Science the middleman

There is a war being fought this very day. It has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, maybe even millions, but casualties aren't just measured in terms of fatal wounds. There is a war being fought on Earth today, and it has the potential to tear this very world apart. And in this war, I am a combatant.

This is not a war to be fought on battlefields (though it sometimes occurs). It is a war that is being fought in the hearts and minds (both are of course metaphors for the brain) of the people, the skirmishes takes place during conversations and debates and the battles have their venues in courthouses and universities. Conflicts of this sort spans over continents and oceans and disputes can take place regardless of language or race. This is a war of ideas, and the boundaries of the factions are poorly defined.

The world is polarised. On one side stands the proud conservatives, included are the fundamentalists and the self-appointed defenders of traditions. Their leaders prize stability above all else while the followers are content to be obedient servants listening to masters in the hope of receiving ultimate rewards. If they had their way, they would set up a state of theocratic absolutism of the Middle Ages.

The superpower on the other side are the fervent liberals. Theirs is a group of enormous diversity, including the animal rights movements, environmental activists, anti-GM, organic and vegetarian practitioners, the New Age con-artists and their believers, the postmodernists, the anti-corporations, to mention a few. The ideas they mostly embrace is a oneness with nature, calling themselves spiritual while not fond of traditional organised religion. These almost equally mindless supposedly peace-loving Hippies sometime see it fit to use violence to achieve the motives, while their leaders cling on to unrealistic causes.

Trapped in the midst of the crossfire are the repositories of the Enlightenment, the passionate but practical scientists. Although hard at work to achieve progress, they are hindered by policies from cranky people on both sides. Nuts on the right try to block any work from being done to their imaginary souls while similar people on the left block work that however slightly affects their mystical nature, both sides have factions that are indifferent to using guns and bombs to destroy institutions of research, yet Science never retaliates. And how can it? The manpower supporting Science is a small minority of mostly intellectuals, which uphold the principles of the Enlightenment such as free speech, unrestrained questioning, the value of life, among many others.

The power of this third group comes not in numbers but in the method of Science itself, of which is the best and most successful tool that humanity has ever produced. Despite this, the group still struggles for survival, its small size means that funds have to come from elsewhere, a particularly dangerous proposition. The small size also causes the realisation of a flaw in democracy, especially in an uneducated public. Science is not run democratically, neither is it run autocratically, from a system of peer reviews and open criticism, an entirely new political system have arisen, one that might have great potential yet to come. Deep within the scientific community lies the breeding ground for true atheism, a cosmological framework of absolutely no spirituality. For it is here, deep within Science, that claims need evidence to be supported and hence the default position is always non-belief, and it is also here where the a believe in the spiritual is clearly seen to be dangerous.

As a new generation of scientists carry on the war that started in the 16th century, it plays its next political move carefully, for if either side wins Science would wither and a new Dark Age might return, one that have the possibility of entirely wiping out humanity.

Take that Pascal

This is a response to Pascal's Wager. For those of you who don't know who Blaise Pascal is or why he is the subject of so much scorn, here's a quick write-up. Pascal is the French mathematician who brought you Pascal's triangle, although I could have made up that triangle in my dreams, and the guy who have the SI unit of pressure named after. Apparently he also had a knack for sticking he nose where it didn't belong, namely in reason.

Pascal's wager, if you didn't already know, is the bet that says if you bet on god and it turns out you're right, you go to heaven. While if you didn't bet on god, then you go to hell. Of course, his medieval mind would then associate heaven with infinite good and hell with infinite suffering. His point being that you have everything to gain by wagering that god exist, and nothing to lose, so just pray. Understandably, anyone who knows reason would know that that logic is simply flawed at best, or totally incoherent at its worst, of which the "nothing to lose" part have just been dismantled by the comic.

First one have to wonder why an omnipotent (all-present) and omniscient (all-knowing) god wouldn't see through your cheap bet. Why in the world would he let in those cunning, scheming people who go onto their knees just because they hope to make it into heaven, while leaving the sincere and honest atheists who proudly proclaim their disbelieve to go to hell. If that deity is even one bit as moral as all the sacred books and all his followers claim him to be, then he certainly would at least have it the other way.

The next thing is how do those faithful fanatics know which is the god that really exist of the so many that have been created from the dawn of civilisation? The Greeks had three different gods to democratically judge where you would go for an afterlife, and no, believing that they exist wasn't in the Greeks' criteria. Then there's the Babylonian, Egyptians, Romans, Norse and many, many other mythologies to pay attention to. Are we supposed to practise the rituals of every single culture, just so that we can negligibly raise the chances that we get to enjoy our afterlife? And how do they even know what the intention of those gods are anyway? People always like to say god works in mysterious ways when he kills thousands of people in floods and hurricanes, so how do we know he isn't doing one of those mysterious things again, and instead rewards atheists with the good afterlife instead?

Lastly, we can also break apart the links holding those many arguments in position, and question the whole "mathematical" model behind it. What if the chances of the existence of any gods at all is so small that it is negligible, so what happens when you put negligible chance together with infinite happiness? Huh, did Pascal ever thought about that? And what if the right way to calculate the value of life is in percentage, and if the atheists were right, then you have just wasted a significant portion of your only life into adhering to some of those absurd rituals, while if god did exist, you'll might not make up those percentage lost time, because you still carry on some stupid rituals in heaven?

The only thing Pascal's Wager is, is a scheme of a religious huckster. It's like a salesman trying to sell you a lousy piece of junk by giving it a fake gold coating. It amazes me how this crazy man could ever have been immortalised in Physics.

The rise of the British merchants

So seldom do so many of the topics I want to talk about converge on a single article, many people don't realise that this industrialised world we lived in had a bottleneck in history not too long ago. And that bottleneck was in 17-18th century Enlightened England. The legacy of it? The world domination of the British merchant class.

It all started when during some time in the Renaissance, about 1400s, the British merchants were living in the upper-middle class, and trade was making alot of money. In the studies done, the merchants were found to have the highest number of children as compared with the normal peasant, that is about 4 children per merchant to about 1.5 child per peasant. (Of course kings have more children, but their proportion in the country is so small that it didn't really matter) These children inherit the family fortune, as well as genetic traits and the upbringing of their wealthy families. However there were only a fixed amount of social positions in England, and naturally, the traits of the peasants get pushed out of the society (took a few hundred years for that to happen). So what happened is that England was the first to evolve and be dominated by merchants and the industry of trade.

Now, the first few things you need to know about merchants is that trade flourish in peaceful countries, so the large number of merchants in England pushed the government for a number of policies for a stable country, such as lowering crime. And of course everyone knows that England was situated on an island separated from Europe and so wasn't too affected by wars, especially when defended by the large Royal Navy. Together with flourishing trade was also flourishing Science, since Britain wasn't controlled by the Catholic Church and so scientific talents were free to publish. This then cumulated into the Industrial Revolution, and brought fourth every merchant's dream of capitalism.

And so there you have it, with the Industrial Revolution, the British merchants literally took over the world. The British East India Company was perhaps the largest trading company in the world, when assimilated by the British Empire, about a quarter of the world was under its rule, spreading the ideas of the Industrial Revolution like wildfire. Although Spain was large during that time, it was economically much poorer, so European competitors on seeing British lead also industrialised and practised capitalism. And that was enough to transform the world forever, even when Communism tried to overthrow capitalism, ultimately they failed.

It is stunning to think that just because of one group of people on one island off the coast of Europe living only a few centuries ago, the world was overran by British merchants and their ideas. And that the modern, industrialised, liberal global society is modelled from them.

Western Terrorism vs. Eastern Terrorism

I'm missing a number of updates due to a terrible strain on my head from trying to finish a couple of library books, so I'd thought I'll try my best to get to articles up today.

Terrorism is of course not a new idea, its history can be traced so far back into the dawn of civilisation that its really hard to tell where its origins lay. Is it from the raiding bands of barbarians living on the fringe of civilisation? Or did it arise from secret revolts plotted from the heart of isolated/unruly towns? Wherever it might have originated, among the last place you would expect to find it is in the army of an ancient civilisation. Great civilisations raised massive amounts of troops employing intricate formations and having generals leading them. In certain cases, you could almost say that there were rules in battle that the military powers observed.

Yet when facing the savages that lay outside military law, there was always the danger of being surprised. Some used unusual tactics due to the environment they lived in, others have well-developed ambush strategies like the Mongol horde, and even some fearless/suicidal ones who charged to their deaths. The last of course have been virtually stamped out in the West as gunpowder came along. The thing about dissidents in the West, like in the American Revolution, or in the northern Ireland conflict, is that they always leave, to their best efforts, an escape plan. After their sabotage, or even if their mission is unsuccessful, they really want to live to fight for another day. Maybe it's from a lack of manpower, which the East seems to be in no danger of running out, but I'd like to think that it is the result of the Enlightenment.

In the East however, suicidal attacks seem to have no end. Combining suicidal impulses together with modern armoury seems to be the cornerstone of military tactics in the East. These kind of terrorism have demonstrated its finest moments to the world in World War II, where the Japanese were notorious for their Kamikaze pilots in trying to sink Allied ships, as well as for their spectacular way of dying while refusing to be taken prisoners. Unfortunately the East have no lack of other examples, there is the Tamil Tiger bombings, as well as the Palestinian bombings, Indonesian bombings, and the latest craze the Iraqi bombings. All these plans seem to have only 3 options, hit-and-die, die trying and of course being captured when something screws up. Without an exit strategy also simplifies their assault plan, and they have almost no care about who goes down with them, making them frightfully dangerous.

And that's the problem with giving a couple of Bronze Age people modern weapons, just like giving them anything else, the mindset needed to use the technology isn't there.

The American Revolutionary War

It was once said by an American in the 1800s that they should not repeat the mistake that France had just made. That is to revolt against the authorities and put the powers into the hands of a military leader (Napoleon). Little did he realise that had already happened just a few years ago. Yes, they didn't put the powers into the hands of a person but a republic(and so did the French). What led one nation one way, but the other in another is quite an interesting phenomenon. So let us wind back the clock and return to The American Revolution.

North America just before the time of the American Revolution was under a two way power-sharing deal by the Europeans after kicking the French out, namely by the English and the Spanish. The English, of course being the most liberal of all three countries, and that perhaps is one of the reasons why the United States is the first of the colonies to revolt, and have perhaps the most successful one.

The most important factor that led to the revolution was the problem of representation of the American colonies, being British citizens, in the British government. Britain then further angered the colonies by passing more taxes. Years of friction later resulted in some outright demonstration against the government, like dumping tea into a harbour in the Boston Tea Party. A few more laws from the British and more militarization by the Americans soon led to war.

While both the American and French Revolution were both parts of the Enlightenment. whereby people basically freed themselves. What marked the differences between the Americans and French were enormous. First of all is that the Americans faced an external threat, which were the invading British. While the French was overthrowing an absolute monarchy in their own homes, that is until the Germans start retaliating. The Americans also seemed much more organised in their revolt, while most people remember the French revolution as an era of confusion. Perhaps the most telling signs of this is that the Americans all had clear and exceptional intellectual leaders, Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, Hancock, Adams, ... yet in France, there were so much confusion that a number of their intellectuals and even revolutionary leaders were executed.

The success of the Americans must not be lightly dismissed. Many revolutions had occurred after that, but none had managed to churn out another country that serves as a model to the world. The creation of a government by a group of people who understood Enlightenment philosophy might have done the trick. It is said that trying times bring out the best in people, and it is certainly so for America. Perhaps the best government can only be found when the very survival of the nation is threaten.

You might have heard of the term "continuous revolution" from China's many Communist revolutions and that the idea had came from Communism. However, it had actually originated in America. Those founding fathers believed in the right for a people to overthrow their government whenever they want and preferably every 20 years. Maybe that is the whole idea of a good government, that each generation have to go through a trying event in their lives. Although the dream was never carried through, something similar again happened in the Civil War, and again it brought out one of the better presidents of the United States, Lincoln. It might just be the recent lack of an imminent threat to America's survival that have led to the recent string of unintellectual presidents that America once proudly boasted.