Nerds, Nerds, Nerds

Vim sans Vigor

2011-04-15T22:44:00.004-04:00

A few days ago, I came to realize something: Nobody says Vim on its own.

In my experience, and that of a few people whom I've since consulted, people don't say "vim" without coupling it with "and vigor."

Merriam-Webster defines "vim" as robust energy and enthusiasm, and notes its first known use in 1843.
It comes from Latin, "vis," meaning strength. Their webpage says nothing about using it in combination vigor, instead including it among the synonyms which I found encouraging. Not only is "vim and vigor" just kind of silly, but it's redundant.

I say that we should bring vim back, and give vigor a break. In addition to helping you look like a smartypants, you might be able to educate somebody who thinks it can only be used with "vigor."

Spread the word, with vim!

Atomism took some nerve.

2011-03-29T22:03:00.000-04:00

So, atomism. Yes, this is something that I think about even though it was proven obsolete This is an ancient Greek concept for the makeup of objects and substances and such. It's generally attributed to Democritus, and sometimes also his alleged teacher Leucippus, but I don't recall ever reading anything written by Leucippus, and from what I've retained of my ancient philosophy course there may be some question about his existence.

Because all of this ancient Greek business happened before the sciences were well-defined, all of the math and sciences fell under the "Philosophy" umbrella, which makes sense because the majority of folks working on any kind of science were mainly sitting around thinking about things.

An atom was originally posited to be the smallest possible particle, and therefore indivisible. A series of other philosophers added onto this basic concept with thoughts on the different types of atoms to explain different substances (hint: they were all wrong).

I feel like this kind of speculation is both foolish and commendable, in that it requires a lot of guts/balls/gumption/whatever to hypothesize about the physical world without any means of proof or references other than analogy, and perhaps knowing that somebody else would eventually be able to see what the facts were (what sorts of tiny things there were, how they fit together, etc.)

Of course, you might respond to me with the idea that any philosophical speculation is in exactly the same precarious position. I would however, have to draw the line between theorizing on the physical world versus theorizing on more abstract concepts (e.g. ethics, epistemology, etc).
While there may in fact be a future invention to objectively measure, say, a full catalog of what someone knows, I must say that as it has not yet come about, it requires (required?) a great deal more planning than, say, the tools that allowed for the first inspection of an actual atom.

To clarify, I will run with the epistemological issue. I find myself concerned with the added difficulty of the jump from brain composition to composition of thoughts, which may be a speed bump in solving that particular problem, or may turn out to be insurmountable. These potential barriers lead me to believe that we may be arguing these topics forever, though Democritus probably thought that his concerns were just as murky and unanswerable.

(Note: I'm really going to post more again. I had a pretty strange Winter, but I'm back.)

Novembowrimo

2010-11-24T22:46:00.001-05:00

It's November again... which means it's NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. I've still not finished a novel, since beginning last year.

Currently, I've got three short stories that are all semi-written. I feel kind of like a failure about it, but I console myself with the knowledge that I keep having awesome story ideas. =)

Less Vs. Fewer.

2010-06-11T21:16:00.005-04:00

Welcome to grammar lesson two in the Nerdhappiness series on appropriate use of terms.

For our previous look at the nuances of "i.e." and "e.g.", click here. This clarification may be a bit simpler than that, however it may be more important given the more frequent use of comparisons in speech and writing. (For example, people would say "less" and "fewer" significantly more frequently than they might choose to say "i.e." or "e.g." Most folks that I know would choose "like " or "such as" instead.)

Over time, these two terms are being blurred together more and more. I find that kind of annoying.

My colloquial understanding has always been that "less" is to be used when you're talking about unknown amounts of a substance, while "fewer" is appropriate when you know the exact quantities of whatever you're describing.
For example, "Susan has three fewer apples than Nate," and "there is less water in my bottle than in yours" are both correct.
Imagine those statements with "less" and "fewer" switched. How awkward is that?

Upon some research, I have found that "fewer" refers to number, while "less" refers to scale. Which is than what I had previously thought.

M-W.com provides the following examples:
"Their troubles are fewer than ours," meaning "Their troubles are not so numerous as ours."
"Their troubles are less than ours," meaning " Their troubles are not so great as ours."

I like the revised definition better. It still accounts for my previous notion, but it's more elegant. So, remember. Fewer => Number, and Less=> Scale.

Life update. Blog update to follow.

2010-06-11T19:58:00.003-04:00

I took about a month off from this to come home and settle myself. I've found some work for now and am mostly settled in, so here I am again.

There are a few interesting ideas on a post-it that I need to find and get started on, but here is an update.

Your regularly scheduled ranting will resume shortly.

Lies and lack of concern, or "why does no one care about lesbians?"

2010-05-09T02:12:00.003-04:00

All of the following "research" was done on 12/23/09, when the following was originally written. It is unlikely that there have been significant changes in the posted data since then.

Over a few years of taking psychology classes and many more years of watching TV (particularly shows such as Law and Order: SVU), I have come to realize a simple fact: there are a disproportionately low number of psychological, medical, and other studies done with an eye to lesbians. No one seems interested unless the phrase "hot action" is employed

Nobody seems to care what makes them tick. Perhaps they assume that it's the opposite of whatever 'makes' men gay that 'creates' lesbians. [Yes, I'm running with the Freudian experiences-in-youth create personality line here.] I find that extrapolation completely unsatisfying.

It is definitely a marginalized group.
On Logo, the channel oriented towards the LGBT community, there is practically no lesbian-oriented advertising. The mere fact that I find the phrase "lesbian-oriented advertising" incredibly awkward is telling.

There are plenty of studies that report, for example, that having a distant father makes men more likely to be gay, but no one bothers to look at distant parents of lesbians.

A google scholar search for "Lesbian psychology" returned 52,300 results, while the same search for "Gay psychology" gave 163,000. Over three times as many!

A search for "Lesbian psychology -gay" gave me 12700 google scholar results and "Gay psychology -lesbian" returned 79,200.
A much wider margin, but the fact that all lesbians are gay but not all gays are lesbians skews the data because it is extremely likely that "lesbian" results also contain the word gay.

It is still important to note that the gay without lesbian search gives over 50% more results than the original lesbian search (results that may include the word "gay."

Does being a daddy's girl make you more likely to be into men, or women? I personally have no idea and can argue either way.
1) You might love your dad so much that you want to grow up and marry somebody just like him.
2) You might take after your dad and like the ladies
3) It may have no measurable effect at all, or these effects may cancel out.
I'm actually leaning towards #3 on this one.

Even when studies try to include lesbians, comparing them to gay men and straight men and women, the lesbian data is skewed. There are a few reasons for this.
1) Lesbians are hard to find and often bisexual women are put in the same category, which skew the data. [believable]
2) Lesbians don't exist and are just straight women going through a phase. [mostly bullshit]
3) Lesbians are hard to find, so the sample sizes are very low and samples often contain straight women going through a phase. [somewhat believable/bullshit]

I was once in a class in which I had to conduct a study involving sex and orientation differences. Admittedly, we did not do a very good job. In my group's study, we had people of different sexes and orientations write paragraphs, which were then judged by others on masculinity/femininity and straightness/gayness. I was the only lesbian I could get to provide a writing sample, and there were only two samples by gay men. The other LGBT people were all self-proclaimed bisexual women. I don't remember if we got any straight women, but there were ten straight men. Needless to say, we got some pretty strange data.
This ridiculous anecdote's purpose here is to point out the importance of getting good samples.

Maybe if someone runs a study with a good lesbian sample we can see if people are actually reporting their sexual orientation correctly.

The type of study that I would recommend for this is one in which the participant looks at a screen and is told to fixate on a cross ( + ) in the center. They are told to report on which side of the screen a shape appears by pressing one key for left and another for right. On one side of the screen, a nude image of either a man or a women will be flashed for an amount of time below the perceptual threshold, so that the participant has no idea that it was there. The shape then appears on one side of the screen.

-If the nude is of the participant's preferred sex and the shape appears on the same side of the screen as the nude, then the reaction time will be quicker.
-When the participant's nonpreferred sex is on the same side as the shape, they take longer to report.
-In cases where the nude of one's preferred sex is on the opposite side of the screen from the shape, the report time is longer.
-And if the nude of one's nonpreferred sex is on the opposite side from the shape, the reaction time is fast.

Long story short: one subconsciously looks towards the nude that they like and away from the nude that they don't like.

This kind of study has a lot of drama around it because it is a very accurate way to predict (or confirm) sexuality. Of course, in results that I've seen of this type of study, the data on lesbians is shaky. They responded well to both male and female nudes. (Hence #1 from why lesbian data might be bad.)

At any rate, this peeves me and I would really like for people to fix it. Get on it, psychologists!

Apple forgot this note at the end of the ads.

2010-04-30T23:53:00.006-04:00

*Usefulness Not Included.
Of course I'd be a bad nerd if I didn't have anything to say on the topic of the iPad. It's probably a little late to jump in, but here's what I think.

As a college student who just got a netbook (love it!), I know a little about portability-related goodness. As a general dork who thinks about gadgets a little too often, I know a lot more about what I want in a device. Since this thing is allegedly a new category of device and it's supposed to be ultra-portable, it seems appropriate that I chime in.

The first allegation about the iPad is that's an overgrown iPhone, what with the structure and the unitasking and such. I agree that it is very similar, with one caveat: I would never want a phone this big and expensive-looking. Friends of mine have expressed that they would be interested in an ipad with phone functionality, but when posed with the situation of walking in a bad neighborhood and needing to call a taxi, they get antsy and say they would want to use a normal cell phone or even a pay phone.
So, the device fails as a phone because you will get mugged for it and because it's too big and unwieldy.

The second allegation is that the iPad is a fancy peripheral and not a stand-alone computer. As a netbook owner, I've heard this before, and I actually have a snazzy set of peripherals for it (mouse, keyboard, external hard drive and disk drive, and my tv actually doubles as a monitor), but the only peripheral I use regularly is the mouse. Sometimes I'll hook it up to the monitor when people want to watch youtube videos in a big group, but that's pretty rare.
Since one of the biggest complaints I've heard on the iPad is the lack of a kickstand to make it into a proper monitor, I'm already inclined to agree. On hearing how awkward it is to hold and use the keyboard, or to lay it flat while trying to type and look at the screen at the same time, that's a big ten-four. It's also my understanding that it hurts your neck if you try to place it on your lap and it's too heavy to hold up to eye-level for an extended period of time. As far as I know, it doesn't even have USB ports to connect these things, so you'd need something to convert the standard apple device charging port into usbs, which is ridiculous.
It sounds like a pain in the neck (hah!) to use and that it definitely needs something else to make it tolerable. With that in mind, I know that I wouldn't want one as my main computer, while my netbook serves that purpose just fine.

Flash Support! This is just ridiculous. I recently got a firefox app that would block everything using flash and give me the option to activate them or not, as a trick to save RAM. This exercise, in addition to freeing up my RAM, has drawn to my attention that flash is everywhere. I would be so irritated to not be able to see flash.
This is a no-brainer, and given its prevalence, Flash is not going away very soon: certainly not by the time they come out with a 2nd generation iPad.

Price. People who can afford to have 2+ computerish devices per person and already have smart phones and mp3 players and psps and such will buy this. People who can afford one computer per person or per household will not, because it is not sufficiently useful and is not particularly unique.

My overall assessment is negative, in case you hadn't caught on to that by now. I may make a post at some point about my ideal portable device, but this certainly is not it, for reasons of size, lack of function, and unnecessary flashiness.
In conclusion, bring it on, apple fanboys.

i.e. you're doing it wrong.

2010-04-19T15:30:00.010-04:00

I've recently had revealed to me that I have a new pet peeve. It's simple, but bears clarification. The conflation of the expressions "e.g." and "i.e." has really been getting to me lately.
Standard American English requires that a comma follow both abbreviations when they are used mid-sentence. It is my understanding that there is no such requirement when using British English.

e.g. stands for "exempli gratia," which is Latin for "good example."

Simply, you use it when you're giving an example of something you've already been talking about.

"I really hate artificial chocolate milk, e.g., Yoohoo. That stuff's shelf-stable."

i.e. stands for "id est," Latin for "that is." I prefer to think of it as being short for "in essence."
"i.e." should be used when you want to be more specific or clarify a point.

"Two wheeled, pedal-propelled vehicles, i.e., bicycles, are environmentally friendly."

Note: i.e. does not stand for "in example." The incorrect belief that it does indicate an example may be the source of this whole problem.

However, this does not explain why people would use e.g. when i.e. would be appropriate. Any thoughts on that, other than "they don't care" would be welcome; I'm aware that people generally don't care about language.

There's a browser for that.

2010-04-15T15:42:00.006-04:00

I'm just going to say it: I don't understand apps.
Applications, sure, on a computer, but the fascination with apps is just beyond me.

My main concern is that they're just unnecessary.
Almost all of the app-friendly devices also support web browsers. I could sort of understand apps if a browser is unavailable, but as far as I know, most people have them.

The over-specialization of apps is a real problem. You have dozens, including one for ordering pizza hut, one for mafia wars, one for your Facebook status, one for twitter, and one for Geico. You can access all of those things from a browser, and it will be better from a browser!

Waah, I need to access all my favorite stuff in three seconds or I'll just die!
That's what bookmarks are for.

Better yet, a browser (on a netbook, which I think is the current ideal device) has tabs! Tabs are the ultimate in multitasking. You can have each of the above 'apps' open at once, in the form of websites!

The worst app of all has to be email.
Yes, email is important; there's no way that I'm denying that. However, you don't need to be alerted by your pocket vibrating every time eBay says "don't miss out on your watched items!"

Apps clutter up your desktop. Pages and pages of little icons: how infuriating to page through to find what you want with no organization. As far as I know, you can't make folders on a device like an iPod touch the way that you can on a computer... and since something like the iPad functions much the same as an iPod touch, again, you have a lack of clean desktop space.

So, Apps don't have any special function that a browser & website don't already. They're far too specific, so that you end up with way more of them than you need. I would not be surprised if most apps on a device are used less than 5 times. Then, you end up with a cluttered device and don't get to enjoy your snazzy background.

Conclusion: Apps are stupid and we'd be better off without them.

Image from ismashphone

Babble, Feelings, and Other Minds

2009-12-14T16:58:00.005-05:00

Disclaimer: This post was inspired by listening to Wonderwall by Oasis while sitting in the Rochester International Airport.

I've gotten to thinking on the other minds problem. It's just what it sounds like; how can any individual deduce that other people really have minds and aren't just cleverly-disguised Borg? Oh no, you can't!

The line "I don't believe that anybody feels the way I do about you now" got me thinking about mental states... and the possibility of dualism (that the mind is a separate substance from the body and yet can act upon physical things: you can think that you want to do X, and then you make your body do X).

My question is, is it possible for someone else to feel the way I do about X? EXACTLY the same way?
Unfortunately, to determine this, we would probably have to get very specific about the different attitudes that people can have towards things. It's my intuitive opinion that there are infinitely many. You can keep making them up. eg. the feeling that they should be pushed off of a platform above a working giant blender, vs. the feeling of wanting to do that to the person oneself, vs. the feeling that a specific other person should do it, etc, etc. By fiddling with the details there are just way too many potential attitudes!

Now, just because there are an infinite variety of ways to feel, that does not mean in itself that multiple people cannot have the same one. It just makes it harder to figure out who has which attitudes. Most people don't think about their feelings about all sorts of things, and therefore would not be able to be specific enough about their attitude regarding a particular thing.

There are also personal differences in how people choose to express their attitudes, such that even if two people had the same feeling, they may describe it different ways. If this is the case, then how should we decide to condense these descriptions so that we might have a manageable number of attitudes, or even specific kinds of attitudes.

This is clearly an epistemic problem. We can't know whether people have differing or similar attitudes regarding X because of a problem of variety, and in attempting to solve that problem, we encounter another one, of types.

My conclusion: I don't believe that anybody would describe their feelings the same way I do AND have the same mental states about X if X is something that we are both well informed about.

NaNoWriMo

2009-10-23T19:19:00.002-04:00

I'm going to participate in National Novel Writing Month. I got a great idea in my philosophy class the other week and I'm really excited about it.

I may not be able to make the 50,000 word length, but my idea is awesome. Intrusive dystopian governments, ftw!

Pi win!

2009-08-03T00:49:00.002-04:00

I took first place in the Pi poetry contest I talked about in my last entry. I feel special. =D

The only trouble is, I don't know if I want to keep the prize or sell it. I think I'll hang onto it for the time being and see if I make a decision to use it or not.

Pi.

2009-07-20T10:12:00.003-04:00

I'm entering a contest in my clan on Kingdom of Loathing, a rockin' text and image turn-based RPG.

I have to write something about Pi for the contest, so here's my entry.

Infinite
Pi,
I can't count you
but
I wouldn't want to.
You are too much for me to handle.
I can
still appreciate you,
though mathematics
is not my
strength, I can eat a
slice of pizza pie or pumpkin
when it's time to celebrate being
an irrational number.

Video Nerd Update!

2009-03-12T03:22:00.005-04:00

I totally forgot to mention that I got that TV from Target the day before I left for spring break. It is beeeautiful. Unfortunately, in the process of setting it up and moving it around, the sheathing on one end of the coaxial cable broke off and I couldn't fix it. I'm going to need a new one of those, and I'll also hunt around for an HDMI... to hook up my new XBOX 360 that could possibly already be at the campus post office!

I'm so excited to become a DDR dork.

In other news, the internet in my dorm room has now been off for almost a week. I've given my laptop to the IT people to "inspect" and will hopefully be getting it back in a day or two.
Thank goodness the XBOX came when it did or I'd have shot myself days ago.

That's a lotta waldens.

2009-03-11T23:37:00.003-04:00

I started reading "Walden Two" by B.F. Skinner on the plane on my way home for spring break. I'd been meaning to give it a look for months and ordered it from paperbackswap.com at the end of December.

It's pretty interesting so far, roughly 1/3 of the way through. One of my professors had claimed that it was extremely boring, so either he has a higher threshold for entertainment than I do or some disappointment will come my way as I carry on with the read.

I'm mostly intrigued by Skinner's writing from the perspective of someone who questions his views. It gives me a reason to respect him, which I didn't really before given all of the pigeons pecking buttons and such. He just struck me as, for lack of a better term, full of shit (in addition to being covered with bird guano from his classical conditioning experiments).

Maybe once I get farther into the characters' explanation of their society the BS will be revealed, but as it stands, it sounds like Skinner wants me to disagree with him... which is nice.

Branching out in Nerd.

2009-02-26T23:06:00.005-05:00

Over Winter break two months ago, I spoke to my mother about how I never had video games. She revealed to me that when I was in first grade she asked me if I wanted a video game console and I said "no." This floored me. I always thought that she was just cheap and/or being mean to me. Really, who takes a six year old so seriously?

I recently came into a reasonable sum of money and experienced a lot of stress. Since stress is the result of a change, the change to being able to afford something I want was freaking me out. I knew that I wanted a system, but it isn't like me to spend money like that. I worried about how long I would get to keep it, if I would need to sell it in a year once I'm out of college and not safe anymore. I don't feel justified in buying something nice like that. I always got the next best thing when I was a kid, so having my first choice is mind-blowing.

Another problem is that my TV is not going to be compatible with anything more complicated than cable or a DVD player. I'd need a new TV for it to work, but it would have to be all-or-nothing. I've found a TV at Target that's cheap but they don't have it in stock and may not be getting it back. I've seen XBOX-360s on craigslist and ebay but I'm skeptical of their condition. I don't want to buy something and have it break in a month; then I'll really feel wasteful.

I've gone into Gamestop a few times to get the lay of the land. I always feel uncomfortable in there because I think they know that I didn't grow up with this stuff. I don't want to ask any questions because I feel like a child would know the answers. So I'm left with a series of google searches to tell me about these consoles, games, controllers, guitars, hard drives, memberships, etc.

It's disheartening to get into this so late. It's not cool to start being a video game geek in your 20s (and when did that phrase become applicable?), and I don't know how I'll handle being so behind the times, and watching my miraculous new system be replaced by a newer version in a year or so.

The short of it is: I want a 360. I want to play games and make up for lost time. I, however, don't have anyone to help me figure out how to go about it. I don't have any video gamer friends, I don't have much knowledge, but I want this and I'm going for it.

Super Super Supervenience

2009-02-04T18:16:00.002-05:00

I've been busy and I've been sick. You don't want to hear about that. You might want a new fancy vocabulary word.

Supervenience is a characteristic of sets of properties. One set supervenes on the other if a change to one set cannot be made without a corresponding change being made in the other.

Example: Since is the case that the set of mechanical things are contained by the set of physical things, then it can be stated that the mechanical supervenes on the physical.

As it happens, lots of things supervene on the physical. Some are trickier than others. For my example, I used something pretty simple that nobody would really want to argue. Now, a lot of people would say that any category you could come up with supervenes on the physical.
Saying that life supervenes on the physical would anger some people. Particularly those who think there's some external life-force that's present in trees but not rocks, et cetera.

The term kind of annoys me. I feel like the set that supervenes should be the larger set, the super set! I would have made it so that the set that includes another supervenes on that set, but unfortunately I wasn't there when they coined this term. I'll just have to get used to it.

Hopefully you don't feel the same annoyance at the term and can find some way to use it in your daily life. You can confuse the hell out of somebody, which will be fun.

Do Textbooks Cost Money?

2009-01-06T09:48:00.005-05:00

When I got up this morning, I found myself staring at my bookshelves. I had a look at what was there. The first five Harry Potters in paperback, a very tattered copy of The Glass Menagerie, some old philosophy "textbooks." (I use quotation marks because textbooks tend to be these large heavy hardcover books with chapters and such. The books I often need for philosophy classes are smaller, paperback, and anthology-style.)
After perusing the shelves, particularly the ones that I had failed to organize, I picked out a few books that I don't think I want anymore. They include a mystery novel written completely in French that I was never competent enough to read, a few books of short stories that I've needed for classes and now want to be rid of, and "Blood Music" by Greg Bear, which I have not read. It appears that I (or someone else who gave it to me) bought this book at a library sale, but it's in unusually good condition. I might hold onto it... it looks like something I would be into, which is probably why I have it.

From the back cover:
Vergil Ulam wasthe genius behind "biologic": the restructuring of cells. Cells that can think. When Genetron canceled the project, Vergil smuggled his life's work out of the lab the only way he knew how: He injected himself with them.
At first, the effects of the "intelligent" lymphocytes were small miracles. His eyesight, his overall health, even his sex life, improved.
But now, something strange is happening. Vergil's concocted cells are capable of forming complex organisms and eventually whole societies in his blood and body. He carries a universe within himself. A universe of cells. Intelligent cells. And they think it's time for a change...

I feel like this is worth a closer look. It's science-fiction and has a bit of a sinister edge to it, since the guy's cells will almost definitely turn against him, causing him a lot of angst since it's his creation. And, really, he doesn't seem to have any way to get rid of the civilization. If he tries to kill himself, even, they could probably just survive in there like maggots.
That was sufficiently creepy. Hopefully I actually read this.

As for the other books, they're going up on PaperbackSwap. New members have to post 10 books they're willing to mail to other people before being able to request books. They have most of the textbooks I need for the spring so maybe I can get them that way instead of spending crazy amounts of money. Damn me for taking statistics and two brain classes at once. Too expensive, thanks.
My philosophy books still haven't been posted online, but hopefully there's only one or two of those. History shows that they should be fairly cheap. With any luck, the professor will realize that it's his fault that no one has the books for the first day.

Pandora Radio and Plato.

2008-12-27T01:38:00.003-05:00

I'm addicted to Pandora Internet Radio, partially because iTunes hates my computer and mostly because it is amazing.
I made a new station a few days ago based on all (available) of the songs from The Killers' new album, Day + Age. I've been getting 80%, 20% questionable material back.

The golden musical joy included "You haven't told me anything (that I didn't already know)" by Keane, a band that can be hit or miss, in my opinion. I suggest that you go listen to this particular song.

The nerdy part is that upon hearing the song, in which the title phrase is oft repeated, I was immediately and forcefully reminded of Plato's doctrine of recollection.
Now, I learned about this about 3 months ago in a history of ancient philosophy class that I only took because it is required for my major. I hated the class and fully expected to forget everything. Remembering it when I heard this song struck me quite by surprise.

The basic idea is that Plato proposes that there exist some fundamental truths and universals like "love itself" and "beauty itself." He also wants is to believe that knowledge of these things is innate. That is, that we have it from birth. The trick is that we can't access this information. We recollect (key word!) them at the point that we finally grasp the concepts. We don't actually learn these things because we had them in our heads (or minds, for the substance dualists) all along.
Aristotle and I have a few issues with this view, but they can be left for another time.

And thus, I give you Plato's theme song for the doctrine of recollection:

Relativism... What?

2008-12-26T16:49:00.002-05:00

I've been getting back into MMORPGs lately and was playing one that will not be named yesterday when some guy started ranting about Jesus. He was a non-christian and was upset that there was a christmas-themed special event and that everyone was making such a big deal out of it.
Everybody who was around tried to make him shut up, but I just kept fishing and didn't say anything. As an agnostic with a mild interest in (as well as discomfort with) religion, I wondered where this would go.
The ranting guy went off talking about Judaism next; he said, "at least Jews have a normal god," probably in reference to the strange composition of the trinity (father, son, ghost. You know.)

That's when I saw the need to jump in. I questioned his use of "normal." The word bothers me. I blame it on the psych classes and all of the education I've had on "social norms" and all that. I don't think normalcy exists. I don't know what it would be.

So I looked it up. Dictionary dot com came up first, so I've taken that and split it up by concept in the following way.

conforming to the standard or the common type: There is no standard religion. The most common one is, generally, Christianity. Judaism is number six.
usual: I'm not sure if this helps. It's about as mysterious as "normal."
not abnormal: This is not a definition. It's double-negation.
regular: See "usual."
natural: A religion is as natural as a highway overpass. It's constructed by people.
serving to establish a standard: This is a little tricky. So, the normal is what should be the standard? It is currently unestablished? Then don't talk about it like it's established!

The idea of standardization suggests that conformity is the goal. Standardized tests are for everybody. I'm therefore inclined to reject this definition.

"Normal equals common" is much better since it doesn't say anything about those uncommon types.

It does irk me when people refer to, for example, heterosexuality as normal. I think that this is because I'm assuming that they mean the first definition of normal, regarding standards. I need to make the cognitive switch to interpreting it as the "common" definition and hope that that* is what they meant.

So after I told the guy a much condensed version of the above, someone else chimed in and says something to the effect of "Your religion is yours. It's different for everybody." This sent me off again.

Relativism is an odd idea, but one that may be growing more popular with increasing individualism.
The premise of relativism is that things, usually perceptions (of morals, physical objects, anything really) are related only to the individual. This leads to some trouble.

The first consequence of relativism is that every statement a person makes is only a matter of his or her opinion. The truth values of a person's statements become irrelevant, and logic flies out the window. Saying "X is bad" really means "I think X is bad." And really, who cares what you think? It doesn't say anything about the world**, and since the world is what we're trying to figure out, this is useless.

The second big problem is interpersonal, and stems from the first. If none of your statements pertain at all to the world, you can't talk to anybody about the world. You're talking about different things because the thing, your idea, is related only to what's in your head. Even if by chance you're talking about the same thing as someone else, simply stating opinions does not allow for any learning to take place, except for knowing statements like "so-and-so (dis)likes X." Again, what good is that?

Issue number three regards improvement. This pertains specifically to moral relativism, but also ties in with learning. There is no way to measure moral change or differences (over time, cross-cultural, whatever) if there is nothing objective to be said about morality. A closely related issue is punishment. How can anyone be held responsible for what they do if they truly think that it was the right thing to do? Is it then right to punish someone who thinks differently than you do, or differently than the majority does, if they really thought they were doing the right action?

These are the issues with relativism that I could come up with right now. There's more lurking around in my head. I may be back to this topic soon. I can't think anymore.

* "that that" always bothers me (and the MSWord grammar check) but I'm not getting rid of it.
**For my purposes, the world consists of anything external to the self.

Matrices and Pop Philosophy

2008-12-26T06:16:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite nerdy podcasts that I've come upon is "Pop Philosophy" by Open Court, which I recommend you search for on iTunes. I haven't listened to many episodes, but I do like what I have heard.

An especially good episode was titled, 'Why Make a Matrix? And Why You Might Be in One." The argument therein, which they call the Simulation Argument, basically tries to prove that there are possibilities regarding matrices. They are as follows:

1. Most civilizations go extinct before becoming technologically mature
We have no reason to think we're special. We'd probably go extinct by then too.

2. No technologically mature civilization would want to build matrices.
A matrix could be used for 1) recreation/ virtual reality vacations or 2) counterfactual historical study.
If a society is technologically mature, it may have 1) more advanced ethics than us (prohibiting matrices), or 2) not need matrices for recreation or informational purposes due to the super-high level of advancement.

3. We're almost certainly in a matrix.
In a world in which matrices are created, more people live in matrices than in the original creator-world. So, statistically, we're more likely to be in a digital world than in a physical one, providing that some civilization became technologically mature and had an architect build at least one matrix.

The argument given doesn't say which of these three options is the case, but only that one of them must be the case. We need to know more about technological maturity and the motivation of potential architects for that.

Something that I liked about this particular podcast was that they discussed the problems with the movies, such as Neo's ability to control things with his mind after supposedly leaving the matrix and how it then appeared that they were merely in another level of the matrix. Then there is the problem of "glitches in the matrix" and deja vu when something is changed. It is pointed out in this podcast that such things would not occur. The people in the matrix would skip backwards as well as the things around them and thus not remember the first incident of seeing something. They would not experience the deja vu.
Also, it would be unnecessary to simulate every little feature of an object, and things that no one perceived would be extremely compressed, making it such that a tree falling when no one's there to hear it would not need to make a sound.

I enjoyed this; just thought I'd share.

Topics

2008-12-24T03:09:00.000-05:00

Here is a list of things that I would like to examine further in my free time.

Analyze and disprove common expressions, such as 'knowledge is power" and "silence is golden"

Discuss the phrase "I have no idea about..." with regards to the paradox of inquiry.

Collect a number of examples of "good" acts, analyze the similarities, and come up with some sort of working definition of goodness. Nobody's ever been good enough before, but why should that stop me?

Deconstruct the different free will positions and attempt a new, satisfying, theory. Alternatively, argue that it is not irrational to use blame/praise language and punishment/rewards without attaching responsibility.

Get the word out about the misuse of the term "insane."

I'll update this post as I get more ideas and I'll likely discuss most of them here (though that likely won't happen much during the school year).
Feel free to give suggestions.