...fails entirely to interest.
Why?
Anthropic principle.
Not in the trivial "Intelligent life may be a hell of a lot less likely than we think" sense, although that's a perfectly valid proposition as well.
But in the sense that "Some of the conditions of the universe we think to be universal and independent of our existence may exist solely for us."
For example, time. Is time as we understand it a universal concept? Our existence in time can be conceptualized as a pattern propagating through four dimensional space; assuming this is a valid model, should we expect similar patterns to be propagating in a direction orthogonal to our own, never even minding parallel?
How do brains work? I'm not the only person considering the brain as a quantum computer. Although the people trying to show Einstein-Bose condensate in the brain clearly don't understand the implications of this - the Einstein-Bose condensate would merely be the point where matter no longer has enough energy to wiggle in fivespace, and crystallizes; it looks like a smear because we're perceiving matter which in a threespace brain model is overlapping (even though in the fivespace our brains and eyes occupy it doesn't). More specifically, if the brain is a quantum computer, it must occupy a certain amount of fivespace. (Which suggests we have anatomy in fivespace we're not even aware of.) Why should we expect aliens which happen to exist orthogonal to us, and more parallel to us, to also occupy the same fivespace as us?
We tend to assume the universe is, and we happen to exist within it. The universe cannot be separated from the observer.
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Friday, January 20, 2012
Why Affirmative Action is Wrong...
...without going into how social justice is the opposite of justice:
It's solving the wrong problem.
That's it, full stop.
How can I completely demonstrate that affirmative action solves the wrong problem?
Its goals would be complete if you made every white person systematically worse off.
Hence. It's solving the wrong problem. Any social problem which is soluble by making society worse is a poorly defined social problem.
It's solving the wrong problem.
That's it, full stop.
How can I completely demonstrate that affirmative action solves the wrong problem?
Its goals would be complete if you made every white person systematically worse off.
Hence. It's solving the wrong problem. Any social problem which is soluble by making society worse is a poorly defined social problem.
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Another Post on Libertarianism
The real problem with libertarianism:
It doesn't solve your problems, or perhaps more accurately, it offers no internal solutions for them.
The remarkable thing about those who complain about libertarianism is that the alternatives they promote -also- don't solve your problems; the problems they promote as inherent to libertarianism are invariably problems which were or are encountered in governmental systems which definitively were or are -not- libertarian.
First and foremost, a libertarian government IS A GOVERNMENT. It's a limited government (the precise limits vary by libertarian - some favor social safety nets, some, like myself, favor a minimal government whose domain is limited to that of violence), but it is a government. Most libertarians hold that government should have taxing power - those who do not favor arrangements such as lotteries or other voluntary fundraising mechanisms.
It's not lawlessness; indeed, libertarian principles are rooted in the concept of rule of law, and hold as a prime principle that the government must be subject to the law even as it is its enforcer, which is why their favored governments are constitutional. (A constitution being the set of laws which dictate how the government must behave.)
We don't favor rich people, we just don't think government should hold them in disfavor in order to provide some sort of cosmic balance for the way they've been elsewise favored; libertarians believe justice must be blind, and any justice which isn't isn't justice at all.
In general, we're not particularly fond of corporations. A lot of us are accustomed to defending them from baseless assault, a habit which can lead to defending them from reasonable criticism, but most of us dislike the way they indemnify the people who run them against tort, a legal privilege which runs against the rule of law.
As a rule of thumb libertarians oppose collectivization. This leads us to oppose both racism and affirmative action, both of which treat people as collectives rather than individuals. Statistics are frequently devoid of information which is personally meaningful to us, although we're not opposed to using them in arguments with people for whom they are meaningful.
Many, but not all, of us regard trade in something the same manner that others regard religious beliefs; a personal matter. No trade is fundamentally different than two boys in a cafeteria exchanging trading cards, or anything else of mutual value. A company is as a church, a collection of people sharing similar purpose; and as the freedom for the individual to pray in his home is no different from his freedom to collect with others to pray together (or to abstain from such activities), so to is a group of people working to mutual benefit no different from those boys.
Contracts are enforceable as a matter of ownership, a principle common law agrees with us on. (Common law on contracts can only enforce by principles of ownership; a contract without mutual trade of value is unenforceable. For an example of how and why this matters, if you sign a contract to let an oil company dig a retention pool on your property in exchange for them filling it in later and planting some trees, and they refuse to fill it in and plant the trees, common law provides only the difference in property value, not the cost of doing what was agreed upon.)
Because there's a variety of positions of libertarian, the reasons for diverging from other political philosophies also vary. Pragmatic libertarians believe the best government for (X criteria) is a smaller government; principle libertarians are generally closer to the minarchistic side, and most frequently abide by the non-aggression principle.
Many anarchists also cite the non-aggression principle as a reason for their political position; libertarians and anarchists are at odds over who better abides by it. Anarchists hold that forcing people to abide under a specific government is a violation of the non-aggression principle; libertarians hold that anarchistic modes of governance effectively make the non-aggression principle optional (or in some modes of anarchy, negotiable), and so violate it by default. I don't personally find that there's a clear winner there, and default to libertarianism on pragmatic grounds. (Granted, my personal conviction that anarchy is untenable depends upon armchair logic, but their conviction that it is tenable is no different in that regard.)
Some libertarians believe the right rules can make a libertarian government permanent; I personally hold that no governmental system is permanent, and regard the slow shift to a social democracy unavoidable, albeit correctable. (I hold that there is entropic decay in any government which will eventually lead to its destruction; entropy can be countered by a constant effort by a determined populace, but I hold in addition that the societal structures which produce this effort themselves are also subject to entropic decay; you can add as many layers of protection as you want, they'll each eventually collapse in turn.)
Libertarians don't hold particularly interesting views, once you look at their reasons. Just different ones.
It doesn't solve your problems, or perhaps more accurately, it offers no internal solutions for them.
The remarkable thing about those who complain about libertarianism is that the alternatives they promote -also- don't solve your problems; the problems they promote as inherent to libertarianism are invariably problems which were or are encountered in governmental systems which definitively were or are -not- libertarian.
First and foremost, a libertarian government IS A GOVERNMENT. It's a limited government (the precise limits vary by libertarian - some favor social safety nets, some, like myself, favor a minimal government whose domain is limited to that of violence), but it is a government. Most libertarians hold that government should have taxing power - those who do not favor arrangements such as lotteries or other voluntary fundraising mechanisms.
It's not lawlessness; indeed, libertarian principles are rooted in the concept of rule of law, and hold as a prime principle that the government must be subject to the law even as it is its enforcer, which is why their favored governments are constitutional. (A constitution being the set of laws which dictate how the government must behave.)
We don't favor rich people, we just don't think government should hold them in disfavor in order to provide some sort of cosmic balance for the way they've been elsewise favored; libertarians believe justice must be blind, and any justice which isn't isn't justice at all.
In general, we're not particularly fond of corporations. A lot of us are accustomed to defending them from baseless assault, a habit which can lead to defending them from reasonable criticism, but most of us dislike the way they indemnify the people who run them against tort, a legal privilege which runs against the rule of law.
As a rule of thumb libertarians oppose collectivization. This leads us to oppose both racism and affirmative action, both of which treat people as collectives rather than individuals. Statistics are frequently devoid of information which is personally meaningful to us, although we're not opposed to using them in arguments with people for whom they are meaningful.
Many, but not all, of us regard trade in something the same manner that others regard religious beliefs; a personal matter. No trade is fundamentally different than two boys in a cafeteria exchanging trading cards, or anything else of mutual value. A company is as a church, a collection of people sharing similar purpose; and as the freedom for the individual to pray in his home is no different from his freedom to collect with others to pray together (or to abstain from such activities), so to is a group of people working to mutual benefit no different from those boys.
Contracts are enforceable as a matter of ownership, a principle common law agrees with us on. (Common law on contracts can only enforce by principles of ownership; a contract without mutual trade of value is unenforceable. For an example of how and why this matters, if you sign a contract to let an oil company dig a retention pool on your property in exchange for them filling it in later and planting some trees, and they refuse to fill it in and plant the trees, common law provides only the difference in property value, not the cost of doing what was agreed upon.)
Because there's a variety of positions of libertarian, the reasons for diverging from other political philosophies also vary. Pragmatic libertarians believe the best government for (X criteria) is a smaller government; principle libertarians are generally closer to the minarchistic side, and most frequently abide by the non-aggression principle.
Many anarchists also cite the non-aggression principle as a reason for their political position; libertarians and anarchists are at odds over who better abides by it. Anarchists hold that forcing people to abide under a specific government is a violation of the non-aggression principle; libertarians hold that anarchistic modes of governance effectively make the non-aggression principle optional (or in some modes of anarchy, negotiable), and so violate it by default. I don't personally find that there's a clear winner there, and default to libertarianism on pragmatic grounds. (Granted, my personal conviction that anarchy is untenable depends upon armchair logic, but their conviction that it is tenable is no different in that regard.)
Some libertarians believe the right rules can make a libertarian government permanent; I personally hold that no governmental system is permanent, and regard the slow shift to a social democracy unavoidable, albeit correctable. (I hold that there is entropic decay in any government which will eventually lead to its destruction; entropy can be countered by a constant effort by a determined populace, but I hold in addition that the societal structures which produce this effort themselves are also subject to entropic decay; you can add as many layers of protection as you want, they'll each eventually collapse in turn.)
Libertarians don't hold particularly interesting views, once you look at their reasons. Just different ones.
Friday, January 6, 2012
Seeing God...
One of the things I cannot relate to, in any sense, is seeing God's work.
That is, perhaps, why I'm an atheist.
I do see the work of capitalism everywhere - I guess I'm a convert to capitalism, because as I started to grasp it, smokestacks and warehouses and farmland took on a subtle beauty, and I hold them in a kind of reverence - this is industry, this is life, this is everything that makes the life I live possible.
So I can sort of see where they come from. Once you start Seeing, it's hard to stop.
I guess statists see a highway and See - central order, organization and efficiency flowing down and making our lives possible. And environmentalists See corpses in the very industry I myself see beauty in.
If I were, tomorrow, to decide - fuck capitalism, I'm not doing this anymore - I don't think I could. Because I'd drive by a factory one day and remember - this is life!
Affirmation? I suppose so. It does illuminate how religion takes such a deep hold in somebody's mind - because how do you stop Seeing? And why those who have renounced religion tend to take such a bitter view of it - they cannot.
I See death, in abandoned factories, overgrown with vines. Perhaps somebody else Sees something beautiful in the resilience of nature.
How does our Sight change the way we view fellow human beings? A curious question.
That is, perhaps, why I'm an atheist.
I do see the work of capitalism everywhere - I guess I'm a convert to capitalism, because as I started to grasp it, smokestacks and warehouses and farmland took on a subtle beauty, and I hold them in a kind of reverence - this is industry, this is life, this is everything that makes the life I live possible.
So I can sort of see where they come from. Once you start Seeing, it's hard to stop.
I guess statists see a highway and See - central order, organization and efficiency flowing down and making our lives possible. And environmentalists See corpses in the very industry I myself see beauty in.
If I were, tomorrow, to decide - fuck capitalism, I'm not doing this anymore - I don't think I could. Because I'd drive by a factory one day and remember - this is life!
Affirmation? I suppose so. It does illuminate how religion takes such a deep hold in somebody's mind - because how do you stop Seeing? And why those who have renounced religion tend to take such a bitter view of it - they cannot.
I See death, in abandoned factories, overgrown with vines. Perhaps somebody else Sees something beautiful in the resilience of nature.
How does our Sight change the way we view fellow human beings? A curious question.
Monday, December 19, 2011
The Art of Societal Change
The single most important thing a campaign for societal change must do is this: It must change itself.
"Be the change you want to see," in the words of Gandhi.
Sun Tzu addressed this in terms of war in a dozen different ways - the single most important thing one may draw from him is that, before defeating the enemy, you must first defeat yourself.
Campaigns which do not live up to their own standards, campaigns which -cannot- live up to their own standards - which is every progressive, socialist, and communistic movement - must ultimately fail. This is not to say they cannot change government, that they cannot change society - but not in the ways they hope. The hypocrisies necessary to these philosophies ensure they cannot change themselves, and hence cannot change society, in the manner they hope. (See the percenters who refuse to give up their own globally exemplary wealth to feed the starving elsewhere, for example.)
The internet has given such campaigns immense power to communicate, to engage in the self-policing activities necessary to ensure that they live up to their own standards. The "enemy" is basically irrelevant; this has been particularly apparent in the second amendment rights movement; gun control advocates have increasingly been pushed into irrelevancy. It's important that the campaign has the facts on its side, but it is more important that it has done such a remarkable job pushing damaging elements to the periphery.
The most important thing for a modern campaign to do is precisely the activity of self-policing. Scandals are fine if the campaign reacts appropriately to them; in the era of free information, scandal cannot be avoided, only dealt with. The popular political parties, as campaigns, have been doing very bad jobs of dealing with their own scandals, which is a large part of their current state.
I routinely piss off the people on my side of the debate; I'm more likely to attack them than my enemies. This is necessary, and it is necessary that a good movement be willing to rebuke and dismiss individuals in its membership, no matter how important they may seem. Movements that cannot or will not do this will die.
Hitchens was willing to take to task his own. He was a kindred spirit, if opposed in ideals, and represents a dying breed among his own. I do not think the left will soon recover from his loss.
"Be the change you want to see," in the words of Gandhi.
Sun Tzu addressed this in terms of war in a dozen different ways - the single most important thing one may draw from him is that, before defeating the enemy, you must first defeat yourself.
Campaigns which do not live up to their own standards, campaigns which -cannot- live up to their own standards - which is every progressive, socialist, and communistic movement - must ultimately fail. This is not to say they cannot change government, that they cannot change society - but not in the ways they hope. The hypocrisies necessary to these philosophies ensure they cannot change themselves, and hence cannot change society, in the manner they hope. (See the percenters who refuse to give up their own globally exemplary wealth to feed the starving elsewhere, for example.)
The internet has given such campaigns immense power to communicate, to engage in the self-policing activities necessary to ensure that they live up to their own standards. The "enemy" is basically irrelevant; this has been particularly apparent in the second amendment rights movement; gun control advocates have increasingly been pushed into irrelevancy. It's important that the campaign has the facts on its side, but it is more important that it has done such a remarkable job pushing damaging elements to the periphery.
The most important thing for a modern campaign to do is precisely the activity of self-policing. Scandals are fine if the campaign reacts appropriately to them; in the era of free information, scandal cannot be avoided, only dealt with. The popular political parties, as campaigns, have been doing very bad jobs of dealing with their own scandals, which is a large part of their current state.
I routinely piss off the people on my side of the debate; I'm more likely to attack them than my enemies. This is necessary, and it is necessary that a good movement be willing to rebuke and dismiss individuals in its membership, no matter how important they may seem. Movements that cannot or will not do this will die.
Hitchens was willing to take to task his own. He was a kindred spirit, if opposed in ideals, and represents a dying breed among his own. I do not think the left will soon recover from his loss.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
STEM
This seems a popular topic on the blogs right now, on account of it having recently become politically relevant, so I thought I'd throw my two cents in.
If a convention somehow containing every critic of Finnegan's Wake (chosen as one of the hardest subjects in English literature to understand) suffered a critical architecture collapse, and every one of them died, would society suffer any serious setbacks?
What if a convention containing every single kernel-level driver programmer (chosen as one of the hardest subjects in programming to understand; substitute BIOS programmers, if you wish, or even trivial branches of architecture or engineering) suffered the same disaster?
What advantages do liberal educations confer which extend beyond the first couple of semesters of material, which STEM majors are already obligated to study? The fact that this is a challenging question to answer in liberal arts educations, but -not- in STEM majors (where the answer is fairly trivial; advanced studies are for specialization in field, specializations which industries depend upon), sums up the divergence.
If a convention somehow containing every critic of Finnegan's Wake (chosen as one of the hardest subjects in English literature to understand) suffered a critical architecture collapse, and every one of them died, would society suffer any serious setbacks?
What if a convention containing every single kernel-level driver programmer (chosen as one of the hardest subjects in programming to understand; substitute BIOS programmers, if you wish, or even trivial branches of architecture or engineering) suffered the same disaster?
What advantages do liberal educations confer which extend beyond the first couple of semesters of material, which STEM majors are already obligated to study? The fact that this is a challenging question to answer in liberal arts educations, but -not- in STEM majors (where the answer is fairly trivial; advanced studies are for specialization in field, specializations which industries depend upon), sums up the divergence.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Success
Following up on The Profit Motive, what constitutes success?
Ask a socialist, and perverse to naive expectations, the word is almost certain to mean -financial- success.
Ask a capitalist, and perverse to naive expectations, the word is almost certain to mean something far more personal.
Socialism is to a great extent defined by its deification of money; sometimes it's an evil and vengeful god, sometimes a benevolent one whose worshipers are the real problem, but the theories of socialism are money-centric; in bygone eras they were property-centric.
Capitalism is not. Do not be confused by its name, or forget that capitalism was named by its detractors, who saw capitalism as about ownership; socialism from its root was obsessed with wealth, and capitalism was named for the holders of wealth by people who saw the accumulation of wealth as an inherently bad thing.
Capitalism is defined by choice, as mentioned in the profit motive. Most important of all, the choice on what to do with your life - a choice which is missing from socialism, though few socialists would admit that taxation at its root is the loss of choice about what ends your efforts go towards.
The modern rhetoric of war as a political metaphor - the war on drugs, the war on poverty, the war on illiteracy, the war on this and the war on that - this is a useful metaphor. Because taxpayers are all draftees in that war, whether they want to be or not. This is the root loss of choice, of freedom.
And all of these wars come down to a single artifact - measure of success. Socialists want everybody to be successful, by a particular definition of success, without regard to other definitions - and theirs is the financial definition. Poor in money but rich in love is not success to them, it is tragedy.
That's not to say the reverse is tragedy, either. The beauty of choice is that the person who foregoes love for money is as free to do so as the person who foregoes money for love. We choose our own success. And by and large, we achieve it.
Ask a socialist, and perverse to naive expectations, the word is almost certain to mean -financial- success.
Ask a capitalist, and perverse to naive expectations, the word is almost certain to mean something far more personal.
Socialism is to a great extent defined by its deification of money; sometimes it's an evil and vengeful god, sometimes a benevolent one whose worshipers are the real problem, but the theories of socialism are money-centric; in bygone eras they were property-centric.
Capitalism is not. Do not be confused by its name, or forget that capitalism was named by its detractors, who saw capitalism as about ownership; socialism from its root was obsessed with wealth, and capitalism was named for the holders of wealth by people who saw the accumulation of wealth as an inherently bad thing.
Capitalism is defined by choice, as mentioned in the profit motive. Most important of all, the choice on what to do with your life - a choice which is missing from socialism, though few socialists would admit that taxation at its root is the loss of choice about what ends your efforts go towards.
The modern rhetoric of war as a political metaphor - the war on drugs, the war on poverty, the war on illiteracy, the war on this and the war on that - this is a useful metaphor. Because taxpayers are all draftees in that war, whether they want to be or not. This is the root loss of choice, of freedom.
And all of these wars come down to a single artifact - measure of success. Socialists want everybody to be successful, by a particular definition of success, without regard to other definitions - and theirs is the financial definition. Poor in money but rich in love is not success to them, it is tragedy.
That's not to say the reverse is tragedy, either. The beauty of choice is that the person who foregoes love for money is as free to do so as the person who foregoes money for love. We choose our own success. And by and large, we achieve it.
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