Reproduce according to their kind

What exactly is a species?  We know that species evolve into one another (even creationists say as much -- that dogs evolved from wolves, that horses and zebra are related, etc.)  They admit this sort of "micro-evolution."  What they say (at least the ones using Bible phrases), is that a species is a recent term and the unit that can't evolve is the "kind" -- you know, "Each after his kind."

We usually think of a species as a population capable of interbreeding and producing "viable" (themselves able to produce offspring) offspring.  This is of course an arbitrary line, but works reasonably well, at least for living creatures where you can breed them and see what happens.

The fact that living creatures fall into genera, families, classes, orders, and so on, so naturally -- occasionally the DNA, especially at the edges, has corrected a few misclassification -- but for the most part the old comparative anatomy methods did the trick with remarkable accuracy, is testimony that the history of life is one of "macro-evolution" and that the "kinds" of the creationists are meaningless and don't reflect anything real.

Defining science

Some tell us science is a way of seeing the world; others tell us it is a method; a few (the real philosophers I suspect) tell us that to be science an idea must have certain characteristics -- mainly that of being testable -- I think that is generally but not always true and that it is worthwhile to throw about wild speculations with the possibility that someone will think of a clever way to test it.

Well, of course, but does that distinguish "science" or just sane thinking?

I think of science metaphorically as a huge rambling edifice, with no plan or pretense of any control, going in every which direction, with pieces constantly being added.  Most of which gets added is small and not much noticed except in the dedicated peer-reviewed journals, although sometimes something big gets tacked on.

From time to time an error gets added to the edifice, and sooner or later (usually sooner) has to be removed or maybe remodeled, but for the most part the edifice we have it is sound and will stay as it is indefinitely, with occasional new paint.

Given the presence of a gun

Given presence of a gun, a spate of depression becomes a suicide,
a family fight becomes a murder,
a confused old man going in the wrong house is dead,
an automobile cut-off ends in a dead baby in the back seat, \
a disturbed high schooler ends up killing twenty or more fellow students.

Yes, Susan, there is a reality

Depends on what is "reality."  I kick a stone and hurt my toe (this has been done before) and say that proves the stone is real.  But it proves nothing of the sort.  The stone as I perceive it (something solid and capable of hurting me if I kick it) is an illusion.  The reality is the stone is an aggregation of atoms held together by electronic forces and it is these electronic forces that give the illusion created in our brain of solidity.

Still, electronic forces and atoms are real too, until you look more closely and see that they too are not what we at first thought.

The thing is illusions need some sort of underlying reality (even if it also turns out in the end to be an illusion) to generate the appearance -- layer after layer after layer of illusion, each in its turn generating illusions.  You can't have the illusion of rain in the desert without real atmospheric things going on to generate the appearance.

The one reality I feel quite sure about is that the reality we experience of substance and color and heat and all those things is all generated by our brains to give us an interface for dealing with the incoming sensory experiences, themselves all generated by their own set of illusions.

Religious fervor declared a mental illness

I'm not sure what is meant by "fervor" in the "religious fervor," (although I'm sure the official decision tried to define it).  Personally I think any "belief" is a form of mental derangement -- we should stick to having opinions and not commit ourselves emotionally to them.

(Anyone who practices introspection much, and does it with a good teacher, learns how to identify beliefs and distinguish them from opinions.  Basically a belief is something we assume and don't question, or if we do question it, we suffer guilt or fear or other negative emotions -- religions sometimes use this to prevent people from questioning their dogmas.  We assume that what goes up must come down, even though we intellectually know better, the belief is just part of the furniture that we sit on without noticing.)

Take belief in the Bible -- how many people believe in it and could never bring themselves to see it as just a possible attitude and one probably wrong?  Instead, they refuse to allow doubt to enter their head, and won't read stuff that might raise such doubts.  To me this sort of thing (whether religion or politics or whatever) is a mental illness.

My mom use to tell me stories about how precocious I was when I was an infant and toddler -- things I have since learned from others were all in my mom's head.  I believed them for a long time, and finding out I was not so special caused me considerable hurt, although of course in the end I am better off.  That just shows children believe (don't have opinions about but believe) what their folks tell them -- reason for adults to be very careful about what they indoctrinate their children with -- to my mind a form of child abuse.

Life has ups and downs

I learned many years ago that happiness and depression, not quite but close to the reverse sides of the coin, are basically personality traits with external events having a surface but not deep impact (bad events don't phase happy people and good events don't help the depressed all that much).

Within reasonable limits, we should be allowed to be what we are, and others should be sensitive to this.  That said, clinical depression is a disease (maybe an inherited one like a tendency to acne but still a disease) with potentially lethal consequences, no less than cancer or heart disease, and therefore to the extent medical intervention is possible it should be utilized.

Still, short such extremes, it is not necessary or even desirable to be happy all the time.  Life is Yin and Yang.

Platonic ethics

We need to distinguish real ethics from what culture says.  Morality is right and wrong, and cultures often get it wrong.  People generally make that mistake -- they think that if the culture condones something, it must be ethically right, and vice-versa, but we can easily see from history that this is very often not the case.

Ethics (right and wrong) and aesthetics (beautiful and ugly) and value (valuable and junk) and knowledge (true and false) are concepts that make us human, and a full life involves a good deal of agonizing over them.  They all seem to be cultural constructs, but they really exist in a Platonic sort of realm of their own that we can only discover through rational thought.

Thinking about why Trump won

The main reason I think Trump won was unspoken connivance between him, the FBI director, and Putin.

They kept the "Big Lie" that the Clintons are somehow corrupt going, without evidence, just accusation and innuendo -- as it turns out the FBI subpoena (issued at a point to do Clinton the most possible damage) was made of tissue paper.  I rather hope he is investigated for abuse of power, but since Republicans control things now this is unlikely.

Gun control, unfortunately, and in spite of a steady stream of unnecessary deaths, is not going to happen in the US -- even though where it is in place you have far fewer gun deaths.  There seems almost a religious insanity about the subject in many parts of the US, stemmed by the gun industry's propaganda.

America is remaining relatively strong because of the immigrants, both legal and otherwise.  Immigrants invigorate a nation.  Countries that restrict it stagnate and get older and older.  If immigration into the US is stopped, within twenty years the country won't have enough working age people to pay for its Social Security pledges (I see Republicans are already talking about reducing benefits).

I begin to see signs of reality in Trump.  That will mean non-repeal of Obama Care (oh they will do something cosmetic to "fix" it), backing off on building the Wall with Mexico, backing of on trade restrictions, and so on.  I think if his base is at all intelligent they will fairly soon see that they have been bamboozled.

Of course the actual fact is that Clinton won the election if it had been held anywhere other than the States -- the Constitution is now an out-of-date document and needs major work.

Have aliens been here?

Odds are, after traveling all that way, if we had been visited they would have settled and we would either not exist or at a minimum we would know it.

To distinguish between "believe" and "know," I dunno -- seems to me if I believe something I also know it, even though in both cases I may be wrong.  My opinion is that "they" are out there, but way, way out there -- so far that there is almost no chance of our ever detecting their presence (like maybe just one civilization in a given observable universe type rarity).

(A remark about "observable universe."  Since the Big Bang, light has had a little under 14 billion years to reach us, and has been expanding all the while, so that over time more and more galaxies recede to a point where their light can never reach us -- the observable horizon -- which now consists of several hundred billion galaxies but over time as the expansion speeds up will become fewer and fewer).  The real universe is, assuming inflation happened, which seems most likely, is many orders of magnitude bigger than that, if not infinite, but this is stuff beyond our ever seeing as it is receding from us (actually the space they are in is receding) faster than light, so no information about them can ever reach us.)

Of course in an infinite or at least unimaginably large universe pretty much everything that is possible will happen, and from our case we know things like us are possible.  Still, there are so many points in our evolution where things could have gone wrong and are extremely unlikely, and it only takes a line of a few of these to put the odds against us into the astronomical area.

Of course we are just beginning the search, and the search is magnificently worth doing, but we should not hold our breath.

Doing God's Work

Does God want or need our worship?

The ancients made burnt offerings, apparently including the Hebrews, in the sense of some sort of sacrifice to appease the gods, or at least please them.  The story is that the burnt smoke of the offering was a pleasant smell for the gods, and in some stories was even essential to their (the god's) survival.

This ties in with the idea of sacrifice -- doing without something or doing something difficult or dangerous in order to please the gods, such as Luther caught outdoors in a fierce thunderstorm being so frightened he swore to God if he survived this he would become a monk.  The idea of doing some penance to get forgiveness for our sin or in thankfulness for some special thing God does for us is certainly popular and found practically everywhere -- so much so that one suspects there is a human instinct (similar behavior is seen in most social animals in the form of hierarchic submission/dominance behaviors) behind it (although of course given the idea of a god with personality (anger, grudges, appeasability, etc., there is a certain logic too).

So we have the perfect Christ dying a sacrifice to appease God for the sin of Adam -- something probably borrowed from other similar Greek mystery sacrifice cults where the god is betrayed and dies a sacrificial death from which, by performing certain rituals, one gains salvation.  It is all unutterably primitive -- curses passed from generation to generation, blood sacrifice to lift it, partaking of that blood to gain personal salvation.  You would think by now many theologians would have figured out ways to downplay this primitiveness and make it into some sort of metaphor, and, of course, some have.

If God is an infinite being, then of course he has no need for us or anything we do, nor does he gain or lose from it, and the idea of, "Doing God's work" is an idea of insufferable arrogance.

It has been said that all these things (sacrifice, prayer, penance, doing God's work, and so on, were instituted not for God but for us, so that we might improve ourselves thereby.  I suppose, but many don't believe in God but still give to charity, practice courtesy and kindness, don't hold grudges, try to do what is best and good and try to correct their mistakes, without any God or other deities to try to please.  Isn't doing what is right just because it is right a better thing than because God wants it?

When religions control government

Government and religion are in most advanced states (those I would say are civilized) kept relatively separate.  There are exceptions here and there, many of which are trivial and not worth making a disturbance about.

I think the main reason for secularism like that is because religions have a tendency to try to use government power (taxes, even criminal statues) to impose their views.  Muslim countries tax non-Muslim citizens extra, things like divorce and gambling and various foods and alcohol, and a variety of human sexual expressions, and of course, "blasphemy," are all on occasion penalized when a religion gets control of government.  This is what worries me so much about what is happening in Turkey -- it seems the one country where we use to be able to say Islam and secularism can get on seems to not be an exception at all.

I tend to be tolerant of religious belief, thinking it merely demonstrating a lack in the person's ability to think clearly, but I tend to oppose organized religion simply because it seems utterly unable and unwilling to allow freedom once it has power.  The same of course can be said of other ideologies.

Replacing the Golden Rule

I don't believe in and don't practice the Golden Rule as it is generally stated -- do to others as you would have them do to you.  Taken literally this is unworkable.  We would not punish criminals if we took it strictly, nor even fire incompetent or dishonest employees.

Something more workable is the rule of compassion and non-judgmentalism.  We do what is best for the person, even if punishment is best, we don't seek revenge and never need to forgive since we don't take offense or hold grudges, and we try to understand why people do bad things (childhood, poverty, mental illness, sociopathy, etc., even though sometimes we can't know the person well enough to say, we understand in the end we are all animals with desires and instincts.

We are not naive -- when we know a person is a con artist or thief or liar or whatever, we recognize and accept that fact and adjust what we do accordingly, but it is just a fact, not a judgment in any sort of moral sense -- that is not up to us to do.

Further, we ignore most authority and tradition and conscience.  They tend to produce fairly good guides on how to behave, but not always, as they derive from cultural development rather than rational thought.  I try to apply Kant (don't do something you would not want everyone to be free to do) and of course utilitarian notions to the extent possible (try to figure out what in the end will do the most good and least harm).

Diatribe about US education

Here is my diatribe about US schools -- I feel I can comment since I spent a lot of time working with US educators on computerization, language teaching methods and volunteered several years, while I was working in the States, for Jr. Achievement.

Public schools are the only way to go -- vouchers can work so long as ideologically or religious oriented schools are rigidly excluded.  The home schooling movement, while on rare occasions does work, for the most part leaves the children way behind their contemporaries and with a load of prejudice and misinformation.  There is no good way to use profit incentives in education, as in medicine -- capitalism is the best way to produce most goods and services, but not police, military, education and health.  The incentives are all wrong.

The US does one of the best jobs around of educating the elite -- the doctors and engineers and scientists and architects and accountants and musicians and so on, I think because teachers recognize the "gifted" and work and encourage them.  Also, of course, this has much to do with the high quality of most US universities.

The general public in the US are among the least educated general publics in the world, showing gross ignorance of science and business and economics and so on.  I think that is because teachers, in an environment where there is little possibility of real discipline, merely give up on them and become baby sitters.

It produces poor, money-grubbing lawyers -- that seems to be all that law school there is about, not justice.  Also, since most politicians are drawn from that class, they are also generally "unfortunates."

Finally there are the teaching schools, an almost complete waste of time, where all sorts of theories about how to teach are bandied about from fad to fad.  I think a teacher should be well grounded in the subject being taught, and a few grossly bad potential teachers should be fired, but otherwise I wonder at the credentialism American schools are stuck with, where teaching certificates count more than knowledge of the subject.

Of course one problem is that the teachers are largely unionized -- a guaranteed way to assure mediocrity in any field of endeavor.  Another problem is the amount of money spent, not, it seems, on teacher salaries, but somewhere, since America spends more per student than anywhere else -- by a long shot.  These costs just naturally generate political opposition to spending more money.

Of course there is also politics -- efforts to get all sorts of silly (and sometimes unconstitutional) things into the curriculum, air-heads who want things like ethics and initiative and imagination to be the emphasis, and hard-heads who want nothing more than literacy and numeracy.  That is a perpetual conflict preventing a moderate curriculum.

Looking closely at faith

It may be helpful to make a distinction between "belief" (or faith) and "opinion." (Many languages make a clear distinction but English often confuses the two and treats belief as nothing more than strongly held opinion -- I would suggest that opinion is on the surface while belief is buried deep inside us, and not really noticed as such but just taken for granted).

Belief is an emotional state, opinion and intellectual one.  One comes to believe via indoctrination, one forms an opinion via evidence and reasoning. 

(What is "indoctrination?" It is also called, to bring out the negative aspect, "brainwashing." It happens most often to children wherein they form their notions about the world and their notions of right and wrong ("conscience").  A feel for this can be seen in the sense that up and down are absolutes, not something relative to the planet -- so that around age ten almost everyone goes through a period of intellectual difficulty contemplating why people at the antipodes don't fall off the planet.

Indoctrination happens when we are children because we don't have mature critical thinking abilities yet, but are otherwise very much in learning mode and are full of questions.  It also happens to adults who never fully developed the ability to think critically (we call them gullible), but it can happen to anyone not paying attention.  It is achieved through propaganda rather than reason -- music, parades and raucous rallies, beautiful pictures or buildings, beautiful or appealing ideas, ideas that have wonderful consequences if true -- plus less appealing tactics such as band wagoning, coercion, repetition, invention of false stories and "facts" (lying), reference to unqualified "authority," logical fallacies, "group-think", altered mental states such as from sleep deprivation, drugs, even heavy meditation, and who knows what else.  The thing these techniques for brainwashing people have in common is use of emotional triggers and mental attributes other than reasoning.

I remember being told by a well-meaning but misdirected monk to meditate on the idea of my previous lives, since I plainly doubted they were real.  I meditated hard, for several weeks, several hours a day, and persuaded myself I could remember traces of such lives.  As a result I "believed" this teaching sincerely, for many years, and adjusted my life accordingly.  I later realized the evidence was flimsy, nowhere near enough to support such an extraordinary teaching (the problem of course is that anything could be true, and when one believes (is indoctrinated), one latches onto possibility as proof.  We have emotional (probably derived from early human or maybe even animal instincts to adhere to the views of the group) links to the belief (one wants to believe it and doubt creates emotional stresses (guilt, fear).

I see people who have rejected the religion of their childhood ending up hating the religion and all it stands for, largely for what was "done to them" and the suffering they went through as they developed cognitive dissonances as they learned truths that didn't fit it.  (This happens less in Buddhism since it is not creedal and, while it has lots of teachings, it doesn't insist on bad things if one doubts or rejects).

I also see people who have gone through periods of doubt, maybe even periods of disbelief, who are so tortured by their instincts here that they end up "deciding" to believe in spite of it all.  The body then rewards them with a stopping of the guilt and fear and a replacement with feelings of joy and visits by the Holy Spirit.

"Faith" is, then, really just a cop-out.  It is an excuse for giving in to the indoctrination (almost always of childhood) because one wants to and because doubt produces serious discomfort that takes a long time to get over.

Non-belief is the default

I think non-belief is, whenever we are presented with something extraordinary, the default, and I think this is healthy.  When it comes to God or gods (surely extraordinary claims), then, again, the healthy response is non-belief, which in this case is called atheism.

What would it take to make be change my default view?  Actually, not much -- an appropriate asterism (arrangement of stars) in the sky as seen from our perspective -- say the Tetrahedron -- would do the trick.  Miracles don't, since fraud is so likely, and especially miracles reported second and third hand.

A different world -- one which doesn't have so much suffering and where evolution takes place without so much death and disease -- that might help too -- at least some sort of explanation for all the suffering more credible than Adam and Eve.  (I note they found a fossil fish dating from before the dinosaurs that apparently had a huge tumor.  I wonder how that poor fish was able to inherit Adam's sin).

The idea that the universe is just what it is, and doesn't care (has no possibility of awareness) about us and the bad things that happen to us) fits the observed universe much better.

Judge not lest ye be judged

We have to make judgments about people all the time, if nothing more than for our personal safety.  Underwriters and loan officers have to judge, as do police and jurists and employers and on and on.  The Bible's words here need to be taken a little differently if not just disregarded.

When I'm dealing with someone I think is a con artist (such as the new US President), it is appropriate to make that decision and act accordingly; when dealing with a spoiled child, the same, when dealing with a pan handler or beggar, it is difficult because charity calls for giving but not enabling alcoholism or something like that.

So we judge, but if we are good people we judge with compassion, realizing we are all human and there are reasons that may be out of the person's control for the way they are.  Still, society must function and hence wrongdoing must be discouraged.

I don't trust traditions

I don't trust traditions.  They need watching and constant checking.  They are a map and when in strange terrain, if there is conflict between the terrain and the map, believe the terrain.

Religious racism

What might be the religious equivalent of racism?  About the best I can think of is "sectarian," although "cultist" is possible but would not incorporate non-believers.

Many years ago when I was in the States I took a teenage Vietnamese girl to a place where they test one's English for English-class placement purposes, and in the room were also some large extremely black refugees from Ethiopia.  She screamed in terror -- demons, demons -- and would not stay in the room.  Was she a racist or just confused about what constitutes a demon (often in Vietnamese demons are often pictured as large and black much as in the States they are often pictured as red).

No -- I don't think she was a racist.  She was ignorant and superstitious, but this was overcome readily enough and now she gets along with black classmates just fine.

Some people are different -- they are closed minded and tend to judge others (they are hypocrites if they also believe the Bible) and want to look down in some way (convince themselves they are superior) to pretty much anyone who is different from what they happen to be -- it can be race, nationality, accent, religion, politics, sex, sexuality, life style, economic status, even musical taste.

rThis goes by the generic label "prejudice," although I think this too weak a word and we need something that conveys the wrongness and bad karma such thinking and attitudes involves.

The Extravagance of the Multi-Universe interpretation

If the "multi-universe" interpretation of the various slit experiments is real (and I have to say it is the only interpretation that avoids what I see as mystical influences by the observer), one should sit back and think about how really extravagant it is.

Take an atom of uranium.  At some random point in time it will decay, but when it will do so is utterly unpredictable ("truly" random).  The only thing we can do is observe a probability, based on observing billions of such atoms and calculating their rate of decay (in this case it says that in several billion years there is a 50% chance that it will have decayed).

However, the given atom "decides" each Plank moment (if you have any idea how short a time that is, raise your hand) whether or not to decay or not.  In the multi-universes interpretation, a number of universes branch -- almost all not decaying (billions upon billions upon billions) and one decaying.  So, each Plank moment, for each uranium atom in the universe, such a number of otherwise identical universes branch away.

This applies to each quantum event anywhere in the universe, such as an electron deciding to decay from an excited state, or a proton deciding to decay (and the number of non-decay "decisions" here must truly be outrageous, since protons live much, much longer than uranium atoms), throughout the entire universe (which is immensely larger than the billions of galaxies that are observable).

In short, the theory is so extravagant that most who understand it tend to recoil, not on any logical basis but just because it is so extravagant.

Buddhist wisdom and Western anti-intellectualism

I think it is fairly accurate to say that the Buddhist environment (aka "Confucian ethic", to indicate the general attitude in Asia) and the Christian environment are different in an important respect (I might comment as an aside that modern Jewry is more like the Asian view).

This is that there is emphasis on learning.  Christians tend to downplay the importance and even value of knowledge, in spite of the fact that they invented science (and it may be this that in part is why -- it was a rebellion against enforced orthodoxy).  Christ taught to be as children, that God puts the wisdom of mankind to shame, even that the ignorant are as worthy as anyone else (not that all are not equal as humans, but they plainly are not in detail).

Wisdom in Buddhism is centered on the monastery.  The general public can believe what it wants, and the monks will smile and say that is true, and do whatever the traditional ritual might happen to be (and get gifts).  Hence they burn fake money for the dead, so that the dead are wealthy in the afterlife, even though everyone also believes that very shortly after death one's spirit occupies (parasitises?) a developing fetus, where surely it has no use for the money.  These contradictions abound, and none are argued with, and they are generally believed, although to someone like myself who has had a course in Greek philosophy and understands Aristotle this just can't be.  Asians don't have heretics.  If they have mutually contradictory beliefs, they are both true in some way that perhaps we don't grasp, and even if not, they are a way.  Hence Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism tolerate each other and a variety of more local animist sects perfectly well.

(Another aside: it was the coming of the Christian heresy -- Communism -- which inherited the idea of heresy from Christianity -- that upset this in China).

The Christian and the Muslim, in their fundamentalist forms (the idea of a "fundamentalist" Buddhist is kinda hard for me to even imagine -- not that Buddhists can't be strong and resistant in defending themselves -- although usually they aren't and usually resort to things like self-immolation in protest) is like the common American high school dropout who creates psychological justification for this failure by downplaying "eggheads" and "nerds."  They won't admit someone might be smarter and therefore have more valid opinions; indeed they foolishly try to deny it, even though hard experience should teach us that there is always someone out there smarter than we are and to whom we should listen and from whom we should learn.

So they reject things of science they don't like or don't understand, such as global warming or, of course, evolutionary theory.  Both are established science, but they are either economically inconvenient or don't fit what they want to believe, and they are incapable of accepting better informed, wiser opinion, so they become something of a laughing-stock.  The Trump approach that he doesn't need CIA briefings because he is "smart" is to me just a manifestation of ignorant, stupid arrogance.

My experience in America included volunteer stints visiting American high schools, where I became convinced Asian methods, where students are not mixed but separated sexually and by achievement, are better, involved the observation that the teacher in America spends a good deal of time just controlling the class from a few under-achievers who are loud and aggressive and egoistic know-nothings, not worthy of a bit of respect, and trying to demand it, or at least its external symbols.  In Asia such are expelled and either go into the army as cannon feed or join the ranks of common workers.

Trump has lost any legitimacy he may have had

Trump has lost any legitimacy he might have had.  The CIA is not a political entity; he should have paid attention to it and said he would see to it any help he had from them was not repeated.  I doubt their activity won him the election, but it may be that they really did alter enough votes in electronic states to do that.

His reaction instead -- just a stupid denial without evidence -- is outrageous and, as I said, strips him of legitimacy.

At the same time, I have to also conclude that the majority if not all Republicans in the US are hypocrites of the worst and most vile form I can imagine, accepting the fact, without protest or even call for change, that a man was elected President via technical and obsolete and undemocratic rules who in fact lost the election by a significant margin.  It appears Republicans only believe in democracy when it is convenient.

The Soul

The soul is a useful way to think about self, which is why I think the idea is so useful.  It also leads to a lot of mischief, such as the idea that an aborted fetus had a soul since the theory is that God gives each conception a soul.  I wonder if those who believe this have any idea of the number of natural abortions that occur before implantation.

Buddhism teaches that we are not a self, and certainly don't "have" a self or soul.  Instead, what we identify as self is really just a self-perpetuating process -- like a wave or a flame -- that continues to give itself rebirth from moment to moment out of its internal processes.  I find this convincing, as most people can who take a moment to sit quietly and "watch" the process of mind as it goes from thought to thought, bringing in memories or having idea rise up from the subconscious or noting an incoming sensation and so on -- each connected only to a certain degree to what the mind was at before.  This is process, not "thing.

(This always raises the question of, "Who is doing the watching?", for which there is a simple answer -- the same process -- just looking at short-term memory at its own state a moment ago).

One final point here: it is not necessary to take a materialist ("physicalist") approach when one accepts this view.  The process could be completely natural or it could have karmic (or whatever one calls it) aspects.

Crazy ideas

The fact that occasionally a crazy idea turns out to be true is like the fact that out of a million prospectors who die in the desert one comes back and strikes it rich.  We hear about the one who got rich, the rest die alone and unnoticed.

Cause(s) of homosexuality

It is a difficult subject to get people to be objective about.  Many see it as sinful or some other such bigotry, and therefore such people can be dismissed out of hand.

On the other side of the coin, however, homosexuality does need explaining.  It would not seem, at least on the surface, to be something natural selection would allow.  The claim that it is just a matter of taste is well known to be false; homosexuals (and other flavors of human sexuality) are not chosen -- people are born with it, and, at least for males, the trait seems to come from the mother.

One interesting theory, based on the observation of females maintaining the "genes" for the trait in the population (since until recently women rarely had much choice in childbearing so even gay women would have children) is that mothers of gay men tend to have more children than normal -- not by a lot but enough to keep the tendency in the pool.

This is but one of a whole class of theories that speculate there is some offsetting advantage for the homosexual traits -- better birth term survival, more robust babies, and, as described above, mothers who for some reason have more children.

There is also a set of theories that involve survival of hunter-gatherer cultures -- ideas like the homosexual (again, the male) serving a special role (shaman, pseudo-woman, etc.) and therefore allowing the other males to leave the group for extended periods without fear of being cuckolded.  (Personally I find this one a bit of a stretch).

Agnostics and atheists

I suppose it isn't how most people see the word, but technically an "agnostic" is a form or category of atheist.  An "atheist" does not believe in God, and neither does an agnostic.

Of course there are other kinds of atheist, so agnostic is a useful word for those who either say we don't know or maybe say we can't know.  I would subscribe to the latter, since it seems to me that to be "God" a being would have to be infinite and so far beyond us that knowledge, even revelatory knowledge, would be beyond our possibility of understanding.

The reason I tend instead to be a more standard atheist is that I see no need for such a hypothesis, and no reason to think it might be true.  It is possible but lots of things are possible, and we don't believe things just because they are possible.

Politics and energy technology

The efforts of the energy companies, mainly oil and coal, to prevent substitution of their products with renewable energy (and deny the problems their products cause) put me in mind of the efforts of the tobacco companies and now the soft drink companies to deny and hide the problems of their products.  It's enough to make one a socialist, except socialist enterprises are no better.  To rise to the top of a large business requires a certain ruthlessness, amorality, and willingness to put profit ahead of people.

The only solution has to be political (regulation, subsidies for alternatives to jump start them, etc.).  Unfortunately the established businesses have lots of resources and lobbyists and, well, after the mess the Americans just created in the world, a lot of foolish voters easily taken in by propaganda.
Who knows, we may get lucky and technology come along that simply out-competes the established firms on its own.  This could happen, and there are signs it may happen, but I continue to fear the political power of the political right to prevent a switch-over even then.

Jesus and other religious founders as myth

The details of the lives and teachings of the great religious tradition founders is almost entirely myth, except maybe Mohamed and Joseph Smith, who more likely were pious frauds, one to justify brigandry and the other for psychological reasons.

It is not necessary for a kernel of a real person to have existed for there to arise a body of myth about a person.  That is to say, King Arthur did not exist, much as some people try to find something, anything, for it.

At the same time, it is also possible for the kernel to have really existed, as is almost certainly the case with Confucius, Lao Tse, and Gautama the Buddha.  That does not mean, however, that we need take all or even most of the stories about these figures at face value.  Myths can exist about real people.

I think "Jesus" of Christianity was pure myth, mainly because he doesn't appear in writing for about a century after he is supposed to have been around, and the stories are, to those informed and honest about it (especially to themselves) conflicting and out of touch with real history and geography.  Still, the possibility is there -- the thing is, it makes no real difference whether the myth is the man himself or only the stories and teaching about him.  Either way we end up with nothing but sand for the religious edifice.

Life and Death in the Boondocks

It is interesting that most (if not, in fact, all) people can see situations where they would rather die than extend their lives a short while.  This involves considerations of quality of life but it also to very many involves considerations of cost and of difficulty for others.

When I decided to take residence in a place far out of town, where it takes a couple hours to get into town over largely dirt roads and without a hint of emergency service of any sort, my friends were astonished -- "What if you have a heart attack or something?"

Well, I have taken some measures, but I figure the money I save, the peace and quiet and clean air and beautiful surroundings I now live in make it a worthwhile trade, especially since I seriously doubt that any condition I can't survive for at least a couple hours getting me to hospital would be a condition I would want to survive anyway.  Using up my estate on keeping me alive in hospital and probably in pain for a few extra weeks, or in a comatose condition for however long, does not seem a reasonable deal.

Of course there are two elements that need thinking about in this context.  One is that illness is complex, and there are many disabling and even painful illnesses that still warrant continuing.  The second is that death is it.  Death is for eternity -- one is no more -- and this has a scary effect if not put in perspective.  It is not something to rush into.

Wild guess philosophy of time

There is time as measured on a clock and there is subjective time.  

There is no reason for us to think that the measurements we make aren't of something real, as part of a larger reality we call space-time, and obeying the Lorentz transformations, which goes to show me our understanding of it has to be remarkably deep.  That doesn't mean subjective time is real -- it is an experience invented by our brain, using our experienced knowledge of how long things typically take to happen.

I think of time as quantized to unbelievably short moment intervals (Plank time or less), with nothing between them (each such moment ceases to exist and the next one takes its place).  They are like moves on a chessboard.  Each move is influenced by what has already happened, but still also has elements of will and of chance in it, but always must obey certain rules we call laws of nature.

Nincompoop Presidential appointments

I wonder; I know of several generals and retired generals and quite a number of large corporation presidents and retired presidents Trump has taken into his administration, but I can't think of anyone from the academic world.  Maybe there have been and it escaped me.

Still, it tends, along with global warming being a Chinese fraud, and the impoverished vocabulary, and the rabid anti-intellectualism repeatedly expressed in his rallies and roundly cheered, if maybe, just maybe, the US has elected an ignorant, stupid nincompoop.

Prime numbers

It might be worth reminding ourselves that there can be no largest prime number, only (as already noted above) a largest known prime.  The implication worth contemplating in this context is that no matter how many gazillion digits a prime number has, it is infinitesimally small (indistinguishable from zero if looked at from far enough away) compared to all the primes that exist.

It is also interesting that, although we have to admit the prime numbers, on average, steadily get further and further apart, there is nevertheless an infinite number of them separated by any given even number, even two.  (Primes can't be separated by an odd number since an odd plus another odd number always produces an even number, and even numbers are by definition composite).

Another mind-boggler -- the occurrence of primes in the number sequence seems, by every test we can imagine, to be random, but, of course, it can't be random, as it has to be something determined.

Man the Hunter

When I was in college we were taught all about "man the hunter," the males going out and bringing back the big game and the women collecting the veggies.

It now appears that the reality could not have been more wrong -- that only in the last 20,000 years or so have humans had the technology to bring down big game at all, and that previous associations with such animals were examples of human scavenging.  While "hunter-gatherer" societies did sometimes get small game, like maybe a rabbit or two, mankind did not evolve as the hunter but as the scavenger and root digger, and both men and women participated in both.

It is true some people get a thrill out of killing an animal.  I feel sorry for them and their karma.

Is God evil?

Thanks for that -- you make an important and profound point --"the more we justify suffering the less basis we have for saying something is evil at all."

Some religions don't identify suffering as the definition of evil, but, instead, violation of certain rules, allegedly provided by God.  It is hard to deal with that.  Why does God make such rules?  If it is because they are wrong in themselves, then God's inserting himself is of no meaning -- they would be wrong anyway.  If it is because he simply decides on some ineffable basis, then what happens if someday he changes his mind?

(This of course is an ancient argument from Plato).

It seems that suffering is really the only possible meaningful definition of evil, in which case, since God created a world so full of suffering (in fact the main operating of creation -- natural selection -- depends on suffering and death as its driving force), aren't we forced in the end to say that God is evil? 

Of course there are also good things in the world, so one can say God is doing the best he can, but for good to exist evil must also exist.  That is probably true, but then why do we need God in the picture at all?

Trump and Putin's propaganda

I noted an extensive article in this morning's Washington Post about how the Russian propaganda machine was extremely (an adverb I try to avoid but which fits here) active in spreading false stories about Clinton during the campaign, and how it seems Trump's people, at a minimum, did nothing to discourage it.

One wonders why.  Some possibilities, not to be taken too seriously, are that Putin sees in Trump an incompetent he can manipulate or maybe a fellow kleptrocrat he can cooperate with in mutual self-enrichment (what is it -- Trump will enter the White House with millions and leave with billions upon billions)?

It is ironic, at the least, that those who paint themselves most patriotic among Americans here buy this propaganda and push it along.  Some of it is no doubt their naiveté, but I have to say I wonder about those who also regularly post misinformation about how the rebels in Syria are all ISIS and the Russians are not engaging in atrocities -- and similar stuff about Ukraine.

We need to be aware that Putin is corrupt and ignores international standards and is a bald-faced liar.  I tend to think about the same regarding Trump, but am going to have to give him the benefit of the doubt for at least a few months.

Recognizing propaganda

There are two general categories of unfair debate -- what is called propaganda, and, of course, logical fallacies.  It occurs to me that people don't seem to know how to recognize these.  There are web sites that can be found in any search to help.

Basically, propaganda uses non-rational, emotional appeal.  This is often negative (name calling, talking down to people, personal insults, attacking the person and their history rather than what they say, dismissive labeling, and others).  They can also be positive (patriotic symbols and music, religious appeals, quotes of famous people, and others.  Far and away the most effective form of propaganda is the lie -- disinformation -- invented stuff repeated over and over and made to appear legit.  To defend oneself from this sort of thing requires identifying sources of misinformation by being widely read over a broad political spectrum.

One other form of propaganda is "band-wagon," where a partisan group gang up on individuals who have other views.  It does not work, folks, except for those worried overmuch about what others think.

I won't go into logical fallacies here, although I sure see a lot of those too.  It amazes me, and I have to think that a lot of the people around here haven't had much education or they would know better.

Trump reversals

According to the LA Times this morning, yesterday Trump compromised on at least three issues.

First, he said he had been persuaded that torture was ineffective and that other methods work better -- torture only generates fabrications, not truth.  I would wish he would address the moral issue here -- that the appeal of torture seems to be sadistic and revenge impulses in the interrogator and has no scientific basis, and, more significantly, is wrong.

Second, he backed off on prosecuting Mrs. Clinton, saying she had suffered enough and that the Clinton Trust actually does a good deal of good.  This is really nothing more than an admission that the Big Lie he based his campaign (that Mrs. Clinton is "evil") and apparently won the Presidency on is false.  He would in fact, or at least should in fact, have no influence on whether there are prosecutions or not -- this is supposed to be done in a non-political way by the attorneys investigating -- and it would seem that no prosecutions are in the offing.  Putting it in terms of having "mercy" on the Clintons is transparent and outrageous, after the way he conducted the campaign. 

Third, now he says he has an "open mind" about global warming and that US withdrawal from recent warming agreements will not be automatic.  That is perhaps the most encouraging thing of all, since the consequences of his sticking with his prior unscientific attitudes could lead to disaster for future generations.

Qualia and Chemicals

I think it might be useful to insert a distinction here between "it's just chemicals" and "it's real."  Chemicals are real enough, and there is a reason the chemicals are there, but the presence of the chemicals might not be the cause but a result.

What we do think we know is that we "experience" things (known as "qualia" -- emotions, sensations, an ongoing narrative of the world).  It has been realized by introspective people from ancient times that none of this can possibly be "real" in the usual and intuitive sense of the world -- that our experience is not real but generated somewhere -- moderns assume in the brain.  About the best we can say is that the ongoing narrative of our experience is a useful interface between the outside world and ourselves -- like the odometer on a car is not "real speed" but just an interface telling us about the car's real speed.

Evolutionary fact and evolutionary theory

I wince when I see expressions like, "scientific fact."  It implies something determined beyond doubt that could never be questioned or modified.  I realize that when a scientist says it, he means something a bit different, but it is misleading regardless.

The best word in my opinion is "theory." Scientific theories are models of the world that explain in terms we understand what we observe -- the data.  There is atomic theory, genetic theory, germ theory, quantum theory, and so on.  Sometimes they are readily understood, sometimes they are not, and require us to just accept the fact that the theory makes predictions that can be tested and check out.

By the way, I do think evolutionary theory is so supported by all the biological and geological and genetic evidence that it is as close to "fact" as is humanly possible.

Trump's effects

In all Trump will probably be good for the economy.  He will reduce environmental regulation (it is feared to the harm of the environment and an increase in global warming), increase regulations on unions (it is feared to the point they will have no ability to change exploitive situations), eliminate all sorts of consumer protection regulations and so on and on.  This will happen mostly unseen by changes in rules and in the attitude toward their enforcement, but will tend to help the economy, at least short term, so there may be some growth.

However, it also appears there will be a surge in wasteful spending, on military boondoggles and, of course, on The Wall.  A lot of bridges and such will no doubt be built, some needed, but things less visible, such as water pipes and sewage disposal systems, will continue to be pushed aside.

Then there is trade policy.  If things go according to the rhetoric, a trade war with Mexico and China is in the offing, if not the rest of the world.  What seems to be forgotten is that these countries can retaliate.  Also, of course, such a policy is tailor made to increase China's trade and other economic influence with Latin America, Africa and Asia.  If carried far enough, it could precipitate a world-wide depression.

What worries me most however is social.  That women will lose the right to an abortion seems inevitable -- not just in states that want to do so but via Federal regulation of medical practice.  That gays may lose the right to marry also seems, for similar reasons, likely, even though Trump himself has pretty much avoided the issue.   It will be done by his appointees in small steps.  Of course immigrants, even legal ones, will lose most of their rights, and will end up living under a constant shadow of the threat of challenge (even when they produce papers, this sort of disturbance will cause many employers to terminate, just to avoid attention).

  

Not just immigrants, too, but Muslims (how about Jews, Catholics, Mormons, atheists) will live in a shadow, and, of course, blacks will have it hard.  Nothing official mind you -- just selectivity in the enforcement of existing laws and their interpretation will be enough.

There is also the right to vote.  I can see identification laws applied like Florida tried to apply, designed to see to it that only whites vote.

Love versus oxytocin

I have a split with myself over this.  The pleasure of a life partner to share things with and to raise children with is not to be denied.  Of course children are not the only reason for marriage -- a life partner, solemnized by ritual and recognized by family and community, is precious by itself.

Still, the knowledge that it is mainly oxytocin behind these feelings helps us keep a certain detachment, in the realization that no pleasure is permanent and all ultimately ends in frustration.  Our wife dies, our children disappoint us, we disappoint our children, and when we die we desperately desire to restore what we had, but cannot (or maybe we don't -- that one is still in the air.  

Balance is needed -- to prevent our detachment from making it too easy to abandon relationships and love making it too hard when the relationship dissolves regardless.

Stolen election

I don't think the election was rigged -- that was Trump's nonsense and would be impossible to do.  It nevertheless does appear to have been stolen.

All the polls -- unanimously among those with a scientific basis -- two weeks before the election had Clinton winning, then out comes the FBI, illegally, with "revelations" it has to investigate (although it was forced fairly quickly to back down -- the revelation was timed too close and the back down looked political).  Therefore it changed maybe two percent of the vote -- some pretty much undecided types.

One has to wonder what went on in the FBI.  It is not likely Trump's campaign was involved, but that there were a lot of anti-Clinton folk there who might easily have pulled such a stunt, knowing what might happen, makes the scenario probable.

At any rate Trump will not be seen as legitimate by most of the world, and probably after a little while by most Americans.  He may have the office but he has no mandate (to have that he would need a popular vote majority anyway).

Should California secede

Interesting question: given what may happen, should California secede.

Along with Washington and Oregon and a couple others, it now has a vastly superior governmental structure, with non-partisan districts, open primaries and term limits applied universally.

It is also grossly underrepresented and over taxed by the Feds (in effect California subsidies the rest of the country with far less voting power).

To secede legally would be almost impossible, as it would require consent of two-thirds of the other states -- so we may presume any secession will not be very peaceful, although it would not necessarily be violent.  It would take consistent non-cooperation by the State and refusal to forward tax revenues and things like that to get the Feds to back down.

We nevertheless see that the underrepresentation of California has had the effect of putting a nut in the White House -- the American people, if California were treated fairly, did NOT elect him.
I wait to see what happens when the Feds decide to ban abortion and contraception, ban marijuana, ban gay marriage and make being gay a crime, remove consumer protection laws, as well as environmental protection, worker safety protection, and so on and on.  I also wonder what might happen if Feds go into California and start deporting Latins and Muslims and maybe even Asians.
I see a huge amount of civil disobedience, at a minimum.

Trump has no mandate from the people -- he is President simply because of ugly spots in the American system.  He would do well to back off and not try to push anything he promised.  Of course if he does he will lose his base.  Besides, he doesn't appear to be in touch with reality enough to see the situation he is in, and so is likely to blunder forward blindly. 

It would be an interesting thing to watch, if it weren't so scary.

The Founding Fathers and Trump

It is ironic.  The Founding Fathers were mostly landed and wealthy aristocrats, and back then to vote you had to own land and pay taxes.

The thing is, they were influenced by the myths of the Enlightenment and hence ended up designing a government far more "democratic" -- not as democratic as Athens, perhaps, but much more than what Rome ever imagined.  After one generation the aristocrats were gone and replaced by standard American mediocre politicians and lawyers.

The problem here is that closed primaries has allowed a nut case to win the Republican nomination and then the Electoral College has defeated the voice of the people and via a series of flukes put him in the Presidency.

I notice he is complaining that it is "not fair" that people are protesting.

  

I foresee hard times for America and the world.

Catching one's breath after the American electoral disaster

It does little good to argue that Clinton, as measured by actual vote counts, won the election.  By the outdated rules of the US Constitution she lost and the worst possible candidate won.  Still, this point needs making -- that he was not, by democratic rules, legitimately elected.  The problem is the US is an approximation of democracy.

The Democrats, led by Obama, have behaved properly, and not questioned the results and wished Trump the best.

Now, what happened?  Well the polls showed Clinton winning, so we have to assume it was the FBI behavior, both the "finding" of new tapes that weren't new and then the quick "decision" that there was nothing there to prosecute (which of course there wasn't) that flipped enough voters in key states.
That the FBI could not defend what it did was plain, so what happened next was a neat trick, overwhelmed by the seeming political decision to back off.   I see Putin is delighted, and thinks it was his activity (I think this is not likely but he probably did what he could to help).

I think we can also attach some blame to Sanders.  His behavior during the primaries forced Clinton to go further to the left than a lot of more centrist voters (such as myself) were comfortable with.  Then he took his good sweet time coming around -- it is plain the man has too much ego to be a leader and that his policy prescriptions are not acceptable to the American people.  Look at how Colorado voted for Clinton but rejected Sander's ballot proposition.

In the end, "big lie" propaganda worked, overcoming the fear and distaste for the boorish behavior and obvious incompetence.  The idea that the Clintons are "criminals" (an absurdity or they would long ago have been brought to task, in spite of repeated Republican efforts to do this) was repeated over and over and over, with the flimsiest evidence but lots of loud repeating.

Being turned off by God

It has been said that the reason many are atheists is the horrible picture believers pain about God and his history.  This is probably the case with a lot of people, but I think most atheists have a more favorable impression of what God, if he existed, would be like.

What the churches say is, of course, all over the place, but there are churches that have elevated and ethical ideas.  The simple problem with God is there is no good reason to say he exists, except various emotional and psychological reasons ("feelings").  I am skeptical enough about myself to realize that this sort of thing is not credible.

Belief vs. Opinion

The English language is ambiguous on any difference between "belief," and "opinion."  The former is often taken as just "strong opinion." 

I would argue that in reality there is a psychological difference.  Beliefs are obtained mainly from indoctrination, opinions from investigation and education.  Beliefs tend to be defended "no matter what," opinions are alterable, with difficulty but without emotional trauma.  There are meditative techniques that can inculcate a belief, none that merely make opinions (which is a reason meditation under the wrong or a misguided teacher can be dangerous).  Mostly, our beliefs derive from what we were taught as children before we had mature skeptical minds.  That is why most Egyptians are Muslims, most Italians Catholic, most Cambodians Buddhist.

It behooves a person who would truly know themselves and truly understand things to root out beliefs, study them objectively, and either keep them as opinions or reject them.

Obstructionist Republicans

It does seem to look as though the Republicans are going to go obstructionist, keeping the country from being governed except by executive decree and causing the count of judges in the Supreme Court to steadily drop, and maybe the whole Federal Judiciary.  The only thing they seem to have on their minds is investigative power.

I would hope more adult minds would prevail, as this is a recipe for steadily losing more and more of the American public until all they have left are the racists.  (Look at how California went after the Republicans behaved similarly there a decade ago -- and what is now happening in Colorado).