Where I throw crap at a Popperian wall and see what sticks
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "baal_shem_ra" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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08:46 pm
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Fuck money and jobs
So I've been asked to expand upon a comment I made. The point in question was revenues and job creation don't justify anything. This was in the context of an argument in favor of gay marriage which said that it would generate a given amount of revenues and jobs.
The producer emphasis is a very common one. You can find it in speeches from the US Republican party just as much as you can find it in the French Socialist Party's. Witness the justifications for free trade agreements; it is almost always framed in terms of opening other markets so we get to sell them goods and thus get money and create jobs. Cheaper imports, on the other hand, are lucky if they are seen as neutral. Most often, they are destroying good [insert nationality] jobs. If you want to hear about comparative advantage or economies of scale, you'll have to read specialist or semi-specialist (such as The Economist) sources. That emphasis leads to deeply mistaken policies.
First, let's find out what matters in economic activity. If we could choose to either work and not get the goods or get the goods and not work, which would we choose? The goods, of course. You might object at this point that even with extreme automation, we still need some labor input. True, but knowing what is ultimately sought is useful because while all goods require jobs, some economic configurations will give you a higher ratio of goods to jobs than others and some configurations maximise one at the expense of the other. For example, if a refrigerator manufacturer buys machinery that allows him to produce twice as much (and that his market is saturated), what will likely happen is that he'll produce (something close to) as much as he used to while using (something close to) half of the labor he used to employ. If you're after jobs, this is woeful. If you're after goods, this is wonderful.
It's woeful because not all the workers will find jobs and many will find jobs that don't pay as much. It's wonderful because half of the labor has been freed up and now we can have about the same number of refrigerators plus whatever the freed up labor will produce.
This argument also works for importation and this is why the “we have to do use tariffs/quotas otherwise all the jobs will move to China” argument for protectionnism is as ill-advised as the “we have to stop automation otherwise all the jobs will be done by robots” argument (which of course, doesn't get made).
The more we try to create/protect (because if we want creation, we should also want protection of same), jobs, the more we incentize/maintain a production factor tied up in an activity which is not the most sought-after activity for that production factor. It is like pleading that we should keep treating a pricked finger when there is a gash to tend to.
But, you might say, it's a strawman, of course it's recognized that such adjustments should take place. Not by all, not at all. Think of the Luddites (textile workers) in the early 19th century who fought against weaving mills and now about Italian textile manufacturers who recently benefited from quotas against Chinese imports. Think of the British Corn laws and today about the US farm bill, the Canadian agricultural boards and, of course, the European CAP. Or about British automakers in the 70s, German automakers in the 90s and Canadian automakers today. Or British coal miners in the 80s.
Their labor could have been used making goods consumers wanted more than what they were currently producing but we had to create/protect jobs. Such attitudes are understandable because what is most advantageous to any producer is that other producers adapt to what it wants to consume and that it not have to adapt to what other producers want to consume. This is the case for all producers and thus creates a Nash equilibrium. But the more producers are protected/incentivized away from making the sometimes painful switch, the less goods correspond to the quantity/type that consumers want.
And what consumers want is the point of economic activity. If you write computer programs, you don't write computer programs to write computer programs (I'll leave hobbies aside, it's not what's meant by job creation anyway and it doesn't require job creation or revenues creation). You write computer programs to trade with other people to consume the food, shelter, entertainment, clothes etc that they produce. The danger here is that if the State enables you to produce what you want to produce rather than what the consumer wants to consume and that this is generalized, it will also enable producers you trade with to offer you what they want to produce rather than what you want to consume. Which is not what you intended when you decided to enchange your labor for currency.
Now about that currency. The reason you want currency, unless you're really into showing off or want to hold it close to you, is to get goods. Currency is extremely handy for trading goods. But more currency being exchanged (revenues) doesn't mean more goods and it doesn't mean more consumer satisfaction. It's an understandable error drawn from personal experience: when my income doubles, I can afford twice as much. This is not true in the aggregate though; if you double everyone's income, you' won't make them richer. If you double the income without doubling the goods, you get nothing. If you double the goods without doubling the income, you do get twice as much of what you want.
You can even get more consumer satisfaction while having less revenues. If an industry becomes very efficient at producing something, the revenues involved will decrease. The revenues involved will decrease because the average unit cost will decrease, thus allowing producers to keep making a profit (their incentive to keep supplying consumers) at a lower price. Consumers will then have to work less to be able to consumer the same goods. This, from a consumer satisfaction point of view, is great. But it's an argument against efficient production if you want to maximise revenues.
In sum, revenues and jobs are not what economic activity should be about. If they're ever taken as criteria by which to make political decisions, they will either coincide with consumer satisfaction and make no difference or the decisions makers will find a compromise between revenues/jobs and consumer satisfaction. This would be sacrificing the point of economic activity for the sake of having more economic activity. It is paying people to dig holes in the grounds and filling them up again.
Higher employment and revenues should at best be seen as indicators (but emphatically not be equated with the fact) that something is going well. But like many indicators that you're doing something well, it can be faked. It's entirely possible (and unfortunately frequent) for the State to try to boost revenues/employment through measures that incentivizes producers away from optimal consumer satisfaction. This will be a good thing for producers, but a bad one for consumers. I'd rather live in the consumer's paradise.
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12:17 pm
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I have no choice but to post now
So I was tagged by Quae and now I have to give a sign of life.
1Grab the nearest book.
2Open the book to page 123.
3Find the fifth sentence.
4Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5Don't you dare dig for that cool or intellectual book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.
6Tag five people.
Me (translating): "But, in renouncing those, they gave the Axis the opportunity to prepare their counterattack.
When a military leader has won a decisive victory, and that of Wavell over the Italians was devastating, he usually commits an error in being satisfied with a strategic objective that's too limited. It is during the pursuit, when the vanquished enemy is still demoralised and disorganised, that one obtains the most prisoners and booty."
So, the book in question was Erwin Rommel's War without hatred (my translation, might have another title in English). Technically, the nearest book was a French-English translation dictionary and the second nearest book was a French encyclopedic dictionary. Figured that's not what was expected.
Oh wait, the shelves above my head. The fourth one all the way up. Isaac Asimov's The robots then:
"The robot gently got closer:
- Are you leaving? it asked.
There was sadness in its voice."
Tagging: Tom Scud, Treptoplax, Pantom, Eerie, Pheromone.
Update: Forbes to enter into competition with The Onion.
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06:43 pm
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On dating
So, I had a date yesterday. Great gal from what I learned about her. About 5 years younger than me but as mature or more so than many people in my philosophy classes.
There were some awkward silences during the 2.5 hour date. You know, the ones where there's a lull in the conversation and then you get a bit uncomfortable and you glance downward and then that makes both of you even more uncomfortable and you try to think of something to say to keep it going and make the awkwardness stop (and, you know, maybe even learn more about the other person).
We seem to have a lot in common but also have different styles in some ways. I'm more the reserved rational type who wants to talk about epistemology and the finer (more hairsplitting?) points of ethics, politics and economics while she's more interested in hanging out with the other person, getting to know them by talking about this and that. "This and that" and that touchy feely stuff leaves me at a loss. I recognise that I need to get better at it and my use of the expression "touchy feely" isn't meant to be contemptuous. I just suck at it and don't know by which end to grab it.
She said she wanted to know more about me. At some point, I came out and asked her to ask me questions about me since she wanted to know more about me. As if to say: "alright, interrogate me now". I'm not a people person.
So, I'm wondering if people reading this who did go through dating, are more people persons than I am, don't have the same flaws in this area could help me for subsequent dates. Locations, activities, topics, attitudes, tips etc.
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06:55 am
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Conversations, sleep
Conversations: Seems that conversations usually fall under two categories. Either small scale gossip or large scale power and projects. E.g.: People will talk about what they had for dinner or which celebrity is expecting a baby or they will talk about the Israelo-Palestinian conflict or the causes of the fall of communism.
I do that too, especially the latter. But why don’t people talk more often within a third category which is small scale useful thoughts. E.g.: “You know, in love, my experience has been that doing X and not doing Y tends to produce Z” or “when you want to determine which option you should choose, you should first […] and then second […]”. That kind of ethics, epistemology and wisdom would be quite more useful than talking about Brengelina or finally figuring out if it's the Jews or the Arabs who are the bigger victim. Why does it not happen more often?
Sleep: Got any sleeping tricks? I find myself often taking 2 or 3 hours just to fall asleep which really eats into my day. I work out almost everyday (but stop at least 3 hours before bed), don't consumme dessert or pop 3 to 4 hour before bed, my room is almost completely dark, there is little noise.
I often find myself thinking and not being able to stop thinking which keeps me awake. How do I stop that or at least how do I make myself thinking about stuff that will not keep me awake?
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06:47 pm
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the modern, beliefs, misc
Do you know anyone who dislikes chocolate? I don't mean for health reasons, I mean the taste. By "chocolate", I meant any kind of chocolate.
Why do people get small dogs? They’re noisy cats that aren’t housetrained.
The modern
When you think “modern”, do you spontaneously think about? After some thought, how do you define “modern”? What are some things that are definitely modern and others that are definitely not modern? Is "modern" a usefully descriptive term or is it more heat than light (i.e.: useful for propaganda purposes but not for frank communication)?
Beliefs
How would you go about convincing someone of the dubious accuracy of astrology or tarot? If someone believes that when a knife is dropped on the floor, a man will visit (or a woman for forks) and that one can stop this by throwing salt behind one’s shoulder? Do people say this as a kind of folklore maintenance or are there people who truly believe that it is a reliable predictor or even a cause?
How about someone who believes that Mossad was behind 9-11? I don’t have any evidence that it wasn’t, just like I don’t have evidence the Martians weren’t involved. When I asked the person who believed that, she used the “qui bono?” argument, saying that only the Israelis benefited from 9-11. I asked if there was anymore evidence than who is benefited to and no, the absence of evidence is exactly what we would expect if Mossad was behind it, right? Another person, a philosophy of science teacher, said that the US government knew about it the morning of 9-11 but didn’t stop it. Again, I’m not privy to information that would disprove that. How would one disprove that aside from “that’s completely ridiculous, if they wanted a casus belli, they could have gotten one while making a much smaller sacrifice”?
Are those the kinds of belief where people who hold them and people who don’t are so far apart that arguments aren’t enough?
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01:57 pm
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Death
How would you prefer to die? Aside from while asleeping or having sex.
Irrespective of what you answered to the previous question, how do you want your body to be disposed of?
Irrespective of what you answered to the previous question, what do you want said at your funeral and written on your tomb?
Should we punish (rhetorically, legally, financially, biologically) people who consciously take a 10% chance of killing 9 people in the same way and to the same level as people who consciously take a 90% chance of killing 1 person?
How about 10% chance of killing 10 people vs 100% chance of killing one person, still equal punishment? All instances are performed with the same attitude, i.e.: either "probability of death is not the main goal in both cases or it is the main goal in both cases.
If you answer that those are unequal in terms of punishment that must be applied, what wuold it take to make the equal in that respect? If 10% of 10 people must be punished less than 100% of 1 person, what about 10% of 20 vs 100% of 1? 10% of 1000 vs 100% of 1?
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08:32 am
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Life tips, me (me! me! me! me! me!)
So not long ago I turned 23. When I turned 22, I asked people what the things they had found out they wish someone had told them in their early twenties. I'd like to know some of the "life tips" you've picked up either though mess ups or things that worked out well. It can be specific ("dont take shit from anyone") or general ("Buy a used").
I'd also like to know how I come off. I know this is a blog and that I can control of lot of what's visible but still, what is it? Sometimes a personality trait is like a pimple at the end of one's nose (poetic isn't it?); everyone else can see it but you. E.g.: A very generous person is unlikely to think of himself as generous because giving to others goes without saying (and without thinking to a large exent). Same thing for rude people.
While I expect neither of those answers, saying I'm a great guy or an asshole will not really help me as those are too broad.
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04:11 pm
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Razors, profits
1: I often take 20 minutes to shave using a non-disposable* safety razor (even using a brand new blade). This is too long. I've tried electric razors but the one I used hurt and don't shave closely enough. I need to be able to shave in 10 minutes or less. What brands/models give you give you a quick, effective shavial shave? I've tried googling for this but all I get is several: "the razors we sell offer the smoothest, closest, most comfortable blah blah blah".
Also, how should I shave? Upwards, from ear to chin? Some trick I don't know?
2:Why should companies that are turning a profit be allowed to fire people to make a greater profit? Why shouldn’t companies be prevented from or at least penalised when firing employees not to save the company but to boost profits?
I heard the French Socialist Party candidate (centre left in France) say that companies that fire people when they are profitable (or even to become more profitable) should be penalised. What's wrong with this?
I think that instituting such a practice would make investment less attractive, resulting in less investment. It would allow some workers to keep their jobs but it would have the hidden costs of a bunch of other workers not getting a job because an investment hasn't been made. The lesser profitability would also impact people who have money in mutual funds and such. Maybe I'm wrong and more/better jobs are saved through punishing such practices. Perhaps there are other reasons why this is a bad idea.
3: I’ve heard people complaining about say, Macdonald’s donating money to a charity and saying that this is for tax and PR reasons. What’s the point of this type of complaint? Is anything advocated by that complaint aside from “let’s complain about how this world is not perfect and there are acts that do not come from altruism”? Do people who have such complaints think that tax deductibility for such donations must be taken out of the law now? And/or do they think opprobrium must be brought upon companies that make such donations such that making them is actually neutral or negative for PR?
What?
*I've tried disposable razors. It is not an option.
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02:13 pm
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Moral systems, trees that fall, Cold War alternatives
Morality
Must a prescriptive system be able to tell us what to do in all possible (meaning with natural laws as we understand them, perhaps even excluding highly artificial situations that have never happened such as “what if E.T.s landed tomorrow?”) situations? If a prescriptive system is unable to tell us what to do (not for a lack of empirical information), must we reject it?
I’m thinking of triage, hostage rescue when rescuing will lead to innocent deaths and not rescuing will lead to same (but perhaps in different ways) etc. As a kid, I remember being disturbed by a scene in Jaws 3 or 4 (if you haven’t watched either one, don’t bother doing so) where there is a tunnel underwater. A section of the tunnel breaks, letting water flood the tunnel. What happens is that doors close, limiting the flooding to one section of the tunnel but also insuring that whoever is in that section is certain to die while also eliminating any probability that people in other sections will die.
Many prescriptive systems would not be able to deal with such a choice. Yet it seems that a prescriptive system that cannot make such a call is just burying its head in the sand or covering up its ears with its hands and chanting “lalalalalala I can’t hear you!”. That kind of choice had to be made and saying “It’s a tragedy” won’t make it go away.
Trees
"If a tree falls and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?"
Yes, the question that makes philosophy look bad.
I read (don’t know where, easy to google) that we must make a distinction between wave-sound (sound meaning the production of waves and displacement of air) and felt-sound (the psychological phenomenon). The two are quite different, though they tend to occur concurrently. I agree with this so far.
To say that a tree that falls when no one is there to hear it makes no felt-sound is trivial, it amounts to saying that if no one is there to hear a given sound, that given sound is heard by no one.
If it says something non-trivial, it is saying that if a tree falls and no one is there to hear it, it makes no wave-sound. This is like a Bugs Bunny cartoon where the coyote runs beyond the ridge of a canyon, keeps running through the air, looks down and only when he realises that no ground is beneath his feet does he start falling. I.e.: For something to exist (not socially or cognitively exist), it has to be seen. A thing is perceived/thought/felt before it exists. E.g.: If I go take a walk through the woods and walk over a hole no one has ever seen, I will not fall through it.
Are there people who really believe that?
It seems the strategy is to argue that there is no felt-sound and use the important but undisclosed distinction between wave-sound and felt-sound to demonstrate that there is no wave-sound either.
It takes this form: If a tree falls, there is no sound (meaning felt-sound). Now, we have agreed that there is no sound (kind of sound is undefined here). Therefore, there is no sound (wave kind). It’s a semantic sleight of hand.
Nukes
During the Cold War, there were people who wanted to ban nukes. The USSR had a conventional military advantage in Europe (tanks work best in such terrain, the USSR’s speciality was tanks). How did those who wanted to abolish nukes propose that the USSR be prevented from annexing Western Europe? Besides relying on the goodwill of the USSR. Were there people who wanted NATO countries to get rid of their nukes, unilaterally if the USSR didn't agree to do it too? What did they say about the same geopolitical problem?
I wish I could ask someone that I know thought that, perhaps someone reading this used to or still does think this. In any case, all but one potential reader are older than I am, so I figured I'd ask you.
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12:04 pm
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Sequels and souls
Sequels:
Why do sequels suck? There was a TV special the last three weeks, each week showing a Jurassic Park movie. The first one was very good, the second one was ok and the third one’s only asset was the CGI. This reminded me of the fact that a lot of sequels suck and that the third movie tends to be atrocious.
At first, I thought it could be because sequels are made chiefly for the sake of money. But, if a movie has been produced by a major movie studio, it (that includes first movies) is made mainly for the sake of money too. A lot of firsts (and any movie which has a possibility for a sequel is a first) are made chiefly for the sake of money.
It could be that the material/possibilities are exhausted in the first movie so that the second and third movies just stretch it thin. But movies are usually very content-light so that a universe/book premise should not exhaust itself after 90/120 minutes, especially since the first 10-15 minutes (less for sequels) are dedicated to introducing the characters/terrain and the last 15 minutes are dedicated to the showdown and closure.
It might be bcause once a premise/universe/character has proved its profitability, movie executives get heavily involved and lower all elements to the lowest common denominator, thereby increasing profits but lowering movie quality. I can't find many arguments against that.
Some exceptions
The first three movies of the Alien series were good (although the third one wasn’t up to the first two). Note that Alien was directed by Ridley Scott, Aliens by James Cameron and Alien 3 by David Fincher. The fourth one was directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. The fourth one was weak and would have been another example of the “sequels suck” syndrome.
The first three Star Wars movies were good. The last three, well… they had good CGI.
So, what could cause such suckage?
Souls:
I've heard a couple of times that you can gain some information by looking into someone's eyes (other than medical information), even that the eyes allow one to look into the soul of someone, that you can know that someone has been through difficult/painful times by looking into their eyes. Note that this is attributed to the eyes, not the facial expressions or even the expressions of the parts of the face near the eyes.
It seems to be based on the idea that eyes are a kind of window that Me (“Me” meaning my consciousness, emotions, thoughts etc) looks through to see the outside. Now, if I am looking through a window from room A into room B, then someone from room B can look through the window the other way and see into room A. Ergo, looking into someone’s eyes allows one to see Me’s emotions, thoughts etc.
Perhaps this shows the danger inherent in using metaphors. The eyes as are the window of the soul, one can look both ways thorugh a window, ergo, one can look both ways through eyes.
Is this it? Am I attacking a strawman here? I hope so.
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10:50 am
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Joker can't take joke
So, Maddox posted this http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=spot_the_pedo [go read it before you read the rest]. Seeing that there was a picture of Sheik Ahmed Yassin in a funny pose, I sent him this from the email account jeff_qtub@yahoo.com:
Title: You have insulted a figure of Islam, now you must die!
Dear Mr. Maddox,
This is to inform you that a fatwa has been decreed against you for that offensive picture you posted of Sheik Ahmed Yassin. He was very good man and he is still a revered figure in the ummah today. Your use of his picture is completely unacceptable. First, because depicting any of God’s creatures is forbidden, second, because you tried to pass off Sheik Ahmed Yassin as a man afflicted by a very Western perversion indeed. You have offended more than a billion Muslims with your website. For this insult, you must croak. Expect a parcel. Furthermore, we will boycott your website and closely monitor it for any further offensive material to Islam. In these difficult times, our religion of peace needs some blood spilt. Yours will do.
Best wishes,
Jeff Qtub,
Al-Jihad International,
19 Victoria Street, London
P.-S.: We will be holding a fundraiser in March, would you be interested in contributing? If so, use your car to go to the convenience store.
Here is what he replied: "How did I insult him? I said he's NOT a pedophile. Besides, since
when is it forbidden to depict God's creatures? Even if that's the case,
you think murdering God's creatures is less of a sin than depicting
them?"
I'm a little disappointed. I expected a smartass response. Could my e-mail have been taken seriously?
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02:44 pm
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Kumbaya
What does it mean to be a pacifist?
I understand there to be two general positions, one ridiculous and one trivial. Maybe the first one is not absurd and the second one is not trivial. You tell me.
The first argues that we should never go to war at all. This means that no matter what other parties do, we are not allowed to engaged in military operations against them. This means that if a country is invaded by another and the invading army is set to wide out the invaded country’s population, no violence may be used. This means that Tutsi’s should not even have tried to fight back. They should have held peace vigils, peace marches, gone on strike, given speeches at the UN (and the UN itself could not have deployed soldiers to Rwanda).
What is it that is deontologically unacceptable in war? If it’s using coercion, then we should ban police forces right now because the army is a beefed up version of the police. If using coercion is deontologically unacceptable, then it’s also unacceptable for cops to use violence of the threat of it.
What deontological argument against war could not be used to against violence in general? Note that a deontological argument does not take empirical context into account. Think of Kant and lying.
The other position is more slippery. It seems to say that, everything else being equal, solving a conflict without bombing, shooting, shelling etc is preferable to solving the conflict with bombing, shooting, shelling etc. This is trivial. No one but sadists (in the medical sense, not the overused common sense) or racists/bigots (if the war would be against a hated group) believes this.
Sure, if two countries have a disagreement over, say, how to split a territory and a war ensues which gives 30% of the territory to one faction and 70% to the other faction, it would have been preferable to have the same result through negotiation. I have no qualms with this. Not many people do, I would say.
What if it wouldn’t give the same result? How does one decide that?
Seems that this kind of pacifism is not principled (but which I don’t mean that it’s not based on ethics, just that it’s not an end in itself) but punctual. It is a disagreement over the facts of a particular case and over the effectiveness of the particular means that can be used to resolve a particular conflict. This is where it gets slippery but where proper empirical study might yield the possibility of general agreement, unlike deontological opposition to war/violence.
There is a position I’ve heard a few times that we should abolish (our) armed forces (without mentioning is this is predicated on other countries/factions abolishing their armed forces). If it is predicated on other countries doing so, then saying we should abolish our armed forces is pie in the sky, wouldn’t-it-nice wishful thinking that makes for nice slogans that doesn’t give us much information about what we should actually do, considering that other factions are not about to be anywhere near doing so. Aside from hope, I don’t see what would make us believe that all other factions agreeing to abolish their armed forces is likely to happen at any point in the future. If other factions agreed to abolish their armed forces, we should abolish ours. But they won’t. So it’s trivial.
The other possibility is that we should abolish our armed forces whether or not other factions do so. This means that Western Europe (and US forces in Western Europe) should have abolished its nuclear arsenal and its conventional forces whatever the Warsaw Pact intended to do. Do non-Communists believe this?
I read a post on David’s blog some time ago. Someone was saying that when people go to war, it is because they haven’t reached a solution diplomatically (I’m trying to paraphrase accurately). This could be read two ways. The first is to say that when a conflict between two parties is resolved violently, both parties are equally to blame. On a macro scale, this means that South Korea was just as much to blame for the Korean War as North Korea (when it is North Korean forces that moved south). On a micro scale, it means that if Pat tries to rape Hilary and a fight ensues, Hilary is just as much to blame for the fact that violence was used. This seems ridiculous.
It’s possible to read the assertion as meaning that when a conflict is resolved violently, it’s because it was not previously resolved non-violently, which is trivial.
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08:18 am
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Questions on science and me
1: How can you test a theory if not through predictions?
How can you make precise predictions if not by using quantitative data, especially if several factors are involved?
2: I have a psychological problem. I tend to fuck up because I'm nervous and the reason I'm nervous is because I'm afraid my nervousness will make me fuck up. Any tips on that? The way I fuck up is that an expression of amusement shows up in my face when no emotion must do so. Not having to laugh (even if I didn't at all feel like laughing in the first place) has the effect of provoking a difficult to repress giggle from me.
3; I have a physical problem. My knees do not have chronic problems but ever since I took a 6-7 hour walk with a 20 minute stop (2 weeks ago), my knees have hurt when I have to walk for about 10-15 minutes or after 5 minutes when I run. What can I do about that? I am not working out too much, only once every two days and I don't push myself a lot when working out (anymore, I learned the hard way not to be cocky).
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10:23 am
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Making sense of it all
1: What do you say to somebody who believes that living in South Korea is not preferable to living in North Korea?
2: How come they don't have extra-caffeine coffee? I asked for it at the supermarket and they didn't have any. Aside from gourmet coffees (which are pretty much fancy hot cocoa), coffee is a caffeine delivery system. Is it because normal coffee is already as caffeine-filled as chemically possible?
3.1: What's wrong with cannibalism? No "ewww, gross!" answer will be accepted. I recoil at eating insects but that doesn't make eating insects immoral. "Eww gross" also served us badly when it comes to sexual acts.
One may argue that it's a defense against being killed. But one can kill and not eat the body or eat a body without it having been killed. The meat the body represents doesn't seem like a significant incentive to go around killing people, except in very extreme situations that few will ever encounter today. I said "today", it may have been more common before the development of agriculture (others point to the establishment of the State). But that's a long time for such a strong taboo to have remained. So, what's wrong with it?
3.2 The classic definition of negative liberty is that a mature individual may do as he wishes up to the point where he stops other mature individuals from doing as they wish. Isn't consensual cannibalism acceptable under this rule?
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02:01 am
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They're all write
I was asked the following question by Dubaiwalla after I had made two smart-ass comments: “So tell me, why are you a philosophy major thinking of joining the army and not a comedian/columnist?”
Here I will subsume jobs as a comedian or columnist under the general heading of man of letters which relates to anyone whose job is purely about reporting and/or creating information and especially matching abstract concepts with other abstract concepts. It would include academia, journalism and literature amongst others.
Dubaiwalla's question ties in with something I had been taking notes on for a while so here goes. I edited much of what I wrote but it's quite possible that there's repetition and missing parts, sorry. There are two elements. The first relates to learning (itself divided into two elements) and the second to service. However, I will start with an argument supporting the importance of the humanities, especially philosophy.
The importance of experience to the humanities and philosophy and the importance of the humanities and philosophy to us
In fields such as engineering, if what one says is way off, it will be revealed as such before a bridge is built with great reliability and if the bridge collapses, it will most often be clear what went wrong. In fields such as sociology and philosophy, if what one says is full of dubiousness, it’s a lot more difficult to call it as such and if a large scale project is built on the asserted information, apologists for the assertions can often wiggle out of any responsibility and claim it wasn’t the genuine thing. Marxist socialism springs to mind. Perturbing factors, of which large scale cases contain many, can make it difficult to determine the aetiology of successes and failures. Experimental experience is hard to come by in humanities. If the link to experience is difficult to have externally, the lessons of experience should be internalised in the individual. Hence, the more “foofy” the subject matter, the more the teacher should have practical experience if one wants to decrease the influence of wishful thinking. Unfortunately, humanities teachers tend to sorely lack any practical experience. While the tried and tested method is to learn it, do it and teach it, contemporary academics go directly from learning it to teaching it. The most crucial part is missing.
You learn it, you do it, you teach it. Those are main phases where the prevailing activity is indicated. One can still learn while mainly doing and one can still learn and do while mainly teaching. But most academics go from learning to teaching. They never did anything related or had any practical experience with what they are pontificating on. A chemist can have a link to experience through laboratory experimentation. In soft fields, the link to experience is difficult, tenuous or impossible. The link to experience must then be internalised. During the Middle Ages, the philosopher who started the movement that would eventually put reason above faith was Averoes. What did he do for a living? He was a physician. The lesson that when you’re full of it it’s going to end badly even if you use beautiful words is one they have internalised and use. This is not the case for the vast majority of humanities professors.
If an academic has never held a serious job outside academia, what he says about human affairs should be considered only with the utmost suspicion. A man of letters may act as if the theoretical world is the real words (of ideas) and that the world outside academia is a pale imitation of it, much as a monk would. While there is a possibility that the academic will say something which is right, the probability of that happening is dwarfed by the probability that he is spectacularly wrong and appears right because he is skilful with words. In all his life, he has done nothing but chatter. Consequently, he is quite good at chattering. In addition, having spent a lifetime in an environment where saying or writing the right words is key to solving every problem, an academic is likely to operate under the implicit assumption that this is the case outside school. This is dangerous in the short term if divagations are followed and it is even more dangerous in the long term because while humanities’ topics are not of much direct relevance to anything, they, and philosophy chiefly, are the basis upon which the rest rests (and it is through philosophy that it acquires meaning) and it is information concerning humans and philosophy that can most improve (or worsen) our lives. The great technological developments we enjoy and which bring us so much would not be possible without certain social and most of all philosophical factors.
Empiricism, for example, if a philosophical choice. The decision not to explain phenomena using the supernatural is also a philosophical choice and one of such importance that Thales of Miletos can arguably (I’ll argue it if you want me too but later as this would get us off track) be considered the founder of Western civilisation. Bacon and positivism are also extremely important in the development of science. Down-to-earth worldliness is what had made science, most notably Hippocratic medicine, make all other forms of medicine be preceded by the word “alternative”. The dismal science, which is most British, is also the social science (excluding psychology, whose social status is questionable since psychology concerns individuals or small groups) taken most seriously when comes time to make decisions and not just because politicians or their electors are only after money. The average politician could be making a lot more money in private law practice than as a politician and he would catch a lot less flak.
While most philosophers are as soft-hearted (good) as they are soft-headed (bad), this does not mean that philosophy needs to be soft-headed. The way to ensure that the philosopher takes his rightful place as society’s monarch with humanities’ academics sitting to his right is to make philosophers and humanities people* learn it, do it and then and only then, teach it. Then, when someone says that a datum is “academic”, it will not be a synonym for “irrelevant”.
So far, I’ve studied philosophy, anthropology and history. Those are all soft fields. That’s not reprehensible per se. But having only been exposed to soft subjects is a serious liability as far as thinking habits go. This is why I want to go from one of the softest and most theoretical areas of knowledge (philosophy) to one of the hardest and most practical (the military). The very soft discipline of philosophy, the very hard discipline of the military as well as their mix will teach me a lot.
If I spend my whole life solving purely conceptual problems as an academic or journalist by deciding a question through the case in favour, the case against and the final result, (i.e.: the thesis, the antithesis and the synthesis), I may come to believe that the whole world works that way. But I would be dead wrong, even if it’s what I’m used to, having isolated myself from everything else. This often happens to men of letters; they start thinking that the idealised versions of reality are reality and they make prescriptions based on the characteristics of that idealised reality (which might be significantly different from the characteristics of reality). My thinking habits must be linked to experience and I will not get that if I am only ever a man of letters.
Another related element comes from a Russel quote: “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people are full of doubts.” What’s needed is more people who doubt (even themselves; Popperian doubt) and are willing to reflect on moral questions but don’t let that doubt and reflection get in the way of acting. Having been in philosophy and the military should further get me there.
Learning and practice
Suppose I had a gun and I wanted to know if my gun is accurate (my system is good) or if I am a good marksman (I know how to use the system), how would I know that if every time I shot, I didn’t see where the bullet hit? I might construct some very elaborate theories about it, but they would quickly turn to dreaming without a link to experience. At some point, the pudding has to be tasted and it better be tasted on a small scale before it’s tasted on a large scale because tasting it on a small scale allows us to improve our ways and it can warn us that our ideas are disastrous. See Marx, Karl.
If I were to be only a comedian, columnist or academic, I would be a man of letters and this is something I truly do not wish to be. Men of letters are word-matchers; their only problems relate to matching a set of words with another set of words to the satisfaction of peers whose only problems are matching sets of words with other sets of words. Their ideas and the way they think are not receiving a valid test. It’s quite alright to be an intellectual, what’s not is to only ever have been an intellectual. Then one runs the risk of being less an intellectual (in the best sense) than a rhetorically skilled daydreamer. When one has spent decades doing nothing but daydreaming and only confronting what one thinks and how one thinks to colleagues in colloquia (who themselves have being daydreaming for decades and only been confronting what they think and how they think to colleagues in colloquia who themselves…), then one can become very good at talking but not at all at doing. Yet one talks about what should be done. This means that the prescriptions and proscriptions may some very good (for they are skilfully delivered) but be disastrous when applied, for they have been thought up by people completely disconnected from anything but their world of daydreamers.
If I may speak in metaphors (though I’ll try to keep it below Hegelian levels of obscurity), the proof of the pudding is in the eating. The problem is that those teaching the cooking and giving advice concerning it have never been near an oven. I am interested in teaching, eventually, and it wouldn’t have to be in an academic setting. But I don’t want to
If a (non-theoretical, the more exotic stuff about quarks and such) physicist has theories that are way off, a bridge might be built using them. Having been built on theories that are far off, it is more likely to collapse than otherwise which will lead to embarrassing questions. The same can be said of explosives, which, because they are built using erroneous chemical theories, don’t explode or cures that don’t cure because of erroneous biological theories. The fact that he’s wrong is likely to be found out before it’s disastrous. It’s not a perfect system, but it’s pretty effective. But it is wholly absent when you concentrate on “the phenomenology of the face” and other such things. Even if you’re completely wrong and that it contributes to very (diffuse) nefarious effects, the link between being wrong and the deleterious effects will be tenuous. If your theory of History is wrong, you can get away with day dreaming and most of your disciples will only realise you were wrong after a century and tens of millions of death. See Marx, Karl.
The military (especially in the infantry, which is where I am going) has a direct link to experience. Your ideas and way of thinking can be applied in a made or break fashion, especially at the tactical level. That is, in the military, you can see if the way you think lead to disaster or success. Also, the military is all about trade-offs. You are trading lives for objectives. The idea that trade-offs are necessary and how to operate them is not something which is often thought about by men of letters. After all, considering non-ideal circumstances limits the extent to which one can poetically daydream. Having no grounding whatsoever allows for absolute literary freedom which makes for really thrilling narratives.
This reminds me of a difference between two socialists, Robert Owen and Karl Marx. One thought he had a good idea, went ahead and tried it on a small scale. It crashed and burned. He tried it again, it crashed and burned. We learned from that. The other guy had another way of doing it. Bitch about how crappy the currently used option is? Always! Rave about how great it’ll all be when your preferred option is finally implemented? Always! Try your preferred option to see if, outside the world of daydreaming, it actually delivers something better than the option currently being used that’s so crappy? Never! Just prophesise about how great it’ll all be. That’s much safer and since you never actually have any link to experience, since you have nothing to hold you to the ground, you are free to flow to whatever poetic heights you wish. I want to be a lot closer to Owen than to Marx. I will get about as clear an idea of whether what I think and how I think makes sense in the military and my rhetorical skills are unlikely to save me.
Another thing that lead me to this choice is that I had a bright philosophy of science teacher. I thought, why does he only take apart others’ philosophies of science? If his is superior (he said he had one), let him go and do science according to his superior philosophy of science. Surely if it’s superior, it should produce science that is superior in at least one respect. Then he’ll show just how right he is, by actually applying his supposedly superior system. But that, he wasn’t going to do. That, I will do.
Learning and incentives
Beautiful words, inspiring phrases, confirming beliefs of audience. Once you have that, you can talk out of your ass all you want in soft fields and be rewarded for it.
If what one says does not visibly affect the intense egotistical interests of someone, you can easily get away with being full of shit as long as you’re rhetorically skilled. If my medical or economic (most of all micro-economic) theories are way off, if I don’t get at least an approximation of the truth, then someone’s going to lose a lot of money, become much less healthy or die. When your life or personal money are concerned, the poetic bullshit stops and people get serious to the point where you know what they really believe. This is not the case for, say, literary criticism. Sure, if I give a bad review to a good author because my theories are way off, he’ll be upset, but him being upset will not give me much indication that I should change my literary theories because I could just as well have given a good review to a bad author and his being happy would not have in any way confirmed my theories.
Academia (and the equivalents for other men of letters) incentivises academics not to come up with the theory that can benefit the outside world the most but with the theory that sounds the most inspiring when heard at a colloquium (or newspaper article etc). When something important is discovered, the effort is not to make it more concrete but to make it more abstract. What they get is ever hotter air. In engineering, there is an external incentive to at least approximate the truth. In literary criticism, there is no external incentive to approximate the truth. The feedback you get depends solely on the judgement of fellow academics who themselves are under no other external incentive but the judgement of fellow academics. He who wins is not he who got closest to the truth, it is he who said things that confirm the community’s feelings the most and has the most rhetorical skills. You don’t win by out-accurating the other guy or being by saying things that are more helpful, you win by out-poeting the other guy or by saying things that are more beautiful.
I found this in Discourse on the method by Descartes::
« Car il me semblait que je pourrais rencontrer beaucoup plus de vérité dans les raisonnements que chacun fait touchant les affaires qui lui importent, et dont l’événement le doit punir bientôt après, s’il a mal jugé, que dans ceux que fait un homme de lettres dans son cabinet, touchant des spéculations qui ne produisent aucun effet, et qui ne lui sont d’autre conséquences, sinon que peut-être il en tirera d’autant plus de vanité qu’elles seront éloignées du sens commun, à cause qu’il aura dû employer d’autant plus d’esprit et d’artifice à tâcher de les rendre vraisemblables. »
Translation: “For I thought that I could happen upon a lot more truth in the reasonings each person does in the affairs that affect him/are important to him, whose consequences punish him soon thereafter, if he has judged badly, than in those [the reasonings] of men of letters in their offices, touching on speculations that produce no effects, and which don’t affect affect him otherwise, except perhaps that he will gain more vanity the farther there are from common sense, because he will have had to use more brainpower and artifices trying to make them seem plausible/trueseeming.” I remember two teachers of mine praising something for people for being subtle (one of those two teachers was praising a philosopher I am fond of). The way they talked, it seemed that subtlety was good in itself, like academic research is an exercise, a sport where the main goal is not to produce something helpful to others but to show off your abilities. The goal doesn’t seem to be to find ways to help other people but rather to find beautiful words that make one look sophisticated/virtuous.
In the military, you have a rather significant incentive not to be full of (poetic) shit because saying beautiful words will not save you in a fight. This is not the case for men of letters.
Service
One could say that men of letter are not trying to find ways to help others right now but farther into the future; they have a long term view. Descartes said that what he wanted was to be useful to others but that instead of concentrating on helping people right now, he preferred to find a way to help future generations. In response (isn’t great to answer dead people?), I can say that if you want to be useful to future generations (and learn how to be useful generally), make sure you can be useful to this generation. Otherwise, you could conceal your lack of ability to bring benefits by simply saying that the benefits will materialise in some far off future, when you’re dead and you can’t get any incentive feedback (blame, shame, punishment) for having been dead wrong. See Marx, Karl.
While men of letters can certainly make speeches and write books that describe beautiful worlds, I am more interested in making this world somewhat better than in creating fictitious perfect worlds. While men of letters can deconstruct narratives they oppose, I am interested in a more literal kind of deconstruction, one that is more effective. Being in the military will allow and enable me to do that. It will not allow me to deconstruct everything and everyone I consider to be deleterious, but I don’t expect to run out of allowed targets.
Trying to stop the rambling and conclude here, something which the military has that much of humanities academia does not is confrontation with experience and an incentive to prefer at least approximations of truth rather than romantic poems merely written in prose. I am equally disgusted by the Gengis Khans who can only speak of what Is (or means) and either cannot or will not see that might doesn’t make right and the Che Guevaras who can only speak of what Ought (or ends) and cannot or will not see that right doesn’t make might. If I were to remain only a man of letters, I am afraid that I would become one the latter. Do I risk becoming one of the former? It’s not likely, considering my education. We must think so that we may act better but having little experience of action will not teach us how to think.
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08:33 am
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Why, why, why, why?
Why do I have to avoid stepping on cracks on the sidewalk? I equally welcome a subjective normative answers (don't have to be factual, just about perceptions) as well as objective, psychological answers.
Why do countries that have the death penalty hide it from public view? If you want to deter people, it seems that showing them the killing and making it gruesome would make the death penalty more effective and the deterrence argument seems to be the most popular one, at least publicly. I say publicly becuase it's quite possible that most people's central reason for supporting the death penalty is that they adhere to justice as a normative criterion and to lex talonis as a justice criterion. That bit about deterrence is just a cover for making that murdering bastard bite it.
But many other countries which don't have an Abrahamic past also behave the same way and other countries with a not-so-former Abrahamic history openly show executions. The non-Abrahamic countries (China, Singapore) are quite open about using the death penalty but they don't want to openly show the death penalty, even when it applies to common criminals (as we can understnad why the Chinese government would not want political executions to be public). It used to be public though, even in Europe or North America.
Why procrastination (like I'm doing now)? It seems that if my assignment is to write a paper on saint Augustine, video games and websites beacon me like so many hungry Sirens. But if my assignment were to play video games and visit websites, I bet I would start reading philosophy and procrastinate on playing video games and visiting websites. Why?
Enough questions for now. Any answers appreciated as I'm curious about this.
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10:32 am
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What do people mean? Fear of death
When people speak of the fear of death, what do they mean? I understand that different people may mean different things. If you know of more than one meaning, please do tell.
Do they mean that they desire not to die because they enjoy life and would like to keep going (at least some more)? Would fear of death then only be an aversion to the loss of a gain, i.e.: "if I die, I won't get to enjoy what I would have enjoyed had I kept living"?
Or do people mean something else? Are there people who are afraid of death not in the sense that they have an aversion to the loss of an opportunity for gain but are afraid of something else, even of death itself?
I understand the first meaning but I can't find any other that I can wrap my mind around.
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11:31 am
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Shana tova!!
So I've been wondering about the implications of the Shehecheyanu of Rosh Hoshanah. It goes like this:
Barukh atah Adonai, Elohaynu, melekh ha-olam
Blessed are you, Lord, our God, king of the universe
she-hecheeyanu v'keey'manu v'heegeeyanu la-z'man ha-zeh
who has kept us alive, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this season
It is the second part which hs the most implicaions, the first part is standard and comes back in other prayers. It says that we are alive because God wants us to be alive. It is even Him who enables us to have made it as long as we have.
This jibes with Rosh Hoshanah and Yom Kippour. During the Yamim Noraim (days of awe), there's a "spiritual sprint" where you can attone for the sins committed during the year through daven (prayer), tzedakah (charity) and teshuvah (repenting). If you don't do enough attoning to cover your sins, then you don't get inscribed by God in the Sefer Chayim (book of life). Then on Yom Kippour, the Sefer Chayim is sealed. Those who don't make it in are fucked. Hence the blessing: "L'shanah tovah tikatev v'taihatem" (May you be inscribed and sealed for a good year). Is it God who choses who will live in the next year, keep them alive, enables them to reach some future point in time.
What, then, are the implications of that. If someone gets killed, then it was God who chose that it should be that way. If a mother, father and their two children burn to death in their house, they simply hadn't been worthy of being enscribed in the sefer chayim. The whole family. God just found it convenient to kill four birds with a stone. The Yangtze flood was also God's mini Flood (He said he wouldn't flood the whole earth again, he didn't say anything about flooding bits of it). The Armenian and Tutsi genocides were deserved as well by all "victims". God simply didn't inscribe them in the Sefer Chayim before he sealed it because they had sinned too much and not attoned enough. Or, for that matter, when Israelis are blown up by Islamo-fascist homicide bombers, it is because they deserved it. I don't see why Sharon wants a security fence. If Israelis were simply more observant, they would have the ultimate security fence. Whenmever you hear of a new homicide bombing in Israel, simply say: "Well, just one more busfull of people who got what they deserved."
Certainly, those events were good and just. We simply do not have the capability to undestand how they are good and just. It is beyond our merely human minds and souls. We might have a great deal of difficulty understanding how this makes sense but we just have to accept it. God is, after all, the Baruch Dayan Emeth (blessed judge of truth). Sure, you can argue with God as Job did, but it's a bit useless. It's not like God is gonna say:"Gee, I hadn't seen it that way, guess I'll change that then." Whenever God has allowed people to be killed and you think it is horrible, unjust and gratuitous, just say "Baruch Dayan Emeth."
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04:57 pm
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What do this sentence mean?
"There is a deep, rich and vibrant humanity in him."
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11:41 am
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Exegetic guide for the modern world
You'll forgive some of the confusion in that text, the ideas are interwoven. Fire away or say what you agree with.
Perhaps you’ve heard this before, a devout person will quote from his religious scriptures, making an authority-based assertion. For example, a quote will be pulled out of the NT about helping the poor. But when that same person is presented with a quote from the same source (say, one which many women, gays or would-be slaves would disagree with), then that quote has to be put back in its context or it only applied to that time or those who wrote the Scriptures were also human etc.
Note that “it was in another context” or “those who wrote it were inspired by God but were also human” could equally be said of the help-the-poor quotes but that while it is presented as sufficient to sweep the misogynistic/warmongering/homophobic/pro-slavery parts under the carpet, it is not sufficient to disregard the help-the-poor parts. To me at least, and I may be wrong, this indicates that the “put it in its context/application in those days/writers were human too” arguments are really a cover for personal moral disagreement with the quotes. The person wants to keep making authority-based arguments using the Bible for the parts he agrees with but wants to avoid having to follow the prescriptions/proscriptions of the very same authority he invokes that he finds disagreeable.
A more generous way to look at it is to say that the thought process used is: “What is written in that verse is immoral”+”God only wants what’s moral”=What is written in that verse is not what God wants”. But someone who thinks that morality comes exclusively from God and that the Bible is God’s Word ought to think: “God only wants what’s moral”+”God wants what is written in that verse”=”What is written in that verse is moral”. If one believes that God is the only source of morality and that God has revealed himself only in the Bible, how can one start with the premise that a verse in the Bible is immoral? How does one determine which verses come from God and which don’t without first doubting some parts of the Bible which, a priori, is God-given? How does one choose which parts of the Bible to first doubt? If I believe that the Bible is from God, why should I start doubting Leviticus 20:13 before I start doubting the be-nice-to-people parts if I don’t already believe that Leviticus is less likely to be godly and moral than the be-nice-to-people parts? How do I come to that conclusion using only the Bible as the foundation of morality?
Why couldn’t it be that the parts that were only valid in the context in which they were written and not eternal commands are the ones that say we should help the poor and be nice to people? Why is it that when writers of the Bible let their imperfect humanity distort the divine message, it was only for the misogynistic/warmongering/homophobic parts? Couldn’t the divine message have been one of misogyny, homophobia and warmongering and that the bits about helping the poor come from the writers’ imperfections?
Note that common sense or some other source of morality cannot be brought in because God is the only source of morality. Aside from the knowledge that God prefers helping the poor to slavery, there is no reason to prefer helping the poor to slavery if you believes that morality comes from God.
To recap, if part A and part B of the Bible contradict each other, there is no reason to prefer A to B and vice versa. One could pick A and reject B on the basis that this jibes more with one’s personal/social group’s morality, but if all (true) morality comes from God, one cannot reject a biblical moral assertion on the basis of something which is not biblical since any true personal or social morality must come from the Bible.
Exegesis often seems to work this way:
Saw a part of a religious text you liked? It was meant to be understood literally.
Saw a part of a religious text you didn’t like? It was meant to be understood metaphorically.
A bit you don’t like that wasn’t there at the start of the religion? It can be disregarded, having been added much later on.
A bit you don’t like that was there at the start of the religion? It can be disregarded because it was written in a socio-historical context which is different from ours.
A bit you like that was there at the start of the religion? It is part of the original, real thing (although it too was written in a socio-historical context which is different from ours).
A bit you like that wasn’t there at the start of the religion? It is an enrichment/opening of the real thing.
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