Glenn Reynolds has a review of Ron Paul's book
...Soylent green. The miracle food of high-energy plankton gathered from the oceans of the world.Soylent Green, 1973
The New York Times predicts that "if current fishing practices continue, the world's major commercial stocks will collapse by 2048." Their solution: lower energy content by eating sardines instead of feeding them to farm-raised salmon.
Mistaking energy content for price is a common mistake. Chew on this: organic lettuce is more expensive than a hamburger.
Wild fish will be eclipsed by farm-raised fish just as farm-raised beef has eclipsed free-range beef. Get used to it, perhaps by preparing to pay an extreme premium for free-range fish. Don't expect the Chinese middle class to prefer wild cod once a year to farm-raised salmon once a month. Expect the coastal waters to be fenced into fish farms just as the Great Plains was fenced in during the 19th century.
It's time to manage the pollution and reserve the wild fish parks upcurrent. This tide isn't going to be turned back by pondering how the old days were until we're eaten up.
Posted by Sam Dinkin at 07:47 AMKatherine Mangu-Ward, in an essay on Tor Books, says that the link remains strong.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:45 PMIt seems likely. We're going to have to join forces against the fascists who are taking over Washington. Lots of good discussion in comments.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:39 PMOf all the dumb reasons to vote for Barack Obama (and they are legion, even if there are a few smart ones interspersed), one of the dumbest is simply because the media is telling you he's inevitable. The bandwagon effect is a classical logical fallacy, that many fall for nonetheless (because most people are untrained in logic).
Don't let them herd you like a sheep into voting for someone just because you want to vote for the winner. If you're going to drink the redistributionist koolaid, at least do it because you actually believe it.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:27 AMFrom Robert Heinlein:
Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded -- here and there, now and then -- are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as "bad luck."
[Via Instapundit]
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:25 AMOver at Winds of Change:
Stipulate that there is a small machine that I could put into your home or workplace that with absolute accuracy - I mean 100% accuracy - would send an alarm in the specific case that a person who had the true intent to commit murder was close to it. Yes, it's Minority Report territory. But accept it as true.
Would you - as an American - be comfortable having something like that in your house?
I would need a little clarification: what is "close to it" and what does "murder" mean? Does it merely mean killing someone? Would self defense count?
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:47 AM...has passed on.
Firefighters spotted Scarlett, despite burns to her eyes, ears and face, toting each kitten out of the building to safety. Once outside, Scarlett nudged each baby with her nose to make sure she found all five.
The hero cat was taken to the North Shore Animal League with her offspring - and their story soon attracted attention from around the globe.
It's instinct, but it's not just instinct, because there are some mothers who don't make the mark. All species can transcend, to limited degrees. But there are variations within.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:46 PMIce cream tastes better licked than spooned. Dr. Kass will be appalled to hear about scientific discrediting of his "yuckometer."
(And yes, before you bother to comment, I know that his point wasn't that licked ice cream doesn't taste good.)
Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:31 PMOver at Samizdata, Jonathan Pearce wonders if freedom seekers will be heading the other way after the election:
Occasionally, whenever one of us Samizdata scribes writes about events in the UK, such as loss of civil liberties, or the latest financial disasters perpetrated by the government, or crime, or whatnot, there is sometimes a comment from an expatriate writer, or US citizen in particular, suggesting that we moaners should pack our bags, cancel the mail and come on over to America. Like Brian Micklethwait of this parish, I occasionally find such comments a bit annoying; it is not as if the situation in Jefferson's Republic is particularly great just now, although a lot depends on where you live (Texas is very different from say, Vermont or for that matter, Colorado).
But considering what might happen if Obama wins the White House and the Dems increase or retain their hold on Congress, I also wonder whether we might encounter the example of enterprising Americans coming to Britain, not the other way round. The dollar is rising against the pound, so any assets that are transferred from the US to Britain go further. Taxes are likely to rise quite a bit if The One gets in, although they are likely to rise in the UK too to pay for the enormous increase in public debt, even if the Tories win the next election in 2010.
For a number of reasons stated over there, it seems unlikely, but this comment stood out:
I think the general message here should be that the whole western world is on the same trajectory, and shopping around for liberty is going to be ultimately futile. In a sense, we all need to be "liberty patriots" and do our best in our own countries to reverse the rot, because wherever you flee to, it's happening there too, if at a different pace or in in slightly different ways. The anti-liberty movement is operating in every nation, and trans and supra-nationally, and everywhere it is winning. There is nowhere to run.
Well, as I've long noted on this blog, that's what space programs are for.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:43 AMHere's a brief piece on Christopher Hitchens' ignorance about Sarah Palin. Now, I've long admired Hitchens as a writer, and for his integrity in standing up against the Clinton gang in the nineties, but he does seem to have gone off the rails lately, with his jihad against religion (not that it's new, but it seems to have expanded beyond his Mother Theresa bashing). But I found this comment over there interesting:
Everyone has a crazy section in their brain. Andrew Sullivan was all for Bush until Bush came out against Gay Marriage. Andrew will never be happy until he and his partner can be married by the Pope himself. In his case, the craziness has spread throughout his thinking, so he doesn't make sense anymore, although he still retains an ability to write well.
As to Hitchens, another word-centred person, his craziness is centred on religiosity, and specifically, Christian religiosity. He has written a book on atheism and on Mother Theresa. In fact, I would say he is lunatic when it comes to this topic. Sarah Palin is a declared Christian, therefore Hitchens sees her only as a cardboard cutout of 'snake-handling primitive in the woods'. He could read Byron York's column on what Sarah Palin has actually done as Alaska's governor, and why she enjoys 80% approval, but Hitchens, cowering in his corner of craziness will not pay any attention.I notice that that Maher fella, the TV comedian also hates (really: HATES) Palin and all conservatives, even the Methodist George Bush. His craziness centres around the necessity of sexual liberation is his life and that of all the elite's life.
I wonder if it's true that everyone has a "crazy section in their brain"? And if so, where mine is?
I'm confident that my commenters will inform me shortly.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:40 PMJonah Goldberg has a roundup of links criticizing Jacob Weisberg's brainless piece about the death of libertarianism.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:01 AMI'm getting a little tired of things like this.
Let me state, to attempt to prevent any future comments in this vein, that (apparently) unlike many people, there is no one whose opinion I have sufficient respect for who could convince me that Barack Obama would be a better president than John McCain (not to imply, of course, that I think that John McCain will be a great president). Only those who have no time to evaluate the candidates and the issues rely on endorsements, from anyone, and to do so is a short cut and an intrinsic logical fallacy.
I have abundant information on both candidates at this point, and while (in theory) I could be persuaded to change my mind, this seems unlikely. What I will not be persuaded by is an endorsement by anyone, absent new facts. All that I will be convinced of is that the endorser is either an idiot, ignorant, or on the take (e.g., Colin Powell). I would like to think that this is the case with (at least the intelligent) readers of this blog as well. And (I would like to think that this would go without saying, but apparently it doesn't, because it keeps happening) I will have a similar opinion of the commenter who informs me of the endorser.
I hope I have made myself clear about this, because I have no more to say on the subject.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:43 PMSome interesting thoughts on whether or not one can, or should be able to, sue God.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:56 AMOf course, there was a time when the two words meant pretty much the same thing. But that was before the "progressives" came along and hijacked the word "liberal."
Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:31 PMJohn Jurist writes (or at least implies) that there's just too much competition in the suborbital market:
An approach I favor is forming a university consortium analogous to those that design, build, and operate large cooperative research assets, such as telescopes and particle colliders. That consortium could develop a suborbital RLV or even a nanosat launcher to be used by consortium members for academic projects. Since the consortium would design and develop the vehicles, participating universities would be more likely to use them for student research under some type of cost-sharing arrangement with federal granting agencies.Dr. Steve Harrington proposed something a bit different recently:
If you took all the money invested in alt.space projects in the last 20 years, and invested in one project, it could succeed. More underfunded projects are not what we need. The solution is for an investment and industry group to develop a business plan and get a consortium to build a vehicle. There is a lot of talent, and many people willing to work for reduced wages and invest some of their own company's capital. Whether it is a sounding rocket, suborbital tourist vehicle or an orbit capable rocket, the final concept and go/no go decision should be made by accountants, not engineers or dreamers (Ref. 8).I would concur with Dr. Harrington's final remark except I would expand the decision making group to include management and business experts nominated by the consortium members with whatever technical input they needed.
Yes, good idea. After all, we all know that it's a waste of resources to have (for example) two grocery stores within a few blocks of each other. They could dramatically reduce overhead and reduce costs and prices if they would just close one of the stores and combine forces. In order to assure continued premium customer service, they could just assemble a board of accountants, and finest management and business experts to ensure that the needs of the people are met.
In the case of the RLV development, the consortium could hire the best technical experts, and spend the appropriate amount of money up front, on trade studies and analyses, to make sure that they are designing just the right vehicle for the market, since it will be a significant investment, and the consortium will only have enough money to do one vehicle development. They will also have to make sure that it satisfies the requirements of all the users, since it will be the only available vehicle. This will further increase the up-front analysis and development costs, and it may possibly result in higher operational costs as well, but what can be done? It's too inefficient to have more than one competing system. As John's analysis points out, we simply can't afford it.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:49 AMHow it evolved?
Note that just because something is natural doesn't make it moral.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:01 PMThat's what John McCain is. One of the reasons it's hard to get enthused about him. I suspect that Palin might be a little better.
[Update a while later]
Both presidential candidates are completely economically incoherent.
No surprise, since they're both economic ignorami. Though in Obama's case it's worse, because he thinks that he understands economics, and much of what he knows for damned sure is wrong.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:57 AMWell, it's what one might expect from an Alaskan. It also explains why the press and the left are so completely wrecking themselves in attempting to derail her. They don't understand libertarians, only able to think in simple minded terms of "liberal" and "conservative." And I have to say that if this is what John McCain means by "maverick" I'm all for it.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:11 AMLileks reminisces:
I got all three volumes from the drugstore - which should have told me something about the land in which I lived, that one could buy this work from a creaky wire rack at the drugstore - and it taught me much about the Soviet Union and the era of Stalin. After that I could never quite understand the people who viewed the US and the USSR as moral equals, or regarded our history as not only indelibly stained but uniquely so. Reading Solzhenitsyn makes it difficult to take seriously the people in this culture who insist that Dissent has been squelched. Brother, you have no idea.
Indeed.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:30 AMAnd a fundamentalist one, at that:
When Salon interviewed me about my new book, "Saving Darwin," I suggested that science doesn't know everything, that there might be a reality beyond science, and that religion might be about God and not merely about the human quest for a nonexistent God. These remarks got me condemned to whatever hell Myers believes in.
Myers accused me of having "fantastic personal delusions" that could actually lead people astray. "I will have no truck with the perpetuation of fallacious illusions, whether honeyed or bitter," Myers wrote, "and consider the Gibersons of this world to be corruptors of a better truth. That's harsh, I know ... but he is undermining the core of rationalism we ought to be building, and I find his beliefs pernicious."Myers' confident condemnations put me in mind of that great American preacher, Jonathan Edwards, who waxed eloquent in his famous 1741 speech, "Sinners at the Hands of an Angry God," about the miserable delusions that lead humans to reject the truth and spend eternity in hell. We still have preachers like Edwards today, of course; they can be found on the Trinity Broadcasting Network. But now we also have a new type of preacher, the Rev. PZ Myers.
And they don't even recognize it in themselves. Dawkins and Myers and Hitchens are doing more harm than good for science in their evangelizing, I think.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:35 PMLet's hope so. Alzheimers is, to me, one of the worst diseases, because it steals not just your body, but your mind, to the point that you're essentially dead while the empty husk metabolizes on. If it's actually possible to reverse the progress of the disease, that's huge news. But I wonder if in doing so, you've still lost some irretrievable memories? And if so, who are you?
Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:15 AMAl Gore thinks (or at least thought at one time, and there's no reason to think that he's changed his opinion) that Rousseau is worth quoting.
You know, if I were going back in history and assassinating someone to prevent great harm to the world, my first choice would not be Hitler. It would be Jean Jacques Rousseau, the father of totalitarianism in all its forms. Though probably someone else would have come up with his vile notions independently.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Somehow, this seems related. An excellent essay on Obama's charisma, and messianic campaign.
The danger of Obama's charismatic healer-redeemer fable lies in the hubris it encourages, the belief that gifted politicians can engender a selfless communitarian solidarity. Such a renovation of our national life would require not only a change in constitutional structure--the current system having been geared to conflict by the Founders, who believed that the clash of private interests helps preserve liberty--but also a change in human nature. Obama's conviction that it is possible to create a beautiful politics, one in which Americans will selflessly pursue a shared vision of the common good, recalls the belief that Dostoyevsky attributed to the nineteenth-century Russian revolutionists: that, come the revolution, "all men will become righteous in one instant." The perfection would begin.
The Founders were Lockean. Obama seems more an heir of Rousseau, though perhaps an unwitting one.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:40 AMDavid Brin has a warning for irresponsible astronomers.
When in danger, most people in a group recognize the responsibility to be quiet, and not give themselves away to an enemy by making noise, sometimes to the point that a crying baby will be stifled, and even suffocated. I think that this is a similar case where people should be enjoined, by force if necessary, because we cannot know the consequences. I see very little potential benefit to this, and a great deal of risk. The apparent insularity of the SETI folks cannot continue--we are all on this planet, not just them.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:07 AMJim Geraghty has some observations.
But I found this interesting (not that I hadn't seen it before):
...many religious believers probably couldn't imagine anything worse than not having their relationship with God. They don't see their relationship with their Creator, by whatever name they call the divine, as something they could be "free" from, and in fact a fairly common definition of Hell is in fact "complete separation from God."
This is one of those intellectual gulfs that separates me from believers. I not only can imagine not having a relationship with God, but I live the dream. Yeah, if I really believed in the fire and brimstone thing, and the imps <VOICE="Professor Frink">and the poking and the burning and the eternal tooooorment...glavin...</VOICE>, then I might decide that sinning wasn't worth it. But if hell be "complete separation from God," something that I've had all of my life, bring it on. All it gets from me is a shrug.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:23 PMHas the Supreme Court abandoned its role as a third branch of government?
It often seems that way.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:36 PMSome thoughts at The Speculist.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:29 AMI'm disappointed that it was such a narrow majority:
District of Columbia v. Heller (Second Amendment challenge to D.C. handgun ban): Scalia majority opinion striking down ban. 5-4 ruling. Breyer dissent, joined by Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg. (No concurring opinions.)
If Obama does somehow get into the Oval Office, I'm glad that this case was handled this year. Almost certainly whoever his choice of nominees would be would have gone the other way. Of course, for the Dems, it will only be maintaining status quo, since it's the "liberal" justices that are most likely to step down soonest, I think.
Souter in particular was a disastrous pick for a supposedly Republican president.
Anyway, now on to the next case, depending on who brings it (I'm guessing someone in Chicago), which will bring in the Fourteenth Amendment and incorporation. But at least the court is now on record as having declared the right an individual one (again, I'm saddened, but no longer shocked, that four justices bizarrely think otherwise).
[Update a few minutes later]
I'll add that, based on what I've seen so far, it looks like the majority got it right. It's an individual right having nothing to do with state militias, but not an unlimited one. A gun ban in shopping malls or campuses is stupid, but not unconstitutional.
[Update a little after 11 AM EDT]
Eugene Volokh already has some initial thoughts, with more surely to come later, after the opinion is read. This is an interesting political point:
This split should be useful to either of the Presidential candidates who wants to make either gun control or gun rights into an election issue -- my guess is that this is more likely to be McCain. Expect McCain ads in states where there are likely many pro-gun swing voters stressing, "your constitutional right to keep and bear arms hangs by one vote." Also expect fundraising letters to likely pro-gun contributors stressing this at length.
Also expect questions of Obama whether he continues to support the gun ban in Chicago. And whether he still thinks that gun sales should be banned within five miles of a school (i.e., almost everywhere).
[Afternoon update]
I haven't read the dissents (and don't know if or when I will, given time constraints), but is it possible that the majority isn't as narrow as it looks? Four justices ruled that the DC ban was Constitutional, but they didn't necessarily do so on the basis that the right to keep and bear isn't individual. For instance, as Ed Whelan notes:
Stevens doesn't dispute that the Second Amendment protects an individual right, but he finds the scope of that right limited to using weapons for certain military purposes. He argues that the text of the Second Amendment (5-17), its drafting history (17-27), and the Court's precedents--especially its 1939 ruling in United States v. Miller (42-45)--support his reading.Breyer argues that even if the Second Amendment does protect a right of personal self-defense, D.C.'s law is constitutional because the burdens it imposes are not disproportionate in light of the law's legitimate objectives. (That sure sounds like a meaningful test, doesn't it?)
So now we have at least six justices who agree that it is an individual right (Whelan doesn't say what Breyer's opinion on that score is, since Breyer doesn't accept that the ban would be Constitutional under that interpretation). And since Ginsburg and Souter joined Stephens dissent, and didn't write one of their own, doesn't it really make it at least eight to one?
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:50 AMIs the Internet changing the way we think?
Over the past few years I've had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn't going--so far as I can tell--but it's changing. I'm not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I'm reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I'd spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That's rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I'm always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.
It's anecdotal, but I've noticed the same thing. I used to read many more books (and magazines, such as The Economist) than I do now. Almost all of my reading occurs on line, and I am much less able to focus than I used to be. But it's not clear whether this is an effect of aging, or new habits. More the latter, I suspect.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:38 AMEd Driscoll has some thoughts on haters of humanity, who are now making Hollywood films to convey their views.
Hey, how about if we save the earth by migrating into space?
Somehow, I don't think they'll like that, either.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:25 PMI think that this is a much more justifiable term than "Islamaphobia" or "homophobia."
But then, maybe it is just bigotry.
[Saturday update]
They're not theophobes. They're just theophobic about conservatives. So, that's all right then.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:13 PM...against the pessimism. I think that Stephen Gordon is right in comments. People are optimistic in their own lives, and think that the world is going to hell in a handbasket, because they watch and read too much news.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:33 AMAn interesting theory of life, the universe and everything. How would one test it, though?
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:50 AMSome interesting legal speculation on the upcoming Heller decision to rule on the constitutionality of DC's gun ban, and on the meaning of the Second Amendment.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:49 AMJon Schaff, who started the subject, has what he hopes is the last word. I have to confess being a little lost in the conversation, not having been a Buffy fan.
And if it's the end of the vampire discussion, perhaps it's time we moved on. To zombies.
[Update mid-Friday afternoon]
Well, I should have Googled the subject; we could have saved ourselves a lot of discussion. Here's a Rothbardian treatise on the subject from three years ago:
In The Ethics of Liberty, his great reconciliation of Austrian economics and natural law ethics, Murray Rothbard commented that a new species of beings having "the characteristics, the nature of the legendary vampire, and [that] could only exist by feeding on human blood"(1) would not be entitled to individual rights, regardless of their intelligence, because of their status as deadly enemies of humanity. I wish to discuss this issue in more detail and argue that Rothbard, who was kind of a night owl himself, was unfair to those mysterious creatures. The libertarian theory of justice would in fact easily allow for a peaceful coexistence with vampires.
But of course. Just no non-consensual neck biting.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:00 AMJonah wants to know if an atheist would think that vampires have rights.
I guess that they probably have some rights. I mean, I'm willing to grant them the right to be a vampire. That is, if they want to live forever, turn into a bat occasionally, not show up in mirrors, and avoid sunlight and garlic and crosses, and so on, it's no skin off my nose (or blood out of my neck). But (like some conservatives' view of homosexuals), I'm not willing to grant them a right to indulge in their (un)natural desire to drink blood. Particularly mine. I think that the Christian formulation would be hate the blood sucking, but love the vampire. But of course, this was about what atheists think.
Though if the blood sucking is consensual, it might be all right. But can it really be consensual? I mean, the consent can't be very informed. You can describe what it's like to be a vampire until the cows (and vampires) come home, but is that enough to allow someone to enter into such an arrangement
The blood sucking aside, though, I don't see (given the limited thought I've given to the proposition) why vampires should have any fewer rights than the rest of us. It certainly seems discriminatory, and a hate crime of the first rank, to think that one has license to stick wooden stakes through their hearts, simply because they're vampires. But if they've been engaged in non-consensual insanguination and vampire recruitment, then it seems as though it would be a preemptive act of self defense, albeit taking the law into one's own hands.
Sorry, fascinating topic, but I think I'm starting to ramble. If I gave it more thought, I might come up with a more coherent treatise.
* Come to think of it, this has some parallels to some conservatives' argument that gays have to "recruit" young boys, because they're unable to procreate. This is a notion that I always thought nonsensical--no one can be "recruited" to be gay unless they're already at least bisexual. I have never been unsure about my sexuality--was approached once when I was fourteen or so, and I wasn't recruited--I was disgusted at the thought.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:22 AMSeveral essays, over at IEEE Spectrum. I haven't read them yet, but they look interesting.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:58 AMI have some thoughts on this weekend's successful arean invasion, over at PJ Media.
[Update at 7:40 AM EDT]
Some less lofty thoughts over at Althouse's place, particularly in comments.
[Mid-morning update]
Jeff Foust writes about a second chance for an underdog, over at The Space Review.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:16 AMI find it amusing that these folks were clueless as to the purpose of the Google Lunar Prize when they signed up:
In my first blog, I wrote why Harold Rosen formed the Southern California Selene Group. In short, he and I registered our team to compete for the Google Lunar X PRIZE to demonstrate that a low-cost space mission to the moon could be accomplished and could lead to lowering the cost of some future robotic missions to planetary moons. Plus, we intended to have fun! Harold and I both are strong supporters of space science and robotic space exploration. (For one, I'm an astronomy and cosmology enthusiast.) We love the kind of work that JPL is doing, for example. But we most definitely are not in favor of human space missions. That is not our goal, nor do we support such a goal.
The Team Summit turned out to be a real wakeup call. In the Guidelines workshop that I attended just last Tuesday, the cumulative effect of hearing all day from Peter Diamandis, Bob Weiss and Gregg Maryniak that the "real purpose" of the Google Lunar X PRIZE was to promote the so-called commercialization of space (which I took to mean highly impractical stuff like mining the moon and beaming power to the earth, as shown in one of GLXP kickoff videos), humanity's future in space, etc. etc., took its toll. I couldn't help but think "what am I doing here?" When I spoke to Harold about it on the phone later, he agreed - no way did he want to be involved in promoting a goal he does not believe in.
So, what does this mean? It sounds to me like it's not just a goal they "don't believe in" (which is fine--they could not believe in it and still want to win the prize for their own purposes), but rather, a goal to which they are actively opposed, and don't think that anyone should be pursuing. I'm very curious to hear them elaborate their views, but it sounds like they're extreme Saganites. For those unfamiliar with the schools of thought, you have the von Braun model, in which vast government resources are expended to send a few government employees into space (this is Mike Griffin's approach), the Sagan model ("such a beautiful universe...don't touch it!), and the O'Neillian vision of humanity filling up the cosmos.
So when they say they don't support such a goal, does that mean they oppose it, and would take action to prevent it from happening if they could? Sure sounds like it. And they take it as a given that lunar mining is "impractical," but is that their only reason for opposing it, or do they think that it somehow violates the sanctity of the place, and disturbs what should be accessible only for pure and noble science? I'll bet that they'd prefer a lot fewer humans on earth, too.
[Via Clark Lindsey]
[Update late morning]
Commenter "Robert" says that I'm being unfair to Carl Sagan. Perhaps he's right--I was just using the formulation originally (I think) developed by Rick Tumlinson, though Sagan was definitely much more into the science and wonder of space than were von Braun or O'Neill... If anyone has a suggestion for a better representative of the "how pretty, don't touch" attitude, I'm open to suggestions.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:27 AMLet me start by saying I don't know the answer to the question in the post title, but it is one of the hallmarks of a nanny state. Interestingly, though, while it's an east-coast, west-coast thing, it's the reverse of the usual stereotype, in which the westerners are anarchist cowboys, and the easterners civilized obeyers of the rules. Let me explain.
Growing up in southeast Michigan, I remember understanding the term "jaywalking," but only because someone explained it to me after I heard the term, not because I personally had any experience with it. Or rather, not because I had any personal experience with it in terms of it being illegal, and the law being enforced. I walked across a street when it seemed safe to do so, regardless of distance from lights, or their chromatic condition. And no one ever said boo about it, let alone the law enforcement authorities. I always considered the "Walk" and "Don't Walk" signs advisories, rather than commands (and I should add that I like the new ones that have a countdown clock telling you how many seconds until it's going to change, so you can judge whether you have time to start across). This was true in both Flint, the city in which I was raised, and Ann Arbor, where I spent three and a half years at school.
Being brought up in such an environment, I was surprised when I moved to southern California, and was informed by the locals that the gendarmes took illegal pedestrian street crossing seriously (i.e., they actually gave out tickets for it if, for instance, you crossed the street within some specified distance of a traffic signal, but didn't use the crosswalk). I heard many tales from the locals of such ticketry, and accordingly, I restrained my chicken-like urges to cross the road where and when I pleased (traffic permitting, of course). But like red arrows for left turns, when there was no oncoming traffic, I bridled at it, thinking it idiotic, and being treated like a child.
It got to the point that one of the reasons that I looked forward to business trips back east (generally, in my case, DC) was that I would have the freedom to cross the street if it was safe, anywhere and anywhen I wanted, without first having to check for the gestapo.
Anyway, Tigerhawk had a (to him) disturbing visit to the left coast (Seattle) and was shocked at the level of conformity and groupthink in this supposedly hip and counter-cultural town:
I walked down the hill and up again all before about 7 am. The streets were essentially empty of cars, so being an Easterner I skipped merrily along with little regard for the status of the pedestrian Walk/Don't Walk signs.
Then I noticed that the few other peds were just standing there waiting for the "Walk" signal to come on even when there was not a car in sight. Not surprisingly, they all looked at me like I was a middle-aged feminist at an Obama rally, so I also stopped violating the crosswalk lights.When I landed I reported all of this to a friend of mine who claims to hate Seattle -- how can anybody actually hate Seattle? -- and she said "Of course, Seattle is basically just a suburb of Canada."
Like that explained it. Although it sort of does.
Anyway, other than in Washington, DC -- which back in the day raised money by assigning cops in unmarked clothes to write jay-walking tickets -- I've always thought of crosswalk signals as purely advisory. Not the command "Don't Walk," but more like "probably not a good idea to walk, because the cars have a green light." That is certainly the rule in any city in which I have lived or worked, including both New York and Chicago. In Seattle, though, pedestrians comply with crosswalk signals almost to the extent that motorists obey traffic lights. You know, they wait for the light to change even when there is neither a car nor a cop in sight. It is bizarre, and really quite un-American.
Well, the "suburb-of-Canada" thing doesn't explain the attitude in southern California. But it is un-American. A good friend of mine (who has been in LA for the past thirty years or so) lived in Germany for quite a few years back in the seventies, and acquired a wife and step-daughter there. He described the Germans (including his wife and step-daughter) as being hyperobediant to the law, including jaywalking laws, and they would never think of going without permission from the traffic signal, or outside of a cross-walk. At the time I attributed it to being German, but one of Tigerhawk's commenters notes that the Swiss are similar (though he didn't say whether it was the French, Italian or German Swiss).
Is such strict cultural regimentation in itself fascist? No. In fact, I think that in general, respect for the law is obviously a good thing. But sometimes, as Dickens put into the mouth of his character, "the law is a ass." Like the rules of bureaucracy, the laws are meant to protect people with poor judgment (and others who might be affected by dumb decisions) by constraining their behavior. Some foolish people might misjudge traffic, and unthinkingly cross the street against the light, or in the absence of a light, and get hit? Make it illegal. Problem solved. No judgment required. Just follow the rules.
In fact, in LA, I suspect that it has the unintended consequence of actually causing more accidents, exactly because it removes pressure for people to think before acting. Children are taught in school to always use a crosswalk, because in a crosswalk, you see, the pedestrian has the right of way, and cars aren't allowed to enter it while they're in it. And in fact, when you step into an unsignaled crosswalk in LA County, traffic will generally (note the word) stop for you. It's the law, and the culture.
Which can breed a dangerous complacency. That the crosswalk doesn't contain a force shield to actually prevent cars from crossing it while a pedestrian is in it, and that the law doesn't involve suspension of the very real physical law of momentum or decrease the stopping distance of trucks, isn't taught, apparently. I haven't seen the statistics, but I'll bet that a lot more people (particularly California natives) are injured and killed in crosswalks, where they have a false sense of safety, than in the "unsafe" areas where they actually have to look both ways and think before crossing the highway. Particularly because they not only have to look out for traffic, but police with nothing better to do than hand out jaywalking tickets.
Too much unthinking respect for the law isn't fascistic per se, but it provides a fertile breeding ground for someone with charisma who comes along with grand ideas for new laws which, of course, because they are laws, must be obeyed. Thus when it became the law for Germans to turn in the Jews, what choice did they have? It wasn't after all, their decision. It was the law.
But of course, while LA and Seattle are the west (about as far as you can go west in the lower forty eight and remain above water), they're not the wild west. They're in fact (with San Francisco) the bluest of the blue states, chock full of so-called "progressives." So it's not surprising at all, per Jonah's thesis, that they are much more culturally attuned to obeying laws, even senseless ones, and all in favor of more. For the children.
OK, now for the challenging part. How to fit the traffic anarchists of New York City (cue Dustin Hoffman, "I'm walking here!") into the thesis?
Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:44 PMQuite a bit of jousting in comments (including some by yours truly) about Expelled, science, epistemology, etc., over at WOC.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:49 PMGlenn Reynolds has a review of Ron Paul's book
Jim Manzi reviews Expelled. He's not impressed.
And John Derbyshire is appropriately dismayed by Jews like David Klinghoffer and Ben Stein latching on to this anti-science schtick:
One of the best reasons to be a philosemite in our time is sheer gratitude at the disproportionate contribution Jews have made to the advance of Western civilization, and to our understanding of the world, this past two hundred years. The U.S.A. dominated the 20th century in culture and technology, to the great benefit of all mankind, in part because of the work done in math and science by the great tranche of pre-WW2 immigrant Jews from Europe.Now you have joined up with people who want to trash the scientific enterprise and heap insults on one of the greatest names in intellectual history. For reasons unfathomable to me, you and Ben Stein want to sneer and scoff at our understandings, hard-won over centuries of arduous intellectual effort. Don't the two of you know, don't Jews of all people know, where this anti-intellectual agitation, this pandering to a superstitious mob, will lead at last? If you truly don't, I refer you to the fate of Hypatia, which you can read about in my last book (Chapter 3), or in Gibbon (Chapter XLVII). Your new pals at the Discovery Institute no doubt think Hypatia got what she deserved.
Civilization is a thin veneer, David. Reason and science are bulwarks against the dark.
The mistake that these people make is to equate science with atheism. It is true that, as science advances, and more scientific explanations are put forth, much of the need for God, at least insofar as an explanation for natural phenomena, is removed. But then, that's the nature of natural phenomena--if they require the supernatural, they are by definition not natural.
But it doesn't follow that a belief in science in general, or evolution in particular, requires atheism. Many (including Manzi in the link above) have pointed out numerous examples, going back to Aquinas, of the compatibility of rationality and reason, and theism. Stein and Klinghoffer would return us to the dark ages, even if they don't realize it.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:20 AMSome thoughts from Gerard Van der Leun, who really should be on my blog roll.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:42 PMRob Bailey has an interview with Peter Thiel. I agree with him that "transhumanist" is a misleading word, and it's not useful to use it until there's agreement on what is human. Unlike people like Asimov (and Kass) I don't believe that we lose our humanity when we live indefinitely long.
I would have been interested to hear his thoughts on space.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:35 AMWell, if not his oyster, at least his dippy dot:
"It seems the legends of 21st-century man's crude ice cream-eating habits are all true," Wolcott said. "I see the way you consume these dripping concoctions with protruding tongues, the way the dark cream dribbles down your chins, the way your workers must dig tirelessly with spherical metal 'scooping' devices to even obtain this product."
"Barbarians!" Wolcott added. "Dippin' Dots can be poured effortlessly into cups. They do not melt or make a mess, and plus they are very fun to eat."
Now, it would seem to me that this is a man after Leon Kass' heart. Not to mention, ironically, that it gives this enemy of longevity a reason to live, and see such a marvelous future, in which he will no longer have to suffer the indignity of seeing people licking cones in the street, like so many cats at bath.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:56 PMPhil Bowermaster (along with Jerry Pournelle) has some thoughts about Intelligent Design, panspermia and simulated universes. How would one go about looking for the easter eggs, if they exist? Sagan had an interesting one, in Contact
Norm Geras says that he didn't leave the left--the left left him.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:27 AMMickey Kaus says that Obama, like himself, is a vulgar Marxist.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:18 AMSometimes, you just have to think that these people's brains are broken.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:29 PMHey, I'm all in favor of factory-manufactured meat, if it can be made to taste as good as the naturally grown variety, but I'm not going to stop eating meat until it happens. My criteria are basically intelligence based, and the first animal I'd give up eating, if I were going to give up any,s would be pigs, but I still occasionally have pork. I don't feel that badly about eating cattle--they just don't seem that bright to me. And the question of whether or not they're better off living a short life, and then being slaughtered, than never having existed at all is one that, as noted, is purely subjective and unresolvable in any ultimate sense. I know that I've seen some pretty happy looking cows on the hillsides overlooking the Pacific in northern California. I can think of worse lives.
By the way, Phil should be aware that marsupials are mammals. The distinction is placental versus non-placental mammals. And there are people (probably some of those "bitter," out-of-work folks) in this country who eat possum, and armadillo.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:53 AMRobert Bidinotto wants me to boycott Starbucks. It's a worthy cause, I guess, but I've been boycotting Starbucks ever since they opened their first store. I've never purchased anything there for my own personal consumption, with the possible exception of a bottle of water once.
The simple reason is that they have never offered anything for sale in which I have an interest in consuming. It's nothing but various forms of coffee, which I don't drink, and high-glycemic carbs, which I tend to avoid, particularly since there is no protein on offer to go with them (in my limited experience--I suppose it's possible that that's changed). And I'm not that into the "coffee house" experience.
So I can't really help make a dent in reducing their sales, because it's not possible for me to purchase less from them than I already do. If everyone were like me, they wouldn't exist at all to denigrate the capitalism that has made them so successful. But maybe some of my pro-free-market readers can reduce their consumption.
It occurs to me, while I'm on the subject, to write about a topic on which I've often mused, but never posted--what the world would be like if everyone were like me. Well, obviously, it would be a lot more boring place. With no s3x, other than self congress, because there's no way that I would get it on with me.
Just off the top of my head, there would be no rap music. In fact, most popular music wouldn't be popular at all. No dance clubs. There would be college football, assuming that some of me were willing and able to play (not obvious, as my athletic ability is marginal), but probably not pro. There would be baseball (again, my skills permitting), but no hockey or basketball. Or boxing or wrestling, or martial arts. There would be Formula 1, but no NASCAR. Lots of hiking trails in the mountains. No one would live in south Florida.
No coffee houses, as noted above, or coffee production, period. Same thing with tea. No tree nuts would be grown or harvested, because I'm allergic. The Asian restaurants would be much better, as would Mexican ones (they'd all be Sonoran style). No wraps or vegetarian places.
It would also be a much messier place, because I'm kind of a slob.
On the up side, though, traffic would move much faster, and much more smoothly. And we'd all get on and off airplanes extremely expeditiously. And there would be no wars, both because (I know that this will surprise some of the trolls here) I'm not that into them, and I'm not sure what we'd fight about. Oh, and we'd have a sensible space program.
So, what would the world be like if it consisted of only you?
Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:06 AMWhy is Barack Obama against drug legalization?
I'm running through the issues, and I can't find a single one on which I agree with him, other than that blacks should take more responsibility for their own lives.
That's great but, sorry, it's just not enough. Just another non-federalist fascist.
This comment probably explains his position:
The only black dude and admitted former drug experimenter in the race cannot afford to look soft on drugs.
Yup. New politics.
Can someone pass the Kool-Aid?
Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:25 PMIt's a couple weeks old, but here's a very interesting article on the current debate among medical ethicists of when someone should be considered dead for the purpose of organ donation:
Truog is one of a handful of vocal critics who believe the medical community is misleading the public -- and deluding itself -- with an arbitrary definition of death. The debate, which is being fought largely in academic journals, has important implications for the modern enterprise of transplantation, which prolonged the life of more than 28,000 Americans last year. Truog and other critics believe that changing the rules -- and the bright-line concept of death that underlies them -- could mean saving more of the 6,500 Americans who die every year waiting for an organ.
...This debate exposes a jarring collision: On the one hand, there is the view that life and death are clear categories; on the other, there is the view that death, like life, is a process. Common sense -- and the transplant community -- suggest that death is a clear category. Truog and other critics suggest that this is to ignore reality."They think, 'We can't remove these organs unless we decide that you're dead,"' says Truog, "so the project becomes gerrymandering the criteria we use to call people dead."
Many people assume that we have good criteria for determining when someone is dead, but we don't and never have. I wrote about this several years ago, during the Ted Williams cryonics controversy:
There's no point at which we can objectively and scientifically say, "now the patient is dead -- there is no return from this state," because as we understand more about human physiology, and experience more instances of extreme conditions of human experiences, we discover that a condition we once thought was beyond hope can routinely be recovered to a full and vibrant existence.
Death is thus not an absolute, but a relative state, and appropriate medical treatment is a function of current medical knowledge and available resources. What constituted more-than-sufficient grounds for declaration of death in the past might today mean the use of heroic, or even routine, medical procedures for resuscitation. Even today, someone who suffers a massive cardiac infarction in the remote jungles of Bolivia might be declared dead, because no means is readily available to treat him, whereas the same patient a couple blocks from Cedars-Sinai in Beverly Hills might be transported to the cardiac intensive-care unit, and live many years more.
I find it heartening that this debate is finally occurring, rather than the medical community dogmatically keeping its head planted firmly in the sand. Because it lends further credence to the concept of suspension (cryonic or otherwise), and clarifies whether or not cryonics patients are alive or dead. The only useful definition of death is information death (e.g., cremation, or complete deterioration of the remains). As long as the structure remains in place, the patient hasn't died--he's just extremely ill, to the point at which he's non-functional and unable to be revived with current technology.
In fact, given that this debate is about organ donation, it's quite applicable to cryonics. In a very real sense, cryonics is the ultimate organ donation (and in fact it's treated that way under some state's laws). You are effectively donating your whole body (or just your head, in the case of a neurosuspension) to your future self.
But it will continue to tie the legal system up in knots, and declaring cryonics patients to be alive would be a problem under the current cryonics protocols, because unless one is wealthy, the procedure is paid for with a life insurance policy. If you're not declared dead, then you don't get the money to preserve yourself. But if you don't preserve yourself, you'll eventually be clearly dead by any criteria, as your body decomposes. At which point the policy would pay off, far too late to preserve your life.
And of course, if a cryonics patient isn't considered dead, then the heirs won't get any inheritance at all. Cryonics patients already have enough fights with relatives over the amount that they'll inherit due to the cost of the suspension. Keeping them legally alive will only make this situation worse. We really need to come up with some creative new laws to deal with this, but I suspect it's not a very high priority among legislatures who, when they deal with cryonics at all, generally instead of facilitating it, attempt to outlaw it or regulate it out of existence. And that's not likely to change any time soon, regardless of the state of the debate in the medical ethics community.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:29 PMJohn Tabin writes that, regardless of the election outcome, the next president will be a fascist:
JOHN McCAIN IS a huge admirer of TR. His career has been marked by an instinctive enthusiasm for regulation. He brags of a military career chosen "for patriotism, not for profit," clearly viewing civilian life as debased.Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:20 AMGoldberg's Afterword, "The Tempting of Conservatism," holds up McCain and the "National Greatness Conservatives" who backed him in 2000 as an example of how progressivism can enthrall conservatives. (Possible good news: McCain has praised free markets in the course of this campaign -- for the first time in his political career, according to McCain biographer Matt Welch.)
Hillary Clinton's calls in the '90s for a "new politics of meaning" and for the state to act as the "village" that raises our children has deeply totalitarian implications that Goldberg discusses at length. In 1996 she declared that "there isn't really any such thing as someone else's child." Assessing her worldview, Goldberg labels Clinton "The First Lady of Liberal Fascism."
Barack Obama's enormous rhetorical talents have already earned him an extremely creepy personality cult. His wife declares that her husband "will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism... And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed."
The last Soviet premiere was a Christian.
I find arguments (such as Dennett and Dawkins, and Hitchens) put forth that religion is the source of all evil in the world to be tendentious. Much evil has been (and continues to be) done in the name of a god, but the most nihilistic, murderous regimes in history, in the twentieth century, were godless. Belief in God (or lack thereof) is neither a necessary, or sufficient condition for evil acts. The real dividing line, as Jonah points out, is not whether or not one is a deist, but whether or not one is an individualist. Say whatever else you want about a classically liberal society--it might leave some behind, but it won't murder them wholesale.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:23 PMAnd just in time for Easter, too. Crucifixion is bad for your health.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:15 PMLileks seems to be a co-religionist with me:
You know, every so often I run across comments on message boards from the "12 Monkeys" demographic, the people who wish people would just disappear and leave the earth alone. If the Aftermath show has any message, it's how useless the world would be without people. Without humans it's just hunting and rutting, birthing and dying, a clock with no chimes. It's always interesting how people romanticize Nature, and ascribe all manner of purpose and intelligence to it, lamenting the injuries people wreak on the innocent globe. I'd love to read an interview with Gaia in which she says that her goal all along was to come up with a species that could produce Beethoven and make rockets to send the music deep into space. Now that's something to make the other planets sit up and take notice. You think the point is merely to provide a home for thirty billion varieties of insect? I can't tell you how much they itch. Sorry about the earthquakes, but it's the only way I can scratch.
I do believe in a teleology, and this belief is not scientific at all.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:06 AMI just remembered that I called the Bob Davis show this morning to talk about the new theory re: Moses and the Ten Commandments: dude was high. Apparently a professor somewhere has suggested that the entire experience was the result of a mushroom or some such ceremonial intoxicant. I called to say I didn't believe it, because if Moses was tripping we wouldn't have ten commandments. We would have three. The first would make sense, more or less; the second, written half an hour later, would command profound respect for lizards who sit on stones and look at you, because they're freaking incredible when you think about it, and the third would be gibberish. Never mind the problem of getting the tablets down the mountain - anyone who has experience of watching stoners try to assemble pizza money when the doorbell rings doubts that Moses could have hauled stone tablets all the way down.Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:51 AM
I don't actually watch that much network television, but I have to admit that I probably watch more Foxfare than anything else.
Tonight, there premiered a new show, called "New Amsterdam."
It's an interesting premise. A man who was born in the early seventeenth century (or even a century before) is given eternal (or almost eternal--hang on) life in perpetual youth. He lives that long life in what was at that time New Amsterdam, but what become shortly thereafter (once the British took it from the Dutch) New York.
He sees the village evolve into a town, then into a city, then into the greatest city in the western world (if not the world itself), which is why it was attacked six and a half years ago by those to whom the western world is an anathema to their seventh-century beliefs. But I digress.
He becomes a homicide detective in that great city, and his knowledge of the past is a great aid in solving gotham crimes.
As I said, an interesting premise. I mean, given that CSI, Wherever, is one of the biggest hits on network television, how could any producer turn it down?
But there's a (supposedly) dark undercurrent to the story.
His eternal life is not viewed, by the story writers or himself, as a blessing. It is apparently a curse. He cannot end his life volitionally. The only way to put an end to this (apparent, and obvious, at least to the script writers) misery of endless youth and health is to find his true love.
Then he can die.
Just how perverse is that?
Let's parse it.
OK, so you've "suffered" through four centuries of youthful life, in perpetual health, in a world in which your chances of dying are nil, and you apparently don't even suffer any pain, though this is a world in which even dentistry is barbaric for at least the first three hundred years. And now, after having seen a little village purchased with beads on a little island at the mouth of a river, you've watched it become the most powerful city on the planet, you want to check out?
You're in the early twenty-first century, about to enter a world in which many may join you in your longevity, though without the "burden" if having to find their true love to end it.
Well, both boo, and hoo.
Here's the thing that makes this science fiction (or rather, speculative fiction).
In the real world, people who are offered the gift of living forever will also have the capability of ending that endless life, barring some sadistic fascist government that (like some perceptions of God) thinks that the individuals are the property of the state, and not of themselves. If they really get tired of life, they will check out, either legally and easily, or illegally and in a more difficult manner. But the will to die, if it is strong enough, will win out.
So to me, the real suspension of disbelief in this new series is not that a man could live for four hundred years, but rather, that he would have to live that long in misery.
Thus, it is more of a morality tale, based on unrealistic premises, than one based on anything resembling the true future.
I hope that no one decides that long life is a bad thing, and more importantly, that no one thinks that it is something that no one should have, based on this foolish, deathist premise.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:58 PM...or at least as much as we think we do. Does the gravity model need to be adjusted?
In the one probe the researchers did not confirm a noticeable anomaly with, MESSENGER, the spacecraft approached the Earth at about latitude 31 degrees north and receded from the Earth at about latitude 32 degrees south. "This near-perfect symmetry about the equator seemed to result in a very small velocity change, in contrast to the five other flybys," Anderson explained -- so small no anomaly could be confirmed.
The five other flybys involved flights whose incoming and outgoing trajectories were asymmetrical with each other in terms of their orientation with Earth's equator.For instance, the NEAR mission approached Earth at about latitude 20 south and receded from the planet at about latitude 72 south. The spacecraft then seemed to fly 13 millimeters per second faster than expected. While this is just one-millionth of that probe's total velocity, the precision of the velocity measurements was 0.1 millimeters per second, carried out as they were using radio waves bounced off the craft. This suggests the anomaly seen is real -- and one needing an explanation.
Well, gravity just like evolution, is (in the words of anti-evolutionists) only a theory. It's not reality--it's simply an attempt to model it. And for most purposes, it does a pretty good job. But one of the reasons to do space, I think, is that it gives us new laboratories to make new discoveries about basic physics, the potential of which is unforeseeable.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:39 AMOver at Reason, the sad tale of a free-loader wannabe:
The group was now "out of food, hadn't slept in days and were really cold," and decided, in a grubby version of Dunkirk, to abandon the mission and head back to England. Boyles is disappointed-but not deterred. He is, the BBC reports, planning "to walk around the coast of Britain instead, learning French as he goes, so he can try again next year." At which point the cycle begins anew, when, upon reaching Baden-Baden, the poor lad will realize that he should have also studied German.
As Wilde said in another context, one would have to have a heart of stone to read this and not laugh out loud.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:22 AMJim Manzi has some thoughts on conservatism, libertarianism, and subsidiarity.
His emphasis on federalism, despite his conservatism, was the biggest thing that I liked about Fred Thompson.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:33 AMSome thoughts from Jonah.
And I thought this bit, while not directly pertinent to the point, did seem pertinent to some recent discussion here.
The reaction from so many liberals to William F. Buckley's death is a good case in point. How many of them insist that even though Buckley recanted his earlier views on race that these views are all important and eternal when it comes to assessing the man? But the fact that the founding fathers of Progressivism and modern liberalism were chock-a-block with imperialists, racists, eugenicists, fascist-sympathizers and crypto-fascists is not only completely irrelevant but tediously old news? Am I alone in seeing a disconnect here?
No. No, you're not.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:50 PMOr, rather, crazier. Jonah's Book
While I'm not a conservative, and never have been, I came to appreciate William F. Buckley much more as I grew older and started reading National Review (though not consistently--I've never had a subscription) back in the Reagan years. An intellectual giant has passed.
The Corner is (not surprisingly) all WFB all the time right now.
[Update at 2:30 PM]
A tribute from Mario Cuomo:
I was privileged to know William Buckley for more than 20 years and was in fact his opponent in his last public debate.
He may not have been unique. But I have never encountered his match. He was a brilliant, gentle, charming philosopher, seer and advocate.William Buckley died ... but his complicated brilliance in thought and script will survive him for as long as words are read. And words are heard.
[Early evening update]
Bob Poole weighs in, with a libertarian perspective:
By creating National Review in 1955 as a serious, intellectually respectable conservative voice (challenging the New Deal consensus among thinking people), Buckley created space for the development of our movement. He kicked out the racists and conspiracy-mongers from conservatism and embraced Chicago and Austrian economists, introducing a new generation to Hayek, Mises, and Friedman. And thanks to the efforts of NR's Frank Meyer to promote a "fusion" between economic (free-market) conservatives and social conservatives, Buckley and National Review fostered the growth of a large enough conservative movement to nominate Goldwater for president and ultimately to elect Ronald Reagan.
In many ways, this is a loss for the conservative (and libertarian) movements even greater than that of Reagan. But due to his influence, which is immeasurable, he leaves behind many to pick up and carry the torch for freedom forward.
[Evening update]
Ed Kilgore has further thoughts:
Buckley once said he offered his frequent polemical enemy Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., a "plenary indulgence" for his errors after Schlesinger leaned over to him during a discussion of the despoilation of forests and whispered: "Better redwoods than deadwoods." And that's certainly how a lot of us on the Left feel about the legacy of William F. Buckley, Jr. (see progressive historian Rick Perlstein's tribute to WFB's decency and generosity at the Campaign for America's Future site). He made us laugh, and made us think, and above all, taught us the value of the English language as a deft and infinitely expressive instrument of persuasion. I'll miss him, and so should you.
It's a shame that I have to suffer pea-brained feces-flingers in my comments section on the occasion of his passing. That person will clearly never be able to use the English language as an expressive instrument of persuasion, infinitely or otherwise. It's sad that he's unable to realize how unpersuasive, and deserving of the contempt of all, that he is. It's equally sad that he has no sense whatever of shame, no matter how deserving.
[Update early Thursday morning]
The Washington Post says that Buckley will be missed. Well, not by certain scumbags in my comments section, of course. But who cares about them...?
[Update early morning on February 28th]
Here's a huge compendium of encomia from all points on the political spectrum. Sadly, the only unbonum words that I've seen have been expressed in my own comments section. But then, I don't deliberately go to the wacko leftists web sites.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:27 AMAlan Boyle has an interesting post on the ethics of killer robots.
"Asimov contributed greatly in the sense that he put up a straw man to get the debate going on robotics," Arkin said. "But it's not a basis for morality. He created [the Three Laws] deliberately with gaps so you could have some interesting stories."Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:52 AM
Even without the Three Laws, there's plenty in today's debate over battlefield robotics to keep novelists and philosophers busy: Is it immoral to wage robotic war on humans? How many civilian casualties are acceptable when a robot is doing the fighting? If a killer robot goes haywire, who (or what) goes before the war-crimes tribunal?
Scientists now have a plausible, and likely theory for what created the Burgess Shale:
By looking over hundreds of micro-thin slices of rock taken from the famous shales, the researchers have reconstructed the series of catastrophic underwater landslides of "mud-rich slurry" that killed tens of thousands of marine animals representing hundreds of species, then sealed them instantly - and enduringly - in a deep-sea tomb.The mass death was "not a nice way to go, perhaps, but a swift one - and one that guaranteed immortality (of a sort) for these strange creatures," said University of Leicester geochemist Sarah Gabbott, lead author of a study published in the U.K.-based Journal of the Geological Society.
I use the scare quote because that's the word used in the headline. This kind of language, I think, is (at least partly) what bothers people who continue to rebel against evolution, and science. It is a certainty of language (like "fact," rather than "theory") that they consider hubristic, and arrogant. After all, when Sherlock Holmes "solved" a case, it generally was the last word, case closed.
In this case, what the word means is that scientists have come up with a plausible explanation for an event for which they'd been struggling to come up with one for a long time, and it is sufficiently plausible that there are few scientists who argue against it, thus presenting a consensus. Does it mean that they have "proven" that this is what happened? No. As I've written many times, science is not about proving things--scientists leave that to the mathematicians. What scientists do (ideally) is to posit theories that are both reasonable and disprovable, yet remain undisproved.
There may be some other explanation for what happened up in what is now Yoho National Park that corresponds better to what really happened, but until someone comes up with one that makes more sense, or comes up with some inconvenient indisputable fact that knocks this one down, it (like evolution itself) is what most scientists, particularly the ones who study such things for a living, will believe.
And of course, I won't even get started on how upset some anti-science (and yes, that's what they are, even if they don't recognize it) types will get over the statement that one of the ancestors of humans is in that shale.
[Update a few minutes later]
Oh, the main point about which I put up this post. This is an excellent illustration of how rare are the circumstances in which we find the keys to our biological past. Those that demand that we cannot know the history of life until every creature has died on the body of its parents, perfectly preserved, are being unreasonable. To paraphrase Don Rumsfeld, we do science with the (rare) evidence that we have, not the evidence we'd like to have. There will always be many huge holes in the fabric of the evidence, barring the development of a time machine to the past. We simply do the best we can with what we have, and put together theories that best conform to it. To say that God (or whoever) did it isn't science--it's just a cop out. And that is true completely independently from the existence (or not) of God (or whoever).
Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:11 PMWell, I don't think so, at least not intrinsically. But apparently a lot of people do. I wonder how the results would come out if you said "molecular manufacturing" instead?
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:48 AMIt's been rumored for several months that Burt Rutan has been under the weather. He certainly didn't look great when I talked to him briefly in the hallway in Long Beach in September.
Without getting into details, I now have it on very good authority that he underwent (or is undergoing) surgery this morning in California. My understanding is that, if successful, the prognosis will be good, and he'll be doing much better soon. If you're the praying type, and think it does him any good, then you might want to do that. But if you do, it might be best not to tell him. Me, I'll just hope for the best.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:33 AMChris Wallace on Fox News asked Huckabee how his campaign differed from others. His response was that he listened to "the little people."
How did that differ from an answer from Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama? Or any Democrat candidate?
Here's an interesting article on the economics of repugnance. As Sally Satel (and her donor, Virginia Postrel) have pointed out, an unwillingness to allow a market in kidneys is murdering thousands every year, to help ease the stomach of so-called biomedical "ethicists."
Note to Leon Kass, and others: the "yuck" factor, like all emotions, should be viewed as suggestions, not commands.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:28 AMHe's going to be #3 on the NYT book list, and he's been nominated for a Pulitzer:
It would be great, not to mention amazing, if he wins one.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:32 PMWith Jonah Goldberg, about his new book
Just when you think you have plumbed the darkest depths of the nation's moral decline, someone comes up with something like this. I weep for my country.
Well, I'm not sure that it's really unethical to not break up the pieces, but it certainly seems to miss the point, unless your only goal is simply to complete the puzzle as quickly as possible. And I've never seen a puzzle that was really worth the end result. With a jigsaw puzzle, isn't the journey the destination?
Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:53 AMIlya Somin writes about the clash of values between those of us who want to live, and those who want us to die. And no, I'm not referring to Islamists.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:04 AMA debate, that I've only skimmed, but it looks interesting.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:40 AM...that atheists and Christians can, and must agree on. From, of all places, Cracked.
[Via emailer Eric Akawie]
Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:41 AMRon Bailey doesn't think so. Neither do I. And I sure hope we don't.
I've noticed this kind of "argument" a lot with people who want to hold back true progress (as opposed to the "progress" proposed by many "progressives"):
So what about the social consequences of radically longer and healthier lives? In that regard, Diana Schaub in her reaction essay raises many questions for reflection about those consequences, but curiously she fails to actually reflect on them. Schaub isn’t “willing to say that agelessness is undesirable,” but she simultaneously “can’t shake the conviction that the achievement of a 1,000-year lifespan would produce a dystopia.” She then simply recapitulates the standard issue pro-mortalist rhetorical technique of asking allegedly “unnerving questions” and then allowing them to “fester in the mind.” Sadly, all too many bioethicists think they’ve done real philosophic work by posing “hard” questions, then sitting back with steepled hands and a grave look on their countenances.
Yeah, these sorts of questions have been "festering" in my mind for decades. I don't ever seem to come up with the sort of scary answers that she won't tell us, though.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:43 PMIn both science, and journalism.
The notion that journalists are, or should be, or can be "objective" is perhaps the profession's most fatal conceit. As Virginia Postrel says, what's important is to be fair, something that they often don't even attempt, as demonstrated by CNN and its performance in the debates.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:53 AMThis is something that always appealed to me:
With an estimated 14 percent of Americans professing to have no religion, according to the Institute for Humanist Studies, some are choosing to send their children to classes that teach ethics without religious belief.
One of the reasons we came up with our July 20th ceremony was part of a broader effort to formalize our belief system. Several of the people that I was hanging out with at the time wanted to have a place to take their kids to learn their own belief system, rather than a Christian one.
My problem is that, while I'm not a theist, I'm not an atheist (in the sense of someone who believes there is no God) either. I'm a skeptic. In fact, the Unitarian Church can serve the function described above (I actually did attend a Unitarian Sunday school as a teenager). The problem with Unitarians is that they tend to be "progressive."
Back in the eighties, Keith Henson and I used to occasionally discuss trying to take over, or start up, a Unitarian congregation that would be libertarian, rather than "liberal." But it seemed like a lot of potential effort, with an uncertain outcome, and nothing ever came of it. In the nineties, he decided to crusade against Scientologists instead. It probably would have been smarter to take on the Unitarians...
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:37 AMThey don't abjure sex, but the effect is the same:
At the age of 27 this young woman at the height of her reproductive years was sterilised to "protect the planet".Incredibly, instead of mourning the loss of a family that never was, her boyfriend (now husband) presented her with a congratulations card.
While some might think it strange to celebrate the reversal of nature and denial of motherhood, Toni relishes her decision with an almost religious zeal.
"Having children is selfish. It's all about maintaining your genetic line at the expense of the planet," says Toni, 35.
It's hard for me to feel regret that this moron wants to end her line.
But here are some people that I'd hope would be even more proactive than the Shakers, and really get on with the job:
We endorse a more "healthy" hatred of humanity — a humbling hatred. It makes you a better person. More aware. Less ignorant. I'd use the term "human racist" if I could trust the general public to understand we're not saying we hate any one given race. That's just irresponsible and ignorant.
Well, if you hate humans so much, you know where to start, and it's entirely within your own power to end your own existence. Who would possibly miss you?
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:14 PMWhen we went out to the White Sands monument, I was reading one of the signs about how life adapts to the shifting dunes. Yuccas apparently root themselves in the interdune area, planting roots deep to get at the underground aquifer. As the sand advances and starts to bury them, they grow ever higher, to keep their stalks in view of the sun. This continues for years until they may be only a couple feet above the top of the dune, with thirty feet of plant beneath. They persevere.
Until, that is, the dune continues to advance, removing the supporting sand from around the thirty-foot plant until it collapses of its own weight (somehow, the aspect ratio of the Ares I, of which I saw a model at Holloman today, comes to mind).
There's a lesson there somewhere. I guess it's "life sucks, and then you die."
On that cheery note, I'm off to bed, so I can go watch Armadillo win the Lunar Landing Challenge in the morning. Or be surprised if they don't.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:42 PMHere are a bunch of folks discussing whether or not the universe has a purpose. I'm too busy to read it all right now, but I thought my readers might find it of interest. Without reading it, I was a little surprised that the "maybes" and "yeses" outnumbered the "no ways" or "unlikelies." I think it does, but I recognize that it's a (non-theistic, in my case) religious belief.
[Via the Derb]
Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:16 PMI'm fearless, in this regard, having spent my entire life to date in that state:
Mother Theresa's confessions (if such a word could be used lightly given the context) similarly affirm Theology, that the greatest fear, or perhaps the greatest threat posed to believers, isn't death, or evil, or something else, but the absence of God.
And never having had any ambitions toward beatification, I'm not going to lose any sleep over it. There has obviously been a lot of intellectual energy, and even occasional rigor involved in analyzing these issues over the centuries, but to me, it always reads like a dispatch from an alien planet. I worry more about cancer, cardiac problems, and terrorists getting nukes myself. But then, theology was never my strong suit.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:09 AMPhil Bowermaster has some thoughts on animal rights, as does Megan McArdle.
I would find it tough to give up eating mammals. I am bothered by eating pork, because pigs seem to be quite intelligent (though not enough to forgo it), but I have trouble working up much sympathy for cattle. I'm also a little off put by baby mammals (so I rarely eat lamb, and almost never veal), though that actually seems a little irrational to me. Just my own version of Leon Kass' "yuck factor" I guess. And I have no problem with eggs, though I wouldn't want to eat deep-fried chicks (even disregarding the inefficiencies of finding much meat amidst the bones and viscera). Anyway, as noted, forgoing all animal protein, as vegans do, is a very tough lifestyle to do healthily.
All these things, as Phil notes, are driven more by culture and innate tastes than any rational or ethical analysis. Many cultures have no problem with eating land-based arthropods (fried locusts, anyone), but I can't stomach them unless they come from the water. And it's not just the size.
I hope that we aren't far from technology that allows a filet mignon to be grown in a vat, which will resolve a lot of these issues once and for all.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:18 AMDr. Helen has some thoughts. I'm with Mark Twain and Heinlein on this issue, myself. Every action we take is, ultimately, for ourselves, if for no other reason that it makes us feel good.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:38 AMMichael Gerson somehow imagines that Second Life proves that libertarianism doesn't work. Ramesh Ponnuru (no libertarian) points out the flaw in his "argument" (such as it is).
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:05 AMAn interesting dust up between Leon Kass and Steven Pinker on the nature of the mind, and morality.
I think that, as is often the case in debates like this, that they are talking past each other, which is almost inevitable, given that they start with such profoundly different premises.
[Update early afternoon]
John Derbyshire (from whom I got the link) has further thoughts. I'm a little surprised that he's surprised that Kass can have a nasty side, though.
[Update an hour or so later]
He also has some cogitations about consciousness.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:05 AMBut "liberals" always want to try. Imagine the mental and logical gymnastics one must go through in order to believe that it's all right to abort a "normal" baby, but not one genetically deformed:
Mr. Imparato said he was disturbed to learn recently that in several states with legislative efforts to restrict abortion rights, groups like Planned Parenthood often lobby for an exemption for women who learn their child would have a disability.But he said that the person who alerted him was a Planned Parenthood lobbyist who was herself troubled by the tactic because it seemed to run counter to the progressive political agenda that supports both choice and tolerance of human difference.
“You’ve got these two basic liberal values on a kind of collision course,” said Rayna Rapp, an anthropologist at New York University who has studied attitudes toward prenatal testing.
[Late afternoon update]
In the interests of comity here, and despite the quotes around the word "liberals," per a(n anonymous) complaint in comments, I'll amend the opening sentence to "But some liberals always want to try."
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:17 AMAlan Boyle has an interesting interview with Paul Davies, and his latest theories about the universe.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:53 AMThe Centennial Edition of Atlas Shrugged
Jane Galt wonders why she prays to a being in whom she doesn't believe (and let me extend my best wishes, though not prayers, for the health of her dog). As I've noted before, I've never done this, or had an urge to, but perhaps I've never been under sufficient duress. On the other hand, I've heard that, in fact, there are atheists in foxholes.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:47 AMQuine or no quine, Will Wilkinson seems to be unable to make a distinction between not believing in something and believing in not something.
I don't believe in God, and have no need for one, but that's not the same things as believing there is no God. I remain a skeptic.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:36 AMDerb makes an interesting point about the heritability of religious belief.
The two things—the heritability (or not) of susceptibility to religious feeling, and the reality (or not) of the things religions talk about—seem to me to be orthogonal. Neither one depends on the other.
Yes. There are obviously many people who have a sense of a god, and who am I to tell them they're wrong, just because I don't? I can't know whether God exists or not (and really, no one else can either--that's why they call it faith), but there's something they sense or feel that provides a foundation for their faith that I've just never had.
I do feel a need to believe in something, but the God thing, and particularly the Jesus thing, literally never made sense to me. So I go for a more vague teleology thing. That is, I do think that the universe has a purpose, and that we are helping fulfill it by going forth and multiplying into the cosmos. But that doesn't require an entity that keeps an eye on the process, or pays any attention to the details (e.g., every sparrow that falls). Or that listens to an individual's, or even a group of individuals', prayers.
But I could be wrong.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:21 AMDoes death give life meaning? Perhaps, but that I think that there are other ways to do so.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:51 AMDavid Barash asks if we should be teaching evolutionary psychology.
Answer: yes, but carefully:
What to do? One possibility — unacceptable, I would hope, to most educators — would be to refrain altogether from teaching such dangerous truths. Teacher, leave them kids alone! Preferable, I submit, is to structure the teaching of sociobiology along the lines of sex education: Teach what we know, but do so in age-appropriate stages. Just as we would not bombard kindergartners with the details of condom use, we probably ought not instruct preteens in the finer points of sociobiology, especially since many of those are hidden even to those expected to do the teaching. For one thing, a deeper grasp of the evolutionary biology of altruism reveals that even though selfishness may well underlie much of our behavior, it is often achieved, paradoxically, via acts of altruism, as when individuals behave in a manner that enhances the ultimate success of genetic relatives. Here, selfishness at the level of genes produces altruism at the level of bodies.Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:16 AM...Beyond the question of what our genes may be up to and the extent to which we are independent of them, those expected to ponder the biology of their own "natural" inclinations ought also to be warned (more than once) about the "naturalistic fallacy," the presumption that things natural are, ipso facto, good. I'd even suggest pushing this further, and that the real test of our humanity might be whether we are willing, at least on occasion, to say no to our "natural" inclinations, thereby refusing go along with our selfish genes. To my knowledge, no other animal species is capable of doing that. More than any other living things, we are characterized by an almost unlimited repertoire; human beings are of the wilderness, with beasts inside, but much of the beastliness involves gene-based altruism no less than selfishness.
Donald Sensing has an interesting post (with equally interesting comments) about science as a religion.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:30 AMFrederick Turner has some thoughts:
The figure of the village atheist is a rather comic one. He proves his superior intelligence by mocking the sheeplike conformity of the poor benighted believers. The old word "enlightened" has now been replaced by the word "bright" as the self-description of this sort of atheist. He is a variant of the "Cliffie the mailman" wonk who knows it all, or Sportin' Life the cynic in Porgy and Bess. An older version is Flaubert's character Homais the bourgeois anticlerical pharmacist in Madame Bovary, and an even older one is Thersites the scurrilous doubter in Shakespeare and Homer. Much pleased by their own originality, they take their mishaps as the martyrdom of the bold intellectual pioneer, and they have produced a group of arguments that should probably be taken apart.One is that religious ideology is a unique inspirer of terrible wars. In the current perspective, such an opinion sounds plausible. But anyone with an historical sense will recognize that the few hundred people who die each month in religious conflicts are absurdly dwarfed by the tens of millions, almost all of them religious believers, who died, within living memory, under the savage atheistic regimes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong and the various dialectical materialist dictators of eastern Europe. We have seen what atheism looks like on the large scale, and it is not pretty: the Holocaust, the Gulag, the Cultural Revolution, the Killing Fields. Religion has indeed been a cause of appalling slaughter during the course of human history; but it must take fifth place behind atheist ideology, nation-state aggression, mercantile colonialist expansion, and tribal war in the carnage sweepstakes.
Another argument brought by the village atheist type is that to base one's life on faith is intellectual suicide. This argument might be persuasive if there were any alternative, but there is not. Reason is not a basis for thought, but a method of thought. Kurt Gödel showed conclusively that every system of reasoning contains self-referential statements of the form of "This statement is unprovable", which are correctly formed propositions that must be true or false, and must, if reason is fundamental, be provably one or the other. Analysis quickly shows that the statement must be true, but cannot be proved to be true. Reason is a process of proof, but reason is incapable of proving a certain true proposition, one that must take its place among the axioms of any logical system. Rationality cannot prove itself. The fundamental validity of reason therefore must be taken on faith; the only difference from a purely logical point of view between an atheist who believes in reason and a religious person who makes a primary act of faith is that the religious person recognizes the pre-logical basis of his beliefs, while the atheist does not.
If the village atheist dismisses this sort of thing as logic-chopping and takes his stand on the empirical down-to-earth evidence of the senses, the ground similarly disappears from under his feet. David Hume is rightly hailed as a hero of atheism, for his dismissal of the traditional arguments for the existence of God. But what his atheistic admirers miss is that his argument against empirical knowledge is even more devastating. Hume showed that the concept of cause has no logical necessity—that just because one event has often followed another, that does not mean that the same sequence must necessarily happen again, or that there is any necessary causal connection between them. Our expectation of causal connections in general, not just those that attribute the cause of events to God—is at best an emotional and practical habit. The religious person, by this logic, is actually more aware of the shaky basis of his commonsense than is the confident atheist.
RTWT
Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:38 AMAnd remains appropriately obdurate in her continuing skepticism:
The most important characteristics of the Christian God, as I understand them, are his love of man and his justice. If one were to posit a god who is capricious, ironic, absent-minded, depraved, or completely unknowable, I’d be on board. Any one of those characteristics would comport with a deity superintending the world as I see it. But not the idea, as a Bush administration publicist put it to me, that every one of us is “precious in God’s eyes.”Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:32 AMLet me take a banal example. As I write this, the Los Angeles Times has a small item on a thoroughly unremarkable traffic accident. A 27-year-old man in Los Angeles misread a traffic signal, and drove his car into an oncoming Blue Line Metro Train. He and his sister were killed; his 7-year-old son and his grandmother were seriously injured.
Now imagine that a human father had behaved towards the occupants of the car as our Divine Father did. That is: a) He knew that his children would be mowed down by a train; b) he had the capacity to avert the disaster through any number of, for him, quite simple means; and c) he chose to do nothing. No one would call this father’s deliberate and possibly criminal passivity “love.” Instead, we would deem such a father a monster and banish him from our midst. Yet when God behaves in just this way, we remain firm in our conviction that he loved the occupants of that car, and that each was “precious” in his eyes.
How do I know that God could have averted the accident? Because believers tell me so. At the encouragement of their Church, Catholics regularly pray to saints to intercede with God on their behalf for the cure of sickness or protection from accidents. Such prayers would be nonsensical if God did not have the capacity to answer them. When a believer recovers from cancer, he thanks God for saving him. Ditto when an air passenger misses a flight which subsequently crashes — if he is a believer, he will likely thank God for keeping him off board (without wondering why he deserved a reprieve from death and the other passengers did not). If a hurricane misses a town, believers express gratitude to God for redirecting its course. As I mentioned in my American Conservative article, John Ashcroft credits God for keeping America safe since 9/11 (while holding him blameless from allowing the attack to go forward in the first place).
Some thoughts from Razib, over at Gene Expression.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:54 PMIn today's Wall Street Journal, "The Fertility Gap" between Democrats and Republicans is analyzed:
According to the 2004 General Social Survey, if you picked 100 unrelated, politically liberal adults at random, you would find that they had, between them, 147 children. If you picked 100 conservatives, you would find 208 kids. That's a "fertility gap" of 41%. Given the fact that about 80% of people with an identifiable party preference grow up to vote the same way as their parents, this gap translates into lots more little Republicans than little Democrats to vote in future elections.
For a less politically correct treatment, here's an earlier article with stark graphs (that's free):
The white people in Republican-voting regions consistently have more children than the white people in Democratic-voting regions.
But that's just the facts. The philosophy question is more interesting.
If the adults have less than 200+ children by the time they die, their philosophy will have to spread faster than their progeny because at less than replacement rate the base of supporters will shrink. In mathematical terms, a stochastic series with an average geometric mean less than one will converge at 0.
In population terms, subpopulations with less fertility than replacement values will die out.
Religions with an admonishment to be fruitful and multiply will last longer than competing ones. Philosophies that call for zero or negative population growth will commit suicide in a whisp of finite time. It doesn't take many generations for a philosophy to die out. A philosophy that garners 3/4 of the previous generation's adherents will go from 150 million adherents to 1,500 aherents in 40 generations.
Optimism about the human condition is selected for. People who believe in Julian Simon's theory of plentiful commodities and bountiful technology (The Ultimate Resource 2) will be more fertile than the worriers about carbon pollution and the population problem du jour. The former ideas have positive probability of being eternal.
Posted by Sam Dinkin at 08:09 AMRamesh Ponnuru asks an interesting question:
...what's the best term to refer both to agnostics and atheists? "Faithless" seems too negative, "bright" too propagandistic. Do agnostics and atheists consider "unbeliever" better than "non-believer," or vice-versa? When I was agnostic, I didn't take my own unbelief seriously enough to consider this question.
I've never given much thought to the matter, but if one insists on lumping both into the same category, I'd say that "non-theists" seems both accurate and non-pejorative (other than to those to whom not believing in God is an intrinsically bad thing...).
But I think that the distinction between atheists and skeptics is important. The former (based on my experience with them) are as devout, or (actually) more devout, than most theists. They fervently believe (unprovably) that there is no God, and will proselytize endlessly to convert others to their belief. I have no belief, one way or the other, and it would never occur to me to (futilely) attempt to persuade a believer, of either faith, one way or the other.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:17 PMPhil Bowermaster has the results of the survey he did a couple weeks ago.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:50 AMOver at Samizdata, an interesting discussion (including comments) on the nonsensical notion of a libertarian Democrat.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:27 PMThe Simpsons as philosophy.
[Via Geek Press]
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:35 AM...in this post, I see that I need to write an essay titled "Why Diogenes' Search Is Futile, And Why It Doesn't Matter."
So much to do, so little time. And I should note, that the man himself knew that his search was futile. Of course, some will inevitably argue that this fable is more about human nature than about whether or not truth exists. And they may be right.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:51 PMJonah wants to know:
There are more persuasive games to be played in order demonstrate that there is truth out there (think science, math, Irish whiskey). But Matt isn't saying (I assume) that there isn't any such thing as truth, he's saying he doesn't believe in moral truth.
Well, actually, the science and math aren't examples of truth, either (I can't speak to Irish whiskey, though I suspect that Goedel would shoot that one down as well). No, sorry, there is no absolute truth of any kind, moral or otherwise, sad to say. Scientific truth is so only in the context of science. If you don't accept the premises of science, or the postulates of math, then there's no truth to be found there, either. It's a cruel world for conservatives.
That doesn't mean that we shouldn't defend our civilization from barbarous misogynistic Islamonutballs, though.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:00 PMRutan said anyone offering spacecraft for commercial service should demonstrate their confidence in the system's safety by having their children be among the first fliers, as Branson has said he will do."Spaceship guru roasts his rivals," Alan Boyle, MSNBC.com
Should cigarette makers force their children to smoke or withdraw their product? Should parachute makers force their children to skydive or withdraw their product?
This does not follow. People afraid of heights should be allowed to sell bungee jumping supplies without personally testing them. The deathly afraid maker might design better equipment than a fearless one. Makers of hazardous products do not have to partake and may be sending a clearer message if they don't. That does not mean their product should be shunned.
It is ironic that Virgin Galactic will be required to disclose its product is quite risky. It will require flying thousands of times before showing a spacecraft is as safe as a military jet. Very little is learned from a single draw on a distribution. 98% of shuttle astronauts returned. All that Branson and his family flying prove by flying is that they are risk takers, not that his craft is safe. It is a greater disservice to create a false impression of safety than to put a product on the market where hazards are fully disclosed and no effort is made to express false confidence.
Rutan's sentiment is a throwback to medieval food testers to test for poison. He is not alone--Transportation Safety Administration required people to take a drink of liquids they were carrying (at least in Austin). Weird.
We will have a choice of vendors for spaceflight. Some of them will fly the owners first. Some of them will fly with a pilot and others will be remotely operated from the ground.
Would Space-Shot.com customers like me to raise the price of an entry so I can fly personally before the first winner?
Posted by Sam Dinkin at 08:46 AMFor those lacking patience, I give you the two-minute Haggadah.
Speaking of children: We hid some matzoh. Whoever finds it gets five bucks.The story of Passover: It's a long time ago. We're slaves in Egypt. Pharaoh is a nightmare. We cry out for help. God brings plagues upon the Egyptians. We escape, bake some matzoh. God parts the Red Sea. We make it through; the Egyptians aren't so lucky. We wander 40 years in the desert, eat manna, get the Torah, wind up in Israel, get a new temple, enjoy several years without being persecuted again. (Let brisket cool now.)
Happy Passover.
[via Joe Katzman]
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:58 PMThe Speculist has a podcast interview with Jim Bennett, serial space and IT entrepreneur, and popularizer
Among other things, he explains why this may not be the Chinese century.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:15 AMPhil Bowermaster has a couple of interesting and related book reviews. The Angosphere Challenge
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You scored as Serenity (Firefly). You like to live your own way and don't enjoy when anyone but a friend tries to tell you should do different. Now if only the Reavers would quit trying to skin you.
Your Ultimate Sci-Fi Profile II: which sci-fi crew would you best fit in? (pics) created with QuizFarm.com |
There's a problem with the quiz, though (as there often are with these things).
I wasn't quite sure how to answer the very first question:
"Peace is achieved through large single government rule (agree, disagree).
Well, I agree that this is certainly a way to achieve peace, but there seems to be a presumption to this (or at least an implication) that peace is an unalloyed good. As some anti-war types are fond of pointing out, Saddam Hussein's Iraq was largely at peace (if you don't count the random murders and torture that he occasioned on his own people), but it was hardly a desirable state. So I answered yes, but I'm not sure how that answer was interpreted by the test creators.
Also, interestingly, I see that when I go back to look at the quiz, the order of the questions is different. They must randomize it.
[Via Alan Henderson]
[Late morning update]
The more I think about it, the more I suspect that the "peace" question lowered my Firefly score. I think that whoever wrote the question did assume that a) peace is a desirable thing, per se and b) everyone would agree with that--the only issue is how it's best achieved. What's the flip side of that question? "Peace is achieved through multiple government rule?" "Peace is achieved through minimalist government?" "Peace is achieved through a well-armed citizenry?" This was a really unuseful question, as posed.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:10 AMIn researching The Tragedy of the Commons, reading Freeman Dyson's autobiography Disturbing the Universe, and checking out today's NY Times (subscription required--at least intermittently), I reached the following epiphany. If current trends continue, the world will either be empty or full. We will each live forever or die out because our life expectancy will go to zero. The Tragedy of the Commons was coined back in 1833 by Malthusians. Dyson quipped, "we all thought that energy was going to run out in 1937" and today's Friedman column worries that social security and medicare will eat up all the budget.
I think that it is good to have social security eat up the budget. As people start to live forever, the only way to get them to cede the good jobs is to offer them a life of leisure. Inflation will take care of any pesky budget infinities. With the right subsidies, the federal budget can be hundreds of percent of GDP. You have to recycle the subsidy dollar and tax it back multiple times per year. That brings up another thing. Taxes will either go to infinity or zero (or maybe negative infinity).
In Joe Haldeman's Late Twentieth, society has to deal with immortality. I think that there won't be a radical shift like he extrapolates. If you think of age as a percent of life expectancy, long lives are the same as short ones. Even with clinical immortality, there are always accidents and violence (as he proves in Forever Peace). But suppose we achieve RAID integrity and deaths could hit zero for a good length of time. If trends continued, to update Keynes, in the long run, we will all be dead--or alive.
Posted by Sam Dinkin at 04:09 AMA "knee-jerk militant agnostic"?
If someone is of sufficiently strong opinion on a matter to be militant or knee jerk about it, it's hard to imagine that they're "agnostic."
In any event, as a skeptic, I can't imagine being upset about Narnia (which I'd actually like to see, based on reviews). Or the Passion of the Christ, for that matter, though I've no intention of seeing it. I wasn't even bothered by the gay shepherd movie, though I've no intention of seeing that, either. I was simply amused by the utterly predictable media reaction to it, in which if it isn't a box-office success, it's because we're all homophobes, and if it is, it means that the nation is now all-accepting of gays, and ready to metaphorically walk down the aisle with them, sexuality notwithstanding.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:30 PMConsidering it's a "shall-issue" state, I'm thinking there's going to be a lot less looting in Texas than there was in New Orleans. Assuming that both hurricanes are equally destructive, this provides an opportunity for a controlled social experiment.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:07 PMGlenn says that, apparently, the incoming Chief Justice thinks that there's nothing that the Commerce Clause doesn't prohibit. Sounds like it's time for a constitutional amendment.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:22 PMMark Daniels has some good marriage advice, even for non-Christians (or even non-theists) like me. But I don't get this:
Sex is great. God invented it, so that shouldn't be a surprise. He only makes good things.
Really? So are (for instance) smallpox, sleeping sickness, mosquitos and tsetse flies, anthrax, Osama and Adolf Hitler good things? Or did someone else make them?
I mean, it's a nice sentiment, but is it really a theologically (or logically at all) sound statement?
[Update at 11:30 AM EDT]
Some in comments are defining the problem away, by saying that we don't really know what "good" is.
Sorry, but that doesn't wash for someone who doesn't necessarily believe in God, and particularly doesn't believe in a God whose every action is good, by definition, which is what seems to be the point here. Once you define "good" in that way, the word really has no useful meaning at all for normal conversation (again, from the standpoint of someone who thinks logically, and likes words to have some kind of commonly-understood meaning, without which it's impossible to communicate effectively).
Torture = good
Suffering = good
Death = good
Bad = good
Either these statements are all true, which renders the word "good" meaningless, or God isn't the author of any of them, in which case, who is?
Can't have it both ways.
[One more update]
I think that some people are missing my point here. I've often heard that we can't know God's purposes, but that all things have a purpose. Not believing that there is a God, or that everything has a purpose, I obviously don't agree with that, but it's a philosophically defensible and at least logically consistent position (though, I think, a trivial one, and one that does indeed rely on faith).
But that's a different thing than saying that everything that God does is good by most peoples' understanding of the meaning of that word. That just seems like junior Sunday-school stuff to me, for people unable to grasp deeper concepts, and to defend it by redefining "good" is to engage in sophistry, rather than theology.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:50 AMWell, not you. Hopefully, few of my readers would be capable of doing that.
I mean, can a person, any person, rape a dog?
What I really mean is, is the word "rape" really applicable here? It just looks strange to me. Obviously, of course, it's possible to forcibly penetrate a dog (well, not for me--I wouldn't be able to get, or keep it up for such an act), but the word "rape" has connotations that don't, or at least shouldn't, apply. To me, the word rape means non-consensual penetration (of either gender), but can there be any other kind of penetration of an (non-human) animal? It seems like a category error to me.
How does a dog issue consent? I don't have any personal experience, but I'm given to understand that this is not an uncommon activity on farms, and that the animals don't always necessarily fight back or complain (and generally aren't even injured), but that's not the same thing as granting permission.
Now clearly, this was a brutal crime, but it seems to me that the crime is animal cruelty, not rape. The fact that the instrument of torture and injury was the young man's male member doesn't change that.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:16 PMOver at Winds of Change, Robin Burk and Marc "Armed Liberal" Danziger have an interesting discussion of the morality of our victory in Europe sixty years ago.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:51 AMThere is an interesting argument going on here about my article on Orion. I am cc'ing you the following:
I always thought the active-passive distinction in philosphy and law was a cop out. We are just as responsible for the millions who die from our inaction as we are for murder. If you are consciously not donating to a hunger fund with the understanding that the inevitable consequence is that an additional person will die of hunger, it is tantamount to first degree murder.
There is an active choice to be part of coal deaths. Every time we turn on a light switch, we actively increase the coal output that kills tens of thousands per year or more. So each flick is increasing the likelihood of death. It is therefore self-deception to suggest that moving in the direction of safety is a sinless course. It is just murder too common to prosecute.
So if we can all agree that we are a civilization of murderers, then we can get on to real questions like is it better to kill people with atmospheric nuclear explosions to colonize the solar system or kill each other through inaction.
Sticking with spending $15 billion/year on chemical rockets instead of half on nuclear rockets and half on defibrillators is killing hundreds of thousands.
I would give my life to colonize the planets. Our focus on saving every life is penny wise and pound foolish.
Do people avoid having children so that all their cells can die a natural death? Envision all humanity as cells of a greater organism, the global species. Envision that it is time to have a child species on another planet. Isn't that worth the death of millions or hundreds of millions if new billions will spring into existence? I am asking for dozens possibly killed offset by savings thousands of others that would otherwise be killed.
I don't expect to fundamentally change dinosaur thinking. "I will not kill anyone to save the species from the asteroid that has our species' name on it." But be aware of the systematic cost of the capricous risk aversion we impose in the name of morality.
Posted by Sam Dinkin at 09:05 AMSome of my recent reading material has caused me to return to the question (upon which I've pondered off and on for decades) of what it means to be human. Along those lines, I have to confess to being a little perplexed by a post at Powerline today, in which Scott Johnson writes:
One of the great projects of the Progressive movement is the abolition of nature as supplying the standard of human conduct -- the kind of standard to which the Founders appealed in adverting to "the Laws of Nature" in the Declaration of Independence.
Now, certainly progressives are opposed to the very notion of human nature--no dispute about that--but whence comes the notion that nature per se should "supply the standard of human conduct"? I assume that Mr. Johnson considers himself a conservative, and so I wonder if he's actually thought through the import of this statement.
If he really believes this, he's indulging in the naturalistic fallacy. I'm not sure what he has in mind here, but if we were to use nature, even human nature, as a guide to conduct, then rape would be perfectly acceptable, since this is a natural human behavior. As would homosexuality, since there's nothing particularly unnatural about that, either. It may not be useful in reproduction, but there's little doubt that there are people born to be attracted exclusively to members of the same sex, and like it or not, such behavior has been observed in other species as well (some very closely related to us).
I wouldn't claim to be a conservative, but I had thought that conservativism was about operating from higher principles (e.g., divine, or otherwise), and rising above our animal tendencies. I'd like to see a little expansion on this topic from him, because as barely stated, it doesn't make much sense to me.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:17 AMEd Morrissey says that the Iraqi government may be working out a deal to spare Saddam's life in exchange for an end to the "insurgency."
That's fine by me. I think that it's a much worse punishment for Saddam to live for many years and watch the nation that he thought of as his personal fiefdom go on (much more) happily without him and his sadism. Well, actually, like Eugene Volokh, I'd like to see him go through all of the torture and death that he dealt to so many, but one can only do that once, and he wouldn't be able to sample all the variety that he was so eager to dispense. Which raises two questions.
First, as Ed points out:
As long as Saddam never sees the light of day again, he can die like Rudolf Hess -- crazy, broken, and of old age.
Just so. But what does Saddam's future hold, assuming that he survives his current medical woes? One of the most powerful objections to effective immortality that may result from advanced medical technology is that, as long as men (and women) are mortal, then so are tyrannies. Even if it's impossible to overthrow a dictator, there is always the knowledge that he won't live forever. Once life-extension treatments become available, it's a given that the first to have them will be dictators, thus cutting off hope of ending their reigns of terror via natural causes.
In this case, now that the dictator is in prison, what are the ethics of medical care for him? He is receiving treatment for his chronic prostate infection. But suppose that our medical capabilities were more advanced, and affordable to all? Suppose that in fact we could restore him to full health, and indefinite youth, and that contra Ed's desires, he didn't die broken, of old age?
Should we? And if not, in a world in which no one else any longer had to suffer such infirmities, and the eventual death from them, how would withholding such treatment differ, ethically speaking, from a prolonged and painful (in the context of a new era of eternal youth) execution?
Moreover, suppose that we were in fact able to restore a human body to full health from the most major physical trauma? For instance, we could feed him into a shredder feet first, perhaps up to his very viscera, and then pull him out still alive and regrow the body. Or electrocute him with electrodes attached to various parts of his body (use your imagination here), and then resuscitate him to do it again. Or lop off ears, gouge out eyes, cut off tongue, gas him, rape him with various interesting objects--all the things that he cheerfully, joyfully did or had done to others, and then fix him up for indefinite repeat performances?
At some point, it takes on the flavor of the revenge of Greek mythology, like the fate of Prometheus, doomed to have his liver eaten every day to be regrown by night, or Sisyphus, condemned to forever roll the stone almost to the top of the hill only to have it fall down again.
In a world of potentially infinite good health, the problems of dictators, and of crime and punishment, will surely take on a whole new cast. It may be, in fact, that the future holds means of punishment and agony that the Spanish Inquisition couldn't dream of.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:26 AMAlong the lines of my previous post, I'm still trying to get my head around when Terri Schiavo's soul departed her body, and am still trying to understand the thoughts of those who believe in souls.
Hans Moravec has postulated a thought experiment in which his brain is gradually replaced by a mechanical de-vice, one subunit at a time. After each component replacement, he's asked if he still feels like himself. Presumably, if the answer is yes (and an assumption is made that he's being truthful), then the next component is replaced, ad semi-infinitum, until there is no longer any meat left in his head, and he's thinking entirely with hardware. At the end of the process, by definition, he still feels and thinks like Hans Moravec. So is he? Or is he a robot?
Now, this ignores the (perhaps large) degree to which thought processes and feelings are mediated by hormones--it simply assumes that there are some kind of sensors at the interface between the body and the mechanical mind that sense them and get the mind to respond the way the gray matter would have. Of course, one gets the sense that Moravec would prefer to have done with those unmanageable emotions anyway. Which is why he'd probably have replaced his body first, and gotten rid of all those yucky glands, before doing the brain upgrade.
But leaving that aside, the question is, does mechanical Hans still have a soul? Is he still made in God's image? If not, and assuming that he did prior to the initiation of the procedure, at what point did it leave?
These are not just ethereal philosophical questions. They're going to become theologically important to some people as technology continues to advance, and we become more cybernetic in the future. We've heard about gaining kingdoms at the price of one's soul. Will there be some unwilling to undergo life-saving medical procedures, fearing such a stiff bill?
OK, now, let's forget about the gradual replacement scenario. Suppose the functions are simply removed, and not replaced. This is in fact what happened, to some degree that remains in dispute, to Mrs. Schiavo. Getting back to my earlier question, suppose that her cortex was damaged to the point that she no longer had any awareness, of herself or others?
Well, remove it completely, but keep her breathing and her blood circulating. Keep her body healthy.
Now remove other parts of her brain, one by one, but all other organs remain functioning and healthy. Leave in the eyes, and provide nerve impulses to them so that they follow moving objects observed by external cameras, and cause her to emit random sounds with her mouth and lungs of seeming recognition at faces that would have been familiar to her prior to her tragedy. That is, remove the brain entirely, but have her behavior seem exactly the same as it appeared to be in reality.
Is that Terri Schiavo nee Schindler? Does that body still have her soul, or anyone's? If not, during which excision did it depart for new premises? If so, if it's a function of physiological functions of respiration and blood circulation, then what does that really mean in terms of today's technology, that will soon be capable of keeping a brainless body alive, if it isn't already?
To the degree that I understand the concept of the soul, I can't believe that it is associated simply with a body, living or breathing. To the degree that I believe in souls, I think of it as a different word for "mind."
That's why I think that if I were someone who loved Terri, and I believed in souls, I'd comfort myself with the thought that hers perhaps departed long ago, and was observing in anguish from above throughout the whole circus, and that while effort to hold on to something of her was noble, her ultimate end was foreordained fifteen years ago. And at some level, I'd have to feel relief that the long nightmare was over for everybody.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:12 AMThe people who thought it would be about two weeks seemed to have it right. The body of the person who was Terri Schiavo has finally stopped metabolizing. How many more weeks will it be before we stop talking about it?
There are lots of comments over at Free Republic about "bless her soul," and "she's with God now," and the like.
While my heart goes out to the long-suffering family, whose hearts are surely now fully (if only figuratively) broken, at the risk of being (more than) a little iconoclastic, as long-time readers know, I'm not fully down with this soul thing. Perhaps those who are can enlighten me.
At what precise instant did the soul pass from her body, and was transported to God's sitting room?
Was it when she stopped breathing? When her heart stopped beating? When the phosphor trace on her EEG (assuming that she was on one) stopped wiggling? Even now (or at least a few minutes after the end of these activities) she could have been resuscitated with CPR and defibrillator, and resumed these activities, at least briefly, particularly if rehydrated. Had someone done so, would the soul have had to rush back from heaven, to take up residence in the body again, in case there was still one more legal appeal to play out? Or was the body a lost cause, and the soul would know it? But if the latter then why wait for the conventional functional shutdowns that we arbitrarily use to declare legal death? Why not vamoose once it was clear that all the appeals were exhausted, and the organs were failing, regardless of the respiratory and cardiac state?
The relatives said that Terri has been communicating with them, and they with her, but was that wishful thinking? Did they see a spark in her eyes that they imagined was her, words in her vocalizations that they, in their grief, fantasized as expressions of love and human desires? If so, and those who said that she was truly in a "persistent vegetative state," uncomprehending of self or anything else, are right, then is it possible that her soul actually left when her cortex collapsed, years ago, and that since then they've only been feeding an empty shell in the form of a human being?
I ask these questions for two reasons. First, because I'm genuinely curious, not about souls per se, because I don't believe in them, but about how those who do justify their beliefs, and how they think about them. Second, because I do think that this bears on a more practical issue to those of us who do want to live as long as possible--at what point should someone be allowed to go into cryonic suspension? While the issues of soul dispositions and locations shouldn't enter into legal discussions, it's inevitable that they will, and I'd like to know how the arguments in court might go.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:35 AMHere's one more post on Terri Schiavo and the (so far) ineffable nature of consciousness.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:18 AMRob Bailey has some similar thoughts to mine about the Schiavo case, over at Reason.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:03 AMI wonder what Eugene thinks that Saddam's punishment should be?
Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:18 AMOr vice versa? Stanley Kurtz wants to know.
I don't know, but I would suspect the correlation is low, based at least on empirical data. There are probably theoretical reasons as well, but I don't have time to give it much thought right now.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:39 AMThere's a new study seemingly funded to (among other things) justify fishing with live bait, that purports to prove that worms on a hook feel no pain. It also says that lobsters don't suffer when put into a pot of boiling water. Apparently, the authors of the study think that these critters are too dumb to hurt.
Now, I don't know how to get into the head of a crustacean, let alone a night crawler, but I'm always a little suspicious of such firm pronouncements on subjects that truly are ultimately unknowable. They sound more like rationalization than science (like the old theory, that's unfortunately not all that old, that the medical profession had that newborns were also insensate to pain, and that their cries and wails during unanaesthetized surgical procedures was just a reflexive response). It may be that worms wiggle mindlessly, but I suspect that if a lobster being put in a pot of boiling water didn't mind, one wouldn't have to work so hard to keep them in it.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:20 AMCox and Forkum have a tribute to honor the centenary of the birth of Ayn Rand.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:44 PMOK, one more before we take off. John Derbyshire has a slightly different perspective on the ID controversy:
I would like to see some scientifically literate school board somewhere mandate stickers in biology textbooks stating that "INTELLIGENT DESIGN IS NOT A THEORY, BUT A CRITIQUE." Then we might be getting somewhere with this dismal business.
Just so.
Now, really, see you later. She's dragging me out the door, fingers still frantically stabbing at the keyboard. Why didn't I get a wireless keyb....
Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:47 AMDale Amon has a list of gods in which he doesn't believe.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:57 AMApropos the ongoing ID discussion, John Derbyshire has an interesting post:
Horrors like the S. Asian tsunami have very little to do with free will, of course, and much more to do with the great cold indifference of the universe. Very hard to square with an involved Deity. I can't do it myself, yet I am constitutionally unable to NOT believe in that Deity. I think I'll go lie down for a while.
Just as he is unable to NOT believe in it, I am similarly unable to believe. I wasn't very old before I realized that the God thing just didn't make much sense to me (but on the other hand, making sense is beside the point, isn't it?). I just don't get it. I feel (which to say, using a different meaning of the word, "sense") no presence of a deity in the universe, though I find that universe awesome, whether gazing at distant images through a telescope, or viewing a plain from atop a mountain, or contemplating the peace of a grove of redwoods.
But from talking to people who do believe, it's clear to me that their belief, and sense of a God's presence, is very real, and I think that it foolish and presumptious to deny it for them. They have their reality, and I mine. And of course, my inability to believe troubles me not at all. I not only have no sense of God, I also have no sense of a need for one.
I think that there is a spectrum of levels of belief (just as there's one for degrees of homosexuality). At one end are the clear unbelievers (such as me), and at the other end are the clear believers, and there are many in the middle whose belief is affected mostly by life circumstances.
Logic would dictate, of course, that we aren't all correct--either there's a God or there isn't, but then, logic only applies if one's belief system thinks that a requirement. Which is why it's impossible to prove something to someone whose means of attaining knowledge isn't logic driven, and who uses a different set of axioms.
It's entirely plausible to me that for those who feel His presence, God is as real as anything else in this existence. But not for me. And because of this, while what happened in south Asia this past week is unspeakably tragic, it disrupts my worldview not at all. I have nothing with which it must be reconciled.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:57 PM...on the ID/science/philosophy debate. Though I don't think he meant to:
“Daddy?”"Yes, hon."
“Why did God have to be born first?”
Out of nowhere, that. I swear she’s telepathic.
“So he could make everything.” That should do it! Next subject!
“But who borned God?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t?” This is a surprise, since I know everything. In the course of the day I have explained the origins of dirt, seeds, leather, crayons, bagels and tin. What am I supposed to say? “We don’t know, because our brains really aren’t capable of getting that part, anymore than Jasper can understand how cars work; it’s enough for him to know that they move. Of course, this could all be an echo of some ancient coping mechanism that ascribed the inexpicable manifestations of natural forces to a patriarchal, interventionist superbeing who demanded slavish obedience from the brutish, mewling meatbags he had created, and smote them when the mood took him. That’s what some would say. That’s too easy, by my lights. Either one requires faith; it depends what you want to have faith in.
The beauty of spiral galaxies, and the morality of dogs and Susan Sontag are also involved.
Read the whole thing.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:43 AMOver at the corner, KLo complains about cloning and a judge that rules that anencephalic babies should be aborted:
Besides the culture of death embraced by New Jersey and California on human cloning (we can clone as long as we kill that new life), the courts insistence on legal infanticide re disallowing partial-birth-abortion bans, and, of course, Roe, Shannen Coffin reminds me that two federal judges here ruled that the government had to pay for abortions of anencephalic babies because they had no chance of survival, i.e., no value to life. (Fortunately, some cooler heads prevailed in the court of appeals where one of those two decisions was reversed (another is pending in the dreaded Ninth Circuit.) How far off are we, really?
At the risk of creeping people out (hey, I have to (re)establish my non-conservative bona fides occasionally here, what with all the complaints about this being a "right-wing" site), I have to say that she sets much too much store by DNA. This all really begs the question of what is human, and what represents human life (an essay that I've been meaning to write for years, but never get around to, primarily because it's a tough problem). The short version is that I don't believe that having human DNA is either necessary or sufficient to be human, or at least to be a person with rights.
While I can see the conservative objection to aborting "human" clones (it's at least consistent with aborting in general), I've never understood the convervative objection to cloning in general (other than the Leon Kass "Yuck factor").
I use the word "human" in quotes because I'm on the fence as to when an embryo actually attains that state. I don't believe that it's at conception, but I do believe that by the time there's a brain stem there, you've got something that shouldn't be deliberately killed without a damn good reason. Which brings us to her second complaint, about aborting "babies" that literally have no minds.
These are creatures with human DNA, but can they really be said to be truly human? I think that much of what makes us human resides in our minds, and that absent a brain, there's no possibility of humanity. For a person in a coma, it can be argued whether or not they are really "there," even if there's no measurable brain activity, but if there's not only no activity, but literally no brain at all (at least none with any higher functions) and no prospects for developing one, what are the prospects for a meaningful life, and what indeed, is the value of such a mass of tissue?
Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:56 PMCigarette-Smoking Man has an interesting post on that subject.
[Via Winds Of Change]
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:33 AM...into Loony Tunes from a commenter at the Aussie Oppressor's site:
Wile E. Coyote is a mythic fusion of Sisyphus and Tantalus. He is doomed to labor eternally at a task that he can never complete, tormented all the while by the presence of the sustenance he craves (the Road Runner) just outside his reach, but close enough to see, hear, and even smell. He is continually subjected to agonizing pain and massively crippling injuries, but he can never die; instead, he heals instantaneously and is forced to continue his hopeless efforts.In short, Wile E. Coyote is in Hell -- a Hell as cruel and sadistic as anything that Dante envisioned.
also,
You have to feel for Sylvester, too - once he finally gave up on the bird, he settles down, has a kid, then spends his declining years plagued by hallucinations about a giant mouse. Poor bastard.
and
The thing that REALLY steams Me about the RR cartoon is not just that the coyote always loses (though that's annoying to this canine fan), but that he's an engineer or at least a technician. You get the message that technology will never solve any problem.Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:06 AMI think the USSR had a cartoon which had a wolf chasing a rabbit, but the rabbit was the inventor and his inventions WORKED.
Why did the damned commies do something right that we didn't?
I just made up that word, for a site about a book that's part blog (well, actually, the book (and theme) blog may not be up for another couple of days). But anyone who's been paying attention to Glenn's blogads will notice one for Jim Bennett's new book on the Anglosphere, which he seems to have almost singlehandedly invented. I'm just pointing it out as well.
Hey, I'm just sayin'...
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:12 PMDavid Brown at Laissez Faire Books says that The Incredibles is an Objectivist-themed movie.
I haven't seen it yet, but I plan to. I've heard many good things about it.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:11 PM...in reading some moronic commentary on Usenet about Dan's Unexcellent Adventure, that this little incident provides a pretty fool-proof intelligence test. Anyone who still believes, at this point, that the documents are genuine, or even could conceivably be genuine, has to be an imbecile.
Of course, someone who believes that they may be false, but now considers them irrelevant because the underlying story must still be true (and conveniently, because they're obviously forged), is simply bereft of logic or ethics.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:00 PMThe comment from "John," in this post, urging me to read Andrew Sullivan, wasn't just rude--it was clueless.
Even accepting the (dubious) premise that Andrew is a "conservative," why would John think that I would care, or that labeling him such would make me take what he says more seriously? I can only presume that it is because "John" deludes himself that I'm a "conservative," and that therefore I'm intrinsically impressed by what other "conservatives" have to say. I'm not a conservative, but even if I were, I judge peoples words by the words themselves, not by the arbitrary political labels that are (mis?)applied to their authors, whether by themselves or others.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:10 AMVia Allen Thomson, here's a long essay on how a Christian came to become a non-believer.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:48 AMIn Enterprise last night, I was struck at how sometimes the writers Just Don't Get It, and make the ship's crew look like fools. If you didn't see it, Archer and T'Pal are kidnapped and being held for a ransom of weapons to aid the local rebel cause. The Vulcans show up to the rescue, and inform the crew that "Vulcans do not negotiate for hostages." Commander (?...what is his rank anyway, I've never been able to sort out ranks on ship, other than the Captain, but I haven't been paying that close attention...) Tucker gets upset and whiny, and asks "Even if lives are at stake?" thus presumably demonstrating the moral superiority of the warm and emotional humans over the coldblooded and logical Vulcans.
Yes, Trip. Especially when lives are at stake. Of course,the writers don't grant the Vulcans any kind of logical rejoinder--that negotiating for hostages simply ensures future hostage taking, and that sometimes lives have to be risked both on principle and to save the lives of many future hostages (the stance which, by the way, the U.S. government has appropriately taken in the Daniel Pearl case). No, they simply look Vulcan and disgusted. I wonder if the script was written pre- or post-911?
Oh, and whooooeeee, how about that little game of twister/simulated-sex scene that they had Archer and T'Pal do in their escape attempt? In prime time, too. Are they reviving the sexual tension from the first episode, or just trying to keep up with the competition?
Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:15 AMProfessor Reynolds points out this interesting article about the odd bedfellows of the left and the right when it comes to technology issues--in this case, Friends of the Earth.
I found this particular testimony most interesting:
the "push to redesign human beings, animals and plants to meet the commercial goals of a limited number of individuals is fundamentally at odds with the principle of respect for nature."
"Respect for nature"? What principle is that? Is it universally shared? He speaks as though there's some sort of well-defined societal consensus for such a principle.
I've already disquisited on this subject; there is nothing holy or sacrosanct about nature. Nature in itself has no intrinsic value.
If this FOE member believes that nature should not be trifled with, then no anaesthetics for him next time he needs dental work. In fact, no dental work allowed, other than knocking aching teeth out with rocks. And no plastic toothbrushes or floss, or anti-cavity toothpaste--they're unnatural.
This falls into the same category of nonsense as Jeremy Rifkin's "integrity of the genome."
Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:06 PMI just read Glenn Reynold's Instapundit site (a multiple daily occurrence), in which, in the midst of his ongoing family tragedy he notes that:
I'd have to say that the medical profession has made a lot less progress with "end of life" issues than I had thought. Unlike Leon Kass, though, I'd rather see them make progress at keeping people alive. They're doing better, but, also unlike Kass, I wish that medical care had advanced as much since 1986 as laptops have. There's nothing noble or natural about seeing someone die of cancer. Cancer isn't natural. It happens because something has gone horribly wrong. Unavoidable, perhaps, but that's not the same as "natural." The same is true of everything else people die of.
First of all, having lost close family members myself, a situation that remains, to date, sadly (though I know Professor Kass wouldn't agree) and fundamentally part of the human condition, I'd like to say that I wish for the best for his family in this trying time.
But if it's not deemed too opportunistic in the face of such personal trauma, I'd also like to disquisite on the above quote. Being a mathematician and thus, by nature (i.e., it's natural for him) logical, I would hope that Glenn's father-in-law would see it as a good cause.
"Natural" is vastly overrated. As is "normal." As is "organic." That such scientific terms, which ought to be morally neutral, have somehow acquired intrinsic value, is a testament to the sad state of the news media and our educational system.
Let's take them (not) in order. "Normal" is a statistical term. It just means a characteristic that most of a given sample have. If you're human, it's normal to have two legs and two arms. It's normal to have skin pigmentation. It's normal to have an IQ within a couple dozen points of a hundred. And it's normal, if you're a man, to be attracted to women. That doesn't mean that any of these things are "good." It only means that a vast majority of human beings have these traits.
Being homosexual is not normal, but then, neither is being Albert Einstein or Mark Maguire or...me. Or you. It is not normal to be either an axe murderer or a genius. The fact that these states are not a normal condition provides absolutely zero information as to whether or not we should or should not approve of them. Thus, the mindless condemnation that any particular trait is "not normal" is meaningless.
OK, next up--"Organic." Although, via arm-twisting by addled ex-hippies and their willing accomplices in the press, the government has come up with bizarre criteria that determine whether or not a food product can be labeled "organic," the scientific fact remains that organic means nothing more than that a substance is...well...carbon based. Scrawny blueberries grown under FDA-authorized conditions of minimum-to-zero fertilizer and pesticides are organic.
So are the disallowed fertilizer and pesticides.
So is botulism. And anthrax--even that produced in Saddam Hussein's labs.
And finally, to get back to the original point spurred by Glenn's family travails, "natural."
This is a rare case in which I disagree with Glenn. Cancer is many things, and one of them is natural.
Nature is not our friend. Regardless of what Leon Kass and Jeremy Rifkin wish to believe, natural is not a moral value--it is just a state of being uninfluenced by humans (at least in the common parlance--some, including me, consider humans and their works to be natural as well).
It is natural to be born. It is natural to love. For humans, it is natural to create works of art and beauty, often transcendently so. Unfortunately, it is also natural, for many, to rape and murder. And it is natural to get cancer, and ultimately, for all so far, it is natural to die. I find it bizarre that those who would condemn rape, welcome death, on the basis that the latter is "natural," when in truth one is no more or less natural than the other.
Since the dawn of recorded time, it was natural for someone injured to become infected, and lose a limb or die, until we came up with the unnatural advent of antibiotics. It was natural for a woman and her child, in the event of a breach birth, to die, or for the child to live, but the woman to die in agony by having the child literally ripped from her womb, until we came up with those unnatural anesthetics. It was natural for people to lose most of their teeth, often painfully, until we came up with those unnatural dental maintenance techniques.
And now that we've unnaturally conquered so many other ills, and, in defiance of human nature, dramatically reduced the incidence of violent death among our youth, and, by unnaturally producing food on farms, reduced our need to hunt dangerous natural wild animals--we live unnaturally long lives, and thus it is now natural for many of us to get cancer. And when we defeat that (as we will inevitably do, though, sadly, probably not in time for Glenn's father-in-law), we will do it with means just as unnatural as those employed to improve the human condition in the past.
We must live our lives by a set of values, but whether or not something is natural should not--indeed cannot--be among them. If it were, and we guided our lives by it, we would still be living nasty, brutish and short lives on a savannah in Africa, subsisting on roots, berries, and whatever the hyenas left behind. Of course, none of you would be reading this in that event, because we wouldn't have such unnatural things as computers, computer networks, or even written language.
We have to find other moral guideposts than whether or not it's what nature intended--nature intends nothing. Or to the degree that one believes in such a teleology, nature intends only that we are born, we breed and we get out of the way for the next generation. If that is our highest aspiration, then we truly are no different from any other animal, and I don't think that even (or especially) Leon Kass believes that.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:38 PM