What is it about music?

I sit here right now with a Gottschalk piano piece playing.  He is new to me, and a delightful find, with a unique voice, as is the case with most good composers.

(I must say I had heard the name before but had not associated it with anything in particular).

His music is uplifting, enthusiastic, obviously very difficult, and I am delighted.  I will listen to it until it gets boring and then go out and find more.  That is a problem with me -- if I like something I tend to overdo it.

What is it?  How is it this noise lifts my spirits so much?  How is it other great music relaxes me or even better puts me into a quietude and spiritual mood, such that I don't want it to ever end?

Some of it is no doubt cultural -- we like what we know and are use to -- I have difficulty with the music of non-Western cultures, and mostly think it trite or repulsive.  I have a similar view with most popular Western music, mainly because of its crassness and triteness and lack of any effort at subtlety or more than superficial beauty.

(Not all of it -- as with most matters of taste there are a lot of exceptions).

Still, as a kid I liked certain compositions the first I heard them, and remember going to the library and putting on the earphones to hear them over and over.  So I have to think there is something inherent.

The thing is we don't hear music, we experience it (if we are really listening).  It has effects on us that go beyond anything physical or brainy.  It is entirely of the mind; the brain gives the sound qualia to the mind and the mind is moved by it and enjoys it and is hooked on it.  It has to be seen as part of the great mystery of sentience.

The same thing of course applies to all those things we call art.

Atheism

There are several kinds of definition of what an atheist is, used by different groups to give them a debating advantage.

Probably the worst is that atheism is a religion of no God.  That is as far as I can tell absurd.  Religion, except for a couple of them originating in India, is all about gods, and these two (that I know of that don't have gods or at least don't assert them) are religions on their own -- not a "religion" of atheism.

No.  Atheism is not even a belief to most people, but just an opinion, albeit usually a strongly held opinion.  The way I would put it is that I am as sure that there is no God as I can be sure of anything, the world being such that one is never absolutely sure about anything.

Of course those who are truly on the fence, who doubt there is a God but have strong doubts about that doubt, who are usually called agnostics.  There is an important distinction here.  The agnostic is on the fence; the atheist may admit a remote possibility but is pretty damn sure.  The atheist only sees the fence but is nowhere near it.

There is a sense in which agnostics could be classed as a type of atheist, if one defines atheism as "no God" since the usual off-the-cuff definition is one who does not believe in God, and the agnostic does not believe -- he or she is just more unsure than the more typical atheist.

Back to the really bad definition of atheism as a religion.  The reason religionists like that definition is then they can say it is just a belief, like other beliefs, and one is not more valid than another -- we just choose.  The thing is these people believe because they want to believe, and maybe even cannot imagine not believing, generally because they were taught to believe in childhood and hence are fully indoctrinated (religions like to get the children before the children are mature enough to think for themselves and with full rationality).

The atheist on the other hand takes the view that although one cannot prove a negative, if one wants to assert something important one must have proof, or at least lots and lots of evidence.  It then becomes a matter of looking at the evidence present that God exists and coming to the conclusion that it is all wishful thinking and doesn't hold any water at all and that there is really no persuasive or even slightly convincing evidence.  The heavens do not declare the glory of God, nor does nature.  There are no asterisms spelling out the Tetragrammaton.

Absence of evidence in favor of an important assertion logically requires a negative conclusion.  An honest person does not accept things because one likes them or because one wants to or because one wants to go to Heaven or because one's parents and culture believes it.  The only honest way to think something is true is because one is persuaded by an honest investigation of the arguments (not just reading theist stuff).

Would you believe it, so far I have not tried to define "God," usually the first question in this sort of discussion.  There is God and there are gods.  To me the former has to be, to be God, omni- various things, such as omnipotent and omniscient.  Omnipresent or omnibenificient would count but aren't necessary.  Even a transcendent, spiritual being would be something like an angel or superman, not God.

This leads to the self-referential contradictions we have known about since the Middle Ages, having to do with whether or not God can make a rock so big he can't move it or whether or not we can really have free will, and not just an illusion, if God knows all the future (these are two different issues and theists have differing approaches, but I want to keep this fairly simple).

The way the theist tends to deal with this sort of thing is simply by saying that God can do anything except something impossible for God to do.  Think about that for a minute.  That has got to be one of the great cop-outs of all time.  Besides, I can do anything except something impossible for me to do, so am I God?  No.

What the theists do to get around their logical contradictions is to make God into a god.  Zeus can do a lot of things too, but not those things he can't do.

Why I don't like the legal profession

Lawyers are neither more nor less likeable, I suppose on average, than anyone else.  This is not personal.

When I was in high school, being outspoken, loquacious, and opinionated, I was many times told I should be a lawyer or even that I might make a good lawyer.  At the time I would shudder and stay silent -- I had already formed my opinion of the profession.

If someone is smart and goes to college, one is presented with a number of possible career choices.  One can become a teacher if one is idealistic and likes children and is not too much worried about making a lot of money.  Or one can become a doctor if, again, one is idealistic and perhaps fascinated by blood and gore, but at the same time wants to be affluent.  Or one can become an architect or artist or musician if one is into beauty and would like to be well off but is more interested in appreciation and even fame.  Of course if one is nerdy or likes mathematics, one can go into computers or engineering or science.

There are, then, many choices.  The ones who go into law are a little different.  They too are smart, but not idealistic and very much interested in money.  The other group who also fit this are of course those who go into business schools.

The similarities between the two groups are considerable.  The thing I want to bring out though is they both have a certain tendency to rationalize unethical behavior, so long as there is a good chance they will get away with it.  Of course I am sure there are exceptions to this, but the exceptions are not typical.

People self-select and lawyers are people with this personality trait.  Their training makes it even worse.  Under the rationalization that even the worst criminal is entitled to good legal representation at trial, they confuse juries and distort evidence and in the end the most competent of them help celebrities get away with murder.

So also, and even worse, is the tort bar, where the lawyer creates and seeks out litigation, slowing the economy and increasing costs for everyone not winning the tort lottery.  The rationalization is fair compensation to those injured, but that lawyers and litigation can be done without is demonstrated by worker's compensation systems and other similar experiments -- but the lawyers in the legislature prevent such arrangements from being put into place for most litigation.

The end result, especially in the United States, is a country bursting at the seams with lawyers making comfortable and in some cases outrageous amounts of money off litigation and the threat of litigation, generating in my view a general decline of the country (it would be more noticeable except lawyers elsewhere do similar things) and a lower standard of living for the population, and, in many cases, especially medical care, a level of expense that makes not having insurance an insane proposition, as insurance premiums go higher and higher.
  

Science or hermeneutics?

Science is doing things to see what you find, sometimes guided by observations and ideas, but never opinions or beliefs.  When one is instead doing experiments with the intent of proving something you already believe, you are engaging in a form of hermeneutics.   It becomes religion not science, which is of course why these chaps tend to always find what they are looking for, but others don't.

What hermeneutics does is also known as "cherry picking."  One researches everything -- mainly the pertinent literature but often does one's own observing and experimenting -- and then picks out those things that support one's view and either ignores or rationalizes (when it is not possible to ignore it as it is either common knowledge or publicly pointed out) those things one can't ignore.

Space elevators -- future speculation

As I understand it there are two problems with the idea of having space stations in geosynchronous orbit tethered to the earth with a real physical line, to which can be attached an elevator, or that itself serves as one.

The first problem is a cable material of sufficient strength to do this.  This is a pretty obvious problem and may not be doable, in which case the subject is closed.  I think probably it is doable in the near future.

The other problem is the radiation exposure people riding such an elevator would suffer.  In a rocket the exposure is a few seconds; on such an elevator it might be hours.  (The earth is surrounded by radiation belts of deadly stuff -- out in geosynchronous orbit the radiation problem is manageable, but closer in it could be a killer).

Of course shielding would be needed, without adding too much weight, I suppose.

Now imagine what might be possible out there with almost unlimited room for anything.  Huge multi-billion-people cities, self-sustaining for the most part, utilizing solar energy and providing each inhabitant lots of living space.  Gravity would be from rotating the cities, one living near the rim, but with trips to the hub for zero-gravity activities available.  Kinda like a huge luxury liner in the end, but with enough people to make a rich and varied culture work.

I can see problems getting the raw materials necessary -- we have already exploited earth quite a bit, although much remains -- but probably other objects would be mined. 

I think in spite of my perception of the present world as fundamentally corrupt, it will progress to a much better, even glorious, future, in spite of this.  I guess I'm an optimist.

Trying to fix representative democracy

Yesterday, in the context of how copyright laws have come to be so absurd and hurt the public and defeat the reason they exist, I made a strong attack on the distortions money and press access have on the legislative procedure, to the effect that I have abandoned hope in democracy.

This is largely true, except as Churchill once noted, it is hard to come up with a viable alternative that doesn't risk dictatorship (not that democracies don't generally evolved into dictatorships too, or at least societies where people have little freedom).

Several things.  First, the legal profession has to be prevented from controlling things.  Lawyers are generally disliked everywhere for good reason, although there are good lawyers, there are an awful lot who do much more harm than good, but that is for another blog.

The issue here is that they tend to, as a profession, dominate legislative processes, and their solution to everything is to complicate the law.  Society ends up with more and more regulation and regulators and bureaucrats and litigation and in the end vast amounts of corruption needed to function at all.

They also of course routinely act in their personal interest, so we have laws about things like "practicing law without a license" and an utter inability of legislatures to get litigation under any reasonable control.

So the first thing I think needs doing is to ban any member of the legal profession from politics, or anyone who has been in the past.

Another thing is pork.  One approach might be to let the executive make the budget and the legislature either approve or disapprove, up or down, with no amendments.  A lot of pork can be dealt with by having at-large representation in the legislature, with staggered terms.

That still doesn't eliminate it as the executive will have to make compromises in order to get the budget passed, and the executive itself will probably have its own bits of corruption.  (Yes pork is corruption -- we need to recognize it for what it is.)  This also seems putting a lot of power in the executive's hands, so institutional checks here need to be thought up.

Of course largely the root of the problem is the voter.  They vote for all sorts of silly reasons, although more often in their selfish interest or based on the position of the candidate on a limited range of issues.  So candidates lie or take bad positions just to get elected.  Or, even worse, ideologues get elected, and some really stupid people who don't understand the real world and function from within an ideology or even a religion.

The thing is the voter has little choice.  He or she only can assess the candidate by the campaign and what and how they say things, and this is so easily manipulated.  Negative campaign adds, for example, have been shown to be effective over and over, when in fact it should drive voters into the camp of the person being attacked.

A much more limited voter roll seems needed -- one where stability and education and reasonableness and so on are considered when one applies for the franchise.  Of course such things inevitably get used to keep groups, such as racial minorities, from having a say, so it would have to be much more complicated than just a board reviewing applications and more automated.

Then the voters are a small number who can get to know the candidate personally and who know what is going on.

I suspect my views are just too radical for most people, and smack of Platonic ideas and of course of Leninism, although there are differences.  One thing is I would have the whole thing non-partisan and eliminate political parties (which have the effect of turning elections into sporting events).

Of course no system is perfect, and all can be criticized, but it seems to me we are so badly governed nowadays in most countries that something pretty radical needs to be done.





 

Assessing scientific studies

How does one deal with a "scientific study" that contradicts what you know or that seems improbable or that supports ideas that are usually rejected as pseudo-science?

The fact is a lot of "studies" aren't really and are either outright lies or contrived to "prove" what people want to prove.  The ordinary person is not really able to assess such things, since even "peer reviewed" is more and more becoming meaningless (except for of course certain publications, but getting them and reading the original article is not terribly useful for all the jargon).

Generally even these reputable studies get misused and misinterpreted by both marketers and the press.

So what to do?  I don't really know, except be aware and as informed as possible and generally follow what the scientific consensus seems to be.

Copyright laws

An example of how special interests dominate political bodies to get what it wants are the insane copyright laws all over the place.

The idea of copyright of course is to reward those who write or produce things people want, so the laws should be designed to optimize that, not optimize income to the ultimate owners of copyright.  It is well known that things are written and produced even if copying is rampant, but still fairness says the authors and so on should get some money from copies for awhile.

One of the bad things that happens is that copyright owners are allowed to absolutely prevent the use of their characters and ideas in other places -- something just begging for litigation -- but, that aside, it has the perverse effect of denying the public things that would otherwise be produced -- thereby defeating its own purposes.  An example are wonderful books where the rights are inherited by a strange relative of the author who subsequently locks it up.

Instead, the rule should be simple -- you can't use copyright to deny others the right to use your ideas, nor to keep your own product off the market for whatever reason -- you are entitled to reasonable royalties when this happens, for a few years (not the fifty plus we see nowadays) and that is it.

One must distinguish copyright infringement from plagiarism.  The author of something is entitled to mention whenever the work is used, forever, and must be given credit.  Using someone else's work as your own is dishonest and corrupt.  This however is a moral rather than a legal issue -- the state needs, or at least should need, since the US Constitution is obsolete in its provisions here, compelling reason to restrict press and speech freedom.  But only for a reasonable time should one have to pay for it, and then only a reasonable amount (legislatures need to provide details).

Another thing -- I find it astonishing that pornography is subject to copyright.  I suppose the problem is defining it, but I would say the finding that the work is prurient only and of no other value should be a sufficient defense with copyright infringement.  This stuff will appear regardless and does not need legal protection. 

Of course no doubt this would mean you would have Mickey Mouse in all sorts of things the Disney Company doesn't like (actually it happens anyway and the character is not all that valuable outside his native habitat).  So what?  The public loses and only Disney Company gains with the present restrictions.

The thing is in a politically elected body, the commercial press, and movies studios in particular, tend to get what they want.  Not only do they have plenty of money to spend in various ways to influence legislators, but they can also defeat even an incumbent in the ways they report about them, and so on.  It always amazed me how two such politically different institutions, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal seem to have the same editorial views on this one.

My conclusion, and this is just one reason, is that elective democracy just doesn't work as the propaganda would have us think.   Such bodies are corrupt in all sorts of subtle ways without taking bribes.

Where is Mozart?

One of the problems I perceive with traditional Buddhist (and Hindu) rebirth (mislabeled "reincarnation") teaching is where is Mozart?  He should have been reborn several times now.

The thing is his voice is unique.  From earliest age his compositions are recognizable as his.  This is true of many composers and artists and writers, but Mozart makes the best example.

So why haven't there been several Mozart's in history?  Is all of that lost in the rebirth process -- if so what is the point? 

All sorts of rationalizations are possible, of course, but wouldn't it be nice if there were at least one clear example of the rebirth of an identifiable talent? 

Vietnam retirement

Should you retire in Vietnam?

It is not as scary as it sounds.  The country has been stable and getting more and more open for forty years now and shows every sign of stability.  Only China now is a fly in the ointment and trouble with them is unlikely in spite of what you hear.

Still, for most people, I would say, no.

The main reason is that the government does not seem to understand the value to the economy this could represent, and many of the police and other government officials see pensioners as "parasites" (even though they pay their own way and bring money into the economy).

Hence one cannot buy property and must pay rent, losing any capital gains as the rent money goes down the drain.  Of course one might buy the property in a native Vietnamese name and sign with them a long-term lease:  I am not sure if that would be effective.  I have to say though that what you get is worth the rent.  You can get a six bedroom modern place with real luxuries for half the rent you pay in a US city for a piece of junk.

The biggest problem though is a constant financial drain and risk involved with maintaining a good and current visa.  You even have to leave the country every now and then and apply while overseas, and it isn't anywhere near as cheap as the official fees -- you can't do it yourself and have to hire others.

Other than that Vietnam is a retirement paradise.  The beaches and mountains and shopping and culture and food (both Vietnamese and pretty much anything else) are all optimal.

It is not as inexpensive as it once was -- the local currency is, it seems, steadily devalued, and prices do go up steadily.  Still it is one of the least expensive countries around.  The other thing is the culture puts a high prestige tag on those who help the elderly -- it is not the low-class job as seen in the States -- so people who want to do it are around, in particular if one has medical or locomotion problems.

As to health care, I am of the firm opinion that what is available in the States is much worse than what is available in Vietnam for a fifth or less the cost.  You do have to pay for health care up front, but it is affordable, even serious things -- and they have modern facilities and well-trained doctors.  The thing is the doctors are not afraid of law suits and insurance companies and so on and so do what they think (and you think) is best for you, so long as it is evidence based.

With the exception of a few really dangerous or habit-forming drugs, you don't really need a prescription for most things, which makes the process much cheaper.  Pharmacists there are able to hear you out on symptoms and recommend things, or recommend going to a clinic or hospital.  For minor and moderate problems, in other words, one does not need to see a doctor.

Much the same applies to dentistry.  Good work (as confirmed by my US dentist) at a fraction of the cost.  Work (major bridges and root canals all over my mouth) that was quoted to me in the States at $40,000 cost me a little less than $1,000.  It is really nice to have a full set of teeth again, and I could afford it.

Still, you have to remember that it is a third-world country.  Actually more "second" world -- it has made major progress.  It is also much safer than almost anywhere else in the world, at least as regards crime (not as regards traffic).  It has excellent airports and some cities are cool and others beach paradises, and even HCMC (formerly Saigon) has neighborhoods that are wonderful (although traffic is difficult and a car would not be advisable -- but cabs are not expensive -- fifteen dollars for one end of the city to the other -- it is a very large city).

Oh -- and almost everyone under a certain age who is educated speaks English and Vietnamese uses a Roman alphabet so one does not get lost the way one does in China or Korea or Japan or Thailand.

Eternal life

I read an item in one of the scientific web sites to the effect living forever is impossible.  The basis was a survey of the age of death of the very oldest, and while lifetimes have been getting longer, this maximum age has not.  Therefore no matter how good medical care and so on get, there is a maximum age.

While I agree living forever is impossible, this evidence draws the wrong conclusion.  We age for some unknown complex of reasons, but each species seems to have a different and evolving maximum age, and there is no reason for that not to apply to us.  There are biological reasons we age and die, and each species reflects these in accordance to its lifestyle and the normal age of death from disease or predation.  That humans overcome these would remove the biological reason for aging and dying, and we would expect maximum lifetimes to slowly increase -- but on evolutionary terms this would require thousands or millions of years, not the short time of the observations.

The important thing here is that the fact that maximum age varies from species to species tells us it is not inherent but evolved, and that therefore there ought to be ways to interfere with it.  

The reason living forever is impossible is simple -- one may never die but at the same time one has never reached infinite age.  One may be a million or billion or gazillion years old, but never infinite.

One day the earth will become uninhabitable, a little later the solar system.  Humans will of course know it is coming and we presume will have the ability to go elsewhere.  Even orbiting a red dwarf, long-lived as they are, would someday have to come to an end.

There is reason to think, though, that space-time has unlimited low-entropy energy available -- this is after all how our present universe got its energy.  Just separate the positive and the negative keeping the total at zero.  So humanity could go on.

Back to nearer to us in time, what might a society where there is no aging and presumably very few if any deaths (technology would also steadily improve safety) be like?  One can imagine frightening scenarios -- say a Stalin was in power and would live on and on -- and other messes, but one can also imagine things being pretty nice.  Remove death and you also remove a lot of human angst.

Don't worry about overpopulation.  That particular worry is trivial.  If it came to it children would stop happening, but I think more likely humanity would expand.  It's a big universe.

What is philosophy for?

As a look at my blogs shows, I'm interested in amateurish philosophizing.  The pros seem to mostly do nothing but talk about what philosophers in the canon said or didn't say, so I call what I do amateurish.  I actually think about real answers.

(I do however recommend knowing at least what a few important philosophers had to say -- keeps one from re-inventing the wheel).

By the way, I do wonder how some people, like Nietzsche or Marx or Hegel or Sartre or Ayn Rand, got into the canon.  Their ideas don't hold water, and all philosophers seem to do nowadays, is refute them.  They were maybe just good, albeit arrogant, writers, and of course Marx and Hegel are significant politically, but not as far as I can see as philosophers.

But one doesn't do things like philosophy just to be right, since these are questions one never can be sure of.  No the fact is I do it because it's fun.  Thinking about it though, maybe one way into the cannon is to be sure one is right -- it's like a religion then and one gets disciples whom others have to set straight.  Those less arrogant don't make it.

No, what philosophy is really for, is happiness.  It provides ways to see the world in less gloomy ways -- except of course if you enjoy being gloomy, since it provides that too.  One can learn to accept or maybe not care about or maybe see and avoid the two-by-fours life sometimes hits you on the head with.

Ethics is an example, and maybe the first branch of real philosophy (rather than religion or philosophy that became science).  We all want to do what is right (I would hope), and doing what is right is satisfying and provides even joy.  But that assumes we know what is right, which in turn implies there is such a thing.

Analogy to aesthetics is hard to avoid, so let us analogize.  We all want what is beautiful but we don't really know how to say what is beautiful or whether or not beauty really exists -- except in the head -- we know it exists in our heads.  Beautiful things give us joy (do they ever) but we don't know why or what it is.  All we can say for sure is that beauty changes from person to person as well as over time and from culture to culture.

Does right and wrong behave similarly?  If we say it does then the whole exercise of doing what is right becomes a farce.  Right and wrong behavior affect others and affect the world -- we can be destructive or constructive.  Now making beauty is the right thing to do, no doubt, but appreciating it is personal.  Doing right is not.  What we do and don't do have consequences far beyond what we like and don't like.

It might be that what is beautiful is not so variable as I think but exists in an absolute way, inferred from fundamental principles, but I doubt that very much.  On the other hand I am forced to think that is the case with good and evil.  What is evil, at least, can be reasoned out from principles, such as more sophisticated versions of the Golden Rule (the actual rule as we have it is easy to criticize, but the criticisms can be handled with rephrasing).  Kant I think did a decent job of that.

The point is that the views of people (derived from their culture and personality), even majorities and universals, about ethics, are historical and personality accidents, to be disregarded (maybe evidence as to what is bad but not as proof).  That is why the common test of an ethical rule, namely to think of a scenario where the rule when applied to the scenario has results we think violate our conscience, is not a valid test.

So when I do ethics I do philosophy in trying to deduce right and wrong using what I suppose is another branch of philosophy, logic and reasoning.  In the end I do this in order to be happy and to have fun working it out.  Kinda funny if you have that sort of sense of humor.  It's not as funny though as trying to work out the nature of existence or whether non-existence could exist, or how we might know or not know something.

Hamas lobbing its missiles

Maybe somebody will tell me why on earth Hamas persists in lobbing missiles into Israel when they achieve nothing except occasionally kill a toddler.  Israel will never stop what it's doing, and the rest of the world will not apply enough pressure to Israel to stop, so long as this is going on.  Hamas should know by now it achieves nothing, so why not try a different tactic?

As things are, Israel knows and gets daily proof, that if they let up they are to be destroyed.  So Hamas has condemned and continues to condemn Gaza and maybe all the Palestinians to miserable hovel lives of poverty and deprivation and danger.  Is this what they want?  Sheesh!  Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face. 

Putting my nose even deeper in the abortion issue

The west is I think burdened by the idea of sin -- that any deviation from what is right is equally wrong with every other deviation.  That this is nonsense is even revealed by the penances handed out by priests at confession -- minor sins require minor penances.

As I posted earlier, is an abortion wrong?  I don't think so, but the issue comes up of late term abortions.  By then, by traditional Buddhist thinking, the fetus is inhabited by a human spirit, but it is still pretty plain that the fetus is not sentient, at least to any important extent.  That spirit will just have to deal with it and find another host.

So there is still no rational way to say it is wrong.  I would say, however, that these abortions, being more dangerous to the mother, are to be avoided if possible by doing the procedure earlier in the term.  Also legal regulation for medical standards would I think be more in order. 

Because something is not immoral doesn't mean the state may not have an interest in regulating it.  The two are different questions entirely and should not be conflated.

Vietnam driving

Most people in Vietnam get around on motorbikes or motorcycles and similar things.  Foreigners are well advised to stick to taxis, and at the airport go with the authorities there who will put you into a cab rather than taking a freelancer.  Elsewhere, call the cab, don't hail it.

If one is traveling by road between cities, a car or van is recommended.  The dangers of going by motorbike are obvious enough.  Vietnamese roads are not up to U.S. standards, as one would expect, and seem to be continually under construction and in many places are jammed with trucks (the economy is growing much faster than the road system).  One also has to keep a close watch for insane bus drivers.

Going by sleeper-bus if one is going a good distance is an experience only for the young (I'm 71 and manage to survive, but I think maybe I'm a little different and I have help).  Bring blinders and either earplugs or a way to block the noise with earphones.  Be prepared to take off your shoes and to relieve your bladder alongside the road.  A couple small pillows will also help.  Be sure you are on an "express."

I mentioned insane bus drivers.  Once on a two lane mountain pass alongside the ocean (a several hundred meter drop to the beach) I am passed to my left by a truck and to my right by a honking bus (on the shoulder).  Well a car comes around the curve so the truck has to get over and the shoulder ends so the bus has to get over, and I'm stuck between them.  Somehow it happened but I sat there for awhile putting my thoughts together.

Judgmentalism strikes twice -- obeisity and grammar

Well I'm working on disagreements -- some pretty strong -- with two of my positions -- that we don't really control our weight no matter how much will power we have and that English grammar rules should for the most part be gotten away with.

Interesting but what I see in both cases is a symptom of the same disease -- judgmentalism, and in both cases doing harm.

I remember my mom when I was a kid after some relatives had left, remarking about one of them who was fat -- she said, "She tells me she has a hormone problem, but I don't believe it -- she just eats too much and is lazy."

That's judgmentalism and bigotry -- you look at someone, they are fat, ergo they stuff themselves all the time and are lazy.  Clearly overweight people are discriminated against in society in many ways, and it is just as bad as discriminating against someone because they are short or very tall.  Besides what they eat and whether or not they are lazy may be marginally relevant to what they are as a person, but probably not.

The other problem is the condemning people do of others who don't speak English according to the rule book.  The purpose of a language is communication.  Therefore if you successfully communicate with a minimum of effort from the reader or hearer, you are fine, and it is only when you are not understood or are ambiguous and could be misunderstood is it that you have made a mistake.

Rules are not even needed to avoid ambiguity.  Then you don't use rules to correct it but attack the ambiguity directly.

There are however two other reasons to know and follow the rules.  First is that often they are esthetically more pleasing to the reader.  It is much more pleasant to read well constructed paragraphs filled with complete sentences and well punctuated than it is to read other stuff.

The other thing is, right or not, there are those who will make prejudicial judgments about your writing or maybe dismiss or not pay attention to what you say because of the grammatical distraction.

This last is for our own behavior.  We need to train ourselves to not get upset or anything when others make "mistakes."  One may recall that revulsion is the second cause of our personal unhappiness, and this is a revulsion.

Judgmentalism is negativity.  When we think bad of someone we harm ourselves by having ugly thoughts.

How do we know if something is right or wrong?

Yesterday the post about abortion pointed out that there is nothing immoral about a pregnant woman getting an abortion.  How can we know?  How do we know if anything is right or wrong?

The usual ways, such as how we feel about it, or what we've been taught by our religion, or what is legal, or what our conscience says, or what is traditional, while they all usually get it right and should therefore be thought about, in the end just do not work.  I don't know that it's necessary for me to go into all that -- they just don't work.  We need to have a rational basis for saying something is wrong, immoral.

Of course anything that happens has both right and wrong about it.  A volcano killing people is wrong, a volcano letting off pressure and fertilizing the soil and building land is doing right.  A lion killing its prey brutally and causing it a suffering, fearful death is doing wrong, a lion culling the herd and keeping it from ruining the environment and so on is doing right.

We don't make moral judgments in such situations because we argue doing good or causing suffering are not at issue -- volcanoes and lions cannot make right and wrong assessments and hence are not held to account.

Actually the same applies to people.  We may think we make our own decisions, but this is rarely really the case.  Most people act automatically according to instincts and personality and other factors and never really make a moral decision, although they could and in many cases where the decision is truly difficult they are forced to.

Therefore we can judge what others do no more than we can judge a volcano or a lion.  We don't know that they have actually made a conscious decision to be immoral, and if we think about it we know that is unlikely (although of course definitely possible).  We don't know the whole story and therefore cannot judge.

But we can judge ourselves.

Most of the time, presented with a moral question (a real one, not a hypothetical), we can see pluses and minus and have to decide whether the good outweighs the bad.  It turns out that some things are more wrong than others, even though both are wrong.  It depends on the suffering and harm we cause.  Lying to the Gestapo strikes me as harming the Gestapo, but almost certainly by making their job more difficult, and so is the thing to do, and rationally in that case telling the truth is morally wrong.

Of course this is a simple, if not simplistic, theory of ethics, but it has something to say for it that the traditional ethics don't have -- it is rational.  Do the good aspects outweigh the bad?  Most of the hypothetical situations people use to object to this depend on our gut feeling or one of the traditional tests to raise questions.  I think that is the wrong way to proceed.  That we don't like an outcome is not a rational basis for a decision.

There are however a couple of serious problems with it.  The first is the ability we have to fool ourselves and rationalize the goods as exceeding the harms when in fact this is not so.  The other is how do we know we have all the facts when in fact we know we surely don't?  Ain't easy, but if one is serious about being an ethical person the effort must be made and a decision must be reached.