Maths

            I’ve done some math during my life. It was always my favorite subject in school and I eventually ended up studying engineering in college, which was practically all math. My job doesn’t go to quite the same level, but I’m still using a calculator regularly. What I’m setting up is the possibly unexpected idea that I don’t believe math applies directly to the real world. Let me explain.

            Math to me is a conceptual tool that is useful for modeling, predicting, and simplifying real life phenomena, but only after the phenomena has been reduced to an idealized form. Generally the more math you use the less idealization, but even the most basic parts of math are based on idealizations of the real world. Take pi as an example. Pi is the ratio between a circle’s diameter and its circumference, and already we’re dealing with idealization because perfect circles don’t exist in nature. Already one step removed from the real world, pi still doesn’t fit into our math. Pi gets a lot of attention for being an irrational number, meaning that it consists of a never ending and never repeating string of digits. This might seem mysterious and unpredictable, sort of a loose cannon of the number world, but to me this is a glaring example of how our math is flawed (I keep saying “our math” because I don’t believing the math that humans use is the only possible math, but that is a whole other discussion that I don’t want to get into at the moment). Since it’s impossible to write down all the digits of pi, it can only ever be used as an approximation. The true value of pi completely escapes our grasp. Just a heads up, this fact is also true of every single measurement ever taken. That’s a pretty devastating blow to math’s ability to represent the truth of the real world, and it’s also a reason why pi isn’t all that special. Technically, there are a few measurements that define units. When you weigh the International Prototype Kilogram it’s exactly one kilogram, but that’s more a(nother) reason why the IPK is stupendous and less a triumph for mathematics.

The IPK is so great

            Leaving out all that irrational number bullshit, we’re still left with adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing, aka doing arithmetic to, discreet objects. For example, take four apples. Add two apples to get six. Double the number of apples to have twelve. Divide out a fourth of the apples to have three. Then subtract two apples and one apple is left. Repeated an infinite number of times, this process should always result in one apple. It’s too bad that the apples have to be completely idealized first. The reason this apple arithmetic works is that it assumes that one apple equals one apple equals one apple, just like how the number one equals the number one equals the number one. In the real world, every single apple is unique, so they can’t be used like numbers. One apple plus another apple is not equal to a different apple plus another different apple, but one plus one always equals one plus one. Numbers are also homogenous in a way the worldly objects aren’t. It is impossible to cut an apple in half and have two identical pieces the same way that the halves left after dividing one in half are identical. The only example of arithmetic that might work in the real world is if you subtract out everything to get zero, because if you have three apples and then take all three away it doesn’t really matter what kind of apples you had to begin with. Only math has to go and ruin this situation too, since if you ask any math major they’ll tell you that subtraction doesn’t exist, it’s only addition of an inverse. Inverse apples definitely aren’t a real thing, so there goes that.

An inverse apple?

            Now it might be possible to do this kind of arithmetic with quantum particles, because as far as physicists can tell all electrons are identical (as far as values for mass, charge, and spin go anyway). Assuming this isn’t just due to a lack of measurement precision; electrons start to look a lot like numbers. An electron can’t be divided into fractions and subtraction is still right out (an anti-electron is kind of like an inverse electron, but an electron plus an anti-electron results in energy, not zero) so it’s not perfect. This leaves addition and multiplication as a sort of fancy way to count. There’s also the fact that the quantum mechanics that describe the behavior of electrons are far removed from experiences of the macroscopic universe and can only be expressed using math, so I’m not ready to except quantum particles as an example of how math existing in the physical world.

            I’m not trying to say that math is bad or doesn’t have value. The measurements, predictions, and models that math can create are absolutely amazing and incredibly useful. Almost none of the aspects of modern civilization would be possible without math. Sure, the Romans build some pretty great stuff without using math as we understand it, but I think we’re doing things better now (the road I help build beat Roman roads any day). I just think it should be acknowledged that math is using abstractions and idealizations, and isn’t some great truth at the heart of the universe. Also pi really isn’t that cool.

Subjectivism

            The ongoing quest to reduce all my thoughts, opinions, and actions down to a single source has hit another milestone. Previously, I’ve written about my ego and its desire to have no needs, and it’s been almost a year since I described my aversion to compulsion (how the time flies). I’ve kept digging and have found a pattern of subjectivism below everything. Subjectivism is basically a belief that truth isn’t singular and depends on how you vied it. This view of truth covers everything; from if a song is good, the speed and direction of a moving object, the color of a shirt, or the mechanism by which air is necessary to combustion.

Songs, or any art for that matter, is a good example since everyone has different opinions and preferences on the subject. You might say this is because it is a complex subject that depends on highly variable tastes, but the way so many people state the quality of art as an inarguable fact makes me think that they believe their opinions are the objective truth (objective being the opposite of subjective, where there is one truth and all others are false). I believe that all thoughts on art are equally valid and have even gone so far as to say that the subjectivity is what makes it art. How a song makes you feel is something that is uniquely true to you, and even if you don’t agree with a single other person that can never make you wrong.

 

I don't care what anyone says, One Night In Bangkok is my best song ever

For speed and direction let’s say a car leaves St. Louis headed West at 75 mph. But what if you view it from a car doing 80 mph in the same direction? Now the car is moving East at 5 mph. What makes a velocity relative to the surface of the Earth truer than a velocity relative to anything else? It may have more utility, but it isn’t any truer. The Earth is rotating and moving through the solar system so it’s not like it’s a constant reference. Plus the solar system is moving through the galaxy and the galaxy is moving through the universe. Don’t even get me started on how the universe itself is expanding and how the constant speed of light throws a whole new twist on everything. Even without relativistic effect the speed and direction of any object is completely dependent on what you measure it against.

            Color requires me to get a little more abstract to describe how it is subjective, so stay with me. The simplest example is just when you have an uncertain color that will be described differently by different people. The same hue could be described as cyan, aqua, teal, turquoise, bluish green, or greenish blue depending on who you ask. With the aid of some color charts you could probably get most people to agree, but this is assuming everyone views it under the same conditions. Add in factors like differences in lighting, angle, and distance (or monitor settings) and even the same person can see the same color in completely different ways. The same hue can look different under incandescent, florescent, and sunlight, not to mention under just different kinds of sunlight. What makes any one color the true color? This hasn’t even involved the fact that I think different people could view the exact same shade differently due to purely mental differences, which is an idea that completely blows my mind. Stuff doesn’t really change from green to red very often (unless you shine only red light on it, in which case everything becomes a shade of red), but subjectivity isn’t about anything being true, it’s simply that more than one thing can be true.

 

Looks aqua to me

            The mechanism by which air is necessary for combustion is an oxygen and phlogiston reference. I’m a big fan of phlogiston as it’s one of those Baroque period scientific theories that is a really elegant and reasonable explanation of events, but when viewed with more modern scientific evidence is completely false. Until Robert Boyle came along, people believed that combustion was due to phlogiston, a sort of elemental fire, escaping from a substance. The surrounding air needed to be circulated so it wouldn’t become saturated with the phlogiston. We now believe that the process is actually oxygen reacting with the substance and the air must be changed to replenish the supply of oxygen. I would argue that the discovery of oxygen doesn’t make the theory of phlogiston any less true in its time. People then believe in it just as much as people believe in oxygen now. Belief in oxygen may have a lot more evidence, but I don’t think that makes it inherently different from the historical belief in phlogiston. It’s not that we could go back to a phlogiston theory, but maybe oxygen doesn’t work exactly how we think it does. You never know when another Boyle will come along and find some evidence that throws everything back to the drawing board.

            Those are some examples of how I view subjectivity, but that doesn’t really explain the effects it has on me and my life. Since this is basically a continuation of my post about compulsion, I’ll explain how it ties in with that. Essentially, embracing subjectivism means that I view different opinions and viewpoints as equal. My beliefs are no more true than anyone else’s, and theirs no more so than mine. Compulsion is one person forcing their way of thinking on another, and that strikes me as wrong. Presenting evidence and working to bring someone to a different point of view is persuasion or informing, which is okay, but forcing a full conclusion is compulsion, which isn’t cool. An example of how I feel about this is pulling out into traffic. If I’m waiting to turn onto a street but pulling out would mean someone already driving along the road would need to slow down then I won’t do it. The other driver probably has a plan to drive along the road at a roughly constant speed, and by pulling in front of them I’m forcing a change in this plan (compelling them to slow down). Just because I desire to get to where I’m going a little bit faster doesn’t give me any right to interfere with someone else’s desire to reach their destination as soon as possible. The burden is on me to respect their desires because I am the one making the choice of when to pull out. I’m in control and can change my own plans without affecting theirs, but the other drive can’t really do the same. This whole situation is greatly complicated if someone is waiting to turn behind me, and usually results in me panicking. But then given a choice I’ll go for the one that least impacts other people.

            Subjectivism also makes me really skeptical. For me, all truth only exists when viewed from a certain perspective and who is to say what it would look like when seen differently. I can believe that the Titanic sunk because it hit an iceberg based on what some history book tells me, but how can I be certain that if I were to actually witness the event I wouldn’t see that it was actually sunk by a time traveling Russian submarine (11 year old me’s theory). The iceberg seems a lot more likely at the moment, but one good piece on evidence could easily shift the balance the other way. I already mentioned my doubts about oxygen. I believe in oxygen because the idea is useful and it can help me explain and predict the world. This doesn’t mean that I would ever say that it’s objectively true, and I’ll always maintain a belief that it could be false. This suspicion of falsehood is something I can and do apply to everything.

 

Is that some Soviet era submarine paint scraped off on the side there?

            After all that theories and opinions are still important to me. In fact they are the thing I find most important. I usually can’t care less about facts and figures, and when I do it’s only in relation to the conclusions that they support. I’m really bad at remembering a person’s eye color or birthday, but I’ll remember if they don’t like the Talking Heads or if they wanted to be a veterinarian growing up. I remember these things because they interest me. This is why I don’t like small talk but love debate. Small talk is usually just an exchange of facts: the weather sure what nice; I grew up in some town; this one time this happened; none of that matters to me. I care about opinions and the ideas that support them: I liked this movie because it made me think; my favorite kind of car is so and so because the styling is whatever, I prefer smooth over chunky peanut butter because it spreads better; this is what I want to talk about. Sure I don’t much care about which team people believe will win the big game, but it’s still better than a list of high scoring players or something. What I really like are ideas I don’t agree with since they present things from a new perspective. New information is always better than the same stuff you already know, and a discussion is vastly improved when it has more than one side. Different conclusions drawn from similar inputs is the core of subjectivity and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

            A subjective attitude isn’t all positive though. Depending on how you look at it, it can make me either easygoing or uncaring. I’m not competitive because I believe there are more ways to measure success than by who scored the most points, and I don’t get real upset things don’t go my way since my plans aren’t the one best way for life to be. I consider these good things since they help reduce stress and conflict. Not so good is the fact that I often don’t take things as seriously as I probably should. I have a tendency to simply drop out of troubling situations or feelings with an “Eh, it doesn’t really matter”. Sure this helps me get over mistakes and stuff like that, but I don’t think that it is always the most mature way of dealing with problems. There is a lack of that extra amount of motivation need to solve some problems so they just end up unresolved. Having embraced subjectivism also means that I’m always just one short step full blown nihilism, ennui, or solipsism, which is scary. A love of utility seems to be all that holds these unproductive views at bay. Now that I think about it, desire for utility is another major factor in my personality, but this post is about subjectivism so let’s forget about it (for now).

            To wrap this up, I don’t think that truth is concrete but that doesn’t make it any less valuable. It may be dependent on a specific point of view and initial assumptions, but truth is still useful. Or maybe I’m wrong and objective truth is really a thing. Eh, it doesn’t really matter.

My Religion Part Three: And It Was Good

 There are a few things that I don’t have covered with my quasi-religion. Most of them have to do with my antisocial tendencies, and subjective beliefs. Let's take a look shall we.

To start, I don’t have a place where assistance can be summoned from outside of one’s self. I’ve got no one to pray to and no supernatural force from which strength can be pulled. This isn’t a problem because I feel that everything a person needs can be found within. If I need inspiration I can just look at all the accomplishments of humanity and know that I am a part of that. If humans can go into space, I think I can deal with any of my troubles. We’re all chocked full of potential, and belief in yourself is the best help a person can have. This system requires independence and personal responsibility and those are good traits to encourage in my opinion. If you do need a little extra help, hopefully other people can supply what you need.

Speaking of other people, I lack the community aspect that organized religions offer. I have no set place to go, ceremonies to perform, or group to associate with. A joiner I am not, so I don’t feel much of a loss. Individual and unique views are a good thing in my opinions, and I come to most of my conclusions through self-reflection and an ongoing quest to reduce my ignorance. Some may like to delegate these tasks out, but I like to keep it in house. Without a group it’s hard to develop an “us vs them” mentality, which can help reduce conflicts. I do get a little scandalized when I hear someone doesn’t believe in evolution or something like that, but I try not to hold it against them. A generally subjectivist philosophy helps here, since I believe there is no absolute right answer to any question. A variety of different opinions is just more interesting. I mean, it’s hard to have a good discussion about a topic in which everyone agrees.

On a bit of a side not, I dislike how grand many places of worship are. When your building is funded by charity, I would think it best to keep the cost down. I understand that the point is to inspire awe and a sense of grand scale, but I think that is a job for the ideas and not the buildings. I also have this objection to government buildings. 

This is why North Dakota has my favorite capital building

Nobody is imbued with any special status in my view. I have no priests, saints, martyrs, messiahs, castes, saved, or damned. There is no supernatural metric I hold to by which people can be judge as better or worse. Mental gifts of physical talents can separate people and everyone has developed different skills, but these can be surprisingly insubstantial. Money and social connections can also give advantage, but in the end all of these things are so often borrowed and traded that they aren’t that hard to come by. An individual’s past can also have causal effects on their future, but these are by no means always rational. Enlightenment is an idea I almost adopt, but it implies an endpoint which is something I don’t have. Collecting knowledge and answering questions are goals of mine, but this is a process that will always be ongoing. I can’t imagine there will be a point where science finishes its journey. I also have a near saint like regard for many great minds of the past, but this is limited. Isaac Newton is an idol of mine and I have tremendous respect for his ideas, but I also understand that he was kind of a jerk. People are always just people.

Smart guy, but he didn't always play well with others

No book or writings can be used to show or record my beliefs. You might think that these blog posts are meant to collect and hold my feelings, but I view it as more of a brief expression of my thoughts at one moment in time. Everything in here is subjective; both in the fact that I don’t expect everyone to agree and that I don’t even expect my own opinions to remain the same. The point is to inspire thought, not to answer questions. Making any idea solid seems like a mistake, because it might need to be changed when more perspective is gained. You never know when the next paradigm shift might happen and all that you believe gets thrown into a new light.

            That was enough self-indulgent introspection for now, so I’ll wrap things up. I’m probably guilty of just using religion as a convenient catchall to cram a bunch of my theories into one place, but it worked well enough (This all started as a parody of other religions call Peteism, where everything was done “for the love of Pete”, but I decided it wasn't very funny). Each idea probably could have been explored separately, but I’ll save that for my giant unreadable philosophical book that I will hopefully never write.

My Religion Part Two: Let There Be Infinite Alternate Universes

            I’m describing what I call my religion, and religions are usually about more than faith and a sense of awe, so I guess I’ll go in to some of my other beliefs that are commonly covered by religions.

First should probably be the origin of the universe. I support the Big Bang, but that is more of a description of how the universe started and not how it came into being. I use infinite parallel universes to explain the origin of everything. Most of the infinite universes are going to have a group of laws and conditions that can’t result in stability or even any physical existence at all (such as if there was an inverse cube law instead of our inverse square law, assume a three spatial dimension universe, obviously), but when you have an infinite number of tries to make a universe, a few of them are going to end up making sense. I also have room in this theory for of universes that exist in a stable way, but also have rules different from our own, which is fantastic. Imagine a universe just like ours, except the Pythagorean Theorem doesn’t work! Just try to think about that for a while without giving yourself an aneurism.

Stay classy geometry

For the end of the universe I have beliefs with a similar theme. I accept the scientific theory of a universal heat death as the progression of entropy reaches a conclusion, but with some extra bits of my own added on to make things interesting. The extra bits are the fact that I’m not certain than the Big Bang was a unique event. We could get another bang every few trillion years (give or take) due to some unknown spontaneous energy generation (I have faith that matter is energy). The whole idea of something happening once, and only once, makes me suspicious. Just because the Big Bang is the only such phenomenon that we know about doesn’t mean that it is the only one that can or will happen. This is an example of using skepticism to expand one’s worldview rather than contract it.

Next up should probably be the afterlife. I’m going to dip into my infinite alternate universe theory again and pull out something neat. I think it would be endlessly stupendous if every alternate version of a person collapsed into a semi-collective consciousness after death. Basically, you would because aware of every other life you could have lead depending on different choices or circumstances. You would get to know how your life would have progressed had you gathered the courage to ask your sweetie to prom, or had been born the son of an absolute monarch in the middle ages. Extended far enough this would end up giving you complete causal knowledge of the universe, since you would have witnessed everything and anything that is capable of happening (because technically everyone is an alternate version of you). You would get to become Laplace’s Demon upon death, which isn’t a paradox since you're no longer a causal agent. I like to maintain a sense of identity in this afterlife, because an exploration of all possible universes wouldn’t be as good without a solid origin.

You could meet your evil self!

Last, I’ll cover my source of morality. Earlier, I explained how I believed morals to be subjective depending on the social system in which they exist. A good act is one that benefits society, and evil the opposite. Assuming the society is one that benefits you and others anyway, or else the opposite is true (basically you can overthrow a cruel dictator and it would be good, baring the establishment of an even worse social system). This carries a bit of a utilitarian aspect to it, but I don’t get bogged down with trying to weigh alternatives against each other. I don’t think you can ever sum the pleasures and pains of yourself and everyone else and come up with a best action. For this reason I think that intension is more important to morals than consequences. One should just do one’s best to benefit themselves and those around them, while also trying to do as little harm as possible. In the end, all this boils down to is "try to be a jerk as little as possible". Things just go better that way. The golden rule is also a good thing to follow.

All in all, I think that does an okay (if extremely brief) job of answering some of the major questions typically covered by religions. I’m still not done with this self-adulating shenanigans, so next time I’ll talk about the aspects of religion that I don't have.

My Religion Part One: In the Beginning

            In the past I’ve been known to claim my religion is Norse. I was basically treating the whole idea of religion as a joke, which isn’t really all that useful. I’ve been doing some thinking and I’ve come up with some slightly more mature ideas on the subject. My new collection of beliefs have all of the aspects of religion that I view as positive, without some of the stuff I don’t think is so great. Let's talk about it.

            If I had to sum up my beliefs in one word it would be pantheism. Basically, I see God as being indistinguishable from the universe and its laws. God isn’t a great word since it implies an amount of anthropomorphization, so it would be more accurate to say that I feel the universe possesses a level of divinity. I’m awed by many aspects of the universe; the consistency and power of mathematics, the grace and opportune qualities of the physical laws, the beauty and efficiency of nature, and the seemingly endless breadth and depth of the universe. I wouldn’t say that I worship these things, because I don’t have any sort of rituals or observances, but my regard goes beyond a simple appreciation of science and nature. Close inspection or reflection on everything I perceive can cause simultaneous feelings of wonder, excitement, disbelief, and warmth. The ability of my mind to comprehend concepts from infinity to simple geometry (there is no such thing as a straight line in our physical reality, they exist only as an idea, which is fantastic), the way simple rules can be used to predict or achieve complex actions (like understanding the orbits of the planets, and then landing robots on those planets), the myriad of systems that work together in biological organisms (me for instance) to perform even simple operations (like closing my hand) or between organisms (like gut bacteria; I have an ecosystem inside me), and the fact that the universe simultaneously has no edge and has continued to produce ever smaller particles (wave-particles, or whatever they prefer to be called) as fast as we can find them (it’s turtles all the way down, but also all the way up) are just a few examples of things that fill me with amazement.

I love giant space cameras

My faith in the existence of these things (I’ve never seen an atom and haven’t personally dissected animals to see how their organs work) is very important to me. This faith isn’t just believing what scientists tell me. I also fully accept causality (that causes lead to effect), persistence (that the backs of objects are still there even if I can’t see them or that the laws of gravity will continue to function in the same way), and that my senses give me an accurate representation of the world. These may not seem like concepts that can be doubted to most people, but I’m not most people. I’m some sort of crappy pretend philosopher who writes rubbish on the internet. I’ve always had a strong skeptical streak (I once failed a true of false quiz about the Titanic, not because I didn’t know the answers, but because I was doubting our ability to site history as absolute fact), and I could easily fall into a solipsistic world view. My beliefs are an active choice, made because they make my universe more stupendous. They also have quite a bit of utility (it is hard to pursue pleasure if you don’t believe in the existence of your body).

This could be a fake picture and I would never know

This whole “religion” thing is based around my abnormal view of the world. I mean, I lost sleep the other night because I was so excited about a number series that I had thought up (numbers that are the least common multiple of sequential numbers: 1, 2, 6, 12, 60, 60, 420, 840…). Another good example is the fact that I write introspective essays and post them on the internet. Speaking of which, I think this is enough for one go, so, TO BE CONTINUED.

Cosmic Questions

It’s time to definitively answer some questions that no one else seems to want to answer. Let’s do this.

First up: Can God create a stone so heavy even He can’t lift it?

           

Answer: No. To elaborate, omnipotence means that you can do anything, not create anything. The whole question is just a cleverly disguised contradiction. You could rephrase it as “Can God do so much that he does something that he can’t do?”, and that doesn’t make any sense. The dude can lift anything with finite mass, end of story. I say finite mass because an object of infinite mass would break the universe (infinite gravitational attraction to every other object sort of thing). I guess He could create something of infinite mass, destroy the universe, and then fail to lift it because it no longer exists. I want to change my answer.

Number Two: If we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?

Answer: First of all, apes. We evolved from apes. Secondly, the major evolutionary step between us and apes was moving out of the forests and into the plains. The difference in habitat meant that we were no longer competing or breeding between groups. All the species between us and apes that lived in the plains our ancestors either killed off or interbred with, so that’s why they aren’t around anymore. Apes meanwhile were having their own evolutionary history separated from ours by a bunch of trees.

Number Tree: If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

Answer: A tree can’t fall in the forest if no one is around to observer it. All the unobserved trees simply exist in state of superposition where they are both fallen and standing simultaneously. It's not until the trees are observed that their wave functions collapse and they exist in a specific state.

Question the Fourth: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Answer: This depends on whether you believe in creation or evolution. In creation, God made a chicken 6,000 odd years ago and it promptly started laying eggs, so chicken first. For evolution, something that wasn’t quite a chicken laid an egg that hatched into the first chicken, so egg first (I’m assuming the egg in questing is “egg that will hatch into a chicken).

V: How do we fix global warming?

Answer: Do nothing and just let the climate sort itself out. When the temperature rise due to greenhouse gases the icecaps will melt and raise the sea level. It’s not like anybody lives on the coast or anything. Increasing the surface area of the oceans will work as a heat sink helping to balance temperatures. Increased evaporation will result in increased rains (more surface area equals more evaporation right?), which is a natural way of scrubbing CO2 from the atmosphere. Bonus points if the ocean currents change and Europe loses the Gulf Stream. All those new glacier in Northern Europe will be a good storage of water, helping keep sea level down (I’m sure no one would mind is France has the climate of North Dakota and Ireland is indistinguishable from Newfoundland). All that CO2 from the coal and oil is really just what was already in the air a few hundred million years ago. Sure the only terrestrial life supported back then was amphibians and arthropods, but that’s nothing that a few mass extinctions can’t fix. I think we can all stop worrying.

One that I already kind of covered: Zeno’s Paradox

Answer: Look at this math formula that is basically what Zeno is describing.

One is a number between zero and two. It’s also between 0.9 and 1.1. It is in no way infinity. If you can’t get to one from zero you have problems.

Last one: What is the sound of one hand clapping?

Answer: One hand can’t clap. Clapping is defined as “to strike the palms of (one's hands) against one another resoundingly. You need two hands to do that.

Well, I hope we all learned something today. Feel free to ask me more questions so that I can completely annihilate them with my logic and reasoning.

The Appreciation of Pictures

            What is art? Now that I’ve been engaging in possible art-like activities I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Am I doing art? Am I not doing art? Is art even a thing that you can do? Let’s talk about it.

            I’ve heard it said that art has no function but itself. I struggle to even comprehend the implications of this definition. Personally, my drawings are meant to convey meanings. I’m trying to express feelings, thoughts, and even humor. I’m using it to communicate, and that seems like a function outside of art itself. Apparently I’m not doing art. Does that mean stuff like Emily Dickinson’s poetry is real art? Maybe art is writing poems just because you can and not actively sharing them. It might just be me, but I still see function in this. Writing down thoughts and feelings helps relieve mental tension and expands your understanding. These are functional things. Emily is out then. All that leaves is really abstract stuff. Say I make a snow ball and throw it at a concrete wall just to see what kind of pattern it makes. Art? Nothing is communicated since I’m by myself and the snow will quickly melt. I don’t gain any new understandings (other than more reinforcement for my belief in physical laws, but that would only really be something if it didn’t follow expectations). It does make me feel kind of good. Is that a function? I’m pretty sure this definition of art is terrible, and I’m going to abandon it.

Art?

            It’s time to come up with my own definition. How about; anything that conveys meaning in a subjective manner. The word subjective is the important part. Who cares about if art is creative or useful; I think the important aspect is that it’s different for everyone. Real art should generate a personal experience for anyone that encounters it. For any item or art; be it song, drawing, sculpture, book, or anything else; some people should enjoy it and some people shouldn’t. They should also do it for personal and unique reasons. Furthermore, the people who don’t like art are just as important as the ones who do. If everyone liked art it wouldn’t be the same. Inventing a device to make anyone’s brain experience a designated feeling isn’t art. If I like “One Night in Bangkok” because it’s a metaphor for my life, another person likes it for the Thailand references, and another person hates it because they think the 80’s were the lowest point in music history, that’s good. That’s great. That’s ART.

            Just as someone who doesn’t like art is important to the art, art someone doesn’t like is important to the person. If you don’t like modern pop music, that doesn’t mean that it’s bad and shouldn’t exist. If everyone just “made music like they used to” then there would be no variety, no originality, no contrast. If disliked music didn’t exist, you couldn’t understand liked music. All you could say is “I like music”. That still implies a contrast (as in music over painting), so all you could really say is “I Like” and that doesn’t have any meaning. There needs to be contrast for anything to have real meaning. If black didn’t exist alongside white I would have a really hard time trying to get any points across.

            In conclusion, I think art for an individual is distinguishing what is liked from what it not. Drawing has made me much more aware of this. Now when I look at an illustration I note things like the line work, coloring, shading, realism, and perspective. I then decide if I like them or not. This goes beyond things that would traditionally be described as art. While brushing my teeth this morning I was looking at the way my hand held the brush and how the brush entered my mouth and was able to view it the same way I would a painting. Some positions were good and some weren’t. Different arrangement conveyed different meanings. I suddenly have no idea where my definition of art stops, but I think that’s a good thing. 

Myriad (this is my attempt at a catchy name for a philosophical text)

            I’ve come to a conclusion that all justice, morals, virtues, and concepts of good and evil are completely relative. Not in the way that you can come up with whatever you want and be correct, but that they are determined by the social system in which they exist and not universal constants. This statement seems obvious after thinking about it for so long, but I guess I can still back it up with some discussion. Morals are going to get the most focus since they’re most commonly believed to be unchanging.

            The way I see it, it all starts with the social system. A social system is just any structure that human beings use to organize their interaction with one another, ranging from a nation, to a club. By my definition; within a society justice is beneficial action, virtue is valuable traits, morals are concepts for propitious behavior, and good and evil are labels for anything that is advantageous or harmful. Here’s an example. In my wider culture of the United States of America during the early 21^st Century, sex between an adult male and a young boy is considered to be very wrong. So much so that it’s considered justice to send those whom commit this act to jail, where they will be considered to have less moral value that murderers and thieves. Compare this to Classical Hellas, where love between a man and a boy could be considered superior to love between a man and woman (See Plato’s Symposium). Men would have a mentoring relationship with young boys and these relationships included a physical component. The boys were not damaged in any way since this was a completely accepted aspect of the culture, and they likely benefited since they learned stuff and a caring physical relationship can hardly be traumatic. A similar system also existed in Feudal Nippon, just to show it’s not a lone aberration. I realize that in modern times these relationships are typically conducted with additional antisocial acts like assault and kidnapping, but the sexual aspect is usually considered to be the most morally reprehensible part, and without the stigma against the relationships the violent aspects probably wouldn’t commonly exist (I assume here that being taught that one’s natural urges are wrong and need to be repressed might create an unstable and violent individual). This moral belief and others sex related morals (anti-homosexuality, condemning premarital sex, and denouncing all non-monogamous relationships to name a few) can probably be traced to this countries early Puritan roots. But how about murder, it’s always evil right? Well, I can come up with a social system that wouldn’t agree. Imagine a warrior society that believes in a concept of survival of the fittest and glory through combat. Killing others could be viewed as a way to prove ones worth and also as a way or removing those who weren’t valuable to the community. Hypothetical societies like this can be imagined for any act viewed as morally wrong in a culture, and also the opposite where good morals are viewed as evil.

             What I think can be taken away from this idea is that you can’t judge actions within another culture as right or wrong by your own cultural standards. It’s easy to view another society as inherently evil due to differences in the morals built into the social systems, and it’s harder to just accept and tolerate differences. Morals are not completely subjective though, and an individual can’t act in any way desired and claim to follow a different system. Citizens in a social system are obligated to act in the society’s best interest or expect repercussions. It’s only natural for a society to protect itself and encourage the behavior that benefits it, and this is where laws, police, moral education, and such come from. It seems like the problems are that social systems can’t be objectively measured as better or worse, and that many people live in systems that they don’t completely agree with. A solution to this would be to organize various parallel social systems that exist with free movement of their citizens. Diverse cultures could be created in something like city-states, and every member of a culture would be expected to be a willing participant. The more diverse cultures the better, with differences ranging from political organization to economic systems to whether or not people eat meat. Individuals who find that they don’t agree with the culture they live in could hopefully move to another that better suits them, and many morally influenced crimes could be simply punished with exile to another culture that doesn’t view them as crime. Thieves could be sent to the city where property doesn’t exist, adulterers to a free loving state, and embezzlers to a free market anarchy. Exile could be used as a punishment for all serious crimes, with those unable to fit into any group sent to uninhabited areas to create new groups (this isn’t really feasible with the current population on Earth, but once we are capable of living off this planet we can send them to live on asteroids or the like). I’m a big fan of exile, since with justice being actions that benefit society, if a criminal can’t be trusted to cooperate with the social system it's more beneficial to simply make them leave than to dedicate infrastructure to imprisoning them or to waste their life by ending it. I hope societies could be much more stable with all the members giving their full support, and as long as each group recognized the morals of the others as different but not inherently wrong, then many conflicts could be avoided (like Crusades). A focus on judging laws and morals according to how they better a social system rather than as objective facts could also be helpful (such as would legal drug use or the illegal drug trade causing more damage to the society).

            I’m tempted to go on about my opinions on the social contract and other thoughts but I think this is enough moral/political philosophy for now. I think my postulation that morals are relative base on the social system in which they exist is sound, and I fail to come up with a moral idea that can’t be reversed within another viable system. The first way to apply this idea is to be more tolerant of the morals and cultures different from my own. This is easy for me with my non-coercion leanings, and leaving others to their own devices is what I do naturally. In conclusion, I agree with the belief that no one does evil intentionally, but my interpretation is that they just don’t agree on what actions are the most beneficial for society.

Feminism

            I have a problem with feminism. Did someone throw a betterment of humanity party and not invite me? It’s mostly the name that makes me think this, but feminism seems like a bit of a no boys allowed club. I realize that men have continuously been hostile towards this subject, but if they realized that they had something to gain they might be a little more helpful (hopefully). There are some pretty good reasons for men to care about gender equality, two of which are the fact that we have gender inequalities of our own, and the fact that we should be responsible for improving the role we have in society.

            Men have some pretty crappy gender stereotypes that I would like to see make their way out of our culture. A big one is how men are encouraged to be the violent gender. Men are pushed to solve problems with their fists, and to value fighting ability over other means of conflict resolution. Intelligent adults shouldn't behave this way, but they do. Another particularly disgusting institution is how males are taught to hate and oppress our homosexuals. Female homosexuality is essentially encourages, in a terribly exploitative way, but I still thing ours is worse. Insinuating that a man is homosexual is one of the biggest insults around, which is dumb, because who you find attractive doesn't make you a bad person, but being an ignorant jackass does. Cultural viewpoints towards sex and woman that are urged on men are something that I find displeasing as well. Treating women as objects, applauding sexual conquest, associating love with what can only be described as bribes, and the conditioning of the Pavlovian response to cleavage are just some of the aspects that I don't like in male societal norms. I realize that all the things in the last sentence set up women as victims, which sucks, but it’s also setting up men as the culprits, which isn't great either.

Bad Role Models

            Now when men aren't punching each other in the face or having sex with big breasted women, we are supposed to be hoarding wealth and exerting our will over others. I'm talking about money and power, and I don't agree with how much value men are expected to put into these concepts. What is really scary is that some women may be trying to share in the money and power game. All I know is that the media is only commonly mentioning the gender differences in salaries and management positions, but I don’t think the media has ever done much to help gender equality. What I hope both genders will esteem (or continue to do so) are professions that involve aspects like protecting others (police, firefighting), building/inventing/creating (engineering, programming, art), and technical/scientific prowess (science, IT, mechanics). Art is probably the only field I mentioned that is well gender balanced, but I forgot to mention the admirable careers that women dominate. These are the nurturing, caring, and teaching related jobs, like nurses, therapists, and teachers. I wouldn't mind seeing more value put into these occupations, especially for men. I am still forgetting what I think of as the most important human pursuit, which is very female dominated. This is child rearing, and while being limited to only this job is awful, the fact that this is the most meaningful human pursuit out there shouldn't be forgotten, and it doesn't even have a salary.

Good Role Models

            I believe in feminism, but would prefer to call myself a gender equalist. Thinking about it, I don’t really have a problem with feminism because I can respect women’s desire to solve their own cultural problems, and I am actually upset by my own sex’s failure to address these problems. In the end I still feel that actions should be self-determined, so in a move that I hope will be welcomed, I will leave women to work on their own behavioral norms, and hopefully my side can meet you in the middle someday. Apparently the genders are equal in how we are both being equally screwed over by atrocious stereotypes and customs. That isn't actually true, because men don't have to live with fears of sexual assault, which is the topic that I most want to leave you thinking about.

Killing: Just How Uncool is It?

            So I think we can agree that killing is generally wrong. Killing a person is basically one of the worst things that thon can do, other than killing a bunch of people. A neighbor’s pets are also off limits as far as recreational life ending, and endangered species should probably not be used for the testing of knife sharpness… or pointiness. But what about laboratory mice, spiders, or non-native cane toads? I think this is a job for philosophical discourse.

            I’ll start with the killing that I believed to be justified. First is any game animal that hunting or fishing has become an integral part of their ecology. “Harvesting” such animals so that they remain below the carrying capacity of the environment is good. I personally would rather be shot than starve to death, and they go to some use this way. Speaking of death for a useful purpose, I believe some lab testing is acceptable. This doesn’t mean that I think we should go see how much shampoo a rabbit can eat before it dies, but cancer research and understanding how brains work seem like sufficiently important studies to allow for some casualties. We all die, but we don’t all die FOR SCIENCE. Self Defense is naturally cool too since it doesn’t matter if it’s a charging bear or ax murderer, you are allowed to act in self-interest. With the exception of if the bear just caught you stealing its children (or the ax murderer for that matter). Other than those situations, I struggle to outright condone the intentional ending of life.

Killing can be a very powerful scientific tool

            There are some common types of killing that I definitely don’t believe are okay. Is a spider’s life really worth less than the 30 or so seconds that it would take you to put it outside? Impulsive killing like this is not cool by me, especially when motivated by fear or malice. Those are not good emotions to let dictate your actions, so I don’t care how afraid of snakes or annoyed with pigeons you are, that doesn’t give you the right to kill them. I know it isn’t easy, but being right rarely is. Killing purely for sport or trophies is also something I can’t agree with. It doesn’t matter how good it looks on a wall, it looked better alive, and the story can never outdo a life story. My opinion anyway.

Are you going to eat that lion?

            Now for the hard bit, as these are the ones I’m not sure about. Invasive species are a topic that I have divided feelings about. The pro-extermination feelings tell me that these animals are causing the destruction of environments and the deaths of other animals, and it is probably our fault so we should fix it. On the other hand, these are still natural species, and is the act of one animal effectively out-competing all rivals something that should be punished? In theory we might be doing the environment a favor by introducing more fit breeds of animal. Genetic diversity is nice from a “life is beautiful” standpoint, but evolution is about efficiency. Another scenario I’m undecided on is creatures that compete with humans. Is a man justified in shooting a wolf because it eats a cow before he does? A bear might kill a puma over food, but aren’t we a higher form of intelligence? You could also frame it a punishment for theft, but you wouldn’t shoot another human who stole your livestock (I hope). You can’t reason with a fox to keep it from eating your chickens, but killing it just seems like the cheap and easy way out. I guess the jury is still out.

Is stealing corn a capital offense?

            In the end killing is really easy to do. Life is pretty fragile, and even simple accidents can end it. It can be challenging to avoid senseless cessation of sentience, but I think a person would be better for it.

Everybody Loves a Bad Boy

            You love bad boys. You know you do and if you say you don’t you’re lying. I can prove it.

            By definition, bad boys are bad because they make bad decisions.  Bad decisions are responsible for everything that has ever been suspenseful, sexy, or exciting ever. These decisions, by their very nature, create drama, conflicts, and problems. You may recognize these as the elements that make a story, well… a story. It is pretty impossible to make something interesting without one of those components. I defy anyone to write a story longer than five pages that doesn’t involve one bad decision, and then try to get anyone other than their mom to suffer through it (moms will read anything and say it’s good, they are completely delusional).

Here is an illustration of a bad boy making a bad decision

            Now what do I mean when I say bad decisions? They are not the same thing as stupid decisions, because choosing to wash your cat with Pine Sol isn’t interesting. Bad decisions are like deciding to take a Christmas Party hostage so you can rob their vault (or deciding that you are the one man to stop them), falling in love with a member of a rival family, or stealing porridge from bears. They involve taking risking, making people upset, and going against the beaten path. Anything that creates problems, opposition, or causes plans going awry, can be traced back to a bad boy somewhere.

The double thumps-up was pretty edgy in the 1970's

I could make a comprehensive list of all the bad boys in storytelling, but it would just be a list of every interesting character ever, and I don’t have that kind of time. I can give an example of a character that doesn’t make bad decisions though. If you have ever seen the Star Wars prequel movies you may have noticed these characters called Jedi. They don’t make any bad decisions, and it shows. Try to watch one of these characters (wait, a character need feature and traits. How about people… no that implies personality. Um, how about specimen. I think that has the right cold emotionless feel to it. Anyway) specimens for more than 30 seconds without yawning so hard that your soul flees the abyss of boredom that your body has become. Sitting around and talking in a calm fashion is not interesting. You know what is interesting? Flipping tables. Bad boys flip tables.

They are all holding laser swords and yet they still look boring

You may know bad boys by other names, such as loose cannon, rascal, scamp, rogue, or scoundrel. You may recognize these as descriptions of many, many famous characters from books, film, and all other forms or storytelling. Good boy are too busy staying home and working on the family farm while brushing their teeth twice a day to get a story told about them. Good boys do what is expected of them and don’t make trouble. Good boys are incredibly tedious and I’m already tired of talking about them.

Only a mom could find this picture interesting

Now if you still don’t like bad boys then you are missing out. They may cause a lot of problems, but they are also the ones who fix problems. You can’t solve a problem without opposing something. Bad boys can be traced all the way back to (and past) that first proto-human who stepped out of the trees and into the savanna. Some good decision making monkey was probably say “Look out, there are lions and junk out there”, but the bad decision making man just said “Whatever dude, if you need me I’ll be throwing pointy sticks at zebras”. What I’m trying to say is that we wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for bad boys. I would at this point like to make it clear that bad boys includes females, it is just that the term alliterates, and is therefore more entertaining to write with (sorry about that).

Sweet German Words and the Least Popular Kind of Zombie

            It’s Philosophy:30, we should celebrate. I have two of my favorite ideas with me and there’s enough for everyone, so don’t feel bad if you didn’t bring anything. Let me introduce you to Ubermensch and Philosophical Zombies.

            Ubermensch is an idea from the German philosopher (and mustache enthusiast) Friedrich Nietzsche, and roughly translates to “overman”.  Uber is a very nuanced word in German, but it doesn’t really translate to super as it is commonly used. In fact, Germans already have a word for super, it’s super (pronounced zuper). Anyway, back to the philosophy. The Ubermensch is a goal for the future or humanity, and is Nietzsche’s idea of living up to our full potential. The goal can basically be reduced to the phrase “Thine own will be done”. Pursue your own happiness and goals without being compelled by others or wasting time worrying about what they want. The advancement of humanity is put above any moral systems that would keep us from being the best that we could be.

Behold its bushy glory

            I like this idea. Many people think it is just a justification for selfish and egotistical behavior but that is not how I see it. There is no reason why the pursuit of one’s own goals would be antagonistic toward others. For instance, you might say this justifies the strong taking from the weak, but taking from the weak isn’t in keeping with the advancement of humanity, so it's not in keeping with the Ubermensch. The disregard for morality comes in on cases like the ban on research in human cloning. This stifles the advancement of the human race for what I can only imagine to be religious moral qualms. The Ubermensch has no fear of progress and doesn't get concerned with other peoples issues.

            Philosophical zombies are what I like to think of as the opposite of the Ubermensch. Unlike traditional zombies who are human forms who lack all humanity, philosophical zombies are human forms that lack all consciousness. This was originally just an idea used to refute physicalism, but I like to take it a step further. P-zombies, as they are sometimes called, are just bodies “going through the motions”, without any will of their own.  This is a being that is incapable of originality or creativity, which are traits that I associate with the Ubermensch. The scary part about these zombies is that I suspect that they might exist.

Obligatory Philosophical Zombie Visual Pun

            Anyone who lives only through the eyes of others, and is only concerned with conforming to the group is a p-zombie by my definition. All ideas and opinions would be the ones that were adopted from outside the self. That is not a real person in my opinion. The ability to create is what makes us human. Nietzsche’s antithesis for the Ubermensch was the “Last Man”, who seeks only comfort and has no desire for advancement, for self or race. Between the two of these I definitely detest the p-zombie more, but the Last Man isn’t high up in my book either. See also Ayn Rand's Second Handers.

            Well I hope you enjoyed meeting these ideas, and I would be happy to discuss them in greater depth with anyone. I taught my spell check some new words, so all in all not a bad day.

Tallness, A Crime Against Humanity?

            Tallness, let’s talk about it. Height seems to be a very admirable trait in modern society and I have no idea why. I can see no real benefits and a number is disadvantages to being tall. I should probably say that I am 5’ 9” (that’s 69”... ladies), so I am coming at this from the perspective of an average height person.

            I’ll start with the pros of being tall. Um, you can reach higher things without getting a chair or something. You have an advantage when playing basketball. You can see slightly father due to a higher vantage, once again neglecting the ability to stand on a chair, or like a rock or anything. That’s all I can think of. There is also the whole thing were tall people are perceived as more attractive, but I am about to crush that misconception.

            My first con is that there really isn’t anything tall people can do that short people can’t, but the inverse is true. Anyone can wear platform shoes or stilts to gain height, but you can’t do anything to lose it temporarily. Now the only shortness exclusive activity I can think of is fitting into small spaces, but that could be a pretty big deal in the right situation. What if you are getting chased by an angry bear and the only escape is a tight gap in the cave wall or something; I sure hope those extra 6” were worth it. Now you may say that the tall person could reach a high branch and swing into a tree, but bears can climb trees so that argument is invalid.

This is pretty much all you need to cancel out a couple feet of extra height

            Con number two is the loss of body efficiency as height increases. Bone and muscle strength increase proportional to their cross sectional area, not their volume. Since area increase according to the square of the height ratio, and volume increase according to the cube; if you double your height you will quadruple you strength, but octuple your weight. This means that if you take someone who can lift their own weight and then proportionally half their size, they can then lift twice their weight. This is why people brag about ants being able to lift the equivalent of cars to their own weight, but it’s not true because if you scaled the ants up they probably wouldn’t be about to lift anything, because they would be too busy being crushed by their own weight (exoskeletons are only feasible at small sizes).

Don't worry mam, gravity will soon collapse his entire body

            My final and largest problem with tallness is the consumption of resources. Larger people eat more food, need more material for clothing and housing, and basically everything needs to be built on a larger scale to accommodate them. I don’t think food consumption will scale 1:1 with weight, but if we shrink every human on earth by half we could reduce food consumption roughly eightfold. All of our houses and cars could be built at half size, and you would save immensely on all structural components because the masses would decrease so much. It would be like reducing the human population by a factor of eight, and who’s to say that we would have to stop at only half size. At one quarter height, weight is decrease by a factor of 64!

THANKS FOR RUINING THE PLANET

            The only problem I can see with shrinking humanity is a reduction in brain size might reduce intelligence. A correlation between brain size and intelligence hasn’t been proven though, and a reduction in body size should decrease the number of nerves and what not, reducing the amount of brain power that is needed to run the body. We could also just keep most of our head size with tricks like more premature births or exclusively cesarean sections. Anyway, tallness sucks, Cob out.