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.