My movie, But for the Grace of God?, a feature-length documentary about homelessness, is premiering at the Oakland Film Festival on April 15! There's more information and a trailer on the web site. If you live in Northern California I would love to see you there.
I'm not going to write much about the film here (I'm setting up a separate blog for that) so if you want updates please sign up for the mailing list on the film web site or subscribe to my twitter feed (@rongarret).
Monday, March 21, 2011
Sunday, March 20, 2011
A exceptionally good summary of what's going on at the Japanese reactors
In case you were wondering. Bottom line: the reactors worked exactly as they were designed to. These are forty year old reactors, they experienced one of the worst natural disasters in recorded history, and while they have been damaged, there has been no danger to public health. And the most likely long-term danger to the public is that everyone will freak out over nuclear energy, which will hamper efforts to control carbon emissions.
Friday, March 18, 2011
The NBC Nightly News Drinking Game
Want to get smashed in 30 minutes? Then pull up a bottle of tequila and the NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams and take a shot whenever Brian says any of the following words or phrases: "Massive", "As Always" or "Our very own." I guarantee you will not be able to walk a straight line at the end of this exercise.
[UPDATE - 3/23] - I've actually noticed that ever since I posted this, Brian seems to be using these phrases a lot less. I wonder if maybe someone at NBC reads my blog? :-)
[UPDATE - 3/23] - I've actually noticed that ever since I posted this, Brian seems to be using these phrases a lot less. I wonder if maybe someone at NBC reads my blog? :-)
Friday, March 11, 2011
What Kind of Sick Culture Blames an 11-Year-Old for Being Gang-Raped?
When I first saw that headline I assumed they were talking about some backwards tribal culture in a Muslim country. But no, this happened (actually, is happening) in Texas. Guess I was wrong about the Muslim part.
Wednesday, March 09, 2011
A bumpy ride through the moral landscape
Sam Harris takes a valiant whack at the dragon (or is it a windmill?) of moral relativism in his new book, "The Moral Landscape." Harris argues that, contrary to Hume, one can derive "ought" from "is", at least to a first-order approximation, by starting with the premise that morality is that which advances the interests of conscious beings.
One of my mentors in graduate school once told me that it is worth paying attention to what smart people have to say even -- perhaps especially -- when they are wrong, because they are usually wrong in interesting ways. "The Moral Landscape" is a perfect example. It's wrong, but it is wrong in a very interesting way.
Let me say up front that I have tremendous sympathy for Harris's agenda. I wish it were true that one could derive "ought" from "is" (and I think it might be possible, but it's much, much harder than Harris -- or any of the new atheists -- seem to recognize). I do accept Harris's premise that maximizing utility for conscious beings is not only a reasonable foundation for such an endeavor, it is the only possible reasonable basis for it.
Unfortunately, between Harris's premises and his (predictable) conclusion that religion is the root of all evil (his Introduction has a section prominently entitled "The Problem of Religion") are a whole host of tacit biases and assumptions that render his reasoning circular. Harris defines the problem of morality as maximizing some utility function with respect to consciousness (which is perfectly fine), but then he goes on to assume without any foundation (and, worse, without being explicit about it) that this quality metric should have certain characteristics. Like erstwhile provers of Euclid's fifth postulate the assumptions he makes appear intuitively obvious. But if science teaches us anything it is that what is intuitively obvious is often wrong.
Harris's argument runs off the rails almost from the very beginning. This is taken from his introduction:
I won't quote the whole thing; you get the idea. The good life, on the other hand, I reproduce here in its entirety because the details matter:
Surely it is obvious that the Good Life is preferable to the Bad Life in every way? Well, alas, no it is not. It is certainly preferable from the point of view of an affluent Western academic, which both Harris and I happen to be, so I can certainly understand the appeal. But it is not true that this need be the case for all conscious beings, or even for all rational conscious beings. But Harris dismisses this possibility out of hand:
Well, yes, we must. Hidden in the trees of horrific detail is the forest that makes Harris's Bad Life preferable to his Good Life for many people: the woman in the Bad Life scenario (one wonders if Harris considers being a woman to be a salient characteristic of the Bad Life) has children while the person (notably with gender unspecified) in the Good Life scenario doesn't (or, if s/he does, they don't figure prominently in Harris's reckoning.)
Now, I do not mean to suggest that any rational person would choose the totality of Harris's Bad Life over his Good Life. I merely point out that Harris's quality metric is heavily prejudiced by the fact that he is an affluent Western academic male. Money, in particular, figures very prominently. He mentions it three times. It is particularly noteworthy, I think, that helping the poor unfortunate children in the developing world is done with a billion dollars of other people's money rather than your own.
Let us give Harris the benefit of the doubt and assume that he is simply ignorant of the evidence that providing financial assistance to developing countries does more harm than good and that his heart is actually in the right place. But look at where he puts the emphasis: helping other people is not good because of the benefit it provides to others, but because of the personal satisfaction that it provides to the benefactor. The Good Life is not good because you are good, it is good because you feel good. You are free of pain and want, and on top of that you get to bestow a billion dollars of largesse on some poor unfortunate urchins without compromising your standard of living. That sounds good to me because I am a member of Harris's demographic. But I wonder how it sounds to the urchin.
(If you still doubt this point, let me add just one sentence to Harris's Bad Life: "Because of your suffering, the attention of the world's media has been drawn to the plight of your people, and years after you are dead millions will be living better lives because of your sacrifices." And another to the Good Life: "Unfortunately, though you are blissfully unaware of it, the money you have given out to third world countries has ended up in the pockets of corrupt dictators and the net result is that you have made the lives of millions of people worse, not better." Now which life is the Good Life and which is the Bad Life?)
Again, my point here is not to argue that Harris's Bad Life is superior to his Good Life, only to plant a seed of doubt that the superiority of every aspect of Harris's Good Life is beyond question. Unfortunately, even this small seed of doubt undermines Harris's entire agenda. The problem with applying science to morality is that it requires you to choose a quality metric from a complex space with multiple incommensurate dimensions. Even as simple a premise as, say, all else being equal it is good to minimize physical pain is open to rational doubt: it may well be that a certain amount of physical pain is necessary to psychological well-being (as measured according to some other quality metric). Maybe people who never experience any physical pain end up being so risk-averse that they become dysfunctional cowards. I really enjoy my affluent lifestyle, but I really wonder if I'm going to be up to the challenges that are going to come our way when, say, the planet's reserves of crude oil start to run out. (Or, what ought to be even more frightening, phosphorus.)
The fundamental problem is that "the interests of conscious beings" is not well defined. What exactly are those interests? To exist? To exist free of pain? To exist at some balance of pain and comfort that maximizes some other ineffable quality like "self-fulfillment" (whatever that might mean)?
The ultimate irony is that the reason that the interests of consciousness is not a coherent basis for morality (or anything else for that matter) is precisely because consciousness was created by evolution and not by God. Consciousness exists not because it is the cosmic destiny of the universe, but rather because, like all other complex things, it has survival value -- but not for itself. Consciousness is not an end, it is a means. Consciousness exists because it provides a powerful motivator for an entity afflicted by it to keep itself -- and hence its genes -- alive. Wealth and physical comfort feel like wins because up to a point they increase reproductive fitness. But as soon as it gets to the point where consciousness starts to value things like "self-fulfillment" over having children, trouble begins. The interests of that sort of consciousness are not longer aligned with those of its creator.
This is why Harris's program is almost certainly doomed to fail. Advancing the interests of consciousness will not lead to a planet full of humans singing kumbaya in blissful conscious harmony because that's not what consciousness is for. Consciousness exists to make us care about making sure our children stay alive long enough to have children of their own. Our children. Not someone else's. Of course, the situation is complicated by the fact that the boundaries between "ours" and "theirs" are fluid and can change opportunistically (because that kind of flexibility also has survival value). But there is nothing in the laws of physics that says those lines should be drawn around a single species, or even a single mental attribute like consciousness.
I wish things were different. I really do. I would like nothing more than to be able to preach the Gospel of Sam and so help to bring peace and harmony to the world. But Sam Harris of all people should be able to sympathize with someone like me who has a limited ability to suspend disbelief, so I trust he will forgive me.
One of my mentors in graduate school once told me that it is worth paying attention to what smart people have to say even -- perhaps especially -- when they are wrong, because they are usually wrong in interesting ways. "The Moral Landscape" is a perfect example. It's wrong, but it is wrong in a very interesting way.
Let me say up front that I have tremendous sympathy for Harris's agenda. I wish it were true that one could derive "ought" from "is" (and I think it might be possible, but it's much, much harder than Harris -- or any of the new atheists -- seem to recognize). I do accept Harris's premise that maximizing utility for conscious beings is not only a reasonable foundation for such an endeavor, it is the only possible reasonable basis for it.
Unfortunately, between Harris's premises and his (predictable) conclusion that religion is the root of all evil (his Introduction has a section prominently entitled "The Problem of Religion") are a whole host of tacit biases and assumptions that render his reasoning circular. Harris defines the problem of morality as maximizing some utility function with respect to consciousness (which is perfectly fine), but then he goes on to assume without any foundation (and, worse, without being explicit about it) that this quality metric should have certain characteristics. Like erstwhile provers of Euclid's fifth postulate the assumptions he makes appear intuitively obvious. But if science teaches us anything it is that what is intuitively obvious is often wrong.
Harris's argument runs off the rails almost from the very beginning. This is taken from his introduction:
For my argument ... to hold, I think one need only grant two points: (1) some people have better lives than others, and (2) these differences relate, in some lawful and not entirely arbitrary way, to states of the human brain and to states of the world. To make these premises less abstract, consider two generic lives that lie somewhere near the extremes on this continuum:
The bad life
You are a young widow who has lived her entire life in the midst of civil war. Today, your seven-year-old daughter was raped and dismembered before your eyes. Worse still, the perpetrator was your fourteen-year-old son, who was goaded to this evil at the point of a machete by a press gang of drug-addled soldiers... Since the moment you were born your world has been a theatre of cruelty and violence. You have never learned to read...
I won't quote the whole thing; you get the idea. The good life, on the other hand, I reproduce here in its entirety because the details matter:
The good life
You are married to the most loving, intelligent and charismatic person you have ever met. Both of you have careers that are intellectually stimulating and financially rewarding. For decades, your wealth and social connections have allowed you to devote yourself to activities that bring you immense personal satisfaction. One of your greatest sources of happiness has been to find creative ways to help people who have not had your good fortune in life. In fact, you have just won a billion-dollar grant to benefit children in the developing world. If asked, you would say that you could not imagine how your time on earth could be better spent. Due to a combination of good genes and optimal circumstances, you and your closest friends and family will live very long, healthy lives, untouched by crime, sudden bereavements, and other misfortunes.
Surely it is obvious that the Good Life is preferable to the Bad Life in every way? Well, alas, no it is not. It is certainly preferable from the point of view of an affluent Western academic, which both Harris and I happen to be, so I can certainly understand the appeal. But it is not true that this need be the case for all conscious beings, or even for all rational conscious beings. But Harris dismisses this possibility out of hand:
Anyone who doesn't see that the Good Life is preferable to the Bad Life is unlikely to have anything to contribute to a discussion about human well-being. Must we really argue that beneficence, trust, creativity, etc. enjoyed in the context of prosperous civil society are better than the horrors of civil war endured in a steaming jungle filled with aggressive insects carrying dangerous pathogens?
Well, yes, we must. Hidden in the trees of horrific detail is the forest that makes Harris's Bad Life preferable to his Good Life for many people: the woman in the Bad Life scenario (one wonders if Harris considers being a woman to be a salient characteristic of the Bad Life) has children while the person (notably with gender unspecified) in the Good Life scenario doesn't (or, if s/he does, they don't figure prominently in Harris's reckoning.)
Now, I do not mean to suggest that any rational person would choose the totality of Harris's Bad Life over his Good Life. I merely point out that Harris's quality metric is heavily prejudiced by the fact that he is an affluent Western academic male. Money, in particular, figures very prominently. He mentions it three times. It is particularly noteworthy, I think, that helping the poor unfortunate children in the developing world is done with a billion dollars of other people's money rather than your own.
Let us give Harris the benefit of the doubt and assume that he is simply ignorant of the evidence that providing financial assistance to developing countries does more harm than good and that his heart is actually in the right place. But look at where he puts the emphasis: helping other people is not good because of the benefit it provides to others, but because of the personal satisfaction that it provides to the benefactor. The Good Life is not good because you are good, it is good because you feel good. You are free of pain and want, and on top of that you get to bestow a billion dollars of largesse on some poor unfortunate urchins without compromising your standard of living. That sounds good to me because I am a member of Harris's demographic. But I wonder how it sounds to the urchin.
(If you still doubt this point, let me add just one sentence to Harris's Bad Life: "Because of your suffering, the attention of the world's media has been drawn to the plight of your people, and years after you are dead millions will be living better lives because of your sacrifices." And another to the Good Life: "Unfortunately, though you are blissfully unaware of it, the money you have given out to third world countries has ended up in the pockets of corrupt dictators and the net result is that you have made the lives of millions of people worse, not better." Now which life is the Good Life and which is the Bad Life?)
Again, my point here is not to argue that Harris's Bad Life is superior to his Good Life, only to plant a seed of doubt that the superiority of every aspect of Harris's Good Life is beyond question. Unfortunately, even this small seed of doubt undermines Harris's entire agenda. The problem with applying science to morality is that it requires you to choose a quality metric from a complex space with multiple incommensurate dimensions. Even as simple a premise as, say, all else being equal it is good to minimize physical pain is open to rational doubt: it may well be that a certain amount of physical pain is necessary to psychological well-being (as measured according to some other quality metric). Maybe people who never experience any physical pain end up being so risk-averse that they become dysfunctional cowards. I really enjoy my affluent lifestyle, but I really wonder if I'm going to be up to the challenges that are going to come our way when, say, the planet's reserves of crude oil start to run out. (Or, what ought to be even more frightening, phosphorus.)
The fundamental problem is that "the interests of conscious beings" is not well defined. What exactly are those interests? To exist? To exist free of pain? To exist at some balance of pain and comfort that maximizes some other ineffable quality like "self-fulfillment" (whatever that might mean)?
The ultimate irony is that the reason that the interests of consciousness is not a coherent basis for morality (or anything else for that matter) is precisely because consciousness was created by evolution and not by God. Consciousness exists not because it is the cosmic destiny of the universe, but rather because, like all other complex things, it has survival value -- but not for itself. Consciousness is not an end, it is a means. Consciousness exists because it provides a powerful motivator for an entity afflicted by it to keep itself -- and hence its genes -- alive. Wealth and physical comfort feel like wins because up to a point they increase reproductive fitness. But as soon as it gets to the point where consciousness starts to value things like "self-fulfillment" over having children, trouble begins. The interests of that sort of consciousness are not longer aligned with those of its creator.
This is why Harris's program is almost certainly doomed to fail. Advancing the interests of consciousness will not lead to a planet full of humans singing kumbaya in blissful conscious harmony because that's not what consciousness is for. Consciousness exists to make us care about making sure our children stay alive long enough to have children of their own. Our children. Not someone else's. Of course, the situation is complicated by the fact that the boundaries between "ours" and "theirs" are fluid and can change opportunistically (because that kind of flexibility also has survival value). But there is nothing in the laws of physics that says those lines should be drawn around a single species, or even a single mental attribute like consciousness.
I wish things were different. I really do. I would like nothing more than to be able to preach the Gospel of Sam and so help to bring peace and harmony to the world. But Sam Harris of all people should be able to sympathize with someone like me who has a limited ability to suspend disbelief, so I trust he will forgive me.
Is the Square reader a security hole?
Verifone tooka swipe at Square today, saying that the Square credit card reader, which plugs into an iPhone headset port and lets anyone accept credit card payments, is a security hole. Are they right?
Yes and no. Yes, it is possible to use the Square reader to steal credit card information. But no, the Square reader does not make the existing credit card security situation appreciably worse than it already is.
Credit cards are basically 1950's technology, and their security model is fundamentally broken for on-line transactions. Back in the 1950's when credit cards were invented, the security model was that you had physically present the card to the merchant, who created a physical imprint of the card using a mechanical device. The consumer then signed the imprint. This made the security model essentially the same as that for checks: you had a physical token (the check or the card imprint) and a signature. Perpetrating credit card fraud was about as hard as perpetrating check fraud. You had to produce a physical artifact (a fake check or a fake credit card) and forge a signature. That was a high enough bar that fraud was rare by today's standards.
The descent from that halcyon days of the 1950's to today's chaos happened very gradually. Although finding documentation for this is probably very hard, the first step was almost certainly the result of merchants dealing with mechanical failures in the card imprint machines by writing down the credit card number on the sales slip by hand. The one day a merchant gets the bright idea that because they can write the number down by hand, they can accept orders over the phone. In the 1960's, magnetic stripes were added to cards, which allowed the entire end-to-end process of processing a credit card transaction to be computerized. This was a big win for efficiency, but in the process it completely eliminated the two features of credit cards that provided security: the physical imprint and the signature. The result, predictably, was a dramatic increase in fraud.
The fundamental problem with credit cards for in-line transactions is that, by definition, on-line transaction can involve only the exchange of information, not any kind of physical token. But the information that you have to give to a merchant in order to conduct one transaction is the same information that is needed to conduct an arbitrary number of transactions.
The credit card industry has responded to this situation with breathtaking naivete. A number of "security" measures have been added over the years, but they all amount to minor variations on one of two themes: 1) require additional information to conduct a transaction (expiration date, billing address, CVV code, and use computers running sophisticated pattern recognition algorithms to try to detect fraudulent activity. Neither of these measures is even remotely adequate for the task. As long as the information to process a transaction is the same for every transaction it doesn't matter how much of it there is, a fraudster can easily acquire this information (whatever it is) simply by posing as a legitimate merchant, which is trivial to do on the web. And heuristic fraud detection helps, but it will always have both false positives and false negatives. The result is a horrifically inefficient and fraud-prone system. The Square reader does make it slightly easier to perpetrate credit card fraud: now a fraudster can scan the card instead of, say, taking a photo of the front and back. But letting a fraudster copy a card in two seconds instead of six is unlikely to have even a detectable impact on current fraud levels.
The credit card companies could easily solve this problem by deploying smart cards with embedded processors that use cryptographic techniques to produce tokens that are unique to a particular transaction. This would all but eliminate credit card fraud overnight. Why don't they do it? That's a good question. The honest answer is that I don't know, but I strongly suspect that it's because the card companies are not the ones feeling the pain. The cost of fraud is substantial, but it's just fobbed off onto the merchants in the form of ridiculously high transaction fees, chargebacks, and rules that prevent the merchants from passing these costs on to the customers. The merchants are a captive audience because consumers, understandably, insist on paying with cards, blissfully ignorant of the fact that billions of dollars are being silently funneled out of their pockets and into the coffers of fraudsters and banks.
Normally, a situation like this would be ripe for a startup to come in with a better, more efficient disruptive solution. But the problem is that there is a huge chicken-and-egg problem: merchants won't want to use a new payment system unless consumers are using it, and consumers won't want to use a new payment until merchants are using it. So at the moment, unless the banks decide to do the Right Thing (don't hold your breath), we're stuck in this local minimum.
Yes and no. Yes, it is possible to use the Square reader to steal credit card information. But no, the Square reader does not make the existing credit card security situation appreciably worse than it already is.
Credit cards are basically 1950's technology, and their security model is fundamentally broken for on-line transactions. Back in the 1950's when credit cards were invented, the security model was that you had physically present the card to the merchant, who created a physical imprint of the card using a mechanical device. The consumer then signed the imprint. This made the security model essentially the same as that for checks: you had a physical token (the check or the card imprint) and a signature. Perpetrating credit card fraud was about as hard as perpetrating check fraud. You had to produce a physical artifact (a fake check or a fake credit card) and forge a signature. That was a high enough bar that fraud was rare by today's standards.
The descent from that halcyon days of the 1950's to today's chaos happened very gradually. Although finding documentation for this is probably very hard, the first step was almost certainly the result of merchants dealing with mechanical failures in the card imprint machines by writing down the credit card number on the sales slip by hand. The one day a merchant gets the bright idea that because they can write the number down by hand, they can accept orders over the phone. In the 1960's, magnetic stripes were added to cards, which allowed the entire end-to-end process of processing a credit card transaction to be computerized. This was a big win for efficiency, but in the process it completely eliminated the two features of credit cards that provided security: the physical imprint and the signature. The result, predictably, was a dramatic increase in fraud.
The fundamental problem with credit cards for in-line transactions is that, by definition, on-line transaction can involve only the exchange of information, not any kind of physical token. But the information that you have to give to a merchant in order to conduct one transaction is the same information that is needed to conduct an arbitrary number of transactions.
The credit card industry has responded to this situation with breathtaking naivete. A number of "security" measures have been added over the years, but they all amount to minor variations on one of two themes: 1) require additional information to conduct a transaction (expiration date, billing address, CVV code, and use computers running sophisticated pattern recognition algorithms to try to detect fraudulent activity. Neither of these measures is even remotely adequate for the task. As long as the information to process a transaction is the same for every transaction it doesn't matter how much of it there is, a fraudster can easily acquire this information (whatever it is) simply by posing as a legitimate merchant, which is trivial to do on the web. And heuristic fraud detection helps, but it will always have both false positives and false negatives. The result is a horrifically inefficient and fraud-prone system. The Square reader does make it slightly easier to perpetrate credit card fraud: now a fraudster can scan the card instead of, say, taking a photo of the front and back. But letting a fraudster copy a card in two seconds instead of six is unlikely to have even a detectable impact on current fraud levels.
The credit card companies could easily solve this problem by deploying smart cards with embedded processors that use cryptographic techniques to produce tokens that are unique to a particular transaction. This would all but eliminate credit card fraud overnight. Why don't they do it? That's a good question. The honest answer is that I don't know, but I strongly suspect that it's because the card companies are not the ones feeling the pain. The cost of fraud is substantial, but it's just fobbed off onto the merchants in the form of ridiculously high transaction fees, chargebacks, and rules that prevent the merchants from passing these costs on to the customers. The merchants are a captive audience because consumers, understandably, insist on paying with cards, blissfully ignorant of the fact that billions of dollars are being silently funneled out of their pockets and into the coffers of fraudsters and banks.
Normally, a situation like this would be ripe for a startup to come in with a better, more efficient disruptive solution. But the problem is that there is a huge chicken-and-egg problem: merchants won't want to use a new payment system unless consumers are using it, and consumers won't want to use a new payment until merchants are using it. So at the moment, unless the banks decide to do the Right Thing (don't hold your breath), we're stuck in this local minimum.
Sunday, March 06, 2011
Did NASA discover bacteria in meteorites (again)?
Tuesday, March 01, 2011
Pardon me while I pick my jaw up off the floor
The Supreme Court just ruled that corporations do not have a right to privacy. And it was unanimous! My worldview lies in shambles. I would have given you long odds that Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, and Alito would rule in favor of corporations at every possible turn. Maybe there is some hope for the future yet.
Monday, February 28, 2011
The obfuscater of last resort
I never thought I'd find myself agreeing with Antonin Scalia, but I have to join him in decrying the Supreme Court's ruling in Michigan v. Bryant. The Constitution is very clear that "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused [has] the right ... to be confronted with the witnesses against him." Period, end of story, no exceptions. But the Court has ruled that "because the primary purpose of the interrogation was to enable police to deal with an ongoing emergency, the statements resulting from that interrogation were not testimonial and could be admitted without violating the Confrontation Clause."
Scalia in his dissent writes that the decision "distorts" the Constitution and "leaves it in shambles... Instead of clarifying the law, the court makes itself the obfuscator of last resort." Which, of course, it does. But no more than the proposition that corporations are entitled to Constitutional protections but gays and women aren't. Perhaps Justice Scalia needs to be reminded that as ye sow, so shall ye reap.
Scalia in his dissent writes that the decision "distorts" the Constitution and "leaves it in shambles... Instead of clarifying the law, the court makes itself the obfuscator of last resort." Which, of course, it does. But no more than the proposition that corporations are entitled to Constitutional protections but gays and women aren't. Perhaps Justice Scalia needs to be reminded that as ye sow, so shall ye reap.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Another domino falls
This is a big one. President Obama has ordered the justice department to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act. Wow.
Now if we can just get taxes raised on multimillionaires I can retire from politics.
Now if we can just get taxes raised on multimillionaires I can retire from politics.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
How the hell does something like this happen?
Doctors at USC University Hospital accidentally transplanted a kidney into the wrong patient.
Accidentally?!?
Accidentally?!?
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?
Matt Taibbi plumbs the depths of Wall Street and Washington corruption. Long, but as usual worth reading all the way through. The U.S. is not quite yet a banana republic but it's getting too close for my comfort. What has the world come to when China is the leader in innovation, Russia wins the space race by default, and Egypt sets the standard for government of the people, by the people and for the people?
Republicans are hypocrites
Yeah, I know, tell you something you didn't already know. But this is pretty brazen even by Republican standards: the Democrats introduced an amendment to the Patriot Act that would require government officials to follow the Constitution. All but two Republicans voted against it.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Glen Beck is a complete lunatic
This video is proof. In it, Beck spins this bizarre conspiracy theory about how labor unions, communists and radical Islamists are plotting to bring about "fundamental change" in the United States under the rubric of "One Nation." He specifically cites onenation.org as the cyberspace HQ for this nefarious plot.
Trick is, onenation.org is a right-wing web site advocating English-only education. One has to wonder if Beck (or his producers) even bothered to look at the site before deciding to point to them as the bogeyman for the twenty-first century.
No wonder even Bill O'Reilly looked skeptical.
Trick is, onenation.org is a right-wing web site advocating English-only education. One has to wonder if Beck (or his producers) even bothered to look at the site before deciding to point to them as the bogeyman for the twenty-first century.
No wonder even Bill O'Reilly looked skeptical.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
If you think sexism is dead...
Think again.
Watching C-SPAN is usually about as exciting as watching the proverbial paint dry but I found this hour-long argument about parliamentary procedure to be oddly captivating. In it Congressman Anthony Weiner of New York presses a point of order that the Republicans failed to follow their own rule requiring every new piece of legislation to cite the specific section of the Constitution that gives Congress the authority to enact the proposed law. It's fun watching the Republicans squirm while Weiner keeps asking them which section of the Constitution gives them the power to outlaw abortion and they are, of course, unable to provide an answer.
But what is most striking is the badinage between all the good old boys while Jan Schakowsky of Illinois tries for almost thirty minutes to be recognized to speak while the chairman pointedly ignores her. If you're an American it's really worth taking an hour out of your life to watch the whole thing. This is your government at work.
Good night. And good luck.
Watching C-SPAN is usually about as exciting as watching the proverbial paint dry but I found this hour-long argument about parliamentary procedure to be oddly captivating. In it Congressman Anthony Weiner of New York presses a point of order that the Republicans failed to follow their own rule requiring every new piece of legislation to cite the specific section of the Constitution that gives Congress the authority to enact the proposed law. It's fun watching the Republicans squirm while Weiner keeps asking them which section of the Constitution gives them the power to outlaw abortion and they are, of course, unable to provide an answer.
But what is most striking is the badinage between all the good old boys while Jan Schakowsky of Illinois tries for almost thirty minutes to be recognized to speak while the chairman pointedly ignores her. If you're an American it's really worth taking an hour out of your life to watch the whole thing. This is your government at work.
Good night. And good luck.
The hardest part of getting what you want -- part 3
When I was a kid I went through a new-agey period where I "realized" that the boundaries between "me" and "the rest of the universe" were not as clearly delineated as I had thought, and I spent a few months feeling as one with the Universe. But that is, of course, wrong, Just because the boundaries aren't crisp doesn't mean they aren't there. It is in fact one of the hallmarks of life is to draw the line between itself and its environment. The invention of the cell wall arguably marked the beginning of life as we know it. Separating itself from its environment is essential to -- perhaps even the essence of -- life. You cannot be alive without distinguishing (even if not explicitly) between "myself" and "the other."
We humans have multiple layers of boundaries. We are eukaryotes. We draw boundaries even within the confines of our own cells, which glom together to make higher-order boundaries between organs, which glom together to make individual humans.
Because our human consciousness resides as an (apparently) unified whole within a body that is also a physically unified whole with more or less clearly defined boundaries it is tempting to think that the hierarchy ends with those bodies. But this is not necessarily the case. The idea that physically distinct entities ought to be considered logically distinct individual life forms is a prejudice. Ants and honeybees, for example, glom together to form colonies which have more of a claim to the title of "individual living entity" than do individual ants or honeybees. Most individual ants and bees are sterile and cannot reproduce when separated from the colony or hive, just as most of the organs in our bodies exist under similar constraints. So it is a not unreasonable point of view to look at an ant colony as a living individual whose component parts just happen not to be rigidly attached to each other.
Most "higher" life forms cannot reproduce as single individuals. It takes at least two to tango, as it were. And in the case of humans, it takes, as they say, a village. It is an extremely rare human who can survive for more than a few days without the support structure of at least some kind of society. This is why we are social creatures and being alone for too long drives us mad.
This is another thing that the rationalists get wrong. Discussion of rational behavior is invariably predicated on the assumption that the quality metric is bound to an individual human. We speak of rational people but never of rational groups whose group interests may or may not coincide with the interests of the individuals making up those groups. Indeed, self-proclaimed rationalists seem to actively resist even considering such quality metrics, and take it as axiomatic that, for example, having individual humans whose minds believe in objective truth is a good thing. There is no rational justification for this, which makes it all the more ironic.
So you get Lisp programmers who spend all their time honing the arguments for why Lisp is the best programming language, and C programmers who ignore those arguments, write a bunch of ugly code, and take over the world. You get evolutionists who spend all their time honing the arguments for why evolution is true, and creationists who ignore those arguments, tell people that they are special because they are created in the image of God, and take over the world, not because they were correct but simply because the "you are special" meme reproduces better in the mind of a social creature than the "you are alone in a hostile universe" meme does.
We humans have multiple layers of boundaries. We are eukaryotes. We draw boundaries even within the confines of our own cells, which glom together to make higher-order boundaries between organs, which glom together to make individual humans.
Because our human consciousness resides as an (apparently) unified whole within a body that is also a physically unified whole with more or less clearly defined boundaries it is tempting to think that the hierarchy ends with those bodies. But this is not necessarily the case. The idea that physically distinct entities ought to be considered logically distinct individual life forms is a prejudice. Ants and honeybees, for example, glom together to form colonies which have more of a claim to the title of "individual living entity" than do individual ants or honeybees. Most individual ants and bees are sterile and cannot reproduce when separated from the colony or hive, just as most of the organs in our bodies exist under similar constraints. So it is a not unreasonable point of view to look at an ant colony as a living individual whose component parts just happen not to be rigidly attached to each other.
Most "higher" life forms cannot reproduce as single individuals. It takes at least two to tango, as it were. And in the case of humans, it takes, as they say, a village. It is an extremely rare human who can survive for more than a few days without the support structure of at least some kind of society. This is why we are social creatures and being alone for too long drives us mad.
This is another thing that the rationalists get wrong. Discussion of rational behavior is invariably predicated on the assumption that the quality metric is bound to an individual human. We speak of rational people but never of rational groups whose group interests may or may not coincide with the interests of the individuals making up those groups. Indeed, self-proclaimed rationalists seem to actively resist even considering such quality metrics, and take it as axiomatic that, for example, having individual humans whose minds believe in objective truth is a good thing. There is no rational justification for this, which makes it all the more ironic.
So you get Lisp programmers who spend all their time honing the arguments for why Lisp is the best programming language, and C programmers who ignore those arguments, write a bunch of ugly code, and take over the world. You get evolutionists who spend all their time honing the arguments for why evolution is true, and creationists who ignore those arguments, tell people that they are special because they are created in the image of God, and take over the world, not because they were correct but simply because the "you are special" meme reproduces better in the mind of a social creature than the "you are alone in a hostile universe" meme does.
Kudos to Egypt
I have to say that I am amazed at the events in Egypt over the last 48 hours. Right now it really does appear as if that country is on the road to the successful conclusion of a (mostly) peaceful democratic revolution. Two weeks ago I would not have thought that possible. I knew there were reasonable Muslims out there, I just didn't think there were so many of them in Egypt of all places. It remains to be seen if the center can hold, but right now it's looking a lot more promising than I would have predicted two days ago.
I think a lot of the credit has to go to the army. I find it hard to imagine that it never crossed Mubarak's mind to use Tiananmen Square as a model for how to resolve the situation in Tahrir square. Someone high up in the army must have, either implicitly or explicitly, let Mubarak know that was not going to happen on his watch. I really want to know who that was.
I think a lot of the credit has to go to the army. I find it hard to imagine that it never crossed Mubarak's mind to use Tiananmen Square as a model for how to resolve the situation in Tahrir square. Someone high up in the army must have, either implicitly or explicitly, let Mubarak know that was not going to happen on his watch. I really want to know who that was.
Friday, February 11, 2011
Maybe it's just a plain ol' conspiracy after all
Glen Greenwald on the BofA campaign against Wikileaks:
Worth reading the whole thing.
The U.S. Government's obsession with destroying WikiLeaks has been well-documented. And because the U.S. Government is free to break the law without any constraints, oversight or accountability, so, too, are its "private partners" able to act lawlessly. That was the lesson of the Congressional vesting of full retroactive immunity on lawbreaking telecoms, of the refusal to prosecute any of the important Wall Street criminals who caused the 2008 financial crisis, and of the instinctive efforts of the political class to protect defrauding mortgage banks.
The exemption from the rule of law has been fully transferred from the highest level political elites to their counterparts in the private sector. "Law" is something used to restrain ordinary Americans and especially those who oppose this consortium of government and corporate power, but it manifestly does not apply to restrain these elites.
...
In this world, law does not exist as a constraint [on large corporations]. It's impossible to imagine the DOJ ever, ever prosecuting a huge entity like Bank of America for doing something like waging war against WikiLeaks and its supporters. These massive corporations and the firms that serve them have no fear of law or government because they control each. That's why they so freely plot to target those who oppose them in any way. They not only have massive resources to devote to such attacks, but the ability to act without limits."
Worth reading the whole thing.
Tuesday, February 08, 2011
The hardest part of getting what you want... part 2
I realized from Don's comments on yesterday's post that I gave a mistaken impression. That post was intended to be about politics, not my personal quest for meaning in life. (I am not quite so narcissistic as to think that that is worth blogging about.) I was just couching it in first-person terms to be illustrative. The point I was trying to make was that rationality is in some sense self-undermining. It leads you inexorably to the conclusion that our fundamental nature as humans is a substrate for competing replicators (and even that is just an approximation to the underlying metaphysical truth). This is not a statement about purpose, it's a statement about objective reality, or at least some reasonably accurate approximation of it. And the point I was trying to make was simply that some people can't handle the truth and so they turn to God. I hope I don't have to describe how this has political ramifications.
There is an additional aspect of the underlying objective truth that I hinted at yesterday: "It is not possible to rule out the possibility that there are other replicators resident in ourselves whose nature is not quite so apparent." This alludes to what I dubbed (to my everlasting regret) the "great conspiracy" (a name which turns out, incidentally, to be already taken), the possibility that there are "mega-memes" or "meme-complexes" that are coherent replicating wholes that are distributed across multiple brains. This could account for the fact that, for example, no one seems to be in charge of the protests in Tunisia and Egypt. One might be tempted to argue that this is not evidence for a "mega-meme" but merely the large-scale replication of an ordinary meme of the sort that lives in one brain at a time. The problem with this theory is that it is not readily apparent what that meme might be. The obvious candidate, the freedom-and-democracy meme, is also obviously wrong. When (no longer "if") Hosni Mubarak falls the most likely replacement is the Muslim Brotherhood, and the most likely result of that is Sharia law. Egypt is not trading repression for freedom, it is trading secular repression for religious repression [UPDATE: it seems I may be wrong about this -- see the comments] despite the fact that not a single individual involved in the protests would be willing to concede that.
You can see the same disconnect between individual rhetoric and underlying collective reality in American politics as well. Republicans talk about being fiscally responsible and getting government out of people's lives while at the same time running up record deficits, and going to some rather extraordinary lengths to invade people's privacy when it comes to things like drugs, abortion, and "national security." Democrats talk about ending Republican abuses but then continue nearly every one of those abusive policies. No one on either side of the ideological divide seems to notice the gaping disconnect between rhetoric and reality.
There are at least three plausible explanations of all this. One is that the vast majority of people are simply too stupid to notice that what they are being told is not what is actually going on. The main problem with this theory is that there are an awful lot of apparently smart people falling for a wide variety of flim-flam, both political and not. Say what you will about Karl Rove, he is not stupid.
The second possibility is that there is an actual conspiracy, a shadowy cabal of powerful individuals who are consciously and deliberately manipulating the world's politics for their own benefit. The problem with that theory is: who are these people? I don't see any plausible candidates for the role of puppet master, particularly in the middle east. In the U.S. I can see an argument to be made that there is a sociopolitical elite that essentially cultivates the general population like a herd of domestic animals to provide them with whatever their avarice desires, but who is pulling the strings in Cairo and Tunisia? The elephant in the living room of the traditional conspiracy theorists is Islam: who benefits from its rise? In the case of Christianity you can always point to the Church, but Islam has no Church, no cache of wealth, no central locus of power. If Islam is a conspiracy, who is conspiring, and to what end? (Yes, I suppose one could point to the House of Saud, but surely the Saudis have nothing to gain by fomenting discontent in Egypt, so say nothing of Yemen.)
The third, and to my mind most plausible, explanation of all this is that individual humans are not in fact the principal actors on the world stage. The political and macroeconomic forces at play in the modern world do not seem to be working for the benefit of the vast majority of individual humans in the world, but they are clearly benefiting, in Darwinian terms, certain meme complexes, with Islam being the poster child, and various forms of corporatism and nationalism running close behind.
It may be that in the deep dark recesses of the world's mosques and membership clubs and private jets is a small collection of imams, politicians and corporate leaders who are living deliriously happy lives at the expense of the rest of us. But I really doubt it. I really believe that very nearly every individual human struggles to figure out their role in the scheme of things, and what we see is the predictable, understandable, and cosmically (or maybe that should be comically?) tragic result.
There is an additional aspect of the underlying objective truth that I hinted at yesterday: "It is not possible to rule out the possibility that there are other replicators resident in ourselves whose nature is not quite so apparent." This alludes to what I dubbed (to my everlasting regret) the "great conspiracy" (a name which turns out, incidentally, to be already taken), the possibility that there are "mega-memes" or "meme-complexes" that are coherent replicating wholes that are distributed across multiple brains. This could account for the fact that, for example, no one seems to be in charge of the protests in Tunisia and Egypt. One might be tempted to argue that this is not evidence for a "mega-meme" but merely the large-scale replication of an ordinary meme of the sort that lives in one brain at a time. The problem with this theory is that it is not readily apparent what that meme might be. The obvious candidate, the freedom-and-democracy meme, is also obviously wrong. When (no longer "if") Hosni Mubarak falls the most likely replacement is the Muslim Brotherhood, and the most likely result of that is Sharia law. Egypt is not trading repression for freedom, it is trading secular repression for religious repression [UPDATE: it seems I may be wrong about this -- see the comments] despite the fact that not a single individual involved in the protests would be willing to concede that.
You can see the same disconnect between individual rhetoric and underlying collective reality in American politics as well. Republicans talk about being fiscally responsible and getting government out of people's lives while at the same time running up record deficits, and going to some rather extraordinary lengths to invade people's privacy when it comes to things like drugs, abortion, and "national security." Democrats talk about ending Republican abuses but then continue nearly every one of those abusive policies. No one on either side of the ideological divide seems to notice the gaping disconnect between rhetoric and reality.
There are at least three plausible explanations of all this. One is that the vast majority of people are simply too stupid to notice that what they are being told is not what is actually going on. The main problem with this theory is that there are an awful lot of apparently smart people falling for a wide variety of flim-flam, both political and not. Say what you will about Karl Rove, he is not stupid.
The second possibility is that there is an actual conspiracy, a shadowy cabal of powerful individuals who are consciously and deliberately manipulating the world's politics for their own benefit. The problem with that theory is: who are these people? I don't see any plausible candidates for the role of puppet master, particularly in the middle east. In the U.S. I can see an argument to be made that there is a sociopolitical elite that essentially cultivates the general population like a herd of domestic animals to provide them with whatever their avarice desires, but who is pulling the strings in Cairo and Tunisia? The elephant in the living room of the traditional conspiracy theorists is Islam: who benefits from its rise? In the case of Christianity you can always point to the Church, but Islam has no Church, no cache of wealth, no central locus of power. If Islam is a conspiracy, who is conspiring, and to what end? (Yes, I suppose one could point to the House of Saud, but surely the Saudis have nothing to gain by fomenting discontent in Egypt, so say nothing of Yemen.)
The third, and to my mind most plausible, explanation of all this is that individual humans are not in fact the principal actors on the world stage. The political and macroeconomic forces at play in the modern world do not seem to be working for the benefit of the vast majority of individual humans in the world, but they are clearly benefiting, in Darwinian terms, certain meme complexes, with Islam being the poster child, and various forms of corporatism and nationalism running close behind.
It may be that in the deep dark recesses of the world's mosques and membership clubs and private jets is a small collection of imams, politicians and corporate leaders who are living deliriously happy lives at the expense of the rest of us. But I really doubt it. I really believe that very nearly every individual human struggles to figure out their role in the scheme of things, and what we see is the predictable, understandable, and cosmically (or maybe that should be comically?) tragic result.
Monday, February 07, 2011
The hardest part of getting what you want...
Over the weekend I got a very flattering but somewhat bizarre request in the comments of a post I wrote nearly a year ago. Someone who goes by the handle lordbap asked me to write a book about my "take on politics, and hints toward conspiracy theories." It's very gratifying to know that someone out there cares what I think about politics, but writing a book is a non-trivial undertaking, and writing a book about a topic about which I don't actually know very much would probably suck up the better part of a year. So if I were going to take seriously lordbap's request to write about conspiracy theories I would first cast a very jaundiced eye towards the request itself and start to wonder about what sinister ulterior motives might be lurking behind it.
Which brings me to the topic of this post.
In the ongoing battle between the forces of rationalism and faith my natural sympathies tend towards the rational. From my privileged vantage point near the top of the socioeconomic ladder (at least when measured on a logarithmic scale) I can see the positive effects that rationality has on the material well-being of me and my fellow humans. It is natural then to wonder why irrationality (a.k.a. faith) seems to be so resilient. One theory is that faith is an effective palliative against existential angst and other psychological (and even physical) maladies, and it derives its resilience from the same source as other drugs: it's addictive. I still believe that, but in the nearly two years since I first advanced that theory I have come to believe that there is something much deeper going on.
In terms of Darwinian evolution, humans are the caretakers of at least three different kinds of replicators: genes, memes, and, in the last decade or so, computer viruses. (I say "at least" because it is not possible to rule out the possibility that there are other replicators resident in ourselves whose nature is not quite so apparent.) Even leaving aside computer viruses for the moment it is apparent that we serve the reproductive interests of both ideas and DNA. Sometimes those two replicators are symbiotic (like when memes invent antibiotics and sanitation), but not always. Promiscuous sex, for example, can be a very effective reproductive strategy for genes, but having to raise a few dozen kids doesn't leave much time for scholarly pursuits. Memes have since responded by inventing contraception and pornography, which for the moment seems to have given them the upper hand in the eternal reproductive arms race, at least in certain circles.
If one opts to travel the rational road, that is, if not the final destination, at least a major truck stop along the way.
Having reached this place, one can for a while bask in the warm glow of understanding, revel in the power of being able to manipulate one's environment, and enjoy the hedonistic pleasures that become available in an industrialized world of material plenty. But after a while one comes face to face with a very thorny problem: having freed ones self from the constraints that guided the existence of one's ancestors one must now make a weighty decision: now what do I do? Hang out on the beach? That gets old surprisingly quickly (at least it did for me). Write? Write what? Novels? Screenplays? Essays? Code? A book? That seems like it could be interesting, but is that really what I want, or is that just the part of my brain that has been parasitized by my memes manipulating me into frittering away the rest of my life on serving their interests? (I actually hate writing because I hate reading the crap that most of what I write turns out to be. But I love having written.)
Then too, I love learning new things, which seems like an honorable pursuit (but again maybe that's just my memes talking?) Maybe I should take a class? (I sometimes toy with the idea of going to law school.) Oh, but it's so much easier and faster to just look things up on the web. In fact, it's so much easier and faster that I can quench the desire to learn, at least for a while, by skimming a few wikipedia articles. Maybe it's too easy? Wikipedia seems like scholarly pornography -- you get the endorphin rush without having to go to the bother and risk of seducing an actual woman or doing some actual research work.
Write some code? Start a company? So much easier (and more fun) to just pot shots at the people who are actually doing it (but getting it all wrong of course) and justify it to myself as bestowing the benefits of my wisdom and experience on all those green aspiring entrepreneurs and angel investors out there. And how is that so different from what I'm doing right now? Well, the person I'm taking pot-shots at right now is me, and I'm doing it because someone asked me to instead of on my own initiative, but is this really what I want out of life? Am I really so unsure of my own self-worth that I need cultivate a pack of ass-kissing (lordbap's description, not mine) sycophants to make me feel whole? (Note to lordbap: you asked me not to edit. Careful what you wish for.)
Deep understanding and financial independence are not the panacea they may appear to be. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't trade my problems for anyone else's. But even nice problems to have can still be real problems.
The hardest part of getting what you want.... is figuring out what it is. And the more options you have the harder that becomes. Which is, I think, why beyond a certain point money really can't buy happiness.
When it comes to choosing a direction in life the rationalist is truly adrift. He has no god to turn to. He cannot blindly follow the dictums of society. He has nothing to rely on but himself, the data, and Bayes' theorem. It works for a while because there are clear immediate needs to attend to that both genes and memes can agree on: vanquishing disease, increasing crop yields. But, like I pointed out earlier, once basic needs are met the agendas diverge. And here the rationalist has no choice but to peer into the abyss, because this is a fundamentally irreconcilable conflict as decreed by none other than Darwin himself.
The reason religion is so resilient is not just that it helps deal with existential angst, it's because it provides a goal. Rationality can provide the tools for making decisions, but it cannot provide a quality metric, at least not for an individual. "What do you want out of life" is a question that only you can answer. The problem with rationality is that it eventually leads you to wonder who -- and what -- "you" are. Is it really "you" who wants to start that business? Write that book? Surf that wave? Fuck that woman (or man)? Vote for that candidate? Argue for that position? Or is it some gene or meme complex that has hijacked your brain for its own soulless purpose? (For that matter, do you really have "free will" to make decisions about what "you" want? Do you even exist, or are you just a butterfly dream or an artifact of quantum decoherence?
It's very easy to get wrapped around the axle over such questions. I think it's a rare human being who has fully grappled with them and not either decided to punt or gone insane. When you gaze into the abyss...
For the other seven billion of us it is very tempting to just hand that kind of heavy lifting over to God and let Him deal with it. And, on those occasions when God isn't available, the Republican Party is there ready to pick up the slack.
Well, lordbap, that's the result of five hours of unedited (except for typos and grammar) writing. Not the twenty you were asking for, but I'm afraid that's all I have in me right now.
Which brings me to the topic of this post.
In the ongoing battle between the forces of rationalism and faith my natural sympathies tend towards the rational. From my privileged vantage point near the top of the socioeconomic ladder (at least when measured on a logarithmic scale) I can see the positive effects that rationality has on the material well-being of me and my fellow humans. It is natural then to wonder why irrationality (a.k.a. faith) seems to be so resilient. One theory is that faith is an effective palliative against existential angst and other psychological (and even physical) maladies, and it derives its resilience from the same source as other drugs: it's addictive. I still believe that, but in the nearly two years since I first advanced that theory I have come to believe that there is something much deeper going on.
In terms of Darwinian evolution, humans are the caretakers of at least three different kinds of replicators: genes, memes, and, in the last decade or so, computer viruses. (I say "at least" because it is not possible to rule out the possibility that there are other replicators resident in ourselves whose nature is not quite so apparent.) Even leaving aside computer viruses for the moment it is apparent that we serve the reproductive interests of both ideas and DNA. Sometimes those two replicators are symbiotic (like when memes invent antibiotics and sanitation), but not always. Promiscuous sex, for example, can be a very effective reproductive strategy for genes, but having to raise a few dozen kids doesn't leave much time for scholarly pursuits. Memes have since responded by inventing contraception and pornography, which for the moment seems to have given them the upper hand in the eternal reproductive arms race, at least in certain circles.
If one opts to travel the rational road, that is, if not the final destination, at least a major truck stop along the way.
Having reached this place, one can for a while bask in the warm glow of understanding, revel in the power of being able to manipulate one's environment, and enjoy the hedonistic pleasures that become available in an industrialized world of material plenty. But after a while one comes face to face with a very thorny problem: having freed ones self from the constraints that guided the existence of one's ancestors one must now make a weighty decision: now what do I do? Hang out on the beach? That gets old surprisingly quickly (at least it did for me). Write? Write what? Novels? Screenplays? Essays? Code? A book? That seems like it could be interesting, but is that really what I want, or is that just the part of my brain that has been parasitized by my memes manipulating me into frittering away the rest of my life on serving their interests? (I actually hate writing because I hate reading the crap that most of what I write turns out to be. But I love having written.)
Then too, I love learning new things, which seems like an honorable pursuit (but again maybe that's just my memes talking?) Maybe I should take a class? (I sometimes toy with the idea of going to law school.) Oh, but it's so much easier and faster to just look things up on the web. In fact, it's so much easier and faster that I can quench the desire to learn, at least for a while, by skimming a few wikipedia articles. Maybe it's too easy? Wikipedia seems like scholarly pornography -- you get the endorphin rush without having to go to the bother and risk of seducing an actual woman or doing some actual research work.
Write some code? Start a company? So much easier (and more fun) to just pot shots at the people who are actually doing it (but getting it all wrong of course) and justify it to myself as bestowing the benefits of my wisdom and experience on all those green aspiring entrepreneurs and angel investors out there. And how is that so different from what I'm doing right now? Well, the person I'm taking pot-shots at right now is me, and I'm doing it because someone asked me to instead of on my own initiative, but is this really what I want out of life? Am I really so unsure of my own self-worth that I need cultivate a pack of ass-kissing (lordbap's description, not mine) sycophants to make me feel whole? (Note to lordbap: you asked me not to edit. Careful what you wish for.)
Deep understanding and financial independence are not the panacea they may appear to be. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't trade my problems for anyone else's. But even nice problems to have can still be real problems.
The hardest part of getting what you want.... is figuring out what it is. And the more options you have the harder that becomes. Which is, I think, why beyond a certain point money really can't buy happiness.
When it comes to choosing a direction in life the rationalist is truly adrift. He has no god to turn to. He cannot blindly follow the dictums of society. He has nothing to rely on but himself, the data, and Bayes' theorem. It works for a while because there are clear immediate needs to attend to that both genes and memes can agree on: vanquishing disease, increasing crop yields. But, like I pointed out earlier, once basic needs are met the agendas diverge. And here the rationalist has no choice but to peer into the abyss, because this is a fundamentally irreconcilable conflict as decreed by none other than Darwin himself.
The reason religion is so resilient is not just that it helps deal with existential angst, it's because it provides a goal. Rationality can provide the tools for making decisions, but it cannot provide a quality metric, at least not for an individual. "What do you want out of life" is a question that only you can answer. The problem with rationality is that it eventually leads you to wonder who -- and what -- "you" are. Is it really "you" who wants to start that business? Write that book? Surf that wave? Fuck that woman (or man)? Vote for that candidate? Argue for that position? Or is it some gene or meme complex that has hijacked your brain for its own soulless purpose? (For that matter, do you really have "free will" to make decisions about what "you" want? Do you even exist, or are you just a butterfly dream or an artifact of quantum decoherence?
It's very easy to get wrapped around the axle over such questions. I think it's a rare human being who has fully grappled with them and not either decided to punt or gone insane. When you gaze into the abyss...
For the other seven billion of us it is very tempting to just hand that kind of heavy lifting over to God and let Him deal with it. And, on those occasions when God isn't available, the Republican Party is there ready to pick up the slack.
Well, lordbap, that's the result of five hours of unedited (except for typos and grammar) writing. Not the twenty you were asking for, but I'm afraid that's all I have in me right now.
Perspective
If you shrank the sun down to the size of a ping pong ball, the earth would be the size of a very fine grain of sand about three yards away.
Jupiter would be the size of a small pea about 15 yards away.
Pluto would be just over 100 yards away, and it would be so small you'd need a microscope to see it.
At this scale, light travels about a foot a minute, and the nearest star is... 400 miles away.
It's a big universe. And it's mostly empty space.
Jupiter would be the size of a small pea about 15 yards away.
Pluto would be just over 100 yards away, and it would be so small you'd need a microscope to see it.
At this scale, light travels about a foot a minute, and the nearest star is... 400 miles away.
It's a big universe. And it's mostly empty space.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Obamacare is doomed
SCOTUS will have the final say of course, but this sure sounds like the death knell to me:
Now if I could just figure out how to use my gift of prophecy (or is it a curse?) to pick stocks.
"Because the individual mandate is unconstitutional and not severable the entire Act must be declared void."
Now if I could just figure out how to use my gift of prophecy (or is it a curse?) to pick stocks.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Geek corner: on blurring the distinction between code and data
A while back I wrote this as a throwaway comment in a discussion on comp.lang.lisp:
Someone sent me an email asking me to expand on that thought, and I promised I would. It took me a lot longer to render that expansion into words than I anticipated, so I thought I'd put it up here in case others might find it useful.
Writing programs typically goes something like this: First, a specification of what the program is supposed to do is written. Then that specification is rendered into code. The code is then (typically) compiled into some kind of an executable image. That image is then delivered to users who run the program and (again, typically) provide it with input, which we call "data".
This distinction between code and data is purely artificial. On a fundamental theoretical level there is no distinction between the two. All "code" can be viewed as "data" that is fed as input into an interpreter or a compiler, and all "data" can be viewed as a "code" for a specialized interpreter (or compiler) that comprises the application. From the computer's point of view it's all the same: bits go in, bits come out. Whether those bits are code or data is in the eye of the beholder.
We choose to make the (artificial) distinction between code and data because doing so has benefits. "Programs" can serve to bridge the often severe impedance mismatch between the mental states of typical users and the underlying reality of computational hardware. They can also restrict what a user can do in order to prevent him or her from getting the machine into undesirable states. And constraining what a program does allows optimizations that makes the resulting code run faster.
But making this distinction also has drawbacks. There is, obviously, a fundamental tradeoff between writing "programs" according to certain assumptions and constraints (and hence availing yourself of the benefits of those assumptions and constraints) and the freedom and flexibility to discharge those assumptions and constraints. This is the reason that code "maintenance" is considered an activity in its own right. Code doesn't require "maintenance" the way that mechanical systems do. Code doesn't degrade or wear out or require periodic lubrication. What happens instead is that the users of a program come to the realization that what the program does isn't quite what they wanted. There are bugs, or missing features, or parts that run too slowly or consume too much storage. So now you have to go back and change the code to conform to new assumptions and constraints. Often this is more work than the initial development.
The important point is not that these things happen, but that they happen because of an engineering decision, namely, the strong distinction between code and data, and the correspondingly strong distinction between programmer and user. There is nothing wrong with the decision to make this distinction. There are perfectly sound reasons to make this decision. But it is a decision. And because it is a decision, it can be changed. And it often is changed in small ways. For example, a spreadsheet blurs the distinction a little. Embedding a macro programming language like Visual Basic into, say, a word processor blurs the distinction more. Javascript probably blurs the distinction more than anything nowadays. Anyone with a web browser and a text editor has a Javascript development environment.
The line between code and data is blurrier now than it used to be, but it is still quite distinct nonetheless. There is still a strong division of labor between those who write web browsers and Javascript interpreters and those who write Javascript, and also between those who write Javascript and those who typically use web pages. There are still fairly clear distinctions between "scripting" languages, which tend to be easier to use but slow, and "real programming languages," which tend to be harder to use but faster, though this distinction too is beginning to blur as well. But the final merging of code and data, coder and user, compile-time and run-time, is still a ways off, and for a very good reason: it's really, really hard to do. That is what I meant by my original quip.
Whether or not the trend towards blurring the distinction will continue to the point where it disappears entirely is an open question. There are theoretical reasons to believe that a complete blurring might not be possible or even desirable. But the trend is inarguably in that direction.
One of the reasons I like to program in Lisp in general and Common Lisp in particular (and one of the reasons I think CL has had so much staying power) is that it is still the language that most effectively blurs the distinction between code and data, compile-time and run-time. (It doesn't blur the distinction between coder and user because of its abstruse syntax. Like I said, this is a really hard problem.) It's the only language in existence that allows you to change the lexical syntax while a program is running. On top of that, you can get native-code compilers for it. That is a stunning -- and massively under-appreciated -- accomplishment. Suddenly decide you want to use infix notation to write your code? You can do that, and you don't have to stop your already-running program in order to do it. That is mind-blowing. It's incredibly powerful. And, of course, it's dangerous, and if you don't know what you're doing you can get yourself into deep trouble if you're not careful. Solving that part of the puzzle is still an open problem.
IMHO (one of) the hallmark(s) of "real" programming is a general blurring of the distinction between "compile time" and "run time". Compilation is just one kind of optimization. Running that optimization as a batch job makes it easier to apply, but the real challenge is refining the optimization on a continual basis in response to new information, including changes to the operational spec.
Someone sent me an email asking me to expand on that thought, and I promised I would. It took me a lot longer to render that expansion into words than I anticipated, so I thought I'd put it up here in case others might find it useful.
Writing programs typically goes something like this: First, a specification of what the program is supposed to do is written. Then that specification is rendered into code. The code is then (typically) compiled into some kind of an executable image. That image is then delivered to users who run the program and (again, typically) provide it with input, which we call "data".
This distinction between code and data is purely artificial. On a fundamental theoretical level there is no distinction between the two. All "code" can be viewed as "data" that is fed as input into an interpreter or a compiler, and all "data" can be viewed as a "code" for a specialized interpreter (or compiler) that comprises the application. From the computer's point of view it's all the same: bits go in, bits come out. Whether those bits are code or data is in the eye of the beholder.
We choose to make the (artificial) distinction between code and data because doing so has benefits. "Programs" can serve to bridge the often severe impedance mismatch between the mental states of typical users and the underlying reality of computational hardware. They can also restrict what a user can do in order to prevent him or her from getting the machine into undesirable states. And constraining what a program does allows optimizations that makes the resulting code run faster.
But making this distinction also has drawbacks. There is, obviously, a fundamental tradeoff between writing "programs" according to certain assumptions and constraints (and hence availing yourself of the benefits of those assumptions and constraints) and the freedom and flexibility to discharge those assumptions and constraints. This is the reason that code "maintenance" is considered an activity in its own right. Code doesn't require "maintenance" the way that mechanical systems do. Code doesn't degrade or wear out or require periodic lubrication. What happens instead is that the users of a program come to the realization that what the program does isn't quite what they wanted. There are bugs, or missing features, or parts that run too slowly or consume too much storage. So now you have to go back and change the code to conform to new assumptions and constraints. Often this is more work than the initial development.
The important point is not that these things happen, but that they happen because of an engineering decision, namely, the strong distinction between code and data, and the correspondingly strong distinction between programmer and user. There is nothing wrong with the decision to make this distinction. There are perfectly sound reasons to make this decision. But it is a decision. And because it is a decision, it can be changed. And it often is changed in small ways. For example, a spreadsheet blurs the distinction a little. Embedding a macro programming language like Visual Basic into, say, a word processor blurs the distinction more. Javascript probably blurs the distinction more than anything nowadays. Anyone with a web browser and a text editor has a Javascript development environment.
The line between code and data is blurrier now than it used to be, but it is still quite distinct nonetheless. There is still a strong division of labor between those who write web browsers and Javascript interpreters and those who write Javascript, and also between those who write Javascript and those who typically use web pages. There are still fairly clear distinctions between "scripting" languages, which tend to be easier to use but slow, and "real programming languages," which tend to be harder to use but faster, though this distinction too is beginning to blur as well. But the final merging of code and data, coder and user, compile-time and run-time, is still a ways off, and for a very good reason: it's really, really hard to do. That is what I meant by my original quip.
Whether or not the trend towards blurring the distinction will continue to the point where it disappears entirely is an open question. There are theoretical reasons to believe that a complete blurring might not be possible or even desirable. But the trend is inarguably in that direction.
One of the reasons I like to program in Lisp in general and Common Lisp in particular (and one of the reasons I think CL has had so much staying power) is that it is still the language that most effectively blurs the distinction between code and data, compile-time and run-time. (It doesn't blur the distinction between coder and user because of its abstruse syntax. Like I said, this is a really hard problem.) It's the only language in existence that allows you to change the lexical syntax while a program is running. On top of that, you can get native-code compilers for it. That is a stunning -- and massively under-appreciated -- accomplishment. Suddenly decide you want to use infix notation to write your code? You can do that, and you don't have to stop your already-running program in order to do it. That is mind-blowing. It's incredibly powerful. And, of course, it's dangerous, and if you don't know what you're doing you can get yourself into deep trouble if you're not careful. Solving that part of the puzzle is still an open problem.
Friday, January 14, 2011
The quantum conspiracy
I gave a talk at Google the other day entitled, with tongue-in-cheek, The Quantum Conspiracy: What Popularizers of Quantum Mechanics Don't Want You to Know. It's basically a recap of this paper that I wrote ten years ago. Despite my efforts to enlighten the world, you will still read in the popular press nonsense like, "When an aspect of one [entangled] photon’s quantum state is measured, the other photon changes in response, even when the two photons are separated by large distance."
No, nothing changes when you "measure" an entangled photon. Watch the talk (or read the paper) to find out why. Physicists have known this for decades now. Why does the popular press have such a hard time getting it right?
No, nothing changes when you "measure" an entangled photon. Watch the talk (or read the paper) to find out why. Physicists have known this for decades now. Why does the popular press have such a hard time getting it right?
I've been doing it wrong
For nearly forty years I've been putting two spaces after a period. Turns out that's wrong. In my defense I will point out that when I started typing back in the day I was using a manual typewriter, where using two spaces is apparently not quite so wrong. Still, I have come to see the error of my ways and I will do my best to go forth and sin no more. Gonna be a hard habit to break though.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Two data points...
... to dispel the myth that there is anything at all unique about Islamic radicalism (as opposed to other forms of radicalism):
1. Terrorism in Europe has been steadily declining since 2007, and the overwhelming majority of terrorist attacks are carried out by non-Islamic groups.
2. The Westboro Baptist Church is planning a rally in honor of Jared Lee Loughner, the man who killed six people in Arizona, including a nine-year-old child.
Actually, that should be three data points, since Jared Lee Loughner is not a Muslim either.
1. Terrorism in Europe has been steadily declining since 2007, and the overwhelming majority of terrorist attacks are carried out by non-Islamic groups.
2. The Westboro Baptist Church is planning a rally in honor of Jared Lee Loughner, the man who killed six people in Arizona, including a nine-year-old child.
Actually, that should be three data points, since Jared Lee Loughner is not a Muslim either.
Saturday, January 08, 2011
Is the U.S. on the brink of fascism?
This article from 2009 (and republished last month) has turned out to be disturbingly prescient:
People are pointing out that Sarah Palin's website literally put crosshairs on Gabrielle Giffords and 19 other congress members.
This is getting pretty scary.
In the first stage, a rural movement emerges to effect some kind of nationalist renewal (what Roger Griffin calls "palingenesis" -- a phoenix-like rebirth from the ashes). They come together to restore a broken social order, always drawing on themes of unity, order, and purity. Reason is rejected in favor of passionate emotion. The way the organizing story is told varies from country to country; but it's always rooted in the promise of restoring lost national pride by resurrecting the culture's traditional myths and values, and purging society of the toxic influence of the outsiders and intellectuals who are blamed for their current misery.
...
In the second stage, fascist movements take root, turn into real political parties, and seize their seat at the table of power. Interestingly, in every case Paxton cites, the political base came from the rural, less-educated parts of the country; and almost all of them came to power very specifically by offering themselves as informal goon squads organized to intimidate farmworkers on behalf of the large landowners. The KKK disenfranchised black sharecroppers and set itself up as the enforcement wing of Jim Crow. The Italian Squadristi and the German Brownshirts made their bones breaking up farmers' strikes. And these days, GOP-sanctioned anti-immigrant groups make life hell for Hispanic agricultural workers in the US. As violence against random Hispanics (citizens and otherwise) increases, the right-wing goon squads are getting basic training that, if the pattern holds, they may eventually use to intimidate the rest of us.
...
America's conservative elites have openly thrown in with the country's legions of discontented far right thugs. They have explicitly deputized them and empowered them to act as their enforcement arm on America's streets, sanctioning the physical harassment and intimidation of workers, liberals, and public officials who won't do their political or economic bidding.
People are pointing out that Sarah Palin's website literally put crosshairs on Gabrielle Giffords and 19 other congress members.
This is getting pretty scary.
Friday, January 07, 2011
Religion is not the problem
[A response to Don Geddis]:
Don,
I certainly agree with you that Salman Taseer's murder and the resulting response is dismaying on many levels. It is also true that, as you say, "separating belief from truth" is a contributing factor to the madness. But I stand by my position that it is not religion per se that merits our concern. The population of the United States is overwhelmingly religious, and has been for all of its history. By way of rather stark contrast, Nazi Germany was, at least in its doctrine, purely secular. (Sadly, it still is.) Those examples alone are enough IMO to conclusively refute the proposition that "It's only a matter of luck if some of the faithful happen to wind up in a positive place for society rather than a negative one." There are horror stories aplenty -- and inspirational tales too of course -- on both sides of the divide.
The problem is not religion, the problem is fundamentalism, and secular fundamentalism is no better than religious fundamentalism. When doctrine trumps facts civilization loses, whether that doctrine is Allah or the Dear Leader.
Now, it is true that Islam does seem to lend itself more to fundamentalism than other belief systems, but it's far from clear whether fundamentalism is an inherent feature of Islam, or just something that happens to be brought to the fore by contemporary geopolitics. The protests of Taseer's murder from the Muslim world are certainly not as loud and numerous as one would hope, but neither are they non-existent. One must wonder, too, how many muslims condemn the murder in their hearts, and would like to condemn it openly but choose not to out of understandable fear for their safety and that of their loved ones. There is also a question of whether the press coverage of this event has been, to coin a phrase, fair and balanced. The most populous Muslim country in the world is Indonesia, and I can't find a single story about what Indonesians have to say about any of this.
My basic position is unchanged by the response to Salman Taseer's tragic death. Religion is a drug. Literally. Belief exerts physical influences on the body and brain by way of the placebo effect. Like any drug, it comes in forms of varying potency and effectiveness. You can get addicted. It can be abused. Myth is the stuff from which the drug is made. If recent history teaches us anything it is that you can't deal effectively with a drug addiction problem by getting up on a soap box and proclaiming that drugs are evil and people should just say no.
It's really important that we get this right because the problem is very real and very serious, and we're not going to solve it if we start with a false premise about what the problem actually is.
Don,
I certainly agree with you that Salman Taseer's murder and the resulting response is dismaying on many levels. It is also true that, as you say, "separating belief from truth" is a contributing factor to the madness. But I stand by my position that it is not religion per se that merits our concern. The population of the United States is overwhelmingly religious, and has been for all of its history. By way of rather stark contrast, Nazi Germany was, at least in its doctrine, purely secular. (Sadly, it still is.) Those examples alone are enough IMO to conclusively refute the proposition that "It's only a matter of luck if some of the faithful happen to wind up in a positive place for society rather than a negative one." There are horror stories aplenty -- and inspirational tales too of course -- on both sides of the divide.
The problem is not religion, the problem is fundamentalism, and secular fundamentalism is no better than religious fundamentalism. When doctrine trumps facts civilization loses, whether that doctrine is Allah or the Dear Leader.
Now, it is true that Islam does seem to lend itself more to fundamentalism than other belief systems, but it's far from clear whether fundamentalism is an inherent feature of Islam, or just something that happens to be brought to the fore by contemporary geopolitics. The protests of Taseer's murder from the Muslim world are certainly not as loud and numerous as one would hope, but neither are they non-existent. One must wonder, too, how many muslims condemn the murder in their hearts, and would like to condemn it openly but choose not to out of understandable fear for their safety and that of their loved ones. There is also a question of whether the press coverage of this event has been, to coin a phrase, fair and balanced. The most populous Muslim country in the world is Indonesia, and I can't find a single story about what Indonesians have to say about any of this.
My basic position is unchanged by the response to Salman Taseer's tragic death. Religion is a drug. Literally. Belief exerts physical influences on the body and brain by way of the placebo effect. Like any drug, it comes in forms of varying potency and effectiveness. You can get addicted. It can be abused. Myth is the stuff from which the drug is made. If recent history teaches us anything it is that you can't deal effectively with a drug addiction problem by getting up on a soap box and proclaiming that drugs are evil and people should just say no.
It's really important that we get this right because the problem is very real and very serious, and we're not going to solve it if we start with a false premise about what the problem actually is.
The Evil in Religion
[A guest post from Don Geddis]
The Atheist trinity (Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens) criticizes religion as a whole. Ron has attempted to break "religion" in to two distinct parts: fundamentalism, and mythology. Ron says (with the help of author Karen Armstrong) that fundamentalism may cause problems in the world, but that myth is a significant and valuable part of human culture. (He has even spent time promoting his own favorite myth, Loki.)
But it seems to me, that in evaluating this distinction, we must address the recent case of Governor Salman Taseer's assassination by his own bodyguard, in Pakistan.
No, not the evil within the assassin's warped brain. There are small numbers of broken people in every culture and every organization. You can't judge a group by its worst members.
No, the problem is the town itself, which has erupted in public support for the vigilante betrayer. And, note well what the Governor's "crime" was: a devout Muslim, he dared to openly discuss whether death sentences for blasphemy (as opposed to just severe punishment!) might be overly harsh, and perhaps applied in a discriminatory manner against the weakest members of society. For merely talking about this issue, the assassin decided to be judge and jury and executioner ... and the people celebrate his choice.
Perhaps it is just one strange warped town in Pakistan. Surely the millions and millions of moderate Muslims don't at all agree with this one wacko.
Alas, no. What do we hear from the Muslim community? Either outright support, or else ... silence. Where is the outrage from the Muslim community?
We're forced to conclude that it is not just radical fundamentalism that brings evil into society (as Ron and Armstrong wish us to believe). It appears that religion itself is quite capable of encouraging and rewarding horror and suffering.
Once you separate Belief from Truth (via the tricky mechanism of Faith), the sheep can be led pretty much anywhere. It's only a matter of luck if some of the faithful happen to wind up in a positive place for society rather than a negative one.
Yes, mythology satisfies some deep human needs. Yes, our myths provide us with a lot of good. But they cause a lot of evil too. And religion doesn't really offer a reliable way to separate the two.
The Atheist trinity (Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens) criticizes religion as a whole. Ron has attempted to break "religion" in to two distinct parts: fundamentalism, and mythology. Ron says (with the help of author Karen Armstrong) that fundamentalism may cause problems in the world, but that myth is a significant and valuable part of human culture. (He has even spent time promoting his own favorite myth, Loki.)
But it seems to me, that in evaluating this distinction, we must address the recent case of Governor Salman Taseer's assassination by his own bodyguard, in Pakistan.
No, not the evil within the assassin's warped brain. There are small numbers of broken people in every culture and every organization. You can't judge a group by its worst members.
No, the problem is the town itself, which has erupted in public support for the vigilante betrayer. And, note well what the Governor's "crime" was: a devout Muslim, he dared to openly discuss whether death sentences for blasphemy (as opposed to just severe punishment!) might be overly harsh, and perhaps applied in a discriminatory manner against the weakest members of society. For merely talking about this issue, the assassin decided to be judge and jury and executioner ... and the people celebrate his choice.
Perhaps it is just one strange warped town in Pakistan. Surely the millions and millions of moderate Muslims don't at all agree with this one wacko.
Alas, no. What do we hear from the Muslim community? Either outright support, or else ... silence. Where is the outrage from the Muslim community?
We're forced to conclude that it is not just radical fundamentalism that brings evil into society (as Ron and Armstrong wish us to believe). It appears that religion itself is quite capable of encouraging and rewarding horror and suffering.
Once you separate Belief from Truth (via the tricky mechanism of Faith), the sheep can be led pretty much anywhere. It's only a matter of luck if some of the faithful happen to wind up in a positive place for society rather than a negative one.
Yes, mythology satisfies some deep human needs. Yes, our myths provide us with a lot of good. But they cause a lot of evil too. And religion doesn't really offer a reliable way to separate the two.
Tuesday, January 04, 2011
The Cosmo and Me, Part 2
Because it appears that we may get dragged kicking and screaming into filing a lawsuit against the Cosmopolitan Resort and Casino I thought I should take a look at all the documents that have been piling up in my inbox over the past two years. Having been reluctantly dragged into a lawsuit once before I would rather have my left testicle gnawed off by rabid piranhas than participate in another one. But since it appears that push may be coming to shove I decided I should take a closer look at what is going on. What I am finding is rather disturbing.
Here are the facts:
1. The original delivery date for the condos was supposed to be on or before January 1, 2009, so they are more than two years behind schedule. This fact alone should entitle any purchaser to rescind their purchase contract under Nevada law and receive a full refund of their deposit plus accrued interest.
2. The construction delay was due in part to difficulties resulting from having to pump ground water out of the subterranean garage. I'm still a little unclear about how they could not have known the water was there and taken it into account in their construction schedule, but the salient fact is that the Cosmo did not disclose that the water was there even after it (apparently) flooded the excavation. In fact, I'm looking at the property report that was given to us when we signed the purchase agreement and it specifically says, "... no drainage ... is necessary to render the [building] useful ..." That sure looks like a smoking gun to me.
3. The Cosmo settled a class-action lawsuit last December, releasing over 1600 purchasers from their contracts (for 75 cents on the dollar -- 66 once the lawyers took their cut). That left about 200 buyers, including us, who opted out of the class action for one reason or another. I spent eight months trying unsuccessfully to get the Cosmo to tell me what they were going to do with the now-unsold units. As I mentioned in my earlier post, there were only three possibilities: try to re-sell the units, let them sit vacant, or turn them into hotel rooms. If they turned them into hotel rooms that would give all the remaining owners the contractual right to rescind our purchases, which is pretty much what happened.
4. Despite the fact that at the time we had opted out of the class action and not yet rescinding our contract (because the final subdivision map was not yet available) we did not receive an invitation to the Cosmo's grand opening. (We did, however, receive an email solicitation to reserve a room at the Cosmo for the New Year's celebration for $5000.) Not that the Cosmo had any obligation to do so, but this did not exactly leave us with a warm fuzzy feeling that the Cosmo considered us valued customers.
There's actually a lot more, but I want to save some for next time. I have a notion this is going to become quite the little saga.
Here's the thing: what could possibly be the Cosmo's motive for doing these things? I honestly find myself at a loss. I can only think of three possibilities:
1. They're stupid. They're heading for a train wreck, but they don't realize it. That doesn't seem very likely.
2. This is a ploy to intimidate as many buyers as possible to settle for less than the full amount of their deposits before push comes to shove and a judge reads them the riot act. That doesn't seem likely either. The Cosmo actually extended the class action settlement right up to the point where they had to prepare the final subdivision map, at which point they withdrew it. If they wanted people to take the settlement, why withdraw it now?
3. They know something we (and our lawyers) don't.
It is this third possibility that has me a little concerned. On the merits, our position is a slam-dunk. We have at least three different grounds on which we are legally entitled to a full refund of our deposit (the delay, non-disclosure of the drainage problem, and the changes to the subdivision map). If this goes to court and we win, we will also be legally entitled to recover attorney's fees. Our attorney is confident enough in the merits of the case to take it on contingency. Win or lose, this isn't going to cost us a dime. So what does the Cosmo possibly hope to gain from this?
My worry is not that the Cosmo's lawyers are going to pull a legal rabbit out of a hat and cite some obscure legal precedent that will undermine our position. I've vetted our lawyers well enough to be very confident that that is not going to happen. But I'm not so sanguine about the possibility of getting a harsh lesson in how the world really works here. The Cosmo is owned by Deutsche Bank, a very large and very powerful multinational corporation (with, apparently, a somewhat unsavory history), and this is Las Vegas. I'm not sure I would bet my entire life savings that the rule of law is going to carry the day.
If you live in Las Vegas (do I have any readers in Vegas?) you should be worried. You have a lot more at stake here than we do. Contrary to the PR, not everything that happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. If Deutsche Bank somehow manages to manipulate the legal system and steamroll us, people will find out. And the next time they think about doing business in Vegas, they'll think twice.
Here are the facts:
1. The original delivery date for the condos was supposed to be on or before January 1, 2009, so they are more than two years behind schedule. This fact alone should entitle any purchaser to rescind their purchase contract under Nevada law and receive a full refund of their deposit plus accrued interest.
2. The construction delay was due in part to difficulties resulting from having to pump ground water out of the subterranean garage. I'm still a little unclear about how they could not have known the water was there and taken it into account in their construction schedule, but the salient fact is that the Cosmo did not disclose that the water was there even after it (apparently) flooded the excavation. In fact, I'm looking at the property report that was given to us when we signed the purchase agreement and it specifically says, "... no drainage ... is necessary to render the [building] useful ..." That sure looks like a smoking gun to me.
3. The Cosmo settled a class-action lawsuit last December, releasing over 1600 purchasers from their contracts (for 75 cents on the dollar -- 66 once the lawyers took their cut). That left about 200 buyers, including us, who opted out of the class action for one reason or another. I spent eight months trying unsuccessfully to get the Cosmo to tell me what they were going to do with the now-unsold units. As I mentioned in my earlier post, there were only three possibilities: try to re-sell the units, let them sit vacant, or turn them into hotel rooms. If they turned them into hotel rooms that would give all the remaining owners the contractual right to rescind our purchases, which is pretty much what happened.
4. Despite the fact that at the time we had opted out of the class action and not yet rescinding our contract (because the final subdivision map was not yet available) we did not receive an invitation to the Cosmo's grand opening. (We did, however, receive an email solicitation to reserve a room at the Cosmo for the New Year's celebration for $5000.) Not that the Cosmo had any obligation to do so, but this did not exactly leave us with a warm fuzzy feeling that the Cosmo considered us valued customers.
There's actually a lot more, but I want to save some for next time. I have a notion this is going to become quite the little saga.
Here's the thing: what could possibly be the Cosmo's motive for doing these things? I honestly find myself at a loss. I can only think of three possibilities:
1. They're stupid. They're heading for a train wreck, but they don't realize it. That doesn't seem very likely.
2. This is a ploy to intimidate as many buyers as possible to settle for less than the full amount of their deposits before push comes to shove and a judge reads them the riot act. That doesn't seem likely either. The Cosmo actually extended the class action settlement right up to the point where they had to prepare the final subdivision map, at which point they withdrew it. If they wanted people to take the settlement, why withdraw it now?
3. They know something we (and our lawyers) don't.
It is this third possibility that has me a little concerned. On the merits, our position is a slam-dunk. We have at least three different grounds on which we are legally entitled to a full refund of our deposit (the delay, non-disclosure of the drainage problem, and the changes to the subdivision map). If this goes to court and we win, we will also be legally entitled to recover attorney's fees. Our attorney is confident enough in the merits of the case to take it on contingency. Win or lose, this isn't going to cost us a dime. So what does the Cosmo possibly hope to gain from this?
My worry is not that the Cosmo's lawyers are going to pull a legal rabbit out of a hat and cite some obscure legal precedent that will undermine our position. I've vetted our lawyers well enough to be very confident that that is not going to happen. But I'm not so sanguine about the possibility of getting a harsh lesson in how the world really works here. The Cosmo is owned by Deutsche Bank, a very large and very powerful multinational corporation (with, apparently, a somewhat unsavory history), and this is Las Vegas. I'm not sure I would bet my entire life savings that the rule of law is going to carry the day.
If you live in Las Vegas (do I have any readers in Vegas?) you should be worried. You have a lot more at stake here than we do. Contrary to the PR, not everything that happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. If Deutsche Bank somehow manages to manipulate the legal system and steamroll us, people will find out. And the next time they think about doing business in Vegas, they'll think twice.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
The Cosmo and Me, Part 1
Back in 2005, when investing in real estate still seemed like a good idea, we put down a deposit on a condominium at the new Cosmopolitan Resort and Casino. At the time, the Cosmo was a vacant lot sandwiched between the Bellagio and the new CityCenter development on the Las Vegas Strip.
The project has had numerous difficulties, not least of which were a foreclosure by its main creditor, Deutshche Bank, and a class-action lawsuit which was settled out of court last year. The upshot of the settlement was that most of the buyers of the 2000 or so condo units were released from their contracts and had their deposits partially refunded. We decided to opt out of the settlement because it seemed like a bad deal. With so many buyers released from their contract, we figured one of three things had to happen.
The first possibility was that the units would be allowed to sit empty until the real estate market improved. That seemed pretty unlikely.
The second possibility was that the units would be put back on the market, in which case we figured we might be able to renegotiate our purchase price. If they were trying to sell condos in the current climate, a happy customer would be worth a lot more to them than the difference between our contract price and current fair market values, especially a happy customer who wrote a blog.
The third possibility was that the units would not be put back on the market, but would instead be turned into hotel rooms. This is what ultimately happened. Instead of 2000 condos and 1000 hotel rooms, the Cosmo now has 200 condos (under contract to the people who opted out of the class action settlement) and 2800 hotel rooms.
There was a clause in the purchase contract that allowed us to unilaterally pull out of the deal if there were "material and adverse" changes to the building's floor plan. The change from 2000 condos to 200 certainly seemed "material and adverse" to us, so we sent a letter to the Cosmo notifying them that we were electing to terminate.
We were hoping that the Cosmo's response would be an offer to renegotiate the purchase price. We actually wanted the condo, we just didn't want to pay a height-of-the-bubble price for it if we could avoid it. But instead of negotiating, they decided instead to sic their lawyers on us. We received a letter not from the Cosmo, but from the law offices of Snell and Wilmer, saying:
That seemed a little harsh considering that our unit was not even scheduled to be completed until the middle of next year.
The notice of default backed us into a corner. We had to respond to it, so we had to consult with a lawyer. Happily, we were referred to a lawyer who was already representing a bunch of the remaining condo buyers in a new lawsuit against the Cosmo. The case was strong enough that he was prosecuting the case on contingency. Among the long list of documents that he had amassed in the case was a letter from a fellow named Matthew L. Lalli, one of the Cosmo's lawyers at Snell and Wilmer, and one of the people cc'd on the notice of default they had sent us. This letter read:
I think Mr. Lalli's gonna have some 'splainin' to do. :-)
Frankly, I don't see how any reasonable person could argue that changing a project from 2/3 condo and 1/3 hotel to 7% condo and 93% hotel is not a material and adverse change. But it is becoming apparent that the Cosmo is not dealing in good faith. I can't help but wonder, though, what they think the end game is going to be here.
The project has had numerous difficulties, not least of which were a foreclosure by its main creditor, Deutshche Bank, and a class-action lawsuit which was settled out of court last year. The upshot of the settlement was that most of the buyers of the 2000 or so condo units were released from their contracts and had their deposits partially refunded. We decided to opt out of the settlement because it seemed like a bad deal. With so many buyers released from their contract, we figured one of three things had to happen.
The first possibility was that the units would be allowed to sit empty until the real estate market improved. That seemed pretty unlikely.
The second possibility was that the units would be put back on the market, in which case we figured we might be able to renegotiate our purchase price. If they were trying to sell condos in the current climate, a happy customer would be worth a lot more to them than the difference between our contract price and current fair market values, especially a happy customer who wrote a blog.
The third possibility was that the units would not be put back on the market, but would instead be turned into hotel rooms. This is what ultimately happened. Instead of 2000 condos and 1000 hotel rooms, the Cosmo now has 200 condos (under contract to the people who opted out of the class action settlement) and 2800 hotel rooms.
There was a clause in the purchase contract that allowed us to unilaterally pull out of the deal if there were "material and adverse" changes to the building's floor plan. The change from 2000 condos to 200 certainly seemed "material and adverse" to us, so we sent a letter to the Cosmo notifying them that we were electing to terminate.
We were hoping that the Cosmo's response would be an offer to renegotiate the purchase price. We actually wanted the condo, we just didn't want to pay a height-of-the-bubble price for it if we could avoid it. But instead of negotiating, they decided instead to sic their lawyers on us. We received a letter not from the Cosmo, but from the law offices of Snell and Wilmer, saying:
This law firm represents Nevada Property 1 LLC, the owner and seller under your contract to purchase a condominium hotel unit in The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. We received your ... letter terminating your contract. However, we disagree with the premise of your termination, as there have been no material or adverse changes to the subdivision map. To the contrary, the final subdivision map reflects a project very much the same as reflected in the provisional subdivision map. Accordingly, your termination is without basis and is a default under section ... of your contract. You have 20 days from receipt of this letter to cure your default. If you fail to do so, we will proceed in accordance with your contract [and confiscate your security deposit].
That seemed a little harsh considering that our unit was not even scheduled to be completed until the middle of next year.
The notice of default backed us into a corner. We had to respond to it, so we had to consult with a lawyer. Happily, we were referred to a lawyer who was already representing a bunch of the remaining condo buyers in a new lawsuit against the Cosmo. The case was strong enough that he was prosecuting the case on contingency. Among the long list of documents that he had amassed in the case was a letter from a fellow named Matthew L. Lalli, one of the Cosmo's lawyers at Snell and Wilmer, and one of the people cc'd on the notice of default they had sent us. This letter read:
... [the contract] does not impose any contractual obligation on [the Cosmo] to record a final map with any particular details or requirements... It merely gives the buyer the option to terminate the contract if he/she believes the final map differs materially and adversely from the provisional map. [Emphasis added.]
I think Mr. Lalli's gonna have some 'splainin' to do. :-)
Frankly, I don't see how any reasonable person could argue that changing a project from 2/3 condo and 1/3 hotel to 7% condo and 93% hotel is not a material and adverse change. But it is becoming apparent that the Cosmo is not dealing in good faith. I can't help but wonder, though, what they think the end game is going to be here.
Monday, December 27, 2010
Swing and a miss
Kenji Yoshino at Slate is still mixing it up with Princeton's Robert George over the issue of gay marriage. George, you may recall, is the Princeton professor who published an article in a scholarly journal arguing against gay marriage on the grounds that reproduction is necessarily part-and-parcel of any "real" (his word, not mine) marriage.
Yoshino's response is valiant and mostly well argued by scholarly standards, but I can't help but wonder why he chooses to dance around the slam-dunk refutation of George:
Why the parenthetical? Why not go straight for the jugular? It is precisely the heterosexual couples who choose not to have children that are the inarguable refutation of George's position. No need to quibble over whether homosexual orientation is a choice or not: people who undergo surgical sterilization are indisputably choosing a "lifestyle" that is incompatible with reproduction. Not only that, but there can be no dispute that they are making this choice deliberately and with the express purpose of thwarting reproduction, as opposed to homosexuals, for whom the obstacles to reproduction are arguably in some cases merely a side-effect of the actual objective.
There is no possible way to argue for the invalidity of gay marriage on the grounds that marriage is inextricably bound to reproduction without taking the position that people who have voluntarily sterilized themselves are not entitled to marry. That's it, the whole megillah, period, end of story. The fact that not a single sane person would be willing to take that position reveals George's argument as just another instance of thinly disguised bigotry against gays.
What is harder to understand is why left-leaning scholars like Yoshino relegate this argument to parentheticals instead of putting it front-and-center where it belongs. Instead, Yoshino takes his eye off the ball and allows himself to get drawn into a quagmire of quibbling over sports analogies. I really don't get it.
Yoshino's response is valiant and mostly well argued by scholarly standards, but I can't help but wonder why he chooses to dance around the slam-dunk refutation of George:
... it might surprise many couples who cannot have children (or choose not to do so) that the validity of their marriage rests on its "orientation" toward procreation.
Why the parenthetical? Why not go straight for the jugular? It is precisely the heterosexual couples who choose not to have children that are the inarguable refutation of George's position. No need to quibble over whether homosexual orientation is a choice or not: people who undergo surgical sterilization are indisputably choosing a "lifestyle" that is incompatible with reproduction. Not only that, but there can be no dispute that they are making this choice deliberately and with the express purpose of thwarting reproduction, as opposed to homosexuals, for whom the obstacles to reproduction are arguably in some cases merely a side-effect of the actual objective.
There is no possible way to argue for the invalidity of gay marriage on the grounds that marriage is inextricably bound to reproduction without taking the position that people who have voluntarily sterilized themselves are not entitled to marry. That's it, the whole megillah, period, end of story. The fact that not a single sane person would be willing to take that position reveals George's argument as just another instance of thinly disguised bigotry against gays.
What is harder to understand is why left-leaning scholars like Yoshino relegate this argument to parentheticals instead of putting it front-and-center where it belongs. Instead, Yoshino takes his eye off the ball and allows himself to get drawn into a quagmire of quibbling over sports analogies. I really don't get it.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Placebos work even when patients know it's a placebo
A while back I blogged about my personal mystification at what appeared to be an instance of the placebo effect at work even though I knew that it was a placebo. In my case, I had some medicine prescribed and I filled the prescription, but my condition improved before I actually took any of the medicine. Now a new study indicates that this might not have been a fluke. The LA Times reports that Placebos work, even when patients are in the know, study finds.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
It all makes sense now!
I've been reading a fascinating distilled timeline of the Great Depression and came across this:
More details here and here.
Suddenly, the existence of Fox News makes a lot more sense. Rupert Murdoch and his cronies have apparently been studying their history.
UPDATE: This seemed relevant to contemporary life as well:
Alarmed by Roosevelt's plan to redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor, a group of millionaire businessmen, led by the Du Pont and J.P. Morgan empires, plans to overthrow Roosevelt with a military coup and install a fascist government. The businessmen try to recruit General Smedley Butler, promising him an army of 500,000, unlimited financial backing and generous media spin control. The plot is foiled when Butler reports it to Congress.
More details here and here.
Suddenly, the existence of Fox News makes a lot more sense. Rupert Murdoch and his cronies have apparently been studying their history.
UPDATE: This seemed relevant to contemporary life as well:
1945: Although the war is the largest tragedy in human history, the United States emerges as the world's only economic superpower. Deficit spending has resulted in a national debt 123 percent the size of the GDP. By contrast, in 1994, the $4.7 trillion national debt will be only 70 percent of the GDP!
The top tax rate is 91 percent. It will stay at least 88 percent until 1963, when it is lowered to 70 percent. During this time, America will experience the greatest economic boom it has ever known.
Who knew?
"A new survey of American voters shows that Fox News viewers are significantly more misinformed than consumers of news from other sources."
Imagine that.
Imagine that.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
The government goes rogue again
The U.S. government, specifically the Department of Homeland Security, is shutting down music blogs, ostensibly because of piracy, by seizing their domain names. No warnings, and more importantly, no warrants. Not even any charges!
I would like to be able to say that a more blatant disregard for the fundamental principles that this country is supposed to stand for is hard to imagine, but alas, that would be untrue.
David Snead, a lawyer specializing in Internet cases who is representing the owner of torrent-finder.com, speculated that it might be 30 to 60 days before he would be able to see a seizure order. “The government is providing zero information to help us determine what he is being charged with,” he said. “It’s a black hole.”
I would like to be able to say that a more blatant disregard for the fundamental principles that this country is supposed to stand for is hard to imagine, but alas, that would be untrue.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
The woman I breed with
It's articles like this that help me to understand why conservatives often have problems with academia.
In other words, gays should not be allowed to marry because to have a "real marriage" (those aren't scare quotes -- the authors actually use that term in the paper) you have to make kids, or at least go through the motions.
How fortunate for infertile heterosexual couples. But what about people who choose not to have children and implement that choice with artificial birth control? Should they too be barred from getting married?
Funnily enough, the paper doesn't address that question. It also doesn't address the question of whether, say, a couple that puts their child up for adoption should have their marriage annulled.
This paper appears in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy an apparently respectable academic journal. I am not impressed by their standards of scholarship. (I am, however, impressed by their euphemisms. "Organic bodily union" has got to be the most highfalutin' way I've ever heard of saying "fuck.")
In the article, we argue that as a moral reality, marriage is the union of a man and a woman who make a permanent and exclusive commitment to each other of the type that is naturally fulfilled by bearing and rearing children together, and renewed by acts that constitute the behavioral part of the process of reproduction.
In other words, gays should not be allowed to marry because to have a "real marriage" (those aren't scare quotes -- the authors actually use that term in the paper) you have to make kids, or at least go through the motions.
To form a real marriage, a couple needs to establish and live out the kind of union that would be completed by, and be apt for, procreation and child‐rearing.53 Since any true and honor‐ able harmony between two people has value in itself (not merely as a means), each such comprehensive union of two people—each permanent, exclusive commitment sealed by organic bodily union—certainly does as well.
Any act of organic bodily union can seal a marriage, whether or not it causes conception.
How fortunate for infertile heterosexual couples. But what about people who choose not to have children and implement that choice with artificial birth control? Should they too be barred from getting married?
Funnily enough, the paper doesn't address that question. It also doesn't address the question of whether, say, a couple that puts their child up for adoption should have their marriage annulled.
This paper appears in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy an apparently respectable academic journal. I am not impressed by their standards of scholarship. (I am, however, impressed by their euphemisms. "Organic bodily union" has got to be the most highfalutin' way I've ever heard of saying "fuck.")
Monday, December 13, 2010
Backscatter x-rays are useless
Researchers at U.C. San Francisco say that backscatter X-rays are basically useless for detecting explosives:
Of course, this is not terribly surprising when you consider that someone apparently was able to smuggle an entire dead body aboard an airplane last month.
...although images can be made at the exposure levels claimed (under 100 nanoGrey per view), detection of contraband can be foiled in these systems. Because front and back views are obtained, low Z materials can only be reliable detected if they are packed outside the sides of the body or with hard edges, while high Z materials are well seen when placed in front or back of the body, but not to the sides. Even if exposure were to be increased significantly, normal anatomy would make a dangerous amount of plastic explosive with tapered edges difficult if not impossible to detect.
Of course, this is not terribly surprising when you consider that someone apparently was able to smuggle an entire dead body aboard an airplane last month.
Ron 1, Obamacare 0
As I predicted back in March, a federal judge in Virginia has ruled a key provision of Obama's health care reform unconstitutional. Of course, this will surely be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but there is no reason to believe that the outcome will be any different there.
Thursday, December 09, 2010
The government has gone rogue
Police in Aurora, Illinois seized $190,000 from two men during a routine traffic stop. No ticket was issued. The men have no criminal record. There is no evidence of them having done anything wrong. A judge, naturally, ordered the city to return the money. The city refused.
And if that's not enough to get your hackles up, it now appears that the federal government has decided to help themselves to the loot:
Seriously, the difference between the government and an organized crime organization has become quite difficult for my admittedly unschooled eye to discern.
"Their [the city's] lawyers basically said the city was going to file for forfeiture," Kinnally [the men's lawyer] said. "The judge asked on what basis. The lawyer said, 'We don't know,' and the judge said: 'This is America. Give it back.'"
The judge ordered the city to return the $190,040, along with a month's interest and costs. But Kinnally said that when he brought the order to Aurora, the city refused to turn over the cash, saying it planned to appeal the judge's order.
And if that's not enough to get your hackles up, it now appears that the federal government has decided to help themselves to the loot:
Aurora's legal department has not responded to requests for information. And it now appears that the city no longer has the cash.
Jesus Martinez received a certified letter last weekend from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Dated Dec. 2, the letter states the Department of Homeland Security/Immigrations and Customs Enforcement seized the money from Aurora, and that the cash is subject to forfeiture under U.S. codes dealing with drug transactions.
Seriously, the difference between the government and an organized crime organization has become quite difficult for my admittedly unschooled eye to discern.
It's not about left and right, it's about national bankruptcy
Someone who calls themselves Electablog argues over on Daily Kos that liberals ought to be happier about the tax deal that Obama struck with Republicans because liberals got more of what they wanted than Republicans did. Electablog adds up the score and declares victory for the left, $500 billion to $75 billion.
I consider myself (mostly) a liberal, but I don't feel like a winner here. The left may have won, but the country has definitely lost. What both sides seem to have lost sight of is that the U.S. is rapidly careening towards national bankruptcy, and while $75B worth of extra revenue from rich people will not make much of a dent in a trillion-dollar deficit or a multi-trillion-dollar debt, it is worrisome that despite lofty rhetoric, neither the left nor the right seems to be taking the problem seriously. We are in a deep, deep hole, and this compromise just digs us in deeper.
What has just happened is rather like a married couple in deep debt arguing over whether they should cut their vacation or buying a new car. They compromise by deciding to go on vacation and buy a new car and charge it all to their already overloaded credit card. Maybe both sides feel like they've won, but as one of the people who is ultimately on the hook for paying the credit card bill, it doesn't make me feel any better. And you shouldn't either, because even if you don't live here I guarantee you will feel the pain if the U.S. goes under.
I consider myself (mostly) a liberal, but I don't feel like a winner here. The left may have won, but the country has definitely lost. What both sides seem to have lost sight of is that the U.S. is rapidly careening towards national bankruptcy, and while $75B worth of extra revenue from rich people will not make much of a dent in a trillion-dollar deficit or a multi-trillion-dollar debt, it is worrisome that despite lofty rhetoric, neither the left nor the right seems to be taking the problem seriously. We are in a deep, deep hole, and this compromise just digs us in deeper.
What has just happened is rather like a married couple in deep debt arguing over whether they should cut their vacation or buying a new car. They compromise by deciding to go on vacation and buy a new car and charge it all to their already overloaded credit card. Maybe both sides feel like they've won, but as one of the people who is ultimately on the hook for paying the credit card bill, it doesn't make me feel any better. And you shouldn't either, because even if you don't live here I guarantee you will feel the pain if the U.S. goes under.
Everything you think you know about the Quran is wrong
Lesley Hazleton gives an amazing and apparently well informed talk about the Quran from the point of view of a non-Muslim (she is a self-described "secular Jewess"). If you are at all interested in learning more about Islam, watching this video will be ten minutes well spent.
Wednesday, December 08, 2010
A lovely little mythlet
Just happened to stumble across this little gem, apparently by Larry Wohlgemuth:
WHERE SHALL WE HIDE THE SPIRIT OF GOD?
“Where shall we hide the Spirit of God from people?” the gods all cried when they were made.
“How can we guard our secret now?” they asked each other so afraid.
“Hide our Spirit in the earth and they will mine it.
Hide it on a mountain and they will climb it.
Even in the sea they will find it.
Where, oh where, shall we hide the Spirit of God from people?”
“Hide our Spirit in the wind and they will pursue it.
Hide it in an atom and they will view it.
Even in an act they will do it.
Where, of where, shall we hide the Spirit of God from people?”
They thought of stars in outer space or in the nature of a tree,
but they knew that people could solve each and every mystery.
“Hide our Spirit in matter and they will analyze it.
Hide it in water and they will crystallize it.
Even in hell they will surmise it.
Where, oh where, shall we hide the Spirit of God from people?”
And then they solved the puzzle of how the frightened gods should win.
The wisest said, “Let us take the Spirit of God and hide it deep inside of them.”
“Hide our Spirit in their heart and they will doubt it.
Hide our Spirit in their very soul and they will live without it.
Even if we reveal it and shout it,
they will never, never believe that the Spirit of God is deep inside of them.”
Sunday, December 05, 2010
Oh yeah, that will solve the problem
Our elected representatives seem to have this all figured out. Instead of cutting spending and raising taxes to close the budget deficit and avoid bankruptcy, they are going to keep the Bush tax cuts and extend unemployment benefits, in other words, cut taxes and raise spending. Yeah, that'll work.
I don't like to predict doom and gloom. A lot of people have lost a lot of money short-selling the United States. But if there's a trajectory that is going to avoid national bankruptcy at this point, I don't see it. If raising taxes even on the very wealthiest is politically untenable then what's going to give instead? Defense? Social security? Medicaid? Good luck with those. Everything else (except interest on the debt of course) is lost in the noise. Grow our way out of this? How? I keep hearing pundits pinning their hopes on somehow "getting the banks to ease credit so the American consumer can start buying again." That makes no sense to me at all. We're not going to "grow" our way out of this mess by increasing the rate at which we buy Chinese televisions, or the rate at which we allow Wall Street bankers to rip off homebuyers and investors, or the rate at which we invest in copycat internet startups at inflated valuations.
Maybe we can make money selling predator drones to the rest of the world, but I'm not sure that's such a good idea in the long run.
Gotta love this quote:
If that's "not caving" I really have to wonder what caving would look like.
I don't like to predict doom and gloom. A lot of people have lost a lot of money short-selling the United States. But if there's a trajectory that is going to avoid national bankruptcy at this point, I don't see it. If raising taxes even on the very wealthiest is politically untenable then what's going to give instead? Defense? Social security? Medicaid? Good luck with those. Everything else (except interest on the debt of course) is lost in the noise. Grow our way out of this? How? I keep hearing pundits pinning their hopes on somehow "getting the banks to ease credit so the American consumer can start buying again." That makes no sense to me at all. We're not going to "grow" our way out of this mess by increasing the rate at which we buy Chinese televisions, or the rate at which we allow Wall Street bankers to rip off homebuyers and investors, or the rate at which we invest in copycat internet startups at inflated valuations.
Maybe we can make money selling predator drones to the rest of the world, but I'm not sure that's such a good idea in the long run.
Gotta love this quote:
"Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) said President Obama was 'not caving'' by considering an extension of the tax cuts for all income levels."
If that's "not caving" I really have to wonder what caving would look like.
Bad news for xenobiology fans
Bad news for Science (the journal) and science (the enterprise) and NASA too. What appears to me to be a very well informed review of the recent NASA claims of having grown bacteria that substitute arsenic for phosphorus in their biomolecules concludes: "Bottom line: Lots of flim-flam, but very little reliable information."
To my unschooled eye it certainly looks like shoddy work at best.
To my unschooled eye it certainly looks like shoddy work at best.
Islamic extremists? No. FBI informants.
The FBI installed an informant in a mosque posing as a jahadist. The members of the mosque were so alarmed by this person that they reported him to the FBI.
I had always considered that we might have more to fear form our own government than from Islamic extremists as an abstract possibility, but I never really took it seriously before reading this. Makes me really wonder about the case against Mohamed Osman Mohamud too. This incident lends credence to the theory that Mohamud was entrapped. It would, apparently, not be the first time.
I had always considered that we might have more to fear form our own government than from Islamic extremists as an abstract possibility, but I never really took it seriously before reading this. Makes me really wonder about the case against Mohamed Osman Mohamud too. This incident lends credence to the theory that Mohamud was entrapped. It would, apparently, not be the first time.
An atheist discovers part of God
Don Geddis sent me the previoius post in an email and I asked him to post it here because I think he's on the right track, but not quite there. In particular:
and I hope he'll forgive me for lifting this from his original email:
Darwinian evolution indeed is not much of a comforting myth. I think that's one of the reasons it doesn't get more traction. Happily, Darwinian evolution is not all there is. Evolution is just one layer in a hierarchy of phenomena, some of which do care about humans, and some of which are benevolent. It just so happens that the phenomena that are benevolent and care about us are not the same ones that created us. They are us (and in some cases, our pets).
It is noted among Biblical scholars from time to time that an ambiguity in Hebrew grammar allows Genesis 1:1 ("Bereshith barah Elohim et ha shmayim ve et haaretz.") to be properly translated not as "IN the beginning..." but rather "The Beginning created God, the heavens and the Earth." A properly poetic but still scientifically tenable creation myth might then go something like this: The Beginning created Physics, which created evolution (which is nothing like physics), which created DNA (which is nothing like evolution), which created humans (which are nothing like DNA), which recently created computers, which are (so far) nothing like humans. It is truly a grand and glorious scheme of things, of which intelligence is only a small (but disproportionately interesting) part. If we use the shorthand "God" to mean the totality of creation at all levels of abstraction (c.f. Raymond Smullyan), then to call God intelligent is an insult to God.
We can even co-opt a passage from Isaiah: "I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the multiverse, do all these things." (I've taken another small liberty with the translation here.)
That kind of God I think can properly compete in the theological marketplace with one who forces people to cannibalize their children.
God doesn't care about humans, and God is not benevolent.
and I hope he'll forgive me for lifting this from his original email:
Doesn't make much of a comforting myth,
Darwinian evolution indeed is not much of a comforting myth. I think that's one of the reasons it doesn't get more traction. Happily, Darwinian evolution is not all there is. Evolution is just one layer in a hierarchy of phenomena, some of which do care about humans, and some of which are benevolent. It just so happens that the phenomena that are benevolent and care about us are not the same ones that created us. They are us (and in some cases, our pets).
It is noted among Biblical scholars from time to time that an ambiguity in Hebrew grammar allows Genesis 1:1 ("Bereshith barah Elohim et ha shmayim ve et haaretz.") to be properly translated not as "IN the beginning..." but rather "The Beginning created God, the heavens and the Earth." A properly poetic but still scientifically tenable creation myth might then go something like this: The Beginning created Physics, which created evolution (which is nothing like physics), which created DNA (which is nothing like evolution), which created humans (which are nothing like DNA), which recently created computers, which are (so far) nothing like humans. It is truly a grand and glorious scheme of things, of which intelligence is only a small (but disproportionately interesting) part. If we use the shorthand "God" to mean the totality of creation at all levels of abstraction (c.f. Raymond Smullyan), then to call God intelligent is an insult to God.
We can even co-opt a passage from Isaiah: "I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the multiverse, do all these things." (I've taken another small liberty with the translation here.)
That kind of God I think can properly compete in the theological marketplace with one who forces people to cannibalize their children.
An Atheist discovers God
[NOTE: This was posted by Don. But I think he's on the right track track -- ed.]
For thousands of years, people have observed the world, and concluded that God must have created humans. One of the strongest arguments -- quite rightly -- is that you can't get the complexity of a human being just by random chance. As Hoyle said,
You need something, besides just random chance, to get the complexity of modern life. And it's traditional to call that something, "God". As Yudkowsky has noted
Of course, some guesses (or wishes and hopes and dreams) about the nature of God turned out not to be true. Man was not made in God's image. The universe was not made "for" humans. Humans are not the purpose of God's creation. In fact, God doesn't really have a "purpose", as such. Most important, God doesn't care about humans, and God is not benevolent.
But make no mistake: God is there. A powerful force, designing all life that we see around us. After thousands of years of searching, God was found. Darwin found it. Alas, most religious folks were unable to -- or refused to -- recognize God when it was found.
For thousands of years, people have observed the world, and concluded that God must have created humans. One of the strongest arguments -- quite rightly -- is that you can't get the complexity of a human being just by random chance. As Hoyle said,
The chance that higher life forms might have emerged in this way is comparable to the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.That intuition is exactly right. And you don't solve it just by saying "it takes a lot of time". Yes, millions or billions of years is a far longer time than most people can comfortably think about ... but just having lots and lots of tornadoes still doesn't get you a 747 from the junkyard.
You need something, besides just random chance, to get the complexity of modern life. And it's traditional to call that something, "God". As Yudkowsky has noted
The Shaper of Life is not itself a creature. [It] is bodiless [...]. Omnipresent in Nature, immanent in the fall of every leaf. Vast as a planet's surface. Billions of years old. Itself unmade, arising naturally from the structure of physics.
Of course, some guesses (or wishes and hopes and dreams) about the nature of God turned out not to be true. Man was not made in God's image. The universe was not made "for" humans. Humans are not the purpose of God's creation. In fact, God doesn't really have a "purpose", as such. Most important, God doesn't care about humans, and God is not benevolent.
But make no mistake: God is there. A powerful force, designing all life that we see around us. After thousands of years of searching, God was found. Darwin found it. Alas, most religious folks were unable to -- or refused to -- recognize God when it was found.
Thursday, December 02, 2010
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