About open borders and allowing immigration.

First, living "on top of each other" is great.  The condo provides all sorts of things and services people otherwise have to get themselves, manage themselves, and drive somewhere to obtain.   It is also ecologically much better.  That said, overcrowding applied to the US is a silly notion -- the States is a big underpopulated country with plenty of room for sprawling suburbs if that is what you really want.

Allowing free immigration is great for foreign relations.  A local population from a given country tends to influence the country back home to be friendly, and the fact that the country allows its nationals in avoids feelings of the receiving country being selfish, racist, what have you.  As things are now a lot of the hate directed toward the States is because of its restrictive immigration -- the US really is seen as racist and selfish and only interested in exploiting the rest of the world by large numbers of people, for just this reason.

There is a well-known tendency for those who immigrate to be more ambitions, more energetic and more intelligent than those who stay home.  If you look at immigrant populations, such as Asians or Jews or Eastern Europeans, within a generation or so they begin to be at the top of the achievement ladder, so long as they are not held down too much by discrimination (which is what holds down African and Mexican Americans).  In other words, with open immigration a country tends to get the "cream of the crop."

-- A side note here about Latin America -- the US cannot afford to have such a large country as Mexico poor and feeling exploited -- allowing them more freely into the States is almost a necessity, as otherwise you have hate brewing in Mexico and a large illegal population in the States who feel no loyalty and also feel exploited.

New arrivals, especially if uneducated, not speaking English, poor, and so on, are a temporary burden on educational and health care systems (both of which in the States are in huge need  of massive overhaul anyway) and in some limited cases add to crime.  This is short term until they become acculturated, and the investment is worth it.

Businesses in a country with unrestricted immigration can freely recruit what they need anywhere without the need to ship the jobs overseas -- not that they get cheap labor as a competitive labor market quickly nips anything like that -- but that they can find the best skill sets and best track records anywhere without a lot of bureaucracy and difficulty.  This helps the economy.

A growing population naturally brings about a growing economy, and the nation stays strong, with a ready pool of people for the military and the economy.  It also stays younger, with a large pool of working people to support the elderly (with present demographic trends services like Social Security are going to have to be steadily limited more and more so as not to be such a huge drain on the economy).  The birth rate in the States, as with most developed countries, is just not enough to sustain the present population, let alone grow the nation.

Without more people the US will soon become like Britain -- important but not dominant.

As Islam is today, I can see where allowing massive numbers of Muslims in would cause fear -- even though the vast majority would acculturate over a couple generations, such a community would tend to produce a certain number of terrorists and other evils, in spite of their parents.  I can't see any good way to manage that, and admit it.

I can also see some restrictions being reasonable -- a sort of point system without a waiting period -- for education and English and family relations and freedom from criminal record, but not numeric limits or quotas.  (Quotas are inherently racist even if not intended as white countries don't fill their quotas and brown and black countries develop long waiting periods).

One final thing -- what other countries do is beside the point -- that one country is stupid doesn't mean the States has to be stupid too.

One of the mistakes in thinking that I see both theists and some non-theists making is the assumption time has always existed, but, logically, that can't be so, since one cannot get from infinitely far away either in distance or time to here in any trip.  Time logically had a beginning.  (See note below).

This is difficult, I know, and caused me a lot of time meditating to come to understand it.  Time itself had a beginning, and not in some "super-time."  To say "before" the beginning of time is a meaningless statement -- there was no before.  Time began and things happen after that, but not "before."  One cannot even meaningfully say there was "nothing" before -- there was no before.  It also follows that the beginning of time was uncaused, since there could be nothing prior to time to cause it.

The oft-repeated mantra that "something cannot come from nothing," when I hear it, merely tells me the speaker lacks intelligence and imagination and cannot think outside a rather juvenile and naive philosophical box, usually motivated by a desire to hold onto childhood beliefs (an interesting psychological issue in itself).  I usually avoid exchange with such people.  Religious belief seems to stifle thinking with an arrogant confidence.

Note: Sometimes people say if time has been traveling forever then in this infinite time it could have gotten from infinitely far away to here.  That has a certain logic, but think about it -- can something travel "forever?"  No matter how old you might become, assuming you live forever -- a million, a billion, whatever years -- your age will always be finite.  "Forever" or "infinite" are not numbers, and the constant fallacy of thinking of them as numbers creates this confusion.

I admit that a singularity -- an object of infinite density and zero size -- is not comprehensible in terms of human experience.  It therefore naturally gets opposition.

I don't really know what to think; my inclination is to suspect that there must be unknown forces that stop the collapse before that happens, but we have to accept that because we cannot imagine something is not reason to say it cannot be.  More likely is a failure of our imagination.

My impression is that most Muslims are what any reasonable non-Muslim would call radical Islamists, and while they may 'tut' at the beheadings and so on as counterproductive, they are ambiguous about it, and don't condemn it.  In other ways almost all Muslims are "fundamentalist" (in the sense that they do believe and don't rationalize or claim metaphor) whereas most Christians are not.

In my mind this makes Islam dangerous, and, while individual Muslims may be good neighbors and all that, the community will constantly produce very dangerous young men.  It's inherent in the meme.

Another thing is that while Muslims practice charity and love, it is reserved for only other Muslims, and generally even only for the same sect.  Some Christians are that way too.  It always gets me when religions broadcast their charities and don't mention this.

There are many ways life on earth could have begun, but we can't really say because the traces have pretty much been wiped out by subsequent biological and geological events.

It's not hard to envision a reducing atmosphere (no free oxygen around to destroy complex chemicals) with several energy sources and an ocean.  We know that such an environment would, within weeks, produce a soup of amino acids and similar chemicals.  Then give it a few million to a few hundred million years.  All you need is one molecule that makes a copy of itself from this soup -- not even an exact copy, just one that perpetuates, and then natural selection happens automatically to build the complex machinery people wonder at now.

Life was of a single-celled nature after that for a couple billion years, no doubt refining the processes, before striking out into organisms we recognize as getting advanced.

"Moderate" Muslims seem to be the minority and get assassinated.

Advertising is interfering seriously with how a competitive economy should work.  Brand names, trade marks, and the efforts thereby people who sell ordinary stuff try to make you think it is not ordinary, so they can charge more.  Also propaganda tactics in advertising -- especially testimonials and bandwagon tactics and glittering generalities and loaded words.  And the stupid music and the appeals to patriotism or the use of cute babies or animals -- I saw one where babies were selling a lubricating oil.


All this "marketing" is really corrupt lying (misrepresentation and deceit are lies).  It is amazing modern societies tolerate it.  This corruption is much more damaging to society than slipping the customs inspector a fiver.

Mammals probably did not evolve from reptiles.  Instead they both evolved from an earlier group.  Birds did evolve from a specific group of dinosaurs and in many ways are still dinosaurs.

The reptiles are a convenient grouping, but they really are several very different and ancient groups -- turtles, crocodilians,  dinosaurs, snakes and lizards (the last two in the same group).

The problem I think some creationists who genuinely have problems with evolution (rather than just stubbornly insisting on their childhood teaching) is that they don't comprehend the time periods involved -- millions and hundreds of millions of years -- in such time periods a lot of things happen.  It is called "deep time."

Vietnamese Buddhism has demons in it, inherited from local beliefs and from Chinese Taoism.  I think though the translation of "demon," like the translation of a lot of this sort of word, misleads.

Taoist demons, because they are so frightening in appearance, are often considered helpful in scaring away other demons and the like.  They are also generally believed to be the spirits (ghosts) of dead people who for some reason (mainly bad karma) reincarnate as demons.  There are a gazillion types you can come back as, depending on what you did wrong during your life.

Now there is an example of a translation that misleads -- dragon -- not at all the beastie of the West.

The best way to protect yourself from demons is with loud noises, such as drums and fireworks.  Statues of certain Chinese worthies and of course lion or dragon demons (especially) in your home are also protective, as long as you do the proper rituals.

The idea of demon possession seems to be a Western idea -- insane people are considered to have a medical problem.

Much of this, of course, is seen as superstition by most of us in Vietnam -- but we do like the Taoist rituals with the dragons and fireworks.

Irritated that someone used the last of the toilet paper and said nothing about it?  Get a little spray device.  It takes a little (very little) practice to use and eliminates any need for toilet paper and running out and the destruction of the trees.  It also leaves you cleaner, is much easier to use if you are overweight or handicapped, and no more skid marks -- ever -- and only takes a few seconds, and is easier on the plumbing.

I feel so virtuous getting up just before dawn, and I love the morning air and the gradual brightening of the sky and the birds and the quiet -- except of course for the birds.

(The sky getting brighter is so optimistic -- the world telling me things will get better.)

Close

I will admit I worry about genetic manipulation technology.  The temptation to "improve" and give the offspring every opportunity, according to the prejudices of the parents, will be huge.  First we will work at eliminating genes that bring about diseases, without considering that nature may have struck a balance here so that removing the gene will have other consequences.  Then we will consider things like height and skin color and of course sexual orientation.  First the blind and deaf communities will disappear, then the gay community.

If most Asians and others too had there way all babies would be boys.  They had better not remove gay orientation is that is the world we are going to create.

What about a world inhabited entirely by geniuses?  I think it might be a nerdy place.

Sometimes outmoded industries with dinosaur management in the habit of caving to unions all the time, or who have no choice and the union is unreasonable and selfish, need to be allowed to go.  A nation is better off buying from foreigners if the foreigners can produce it cheaper -- that way the nation doesn't waste money on subsidies or barriers -- and can concentrate on what it does best.  The economic process is called "creative destruction" and means that it is foolish to try to hold onto old industries when their time has come.

People are starving today because of bad governance and cultural ignorance and things like that.  When a country is well governed and the population is literate and the agricultural industry is not run by corrupt officials and people don't insist on so much meat, there is no problem providing enough food.  I constantly cite Vietnam as an example, but Japan and China and India and Indonesia and of course all of Europe and North America are examples.

Considering what Vietnam exports, it could easily feed three times its present population, and, believe me, the population here is dense.

As far as water, it is true that no one dare touch the water in Vietnam, either in the rivers or from the tap -- but bottled water is abundant and cheap.  The problem in Vietnam with tap water is a prejudice against chlorine inherited from the French -- and I will admit when I'm in the States I let my water sit for an hour or so before drinking it so the chlorine can evaporate out (in my case, though, it's taste, not a conspiracy theory).

It is obvious there has to be some sort of limit on the earth's carrying capacity, and I would agree that from an environmental point of view a steady population can be of help, but the fears are way overdone.  Besides, the way to control population, as we have seen over and over around the world, is to raise living standards.  When living standards reach the level of even less than half that of Vietnam, population growth takes a plunge.  Rigid birth laws are intrusive, autocratic, even fascist.

I want to comment too on the idea of our living in space.  I fully expect that to happen -- not so much colonizing the galaxy (although that could happen too) but building self-sustaining space cities, maybe tethered to the earth or maybe out there on their own.  This stuff, however, is centuries away.

Tomatoes -- not the ones the American markets sell -- they may as well be cardboard (in the States you have to go to a farmer's market or grow your own or know someone who does), is one of life's little but wonderful pleasures.  In Vietnam you also have to avoid the markets and the imported tomatoes and go to one of the ubiquitous outdoor markets.  Since the market tomatoes are cheaper, easier to buy (there is a market one can walk to no matter where you are in the city) and much better tasting, for the life of me I don't see why anyone would want to buy an imported tomato.

I like to steam them a little to release the lycopene.

What about aliens -- good or bad?

Proof of aliens with either no religion or religions different from ours would ultimately spell the end of our religions, except maybe those without deities and a philosophy.  Whether that would do good or harm is a different question, as so many are so dependent on their religious beliefs for their sense of purpose and future.

I'm not terribly concerned about an alien invasion, unless it turns out physics as we now know it is all wrong, which doesn't seem to be likely.  However, I wouldn't want to go off half-cocked building a contraption they send us instructions on how to build, as was done in some movies.

If we ever do meet face to face, the odds are significantly in favor of a peaceful, productive, and helpful relationship.

There is no shame in accepting help, if you need it, from any quarter, including help from the state.  The shame is either when pride prevents accepting help or when one could perfectly well take care of oneself.

Raise people's standard of living and you don't need vicious policy to lower birth rates.  Vietnam's has been radically decreased as the people become more prosperous.  The government has done nothing (of course contraception and abortion are available here, as part of being a secular state, but people who need them pay for them, not the government).

In particular, giving women the ability to decide when and how many children to have, and squashing those men who see it in egoist terms, brings down birth rates remarkably.  Women have more sense about these things and, of course, are the ones who have to go through the pregnancy.

What can happen, though, if population growth slows too fast is that you get an aged population and not enough young people to support them properly.  This is going to happen in China because of its foolishness here, and probably much of Europe and of course is happening in Japan -- that is what is behind its lack of economic growth now.

Power naturally gravitates upward in any federal system.  They can pass laws prohibiting local governments from doing certain things, can hold out carrots of money for compliance, have a much better tax base, control the strings of publicity much better, and so on.  Over time local government institutions become empty shells.

Some time go look at a Federal court house and compare it to a local court house.

In a richer society than exists today, one where most things are automated, everyone will be provided the basics of housing and food and health and education and entertainment and even some luxuries, but must do something that earns extra money if one wants more.

If Scotland had separated itself when nearly half the population was against, it would not have been good for Scotland.  Now the English have to deal with a Scotland where nearly half the population wants to separate.

Satan

It's a bit hard, and I have to bite my lower lip, to avoid ridiculing the Satan idea.  He has, however, over the centuries, gotten a lot more sophisticated -- he no longer has horns and cloven hooves, for example, and in Victorian literature tends to carefully pick out his targets as people of intelligence and talent who appear to be particularly desirable souls, much as we pick out a ripe red cherry.

As a literary device, then, he is great, especially if you want to deal with aspects of human existence and desire and ambition and pride.

Now, though, really -- get real.  Such a figure would long ago have given up, since he knows he is otherwise doomed.  Be rational folks -- and this bit about Satan wanting to convince the world he doesn't exist is just a remarkably stupid rationalization -- conflicting with his supposed pride.  Why should he care to bring others down to perdition?  What would it be to him since he's doomed anyway?  You have to break through the childhood indoctrination and think about things a little.

As I understand it, Satan entered Jewish thinking during the Persian exile under influence of Zoroastrianism, with its two immortal deities in eternal conflict -- one good and the other its opposite (I don't say "evil" because to it the good is evil).

They had already (maybe, depending on when the narrative surrounding the Job poetry was written -- if this was written during or after the exile then they didn't already have even this) had a figure appointed by God to make sycophants honest by pointing out problems with what they say.  In other words he was an angel in good standing doing a job God assigned him.

The identification of the Zoroastrian deity with this Shatan or something was not hard, and it fit with the Jewish monotheist thinking (you can't have a co-eternal deity and be a monotheist even if you follow only one of them).

It was then much, much later that Christians identified Satan with the serpent in Genesis.  As far as the Genesis account has it you only have a talking snake.

The horns and all that also came later, in identification with the Greek god Pan (as described above).

The thing to notice is in the OT you don't see evil acts or idolatry or anything like that blamed on anyone except the perpetrators, not on a devil and his existence is not mentioned (although God himself blames himself a couple times) .

What I really don't get is why doesn't Satan just give it up and beg for mercy?  Would God deny it?  Satan's pride is described in Milton's Paradise Lost, and I remember when I read that (way back) thinking, "This is not real, not believable."

• Top
• Quote
• MultiQuote
• Edit
• Report

"Reality tunnel," -- I just was introduced to that word as a modern psychological insight.  It is I think similar to a Buddhist concept dating from way back as to why it is so hard to change people's religion and conscience and even things like thinking the earth is flat and up and down are absolutes.  We are wired to "believe" things we pick up as a child.

I think though that there are complications.  Hard core "beliefs" can be modified with meditation into less rigid opinions, which then become subject to analysis.  (Meditation can also, unfortunately, be used to harden opinions into beliefs).  Also there is a teen period of rebelliousness (so that the individual can establish an independent identity), when much of this can come into question, leading to no end of angst and turmoil, until in most cases the individual returns to the fold, with much joy and peace (all hormones in there doing what they are programmed to do).

The thing about such beliefs is that most people don't even notice they have them.  They sit on them as though they were furniture -- something to be noticed only if attention is drawn to them by someone else, and then the reaction is typically not of the mind but of the instincts, with denial and anger and rationalization and so on.

There are some who break some of these beliefs.  Interestingly when the person does so sometimes the reaction is hate of the original belief and of the organization that imposed it.

Some always are cynical about love of country to the extent of willingness to die for it and say things like, "What has my country done for me."

I really don't know about such people.  The word "selfish" comes to mind, but I think it goes beyond that to a sort of effort to be "sophisticated" and not have emotions -- good emotions -- about one's motherland.

As a rational issue, a country cannot persist without patriots, and that is the way our world now is organized.  It may be that someday the nation-state will disappear, but there will always be one's city, one's culture, one's neighborhood and eventually one's family.

I think the person who scoffs patriotism is the sort who throws trash out onto the road with no compunction so long as no one is watching.  Pride in one's country is just an extension of pride in oneself.

Nationalism, though, is a political disease.  We have seen a lot of that in Scotland (although I am sure many of the yes votes were patriotic and not nationalistic, the campaign was mainly nationalistic, which is what soured me on it).

I'm glad for Scotland that it decided to stay in the Union, although the world would have not changed all that much if things had gone the other way.

Momentous things of this sort should be subject to super-majority whenever one is to change the status quo.

It seems that there was an age differential in the vote -- the young tending to vote yes and the old, no.  This is not surprising -- as you get older you become more cautious -- I think because you have had more experience in life and realize better the perils of change.  At any rate I suspect the radical young people who think they just have to wait until the present older generations die off will find that as they age they develop a different view. 

Patriotism as I understand the word is a high virtue, combining love of one's homeland and willingness to make sacrifices for it.  Don't confuse this with nationalism, the view that one's culture and nation are superior to others, nor with jingoism, the hatred of other nations.

As usual, dictionaries lose these fine distinctions in the process of how the words are sometimes used, which has to include uses by sloppy people.

I can't say there are objective morals in the universe, but I think the Western type of materialism is wrong.  I just don't know what to replace it with -- my inclination is some sort of Tao -- and that would imply objective morals.  So would a universal karmic mechanism as envisioned in India.  I note that neither the Chinese nor the Indian view involve deities -- any deities are as subject to it as we are.

In any case the thing is one can deduce maxims or rules from fundamental principles such as compassion and love.  Do not harm, be of help -- these then lead to the Golden Rule or Kant's categorical imperative (a tighter statement of the same idea) -- which in turn lead to do not kill, steal, lie, enslave, and so on.  It is rational progression.  That religions and cultures don't always follow this progression and teach children incorrect things -- which gets buried in their emotional responses or consciences, is simply a reflection that humanity and its cultures are not always rational.

What society or tradition or religion or our own conscience says is right and wrong are good but not completely accurate guides.  In the end we have to think about it, not letting our emotions and biases get in the way, and deduce right and wrong from more fundamental principles.  One of these is that every person is a "person" with innate rights to not be harmed and to pursue their life so long as they don't infringe on the same rights of others.

I suppose one could take this as a pragmatic necessity for modern living, if there is to be peace in the world.  I tend instead to take it as derived from even more fundamental principles, those of "love" in Western terms and wise compassion in Buddhism.

Militarization of police

Police all over the world tend to have issues with authority and respect.  It's a result of self-selection (those with such issues tend to want to be police) and experience dealing with low-lifes.  That they need civilian control and civilian review boards is obvious, but how to be sure those boards don't have their own agenda is hard, and there is always pressure from groups like police unions to extract such a board's teeth.  (To me the vary idea of a police union is outrageous and an abomination).

I think certain selected police squads should be given military equipment and training in using it -- at least in large cities -- since there are situations where they need it and one does not want to have to call in the army.  However their deployment should be from outside the force itself in civilian hands.

It looks like Putin is going to move Russia toward being economically isolated, "self reliant".

Of all the countries in the world Russia would probably be the best able to pull this off, but it would be bad for Russia and its people would be stuck.

I see where Putin is coming from though -- deny it or not (and all countries subject to embargo deny that there is any effect), the embargo must be biting, and he wants to be free of it.

Still, when a country adopts such a policy, the long-term effect is to gradually, and sometimes not so gradually, weaken the country's economy relative to the rest of the world.  The reason isn't hard to see -- if you can buy something cheaper elsewhere in the world, a country is better off doing so and using the money saved in other ways.

Of course almost everyone puts up trade barriers, and as such they harm themselves, but it is usually in response to special interest agitation.  Sometimes the excuse is to allow domestic industries time to get on their feet, sometimes the excuse is to protect local jobs, sometimes the excuse is to protect the local economy from better technology elsewhere.  Very often the excuse is fairness -- the other country is restricting the country's ability to sell things there.

All these excuses are really special (selfish) interest and in the end do harm.  Of course successes can be pointed to -- a given enterprise was rescued (from a destruction generally caused by bad management and unions that think they can forever get their members better wages than the value they add otherwise permits).  My thought there is that this weak firm will go on being a drain on the country's resources.

Nations are better off letting industries that can't compete internationally go, and concentrating on their unique special advantages.

I see where North Korea has the "most advantageous human rights system."  Advantageous to whom?

The Golden Rule needs qualification before it really works.  If I were on a criminal jury the Golden Rule says I should vote in all cases to acquit because if I were in the defendant's shoes I would want me to vote that way.

How does a company like Gilead get away with charging Americans all told over $100,000 for its hepatitis C treatment and through an agreement with a generic drug company (I presume a limited license agreement) make it possible for Vietnamese to get the same thing for around $6,000?

That the States permits this kind of obvious gouging indicates there is something seriously wrong with its patent and copyright monopoly approach.  A tenth the profit they are taking would still be enough to motivate the risk taking and study expenses.

Christian investment in Bible belief

It occurs to me that one reason some Christians hold on so irrationally to their belief is because they have invested a lot of time in Bible study and they are proud of what they know and they don't want to admit it is useless and they wasted a lot of time.

It's like a woman in an office I once worked in who fiercely resisted giving up her comptometer (an archaic machine with a huge learning curve that used up a third of her desk and was noisy and slow) in favor of one of the early Texas Instruments portable calculators.  She had spent a lot of time learning to use it and was proud of her skill and had thought it would give her job security.

More about America's high cost low quality health care

Insurance companies benefit from higher and higher prices for health care since that enables them to raise rates and profits generally follow as a portion of income.  This however is offset by the fact that they have to compete, so that if another insurance company does its underwriting job or its claim handling job at less cost they have a competitive advantage.  Hence the insurance companies tend to like Obamacare since it almost eliminates meaningful competition.  Rare there is a businessman who does not do everything he can to eliminate competition, which is why governments have to constantly force them to not do it.

I don't think, however, that we can blame anyone's greed for the American situation.  People are greedy everywhere.  No it's something about the system or about the institutions unique to America that is behind the problems, I think mainly the tort legal system, the guns, the fact that employers have traditionally provided insurance, creating a real problem for small businesses and the self employed, and of course the outrageous tax system (other countries pay more as a percent of GNP but without nearly the damage to the economy).  The partisanship is another factor, as well as a corrupt system of holding elections (political contributions and negative campaigns and television ads that are pure propaganda) as well as the gerrymandering and the ridiculous arrangement where every state has the same number of Senators.

I am not being critical or scornful, I am trying to be helpful.  When I'm in the States all I hear is that it is the best of the best, with the best systems and best government.  That this is patently not true is something Americans have to admit -- plus get rid of two thirds of the lawyers.

I fear our minds are isolated ships in the fog going past each other with only horns to let us know others are there.  We communicate but only superficially using words and gestures and expressions.  We are alone and cannot share our experience of life, and when we think we do it is an illusion.

We don't know what is real and what isn't.  In fact our whole experience of the world is an illusion created by our brain to enable us to understand an outside world that would bewilder us.  Colors and odors and sounds are created by the brain, to inform us about light waives hitting our eyes and chemicals in the air and sound waves hitting our ears.

People should not completely trust their senses -- no matter how sane we think we are -- they censor what we get, they alter it and often just outright lie to us.

American medical costs

I found this interesting, and while it doesn't address Obamacare directly it has to have been written with thoughts about it in the background.

"The Commonwealth Fund recently published a report on how the U.S. health care system compares with the industrialized nations of Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland. Despite having the most expensive health care system, the United States ranked last in measures of quality, efficiency, access to care, equity and healthy lives. The U.S. ranks last on all three indicators of healthy lives — mortality amenable to medical care, infant mortality, and healthy life expectancy at age 60. The data from 2011 also shows that the U.S. spent $8,508 per person on health care, compared with $3,406 in the United Kingdom, which ranked first overall."

http://www.news-lead...nsive/15542343/

Why?  Why is the same true of schools, the military, the postal services, and so on and on and on.  Americans need to get a grip and recognize there is something at root seriously wrong here, and not go off dealing with the symptom (large numbers of people who can't afford insurance) and deal with the real problem.

I think both the political system and the legal system need drastic reworking, or things will continue to get worse.

Vietnam market economy

You don't understand (at least really understand in your gut) what is wrong with socialism until you've been there.  The regime can be benign, as Vietnam's was after the first couple years, or like Castro's Cuba is, and things still slowly deteriorate.  The reason is pretty obvious -- when you fine people for doing business outside the official businesses, there is no entrepreneurship.   Everyone just concentrates on working the system rather than actually taking risks and working hard.  The economy loses the benefit of the incentives to get rich and to see to it one's offspring are better off than you are.

Of course capitalism suffers from greed and exploitation and periodic panics (not that socialist societies don't have that too in different ways) and so the horses have to have reigns and blinders and so on.

When "new thinking" came to Vietnam about twenty years ago (following what had happened in China), there was a sudden boost in agricultural production and everyone (typical Asian mind set) went into business for themselves.  All that the government did then was stop prohibiting small family and neighborhood enterprises -- the big things stayed government owned.  Since then even this has relaxed, especially to draw foreign investment, and a few large enterprises have been spun off to private hand and there is now a Saigon stock exchange.  (Foreigners have no business being in it except maybe through a fund, and even then I would say be very wary).

The present government does seem to be on a course of emulating places like Sweden rather than Cuba (an obvious failure -- in his honest moments when he sheds his massive ego, even Fidel admits this).  The problem of course is what to do with the Party and its favored position -- as of course the ranks of the Party don't want to give this up, and having a selected group of vetted people run things avoids partisanship and elective corruption and stupid voters and even stupider politicians.

I worked with AI back in the '80s, and back then several start-ups were peddling "Inference engines" for $500 or so a copy -- software that you could feed "rules" and it would give you answers.  They didn't really work -- demonstrations looked great so long as the domain was very limited and artificial -- and they soon disappeared.

We still have materialist-type neurologists insisting computers are capable of great feats of logic, and that is true, and they are wonderful for mass data storage and sorting and fact calculation and modeling, but they don't "experience" the world the way they do and everything is of a reflexive nature, without real sentience.  The problem is we just don't know how the human brain (and many animal brains) produces sentience, and until we do we will not be able to do it in machines.

Of course the efforts should still be carried out.  Maybe they will succeed and thereby we will better understand our brains, but I'm not optimistic and think most of it is hype to get funding or tenure.

I like the idea of "scripture" -- writings we can depend on to give us hope and counsel and so on, but the Old Testament just doesn't qualify.  (A couple of books in it, like Ecclesiastes, might).  Most of the OT is just the writings of nationalistic Jews trying to set themselves above the rest of mankind.  All cultures like to try to do this some way.

What we need is some sort of world council to set a better canon -- one less narrow and with better moral standards.

Sigh.  Of course this will only lead to ten times as much assistance to the Peshmerga forces, and to all their other enemies, if not a public outcry for direct British involvement.  How stupid they are.

Phycalist materialism

I think the widely imagined scientific materialism is not so.  Most scientists avoid the issues involved, and are rather unsettled about it.  Materialism of course (there is nothing but matter and the void) went out the window at the beginning of the twentieth century when physics taught us that matter is nothing but a kind of compressed energy.  It tended then to be replaced by "physicalism," but that is much harder to define -- there is nothing but energy and the void just doesn't make it, since we also now know that there is no void, at least in our cosmos.

We use to have a sense of what "matter" is.  This has been destroyed and there is no good way to define "energy."  It has properties and can usually be measured, but it can also be "potential."  It is more a case of balancing the books than have a real "thing."

A problem for the physicalist is what to do about consciousness and sentience and all that.  Of course it is brain activity, and brains are physical, but that is about all we can say, and we suspect there are things going on in our heads of which the neurologist will never know.  Things we feel and experience seem inescapably outside science.

Still, that is not a license to go off into the wilderness believing that we have mental feeds from our toaster.  All we have the right to say without evidence is that we don't know.

Vietnam now, it seems, is officially a market economy with socialist orientation.

I wonder what "socialist orient market economy" means.

I suspect it means the party plans to privatize a lot more businesses, but out of respect for the past, it will still use the word "socialist" somewhere -- just oriented, you understand, in a market economy.  For those not attuned to these subtleties, "market" means "capitalist," but that word is rarely used in polite Vietnamese society.

Bombing Japan

The Japanese bombings are difficult to be rational about, or even to think about.  I know my parents and grand parents told me that at the time they were delighted, considering the difficulties and hardships brought about by the war, but they later had misgivings and ended up thinking some other way to end the war would have been better and that probably Japan would have surrendered anyway once Russia entered the war, but we will never know.

Morality instinct

I think evolution provided us with instincts to stick with the ideas and behaviors we are taught as children (in some cases the childhood indoctrination), so that when we go against them we feel bad things (guilt, fear) and when we follow them we feel much better, relaxed and even full of joy.  The evolutionary benefit of this should be easy to figure out.

Our "conscience" is one of those things we are taught -- the mores and rules of our culture.  Hence people can end up doing perfectly awful things but feel nothing if they were not taught against it in childhood.  For the most part, however, because of a sort of natural selection among cultures, what the culture teaches is fairly moral and usually a reasonably good guide.

Our beliefs are another thing -- which can have the serious downside that we believe things stubbornly rather than changing them into opinions subject to critical scrutiny.  These beliefs can be compared to furniture we sit on without noticing they are there -- we don't see them as subject to question and can react emotionally when others do, sometimes in some cultures with deadly effect.  I have found meditation about such things useful.

Whether or not "good" and "evil" exist as objective realities in themselves is a philosophical question.  I feel that we should analyze our beliefs about good behavior rationally, rather than the emotions our instinct produces, but this is hard -- not just to recognize the effect the instinct is having on us (such as creating harmful revulsions) but also to force ourselves to avoid intuitive judgments.  Various philosophical schools have tried to reduce the rational process down to deduction from fundamental principles, with a good deal of success, although in some cases with difficulties in highly artificial theoretical scenarios.  Study of this ethical history is a good idea if one wants to discern what is really good and bad rather than what our culture and instincts tell us.

We know that some people seem to be born without the instincts described above, and feel no emotions when they do wrong -- the tendency is seen to run in families (hence is genetic) and is usually called sociopathy.  I think this phenomenon serves to provide extremely strong evidence of the correctness of my opinion as described above.

Morality without religion

I think religion makes people more inclined to follow the precepts of that religion's teaching.  Whether this is more moral or not depends on the details of that teaching.  A religion can bring about, instead, extremely immoral behavior.

The person without religion has to make up their own minds and assume personal responsibility for what they do.

Here is a view of the founders of the US -- I think maybe more objective than what one usually gets.  Every country seems to want to deify its founders.  The American Founding Fathers were, except for Franklin, white male aristocratic wealthy landowners (Franklin was probably America's first millionaire and was a self-made entrepreneur).  They were fairly spread over the political spectrum, from the extreme right (Hamilton) to the center right (Washington and Adams) to the extreme left (Paine and, slightly less extreme, Jefferson).  The actual constitution was written mainly by folk in Washington's camp, the Bill of Rights by folk in Jefferson's (Jefferson opposed the original Constitution).

They were of course all well educated gentlemen, with but a couple of exceptions not Christian but Deists, although except for Adams they didn't ever express much antipathy to Christianity in public.

Many of them owned slaves and to my knowledge only Adams ever expressed any dislike of this -- being from Massachusetts that would not be surprising.  Jefferson appears we now know from DNA evidence to have been a hypocrite on that subject, having had a slave woman for his mistress (this was about then but he adamantly denied it), and not freeing any of them until his death (such manumissions for slaves close to the master were common).

The political system they created was in my opinion not very good, and has not been among the reasons the US has been so successful.  Presidential systems are inherently subject to gridlock -- something that at one point led to the Civil War and which has always, except in a few periods of one-party rule (reconstruction), hindered American political action.  After the Founders passed, very few men of distinction made it up, and then by accident -- Lincoln, TR Roosevelt -- because the political election system and general franchise fosters non-intellectual and emotional and -- well politicians rather than statesmen.

Reincarnation (rebirth)

I have had experiences that I could interpret as traces of a past life, but if one lives in a culture where it is taken for granted -- much as many Americans take Heaven for granted -- such experiences cannot be trusted entirely, but are nevertheless suggestive.  I think people around the world have such things happen to them but unless their expectations are clued, they dismiss them.

The claims just can't be tested scientifically any way I can think of.  Therefore a rational person has to withhold belief, and leave it as an opinion that it seems likely, and no more.

I will say though that a universe where sentience is like electric charge or energy -- preserved but constantly changing -- the idea sure makes sense.  It is way too easy, though, to go overboard here -- this is speculation since no one knows what sentience might be or where it might came from (although actually much the same can be said of electric charge or of energy).

One must be compassionate and not judge, but one also must not be naive and unwise in thinking everyone out there is good.  Most often the good ones are on the side of right and the evil ones on the side of wrong, and an objective observer has little trouble telling them apart.

More belief mockery

Believers should not get away with putting their beliefs or their faith outside the limits of rational attack by arguing that each person has freedom to believe what they want (or with any other tactic, for that matter).  They don't want to question their beliefs and don't want any one else to bring up things that are uncomfortable to them and raise doubts.  Attacking such beliefs on rational grounds is not a personal insult unless one uses invective.

Faith is one of those things.  The meme called "Christianity" has this teaching -- that God gives you faith.  It is really clever.  If you don't believe, then God has overlooked you, so you believe and attribute it to God while in reality it is a cop-out for believing what you have been indoctrinated with and want to believe.

I've seen the testimonials of people who have "come back" and their testimony of the joy and relief they felt.  Breaking with indoctrination is hard -- one feels guilt and fear -- and giving in and going back to the indoctrination gives you relief from that plus a good dose of serotonin to boot.  Thus most of those who have been indoctrinated into rigid beliefs in childhood either stubbornly stick with them in spite of reason, or they become hostile (sometimes extremely so) to those who "did that to me" and hate their prior religion.  Neither is healthy.  Rational skepticism in the absence of "belief" or faith -- with just reasoned opinions -- is the best.

Belief mockery

That others mock us doesn't mean we need to mock them, and, in fact, we are better off if we don't -- both from a karmic viewpoint and from how the world sees us.  (Karmic viewpoint = how our behavior affects or changes us.)

Mockery, though, is much in the eye of the beholder.  Usually the one handing it out doesn't see it as such, and is insensitive -- or the opposite may be the case and the person who thinks they are being mocked is too eager to assume it.

Criticism is not mockery.  Nor is humor.  Not even both of them together is mockery.  I would make my feeble effort to define mockery as requiring a malicious element in it.

Death by meditation

One of the stories of the Buddha's death is that he did something similar to what the Thai monk reportedly was trying to do.  He called his followers together and went into progressively deeper and deeper states of meditation and effectively committed suicide.  That some believers would want to emulate that is understandable.  The problem is one can't really do it -- it's a story.  The actual death is under some question but most commonly thought to have been brought about by food poisoning.

There is in my opinion way too much stuff attached to meditating.  It is not some magic practice where one works wonders and sees the future and all that.  It is a great way to compose oneself and gain personal insights and organize ideas in one's head, but really, it is not a paranormal thing at all.

One world one government

Who knows what the future holds.  I personally think a benign autocracy without political parties would be close to ideal, but it has such a danger attached to it that most, probably rightly, would never allow it to happen.  How does one be sure the autocrat will stay benign?

A single global government, though, is needed, and we pretty much have one.  Not the United Nations -- it is getting better but still is pretty much a joke, but the network of international treaty organizations, especially the WTO, combined with all sorts of conventions dealing with specific problems, such as global warming, freedom of the seas, human trafficking, endangered species, money laundering,  human rights, and so on.

As nations learn more and more how to act together to pull errant nations into line using embargoes and sometimes force, and as economies and political systems move more and more toward each other (i.e., socialists become more capitalist and capitalists become more socialist), and as the overall level of health and education and living standards improves and evens out, a single world seems inevitable.

Some rules of English grammar that should be dropped.

1.  Eliminate the insistence on "complete sentences."  Sometimes sentence fragments are just fine and in fact effective.

2.  Stop fussing about correct use of pronoun case.  "Me want a cookie!"  is wonderful.  Of course in that case humor is intended, but a sentence like, "She gave pencils to Mary and I" has the benefit of avoiding the alliteration and is not usually misunderstood, sounds natural, and even if it is a case of being "over-correct," so what.

3.  In that vein, the language should eliminate "whom" except as object of a preposition (where "who" still is distractive).

4.  Ban "shall" from legal documents.

5.  In fact, only allow "shall" in the polite request, "shall we" to keep the distinction between it and the question "will we?"

6.  Stop being so fussy about agreement between subject and verb.  All kinds of subtleties would become possible if the rules weren't so rigid.

7.  Change the punctuation rules at the end of the sentence to be logical by stopping the insistence that closing quotes must be outside the end-of-sentence mark.

8.  Drop the fussing about comma splice and other uses of the comma and make its use optional depending on need for clarity and style.

9.  Agree that a period is optional after common abbreviations such as "Mr".

10. Don't worry about dangling participles.  So what if someone can read it in a ludicrous way -- they won't, and if they do that's their problem (or maybe gain in pleasure). 

11. Allow use of a period rather than a question mark except for sentences intended to be questions but are not grammatical questions.  "Are you happy."  "You are happy?"  Rhetorical questions should also not need a question mark.  (Basically that would mean the question mark would indicate up-tone).

I would lie to someone who demands information I don't want to give and to which they have no right.  Refusing to answer is not a good solution, as then they assume the worst.

Pearly gates

I would much prefer there were pearly gates awaiting me than either rebirth (which I think likely but does not preserve me, only my "life spirit," whatever that might be) or extinction (a distinct possibility).

However I am too proud to let what my intellect tells me be overcome by what I would like.

When there is no note and no sign (depressive behavior is not really a sign -- unless they talk about killing themselves or the hopelessness of life) then one wonders and hopes the police do their job.

I wish the world were wealthy enough that everyone could talk to a mental health specialist at least once a month.  Absent that maybe they should put anti-depressives in the drinking water (of course that is absurd, but I do know people who are not depressive but still take anti-depressives and they are happier).

There are two things I would say to a suicides survivors:  First, do not judge.  They were depressed, and that is a disease condition -- one should not judge them any more than one would judge someone who dies of some other deadly disease.  Second, do not feel guilty -- even if the suicide note blames you.  Again, it is the disease talking.  Sometimes we think, "If only I had done such and so."  No -- we are not supermen and cannot read minds.




Well, at least that is what I've learned from my counselors (fortunately I have insurance that covers that stuff).

If there is a "God" who has a physical form, they you should get rid of the capital "G."

Scientific error

There have been a number of times respected scientists have trusted their instruments and gotten their fingers burnt.  The neutrinos traveling faster than light comes to mind.

There have also been times when the scientist believes his numbers over the rest of the scientific world, and in the end put himself on the fringe.  Room temperature superconducting comes to mind.  Here the potential profits were so great and even getting study grants so important that the people involved just refused to admit error.  They probably convinced themselves -- unless we are careful and humble it can happen to anyone.

The scientific edifice is not often in need of major demolition and repair.  Most changes happen incrementally, so whenever one has results that imply need for a major change, one should be very sure of one's data and its interpretation.  This is not something the untrained or amateur should even think of undertaking.

Pills for sleep, constipation

I'm a believer in not suffering if there is a pill available to fix the problem, but I learned the hard way that this approach should be avoided when it comes to sleep and to constipation.

Evil regimes

I think the world, or whatever part of it has the ability, has a moral obligation to stop evil regimes in the bud.  Not only do they tend to fester and infect the rest of the planet, but human decency calls out to help those they brutalize.  The fact that evil regimes in the past have been allowed to fester this way until they became calamities should teach us a lesson.

Of course it doesn't always happen -- it takes a lot of leadership and usually it requires them to present an immediate danger -- which tells us sad things about humanity.

Abuse takes many forms, and sometimes parents abuse their children and don't know it.  Ignoring the child when it wants attention, or insulting it by telling it it is bad or stupid or some such thing, or teasing the child and embarrassing it in front of others, or relentless tickling or roughhousing when the child gives "enough" signals, or, of course, punishments that involve denial of food and such.  We can even abuse a child by failing to hug it or tell it you love it and will care for it.

That abused children often (more often than we care to admit) do the same to their children is an ongoing disaster.

Sherlock Holmes had the maxim that whenever you have eliminated all the reasonable possibilities, whatever remains, no matter how unlikely, has to be the truth.

This is unscientific and illogical.  If something is highly unlikely it needs lots of its own evidence to be believable.  Just eliminating other possibilities is not enough.  There is always the "unknown" possibility -- something no one thought of.

The rational response, then, to situations where one has nothing available but unlikely things, is to say, "I don't know."

I post this because I see an awful lot of use of this fallacy by people who want to believe essentially unbelievable tales.

Insomnia

There are all sorts of books peddling all sorts of nostrums for insomnia, some of value others questionable.

The best sleep advice is to go to bed and get up at the same time every day, weekends and holidays included, have a dark and quiet and cool place to sleep, don't have a TV or reading lamp in the bedroom, and if you don't get to sleep just tell yourself you are getting rest anyway and that helps and stop worrying.

Nice clean sheets, a comfy quilt, a mattress you are comfortable on, and lots of pillows to wedge here and there (different sizes and shapes and fluffiness) too, but take care you don't end up just rearranging the blankets and sheets and pillows all night.

Finally, find out what foods and drinks contain stimulants and avoid them, and try some warm soup.  Avoid pills and alcohol -- they seem to help but are traitors.  (There are exceptions to this but it is a good general rule).

I understand that one should have a ritual before going to bed -- especially taking a warm shower or bath -- and avoid TV and computer and bright lights and even reading (although personally sometimes certain books put me to sleep).  Sleep also goes better if the room is either pitch black or you wear eye shades; they take getting use to but I carry them with me all the time in case I want to take a nap somewhere.




If you have any sort of chronic pain or cough, get up and deal with it if you can.  That can be a real bitch when you are awake and there are no distractions.

Spirit visits

Certain pain medicines I take for sciatica lead to visits by angels and ghosts and other denizens of the spirit world; it's interesting.  Whenever my sciatica won't let me sleep and I resort to them, I lie back and see what sort of tricks the spirits will try to play to convince me they are real.

Suffering

My word it seems we were born to suffer even when we have no reason to suffer.

Everyone is much nearer death than they imagine.

Evidence of God

I would like to respond to the argument that atheists would not accept any evidence that God exists short of personal revelation.


It is not correct.  There is evidence I would accept, such as an asterism in the form of the Tetragrammaton.  I would probably accept the clear occurrence of a miracle done under controlled conditions, but religionists have an excuse for why this doesn't work similar to the one psychics use -- it goes away when you control the conditions.

Or, perhaps, the Bible were really the spiritual book people say it is, and the history of religions were not so bloody and hypocritical, or if religion really did have an uplifting effect on its adherents.  This would not be as persuasive as an asterism, but it would be good evidence.

If you want to claim something so important and so extraordinary as God, you have to realize with intellectually mature adults the default is going to be skepticism.

I should stipulate -- theistic religions.

I must say, also, that personal revelation is probably the last thing I would accept.  I don't have so much ego as to think such a thing would be real instead of my own mind.

Science is not just experiments: it is also observation and thought.  Astronomers, for example, rely on mathematics and thought experiments and coming up with scenarios to explain observations (one cannot experiment on black holes, but one can study them).  Ideally one's scenario should go further than just explain observations but also predict things that observers can then go look for.

Daydreaming

I day-dream for at least a half hour every morning after I wake up but before I get up.  It is very pleasurable, and there is to my mind nothing wrong with pleasure taken in moderation.

Of course after I am up the world comes at me in force and mind wandering like that is subject to so many interruptions it becomes impossible.

Ezra and the Old Testament

Much of the OT as we have it, and the earliest parts we have, were written by priestly scribes with the Ezra return from exile.  They probably had access to older documents, and seem in many places to have made an effort to merge conflicting stories.

They also edited what they had to produce a myth of the Jews as being extremely ancient (which the ancient world accepted without questioning how unlikely that would be) and to put the priests and Jerusalem and its temple at the center of things.  The fact is the Hebrews evolved out of Canaanite tribes and the vast majority of the figures talked about (such as David), while probably based on some real figure, are extremely mythical.

At least that is what I've learned over the years.

People sometimes kill themselves.

Others are judgmental about it.  Some say if they want to do it they should go ahead and do it and get out of everyone's hair with their self-pity.  Others say it's a sin against God.  Even others say it's caused by demon possession.  Finally, and this is probably most common, there are those who say the suicide had to be insane to do such a thing.

There are many reasons people do this, and a lot depends on the culture.  The Roman aristocrat who fell on his sword rather than be executed in one of the brutal ways Romans tended to execute people was doing the honorable thing.  Many societies see some suicides as honorable.

Most of us can imagine a scenario where we would kill ourselves -- incurable disease combined with unremitting nausea would do it to me (pain I can handle better).  Probably also a disease that promised in the future to render me helpless and a burden.  We all die someday and some things are worse than death.

However, suicides today most often are associated with the set of diseases put together as "depression."  Those who have never experienced it have to remember that this is not "being sad."  It is another thing entirely.  It is a cloud of blackness that pushes you down and doesn't let you think at all clearly but only makes the world hopeless with no escape.

One thing to remember is that depression is not insanity in the usual sense.  It is a mental illness, but not one that involves irrationality (I sometimes think it is a case of being too rational).

Psychiatry has tried all sorts of ideas on how to deal with this, and often can have a temporary effect, at least until the depression passes, but then they lose the patient next time around as the disease figures out the psychiatrists tricks (not unlike the cancer evolving resistance to the treatment).

It is true that how we look at the world is a great part of the problem -- the old "glass half empty or half full" sort of thing, but knowing this does a depressed person little good.  Truth is, one can always think up the negative side of things, as the world is not all that good to people and most young people have their ambitions squashed fairly fast anyway.

It is purposeless to try to find a purpose in life.  The vast majority of us have only one purpose in our existence -- to give life and happiness to our children.  This is something of an evolutionary trick, since usually the children don't turn out as expected and sometimes turn on us, and we have to adapt.

In the end the only real treatment for depression is going to be medical, not psychiatric (psychiatry is seen as a branch of medicine, but its methods and training are different).  The widespread bias against dealing with emotional problems with pills needs to be overcome -- diseases are best treated with pills, although in some cases other forms of intervention can work.

There is no guilt associated with being depressed -- the tendency runs in families and is just part of the baggage we are born with.  It is useless (and in my opinion evil) to tell the depressed to get over it and stop being so self-involved.

Finally, there is no guilt associated with someone who has actually committed suicide.  They should be treated as anyone else who has died of a chronic disease.  The death should be reported as such (not covered over -- society needs to know the reality) but without blame or shame or as a scandal.

Causality as karma

I don't think it's necessary to use the possibility that the universe was once a singularity to say the universe breaks "its own rules."  The rule is that of causality, and we know this rule is constantly broken, that causality may be something of an illusion based on probability and the statistical "law of large numbers" rather than something inherent to existence.

It reminds me a little of the Buddhist and Hindu idea of karma -- what you do has consequences.  We know those consequences are not preordained but just made more likely when you behave certain ways.

Theravada life after death

I think of mind as a process using memories stored in the brain and sensations provided by the brain, that can be thought of as a sort of life process (the flame on a candle, a wave on the water -- that sort of thing).  When brain dies what becomes of this process?

If it weren't for the observation that waves can perpetuate without a medium (well it's more complicated than that but there is no aether), maybe the process that is mind can go on even though the body has died.  This is pretty much standard Theravada Buddhism that the "life spirit" goes into a womb and is reborn, except see it as the conservation of sentience.

Trouble is the memory and most of the personality are in the brain and die, and the new baby has its own genes and life experiences and is a different person.  This would not seem to be a formula for "going on."  It is more like making a big deal out of the fact that the atoms that make up our body get recirculated through the biosphere.  Substitute life spirit for atoms and you get much the same result, not terribly profound and not particularly different from simple extinction.

Mozart (and most great artists of all fields) had a distinct voice from the youngest age, and he has not reappeared.

Everyone is much nearer death than they imagine.

The life we find on the earth occupies but a vanishingly thin layer near its surface, even when you count deep rock microbes.  It has no effect at all on what goes on through the main mass of the planet.

Distinguish between life (complex molecules with that mechanically reproduce themselves using material from the immediate environment) and sentience (the experience of life and sensory input and emotions and thoughts).  The biosphere is not sentient and is composed mainly of things not sentient.  Anyone who says otherwise needs to prove it.

Because I don't know the reason for something doesn't mean I have to say it is God.  I can just say I don't know.

Russia is getting scary

I did a survey of several Russian newspapers available in English on the internet.  They all take the same line. 

The difference between this and Western reporting, where newspapers are all over the place -- although in the Ukrainian case both leftwing and rightwing papers are similar and the exact opposite of what Russian readers are getting -- is striking.

It is discouraging too.  There is plainly no freedom to publish against the government in Russia -- something that can only be said to be fascist.  That is a strong word and a few have taken me to task for using it to describe Putin, but I think the evidence is strong. 

There is the resurgent militarism and military boasting, the use of nationalism for political purposes, the clamping down on the press and other forms of expression, the use of hoodlums and criminals as enforcers, the close ties with cartels and industrial lords, and of course the anti-gay campaign (pick a disliked minority and persecute them).  It is all too familiar.

Dieting yoyo

I hate it but I have become convinced that you weigh what your destiny says you will weigh and trying to lose weight through will power and drugs creates a yo-yo and you put it back on with a little extra.  Exercise is good but only leads to a fit fat person, not bad but not good either.  Trying to diet permanently is like trying to hold your breath permanently, and changing your diet to healthy foods, while good for other reasons, only causes you to eat more to get the same calories.

Maxim about Wasabi mustard

Sometimes I (and probably most people) think of sentences that are "quotable."  I think when this happens to me I will from now on post them.

OK here goes:

There are many things where a little is good and more is horrible -- such as Wasabi mustard or anchovies or salt.

Burden of Proof

In the last post on witches and a few other times I have referred to the concept of "burden of proof."

This is the idea that if one asserts something (say being a witch or that the Buddha existed as an actual figure with all the miraculous things that happened), which is both important and hard to believe, then one must provide what is called "extraordinary proof."

This burden is in fact so great that pretty much nothing is enough.  Testimony is useless, as are historical documents and even experimental demonstration.

Of course people don't like this burden -- they want to believe what they want to believe, and some are such that if they have seen something they will believe it without doubt, even when many possible explanations are available.

Of course at issue is always the question of whether or not something is "hard to believe," since for some many things are quite easy to believe, mainly because they were brought up believing it.

Things at the frontier of science make a good example.  The debate about whether too little salt is possible, and the assertion that the Heart Association's recommendation is too little comes to my mind.  To me that is fairly easy to accept.  We need some salt to survive, so it stands to reason too little would be harmful, and the best evidence as I see it is that only some people really need worry about getting too much (although this is still undecided), so a minimum seems logical.

I hasten to insert here that we know too much salt is harmful. 

What I suspect has happened is that the scientists at the Heart Association have locked them into the belief in the evil of salt (subconsciously of course), and to them the burden of proving otherwise is extraordinary.  To me it is not.

Sometimes some scientific result is announced, calling for a reversal of some otherwise well established part of the scientific edifice.  People who make such announcements (and the journalists who eagerly broadcast the claim) properly come under heavy criticism for making such things a press event when they have not met the burden of proof and in fact can't (such a thing requires independent confirmations out the wazoo).

There are some claims that no amount of evidence would suffice short of hard physical specimens that are such that all sorts of experts can pour over.   Perhaps ghosts, rebirths (reincarnation), miracles, angels, witches, demons, alien visitors (the interstellar kind), Sasquatch and similar animals and beasts all fall into that category.  They are all hard to believe and easily contested, and would require evidence that goes beyond anything available.

The main point is that the default has to be disbelief -- not so much rejection or ridicule but just not believing or even thinking it might be true -- without evidence that meets the high burden of proof.

Why can't we just "choose to believe?"  After all it is not possible to disprove such claims (most of the time -- sometimes the evidence against the claim is massive).  The thing is, there is no reason to accept such things, so such "choice" isn't really a choice but just wishful thinking and being irrational and even irresponsible.

Such intellectual dishonesty may even be immoral -- I don't know that lying to oneself is a moral offense or not -- I can see a case for either position.  Certainly pushing it or preaching it to others is immoral. 

Witches

Since I seem to get more attention with witches as my topic than my usual stuff, let me talk about them and see what reactions it brings.

The idea that there are people with special "magical" powers or that such a thing can be learned, is not demonstrable and I think almost certainly fantasy.  That said, what are we to think about people who think they are witches or who fear them or whatever?

The Bible says one must kill any witch.  So I guess the Bible disagrees with me on this.  I think though that the Bible is not just in error here, but, even if witches were real, they should not be killed.  The Bible here is morally wrong.

More than likely someone who thinks they are a witch is just mixed up some way, and killing such people is wrong.  So, also, of course, is killing people thought to be witches, no matter how eccentric they may be.  This sort of thing is as morally corrupt as it gets.  No matter how sure one may be that someone is a witch, the burden of proof for such an idea exceeds anything that might be produced.  Some things are just like that.

This doesn't of course mean that the state shouldn't execute murderers, and shouldn't jail people committing other crimes, including I would think saying one is a witch to extort or commit fraud.  It is, though, the murder or extortion or fraud that is prosecuted, not the witchcraft.

Besides, it seems likely, if there are witches, they could be doing good rather than evil.

 

Russians in Ukraine

I must say I have a real problem with Russia thinking it has the right to meddle in other countries to "protect" the rights of Russian nationals there.

That was the excuse Hitler used to seize Czechoslovakia, and it was no more valid then than now.  A nation should act as much as possible to protect overseas citizens and nationals, but not nationals of another country, no matter what the cultural links.  The only exception is when human rights are involved, and then it should be without regard to the ethnicity or culture of those being persecuted.

Actually this is nationalism, and the citizens and nationals of any country owe their allegiance to the nation they are part of, not any other country, and so the rebels in Ukraine should be seen as really simply traitors putting ethnicity ahead of nation.  When ethnic groups fail to realize this they bring discrimination and persecution down on their heads, and should not be given foreign assistance.

Reviewing the blogs I've posted, it seems there is a theme - what is right and what is wrong - ethics.  I haven't delved much into the formal ethics taught in college of Socrates and Kant and others, although I think it is good that people study these thinkers.  I've just kind-of applied a mix of Western philosophy and Buddhist ethical thought, in a personal way coming down to where I think one should be and then explaining and defending that.

There are and will of course be blogs on other topics, but in the end I notice that they seem to almost always come down to our doing what is right.  I think life is mostly about that, and for sure happiness is.  (Oh, following traditional rules, even though they are presented as ethical rules, often causes unhappiness, but this is because (at least in the given situation) they are wrong and in our hearts if we are sensitive we know it).

So I'm going to change the title of this blog to something more specific and point out the general thrust.

Contradicting myself

It has been brought to my attention that I appear to contradict myself (horrors!).  In one blog I state the maxim that one should eat whatever one is served when one is a guest.  In the other I say that I usually carefully pick out the curdled blood when it is in my noodles or soup or whatever.

Well, in the latter case I had in mind in a restaurant.  When one is paying for the meal one is not a guest.  That said it is not good to make an issue of such things anywhere.

But really the criticism of this contradiction misses the point that I think is a thread throughout this blog -- that rules or laws or maxims of an ethical nature are guides, but we must always be willing to abandon them if it leads to our doing something wrong.

This takes judgment and compassion, and for the most part the feelings of our host are paramount.  When it comes to something clearly unhealthy (as opposed to meat which is plainly not unhealthy as so many thrive with it in their diets), one would still not say anything and try to be surreptitious.  At least that is where I come down on this.  I must say that I would rather eat the blood than hurt my host, and I think this is where I come down, although of course others may think otherwise.

It is OK to avoid things for no reason other than that you find them repulsive.  One often should try to get over and control one's revulsions, but if something makes one unhappy, then by all means avoid it.  It's just that in the end we are better off not having to avoid things.

My main point though is that if one is a vegetarian one need to not let this be known.  It is praying in public and people don't like it and are often offended. 

Eating blood -- if one eats meat, why not?  As a westerner I have a cultural problem and can't bring myself to do anything but carefully pick out the bits of blood in my noodles or whatever and set them aside, although of course I say nothing.

One should not eat blood for the same reason one should avoid organ meats -- the iron and metallic load is too great (and other reasons -- this is not a medical blog so research it yourself).

However many religions prohibit blood consumption on its own for superstitious reasons -- it seems the precursors of modern Jews thought the soul was in the blood, or some such thing, and this got passed to Christians and Muslims, so that in most countries there are special laws regarding the draining of blood from slaughtered animals.  The Muslims appear to have taken this way to far and demand slaughter methods that are barbaric and cruel.

Of course common sense tells us that even after draining the blood there will remain a lot of it in the meat.  I don't know how the religions who make a big deal of this rationalize this simple fact.

I read in the Bible's Book of Acts that the apostles lifted most of the Jewish dietary laws from Christians (to ease the conversion of Gentiles) but did leave the "abstain from blood" in there.

So now we have at least one Christian group, Jehovah's Witnesses, who expel members who have a transfusion or allow one for their children to save the child's life, and insist the child be allowed to die.

Even if there were an ethical reason for not eating blood, and I can see no rational justification -- just authority and superstition -- this reflects a horrible and tragic and, indeed, evil, application of ethics.  When presented with a choice of two wrongs, one must choose the lesser -- and a child dying versus a blood transfusion -- sheesh! -- obviously breaks that fundamental rule.  

Eating meat

Something I've wanted to post about for awhile is the need for mankind to get off meat, or at least drastically reduce what we eat.

Of course there are ethical reasons -- meat is from sentient animals and although a case can be made that such animals might actually have better lives (and a good deal better karma if one sees this as valid -- and of course at a loss of karma for humans involved), the reality is probably that they lead lives of suffering, considering how many of those who raise animals for slaughter treat them.

But there are three other reasons.  There is the environment, our health, and cost.  The burden on the environment of ever-increasing animal husbandry offsets much that the world does to slow climate change, and those who make personal sacrifices for the environment but continue to demand meat are being hugely inconsistent.  Also of course red meat is well known to contribute to modern diseases and suffering.  Finally, leave the meat out and the food budget gets much lower, leaving money for other pleasures or charity.

I don't think it would be a good thing to completely eliminate meat, since it does add certain nutrients difficult to get otherwise, and it is very pleasurable.  The pleasure however can be gotten by keeping its use down as a sort-of condiment rather than a main dish and experimenting with meat substitutes.

If one does decide to leave meat out of one's diet, one should remember the maxim that, when a guest, eat what is served, and not fuss or cause one's host to even be aware.  The amount of rudeness and arrogance sometimes seen in vegetarians is unfortunate and counterproductive.

Putin says he could take Kiev in two weeks.  Probably true but arrogant and, of course, taking it would be only the beginning.  The Ukrainians will not just fold with the fall of a city.

We seem to have a fascist on our hands.  The world, and especially Europe, would do well to pay close attention.  After what Russia has been through, this isn't too surprising, and nationalism is an easy enough way of thinking for those who are so inclined.  I doubt most Russians would buy what is going on if the actually knew the details.

Wolves at the door

Democracies (countries run by popularly elected politicians) tend to not pay much attention to wolves until they are at the door.  There is instead a constant cry that the democracy causes the presence of wolves and that military spending in particular is (always, no matter how small) excessive.

The reason is mainly because wolves often self-destruct, and besides it interferes with re-election.  The public does not like to make sacrifices to protect itself.

I read a nice piece in Huffington yesterday about the history of Wahhabism in Saudi.  It seems terror and brutality have been a core part of not just that part of Islam but part of Islam in general through its existence -- that killing and raping the non-believer is not only acceptable behavior but is commanded.  (I add that Islam is not unique in this respect).

As a tactic, up to maybe the end of the nineteenth century, it usually was successful.  People will and generally should submit to preserve themselves and their families.  Alexander the Great was generous to cities that surrendered without a fight and engaged in general slaughter and rape and enslavement and looting when there was resistance.  It worked and he was able to take Asia Minor with only a few real sieges.

I don't think it works at all in today's world.  What it does is alert democratic politicians and the public to the presence of a wolf.  The wolf needs to wait until its power is too great for the democracy to resist, and, until then, play ball, for the most part -- as the Chinese seem to be doing.

Politicians like Obama and the Clintons love to save money by weakening the country's military, so they can buy votes with social programs.  (I don't know that it is as crass as that -- maybe they think they are doing the right thing -- hard to understand though.)

Of course if one spends really excessive amounts on the military, one can weaken the domestic economy, and this ain't good either -- and ends up reducing the amount available.  In the States, though, the weak economy is from other causes.

The Muslim terrorist and extremist groups think the old brutality and fear tactic still works.  That was behind 9-11, which only served to give Bush the chance to invade Iraq and Afghanistan, although what he achieved has now been frittered away.  At least for a couple of years the public understood the danger, but they don't like sacrifices and want them to stop.  A couple of years is about all a determined leader has before the clamor forces compromise with evil.

Now ISIS, or whatever it will be called, is doing as much, telling the world the wolf is at the door.  If they had pulled their uprising and then been civilized about it, instead of going on a murder spree, the world would have seen it and not liked it, but have done nothing.  As it is Obama is being dragged into doing something (it seems as little as possible) by his own public.

In other words, terrorism today is stupid.  It achieves very little if anything except alert the world to your evil.

 

Russian feet in the door

I appreciate the email last night the explained how Russia had promised to honor Ukraine's sovereignty in return for Ukraine handing over its nuclear weapons.

It would seem once the Russians got that danger out of the way they had no intention of keeping their side of it.  They just needed to wait a decent interval and for something to take place that gave them an excuse.  (I also note an unsettling tendency of Russian authorities here and there casually mentioning that Russia still has nuclear weapons -- lots of them).

Russia seems to be in the business of setting up small enclaves out of parts of former USSR republics.  It has done it in Moldova and Georgia and now apparently will in Ukraine.  They find an area where, because of Stalin's brutality, Russian ethnics predominate, and force the creation there of a separate political entity, controlled, however, by Russia.  These are basically criminal regimes run by criminals with no legitimacy or international legality.

There is a temptation to think the locals should be allowed to make the decision, but this cannot be allowed unless the sovereign country agrees to it (as with Czechoslovakia).  Otherwise the world will end up with no end of ethnic groups and sub-groups, majority or not, clamoring for independence.  One can imagine the Navajo setting up their own state in the U.S. Southwest.  A state, once legally constituted, can decide for itself whether it wants to divide itself up or not, but this cannot be imposed from outside and inhabitants who try to do this on their own can and should be suppressed.  (Of course here in the case of Ukraine they were being suppressed -- we have instead a foreign invasion -- come to think of it, that is what happened in Georgia too).

When one either moves or otherwise comes to be a citizen of another country, it is incumbent on that person to give up their loyalty to the mother country and be patriotic, loyal citizens of the new country.  That doesn't require giving up one's culture, at least right away (it usually happens naturally after a few generations).  People who do not do this but stick to loyalty to a foreign state set themselves up to become traitors.

Still, these enclaves present to Russia an excellent foot in the door for eventually gaining back its empire, although of course now it won't be Communist but more Fascist in nature.

Pious fraud

One of the things one has to be attuned to as a skeptic (a person from Missouri) is the phenomenon of "pious fraud."

In its classic form it consists of creating evidence or distorting evidence or lying in order to win converts to a religion.  The idea is that saving the soul is more important than little details like honesty.

I remember seeing a brochure from a fundamentalist group listing all the prophesies of the Old Testament that were fulfilled by Jesus.  Thing is it is all a pious fraud.  None of the points exactly point to Jesus and most of them were not even prophesies, and the details of the Jesus story was manipulated to fit.

This doesn't just apply to religion.  People who have a conspiracy theory are notorious for this.  So are people who support one of the countless pseudo-sciences or bizarre phenomena we hear tell of.

I think in fact this is the main reason personal testimony is not credible, on its own.  Supporting evidence may be credible, but even then the personal testimony counts for nothing (it is possible to commit pious fraud in favor of something that is in fact true).

So when someone tells me this or that based on testimony or their own experience, I may be polite and not say what I think, but I'm thinking, "It's more likely that you lie."

Nationalism is exceeded only by ideology and religion in irrational perversity and the people it can kill and the lives it can ruin, and only by a little bit.  Partisanship is only a tad behind.

East Ukraine

I begin to think Russia will first set up an East Ukraine rather than emulating Hitler and using nationalism to occupy the whole country.  That is good, but of course it means a hostile Ukraine (much more hostile now) will remain on its western border, so we will see.

Still, this East Ukraine, populated mostly by ethnic Russians, will be subservient, and probably quickly invite the presence of full-time Russian soldiers.

That would mean being, legally at least, an independent country, which has the small benefit of giving Russia another vote everywhere, but otherwise means nothing and can be undone any time with a simple annexation vote.  There is a dollop of hypocrisy here -- Putin can pull back and say he didn't invade and didn't annex, while in fact of course he effectively did.

It is, however, now probably the best possible solution, considering the rabid Russian nationalism we are seeing.  It is interesting that similar attitudes in Serbia gained them nothing -- I guess Russia is a bigger country.

Ukraine should have been left to work out its problems on its own, but Putin saw personal political advantage domestically, and went on to prove that he is without scruple or honor.

MSNBC and FOX

I'm surprised MSNBC is apparently so weak. I live overseas and frankly was shocked during a visit this summer to the States to see how blatantly partisan they, and FOX on the other side of things, really are. I guess the objective is to appeal to a niche of the audience by giving them political dog-meat.

Wizards and witches sometimes don't know they are magical beings, but the Ministry of Magic does, and watches.