Politicians open up

ABC screened a pretty cool documentary, called “What Our Leaders Believe”, examining the ethical and religious opinions of Australian political candidates. It was an interesting program, in which the leaders opened up about their true opinions impromptu, with a startlingly frank honesty in which you never typically see from them. Given how many people they could potentially have alienated, it didn't seem politically scripted at all.
he Greens leader openly declared himself an atheist, as did Mark Latham (former Labour leader), and the Democrats leader, Andrew Bartlett.
Disappointingly, John Howard (Liberals leader) and John Andersen (Nationals), appeared to be the most closed-minded of all five on various aspects. Including their seemingly set views on the “positive impact of Judeo-Christian ethical systems on society". Hmmmm hmmm. Anyway, even many of Howard's opinions weren't expressed in a politically advantageous way. Very refreshing.

University of YouDontLearnFuck

James studied B.Crap/Dip Shit at the University of YouDontLearnFuck.

First Year Courses:
Learning Why Knowledge Should be Avoided
Kabbalah/Numerology 1A
Astrology 1A
Respecting Old People No Matter What
Creation Science
Driving Slowly In The Right Lane
Physics For Poets

Second Year Courses:
Intermediate Superstition
Unnecessarily Wasting Resources
How To Have Simplistic Ideas About Everything
Extension Bible Studies
How To Ignore Reason
Eastern Medicine Method

Third Year Courses:
How To Entertain Guests
How To Put On 10kg In 10 Days
Beginner Fashion
Psychic Practical: Contacting The Dead

Fourth Year Courses:
Palm Reading
How To Only Be Interested In Stupid Things
How To Read Only Fiction & Biographies
Buying Rip-Off Goods

Fifth Year Courses:
Advanced Spirituality XXX
Being A Luddite
Religious Ethics & Anti-Abortion
Selecting Shitty Movies To See
How To Spend Money You Inherited

Domestication

It’s one of the sickest known jokes, and sure to offend many:
“Why do nice guys finish last? Because women, like other domestic animals...need a strong hand to tame them”
But has it got any truth in it? OK, disclaimer, to anybody hopping mad on their chair with disbelief. Don't come up with simple-minded objections to this. It's possible here that I'm using the word 'taming' differently to you. Men are animals, just as women are. And of course, in mating, women have selected behavioural traits in men that they liked as much as men have done in women.
So you could come up with similar jokes about men. I'm sure they exist, I was just told this one. It wasn't funny, but thought provoking. I'm weird.

The offensive part is the allegation that women (or at least a large part of the female population) have been 'domesticated', i.e selected in particular for specialisation in domestic requirements (as men, say, specialise over women in hunting). We know about the so-called "battle of the sexes", whereby genes of one sex actually have competing (and interdependent) interests with genes belonging to members of the other sex. Men could disadvantage women in a peculiar way, through physical and/or other oppression. Some lineages or tribes or cultures of men, therefore, might have domesticated some women. It may be that because women HAVE been less powerful for so long, HAVE been treated so unequally by men as a whole, that the joke is now partially true, for some women. Men may have controlled women for so long, as they have bred and controlled dogs for their own purposes, that it may be that some women have become partially domesticated too.
This doesn't imply that women are any less intelligent and otherwise able than men, by any means. Perhaps, the opposite. Certainly, women seem to do a disproportionate share of the work. This is still true to this day. According to ABS figures, women work, on average, 41 mins longer than men per day, once all reported 'responsibilities' are totalled up. But it certainly seems likely that men and women, statistically speaking, perform better in different roles. Once again, for those out there....this doesn't logically imply that a woman's place is in the home, that she lacks skills that you have, or any other misinterpretation you're likely to come up with.

O'Reilly Is A Tool

Bill O'Reilly of "The O'Reilly factor" (a FOX News program), found himself convincingly beaten by Phil Donahue, who used O'Reilly's own debating 'tactics' (intimidation, personal attack, loud voice) against him.
Cleverly, O'Donahue inverted O'Reilly's most common charge against others (lack of patriotism) against O'Reilly!

Of course, O'Reilly will never see beyond his own simplistic viewpoint.
But it was funny anyway to watch somebody smarter than him lower himself to O'Reilly's level in order to make O'Reilly squirm.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ctlmholr45c
Fox 'News', a total sham.

Other tactics to use against O'Reilly:
-When necessary, just keen repeating to O'Reilly that his facts are wrong, whilst shrugging your shoulders with disappointment.
-Absolute coolness, and ask O'Reilly to calm down when he gets keyed up. Tell him that's absolutely necessary if you and he are to have a civilised discussion. Tell O'Reilly that he is being irrational.
-Point out logical errors that he makes using ridiculous hypotheticals.
-Tell O'Reilly that you wish you couldn't feel his spit flying across the room.


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Advanced shared equity home loans are like communism

Simple Things

I’m enjoying the simple things in life more:
-- The street-sign “Form One Lane” which always gets turned in to “Form One Planet” by hooligans. The efforts of the council to remove this graffiti, and the significantly more efficient response by the hooligans, who re-graffiti it.
Generally, I despite graffiti artists who fuck up trains, their own and other's neighborhoods. But the person who says that all graffiti is disgusting is lacking something too.
-- Me and some random girl rushing from the ticket counter at Central, to make the train back to Gordon, just making it on to the train as the doors closed.
Me saying to her “We made it!!” with a big grin, and receiving one back.

The Problem of Morality

Moral expectations are related to perceived intelligence.

We don't hold dogs to as many 'moral' standards as we do humans, as we believe them to be largely incapable of controlling impulses which we think that we, as humans, can. Those with significant understanding of dog psychology also think that choices the dog believes itself to be freely making were actually NOT made by the dog. That many dog behaviours are more obviously predictable to us, and less "chosen" by the dog eg willful disobedience. That kind of vocabulary, to describe animal behaviour (which places emphasis on choice rather than training and feedback), is less appealing to specialists. And with good reason.

It seems to me that smarter creatures probably would think humans incapable of freely choosing choices which we believe that WE freely chose. They'd know more about our limitations in controlling our thoughts AND our emotions, and see more of our habits, genes and environment being responsible for our 'choices' than we realise. Probably, they wouldn't hold us to as many moral standards as we do ourselves. We could be in cages, being observed, socialised, just as other animals are by humans. But not judged.

Cho

Sure, lax gun laws did facilitate the murderous rampage of Cho Seung-Hai. There needs to be change in that respect. But all this is very superficial.

Where there is no cancer growing malignantly inside the head of the murderer, no extreme tragedy experienced to cause a meltdown, the cause for the mass-murder is clear. It is a frustrated, unrestricted narcissism that drives people towards such crimes. Cho saw himself as a Christ-like figure, with an important message to tell. When you realise that the States has a particularly narcissistic culture, it becomes clear why there are proportionately more school and university mass killings there than in other countries with even less tight gun laws.

In years past, I have caught myself in narcissistic moments. It's true that there WAS a tiny core of extreme confidence in oneself. But, mostly, it is the fight that this core engages in against an extremely damaged, fragile ego, a quiet depression, a bitterness, an all-pervading dissatisfaction with life. Narcissistic people respond far more explosively to stress, to humiliation, to exclusion, to the indifference of others. They want attention, glory, praise. There is a distortion of thinking which can be treated most effectively over time. Sometimes, genuine individual effort alone is enough, but where that fails or where the subject is not aware enough to self-diagnose,the provocation and then support of outsiders is crucial. I've mentioned before that a reasonably large ego is OK in some respects. It motivates, for example. But one has to keep it in check, privately and publicly!

ook at Cho's videos, his writings, his self-centredness, his planning, his warnings, his identity. He suddenly became as grandiose in real-life as in his fantasies. If only temporarily, he finally felt powerful. An easy, most cowardly way out, yes. So, to prevention: Tease out narcissistic thoughts, which become evident in the individual's creative expression, in their opinions and behaviour. Gently dismantle the narcissistic structures people build in their minds. No more killer. And do something about those gun laws!

Oh, and consider how narcissistic Jesus Christ himself must have been. Wow. I'm not saying he didn't have some fantastic traits. He was probably extremely intelligent. But what came with that, amongst other things, was "I have god's message, listen to me, give me attention, control, power". One can imagine his increasingly grandiose thought patterns as he attracted more and more sheep to his flock.

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The Onion reports that thousands more are dead in the ongoing victory in Iraq

Control

Why is it that those that seek to control others most are often the ones who are least able to control themselves?

Wisdom

What of the "arsehole" that told a patient that he didn't have the willpower to regain movement, because he knew the only way that the patient would regain movement would be if he had somebody to prove wrong?
Arsehole or not?

What of the guy who refused to admit that winning the lotto was positive luck, or that his car crash was unfortunate?
Wise, or ridiculous?

Privacy

Gotta take my surname off this blog for a little while at least.
Employers could search for my full name, find something that they don't like. Decide to no longer hire me or whatever. Heard so many stories like that.
The world isn't ideal. I'm still getting used to that

Stuck

Somebody I really like reminded me of how easy it is to get stuck in the day-to-day. I've just been thinking about how little I resemble the me of years ago.
A time when I was much more childish, spiteful, aggressive, hypocritial, insecure, uninformed, less empathetic.
But I had some things going for me which I no longer do, to the same extent.
Energy. Humour, cockiness, charm, passion. Excellent grades. More curiosity. More muscle.

But I was wrong. Perfectionism in certain ways is not an enemy that should be vanquished. When I realised how much of a perfectionist I was, I became periodically horrified by it, and thought it a test of myself to be free of those thinking patterns. I must have created a new definition of perfect, which included not permanently thinking about ways to improve. What a mistake.

I need to be born again, minus the cries of hallelujah, minus the Church.
Pay attention to food intake, exercise, positive thinking.
Reintroduce my fanaticism about time, planning, optimisation.
Start diarising again, start doing something social most days.
Stop moralising about my actions, censoring myself. Stress about things that I SHOULD stress about (Care more about uni?). Play with the dog more. Talk to my parents more. Bring back the ambition, the edginess, the distorted but useful thinking patterns.

Make the most of life


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Turning down sex to read The Neoconservative Legacy

Law

I've become more interested in Law lately. If I entered uni now, I'd probably consider studying it.

Generalising here - lawyers are highly intelligent, articulate people. Lawyers of some specialisations are sometimes unduly criticised for being 'unethical', that is, for fulfilling their professional responsibilities, despite reservations they may have about about the ethical details of a case.. I could dissect lawyers, discussing what aspects (beyond money), draws students to study Law. That could be interesting. Somebody else, do it. I'm more interested in what this beast, the Law, is really all about.

We know what the Law is. It tells you what you can or can't do, without running the risk of being punished. Many think the law actually prescribes what one SHOULD or SHOULD NOT do, if one is to be 'moral'. A modern example: to not kill others. Sometimes, the idea that the Law is somehow related to the question of what is good and/or what is moral seems obvious. At other times, it seems to simply allow the powerful to discharge their will. That could mean letting the majority have its way, or letting the aristocracy or the wealthy or the King's bloodline have its way etc etc. Depends on the time and place.
I should also point out that The law is obviously a diverse field of study. One can study contracts, criminal law, property law, intellectual property. Etc Etc. Some have more relation to ethics than others.

Some see The Law as a benevolent force, as in "the long arm of the law will eventually catch up with that criminal".
Some see The Law as a structure to preserve unjust power structures or as one to tear them down, to undermine their legitimacy through a creed of universalism.
Some see The Law as a way of limiting our thoughts, our imaginations.

What I personally find curious to note that the Law is constantly trying to cover the new lawless domains which technological innovation creates. The Law here looks more like a dogmatic, old-fashioned, conservative mother. Or even a priest, potentially unnecessarily regulating our behaviour from a position of inexperience, from a viewpoint of fear, with little understanding of technology itself and the nature of innovation and of general societal change.

Perhaps more dangerous is this possibility:
The scientist tries to understand how the real world works. But the Law often seems to try to "bring ideology" to the world. To impose an ideology as to how the world SHOULD work, 'hopefully' effectively enough to actually MAKE the world work a little bit more like that. As in, convincing people that stealing guarantees punishment, murder guarantees jail etc. Here, the Law is a weeping, altruistic child, disgruntled by things about the world which upset it. Or a religious zealot, convincing heathens or criminals of the hell which awaits in response to their sins. What is illegal has changed drastically. Apartheid was once legal, as was the stoning of blasphemers etc. The Law slooowly changing to reflect our changing circumstances is more an admission of its impotence, of its confusion in the face of change, where properly considered ethical systems give one better guidelines about how to react to change . And of the Law's reluctance to admit that it has almost nothing valid to say on the eternal question of what is desirable and what is not. It certainly does not admit that its judgements are often arbitrary, individual interpretations of vague dogmas. It cannot admit the contextually relevant reasons of an intelligent defendent if it is to serve its purpose. Luckily, judges don't care much about this in practise, and do "stretch" the law as they see fit, given additional circumstantial information.

It's true, I've always felt science was a nobler pursuit than law. Because most scientific work is less, or could be less ambiguously good for mankind than the law is. Obviously, again, Law is a diverse field, my argument isn't great. Whatever, it's 3am.

I've never felt civilisation could be enforced by policemen. I believe in 'justice' in some sense. But I think it cannot arise from the words from a judge's mouth, a lambasting by a jury, or from shaming or societal norms. It cannot be ordered by the will of the democratic majority or enshrined eternal in the sacred texts of the Constitution. This is not to advocate anarchism. The Law is ENTIRELY necessary. A law which seeks not to punish, but to understand, and then prevent, would not be something anybody reasonable could complain about.
It's just that I've always felt the Law has almost nothing to do with civilisation. I've always felt civilisation was more about understanding how things work. That we stopped burning witches AND stopped wanting to burn them because we realised they weren't witches, not because we grew a conscience or because it became illegal to do so.
Law doesn't give you such civilisation, only the surface appearance of it. Not to dismiss the possibility that certain law systems are more conducive to civil arrangements than others. Understand the difference?

Lawyers may learn case studies for reasons of precdent, defend or rebut against the laws as they exist today, become brilliant at manipulating or interpreting the meaning of the words which laws are made out of, find loopholes etc. Just please, please, lawyers: recognise that the Law has very little relation to the more vexing questions of morality, and none to truth. If you believe in such a thing. I'm not suggesting one must, but just don't be pretentious and think the Law has anything serious to say about how to justify your own behaviour.


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Cannibals don't eat clowns as they taste funny

Why there can't be a God

I watched the video clip for Metallica’s "One". It’s from the movie "Johnny Got His Gun", which I watched years ago. This movie has always stuck with me. It was disturbing and wonderful at the same time when I first watched it.
We hear out load the thoughts of a “de-cerebrated individual”, severely injured in warfare. He lies on an operating table, his entire body covered up by a sheet.

He has no arms or legs. He is totally paralysed. He is blind, deaf, mute, he cannot feel or smell anything. He of course knows nothing of his whereabouts.
Yet he is fully conscious. He lies there, his thoughts and memories racing around crazily, for YEARS. Year upon year of misery, frustration, loneliness, desperation and helplessness stack up. He thinks “inside, I’m screaming, but nobody pays any attention”. “If only I had arms, I could kill myself”. It drives him insane that he is living COMPLETELY in his own mind, and that nobody can understand the pain that he is suffering.
The man eventually gains of his neck muscles. Remembering Morse Code, he instructs the doctor, using his head movements, to please kill him.
The doctor knows that it is illegal to do so, and he refuses, though he cannot communicate this to the patient or apologise for not being able to.
And so the man goes on as the screen fades...

“I’ve just GOT to do something. I can’t see how I can go on living like this, like a piece of meat”.


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Never try to teach a pig to sing – it won’t work, and he’ll be angry with you.

You need everyone

It seems a paradox. But society needs all these different people with different, completely opposed and sometimes incompatible ideas, in order to be stable. When there are a plurality of competing ideologies, of wildly different people, the resulting society is healthier. It's a weakness, a slowness of a true democracy, but it's also a major advantage of it. It's not just about variety, about the relief from the boredom of uniformity. The whole system actually works better if you have:

Pragmatic empiricists arguing with genius logicians. Idealists raging against apathetic people who laugh at the idealists for their naivety. Communists arguing with Capitalists arguing with Anarchists arguing with Fascists. Mathematicians arguing with lawyers arguing with historians arguing with biologists arguing with linguists. The rich feeling guilty for their subjugation of the poor who enjoy being able to blame their misfortunes on their subjugation. Nihilists arguing with seven-day-adventist moralist fundamentalists. The sweet resentment of the pitied ugly toward the beautiful. Materialists flaunting the things which irritate spiritualists so much. Spiritualism's mockery of the deathbed sorrow of the materialist.The strong happy to care for the weak who want the strong to care for them.The dramatists who don't give a shit about the real issues but simply want drama. Businessmen ignoring poets who ignore businessmen. The optimists to remind the pessimists of the possibilities that the pessimists remind the optimists don't exist. Theists and atheists duelling, and snatching ideas from each other, and from different religions. The morbid drawn towards the death that the squeamish want to avoid talking about.

Some countries claim to be a democracy but really are composed of citizens with a ruthlessly communitarian, authoritarian, conformist culture.

Stoned

The 'scope' on Windows Media Player - the line representing the music playing that shows amplitude, pitch etc. Something I've enjoyed observing and recording when me and my friends have been stoned

Perfect Waves
Super Mario Brothers Theme!!
Chinese Bamboo Flute
"AM180" by Granddaddy (Start)
"Solo Violin" -byBach
"Engel" by Rammstein (Whistling at Start)
"Rollercoaster" by Red Hot Chili Peppers (Start)
"I Will Always Love You" by Whitney Houston
"The Scientist" by Coldplay
Requiem For A Dream Synthesisers eg "Fear
"Feuer Frei" by Rammstein (Start)
"Do you Know What I Mean" by Oasis (Plane at the start)
"Sweet Dreams" by Marilyn Manson (Last 20 seconds)

Strange Waveforms
"Israel's Son" by Silverchair (Starting strings)
"Crossroads" by BoneTHugs N Harmony
"Under The Weeping Moon" by Opeth - 2 minutes 25 secs

Gandhi had problems

And was supposedly a paedophile.
15/3/07: The bracketed parts of this quote made me feel slightly inhuman, although, according to it, I am becoming more human.

"The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty, [that one does not push asceticism to the point where it makes friendly intercourse impossible, and that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one's love upon other human individuals]"
-from Reflections on Gandhi, George Orwell, 1949

Glasses

I watched a documentary on smell a while ago. As 90% of taste comes from the olfactory receptors rather than the tongue, even 'experts' can't tell the difference between coffee and tea when their noses are plugged. This guy that completely lost his sense of smell started losing much of his memory too, due to the interconnectedness of the brain parts and the way that his was wired. He claimed he has started hating eating too, and was highly depressed.

This got me wondering how not having the best eyesight might change your brain. If one has better eyesight, presumably, the brain would need to expend more resources to give a the clearer picture of what you see (Cognitive load theory). Just as a man who goes blind compensates for this as his brain re-wires itself so that his sense of touch and hearing are more sensitive, varying degrees of blindness, or even short-sightedness, must alter the brain’s workings quite profoundly. Perhaps even affecting your skills in maths, science, languages etc. Who knows in what way. Maybe having great eyesight improves your art skills.

The Sublime

26/6/06. What gives me a sense of the sublime?
Sometimes, a fantastic modern environment, a futuristic museum. Shinjuku, Tokyo. Times Square.
But more often...Vast, grand, empty spaces. Huge public squares such as Red Square, Tiannenmen’s Square. A mystical feeling that suffering has taken place and that battles have been fought by passionate, tearful, fearful men over ideas, sometimes noble, sometimes absurd. Lives torn apart and made.
All of these places have a sense of historical importance. That alone is enough. The grey concrete housing departments of Alexanderplatz, Berlin do it too. Old Le Corbusier-designed French apartment high-rises, a sense of old ideas.

Also, in landscapes. The red rocks in the deserts of Arizona, of Australia. In Antarctica, a frozen world. The mountains of Peru. In Mongolia, the vast light green grass with pale blue lakes of waters. And knowing that it’s chilly makes it even more beautiful. Dripping rainforests with massive trees in Brazil, a canopy of even height with vines wrapped around every tree. Sand dunes in Egpyt on which lost Arab women are riding camels.

31/10/06 Yesterday I went to an Informal Class at the University of Texas’ Pickle Research Centre, in the north of Austin. After the class, I had to wait outside on the side of a deserted stretch of road for the bus. Standing there, I felt the scene was sublime, beautiful. What I really liked was waiting for an hour just nearly under the power lines. From this point, I could see:
- The power lines, supported by heavy wooden logs, stretching far away. The soft buzzing sound from the transformer box mounted on one of the logs.
- The full moon above the power lines
- The bus stop sign
- A transmission tower flashing red hundreds of metres away in the distance
- A water storage tower standing alone amongst the tall grasses in the middle of an overgrown field next to the road
- The street lights curling away in to the distance, an occasional car coming roaring past.
With the exception of this and the soft hum from the transformer box, the night was cool and quiet. Standing there, watching, and then, eventually, listening to my iRiver MP3 player, I felt the beauty of the place. What I really like is the feeling of seeing the markings of civilisation (the power lines, or a train track on which occasionally a train would pass by when I was in Czech Republic), and yet the place is lonely, quiet, and the environment is still totally natural. It is a lonely, quiet area and the moon and the deserted field and other natural things are right next to such looming infrastructure projects.


7/12/06. Delirious thoughts on absurd humour: You have a virtuous room, virtue is embodied in the walls. Your room is The Good. You can strike truth in to the hearts of others.

Tourism

From before my trip to the game-reserve:

It is well known that enterprising South African farmers fence off huge areas of land inappropriate for wild animals that they've bought cheaply and dump "The Big 5" (Buffalo, lion, elephant, rhinoceros and leopard) in to the enclosure. They then put other animals in there to feed The Big 5. The experience is inauthentic because the "rangers" employed by the farmers are simply yuppies placed in land-rovers who are trained to say a few things about each of the animals which sound good to the uneducated tourist. They engineer the 'surprise' encounters with the animals, because they almost always know where the animals are. They are schisters and they'll take you out on a game tour at 2pm. All the sensible animals at this time are finding cool spots to rest from the 40 degree heat. In a 3 day experience at some of these private game parks it is known that you often won't see wild animals behaving like wild animals should. They'll behave more like zoo animals. They can't hunt. They don't chase. They are fed at regular times. The structure of the animal pride or whatever is totally non-existent in the new environment they find themselves in. You won't see a leopard ripping apart an impala, it'll just be sitting there, panting. None of the animals will act surprised around you, because they see tourists like you at the exact same time every single day. Tourists might gaze in wonder at them if they've never seen them before. But I HAVE seen them before and I'll see the experience as a fraud if that's what it is, as I've heard other traveller say. Then they’ll take you on a “cultural experience tour” where you’ll pay heaps to see some alcoholic bums from Cape Town dance around in some traditional clothing. They’re former prisoners, not the proud Africans who once lived in these areas before their cultures were crushed. They’ve got more problems than the old guys had, and you can see them just trying to grab your money, because they don’t care. It’s just a show. I hope my mum, the travel agent, and South African, will not allow us to be ripped off like this.

Objectivism, Objectively

Who is John Galt?

Objectivism, Ayn Rand's reason for writing her books, functions as a reasonably accurate PowerPoint replacement for an in-depth understanding of Economics. But it is essentially a cheapened, retarded substitute for doing difficult philosophy.

Ayn Rand was a stubborn genius, a typical product of a Russian smart (and wealthy) enough but hateful enough of the corruption in her system to flee to the U.S.A in the days when the U.S.A was ideologically healthy and valued rights and the truth more than equality and some confused notion of respect. However, if many of her readers and believers woke up in her paradise, they'd be confused and angry.

Consider how Alissa's emigration beautifully represents the links between Economic theory, morality and religion. When I read her, I thought of old Ayn Rand aka Alissa Rosenbaum more than she realised as a typical Jewish girl of her time period, arranging herself towards living up to a dominant man. (Jewish girls aren't like Ayn anymore, not that I'm saying this pleases or displeases me!).

I was totally mind-fucked to learn, then, that when she was 45, she started fucking Nathan Blumenthal, who was 20. He is nothing like the heroes of her book. He wrote academic books on self-esteem, one of which I've read.Who could resist seeing what kind of person Ayn Rand would go for? But he was basically like her servant, spent all his time promoting her philosophies, and agreeing with her etc. There's something about that which makes me really really confused about her, and about her change of 'hero'. Did Ayn Rand have a penis? She is a very influential figure. But what is certain is that Ayn Rand isn't as cool as some of her readers of old still think she is.

If you care seriously for the idea of truth, there are better philosophies than Objectivism. There are no valueable short-cuts to take in life, and Objectivism is no exception to this rule.

Jobs

Why do companies that I am applying for graduate jobs at require that I be involved in the community, when some of these companies themselves don't do shit for the community?
Management likes to break the spirit of new workers?

You call yourself a scientist?

Politicians and ideologues have always sought to portray their ideas as being "scientific". The word is bandied around like there's no tomorrow. So what, if anything, do, or should, people who describe themselves as 'scientists' have in common?

There are certain things which anybody who wants to consider themself a scientist is supposed to do. Scientists are supposed to observe the real world, and formulate hypotheses about how it might work. They should then test these hypotheses using all the analytic tools they have access to (observing through stethoscopes, x-rays, and analysing their findings with mathematics, especially statistics). Scientists are supposed to create models (either conceptual or physical ones) to explain their observations, and to revise and refine these models based upon the evidence that they gather and pain-stakingly control. Obviously, scientific hypotheses are actually TRUE or FALSE in some sense - there either was a big bang or not. But scientists do not propose or execute experiments with the aim of revealing some grand "truth", but in terms of the increasingly accurate predictive and explanatory power of these models and the evidential support of their hypotheses.

The heuristic maxim that is the backbone of science is Occam's Razor.
"Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate ::::: Plurality ought never be posed without necessity". Galvani Volta thought the electricity in the nerves of living creatures was of a different nature to the electricity that ran machines or stretched between the clouds. Mistake. The introduction of an extra category was unnecessary, entirely superfluous, and did not fit any observations at hand but was based on a bias, a prejudice (So must many of our beliefs today be, but we know what is wrong, and it is hypothesis that does not match belief, and we may weed out wrong hypotheses). Newton made no such mistake. He realised that the SAME, UNIVERSAL force made his apple fall from the tree to the ground as did keep the moon in orbit of the Earth. Positing a redundant extra force to move the moon was not only no longer necessary to explain what was observable, it was entirely absurd.

As scientists rationally attempting to evaluate what we see / what we see our equipment registers, we look to the most simple explanation which best fits in with the body of evidence that we have from all of the scientific fields of inquiry. When we propose an explanatory entity, this entity MUST EXPLAIN MORE, through its introduction, than it would render unexplainable and unpredictable, than it would introduce logical contradiction or redundancy.
As an example - to a scientist, it is possible, but ENTIRELY IRRATIONAL, to believe that there is an alien hidden by an energy field in this room which does X and Y that I can't explain. All of our observations seem to indicate that there is no alien presence changing anything in this room, so to propose that there was one would raise many more questions than it would solve. You go with the most simple explanation for what you observe. Not for what you want to believe. Not for what is possible. Not for which there is no evidence AGAINST. Not for what would be "cool" or more interesting or would make you want to pray. It may be dull, but have the courage to apprehend the world as we observe it. The flickering lights are more probably caused by current fluctuations, the graphical aberrations on my monitor caused by the age of my video card etc, the sound in the roof by a possum. The new entity or force should not raise more questions, or be redundant somehow. We should always doubt 'miracles', not only because the idea of a miracle is logically impossible, but because we peform 'miracles' by standards of old, and we now understand that there's no such thing.

If a person reveals that they take seriously the possibility that ghosts exist, this is plainly not the opinion of a scientist, or rather, it is not the scientist in that person talking. Now, it may be that ghosts or the afterlife DO exist, in some sense (though I don't believe this). There is a HUGE DIFFERENCE between acknowledging the possibility of something existing which seems extremely unlikely and actually entertaining the idea as part of your belief system. Any self-respecting scientist must declare that they almost certainly do not exist, given the complete lack of evidence for them. And no scientist can admit of the existence of non-material objects or objects which cannot be observed or described, precisely because they cannot be observed or described. So the scientist speaking needs to encode such a belief in to an hypothesis of some kind! Granted, there is not always consensus in the scientific community, but it certainly does emerge on well-studied issues, at least until new evidence crops up. Scientists should know as much about the problems with human perception, with human emotion, with the biases of human intuition, and with our logical and intellectual limitations as they do know about the problems of measurement.
Likewise, it may be that there is a God. But no scientist can say that his or her belief that there is a God is at all scientifically reasonable. No true scientist thinks in terms of "God". There is simply no observation that can be made which justifies considering such an object or using it to explain the mechanisms of nature. The idea of "God" has zero explanatory power, raises more questions that it answers, and is entirely redudant - other things explain more than adequately what "God" is supposed to explain. If you are a scientist, you are a materialist, and that's that. If you're a scientist and you believe in a God of some kind, you have not just seriously compromised your scientific integrity and credibility in a number of ways. You have selectively rejected the input of the scientific method on a number of questions and embraced some combination of mysticism, dogma, faith and revelation as the tools by which to gain knowledge on these questions or structure your life experiences. I'm not saying you're wrong for believing in God. You are just not a scientist in the truest, most consistent sense. You may occupy a scientific post and improve man's scientific knowledge but you lapse in to unscientific thinking on certain questions. You may be very very intelligent in many ways. But you are just not consistently using the thought-tools which have taken us out of the pre-industrialised, primitive world. Like everybody, I suppose, you are just not thinking scientifically at all moments. Nothing necessarily 'wrong' with this, we're free to believe what we want and think like we want. Just be aware that's what you're doing.

A reasonable scientist would do well to be skeptical of a variety of many other things. If human telepathy were possible, why is it that nobody who claims to possess these powers has ever been able to demonstrate them in a laboratory, under controlled settings? Why is it that there is absolutely no evidence for the existence of aliens? For anything supernatural? Of human prophets? Of humans with healing powers? Of ESP, spoon-bending, triangles in which people disappear? Of God, the Devil, of the tooth fairy? Why is that there is evidence for evolution and none for "intelligent design"?
Scientists, either try to consistently think scientifically, or acknowledge that many of your beliefs are deeply unscientific and that you're happy with not subjecting all of your beliefs (maybe most of them) to the scrutiny of scientific methods.

Random Thoughts...

A week in the life of a strange, distracted, fatigued mind. Here the thoughts spill over
- “Every writer creates his own precursors”. In Kierkegaard and Zeno there is Kafka (who came after those two), but if Kafka had never written, nobody would have noticed this fact. Thus by writing, Kafka created Zeno and Kierkegaard as his precursors.
- George Bush keeps saying that democracy is “God’s gift to citizens of the world”. Bullshit. Democracy is not a gift, the people inside undemocratic countries have to work extremely hard to make and then keep their country democratic, because there are always forces opposing democracy.
- Man is attracted to a beautiful environment only because the body tells him that such an environment could sustain him. We do not find rolling desert sand dunes as beautiful as...yeah
- India and China have engineers and scientists in their positions of political power. And yet, we in the West have only thoroughbred politicians in political power. Just as psychologists are best able to advise on depression, physicists are best able to advise about space missions etc, scientific economists and philosophers are probably best able to advise about how a country should be run.
-Competitive forces, amongst all the other wonderful things they can do, have the potential to destroy the lives of humans. For example, competitive forces would have children be forced to study from younger and younger ages (perhaps with the aid of medication) in order to be able to compete with others. This is because an edge can be given to any individual that works harder earlier on in their life. It is conceivable that non-stop training would begin at age zero days for children if nothing prevents the level of competitiveness in society. What happens now is that people pretend they aren’t pushing and don’t want to push their children ahead…and then they go and do it anyway!
-All of civilisation’s history is about the specific capabilities of peoples of different nations, and how these have been used. The capabilities of peoples will always be the primary determinant of the nation’s wealth, and in general, the nation’s wealth and capabilities will also determine how free the people are
-Depressingly, depression could be adaptive. It gets you to ruminate about the causes for your depression, and you respond (at least sometimes) with thought and intelligence, perhaps more insight than when you are not depressed. Not only can you go ahead and potentially fix what the problem was, but you can help others fix their problems (The phenomenon of the depressed psychologist or the willingness of those who have had depression to help others out of it).

Directional History

History does seem to be directional. Slavery/Subsistence Agriculture yields to Theocracy, then Monarchy/Feudal Aristocracy and finally, Liberal Democracy. Simplification. But liberal democracy combined with capitalism does seem to be the end point of the evolution of systems of governance or at any rate an extremely stable combination for keeping a nation powerful, its citizens farily docile and flush with goods. Whether a society survives or not will be based on whether there are any inherent “contradictions” [perhaps of a logical nature, but more often one which threatens the survival of the society] in it. For example, fascism has less reason to exist after a fascist country takes over the rest of the world and so it is in a sense unstable. Communism is unstable because the incentives problem leaves it exposed to economic domination which undermines the survival power of the ideology, and reliance on central governance creates incentives to be a government worker, promoting inefficiency and inequality both of material goods and of the ability to influence the system...again undermining the system. We can project which problems might come to the surface for any system with the dialect, or implement the system and simply note which problems arise naturally.

So then, what, if any, are the remaining problems with the idea of liberal, capitalist democracy? The destruction of the environment or overpopulation necessitating that our rights become restricted (Environmentalism becoming allied with socialism)? Or severe inequality leading to political unrest? Or will the competitive pressures of the market eventually cause too many social structures and human bonds to decay, causing popular unrest and rebellion?And if liberal democracy is combined with technocratic capitalism, what kind of ‘hostile’ society could over-run the liberal democracy? Technology does seem to naturally force authoritarians to lose their grip on power, at some point. And technology can't be permanently lost, as at the very least the memory of the scientific method and its discoveries would survive a prolonged natural disaster. I’m talking long term here --- how can anything other than liberal democracy be the final stable system?

And what other directions might liberal democracies take over a long period of time, if any? Presumably the liberal democracy would continue to incorporate more elements of what humans want over time (although there might be periods in which this isn’t the case), and solve its problems through market mechanisms. Technology is continuously providing for our wants (albeit only by creating more). Nevertheless this situation is stable, despite a permanent gap between what we have and our desires. It is the steady state of always wanting something else. And it is ridiculous to suggest ‘freezing’ technology, not only because countries which do not will move ahead, but 1) there are lots of people who don’t have what they want 2) it simply cannot be administered (especially information – how could a dictatorship ultimately prevent modern flows of information without isolating itself and hence becoming vulnerable to takeover by less hostile societies simply because it becomes technologically inept. 3) there’s no reason to suggest that freezing technology in its present state would make anyone happy. That is, people aren’t particularly satisfied with what technology can do for them today.

I've tried to think of other stable outcomes, and they all have problems. And all of them lead to eventual destruction.

Free Will

One of the oldest problems of philosophy is the "Problem of Free Will". The 'problem' is that we tend to believe that we choose what we say and do. Whereas, scientifically, there is no basis for this assertion. Just as particles flying around in the air have no 'will' of their own and no 'choice' as to how they move (it is evident that they obey laws of physics), so too must the particles in our brain. Therefore we do not 'choose' our thoughts, emotions, opinions, or choices, which are all very much determined by our brain activity.

Some have proposed that we therefore cannot be held responsible for crimes that we commit. After all, if our brain states are entirely dependent on laws of physics, then we could hardly have 'chosen' to do something in violation of a law of physics. Others counter that juries and judges could hardly have 'chosen' something else than to sentence a criminal as they see fit.
The idea that we can't choose what we do doesn't make any intuitive sense - we believe that hearing a prediction of what we're about to do allows us to alter our behaviour to prove this prediction wrong. That, if somebody predicts we will raise our right arm in 10 seconds, we can stop ourselves from doing so (Although brain scans reveal 0.2 seconds before I actually do so AND before I know that I will do so, that I WILL definitely lift my arm). This may prove that hearing a prediction invalidates that prediction within certain time windows, or it may prove that it's impossible to prove what another person will do, under all but the most limited of circumstances or only over very short intervals of time (see Chaos Theory and combine your knowledge of this with knowledge of the Uncertainty Principle). For example, after you finish reading this sentence, over the next 0.1 seconds you are likely to continue reading. When you step on a nail you will hop around afterwards etc.
Or it may just prove that various parts of the brain process information with different delay periods.

Many contradictions around free will exist too. For example, the claim of various religions that you have free will, and yet God Knows All, including everything that you do will do in the future. If God Knows what you're going to do, you could hardly choose to do something yourself!! And if you have free will, you never chose whether or not to have free will!

What I am certain of is that
** Free will is restricted to the domain of our knowledge. If I am unaware that there is a party at 4 Umbrella Road, Blacktown tonight, then I do not have free will to go to this party. After all, the next morning, I’d rightfully claim that I wasn’t “free” to go to this party or any of the others that I was unaware of. One would need to be omniscient to make a decision that is truly free, thus based on a consideration of all available options.
** Language is a problem. What does 'free' mean, when we talk of "free will"? We seem to use it in different senses -- eg 'freedom' (absence of being in jail) meaning an absence of constraint, versus the normal usage. 'Compatabilists' say that our BELIEF that our actions are free are what makes them free, regardless of whether or not this is an illusion
** The illusion that is free will is strengthened by the fact that we change...because we are constantly becoming a different person, our decisions, thoughts and actions often seem novel to us and chosen by us, whereas to an older person our behaviour was more predictable. The reason you thought mum was so smart was that she could predict what you'd do and she had lessons which she knew you'd learn.
** Its obvious, upon analysing what you do all day, that you do not have free will in all senses. You do not decide “Should I do 100 push ups on the roof, and then eat my own shit, jump in the pool and then screech at the bird in the tree at 43Hz?" It is no wonder researchers at scientific institutions often have to publish their papers in E-Prime in order to not be laughed off campus. If I asked you to kill me now, could you really do it? Could you really?

--- Note that the true picture, the world as a probabilistically determined system that works according to Quantum Dynamical properties has been ignored in this post, although similar dilemmas related to free will exist anyway under this system. When you incorporate this, it looks as if our actions are not predictable but also are not free.

**** Reason is a bullied child

Israeli-Arab Conflict

Weighing in on this particular issue with what I think are the perspectives of either side on several issues.

-- The charter of organisations such as Hamas and Hezbollah explicitly call for the destruction of the State of Israel. The Iranian PM publicly declared his will to "wipe Israel off the map", which received widespread support amongst Arab League politicians rather than condemnation. Apart from being totally uncivilised, this creates indescribable fear for Israelis, who feel there is a permanent existential threat to themselves
** Israel cannot continue to refuse to deal with Hamas and Hezbollah. It is stubbornly looking for ways to prevent making more concessions. Palestinians and other Arab citizens cannot be blamed for supporting Hamas along with their violent policies, for there are few credible alternatives, and Hamas runs Arabic schools and supports other infrastructure projects.

** The US has assisted Israel militarily and economically since 1948 far more than it has Palestinians and other Arab peoples, which is seen by Arabs within the framework of ongoing US hostility towards Islam
-- The US says its support for Israel is due to Israel being the only democratic, stable nation in the Middle East, and one which shares its goals, and trades freely

** The Israelis humiliate the Palestinians on a day-to-day basis. The Israeli security fence prevents Palestinians from leading ordinary lives, interfering with their families and businesses, and Arab-Israelis are discriminated against severely in Israeli society
-- The Israeli military can prove that these measures have caught hundreds of would-be suicide bombers, although whether this exceeds the number of bombers created out of peaceful people is debatable

** Palestinians are poor, humiliated and desperate and see no way out of their present situation. Israel does almost nothing to assist them in their plight. Other weak, corrupt Arab governments blame Israel for all of their problems in order to deflect criticisms from themselves
-- Israel says this is mostly their own fault, and that of the corrupt leaders that they elect. Further, Jews are critical of Arab families which are prepared to send their 10 year-old daughters on suicide missions to kill innocents.

** Ariel Sharon was said to have 'provoked' the 2nd Intifadah by his controversial visit to the Temple Mount. He indeed had no other reason to go other than the fact that he felt he should be able to, and he knew it would create hostility and resentment.
-- Israelis should be able to go where they want in their own country. Israel's population is 20% Arab and these citizens have the same rights as Jews, whereas in places such as Mecca, Saudi Arabia, simply being present at certain times is illegal for a Jew

-- Preceding the recent Lebanon conflict, there were hundreds of rockets fired in to Israel from Southern Beirut, killing many and terrorising more. If Australians set up rocket batteries in Cronulla and fired them at New Zealand, and if the Australian government repeatedly failed to respond to requests made by New Zealand to dismantle these rockets immediately, New Zealand would be justified in bombing these batteries
** Israel responded very heavy-handedly, and hundreds of innocent Lebanese were killed, and hospitals and other infrastructure were badly damaged or destroyed

-- The Palestinians were offered 90% of what they demanded for their new state at the 2000 Camp David Peace talks, and they rejected it. It is said that they "never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity"
** Israel delibarely has undermined the leadership of many Palestinian representatives and has encouraged factional disputes amongst the Palestinians for their own benefit.

-- In London, there has been 1 suicide bomb. There have been >400 suicide bombs in Israel since 2001, all of which have targeted civilians, bombs packed with nails in crowded market-places etc
** Ordinary Palestinians are being punished for the actions of their compatriots. -- Israel at least attempts to pick out terorists from civilians

-- Israel is so small it fits 3 times in to Tasmania - you can drive across it at its widest point in one hour. Elderly Israelis have seen their country give away more than 50% of its land as peace offers to various hostile neighbors since 1967, none of which have ultimately stemmed the hostility from those countries (Egypt is an exception)
** When Israel defeated its aggressors in 1967, it gained some areas of useless land which it has since refused to give back, and religious fundamentalist Jews continue to settle some areas of the West Bank against all international advice and agreements, thinking that the land is "holy".

Much of the land on which Israel was created was Palestinian territory prior to the 1948 mandate. Before that, it was often occupied by Jews. Throughout the ages, various parties have alternately occupied that territory, and it's clear that both groups have claims to joint ownership of vast swathes of land.

The Rights of an organism

Humans were once locked in to a fierce, life-or-death competitions over resources, influence and procreation. The stakes aren't as high now in some ways. What emerged fairly recently is the concept that humans deserve freedom of and/or access to certain things, simply because they're alive. This notion is most feasibly entertained wherever luxury prevails...the people making your sneakers have fewer rights than you. It's quite interesting to note the order and ease (or lack of) in which Australians and others have gained their rights;

The right to not be physically harmed or stolen from. The right to not be enslaved. The right to vote. The right to freedom of speech and other expression. The right to unemployment benefits and shelter. The right to not be threatened, stalked, slighted or misled financially by another. The right to legal representation and a fair trial, and to remain silent. The right to treatment devoid of discrimination based on a sex, race, orientation, age and religion. The right to damage your own body if you're not harming another's (sometimes). The right to 10 days paid sick leave and earmuff protection in intensively noisy environments. The right of the wheelchair-bound to easily navigate sidewalks and buildings. The newly proclaimed right for all school-children in NSW to have reasonably fast internet access. It's a source of wonder and gratefulness but also slight apprehension for me that our rights continue to expand. Our prosperity is fragile, and so therefore are our rights.

Where concerns for human rights are most prevalent, so too generally are the concern for the rights of other animals. It's not only that comfort and wealth raise our consciousness level, comfort and wealth limits the all-or-nothing nature of the balancing act between the rights of humans and the rights of other animals. The RSPCA, for example, works tirelessly to give household pets the right to not be cruelly treated, including adequate provision of food.

Yet we're still not comfortable enough ourselves to focus on animals. The unceasing misery and abuses which other intelligent, emotional creatures are subject to is sad, but will only come in to sharper focus where humans are prosperous. Only when (or where) almost all humans are comfortable will the voices for animals be heard loudly enough for any real change. I predict that later on in this century, there will be a revolution in the way that animals are treated and they will end up with almost as many rights as they are able to enjoy. That is, if these other species still exist at that time.

Nicer Things

A while ago, (in commemoration of Friedrich Nietzsche), I wrote a list of unfortunate, unpleasant truths that are often overlooked. As promised, I return to list of what, for me, are 'nicer' truths (shutup nihilists, I share many of your opinions, this post is valid anyway). They're lamer and were harder to think of, but here you go:


-Solace from all sorts of discomforts may be fount in art, philosophy, literature, music, drama.
-Wherever and however life disappears from the landscape, it eventually springs up there again or somewhere else.
-Time heals just about all wounds.
-Nothing will stop stem cells, or science generally, including creationists and religious objectionists around the world.
-Memantine can help a person 'forget' chronic pain.
-"Evil empires" always do fall, eventually, due to internal problems or contradictions.
-We're capable of true empathy and sufficient sympathy, forgiveness, of rising above our most vulgar instincts through self-restraint. We're capable of change too.
-We're approaching greater levels of meritocracy, rather than unjustified aristocracies based on class, race, family name or title.
-Forgotten ideas will be remembered and current ideas improved on. The truth is always out there waiting to be discovered or re-discovered.
-Almost everybody is wealthier and far healthier than people from previous generations were. The lowest classes in Sydney lives like the Kings of centuries ago and poverty around the world is on the decrease.
-We're all dead in the end anyway.
-The World is tiny, there's so often a way for people who otherwise would be torn apart to cohabitate. And we can communicate with almost anyone, anytime.
-People usually eventually recover very well from intensely negative life events.
-There is somebody out there that can love you, no matter who you are.
-The pleasures of small things
-The 'good' will carry on acting as they do, even if they realise that there's no God.
-People living today have an historically almost unparalleled amount of freedom to live life as they choose to and are tolerated more than ever.
-There are lots of people who work tirelessly and altruistically.
-The Internet has drastically enhanced access to information.

Uhh, feel free to add.

Snobbishness

There are different types of snobs - intellectual snobs and materialists. Both sides like to feel themselves as superior and have some measure of contempt for the other.

There are high-powered CEOs who, due to their lack of knowledge on a topic, are routinely humiliated by intellectuals. There are plain-clothed intellectuals that are ignored, ridiculed or pitied by the wealthy. There are trendy, beautiful people in successful careers who are enraged and humbled by their complete irrelevancy in matters political or scientific. There are trendy intellectuals who are unfairly labelled as materialists, and shallow, materialistic geniuses who are ashamed to be called know-it-alls and who recoil at the possibility of being ostracised due to a perceived intellectual elitism. The intellectual elites are derided as bullshit artists, the materialists as uneducated.

It can be very difficult to reconcile these ways of living. Where one tries merely to gain as many posessions as possible, one must compromise, to some degree, ones love of gaining as much knowledge as possible. Of course, knowledge may sustain wealth, and wealth may help you obtain or transfer knowledge, but ego and identity depend on which category we choose for our own self-evaluation. Too often, people of different tastes judge the other on criteria they did not submit to. Two people with a commitment to knowing all about cosmic rays may compete fairly, as might two people who just want to be billionaires. When the cosmologist judges the aspiring billionaire or vice-versa, is where things get very strange.

Incredibly...Stupid.

$AUD 20 BILLION is being spent on a couple of crappy fighter jets? 15% of the Australian Federal budget, EVERY year for 10 years, being spent on such crap? On jets which are ALREADY outdated! On jets which could never, ever, come even close to saving us in the event of a war anyway! In any case, there are no hostile neighbors now, and no reasons why there needs to be. There are absolutely no justified OR feasible applications for these ridiculous jets, even in the overseas wars currently taking place. There is also no potential for these jets to improve Australia's ability to meet its obligations to its treaty signatories such as Japan, the US and New Zealand, nor for peace-keeping OR counterterrorism measures (not that I think counter-terrorism is worthwhile, either).

I am exploding with anger not only at the stupidity of the Joint Strike Fighter jet purchases, but on the very idea that Australian military idiots could consider us a country capable of defending ourselves in a situation of war. Or economically powerful enough to poking our fingers around elsewhere. Years ago, these same fools wasted $10 billion on disgracefully impotent and defunct submarines, to the aggravation and often tangible pain of everybody domestically, and to the bewilderment of our neighbors. This decision raises the bone-headededness to a new level.

The Defense portfolio needs to be virtually dismantled and its ministers removed in disgrace. We should be spending all of that money domestically, slowing down the rate at which Australia becomes an uneducated, internationally uncompetitive basketcase that is drowning in debt.

"Luv Yer"

Every so often, someone makes a revealing comment. True feelings, fears, insecurities and prejudices are finally exposed. Some admissions are sad, some bold, pathetic, embarassing or touching. We cringe or we laugh when we hear them, we act sensitively, but somebody has to be the guy who points out another's distorted thinking patterns, and slips of the tongue are the best opportunities if you care for somebody. Lately many girls that I know have revealed, sometimes unconsciously, a lack of self-esteem to me. They're still not truly convinced that they're sexy, smart, or whatever it is that they need to feel. They demand, and are grateful for, too little.

Case 1: I see a girl in an on-off 3-year relationship who now types "luv yer" on MSN to her bf, in response to something considerate he'd done for her. This can be just an innocent abbreviation for a genuine feeling, but I knew that it wasn't for her...she had once typed "I love you" in similar circumstances to somebody else that she really loved, and to him long ago. She had considered typing "love you" and thought better of it. She says she DOESN'T love him, their relationship is neither here nor there. Never terrible, never good. She just says things like "luvv ya" cause she thinks he wants to hear it. She was amazed that I picked up on this, I'm surprised that she was amazed. As if I don't know her inside out by now. Wow, that has sexual connotations. But we've never even kissed. She says she can't break up with this guy, "because he doesn't deserve it". Breaking up unfair because of an ABSENCE OF MISTAKES on his part? THAT'S NOT THE ISSUE. The potential for guilty feelings is NOT good enough reason to stay in a relationship. You don't have to wait for mistakes as an excuse to end it! My not making mistakes does not entitle me to another person, nothing does in fact.

Other ones I've heard from different people:
"Nobody else could ever love me as much as he does". Rubbish. We're so young anyway.
"I want to try to not fuck things up again" - wrongly believing that, by staying committed to one guy, past mistakes such as pickiness or infidelity can be corrected. For some, to prove themselves capable of more commitment.
"Nobody out there is as good as him". Bullshit. Others exist. This actually reflects her view that better catches out there are not within her reach.
"I don't deserve someone like him". Very startling. There's a terribly depressed view of the self here. Everyone makes mistakes, but it is distortion if you believe your past mistakes are permanent features of your personality. Or assume that the mistakes you've made deserve punishment from somebody that loves you.

Probably the most common, and the most forgiveable, is "I need someone now". That's totally fine, if neither person believes it's a serious relationship. Another common statement: "I realised what a nice guy he is". You didn't when you got together? Obviously, we speak in short-hand, this means more, but still!

It is nice that people consider the hurting of other people's feelings.
I'm not suggesting that every relationship that you go in to needs to be deadly serious. Greater feelings sometimes develop more slowly, anyway. Just be clear of what it was that you were looking for when it started. If you aren't, the relationship could eventually assume a pretentious or dishonest status.
I'm also not advocating always searching for more, and never stopping to be satisfied with what you have at the moment. Or even considering that one person might have enough to offer you for the rest of your life.
Just think, at least occasionally, with a larger perspective about the significance of the relationship and what the purpose of it was and now is for you and for the other. If there are things missing which aren't going to appear, don't play down the importance of them.
Guys do this all the time too. Stop letting these thoughts swirl around in your head, and don't get trapped in a vicious cycle of neediness and reinforcement between two people who no longer share much in common other than a neurosis.

Collecting

This is a confessional. One of my strange psychological quirks is my desire to archive things. It's crazy, self-centred, and it consumes an hour every few weeks or so. I've just always hated the feeling of losing my memories. It's a fantastic feeling when you're able to see your past before you, when you wish to. To know that while your memory may one day fail, you will not forget. I'll appreciate it in my old age. (Although I'm working on keeping the past in its context and not letting it interfere with the present).

I've got collections of travel diaries from every holiday since I was 7 (Those are funny to read, I wrote the precise time we arrived at places more than what we saw). From my travels, I also have old passes to mountain ranges, tickets from trains, museums, trams, productions I attended, films, art galleries, clubs. If I enjoyed overseas music, it has been downloaded and forms the audio part of my travel memories folders, nearby the photos.
I've got all my writings for the last 5 years and many from before, with the date of writing mentioned, and the content categorised. I've got archives of every conversation I've ever had on MSN, archives of interesting web pages or articles I've saved to my hard disk for retrieval when my interest on researching a subject is reignited. Old mIRC programming, and other nerdy material.
I'll have almost all my photos right back to primary school camps, and even my dad's old 35mm slides digitized and filed away on my computer in their appropriate place.
I've got diaries, dream diaries, dead end writings, old workbooks. Lists of my top 50, 100 books, movies. I've got stand-up comedies, film clips, TV shows. Data systems with application backups. On an external hard drive I've also got just about every computer game I ever played (I no longer play them). I've got old clothes, old trophies, team memorabilia, board games.

It's compulsive, addictive, but it's incredibly satisfying for me and it's proven very useful many times. I thought I was going to run out physical space, but most things are digital now anyway. Even this blog is sort of an archive. I wonder how long I'll keep everything up for.

Moore's Law

IT Journalists who realise they haven't researched anything to write about for their weekly column end up publishing something about how much faster computers have become. They often rant and rave about "Moore's Law"...not the Moore that said that everything that can go wrong, will go wrong. Gordon Moore, the CEO of Intel, who once predicted that computer processing power will double every 18 months.
Pseudo-nerds like to talk about Moore's Law, to pretend they're smart. Problem is, the "law" does not describe reality, and hasn't done so for some time. 4.5 years ago, I bought a 1.8GHz processor. If the "law" was correct, by now I'd be using a 14.4GHz processor. 4GHz is the fastest available, however. So computer CPUs have taken 4.5 years to roughly double in speed. They've hardly advanced in speed at all in 3 years (I could get 3.4GHz, 3 years ago). Moore's "Law", conclusively, is bullshit. What annoys me more is the thought that people ever believed there was reason to think that miraculously, research would just happen to advance in such a way that every 18 months, CPUs would double in speed. Deserving pain are the journalists who write as though Moore's prediction actually CAUSED computers to become faster, as though, by trying to keep up with his prediction, research has gone faster than it otherwise would have. What absolute nonsense.

The instinct to learn

It is often assumed, in casual conversation, that everything which children know they were taught or learnt in some way (often by trial and error). However there is definitely not only an ‘instinct’ to learn...babies are smart enough to generalise and know complex things, without any instruction whatsoever.
-For example, a baby is pointed to a cup, taught that it is called a cup. They immediately recognise all distinct cup-shaped objects as cups, despite never having been taught this. Crucially, this behaviour continues in adulthood.
-Humans develop a knowledge of "physics" early on. Young infants are surprised by the tricks of magicians, because, watching them, they instinctively feel that some law has been violated. Due to their curiosity-imbibed fumblings, they've learnt to walk, talk, and to interact with objects, and they know what is not possible. As a physicist does, they've already built models of reality which they've adapted in line with their 'experiments'
-Body language!

I think a lot more of what humans do is instinct than is generally recognised. Walking, talking, thinking. Even without being taught mathematical operations, people would continually re-invent addition, multiplication, etc, as ways of solving real-life problems, such as how to share food amongst many people. {Mathematicians were once ethicists / "from the priest clan"!!!}.

Have a good, long think about what other learning mechanisms are hardwired in to you, and how they influence your behaviour, and your opinions. If you're not a lazy arsewipe and do this, you'll be absolutely intrigued by your findings.

**** "Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away"

Problems with Gravity

I've come up with errors in man's understanding of gravity. They're listed in the comments, if this is something that you find interesting. Otherwise, less space has been taken up :)

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"Lovie Smith becomes the first African-American sports coach to ever lose the Superbowl"

A woman I respect

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a remarkable woman. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayaan_Hirsi_Ali
She is the daughter of a Somali warlord, who escaped Islamic fundamentalists, and turned in to an influential Dutch politican and prominent atheist. After she wrote the script for the film "Submission", a fundamentalist killed the director, Theo van Gogh, and left a 5 page letter attached to his body, threatening her death too (she now is under protection from the Dutch).
She is part of a minority that understand why our principal concern must be the concept of human rights, rather than our traditional understanding of what constitutes respect. If we want a peaceful society.
Chomsky, now: "The beauty of the democratic systems of thought control, as contrasted with their clumsy totalitarian counterparts, is that they operate by subtly establishing, on a voluntary basis (aided by the force of nationalism and media control by substantial interests) - presuppositions that set the limits of debate, rather than by imposing beliefs with a bludgeon"

****
Death to those that call us murderers

"Against nature"

I can't understand how people could label cloning ‘unnatural’. The public fail to understand that thousands of clones are born each day, completely naturally. This is what identical twins are. What people call 'unnatural’ is often just what hadn't happened before. Like penicillin, chemotherapy and Panadol. It's the logical fallacy people, AGAIN, of deriving an "ought" from an "is". Due to fear.

Natural vs Unnatural is a stupid way to think when analysing what changes to society should be banned. If we are to be consistent with “nature”, people with leukaemia are supposed to naturally die without intervention. All other inventions, such as microwaves were also considered unnatural at one time. Familiarity has changed that. You could not possibly begin to argue that such things should certainly be banned simply because they didn’t exist for the majority of the time Homo Sapiens have been around. More reasonable grounds need to be given to ban an invention such as cloning other than the fact that we're uncomfortable with it. Eg, suppose it is dangerous in that it produces freak mutations. Watch out for that though, because PLENTY of things are dangerous when they are new but the risks involved decrease to zero eventually as the technologies advance)

****
Once, the mind existed to ensure the body survived. Now, the body exists to make sure the mind survives.

The Search Function

1] We are unaware about HOW we recall things….the process seems to occur completely outside our control, as does the beating of the heart. So how does memory recall work? You don't think very hard; you more hope your brain fetches the memory for you. And yet you're happy when you remember something. I guess the pride is that you stored that memory to retrieve in the first place! Is the brain scanning for associations? To what could the brain’s “search mechanism” be compared? A computer searching for files? What is the “method of storage”? -------- When you get the feeling that you are "getting close" to remembering the answer, or if you get the feeling it starts with an M, are you literally searching somewhere near the information required and have briefly scanned over it, or a part of it? Somebody help me out with this one!

2] For memory scientists. I figured out something while playing Memory Blocks (where you flip blocks, trying to find matching pairs). Which you should investigate. I only ever set the record the first time I play, so the short-term memory must confuse itself, the map of which block is where the second time I play must interfere with the map from the first game. Etc

3] If somebody asks you “What do you think about X” you often realise during your response, mid-sentence, that you are wrong (or that you have not given the matter adequate thought). This is because different parts of the brain work at different speeds. (On a slightly different but related note, nobody says “I hear a ball dropping now” – you know the event will be finished by the time you’ve completed the sentence, yet you say “I’m in Love” because the parts of the brain making you feel love are active for much longer periods). After somebody asks a question, our auditory systems often start responding before our brains have been able to recall ideas we learnt before and stored, and ideas we no longer actually believe in start to stream out. Then the other systems of the brain catch up, and we realise that we’ve been talking bullshit. Goddamn

***

An atheist says, hey, let's not spend our time and money building a church, let's build a hospital instead.

Self-deception

Now obviously we all have limitations. People say things like “I cannot draw”. Or “I cannot solve equations”. “I don’t understand culture X”. “I don’t understand women”. “I don’t understand men”. “I am not technically minded”. “I cannot communicate effectively”. “I can’t write well”. “I can’t / (hate?) read(ing)”. “I can’t play piano”. “I cannot study”.
People are more hesitant, however, to admit or come to the following conclusions and concede the true flaws they have:
“I'm not very creative". “I am largely incapable of logic of any sophistication”. “I'm ignorant relative to others about X,Y,Z". "I often am not able to empathise”. “I am not very precise and cannot structure my thoughts”. “I could not be relied upon to establish civilisation”. These are the analogues of the former in many ways, yet they are greater attacks on the person’s self-worth. By admitting their problems in a weaker form, people give themselves the illusion that they've confronted theirselves and that their inadequacies aren't so bad, and doesn’t affect their other abilities.

****
A terrible thing when a generation fights for a set of laws – and then achieves them all. The road is better than the inn. Those who find themselves in the inn will cast themselves out on the road again in search of something more. They will also manufacture problems in areas that weren’t any before.

Feels Good, Fool

Bunnings Warehouse have an offer “Find a cheaper price on one of our items elsewhere and we’ll beat it by 10%”. At first glance, this seems to be a good thing for consumers. A little game theory and you see why this offer is deceptive and misleading! If Paul’s Warehouse, a competitor, knows about this offer, they won't offer lower prices than Bunnings. So Bunnings' offer/threat to beat prices encourages Paul’s Warehouse to collude with Bunnings in keeping prices high…Unless, of course, Paul's Warehouse feel they have a realistic chance of making Bunnings go bankrupt.
Bunnings actions are typical of a large established business. They are using their power and large cash reserve (which will help them ride out difficulties) to make Paul recognise that he cannot afford to compete with them on price. The ACCC need to stop this anti-competitive behaviour immediately.

In the mean time, Caveat Emptor. Buyer beware.

The patterns aren't there, retard

There is something very stupid about suggesting a share's price or a sharemarket follows a pattern (ie formula). This "holy grail" idea of there being a pattern we can use to work out where a share or market is headed is contradictory. Basing our buying and selling decisions on discovered mathematical relationships in price movements DISTORTS THOSE VERY PATTERNS. To see why there must be no pattern, consider what would happen if there was one:
Suppose the formula predicted a share was to rise from $40 to $45. Nobody would ever sell the share below $45, then. So it wouldn't move from $40...and it wouldn't move to $45 either!! Therefore the market would not move as the formula predicted. The existence of the formula would destroy the possibility of it being correct. There may be a short-term strategy which yields greater than average returns, but it's not the holy grail you're after.

Doom !

The 2nd Law Of Thermodynamics states that Entropy (aka disorder) always increases. It is chillingly true that all energy in the Universe will continue to be transformed in to less and less usable forms. For example, regardless of the insulation you use, your house must always radiate heat which cannot be recovered without expending energy. Any whole system must be <100% efficient. Which means, in the long run, ALL LIFE IS DEAD. With CERTAINTY. Conserving the environment (or any other conceivable action, for that matter), won't make one iota of difference, it'll just slow down the inevitable. In our future searches around the galaxy for energy sources, we will appear like frogs trying to leap between lillies which are drifting further apart. We will eventually fall. All life tries to organise matter (reduce Entropy aka disorder) to prolong its own life. Humans, for example, gather ordered matter such as food and water from external sources, to create order internally, in their bodies. Trees soak up water and sunlight.
The Entropy law dictates that if you expose bottled perfume to the air, it’ll eventually dissipate and the perfume will be evenly spread around the air. This transaction is non-reversible...you’d never expect the perfume to re-appear inside the bottle. And yet if you look at the low-level, everything that happens in the universe seems to be reversible. When a perfume spreads, all that’s happening is that particles are bumping off against each other, moving across the room. Again, and again. Every individual collision, we rightly believe to be reversible. But why then are macroscopic events like the dispersal of the perfume NOT reversible? What a mystery!

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Maths is the male counterpart of that tricky woman, philosophy

Superior Nerds

As we age, it starts making less sense to call people nerds. Though we know they once were. Their lack of social skills eventually becomes obvious to a nerd, which gives him/her a million insecurities and fears. The feeling of being marginalised, misunderstood, and incapable of deep personal relations eventually fades, however, as and because the nerd eventually finds his voice and confidence.
The elitism and the superior aspect however is that, for his ego to survive, the nerd must hypothesise, perhaps soemwhat truthfully, that he is underappreciated because others are inferior in other ways and don't understand him. He must suppose that others don’t relate to him or desire his company simply because they cannot fathom what he is thinking about. That they marginalise him, he feels, is because their culture is inferior, their sense of humour stupid, their enthusiasms misplaced. Is this just a way of coping or is it really true? Is the nerd’s inferiority in certain domains illusory and in fact a construction of those who are successful socially? What exactly are "social skills", do you think?

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To ‘sin’ actually once meant to "miss the point", to not understand. I quite like this idea of sin

Mambo T-Shirt Philosophy

Those Mambo T-Shirts say “Make Love, Not War”. Southpark says "Make Love, not Warcraft". A mature love most certainly will not look like war. But I suspect that, particularly at the beginning, they aren't so different. Instead, there is simply passion, and arousal, and this could go either way. In and towards somebody special, somebody who might be a passionate love of yours, I think there is respect, fear, aggression, defeat/conquest, surrender, humiliation, occupation, and always a trace of possessiveness. All of these are military-related.
Even between the greatest of enemies there is often a connection, a passion. The outbreak of war between neighbours is usually a failure or strangulation of that connection. "A woman is like a violin - held tight, she is played by the man, who is the bow. He must know how to play her correctly to make her vibrate to the tunes that both she and he want to hear. And to do so, he must master her". Not as a dog, but he must understand her and let her know that she needs him as much as he her. Traditionalist, perhaps, but I suppose that's how it works for me.

Das Land der Dichter unt Denker

I find it curious that pre-WW2 Germans saw Germany as "Das Land der Dichter unt Denker" – The Land Of Poets And Philosophers. Germans have had great success in every field. But, apart from football, their image abroad is more closely associated with good science and engineering than it is with poetry. Despite Goethe! But I find such self-identification interesting. In WW2, the Nazis showcased scientists supportive of their theories, but they were thinly spread - science was always their enemy. Einstein's equations were Jewish, therefore wrong, and scientists knew their work ultimately couldn't continue in such a climate. Those "Jewish" theories led to the production of a working Bomb, anyway.

I think the Nazis rose on the back of (not in spite of) the Poet and the Philosopher in the German. We know that Hitler was an artist, and he loved the theatrical, glorious nature of Wagner’s music. It made me think that, for intellectuals, amongst other things, Nazism was the result of literature and music, and hundreds of years of radically different currents of thought in German philosophy, particularly in the irrationalism of people like Hegel and in Martin Heidegger.
The poetry side of it makes me think Nazism was also more the result of some simple aesthetic ideal for non-intellectuals. The swastika, the displays of power, the flags and colours, the military might, the clean uniforms, and efficiency as simple things that broad elements of the population delight in. Fascism could also be seen as an artistic man’s theatrical, musical, dramatic outlet. The “German philosophy” is also embodied somewhat in the idealists and in decades of authoritarian hatred of British liberal traditions. The population, besieged by The Depression and humiliated domestically, allowed the philosophy of its thinkers, intellectual statesmen and historians to leach through to them and just fell for the allure of Hitler’s promises of their future power and grandeur

I hope India wins

Westerners - divert your money away from China and in to India. You may make 18% instead of 20% p/a, but you won't be implicitly supporting a monstrous totalitarian regime. The Chinese Communist Party has consistently showed its utter contempt for human rights, and demonstrated that it will pursue glory at any cost. I understand the importance of stability to the Chinese, given the chaos in China in the last century. I know that Chinese need to manage the possibility of their progress being de-railed by severely disruptive social problems. But Chinese leadership has conducted itself despicably.

Chinese often wonder why the events in and around Tiannenmen's square remain such powerful images in the minds of many Westerners...
-- Hundreds of millions of peasants that toil fruitlessly toward the glory that the CCP promises them have their homes demolished without notice or compensation, and, should they protest, they are beaten and jailed. There are too many people for fair trials. The media and political opposition are strangled in China, foreign investors have ridiculous restrictions placed on them, and may at any moment have their assets confiscated without recourse to legal action.
-- Chinese officials packed people infected with SARS into ambulances and drove around for hours just so that the WHO wouldnt know the truth of the extent of the infections and the inability of the health system to contain them.
-- Falun Gong members and their families are kidknapped, and often used in live organ forms. Outspoken members may be sent for "re-education", which is the Chinese government's way of saying they will labor all day to build the infrastructure to support this enormously overpopulated country. These measures against Falun Gong and other minorities are widely supported.
-- Govt officials decided not to tell 8 million residents in Hunan province that they were drinking poisoned water, while they scrambled to fix the problem.
-- The Chinese government maintains a "Great Firewall of China", censoring vast portions of the Internet which it feels undermine their iron grip over the contents of citizen's minds. The concept of freedom of speech, or expression in appearance, sexuality, profession etc just isn't taken seriously in China.
-- The Chinese, bent on a glorious image, snatch 5 year-olds from their families to be machine-trained for 7 hours a day in order to win gold at the Olympics. Yao Ming, the 232cm basketballer, was the product of government "matching" efforts between two tall people.
Etc. Think about it, the West sucks in many ways that China does not, but do you really see the above happening in countries such as France, Australia, Canada?

The Chinese are a proud, intelligent, hard-working people with an incredible history. They will form a very useful counterbalancing force to the USA et al. However, I'm worried about what China may look like when it has eclipsed them. Will Chinese citizens have rights by then? Or will tyranny be exported elsewhere?
The Chinese I meet who haven't been outside of China for long have huge walls in their head. This can appear sweet/cute, in native, naive Chinese girls in their 20s, but can also seem very ignorant. China (NOT people of Chinese origin) is socially and institutionally inferior in many respects to Western countries with long histories of wealth and stability. Also, it's great that China's politicians are often scientists and engineers rather than hacks like here, but they need to realise that Chinese cannot innovate to the degree required in today's information economy if they are brainwashed and taught not to think for themselves.
Unless China reforms, internal instability may cause its downfall, even without the demands for change that powerful Westerners are likely to start to call for. Float your currency, China.
India has many of the same problems as China, and it approaches many issues less scientifically and analytically. But it does a better job of balancing its development with justice, democracy and human rights.

******
This guy was so in love with this girl, that when he was away from her, he sent her a love letter every day for 500 days. On the 500th day, she married the postman.

Born of a blood and misery, Born of broken men

The horror of WW2 is undeniable. But the paradox is that, ironically, something as wasteful and tragic as WW2 inspired necessary changes that have enriched mankind ahead of time. Mankind evaluated its disastrous state after WW2, and this uncommon process of reflection bore many rewards, as did many aspects of the actual war process. Just as competitive evolutionary struggles for life and death increased homo sapien's intelligence and strength, worldwide warfare delivered some improvements to man along with all the pain
-- The birth of the U.N, the creation of the World Bank and the IMF which gives aid and tries to develop countries.
-- The increasing convergence of worldwide law and the creation of the International Criminal Court to try war criminals, dictators and other undesirable humans. The push to create the E.U.
-- A whole bunch of scientific inventions, whose creation was motivated by the desire to kill more efficiently, ended up being used for peaceful purposes; the rockets that would take man to the moon and the engines that would later provide cheap worldwide travel. The advances in physics, chemistry, engineering, medicine, the psychological and social sciences such as Economics. All the art, the music, the drama.
-- Increased interest in cultural diversity and a desire to understand people from other backgrounds

There is the risk this post will be misinterpreted. Read carefully, this is NOT a pro-war message, most of the things that humans do to improve their lot do not involve a struggle to the death. But I do like "1812" {See first post!}

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Remember, foreplay for an evening's sex session begins at breakfast.

Fight or flight - But fear is running you

This was a Good Weekend article, that I have compressed:
Fear is in control of our world, and is corroding our humanity. Once, people's fears were specific, such as fear of spiders or heights. Losing touch with other people and becoming more lonely, we’ve adopted a perspective of "the worst possible outcome". Although Sydney’s water quality has been improving every year, a greater proportion report lack of trust in it and resort to bottled water. Even as the incidences of murder, rape and pedophilia have been decreasing, the perception is that these crimes are on the rise. We are healthier and live longer but are also more paranoid about health (health-consciousness raises life expectatancy, though, I suppose). The fear of taking risks is creating a society that celebrates victimhood rather than heroism. The celebration of safety alongside the continuous warning about risks constitutes a profoundly anti-human intellectual and ideological regime. Aversion to fear eliminates excitement and enjoyment. It continually invites society and its members to constrain their aspirations and to limit their actions. Children grow up thinking the world is a dangerous place full of risky strangers. The proportion of British children taken to school by car quadrupled between 1971 and 1990, even as transport improved both in safety and efficiency. Parents are more likely to accompany their child in any activity now. This is wrong not only because risk-taking is part of humanity, but because it makes children less capable of dealing with the unexpected. Protectiveness towards children is now at absurd levels. Fathers worry about photographing their children playing football unless he gets the permission of other parents. That’s because everyone is looking at the world from the perspective of a paedophile. We think every parent is a potential paedophile, and ultimately, that’s a triumph of paedophilia over common sense. Before there used to be traditionalists and futurists. There are now neither. We are living in a kind of infinite present. We are in post-political times. Politics has lost the desire and confidence to change things in a big way. The larger debates of the past have been replaced by single issues such as literacy in classrooms or school lunches. These issues don’t have much to do with traditional politics, and they don’t concern the future or morality. They concern people’s lifestyles. Sometimes, people’s most heated debates today are around individual preferences such as who likes the “Big Brother” TV program, and who hates it.

Dialectical behavioral therapy

When birds fly in a circular formation, following the bird(s) directly ahead of them, it can become impossible to pinpoint the exact causal chain which sustains their movement. A similar collective retardedness lies at the heart of every person. This is visible beyond the standard Prisoners Dilemma. Mobs lynching people assume moral immunity, as each of its members deny individual responsibility. The moralising leaders attempt to arouse hostile feelings within a crowd and ultimately seek to divide human beings by categorising some as extremely different to others, contrary to all evidence.

Communities distant in the circles [that represent cultures] always overestimate, relative to other observers, their differences with their neighbors. Eg: to Australians, the difference between Shiite and Sunni Muslims or between Chinese and Taiwanese or Indians/Pakistanis is small, and yet to these parties, it seems a lot larger. And vice-versa.

If humans were less susceptible to emotive reasoning, being persuaded only by rigorous, sobre arguments, eventually our emotional responses could come to coincide with our rational judgements. Our minds and our hearts could finally synthesise in a glorious harmony. But, as it stands, a massive chasm has opened up between our emotions and our reasoning, causing a little discomfort, but mostly confusion.
In the logical part of our brain,
-- We know that helping out 'desperate' (but just lacking luxuries) members of our family or local/religious/ethnic community at the expense of truly starving children in Africa is inexcusable. Yet we follow the emotional imperative to help our kin's genes. Even though we realise a collectively rational world would consist of every individual protecting the most vulnerable, despite lack of proximity. This social contract, in the literature, is Brittle, but could become Strong
-- Intelligent, rich individuals know that pride about their genetic good fortune is foolish, because they did not earn it, and that their contempt for stupid humans is completely unfair. Yet there is still a smug superior feeling one gets. Unrelated, but racial tolerance isn't sufficient if we are to be cultural snobs anyway!!!
-- Anybody with any level of imagination can see that people are not cops or robbers, they are both, in different circumstances. Yet... ____
-- We know that killing one healthy man to harvest his healthy organs to save five other lives probably does more good than harm. Yet we have an instinctive resistance to helping the unhealthy at the cost (bloody murder!) of the healthy innocent (with good evolutionary reason to do so! Save the species!!).
-- We know that animal pain probably feels v.similar to human pain, and yet we convince ourselves that their pain is morally insignificant, because species have a bias towards preserving themselves. We can stab cows. Morality must have some connection, however, to the creation of pain/pleasure. Yet...I do like meat though.
-- Like 50 people die between P-Plater deaths. Consequentialism may be cognitively demanding, but FUCK, people! Who cares? Is it worth restricting the freedoms of young drivers over? I think not. I must be cold.
-- We ignore human rights because diversity is the new religion, and sacrificial altar [Consider the Amish]. Why do I feel bad encouraging others to claim their rights? What about the sexual oppression of women in many religious societies?
-- We shouldn't feel hatred at the news of murder. Others may interpret this as me being "soft" on crime, or living in a fantasy world. I am simply not for revenge. The Law incarcerates criminals to prevent crime, not to satisfy the vengefulness of the bereaved by taking pleasure in the misery of the perpetrator. Rage is the most primitive of conventional emotions, replaceable by smarter emotions, like regret, disappointment, disgust.

All of this may just prove that our attempts to moralise are utterly stupid, self-righteous, pointless. Meh. “Battle against Heaven, Earth and Man, and you will find happiness”. Fight reasonably for reason. It will be long and it will be hard. At least the fight is defined. Note: I am NOT advocating harvesting organs from healthy people...I just believe we should constantly strive to give our reasons a little more weight in our choices , and protest if we are called cold for doing so. Being cold may just often be the kindest thing that you can do.

Also, I think morals have a strange connection to smarts.
++ Pre-conventional morals such as obedience are reinforced by reward and punishment and work best on toddlers - "I have a stick...or a sweet...a bomb or development aid". ++ Conventional morals appeal to a sense of duty to community and work on sheep eg "be brave and selfless and serve in the army". ++ Modern philosophical morals appeal to abstract truths of justice and are made best by, and are convincing to, genius. And it was only the material comforts that Science provided which pacified human hearts. And Rawls, you are a genius!

So...a question in summary:
What kind of society would never collapse, never have enemies on the inside or out?
Sob, if it is to be a power struggle, remember that I am likely to crush you.


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Victorian morality: “Do not do what you want to, including relax and have sex as you wish, because doing what you want to is bathing in the FILTH of your instinct"