http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g
This is an amazing video by an amazing man. It says more than I could say with words.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, what is a video?
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
On Democracy
Democracy, it has been said, is the worst form of government except for all the others.
I don't know about the others, but let me tell you. Democracy is really really stupid.
It's a great idea in theory, but so were Socialism, Star Wars (the Strategic Defense Initiative, not the movies, although Episodes 1-3 certainly qualify for this list), and Betamax. Democracy is a great idea in which men and women choose their own destinies, where the laws that affect the populace are chosen by the populace.
The people who decided Democracy was awesome failed to remember that the populace is, by and large, pretty stupid. In Athens, hailed as the first Democracy, only the rich landed men over forty were allowed to vote, experienced politicians and philosophers all. In the United States, a country that prides itself on its democratic fervor, the founding fathers wanted only landed white males to vote. Men they felt were educated, intelligent and more likely to make choices beneficial for all. In fact, soon after the formation of our fair country, several of the founding fathers thought they had been too inclusive with voting rights, that the country would be overwhelmed by the rule of the uneducated masses, that the masses would vote selfishly only for what was best for them and not what was best for all.
And the founding fathers, of course, were unselfish and noble men who never gave a thought to their own personal finances when rebelling against taxes. Who, of course, did not keep their own fortunes in mind when they crafted the country themselves.
Some might say here that the expansion of voting rights nullifies selfishness. When everyone votes, if everyone votes for what is best for them, the will of the majority will be fulfilled.
I'm going to give you a small example here. Not long ago, there was a very controversial ruling in California. Proposition 8.
Before I talk about my example, I should explain a bit about the referendum system in California for those of you who aren't from the US or just can't find yourselves to care about the legal system of our fair state. Most states have their laws made by legislators who are voted into office by the people. In California, a lot of our laws work on the referendum system, where laws are put directly before the people and the people choose what is best for them.
Yeah, it's stupid. You'll see why in a second. Proposition 8 was a hugely controversial topic that was watched from all over the country. Prop 8 was about the outlawing of same-sex marriage in the state and it passed, meaning that gay marriage is outlawed in a state that contains San Francisco (I know, ridiculous right?)
But that's not what I want to talk about today. What I want to talk about today is Prop 2. Prop 2 was on the same ballot, and it was about a matter slightly less dear to our hearts. It was about the legal size of chicken cages.
Here you have everyone in the state voting for the size of chicken cages, in a state with some of the most populated urban areas of the country. What does your average wannabe Hollywood actress know about the size of chicken cages? Your average cubicle worker? Yet you have these people voting on new laws based only on the information they have from commercials for and against Prop 2. How many people can make an informed decision about chicken cages based on biased media? How many people would actually care enough to research about the proper size of chicken cages by themselves?
Rule by the mob is too easily influenced by fear, by propaganda. Democracy simply puts the people with the best advertisements in control. There is too little logic and too much emotion in the masses, too few people who actually make decisions that aren't influenced by personal position or emotional commercials.
Maybe I'm being too harsh on Democracy. I'd like to think so. Especially in America (and I'm not proud of this) voters aren't educated enough about the issues they vote on. We're simply too absorbed with our everyday lives to seriously look at all the issues we vote on. So thus the fault lies with America and not the system.
In America, we are all Kings and Queens. We are all Presidents, all signers of bills and approvers of legislature. Should we be figureheads, mere signers of the pieces of paper politicians put in front of us?
In a Democracy, it is the responsibility of every voter to educate themselves, to know the real impacts of what we vote on, not the slanted views of commercials.
That's why Democracy is such a stupid system. It depends on the minds of every voter to be logical, to be unswayed by selfishness and emotional pleas, or at least the minds of the majority of voters.
And that's just not the way things work. Democracy, like Socialism, is a system based on how the world should be. It just doesn't work.
It's a beautiful idea in theory though.
I don't know about the others, but let me tell you. Democracy is really really stupid.
It's a great idea in theory, but so were Socialism, Star Wars (the Strategic Defense Initiative, not the movies, although Episodes 1-3 certainly qualify for this list), and Betamax. Democracy is a great idea in which men and women choose their own destinies, where the laws that affect the populace are chosen by the populace.
The people who decided Democracy was awesome failed to remember that the populace is, by and large, pretty stupid. In Athens, hailed as the first Democracy, only the rich landed men over forty were allowed to vote, experienced politicians and philosophers all. In the United States, a country that prides itself on its democratic fervor, the founding fathers wanted only landed white males to vote. Men they felt were educated, intelligent and more likely to make choices beneficial for all. In fact, soon after the formation of our fair country, several of the founding fathers thought they had been too inclusive with voting rights, that the country would be overwhelmed by the rule of the uneducated masses, that the masses would vote selfishly only for what was best for them and not what was best for all.
And the founding fathers, of course, were unselfish and noble men who never gave a thought to their own personal finances when rebelling against taxes. Who, of course, did not keep their own fortunes in mind when they crafted the country themselves.
Some might say here that the expansion of voting rights nullifies selfishness. When everyone votes, if everyone votes for what is best for them, the will of the majority will be fulfilled.
I'm going to give you a small example here. Not long ago, there was a very controversial ruling in California. Proposition 8.
Before I talk about my example, I should explain a bit about the referendum system in California for those of you who aren't from the US or just can't find yourselves to care about the legal system of our fair state. Most states have their laws made by legislators who are voted into office by the people. In California, a lot of our laws work on the referendum system, where laws are put directly before the people and the people choose what is best for them.
Yeah, it's stupid. You'll see why in a second. Proposition 8 was a hugely controversial topic that was watched from all over the country. Prop 8 was about the outlawing of same-sex marriage in the state and it passed, meaning that gay marriage is outlawed in a state that contains San Francisco (I know, ridiculous right?)
But that's not what I want to talk about today. What I want to talk about today is Prop 2. Prop 2 was on the same ballot, and it was about a matter slightly less dear to our hearts. It was about the legal size of chicken cages.
Here you have everyone in the state voting for the size of chicken cages, in a state with some of the most populated urban areas of the country. What does your average wannabe Hollywood actress know about the size of chicken cages? Your average cubicle worker? Yet you have these people voting on new laws based only on the information they have from commercials for and against Prop 2. How many people can make an informed decision about chicken cages based on biased media? How many people would actually care enough to research about the proper size of chicken cages by themselves?
Rule by the mob is too easily influenced by fear, by propaganda. Democracy simply puts the people with the best advertisements in control. There is too little logic and too much emotion in the masses, too few people who actually make decisions that aren't influenced by personal position or emotional commercials.
Maybe I'm being too harsh on Democracy. I'd like to think so. Especially in America (and I'm not proud of this) voters aren't educated enough about the issues they vote on. We're simply too absorbed with our everyday lives to seriously look at all the issues we vote on. So thus the fault lies with America and not the system.
In America, we are all Kings and Queens. We are all Presidents, all signers of bills and approvers of legislature. Should we be figureheads, mere signers of the pieces of paper politicians put in front of us?
In a Democracy, it is the responsibility of every voter to educate themselves, to know the real impacts of what we vote on, not the slanted views of commercials.
That's why Democracy is such a stupid system. It depends on the minds of every voter to be logical, to be unswayed by selfishness and emotional pleas, or at least the minds of the majority of voters.
And that's just not the way things work. Democracy, like Socialism, is a system based on how the world should be. It just doesn't work.
It's a beautiful idea in theory though.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
On Government
WARNING: This is not an authoritative thesis. This is just my own musings and almost certainly refutable by any college student actually taking a class on governmental philosophy.
I touched on this topic a bit yesterday, so I'll go a bit more in depth here.
The essence of government is the giving up of individual liberty for safety. By giving up the right to decide everything for ourselves, we also gain the security of knowing that certain things will be provided for us. Things like welfare spring to mind, though there are other examples, such as civil liberties.
The first government, most likely, was some kind of oligarchy. Some leader of a band received the allegiance of his followers in exchange for the increased availability of food. A coordinated, decisive band of hunters were much more likely to bring down prey than a lone tracker.
The need for a leader in this band is not immediately self-evident. If they all know what they're doing, then shouldn't they share the food equally?
That's only until you consider how much man instinctively likes to argue. We love to do it. We are also selfish bastards. Both of those are the driving forces behind why Socialism really doesn't work that well. We like having stuff, especially food. And if we work slightly harder than anyone else, we feel like we should get the lion's share. And if two people feel like that they did more work than the other, fighting ensues and probably ends up with injury for one or the other.
Humanity needs an alpha male, an Ubermensch, someone who can tell everyone else to shut up and eat what's in front of them. We need some one person in charge, at least when we roamed the land in small groups. The autocratic system works pretty well in small groups, with the autocrat always taking the lion's share, but assuring food for all. Even with the death of the roaming lifestyle, autocrats of small towns of farmers works well. The autocrat can spend all his time exclusively working out how to coordinate the town in defense, or simply how to run it daily because he doesn't need to farm food for himself. With more consistent farming practices, as farms became more and more self-sufficient, the need for a coordinator of people fades, and people become largely self-sufficient governmentally as well, though the need for a community persists, in case of hard times. Thus the autocrat is reduced to a nominal position, or removed together as farms depend once in a long while on each others' goodwill.
However, as humanity clumped in bigger and bigger groups, neither simple self-sufficiency nor autocracy would work. Self-sufficiency no longer worked because there were no people who could specialize in making better products than the farms could create themselves. People like cobblers, blacksmiths, specialized trades that required food but did not make it themselves. Farmers needed to trade with the tradesmen, and the tradesmen needed food from farmers. Again, coordination was needed.
However, you couldn't simply have a true autocracy (here, I mean not just a government where only one person has all power, but a government made entirely of one person) with larger amounts of people. True autocracy requires each individual to personally give up some of what they have to the autocrat. However, bigger is merely smaller on a bigger scale. Bigger is different.
Here's an example I've heard. Say you're an actor or an actress and you say to yourself that you will answer every single piece of fan mail you ever receive personally. At first, this isn't too hard. Just an hour a day as the letters trickle in. You get to have personal conversations with your fans. But then you star in a movie and the amount of mail triples. No problem. You just spend three hours a day. That's not too different. Suddenly, your movie becomes a cult classic and you get twelve times the mail. No problem, you'll just spend.... wait. You now receive so much fan mail that it would take thirty six hours a day to reply. Even if you just take the time to write thank you notes, you have to spend twenty hours a day replying, and you still have to do things like sleep and act, so that's out of the question. Even if you have form letters and all you do is sign, it still takes you ten hours. Which is doable, but only barely. And you're not really doing what you promised to do, are you?
The way in which governing becomes different with the first stage of bigger is simple. First of all, you can no longer know approximately what everyone is doing, because there's so many of them. You can't organize people any more. Secondly, there are now a shitload of them and only one of you. How do you enforce your law now? As long as you could physically cow the majority of your tribe or village one on one that was all right. But with enough people unhappy with you, there's nothing you can do.
Thus gives way to the second form of government. "Democracy" (or really, oligarchy.) We see this happening in Ancient Greece, with the rise of Athens. Democracy, the rule of the people, is the most selfish of the governments. Democracy requires every single person to want to participate in the ruling of everything.
And lemme tell you, Democracy is a stupid system.
(More on that topic tomorrow. That is one I know MUCH more about.)
I touched on this topic a bit yesterday, so I'll go a bit more in depth here.
The essence of government is the giving up of individual liberty for safety. By giving up the right to decide everything for ourselves, we also gain the security of knowing that certain things will be provided for us. Things like welfare spring to mind, though there are other examples, such as civil liberties.
The first government, most likely, was some kind of oligarchy. Some leader of a band received the allegiance of his followers in exchange for the increased availability of food. A coordinated, decisive band of hunters were much more likely to bring down prey than a lone tracker.
The need for a leader in this band is not immediately self-evident. If they all know what they're doing, then shouldn't they share the food equally?
That's only until you consider how much man instinctively likes to argue. We love to do it. We are also selfish bastards. Both of those are the driving forces behind why Socialism really doesn't work that well. We like having stuff, especially food. And if we work slightly harder than anyone else, we feel like we should get the lion's share. And if two people feel like that they did more work than the other, fighting ensues and probably ends up with injury for one or the other.
Humanity needs an alpha male, an Ubermensch, someone who can tell everyone else to shut up and eat what's in front of them. We need some one person in charge, at least when we roamed the land in small groups. The autocratic system works pretty well in small groups, with the autocrat always taking the lion's share, but assuring food for all. Even with the death of the roaming lifestyle, autocrats of small towns of farmers works well. The autocrat can spend all his time exclusively working out how to coordinate the town in defense, or simply how to run it daily because he doesn't need to farm food for himself. With more consistent farming practices, as farms became more and more self-sufficient, the need for a coordinator of people fades, and people become largely self-sufficient governmentally as well, though the need for a community persists, in case of hard times. Thus the autocrat is reduced to a nominal position, or removed together as farms depend once in a long while on each others' goodwill.
However, as humanity clumped in bigger and bigger groups, neither simple self-sufficiency nor autocracy would work. Self-sufficiency no longer worked because there were no people who could specialize in making better products than the farms could create themselves. People like cobblers, blacksmiths, specialized trades that required food but did not make it themselves. Farmers needed to trade with the tradesmen, and the tradesmen needed food from farmers. Again, coordination was needed.
However, you couldn't simply have a true autocracy (here, I mean not just a government where only one person has all power, but a government made entirely of one person) with larger amounts of people. True autocracy requires each individual to personally give up some of what they have to the autocrat. However, bigger is merely smaller on a bigger scale. Bigger is different.
Here's an example I've heard. Say you're an actor or an actress and you say to yourself that you will answer every single piece of fan mail you ever receive personally. At first, this isn't too hard. Just an hour a day as the letters trickle in. You get to have personal conversations with your fans. But then you star in a movie and the amount of mail triples. No problem. You just spend three hours a day. That's not too different. Suddenly, your movie becomes a cult classic and you get twelve times the mail. No problem, you'll just spend.... wait. You now receive so much fan mail that it would take thirty six hours a day to reply. Even if you just take the time to write thank you notes, you have to spend twenty hours a day replying, and you still have to do things like sleep and act, so that's out of the question. Even if you have form letters and all you do is sign, it still takes you ten hours. Which is doable, but only barely. And you're not really doing what you promised to do, are you?
The way in which governing becomes different with the first stage of bigger is simple. First of all, you can no longer know approximately what everyone is doing, because there's so many of them. You can't organize people any more. Secondly, there are now a shitload of them and only one of you. How do you enforce your law now? As long as you could physically cow the majority of your tribe or village one on one that was all right. But with enough people unhappy with you, there's nothing you can do.
Thus gives way to the second form of government. "Democracy" (or really, oligarchy.) We see this happening in Ancient Greece, with the rise of Athens. Democracy, the rule of the people, is the most selfish of the governments. Democracy requires every single person to want to participate in the ruling of everything.
And lemme tell you, Democracy is a stupid system.
(More on that topic tomorrow. That is one I know MUCH more about.)
Monday, September 27, 2010
Can't Say Much. Much to Busy Doing SCIENCE!
Never take AP Chem and AP Physics at the same time and then have both a Chem Problem set that the teacher decided to give instead of the test and a list of monthly problems for Chem AND a list of weekly problems for Physics due on the same day. It could seriously impede things like blog posts that you might need to do.
Also, I'm still sick.
And I've found that I still dislike Libertarians. Asking for so much personal freedom while still expecting personal security seems like asking for something for nothing. As Locke said, and as many other people have agreed, the nature of government is the sacrifice of personal freedom for security. That is, I allow the government to keep me from having large bombs under my house as long as it also keeps everyone else from having large bombs under their houses that could conceivably take me up with them.
Also, Blargh Science.
Also, I'm still sick.
And I've found that I still dislike Libertarians. Asking for so much personal freedom while still expecting personal security seems like asking for something for nothing. As Locke said, and as many other people have agreed, the nature of government is the sacrifice of personal freedom for security. That is, I allow the government to keep me from having large bombs under my house as long as it also keeps everyone else from having large bombs under their houses that could conceivably take me up with them.
Also, Blargh Science.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
A Controversial Topic
It's always annoyed me when people automatically equate pro-life with backwards religious fundamentalists. I mean, I hate deep Southians as much as the next liberally-raised Obama-backing teenager, but I still see some merit in the pro-life side of the abortion debate.
(Yes, this is the most controversial topic I've tackled here by far, but I'm going to try and get past that by just plunging straight in and hoping no one notices.
Oh wait.)
Yet when I've tried to explain my views to those pro-choicers who I've talked with, they don't seem to get my views, at least seventy percent, I believe, because they assume it's based on faith.
Well I've recently figured out a way to explain what I think. I have to warn you though, this is a pretty deep hypothetical.
So imagine you time-traveled to March 25, 1908 in Vienna by accident (you were actually trying to get to 2908 so you could read up on the stock market in 2010 and make a shitload of money, but you twisted the dial the wrong way. Silly you.)
While you wait for your handy-dandy time machine to recharge, a painter approaches you with some paintings he wants to sell. You don't have any of this time's money on you (in fact, you can't even remember what it is) so you just end up chatting with the struggling artist. He tells you about how his mother recently died of breast cancer and how he's trying to get into art school. You tell him some stuff you make up on the spot about a father who died in a war. As you talk, a rabbi walks by, and the artist spits at the holy man's feet. Shocked, you launch into an impassioned speech about the equality of man.
Halfway through, you realize that the artist has signed his paintings A. Hitler. You also notice that he has a Hitler mustache. You then realize you are lecturing Hitler on racism.
You also realize that you have a Glock. 45 tucked in the back of your waistband for those pesky space monkeys in the future.
Do you shoot poor sad artist Hitler?
(For the purposes of this exercise, we're going to ignore paradox. Killing Hitler will not cause a cataclysm of events that will cause you not to have a time machine and thus not kill Hitler.)
There are a couple things you need to consider about this situation. We know Hitler caused the deaths of millions and millions of people. If he hadn't lived, it's likely that there are few with the charisma and political savvy to unite the Germans in a nationalistic fervor as he did, although it's possible things would happen anyways. Yet even if killing Hitler makes the Holocaust slightly less likely, killing him seems like a good idea.
Yet there's a good possibility that merely your presence in this time will stop Hitler from the Holocaust. Your lecture had some very good points in it. Maybe Hitler becomes a priest. Maybe he finds a conscience and just expels all Jews from Germany instead of mercilessly slaughtering them as subhuman beings. Maybe as a political leader, he instead makes an appeal to the League of Nations to create worldwide standards of living and causes the League of Nations to actually become a potent force for good in the world. You have no way of knowing.
Yet we know for sure that there is a possibility that Hitler will go and kill all the Jews. This seems the most likely possibility, just from induction. (that is, he did it last time, so he'll probably do it this time.)
Thus, it seems logical that we should kill him. I think most people would agree here (if you don't think killing Hitler before he causes mass genocide, feel free to comment.)
Yet, that seems to demonstrate one lesson: What people can be is a part of what they are now. We think of artist-Hitler as a person who will become Mass-Murderer-Hitler. It's an intrinsic part of who he is, in this case an even bigger part of who he is than what he is now. In this case, who he will be is more important to his identity than who he is now. When we end what he is now, we end what he will be as a part of that.
Can you not use the same logic for abortion? Part of what an embryo or a fetus is currently is what it will be in the future. And, even if life is just a very good chance, as miscarriage is always a possibility, that life that it will have is a part of what it is now. Even if it is not alive yet, it has the potential to be. And by ending the potential life, well, you end a potential life. (Just in case I wasn't clear, Killing Hitler in this case would be an allegory for not having an abortion. Just making sure that was clear.)
It that doesn't make any sense to you, well, it does to me. Now, I should say that I'm not a rabid pro-lifer. I don't believe that abortion should never happen. There are cases where abortion is the best and only choice. Pregnancies from rape, pregnancies that endanger the mother's life or impede her life enough that her quality of life is drastically lowered.
Yet there are other options for other cases. Adoption is a huge one. There are hundreds of people in the world who wants kids and can't have them.
Anyways, I'm not telling you what you should think. That's the realm of holy men and politicians. I'm just trying to explain why I feel the way I feel in a way that makes sense. You can take it or leave it.
(Yes, this is the most controversial topic I've tackled here by far, but I'm going to try and get past that by just plunging straight in and hoping no one notices.
Oh wait.)
Yet when I've tried to explain my views to those pro-choicers who I've talked with, they don't seem to get my views, at least seventy percent, I believe, because they assume it's based on faith.
Well I've recently figured out a way to explain what I think. I have to warn you though, this is a pretty deep hypothetical.
So imagine you time-traveled to March 25, 1908 in Vienna by accident (you were actually trying to get to 2908 so you could read up on the stock market in 2010 and make a shitload of money, but you twisted the dial the wrong way. Silly you.)
While you wait for your handy-dandy time machine to recharge, a painter approaches you with some paintings he wants to sell. You don't have any of this time's money on you (in fact, you can't even remember what it is) so you just end up chatting with the struggling artist. He tells you about how his mother recently died of breast cancer and how he's trying to get into art school. You tell him some stuff you make up on the spot about a father who died in a war. As you talk, a rabbi walks by, and the artist spits at the holy man's feet. Shocked, you launch into an impassioned speech about the equality of man.
Halfway through, you realize that the artist has signed his paintings A. Hitler. You also notice that he has a Hitler mustache. You then realize you are lecturing Hitler on racism.
You also realize that you have a Glock. 45 tucked in the back of your waistband for those pesky space monkeys in the future.
Do you shoot poor sad artist Hitler?
(For the purposes of this exercise, we're going to ignore paradox. Killing Hitler will not cause a cataclysm of events that will cause you not to have a time machine and thus not kill Hitler.)
There are a couple things you need to consider about this situation. We know Hitler caused the deaths of millions and millions of people. If he hadn't lived, it's likely that there are few with the charisma and political savvy to unite the Germans in a nationalistic fervor as he did, although it's possible things would happen anyways. Yet even if killing Hitler makes the Holocaust slightly less likely, killing him seems like a good idea.
Yet there's a good possibility that merely your presence in this time will stop Hitler from the Holocaust. Your lecture had some very good points in it. Maybe Hitler becomes a priest. Maybe he finds a conscience and just expels all Jews from Germany instead of mercilessly slaughtering them as subhuman beings. Maybe as a political leader, he instead makes an appeal to the League of Nations to create worldwide standards of living and causes the League of Nations to actually become a potent force for good in the world. You have no way of knowing.
Yet we know for sure that there is a possibility that Hitler will go and kill all the Jews. This seems the most likely possibility, just from induction. (that is, he did it last time, so he'll probably do it this time.)
Thus, it seems logical that we should kill him. I think most people would agree here (if you don't think killing Hitler before he causes mass genocide, feel free to comment.)
Yet, that seems to demonstrate one lesson: What people can be is a part of what they are now. We think of artist-Hitler as a person who will become Mass-Murderer-Hitler. It's an intrinsic part of who he is, in this case an even bigger part of who he is than what he is now. In this case, who he will be is more important to his identity than who he is now. When we end what he is now, we end what he will be as a part of that.
Can you not use the same logic for abortion? Part of what an embryo or a fetus is currently is what it will be in the future. And, even if life is just a very good chance, as miscarriage is always a possibility, that life that it will have is a part of what it is now. Even if it is not alive yet, it has the potential to be. And by ending the potential life, well, you end a potential life. (Just in case I wasn't clear, Killing Hitler in this case would be an allegory for not having an abortion. Just making sure that was clear.)
It that doesn't make any sense to you, well, it does to me. Now, I should say that I'm not a rabid pro-lifer. I don't believe that abortion should never happen. There are cases where abortion is the best and only choice. Pregnancies from rape, pregnancies that endanger the mother's life or impede her life enough that her quality of life is drastically lowered.
Yet there are other options for other cases. Adoption is a huge one. There are hundreds of people in the world who wants kids and can't have them.
Anyways, I'm not telling you what you should think. That's the realm of holy men and politicians. I'm just trying to explain why I feel the way I feel in a way that makes sense. You can take it or leave it.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
One fish, two fish, Friends help you (ish?)
So today I was dragged to a musical where, of the two main characters, one was condemned by his own family for spreading radical ideas and the other was nearly sentenced before a prejudiced jury of his peers as crazy simply because he believed that some persons who others though of as inferior were just as much people as all the rest.
Can you guess which musical? If you guessed Wicked, you would be wrong. It was actually Seussical the Musical.
But anyways, it got me thinking of the common theme between the two musicals. Both accentuate individuality and how society drags us down. (Although Seussical moderates this very Ayn Randish idea with some implication that there are some people in the universe who will actually help you.)
And then I played a game of Munchkin (for those of you who don't know it, it's a satirical board game revolving around a group of RPG adventurers constantly backstabbing each other so they can get to level 10 before the others) and that seemed to hammer in that other people drag you down.
Isn't that a very contradictory idea to the way human society has developed? We, as humans, have created groups, tribes, based on the ideas of difference and conformity. Even if I may not like it, there is something that connects me with every single God-loving gun-toting gay-hating Texan, just the fact that we are both American. Even if there might be someone much more my temperament living in Egypt, we are still different simply because he's an Egyptian national. Humanity loves groups.
Yet at the same time, in America especially, we constantly hammer in the idea that an individual can do great things. In capitalism, one person with an idea can make millions. The idea of the self-made man, the man who gets no help from any of his friends or his background, is prevalent in our country.
Yet, nothing grows in a vacuum. We are all the product of our friends and our families. They shape us more than we ourselves do, envelop us like a mold around clay. The question seems to be, is the enveloping more of a blanket, keeping us warm in the cold nights, or a straitjacket?
I don't have an answer for that. I think society does weigh us down in some ways. I also know that I love my friends and my family, and, even if I could go farther without them, it's not because they're dragging me down but because I enjoy walking slower if it means I'll be with them longer.
I guess the lesson is, if you have awesome friends, life is much better with them than without. But that's not much of a lesson is it?
Can you guess which musical? If you guessed Wicked, you would be wrong. It was actually Seussical the Musical.
But anyways, it got me thinking of the common theme between the two musicals. Both accentuate individuality and how society drags us down. (Although Seussical moderates this very Ayn Randish idea with some implication that there are some people in the universe who will actually help you.)
And then I played a game of Munchkin (for those of you who don't know it, it's a satirical board game revolving around a group of RPG adventurers constantly backstabbing each other so they can get to level 10 before the others) and that seemed to hammer in that other people drag you down.
Isn't that a very contradictory idea to the way human society has developed? We, as humans, have created groups, tribes, based on the ideas of difference and conformity. Even if I may not like it, there is something that connects me with every single God-loving gun-toting gay-hating Texan, just the fact that we are both American. Even if there might be someone much more my temperament living in Egypt, we are still different simply because he's an Egyptian national. Humanity loves groups.
Yet at the same time, in America especially, we constantly hammer in the idea that an individual can do great things. In capitalism, one person with an idea can make millions. The idea of the self-made man, the man who gets no help from any of his friends or his background, is prevalent in our country.
Yet, nothing grows in a vacuum. We are all the product of our friends and our families. They shape us more than we ourselves do, envelop us like a mold around clay. The question seems to be, is the enveloping more of a blanket, keeping us warm in the cold nights, or a straitjacket?
I don't have an answer for that. I think society does weigh us down in some ways. I also know that I love my friends and my family, and, even if I could go farther without them, it's not because they're dragging me down but because I enjoy walking slower if it means I'll be with them longer.
I guess the lesson is, if you have awesome friends, life is much better with them than without. But that's not much of a lesson is it?
Friday, September 24, 2010
Groggy is a fun word to say.
Seriously, it is. Groggy groggy groggy groggy. Eventually it degenerates into weird animalistic noises, except that no animal ever sounded that stupid. Except for maybe the frog. To any frogs reading this: RIBBIT SOUNDS STUPID. ALSO, YOU SUCK AND TASTE LIKE CHICKEN. EXCEPT A LITTLE MORE RUBBERY. YOU TASTE LIKE WHAT I IMAGINE RUBBER CHICKENS WOULD TASTE LIKE. AND YOU'RE NOT NEARLY AS FUN TO HIT PEOPLE WITH.
I'm a little sick today, which is why this blog post is so early in the day. Nothing major, just sore throat, a headache, and some grogginess.
I have discovered, over the years, that the only part of my writing that improves as grogginess does, is my lyricality, especially when I try poems. So I figure I might as well give it a shot and entertain you all.
This is not in iambic pentameter because iambic pentameter is boring mostly. I don't know exactly what the meter of this actually is, but it's pulsating in time to my headache.
Come to me and bring your spears!
Bring your sons and bring your fears.
We shall ride in fog and night.
We shall ride with fierce delight.
Ride through hill and mount and town
Ride as our fell horns do sound.
Sing of us, if you must sing.
And let the Wild Hunt begin.
I tried to read that all the way through but I started coughing halfway through. It sounded fine in my head though.
I'm not even sure if there's a name for that meter. I want to say something about dactyls.
But yeah. I'm going to go take a nap now.
I'm a little sick today, which is why this blog post is so early in the day. Nothing major, just sore throat, a headache, and some grogginess.
I have discovered, over the years, that the only part of my writing that improves as grogginess does, is my lyricality, especially when I try poems. So I figure I might as well give it a shot and entertain you all.
This is not in iambic pentameter because iambic pentameter is boring mostly. I don't know exactly what the meter of this actually is, but it's pulsating in time to my headache.
Come to me and bring your spears!
Bring your sons and bring your fears.
We shall ride in fog and night.
We shall ride with fierce delight.
Ride through hill and mount and town
Ride as our fell horns do sound.
Sing of us, if you must sing.
And let the Wild Hunt begin.
I tried to read that all the way through but I started coughing halfway through. It sounded fine in my head though.
I'm not even sure if there's a name for that meter. I want to say something about dactyls.
But yeah. I'm going to go take a nap now.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
A Short Post
I had a lot of stuff that needed to be done today, partially because I didn't do any of it yesterday because I was writing a monster of a post. But I'd feel guilty if I left you all with nothing, so I'll just leave a little blurb about something I've been thinking about.
How much does our language affect the way we think? How much does our language affect the way we perceive reality?
I wrote in my last post "Words are shadows of our world, shadows of reality that extend into and affect reality." It got me wondering to what extent exactly that statement was true.
To those of you who have read 1984, this may not be a totally alien concept for you. (For those who haven't, in 1984 the government is creating a new language called Newspeak that actually cut out more and more words of the English language. The idea was that, by cutting out the words for things like anarchy or injustice, the very idea that a state without government, or a ruling that could be somehow not morally correct would vanish. "In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible," a linguist (or, more truely, a language engineer) in 1984 says, "because there will be no words in which to express it"
Most people don't believe that language really affects your mind so drastically. We've all experienced (and if not, I envy you) the moments where we know exactly what we're talking about, a concept that we totally understand inside and out except that we just can't remember its name. Even though we don't have the word for it, the idea still exists. And many of us, or at least I, have just made up a word to describe an idea I didn't know the name for.
Yet, there are some ways in which scientists have found that language does affect our perception of reality. In Greek, for example, there are two separate words for our word blue, ghalazio, which is sky blue, and ble, which is a darker blue. Now, this might not seem like too much of a difference to us, until you think about two things. First of all, scientists found that people who spoke Greek natively had entirely different brain activity when confronted with the colors than an English speaker after as little as 100 milliseconds. (http://www.physorg.com/news154865165.html)
Secondly, our labels of colors are completely arbitrary. Why is red a primary color and not some other on the rainbow? Why isn't Green a primary color? Why is Yellow? And what the hell is Indigo? (Ignore that. Unless you have the answer. Because I really want to know.) On the color scale, from Red to Purple, humans could arbitrarily denote some colors as the same and other colors different. Just as some of us couldn't tell the difference between mauve and purple if it smacked us in the face with a frying pan, maybe some people who spoke a language that categorized both yellow and orange under the word Sunni might not even recognize a difference. And maybe they'd see two shades of red where they only see one.
Yes, that was an absurd hypothetical. I apologize now. But there is another valid point, that I will bring up again when I find out what language this is. My linguistics teacher mentioned that in a certain language (I just can't remember which one) the word for waterfall literally translates as "arc made real by falling water."
When we think of a waterfall, we think first of water falling. It seems evident to us that the water falling is the most important part (except maybe if there are sharp rocks on the bottom, and if you're going to fall over it) of the waterfall. Yet for the people who speak this language, maybe the most important part is the arc of it, the curve of the waterfall through the air.
Are we still speaking of the same concept? Or is one of us saying pineapple and the other pomegranate? The two are both fruits and both ridiculously difficult to eat but they are different things.
That's all I have for you today. I'll try and get something longer out tomorrow.
How much does our language affect the way we think? How much does our language affect the way we perceive reality?
I wrote in my last post "Words are shadows of our world, shadows of reality that extend into and affect reality." It got me wondering to what extent exactly that statement was true.
To those of you who have read 1984, this may not be a totally alien concept for you. (For those who haven't, in 1984 the government is creating a new language called Newspeak that actually cut out more and more words of the English language. The idea was that, by cutting out the words for things like anarchy or injustice, the very idea that a state without government, or a ruling that could be somehow not morally correct would vanish. "In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible," a linguist (or, more truely, a language engineer) in 1984 says, "because there will be no words in which to express it"
Most people don't believe that language really affects your mind so drastically. We've all experienced (and if not, I envy you) the moments where we know exactly what we're talking about, a concept that we totally understand inside and out except that we just can't remember its name. Even though we don't have the word for it, the idea still exists. And many of us, or at least I, have just made up a word to describe an idea I didn't know the name for.
Yet, there are some ways in which scientists have found that language does affect our perception of reality. In Greek, for example, there are two separate words for our word blue, ghalazio, which is sky blue, and ble, which is a darker blue. Now, this might not seem like too much of a difference to us, until you think about two things. First of all, scientists found that people who spoke Greek natively had entirely different brain activity when confronted with the colors than an English speaker after as little as 100 milliseconds. (http://www.physorg.com/news154865165.html)
Secondly, our labels of colors are completely arbitrary. Why is red a primary color and not some other on the rainbow? Why isn't Green a primary color? Why is Yellow? And what the hell is Indigo? (Ignore that. Unless you have the answer. Because I really want to know.) On the color scale, from Red to Purple, humans could arbitrarily denote some colors as the same and other colors different. Just as some of us couldn't tell the difference between mauve and purple if it smacked us in the face with a frying pan, maybe some people who spoke a language that categorized both yellow and orange under the word Sunni might not even recognize a difference. And maybe they'd see two shades of red where they only see one.
Yes, that was an absurd hypothetical. I apologize now. But there is another valid point, that I will bring up again when I find out what language this is. My linguistics teacher mentioned that in a certain language (I just can't remember which one) the word for waterfall literally translates as "arc made real by falling water."
When we think of a waterfall, we think first of water falling. It seems evident to us that the water falling is the most important part (except maybe if there are sharp rocks on the bottom, and if you're going to fall over it) of the waterfall. Yet for the people who speak this language, maybe the most important part is the arc of it, the curve of the waterfall through the air.
Are we still speaking of the same concept? Or is one of us saying pineapple and the other pomegranate? The two are both fruits and both ridiculously difficult to eat but they are different things.
That's all I have for you today. I'll try and get something longer out tomorrow.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
On the Internet: Why All the Problems I Talked about Last Time are Stupid and Dumb.
I lied.
I forgot one Problem in the last post, so the real title of this should be On the Internet: Yet Another Problem with the Internet and Why it and All Aforementioned Problems are Stupid and Dumb.
Between lying and having such an absurdly ridiculous title, the choice was obvious.
Anyways, the last problem goes something like this: The Internet kills creativity. The proponents of this theory are a little iffy on how exactly, but they're very sure on one thing. Internet kills imagination. They cite things like AMV, anime music videos. People take clips from an anime and they play them with music. There are literally millions of them. Seriously, if you go to youtube and search the letters AMV, you will get so many results that Youtube will merely say "millions" instead of a number. Lanier and many others, especially those supporters of copyright say that there is no creativity in AMV's. You merely take clips of an anime someone else made and put it to music someone else made, and voila. You have an AMV. Yet the Internet is constantly churning these out by the hundreds. People make these, and then they tell themseles they've actually created something, but they really haven't. They have done nothing original, nothing to be proud of. Yet they've spent time they could be using to do something actually creative to do this activity.
In addition, people supposedly become dependent on the Internet. Not in the World-of-Warcraft-I-need-my-daily-dose-or-I-will-freak-out-and-hit-you-with-a-chair way (or at least not necessarily) but in more of a, hey, this is convenient way. How many times have you been working on some problem near your computer when you suddenly realize that, "Hey, the answer to this problem is right over there on the Internet. I can Google it and not have to think at all!" (Okay, the exact phrasing could be better. But you get the general sentiment.) The Internet is EATING YOUR BRAIN.
Or so they say.
And now we finally get to what I said was the topic of this post. Why Those Problems are Bullshit.
Let's start with the ones from the last post. To summarize in a handy-dandy list:
-Quantity is killing Quality
-Social Networking sites reduce people to just mere words.
-Wikipedia is overrated. Its writers are not the authorities themselves. The authorities' own views are skewed by the writers'
-TROLLS
-No personal investment on the Internet between people.
Just for fun, I'm going to start with the ones I just wrote down before going back. Simply because they're fresher in your minds. It should be noted now that I'm not going into a really in-depth rebuttal because doing that would require more time than I have.
Regarding AMV's, who the hell says they're not creative? Here's something made just with clips and some autotune.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWRyj5cHIQA
If that isn't creative, I don't know what is. And for those purists out there who argue that autotune is cheating, here's something else.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUZIE78ZK_A
A little repetitive, but he didn't have much to work with.
The people who made this might have used segments from the works of others, but they definitely created something new and different. What they made is not something anybody else could have thought up and created.
On the subject of the dependence on the Internet, the same argument could just as easily be made for textbooks, reading, or speech. People who use them are too lazy to just figure things out for themselves, and instead depend on outside sources to do their work for them. The Internet is a tool like any other. How people use it doesn't reflect on its quality. That would be like some lazy dude who looks up the answers in the back of the book reflects on the quality of the textbook.
Now on to the problems I mentioned before.
-Quantity killing Quality
There's a very complicated rebuttal to this, but I think I can lay down the bare bones. The idea is that Quantity creates Quality. What the Internet does for many people is to reduce the price of failure to zero. For instance, let's take blogging itself. Blogging costs people nothing more than they already pay for getting on the Internet. So you end up with a shitton of crappy blogs that peter out after a few posts (I have yet to show this particular blog to be above that standard, though I'm working on it) with a few really big blogs with thousands of readers. (I should also write that I'm only considering blogs written by people who were made famous by the blog, not the other way around. So Oprah's blog doesn't count.) This, at first seems to be an argument that helps the idea that Quantity is burying quality. But consider this: Some of those people who now have thousands of readers from all over the world would never have gotten their exposure otherwise. Because the price of trying (and, for many, failing) is virtually zero, people who might never have tried writing a blog now get the opportunity. When you combine that with the fact that there are automatic filters that filter out good and bad (Someone subscribes to your blog, your blog gets more screen hits, then it shows up more prominently on Google. The more prominently it shows up on Google and other searches, the more people subscribe and the more screen hits you get, and on. On a side note, you should subscribe to this blog. Just sayin) True, there's a really large quantity, but that means there's more quality available, and, with the right algorithms and things like Facebook "likes", well, quality will out.
There're many more examples and comparisons, among them Flickr and some other internet sites. But I'm essentially writing multiple essays in a single blog post, so I'm trying to keep it down.
-Social networking reduces people to "just" words.
If you couldn't tell from the quotation marks (and you probably could, if you meet the already exacting standards I mentioned before.) I really have a problem with "just" words. I think words are amazing. Saying something is just a word is like saying Chuck Norris is just Chuck Norris. Words are shadows of our world, shadows of reality that extend into and affect reality. They have only as much meaning as the reader gives it, and so much more. When I say, "I am a writer." I'm not labeling myself or limiting myself, I'm describing myself, showing you one aspect of the complex being that is I. (That is me? Something like that.)
-Wikipedia is overrated.
These are entirely valid problems. (For the problems specifically, go back to the last post.) But those problems last only as long as the original authorities don't actually edit Wikipedia themselves. One of the major reasons that leaders of their subjects don't write on Wikipedia is because they still suffer from the stigma of nonliterary sources. Many of them feel that anything bound and written is somehow superior to electronic data.
But that's going to change. I know a grad student at Columbia, really awesome guy with a really awesome hat who loves editing Wikipedia pages on his area of research, philosophy of the mind, especially as it relates to technology. This guy has talked to some of the leading minds in his field including John Searle, a very influential man in the idea of computers and consciousness. And, in all likelihood, he's going to become a leading philosopher himself.
And he's not that strange. People of our generation and the one a little before us have no problem with Wikipedia. And these are the people who will become the leading minds in their fields. In a couple decades, people who do the research will be putting it up on Wikipedia. The current problem is just that, only a current problem.
-Trolls. By far the most troubling. Trolls are a seriously problem on the Internet. My best response is that the Internet is again a tool. We see trolls more on the Internet, but they exist without it too. Cow-tipping, mindless graffiti (I have nothing but respect for those who make real art with spray paint. But some people just spray to deface things), TPing, all are malicious deeds from bored teenagers that injure from behind the shield of anonymity. Trolling does not originate from the Internet. The Internet is just a tool.
-No Meaningful Relationships through the Internet
This is one of the more complicated problems. It's filled with hypotheticals. For example, what if we learn to connect all our senses to the internet? What if we created virtual worlds we could beam our minds in to, through which we could talk to people across the globe as if we were beside them?
I'm going to try and stay away from those. What I can talk about a little is telepresence and Asperger's. Telepresence is the idea that you can be where you aren't. (Yes, there are better ways to phrase that, but I really wanted to say it that way.) It's the idea that you can be genuinely represented somewhere other than your physical body is not. So Skype is a form of telepresence. But there's more than just video-chatting. There is now a shirt that allows people to text hugs. Simply text something to a certain number, and the shirt will tighten in certain places to simulate a hug. Apparently it's very realistic. But devices like that sweatshirt could eventually simulate all of the so called necessary aspects of meaningful human interactions.
Yeah, that was a could. I stray into hypothetical-land. So instead of venturing deeper, I shall talk about Asperger's. I have several friends with this disorder. It's a type of autism that messes with your reading of social cues, emotions and body language (or that's one of the major symptoms at least.) These people are actually more comfortable chatting online, since it lets them see everything that the other participant in the conversation sees, instead of one side being able to read body language and the other not.Yet if it is true that things like body language are essential to meaningful human interaction, does that mean that people with Aspergers don't have any meaningful interactions?
(If you couldn't tell, I'm answering that question with a no.) It seems to me that we're getting too invested in our observations and we're not looking at cause and effect. Just because many meaningful social interactions have body language and other things that can't be put into text doesn't mean that the body language cause social interaction. That would be like saying that, since squares and rectangles both have all right angles and they are both quadrilaterals, all quadrilaterals must have right angles. You're missing out on some of the most awesome-sounding shapes in geometry, the parallelogram (say that ten times fast) and the rhombus (Which I am convinced sounds like some sort of vehicle). In the same way, there could be meaningful interaction without the constrictions suggested.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to wax romantic for a second (It happens at times. I am a cynic merely by inclination, and a romantic at heart.) Feel free to skip to the end of the blog post if you find such things nauseating.
Even if they are right, that meaning can not be found through bits and bytes, I don't think that it's a waste of time to try to relate to others on the Internet. Even if you know you'll fail, sometimes, when the goal is bright and beautiful, you need to go ahead and try anyways. And it is a beautiful idea. Two people, out of six billion and change, separated by countries and culture, who have never met and may never meet, who may have nothing in common, or everything, actually connecting and become meaningful factors in each others lives, even if only as a pen pal. Isn't that a beautiful idea?
Isn't that an idea worth spending a little time and effort on?
(For all you people who decided to skip the gooey parts, here's me ending the blog post. Not sure what I'm going to write about next. If you have any suggestions, there's a link to a suggestion box at the top.)
I forgot one Problem in the last post, so the real title of this should be On the Internet: Yet Another Problem with the Internet and Why it and All Aforementioned Problems are Stupid and Dumb.
Between lying and having such an absurdly ridiculous title, the choice was obvious.
Anyways, the last problem goes something like this: The Internet kills creativity. The proponents of this theory are a little iffy on how exactly, but they're very sure on one thing. Internet kills imagination. They cite things like AMV, anime music videos. People take clips from an anime and they play them with music. There are literally millions of them. Seriously, if you go to youtube and search the letters AMV, you will get so many results that Youtube will merely say "millions" instead of a number. Lanier and many others, especially those supporters of copyright say that there is no creativity in AMV's. You merely take clips of an anime someone else made and put it to music someone else made, and voila. You have an AMV. Yet the Internet is constantly churning these out by the hundreds. People make these, and then they tell themseles they've actually created something, but they really haven't. They have done nothing original, nothing to be proud of. Yet they've spent time they could be using to do something actually creative to do this activity.
In addition, people supposedly become dependent on the Internet. Not in the World-of-Warcraft-I-need-my-daily-dose-or-I-will-freak-out-and-hit-you-with-a-chair way (or at least not necessarily) but in more of a, hey, this is convenient way. How many times have you been working on some problem near your computer when you suddenly realize that, "Hey, the answer to this problem is right over there on the Internet. I can Google it and not have to think at all!" (Okay, the exact phrasing could be better. But you get the general sentiment.) The Internet is EATING YOUR BRAIN.
Or so they say.
And now we finally get to what I said was the topic of this post. Why Those Problems are Bullshit.
Let's start with the ones from the last post. To summarize in a handy-dandy list:
-Quantity is killing Quality
-Social Networking sites reduce people to just mere words.
-Wikipedia is overrated. Its writers are not the authorities themselves. The authorities' own views are skewed by the writers'
-TROLLS
-No personal investment on the Internet between people.
Just for fun, I'm going to start with the ones I just wrote down before going back. Simply because they're fresher in your minds. It should be noted now that I'm not going into a really in-depth rebuttal because doing that would require more time than I have.
Regarding AMV's, who the hell says they're not creative? Here's something made just with clips and some autotune.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWRyj5cHIQA
If that isn't creative, I don't know what is. And for those purists out there who argue that autotune is cheating, here's something else.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUZIE78ZK_A
A little repetitive, but he didn't have much to work with.
The people who made this might have used segments from the works of others, but they definitely created something new and different. What they made is not something anybody else could have thought up and created.
On the subject of the dependence on the Internet, the same argument could just as easily be made for textbooks, reading, or speech. People who use them are too lazy to just figure things out for themselves, and instead depend on outside sources to do their work for them. The Internet is a tool like any other. How people use it doesn't reflect on its quality. That would be like some lazy dude who looks up the answers in the back of the book reflects on the quality of the textbook.
Now on to the problems I mentioned before.
-Quantity killing Quality
There's a very complicated rebuttal to this, but I think I can lay down the bare bones. The idea is that Quantity creates Quality. What the Internet does for many people is to reduce the price of failure to zero. For instance, let's take blogging itself. Blogging costs people nothing more than they already pay for getting on the Internet. So you end up with a shitton of crappy blogs that peter out after a few posts (I have yet to show this particular blog to be above that standard, though I'm working on it) with a few really big blogs with thousands of readers. (I should also write that I'm only considering blogs written by people who were made famous by the blog, not the other way around. So Oprah's blog doesn't count.) This, at first seems to be an argument that helps the idea that Quantity is burying quality. But consider this: Some of those people who now have thousands of readers from all over the world would never have gotten their exposure otherwise. Because the price of trying (and, for many, failing) is virtually zero, people who might never have tried writing a blog now get the opportunity. When you combine that with the fact that there are automatic filters that filter out good and bad (Someone subscribes to your blog, your blog gets more screen hits, then it shows up more prominently on Google. The more prominently it shows up on Google and other searches, the more people subscribe and the more screen hits you get, and on. On a side note, you should subscribe to this blog. Just sayin) True, there's a really large quantity, but that means there's more quality available, and, with the right algorithms and things like Facebook "likes", well, quality will out.
There're many more examples and comparisons, among them Flickr and some other internet sites. But I'm essentially writing multiple essays in a single blog post, so I'm trying to keep it down.
-Social networking reduces people to "just" words.
If you couldn't tell from the quotation marks (and you probably could, if you meet the already exacting standards I mentioned before.) I really have a problem with "just" words. I think words are amazing. Saying something is just a word is like saying Chuck Norris is just Chuck Norris. Words are shadows of our world, shadows of reality that extend into and affect reality. They have only as much meaning as the reader gives it, and so much more. When I say, "I am a writer." I'm not labeling myself or limiting myself, I'm describing myself, showing you one aspect of the complex being that is I. (That is me? Something like that.)
-Wikipedia is overrated.
These are entirely valid problems. (For the problems specifically, go back to the last post.) But those problems last only as long as the original authorities don't actually edit Wikipedia themselves. One of the major reasons that leaders of their subjects don't write on Wikipedia is because they still suffer from the stigma of nonliterary sources. Many of them feel that anything bound and written is somehow superior to electronic data.
But that's going to change. I know a grad student at Columbia, really awesome guy with a really awesome hat who loves editing Wikipedia pages on his area of research, philosophy of the mind, especially as it relates to technology. This guy has talked to some of the leading minds in his field including John Searle, a very influential man in the idea of computers and consciousness. And, in all likelihood, he's going to become a leading philosopher himself.
And he's not that strange. People of our generation and the one a little before us have no problem with Wikipedia. And these are the people who will become the leading minds in their fields. In a couple decades, people who do the research will be putting it up on Wikipedia. The current problem is just that, only a current problem.
-Trolls. By far the most troubling. Trolls are a seriously problem on the Internet. My best response is that the Internet is again a tool. We see trolls more on the Internet, but they exist without it too. Cow-tipping, mindless graffiti (I have nothing but respect for those who make real art with spray paint. But some people just spray to deface things), TPing, all are malicious deeds from bored teenagers that injure from behind the shield of anonymity. Trolling does not originate from the Internet. The Internet is just a tool.
-No Meaningful Relationships through the Internet
This is one of the more complicated problems. It's filled with hypotheticals. For example, what if we learn to connect all our senses to the internet? What if we created virtual worlds we could beam our minds in to, through which we could talk to people across the globe as if we were beside them?
I'm going to try and stay away from those. What I can talk about a little is telepresence and Asperger's. Telepresence is the idea that you can be where you aren't. (Yes, there are better ways to phrase that, but I really wanted to say it that way.) It's the idea that you can be genuinely represented somewhere other than your physical body is not. So Skype is a form of telepresence. But there's more than just video-chatting. There is now a shirt that allows people to text hugs. Simply text something to a certain number, and the shirt will tighten in certain places to simulate a hug. Apparently it's very realistic. But devices like that sweatshirt could eventually simulate all of the so called necessary aspects of meaningful human interactions.
Yeah, that was a could. I stray into hypothetical-land. So instead of venturing deeper, I shall talk about Asperger's. I have several friends with this disorder. It's a type of autism that messes with your reading of social cues, emotions and body language (or that's one of the major symptoms at least.) These people are actually more comfortable chatting online, since it lets them see everything that the other participant in the conversation sees, instead of one side being able to read body language and the other not.Yet if it is true that things like body language are essential to meaningful human interaction, does that mean that people with Aspergers don't have any meaningful interactions?
(If you couldn't tell, I'm answering that question with a no.) It seems to me that we're getting too invested in our observations and we're not looking at cause and effect. Just because many meaningful social interactions have body language and other things that can't be put into text doesn't mean that the body language cause social interaction. That would be like saying that, since squares and rectangles both have all right angles and they are both quadrilaterals, all quadrilaterals must have right angles. You're missing out on some of the most awesome-sounding shapes in geometry, the parallelogram (say that ten times fast) and the rhombus (Which I am convinced sounds like some sort of vehicle). In the same way, there could be meaningful interaction without the constrictions suggested.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to wax romantic for a second (It happens at times. I am a cynic merely by inclination, and a romantic at heart.) Feel free to skip to the end of the blog post if you find such things nauseating.
Even if they are right, that meaning can not be found through bits and bytes, I don't think that it's a waste of time to try to relate to others on the Internet. Even if you know you'll fail, sometimes, when the goal is bright and beautiful, you need to go ahead and try anyways. And it is a beautiful idea. Two people, out of six billion and change, separated by countries and culture, who have never met and may never meet, who may have nothing in common, or everything, actually connecting and become meaningful factors in each others lives, even if only as a pen pal. Isn't that a beautiful idea?
Isn't that an idea worth spending a little time and effort on?
(For all you people who decided to skip the gooey parts, here's me ending the blog post. Not sure what I'm going to write about next. If you have any suggestions, there's a link to a suggestion box at the top.)
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
On the Internet: Some Problems.
An ambitious topic, yes, I know.
It's true I am no Doctorow.
But hey, why not? I'll give it a shot,
For it's a topic on which I've thought. (Much?)
The meter's off. So sue me. It's not the main topic of today.
Anyways, teh interwebs. The glorious glorious interwebs. That is the topic of today.
I'm not going to start with what the internet is or how to use it because I'm going to assume you have some basic understanding of both those topics, simply because you are reading these words.
The Topic I'm going to tackle is a little more ambitious and ambiguous. Is the Internet a good thing?
Many people will say that it is not. Many of those are parents talking to kids, telling them to go outside and get some goddamn air. Most of those parents are lying. They think the internet is great and convenient and easy. They just wish you wouldn't be on it all the fucking time.
There are people with some actually relevant concerns. Among them is Jaron Lanier, a man who seriously looks like he smokes pot eight days a week (and would be okay with that last phrase because he'd be so baked he couldn't remember how many days there were in a week). He also known as the father of virtual reality, spends some time at Columbia occasionally as a visiting scholar and a bunch of other stuff that you really don't think he'd be able to do high.
One of his concerns is about the hive mind of the Internet. So much quantity overrides any quality that is there. The sheer mass of mediocrity simply outweighs any good that might come about. Another is simply the idea that the internet, more specifically social networking sites make people into words. You become a simple combination of name, age, schools attended, job, not a complex breathing person.
A third concern is regarding things like Wikipedia. It's a good idea in theory. Allowing the sum of human knowledge to coalesce into one perfect encyclopedia.
But according to Lanier, this doesn't work. One of his concerns is that it removes the touch of the real author of the information, the man who experience and/or researched the actual information. The majority of the information on Wikipedia is from books, written by people who have only read of the experiences not lived them. What is present on Wikipedia is sterile information, information separate from experience, information lacking insight and interpretation. Subtlety and context is lost in the process of some reader reading the work and putting it up on Wikipedia. In addition, a false sense of authority is present, simply because the information is up on an "official" work. A reader's own bias is accepted wholesale with the information of the authors he cites.
Another problem is anonymity, a problem most on the Internet have encountered time and again. Anonymity is the ultimate shield against repercussion, or so some believe. Behind the mask of perceived safety, trolls can do terrible things, simply because they know it will never be pinned to them. Gratuitous insults, racism, and other horrible deeds. One woman, a blogger named Kathy Sierra. She "had images of her as a sexually mutilated corpse posted prominently, apparently in hopes that her children would see them." (quote from Jaron Lanier's book, "You Are Not a Gadget.", though it should be noted he is not the only one who has expressed this concern.)
For people who don't subscribe to the idea that all friendliness and niceness is a direct result of accountability to the victims, there is another similar explanation. Human beings are not made to think abstractly. We're used to seeing people, feeling them. Even over the phone, we hear voices. But people we've never seen, people we'll never know, people we'll never meet again, people who will probably never ever talk to us, well, they aren't totally real, are they? It's a difficult thing to see text on a screen and turn that into a real living breathing human being. Even if we know that intellectually, we can't completely believe it, and that affects the way we act profoundly.
Even in my own personal experience, I've seen this happen. I have friends who, perfectly personable in real life and some of the best people ever, go on Omegle for fun just to mess with people's heads, and say it's okay because they're "just messing around." I honestly don't get it, but I guess that's just me.
One other concern, still to do with anonymity, is less negative but also worrying. It is the idea that people can not have meaningful relationships through the Internet, and that people too often mistake relationships on the Internet for the real thing. This concern goes deep into the heart of human relations. What do we need to have a "meaningful" relationship? What does meaningful even mean? There are two concerns here. The first is simply that there is no contact. There is so much more to human conversations than just the words you speak. There is the body language conversants display, the sound of their voice, even their smell. Many believe that such factors are completely necessary to meaning in human relations and will never be incorporated into the Internet. Another factor is the absence of risk. What kind of relationship can you have when you can make the other person go away by literally just hitting a button? There is no real change to you, no mistakes you will have to live with. And without risk, there is nothing. Nietzsche (and I'm paraphrasing) said, "Build your colonies on volcanoes, sail your ships on uncharted seas." Only with risk can something life-changing be achieved, and on the internet there is no risk.
Anyways, this post is getting a little long and I have things I must do. So I think I'll leave it with these problems for now and respond to them tomorrow. Or some other time. VERY IMPORTANT NOTE: I don't actually subscribe to the beliefs I posted above (or indeed, any of them at all) and will in fact be countering the majority of them with counterarguments. Just not right now.
It's true I am no Doctorow.
But hey, why not? I'll give it a shot,
For it's a topic on which I've thought. (Much?)
The meter's off. So sue me. It's not the main topic of today.
Anyways, teh interwebs. The glorious glorious interwebs. That is the topic of today.
I'm not going to start with what the internet is or how to use it because I'm going to assume you have some basic understanding of both those topics, simply because you are reading these words.
The Topic I'm going to tackle is a little more ambitious and ambiguous. Is the Internet a good thing?
Many people will say that it is not. Many of those are parents talking to kids, telling them to go outside and get some goddamn air. Most of those parents are lying. They think the internet is great and convenient and easy. They just wish you wouldn't be on it all the fucking time.
There are people with some actually relevant concerns. Among them is Jaron Lanier, a man who seriously looks like he smokes pot eight days a week (and would be okay with that last phrase because he'd be so baked he couldn't remember how many days there were in a week). He also known as the father of virtual reality, spends some time at Columbia occasionally as a visiting scholar and a bunch of other stuff that you really don't think he'd be able to do high.
One of his concerns is about the hive mind of the Internet. So much quantity overrides any quality that is there. The sheer mass of mediocrity simply outweighs any good that might come about. Another is simply the idea that the internet, more specifically social networking sites make people into words. You become a simple combination of name, age, schools attended, job, not a complex breathing person.
A third concern is regarding things like Wikipedia. It's a good idea in theory. Allowing the sum of human knowledge to coalesce into one perfect encyclopedia.
But according to Lanier, this doesn't work. One of his concerns is that it removes the touch of the real author of the information, the man who experience and/or researched the actual information. The majority of the information on Wikipedia is from books, written by people who have only read of the experiences not lived them. What is present on Wikipedia is sterile information, information separate from experience, information lacking insight and interpretation. Subtlety and context is lost in the process of some reader reading the work and putting it up on Wikipedia. In addition, a false sense of authority is present, simply because the information is up on an "official" work. A reader's own bias is accepted wholesale with the information of the authors he cites.
Another problem is anonymity, a problem most on the Internet have encountered time and again. Anonymity is the ultimate shield against repercussion, or so some believe. Behind the mask of perceived safety, trolls can do terrible things, simply because they know it will never be pinned to them. Gratuitous insults, racism, and other horrible deeds. One woman, a blogger named Kathy Sierra. She "had images of her as a sexually mutilated corpse posted prominently, apparently in hopes that her children would see them." (quote from Jaron Lanier's book, "You Are Not a Gadget.", though it should be noted he is not the only one who has expressed this concern.)
For people who don't subscribe to the idea that all friendliness and niceness is a direct result of accountability to the victims, there is another similar explanation. Human beings are not made to think abstractly. We're used to seeing people, feeling them. Even over the phone, we hear voices. But people we've never seen, people we'll never know, people we'll never meet again, people who will probably never ever talk to us, well, they aren't totally real, are they? It's a difficult thing to see text on a screen and turn that into a real living breathing human being. Even if we know that intellectually, we can't completely believe it, and that affects the way we act profoundly.
Even in my own personal experience, I've seen this happen. I have friends who, perfectly personable in real life and some of the best people ever, go on Omegle for fun just to mess with people's heads, and say it's okay because they're "just messing around." I honestly don't get it, but I guess that's just me.
One other concern, still to do with anonymity, is less negative but also worrying. It is the idea that people can not have meaningful relationships through the Internet, and that people too often mistake relationships on the Internet for the real thing. This concern goes deep into the heart of human relations. What do we need to have a "meaningful" relationship? What does meaningful even mean? There are two concerns here. The first is simply that there is no contact. There is so much more to human conversations than just the words you speak. There is the body language conversants display, the sound of their voice, even their smell. Many believe that such factors are completely necessary to meaning in human relations and will never be incorporated into the Internet. Another factor is the absence of risk. What kind of relationship can you have when you can make the other person go away by literally just hitting a button? There is no real change to you, no mistakes you will have to live with. And without risk, there is nothing. Nietzsche (and I'm paraphrasing) said, "Build your colonies on volcanoes, sail your ships on uncharted seas." Only with risk can something life-changing be achieved, and on the internet there is no risk.
Anyways, this post is getting a little long and I have things I must do. So I think I'll leave it with these problems for now and respond to them tomorrow. Or some other time. VERY IMPORTANT NOTE: I don't actually subscribe to the beliefs I posted above (or indeed, any of them at all) and will in fact be countering the majority of them with counterarguments. Just not right now.
Monday, September 20, 2010
My Name, as it were.
My real name is not Yorick. If you didn't guess that, I'd like you to stop reading my blog now. We do have some minimal standards here. No squids over the length of ten feet, no yellowjackets, no Libertarians and no one stupider than your average lobotomized hippopotamus. So yeah, if you fit any of those descriptions, (although I may be lenient on the giant squid side. Just because I'm impressed that you can manage to hit these tiny keys.) you can go now.
I chose Yorick because my username for one of the very first sites I ever used a username for (cityofif.com, great site, worth checking out, don't mention my name or they might not let you in) was deadmanwalking. It sounded great to the eleven or twelve-year-old me (I don't remember exactly how old I was) and I even had a cool little quote that I made up as my sig. "When the dead walk, the living run."
A couple years ago, I realized that I should cultivate some aspects of respectability. So deadmanwalking became Yorick, still dead, no longer walking, but now an allusion to the Great Bard, who I note never actually sang anything. Embracing a higher veil of academia while still sticking to the roots of my stupider self.
How very American of me.
Anyways, I figure it's better than numbers and a name right? Something along the lines of Sam3485_5 or @@Ru55ell18^ isn't a name I'd want, even if in the process I might sneak my own name somewhere in the mix. Better to be individual and whole, even if not entirely accurate.
And hell, Yorick was, if I may quote, "a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy." Sounds like a pretty fun dude.
And there are definitely worse ways to be remembered.
I chose Yorick because my username for one of the very first sites I ever used a username for (cityofif.com, great site, worth checking out, don't mention my name or they might not let you in) was deadmanwalking. It sounded great to the eleven or twelve-year-old me (I don't remember exactly how old I was) and I even had a cool little quote that I made up as my sig. "When the dead walk, the living run."
A couple years ago, I realized that I should cultivate some aspects of respectability. So deadmanwalking became Yorick, still dead, no longer walking, but now an allusion to the Great Bard, who I note never actually sang anything. Embracing a higher veil of academia while still sticking to the roots of my stupider self.
How very American of me.
Anyways, I figure it's better than numbers and a name right? Something along the lines of Sam3485_5 or @@Ru55ell18^ isn't a name I'd want, even if in the process I might sneak my own name somewhere in the mix. Better to be individual and whole, even if not entirely accurate.
And hell, Yorick was, if I may quote, "a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy." Sounds like a pretty fun dude.
And there are definitely worse ways to be remembered.
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