What Pleases You?

12·3·08
"Surrender your mysteries to Zoidberg."
"I'm acting astonished!"
"A raffle of the porno type."
They were in a pickle?
Deviancy amplification spiral, sounds nice.

"Cause it's bad to do what's easy
just cause it's easy.
And I wanna do what pleases me but I can't."

I wish I could type musical note symbols here.
I hate the fact that I know exactly how to manipulate the world, I just can't bring myself to do it, because I have some unjustified belief that it is wrong to lie. Maybe I can convince myself that the idea that 'it's wrong to lie', is a lie we must perpetuate in order to prevent the massive amount of lying that would occur if we were to just say it was okay. But seriously, lies that don't really harm anyone, but benefit you, what's wrong with those? And why can't I bring myself to commit them? Maybe it's not even lying, since everyone knows you're lying, it's not really lying.
I'm morally repugnant, but most people don't seem to notice.
Deviance is a virtue.
Let's start a crime wave.
Dreamt of all the friendships died.
Don't lose yourself.
Don't let yourself be lost.

I think the reason I like WALL•E so much is that I feel like I can relate to the main character. Though that's a pretty common reason for me to like a movie, and since I'm pretty good at interpretting things in a positive light, I'm probably pretty good at relating things to myself too. Anyway, I was driving home from work today, and I noticed that I was one of a number of cars in a line, and it started slowly, but suddenly I was overwhelmed with the feeling that, although WALL•E portrays humankind in an absurd, end-all of laziness, post-apocolytic society, we live in an oddly similarly absurd world, though it is not the same. We aren't yet obsessed with laziness, we are oddly indoctrinated with work, and so many ridiculous ideas about right and wrong that none of us have much of a clue about what we should really be doing (or not doing).

It's weird, I am a geek, but not the modern 90's geek. I've never enjoyed any game, or competition of almost any sort really, let alone the typical geek/nerd games, like dungeons and dragons, or role playing, or whatever else. I'm more the 1950s pocket-protector geek. Not into video games, not into fantasy, or role playing. Just into hard core science.


12·4·08
I'm so sorry.

"We'll go to the loony bin together, I don't give a fuck."

Sometimes I feel defectively altruistic. I'm pretty narcissistic too though.

"Notably, Foot classifies initiating a fatal sequence as a morally objectionable act, while legitimizing the morality of not aiding."

I think I can solve the proposition 8 debate. If marriage is defined to be a man and a women, what do intersexuals do? You could deny them the right to ever get married, but that seems prejudiced. You could allow them to marry, but then you'd be inconsistent. A conundrum! And it doesn't end there... as with many things in nature, just because it is commonly dichotomous does not mean it is truly so, prevalence of intersexual characteristics is estimated between 0.1% and 1.7%, depending on definition. Even better, true hermaphroditism, is "rare" to find with "both types of gonadal tissue to function." That means that there are human beings who have both male and female genitalia, both of which are fertile. (A little reflection can remind you that, there is nothing very bizarre about any of this, we have a clear causal understanding of what processes are behind all of this, and the existences of such humans is consistent with that causal model.) So here is a question, that really special someone, who is able to have children both as a mother and as a father, who could not really be called male or female, who are they allowed to marry? Am I wrong to declare the choices ring down to "deny some people the right to marriage based on anatomy" or "allow gay marriage"? And besides, do you really think this issue will disappear after you ban homosexual marriage? Do you really think homosexual couples will just give up and agree? Do you really think that gay marriage is a bigger threat to your way of life, or you're children's upbringing, than all the other issues in the world?



Older notes. (Did I post any of this already?)
From backreaction, though I don't remember which post...
Bee defined the accusation that science was a belief system, like religion, by responding that science could more correctly be referred to as a doubt system. I really love this idea, but she seems cautious to claim that it is a real description, and I would say it lacks a lot of the essential qualities of science. There is a lot of value in that phrase, but it doesn't quite sum up science. So let's fix that. How about, science is the process of doubting everything for which a clear, observable, repeatable (testable? falsifiable?) cause cannot be established.
Or: science is systematic doubt of knowledge, with occasional 'concatenation' of knowledge, the effect of which is to reduce the "total doubt" of the entire system (e.g. post Maxwell we needn't doubt theories of electricity & magnetism, but the one unified theory of Electricity & Magnetism).
Later I discussed all this with Corey. I think my conclusion was, science is a system of doubting EVERYTHING, ALWAYS, but, when sufficient empirical evidence is established, doubt is condensed such that the number of doubts is reduced, and the total amount of doubt is either preserved or reduced. (Probably reduced.) What must be emphasized is that scientific theory is always open to revision, replacement, removal, but only on the existence of sufficient physical, independently verifiable evidence. Getting back to the original statement, science is entirely dependent on the ability to abandon all that you know in favor of new ideas that explain equal or greater amounts of data while requiring equal or lesser degrees and amounts of assumptions. It is that aspect that makes the 'doubt system' description so potent.
Later I wrote: Or how about science is a system for managing & reducing doubt to the fewest assumptions possible. I'm not sure this is sufficient.

I think I've written this note before, or at least about it.
The fact that physicists are more precise & accurate in their predictions than anyone (or anything) at all, ever, anywhere, is really more a testament to our field's maturity, and the simplistic nature of the phenomena on which our studies focus (as compared to the rest of the universe, which emerges from the phenomena we study). I'm a physicalist, so if you aren't you might disagree.

Check out this logic: You install motion sensors in most rooms to power down lights & devices when no one is around. The conserved power reduces utility bills enough to pay for parts & labor installation of sensors. The reduction of power consuption has reduced cost & demand for power, thereby reducing cost of power per unit. Downside? (This assumes it is cost effective in the first place, which might not be true in a year, or any finite time span, though that seems unlikely.)

Am I an egalitarian, or a meritocrat? Probably somewhere in the middle... I believe that people's merits should have a good influence over their rewards in life, but also, I believe there is a baseline which everyone should be granted (life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Or something like that).
My personality type does, on occasion, conflict with others', however my personality is that I simply do not conflict with other people very easily.

I'm pretty sure I've written this one before: If I can't tell the difference between "too distant" & "too needy", what hope do I have? I'm not sure I've ever been called either one of those, but I'm sure I've self-diagnosed both at times. Maybe it's wrong to think those are opposing extremes of the same dimension?


Old hat.




If I'm bound to forget you, don't you let me be.