Archive for the ‘Philosophy’ Category

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Smart People

Sunday, February 28th, 2010

Increasingly, I’m coming across articles on the fundamental contradictions of the liberal view. And increasingly, the root of the liberal view is that smart people are liberals, and liberals are smart people, and that smart, liberal people know better than everyone else how we all should live our lives.

The problem is, “smart” and “liberal” aren’t synonyms, and worse, far worse, “smart” doesn’t trump “local” and “personal”. A dumb man swinging a hammer on the scene very often trumps a smart man answering an email a thousand miles away, because the local guy knows intimately exactly what his situation is.

M.K. Freeberg, in The House of Eratosthenes, draws attention to yet another thread in the same hangman’s noose:

What we have here, I think, is a confusion between wisdom and irony. If you listen to these people prattle on for a good long time, you’ll notice something rather shocking: The “smart” decision, with regard to each and every question that comes up, is never, ever, ever ever ever the simple one.

Global warming is more dangerous than radical Islamic terrorism.

Queen Latifah is sexier than Beyonce Knowles.

To keep from going broke, we’ve got to spend more money.

A real man is in touch with his feelings and isn’t afraid to cry.

If there is a problem, the best thing to do is to make sure no one can ever make a profit producing a solution to it.

If innocent people could be harmed by a terrorist act, and it could be prevented by bringing physical pain to an evil man, decent people will make sure this doesn’t happen and let the innocent people go ahead and die.

If you’re a baby and you’ve crossed that Magical Vaginal Finish Line you’ve got rights to womb-to-tomb health care, a living wage whether you’re competent or not, a vote in all our elections whether you have common sense or not — but if you’re not there yet, then you don’t even exist as a person. It’s a matter of inches, and that’s just the way it is!

This is the part that scares the hell out of me. These people are not capable of recognizing or responding to the situation in which the simple, common sense answer is the right one. Right, as in — go ahead, put on a magical thinking cap and boost your IQ by a thousand points, you’ll still decide it the same way. This doesn’t work for them, because in their world you have to show off your smarts by deciding the opposite.

Therefore, when this happens they will consistently demand the choice that is made by these smart people, is the wrong one.

Read the whole thing. Freeberg is a very smart guy; he just doesn’t assume his smart is better than yours.

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Posted in Army of Davids, Liberals, Philosophy, Political Correctness | 1 Comment »

This. Keep This In Mind.

Sunday, February 28th, 2010

Everyone’s been linking this, and for darn good reason.

There are forces out there that want you to destroy yourself, that tell you that you are worthless, that you are surplus to requirements, that the very Earth rejects your burden.

They are the same forces telling you that you hurt everyone around you, that you are too stupid and ignorant to run your own life, that they know better than you what you should want and how you should live.

They are the same forces telling you that you are too old, too fat, too fecund.

They are the same forces telling you that your life should be easy, simple, fun; and that if it’s not, you should just give up.

They are the same forces telling you to kill your babies in your womb, because you need to find a perfect mate, find a career, find yourself.

They lie.

This is the truth:

If you’ve been telling yourself that no one will miss you when you’re gone, you are wrong. Your suicide would tear a hole through the future, and nothing could ever fill the space where you used to be.

Read it all. Somewhere in there you will find your reason to defy those who tell you to lay down and die.

The worst thing? The very worst thing?

They are the ones telling you that they bring hope, and change, and help.

They lie.

They are evil.

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Posted in Fighting Back, Liberals, Media, Philosophy, Political Correctness | Comments Off

This Should Be Everybody’s QotD

Sunday, September 27th, 2009

WARNING:
Before clicking on any of the links in this story, for God’s Sake, Read This First. Um, OK, you can click on that link before reading the article it links too.

Our Technical Service Department is reviewing this situation and will come up with a fix Any Moment Now.

===

Dave Barry, ladies and gentlemen. Your quote of the day:

As Americans we must always remember that we all have a common enemy, an enemy that is dangerous, powerful, and relentless. I refer, of course, to the federal government

A Marquette University grad student, Stuart Ditsler, posted this on his office door. The MU adminstration ordered it taken down, calling it “patently offensive”, a term usually reserved for hard core pornography.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has taken up his case. Word is awaited.

Video here.

And, no, of course I’m not making this up.

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Posted in Bill of Rights, Dammit!, Edumakashun, Fighting Back, Philosophy, Political Correctness, Quote of the Day, Uncategorized | Comments Off

The Deification of Imbecility

Thursday, August 6th, 2009

Craig Ferguson has a genuinely profound insight, and I say that meaning absolutely no irony at all.

I’ve seen other expressions of this insight, but this is far and away the clearest, and the most engagingly told.

Let me say it another way: “Never trust anyone under thirty.”

[update]
Craig, not Colin. I hat bean stoopid.
Via MKFreeberg at House of Eratosthenes.

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Posted in Dammit!, Laugh Dammit!, Media, Movies and TV, Philosophy | 1 Comment »

Corpus Christi

Sunday, June 14th, 2009

Via The Anchoress, Deacon Greg Kandra tells a story:

Back in the 1970s, when there was a lot of liturgical innovation going on, Dorothy Day invited a young priest to celebrate mass at the Catholic Worker. He decided to do something that he thought was relevant and hip. He asked Dorothy if she had a coffee cup he could borrow. She found one in the kitchen and brought it to him. And, he took that cup and used it as the chalice to celebrate mass.

When it was over, Dorothy picked up the cup, found a small gardening tool, and went to the backyard. She knelt down, dug a hole, kissed the coffee cup, and buried it in the earth.

With that simple gesture, Dorothy Day showed that she understood something that so many of us today don’t: she knew that Christ was truly present in something as ordinary as a ceramic cup. And that it could never be just a coffee cup again.

She understood the power and reality of His presence in the blessed sacrament.

Which is really the sum and substance of what we celebrate on this feast, Corpus Christi. The reason for what we will do today – celebrating with the monstrance, the music, the procession – isn’t to glorify an inanimate object, a bit of bread contained in glass.

It is to remind the world that in that bread we have been given Christ.

Not an idea. Not a symbol. Not an abstract bit of arcane theology. No.

It is wider and deeper and more mysterious than that.

Look at that host — and you look at Christ.

Yes, read the whole thing.

Now, here’s the deal: Go to the store, and buy two bottles of wine, and two boxes of crackers.

Have your priest bless one bottle and box. Have him pour some wine from his bottle into a randomly selected vessel, maybe a cup, maybe a golden chalice, maybe a crystal wineglass, and set out half a dozen crackers and the cup on a tray.

I, a militant skeptic, will then pour the same amount of wine from the other bottle into another vessel, and set out half a dozen crackers from my box on another tray.

Someone who doesn’t know either of us, and who did not observe us preparing our trays, will then arrange the contents of both trays identically, and leave the room. A group of priests and scientists will then enter the room, and be challenged to identify which tray carries The Blessed Body and Blood Of Christ, and which one carries some cheap wine and stale crackers.

The results, over many repetitions with a large enough sample, will most likely be indistinguishable from random chance. Yes, even if one of the preparers is Joseph Alois Ratzinger and the other is P.Z. Meyers.

Now, what that means is, the wine and crackers were not changed, in any way, by the priest.

However, Dorothy Day was changed by her reverence for an ordinary kitchen coffee cup. The young priest was changed by the act of consecrating the Host and (presumably, watching Dorothy’s act). Deacon Kandra and the Anchoress were changed by relaying the story, and many of their readers, including my obstinately skeptical self, were changed by reading it. Changed, I believe, very much for the better.

And what that means is exactly that the ceremonies involved were symbolic, and that the ideas involved are far from abstract and arcane. They are very powerful symbols and ideas, and the world would be a far poorer place without them.

There must somehow be a way to preserve these ideas, these symbols, and preserve their power to change people for the better, without asking me to believe that the Sacraments have undergone some detectable change. The change is not in the wine, not in the bread, not in the cup or chalice. It’s in those who participate in the ceremony, or watch it, or even hear about it.

Deacon Kandra’s story has given me a glimpse of that way. I can’t write it down, not yet, and it may not even be something that can be written down, but it’s there, and I’m very grateful for that.

Below the fold, my comment at the Anchoress’ site, still awaiting moderation, concerning objections to the use of a coffee cup as a chalice:
(more…)

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Posted in Philosophy, Religion and Superstition | Comments Off

Knowing That You’re Alive

Wednesday, May 20th, 2009

Chanda commented on my post below, Dialog, and made some excellent points. I am pressed for time, and wanted to quickly let her know that, despite that post, I agreed with much of what she was saying. I’ve decided to make my reply to her comment a stand alone post.

Chanda, Dialog is actually the first step in what I hope will be a longer… meditation… on belief, faith, and what I can only describe as “our place in the world”.

One of the things I most want to talk about is the traditional assertion that science isn’t about right and wrong, good and evil, ethics, morals, or even beauty and ugliness. It’s certainly not about comfort in a time of loss and grief. Those principles, of course, are exactly what religion is about, and should be about.

And yet jihadists on both sides continually violate this demarcation. Religious folks keep trying to use their scriptures as biology textbooks (the subject of Dialog), while the Very Scientific keep trying to claim moral authority while denying that such things as morals even exists (and that post has yet to be written).

There are such things as good and evil, and the old religions were founded by people who knew them in practical, daily, life and death intimacy, as a part of a hard-scrabble existence very few people on Earth today can even imagine.

Death was a constant presence in their lives, and they desperately needed what comfort they could find, just to get up when the sun rose in its unthinking, pitiless might over their desert homes, get up and do what had to be done to not die themselves that very day.

Nevertheless, they valued their lives greatly, took great joy and pleasure in living, and most of all, knew they were alive, knew that they were different from the beasts they herded, the plants they cultivated, different indeed from the ancient rocks surrounding them. And at the time, that was an enormous insight, a huge leap in understanding that underlies all scientific exploration.

When we read the old texts and scriptures, what we know now casts what they were only then understanding for the very first time in a very unfavorable shadow. It is easy to laugh at the mistakes and ignorance, even easier to neglect their hard-won wisdom, and to think that we are advanced enough, adult enough, that we no longer need the comfort they offer.

All this is by way of saying, Dialog only has to do with extension of religion into realms where it does not belong, very specifically the dogma of Creationism as a legitimate aspect of biology. It was not meant to attack religion generally, nor to deny anyone the refuge and comfort religion offers (although I look for the day when that comfort need not be founded on a false hope).

[update]
In fact, one of the biggest problems I have with Creationism is exactly that distracts everyone, proponents and critics alike, from the very real wisdom the scriptures have to offer.
[/update]

This is not a full answer to your comment, not remotely a full exploration of the vague structure slowly taking shape in my mind. It’s not even an outline.

It’s just vague pointer in the direction I want to go.

I agree with you about Myers’ stridency. I wish he could let it go, but the fact is, he is attacking an ongoing movement amongst religious conservatives which is at least as strident, and which seriously distracts them and discredits their legitimate points. He remains an important daily read for me precisely because my politics differs from his, and I therefore visit many sites whose contributors are religious, and who do strive to discredit the idea of evolution. I’m not just reading his descriptions of these people; I read them as primary sources, and I need him to keep my balance.

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Posted in Biology, Creationism, Evolution, History, Me, Philosophy, Religion and Superstition, Throwing Out the Trash | 1 Comment »

Transformative versus Revelatory Arcs

Monday, May 11th, 2009

John Rogers over at Kung Fu Monkey explains something I’ve never understood before. It’s disguised as a review of the current Star Trek movie, but don’t be fooled: his topic is much wider and much more important.

A transformative arc is the classic feel good “a bad person becomes a good person.” This is the Disney arc, the classic arc, although frankly many people confuse a character’s circumstances changing with a transformative arc.
…
A revelatory arc # is one in which the story of the movie is revealing how the hero (and the virtues he represents, which you the writer wish to highlight) is exactly the right person to solve the movie’s problem. It’s more an echo of the old school morality play. “Behold how misfortune comes unto the world. Now see what kind of man may set it right!” The protagonist of this sort of movie triumphs by holding on to whatever virtues he has, and often by becoming even more confident in them.

The very best thing about this essay is that it sounds like Rogers is viciously attacking the ST movie; many of his commenters make that mistake, and take him to task for it. Wrong.

These are not flaws, by the way. These are the moves of a supremely confident director/storyteller. And it adds weight to an argument I’ve been making for some time: heroic franchise characters often have revelatory arcs rather thn transformative arcs.

We have become so accustomed to expecting transformative arcs that we now regard revelatory arcs as inherently bad when they are pointed out to us — even though the revelatory arc is in fact the classic hero story.

Continuing here his discussion of our modern preference for transformative arcs, how we tend to see them even where they don’t exist:

…Frankly many people confuse a character’s circumstances changing with a transformative arc. Star Wars is the perfect example. “Luke Skywalker is a farm boy who becomes a hero.” Well, sure. But he wasn’t a cowardly farm boy. He wasn’t an insecure farm boy. As soon as holo-Lea shows up, he is on-mission. He didn’t leave his loving family behind, he was burnt out of his shitty hut he hated anyway.

He wasn’t a farm boy who never believed in the Force, once he’s introduced to the idea. Hell, turning off his targetting computer during the trench run is the least surprising thing he could do. Now if HAN SOLO suddenly showed up believing in the Force, well, that’s a change. As a matter of fact, Han’s the one with the transformative arc in the movie… Just like Spock’s the one with the character story (kinda) in Trek.

The idea of the revelatory arc is profound, and I’m going to have adjust a lot of my thinking to make use of it.

One thing I want to say, and this is just a rough sketch of an idea this has given me:

The transformative arc appeals to us because we are, most of us, painfully aware of our flaws. We want to believe that we can be better than we are.

The revelatory arc, however, is the American story: ordinary people, flawed though we may be, are in fact competent to direct our own lives, even in matters of life and death. There are no nobles who are born to be our masters; we are our own betters, our own nobles.

The best revelatory arcs are those that show ordinary people having their extraordinary characters revealed to themselves.

[update]
Two kinds of revelatory arcs: one in which the hero himself recognizes his exceptionalism; and one in which the people around the hero recognize him as the great leader he is.

Two kinds of transformative arcs: one in which a weak character grows to become a hero, and one in which, as Rogers says, “a bad person becomes a good person”. He calls the later “the Disney arc”, but frankly, I can’t think of many Disney movies where a bad person is redeemed.

Perhaps these can be arranged in a spectrum:

redemption <> growth <> self-realization <> public recognition

A key feature of the “public recognition” variety of revelatory arch is that the protagonist, to be a hero, must be right. Good examples would be Washington or Lincoln (both of whom, I believe, had greater doubts about themselves than their followers did). Otherwise, you get Hitler or Stalin.

Eric Burns-White disagrees with Rogers over at Web Snark. Warning: Very spoiler heavy, more so than Rogers was. I’ve skimmed, but will wait until I see the movie to read it in detail

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Posted in Cool Stuff, Literature, Media, Movies and TV, Philosophy | Comments Off

Tweenbots

Saturday, April 11th, 2009

Your feel-good must-read for the day week month:

In New York City, we are very occupied with getting from one place to another. I wondered: could a human-like object traverse sidewalks and streets along with us, and in so doing, create a narrative about our relationship to space and our willingness to interact with what we find in it? More importantly, how could our actions be seen within a larger context of human connection that emerges from the complexity of the city itself? To answer these questions, I built robots.

Tweenbots are human-dependent robots that navigate the city with the help of pedestrians they encounter. Rolling at a constant speed, in a straight line, Tweenbots have a destination displayed on a flag, and rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right direction to reach their goal.

There’s a word I think I’m going to have to start using more often, and in a completely non-ironic way: “charming”. This is charming.

Via, yes, Hacker News.

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Posted in Army of Davids, Cool Stuff, Laugh Dammit!, Philosophy, Technology, Tools, Toys | Comments Off

Code: Computer versus Legal

Friday, April 10th, 2009

Stevey tries to compare computer programming with writing laws. He starts by describing the policies and programs necessary to implement a seemingly easy change in credit card accounting; it turns out to be a great deal more complicated than you’d think.

He then talks about making marijuana legal. Again, that seems simple, but when you look closely at the problem, all sorts of hidden complexities arise.

I believe, however, that he has missed an essential difference between computers and people:

There is a fundamental difference between writing laws and writing programs:

Computers need programs to function, at all. The bucket example is a good one: without both administrative policies, and the programming code to implement them, the idea can never be put into practice. If there are any errors or gaps in the code, the idea will fail.

People, however, will for the most part function just fine without laws. In the absence of laws, people do whatever they damn well please. Some choose their behaviors wisely and thrive. Others choose poorly, and fail, in which case they either learn, or die.

This process is called “evolution”, and it is known to work very well in terms of generating diverse solutions to a large set of complex and otherwise intractable problems.

There’s a economic analog, called “capitalism”.

In any event, it is absolutely possible to simply…delete a law. It is not necessary, or in many cases, even desirable, to write a replacement.

Example: The Supreme Court recently struck down part of the Washington, D.C., gun control regulations. They did not propose alternatives. They simply deleted the old law. Poof! Gone! (Of course, D.C. promptly wrote a new set of equally offensive and counterproductive regulations, but that’s not the fault of the Court.)

This happens regularly (although not often enough, in my opinion) at all levels of jurisdiction. Courts void laws, legislatures repeal laws, laws simply fall into disuse and are forgotten.

The more laws you write, the more you will run into exactly the problem you describe. The solution is to simply not write laws that are not absolutely necessary. People will seek and find their own solutions to problems, and successful solutions will, on average, persist and spread.

There will be failures. That’s a necessary part of the system, the negative feedback loop.

There will be parasites. Excellent! Both biological and computer systems become more robust when routinely challenged by parasites, which tend to exploit flaws in the system. Either the system adapts (by, for instance, checking for buffer overflows) or it dies, clearing the way for a more robust offspring.

In any event, however, there is no reason why bad laws cannot simply be deleted.

Via the very fruitful Hacker News which is simply a list of interesting links, along with comments from readers. Very interesting stuff, mostly computer and programming related.

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Posted in Bill of Rights, Computers, Constitution, Cool Stuff, Drug War, Economics, Evolution, Government Idiocy, Guns and Ammo, Heller, Philosophy, Politics & Politicians, Throwing Out the Trash | Comments Off

Mike Rowe: The War on Work

Thursday, March 26th, 2009

The most important 20 minutes of video you will watch this week: Mike Rowe of the Discovery Channel show Dirty Jobs talks to TED about the things he got wrong, and so very much more. He plays kind of a goof-ball role on the show, but — that would be wrong.

Watch the whole thing.


[Link]

Via The Anchoress.

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Posted in Cool Stuff, Culture War, Economics, Edumakashun, Government Idiocy, Media, Movies and TV, Philosophy, Political Correctness, Politics & Politicians, Throwing Out the Trash | 1 Comment »

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