About open borders and allowing immigration.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Close

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What about aliens -- good or bad?

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

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

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

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