When the word 'obscenity' runs through your head, what do you think of? Vulgar words? Crude acts of behaviour? Uncouth insults? Perhaps those were obscenities in the old sense of the word, wouldn't actions that actually have meaning to them and have long lasting ill-effects be considered even more obscene than the meaningless taboo acts that we so often refer to as unacceptable? Let me give you a tour through modern obscenity.
First, you have to ask yourself, what is the worst possible thing that you can do to a person without resorting to violence? Lock him up in a room? Maybe. But what is worse than doing the worst possible thing you can do to a person, surely it must be doing that same thing to a child who doesn't even understand what is happening, and whose mind is not sufficiently developed to know how to interpret what they are seeing. Now, if you think that I'm going to talk about child molestation by priests, then you're wrong, that is an offence, and it is almost universally recognized as such, and would be dealt with severely. (Unless you're the pope, in which case you would just place that criminal into another church.) There would be no point in telling you something that you already know is wrong, what I want to call to your attention is more widespread, more common, and certainly equally, if not more, horrifying.
Now, let me direct your attention to a well known disney movie - Peter Pan. I think you would recognize the plot of the story as nonsense, the characters as superfluous, and the concepts presented in it as absurd. It was already bad enough that this roll of indecent film had been screened in theatres, published in books, and featured on the television over and over and over again, yet someone had the nerve to make it into an "interactive" play for children. I'm not sure if you still remembered that one of the most blatantly stupid idea the story portrayed to children was that whatever you believe will come true, and it so happened that the protagonist did not believe that fairies exist and so the puny fairy in the story was dying, the flying boy than had to try to convince the protagonist to believe in fairies. Ignoring the fact of the countless times that this concept had sorely disappointed children all over the world, the meddling director of the play just had to add in one extra portion. The play actually required the children watching it to affirm their belief of fairies at a more than audible volume. The children were actually reciting the phrase "I believe in fairies" over and over again, like some kind of newly found cult. Now, if you really think that there is nothing wrong with the situation, you seriously need to consult a psychologist before you start abusing children in the same manner.
Well, some of you might argue, why shouldn't we let children believe what they want, let them have their fun and not spoil it for them, soon or later they would grow out of ridiculous beliefs such as fairies. Besides the doubt I have that such a fervent affirmation of fairies would in no ways have permanent long-lasting effects on a child's mind, and besides the fact that there is no direct link between fun and what actions we consider ethical, the very real problem is why do we treat kids as if they are somehow unfit to handle the real world? Basically, why do we treat kids as if they are living in a separate world from us? We tell them about preposterous stories about Santa Claus bearing gifts, about Easter bunnies that lay chocolate eggs, about the bogeyman who kidnap children who don't go to bed, about tooth fairies, about monsters and dragons and talking animals... Treat children like that and they would think that they are never expected to grow up.
Perhaps what is worse than feeding children misinformation about the real world that you one day hope they grow out off, is feeding them such information that they never quite fully grow out. Take for example the portrayal of animals, most books usually make animals appear harmless and cute. Many even make the natural predators, such as lions and tigers appear as enemies to the particular kind of animal the story focuses on, rather than showing them as the natural population control agent. There are some few stories which even involves elaborate plans taken by a democratic community of difference species of animals in a forest to counter an impending threat. We almost never once see the blood and gore and suffering so characteristic of the natural world, the tooth and claw ways in which evolution drive species into expansive arms race that strains their resources, making certain food chains of competing species more vulnerable to breaking down. This fairy tale world of animal kindness and affection and democracy is something children find difficult to grow out off, becoming characteristic of the animal rights movement, chasing a dream so idealised that it becomes ridiculous, and blinded to the natural order of things in which animals obey.
The thing about stories is also that children have a difficult time interpreting what the stories mean. In the past, real accounts of the misfortunes of people are told so that others are wary of not committing the same mistake. Then, someone had to invent fiction, but we still in some sense see if there still is anything to learn from those fictional stories. With children, it is worse, they can't understand that what you're telling them is not true, and try to derive some moral to apply in the real world. The best example of this I can think is of the story of Cinderella, when I first heard the story, what I took away from it was that all stepmothers are evil. Luckily I never met any stepmothers in my life, and luckily I realised my error soon enough. However imagine what would happen if someone under the care of a step-parent actually got that idea from the story.
Of course, the worse case of this kind of obscenity can be seen in nowhere else other than in religion. Baptising people in their childhood, reciting quotes out of holy books, believing in utterly ridiculous ideas like the afterlife or reincarnation, affirming beliefs in a cult like manner every Sunday, taking fictional stories as if it was true, do I need to say any more? By treating children at a level worse than that deserving of a child, is it any wonder that so many people in our society are still so child like (but what I would call "pre-child like") in their thoughts, their beliefs and their actions? Is it any wonder that so many adults just haven't grown up? Usually I wouldn't say this, but maybe there should be a law against this kind of modern obscenity.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Saturday, March 1, 2008
The quest for knowledge
The most elusive question for centuries have always been "What is knowledge?" Even to this day it remains unanswered, and even to the extent that different people will point at different things when you ask them to show an example.
Today, I'm am not going to treat the question of knowledge as a philosophical question (whereby people define, redefine and further confuse what words mean, until concluding that sentences have no meaning or some absurd compromise), but true to my personality, I am going to treat it as a scientific question. So let us take a walk down the road of knowledge right from the very beginning, when the first ever useful piece of information was obtained on this planet. When the time was nearer to the formation of this solar system than it was to this present day. Let us stroll back to the origin of life.
3-3.5 billion years ago, the first replicating molecule arose from the ancient soup of proteins formed by the young environment. It finds itself in a world rich in resources for it to multiply, and happily replicate. However after a hundred so replication, it faces a problem, millions of cousins by its side are using up the resources it needs to continue replicating, it comes face to face with a world that is hostile to its continued survival, and environment that can no longer support it. There is some truth in the quote that "adversity builds character", although certainly not in the way the author meant it. Those small handful of replicators that managed to receive a helpful change in structure to adapt to this new environment started outcompeting everyone else. Therein lies the first piece of knowledge in life, and on Earth, the information needed to map conditions to actions.
Now, I can already here the opposition, how can I say that knowledge exist outside a mind, how can I say that a simple mechanical process contain knowledge, but that is precisely what I am saying. Does a windmill have the knowledge to grind grains? Does a printer have the knowledge to give us a legible piece of information? Yes they do, and it doesn't matter who had made them, they possess that knowledge in the way their structures are being arranged and it only take a little more intelligence to reverse-engineer how those machines do their job. Nature doesn't care how you obtained the knowledge you have, it just care on how you use it. And it rewards those who use their knowledge to adapt better to the real world with increased survival. What nature cares about is efficiency all else might as well be thrown into the rubbish heap.
Fast forward about 3 billion years, and we now arrive at the time the first human walked the face of this Earth. 3 billion years of knowledge selection have already been well defined, digestion takes place with a brilliant efficiency of extracting nutrients from food, our faculties of visions have been fined-tune to be able to track the future positions of a trajectory, our feet balances our constantly shifting body weight flawlessly, ... We have knowledge in the sense that we have what is required to survive in a real world, but we lack something too, the ability to predict what the far future had in store. It so happened then that we were forced by nature to then live in social groups of hunter-gatherers (emphasis on the gatherer part), an environment that we are unfamiliar with, and so as with all obstacles in life, we were once again moulded to fit the environment.
50 thousand years passed and we arrive back in our time, thrown again into a different set of conditions, the human species have had no time to adapt yet. And now we once again find ourselves in another quest for knowledge, but this time we have set ourselves a project so vast in magnitude that the knowledge we seek is accurate enough to predict the last decimal place that we can measure of the future world. Today, we take over the job that nature had always been doing, that is the selection of knowledge. Now, 2 questions then arise, how good is the knowledge we have so far, and how are we going to acquire new knowledge? To the first, we can only say that nature had been very diligent in past billions of years, selecting only those pieces of information that most accurately solve the problems we faced. However, it is not very accurate, perhaps not even accurate to a percent. Nature can't afford too high a cost for more accurate information, it is constrained by general rules that tend to work most of the time, and hoping that those exceptions would never come into play. Even so, the process of the natural selection of knowledge is long and tedious, it takes thousands of years before coming up with creative solutions, time that we humans do not have in our life.
So then, how do we get our knowledge? It must be through a system of checks and balance to carefully sieve out errors, it must be based on this world to accurately represent reality to the last decimal point of a percent, but it must also be done in a short period of time. Hence, our knowledge gathering system must both be rigorous as well as fast, a collective network of information transfer and review. In other words, our knowledge must be scientific.
I'll leave you with Carl Sagan's analysis of what separates science from the rest of the world. (The other parts are in the video responses)
Today, I'm am not going to treat the question of knowledge as a philosophical question (whereby people define, redefine and further confuse what words mean, until concluding that sentences have no meaning or some absurd compromise), but true to my personality, I am going to treat it as a scientific question. So let us take a walk down the road of knowledge right from the very beginning, when the first ever useful piece of information was obtained on this planet. When the time was nearer to the formation of this solar system than it was to this present day. Let us stroll back to the origin of life.
3-3.5 billion years ago, the first replicating molecule arose from the ancient soup of proteins formed by the young environment. It finds itself in a world rich in resources for it to multiply, and happily replicate. However after a hundred so replication, it faces a problem, millions of cousins by its side are using up the resources it needs to continue replicating, it comes face to face with a world that is hostile to its continued survival, and environment that can no longer support it. There is some truth in the quote that "adversity builds character", although certainly not in the way the author meant it. Those small handful of replicators that managed to receive a helpful change in structure to adapt to this new environment started outcompeting everyone else. Therein lies the first piece of knowledge in life, and on Earth, the information needed to map conditions to actions.
Now, I can already here the opposition, how can I say that knowledge exist outside a mind, how can I say that a simple mechanical process contain knowledge, but that is precisely what I am saying. Does a windmill have the knowledge to grind grains? Does a printer have the knowledge to give us a legible piece of information? Yes they do, and it doesn't matter who had made them, they possess that knowledge in the way their structures are being arranged and it only take a little more intelligence to reverse-engineer how those machines do their job. Nature doesn't care how you obtained the knowledge you have, it just care on how you use it. And it rewards those who use their knowledge to adapt better to the real world with increased survival. What nature cares about is efficiency all else might as well be thrown into the rubbish heap.
Fast forward about 3 billion years, and we now arrive at the time the first human walked the face of this Earth. 3 billion years of knowledge selection have already been well defined, digestion takes place with a brilliant efficiency of extracting nutrients from food, our faculties of visions have been fined-tune to be able to track the future positions of a trajectory, our feet balances our constantly shifting body weight flawlessly, ... We have knowledge in the sense that we have what is required to survive in a real world, but we lack something too, the ability to predict what the far future had in store. It so happened then that we were forced by nature to then live in social groups of hunter-gatherers (emphasis on the gatherer part), an environment that we are unfamiliar with, and so as with all obstacles in life, we were once again moulded to fit the environment.
50 thousand years passed and we arrive back in our time, thrown again into a different set of conditions, the human species have had no time to adapt yet. And now we once again find ourselves in another quest for knowledge, but this time we have set ourselves a project so vast in magnitude that the knowledge we seek is accurate enough to predict the last decimal place that we can measure of the future world. Today, we take over the job that nature had always been doing, that is the selection of knowledge. Now, 2 questions then arise, how good is the knowledge we have so far, and how are we going to acquire new knowledge? To the first, we can only say that nature had been very diligent in past billions of years, selecting only those pieces of information that most accurately solve the problems we faced. However, it is not very accurate, perhaps not even accurate to a percent. Nature can't afford too high a cost for more accurate information, it is constrained by general rules that tend to work most of the time, and hoping that those exceptions would never come into play. Even so, the process of the natural selection of knowledge is long and tedious, it takes thousands of years before coming up with creative solutions, time that we humans do not have in our life.
So then, how do we get our knowledge? It must be through a system of checks and balance to carefully sieve out errors, it must be based on this world to accurately represent reality to the last decimal point of a percent, but it must also be done in a short period of time. Hence, our knowledge gathering system must both be rigorous as well as fast, a collective network of information transfer and review. In other words, our knowledge must be scientific.
I'll leave you with Carl Sagan's analysis of what separates science from the rest of the world. (The other parts are in the video responses)
Thursday, February 28, 2008
I'm not evil, I'm just indifferent...
... and that's being scientific.
How the mind works have always intrigued us as humans, there are even those who go so far as to say that we should unravel its mysteries lest we stop it from ever working. I am, of course, not such a person and scientists have for a long time been poking and prodding the mind as much as they can in the hopes of getting it to reveal its inner workings. However there are some things that we know about the mind, and one of them is that it is poorly suited for the environment that it finds it self today. The brain is an organ that, like any other organ, have adapted to situations in the past, stored in it are helpful strategies to cope with events a long time ago. It isn't built to solve equations, or to construct algorithms, or even to be rational in buying things. People who find themselves bored have to actively restrain themselves from trying to get a snack, this is not so much as them being greedy, but because as prehistoric hunters and gatherers, food sometimes come out short, people were thus adapted to storing as much food as possible when at a meal.
This and many other examples of residual loads in our heads were undeniably transferred from a working strategy in the past to the present. There has not been enough time for the brain to remove its primitive shackles as it found itself suddenly thrust into the future (except maybe for the British). The process of mutation and natural selection requires hundreds of generations before small noticeable changes can be found. However the whole of the modern age have only lasted for at most 3 centuries, and only for a century if you are in Asia. This leads to a huge deviation from our expressed behaviour to the optimal behaviour we should have, such as being indifferent to the abundance of food. One of this deviation is in the way we treat people, or what you would call morality, but what I would just call expressions of the mind.
The ability for the mind to deal with other minds lie within the whole concept of emotions, a system of checks and balance that have specially arise in the past when social communication first started to grow in importance. From basic game theory, we would want to invest in each person, with as much as they would invest back in you, and that's what emotions cause you to do, as well as to punish people who break their commitments. Back then we live in small family groups that not only were closely related, but also stayed together for a long time. Therefore, heavy investments in other people made much sense because they have a high chance of encountering you again. The gathering of people to form large agricultural societies, civilisation, was only a very recent development, and that's where the rules started to fall apart.Today, we leave in a world so vastly different from the past that previous strategies of our mind completely do not apply. The chances of having another encounter with an acquaintance is so minute that it would be like trying to find a grain of sand after you dropped it, quite easy on a pavement, but close to impossible where at the beach surrounded by sand. To argue that we should invest a lot on acquaintances because of the slight possibility of that impacting your life makes no more meaning than that you should invest in gods, for however small the possibility is for their existence.
Talking about gods, we now come to another residual function in our brain, cognitive dissonance. That is the "art" of the brain combining 2 entirely contradicting positions to try to form a logical connection between them, such as "gods are benevolent" and "there is suffering" into "people who suffer have committed crimes against gods because they have been given free will". This "art" can be easily seen to be beneficial in the past whereby very little ideas are in circulation, when you see a set of fresh animal tracks on the floor, and remember that in the past you saw a boar making almost the same type of track, you connect them to interpret that a boar is close by. However, the world today is so filled with ideas that this primitive system of connection no longer works properly. And it is with particular difficultly that I try to overcome this mismatch of facts as much as possible, I require that sufficient evidence be presented to me before I acknowledge a right answer, or even a possible answer, but at a price to the thought process. My embrace of atheism is because of a strict requirement in my head to always keep consistent, and not because I'm evil, and neither does it cause me to be evil. (As a note, I'm defending atheism here, atheism does not make you an emotionless person, regardless of how much I wish it would. You find me an atheist because atheism admits all kinds of people who doesn't believe the supernatural exist, and I hope I don't need to tell you that it's not a religion, or even a faith)
When I am asked if I'm too afraid to bask in my emotions, shouldn't the opposite question be more relevant? That why is their other side afraid to let go of their emotions, to grow up from a prehistoric past? Emotions have reduced us to the simplicity of following the natural order, and to go with what we feel best. It is antithetical to what the Enlightenment has been all about, which is individualism and the power to understand and take control of our own lives, the separation of beliefs and actions. Emotions are also antithetical to Science, the great body of knowledge that arose out of the ashes of the middle age to bring forth the modern, whose strict system requires all observations to be able to be repeated by any person, or for that matter, any machine.
Furthermore, it can be argued that emotions have brought forth the largest harm to the world. Is it not true that the passionate feelings of nationalism is just another form of sectarianism? How many times have people killed in the name of sectarianism, or hatred, or jealousy? How many times have people got themselves in trouble in the name of happiness, by way of lust and greed? How many times have people massacred in the name of love for their countrymen? (How about all the time?) And then how many times have people killed because they hold no emotions or beliefs? (The answer is none) It is for the same reason why science-fiction books displaying evil robots have got it all wrong. What reason would robots have to kill or torture when they do not have emotions? What would they achieve besides self defence? We wouldn't achieve anything either, but those emotions are too deeply rooted in our brains to wipe off.
To sum up, I am not moral, neither am I immoral, I am just amoral. That doesn't mean that I would not help people or that I would deliberately cause harm, I would only do what is necessary. And that is all that is needed to make the world a better place, as well as being as scientific as possible. (Look carefully, if you think I'm nihilistic or relativistic, I am NOT saying that there is no such as being right, or being better)
How the mind works have always intrigued us as humans, there are even those who go so far as to say that we should unravel its mysteries lest we stop it from ever working. I am, of course, not such a person and scientists have for a long time been poking and prodding the mind as much as they can in the hopes of getting it to reveal its inner workings. However there are some things that we know about the mind, and one of them is that it is poorly suited for the environment that it finds it self today. The brain is an organ that, like any other organ, have adapted to situations in the past, stored in it are helpful strategies to cope with events a long time ago. It isn't built to solve equations, or to construct algorithms, or even to be rational in buying things. People who find themselves bored have to actively restrain themselves from trying to get a snack, this is not so much as them being greedy, but because as prehistoric hunters and gatherers, food sometimes come out short, people were thus adapted to storing as much food as possible when at a meal.
This and many other examples of residual loads in our heads were undeniably transferred from a working strategy in the past to the present. There has not been enough time for the brain to remove its primitive shackles as it found itself suddenly thrust into the future (except maybe for the British). The process of mutation and natural selection requires hundreds of generations before small noticeable changes can be found. However the whole of the modern age have only lasted for at most 3 centuries, and only for a century if you are in Asia. This leads to a huge deviation from our expressed behaviour to the optimal behaviour we should have, such as being indifferent to the abundance of food. One of this deviation is in the way we treat people, or what you would call morality, but what I would just call expressions of the mind.
The ability for the mind to deal with other minds lie within the whole concept of emotions, a system of checks and balance that have specially arise in the past when social communication first started to grow in importance. From basic game theory, we would want to invest in each person, with as much as they would invest back in you, and that's what emotions cause you to do, as well as to punish people who break their commitments. Back then we live in small family groups that not only were closely related, but also stayed together for a long time. Therefore, heavy investments in other people made much sense because they have a high chance of encountering you again. The gathering of people to form large agricultural societies, civilisation, was only a very recent development, and that's where the rules started to fall apart.Today, we leave in a world so vastly different from the past that previous strategies of our mind completely do not apply. The chances of having another encounter with an acquaintance is so minute that it would be like trying to find a grain of sand after you dropped it, quite easy on a pavement, but close to impossible where at the beach surrounded by sand. To argue that we should invest a lot on acquaintances because of the slight possibility of that impacting your life makes no more meaning than that you should invest in gods, for however small the possibility is for their existence.
Talking about gods, we now come to another residual function in our brain, cognitive dissonance. That is the "art" of the brain combining 2 entirely contradicting positions to try to form a logical connection between them, such as "gods are benevolent" and "there is suffering" into "people who suffer have committed crimes against gods because they have been given free will". This "art" can be easily seen to be beneficial in the past whereby very little ideas are in circulation, when you see a set of fresh animal tracks on the floor, and remember that in the past you saw a boar making almost the same type of track, you connect them to interpret that a boar is close by. However, the world today is so filled with ideas that this primitive system of connection no longer works properly. And it is with particular difficultly that I try to overcome this mismatch of facts as much as possible, I require that sufficient evidence be presented to me before I acknowledge a right answer, or even a possible answer, but at a price to the thought process. My embrace of atheism is because of a strict requirement in my head to always keep consistent, and not because I'm evil, and neither does it cause me to be evil. (As a note, I'm defending atheism here, atheism does not make you an emotionless person, regardless of how much I wish it would. You find me an atheist because atheism admits all kinds of people who doesn't believe the supernatural exist, and I hope I don't need to tell you that it's not a religion, or even a faith)
When I am asked if I'm too afraid to bask in my emotions, shouldn't the opposite question be more relevant? That why is their other side afraid to let go of their emotions, to grow up from a prehistoric past? Emotions have reduced us to the simplicity of following the natural order, and to go with what we feel best. It is antithetical to what the Enlightenment has been all about, which is individualism and the power to understand and take control of our own lives, the separation of beliefs and actions. Emotions are also antithetical to Science, the great body of knowledge that arose out of the ashes of the middle age to bring forth the modern, whose strict system requires all observations to be able to be repeated by any person, or for that matter, any machine.
Furthermore, it can be argued that emotions have brought forth the largest harm to the world. Is it not true that the passionate feelings of nationalism is just another form of sectarianism? How many times have people killed in the name of sectarianism, or hatred, or jealousy? How many times have people got themselves in trouble in the name of happiness, by way of lust and greed? How many times have people massacred in the name of love for their countrymen? (How about all the time?) And then how many times have people killed because they hold no emotions or beliefs? (The answer is none) It is for the same reason why science-fiction books displaying evil robots have got it all wrong. What reason would robots have to kill or torture when they do not have emotions? What would they achieve besides self defence? We wouldn't achieve anything either, but those emotions are too deeply rooted in our brains to wipe off.
To sum up, I am not moral, neither am I immoral, I am just amoral. That doesn't mean that I would not help people or that I would deliberately cause harm, I would only do what is necessary. And that is all that is needed to make the world a better place, as well as being as scientific as possible. (Look carefully, if you think I'm nihilistic or relativistic, I am NOT saying that there is no such as being right, or being better)
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Bad Year
To be accurate it had actually been quite a bad century for gods. First was the memorable 9/11 which some Americans seem to have fading memories of already. Then there was the Danish cartoon protests where tons of people around the world protested in favour of restricting speech. (Oh, the irony!) Then came the Hitler Youth pro-Nazi pope Razi(nger) being elected, who not too long ago declared war on unbelievers. There was also the court case of creationism that got shot down by a conservative Christian judge. US government is also in the process of reconsidering the tax-exemption of Evangelical fraudsters who empty the pockets of they who are full of faith. Finally there's the all round assault by atheists books published last year which made it to the bestsellers, one of them of course being the book shown above, another being the one I'm currently reading "God Is Not Great".
Man, I bet this century is going to be worse for the most popular fictional character of the world than even the Enlightenment, considering the horrible PR at the start of the millennium.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
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.
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.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
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.
Monday, December 10, 2007
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.
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.
Sunday, December 9, 2007
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.
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.
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
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.
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.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
The true face of Islam
... and the courage of one female to challenge it. Born in Somalia and brought up to think that total submission of women was the right Muslim thing to do, like the majority of Muslim women are brought up, Ayaan once believed that genital mutilation was fine, heretics should be killed and one of her duty was to participate in Jihad. However her family went one forced marriage too far, and she fled and sought asylum in the Netherlands. There she met the Enlightenment for the first time and underwent liberation from Islamic laws. She have come to embrace the freedom of speech and thought of the Western world and fought for the liberation of women from religion. However she found that the Netherlands had undergo Islamic radicalism and was threatened with death from fellow Arabs, while witnessing the death of a colleague from once such murder. To protect herself, again she had to flee, this time to the US. Now the Dutch are withdrawing her protection, while the US is unable to provide that kind of security, in the light of this plight she still stands as the ex-Muslim who is staging a revolution against the force of subjugation.
For standing up for freedom even under the very real threat of death, Ayaan truly deserves the title of a hero. If the newspaper article in the link doesn't even bring a tear to your eye, then you have absolutely no feelings for humanity and the threat our freedoms are under.
In addition, there are other articles that show the religious insanity of Islam like the Sudanese government convicting a British teacher who allowed students to vote to name a teddy bear Muhammad for inciting hatred. As well as an article on the Saudi government sentencing the victim of a rape to punishment for not being with a male relative while being raped. And finally an article that sums up all these atrocities.
All these just goes to show that a majority of people in the world are utterly stupid and can't prioritise their actions, and that I have been right all along in entirely bashing those religions that have never underwent a Reformation. And also that we are too submissive to religion to publish any article like those in the British newspaper.
For standing up for freedom even under the very real threat of death, Ayaan truly deserves the title of a hero. If the newspaper article in the link doesn't even bring a tear to your eye, then you have absolutely no feelings for humanity and the threat our freedoms are under.
In addition, there are other articles that show the religious insanity of Islam like the Sudanese government convicting a British teacher who allowed students to vote to name a teddy bear Muhammad for inciting hatred. As well as an article on the Saudi government sentencing the victim of a rape to punishment for not being with a male relative while being raped. And finally an article that sums up all these atrocities.
All these just goes to show that a majority of people in the world are utterly stupid and can't prioritise their actions, and that I have been right all along in entirely bashing those religions that have never underwent a Reformation. And also that we are too submissive to religion to publish any article like those in the British newspaper.
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