Maybe Intelligent Design Does Have a Place in Science Class

You'll probably be shocked to hear me say it, but I think that Intelligent Design should be included in science classes. In fact, I think ID could play a more important role in science class than evolution. You see, most current science classes are a big fat failure. They teach many things that we have learned through science, but they generally do a piss-poor job of defining science, which is why so many of the products our public school system (or worse, homeschoolers) think that ID is science.

But wait, didn't I just say that ID belongs in science classes?

Intelligent Design belongs in science class because it is a consummate example of what science is not. Children are leaving school thinking that science is a body of knowledge that includes categories like physics, chemistry and biology. Under this definition, an argument could be made that if the Intelligent Design hypothesis were true (which many already assume to be the case), that it would be scientific.

Science, however, is not a body of knowledge. Science is a methodology for attaining knowledge about natural phenomena in the material world through observation and experimentation and, by extension, a standard for evaluating that knowledge. Our science classes attempt to teach the scientific method, or at least to pay lip service to doing so, but they put far more emphasis on memorizing formulae and the names of anatomical structures. These classes would be better termed "History of Science". A true science class should not teach the fruits of science, but rather the methodology of science and the value of scientific scrutiny of ideas rather than the dogmatic acceptance or rejection of them.

Intelligent Design is an untestable postulation of an immaterial being acting upon the physical world by supernatural means based on claims that have not and could not be observed to be true, and nearly every word of that description contradicts the definition of science.

Islam Bashing

I find the Islam bashing -- both around the intertubes and in traditional media -- increasingly irritating. The Christians who partake in this are generally hypocrites of the worst kind (I saw a video today in the last minute of which Sean Hannity demonstrates Godwin's law with a level of hypocrisy that demonstrate's Poe's law), but it's atheist Islam-bashers who really annoy me. Don't get me wrong, most of what they say about Islam is true of Islam, but it's also true of Christianity, and aiming your rebuke at the religion that is primarily practiced half a world away instead of the one that's most likely practiced by your next-door neighbor, or even others in your own home, smacks of xenophobia.

Let me say this very clearly, Islam is no worse than Christianity.

It may be true that proactively violent fanaticism is more common among Muslims than Christians today, but an honest look at the religious beliefs of the members of the US military would surely call even that into question. The real difference between the two is that there are currently no serious Christian theocracies. Vatican City may technically be a sovereign state, and the vestigial monarch of the UK may also have some ceremonial authority in the Anglican church, but there is no Christian state where a predominantly lay population is held to Levitical law or any other possible analog of sharia. Ironically, some of the most vocal critics of Islam would love to see the United States become just such an oppressive theocracy.

Here in the United States, Christianity is a far greater threat to our rights than Islam. Patrick Henry once famously said "Give me liberty, or give me death." Some Islamic extremists may want to give us death, but their Christian counterparts want us to have neither. More importantly, the Christians are in a better position to attain their goals on a national scale. There is also far more military and economic power among so called "Christian nations" than in the Islamic world. Conditions seem to be different in the UK and possibly elsewhere, but in the US, the threat of the intolerance and batshit-insane ideas of Islam doesn't compare to the threat of the intolerance and batshit-insane ideas of Christianity.

Criticism from within always bears more weight than criticism from afar. We have plenty of Christians and Muslims complaining, often hypocritically, about one another. We need more Christians and Muslims speaking out against more extreme versions of their own faiths, and atheists speaking out against religions with which they have to live, and of which they may have been members. This is one area in which mormonism is a good example for the rest of us, and I would like to take a moment to congratulate and to thank all the former mormons who have spoken out against the LDS church.

Pascal's Wager

Pascal's Wager states that it is logical to believe in God based on a cost/benefit analysis. According to the wager, belief costs nothing, but the potential reward is infinite, as is the potential penalty for disbelief. If there is no god, nothing is gained and nothing is lost whether you believe or disbelieve. This, of course, neglects the value of a belief being true, presumably because it assumes that the chances of being correct in either situation is 50-50 and that no further study can significantly alter these odds.

There are many counter-arguments to Pascal's Wager, and I won't address nearly all of them here, but perhaps the most obvious is that it is a false dichotomy. There are many mutually-exclusive beliefs about the existence of a god or gods, and even if one chose to be a theist, one would still presumably need to choose the correct religion in order to gain the reward. Most people would then start by placing each religion on equal footing with one another and with atheism in terms of probability, but this is already mistaken because there is a true dichotomy between theism and atheism (when defined simply as a lack of theism). Religions posit a god, then make further assertions about that god, so the 50% probability that there is a god must be divided among them. At this point, it becomes clear that, in the absence of evidence either way, the atheist is more likely to be right than a member of any given religion, but this counter-argument misses the point a bit, because in this case it could still be desirable to forego all likelihood of being correct (a finite benefit) for the chance at attaining an infinite reward. This is a much truer wager, and resembles a lottery with a small buy-in for a small chance at big rewards, but in this case there is not only a huge pot to be won, but an equally huge penalty for not winning. You have to play to win, but you don't have to play to lose. Under these circumstances, it still makes sense to pick a religion and believe.

The real problem is that people assume that even if there's a 50% chance of a god, that god must resemble the god of some religion. It's tempting to divide the god side according to the world's religions, or even the individual (and unique!) concepts of god that each believer holds, but without consistent revelation, these gods are no more likely than any other conceivable gods. Herein lies, I believe, the real achilles heel of Pascal's Wager.

Let's assume that there is a god that is aware of you, gives a damn about what you believe, and will punish you for believing the wrong things with regard to its own existence. The probability of this is already far below 50%, but for the sake of argument, we'll assume that these are necessary properties of a god, and ignore deist gods who don't care or those who value other properties such as your taste in music, your favorite color, whether you donate $5 to this website, whether you have a cute mole on your ass, etc. etc. ad infinitum. This god is at least as likely to value skepticism, evidence-based belief, and critical thinking as it is to value blind faith. Add the fact that if there is a god, it goes to great lengths to hide its presence (as evidenced by the fact that we have to ask the question), and the benefit of pleasing the skepticism god is better than that of the faith god, as the latter would obviously be a sadistic psychopath who wants to punish more than to reward. Who would want to spend eternity with a jerk like that? In fact, in the watered-down theologies in which the punishment is only annihilation or separation from the god, I'd say that the punishment is better than the reward.

When you look at it this way, the greatest benefit possible comes from pleasing a god that values skepticism. Skepticism also offers the greatest chance of a benefit because you would have a 25% chance that you will be wrong but will gain the favor of a god that values skepticism on top of the %50 chance of being correct but receiving no further benefit, therefore skepticism is the only logical choice. Of course, adding gods that don't care about belief back into the equation significantly diminishes that 25%, but it diminishes the chances of having the correct theistic belief equally.

Sure, some would argue that a god that values skepticism is far less likely than one that values faith, but what evidence do we have that this is the case? Only the word of theologians who have no more evidence than you or I, can't agree on anything else, and would have to go get a real job if people didn't believe. That, Mr. Adams, does not "pass the sniff test".

Of course, it would be stupid to disbelieve in a god that probably doesn't exist simply for the purpose of currying favor with it, but I think I've demonstrated that it doesn't make any more sense to believe for the same reason.

What would it take?

I was thinking about what it would take to convince me that there was a god. This is a question that theists seem to like to ask, so I thought I should have an answer.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and they don't get much more extraordinary than the claim of an all-knowing, all-powerful being that's everywhere at once and cares what I do while I'm naked. It would require a demonstration that included a verifiable violation of the laws of physics, and in order for that violation to truly be verifiable, we would need a complete understanding of those laws. Is there a deity out there just waiting for us to stumble upon a Theory of Everything before it makes its presence known? I'm not holding my breath.

Theists often assume that if we had proof of a god, we would have no choice but to bow down and worship. This is not the correct response. If we met a non-human intelligent being, we should treat it the same way whether it was a god, an alien or some kind of super-chimp. The correct course of action (after learning to communicate) would be to invite the being to join our society as an equal. As a person, human or otherwise, it would have "human rights" (I don't like that term) and the obligation to afford other persons the same rights. If the god agreed to abide by our laws, we could get along amicably, and I would enjoy watching its party tricks, but if any appreciable portion of the Bible is factual, it would not accept. This is understandable, as it would need to immediately be brought up on charges that would result in imprisonment for innumerable consecutive life sentences, assuming the death penalty was not feasible.

Of course, an omnipotent being could not be forced to comply with our laws, or any punishments we deemed necessary, but if it refused to do so, it would certainly not be a being to be worshiped, but one to be hated and resisted in any way possible. Only a tyrant would demand worship, and it is the duty of any thinking person to resist tyranny.

Thoughts on morality.

I was thinking about morality today, and it suddenly dawned on me what defines what is and is not moral. I was thinking that despite differing opinions of individuals on what should be considered moral, it's pragmatically a society's consensus on morality that matters. Then I realized, morality isn't what each individual thinks it to be, or even what society agrees it to be, and it certainly isn't what some invisible man in the sky says that it is. What defines morality is what it will be agreed to be.

I don't just mean that the morality of an action must be decided after the fact, what I mean is that what is most moral is what will be considered moral in the future. In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins discusses what he calls the "changing moral zeitgeist". This is the phenomenon by which morality evolves (so to speak) through time. Prime examples of this are racism and slavery, which have been the norm until very recently in our history, but are abhorred by anyone we would consider civilized today. I admire Thomas Jefferson, but Jefferson was a slave owner. We all hate Hitler, but the racism that fueled his genocide wasn't nearly as far behind the moral zeitgeist as we would like to believe. The trick to being as moral as possible, I realized, is to be ahead of the curve. Don't try to do what people consider right today, do what will be considered right tomorrow, or next year, or in a thousand years.

Of course, without precognition, it's difficult to know what direction the moral zeitgeist will take. Short-term changes can be sometimes be predicted based on other recent changes as a natural progression, such as the acceptance of homosexuals following from recent moves toward race- and gender-equality, and those who are slightly ahead of the curve already vehemently oppose homophobia and campaign for gay rights. Long-term changes are harder to predict, and even the most progressive among us surely hold beliefs that will be considered appalling within a few generations, but we don't see anything wrong with them today. Perhaps the best we can hope for is to be far enough ahead of the zeitgeist that our posterity will recognize our good intentions, and as with Jefferson, chalk-up our failings to the times in which we live.

Dirty words

I began work on this post some time ago, but in light of current events, I thought it would be a good time to finish it up and get it out there.

Dirty words are stupid. I don't just mean the unnecessary use of them is stupid (which it is), I mean that the idea that certain words are vulgar or offensive and should not be used is stupid. Words are, by definition, simple linguistic constructs that have no meaning unless one is agreed upon. All of these words have definitions -- often sexual, racist, scatological, etc. -- but these meanings are barely understood anymore due to the stigma of their use. Many of them are also used figuratively to provide pejorative emphasis, and can be an effective and valid means of conveying ideas in such context, and to remove them from the permissible vernacular is no better than diluting their meaning through over-use. The use of censorship, even self-censorship, rather than one's own judgement in communication only causes problems.

Another oft-ignored meaning that they have is what they say about those who use them. While their use alone doesn't make an individual stupid, inappropriate or excessive use certainly demonstrates a lack of eloquence. Some are virtually meaningless beyond demonstrating the prejudice of the speaker. Epithetical remarks such as those for which Michael Richards has been receiving flak could just as easily be cognitively replaced with the phrase "I'm a racist". Beyond that, all that he stated was that the individuals that he was addressing were black, a fact of which I'm sure they where aware, and their reported attempt to extort money from a man who pointed out that they black and admitted to being racist is no less shameful.

Words have meaning because we give them meaning. They have no meaning that we don't give them, and we have no power that they don't give them, and it's foolish to give them the power to harm us.

Not-so-lame Ducks

I don't like the term "lame duck". "Lame duck" implies that a person is ineffectual and can be ignored. This does not take into account the fact that such politicians often have all of the authority or their office, but lack the accountability of an official seeking re-election. This can make an individual extremely dangerous. This is evidenced by the unpopular pardons, appointments, and legislation that these "lame duck" periods are known for.

I think a better term would be the "kamikaze period". During this time, when officials hold offices but do not need to worry about keeping them, they can concentrate on doing as much damage -- or furthering of their own and their party's goals -- without worrying about the ramifications, like a kamikaze pilot or suicide bomber attempting to do maximum damage to the enemy without worrying about his own survival.

I have some personal experience with this mindset from playing Halo online. In these games, I frequently kill enemy characters driving vehicles using a well-placed grenade thrown right before they run me over. Because my character will respawn a few seconds later, I don't have to worry about my own death, and when the character in the vehicle is carrying the flag in an attempt to score for his team, it's well worth standing still to aim my grenade -- ensuring my own death -- to ensure that the flag carrier is also killed. In the same way, an outgoing politician -- voted out of office to be replaced by a member of another party -- is willing to damage his own credibility to to ensure that his successor will be unable to "score" for his party. This, of course, is bad because it is the incoming politician who represents the will of the constituents.

The democratic Senate and House majorities may have been elected, but we're not out of the woods yet, and things are likely to get worse before they get better.

Symbols

I spent several hours today permanently transforming my hair into a knotty, matted symbol of rejection of "the establishment" and traditional values. I must admit, though, that creating this symbol feels a bit hypocritical, as I consider emphasis on symbols to be part of what I'm rejecting. In many aspects of our society, far too much emphasis is placed on symbols, often to the detriment of what they are supposed to symbolize. Update: The dreadlocks fell apart when I tried to wash them, so I'm back to my regular, long hippie hair.

This is especially true for religions. I am frequently disgusted to see borderline idol worship directed at crosses/crucifixes by those who claim the Holy Trinity as their one true god. This type of prayer by proxy, at best, shows an individual lack of understanding by those who engage in them of their own religion's principles. While I have problems with the way Christianity defines its deity as a trinity so that it can technically qualify as monotheistic, I don't buy the Catholic variant -- with all of its saints and symbols and superstitious rituals -- as monotheistic for a second.

This hypocrisy is not unique to religion, though. The recent attempt to pass a constitutional amendment to abridge our freedom with a ban on the burning of the American flag, which proponents of the amendment loved to call a symbol of freedom. This clearly shows the problem with putting too much emphasis on a symbol: When reverence for a symbol is used to harm that which it symbolizes, it's obviously gone too far.

Both of these types of symbols have been abused by the current administration to further its own goals, to the detriment of what they symbolize. Symbols, without knowledge of what they symbolize, are meaningless. The use of a symbol is little more than an invitation for its meaning to be misconstrued, and given the danger of a misconstrued symbol, it's a risk that's not worth taking.

Good and Evil

I've really been enjoying the new TV series, Heroes, and I was listening to a podcast about the show today. In the most recent installment of this podcast, the speakers discuss their uncertainty as to whether certain characters are good or evil. I quickly wrote them an email explaining that this was a gross oversimplification, not only of the themes of the show (which is more nuanced than most) but of the concepts of good and evil themselves.

Good and evil are not motivations, nor are they goals, and they're certainly not forces that act independently. Rather, they are subjective interpretations of actions and concepts. Racial oppression -- at least in the overt, white-against-black form that is so prominent in our nation's history -- is generally considered to be evil by most of the western world, but this was not always the case. Many of our religious institutions, which claim to be the highest authority on good and evil, used to be among the staunchest supporters of slavery and segregation. Now these groups are advocating similar forms of hate directed at homosexuals, and history will no doubt eventually cast this stance in a similar light.

It's been said that the victors write the history books. This would explain why good always seems to eventually win out over evil; The winning side is not necessarily more righteous, but the conflict would likely continue if the status quo was believed to be evil. It's easy to cast fictional characters as good or evil, but their stories are more realistic (and more interesting) if, like in reality, good and evil cannot be defined in such certain terms without the benefit of hindsight.

On stem cells and abortion

Scott Adams discussed stem cell research today, and I donated blood. The link between the two may seem a bit tenuous, but it was enough to make me decide that it would be a good time to talk about the stem cell issue.

Ignoring the potential benefits of this research, the destruction of embryos for the purpose of harvesting stem cells is little different from abortion, and should be governed by the same laws. I think most people on either side of the issue would agree with that, as the people who oppose abortion seem to be the same ones who oppose embryonic stem cell research. If anything, the stem cell research should be less objectionable than any method of abortion other than the morning-after pill, because of the stage of development at which the various procedures take place. In short, harvesting embryonic stem cells should be legally tantamount to an abortion 4 to 5 days after conception.

So, should such abortions be allowed? Most pro-lifers seem to be opposed to abortion at any stage of development -- including the use of emergency contraception, or "morning-after", pills -- and some even take this to the extreme of vilifying (male) masturbation and the use of contraception because they result in the destruction of cells that could potentially be used to create life. Not to dismiss these people off-hand as lunatics, but by this logic, menstruation and nocturnal emission are, at the very least, involuntary manslaughter.

Such people are usually opposed these things for religious reasons. I will not argue with these reasons, except to remind the reader that creating laws to enforce religious values is unconstitutional. Without the religious basis, all that matters is what rights the embryo/fetus has at what stage of development. A living creature has rights that a collection of cells -- such as the blood that I donated -- does not, anyone but the most hardcore vegans would likely agree that a person has rights that a living creature does not, and persons is a subset of living creatures, which is a subset of collections of cells. I am all three, and if you're reading this, chances are you are too.

Now this will sound cynical, but I'm not entirely convinced that a child achieves the level of self-awareness required for personhood until sometime after birth. Now, I'm not suggesting that post-birth abortions should be allowed, but I do think that the reason they shouldn't has more to do with the psychological effects on the mother and others involved than it does with the rights of the child.

Well, there's more to say on the issue, but I hope I've given you something to think about, and I'm sure some of you will have something to say about what I've already written (I'm looking in your direction, Lou), so I'll finish discussing the issue later.

Free Will

As another followup to tuesday's post, I thought I'd take on the question of free will. It's often asked whether humans have free will, or whether we are just, as Scott Adams likes to say, "moist robots". The answer, of course, is that both are true.

Free will, as the absence of some sort of predetermination, is in the context of humanity because that predetermination is not. If there is predetermination -- be it in a scientific "moist robot" form or something more transcendental -- humanity is entirely within that bubble, and predetermination has only meta-existence in that context.

In a more objective sense, it could be argued that this means that free will is an illusion, but this does not mean that we are not responsible for our (predetermined) actions. Everything you do is within the context of humanity, in which there is free will. On a larger scale, the action may be predetermined, but that predetermination takes into account your choices and the incalculable number of factors that lead to them.

This writing is predetermined and your reading (perception), interpretation, acceptance, and application of the ideas are all predetermined. You have the choice of whether or not to make your choices based on the belief that those decisions don't matter because they are predetermined, or based on the belief that you do have free will and that your decisions matter. These beliefs themselves are predetermined, but because you and your influences are all the creation and the tool of that predetermination, and because you do not know what is predetermined to be, it is useless to speculate as to what it is, or to introduce it into your decision-making process.

If predetermination is scientific, it would theoretically be possible to calculate every occurrence ahead of time given enough processing power and information about the influencing factors. Of course, this would realistically be impossible, since this would require a computer with enough computing power to not only calculate the physics of everything happening in the world, but in addition it would require the combined processing power of the brains of every human being and the ability to recursively precompute its own computations to factor its output into the computation of that output, a feat that's unlikely to be possible even for a quantum computer.

Time travel, then, would be the only possible method of discovering predetermination, but that's a can of worms for a future post.

Followup to "What is god?"

Well, it seems my last post was met with incredulity. Lou responded with the following:

"Given this model of reality" nothing exists. You don't exist. By that logic, your existence is subject to my perception and interpretation of you. That is the kind of useless drivel that you hear from philosophy majors (a/k/a future McDonalds workers). You do exist. Trust me on this one.

Yes, I do exist. My existence is not subject to your perception and interpretation because I also exist outside that context, just like you exist outside mine.

Let me ask you a question: Who was the first president of the United States? George Washington, you say? Are you sure?

How can you be sure that there even was a George Washington? You couldn't have met him - he died 200 years before you were born. Yet you still believe that, not only did he exist, but he was the first president? What a shocking leap of faith!

You're right, it is faith. I never experienced the existence of George Washington personally. I rely on my belief in the accuracy of historical record -- which, as Nineteen Eighty-Four teaches us, may not resemble actual events at all -- for my belief that George Washington was the first president of the United States. That historical record exists both within and outside my bubble, so it meets the qualifications for objective existence in the context of that bubble, whether it is true or not.

Another question: You have blogged about President Bush. Do you really believe that he is president? How do you know? Have you ever met him? Sure you see him on TV, but you see lots of things on TV that aren't real, don't you? How can you be so sure that there even is a George W. Bush? What? Another leap of faith?

That brings up another question. How would meeting him make me any more sure of his existence than seeing him on TV? Sure, it may be more difficult to pass fiction off as truth under those circumstances, but those experiences could just as easily be some sort of hallucination. He exists either way.

I have also quoted Apollo from Battlestar Galactica, whom I've also seen on TV but never met. Apollo exists in the form of a fictional character, both within and outside my bubble, but I rely on historical records of more recent events for my knowledge of that existence. If those records were false, Apollo could be real and Bush fictional (and we'd all be a lot better-off), but I have faith that that's not the case.

Put down the symbolic logic textbook and come back to earth for a minute. Three facts: George Washington was the first president, George W. Bush is the current president, and God exists. People who don't believe the first two facts are called uneducated. Why is the third any different?

The difference, of course, is that those who claim to know about the first two facts almost unanimously agree, but the existence of the christian god (as a true being, existing outside of humanity rather than as fiction) is much more widely disputed.

What is god?

There is no doubt in my mind that god exists. In fact, every god exists, and every variation of each exists. Every thought that anyone's ever had exists, in the sense that a sketch on a piece of paper exists, in that their existence is subject to the perception and interpretation of them, whereas the paper exists on a lower, more absolute level. Paper, though, it just a name given to a certain range of configurations of molecules, and so it is just as abstract in its own way.

Perhaps "exist" is the wrong word... these things are, they have being, even if that being is not objective enough to fully constitute existence. Then again, for every layer of being, there is a corresponding layer of objectivity, so it could be argued that at any given layer of being, things which are on that level exist, while things that are on higher, more abstract layers merely are. Existence is a subset of being.

Logically, given this model of reality, for any given layer of being, the lower, less abstract things -- while in absolute terms would have some sort of meta-existence -- for all intents and purposes do not exist or have being. That is, they do not exist in the sense that pi does not exist in "2+2=4". While each two may or may not be the area of a circle, of which pi is a factor, pi is not observable as a component of the equation, and has been canceled-out of it if it was ever there. Of course, on lower levels, pi still exists, but as it is not observable from the equation and cannot be proven to exist based upon it, the existence of pi is neither confirmable nor relevant on the layer of the equation, so it is not.

Or perhaps layers are not the best model. Pi and the Golden Ratio can appear in the same equation, both being within a common layer, but each can also appear in its own equation, in which the existence of the other is neither confirmable nor relevant, so while their level of being is at least comparable, it is an oversimplification to say that they are on the same layer, except as part of some perceived and interpreted hierarchy. The existence of the layers is a layer of its own.

Holy crap, that was meta...

Anyway, perhaps a better model is a massive Venn diagram. This diagram would be composed of bubbles of irregular shapes and sizes, intersecting in an infinite number of dimensions, but the dimensions are unimportant. What's important is that, as with any other Venn diagram, there are only four possible relations that any bubble can have to any other: it can intersect it as a peer, it can be a superset that completely contains the other, it can be a subset that is completely contained by the other, or it can have no direct relationship.

In this bubble model, in the context of any given bubble, another bubble is if any part of it is within the context bubble; a bubble's subsets are in the context of that bubble. If it also exists outside that bubble -- that is, they intersect as peers -- the bubble meets the qualifications for objective being; a bubble's peers exist in the context of that bubble. Bubbles with no relation, of course, have neither existence nor being in the context of that bubble, but supersets can only have the irrelevant meta-existence, so these things do not have being or existence either. This all means that in order for A to be, in reference to B, B must include both A and not-A.

Discovery is the expansion of B to include either A or not-A, where before only one was included, and A did not have being in the context of B, either because it had no relationship or because it was a superset.

God -- as an abstract concept -- is, but in the context of humanity, an omnipresent creator of all things can only ever have meta-existence and cannot ever be, and thus is unconfirmable and irrelevant.

The Proposition, the Opposition, and the Truth

You know, propaganda's not really so bad. It can be dangerous if you only get one side because it may be difficult to recognize the bias, but propaganda from two or more opposing sides can be a much more efficient and reliable way to get the truth than getting your information from one supposedly objective source.

A truly objective source is hard to come by. There are a lot of sources that try to appear objective, but that just means that they try harder to disguise their bias. An obvious bias is easier to filter out, especially when you have an equally obvious opposing bias to use a reference point. It's like the ultimate 'pro' and 'con' list.

With information from both sides, you can see the inconsistencies and boil the information down to distill truth. This method also gives you a more complete picture. For instance, in the case of a piece of legislation, if there's something important in the "fine print", one side or the other will usually point it out, whereas it might have gone unnoticed even if you read the bill for yourself. This was especially apparent when I was researching California Proposition 89. The government-provided summary was far less informative than the combining the bullet-point lists on the "yes on 89" and "no on 89" websites.

Of course, you still have to think for yourself in order to tell the truth from the lies and half-truths presented in propaganda, but an obvious bias makes this easier to distinguish, and this requires less thought than finding a truly balanced source.

Now, if you wanna be really sneaky, what you should do is create propaganda against your position, and do a shitty job of making the case, in order to discredit the opposition.

The Patriotism of Dissent

Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.

This quote is often misattributed to Thomas Jefferson (they are actually the words of historian Howard Zinn), but regardless of who actually said it, it couldn't be more true. Now, some will argue that not all dissent is patriotic (such as dissent against an ongoing war), while others (like Bush) seem to think that patriotism means never questioning one's government, but both groups are dead wrong.

Waving a flag as so many did after 9/11 doesn't make you a patriot. A patriot is "a person who vigorously supports their country and is prepared to defend it against enemies or detractors" (Oxford American Dictionary). People like Bush seem to be under the mistaken impression dissent is a form of detraction. On the contrary, dissent is an attempt to protect a nation from potential threats from its own government by righting or averting a perceived wrong. While it's true that not all dissenting opinions are actually beneficial, even those that aren't require a conscious effort to attempt to better one's nation rather than following blindly, and that is patriotism. Supporting the government's decision can also be patriotic, but only when one does so after analyzing that decision and coming to the conclusion that it is a good one. Blind loyalty is unpatriotic. As the preceding implies, patriots can be on either side of an issue, and can even disagree with one another. Patriotism speaks only to ones effort and intentions, and a vehement but misguided patriot can also be an enemy of his country, from whom other patriots try to protect the nation.

President Bush is such an individual. I believe that he is convinced that he is doing good, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and he is doing more harm than terrorist or military force ever could.

Molding Young Minds

As I mentioned, I was at the World Can't Wait protest yesterday. There were a lot of people there, but it was the young children with their parents that got me thinking.

I had a mixed reaction when I saw a few young children walking around with their parents at the protest. While I thought it was good that these children were being exposed to some positive principles (even the average Bush supporter would agree that war is generally bad and standing up for what you believe is generally good), but then I started thinking about the children that weren't there. Specifically, I thought of the children from the Jesus Camp documentary, and how they were being exposed to (if not indoctrinated with) values opposing those of the protesters. This lead to issues that I had previously pondered of the dynamics and ethics of parents attempting to instill their own values in their children.

I believe that parents' influence on their children is one of the biggest reasons that the evils -- especially flavors of hate like racism, sexism, homophobia and xenophobia -- in the world are still around today. Not that hate is always inherited, but parents who hate raise their children to hate (some more effectively than others), and children who are not raised to hate at least have a fair chance to grow up not hating. The impractical solution to nepotism that I discussed in a previous entry would seem to solve this, but I think we can all agree that having the government raise children is something that must be avoided, lest we risk ending up with our own version of the Hitler Youth. If we could trust all parents to expose their children to as many different beliefs as possible and raise them to be open-minded and make their own decisions, the issue would be moot, but that requires a level of altruism that is hard to find.

Or is that just me? My parents exposed me to different beliefs and raised me to be open-minded and make my own decisions, so how can I be sure that my belief that children should should be raised that way rather than with rigid religious dogmas is my own decision and not just a product of my own upbringing?

Your word of the day: Polyarchy

In the video below, Noam Chomsky points out, as everyone should already know, that the United States is not a true democracy. He argues that it is instead a Polyarchy, which he describes as "a system in which power resides in the hand of those whom Madison called 'the wealth of the nation', the responsible class of men, and the rest of the population is fragmented, distracted, allowed to participate every couple of years [...] and they have a little choice among the responsible men, the 'wealth of the nation.'" He goes on to explain that our government was "founded on the principle, explained by Madison in the Constitutional Convention that the primary goal of government is to protect the minority of the opulent minority against the majority." This would certainly explain McCarthyism, and the country's general aggression in fighting the spread of communism, as the opulent minority have the most to lose from communism.

He also argues that we are a one-party state, and that that one party has two factions claiming to be opposing parties. I disagree with this assessment, not because I believe that Republicans and Democrats are completely different animals, but because I don't think that the two are well-defined enough to be classified as factions. As I discussed yesterday, the division between the "parties" is based on an arbitrary and overly-simplistic taxonomy. Both perpetuate the current form of government rather than pushing for real change, but the issues on which they do differ are so disparate and tenuously connected, with so much disagreement within the broadly defined "parties" that calling them "factions" is even less accurate.



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Amorphous Lines in the Sand

Looking at issues in terms of what party supports them is really an absurd idea. When individuals have their own opinion on every issue that they're concerned about, and the average person probably doesn't care at all about more than half of the issues, how do you lump these individuals into groups?

As far as I can tell, the deciding factor is that beliefs described by terms like "Conservative" and "Right" which fall under the Republican Party in the United States are based on the idea that things are are good now and/or were better in the past, and "why mess with a good thing?", while "Liberal" and "Left", represented by the Democratic Party, revolve around the belief that we can work to make the world better than it's ever been. I came to this conclusion largely based on an argument that I saw, from someone who seemed to be a Libertarian voting Republican, that the Democratic Party was too "anti-personal freedom" because it advocates increased taxation and gun regulation. This initially sounded insane to me, as the Liberal values of the Democratic Party tend to fall on the side of increased personal freedom on most issues (this might be partially in reaction to the authoritarian tendencies of the current Republican administration, which are not supported even by many Republicans). So, if the Democratic Party is generally pro-personal freedom, but takes the opposite stance on these issues, what really defines the line between the two? The answer is in the justification for these stances.

The reason for gun regulation is the belief that the need for the average individual to hunt and to protect themselves, particularly in a militia-like fashion as they argue is the purpose behind the second amendment, is outdated, and that the average well-intentioned citizen is more likely to accidentally hurt himself or another with a gun than defend himself. They believe the the primary usefulness of firearms outside military and law enforcement duties is for nefarious purposes, and if, say, a mugger is not able to obtain a gun to mug you, you won't need one to defend yourself from him. In this way, gun regulation attempts to create a better future.

The other issue mentioned is taxation. Nobody likes being obligated to pay money to the government, but taking the money isn't the point of taxation. The purpose is to provide for public programs to increase the general welfare. Everything from road maintenance to business subsidies to universal healthcare requires money. Liberals don't advocate increased taxation, they advocate government programs designed to create a better future that have the side effect of increased taxation because those programs need to be funded.

It is, of course, absurd to agree with either of these solely based on party affiliation. Parties are just a way of organizing these beliefs, and its unfortunate that our system forces voters to decide between such arbitrarily-divided groups rather than voting their own beliefs on individual issues, because that would become so unwieldy with so many issues that even the career politicians elected to represent us can't keep up.

As always, these are my conclusions drawn based on my own observations, and constructive criticism is welcome and encouraged. What do you think defines the division between the parties?

How do you solve a problem like economics?

I am a strong, even radical social progressive and civil libertarian. Individual freedom is most important to me, but when it comes to the other big division between the Left and the Right, I'm a bit less sure what "the way it should be" is. I've yet to see the subject summed-up as simply and brilliantly as Oliver Wendell Holmes summarized the issue of individual freedom with his quote, "The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins." Previously, I have not been particularly interested in the subject, but in reading political blogs and discussion, I've begun to become more interested in these issues simply because they present more information that is new to me, and provide a logical question that I have yet to solve.

The first problem that I see is that we know historically, that communism -- at least in the Leninist form demonstrated by the Soviet Union -- does not work because it fails to encourage hard work and innovation, but inheritance and nepotism prevent the laissez faire ideal that those who work hard and innovate will be the ones with access to capital from working. An interesting but entirely impractical solution to this that came to me is to eliminate parenthood as in Huxley's Brave New World. This would prevent people from becoming wealthy by inheritance and would allow the for all people to enter the workforce with level footing, as assumed by the capitalist ideal. Because it would mean that wealth can't be bequeathed to ones descendants, and of course, you can't take it with you when you die, this would remove much of the motivation to accumulate vast amounts of wealth beyond what one can use, and the excess wealth would either be donated to charitable organizations or used to purchase goods and services for ones own enjoyment (stimulating the economy in the process) rather than being hoarded indefinitely, and any remaining funds would presumably go to the government (reducing or eliminating the need for taxes) and/or to charitable organizations upon the individual's death.

A more practical idea that I came up with to offset the barriers to accessing capital and encourage competition would be for the government to provide special loans to new/struggling businesses to replace the need for venture capital. There would obviously need to be safeguards to ensure that this money is not pocketed by business owners, and the the assets bought with the money would become property of the government (most likely to be auctioned-off) if a business fails. This would not only decrease the barriers to entry, but by making these loans indefinite and only requiring them to be paid back with interest in the case of a merger or buyout by a company that has already received such funds (or absorbed a company that has), it would discourage the formation of monopolies. Of course, more loosely-linked trusts would still be an issue, but by providing these funds, the government would in a sense become an investor, giving it a right to monitor the actions of the business to avoid such abuses.

Against which all governments are measured

There's been a lot of discussion over forms of government, which is the best, and which are better than others. A more interesting question, however, is what makes one form of government better or worse than another. With so many vast differences between various forms, it can be difficult to pin down the single factor that most closely ties to "goodness". Many would argue that the factor is freedom, equality, or accurate representation of the beliefs of the populace, but these values represent an obvious bias toward democracy and the enlightenment values from which it derives. I submit that the "best" form of government is defined not by freedom or representation, but by its inherent level of susceptibility to corruption.

The values behind a form of government may determine its agreeability to a particular individual or group, but its corruptibility determines how likely it is to adhere to those values in the real world, when subjected to the rigors of human nature. Dictatorships are generally reviled as the worst form of government, but an incorruptible, benevolent dictatorship could easily create a far better society than the best democracy. The problem with dictatorships is that they endow an individual with absolute power, and as Lord Acton famously stated, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

But if all power corrupts, why give it to anyone? It would seem that anarchy, which does not grant anyone power over anyone else, would be the least corruptible. Anarchy, though, is not truly an absence of government, but rather is individual self-rule for every individual. It's a billion tiny dictatorships struggling for resources. Now, while this would preclude all but the most masochistic from being abused by their own government, human nature desires power, and alliances would begin to form among the micro-nations creating gangs and eventually leading to mob rule, a de facto government born of the corruption of the ideal of anarchism. In this way, anarchism is like laissez faire capitalism with power as capital -- the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

Similarly, alliances and power blocs can form within a direct democracy, and groups can be influenced through propaganda and strong-arm tactics as well as mutual protection schemes like the alliances on Survivor. This decentralization of power does, however, have the advantage over representative democracy that corruption requires direct support from a plurality of voters, rather than simply a few politicians with the ability to conceal their corruption.

A theocracy is arguably the most corruptible, because while it claims to be under the rule of a deity, power is actually concentrated with the leaders of the religion who purport to speak for that deity, but who are as susceptible to human nature as anyone else. In a society fanatical to install a theocracy, this would mean unchecked power for those leaders, and the ability to put down any dissent without reproach. This fact, more than their inherent conservatism and rejection of enlightenment values like freedom of religion, makes theocracy a bad form of government.

An interesting means of discouraging corruption is illustrated in one of the multiple story arcs in Ambrosia Software's Escape Velocity: Nova. In this game, there is a race known as the Polarans, who have a strict caste system in which the Mu'hari caste, who among other duties serve as judges, juries and prosecutors, are considered the most disgraceful of all castes and must render assistance to any other Polaran in any way asked. Passing judgement on ones peers is considered the ultimate punishment. This also parallels my own experience as moderator in internet forums, where moderators were encouraged to think of themselves more as janitors than as police officers.

If corruption is what makes a government bad, and government by definition has a level of power that promotes corruption, then it is the ability to keep corruption in check that makes a system of government good. This means that a good government must provide a framework for the public, possibly in addition to the government itself, to limit the government's power and keep its members accountable for their actions. Government transparency and freedom of speech, and particularly of the press, create accountability. If the government is corrupt, it will lose support and, in the absence of a means of replacing officials as provided by democracy, will ultimately be overthrown. Likewise, religious freedom is beneficial to prevent the use of fanaticism to mask corruption. Concepts like term limits and separation of powers with checks and balances are also designed to limit the effectiveness of corruption. The less centralized power is, the more obstacles it must overcome.

What is the best form of government that exists today? Probably some flavor of democracy, but it will never be perfect until corruption can be prevented entirely.