Working Recently

As I forewarned in some earlier post, I don't post as much when I'm not getting high every other day. I'm more inhibited, neurotic, and frankly less insightful. When I read books and I'm not high I find myself skipping over lines, but when I'm high I tend to dwell on passages for way too long.

I sat around the house for a while upon coming back home after school, but now I'm back at work -- if you can call it that. I work for the government and get to sit around reading all day. So I visited the library. Here's what I checked out:

Basic Writings of Nietzsche translated and edited by Walter Kaufmann
The Shadows of Power: The Council on Foreign Relations and American Decline by James Perloff
Letters to a Young Mathematician by Ian Stewart
Remember Everything You Read by Stanley D. Frank
Master The GRE 2005

Other books that I own and have been reading are:

Explaining the Atom by Selig Hecht
The Most of S.J Perelman
Play Poker Like the Pros by Phil Hellmuth, Jr.

The nice thing about my job is that I basically sit around outside for long periods of time, and get paid over twice the minimum wage. Gives me plenty of time to read, even if it can get cold.

All of these books (with the exception of Remember Everything You Read and Master The GRE) are pretty interesting, but the most interesting has been The Shadows of Power. It is a well-researched and thoroughly incriminating look at the organization founded by J.P. Morgan which, up till 1988, produced "14 secretaries of state, 14 treasury secretaries, 11 defense secretaries, and scores of other federal department heads" since it was founded in 1921. According to Perloff, every Secretary of State since 1949 has been a member of the Council, although one joined the Council after being appointed.

The other very interesting book was Explaining the Atom. I never realized that chemicals were so interconnected, or that atomic chemicals had been so necessary for further research into the atomic particles. (I never took chemistry!) For example:

...consider spot 32 in the fourth horizontol coil of the Periodic Table. This element lies in the vertical column between silicon and tin, and is now called germanium. Medelejev in 1871 predicted its existence and called it eka-silicon. He said it would be grayish-white in color, and would give a white oxide when burned, and would not be affected by acids and alkalis. Moreover, he gave definite values for its atomic weight, its density, its atomic volume, and even its boiling point. Fifteen years later ... found Mendelejev's predictions almost perfectly fulfilled.

The book has inspired me to memorize the the periodic table and get the basic gist of every chemical on the list. (Up to number 26!) The last half of the book is all on the atom bomb, and I don't remember a whole lot of the details.

I hardly feel like I can do justice to an overview of these books, but I'll probably attempt to do an overview of the Shadows of Power. Really, I recommend that one out yourself, though.

Another Philosophy Graduate

I mentioned that I met a philosophy major working at Safeway here, and I thought I'd mention another that I found today: Carl Icahn. Admittedly, he graduated from Princeton. Today he's worth billions. Philosophy-type people should do well in investing. They can look at the big picture rationally, have the patience to read SEC filings, and, if they study economics, can easily grasp the fundamental concepts of sunk cost and marginal benefits. Then it's buying companies when they're cheap (support) and selling them when they're high (resistance).

Saving Democracy

A computer scientist named Don Lindsay has an idea that could fix democracy. I imagine it's been on his website for a long time, but it hasn't gotten the attention it deserves.

It's a pretty simple idea. When you vote, you put down a first choice and a second choice. If your first choice isn't in the top-two, your second choice is used instead. This would allow people to vote for third-party candidates without absolutely wasting their votes.

It might not fix things immediately, but even I am sometimes reluctant to vote for the third-party (although I always want to) because I know that I need to add my vote to the real tally or else very bad things could happen, like the Bush reelection.

If you like this idea, please pass it on.

By the way, this guy also publishes the longest list of informal fallacies I have ever seen.

Prizes, not Patents

Although I have heard many criticisms of the patent system from computer scientists or, occasionally, politicians, I had yet to hear one from an economist - until recently. Perhaps that is because I have not looked for them. Your average economist will spend plenty of time arguing for patents, and most often they will defend them for one particularly disturbing industry - the pharmaceutical industry.

The story goes that pharmaceutical companies need patents (along with price discrimination and advertising freedom, among others) in order to pay for the exorbitant research costs that are required to produce new drugs. The drugs are a huge fixed cost, but producing pills costs pennies, if that. Therefore a pharmaceutical company can maximize profit by charging people exactly what they can afford to pay - in the United States, that is fairly high, but in the rest of the world (or even Canada) the price is lower. In order to cover their investment they must run tons of advertisements to get more and more people to take the pill. All these things are required to cover investments, many economists say, and to drive the research of new "important", "lifesaving" drugs.

Liberal economist Joseph Stiglitz (winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, who's book Globalization and Its Discontents I flipped through earlier this year) points out in an article in the May PAER that:

drug companies spend far more money on advertising and marketing than they do on research, far more on research for lifestyle drugs (for conditions like impotence and hair loss) than for lifesaving drugs and almost no money on diseases that afflict hundreds of millions of poor people, such as malaria. It is a matter of simple economics: companies direct their research where the money is, regardless of the relative value to society.

In a related issue he notes that:

companies raced to beat the human genome project in order to patent genes such as that associated with breast cancer. The value of these efforts was minimal: the knowledge was produced just a little sooner than it would have been otherwise. But the cost to society was enormous: the high price that Myriad (let me pause to see if this is a public company - it is, MYGN), the patent holder, places on genetic tests may well mean that thousands of women ... will die.

The good news is that there is a simple and effective solution, which immediately rewards the researchers: prizes for cures, similar to the past Ansari X Prize and the current Archon X Prize. He notes that "since governments already pay the cost of much drug research directly or indirectly, through prescription benefits, they could finance the prize fund." It would probably end up saving governments money.

He says that the prize funds would only complement the patent system, which could remain in place to research important things like Viagra and Propecia. I suppose the developers who received the prizes couldn't patent their drugs - though they might not want to anyway, since the drugs he has in mind mainly afflict the poor.

Anyway. Good idea.

PAER and the Dialogic Form

I referred to the PAER a couple months ago here. It's the only academic journal I've been reading, although sometimes I flip through others. It was started by a group of French graduate students who were tired of the narrow, mathematical rather than empirical approach of neoclassical economics, which is the only economics taught in most schools. I'm not going to comment too much on that - I don't know standard neoclassical economics deeply enough to say that it is fundamentally flawed. It all depends on your professor - some try to show you the big picture and the flawed assumptions, and some don't.

The first article is written by three economists: Diedre McCloskey (formerly Donald) of the neoclassical capital University of Chicago department, Arjo Klamer, and Stephen Ziliak. They say they are writing a textbook in the dialogic form, a form which has fallen out of favor in the modern age. They say that it used to be popular "before Newton", and quote some pages from a book by Galileo to prove it. They say the non-dialogic form was "perfected by Gauss", who "gave none of the indications natural to dialogue of where his ideas came from or where they were going."

Already I feel that they are being somewhat dishonest. They make the case that the dialogic form was very popular up until the 19th century - but, after reading plenty of historical philosophy, I know that I haven't read a book in the dialogic form since Plato. That doesn't meant that the form isn't helpful. I enjoyed Plato. But they could be overstating their case. Gauss is not a good example, as this was a mathematician who knew numbers so intuitively that, according to legend, he came up with the (n)(n+1)/2 trick for summing up numbers when he just a kid - it seems possible that there was no "dialogue" preceding his insight.

Still, those are just nitpicks. The dialogic form could be effective, especially when complemented by standard exposition, which it presumably is.

Nerds, Popularity, and High-School

This essay captures all the factors which combined to make high-school a hell-hole.

In almost any group of people you'll find hierarchy. When groups of adults form in the real world, it's generally for some common purpose, and the leaders end up being those who are best at it. The problem with most schools is, they have no purpose. But hierarchy there must be. And so the kids make one out of nothing.

We have a phrase to describe what happens when rankings have to be created without any meaningful criteria. We say that the situation degenerates into a popularity contest. And that's exactly what happens in most American schools. Instead of depending on some real test, one's rank depends mostly on one's ability to increase one's rank. It's like the court of Louis XIV. There is no external opponent, so the kids become one another's opponents.

Gluten Poisoned

I may not have mentioned it on here before, but I do not eat gluten. That makes life difficult for me - I cannot eat out at restaurants and I have to cook all my own food, despite not being a very good cook. Because I always live with (messy) people, I usually get gluten contaminations anyway. The result is that I am constantly sick - that's no exaggeration. You can't really understand what it's like to be severely gluten intolerant unless you are gluten intolerant. However, some days are worse than others, and it can take weeks to recover from the damage of one bad day.

Today I went to an organic supermarket which claims to cater to gluten-free people and had a meal. There were signs proclaiming "wheat-free", but the problem is that I, like all wheat-allergic people, am allergic to wheat, rye, barley, and oats. The Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act of 2004 really fuckin' ignored the people who were allergic to wheat. It's really astonishing, and it would be so easy for food manufacturers to put down whether there is any gluten containing ingredients.

For some reason they abstained from that in order to clarify the rules on labeling products "gluten-free." The problem with labeling something gluten-free is that it is very expensive to test, and nearly everything has some amount of gluten in it. The rest of the world fixes this by having two standards: one stating that there is "less than a certain amount of parts per million" (Codex is 200, Canada is 20, ect) and one for products which have zero gluten (I think). The FDA is looking to allow producers to label their products as gluten free if they have "less than 20 parts per million."

That dishonesty sickens me. It should be criminal to label your items as gluten free if they are not assuredly gluten free. But I suppose that should just remind me not to ever eat out or buy packaged foods. (Although I do like this authentic little Mexican place down the street from my house - real soft corn tortillas! I can't even buy those things in the supermarket!)

Today I was glutenated by either that deli meal (a wok bowl made with "wheat-free sauce"), the trail mix that I bought, or somehow the mashed potatoes, rice, crab, and applesauce I had for dinner. Ugh.

What do we know about volunteering?

I commented on good ol' ADHR's post saying something to the effect "everyone knows that volunteering is increasing." Perhaps I spoke too soon. This illuminating article says that our volunteering statistics are very crude.

I know that I read that more and more people have been signing up for the Peace Corp and AmeriCorp, and it looks like more people are donating. Web activism is very high. I read somewhere that the number of 501(c)(3) organizations is increasing. But I haven't been able to find an easy picture of the data, in numbers of hours worked or people who volunteered, yet. If anyone finds something, let me know.

I should update the section at Wikipedia...oh well

The Murder Experiment

I thought this was a fascinating story. I have no idea what drove the kids to do it, but I honestly think a lot of people would feel little guilt - they are just too afraid.

Does the fact that many people would do something like that but feel no guilt mean it's not wrong? Of course not. (Though I wonder what it would feel like, too.)

I laughed

Q: What did Adam say to Eve?
A: Stand back, I don't know big this is gonna get!

Mathematics and the Real World

Is it very surprising that advanced mathematics describes the real world so well? We live in a world which has volume (l*w*h), rounded edges (circles), definite proportions (constants), and rates (derivatives). There is nothing logical, however, with the way that transcendental numbers exist all around us. If anything these strange numbers support the idea that our universe is nothing but a freakish accident; a product of some natural processes which happen rather than a self-conscious, purposeful Creator.

The constancy and consistency of math is frustrating to someone like me, who's always thinking that the answer must be a little more complicated than simply punching a few numbers.

Fixing Windows

I wish Windows did two things: 1) Keep the installed programs separate from the system programs, and 2) kept careful track of what programs do in the registry when they're installed, and make sure they change it back.

Simple enough requests.

The Logical Flowering of Western Metaphysics

When searching the tag metaphysics on Technorati I came across this nice post. Although I have never read Heidegger, it's nice to run across someone who has and is able to eloquently describe what he's saying - that is a rare find. Even if he (Peter Rohloff) is eloquent, it's hard to understand exactly what he means when he talks about Being with a capital B. Eloquence does not necessarily imply clarity - probably because clarity is impossible when it comes to Heidegger. Does he mean existing, as in existentialism? I'm not familiar with Heidegger enough to know, but it makes me want to read Heidegger. I can empathize with the statement that "nihilism is the logical flowering of Western metaphysics."

Philosophy has sometimes ignored what is staring it in the face for what it can analyze abstractly - past, present, future. When philosophers discuss metaphysics they cam go into great lengths on the nature of time, God, matter, and other things without discussing consciousness and time from the perspective of a human agent and life itself - at least, that's been my impression. It also continues to reason and judge in the face of obvious paradoxes (for example, determinism - nobodoy is morally blameworthy for any action, and the fact that philosophers continue to this day to cast "moral" blame on people is a testament to the fact that they are in blind denial and just don't get it. Note that I did not say that people are not causally responsible for actions which they cause).

Rohloff finishes with Heidegger's amusing reply to Leibniz' old sayind:

"Nihil est sine ratio" : nothing is without reason.

"Nichts ist—ohne grund" : nothing is - without grounds.

Though I don't completlely understand the latter sentence, anyone who's read Leibniz' philosophy knows that the man was deluded (through math, perhaps) enough to assert the former.

I can easily feel like I'm venturing off into silly land when I discuss vague topics like "Being" - the fact is that sometimes the most fundamental philosphic truths may not be so easy to analyze. The real truth is probably like quantum mechanics - completely bizarre and unapproachable through the formal dichotomies and theories of our grammatical logic. Thus the approach of Zen Buddhism and other "Enlightenment" religions, which probably have similarities, at their core, to Heidegger's approach.

Philosophers have always said they are interested in one thing, and one thing only: truth. But what if the truth is in conflict with life? Philosophers have also been interested in goodness. Socrates proclaimed that "the good life is the only life worth living", according to Plato, and he said that was the truth. But what if it isn't the truth? Ultimately philosophers may need to make a choice between the two.

If one believes in practical philosophy, as I do, one can easily question all this nonsense. Did Socrates ever do much to help people while he strode around arguing from his high horse? Did Diogenes? Did Nietzsche? Did Heidegger? Did Buddha? What's the point of all these vague philosophical people? Why should we take cues on living from losers like these rather than hyper-analytical types like Leibniz (who developed calculus) or Aristotle, who laid the foundations of science (and who's philosophy arguably slowed down its progress)? What's the point, really?

First of all, it is probably wrong to say that the former did not believe in practical applications of hard logic (especially Socrates, of course, even if he never wrote down anything and devoted his inquiries mainly to justice and how to live life). They have different natural abilities, and promote different things - they have been the greatest spiritual advisors for our race. Diogenes and Nietzsche have the right message: don't be afraid to contradict your betters and blaze your own path. Seek the truth even if it hurts, and if the truth doesn't exist than create a truth that you like. Or something like that. I don't know, and I've rambled on long enough. I guess I enjoy thinking like this, even if it amounts to nothing and distracts me from practical pursuits, so if you don't enjoy reading it, you can bite me. :)

OpenOffice

Finally downloading OpenOffice. I am done with Microsoft Word's insanity.

Eating Raw Meat

Last night I had a dream in which took several large bites out of a raw T-Bone steak. Then I suddenly realized what I'd done, and walked around asking people if I would be OK.

I was reminded of this dream when I checked out this article on Wikipedia again: toxoplasmosis. Read it. This disease is actually quite scary. Some scientists suggest that it increases your risk of a car accident dramatically, decreases intelligence and novelty-seeking in males, and increases promiscuity and perhaps intelligence in females. One study found that it roughly doubled or tripled your chance of a car accident. Some scientists think it causes schizophrenia.

What's even scarier is that some evidence suggests that 1/3 of US citizens have it.

Cook your meat thoroughly and put your goddamn cats to sleep.

Right now we have two kittens and a cat, and I can't force my roommates to get rid of them. If you have a cat, don't let wander outside. Considering that I've been around cats all my life, most likely I have this disease, and I'll be looking to get rid of it someday - even though there is no real treatment.

People As Means

One of the foundations to Kantian ethics is the idea that "people should be treated as ends in themselves, not means." We should not use people, in other words. But it is impossible not to use people. Parents use children for genetic longevity, happiness, and distraction. Friends use friends for support and pleasure. Employers use employees, obviously - even saints use people to express their saintliness.

The moral question, then, is whether you are using people parasitically, symbiotically, or the opposite of parasitically - benevolently, perhaps? The latter does not exist in nature - probably because it's impossible. Even those who give benevolently are dependent upon the giftee. We respect those who give without ado because they are satisfied with pleasure that giving gives to them rather than the public support that accompanies giving.

Giving out of a sense of duty alone is impossible, and it wouldn't be good even if it was possible. Humans should not be robots. Their fundamental duties are theirs to decide. And who really is imposing this duty - is it oneself, or is it the herd?

Google Alerts and Bilderberg

A search for Bilderberg in Google News brings up only 7 results. One of them is from a commenter. So I subscribed to Google Alerts for Bilderberg and today I received one of my first stories (surprising for a word which is printed so seldom). It is on the trial of Conrad Black, wealthy media mogul and owner of Hollinger International (and also, of course, a long-term member of Bilderberg). He is now facing criminal charges for corporate crime - cooking the books and colluding with competitors, I gather, to add another dozen million to his personal fortune.

Statistically, I wonder what percentage of corporate criminals get caught - of course, some libertarians will tell you that they all do, but such a position is inconsistent with their belief that the government is incompetent. Catching corporate criminals is exceedingly difficult.

Hollinger International owns the Chicago Sun-Times and used to own many more newspapers.

Microsoft Word 2007

I despise it. It automatically wants to triple space pages. When I hit tab it indents half the page. It saves in a .docx format which normal Word can't even open. What bothers me the most is that lots of people think this piece of shit is an improvement. @$&!!!

Soren Kierkegaard - Compilation

This is a fantastic set of Kierkegaard quotes. I had to get stoned and read them. Some good ones:

Worldliness

"Most people are really only sample copies. Of them it may be said: They derive benefit out of living, but the world has no benefit out of their having lived."

"If one would describe the confusion of the modern age, I know of no more descriptive word than: it is dishonest. Young people, even children, are aware of how fraudulent everything is and how everything depends on clinging to their generation, following the inconstant demands of the age. Thus the life of each generation hisses and fizzes uninterruptedly. Although everything is a whirlwind, a signal-shot is heard, the ringing of the bells, signifying to the individual that now, this very second, hurry, throw everything away – reflection, quiet meditation, reassuring thoughts of the eternal – because if you come too late you will not get to go along on the generation’s next whirling expedition, which is just pulling out – and then, then, how terrible!

Ah, yes, how terrible! Everything, absolutely everything is calculated to nourish this confusion, the unholy taste of this wild hunt. The means of communication become more and more excellent, but the communications become more and more hurried and more and more confusing. And if anyone dares, either in the name of originality or of God, to resist it – woe unto him! Just as the individual is seized by the whirlwind of impatience to be understood immediately, so this generation domineeringly craves to understand the individual at once."

"True individuality is measured by this: how long or how far one can endure being alone without the understanding of others. The person who can endure being alone is poles apart from the social mixer. He is miles apart from the man-pleaser, the one who manages successfully with everyone – he who possesses no sharp edges. God never uses such people. The true individual, anyone who is going to be directly involved with God, will not and cannot avoid the human bite. He will be thoroughly misunderstood. God is no friend of cosy human gathering."

Truth

"In order to swim you must take off all your clothes. In order to aspire to the truth you must undress in a far more inward sense, divest yourself of all your inward clothes, of thoughts, conceptions, selfishness. Only then are you sufficiently naked."

"Whereas objective thinking is indifferent to the thinking subject and his existence, the subjective thinker is essentially interested in his own thinking, is existing in it. Whereas objective thinking invests everything in the result and assists all humankind to cheat by copying and reeling off the results and answers, subjective thinking invests everything in the process of becoming and omits the result. The subjective thinker is continually in the process of becoming. The objective thinker has already arrived."

Since Descartes, sceptics don’t dare express anything definite with regards to knowledge. Yet they dare to act, and in this respect are satisfied with probability. What an enormous contradiction! As if it were not far more dreadful to do something about which one is doubtful (thereby incurring responsibility) than to assert an idea. Or is it because the ethical is in itself certain? But then there is something that doubt cannot reach!

"No one can be the truth; only the God-man is the truth. Then comes the next: the ones whose lives express what they proclaim. These are witnesses to the truth. Then come those who disclose what truth is and what it demands but admit that their lives do not express it, but to that extent still are striving. There it ends.

Now comes the sophistry. First of all come those who teach the truth but do not live it. Then come those who even alter the truth, its requirement, cut it down, make omissions – in order that their lives can correspond to the requirement. These are the real deceivers."

"All existence-issues are passionate. To think about them so as to leave out passion is not to think about them at all. It is to forget the point that one indeed is oneself an existing person. To exist is an art. The subjective thinker is aesthetic enough for his life to have aesthetic content, ethical enough to regulate it, passionate enough in thinking to master it."

"Let us be honest about it. We are more afraid of the truth than of death."

Ten Economic Myths

Great article here on the history of economics from an Austrian Economic Historian.

Complement that with "Why I Am Not An Austrian Economist" for some substantial learning.

I am currently reading Bureaucracy by Ludwig von Mises.

What Matters

Intuitively some people think that if they as conscious individuals are not around (either in heaven or Earth) then what exists does not matter. Thus we should not care overly much about the future if we won't be around to see it.

I think this is flawed. I can exist in another form (in one's child, perhaps, or the species) and I should maximize the opportunities for that derivative form because through it I continue. If I have invested time into something while alive, then it is better that it continues while I am dead...

These arguments seem feeble. Ah, nihilism.

Two Thoughts

It is better to act for the sake of love than for the sake of duty.

Treating people as a means is completely unavoidable.

The Conspiracy Chain

It looks like this: Knights Templar ---> Bavarian Illuminati ---> Freemasons ---> (Skull And Bones) ---> Council On Foreign Relations ---> Bilderberg Group ---> Trilateral Commission

The Freemasons have an "Order of the Knights Templar" and supposedly incorporate their symbols, but there is a 400-year gap between the two. That link is iffy. Do I really believe that some organization has managed to continue its quest for world domination from the 1300s? No. But it is a fact that a very large number of powerful, intelligent men have belonged to these groups in the past. Today it is even more worrying - look at the membership lists of the Bilderberg Group and Trilateral Commission at Wikipedia, and read the link that I posted earlier from the Guardian, especially the third page.

Should we protect dying industries?

One deceptively simple economic insight tells us that firms cannot sell things for below they cost to produce and expect to remain in business for long. Yet there could be cases when it is beneficial to society for "firms" to do that - scientists, for example, did not in the past sell much of anything and incurred enormous costs. There is an external benefit to their work, as there is in the work of all of us, especially academics.

I'm wondering whether these arguments could be used to justify supporting a dying industry in a national economy through tariffs or subsidies. It seems to depend upon the industry, but what industries really have that much external value beyond their capacity to produce? (I'm assuming that we can get whatever they produce at the exact same quality somewhere else for cheaper - a major assumption). Does working at a factory really make a man a better thinker? Does the factory improve the environment? Are these people happier and better citizens when they have a decent blue-collar job?

It seems hard to decide, but I think that on the net a low-tech manufacturing firm does not produce external benefits. The money that is saved by allowing them to go under through the market can be funneled back to them while they look for new work. They are now free to retrain themselves as well as perhaps enjoy more leisure (sit around on the internet?).

What about high-tech industries? Again, I think on the whole the external benefits don't justify protecting the industry - but we should be able to compete in the high-tech industries, and we do. We have a high-skilled labor force, lots of capital, and a fair amount of innovation. But we won't necessarily have the most high-skilled workers in the future. Wages will begin to equalize across the world - wages are already skyrocketing in India. Outsourcing won't be cheap forever. By the time this happens we may as well have one world government.

Mr. Sammler's Planet

There is something crude, dirty, and empty about literature which is deliberately philosophical. It does not appeal to the emotions. There is no pull to it. After reading the first paragraph of Mr. Sammler's Planet I was already annoyed and bored:

"Shortly after dawn, or what would have been dawn in a normal sky, Mr. Artur Sammler with his bushy eye took in the books and papers of the his West Side bedroom and suspected strongly that they were the wrong books, the wrong papers. In a way it did not matter much to a man of seventy-plus, and at leisure. You had to be a crank to insist on being right. Being right was largely a matter of explanation. Intellectual man had become an explaining creature. Fathers to children, wives to husbands, lecturers to listeners, experts to laymen, colleagues to colleagues, doctors to patients, man to his own soul, explained. The roots of this, the causes of the other, the source of events, the history, the structure, the reasons why. For the most part, in one ear out the other. The soul wanted what it wanted. It had its own natural knowledge. It sat unhappily on superstructures of explanation, poor bird, not knowing which way to fly."

This was written by a man who won the Nobel Prize of Literature, Saul Bellow. Perhaps literature is so starved for writers who reference philosophy that they'll accept even shoddy philosophy/literature.

Needless to say, I won't be finishing this book.

"People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned."
- Saul Bellow

The Wild Goose - A Symbol

The Wild Goose
A Symbol
Everyone who knows even a little bit about life in the bird world is aware that between the wild goose and the tame geese, different as they are, there is a sort of understanding. When the flight of the wild geese is heard in the air and there are tame geese on the ground below, the latter are aware of it at once; up to a certain point they have an understanding of what it means; so they too get under way, flapping their wings and cackling as they follow along the ground for a short distance - then it is over.

Once upon a time there was a wild goose. In the autumnal season when the time for migration was near he took notice of some tame geese. He conceived an affection for them; it seemed to him a shame to fly away from them, he hoped to win them to his side so that they might resolve to follow when the flock took flight.

To this end he sought in every way to get in touch with them, trying to allure them to rise a little higher, and then a little higher, with the hope that possibly they might be able to follow the flock, liberated from this pitiable life of mediocrity, waddling on the ground as respectable tame geese.

In the beginning the tame geese thought this very entertaining; they liked the wild goose. But soon they grew tired of him, so they gave him sharp words and derided him as a fantastical fool, without experience and without wisdom. Alas, the wild goose had so deeply committed himself to the tame geese that they had power over him; their words counted with him - the end of the story was that the wild goose became a tame goose.

It can be said in a certain sense that what the wild goose wanted to do was very pretty, yet for all that it was in error; for -- this is the rule -- a tame goose never becomes a wild goose, but a wild goose can very well become a tame goose.
If what the wild goose did could in any way be accounted praiseworthy, he should have attended above all to one thing: self-preservation. As soon as he observed that the tame geese were in any way acquiring power over him -- then away, away with the flock!

This applies to genius -- the rule is that a tame goose never becomes a wild goose, but on the other hand a wild goose can very well become a tame goose -- therefore, be on the alert.

This rule does not apply to Christianity... (continued)

-- Soren Kierkegaard

Believe it or not, I hadn't read this when I wrote on domestication - that was inspired by a domesticated elephant on TV.

Simple Wants

Quite simply - I want honesty. I am not, as one man with the best intentions has desired to represent me, I am not Christian severity contrasted with Christian leniency.

Not at all. I am neither severity nor leniency - I am... mere human honesty.

I want honesty. If that is what this race and this generation want, if it will uprightly, honestly, frankly, openly, directly rebel against Christianity and say to God, "We can, but we will not subject ourselves to this authority" - but observe that it must be done uprightly, honestly, frankly, openly, directly - well then, strange as it may seem, I am for it; for honesty is what I want. And wherever there is honesty I can take part.

- Soren Kierkegaard, as written in A Short Life of Kierkegaard by Walter Lowrie.

First Republican Primary Debate

I've been hunting around for the entire Republican debate and so far this is the best that I can find. The setting is exactly the same as the Democrats background: a huge American flag. Such art demonstrates the vast creative power of our political leaders and media machine. The questions in Democrat debate were bad. The only information of substance that I remember getting out of it was that the Iraq war should be stopped and that Hillary and Barack want universal healthcare (a policy I vigorously disagree with, but that's for another post).

SO I loaded up this clip and had to laugh when Matthews asked Romney what he hated the most about America. Romney, of course, chased the hardcore right by responding that he "loved American" and "loved most of all its people", who are the "best people in the world and always will be." And more nationalistic blather.

You know, when I was a young child people always used to tell me that politicians were dirty slimeballs. I always figured it was on some level untrue - that politicians must be smart leaders. These days I've begun to realize how wrong I am. How can we reconcile the competence and character of our past and current leaders with rational choice theory, the idea that people make rational decisions? Why wouldn't rational populations choose the most qualified, intelligent individuals rather than people who build their careers through their ablitiy to schmooze and slander?

Rational ignorance is often cited as the reconciliation between the two. To put it simply, it says that the cost of education is higher than the benefit. What most economists don't tell you but is quite implicit is that the perceived cost and benefit rather than the true cost and benefit is the one which influences people's decisions. We live in a world of imperfect information and the only hope of improving that is to educate people into the importance of the issues today. That change seems to be happening.

The other claim is somewhat more interesting and perhaps linked in how the situation appears to voters. When I go to vote, I don't really influence the result at all in most cases. I don't encourage other people to go vote simply by voting. Even if I promote voting, my actual vote doesn't do anything. The system instead works through the aggregate of people arriving at the decision to vote independently. The game is the classic prisoner's dilemma: the group as a whole would be better off if everyone voted (and, most importantly, researched), but each individual can be better by not spending the time on voting. (The problem is that these people are worse off in the long-run when they don't vote, but even if they had voted it wouldn't have made them less worse off - their vote makes no difference.)

UPDATE: Here is the debate. The idiots running MSNBC didn't build it to run in Firefox.

Domestication

When species become domesticated, are they weakening themselves? Certainly. Is that necessarily a bad thing? All biological things seek to exist for as long as possible - but is sacrificing longevity for weakness a good trade-off? For all those biological things which lack consciousness, the answer seems to be an unequivocal yes. But for humans the answer is not so certain.

Religion is on the decline

While commenting on this post I discovered something that I knew but hadn't verified: religion is on a major decline in the United States. And it's about goddamn time. From 1990 to 2001 non-religious people doubled to 15% of the population.

Almost Cliches

People who half-forget cliches may be better than those who always repeat them.

Another Amazing Internet Show

If you want to understand college life (at least for a certain subculture) and laugh your ass off, check out out Underexposed from SPG Productions. These guys are gonna be huge. The main character (Jimmy Barker) reminds me of myself, but perhaps more pathetic and humorous. I think the main writer (Sean Cruser) is a philosophy major.

You may have to download the Divx software and codec, but it is worth it. That site is like a higher-class Youtube, which comes at a price of slightly longer load times and technical hang-ups.

The Illuminati

Have you heard of the Bilderberg Group? Why not?

Here is a fun article which runs on the long side.

Life and rationality

There is nothing purely rational about sex. We understand why it happens, but at its root it is still somewhat bizarre. So are many things in human life. Perhaps that is why some religions have rejected sex, and emotion, and life on this earth in exchange for life on the next earth. Sex as an overriding drive in human life - as much as we tell ourselves this is natural and right, it does not come naturally to us. Some struggle with how weird life is.

Perhaps the world's existence is like sex - there's no fundamental reason for it except that it is the natural state of the world.

Partially inspired by this article: "The urgent and primary questions of the universe have been undertaken by those physicists who are trying to explain the origins of everything with grand unified theories. But as exciting and glamorous as these theories are, they are an evasion, if not a reversal, of the central mystery of knowledge: that the laws of the world were somehow created to produce the observer. And more important than this, that the observer in a significant sense creates reality and not the other way around. Recognition of this insight leads to a single theory that unifies our understanding of the world."

Monopsony Labor Market

Such a situation can only continue if workers do not shop around for higher wages, or if there is an implicit or explicit collusion on the part of employers. Could that be true today - to a degree? Perhaps yes.

Marginal Income Tax Rates

Why is it so fucking hard to find a table detailing the marginal income tax rates pre-2001?

Socially Responsible Investing

I hear some people say you should be a "socially responsible investor." But does buying a company's stock really have any impact on the performance of that stock? If it does, can you please explain how to me?

If it does not, then why should I invest responsibly? Why not make money off a dirty company and use that money to buy something good, like solar panels?

How is money created?

I don't really understand the big picture of economics. What causes inflation, I've been told, is too much money chasing too few goods&services. That makes sense. However, if a country's economy is growing in real terms (it is producing more goods&services because of higher productivity, let's say), and money isn't being created, deflation would happen. Does an economy create money as it creates goods&services automatically, or must money be siphoned out by the Federal Reserve, who must carefully balance the increase in money with the increase in goods&services produced?

Do stock traders and speculators create money?

Lufia II

"I hear there are monsters in the North Cave."
"Yeah."
"Are you going away again?"
"Well, that's my job."
"Be...be careful..."
"I'll be alright."
"You always say that. But I always worry."
"I'll get them but you have to buy them, Tia."
"I will."
"Well, see ya."

I had to load my one of my favorite old SNES games today, Lufia II. It's kinda sad. I have learned a fair amount in college but all I really want to do at some deep level is read fantasy and play RPGs.

I had to load up it up. I just felt too nostalgic to resist. We'll see how long I can go before the guilt of avoiding productive activity catches up with me.

Relativism and Economic Justice

A few people have always been obsessed with the tantalizing idea that one can commit wrong actions without being evil. (Or, perhaps, being "evil" but still a rational and morally good person.) They are faced with a question: how can I, a rational person, treat someone else as I would not truly like to be treated? Isn't that the true definition of a bad act - acting in opposition to the Golden Rule? How can I hold myself to a different standard? And how would society work if everyone did that?

Well, we alway have done that and we always will. The world can seem pretty fucked up but it still runs. People enjoy themselves and feel like they are accomplishing things. People live by the following rules: I was born in this country and my parents did well, so I enjoy riches while others scrape by. If we only have enough food for my family or yours, my family gets the food. If my country enters into a war with another country, then they deserve death and we deserve life. Our interests are more important then their interest because what matters is whether we (and the ones we love) are alive. What else could matter? (Well, I suppose we could value the species as a whole, or some feature in the species, perhaps - "the good", "excellence", "arete" - whatever you want to call it. But that's a different discussion.)

But can we consider any of these economic facts to be morally right? If they aren't, is acting as a normal citizen somehow wrong?

To what degree can we hold ourselves to a different standard - that those of us with more economic accomplishment or "merit" are worth more?

Five Keys to Forex Trading

This free report from Investopedia is a very accessible introduction to making money on Forex. The five basics:

1. Interest rates (when they're high, the currency will strengthen).
2. Economic growth (when the economy is growing, people are buying more of its currency).
3. Geopolitics.
4. Trade and Capital Flows
5. Merger and Acquisition Activity.

Good stuff.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Determinism&Moral Responsibility

If the world is completely deterministic, then what does moral responsibility amount to?

The Science of Dreams

I just watched this movie. Caellyndria (who I've linked jokingly as My Stalker - sorry!) watched it too. I commented on her review if you want to read it. She didn't like it. I did, in a weird way. I'm not a goofy, artistic, psuedoscientific person. I don't do arts and crafts as a hobby but I appreciated the authenticity of Stephane's creepy obsession with Stephanie. The movie reminded me of the insanity of my dreams and my own creepy obsession with a couple girls. I'm saddened by the fact that I no longer remember to write them down. Here's one of the nightmares that I had a few months back:


3/20/06: After a long day/night of dreams, all I can remember is leaving this decrepit tenement building...weird people leered at us and approached. When I entered the building I had my Smith&Wesson switchblade on me in my pocket and kept feeling atit warily. With me was Eric F and this little blond girl (a child, really) named Jessi. I turned around for a second and then Eric and the girl walked into some random person's house. They were sitting down to eat Ruffles. I commented that there wasn't a lot of food and the resident little
blond girl, who looked a lot like Jessi, said there a lot. Then her father, a strangely intense, heavyset man with greying hair showed up. He asked us what we were doing. When we said we were visiting he smiled hungrily at us. I got real, real uneasy. Eric glanced up a picture on the wall and said, "Uh, your mom's tumor looks like the mole on George Bush's neck..." (not that I remembered if he has one - I don't think he does). He moved to stand up and the father moved in a way that seemed to me to suggest he was gonna stop us. I grabbed my switchblade, but it didn't come fully out, and it collapsed when I stabbed itdidn't stab right because of it. Then we booked it out the door only to realize we'd left Jessi behind. When I woke up, I was deciding to head back for Jessi and Eric just wanted to
split...

EDIT: Recalling back, I remember debating with someone about what
'continuum' meant, and I was holding my pipe Pandora as I spoke..."

CIA World Factbook

Why isn't the data presented in time-series? Why isn't it downloadable as Excel files? Why are government bureaucracies so incompetent?

So I'm doing a project and I need the crude birth rate and the total fertility rate trend for the past thirty years, as well as the average wage of females. (You can guess what the topic is.) As far as I can tell I'll have to access independent archives of each year and piece the thing together myself.

There's something rather fishy about the sheer incompetence of that design. Has no one in the CIA noticed this? Why oh why is it still so hard to get basic information?

By the way -- yes, I've looked through the data on the U.S.Census website and been very disappointed.

UPDATE: This gives me an idea on what to do with my website. Put up reams and reams of statistical data, well-organized.

Stocks

JASO has shot up 13% for the third day in a row. I bought $1000 around 17, sold it at $20, then bought $5000 worth at 23.15. Now it's at 28.

So I've made a cool 1130 bucks in the past few days. Put the original $1000 (now $1130) from JASO into another stock, which didn't look like it was going anywhere, so I took it out and put it into SOLF at 15.79. It was up 22% at the time and will likely have another breakout today tomorrow.

Now is the time to be invested in solar, although you have to be careful not to invest in pure momentum when it's at the top.

UPDATE: At the end of the day SOLF is 17.68 and JASO is 28.20. I know that SOLF is going up tomorrow, not sure about JASO.

Loyalty Rebates

A pretty good overview of the loyalty rebates (used by Microsoft as well) is in this article, in this case referring to the loyalty rebates that Intel uses.

Here's how Intel allegedly dashes AMD's hopes for gradual growth. It tells XYZ that its price per processor is, say, $90, but that if XYZ ends up buying more than 80% of its processors from Intel that quarter, it will pay a rebate of $10 per processor, resulting in an $80 price.

The rebate, however, applies not just to the processors that put XYZ over the 80% target, but to every Intel processor XYZ purchases that quarter, back to the first one. That offer knocks AMD out of the box. Outside counsel Diamond explains why: "Effectively, what Intel's saying is, If you don't buy those ten incremental units from AMD, we'll give you them for free."

That's because 80 processors at $90 each cost the same as 90 processors at $80 each. "So in order to capture that business," Diamond continues, "AMD has to give away product for free. It's pretty axiomatic that you can't stay in any business if you're giving away your product free to pick up market share."

Intel's Sewell has a simple response: His company doesn't offer first-dollar rebates. "We offer a discount program," he asserts, "which is stepped at basically 20%, 40%, 60%, 80%. So if you buy below 20%, you get no discount. If you buy 20% to 40%, you get a discount, but it applies only to the units between 20% to 40%. By the time you get up to 80% or 100%, you're getting the highest discount. If you're at the highest discount rate, and you were to normalize that across all units, you get a better price across the board if you buy more parts from us, but you don't have this dramatic incentive, where you get nothing below 90%, and everything above 90%. In our view, this is a very traditional discount that scales with volume."

AMD's Diamond replies: "If, in fact, Intel's corporate policy is to use only reasonable, stepped discounts and no first-dollar rebates, that's a pretty recent innovation, and I guess we've earned part of our legal fees already. That has not been historically correct."

Morality

Every man makes an exception out of himself when it comes to moral behavior. The degree to which they are aware of this exception decides what their outward morality is.

Since "everyone else" does this, individual people can feel less guilty about it.

Winston Churchill

I've been reading The Last Lion and I am just blown away by Winston Churchill. The man was a genius, and one of the few geniuses to enter political life. He struggled in school because he was so goddamned rebellious, despite being, throughout school, the best writer in his class. He had no patience for math. He loved the truth, and straddled both sides of the political spectrum to pursue what he saw as important. Yet because he loved truth and was not a liberal or a conservative, he was reviled by both parties. They would vilify him for any reason. I find some interesting parallels to that in my own life - lots of people don't like me because I am neither conservative nor liberal. They are afraid of what I have to say.

Some interesting examples:

In the beginning of his career as a politican, Churchill was a Tory. Yet he consistently came out against the party line: he was against the Boer War (reminds one of a modern parallel, perhaps?), and against protectionism. To sum up: he was against imperialism, which was fundamental to the Tory platform. So he switched parties and became a Liberal for a long, long time.

When Germany was about to invade France at the start of World War I, most of the Liberals wanted to stay out of the war. Churchill had to fight to roust them up, although when Germany went through Belgium they all caved. This same exact thing happened in World War II, which could have been avoided had the English and the French seen it coming and nipped it in the bud. Churchill warned of the impending disaster before its time.

There are countless other examples, but I have things to do. It's easy to see parallels today: the minimum wage is not the best way to reduce poverty, and gay marriage should be allowed. Corporate welfare is a big problem, and CEO pay is perhaps an even bigger problem.

Look at recent Supreme Court cases. In Gonzales v. Raich it was the liberals who voted to continue the immoral oppression of marijuana users. In Kelo v. New London it was the liberals, again, who decided that cities may condemn private land in order to give it to corporations. These acts are entirely unforgivable.

Busy as a (Lazy) Bumblebee

I'm sorry if I've been rather lax. My mind is scattered and my will is weak, as usual. I've been too lazy to make myself food even though I'm often kinda hungry. Also, I haven't been smoking weed much. My inspiration to post most often comes when I'm a high.

In other news, I did some looking into the heads of the EPA yesterday. I remarked to a friend (actually, the writer of Simplemind) that GM technology is not being regulated very well. He said that it was regulated by the EPA, the FDA, and the USDA. I noted that not only are these organizations overstretched (the number of FDA drug and biologic inspections reach a five-year low); they are also highly politicized and biased in and of themselves. The Administrator of the EPA is appointed by George Bush. The former EPA administrator was a Mormon, the current one, Stephen L. Johnson, used to work as a senior office in two different biotech companies, Covance and Litton Bionetics (a company which, interestingly, is featured in AIDS conspiracy theories as the creator of AIDS). Up until recently he advocated testing pesticides on infants and children up to 3 years old. These are strange people, with strange ethics. The one before Leavitt, Christine Todd Whitman, told the workers at the WTC that the dust was completely harmless despite having no evidence to back it up. Some people simply do not feel a pang of guilt when they lie.

This lead to a man named Arpad Pusztai who informed Europe of the potential dangers of genetic engineering. Looking at an article by him, he notes that:

#
# Publications on GM food toxicity are scarce. An article in Science magazine said it all: "Health Risks of Genetically Modified Foods: Many Opinions but Few Data".1 In fact, no peer-reviewed publications of clinical studies on the human health effects of GM food exist. Even animal studies are few and far between.

This is more than likely the reality. Of course, I cited an article finding that GM peas harm mice lungs - perhaps that came after it. Regardless, that shows that there is significant potential for harm. But the worst harms aren't the ones that are stark and obvious. The worst toxins are ones whose effects accumulate slowly and cause chronic, low-level problems.

Update: more on Pusztai. It's even creepy. See here:

The 69 year old Hungary-born Pusztai, who had been working at the RRI for 36 years, was removed from service, his research papers were seized, and his data confiscated ~ and he was prohibited from talking to anyone about his research work. All this for having spoken "all of l5O seconds," he says in a programme called World in Action on Granada TV in August 1998, about his findings on the effects of GM foods that ran counter to the prevalent scientific dogma that they were safe. He had also expressed concern that the testing procedures to establish the safety of GM foods may not be adequate.

And here. This last one really requires a full read. His work was suppressed by the English, but the scientists internationally said it was fine, and The Lancet published it.

A scientific committe was asked by the Rowett institute to review the study Pustai referred to. It said there were important deficiencies in the study.

Independent scientists confirmed the correctness of Pusztais conclusions

Pusztai then sent the research protocols to 24 independent scientists in different countries. These turned down the conclusions of the review committee and found that his research was of good quality and justified his conclusions. They found that Pusztai had not mixed up any results.

Scientists and physicians (including the undersigned), who had been in touch with Pusztai confirmed that he was perfectly clear-minded with no signs of confusion or memory defects.

What had Pusztai found? He found that potatoes with a certain type of lectin (useful as a pesticide, I gather - lectins are a particularly interesting protein capable of affecting carbohydrates) slowly caused long-term damage. But we don't test for long-term damage.

Nonsense multiplies

With the internet, intelligence is truly revealed. Lately I've heard some outstanding and stupid claims. When I was driving and listening to the radio I heard someone rant and rave about the amount of blocked up fecal matter in the intestines. They repeated all the same old myths: that John Wayne had 44 pounds of fecal matter in his intestines when he died and the FDA claims that each person has an average of 3-4 pounds of fecal matter.

John Wayne had no such thing and the FDA has said no such thing. Snopes is sometimes wrong (as I mentioned before) but they are not wrong in this case. How can anyone possibly believe this stuff?

The latest myth was brought to me by my roommates, and it concerns the WTO. The WTO is a very bad organization in that they don't allow countries to restrict products based on environmental and health risks, but in this case my roommates was way off. He was taken in by the claims of HealthFreedomUSA, which claims that there is a document callled Codex Alimentarius which classifies nutrients as toxins. This is an obvious exaggeration. I don't think this Codex Alimentarius is a good idea, and I don't think it will serve the interests of health for people, but it does at least on the surface claim to protect consumers from pesticides, contaminants, and adulterants. It says little that I can find about nutrients being toxins.

Sadly, people like these give health-conscious environmentalists (who DO recognize the danger of the WTO and Monsanto) a bad name.

Sometime I will start a weekly profile of a WTO ruling and show how ridiculous it is.

Books to Goodwill

It's that time again. Time to toss books because my tiny room is a godawful mess.

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett: "One of the true masterpieces of the century", according to Clive Barnes. I didn't get it.

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway: I have always considered Hemingway overrated.

Excellence: A collection of quotes.

The Millionaire Next Door: Interesting.

Free To Choose by Milton Friedman: Written for the masses with hardly any sources cited, but edifying nonetheless.

Our Town by Thornton Wilder: A great little screenplay who's author rightly won a Pulitzer Prize.

This is so difficult. I'm wringing my hands over The Last Lion (about Winston Churchill) and Staying Healthy With Nutrition. Meanwhile, I should be doing homework.

Chiropractic Experience

Today my back absolutely killed me. I could not bend it without stabbing pain, so I finally bit the bullet and made an appointment with a chiropractor. I just got back and my back feels much better. All he did was shock it to relax it, and then popped it with a simple technique. I'm still skeptical of many of their claims, but they can certainly reduce lower back pain.

I interviewed the chiropractor as he worked on my back. He seemed a little uncomfortable with discussing the skepticism surrounding his work, but he was polite nonetheless. He didn't say much besides that he was less of a purist and focused mainly on back pain.

Spring Break Trip

Just got back from driving a few hundred miles to see some friends and I'm exhausted. During the trip I bought $1000 worth of JA Solar Holdings. Most of the trip was spent talking and drinking alcohol. One thing I learned: don't discuss God with Christians.

Carl Sagan on Marijuana

The esteemed astronomer who book Broca's Brain I read earlier has an essay on marijuana. I'm reading it right now (stoned) and it's quite enjoyable.

I do not consider myself a religious person in the usual sense, but there is a religious aspect to some highs. The heightened sensitivity in all areas gives me a feeling of communion with my surroundings, both animate and inanimate. Sometimes a kind of existential perception of the absurd comes over me and I see with awful certainty the hypocrisies and posturing of myself and my fellow men. And at other times, there is a different sense of the absurd, a playful and whimsical awareness. Both of these senses of the absurd can be communicated, and some of the most rewarding highs I've had have been in sharing talk and perceptions and humor. Cannabis brings us an awareness that we spend a lifetime being trained to overlook and forget and put out of our minds. A sense of what the world is really like can be maddening; cannabis has brought me some feelings for what it is like to be crazy, and how we use that word 'crazy' to avoid thinking about things that are too painful for us. In the Soviet Union political dissidents are routinely placed in insane asylums. The same kind of thing, a little more subtle perhaps, occurs here: 'did you hear what Lenny Bruce said yesterday? He must be crazy.' When high on cannabis I discovered that there's somebody inside in those people we call mad.

The hypocrisies and posturing of myself and fellow men is so acutely obvious on the blogosphere, when you're constantly confronted with hyper-literate, arrogant intellectuals who think they know exactly how the world works, and think that it's their duty to tell everyone else. I'm one of those people just like all of the others, but at the same time I have to admit that it's oh so ironic and amusing.

When I'm high I can penetrate into the past, recall childhood memories, friends, relatives, playthings, streets, smells, sounds, and tastes from a vanished era. I can reconstruct the actual occurrences in childhood events only half understood at the time. Many but not all my cannabis trips have somewhere in them a symbolism significant to me which I won't attempt to describe here, a kind of mandala embossed on the high. Free-associating to this mandala, both visually and as plays on words, has produced a very rich array of insights.

That's hilarious - here I got high and opened my Bible to look up something from my childhood memories (the whole deal between the Jews and the Canaanites).

There is a myth about such highs: the user has an illusion of great insight, but it does not survive scrutiny in the morning. I am convinced that this is an error, and that the devastating insights achieved when high are real insights; the main problem is putting these insights in a form acceptable to the quite different self that we are when we're down the next day. Some of the hardest work I've ever done has been to put such insights down on tape or in writing. The problem is that ten even more interesting ideas or images have to be lost in the effort of recording one. It is easy to understand why someone might think it's a waste of effort going to all that trouble to set the thought down, a kind of intrusion of the Protestant Ethic. But since I live almost all my life down I've made the effort - successfully, I think. Incidentally, I find that reasonably good insights can be remembered the next day, but only if some effort has been made to set them down another way. If I write the insight down or tell it to someone, then I can remember it with no assistance the following morning; but if I merely say to myself that I must make an effort to remember, I never do.

All of this is so true that I have to quote all of it. I often force myself to blog when stoned, but it's always after I've had most of my thoughts, during the comedown. And often they are sometimes hard to formalize.

I find that most of the insights I achieve when high are into social issues, an area of creative scholarship very different from the one I am generally known for. I can remember one occasion, taking a shower with my wife while high, in which I had an idea on the origins and invalidities of racism in terms of gaussian distribution curves. It was a point obvious in a way, but rarely talked about. I drew the curves in soap on the shower wall, and went to write the idea down. One idea led to another, and at the end of about an hour of extremely hard work I found I had written eleven short essays on a wide range of social, political, philosophical, and human biological topics. Because of problems of space, I can't go into the details of these essays, but from all external signs, such as public reactions and expert commentary, they seem to contain valid insights. I have used them in university commencement addresses, public lectures, and in my books.

But let me try to at least give the flavor of such an insight and its accompaniments. One night, high on cannabis, I was delving into my childhood, a little self-analysis, and making what seemed to me to be very good progress. I then paused and thought how extraordinary it was that Sigmund Freud, with no assistance from drugs, had been able to achieve his own remarkable self-analysis. But then it hit me like a thunderclap that this was wrong, that Freud had spent the decade before his self-analysis as an experimenter with and a proselytizer for cocaine; and it seemed to me very apparent that the genuine psychological insights that Freud brought to the world were at least in part derived from his drug experience. I have no idea whether this is in fact true, or whether the historians of Freud would agree with this interpretation, or even if such an idea has been published in the past, but it is an interesting hypothesis and one which passes first scrutiny in the world of the downs.

Cannabis enables nonmusicians to know a little about what it is like to be a musician, and nonartists to grasp the joys of art. But I am neither an artist nor a musician. What about my own scientific work? While I find a curious disinclination to think of my professional concerns when high - the attractive intellectual adventures always seem to be in every other area - I have made a conscious effort to think of a few particularly difficult current problems in my field when high. It works, at least to a degree. I find I can bring to bear, for example, a range of relevant experimental facts which appear to be mutually inconsistent. So far, so good. At least the recall works. Then in trying to conceive of a way of reconciling the disparate facts, I was able to come up with a very bizarre possibility, one that I'm sure I would never have thought of down. I've written a paper which mentions this idea in passing. I think it's very unlikely to be true, but it has consequences which are experimentally testable, which is the hallmark of an acceptable theory...

When cannabis is legalized, I hope to see this ratio as one of he parameters printed on the pack. I hope that time isn't too distant; the illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world.

It was written in 1969. Has the world gotten madder? I think perhaps yes. It's hard to measure madness, however, because every age seems as mad as the next to me.

Stumbleupon

I love Stumbleupon. Check it out. It can seriously sift through the shit on the internet and bring recognition to the good websites out there through social networking. Note my Stumbleupon profile link at the right - I comment on a lot of webpages that I read with it. Much more efficient, though also much less powerful than the blog.

Sunk costs and marginal benefits

Economics teaches us that rationally, we should ignore sunk costs and instead focus on marginal benefits. (An example of this principle that I often use: you read a book halfway and discover it's utter crap. Do you finish it? This applies to any other good which is consumed slowly.) Yet what's often not added to that is that your sunk costs can dramatically affect your (perceived or non-perceived) marginal benefits. Once you've invested time into something it becomes more beneficial for you to continue then to start over again - at least in the short-run. The marginal benefit to continuing with philosophy and economics might have been, to apply a random number, 1 compared to the 2 of chemistry back then, but at this point I might have fallen behind to the point where that is no longer the case. Then again, obviously the marginal benefit to studying a hard science seemed lower to me then - I saw in economics and philosophy an overarching view of the world which encompasses everything. And I couldn't stand not knowing what that theory said. Now that I know the main theory, however, I should move on.

This is similar to a dilemma that I face. It might be more beneficial in the long-run for me to focus on something scientific rather than philosophy, but if I was to do that all my work towards philosophy would be wasted and I wouldn't get a philosophy degree. That philosophy degree might be useful. But what would certainly be useful is a mathematics, chemistry, or computer science degree. And at some level, shouldn't I take into account these sunk costs, especially if by investing these three years into philosophy I will forever be behind if I went to chemistry?

Firms face a dilemma with sunk costs. They have no way of knowing how much it will cost to research and implement expensive new technologies, nor what exactly the benefit will be, nor at what point the full benefits will appear. One can invest a huge amount of money into a project, then, citing economics, scrap it - only to find later that if you'd continued on the project you would have reaped enormous rewards. And the opposite can happen.

Cost Curves

How easy is it to really come up with a long-run cost function in which fixed costs are no longer fixed? It certainly doesn't seem easy to me. Yet this is never mentioned in the economics classes that I take.

Then again, I can see how you could start to analyze it, by predicting how much increased fix costs would cost and how much they would increase output.

Ads

Why the fuck is their a Google ad offering to sell plastic bottles, with a link named "Plastic Bottles Cancer".

Can these people really afford to pay for an ad? What is going on here?

The Clouds by Aristophanes

The Clouds is so amusing:

STUDENT: All right. Chaerephon of Sphettus once asked Socrates whether, in his opinion, a gnat buzzed through its mouth or through its anal sphincter.

STREPSIADES: What did Socrates say about the gnat?

STUDENT: He said that the gnat’s intestinal tract
was narrow—therefore air passing through it,
because of the constriction, was pushed with force
towards the rear. So then that orifice,
being a hollow space beside a narrow tube,
transmits the noise caused by the force of air.

STREPSIADES: So a gnat’s arse hole is a giant trumpet!
O triply blessed man who could do this,
anatomize the anus of a gnat!
A man who knows a gnat’s guts inside out
would have no trouble winning law suits.

STUDENT: Just recently he lost a great idea—
a lizard stole it!

STREPSIADES: How’d that happen? Tell me.

STUDENT: He was studying movements of the moon—
its trajectory and revolutions.
One night, as he was gazing up, open mouthed,
staring skyward, a lizard on the roof
relieved itself on him.

STREPSIADES: A lizard crapped on Socrates! That’s good!

Whenever one thinks of ancient literature they think of boring, slow, or hard to understand stuff. This shit is too hilarious.

There is some irony in the later stuff as well.

Intelligence

It is worst when you are intelligent enough to know that you are not truly intelligent.

Nanosilver Particles

When I was at the grocery store a couple weeks ago looking at sponges, I noticed that one said it was treated with the anti-microbial "Ultra-Fresh." So I wrote that down and today I looked it up:

‘Ultra-Fresh Silpure’ uses proprietary nano-technology to produce the ultra-fine silver particles essential to ease of application and long-term protection. The technology is based on the power of silver to fight bacteria. It, thus fights contamination and maintain freshness.

Silver is less toxic than most metals which have similar anti-microbial effects, but I'm still wary. Note this story:

Washington -- To find out if the tiniest airborne particles pose a health risk, University of Rochester Medical Center scientists have shown that when rats breathe in nano-sized materials, the particles quickly follow an efficient path from the nose to several brain regions.

That's nothing to sneeze at.

Aching Shoulder

When I woke up this morning my shoulder was killing me. Likely it was that wrestling the night before. I threw out my arm when I was in middle school. I looked it up the internet and didn't find anything too interesting (ice it, heat it, stretch it), but a few things were interesting: biofeedback and ultrasound. I wish I could afford biofeedback for a number of things, but it'll have to wait. The ultrasound looks like a scam but it is intriguing nonetheless.

When I looked up ultrasound on Wikipedia I saw a link to this:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Exposure to ultrasound can affect fetal brain development, a new study suggests. But researchers say the findings, in mice, should not discourage pregnant women from having ultrasound scans for medical reasons.

When pregnant mice were exposed to ultrasound, a small number of nerve cells in the developing brains of their fetuses failed to extend correctly in the cerebral cortex.

As science gets better and better I predict that we will find that humans are quite susceptible to little things like this.

I ended up spraying some Therapain Plus on the shoulder. Seems to work great for my back pain too.

The Ivory Tower

I talked my dad recently and said I have no respect for 90% of those in the U.S. Congress. I said they weren't intellectuals and they had no principles. He said he had no respect for the Ivory Tower.

I wanted to tell him that intellectuals had principles, they knew what the country needed, they weren't the shallow, stupid, short-sighted people that most of our Congressmen were. But I couldn't. I knew my words would sound empty. I just continued to point out how crazy, stupid, and dishonest our politicians were.

The real question is: if intellectuals or academics are so smart, why do they not enter the public arena? Why don't they infiltrate the bourgeoisie and change things? Is it because they don't think changing things is really necessary? (Revealed preference.) Likely, perhaps -- but it might also be because that intelligence, when it comes to success, can be a curse. The intelligent forever second-guess themselves.

Honestly, the question of why the "natural aristocracy" -- the academics and intellectuals -- don't rise to the top is still relevant. Nobody has supplied a good answer thus far. It leaves the intelligence of the so-called intellectuals suspect.

UPDATE: Philosophy is the history of second-guessing -- and really, is there any point to questioning whether or not I'm experiencing reality right now or I'm dreaming? Or whether inductive logic is necessarily logical? Or whether we can really know the "thing in itself"?

Critics & Prejudgment

There is always slimy about the critic - one who makes a living off of influencing and biasing the opinion of people on pieces of art. Be the one who chooses not to. But there I go again with my indecisiveness, I suppose. Some things are just pure crap.

(And I know that my views have possibly been constructed from the views of others. Most especially in philosophy. But is the criticism of philosophy necessary? I suppose so, especially when you consider that any attack is a form of criticism.)

Fame

If I was ever famous I think I might hate it. To always be prejudged, weighed against yourself, and to be possibly found wanting. How annoying.

Oh how I wish I told jokes. But this is soliloquoy.

UPDATE Looking through a search for Ralph Waldo Emerson I find this:

3
A famous quotation of Emerson's goes a little like this: "A friend is one before whom I may think aloud." Pffuh. You know as well as I do that this man had no friends. Shut up, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Nobody likes a blabbermouth. Try to be the one who's interested in other people; everyone likes that guy. Plus, he's usually a pushover who'll buy you a drink.

Names & Style

How much is a person affected by their name, I wonder? Certainly their outward style is affected. What kind of person would I have been had I been named Smith? Would I change my name?

(I hope I would have.)

Decisions

Just make the decisions, I tell myself!

And yet I can't, until I know more, until I'm certain. The intelligent man's greatest strength and weakness: indecisiveness.

Praise and Performance

After this brief debate on Parapundit, I enjoyed reading this article on how praise affects children's performance. If you are or plan to be a parent or teacher, read this article.

Thomas didn’t just score in the top one percent. He scored in the top oneof being standardized tested expected subjected to this shit but i know that rea percent of the top one percent.

But as Thomas has progressed through school, this self-awareness that he’s smart hasn’t always translated into fearless confidence when attacking his schoolwork. In fact, Thomas’s father noticed just the opposite. “Thomas didn’t want to try things he wouldn’t be successful at,” his father says. “Some things came very quickly to him, but when they didn’t, he gave up almost immediately, concluding, ‘I’m not good at this.’ ” With no more than a glance, Thomas was dividing the world into two—things he was naturally good at and things he wasn’t.

What 'intelligent' person can't empathize with this kid? I despise being called intelligent (I despite all flattery, and this one in particular is always insincere -- it feels like an accusation). It makes me uncomfortable for one major reason: it puts expectations on you.

And now I feel like my professors have this expectation of me. If I don't perform I'm immediately unintelligent. It makes me sick to my stomach. This is what Thomas felt.

fuck intelligence fuck school i wannna drop out and play video games im tired lly I have myself to blame for this "intelligence" fetish cause i spend so much time trying to cultivate an intelligent aloof superior attitude it's sickening someone please shoot me

(I'd like to say I do not consider myself intelligent, but that would not be sincere.)

True Hero: Mario Savio

Mario Savio: He was a philosophy student (and later professor) and a civil rights activist.

The Key

I wonder if I'm the only one who is actually more productive and rational when I'm either high or drunk. Alcohol is actually better for math and general reading. I accept the words and concepts wholeheartedly. Marijuana is better for theorizing, brainstorming, and imagining.

Ultimately they are crutches, but surprisingly effective ones.

Revver

Checked out this article. It never ceases to surprise me how stupid businesses can be. I immediately saw the problem with Revver when I posted here. I tried to watch the Lonelygirl15 episodes (never watched one after I posted that, by the way) and found that I couldn't simply sit down and watch them one after another. Instead I had to go back and look through them.

Today Revver hasn't changed much. It's frontpage advertises its model instead of showing off its content. It's a goner, especially since Youtube plans to share revenues soon.

Instincts

The proper instinct: to resist seductive pleasures as long as possible. 

The better instinct: to redefine what is pleasurable.

World Economic Indicators

The sheer idiocy with which World Economic Indicators was designed still blows my mind. Instead of presenting each country individually, with all its statistics, it presents the information by category. So to get a full overview of the statistics of a country I have to manually assemble all the information. It's ridiculous. The information is exorbitantly priced on the internet, where it is assembled well. Yet my professor (who spent no time going over the information) wants me to assemble and understand all this information within a couple weeks.

I have trouble respecting economists when they aren't able to present information efficiently.

The Penn World Tables are better, but the formatting is still ugly and the appendix is weak.

UPDATE: I brought up the RGDP per capita figures with my professor, attempting to find out exactly how they differed from the RGDP Chain-Series. He couldn't tell me. Anyone able to help out? (We were both apparently too lazy to really research it.)

Watching Anime

Right now I'm watching an anime rendition of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. If you've never watched anime or played the video games, I doubt it'd be up your alley. To be honest, it's a bit boring and very badly drawn. But now I feel like loading up the videogame or checking out the book. Anyone know if Chinese literature is good?

If you do feel like checking out anime, start with Berserk. It's by far the best I've ever seen.

Deterministic Compatibilism

People often think that determinism automatically means that there is no moral responsibility, and that nobody can act freely. This post states that and proposes a solution: we forget about how deterministic the world is. He may be joking, but this is similar to William James' position: that we had to believe in free will on moral grounds. Regardless, here was my comment:

That’s not a solution.

The truth is that you don’t know the future. In a sense, you can decide the future - because nobody knows what the future will be, and you have the power to look ahead, evaluate your free will (or lack thereof), look at the consequences, and make a decision.

Think about that. If you think it’s totally out of your control, it is. If you don’t, it isn’t. There’s something to be said for those self-help books and motivational speakers who say “you decide what you want to be.”

It’s a laborious process to exercise rationality in your actions, but when you do, you are exercising free will.

This is called deterministic compatibilism.

Free will can happen (to a degree) within a deterministic physical system. It has a limit, but nevertheless we have some ability to respond to environmental stimuli, based on our genetics. How we act is predetermined, and what environmental stimuli we are affected by is up to chance. If I convinced you that you can adopt a non-fatalistic stance towards free and you acted on it, exerting some measure of volition, then my stimuli could push you towards a path of rational action. If you aren't convinced, you may adopt a fatalistic stance and drift through life. What you do or don't do depends upon your past environment and genetics -- ultimately, God or chance may be morally responsible. But society can't punish God. Society can only punish you. It doesn't matter whether you wanted to be born with no sense of right or wrong, no sense of discipline, no intelligence, no future, ect. You play with the cards you're dealt, and if you don't play well, then that's your fault.

It's a tragedy, but that's life.

(The ultimate irony is that I have yet to start my 5-page International Trade paper, due tomorrow.)

The Measurers of Art

As I read through reviews at Metacritic, I wondered - why are these opinions valid? Often they are contradicted by the values of the masses, yet people still let these "critics" evaluate art. Is it because -- these few are better at measuring what is "objectively" valuable? Either that or they are -- nonsensical? (Disjunctive syllogism.) Could these people, then, be more valuable than the masses?

The interesting question: would any of these people truly believe in treating other people differently under the law because of it currently? How about in the past?

Let's consider a very outlandish scenario. You, a Thinker, and a Barbarian are alone on one large island, with one human. You are the last humans on the earth. The Barbarian treats you contemptuously, but doesn't kill you. You are beneath him. He is strong, but not good. The woman is attracted to him, but you know that if you kill him, she will come to you and she will respect you. She knows that if the positions were reversed, the Barbarian would immediately kill you. You think that this man will populate the Earth with dumb but strong legions. The utilitarian question in the state of nature: do you kill him, perhaps even in his sleep? Do you even have any qualms about killing him?

This elaborate story is perhaps a little exaggerated. I could apply the question to anyone in the state of nature: do you sacrifice your ideas in your weakness? If someone bullies you and takes your money, what do you do? What sort of morals really exist in the state of nature?

And is our current state so much different than the state of nature, with its infinite power struggles?

Ignite

Ignite is a website community for (seemingly) intellectually "aware" and concerned young Christians. Though I'm no Christian, I can't help but support such an endeavor. They even have a section on helping people across the globe! As if Jesus would be concerned for everyone regardless of nationality, race, gender, religion and sexual preference. How un-American. I ran across it through a link from Andrew Sullivan to a philosophy post on God. Sad to say, I don't understand the post. I'm tempted to think that the poster is performing the typical approach of theologians: assuming the existence of God rather than arguing for his existence. He doesn't even argue for how God can exist at these different levels and really why these different levels are better except in the sense that they seem to increase faith and a "correct" interpretation of God.

I dunno. It's late and I don't know anything about Anselm beyond his argument for God, which essentially states (from what I remember) that because God is necessarily perfect, and existence is more perfect than nonexistence, God exists. Why is existence "more perfect" than nonexistence? Who knows. It's one of those archaic arguments that seems like nonsense to us modern, empirical people.

Philosophy trickles down to become common sense...

Reviews from the past

For some strange reason I decided to do movie reviews for a short stint. Then I realized how pointless it was and quickly stopped. I'm gonna toss them up here for remembrance rather than keeping them in this annoying text file.

Blow=7

Review: Blow seems like a half-drama, half-comedy. It's not that realistic about the cocaine industry, and the characters are often off-the wall, but I don't know much about the cocaine industry, and there are all sorts of characters in real-life. It reminded me of "Goodfellas". Johnny Depp plays his character George pretty well, even though George seems fairly shallow and boring to begin with. He's rather faceless, now that I think of it.

Enjoyable, but not deep.

"Life passes most people by while they're making grand plans for it. Throughout my lifetime, I've left pieces of my heart here and there, and now there's not almost not enough to stay alive. But I force a smile, knowing that my ambition far exceeded my talent. There are no more white horses or pretty ladies at my door."
-Johnny Depp, "Blow"

Donnie Darko=8.5

Attempt to understand: I'm going to write this down before I start reading what other people think. I largely didn't understand the physics behind it, and I don't think they really matter. You can't draw practical conclusions from them, really. The physics was just a medium for expressing something else. It's the ultimate Outsider movie. Donnie Darko is one who stands for truth, and sees lies wherever he goes. He sees the craziness of the world. Partly it is because he's slightly insane, but there's also the fact there's reason in his insanity. That isn't realistic, but it is intriguing. Nietzche was also insane. Many great artists have been insane.

The universe is insane and meaningless. Humans spend their lives thinking with their sex organs, even though their minds can tell them that such striving is ultimately pointless. Donnie Darko is a desperate attempt to find meaning in all the random events - some deeper meaning behind all the nonsense. Ultimately, we can go 'round and 'round debating it... and find nothing. Everyone seeks their daily-feel good, but in the end they die alone, all their efforts pointless.

Should write a book about this sorta stuff, and have my main characters be destroyers. Might sell.

Fahrenheit 9/11=7

I think some of this ugly mood stems from watching this documentary. I laughed quite a bit in it, but it was bittersweet, astonished laughter. I just can't believe that things are this bad, or that Bush is quite this bad. It never really sunk into me before. Maybe I'm just being swayed too much by a hugely partisan attack on the Republicans, but for some reason I think he's right. The attack on Iraq was unjust - I've always known that, but I didn't realize how terrible its consequences were until now. The half-assed domination of Afghanistan has always pissed me off, but now it sickens me. If we'd focused all our forces on Afghanistan instead of Iraq everything would be much better. The tragedy of the deaths there hit me rather hard, surprisingly. I'd blame it partially on the music. I've always been rather deadened to "tragedy" of others, and death. I've never felt the death of someone I knew hit me hard. Perhaps now I'm just forcing myself to be empathic. Is that a good thing? I dunno.

PAN Pesticides Database

Check out the PAN Database. I'm tempted to donate to them, in the interests of supporting free and open information.

Monthly Review

I've decided to start doing monthly reviews in the hope that I can solidify my memory of past events. In late December I began "blogging" seriously, in large part because I found this guy to be damn interesting. I took down most of my old, rambling, very stupid posts. I may be changing the URL sometime soon.

First week: I began my class, Introduction to Statistics. One class for one month, 9-12 AM. I liked the teacher - likely the best math teacher I've ever had. I also began a Digg addiction, which allowed me to find Peekvid. I stayed up all night and watched all the Weeds episodes in a few days along with a few other shows. During this time I got stuck in a sleep schedule where I would stay up all night and sleep from about 1-7 PM. I repeated this for a while. I can't remember what I did during the weekend -- likely nothing. I began to sort through my old books with the intention of bringing a bunch to Goodwill. The only book that I really read out of my library was Environmental Science: A Global Concern. After reading it I was unsure of whether or not to donate it, but I will. The cat died.

Second week: Class was going good. I think I was still in the weird sleep mode. I can't remember doing much on the weekend. I checked out a few books:

Western Philosophy by R.J. Hollingdale
Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche
The Philosopher's Toolkit by Julian Baggini and Peter S. Fosl
A Kierkegaard Anthology by Robert Bretall

I began to try reading them along with some of my old library. I read the first three fairly closely and the last not so closely, but I will return to it.

Third week: More of the same. Blogging, reading, pretending to think, not much to brag about.

Fourth Week: My roommates arrived halfway through this week. Always good to have company. That weekend I partied on Friday and recovered on Saturday and Sunday. Found out I aced Stats. I briefly began to get back into Armageddon but was stopped short when I died to a dirty human. There goes 200 hours of playing time.

Fifth Week: Classes have began and they're looking to be easy.

And now we're on to a new month. Along with attempting to keep up with school (easier said than done) I will push myself to study the subjects which repel me: science, web development, and math.

I wanted to get stoned and do this, but I was too distracted doing homework. I'm reading The Elusive Quest for Growth by William Easterly for my International Trade class. The crude analysis of developmental international finance institutions (e.g. the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund) economists that Easterly exposes is nothing short of amazing. Hopefully I will get around to posting quotes later.