ungtss

apologies

2010-07-13T03:04:00.000-07:00

I got to thinking about apologies today. What are they? What are they good for? It seems to me that an apology is a way of accepting blame. And blame, it seems to me, is a combination of causal responsibility and moral failing. In other words if you rearend somebody because of their error, you may have caused the accident, but they are to blame. But if you rearend them because of your error, you are to blame.

But what is this "blame" we throw around? Where is this moral failing? I honestly can't see it anymore. All I see is causation. Causation by stupidity, impulsiveness, mental illness, or something else ... but only causation.

Without blame.

And if there is no blame, can there be any apology? I don't think so. I think an apology without blame means nothing at all.

So I'm going to stop asking for apologies. I may stop giving them. Instead, causation. We'll see how that works.

should and could

2010-07-07T12:22:00.000-07:00

My last post got me thinking about exactly what the difference between "should" and "could" is.

Both of them, of course, imply a difference between the current state of affairs and some alternative state of affairs. It "is" this way, but it "Could/Should" be some different way.

Consequently, they both assume a few more things -- first, that some alternate state of affairs is possible. Second, that some act of will could change the current state of affairs to the alternate. Finally, that the alternate is somehow better than the actual.

That said, the two words describe very different relationships between the actual and the alternative.

"Should" implies a failure to live up to a standard. "Could" implies an opportunity to improve, regardless of any standard. Thus, you SHOULD go to college so you're not a bum, vs. you COULD go to college so you could make more money.

So where does "Should" come from? I think it comes down to a logical error. When we say "should," we really mean "I or someone else want you to, and you're existential value depends on living up to the wants of that person."

Both parts of that equation are essential to a "should."

If I just want you to do something but your value doesn't depend on meeting my wants, then I don't say you SHOULD do something. I tell you I would like you to, and ask you if you would.

If your existential value depends on meeting my wants but I don't want you to do something, then of course there's no should at all.

And all this is not to say my wants are inherently illegitimate. I may WANT you not to waste your life away on crack. Nothing wrong with that.

The danger in the equation, however, lies in the second element. The implied premise that your value -- your "okayness" depends on living up to my standards.

What arrogance. What foolishness to say that if you fail to live up to what i want you to do, you are somehow less valuable than you otherwise would be. What fallacy to project my values on someone else. What utter nonsense.

And that's the fundamental horror of "should." It places the "Shouldee" under the "Shoulder" in value and power. It is inherently coercive and controlling.

Could, on the otherwise, is composed of a completely different scenario. Could is essentially "You would benefit yourself if you did X." It doesn't matter what I want. And you are no less valuable for having done what I wanted or not. It only says "You could benefit if you did X."

Thus, you would make more money if you got educated. You would be healthier if you exercised and ate better. You would be happier at home if you were kind and supportive to your family. Simply put, benefit yourself.

I believe in "Could."

guilt and faith

2010-07-07T11:14:00.000-07:00

I got to thinking about guilt and faith today.

Guilt I'll define as the cognitive dissonance we feel when we perceive a gap between what we "are" and what we "should be."

Faith I'll define as the rush of joy we feel when we perceive an opportunity to rise from what we "are" to what we "could be."

Let me unpack those two concepts a little bit. Guilt is pain. Faith is pleasure. Guilt is finding yourself at the bottom of the well, seeing the sun out of reach. Faith is finding yourself on the ground, and finding a tree to climb. Guilt is the difference between -5 and 0. Faith is the difference between 0 and +5.

Now where do these two feelings come from?

Guilt, I argue, is a form of external control imposed on us from outside. The "Should," after all, has to come from somewhere. Where does it come from? Rarely if ever from us. Usually from parents, preachers, politicians, friends, teachers, and activists. Somebody has to tell us what we "should be."

Why do they tell us this? Is it because we actually SHOULD BE something?

That's an interesting question. Because "Should" depends on a deeper question -- should, FOR WHAT? Should, so God will not send us to hell. Should, so we will not be mocked. Should, so our parents will not turn their backs on us. Should must be for something, and it always seems to be something outside.

The "Could" of faith, however, doesn't have an external purpose. It has an internal one -- the pleasure of being better, stronger, faster. The joy of more power, of more freedom, of more love. It has an internal purpose. And because of that, it cannot be used to exploit us. Rather, because it comes from inside us, it only serves to better us.

Now guilt, of course, is a form of pain. It burns inside us. In extreme cases, it can physically hurt. And as living, breathing, rational organisms, we naturally shrink from pain.

So what do we do with guilt?

Well, since guilt is the gap between what we are and what we should be, what mental tricks can we play with ourselves to close the gap?

Well it seems to me there are two requirements for feeling guilt --

One, you need to have the self esteem to think you "Could" be what you "should" be -- otherwise when people tell you you're bad, you say, "Yes, of course, I know, so what."

Two, you have to care about their standard. If someone calls you a bad person because you fail to live up to their standard, but you don't care about their opinion or their standard, you feel no guilt.

The way I see it, we have four options:
1) We can keep our self-esteem intact while continuing to accept their standard, and become what they require us to be. These are the conformists who live up to society's standards. No guilt because they meet the standards.

2) We can lose our self-esteem while continuing to accept their standard, and become what they say is bad. e.g. Eminem's lyric, "I am whatever you say I am." These are the rebels who accept without question what society says is good, but then place themselves in opposition to it, as a "bad kid." No guilt because they "just can't be good."

3) We can lose both our self-esteem and their standard, and live a life of utter chaos.

4) We can maintain our self esteem while rejecting their standard. These typically invent their own, new moral codes -- which may or may not be in accord with Reality.

None of these responses, of course, is truly desirable. The first leaves others in control of your life and values. The second and third are miserable lives of low self-esteem and rebellion. The last is risky, as one invents one's own standards. Yet these are the only four options we are left with to reduce the pain of guilt, when guilt is used in an effort to control us.

Faith, on the other hand, doesn't raise these issues. It doesn't compare us with what we "should be" -- it points to what we "could be," and shows us the advantages thereof. You don't go to college because "If you don't you're a slacker." You go to college because "Knowledge and wisdom are power." You don't refrain from stealing because "only bad people steal." You refrain from stealing because it's risky, and earning wealth is much more secure and pleasurable.

The difference here is much more significant than mere "glass half full or half empty." The difference is fundamental, because there is no pain to shrink from in faith. There is nothing to hide from. You can acknowledge what you are, and know what you could be, without pain. Without cognitive dissonance. You are free to acknowledge the truth about yourself, and to ponder what you could do better.

I choose faith.

defending the guilty

2010-07-05T05:32:00.000-07:00

in criminal defense, you basically have four categories of clients:

1) People who are not guilty, and the government cannot convince a jury they are.
2) People who are not guilty, but the government can convince a jury they are.
3) People who are guilty, and the government can prove it.
4) People who are guilty, and the government cannot prove it.

Each of these categories needs to be treated differently.

Categories 1-3 are pretty straight forward.

1) If a guy is innocent and the government can't prove they're guilty, you litigate and win.

2) If a guy is innocent but the government can convince a jury they're guilty, you investigate and fight like the dickens to allow the truth to come out in court, then litigate and win.

3) If a guy is guilty and the government can prove it, you convince him to plea guilty and say sorry.

4) It's the last category -- guilty people that the government cannot prove guilty -- that gets people all tripped up. "How can you defend guilty people!?"

Before answering that question, however, we need to dig into the assumptions underlying the question itself.

The key assumption, I think, is that "If a guilty person isn't punished for his crimes, he has gotten away with them -- and this is unjust."

This only makes sense of we assume two things:

First, that governmental punishment is the only legitimate and meaningful source of punishment;
Second, that crimes OUGHT to be punished by government.

I don't think either of those is necessarily true. Consider a man who slaps his wife, and his wife leaves him, but never reports the offense to the police, so he is never punished by government. But of course he loses his wife. He has technically violated "the law," and not been punished by government. But he has been punished. He has received the natural and normal consequences of his actions -- the loss of his wife. And would it necessarily be more just for the governmen to step in and slap him on the wrist for this offense? No. It is best, I submit, for the issue to be addressed between the two of them directly.

There are many other cases where a "crime" need not be punished by government. An insane man attacks a psych ward employee in a fit of madness, and kills him. Punishment will serve no purpose, as the person lacks the mental resources to "learn from his mistakes." Rather, the "right thing to do" is not to punish, but treat the person, and keep him in circumstances where he will not hurt another.

Seems to me there are many other cases where the violation of a law need not be punished by government in order to be adequately addressed. Many sins, after all, are their own punishments.

So let us conclude that there is not necessarily a violation of the deep moral law if a person commits a crime and is not punished by government. Rather, let us conclude that government should only punish crime where punishment is justified and useful under the circumstances.

So then, what is the justification of punishment?

The American system is premised on the idea that punishment is only justified if the government has met its burden of proof. NOT merely that a person is guilty -- but that the government has PROVEN a person is guilty.

And who is to decide that?

The accused cannot be relied on, for obvious reasons. Sometimes they may falsely deny a crime because they want to avoid punishment. Sometimes they may falsely admit to a crime to protect someone close to them, or because of mental infirmity. And people do falsely admit to crimes. All the time.

The government cannot be relied on, also for obvious reasons. Unless the government is given a check and balance, it can -- and will -- exercise arbitrary punitive power, to the detriment of individual rights and the integrity and predictability of society of a whole.

So who is to be relied on?

The evidence, weighed out and balanced in court.

And how is this evidence to be weighed? Well, that's determined by the system. And the rules of the game say that defendants have a legal and moral right to plead not guilty, even if they are.

Why?

I think it's for the best of the system. Because again, just because I'm guilty doesn't mean the government should be able to punish me. The government needs to play by its own rules if it wants to punish me -- and one of those rules is getting the evidence together and convincing a group of people that i did what they say i did. That's how the system works.

So if the system is designed to work that way; and if the system says I have the legal and moral right to plead not guilty even if I am ... and that the government is responsible for proving I'm guilty in front of detached jurors ... then why shouldn't I?

And this brings us back to the first point. If the government does not punish a crime, that may or may not be the right outcome, depending on the circumstances. The rules say that the government has to put together case enough to prove I'm guilty -- evidence enough to convince people who know nothing about me that I did what they say I did.

If they can't do that, therefore, they should not punish me.

And that's what it comes down to. If I defend a guilty man and the government fails to convince the jury that he's guilty, the government does not punish him. But:

1) That doesn't mean he gets away with it. As discussed before, there are many ways we can be punished for our actions that don't involve governmental action. Sometimes (though certainly not always), those punishments are actually more effective than the governmental action itself.

2) The government has set the rules of the game. They've decided to only punish people if they can prove it. If they can't prove it, they can't punish. Regardless of guilt or innocence. Their rules. I see no problem playing by their rules in deciding whether they get to punish somebody.

Why should I apply a higher standard -- a standard that treats the government as God, and their punishment as the only true punishment -- when the government doesn't even assume that level of arrogance?

Marriage, Stimulus + Response

2010-06-13T06:05:00.000-07:00

Assuming for a(nother) moment that we are deliberately designed by one or more really smart people, we can infer a little bit about their design philosophy.

For one thing, they keep everything functioning through equilibrium of opposing forces -- earth's temperature is managed through summer and winter, day and night -- constant change of opposing forces that balance each other out. Equilibrium of extremes keeps things from changing too much and spiraling out of control.

They were also much more concerned with proportion than with size. Show me 100 frogs, and I'll show you 100 frogs of different size. But they all are designed with the same proportion in mind.

Today i thought of a third design philosophy we can infer from how they designed things -- development through challenge. We develop muscles when we have to lift things. Speed when we have to run. Aggression when we need to assert ourselves.

So let's apply this to marriage. Assume for a moment that women were designed as a stimulus to develop personal strength in men. What would we expect them to become in marriage? Unstable, emotional, bossy, unpredictable, flaky.

Without those stimuli, we'd never need to develop leadership.

Taking that a step further, marriage can be looked on as a personal challenge for men. Rather than expecting it to be a situation that gives us everything we want -- happiness, peace, and stability -- we can look at is as a challenge to develop core leadership qualities in us that are essential to running a Tribe.

Maybe that's why things are the way they are -- why wives commonly act in ways that make us nothing short of miserable. They're not there to make us happy. That's not what they're designed for. They're designed to force us to become what we need to be.

Anxiety and its self-medication

2010-06-12T04:47:00.000-07:00

Been thinking a lot about anxiety -- particularly the ways we try to cope with it.

Let's define anxiety as that uncomfortable feeling you have when you don't know what's going to happen next, and fear it might be something bad.

How do we avoid this? 1001 ways.

Alcohol, drugs, controlling others, smoking, anorexia, bulemia, workoholism, procrastination, the list goes on.

The first thing I thought was, "Man, if you find somebody who's exhibiting the above behaviors, watch out -- anxiety is probably under the surface!" We blame people for their alcohol or drug abuse ... but really it's just their way of coping with their anxiety. Because of you're not feeling anxious, there really is no escape necessary. An obsession with massage I think is also a clue that somebody is struggling with anxiety -- because anxiety causes muscle tension, which needs massage. Controlling others is the classic response to anxiety -- I feel out of control, so I impose control on others to make myself feel safe and powerful.

This line of thinking does a couple things for me -- first, it puts these "vices" like control and drugs in perspective as means of coping with weakness, rather than affirmative "sins" in the religious sense. Second, it provides warning signals that somebody may be struggling with anxiety -- and that you can probably expect the rest of the symptoms to show up sooner or later. Third, it explains why I've never had any need for any of those vices, as I really don't experience any anxiety. Fourth, it makes me wonder where anxiety comes from -- early in life? biology? choice? Finally, it makes me wonder how best to deal with the anxiety of others, particularly in the area of controlling behavior, where it begins to have negative impacts on my life.

The obvious answer -- and the one they want you to buy into -- is to alleviate their anxiety. That will certainly alleviate their anxiety, and thus your immediate pain. But the habits that caused the anxiety remain, and the anxiety is sure to return. It's a non-sustainable solution.

What is the answer? Maybe there is no answer to the question "How can I fix them?" as it seems one can only fix onesself. Maybe the answer is simply to cope short-term with anxiety in those around us, and provide education on the tools that alleviate it ...

Why Academics Lean Left

2010-06-09T06:54:00.000-07:00

The demographic studies have always troubled me -- education and leftism are strongly and directly correlated.

What's the causal relationship there?

The Left traditionally explains this in one of two ways -- either education teaches you that Leftism is true, or smarter people choose to be both academics and leftists.

The Right, at least to my knowledge, has never explained it, except from small pockets of anti-intellectually that don't appeal to me for obvious reasons.

So why?

Today, as I was walking back to work, it occurred to me -- Leftism is, at its heart, alienation from and anger at the marketplace. They don't trust the marketplace. They instinctively blame businesses when things go wrong, even when some other fact is to blame -- reactively, angrily, anti-market.

Why?

Perhaps it comes down to alienation. Academics are typically smart, diligent, hardworking, motivated people. Yet they find themselves underpaid and impotent in the marketplace because academia teaches us lots of theories, but very few marketable skills. In fact, you learn your marketable skills in the marketplace, not in school, because marketable skills simply aren't for sale in school. Teachers, for one thing, typically don't have any to pass on.

So let's look at the life of the original and consummate leftist, Marx. Now there was a guy alienated from the marketplace and from real life. He couldn't do anything useful. He couldn't even keep his family clothed and fed. Yet he was smart. And he knew it.

How is an intelligent failure-at-life to explain the problem? One of two ways, really -- some fault in him, or some fault in the "real world."

Many people (myself included) see the problem in ourselves. We recognized when we graduated from school that we were essentially worthless in the marketplace, and needed to learn a whole new set of skills to survive and thrive in the real world.

But suppose someone were to take a different approach, and blame the market for being "unjust" and "immoral." Suppose an intelligent, idealistic young man chose to blame the world for the fact of his uselessness, instead of his own failure to learn anything useful?

Why then you'd have a leftist. Someone who is instinctively, reactively, anti-market at every turn.

Perhaps this explains why academics -- particularly at the highest levels -- tend to be leftist. they're smart, and they know it. yet they cannot compete in the marketplace, and cannot make money. They think they know how the world should be run, because of their extensive study of social science (developed by other academics alienated from the market). Yet business has no use for them. How short a leap to blame business, rather than their own failure to engage in the useful activities demanded by business.

Academia and Leftism share one key similarity -- alienation from the daily business life of the world. Perhaps that alienation is the causal force that drives their correlation.

Old age and death

2010-02-04T11:10:00.000-08:00

I used to think of old age and death as cruel and foreign -- as unjust and undeserved punishments imposed upon us.

As I've gotten older, that's changed. I'm starting to see them as intentional -- and as merciful.

First, death. It used to seem to horrible. But as I grow up, it seems more and more like a merciful sleep. As though I could die tomorrow without fear, because either a) it's just sleeping, or b) there's some sort of eternal life afterwards. I'm thinking a is more likely, but it doesn't really matter, because neither sound so bad.

And what would eternal life be after all? Would I really want to do that? When I was young and spoiled and got whatever I wanted, sure. But now I'm old and I have a lot of responsibilities. I figure as I grow older, my responsibilities will increase. Those are exhausting. Rest sounds good. Because adulthood is not as fun as childhood.

And then I started to think about old age, and how it makes life more and more uncomfortable. Almost mercifully, it prepares us for death by making life less fun. We grow tired just as it becomes time to rest.

I tend to think the Designer(s) gave us death because eternal life would be cruel punishment on a planet of so much work and pain; and they gave us old age to make death more appealing than scary.

Government and racism

2010-01-18T12:22:00.000-08:00

It occurred to me today that most if not all forms of racism are driven and sponsored by activist government -- and in fact, the dynamics of the private sector are largely anti-racist.

Slavery seems to be the clearest example. In order for slavery to exist, the government must establish and enforce the "right" of one person to own another. If the government does not pursue runaway slaves, they are no longer slaves. If the government charges masters with battery when they beat their slaves, false imprisonment when they hold them against their will, and rape when they sexually abuse them (as they would with citizens outside the legally protected "master-slave" relationship), there would be no slavery. Without government sanction, slavery is impossible.

Another example is "nationalism" -- the sense that the "French" need to protect and advance their rights against the "Germans" by going to war and taking their lands. But who really benefits when a state gains land? Not the people -- the STATE. Say France takes 1000 hectares from Germany. Who now owns that land? The State. And they can distribute it as they wish -- most likely, to those who are in good with the political elite. Without governments to fight over land, the notion of the "French" taking land from the "Germans" would be meaningless.

Then of course we have "Jim Crowe" laws -- again, the GOVERNMENT placing one group into a subserviant legal status.

Then of course you have the use of race by politicians to galvanize support for themselves. In Africa, this is particularly vivid as many many politicians run on a tribal, rather than an ideological, platform.

It's less obvious, but no less effective in Western politics. The Far Right often advances policies that unfairly benefit the Majority (e.g. immigration caps and English only legislation), while the Far Left often advances policies that unfairly benefit Minoroties and those in the Majority who can be manipulated into feeling guilty about being in the Majority (e.g. affirmative action, "national apologies," and "hate crime" legislation). Ultimately, they are advancing policies that pit the majority against minorities, when in fact those policies either harm everyone concerned or do nothing substantive at all.

In the private sector, of course, none of this works. Money is money, no matter who gives it to you. A business that only buys or sells to one race will be at a distinct competitive disadvantage with respect to companies willing to buy and sell based purely on price and merit. Racism is not profitable. Wars of nationalism are expensive, and disrupt profitable trade and tourism. Simply, ordinary people live better and richer without racism to limit their opportunities for commerce and social intercourse.

I wonder. Without political interests to manipulate us into racism, would there be any?

Argument and lecture.

2010-01-10T03:59:00.000-08:00

I always learn so much more from an argument than from a lecture. It's kind of like vision, I think. You see better with two eyes than with one. Why? Because each eye sees a different picture. With info from both, your mind can interpolate a single picture that couldn't have been seen by either eye alone. Voila. Depth perception.

This has particularly applied in my recent study of economics and the climate controversy. I learn an enormous amount about how the issues work and play together by hearing disagreements ... because my mind is forced to build a deeper, more nuanced picture than either side alone could have provided in a lecture.

If I were going to run a university, I think I would structure classes with 2, rather than 1 professor. And the class would be structured around controversial (and ostensibly interesting) issues in the subject. And each prof would argue his own perspective. In the process, they would have to explain the basic elements of the subject. To make it comprehensible. As a result, students would gain a much deeper, profound understanding of the topic, as well as the modes and ways of analyzing and criticizing ideas.

Academic questions

2010-01-08T17:52:00.000-08:00

I chuckled at the non-academic and uneducated attempt to distinguish 'academics' from 'truly educated people.' Who determines this?

It's a statement of opinion. I determine it.

What skills are needed?

Experience working with both people who have interacted in the world of business and government, and those who have spent their entire lives on one side of a classroom or another.

What tests are used?

Why would there be tests? It's an opinion.

Who teaches the 'academics' and 'truly educated people'?

Academics are taught by academics alone. Truly educated people are taught by academics, people with real world experience, and their own real world experience.

Is 'real world' a term of art?

See definition number two here: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=real%20world

Where is this 'real world'?

See above.

What constitutes 'more time in the lab'? Does this lab time test apply to all 'academics' or a subset of the group? What about the others?

This is poorly written. Clarify.

Is 'spit back' a technical term?

Out in the real world (see above), it means "repeat without questioning."

How do you test for 'dogma'?

%Dogma=%Conviction/%Falsifiability

How do you test for 'spitting back'?

%Spittingback = GPA/%CriticalThought

What is the relationship between 'a decade ago' and dogma?

The longer a person holds on to stupid ideas, the more dogmatic they are.

How would times of one year ago or two decades ago change the test?

It would not.

If something is not dogma, what is it?

Either error or reasonable belief.

Do academics "fancy themselves much better than the rest of mankind," or do particular geologists on this page happen to know more about geology than the EE proponent here?

Are those mutually exclusive?

Crescent + Star

2010-01-06T17:13:00.000-08:00

Just learned how the crescent moon and star came to be widespread symbols of Islam. The crescent moon was the symbol of the pagan goddess Diana, goddess of the hunt. The city of Byzantium adopted Diana as its patron goddess, and with it her symbol, the crescent moon, and put the moon on their flags. When Byzantium was renamed Constantinople and became the Capitol of the Roman Empire in the 4th century, they added the star, symbol of Mary. For 1000 years, the star and crescent were the symbol of Constantinople -- a symbolic fusion of ancient paganism with Christianity.

In 1453, when the Ottomon's conquered Constantinople, they adopted the crescent + star symbol for the empire. Since the empire was over so much of the Muslim world, it became associated with Islam itself.

And now, it's widely used as the symbol of Islam itself -- on dozens of flags, and the Red Crescent (Islamic equivalent of the Red Cross), etc.

Evidently, there are a number of Muslims, aware of the pagan and Christian origins of the symbol, who disapprove of it. But obviously they're in the minority.

Fascinating how much history, religion, and metaphor is wrapped up in a symbol.

Inflation

2009-12-27T01:01:00.000-08:00

The concept of inflation has always bothered me, because none of the theories I learned about it in school made any sense. Then, on the way back from Paris, I came up with a theory of inflation that makes sense, to me at least.

Prices are of course determined by supply and demand. All things being equal, an increase in demand without any change in supply or a decrease in supply without any change in demand will result in an increase in price. And a decrease in demand or an increase in supply will have the opposite effect.

So imagine you have an island, in which 100 people live, work, and trade in dollars. Everybody produces a certain amount, and consumes a certain amount. Everything is stable, nothing changes. Prices stay the same.

Then imagine somebody comes into town with a million dollars he earned back on the continent. He's retiring on the island, so he's not going to work. He's just going to consume. So he buys a house, buys furniture, buys food. But he produces nothing.

The result is that demand increases, but supply stays the same. That, according to the laws of supply and demand, will raise prices for everybody. Inflation.

But here's the key -- the inflation is not caused by an increase in the money supply. If he had used that million dollars to build a new factory, he may very well have increased supply as well ... canceling out his increase in demand. Or if his factory produced even more than he consumed, it could lower produces across the board. The amount of money in the money supply is not significant. The key is the effect his actions have on the supply and demand for products on the island.

Or suppose the government started taxing half the island, and giving that money to the other half of the island, so the other half could consume products, but was no longer required to work. Demand would increase, because the beneficiaries of the wealth transfer would have increased income. Supply would decrease, because those beneficiaries would no longer be required to work for low wages, raising the costs of production. Demand would increase, supply would decrease. Inflation.

Or suppose the government started buying all sorts of stuff -- non-productive stuff -- like cannons and missiles and laser beams. (Remember, just because something is non-productive does not mean it is useless -- defense is important, but it doesn't produce goods that enter the marketplace). The government would finance those purchases with taxes, which would make production more expensive, reducing supply. It would employ people to operate them, drawing labor and increasing labor costs. And of course the government would use raw materials and resources to produce the weaponry, increasing demand. Decreased supply, increased demand. Inflation.

Now it's important to remember that in this model, inflation is not caused by the mere existence of these things. For instance, if our guy moved onto the island and started spending his retirement savings, there would be a step of inflation as the island adjusted to his spending, but then prices would remain stable at the new, higher level. Further inflation would only be caused by FURTHER outpacing of demand by supply.

It's also important to realize that inflation is not caused by an increase in the money supply by itself, but only by the way that money is USED. If our guy came to the island with a million dollars and hid it under a matress, the money supply has increased, but there has been no inflation. If he uses the money to build a factory, there may even be deflation if he lowers prices. It's only if he increases demand without increasing supply that he causes inflation.

Reasonable things requested unreasonably

2009-11-11T11:00:00.000-08:00

Don't think there's much worse than having somebody ask for something reasonable in a bitchy way. If you say yes, you're a patsy and a pushover. If you say no, you're refusing to do something that's eminently reasonable -- even necessary.

If the request were made in a kind and appreciative way, it would be a pleasure to perform. If the request itself were unreasonable, it would be simple to say "No." But what do you do when it's neither?

Role and Performance

2009-11-11T05:47:00.001-08:00

I've been getting in some high-drama situations lately, which I think come down to a definition and appreciation of roles.

Let's envision a secretary and an executive. The secretary is trained -- and predisposed -- to keep track of details. The executive is a "big picture" guy.

The big picture guy has an appreciation for both the big and small picture -- and also understands that he has delegated the small picture to his secretary.

The secretary, however, appreciates the small picture details, but neither understands nor appreciates the big picture.

The result is that the secretary sees no value in what the executive does, and sees all of his failures in the "small picture" as deep incompetence on his part.

I wonder how one could keep the secretary happy. The concept in the boss's mind -- which revolves around an appreciation for different roles in a team -- doesn't seem to mean anything to her, because she doesn't understand or appreciate his role.

Some people allow her the illusion of power and control in the small picture. Do what she says with obedience and reverence for the significance she finds in it. Joke about your incompetence in that area, and how you "couldn't survive without her." This seems like a common approach.

My first reaction to this approach is to draw back, because it's an illusion and lie. But maybe it's a helpful lie. If the secretary actually does know the value of the big picture -- but finds herself incompetent to deal with it and insecure from her incompetence, she is unlikely to consider herself "better" than the executive. Instead, she is likely to find her "niche" to be a pleasant little bubble of competence where she can pretend she is "in charge."

I have fought this for years because it is a lie. And I have gotten nothing but negative results and failure. Perhaps the key to accepting it is recognizing that it is a lie -- but a lie to a child, because the child cannot handle the truth. And treating someone as though they can handle a truth that they cannot in fact handle is a recipe for disaster.

Meaning III

2009-11-03T13:05:00.000-08:00

It occurred to me a couple days ago ... "the meaning of life" could be answered in the same way as "the meaning of a sentence" -- i.e. whatever the author meant it to mean. the meaning of life? whatever we mean our lives to mean.

Simplistic perhaps. But liberating somehow.

Why do we passively wait to find a "meaning of life" outside ourselves. if we truly have free will (and my daily experience says I do) then the meaning of my life is whatever i want my life to mean.

This is not a theological statement. It's true with or without a God. Real question is "What do I want my life to mean?" and "how do i make it mean that?"

Dennett on Religious Education

2009-06-21T03:53:00.000-07:00

Dennett argues that public schools should teach "facts" about all religions.

He seems to think this would be the easiest thing in the world. "No problem! Just teach the facts."

But there are two problems with his plan that he doesn't address:

1) The facts are disputed. Who wrote the Bible / Quran / Vedas? When? Why? Did the events reported occur? Did Jesus die and rise like the Christians say, die and not rise like the atheists say, not die on the cross at all like the Muslims say? Or did he even exist? What are the facts?
2) Which facts are to be selected? Do we emphasize the Crusades, or the Abolitionists? The selection of facts itself creates a different image in the mind of the student. Who decides what the balance is to be?

Those two decisions are philosophical, not factual -- and they will be made by the teacher.

And the reason I don't want religion taught in school is because I don't trust teachers -- any teachers -- to make those decisions.

The problem becomes clear as he goes on -- he quotes PDL, but his only response is essentially, "I think that's wrong," and/or "I want this meme to go away." Well, yeah. You two disagree about the facts. That's why I don't want either of you teaching religion in school.

He also, off-handedly, says, "Intelligent design? Not from Francis Crick." But Francis Crick, who discovered the structure of DNA, was an advocate of ID -- specifically, directed panspermia.

Dumbass can't even get his own facts right. Why should I trust him or his philosophical minions with the mind of my child?

East and West Rome

2009-06-19T22:31:00.000-07:00

Growing up, I was taught that the Roman Empire was split in two by diocletian, East and West, and that the West "fell" in the 5th century.

But as always, the story is far more interesting than that.

The split was administrative only -- meaning the Empire remained intact. There were augusti over East and West -- but there were also prefectures, diocese, and provinces. Diocletian created a federal system for a united Empire.

He also moved the capitol of the Western portion to Milan -- so Rome was no longer the capitol of ANYTHING significant.

But then Constantinople became the de facto heart of the Empire -- because of its fantastic trade location, that's where the money went. And because that's where the money was, that's where the power went. And the West was neglected, and became something of a backwater -- the center of power lay in Constantinople, and the rest of the empire suffered a brain drain, as always happens in every highly centralized state.

And eventually, the Germanic tribes from up north took the Western provinces -- but this was a loss of territory to a single Roman Empire now effectively capitoled in Constantinople ... not a "fall of the Roman Empire."

That event -- the true fall of the Roman Empire -- occurred in 1453 when Constantinople was conquered by the Ottomon Turks.

If I were to guess, I think our current view of the Roman Empire stems from:

a) cultural bias on the part of Western European historians that see only the Western portion of the empire as significant;
b) professional bias on the part of Western European historians -- because which makes a more interesting story -- "The Ancient Roman Empire Crumbled from within into a ball of fury from mysterious causes which I will now elucidate" or "Nobody cared about Rome anymore, because all the money was in Constantinople -- which is studied by the professor down the hall."

Dirty words and racism

2009-06-14T10:13:00.001-07:00

I got into an interesting discussion about this event, in which a prominent SC Republican joked in a Facebook comment that Mrs. Obama's ancestors were gorillas. The left was, of course, up in arms.

At first, I got caught up in the literal meaning of what was being said, and noted that Bush had been called a chimp and a cracker, and I wondered aloud why there appeared to be a double standard. It also occurred to me that if one takes biology textbooks seriously, it's not far from the truth about her and the rest of us.

All in all, it seemed a very strange thing to get upset about.

But then I thought about it a little harder.

And it seemed to me to be similar to the issue of curse words, which didn't really make sense to me until tonight. The words "Fuck" and "Shit" are widely considered obscene. But why? Each of them has non-offensive equivalents ("Intercourse" and "feces," to name only two) -- so it is not the subject matter itself. And I can't imagine there's anything particularly offensive about the mere ordering of the letters. So why are they offensive?

And then it occurred to me, it's because of the groups that commonly use those terms. They are seen as "prison language," or the language of coarse, vulgar people. It's not the meaning or word itself -- the use of the word is a social signal that one belongs to a particular class. And it is membership in that class that drives the offense.

Perhaps the same thing applies to the comment about being descended of gorillas. From an objective standpoint, there doesn't appear to me much basis for offense. After all, per the theory of evolution, it's true! And also, it's common to call people apes, but seems to only be offensive when applied to blacks -- a rather strange double standard.

But let's look at it from my new vantage point. When a white, southern male says that a black female is descended of gorillas, he is associating himself with a particular group -- specifically, ignorant, old-timey racists. He's doing the same thing as the KKK. It doesn't matter that it's ostensibly true per the theory of evolution -- it's offensive because he's connecting himself with racists.

For comparison, it would be like a gynecologist telling a patient, "Alright, let's see that pussy." The meaning itself is identical to "Alright, I am going to examine your vagina." But it's offensive, because it associates him with those who treat the female anatomy disrespectfully.

But when a black man calls a white man a cracker, what group is he associating himself with? Nobody except a trendy, bold, sarcastic black man -- a group which doesn't have negative associations -- and even has positive ones.

Or when a white man calls a white man an ape, what group is he associating himself with? Every 10 year old who's ever wanted to give somebody shit on the playground. No horrible group there either.

From this vantage point, all these strange offenses common in our culture (and other cultures) come into focus -- it's not about the word -- it's about the speaker.

But what's funny is, the emphasis is on the statement, not the person. We consider the PHRASE offensive, when in fact it is the PERSON we are judging.

Interesting.

Education

2009-06-06T18:56:00.000-07:00

Often I read articles or hear people speak about how "the education system is failing our children, or us, or something." Implicit to those arguments, of course, is that schools have a responsibility to make kids smart -- to mold them, to educate them. To take the blank minds of the youth and mold them into passionate, skilled learners and employable, responsible citizens, yada yada yada.

Noble as the sentiment appears, I think it's backwards and extremely dangerous. The responsibility for education lies not with schools, but with children and parents. The responsibility of schools is simply to make resources available which children and parents can use as tools in educating themselves -- providing lectures, books, and activities that the child can seize upon to educate himself. Or not seize upon, and fail to educate himself.

Here's why this is important: No school can make a child smart if the child doesn't want to. The child simply will not retain, because children only learn when they want to. No school can make a child want to learn -- that desire comes from the child.

The result of shifting the responsibility for education from children and parents to schools is passivity. Children and parents wait for the school to "make them smart" -- an impossible task. Only the children and their parents can do that.

When a child fails to learn, the parent and child blame the teacher, believing the teacher has failed to do something magical in the child to make them not only interested in the topic, but also to retain and apply knowledge. But who has failed to learn? The child. And who has failed to train their child to learn? The parent. Educators are only resources -- by their very nature, they cannot do the essential work of education -- learning.

I think educators brought this shift in responsibility on themselves, as there's a narcissistic appeal in viewing yourself as "molding the young," and it also has political benefits, insofar as you use rhetoric of your own indispensability to get funding and support. Parents and students seem to accept this view, as it relieves them of the responsibility for education. Nevertheless, it's still wrong.

The issue here is of course philosophical, rather than practical. It requires an attitude change on the part of the student and parent, rather than any systemic change to the educational system. But I think it's vital. Children need to go to school in the belief that they are being given an opportunity to grow and learn so that they can be well-equipped to conquer the world. Parents need to see it as their responsibility to train their child in the value of that education, and to make it happen. Teachers need to stop trying to brainwash reluctant learners -- they need to make the tools available and provide structure, but not perceive the responsibility for (and waste time attempting to) educating the unwilling. If a child isn't learning, the teacher needs to tell him and his parents, "If you don't learn, these will be the consequences for your life." Beyond that, the responsibility lies with the child, and with the parent.

Schools are a resource for education, but they are only a resource -- and often not the best one, especially with the advent of the internet. My education always has and always will take place primarily outside the classroom.

It's important that the responsibility for education be placed where it belongs. Because when school is over, if a child got a shitty education, he has no one to blame but himself, and he alone will suffer the consequences.

Female unhappiness

2009-05-26T13:24:00.000-07:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/26/opinion/26douthat.html?_r=1

Interesting article on female unhappiness ... surveys show fewer women report being happier than they did 50 years ago, prior to the sexual revolution. Proposed causes from the article include: "Women are not wired for the working world," "Women are required to work more and still do the household stuff," "the continued struggle against the glass ceiling," etc.

But I favor another hypothesis:

I think women are much more attuned to social expectations than men are. I think in the 60s, women were expected only to run a great household. Now they're expected to run a great home and have a highly successful career. It's miserably difficult to accomplish both. But I know a huge number of women that have internalized both obligations -- and feel intense guilt at their failure to live up to both ideals.

How many times have I heard women feel guilty about spending time with their family when they feel they "should be working," and feel guilty about working when they feel they "should be spending time with their family."

This is peripherally related to the "double shift" hypothesis in the article, but discernably different I think. It's not about "women are doing more work than they did before." It's about "Women feel like they have to live up to a new, unattainably high ideal." Pre-sexual revolution society had much lower expectations of women. They weren't expected to be the peers of men in terms of their intellectual prowess and professional reputation. Raised demands = lower degree of success relative to those expectations = lowered self-esteem = lowered happiness.

How often it seems women do that to themselves.

And this leads me to the ultimate irony I've always perceived about the sexual revolution. I don't understand why they wanted it. If society told me all I needed to do was stay home and care for the kids, I'd do a spectacular job, and have a love of fun doing it. I could read books, surf the web, garden ... I'd love it. I hate going to "the office" every day.

Why the hell did they want to WORK?

The easy answer is, of course, "They wanted the option to work." Well and good. But what they imposed on themselves (with peculiar feminine logic) was an EXPECTATION to work, and not only work, but work well, at high paying, prestigious, meaningful jobs, as the equals or superiors of men. That's a very different proposition from "having the option to work," an option which I think they should well have. But they gave themselves more than they bargained for, I think.

All of this is of course deeply subjective at heart. They're concerned with "whether they're a good person" much more than "what needs to be done." If they were concerned with "what needed to be done," they would likely make efforts to simplify their lives and reduce the demands from both sides. But that wouldn't satisfy the narcissistic urge to be the "uber-woman." And so they make themselves miserable based on self-imposed expectations of perfection in all realms of life.

Meanwhile, men, who are generally much less driven by social expectations, find their load lightened. They aren't solely responsible for the financial and physical security of their family. Many of their women find themselves driven by misplaced pride to be the primary breadwinner ... and many men are willing to say, "Fine, if you say so -- I'm going back to playing Wii."

The key, I think, is to focus not on social expectations, but on the objective requirements of life. Two sets of jobs need to be done -- money-making in the marketplace, and care of the home. Some division of labor is required, and specialization of labor is one of the key mechanisms for increased efficiency. Does that mean that women should stay home? No. But it means that if they choose to work, they need to recognize the costs it imposes on themselves and their families. The family loses the advantage of specialization of labor. It loses the stability of a person who is rested and relaxed enough to care for the emotional needs of the family. It loses the availability of a person who can take care of the endless needs of domestic life. Fine, go to work for your pride, that's well and good -- but do it knowing the effects of your actions.

But I speak in the language of enlightened self-interest, rather than the language of social expectation. And the response, in the language of social expectation, goes something like, "Well now you're just making me feel bad by reminding me of all the things I'm failing to do in the house." And on it goes.

Lynn Margulis

2009-05-25T18:26:00.001-07:00

Props to Sadunkal for the link.

One real highlight is the quote:

Margulis has described neo-Darwinism as; "a minor twentieth century religious sect within the sprawling religious persuasion of Anglo-Saxon Biology."

Love that. And love the fact that there are evidently good-hearted scientists out there fighting against the dogmatism of the Neo-Darwinists, whether or not they agree with me, as dogmatism is always the enemy of Truth.

Not quite so impressed with the blog author, however. He claims: "And it was this perception of evolution and natural selection, the image of “nature red in tooth and claw” that was seized with glee by apologists for capitalism who were, at that time, struggling with an outraged public reaction to the inhuman conditions under which the working class, including very young children, were expected to labour."

Who were these capitalists? Perhaps it was Andrew Carnegie, who devoted his later life to philanthropy? Or Andrew Mellon, who did the same? Who were these capitalists who sought to rationalize the oppressed condition of the poor?

On the contrary, the arguments made in favor of racial and individual supremacy -- of the morality of 'nature tooth and claw' came from the Nazi or National Socialist party. And in the United States, 91 of the 126 votes against the Civil rights act (like 3/4) were by the populist, non-elitist Democratic party. The massive social purges were performed in the Communist countries, Russia and China, while the relatively capitalist US was developing a social welfare system.

Associating Capitalism with dogmatic Survival of the Fittest-style Darwinism seems deeply at odds with the facts, but this author (a scientist, not a historian or a political scientist) makes the claim without support or citation. Yikes.

Baby instincts

2009-05-24T04:47:00.000-07:00

Just got home with my first baby, and man is she delightful. In learning the ancient tricks of parenthood, though, I've been constantly amazed at the amount of knowledge already packed into the baby when she arrives. Not intellectual, abstract knowledge, but instinctual knowledge. For example, she knows how to make sucking faces when she's hungry. Or cry when she's cold.

On the surface, this looks pretty simple. But the closer I look at it, the more remarkable it seems. What mechanism makes her want to do that? The common and superficial Western answer is "Instincts developed and refined by evolution." Well and good, but what is an instinct? What is it, actually, in the organism that makes them perform a behavior?

The articles on the web give only the superficial answer -- "inherited." How so? If genetically, then shouldn't it be possible to "shut off" the instinct with genetic manipulation? We haven't done that yet to my knowledge, so this doesn't strike me so much as an experimental and scientific explanation as an "everything came about through evolution of genetic material, so the answer to every question in biology must be found in evolution." And anyway, how many complex interactions of genes must go into telling a baby how to make a sucking face, manipulate the tongue, and periodically swallow to get milk from a nipple they've never seen before in a world they can't possibly understand?

Or is instinct non-genetic? Is it something else?

Reductionists would argue that the child has some sort of pleasure sensor, and that the release of pleasure-chemicals is triggered by the instinctual behavior. Perhaps. But what pleasure chemicals are released by crying when cold? And what tells the body that those particular chemicals are "pleasure chemicals" to be sought, as opposed to "pain chemicals" to be avoided. This solution seems only to beg the question.

I really have no idea. And that makes watching my little girl eat that much more of a spiritual experience. Because every day it seems more and more obvious to me that somebody put those instincts in her, and I'd really like to shake his hand.

Laws of Form

2009-05-23T21:31:00.000-07:00

(Props to Sadun Kal)

"Discoveries of any great moment in mathematics and other disciplines, once they are discovered, are seen to be extremely simple and obvious, and make everybody, including their discoverer, appear foolish for not having discovered them before. It is all too often forgotten that the ancient symbol for the prenascence of the world* is a fool, and that foolishness, being a divine state, is not a condition to be either proud or ashamed of.

Unfortunately, we find systems of education today which have departed so far from the plain truth, that they now teach us to be proud of what we know and ashamed of ignorance. This is doubly corrupt. It is corrupt not only because pride is in itself a mortal sin, but also because to teach pride in knowledge is to put up an effective barrier against any advance upon what is already known, since it makes one ashamed to look beyond the bonds imposed by one's ignorance.

To any person prepared to enter with respect into the realm of his great and universal ignorance, the secrets of being will eventually unfold, and they will do so in measure according to his freedom from natural and indoctrinated shame in his respect of their revelation.

In the face of the strong, and indeed violent, social pressures against it, few people have been prepared to take this simple and satisfying course towards sanity. And in a society where a prominent psychiatrist can advertise that given the chance, he would have treated Newton to electric shock therapy, who can blame any person for being afraid to do so?

To arrive at the simplest truth, as Newton knew and practiced, requires years of contemplation. Not activity. Not reasoning. Not calculating. Not busy behaviour of any kind. Not reading. Not talking. Not making an effort. Not thinking. Simply bearing in mind what it is one needs to know. And yet those with the courage to tread this path to real discovery are not only offered practically no guidance on how to do so, they are actively discouraged and have to set about it in secret, pretending meanwhile to be diligently engaged in the frantic diversions and to conform with the deadening personal opinions which are being continually thrust upon them.

In these circumstances, the discoveries that any person is able to undertake represent the places where, in the face of induced psychosis, he has by his own faltering and unaided efforts, returned to sanity. Painfully, and even dangerously, maybe. But nonetheless returned, however furtively."

G. Spencer Brown, The Laws of Form, Appendix 1.

Experiment

2009-05-12T18:03:00.001-07:00

"We have to learn again that science without contact with experiments is an enterprise which is likely to go completely astray into imaginary conjecture." — Hannes Alfven

"Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality." — Nikola Tesla

Viral epidemics

2009-04-26T08:37:00.000-07:00

My recent foray into the HIV/AIDS controversy has now tuned me to these periodic "pandemic" scares. Here is the most recent one.

MEXICO CITY – A unique strain of swine flu is the suspected killer of dozens of people in Mexico, where authorities closed schools, museums, libraries and theaters in the capital on Friday to try to contain an outbreak that has spurred concerns of a global flu epidemic.

Wait ... SUSPECTED killer? What exactly does that mean? A particular strain either exists in the body or it doesn't. How can you suspect?

The worrisome new virus — which combines genetic material from pigs, birds and humans in a way researchers have not seen before — also sickened at least eight people in Texas and California, though there have been no deaths in the U.S.

So in other words, in neighboring, rich America, this strain isn't fatal. What's the danger then -- the virus, or the poor conditions of Mexico city?

"We are very, very concerned," World Health Organization spokesman Thomas Abraham said. "We have what appears to be a novel virus and it has spread from human to human ... It's all hands on deck at the moment."

Very very concerned. About 20 deaths in Mexico. When 64,000 die of all varieties of flu every year, these 20 (with an unknown mortality rate although no infected persons have died in the States) have "all hands on deck." Right.

The outbreak caused alarm in Mexico, where more than 1,000 people have been sickened.

Wait, by this particular strain? How do they know that? Untold thousands of people get sick every year in Mexico, but they somehow know that more than a thousand have been sickened by this strain? How? Are they genetically sequencing the viruses of every sick person that comes into the clinic?

Residents of the capital donned surgical masks and authorities ordered the most sweeping shutdown of public gathering places in a quarter century. President Felipe Calderon met with his Cabinet Friday to coordinate Mexico's response.
The WHO was convening an expert panel to consider whether to raise the pandemic alert level or issue travel advisories.
It might already be too late to contain the outbreak, a prominent U.S. pandemic flu expert said late Friday.
Given how quickly flu can spread around the globe, if these are the first signs of a pandemic, then there are probably cases incubating around the world already, said Dr. Michael Osterholm at the University of Minnesota.
In Mexico City, "literally hundreds and thousands of travelers come in and out every day," Osterholm said. "You'd have to believe there's been more unrecognized transmission that's occurred."
There is no vaccine that specifically protects against swine flu, and it was unclear how much protection current human flu vaccines might offer. A "seed stock" genetically matched to the new swine flu virus has been created by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, said Dr. Richard Besser, the agency's acting director. If the government decides vaccine production is necessary, manufacturers would need that stock to get started.
Authorities in Mexico urged people to avoid hospitals unless they had a medical emergency, since hospitals are centers of infection. They also said Mexicans should refrain from customary greetings such as shaking hands or kissing cheeks. At Mexico City's international airport, passengers were questioned to try to prevent anyone with flu symptoms from boarding airplanes and spreading the disease.

And now we learn about the enormous government response. To 20 deaths. Of a disease that kills 64,000 every year.

Epidemiologists are particularly concerned because the only fatalities so far were in young people and adults.

Young people and adults. Yeah, that about covers everybody. Who else is there? I'd be concerned if a flu strain was killing people that weren't either young or adults, because I've never heard of such a thing.

The eight U.S. victims recovered from symptoms that were like those of the regular flu, mostly fever, cough and sore throat, though some also experienced vomiting and diarrhea.

So 8 people get this flu in the states and ... it's a regular flu, no deaths. Pandemic? Really?

U.S. health officials announced an outbreak notice to travelers, urging caution and frequent handwashing, but stopping short of telling Americans to avoid Mexico. Mexico's Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordoba said 68 people have died of flu and the new swine flu strain had been confirmed in 20 of those deaths.

So the flu has killed 68 people, and 20 of those people have the new strain. Why aren't they concerned about the other 48, that died of all the other strains? Or the horribly inadequate government healthcare that causes people to die of an illness that would not be fatal in the States?

At least 1,004 people nationwide were sick from the suspected flu, he said.

Ah, 1004 people are sick from the SUSPECTED flu. Are we suspecting that it's the flu generally, or that it's this PARTICULAR flu? How many people are NORMALLY sick from the suspected flu this time of year?

The geographical spread of the outbreaks also concerned the WHO — while 13 of the 20 deaths were in Mexico City, the rest were spread across Mexico — four in central San Luis Potosi, two up near the U.S. border in Baja California, and one in southern Oaxaca state.

109,000,000 people in Mexico, the vast majority of whom live in unsanitary, undernourished, poverty conditions. 20 of them die of the flu. That's 1/5,000,000. We have a pandemic on our hands! But of course, transfer those cases to the states (which does not have a state-run healthcare system) and the disease isn't fatal. Interesting.

Scientists have long been concerned that a new flu virus could launch a worldwide pandemic of a killer disease. A new virus could evolve when different flu viruses infect a pig, a person or a bird, mingling their genetic material. The resulting hybrid could spread quickly because people would have no natural defenses against it.
Still, flu experts were concerned but not alarmed about the latest outbreak.
"We've seen swine influenza in humans over the past several years, and in most cases, it's come from direct pig contact. This seems to be different," said Dr. Arnold Monto, a flu expert with the University of Michigan.
"I think we need to be careful and not apprehensive, but certainly paying attention to new developments as they proceed."

The CDC says two flu drugs, Tamiflu and Relenza, seem effective against the new strain. Roche, the maker of Tamiflu, said the company is prepared to immediately deploy a stockpile of the drug if requested.
Both drugs must be taken early, within a few days of the onset of symptoms, to be most effective.
Cordoba said Mexico has enough Tamiflu to treat 1 million people, but the medicine will be strictly controlled and handed out only by doctors.

And now, the profit motive. American pharms, ready to spring into action!

Mexico's government had maintained until late Thursday that there was nothing unusual about the flu cases, although this year's flu season had been worse and longer than past years.
The sudden turnaround by public health officials angered many Mexicans.
"They could have stopped it in time," said Araceli Cruz, 24, a university student who emerged from the subway wearing a surgical mask. "Now they've let it spread to other people."
The city was handing out free surgical masks to passengers on buses and the subway system, which carries 5 million people each day. Government workers were ordered to wear the masks, and authorities urged residents to stay home from work if they felt ill.
Closing schools across Mexico's capital of 20 million kept 6.1 million students home, as well as thousands of university students. All state and city-run cultural activities were suspended, including libraries, state-run theaters, and at least 14 museums. Private athletic clubs closed down and soccer leagues were considering canceling weekend games.
The closures were the first citywide shutdown of public gathering places since millions died in the devastating 1985 earthquake.
Mexico's response brought to mind other major outbreaks, such as when SARS hit Asia. At its peak in 2003, Beijing shuttered schools, cinemas and restaurants, and thousands of people were quarantined at home.
In March 2008, Hong Kong ordered more than a half-million students to stay home for two weeks because of a flu outbreak. It was the first such closure in Hong Kong since the outbreak of SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome.
"It's great they are taking precautions," said Lillian Molina, a teacher at the Montessori's World preschool in Mexico City, who scrubbed down empty classrooms with Clorox, soap and Lysol between fielding calls from worried parents.
U.S. health officials said the outbreak is not yet a reason for alarm in the United States. The five people sickened in California and three in Texas have all recovered.
It's unclear how the eight, who became ill between late March and mid-April, contracted the virus because none were in contact with pigs, which is how people usually catch swine flu. And only a few were in contact with each other.

And now, the collossal overreaction. Shutting down the entire city

CDC officials described the virus as having a unique combination of gene segments not seen before in people or pigs. The bug contains human virus, avian virus from North America and pig viruses from North America, Europe and Asia. It may be completely new, or it may have been around for a while and was only detected now through improved testing and surveillance, CDC officials said.
The most notorious flu pandemic is thought to have killed at least 40 million people worldwide in 1918-19. Two other, less deadly flu pandemics struck in 1957 and 1968.

Religion as rationalization

2009-04-21T07:16:00.000-07:00

Got into a fascinating discussion at this blog about this video:

I was fascinated by what would make this guy put this out there. Was this a deliberate lie, or does he really believe this? If he believes it, why? If this is a lie, what's his motive?

Salman Hameed of the host blog raised an interesting hypothesis -- that he is so obsessed with his anti-semitism that he really thinks this is true.

I found that explanation to be highly credible. And then I took it a step further, and hypothesized about the psychodynamics that could drive such a belief. If you are in a state of utter paranoia and panic about this perceived incredibly powerful force that you perceive as insidiously overwhelming your homeland and culture ... you might find yourself seeing symbols of this everywhere, even if it's not true.

The best analogy I could think of is an angry wife. Sometimes a wife gets mad at her husband because he deserves it for something specific he did. But other times it seems that she's already feeling angry at him, or life or the country they're in or whatever, and she projects that anger onto an object -- be it his car, his haircut, his teeth, whatever. She criticizes the object vociferously -- not because the object itself deserves it, but because it acts as a symbol for her overwhelming emotional state.

Perhaps that's what this poor sop is doing.

And then it occurred to me that perhaps much of religion (including atheistic religion) is, in practice, a rationalization and symbolism for deeply felt emotions. A jihadi feels deeply alienated from the world, yet longs for a place of peace, and he perceives that outside forces are to blame for his plight. Jihad is a religious language that matches perfectly with those emotions. It explains why he is feeling alienated, why he hates the West, and gives him hope for a better life. The answer seems intuitively, emotionally, deeply obvious. So he believes it.

I wonder how many other religious beliefs could be seen in this light. Calvinism, for instance, is the belief that we have no control over our wills -- that we are dirty, sinful, and corrupt -- and that only by submitting our will to God can we live rightly. That strikes me as fitting closely with the psychodynamics of a child who feels they lack an authentic will of their own, who worship a father figure, and who have deeply ingrained self-hatred. Perhaps the religion is simply the language that articulates the feelings which come first.

This puts a whole different light on the fact that many people follow the religion of their family -- and perceive it not as momentum, but as genuine, self-held belief. The emotional environment in which they grew up conditions them in such a way that the same beliefs that were intuitively obvious to the parents are also intuitively obvious to the children.

But it has the additional benefit of explaining why some children go a different route than their parents. Because a child has emotional drives of his own, and is not fully determined by the way he was raised. This would explain my case, in which I differ from my family on virtually every essential element of our creed. While they certainly influence me, I have an emotional environment of my own -- and the things that make sense to them do not necessarily make sense to me.

What's my emotional environment and religion? It's grounded on enlightened self-interest, and the belief that harmony with other people of high quality is a highly rewarding outcome. I am relentless in trusting no one else's judgment -- I trust only my own evaluation fo the facts. This emotional environment stems from a childhood of being lied to constantly by religious and atheistic demagogues, and told that I must sacrifice everything for what? Always some unfalsifiable ideal.

And indeed, this reflects itself in my religion. I believe that humans are designed by God to be selfish, and that with wisdom, selfishness leads us back to harmony with God and with man. I do not submit myself to any creed, because I do not trust any authority. And I believe that the road to truth comes through careful, deliberate, relentless examination of the facts.

Interesting.

And what could we say of the materialistic atheists? Well, I'd guess an emotional constitution that wants everything to be orderly and predictable -- that cannot tolerate ambiguity or confusion -- that struggles to hide and stifle the chaos within their own souls, and the souls of humanity, with a nice, clean, orderly explanation. Unfortunately, that explanation fails to adequately explain the facts -- but the facts are too scary to deal with. They must be suppressed in favor of clean, orderly theories.

Now, having analyzed religion in terms of the emotional biases that lead to preference of belief, does that discredit religion itself? By no means. By logical necessity, some set of facts about religious topics must be true. There either is a God or there is not. He either judges us or he does not. Etc. Some religion must be true.

This analysis merely points out that our selection and preference for religion is often guided less by a search for truth and more for a set of beliefs that confirms our preexisting emotional predisposition.

Of course, once recognized and owned, our emotional predisposition is something that can be molded. We need not always be a jihadi or a conventional atheist. We can recognize the disfunction inherent in each of those ways of looking at the world, and adjust ourselves.

And I would think, the more we adjust the lens with which we look at the world to match reality, the more accurately our religious conclusions would match Reality.

Libeling our times.

2009-04-20T08:32:00.001-07:00

Our ignorance of history makes us libel our own times. People have always been like this. -- Gustave Flaubert

Atheists against religious tolerance.

2009-04-20T07:43:00.001-07:00

Found a scary article today by Sam Harris. Key quote is this:

"I hope to show that the very ideal of religious tolerance-born of the notion that every human being should be free to believe whatever he wants about God-is one of the principal forces driving us toward the abyss." From The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, Link here

On the face of it, he claims that religious tolerance is a destructive force. Really? His line of reasoning is this -- if we refuse to call a religious idea wrong (like "I will get 72 virgins in heaven if I blow up this building") then we have no basis for stopping them.

But in arguing this, he misunderstands the basic concept of religious tolerance.

First, religious tolerance is and always has been bound by law. This is to say, "you can believe whatever you want, but you cannot act in such a way as to violate the commonly agreed-upon law." The basis for acting against a terrorist is not "You may not believe that about God." It is, "Blowing up buildings is illegal."

Second, religious tolerance is not religious acceptance. You tolerate a screaming baby next to you on a full flight. But that doesn't mean you like it or think it's as good as any other scenario. It means that, because of the rights of all the people involved, there's nothing you can do to force the baby to stop. You can't throw the baby out the window, smother it, or force somebody in first class to hold it. The baby and its guardian have rights which you can't violate. You have to tolerate the screaming.

Does that mean you can't talk to the person? Of course not. Maybe you have tips on how to keep the baby quiet. Maybe you've noticed that the baby's diapers are dirty and need changing. You can converse, attempt to persuade, even cajole. But you cannot violate their rights.

That difference between tolerance (I'll put up with it) and acceptance (It's fine) is extremely important in the context of religious tolerance. We don't have to accept all views other than our own. But we do need to tolerate them.

And why? Why is tolerance so important?

Primarily, because we don't trust anyone to be the moderator of Truth. No Christian, no Muslim, no Jew, no Atheist, no Agnostic, is to be trusted as gatekeeper of Religious Truth. Because who knows for sure what's absolutely True -- who is sure enough to justify their punishing people who don't believe what's true? Nobody. That is the fundamental assumption underlying religious liberty.

And it's why religious tolerance is so important.

Now it might be argued that I'm just playing a semantic game -- that he was really arguing against what I called "religious acceptance." But if so, he's arguing against something that isn't a significant factor in the world. Everybody who has an opinion on religious matters believes their opinion is better than the alternatives. Dogmatics because their dogma is right. Agnostics because the evidence is unclear and therefore those who have strong opinions are wrong to do so. In other words, they believe agnosticism is better than religionism. Who are these "acceptanceists" out there arguing that no belief system is better than another? I haven't met any.

So if he meant "religious tolerance" as the belief that all belief systems are equal -- and then went on to argue that this concept was one of the principle forces leading us into the abyss, then who are these people who think every belief system is equally valid? I haven't met one.

So, he gets away with this argument through equivocation -- his conflation of tolerance with acceptance. He blames a basic principle of human liberty (tolerance) for something it doesn't do (accepting all religions as equally valid). Simple, no frills logical fallacy.

The ironic part is, of course, that the author is sinking to the level of the worst of his opponents. How many religious wackjobs would make the same argument against him? "We cannot tolerate atheism, because CLEARLY [insert religion] is the truth religion and atheism is the source of all evil in the world."

And around and around we go again.

Killing

2009-04-20T07:34:00.001-07:00

Some [men] kill because their faiths explicitly command them to do so, some kill though their faiths explicitly forbid them to do so, and some kill because they have no faith and hence believe all things are permitted to them. Polytheists, monotheists, and atheists kill – indeed, this last class is especially prolifically homicidal, if the evidence of the twentieth century is to be consulted. Men kill for their gods, or for their God, or because there is no God and the destiny of humanity must be shaped by gigantic exertions of human will . . .

Men will always seek gods in whose name they may perform great deeds or commit unspeakable atrocities . . . Then again, men also kill on account of money, land, love, pride, hatred, envy or ambition.

Does religious conviction provide a powerful reason for killing? Undeniably it often does. It also often provides the sole compelling reason for refusing to kill, or for being merciful, or for seeking peace; only the profoundest ignorance of history could prevent one from recognizing this. For the truth is that religion and irreligion are cultural variables, but killing is a human constant.
David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions, 12-13

Introversion: characteristic or condition?

2009-04-19T06:34:00.000-07:00

On my drive today, it occurred to me that introversion might better be seen as a "condition" rather than a "characteristic." What I mean is this: We commonly say that a person "is" introverted -- as though that were a fundamental characteristic of them as a human being. But what if it is instead a condition -- the way a person behaves due to their situation?

One thing: if introversion were a characteristic, we would expect a person to always be introverted -- but in fact, many introverts become very outgoing in the right circumstances -- generally, when they find themselves in a group of like-minded people with whom they can fit in. The fact that a person can be introverted in one situation and extraverted in another implies that the situation causes the condition, rather than something inherent in the person.

So what causes introversion? My initial hypothesis is this: introversion is a combination of three factors -- feeling like one does not fit in with the people one is currently surrounded by, 2) wanting to engage in the group only if it is likely to result in acceptance and fitting in, and 3) Being either unwilling or unable to expend the mental energy necessary to fit in. Extraversion, on the other hand, is a combination of wanting to interact and either a) fitting in, b) not fitting in but either not noticing or not caring.

Thus, a person is not an introvert because there is some "introversion" characteristic in him, but because he is unable to fit into the group, and so he finds it excessively difficult to engage the group. It's possible not to fit in for two reasons -- a) you understand what is going on in a group, and find the people around you to be intolerably stupid, or b) you don't understand what's going on in the group because you are not sufficiently acquainted with the culture of the group. In other words, you can be introverted because you're in a group of people you find stupid, or because you perceive yourself to be too stupid to participate and be accepted.

Of course, place that same person in a situation in which he feels like he fits into the group and is accepted, and your "introvert" suddenly becomes an extravert.

This would also explain the common phenomenon that introverts need time to "recharge" alone, because social interactions tire them out. It's not that the social interactions themselves tire them out -- it's that, because they don't fit in, interacting takes a lot of mental energy -- like speaking a second language -- and it tires them out. But again, place that "introvert" in a group that he can connect with, and suddenly the need to "recharge" disappears.

Extraversion, of course, is either fitting in, or not fitting in and either not noticing or not caring. Thus a socially adept person would connect with a group, and become very outgoing because he felt accepted and understood. Alternatively a socially maladapted person would not realize or not care that he was not fitting in, and consequently would be very outgoing in the group, but (because he did not fit in) would ultimately drive others away.

Therefore, introversion is a combination of three things -- 1) Perceiving that a set of behaviors are acceptable or unacceptable to a group, 2) Wanting to interact only if you expect that interaction to result in acceptance, 3) finding yourself in a situation where you perceive that fitting in is either impossible or so difficult as to be exhausting.

Take away any one of those three conditions, and an introvert magically becomes an extravert.

Seems to much better describe the experience of introversion. And it explains everything in terms of "wants" and "perceptions" that can be recognized and altered by the person, rather than a native "characteristic" with which one is stuck. I like that.

Meaning

2009-04-14T08:20:00.001-07:00

While thinking further about a conversation I had with Sadunkal about meaning, it occurred to me today that understanding what "meaning" means in the context of language can be very helpful in exploring the "meaning" of life.

The first thing is that to have meaning, you must have a mind. Without a mind to interpret facts, there can be no meaning.

The second thing is that there are two types of meaning: intended meaning and perceived meaning. This applies both to language (What I say versus what you understand) and life (What I want my life to mean versus what others perceive it as meaning).

The two types of meaning have very distinct characteristics.

Intended meaning is pretty cut and dry -- you mean what you mean. But there are some inherent dangers.

The first is, obviously, the risk of meaning something wrong. You may say -- and quite sincerely mean -- that the Earth is flat -- but the plain facts of reality confound you. So it is with life. You may intend your life to "mean" total sacrifice to others -- but that is self-defeating -- a person cannot live in total sacrifice, because they will die. And further, in order to live in total self-sacrifice, you force someone else not to. A world in which everyone lived by that principle would not function. It is a "wrong" meaning, because it contradicts the facts of human life.

The second inherent danger in intended meaning is not being clear enough in what we mean -- you might say "I love you" to someone. But what does that mean? Does that mean you'll stay with her forever? That you wanna screw her tonight? That you want to make her feel better? That that's just what people say? One phrase, vaguely defined, is really no meaning at all -- it leaves both the speaker and listener without a clear sense of what's actually being said. So it is with life. Unless you are very clear about what you intend things -- and your life as a whole -- to mean, you will act vaguely and indecisively -- and will inevitably by misunderstood.

Perceived meaning is even hairier. We can perceive meaning correctly, incorrectly, or even in the absence of meaning! If I say "Peach" and you're an English speaker, generally speaking, you'll perceive my meaning. But if you're a Turkish speaker, you'll perceive something entirely different -- a curse word, in fact. We can also perceive meaning where there is none -- for instance, seeing a particular cloud formation as a sign that we ought to marry the next girl we see, or that walking under a ladder leads to this or that.

So it is with life. I may mean my life to speak "success," but another might perceive it as "arrogance." The meaning in our lives can only be perceived as intended if the observer shares our understanding of what actions mean what things. Similarly, it's possible to find meaning where none exists -- as with the Jihadi who sacrifices himself for a paradise he will not inherit.

Another important point is to stop looking for "objective" meaning. There is no "meaning of life" carved in some objective rules of nature, any more than there is an objective definition of the word "Peach." That's not to say that nothing means anything -- only that meaning is in the eye of the beholder. That beholder might be me -- it might be my neighbor -- it might be God -- but it is always relative to the values of the beholder, and not to the universe.

But significantly, the relativity of meaning does not imply a relativity of reality. "Peach" means different things in English and Turkish. However, in both languages, it refers to a definable, real thing. So it is with life. Career success may mean "Work ethic" to one person and "materialism" to another -- but work ethic and materialism are both real things -- and a person who shares the same values will draw the same meaning from the actions involved.

So the ultimate question is not "What's the meaning of life?" It's "What do I want my life to mean, and what meaning will others (human and/or divine) perceive from what they see in my life?" Those questions, I think, are not easily answerable -- but at least they're answerable with some effort.

Banned

2009-04-14T07:11:00.000-07:00

Amazingly, I found myself banned from a blog today. I commented on three articles. The first one was about the female California Sunday School teacher arrested on allegations of killing an 8-year old, stuffing her body in a suitcase, and dumping it in a lake. The only evidence presented in the article was the woman's statement that the girl visited her that day, and the allegation that it was her suitcase. Extremely weak case on the face of it. No motive. No MO. No witnesses. No evidence.

The blog article, of course, was entitled "Jesus made her do it," and went on and on about Christian whackos killing people. Assuming she's guilty based on a ridiculously weak case. I queried why a bunch of leftists would assume someone was guilty based solely on an arrest, given the thousands upon thousands of acquittals every year, and the extremely weak evidence as presented in the media coverage. I never got a response.

The second article involved an anonymous allegation in an Italian newspaper that the Pope had somehow blocked the US appointment of an ambassador, based on her position as pro-choice. No details were given as to how this was done. The allegation was anonymous. And as anyone who understands how politics works knows, an ambassador's views on an issue of domestic law have absolutely no relevance to the hosting state -- the ambassador cannot change Vatican law, and would be foolish to try. On the other hand, the Vatican made an official statement flatly denying having received any proposed ambassador, much less somehow rejecting her. I pointed all this out. No response from the author, although I got some interesting dialogue from readers.

The third post reported a hacker that had apparently caused a number of computers to flag gay books at Amazon as "inappropriate," so they were removed from the bestseller lists. The author said this stood in contrast to the allegation that Amazon had "gone fundy," and begun censoring gay books. Clearly Amazon had not gone fundy -- it was a hacker.

I pointed out that Amazon was already "censoring" books -- but instead of deciding what books should be "censored" themselves, they allowed the users to do it through their "inappropriate" ratings. I then wondered whether it was censorship at all, since the books could still be purchased -- the only effect was that a private company chose to remove smut from its bestseller lists. Finally, I concluded that if that counted as censorship, then it was also censorship not to have gay books in the front window @ Hastings, where kids could see them while walking by, eating their Sno-Cones.

This last post disappeared without response. And when I posted again to see if it has been removed or if there had been an error, my post didn't show up. And although I was "subscribed" to the page, I had not received e-mails from other comments, as I had in the past. Then it dawned on me: I'd been banned.

So what did I learn about this particular leftist? Well, he:
1) Takes the cops at their word about murder allegations against sunday school teachers, without any demand for substantiation in the case;
2) Takes anonymous, vague, self-contradictory allegations against the Pope as true;
3) Thinks it's censorship to take adult books off the best-seller list of a bookselling website with a wide audience;
4) Censors readers who question his presumptions without personal attacks or bigotry, express or implied.

Now don't get me wrong -- he has every right in the world to block me or whoever else from his blog. It's his blog. But he did this in an article in which he decried censorship by a private bookstore for keeping porn off their personally owned and maintained bestseller lists. More than ironic.

The whole time I was engaged in this misadventure, I was struck by the similarities between his behavior and that of fascists. Trust the cops implicitly. Trust anonymous, unfalsifiable allegations. Censor your opponents.

And then I remembered, the Nazi party was the National SOCIALIST party ...

But the biggest insight I think I gained was the sense of "tribal warfare" in his approach to these issues. His actions are not driven my principle so much as what "team" you're on. If you're on the leftist team, then a private company's decision not to promote you sufficiently is censorship. But if you're on the rightist team, then "it's my blog, my rules, and I can cut you out whenever I like."

Cops aren't to be trusted implicitly, unless the accused is a Sunday school teacher. 'Cause she's on the religious team.

And an anonymous, vague, unsubstantiated allegation beats the word of the Pope any day of the week.

While viewing this through a tribal lens is pretty scary, it does bring things into focus. Until today, I had always been confused by the seemingly erratic behavior of leftist extremists. But now I have a model to construct at least hypothetical explanations for that behavior that are consistent with some inner, driving mental principle.

In the news

2009-04-12T03:25:00.000-07:00

Today in the news, a woman jumped into a polar bear enclosure at the Berlin zoo, and then (seemingly surprised that the bear wanted to eat her) tried desperately to escape, and a Saudi appeals court did not approve a judge's rejection of an 8-year old's effort to divorce her 47-year-old husband from an arranged marriage (on the basis that the child's mother could not represent the child as she was not the child's legal guardian at the time).

I thought to myself, what do these two stories have in common? Aside from deceptive headlines, they also leave me with the impression that the spectrum of human thought is much wider than we typically think. Why would a woman jump into a polar bear enclosure and then run away when they attacked her? Conceivably, because she wanted to die, or because she thought they would be cuddly (and was unpleasantly surprised), or because she wanted to get on the news. Maybe some other reason, but I can't come up with one. On watching the video, however, she looks genuinely perturbed. Like, "this is terrible!" Really? Was she really surprised?

And then there's the Saudi court. A girl married away at 8 to a 47-year old. And the judge won't let her get divorced because her mother can't legally represent her.

Well it would be nice if the girl could represent herself in the divorce proceeding -- but there's only one problem -- she's too young!

Humans are really able to see things through different lenses, aren't they? Wow.

A new concept of economic growth.

2009-04-11T06:12:00.000-07:00

I think the dominant theories of economic growth all evaluate symptoms of growth(increased wealth, more jobs, less debt, more products) rather than the substance of economic growth -- which, I will argue, is productivity.

To understand the heart of economic growth, envision 5 people stranded on an island. If they want to improve their standard of living -- the availability of food, the degree of leisure, their capacity to travel, increased health care etc -- what do they need to do?

First, I'll tell you what they don't need. They don't need "jobs." I could give them all "jobs" digging in the sand and filling the holes back in -- we'd all starve. It's not about money. A ship could run aground carrying billions of dollars of gold. They'd still starve. It's not about equality. They could all divide up the resources equally. They'd still starve.

The answer is, of course, that they need to produce useful things. They must produce food, clothing, housing, healthcare, etc.

The key to economic growth (i.e. an improvement in the quality of their lives) is in increase their productivity. For instance, instead of hunting fish with a spear, you build a net, set it in the water, and let it do the work for you. Instead of spending an hour a day bringing water from the stream a mile away, you build an aqueduct. Now, instead of spearing fish and trudging with buckets all day, you can do something else -- sew clothing, hunt for boar, write a play. More is being produced with the same resources. Economic growth.

Now let's apply that viewpoint to western economies. The development of the automobile greatly increased productivity -- all the energy that had been wasted on travel time, care for horses, spoilage of products before reaching market, etc -- was reduced. People could produce more with less. Result: enormous economic boom in the 20s.

But what happens when people don't understand why the growth is occurring, and therefore expect it to continue indefinitely? What if they don't understand that things are getting better because cars are entering the marketplace, but as soon as everybody has a car, things will stop growing?

Well the same thing that would happen if the people on the island saw that food production increased with each new net, thought that food production would continue to increase indefinitely, and started acting recklessly -- let's say, building a string of fish restaurants big enough to feed 50 people a day. On an island with only 5 people. Sure, food production increases for a while. But eventually it levels out, because 5 people can only eat so much fish. And anybody you hired to man the extra fish stands ends up out of a job.

Back to the real world. People see the stock market soaring because of increased productivity, so they put their money into stocks. But eventually the profits stop increasing. Then the people that were in stocks just for the rising value get out. Stock market crash.

In the 1920s, Ford revolutionized America with the car. Everybody's lives changed. But eventually, everyone has a car. Then things reach an equilibrium. Profits stop rising. Companies across the economy have improved the efficiency of their operations as much as they can. And things flatten out. And when things flatten out, people get out of the stock market. 1929.

I'd argue the same thing drove the economic develop of the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s. In the 80s, home computers raised productivity in the home and office enormously. By 1992, pretty much everyone has a home computer. Recession. In the mid to late 90s, the internet sliced the costs of communication and information transfer. Companies sold directly on the internet. Hundreds of man-years saved every day, and freed up to do other useful things. Then everybody has the internet. Dot-com bust. Then in 2003, housing prices boom because the government is requiring banks to give loans to less than credit-worthy individuals -- everbody's home values go up. People see home values going up and don't know why, so they buy. Suddenly, the people that couldn't afford the houses stop paying. Foreclosure. Housing prices drop. 2007-2008.

The problem lies, I think, in a failure to understand what's actually causing the change in the economy. It wasn't voodoo that made housing prices go up -- it was increased demand. Figure out what's driving increased demand. Oh yeah, people buying that couldn't get loans before. Maybe that will be a problem.

Same thing with the dot-com boom. Dot coms weren't magic companies that would grow unceasingly. Eventually, the internet would be used by everyone, for just about everything it could be used for. And when that happens, the profit margins on those companies are going to plummet.

Same thing with PCs in the 80s, and every other revolutionary invention that has changed our lives. Things get better very quickly -- but for a very specific reason. And when that reason's gone, things are going to stop improving.

The lessons here are two-fold.

First, economics is not about numbers -- it's about productivity. No different than a group of five people who had spend all their time spearing fish before now able to build a hut and sew clothing, because they invented nets to catch fish for them. Increase productivity, expand your economy. That's what our economic policy needs to do -- focus on improving our productivity -- the degree to which we are able to produce socially useful things!

The second lesson is that you can probably predict market rises and falls by figuring out what -- in the REAL WORLD -- is driving an expansion. Because when that force stops improving things, you're going to have a recession. And because nobody else sees it coming, you can make a killing on the markets by getting out before they figure out what's happening.

End and process

2009-04-11T05:26:00.000-07:00

When I was younger, I was often saddened by the realization that everything we do on Earth ultimately comes to nothing. The frustration expressed in Ecclesiastes. Build a great business, fine -- but someday that business will disappear, and then what will be left? Nothing. Same with laws, relationships, family, you name it -- it all comes to nothing in the end.

I realized later that I was looking at the problem the wrong way -- essentially asking, "what end is worth trading my life for?" Seeing that end as "what i've done in the world," weighing it against the value of my life, and concluding (reasonably, I think) that I could find nothing that was worth trading my life for. Ultimately, I was unable to come up with any end in the real world that was worth trading my life for. And that was depressing.

But then, with the death of my friend Heather in college, I changed my paradigm. Instead of concerning myself with the Ultimate End, I would concern myself with the process. It didn't matter if Heather lived forever -- what mattered was that I was able to spend time with her. It doesn't matter if everybody dies whether you help the poor or not. Helping the poor is an end in and of itself. It doesn't matter whether your business will ultimately fade or your law ultimately be changed. The value came in the action -- in DOING what was good to do.

The key premise change here was my rejection of evangelical theology in favor of a philosophy of enlightened self-interest. Instead of seeing my life as a sacrifice for something outside myself, I began to see my life was an end in and of itself. Therefore, I was not trying to find something worth trading my precious life for. I was not trading my life at all. I was seizing it, and seeking to live it to the fullest.

But ultimately this became frustrating too, because I found it to be aimless. Yes, you "do the right thing" or the "fun" thing or the "engaging" thing ... but it never leads to anything. I still had a hankering for some purpose -- some goal.

Then this winter, I learned the value of short-term goal setting -- and the extraordinary psychological benefits of determining a desired outcome and working toward it. I began to put those into practice, and it made my world much brighter.

Then yesterday, it occurred to me that the way to integrate the thruths I had learned was this: "We are trained to see processes as leading toward goals. But I see life as a series of goals, comprising a process." The goals we set -- sending the kid to college, getting the MBA, learning about AIDS, getting in shape -- those are individual goals which when strung together become the PROCESS of a life worth living.

The goals themselves are not eternal, and certainly not worth trading our life for. But the process of setting -- and achieving -- those goals is the process of living itself.

Ends to a means. Hmm.

hiv/aids 3

2009-04-11T04:10:00.000-07:00

More little tidbits:

British Concorde study in 1994 found that AZT (the AIDS drug) did not prevent AIDS, and increased mortality 25%.

Numerous studies show that the only long-term survivors of HIV do not use illegal drugs, and do not take HIV-inhibitors.

HIV-inhibitors do not attack HIV -- they attack cellular function, since the cell is entirely responsible for replication of HIV. Specifically, they inhibit DNA replication. A drug that attacks cellular function does two things -- one, it damages the body and its immune system, leading to increased cases of AIDS (suppressed immune system type). Two, it increases lifespan after AIDS has been acquired, because it acts as an antibiotic on other infections. End result: you go from healthy to miserable, and stay there for a long time.

Cataloguing Categories

2009-04-10T08:01:00.000-07:00

All this talk of conceptual categories left me wondering if I could catalogue them. Here's what I came up with:

1) Objective: Verifiable, testable statements about the physical world. e.g. Objects accelerate at x rate due to gravity. Virus A causes disease B through mechanism C.
2) Subjective: Experiential statements. I feel cold. I chose to go to the store. I love you.
3) Descriptive: Statements of value about something. She's pretty. Good job. This town is boring.
4) A priori: Definitions. A dog is a living organism with X characteristics; Blue is light of these wavelengths.

There may be more, but this is all I could come up with on the way back from Taco Bell.

The first thing I noticed was that the first three types all come down to a priori concepts in the end. That is to say, "This worm is 2 cm long" is an objective statement -- but it depends on an a priori definition of what a worm is, what a centimeter is, and what the word "2" means.

The second thing I noticed was that you can retranslate just about every sentence among the first three. For instance, "Ouch! I'm in pain" (subjective) Ouch! That hurts! (descriptive) and "The contact between your elbow and my chest caused X reaction in my nervous system." (objective). Each of them looks at the event from a fundamentally different vantage point. The first expresses feeling. The second expresses judgment. The third describes reality.

And then I wondered, "if we can state things from all three angles, I wonder if we can examine them from all three angles." Obviously, you study objective reality through the scientific method. Subjective reality must be studied through introspection -- looking into your own experience. Descriptive reality must be studied with respect to a purpose. That is to say, "This is the perfect car" presumes a set of criteria in the mind of the speaker for what a car is intended for -- criteria that exist independently of the characteristics of the car, but which the characteristics of the car happen to match.

The next thing I noticed was that you can't study one category with another category's means. For instance, you can't study the characteristics of a frog through introspection or determining what the frog is useful for. You can't study why you're afraid of the dark with a microscope, or say it's not useful . And you can't determine whether a woman is beautiful or not with a ruler, or hour of meditation. Each type of statement has to be evaluated in its own way.

And then I thought, seems like most philosophical disputes come down to a failure to place concepts in their proper category. Scientists, for instance, seem to want everything to be studied in an objective manner. That works for some things, like chemicals in a test-tube. But it doesn't work for philosophy, interpersonal relationships, or self-awareness. Little wonder so many masters of the lab are failures in their own mind and life. Similarly, subjectivists seem to want everything to be an extension of their feelings. If they feel a thing, it is true. They argue that science is just a rationalization for the emotional biases of the scientist. And surely it often is -- but not when science is properly applied through its proper tools, and in its proper scope. Finally, the religious tend to see everything in terms of its inherent "value." Man is "evil." God is "good." sex is "only for marriage." The purpose of life is to serve God. Always judgment, evaluation, and purpose. And surely sometimes that is good. But they often neglect simply understanding what is (objective world) or what they are actually feeling (subjective world), constantly evaluating, and never understanding.

Is it any wonder that groups looking at the world through such radically different epistemological glasses would come into conflict? They literally look at the same event, person, or phenomenon, and see something completely different. No wonder the bickering never ends.

I think I might be onto something here.

Categories applied to determinism + free will

2009-04-10T02:21:00.001-07:00

A few months ago, I wrote about categories of concepts, and how it's important to keep them straight. Thus "Dog" is a word we use to describe an object with certain characteristics, while "two" is a word we use to describe a grouping of objects, but not an object itself (you can never see a 'two'.) Seems like a lot of philosophical errors come down to crossing these categories -- for instance, the platonic forms treating describers (like "beauty") as real -- more real, in fact, than the things they are used to describe.

Then yesterday, it occurred to me that free will and determinism come down to a similar error. The two are in different categories. Free will is a subjective experience we have in the world -- similar to "pain" or "love." Free will is the experience we all have of choosing a ham or salami sandwich -- of deciding whether or not to give a bum a dime. You cannot see "Free will." There is no "free will box" in the body. You cannot observe an animal and see "free will" at work -- all you see is bodies in motion. Free will is an experience -- a feeling -- a knowledge that you can make your body go either way, depending on what you decide to do.

Determinism, on the other hand, is an unfalsifiable claim about the objective world. It is the claim that everything is invariably caused by something else. But of course this can't be tested at present, because we cannot identify every cause of everything that occurs in the universe. It's not an experience. We don't experience the alleged genes and childhood traumas that force us to select a cheese or salami sandwich. Now don't get me wrong -- we experience the CONDITIONING of our choices -- primarily through habit, but also through compulsive behavior -- but that is different from determinism. Determinism says that everything is decided in advance. Conditioned choices, on the other hand, are our experience that certain choices are more DIFFICULT to make than others, because we experience them as SCARY or UNFAMILIAR or something else. Again, that's experiential. Not deterministic.

Defined this way, free will and determinism do not conflict. If determinism is true, our subjective experience of free will is still true. If determinism is not true, our subjective experience of free will is still true. Demanding that free will be demonstrated in the objective world is just as silly as expecting a child to find the "Two" sitting on the table between two apples, or expecting a doctor to remove the "pain" from my broken arm and place it on the examination bench. Nonsense.

This is compatibilism of a sort, but less rigidly defined than classic compatibilism. Classic compatibilism defines "free will" as "things that are done without external compulsion," despite the fact that they are internally compelled. I don't need to define things that rigidly. My compatibilism holds that determinism is an open question about the objective facts of nature, and free will is a settled question about the universal human experience. They seek to answer two different questions, and are therefore not incompatible with each other.

The key, I think, lies in defining what mean mean by "Free will" and "determinism" as clearly as possible. Within a moment or two, it becomes apparent that what we mean by "free will" is not something that can be observed in the physical sciences -- it is something we know because we feel it. Similarly, determinism is something that could potentially be known through the sciences -- if we were able to compile all facts about the universe into a computer and predict all future outcomes -- but of course we can't yet.

As always appears to be the case, age-old philosophical debates stem from a failure to adequately define our terms.

And I think this modified definition of free will is adequate to serve all its necessary purposes. One of the necessary purposes of free will is in support of moral responsibility. Our sense of justice is offended at the prospect of being punished for actions that were determined, rather than chosen. Free will is significant insofar as it supports a system grounded on moral responsibility -- on reward for good bahavior, and punishment for bad behavior. Without a meaningful free will, there really is no basis for differential treatment for different behaviors. But because we DO actually choose what to do, a world in which bad behavior was rewarded rather than punished would lead people to CHOOSE to engage in much more bad behavior.

But if we acknowledge that free will exists as an experience, if not a physical reality, then it retains its place in our social organization. Whatever the physical reasons, we experience choice. Because we experience it, we must structure our lives and our society around that experience. Good behaviors should be incentivized, so that people are more likely to choose them. Bad behaviors should be disincentivized, so that people are less likely to choose them.

By analogy, "Pain" does not exist in the physical world -- you can't point to it or touch it. It is merely our subjective experience of certain nerve reactions in our system. But that doesn't make it any less real. And medicine needs to take it into account, if it wants to function properly. You can't say, "Well pain isn't a physical entity, so it doesn't exist, and we shouldn't take it into account." It's very real -- but SUBJECTIVELY real. And we ignore it at our peril.

So it is with choice. Whether or not it's one day discovered that all things are ultimately caused by some other physical cause, the fact will remain: we all feel like we have choices, and so our lives and societies will have to take that universal human experience into account.

Conformity

2009-04-09T03:44:00.000-07:00

"Just before WWII, total research and development funding in the United States, public and private together, amounted to approximately $250 million per year. By the mid-1950s, the federal share along had grown to more than $2 billion, reaching $63 billion in 1989, and in 1993 becoming half of all research and development spending in the United States at $76 billion. Federal research money has turned into the major funding source for universities and other institutions, expanding and reshaping departments in its wake ... the total number of science doctorates awarded each year has increased from under 6,000 in 1960 to nearly 17,000 in 1979 ... as a result, "of every eight scientists who ever lived [in the history of the world], seven are alive today [in 1969]" ... Competition among large numbers of scientists for one or a few central sources of funding restricts freedom of thought and action to a mean that appeals to the majority. The scientist who is very productive, most able to sell research, and well liked for not offending his peers for new hypotheses and ideas is selected by his peers for funding. The eccentic, "absent-minded professor" with "crazy" ideas has been replaced by a need breed of scientist, more like a "yuppie" executive than the quirky genius of old academia. These peers cannot afford a nonconformist, or unpredictable, thinker because every new, alternative hypothesis is a potential threat to their own line of research. Albert Einstein would not get funded for his work by the peer review system, and Linus Pauling did not (for his work on vitamin C and cancer even though he received two Nobel Prizes). The only benefit of the numerous cascades of competitive tests and reviews set up by peer review is the elimination of unsophisticated charlatans and real incompetence. In sum, the review of too many by too many achieves but one result with certainty: regression to the mean ... a scientists's grants, publications, positions, awards, and even invitations to conferences are entirely conntrolled by his competitors. As in any other profession, no scientist wecomes being out-competed or having his pet idea disproved by a colleague ... The transition from small to big to megascience has created an establishment of skilled technicians but mediocre scientsts, who have abandoned real scientific interpretation and who even equate their experiments with science itself."

Duesberg, Inventing the AIDS virus, p. 67

AIDS/HIV 2

2009-04-08T03:19:00.000-07:00

More interesting tidbits:

1) The HIV test doesn't determine the presence of HIV itself, much less its prevalence -- only the presence of antibodies that indicate infection at some point in the past. Consequently, you could come up HIV-positive on a test and have no HIV in your system. The test can't tell the difference.

2) There is no documented demonstration of how HIV actually attacks T-cells.

3) HIV-positive Africans in Uganda without HIV treatments have the same 10-year survival rates and HIV-positive Westerners with the treatments.

4) In the West, AIDS is defined as any of 20-some diseases, plus the presence of HIV. For example, multiple bacterial infections plus HIV = AIDS. Multiple bacterial infections without HIV = not AIDS. So the correlation between AIDS and HIV is definitional. In other words, if you define "strong" as "being able to lift five pounds, and being tan," then you shouldn't be surprised when all the "strong" people are tan.

AIDS/HIV

2009-04-07T08:52:00.000-07:00

Many props to my new friend Sadunkal for opening my eyes to the question of whether HIV causes AIDS. I found some interesting articles that raised interesting questions, but I just found the clincher.

The World Health Organization's definition for AIDS in Africa -- called the Bangui definition -- published in Science in 1985, modified slightly in 1994, still used today.

To have AIDS in Africa, you have to score 12 on the following diagnostic tool:

Weight loss exceeding 10% of body weight 4
Protracted asthenia (lethargy) 4
Continuous or repeated attacks of fever for more than a month 3
Diarrhoea lasting for more than a month 3
Cough 2
Pneumopathy 2
Oropharyngeal candidiasis 4
Chronic or relapsing cutaneous herpes 4
Generalized pruritic dermatosis 4
Herpes zoster (relapsing) 4
Generalized adenopathy 2
Neurological signs 2
Generalized Kaposi's sarcoma 12

So in other words, in Africa, if you have 10% weight loss, protracted lethargy, diarrea lasting over a month, and a cough, the World Health Organization says you have AIDS. Of course, drinking from the river, sleeping on a dirt floor, and not having enough food for the season will yield the same symptoms. But the World Health Organization calls it AIDS. And then our government pays pharmaceutical companies billions of our dollars to "treat" it.

Most interestingly of all, you can be diagnosed with AIDS without an HIV test.

References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangui_definition
http://www.popline.org/docs/1025/083913.html
http://www.fearoftheinvisible.com/africans

Establishment

2009-04-05T05:11:00.000-07:00

I've always been of the opinion that the establishment of religion is worse for religion than it is for the state. Sure, it violates people civil rights to publicly express their beliefs, and that sucks. But much more insidiously, it subjects the world of the soul (religion) to the forces of corruption that result inevitably from a government-created monopoly. Imagine if the government established one type of restaurant as the "state restaurant." Not only would people losed the opportunity to explore other types of food (certainly a loss) but the chosen restaurant would itself deteriorate, because it would not be required to adapt, grow, learn new things, and approve itself. It would not need to try -- it would be guaranteed its position whether or not it tried. So it would decay.

That's what happened to religion in Europe. Most of those decaying states still have official state religions. But those religions have done nothing but decay since they were established. And the rates of belief in those decayed religions is remarkably low -- why? because there's nothing worth believing in those churches.

But recently, I've been realizing that the same dynamic applies to philosophical and scientific schools of thought. There are a large number of out of date, demonstrably incorrect notions that still hold sway in universities. Universal common descent in biology. Plate techtonics in geology. Keynesian Economics. Behavioralist psychology. It doesn't take much work to debunk these silly ideas. Yet they remain in power.

Why?

Well, let's follow the money. This article raises the interesting point that virology departments receive enormous amounts of money to research HIV as a virus. But what if (as the article intimates) AIDS is not caused by a virus, but by some other agent? What would happen to the virology department's money? They'd go broke.

The same principle would apply to plate techtonics. If the Earth is expanding, as is strongly supported by the evidence, all current geology researchers -- who have committed themselves to plate techtonics -- would be out of luck.

The same principle would apply to evolutionary biology. Add an intelligent design research department to a biology department, and the evolutionary biologists lose their livelihood.

On and on and on. The people preaching "scientific consensus" are not unbiased observers -- on the contrary, their livelihood depends on the widespread acceptance of THEIR particular academic niche. If their niche is discredited, they go broke.

Suddenly, the existence of so many "pseudosciences" that make so much more sense than the nonsense they spoonfeed us at school comes into full focus. The "scientific community" is merely a state-funded intellectual monopoly, with the same dynamics as a state church -- intellectual stagnation and a desperate effort to squelch heresies that (while truer than the institutionalized beliefs) threaten the livelihood of the establishment just as much as protestantism threatened the power of the Pope.

Force + persuasion

2009-03-22T00:35:00.000-07:00

"Dealing with men by force is as impractical as dealing with nature by persuasion -- which is the policy of savages, who rule men by force and plead with nature with prayers, incantations, and bribes." Ayn Rand, "The Metaphysical Versus the Manmade."

Reductionism

2009-03-20T09:52:00.000-07:00

Recently been listening to a book entitled "The Female Brain." Some valuable information, but also the same old reductionism that always bothers me -- foremost, the idea that we are motivated to do things by the chemical response we get from them. Falling in love, for instance, is described as a desire for the euphoric chemicals that surge into our system when we see the person.

On closer inspection, though, this view looks a little silly to me.

The main question is, "why do we like those chemicals?" At first glance, the answer might seem self-evident. But I don't think it is. The chemicals themselves are value-neutral. Our bodies might as well not like them as like them. Why shouldn't we prefer chemicals that make us sad to chemicals that make us happy, unless something else, something deeper than the chemicals, causes us to seek the feelings they give us?

What in us makes us decide to seek "happiness" instead of sadness? Why do we prefer euphoria to depression?

I don't think we necessarily have a clear answer. But chalking all our impulses up to different euphoric chemicals just begs the real question -- because "i seek hot girls" and "i seek the chemicals that my body gives me when I see a hot girl" leave the same open question -- why do we want anything at all? And why is it more reasonable to believe the mysterious unknown cause makes us want seratonin which makes us want hot girls than to believe that the mysterious unknown cause just makes us want hot girls?

I don't think it is -- but I think that reductionism of this type is nothing more than question begging.

And until scientists are able to figure out what in us makes us want things and causally prove it by giving someone the chemical that makes them want a cheese sandwich, I'm still willing to describe it as I subjectively experience it -- as free choice.

Lewis

2009-03-20T09:50:00.000-07:00

"The love of knowledge is a sort of madness." -- lewis, out of the silent planet.

Chesterton II

2009-02-15T23:11:00.000-08:00

"If you cannot both laugh at something and believe in it, then you have no place in a puppet show. Or the world, for that matter." -- Alarms + Discursions, ch. 2.

The Perfect Game

2009-02-07T07:56:00.000-08:00

By G.K. Chesterton, 1909:

We have all met the man who says that some odd things have
happened to him, but that he does not really believe that they
were supernatural. My own position is the opposite of this.
I believe in the supernatural as a matter of intellect and reason,
not as a matter of personal experience. I do not see ghosts;
I only see their inherent probability. But it is entirely
a matter of the mere intelligence, not even of the motions;
my nerves and body are altogether of this earth, very earthy.
But upon people of this temperament one weird incident will often
leave a peculiar impression. And the weirdest circumstance
that ever occurred to me occurred a little while ago. It consisted
in nothing less than my playing a game, and playing it quite well
for some seventeen consecutive minutes. The ghost of my grandfather
would have astonished me less.

On one of these blue and burning afternoons I found myself, to my
inexpressible astonishment, playing a game called croquet. I had
imagined that it belonged to the epoch of Leach and Anthony Trollope,
and I had neglected to provide myself with those very long and
luxuriant side whiskers which are really essential to such a scene.
I played it with a man whom we will call Parkinson, and with whom I had
a semi-philosophical argument which lasted through the entire contest.
It is deeply implanted in my mind that I had the best of the argument;
but it is certain and beyond dispute that I had the worst of the game.

"Oh, Parkinson, Parkinson!" I cried, patting him affectionately
on the head with a mallet, "how far you really are from the pure
love of the sport--you who can play. It is only we who play badly
who love the Game itself. You love glory; you love applause;
you love the earthquake voice of victory; you do not love croquet.
You do not love croquet until you love being beaten at croquet.
It is we the bunglers who adore the occupation in the abstract.
It is we to whom it is art for art's sake. If we may see the face
of Croquet herself (if I may so express myself) we are content to
see her face turned upon us in anger. Our play is called amateurish;
and we wear proudly the name of amateur, for amateurs is but the
French for Lovers. We accept all adventures from our Lady, the most
disastrous or the most dreary. We wait outside her iron gates (I
allude to the hoops), vainly essaying to enter. Our devoted balls,
impetuous and full of chivalry, will not be confined within
the pedantic boundaries of the mere croquet ground. Our balls seek
honour in the ends of the earth; they turn up in the flower-beds
and the conservatory; they are to be found in the front garden
and the next street. No, Parkinson! The good painter has skill.
It is the bad painter who loves his art. The good musician
loves being a musician, the bad musician loves music. With such a
pure and hopeless passion do I worship croquet. I love the game
itself. I love the parallelogram of grass marked out with chalk or
tape, as if its limits were the frontiers of my sacred Fatherland,
the four seas of Britain. I love the mere swing of the mallets, and
the click of the balls is music. The four colours are to me
sacramental and symbolic, like the red of martyrdom, or the white
of Easter Day. You lose all this, my poor Parkinson. You have to
solace yourself for the absence of this vision by the paltry
consolation of being able to go through hoops and to hit the stick."

And I waved my mallet in the air with a graceful gaiety.

"Don't be too sorry for me," said Parkinson, with his simple sarcasm.
"I shall get over it in time. But it seems to me that the more
a man likes a game the better he would want to play it. Granted that
the pleasure in the thing itself comes first, does not the pleasure
of success come naturally and inevitably afterwards? Or, take your
own simile of the Knight and his Lady-love. I admit the gentleman
does first and foremost want to be in the lady's presence. But I
never yet heard of a gentleman who wanted to look an utter ass when
he was there."

"Perhaps not; though he generally looks it," I replied. "But the truth
is that there is a fallacy in the simile, although it was my own. The
happiness at which the lover is aiming is an infinite happiness, which
can be extended without limit. The more he is loved, normally speaking,
the jollier he will be. It is definitely true that the stronger the
love of both lovers, the stronger will be the happiness. But it is not
true that the stronger the play of both croquet players the stronger
will be the game. It is logically possible--(follow me closely here,
Parkinson!)--it is logically possible, to play croquet too well to
enjoy it at all. If you could put this blue ball through that distant
hoop as easily as you could pick it up with your hand, then you would
not put it through that hoop any more than you pick it up with your
hand; it would not be worth doing. If you could play unerringly you
would not play at all. The moment the game is perfect the game
disappears."

"I do not think, however," said Parkinson, "that you are in any
immediate danger of effecting that sort of destruction. I do not
think your croquet will vanish through its own faultless excellence.
You are safe for the present."

I again caressed him with the mallet, knocked a ball about, wired myself,
and resumed the thread of my discourse.

The long, warm evening had been gradually closing in, and by this
time it was almost twilight. By the time I had delivered four
more fundamental principles, and my companion had gone through five
more hoops, the dusk was verging upon dark.

"We shall have to give this up," said Parkinson, as he missed
a ball almost for the first time, "I can't see a thing."

"Nor can I," I answered, "and it is a comfort to reflect that I
could not hit anything if I saw it."

With that I struck a ball smartly, and sent it away into the darkness
towards where the shadowy figure of Parkinson moved in the hot haze.
Parkinson immediately uttered a loud and dramatic cry. The situation,
indeed, called for it. I had hit the right ball.

Stunned with astonishment, I crossed the gloomy ground, and hit my ball
again. It went through a hoop. I could not see the hoop; but it was
the right hoop. I shuddered from head to foot.

Words were wholly inadequate, so I slouched heavily after that
impossible ball. Again I hit it away into the night, in what I
supposed was the vague direction of the quite invisible stick.
And in the dead silence I heard the stick rattle as the ball
struck it heavily.

I threw down my mallet. "I can't stand this," I said. "My ball has
gone right three times. These things are not of this world."

"Pick your mallet up ," said Parkinson, "have another go."

"I tell you I daren't. If I made another hoop like that I should see
all the devils dancing there on the blessed grass."

"Why devils?" asked Parkinson; "they may be only fairies making fun of
you. They are sending you the 'Perfect Game,' which is no game."

I looked about me. The garden was full of a burning darkness,
in which the faint glimmers had the look of fire. I stepped across
the grass as if it burnt me, picked up the mallet, and hit the ball
somewhere--somewhere where another ball might be. I heard the dull
click of the balls touching, and ran into the house like one pursued.

Relative maturity

2009-01-17T03:48:00.000-08:00

It's well established that boys and girls emotionally/intellectually mature at different rates. Generally, it's said that girls mature more quickly. And I certainly always felt that way. Growing up, the girls my age always seemed more put together than the boys.

Warning: blatant sexism follows.

I wonder, though, about the cause.

Premise 1 -- There are two broad categories of motivations -- subjective and objective. Subjective motivations are those social norms and expectations we internalize from our environment. Objective motivations are things in the external world (aside from the expectations of other people) like rocks, motorcycles, and corporations.

Premise 2 -- Girls tend to be (but are not completely) more subjectively motivated than boys, and vice versa.

I think that subjectively motivated people tend to mature more quickly up front, because they attune to the expectations of their peers and parents, internalize them, and emulate them. However, I think they plateau at some point, because they do not challenge and question the objective nature of things and their own behavior -- they do what's expected, and fail to challenge it.

I think that objectively motivated people tend to mature more slowly up front, because they are not attuned to expectations. They don't particularly care what pleases others, because they are focused on things. However, I think that in the long run, these people tend to continue to mature long after the subjectivists plateau, because once they develop behaviors through trial and error, they grasp the essence of the reasoning behind those behaviors, and continue to develop.

For example:

A girl learns that people respond positively to you when you dress pretty, so she dresses pretty. However, she also judges people who don't dress pretty, because they aren't doing what's expected.

A boy doesn't notice or care how people expect him to dress, and so he dresses poorly. He also doesn't judge people that dress poorly, because he's attuned to the essential -- it's what's inside that counts. After a few years, however, he learns that if he wants to succeed in a career he likes and make money he wants, people will judge him if he does not look professional. As a result, he begins to dress better when necessary, but without being pretentious about it (recognizing that it is merely cultural), and without judging others. Thus, more slowly but ultimately in a superior way, he learns the essence of how and why to dress well.

Applying this model to a broad generalization, I'd say this might explain why girls (who tend to be more subjectively motivated) mature more quickly than boys up front, but in mid to late adulthood, men surpass women in maturity.

As always, this does not necessarily apply to individuals. I know girls who are objectively motivated and boys who are subjectively motivated, and I've seen boys plateau and girls surpass. Also, some boys are more objectively motivated than other boys, and the same with girls. Even so, the application of this causal mechanism to explain the general trends of maturity would still reflect itself in gender maturity rates, due to the general tendencies of the genders.

Religion, government, and libertarianism

2009-01-10T03:38:00.000-08:00

Ayn Rand writes, regarding the reading of Genesis from the moon during Apollo 8:

"When, from the distance of the moon, from the height of the triump of science, we expected to hear the astronaut's message, and heard instead a voice reciting the mouldy nonsense which not even a slum corner evangelist would not have selected as a text, reciting the Bible's cosmology. I, for one, felt as though the capsule had disintegrated, and we were left in the primordial darkness of empty space."

I find this fascinating. Throughout her writing, Rand portrays Religion and Government as the foes of Reason and Science. Yet in Apollo 8 we have a government program operated (at least in significant part) by religiously motivated people. The perfect counterexample to her premise. But instead of grappling with the contradiction to her fundamental beliefs, she lashes out against religious symbolism in the context of scientific achievement.

Instead of asking herself, "How were religious government employees able to accomplish this feat!?" she is angered that the astronauts were religious when (we all know, I suppose) that the religion to which they ascribed was antithetical to the science they were performing.

Why? And why do so many see science and religion as fundamentally antithetical, despite all evidence to the contrary?

I wonder if it's a failure of religious creativity. That is to say, I wonder if all they know of religion is one particular dogma or set of rituals -- and they do not understand that religion is a fundamentally fluid, creative enterprise. To place "Religion" against "Science" is to implicitly assume that it is impossible to invent forms of religion consistent between the two? One reading of Genesis may be "anti-scientific." But why all readings? They don't seem to understand that there is no unchanging monolith known as "religion" -- but that religion is a fluid, abstract label we use to group an enormous diversity of fluid, creative means of understanding the world.

And they appear to be so stuck in that way of thinking that when they see government, religion, and unprecedented scientific achievement operating in perfect harmony, they feel only anger that the scientific achievement was somehow poisoned by a religious outlook which, ultimately, they do not understand.

Life

2009-01-04T05:46:00.001-08:00

"Life's tough......It's even tougher if you're stupid." -John Wayne

Dialectical thinking

2009-01-03T01:38:00.000-08:00

I like to think dialectically. I define dialectical thinking as looking to opposing sides of an issue, and seeking to find an answer that integrates the truths in both sides, while freeing itself of the falsehoods of both sides.

Dialectical thinking is premised on two philosophical positions:
1) All people are at least partially rational -- that is to say, any honestly held belief ascribed to by any reasonable number of people must have, at its center, at least a kernal of Truth.
2) Reality is consistent -- that is to say, if two people disagree on an issue, then their disagreement is necessarily the result of error on the part of one or both of them.

Consequently, when I look at debates, I approach them with the premise that there is most likely truth and falsehood on both sides -- and I dive into the issues, to figure out what they are. I then synthesize a new, creative answer that (to the best of my ability anyway) distills the good from the bad.

For example: Creationism and evolutionism. The kernal of truth in creationism is that life, and the universe, show attributes that we commonly associate with design, and that design-free theories of origins are riddled with errors and outright lies. The kernal of truth in evolutionism is that supernaturalism is philosophically indefensible (as for anything to interact with the physical universe, it must do so through causal mechanisms, making "supernaturalism" fundamentally meaningless), and dogmatism of religious creationists is profoundly irrational -- that is to say, placing utter faith in the text of a book (without critically evaluating its credibility) pretty much embodies superstitious thinking.

So I take both of those truths, and I integrate them. Eliminate the supernaturalism from creationism, and you have the hypothesis that life was designed by natural agent(s), by natural means. Eliminate the dogmatism from creationism, and you have hypotheses of historical creation based on historical sources, which are tentatively accepted, just as any historical document might be, with a critical eye toward the possibility of their being some combination of history, fiction, and error.

On the evolutionist side. eliminate the a priori rejection of the above hypothesis, and intelligent design becomes a vastly more reasonable explanation for the origin of life than naturalistic abiogenesis -- as we have seen the mechanisms of genetic engineering, but have not seen how the ooze came alive.

Or take abortion. The kernal of truth in the pro-life side is that the organism in the womb is biologically distinct from its mother -- with separate DNA, separate sensations, and organs of its own. The kernal of truth in the pro-choice side is that the organism in the womb is not social -- and that in some cases, babies are conceived in circumstances which are very difficult for the mother (and baby) to thrive.

Put those together, and what do you get? In this case, not so much an answer as two fundamentally unanswered questions -- what makes us human, and when do humans have a right to life? Are we human based on our genetics, or on our independence? Do humans acquire a right to life when they interact with the world, or when they become human?

I don't think we have solid answers to these questions yet -- but dialectical thinking at least gets the questions asked. Only then can we try to develop the tools to find the answers.

The result of dialectical thinking, in my experience, is an almost extraordinary capacity to anger both sides of a debate. Yet I cannot help but do it, because it is a natural outgrowth of the two philosophical premises which started this article -- premises in which I am a passionate believer.

True love.

2008-12-28T11:13:00.000-08:00

"She introduced me to so many things: pasteurized milk; sheets; monotheism; presents on your birthday; preventative medicine." -- Dwight.

Class superiority

2008-12-19T23:08:00.000-08:00

From Aristotle's Rhetoric, Book 1, Chapter 7:

"Again, if the largest member of one class surpasses the largest member of another, then the one class surpasses the other; and if one class surpasses another, then the largest member of the one surpasses the largest member of the other. Thus, if the tallest man is taller than the tallest woman, then men in general are taller than women. Conversely, if men in general are taller than women, then the tallest man is taller than the tallest woman. For the superiority of class over class is proportionate to the superiority possessed by their largest specimens."

Fascinating. We no longer use that measure for the superiority of the class. Today, we would object "You cannot overgeneralize -- you cannot say 'men are taller than women' when some women are in fact taller than some men." You can say "This particular man is taller than this woman" or "The average height of all men is taller than the average height of all women."

I wonder if this type of thinking also resulted in the sexism of the Greeks. They looked around for the "strongest, smartest, most powerful person," and they found a man (for whatever reason). Using Aristotle's reasoning, men as a class are therefore stronger, smarter, and more powerful than women. Particular cases are not seen as particularly important -- that is, that a particular women may well be stronger, smarter, and more powerful than a particular man.

The overgeneralization is then enshrined into law and thought, and women are subordinated as a class. All based on a poor syllogism.

"Aristocracy"

2008-12-19T22:42:00.000-08:00

From Aristotle's Rhetoric, Book 1, Chapter 8:

"A Democracy is a form of government under which the citizens distribute the offices of state among themselves by lot, whereas under oligarchy there is a property qualification, under aristocracy one of education. By education I mean that education which is laid down by the law; for it is those who have been loyal to the national institutions that hold office under an aristocracy. These are bound to be looked upon as "the best men," and it is from this fact that this form of government has derived its name ("the rule of the best"). Monarchy, as the word implies, is the constitution in which one man has authority over all. [1366a] There are two forms of monarchy: kingship, which is limited by prescribed conditions, and "tyranny," which is not limited by anything."

It looks like we use the word "aristocracy" in a different way than the ancients did. What we call aristocracy (rule by a few, rich people with old money and land, regardless of their educational/personal qualifications), Aristotle called oligarchy. We call call meritocracy (rule by the educated -- or "best" men), Aristotle called aristocracy.

I'm curious how that took place. Did the European oligarchs begin calling themselves "aristocrats" at this point, in an effort to legitimize their oligarchy by projecting the impression that they were not merely wealthy, but also educated, meritorious, and the best? Did the word then acquire negative connotations associated with those who used it? Was everybody else so uneducated that they accepted the label as given, rather than objecting "This is not an aristocracy! This is an oligarchy!"

Seems like (if this occurred) a similar phenomenon occurred with the term "fundamentalist." "Fundamentalist" means get back to the basics and don't get caught up in all the legalistic nonsense. But it was coopted by legalistic people, and acquired negative connotations associated with the people who used it, until now it means "legalistic" rather than "getting back to the basics." And of course the critics of "fundamentalism" simply coopt the label based on those who claim it, instead of objecting, "You are not acting like a fundamentalist -- you are acting like a Pharisee!"

I wonder how often word switches like that happen. Probably the word "liberal" too, which now describes those support government intervention rather than those who ascribe to the laissez-faire thinking of classical "liberal" thought ...

As a side note, he says that in a "democracy," the people distribute offices by lot (meaning by chance). That's very different from how we use the term democracy (the vote). Which societies were distributing offices by lot!?

Guilt and power

2008-12-13T00:40:00.001-08:00

Suppose somebody felt that acting for the benefit of another person could only stem from guilt -- rather than a self-oriented joy at seeing someone else happy. They then have a choice: either they assume that guilt on themselves (becoming a self-sacrificial martyr), or they project that guilt onto others (becoming controlling and manipulative). Two sides of the same coin.

The result: if you offer them something out of kindness, they will turn it down, because they feel guilty. However, if they demand something out of you (citing your moral obligation to comply), they would judge you if you refused to comply.

That's how guilt destroys.

The only answer, I think, is a paradigm shift from guilt to enlightened pleasure. Enjoy receiving, because it is good. Enjoy giving, because it is fun.

Osmanli political-economic system

2008-12-11T10:11:00.000-08:00

"Moslems alone were obliged to perform military service, and were thus alone eligible for the tenure of land. This was distributed as a reward for service and provided a source of recruitment in the form of military fiefs, free of taxes. Christians were exempt from military service, hence benefitted from no such landed rights. Instead they paid a head tax for the army's support. In the country districts this made them subservient in status to the landholding Moslems. Thus they tended to live and work in the cities and towns, where such civil disabilities were counterbalanced by economic advantage. But through voluntary conversion to Islam, the Christian became automatically an Osmlani, with his origins soon forgotten, enjoying freedom from taxation, the right to hold land, opportunities for advancement, and a share in the benefits of the Moslem ruling elite. Hence, at this stage of Ottoman history in Asia, the growing number of converts to Islam.

Feudal though it was, this Ottoman system of land tenure through military fiefs differed essentially from the feudal system in Europe, in that the landholdings were small and above all seldom hereditary. For all land was the property of the state. Thus at this stage there was to arise in the Ottoman empire no landed nobility, such as prevailed throughout Europe. The sultans retained absolute ownership of the soil they conquered. Moreover, as they continued to conquer, more holdings became available as rewards for more soldiers. Within the framework of this system Orkhan now organized, with the initial advice of his brother, Ala-ed-Din, a regular standing army under the sovereign's command, a professional military force on a permanent war footing, of a kind not to be emulated in Europe for a further two centuries."

Lord Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries, p. 33

Inches and AUs

2008-12-09T13:21:00.000-08:00

63,360 inches in a mile. 63,239 astronomical units in a lightyear. That's less than .2% different. What's up with that?

Renaissance?

2008-12-06T10:50:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, I posted about my discovery that there wasn't a "dark ages," but rather a shift in the center of Christian civilization from Rome to Constantinople, where Christian civilization and scholarship thrived for another thousand years. Today, I discovered something else -- the "renaissance" was not so much a rebirth of interest in scholarship as an exodus of scholars from Constantinople in the last 50 years before it fell to the Muslims in ... coincidentally ... 1453 -- right at the beginning of the "renaissance."

Scholars who left Constantinople in the 15th Century:

Manuel Chrysoloras -Florence, Pavia, Rome, Venice, Milan
George Gemistos Plethon -Teacher of Bessarion
Bessarion
George of Trebizond -Venice, Florence, Rome
Theodorus Gaza -First dean of the University of Ferrara, Naples and Rome
John Argyropoulos -Universities of Florence, Rome, Padua teacher of Leonardo da Vinci
Laonicus Chalcocondyles
Demetrius Chalcondyles -Milano
Theofilos Chalcocondylis -Florence
Constantine Lascaris -University of Messina
Henry Aristippus
Michael Apostolius -Rome
Aristobulus Apostolius
Arsenius Apostolius
Demetrius Cydones
Janus Lascaris or Rhyndacenus -Rome
Maximus the Greek studied in Italy before moving to Russia
Ioannis Kottounios -Padua
Konstantinos Kallokratos
Barlaam of Seminara -Teacher of Boccacio
Marcus Musurus -University of Padua
Michael Tarchaniota Marullus -Ancona and Florence, friend and pupil of Jovianus Pontanus
Leo Allatius -Rome, librarian of the library of Vatican
Demetrios Ducas
Leozio Pilatus -Teacher of Petrarch and Boccacio
Leo Allatius, portrait in the Collegio Greco of Rome
Maximus Planudes -Rome, Venice
Leonard of Chios -Greek-born Roman-Catholic prelate
Simon Atumano -Bishop of Gerace in Calabria
Isidore of Kiev
Elia del Medigo -Venice
George Hermonymus -University of Paris, teacher of Erasmus, Reuchlin, Budaeus and Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples
John Chrysoloras -scholar and diplomat: relative of Manuel Chrysoloras, patron of Francesco Filelfo
Andronicus Contoblacas -Basel, teacher of Johann Reuchlin
John Servopoulos -Reading, Oxford; scholar, professor
Johannes Crastonis Modena, Greek-Latin dictionary
Andronicus Callistus -Rome
Gerasimos Vlachos -Venice
George Amiroutzes -Florence, Aristotelian
Gregory Tifernas -Paris teacher of Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples and Robert Gaguin
Nikolaos Sophianos -Rome, Venice: scholar and geographer, creator of the Totius Graeciae Descriptio
Totius Graeciae Descriptio
Zacharias Calliergi -Rome
Mathew Devaris -Rome
Antonios Eparchos -Venice, scholar and poet
Maximos Margunios -Venice
Mathaeos Kamariotis
Nikolaos Loukanis -Venice
Iakovos Trivolis-Venice
Janus Plousiadenos -Venice, hymnographer and composer

So there was no "renaissance of knowledge after a long period of religious superstition." All the smart people were living in Constantinople until the city was taken over by foreign invaders. Those scholars spread throughout Christian Europe, bringing their knowledge with them, and bringing the light of philosophy and science -- which had grown vastly during the 1000 year Christian empire -- to the dark, ignorant continent of Europe.

Just as the "Dark Ages" was merely the shift in cultural power and influence from Pagan Rome to Christianizing Constantinople, the "Renaissance" was merely the shift in cultural power and influence from Christian Constantinople to Christian Europe.

The beginner.

2008-11-23T12:04:00.000-08:00

"Whom would these men [of the establishment] fear most, psychologically, and least, existentially? The brilliant loner. The beginner. The young man of potential genius and innocently ruthless integrity, whose only weapons are talent and truth. They reject him instinctively, saying that he doesn't belong. To what? Sensing that he would put them on the spot by raising issues they'd prefer not to face. He might get past their protective barriers once in a while, but he is handicapped by his virtues -- in a system rigged against intelligence and integrity. We shall never know how many precociously perceptive youths sensed the evil around them before they were old enough to find an antidote, and gave up in hopelessly indignant bewilderment. Or how many gave in, stultifying their minds. We do not know how many young innovators may exist today, and struggle to be heard. But we will not hear of them because the establishment would prefer not to recognize their existence, and not to take any cognizance of their ideas." -- Ayn Rand.

Expanding Earth Revisited

2008-11-22T04:52:00.000-08:00

Results of a long discussion with a bunch of geologists. That's not to say that they agree with me -- far from it -- they stated in no certain terms that I am a "jackass." But as is usually the case when dealing with academics, I learn the most valuable information in spite of rather than because of its source.

There are three lines of evidence to support the idea that the Earth is expanding, with the oceans constituting the increased surface area: They are geologic, biological, and historical.

The geologic ones are the most compelling, so I'll begin there:

1) As is well-known, the continents adjacent to the Atlantic fit together, that the Midatlantic ridge traces their breaking point, new crust is continually being created at the Midatlantic ridge, and the oceanic crust gets progressively older the further one gets from the Ridge. To verify that, take a look at the image to the right, which shows sea crust ages with red youngest and blue oldest.

2) What's not so commonly known as that the Americas fit with Australia and the Asian trench system as well.

a) Look at Australia and South America. The nub on the Eastern cost of Australia fits into the indentation in South America. Also, look at the East Pacific rise. Although turned slightly clockwise and elongated slightly, it's a perfect fit for Western coast of South America. That turning and elongation is reasonably explained by the existence of another ridge, running from the East Pacific rise to the Chilean coast, and itself producing new crust.

b) Look at the trench immediately off of Kamchatka, headed south to the Mariana trench. Notice that if you slide that trench along the curve of the Aleutian trench, it would be a perfect fit for the Western Coast of North America.

3) So the continents fit together like puzzle pieces on both ends. Is it proof that they were once connected? No. But the evidence that they fit on one end is just as good as the evidence that they fit on both ends, because it is based on identical facts. It seems to me, then, more reasonable to conclude that they were one once linked on both ends than to conclude they were once linked on only one.

4) Also interestingly, the sea crust is substantially younger than the continental crust. Like ... the oldest sea crust dates to approximately 250M years, while the continental crust dates to approximately 4B years. While those dates are based on questionable methods and shouldn't be taken as gospel, they do provide stong evidence that the Atlantic and Pacific (at least the Pacific East of the trenches) formed at the same time. Standard theory, of course, has it that all the continents were bound in Pangaea, and then split, floating their way back into the Pacific, which is (presumably) growing ever smaller. In that scenario, of course, we would expect the Pacific to be older than the Atlantic -- after all, the Pacific was already there when Pangaea broke up. But interestingly, it's not. Both oceans are the same age. And much younger than the continents.

5) The trenches in the Pacific experience extremely frequent earthquakes. There's really no question about that. But a little known fact about those earthquakes is that the earthquakes less than 300km from the surface at tensional, rather than compressional earthquakes. What that means, in simple terms, is that the wave characteristics of the earthquake indicate that it was caused by crust pulling apart, rather than being pushed together. Standard theory explains this as being a result of the downward moving, subducting slab being pulled away from the crust above it. The "Benioff zones" are also used to bolster this conclusion. As in the earthquake map above, earthquakes occur at progressively greater depth as one moves away from the center of the Pacific. This is seen as consistent with increasing depth of the slab subducting under the Asian plates.

There's a problem with that interpretation, however. Specifically: the "subduction" zones don't look like one rock going under another. The trenches, for example, are enormously deep, and steep -- ~~usually less than 5 degrees from vertical.~~ descending quite quickly. (Don't be fooled like I was by pictures that show them to be super-steep -- the vertical scale is consistently exaggerated, even on 3d images without a scale). They are also generally quite wide -- often approximately 50km wide. Is that what we'd expect if one giant piece of rock was being pushed under another? No way. First of all, we would expect compressional, rather than tensional earthquakes, as the subducting slab pushed against the continental slab. We have the opposite. We would expect a moderate slope toward the subduction zone that showed us the direction of motion of the slab. Instead we have a flat seafloor, followed by an enormous drop ~~in a nearly vertical direction~~. Further, while we have direct physical evidence of new crust being formed at the ridges, we do not have direct physical evidence of old crust slipping under the other crust at the subduction zone. Finally, if one plate is slipping another another, we would expect an immediate rise in the crust that's on top -- but we don't have it. We have a volcanic zone some distance beyond the trench, but no slow rise right there to account for the "buried" ocean crust.

It simply does not look like subduction is happening.

But what if those trenches are not caused by subduction, but by stretching? What if the giant, steep trench is caused by the two plates pulling apart rather than being forced together? Well, we'd expect it to be steep (which it is) look the slope of a glacier when an iceberg breaks off. We'd expect it to be wide (which it is), rather than narrow, as it was continually being pulled apart. We'd expect a lot of earthquakes (which there are) from the pulling motion. We'd expect volcanos on the continental side, as the pulling motion "loosened" crust further toward the continent, creating passageways for lava from the mantle to reach the surface. Finally, we'd expect the earthquakes to get deeper and deeper as one approaches the continent (Benioff zones), as earthquakes only occur in brittle Earth, and the mantle is (except in its uppermost regions) plastic and not given to Earthquakes, and continental crust is much, much thicker than oceanic crust, allowing Earthquakes to occur at much deeper levels. Finally, we would expect the earthquakes (at least in the crust) to be tensional, rather than compressional. Which they are.

For icing, add the fact that the trenches on the Asian side of the Pacific fit the coast of North America perfectly.

Strong evidence, it seems to me, that the trenches are caused by tearing, rather than subduction.

6) Expansion without subduction. One more important point in the realm of geology. An oceanic ridge surrounds the entire continent of Antarctica. The necessary implication is that there is expansion southward. In order to absorb that new crust (and keep the size of the Earth static), there must be a subduction zone going East to West around the Earth. But there is no such beast.

So enough geology. There's also evidence in biology.

1) This map shows the present-day distribution of marsupials. Interestingly, they're found in Australia and the Americas. Now don't get me wrong -- fossils of marsupials have been found on all seven continents (including Antarctica). But the fact that marsupials survived to a much later date in the Americas and Australia supports the idea that the continents were linked, such that Australia was ecologically and biologically linked with South America -- more linked, in fact, than to the ecosystems in between.

2) Giant animals in the past: The fossil record is full of animals that could not survive in today's gravity. Arthropods bigger than humans. 3-ft long dragonflies. 2M millipedes. Giant claw reveals the largest ever arthropod" (2007), Biology Letters. And let's not forget the dinosaurs -- 350lb flying creatures, enormous saurapods, etc. No way in the world they could make it in today's world. Yet somehow, they used to. How? Maybe reduced gravity on a small world?

Finally, some historical references:

Plato wrote in the Timaeus:

"For these histories tell of a mighty power which unprovoked made an expedition against the whole of Europe and Asia, and to which your city put an end. This power came forth out of the Atlantic Ocean, for in those days the Atlantic was navigable; and there was an island situated in front of the straits which are by you called the Pillars of Heracles; the island was larger than Libya and Asia put together, and was the way to other islands, and from these you might pass to the whole of the opposite continent which surrounded the true ocean; for this sea which is within the Straits of Heracles is only a harbour, having a narrow entrance, but that other is a real sea, and the surrounding land may be most truly called a boundless continent."

What a strange lie. That is, if it is a lie.

But let's not forget old Genesis.

Gen 2:5: "For the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground."

Gen 6:11: In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up.

Gen 10:25: And unto Eber were born two sons: the name of one was Peleg; for in his days was the earth divided.

Also strange historical references. That is, unless something crazy and cataclysmic happened to the Earth's geology, causing massive changes in continental configuration.

Nature

2008-11-15T05:55:00.000-08:00

"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed." -- Francis Bacon.

What is philosophy

2008-11-15T02:24:00.000-08:00

Reading through "Philosophy: who needs it" by Ayn Rand. Greatness. And it left me with the question: what is philosophy?

Possible definitions:
1) Philosophy is opinion about unknowable things, and arguments to support said opinion;
2) Philosophy is opinion about the fundamental nature of being, which is knowable, and arguments to support said opinion.
3) Philosophy is the tools and structure to one's thought -- the ideas we bring to our experience in order to process experience and determine action.

I think that in practice today, most people use one of the first two definitions -- non-philosophers typically use the first one; philosophers typically use the second. But I don't think either is meaningful. I don't think philosophy is about opinions or arguments to support opinions. I think philosophy is a toolbox of logical, moral, and aesthetic precepts that we bring to our experience and choices. I think it's less about what our opinions are, and more about how we form our opinions. I think it's less about the destination, and more about the process.

Does that mean that opinions are pointless? No. But I think those opinions (when meaningful) fall outside the purview of philosophy. That is to say, my opinions about how what gravity is are not "philosophy" -- there are "science." My opinions about what good art is are not "philosophy" -- they are "taste." My opinions about how I ought to behave are not "philosophy" -- they are my morality.

Philosophy is the tools by which I come to those opinions. It is the practices of deduction, induction, and abduction. It is the practice of identifying and defusing logical fallacies. It is the practice of always defining terms precisely prior to their use.

And those tools of philosophy serve us everywhere -- in love, politics, art, work, and children.

I think that the emphasis placed on "opinions" in philosophy courses is misguided. I think that opinions should be identified, but that the meat and potatoes in philosophy should be in the reasoning that goes into those opinions, rather than the opinions themselves. That is to say, the point of a philosophy class should not be to figure out whether you are Hegelian, Kantian, and Randian. The point of a philosophy class should be to figure out how to think about all the questions raised by those people, and thereby learn how to think about the questions raised by our lives.

Science as process or community

2008-11-14T21:51:00.001-08:00

I got into an interesting argument with a prototypical scientist-who's-been-taught-facts-but-hasn't-been-taught-how-to-think, and he made the following argument:

Science, ungtss, is a community, where everyone discusses and argues and adds to the body of working knowledge through the every changing process of research. The corpus of that research is called "THE PEER-REVIEWED LITERATURE."

I responded (in pertinent part):

Science is not a community. Science is a process -- the process of observation, analysis, and interpretation of facts. Kuhn did a great job describing and analyzing what science as a community yields -- institutional stubbornness and refusal to give the facts a fresh look.

He responded:

Man oh man, I love seeing the anti-intellectualism at work! The blatant disregard for how science is done or practiced! I'm glad you are not a doctor, Ungtss...I'd hate to see your clinical trials...Science is a community, populated by people. Your weird aristotelean/neo-platonic "science" would require that, EVERYTIME WE TRIED TO STUDY SOMETHING, we'd have to independantly come up with gravity, hydrdynamics, etc. The peer-review literature lets us draw on the knowledge and expertise of many other workers, providing us with data and interpretations that no one individual could ever match.

I found his response fascinating, because it illustrates two different understandings of what science is. To him, science really is an organic community of people. Put 10 scientists in a room and ask them what they think about an issue, and you have "science." It's personal, charismatic, and subjective.

To me, science is a process. Put 10 scientists in a lab and let them do their thing. Then examine their results. Experimentally supported results are Science -- or in the case of competing explanations for a given phenomenon, Science is the last explanation standing after the others have been falsified. Science is not exclusive to the scientific community. It is a process that can be done by anyone, but which is done primarily by the scientific community, because they are uniquely suited to do so. However, just because they are uniquely suited to perform science does not mean that whatever opinion they have is "scientific." Their beliefs are still subject to the scientific method which (unfortunately) few of them are actually taught at a philosophical level.

This really reflects the difference between the views of Feyeraband/Thagard and the views of Popper. Popper thought science was a process. Feyeraband and Thagard thought science was whatever scientists think.

What difference does this make?

1) It makes "scientists" like this monkey respond very personally to every challenge to their ideas. Challenge their opinion, and you are not challenging an objective experiment -- you are challenging their status as part of "science" -- and it makes them very angry.

2) It leaves "scientists" like this monkey unable to critically evaluate and interpret the facts, and vulnerable to group think -- because science is primarily about what the other scientists think, not the logical basis for their opinions. Present them with a challenging fact, and they don't know what to do with it. They'll just attack you personally as not being as "scientific" as they are.

3) It slows down the process of science, because scientists are not in the habit of challenging what "the scientific community" thinks -- they are in the habit of reading what all the other supergeniuses think, and concurring.

4) It makes "scientists" like this monkey attack any challenge to their paradigm as "anti-intellectual." Because if I am science, and you are challenging me, then you are challenging science.

Why "scientists" don't get it.

2008-10-04T23:35:00.000-07:00

Article from "The Scientist," Volume 22, Issue 10, Page 29

"What makes Science 'Science'" by James Williams

As a science educator, I train science graduates to become science teachers. Over the past two years I've surveyed their understanding of key terminology and my findings reveal a serious problem. Graduates, from a range of science disciplines and from a variety of universities in Britain and around the world, have a poor grasp of the meaning of simple terms and are unable to provide appropriate definitions of key scientific terminology. So how can these hopeful young trainees possibly teach science to children so that they become scientifically literate? How will school-kids learn to distinguish the questions and problems that science can answer from those that science cannot and, more importantly, the difference between science and pseudoscience?

Undergrad course in history and philosophy of science
Here are some of the data from the 74 graduates that I've surveyed to date:

• 76% equated a fact with 'truth' and 'proven'

• 23% defined a theory as 'unproven ideas' with less than half (47%) recognizing a theory as a well evidenced exposition of a natural phenomenon

• 34% defined a law as a rule not to be broken, and forty-one percent defined it as an idea that science fully supports.

• Definitions of 'hypothesis' were the most consistent, with 61% recognizing the predictive, testable nature of hypotheses.

...

Only a few of the graduates had studied any history and philosophy of science, and therein lies the problem. The majority had high quality degrees and some had doctorates in a science discipline, so it wasn't that they were not well qualified in science. It was just that their study of science had been utilitarian, a means to an end with the end being a practicing scientist. They had not been given any grounding or instruction on what makes science 'science.' It was not their fault: history and philosophy of science was an optional part of their degree programs and many could not see the point of it.

...

(End of quote).

That's the exact conclusion I'd come to in explaining how so many "scientists" can be so completely ignorant when it comes to the nuances of philosophy of science. Of course, this author goes on to lump "creationists" in with the anti-science crowd, but that only assumes his particular philosophical definition of science -- and as with all issues in philosophy, definitions are malleable and debatable. The point is, scientists aren't being educated in the issues of philosophy of science -- why in the world do we trust their opinion on things they've neither studied, practiced, nor shown any competence in, as a group?

Dark Ages?

2008-08-22T08:53:00.000-07:00

Occurred to me today that the old secular narrative that sees the Dark Ages as a reversal of progress and culture is false -- and an example of selection bias. Proponents are able to maintain the story by focusing on the decline of the Italian peninsula, rather than noticing that the capitol of Roman empire and European culture had simply moved -- to Constantinople.

Emperor Constantine (the first Christian emperor) moved the capitol of the Roman empire to Constantinople (previously Byzantium, today Istanbul). So a Christian Emperor never ruled in Rome. Constantine moved the capitol because Rome was just no good -- it was isolated, and subject to flooding and Malaria. So when we think of Christian Rome, we mustn't think of it as centered in the city of Rome -- because it never was.

The Roman Empire of Constantine (which "scholars" call the Byzantine Empire) was never called the Byzantine Emperor by anyone who lived there. In fact, no city named Byzantium existed under this "Byzantine Empire." Its residents called their empire the Empire of the Romans.

So, no longer the Capital of the Empire, the city of Rome declined and ultimately fell in 410. But that was insignificant. The Capitol of Christian Rome, Constantinople, stood untoppled until the 13th Century. And while Rome was in ruins, the new capitol of the Roman Empire was thriving, economically. Classical science was retained and expanded upon. Justinian made huge legal and political reforms. The magnificent Hagia Sophia was built.

Then, Plague decimated the population in the 500s, and the Muslims seized the moment to attack -- Muslims, incidentally, who were advancing mathematics and science to previously unknown heights.

The story is not one of "Christianity took over and culture stopped." That fiction is maintained only by ignoring that fact that the Capitol of Rome and the center of European civilization moved from one city to another.

The story is very clearly one of "The center of culture -- Christian culture -- and the Roman empire -- moved from the Italian Peninsula to Constantinople."

Check and Balance

2008-08-11T11:07:00.000-07:00

The US government is usually portrayed as a system of checks and balances. It occurred to me that much more of our system is based on checks and balances than just the 3 branches of government. For example:

Our market system is based on checks and balances -- consumers' unlimited demands are checked by producer's prices. Producers' unlimited desire for profit is checked by consumer choice. Producers' willingness to take shortcuts in ways consumers' can't identify or fight is checked by the regulators. Regulators are checked by the laws of the legislature.

It also occurs to me that the vote is better seen in terms of check and balance than as actually determining our leaders. Everybody knows an individual vote is never of any significance, because the margin of victory is always more than one. However, the vote does function as a check and balance -- because elected officials are (at least somewhat) checked by the reality that if they tick off the electorate, they'll get fired. We don't get to decide who leads us -- our leaders are selected by party officials, lobbyists, special interests, and connections of the rich. But the leaders we don't get to select are bound by the reality that if they piss enough of us off, they'll get fired. It's not really a representative government -- but it is a check and balance. Seen in that light, it seems less naively noble; but at the same time, it appears to actually accomplish its purpose.

Wittingly or unwittingly, our system appears to work because it makes sure nobody has unbridled choice, but everybody has an incentive to push their own agenda.

Psychology of persecution

2008-06-11T20:44:00.000-07:00

Seems to me there are two possibile explanations for why people persecute others for their beliefs:

1) A genuine disagreement over the issues, a belief that such people are morally reprehensible and/or dangerous for holding them.

2) A cynical desire to maintain their power and position by stifling opinions that draw their own authority into question.

The first is possible, I suppose. But I lean toward the second, because it seems to me that persecution occurs in all realms of human intercourse, both religious and secular -- but is rarely led by people who don't have an economic and/or political stake in the outcome.

Don't get me wrong -- I'm sure there are many troops in these wars who genuinely believe the enemy is bad -- but it seems to me they're just pawns who have been deceived and emotionally manipulated by leaders who always have a personal stake in the outcome.

Consider the Catholic Authorities trying to maintain their hold on Europe through the inquisition. Given the unfalsifiable nature of their claim to authority, could they afford an alternative whose claims were equally unfalsifiable drawing their own into question?

Or evolutionary biologists insisting so rabidly that no alternative is worthy of consideration. What would happen to the funding for their research if it were acknowledged that their theories are absurd?

Or Republicans and Democrats (whose policies are often indistinguishable) using the rhetoric of ideology and morality, and then turning around when in power to do things totally counter to what they said. What would happen to their power and ability to draw contributions and alter the law to benefit themselves and their friends if the other side's moralizing went unanswered?

Or Muslim clerical authorities who use law to stifle religious dissent. What happens to the religious authorities' power if others are free to question it?

And on and on and on ...

It occurs to me that if one attempts to take on these forces through ideology -- through arguing about ideas -- one is simply wasting one's time; because the oppression is not itself about ideas -- it's about the power and authority of those whose ideas are being questioned.

Rewriting history

2008-06-09T17:47:00.000-07:00

Offhand, the other day, I told my then-fiance, now wife, that (with only a very few exceptions) everybody in the educated classes of Europe knew the world was a globe from before the time of Jesus. She was shocked. She'd been told a thousand times (as I had) that everybody thought the world was flat before Columbus.

In fact, Eratosthenes of Cyrene (276-200 B.C.) calculated the circumference of the Earth to startling accuracy. 1700 years before Columbus.

Columbus' bold move was not to assert that the Earth was round, but rather his adoption of the Ptolemaic (rather than Eratosthenesian) circumference of the Earth. The ptolemaic calculation was, of course, much smaller, and ultimately wrong. But he thought the Earth was much smaller than previously believed, and therefore thought he could survive the voyage to Japan.

Right? No. Desperately wrong. He just got lucky there was another continent in the way.

But why the widespread lie about medieval folks believing the Earth was flat? I had TEACHERS teaching me that lie.

Or consider this limerick, in which the author breaks down the galileo affair to a conflict between "natural laws versus mystical cause."

The facts, of course, are radically different.

First of all, neither side was arguing about naturalism vs. supernaturalism. Both sides believed in a Creator. The debate was about whether the Sun revolved around the Earth (The Ptolemaic System) or the Earth revolved around the sun (The Copernican model).

So scratch one.

Secondly, this "mystical cause" theory (you know, the ptolemaic system) was devised by a pagan, not a Christian.

So scratch two.

Thirdly, this "mystical cause" was developed through the scientific method -- Ptolemy observed the physical universe, and developed a system to explain his observations. Turned out his system was wrong -- but it was certainly not based on mysticism. Quite the contrary, it was based on science.

Scratch three.

So what you had, actually, was the Church adopting secular science as dogma. And then the secular science turned out to be wrong, the Church didn't want to let it go.

Analogous to the adoption by many churches (like even the Big One, Catholicism) of the ludicrous doctrine of common descent? Perhaps.

But most importantly, perhaps, Galileo's model was inferior to the ptolemaic system, because he insisted the orbits of the planets were round. On this score, Galileo fell far short of his contemporary, Kepler. Galileo rejected Kepler's (correct) idea that the planetary orbits were eliptical -- because he thought circles were more "perfect" than elipses.

But the funny thing is, because Galileo refused to accept the eliptical orbits of the planets (as calculated by Kepler), his mathematics were actually inferior in their description of reality than the ptolemaic system Over the millenia, ptolemaic astronomers had added in all sorts of ad hoc adjustments to match their geocentric system to observed reality -- absurdly complex and ultimately wrong, but a much more accurate description of the observed fact's than galileo's circular orbits.

So why this whole thing about how Galileo was this "martyr for science?" Seems to me to be another anticlerical fiction -- a little rewriting of history that confirms the popular impression that the church opposes "science."

So who does things like this? Well in the case of Columbus, it was a guy named Washington Irving. In the case of Galileo, I suppose it's the morons writing and passing along limericks that rewrite history to serve their own purposes.

What I really don't understand is how people can actually make up stories to support their argument. As though the truth of the matter is less important than persuading people. Secular Fundamentalism strikes again, I guess.

Senses of "evolution"

2008-06-07T18:51:00.001-07:00

The word "evolution" is used in so many senses that it's often confusing. The most commonly used senses I've heard are:

* Development of an individual ("I started out as a mathematician. But I gradually evolved into an engineer").

* Development of an idea ("Continue the discussion, and brainstorm, until your ideas evolve into something you can put into use.")

* Development of a design ("Cars evolved from the relatively primitive Model T to the modern Hybrid.")

* Adaption of an organism ("Organisms vary naturally, and those best suited to their environment tend to spread.")

* The story of the origin and history of life ("Life appeared as a spontaneous, self-replicating protocell, and developed through variation and natural selection into everything we have around us today.")

What's interesting to me is how loosely many evolutionists use the terms. I once made the old argument that "similarity does not imply common descent any more than it implies common design because there are "intermediate forms" among cars, but we all know cars didn't evolve" to an evolutionist. His response was puzzling -- "Of course cars evolved, you idiot -- look at the changes in them over time!"

I found this to be amazing. The fundamental difference between change in gene frequencies stemming from unguided, natural processes and the "evolution" of cars through the intelligent effort of hundreds of thousands of engineers over the course of a century" seemed to be totally lost on him.

Similarly, I remember watching a youtube video by other evolutionists in which the narrator said, "If it can grow, it can evolve." The fundamental difference between an individual changing due to inborn programming and change in gene frequencies stemming from unguided, natural processes appeared to be lost on her, too.

Then today, I ran across this blog by a PhD, in which he rather extraordinarily says:

"But we most certainly do not need fossils to demonstrate the fact of evolution, as we are surrounded by evolutionary intermediates right here in the modern world. In fact, if we didn't have any fossils at all we would still conclude - from the living organisms that surround us - that evolution happens..."

In what sense is he using the word "evolution" here? Does he mean changes in gene frequencies due to unguided natural processes? If so, then how does he know that organisms are intermediates without a fossil record to show a path of development from a common ancestor to the divergent species? How can one conclude that organisms are "evolutionary intermediates" without identifying their common ancestor which would necessarily only be found in the fossil record?

These "scientists" never seem able to grasp that point. They don't seem willing or able to effectively define their terms in this area such that criteria can be effectively applied to test whether reality corresponds with theory.

The real question about "evolution" is not whether organisms adapt to their environment through variation and natural selection. That's obvious, and was known well before Darwin ever showed up on the scene. The real question is also not whether many organisms have similar characteristics. That's also obvious, and was known long before Darwin ever showed up on the scene.

The real question about evolution is unguided, universal common descent. The idea that everything descended from a single protocell that came about by happenstance and subsequently diverged into all life through variation and natural selection alone. That's the only point of contention.

Does this guy seriously think you can make claims about history without looking at the historical evidence of fossils?

If he does, he's an idiot.

But I don't think he does. He probably never sat down to really think through what he means by "evolution."

Realms of inquiry

2008-05-28T20:48:00.000-07:00

I was reading a book about the early middle ages (around the time of Justinian) called "Justinian's Flea" -- great book, incidentally -- and the author noted that while early medieval architects and engineers were extraordinary geometers, able to calculate and measure complex shapes, etc, they were very poor at the physical aspects of engineering -- e.g. managing stress, torque, etc. That reminded me of the classical Greeks and their mastery of, and indeed obsession with, geometry.

And it got me thinking, that maybe human inquiry can be broken into three phases:

In the first phase, extending from the beginning of human history to the Renaissance, we investigated primarily the abstract -- geometry, the "forms," numbers, and abstract theology. We had no particular interest in, much less mastery of, the physical. In fact, many explicitly despised the flesh, epitomized in neoplatonism.

In the second phase, extending from the renaissance until today, we have investigated primarily the objects within our environment -- biology, physics, chemistry, psychology, medicine -- all are increasingly detailed investigation of the things within our environment. Our ability to conduct these inquiries is in fact dependent upon our mastery of abstractions -- in other words, without the ability to think that was developed during the age of abstraction, we would be unable to grasp the physical universe, so as to understand it.

But we still do not understand the environment itself. What I mean is this: we don't know what gravity "is" -- we don't know why the physical constants are what they are -- we don't understand the relationship between space and time -- we don't understand the "origins" or lack thereof -- of the universe.

And perhaps the next stage of inquiry could (will?) be into the nature of the universe itself. Einstein made some real headway into it -- but the contradictions between relativity and quantum mechanics seem to indicate that there is something deeper -- more fundamental -- about the universe than we as yet understand.

Maybe, just as our mastery of the abstract gave us the ability to grasp the physical, so our (impending?) mastery of the physical will give us the ability to grasp the nature of the universe itself?

Of course, such an understanding would be predicated upon mastery of abstraction and the physical -- something many cosmologists, materialists, and theists aren't much interested in. They preach hypothesis and speculation as somehow "science."

But understanding the universe itself would require a much deeper, more nuanced mode of thinking -- because unlike logic (in which propositions can be tested against rules) or physical reality (in which propositions can be tested against experiment) there is as yet no way to "test" propositions about the environment itself, because we have nothing to test them against.

Maybe someday?

Institution and influence

2008-05-26T08:26:00.000-07:00

Seems to me it's important to distinguish between institutions (organized, people-filled organizations) and influences (people and ideas that change things), and, more importantly, to make sure we correctly categorize different ideas and things.

Consider, for instance, organized religion. As an institution, it is notoriously corrupt. From the very beginning, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism have struggled with corruption from within -- the religions' very holy books say so.

But things take on a very different flavor if you evaluate religions as "influences" -- comparing them to the surrounding milieu, and asking what direction they pulled.

If you compare the Inquisition to the religious liberalism of today, it looks horrible. But what was the context?

Trial by Ordeal was a major determinant of "justice" from ancient through medieval times.

Hammurabi wrote, "If any one bring an accusation against a man," Hammurabi wrote, "let the accused go to the river and leap in. If he sink in the river, his accuser shall take possession of his house. But if [the accused] escape unhurt, then he who had brought the accusation shall be put to death."

This practice was still common in Western Europe through the Early Middle Ages. The Old-English, Proto-Germanic, and Dutch words "ordel, urteil, and oordeel" take their definition explicitly from the practice, meaning "Judgment, verdict."

Indeed, the term ordeal itself still bears this form of legal process as its primary definition

Who forbade bishops to participate in it? Pope Innocent III. He introduced compurgation instead (the accused vows his innocent, and his innocense is vouched for by a required number of other people). Justice? Not really. But much better than what came before it. And who brought that change about? The Christian author of the Albigensian Crusade, of all people.

Also consider what was happening prior to the crusades to heretics. Mobs in the streets, hunting down heretics at whim. The Albigensians themselves killing a papal envoy sent in peace.

The Inquisition, as horrible as it was, was a step forward from the "justice" of the rest of the world at the time.

Slavery, also. Slavery is explicitly permitted in both the Old and New Testaments. But not unqualified slavery. While the Greek and Roman pagans were permitted by law to kill, rape, torture, and abuse at will, the Jews and Christians were not. Jews were enjoined in Exodus 21:1-6 as follows:

“When you buy a Hebrew slave, six years shall he serve; and in the seventh shall he go out free, for nothing. If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself: if he were married, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master has given him a wife, and she has borne him sons or daughters, the wife and the children shall be her master's, and he shall go out by himself. And if the slave shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free: then his master shall bring him unto God, and he shall bring him to the door or unto the door-post, and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall be his slave forever.”

Also, Exodus 21:16: "Whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in possession of him, shall be put to death."

The ideas that slavery was temporary (only 6 years, or voluntarily after that), and that kidnapping and stealing slaves was wrong, were revolutionary. Even in the 19th century, the slaves brought to America were initially captured by Africans who raided rival villages, capturing and selling whoever they could to the whites.

And there was no "6 year rule" in the American slave trade.

In other words, the slavery of the 19th Century still violated the rules set in Exodus 3-4 thousand years prior.

And it was a heck of a lot better than the slavery going on in the Greco-Roman world.

So if you look at organized Christianity as put into practice, you often see many abuses and immoral behaviors. But if you look at organized Christianity in its cultural context, things start to look significantly different.

The key, it seems to me, is to evaluate innovators based on what differentiated them from their cultural context, and not what they retained. Thus if I am a racist in a town of racists, but I challenge the idea of slavery, then I should be evaluated for the innovation or influence I sought, rather than the culture baggage I retained.

Consider Constantine, for example. Certainly a brutal, superstitutious emperor in a time of brutal, superstitutious emperors. But he was unprecedented in his banning of gladitorial fights, and his introduction of religious tolerance.

Or consider the author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Certainly it promulgated a number of stereotypes of blacks held by many at the time; but it was revolutionary in its opposition to slavery. She should be evaluated not by the cultural baggage she retained, but by the new ideas she brought to the table.

Or consider Martin Luther. Judgmental, dogmatic and and racist, certainly. But he also lived in a judgmental, dogmatic, and racist time. How did he differ from his cultural context? He fought indulgences, fought for individual thought with respect to religious truth, fought against superstitious worship of relics ... insofar as he differed from his cultural context, he was a pretty good guy.

Does that mean we don't criticize the old culture? Of course not. Racism, slavery, and inquisitions are all bad things. But I think when we evaluate the people involved, we need to distinguish their radical flashes of insight (which are to their credit) from their cultural baggage (which, it seems to me, is less their fault than their heritage).

Thus a person who keeps 9 cultural prejudices and overcomes 1 is a cultural innovator. We can't blame people for being unable to overthrow every bias of their upbringing. We can only credit or blame them for the things (good or bad) that they bring to the table -- how they differentiated themselves from their environment.

Honeymoon

2008-05-21T15:46:00.000-07:00

What up NOW, San Jose del Cabo!?

Expanding Earth?

2008-05-17T08:07:00.000-07:00

Stumbled across an interesting idea today (no better way to start off your wedding day than with a little "pseudoscience," I guess!) -- the idea that the Earth is expanding. Saw some very convincing graphics showing four very interesting things:

1) Asia, America, and Antarctica fit together perfectly, if the Earth is 40% smaller than it is today.

2) America, Europe and Africa do not fit together perfectly today, unless the Earth is 40% smaller than it is today.

3) In fact, all continents fit together perfectly, if we assume a 40% decrease in the Earth's size. In such a scenario, there are no oceans. Just shallow seas. Like the ones we see in the geologic record.

4) The plate surrounding Antarctica has a zone of expansion surrounding it, without any subduction to suck up the extra "ocean crust."

I find this idea to be very interesting. Seems much more reasonable than the alternative, where we're expected to believe that the continents slid around, bouncing against each other, with billions of tons of rock sliding under other rock. And try as I might, I can't find any mainstreamer who can explain what motive force makes these continents move around so much, nor show me large-scale areas of subduction ...

Those are two big holes that are filled by an expanding Earth. Plus the shapes of the continents, which only fit on a smaller radius ...

Selection mechanisms and stupid professors.

2008-05-14T19:55:00.000-07:00

PZ Myers responded with typical ignorance to an article by Medved today.

Medved cites two books recently released, that argue that many Americans are genetically disposed to active, aggressive, ambitious behavior, because of the selection mechanism that brought them here. Basically, you had to be really adventurous to voluntarily give up your life in Europe and start fresh on the frontier, so the genetic trait causing that adventurous spirit became overrepresented in the US.

They authors further argue that this selection mechanism differentiates the blacks whose ancestors were brought against their will, by slavers, from those blacks who came voluntarily, in the traditional vein of the ambitious immigrant.

Myers, in an unusually profound moment of stupid, portrayed this idea as racist. How dare Mr. Medved portray the descendents of slaves as lazy, etc.?

But that's not what Mr. Medved even said.

Racism is differentiating based on race -- saying, "Blacks are this way because they are black; whites are this way because they are white."

These guys are differentiating based on the selection mechanism that brought people to America. Thus "stay-at-home white Europeans" are in the same category as "slaves brought here against their will." Similarly, "White immigrants who came out of a sense of adventure" are in the same category as "Black immigrants who came out of a sense of adventure."

There's simply no racism to be found. The argument is that people who come out of a sense of adventure tend to pass that trait on to their descendants, regardless of race, and those who come (or remain) for some other reason do not have such an over-represented adventurous spirit.

Regardless of race.

How is it that people (like Myers) who have been through so much schooling can be so transparently stupid? I don't know. My little sister, a particularly precocious Junior in college, could see right through this bogus argument. Why is Myers unable to maintain logical thought? I don't know.

Maybe there's another selection mechanism in academia: "Those who can, do, and those who can't, teach." Not universal, of course. But maybe a factor?

As to the idea itself, I find it intriguing, but I'm also skeptical of "genetics explains everything" arguments. I'd be more inclined to believe that the selection mechanism favoring an adventurous spirit created a culture of ambition and energy, which continues to attract people who think the same way, and perpetuates itself through the acculturation process.

I'm open to the idea of a gene, of course; but until they actually find the gene i reckon they should shut up about it.

Oktar II

2008-05-13T17:59:00.000-07:00

Got a tip on a site that posts decisions and briefs on the Oktar case. It's right here.

First impressions: They really need to get a better translator for the documents -- it's virtually impossible to cut through. They also need to quit wasting time on the rhetoric, and focus on the facts.

However, the facts, as presented, appear to show the following:

Oktar and over 30 other members of the NSF (National Science Foundation) in Turkey were charged with the Turkish equivalent of Criminal Conspiracy. The case was tried in a "State Security Court" -- military courts of limited jurisdiction, which have jurisdiction over Conspiracy charges.

The first court to consider the case had to recuse itself, because the prosecutor was affiliated with one of the plaintiff's attorney (sounds like an ethics violation to me).

The second court transferred it to the third court, which found that it lacked jurisdiction because no finding could support a conspiracy charge or any other charge triable in that court of limited jurisdiction.

A bunch of other courts then all weighed in, saying they lacked jurisdiction, for (presumably) a variety of reasons.

In 2005, a court finally heard the case. They dismissed the allegations against 35 of the defendants, because statute of limitations had passed. The last six defendants were then acquitted on the merits.

Then, in 2007, another Court decided to reevaluate the case under a law that had been passed in 2005.

Keep in mind, this occurred after the alleged offense had been committed (not permissible in any Western judicial systems), and after a full acquittal (double jeopardy).

It also appears that the allegations of "setting up an organization for a criminal purpose" rests on no evidence that the organization was intended to commit a crime -- although there may have been (and I don't know yet) someone within the organization that committed a crime. That, of course, would not meet the standard of a conspiracy charge.

How many violations of procedure can we pack into one case?

Blockbuster

2008-05-12T18:45:00.001-07:00

Recombination hotspots

2008-05-12T18:16:00.000-07:00

Ran across an interesting article here. Key quote:

The researchers also identified particular patterns in the DNA that play a role in hotspot activity. ‘That is very exciting because it takes us closer to understanding how recombination is controlled,’ explained Dr Gil McVean, the other senior author. ‘It looks as though there are patterns in DNA which effectively say “recombine here”. Finding out more about that is a step along the road to understanding one of the major mechanisms shaping genetic variation and its consequences.’

The idea that our genome "knows" where and how to recombine is fascinating. It leaves us with two questions: "How does it work?" and "How did it happen?" The first question is purely scientific -- it will doubtless be fascinating, but is unlikely to be particularly controversial. The second question introduces a lot of speculation and philosophy, and is likely to raise a lot of fists on all sides.

From an evolutionary perspective, the answer to the second question is, "More really lucky mutations we can't comprehensively name or describe, but can infer, based on the paradigm of common descent via mutation. Species which randomly developed the capacity to vary in areas of the genome where variation is useful (and not varying in the areas where it is not) had a competitive advantage, and spread."

From a creationary perspective, the answer is, "Maybe the Creator intended to build in the capacity for rapid variation to allow species to adapt quickly to changes in environment, and to continue replenishing diversity."

Neither of those interpretations is particularly falsifiable. Neither of these interpretations will interfere with the ability of scientists to empirically study the mechanisms of the targetted variation.

Nevertheless, both sides will no doubt use the fact of targetted variation to support their own paradigm, and attempt to "debunk" the alternative.

Purpose

2008-05-11T16:14:00.000-07:00

This may be the first time I've agreed with Dawkins. At least in part. Specifically, his statement that the idea of "purpose" in the universe is inextricably linked to theism.

The first important point is my premise that "purpose" is inseparable from "mind." You can't have purpose unless you have a mind. And to infer purpose in something is to infer that a mind had purpose for the thing.

We can of course infer purpose from the remnants of human or animal actions -- but that is because those beings have minds. To infer purpose from the arrangement of the solar system, or the existence of biological life, is to infer that a creator exists, and arranged matter in such a way as to put his purpose into action.

It's also important to remember, though, that just because there's purpose in the universe doesn't mean we have to like it. There is purpose in a slaughterhouse -- but that doesn't mean the cows know what it is, or should like it if they did.

There's a third issue as well. Just because some things in the universe reflect a divine purpose (like say the origin of life), does not mean that everything in the universe reflects purpose. The shape of a particular mountain, or the cancer of a particular friend, may well be just as purposeless as they appear.

The question of whether there is purpose in the universe is inextricably linked to the question of whether the universe was designed. But the question of whether we like that purpose is a separate one entirely. And just because some things may reflect purpose does not mean everything does.

Science and Magic

2008-05-11T15:22:00.002-07:00

Evolution and Intelligent Design are typically characterized as "Science" and "Magic," respectively.

But it occurred to me the other day: intelligent design of life is being performed every day, by scientists. They are genetically engineering and modifying life; they are even working diligently on creating it from scratch (and have succeeded, it seems, in creating a virus, although people debate whether viruses are actually life or not). At the very least, self-replicating RNA has been assembled from scratch by humans.

So intelligent design and modification of life is clearly science. If it isn't, then why is it being performed by scientists all over the world, every single day?

On the other hand, you have the two dominant "unintelligent origin of life" theories -- RNA world and metabolism world. But nobody's demonstrated how they work. RNA world says "Some RNA came together by sheer luck, and that RNA happened to have the capacity to reproduce." Metabolism world says "A primitive metabolism showed up first, and self-replicating RNA came later." Both are, of course, undemonstrated.

So given the choice between the observed, replicated, coherent explanation of a scientist or scientists intelligently designing life as is seen on a daily basis, and the unsupported, explained, "magical" explanations about how life came together by sheer luck ... which one is "science" again?

The only reason "ID" is considered magic is because of a particularly narrow and rigid theology: the idea that "God" (the creator) works only through 'magic,' not 'natural' means. Get rid of that assumption, and ID becomes significantly more "scientific" than any of the alternatives.

Which brings us to a second important point: what are we to do with this theology of "magic?" What is this "supernatural" of which we speak with reference to the Creator?

I don't think the word "Supernatural" means anything. If you define nature as "everything that is," (a reasonable definition, I think), then there cannot be anything "beyond nature," by definition. God may be somewhere well out of our experience -- he may not be visible from our point of view -- he may not be a part of His "Creation." But if He exists, he must be within the scope of "all that is," and must, therefore, be either part of nature of the substance of nature itself.

So if this God (or gods) created us, he must have done it by "natural" means. No other understanding of creation holds any real meaning.

How? No clue. As Arthur C. Clarke said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

I brought this up in a discussion the other day, and the gentleman objected, saying that he would define "supernatural" as things that cannot be observed and studied, and "natural" as things that can be.

I responded that this definition leads to a whole host of problems.

According to his definition, quarks were "supernatural" until we were able to observe and study them; at which time they become natural.

According to his definition, the boats used during the Trojan war were "natural" at the time they were used, but subsequently became supernatural when they were destroyed and were thus no longer available for observation or study.

Clearly, there are only two categories of things: things that exist/occur, and things that do not exist/occur. If something does not exist/occur, it is not supernatural -- it is fictional. And if something occurs, but we cannot observe it, it is not supernatural, but rather, not yet observed

All this comes down to bad epistemology -- a sin of which both evolutionists and creationists are often guilty.

Adnan Oktar

2008-05-10T12:36:00.000-07:00

A well-known Islamic and Turkish creationist named Adnan Oktar was recently convicted and sentenced to three years prison. For what, we're not quite sure.

DISCLAIMER: I'm not arguing about whether he's innocent or guilty -- I don't know anything but what I'm reading on the web. But this case smells really bad.

Here's the Reuters account .

According to the story, he was accused and convicted of "using threats for personal benefit and creating an organization with the intent to commit a crime."

There are two causes for suspicion here:

1) "In that court case, Oktar had been charged with using threats for personal benefit and creating an organization with the intent to commit a crime. The charges were dropped but another court picked them up resulting in the latest case." In other words, Double Jeopardy.

2) "No further details were immediately available." In other words, we aren't given any of the facts underlying the allegations.

Procedural abuses by the authorities and vague claims always raise my hackles -- in my work, these have proven to be a common theme for trumped up charges.

Here is a video of a portion of a long press conference he gave a while back, to the European media. The rest of the press conference is on youtube, and is absolutely fascinating. What I found most interesting was the unsubstantiated allegations made by the reporter -- about his "suing scientists who talk about evolution." Oktar called the reporter's bluff, and the reporter had nothing to say.

That started to smell even more like trumped up charges.

And then you find blogs titled "Whoisharunyahya" that make all only generalized allegations, without any substantiating facts. I'm hurting here. Need more data.

I have a potential lead on what may have happened here. I didn't realize exactly how nuanced, subtle, and balanced his views were. He calls for tolerance of Jews and Christians here. He says that the Jews have a right to the land of Israel here.

Those two views are enough to make him a lot of enemies in the Muslim world. His opposition to Darwinism is enough to earn him no friends among the secularists.

This brings new light to the statement of a spokesman that "the judge was influenced by political and religious pressure groups." Maybe.

I'm open to the possibility that he's guilty. But I haven't seen any coherent allegations or facts to support them. Apparently he's also been accused of cocaine use, having orgies, molesting little girls ... and been acquitted each time. That makes these allegations stink even more.

Thank God for Due Process.

According to this blog, Harun Yahya got a ruling in Turkish courts blocking wordpress blogs in Turkey, for defamation and libel. I'm certainly no fan of censorship of any type, and I don't know much about Turkish defamation law. However, I do know that the few wordpress blogs I saw (like this one) about him were plainly defamatory and libelous. He was accused of just about everything under the sun, all without evidence.

Paradigm dependence

2008-05-10T09:43:00.000-07:00

I often run into a phenomenon I've come to call "paradigm-dependent argument" -- there may be a philosophically proper name for it out there somewhere, but I haven't yet heard it.

There are two variants -- paradigm dependent evidence for a theory, and paradigm-dependent refutations of a theory. Both are related to, but not identical to, the informal fallacy of "Begging the question"

Paradigm-dependent evidence works like this. In order to provide evidence for a theory, you line up evidence; but the significance of the evidence in supporting the theory depends on assuming the theory is true in the first place.

For example: "The Bible is inerrant. As evidence, there is a passage in which it claims to be God-breathed, and we know God cannot breath lies!"

The evidence to support the conclusion of inerrancy is the passage in which "all scripture" is described as "God-breathed." However, the significance of this "evidence" depends on the assumption that the Bible is inerrant. If the Bible is not inerrant, then this passage could well be in error. And if the passage is in error, then it holds no significance in supporting the conclusion.

On the other side of the ideological chasm, evolutionists often use paradigm-dependent evidence to support the conclusion of common descent. For example, "Human and chimp DNA is overwhelmingly similar; therefore humans and chimps are closely related." However, this "evidence" depends for its significance on the assumption that humans and chimps are related. If humans and chimps are not related, then it's entirely possible that the designer or designers simply used very similar designs for the two, modifying the designs only insofar as necessary to achieve the desired differences.

The end result is that people can appear to be lining up all sorts of "evidence" to support a conclusion, but because of the nature of the evidence itself, it's not really evidence at all.

Paradigm-dependent refutations

This is basically the other side of the coin. I present evidence against your theory which depends for its significance upon the assumptions of my theory, or a strawman version of your theory.

For example:

The one I run into most often is the argument against design from "suboptimal design." It goes like this: Many aspects of the biological design of humans are less efficient than they could be. A competent designer would not design things so inefficiently. Therefore they were not designed.

This "evidence" depends on a straw-man assumption about design -- that the designer, must, of necessity, have intended to create life with optimal efficiency. But without that assumption, we're left with the possibility that life was designed to be efficient, but not perfectly efficient. Much like engineers today, compromises in efficiency have to be made to get the dang thing to work.

Therefore, the evidence depends for its significane on the tacit assumptions that "The Designer would have designed optimally," and "our conclusions of suboptimal designer are actually suboptimal." Without these two dubious assumptions, the "evidence" holds no significance.

The funniest thing of all is hearing scientists call the "design of life" suboptimal, when it is so vastly beyond our ability to design, construct, or even understand. Because we can imagine life being "better designed," (even though we can't even design or construct the most basic forms), we infer that the "Designer" was incompetent. Talk about Monday-morning, arm-chair quarterbacking.

A theistic example of this fallacy is the ontological argument. It goes like this: God is defined as "The being than which no greater can be conceived." It is greater to exist than not to exist. Therefore, if you conceive of God as not existing, you're conceiving of something less than "the greatest." Therefore, if you conceive of God as not existing, you're not really conceiving of God. Therefore, atheism is self-contradictory.

This argument depends on the assumption that "God is defined as 'the being than which no greater can be conceived.'"

But if an atheist instead conceives of God as "An imaginery conception in the mind of men without any corresponding reality outside the mind," then the ontological argument holds no power. The whole argument depends on a definition of God with which an atheist could reasonably disagree.

Old maps

2008-05-09T18:45:00.000-07:00

SEE UPDATE AT END

Stumbled across an interesting old map today. It was composed by Orontaeus Finaeus, in 1532. The actual map is on the left. Polar projections of the Finaeus map and modern map are in figures 2 and 3, respectively.

It is clearly a map of Antarctica -- you can see the tip of South America in the lower right hand corner, and lines of latitude and longitude extending out from the south pole. South America is a little too close (it doesn't actually touch Antarctica in reality). However, there's really no disputing was it is. The similarity is eery.

Interestingly, Antarctica wasn't "discovered" until 1819. The first two expeditions in recorded history to actually see Antarctica were led by William Smith and James Bransfield in 1819 and 1820, respectively.

You can confirm the general ignorance of Antarctica with other, later maps, such as the next one, a map by Henricus Hondius, reflecting the Earth as it was seen in 17th century eyes.

The south polar projection at the bottom reflects the belief of the day: no land.

So how did this Orontaeus get his map of Antarctica?

No clue.

Maybe he used old sources?

I found an article on this map on that inimitable fountain of everything evolutionary, talk.origins, here. They debunk many apparently fantastic claims made by a TV series I've never seen. Although much of their debunking is paradigm-dependent (meaning their "disproof" depends on their own unproven assumptions), many of the claims made by the series do appear to be gross speculation.

There are a few important claims that talk.origins doesn't touch, though: that the map was genuine, that it was written in 1532, and that it does, in fact, depict Antarctica.

That's enough to blow my mind.

Update I found a very reasonable explanation for this map, right here. The theory is that Finaeus based his map off the northern coast of Australia. This is confirmed because not only does it correspond to the northern coast of Australia pretty well, but one of the islands just above it is actually labeled "Java." Looks like he was speculating about what the rest of Australia might look like, and just happened to draw a map that looked a helluvalot like Antarctica.

Specialization

2008-05-09T17:23:00.000-07:00

Heard this one on the radio today, and liked it:

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

-Robert A. Heinlein

Causation, Label or object

2008-05-08T13:44:00.000-07:00

A gentleman named Matt Ackerman made an interesting point. In my scheme of "label and reality," causation does not qualify as reality, because "causation" has no corresponding physical reality. He's right, of course. That's a logical outcome of my scheme i didn't see.

Is this outcome reasonable? Is causation not "real," but rather mere "concept?"

I tend to think so. Especially given the observations underlying quantum physics, it seems possible that causation is much less foundational to reality than traditionally believed.

What exactly do we mean by "causation?"

Seems like we are saying two things:

1) physical state of affairs b follows physical state of affairs a 100% of the time.
2) some aspect or aspects of the physical universe preclude any other outcome

Seems like causation is really just a label we put on those two assertions.

And now that I think about it, seems like both assertions can be proven false, but neither can be proven to be true, because the possibility of a counterexample always exists.

And since both assertions are loaded with room for doubt, we shouldn't be surprised that there is so much argument about causation. If we could observe it in itself, there'd be no problem. But it's really just a pair of assertions about physical reality, both of which are very difficult to prove. Maybe that's why there's so much interminable argument about causation. We treat it like a real thing, but actually it's just a pair of unprovable claims.

that's not to say that the assertions underlying all causation are always false. It's just to show that causation really is those two claims and nothing else, and that those two claims are pretty wily.

For example, consider "she made me mad." claim 1 is easily shown true -- first came her action, then came my anger. But the second one is hazier. Could I have responded differently to the same action? No way to tell. Determinist would say no chemicals and stimuli determine outcome. Freewiller would say yes -- you chose your reaction. Neither can be tested, because it was a one-time deal. Did she really "make me mad?" hard to say.

"the heat from the stove causes water to boil." correlation? Check. Claim about reality? Insert description of the properties of water that make it gas at 100C. Check. Causation proven? No. But good enough for me.

Nested hierarchies

2008-05-07T18:48:00.000-07:00

Also during the long discussion yesterday, the topic of nested hierarchies came up. This caused me to look harder into the topic, to try and understand it. I found something interesting.

First, the main point. Evolutionists use "nested hierarchies" as evidence of common descent -- that is, life can be categories along certain lines, and there are no characteristics that violate those hierarchal categorization. Therefore, those hierarchies constitute the "family tree" of life.

When I first heard the argument, I was struck by how "label over reality" it was. That is, we categorize life according to certain characteristics, and then treat the structure of those categories as being "real." When if we picked different characteristics, we'd certainly have different hierarchies.

In fact, it seemed, there are all sorts of traits that violate the "rule of nested hierarchies."

So with this in mind, I started reading about the marsupials and monotremes, because they seemed to be a great place to start in looking into these hierarchies.

And what did I find? I found placental and marsupial variants of a bunch of different animals. All of the photos on this page are of MARSUPIALS, either alive or extinct. Yet we know instinctively, from looking at them, that they are eerily reminiscent of placental counterparts.

For example, there is the placental wolf, and the "tasmanian wolf," which was hunted to extinction in the 30s. The two species share all the major "dog" characteristics, except radically different reproductive systems, and, apparently, minor differences in the palate bone. So I kept looking, and I found the "marsupial sabertooth tiger," the "marsupial lion," the "marsupial anteater," the "marsupial flying squirrel," the "marsupial mole" the "marsupial badger (or tasmanian devil), the "marsupial mouse" ... and it didn't appear to be ending anytime soon.

All the sources I found treat all these animals as "convergent evolution" -- that is, the "tasmanian wolf" is not a "wolf" -- it is a "marsupial that happened to evolve a lot of the same characteristics as wolves, because it filled the same niche." Maybe I could buy this once. But how many times? Dogs, lions, sabertooth tigers, anteaters, moles, flying squirrels?

How many times did this "convergent evolution" happen?

Or maybe these "nested hierarchies" aren't as involable as argued. Maybe these organisms originated fully formed, in two distinct variants. Or maybe they originated in a single, primal form with the capacity for both forms of reproduction in the gene pool, which "fixed" due to genetic drift over time?

Whatever explanation you choose, these "nested hierarchies" start to look pretty silly when you have such a long list of organisms that have such similar placental counterparts, with only one significant difference: the reproductive system.

(I got all the photos straight off Google Images, and claim Fair Use, as this is a not-for-profit, educational purpose that uses documents only in small part).

Recurrent laryngeal nerve

2008-05-07T17:41:00.001-07:00

I got baited into another long, fruitless debate with some gentlemen, but in the process, I learned some cool stuff about biology.

The recurrent laryngeal nerve is a nerve that runs from our brain to our voicebox to provide motor function and sensation to the voicebox. Interestingly, though, instead of running a direct route from brain to larynx, it runs from the brain, all the way down the neck to the chest, and then back up the larynx. It doesn't take the straight path -- it loops. Hence, recurrent. This occurs in a whole bunch of animals, including the giraffe -- where "taking the long road" adds meters of nerve.

One gentleman in particular used this as evidence of common descent -- after all, why would the nerve take this inefficient path from the brain down to the chest and back up to the larynx in animals as diverse as men and giraffes, unless the two species were related? Having never heard of this before, and finding it interesting, I googled "laryngeal nerve," to learn what it was. On a whim, I then looked up "non-recurrent laryngeal nerve" and I found this abstract, among others, which indicated that non-recurrent laryngeal nerves occur about 1% of the time in humans.

I brought this to the attention of the gentleman, and pointed out that given the regular occurrence of non-recurrent laryngeal nerves, it would seen that if such a path were advantageous, it would have been selected by now. Thus, the fact that the other variant is set (or nearly set) in the population indicates that the recurrent version may well have some advantage. There was also another abstract which indicated that the non-recurrent variant was quite deletarious during surgery, as it increased the chance of injury. That at least provided a potential explanation.

He never responded. I wish he had. He obviously knew some stuff about biology. He obviously had a lot to teach me.

Intelligence

2008-05-04T11:26:00.000-07:00

Got into an interesting discussion with someone about the definition of "intelligence." As I understood him, he seemed to think that our concept of "intelligence" was something of an illusion, because animals (and, presumably we also) simply follow the laws of nature as applied through the genetic preprogramming we bring to the table and the stimuli we experience. Thus, he argued, there was no fundamental difference between the behavior of animals and the the behavior of the weather, except for the degree of complexity in the system.

Not wanting to get into an argument about free-will/determination, compatibilism/incompatibilism, or materialism/dualism, I argued that even if we are simply highly complex systems, we are fundamentally different than the weather, because we have the capacity to act with respect to preexisting desires. We don't just act in response to stimuli -- we interpret those stimuli with respect to desired outcomes (e.g. survival, happiness, reproduction, spiritual fulfilment) -- all things which the weather cannot do. In other words, we don't just see a hamburger -- we see the hamburger with respect to our own desire to eat, or our own desire not to die of heart disease, and act according to our desires.

The weather does not have preprogrammed ends or desires. We do. And that's what makes us intelligent.

Seems like there are three ways to view intelligence:

1) Illusion, as what appears to be intelligence is merely the systematic function of a highly complex system -- a system that reacts with 100% predictability based on genetic preprogramming and physical stimuli.

2) An external, spiritual "soul" that exists independently of the body.

3) The sum of an organisms desires, thoughts, memories, and plans that we bring to our physical stimuli. Whether or not these are purely material or an ethereal "soul," they are what makes us intelligent.

Spearfishing in Borneo.

2008-05-03T09:11:00.001-07:00

Kant

2008-04-27T13:20:00.000-07:00

“The empiricist will never allow himself to accept any epoch of nature for the first–the absolutely primal state; he will not believe that there can be limits to his outlook into her wide domains, nor pass from the objects of nature, which he can satisfactorily explain by means of observation and mathematical thought–which he can
determine synthetically in intuition, to those which neither sense nor imagination can ever present in concreto; he will not concede the existence of a faculty in nature, operating independently of the laws of nature–a concession which would introduce uncertainty into the procedure of the understanding, which is guided by necessary laws to the observation of phenomena; nor, finally, will he permit himself to seek a cause beyond nature, inasmuch as we know nothing but it, and from it alone receive an objective basis for all our conceptions and instruction in the unvarying laws of things.

In truth, if the empirical philosopher had no other purpose in the establishment of his antithesis than to check the presumption of a reason which mistakes its true destination, which boasts of its insight and its knowledge, just where all insight and knowledge cease to exist, and regards that which is valid only in relation to a practical interest, as an advancement of the speculative interests of the mind (in order, when it is convenient for itself, to break the thread of our physical investigations, and, under pretence of extending our cognition, connect them with transcendental ideas, by
means of which we really know only that we know nothing)–if, I say, the empiricist rested satisfied with this benefit, the principle advanced by him would be a maxim recommending moderation in the pretensions of reason and modesty in its affirmations, and at the same time would direct us to the right mode of extending the province of the understanding, by the help of the only true teacher, experience.

In obedience to this advice, intellectual hypotheses and faith would not be called in aid of our practical interests; nor should we introduce them under the pompous titles of science and insight. For speculative cognition cannot find an objective basis any other where than in experience; and, when we overstep its limits our synthesis, which requires ever new cognitions independent of experience, has no substratum of intuition upon which to build.

But if–as often happens–empiricism, in relation to ideas,
becomes itself dogmatic and boldly denies that which is above the sphere of its phenomenal cognition, it falls itself into the error of intemperance–an error which is here all the more reprehensible, as thereby the practical interest of reason receives an irreparable injury.

And this constitutes the opposition between Epicureanism and Platonism.”

Videos

2008-04-27T00:25:00.000-07:00

Broke down and started a youtube account. Here are a couple old videos.

Skiing, Durango CO:

Whale breaching off the coast of Alaska:

Scabs running around in the Albuquerque snow:

The Silverton railroad, Colorado:

The eye

2008-04-26T21:54:00.000-07:00

Another video reflecting profound ignorance:

Here are the errors:

1) Non-sequitor. Titling the video "creationism disproved?" As though the presentation of a hypothesis of the evolution of one organ, the eye, could disprove the idea that the organism itself was created. Silly, if course.

2) Oversimplification. The video starts out with "light sensitive cells," as though the development of such cells was "no big deal." But let's take a closer look at this. How much genetic information is required to transform a limited number of cells into light sensitive cells? First, the cell has to hyperpolarize in light. Then, it has to have the capacity to produce various neurotransmitters depending on its state of polarization, and transmit them. And it has to be connected via nervous tissue which can transfer that neurotransmitters. And it has to have some capacity to receive the neurotransmitters. And it has to have the capacity to use this information in a way that adds survival value. All this irreducibly complex functionality, glossed over in just the "first step." All the further steps similarly oversimplify the steps of development. Like all the genetic information required to construct the "rudimentary lens," including the differentiation of lens cells, and the mechanisms required to manipulate those cells in order to make the lens useful. She skipped those steps, too. Finally, by focusing only on mollusks, she doesn't even get to the real difficult stuff -- the development of the eye BALL, which moves freely inside an eye socket.

3) Hypothesis masqueraded as science. All they have presented is a hypothesis -- not a theory -- there is in fact no evidence to prove that these various forms of eyes actually, historically, evolved from one another. The evolution of the eye could have been radically different than the process presented here. Or there could have been no such evolution at all. There is no evidence to falsify either of these other possibilities, and therefore the "just-so" story presented is not science.

4) Non-sequitur. I think my favorite quote of hers is "If it can grow, it can evolve." How beautiful is that. Growth is the process by which an organism follows the instructions encoded as genetic information preprogrammed into the organism. Evolution is the process by which genetic information is modified through the generations. Radically different processes. But she argues that if an organism can follow its preprogrammed genetic instructions, then surely those genetic instructions could be programmed into the organism without any intelligent intervention. Nice:). Like if a computer can start up, following the instructions pre-ncoded in its hardware and software, then surely those instructions can develop through random variation and non-random selection.

Mind and reality.

2008-04-26T07:15:00.000-07:00

Seems to me there exists a spectrum of philosophical belief regarding the relationship between mind and reality. On the one extreme you have solipsists who believe the mind manufactures reality. On the other extreme you have materialistic reductionists who want to reduce every feeling and thought to a chemical configuration, and ultimately to equate the mind with the physical brain. In the middle there are those (like me) who believe that the mind and reality both exist, but in different categories -- mind being a subjective experience, and reality being objective.

Concepts that fit into the category of subjective experience:

Pain. It has no physical reality. Yet we experience it. We know what it is. We know what to do when we feel it. Its causes and effects can be observed in the objective world -- a slap in the face, or a brain-scan at the time the pain is initiated to see which portions of the brain are lit up. But you can't ever point to "pain."

Similarly, the mind is a subjective experience. It has no physical reality. Yet we experience it. We all know what it's like when our "mind" is "groggy." We all know what it's like when a new idea flashes into our mind. We speak of these things are real -- and they are -- albeit not physically real.

Philosophically, and experientially, we treat these subjective experiences as real. And rightly so. We experienced ideas long before we had any idea of how the brain actually functions. In fact, today, we still don't know what the physical manifestations or causes of an "idea" are. Yet we have them from the earliest age.

Materialists would like to reduce those experiences to mere chemical components. How many times have I read articles about how "love" has been proven by "science" to be "dopamine." But when you read the article, you discover that the basis for this conclusion is only that dopamine is associated with love. But dopamine is also associated with all good feelings -- it's a feel-good drug. It explains why one feels high, but it does not select why one loves one person or another -- or how that love is reflected in the physical reality of the brain. It basically reduces love to "feeling good" -- which is, of course, nonsense to anyone who has ever experienced love.

We experience love, mind, and pain as real, not as their physical manifestations. There's no sense denying what we all experience, every day.

And the mind, while subjective, also has the power to directly impact reality. The placebo effect is real, and it is documented. People act and manipulate objective reality based on these IDEAS, FEELINGS, HOPES, CHOICES, and DREAMS, which, although we cannot see, touch, or measure them, are nevertheless very real to us in our experience.

Then on the other hand, there are the dualists who insist that the mind has some substantive reality. Like the mind isn't just an experience, but "something" that could conceivably be found "somewhere." They do this without any evidence. And a substantial argument to the contrary: the fact that you can fiddle with someone's mind by fiddling with the physical components of their brain.

The key is to keep categories separate. Treat the subjective as real, and subjective. Treat the objective as real, and objective. Don't treat the subjective as objective. Don't treat the objective as subjective. Everything in its right place.

Placental genes

2008-04-20T15:26:00.000-07:00

Cutting through the obligatory evolutionary ranting here, I think it's some pretty cool stuff. Basically, during the first stage in placental development, we activate primarily genes shared by other species. But in the second portion, we activate species-specific genes.

How cool is that?

The evolutionary error, of course, is to conclude from these facts that all the species are related. No go. Just because the Model T and the Highlander Hybrid both have tires doesn't mean they're related. But it's still really cool. I'm interested in what gene (or other biological structure) controls the activation of the genes within the two stages. How does the embryo "know" when different genes need to be activated?

Dawkins. Yikes.

2008-04-14T22:55:00.000-07:00

I can't believe what I'm hearing here. Richard Dawkins said that "In order to prove that a fossil was really 3000 years old, they would have to find igneous rocks which were found in proximity to the fossils, date these by radioactive dating, several different methods of radioactive dating, all of which give independent estimates of the date of the fossil."

That's simply not true.

When you date igneous rock by radioactive dating, you determine how long ago the igneous rock cooled from volcanic rock. You do NOT determine how long ago the sedimentary strata in which you find the rock were laid down. A rock may have emerged from a volcano 1M years ago, and been buried in sedimentary strata 10 years ago. Radiometric dating will still find the rock to be 1M years old.

But, of course, the date of a FOSSIL laid down in a sedimentary strata is not the date of the old rock that got buried there, but the new bones!

By Mr. Dawkins' reasoning, you could have an igneous rock that was 1M years old, bury it in the dirt next to my shoe, and then upon uncovering them both, conclude that my shoe was 1M years old.

But even further, radiometric dating of rocks assumes that the rock had a particular composition when it was initially formed. For instance, K-Ar dating assumes that the rock initially had no Argon. If there was in fact Argon in the rock initially, the rock itself will date millions of years older than it actually is.

And in fact, there are many examples of volcanic rocks being found with Argon in them.

It never ceases to amaze me how these "scientists" are either unwilling or unable to grapple with reality.

Hardware and software

2008-04-14T20:39:00.000-07:00

I often hear people, the popular press, and even "scientists" say things like "DNA contains all the information necessary to create life." Seems to me pretty clear that the claim isn't true, for one simple reason: In order to function, DNA must be in a cell which already has all the structures in place to keep the cell alive, as well as to use the DNA to code proteins.

Seems analogous to a computer: DNA is comparable to the software, and the cell is comparable to the hardware. But in a computer, both the software AND the hardware contain information necessary to the function of the computer.

Same with a cell: DNA by itself doesn't contain all the information necessary for life. The rest of the cell probably contains just as much information (if not more) in the configuration and function of all its organelles.

How much of the total information necessary for life is in the DNA? And how did the rest of the information come to be encoded in the cell? Someday maybe we'll know.

Label and object

2008-04-13T23:30:00.000-07:00

Recently, I've been realizing more and more the importance of differentiating between objects and our linguistic labels for them. In fact, there are many words that we use for things that have no corresponding physical reality.

The number 2, for instance. You can't point to it. You can't touch it. You can't see it. 2 is a word we use to describe a particular grouping, real or imagined, of other objects.

Infinity, also. You can't point to it, touch it, more memorize it. It's defined as something that doesn't end. But because of our inherently limited nature, we can't measure or see anything without end.

Random. Many things we think of as random are not in fact random, but determined by variables we don't know. Randomness, then, would be better understood as "Something I can't put into a pattern."

Imaginary numbers. Not really any more imaginary than real numbers. Again, just a label we use to stick in our formulas. There are no "square roots" in reality, much less any "negative numbers." These are linguistic labels we use to manipulate algebraic formulae.

An idea. We have ideas all the time, and speak of them as though they are real. But you can't touch or feel an idea.

Dimensions. You can't touch or see dimensions. They are just labels we use to describe the universe in which we live. And the big X,Y, and Z are not the only, nor even the best means of describing reality. Non-Euclidean geometries can also describe the universe equally effectively, if not more effectively. Dimensions are just language, not reality.

Seems like the most viscious philosophical arguments are usually over the definitions of these words without any physical correspondending reality.

And what's REALLY weird are the folks (like Pythagoras, Plato, Anselm, and Descartes) who treat these labels as though they are real -- or even, more real than reality. Pythagoros went as far as to worship numbers. Plato thought the form of "greenness" was more real than anything green on the Earth. Anselm thought that because God was defined as the being than which no greater can be conceived, that he must, therefore, exist in reality. And Descartes had his own ontological argument.

All these people made the same fundamental mistake -- treating a label as though it were real -- and in some cases, more real than reality itself.

The ambiguity between label and reality caused a lot of unnecessary struggles more me, particularly in the area of math. As I got higher in math, it seemed more and more like the teachers and books were treating things like probability and integrals like they were something real -- and I was trying to conceptualize them that way. But they're not. Probability is just a label we put on our degrees of ignorance. If we knew all the variables that went into determining the outcome, there wouldn't be any probability. The same problem with calculus. You can't point to or touch an "integral." It's a mathematical game we play to bridge ourselves from physical reality to physical reality quickly and conveniently.

My math and stats teachers, I think, didn't get that. They insisted on treating math as though it were something real -- as though it had some corresponding REALITY to it -- which, of course, it does not. They were just making the same mistake Pythagorus did.

It also caused me to struggle with philosophical discussions about "essence." Philosophers spoke (and speak) of "essence" as though it has some reality it it. But "essence" is really just a definition we put on what we see.

I come to realize that all this means is that I'm thoroughly nominalist and existentialist in my philosophy without knowing it. But now by knowing it, I'm much better able to understand what they meant with all that "essence" stuff.

I wonder what it is about people that makes some of them want to treat labels like reality.

Endogenous retroviruses

2008-04-13T20:09:00.001-07:00

Interesting -- apparently there are thousands upon thousands of sequences in our DNA with the characteristics of retroviruses, and evolutionists use this as an argument for Common Descent.

First some definitions -- a retrovirus is a virus that codes itself into the DNA of the host cell and hijacks the host cell to create copies of the virus.

An endogenous retrovirus, then, is a retrovirus that is permanently in an organism's DNA.

Estimates of the percentage of our DNA that is retroviruses range from 6-10%. A small number of these retroviruses are in almost exactly the same place as they appear in chimps. Evolutionists use this fact to argue for common descent, because, they argue, if these retroviruses are in exactly the same place in both humans and chimps, that retrovirus must have been in place prior to chimps and humans branching, because the chances are too slim that both would be infected in exactly the same place, independently.

This argument rests on a number of key unstated assumptions:

1) That the endogenous retroviruses appear (and appear in exactly the same place) in the genes of all humans. If they weren't, then we have an interesting question: are some humans related to apes and others not? Or, given the 30,000 ERVs in the genome, aren't some bound to turn up in the same location in apes + humans, even if they're not related and were infected independently?

2) These actually are retroviruses. Most of these estimates are just based on segments that have similar coding to viruses. Isn't it possible for DNA to have coding similar to virus coding without actually containing viruses?

3) These viruses weren't intentionally inserted into our DNA. We use retroviruses to perform genetic engineering. Who's to say the Designer didn't use them to genetically engineer us? This is especially interesting, given the fact that some (many) ERVs are indispensible to life.

4) ERVs can actually infect germ lines. In order for an ERV to be passed on to the next generation, it would need to infect the testes or egg of a parent. While we've seen these ERVs in DNA, we've never actually seen them infect a germ line. We assume that what we see are actually old viruses. But we still haven't seen an infection.

5) It also leaves us with an interesting question: if we do all share the same ERVs, how did they come to be set in the entire population? If a single individual is infected with an ERV, that ERV is going to be wiped out by genetic drift over time, unless there is some distinct survival advantage to the ERV. What are the chances, seriously, that viruses that bungle their way into our gene pool are so advantageous to our survival that everybody without them dies? That is, unless the viruses were designed to be good for us ...

What does all this mean? I don't know. But I think it's cool.

Culture and religion

2008-04-13T17:16:00.001-07:00

People of all stripes seem to have a hard time figuring out how to fairly judge and compare religions and cultures. This genius, for example, is deluded enough to think that this had something to do with religion.

So what are the top errors with respect to evaluating culture and religion?

Well first off is the mistake of comparing the Ideal with the Real. What I mean is this: If you compare one man's ideals to another man's actual behavior, you're truly comparing apples and oranges.

"Atheism is great, because atheists believe in human rights. Religion is horrible -- remember the Crusades?."

That's not a fair comparison. If you're going to compare religions, you have to compare apples to apples -- compare one man's ideals to another man's ideals, and one man's behavior to another man's behavior.

Compare the atheist's belief in "human rights" to the Christian injunction that "he who is without sin should cast the first stone." They come out roughly equivalent.

Compare the religious persecution performed by Christians in the 20th century to that performed by Atheists. The Atheists come out much worse. 31,689,000 Christians were martyred by atheists in the 20th century , helped along a great deal by atheists Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse Tung, who killed Christians by the millions simply for being Christian.

That's not to bash my many awesome atheist friends. It's just to show the problem with comparing ideals of many to practices of the few.

The second mistake one can make in this arena is an error in CAUSATION. Are acts committed by people BECAUSE of a belief, or in spite of it?

In the blog by Mr. Myers, he implies some link between the Islamic religion and the forced marriage and sexual abuse of the 8-year old girl in Yemen. But, in fact, the interpretation of Islam by muslims today is that this is immoral. Even in Yemen, while marrying a girl of that age is legal, having sex with her is not. Therefore, the perpretator in this case violated the law. How then can you blame a religion for an act when contemporary religious authorities condemn the act?

If a person commits an act forbidden by his religion, then the problem is not that they are too religious -- the problem is that they are not religious enough.

Interestingly, the Quran itself has no minimum age for marriage -- Muhammed himself married an 8 year old and consumated the relationship with a 9 year old, when Muhammed himself was 52. This is vile to our sensibilities.

However, again, it is important to determine whether a behavior comes from a religion or from the religion's cultural context. A Sharia expert explains the Islamic argument based on cultural context here. In reality, these cultures force children into sexual contact at exceedingly young ages whether Islamic or not -- it's part of their culture. In fact, prior to Islam, women were typically bought and sold as chattel. Even today, in countries like Zambia, one out of three 8 year olds is having sex, and about 1/7 would deliberately have sex with someone if they knew they had HIV. I ask you, is it better for an 8-year old to be having sex with a 50-year old who is responsible for her welfare, or a 9 nine-year with AIDS with no obligations to the girl at all?

Seems about a tossup to me.

And as the teacher explains, the Quran requires some degree of security and protection for the girl. Thus, while the Quran permits something we in the West would never permit and which arguably shouldn't be permitted by anyone, it is certainly BETTER than the culture without Islam.

The last thing one should do when evaluating religion and culture is to take a look at the log in our own eye. As the teacher points out, many girls in the West become sexually promiscuous around age 12 or below. In the US, one third of all births are to unwed women, one third of girls get pregnant at least once before they turn twenty, and four million teens contract an STD every year. We tolerate this because in our value system, it's their "right." However, our protection of these "rights" results in STDs, teen pregnancy, and the broken families and children that come out of those families. Agreed. Marrying children off at 8 is not a good idea. But neither is a culture permitting its 10-year olds to have sex out of bounds. Maybe we should clean up our own house first.