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All Meaning is Attached to Symbol: External Stuff as Omens

In my last exciting post about all meaning is attached to symbol, I built the case that it is possible to abstract characteristics in such a way that the symbol on the internal side can override the reality of the thing on the outside. A good example of this is about any funeral you will ever attend. No one ever goes so far as to say that the person dead was a complete and total asshole, even if they were. In death, their life becomes more of a symbol for the “good stuff” they did. For some, the “good stuff” they did overrides many of their personal foibles and missteps to the point that they become non-human legends. So, we know it is possible to make the internal symbol override the external thing. (provided there are external things)

Adolf Hitler

Doing Hitler's Funeral Would Have Been Hard--"He had an interesting mustache."

Outside Things Trumping Internal Symbols

Sometimes outside things overrule our symbolism on the inside or else modify the meaning of our internal symbols. I shall simply refer to this as an omen. We might have a sense of foreboding if a black crow stares us in the face, but that has more to do with the crow being established as a symbol already. What if, for example, we see a daisy and get a sense of dread? In that the daisy has meaning for us, then it is acting as something contrary to the normal symbolism associated with it. If something then actually DOES happen that is bad, then we have an example of something in the external world foreshadowing something incoming that trumps our internal symbolism.  If it happens to enough people, perhaps it can be elevated into a new common internal symbol.

Dictionaries of Symbols Don’t Work

A dictionary of words is constantly being updated and amended. This is so because language is evolving and usage is changing. Most of the time, when someone utters some statement, we don’t have to look it up even if the usage isn’t something with which we are completely familiar. The meaning we walk away with might be of a slightly different flavor than what our nearby friends walk away with, but we know we are somewhere in the ballpark. When you are in the wild, you decipher meaning on the fly–even if you understand the words there is a whole web of meaning you have to disentangle before you will walk away with understanding.

Everyone Has Their Own Personal Symbolism

So you can’t really consult a dictionary for external symbols and discover what they mean to you unless you are the sort of person who likes to allow external sources to define your experiences for you. Deferring to a dictionary would be an “objective approach” but symbols are, fundamentally, “subjective”. Granted, there is likely to be wide agreement on some subjective symbolism. For example, if  blood is trickling down the wall of a house and it reads “Fuck You”, most people are going to conclude rightly subjectively that that is an unwelcoming sign. A few people will probably conclude that means the place is home sweet home, and those people will likely be appearing on made-for-tv specials later on.  The point is, though, that just because you see a crow and are creeped out it doesn’t mean that your friend will also be creeped out. It depends on how their internal meaning is derived where a crow is involved.

Insides and Outsides Don’t Really Exist

I’ve been using the distinction inside and outside, but really, at the level of symbol, such a distinction doesn’t truly exist. What happens on the outside simultaneously happens on the inside, and vice versa. This is why happenings on the outside that seem random can have meaning to us–when we see them on the inside, it may suggest something about our consciousness or what is soon coming into consciousness. It is impossible to see something on the outside world and not have some internal reaction, or vice versa. If you are emotionally distraught because of traumatic events that have happened, and you see a tulip, odds are high the next time you see a tulip it will bring back a sense of the trauma to go with it. It is, strictly speaking, impossible to get past one’s own perceptions. Even if you read someone else’s work, it will be your perception of that someone else’s work that you will receive.

Your Turn!

Can you think of a moment when you saw something on the outside that affected you on the inside? Have you ever experienced something you thought had symbolic meaning to you on the outside actually having symbolic meaning later on? Comment and let’s hear about it!

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All Meaning Is Attatched to Symbol

Remember that song, sign, sign, everywhere a sign? No? I’ll refresh your memory: Here. Now, don’t you feel better that I provided you that musical intro? I’m sure you do.

Blocking Up The Scenery

It is my contention that all meaning is inherently wrapped up in symbol–that we understand the world through amalgamations of symbols whether we realize we do or do not. I suspect the origins of this way of interpreting life probably started with body language. Predators “move a certain way”. If you then danced and “moved like a predator” while doing so, then you abstracted the movement away from the animal and turned it into something of a symbol. Maybe the dance was your shining creative moment, and you are all out after that and you name it the “fox dance”. At some point, maybe your dance catches on in the entire tribe and pretty soon it becomes common knowledge that a fox just “moves like the fox dance”. Now you have established a symbol with a certain meaning. Perhaps you then draw a picture of the animal meant to mimic the movement which is intended to convey the idea of  “fox”. Now you have both a physical interpretation and an image both pointing back at the physical thing that one recognizes as a fox.

Tree Sign

There will be NO sitting on this tree, Mister.

 

What’s Outside Then Becomes Inside

At the moment the external thing is observed and symbolically represented, it is now an internal thing. When a symbol becomes an internal thing, it has the ability to override the reality of the thing on the outside. In other words, the way a fox moves may be so abstracted that the abstraction becomes the reality as opposed to “whatever it is a fox is doing.” If, for example, I make a fox symbolically resemble dancing the Charleston, then if enough people think that qualifies as a good symbolic match for a fox, pretty soon they’ll be seeing foxes do the Charleston whether or not in fact the fox is doing the Charleston.

Where Do Symbols Start?

So the pressing question is, did the symbol start outside or inside? It’s hard to say. We’d like to say we observed a fox and then abstracted what it did, but for all we know we never saw a fox external to ourselves. All we know is that our symbol took hold. Whether it is inside or outside ultimately doesn’t matter so long as we endow our symbol with meaning.

Astrology as Meaning

So what happens when we have enough internal symbolism? It becomes rich. It starts to take on a meaning of its own, and if we are lucky an isomorphism can be made between our internal symbols and what happens in the outside world.  After all, when we recognize a fox, we are recognizing a whole host of other thing son the basis of our dance. Predation. Caution. Slyness. We aren’t just thinking of a fox when we move LIKE a fox, we are thinking of a whole boatload of attributes and categories a fox fits into, and we are trying to make the movements we make mirror those qualities. Is it then possible that a fox on the outside world moving a certain way might mean something personally to us? How about planets?

The Land of Omens

When most people think of astrology, they think that it means the planets are literally having some influence on us due to some material mechanism such as gravity. This is about as big of a mistake as thinking that words affect us because of some hidden material mechanism–or for that matter music. It isn’t that such a mechanism cannot exist–it is that it doesn’t “need” to in order for something like astrology to work. The planets have taken on symbolism such as our fox did in our earlier example. Where those symbols “are” when you are born can be helpful in thinking about psychology. Why? Because we gave them meaning. It can work in both directions–the outside can give data to the inside when you assign something a meaning.

Say Wha?

Think of it another way. Millions of years from now some life form decides it wants to learn about us. It sees all of our brands from the useless crap we buy stamped over everything. To us, the meaning would be obvious. Would it be so obvious to some other life form? Doubtful. The brand “Sam’s Choice” probably wouldn’t make much sense to them. What the hell is it? Coke? Sandwich bags? It seems to be stamped on a multitude of items, and doesn’t really convey anything about them, so what could it mean? Well, to us it means an off-brand that is cheaper to buy. That’s how we recognize it, and treat it in our minds. Typically, there is some bias as to the quality as well. Is that brand/symbol on the outside or the inside? Well, a bit of both. If we see it on the outside, it connotes certain things internally to us, which might change our buying behavior. Such brands might be powerful enough to change our driving behavior, or even our plans for the day. Do the brands and products we buy say something about us? Well, I’ll leave that for marketing to decide, but it is safe to say we do not typically buy products without status being involved somehow or another. The symbol has the meaning, we buy the symbol, and we therefore think we are it, and hope to influence others to believe we are the same as the symbol.

Leaving It There–For NOW!

Have you experienced something symbolic on the outside being true on the inside that you didn’t know? Got some symbolism chatter you want to get out of your system? Take this moment to comment and get it out of your system before I write the next half of this sucker.

 

 

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Getting By in an Ego Stroking World–Watch Out for Faux Optimism

Have you ever been to a job interview where you told them how excited you were to work for them, when in actuality you weren’t at all excited about them or working for them? How many ads do you see on a daily basis extolling the virtues of some product or service that will most assuredly make your life better? How many blogs have you read wherein the comments were all about how wonderful the post was, without the post really saying anything all that special? If’ you have seen or done these things, you might be a participant or witness to what I will henceforth term “faux optimism”

Faux Optimism–the Reasons

So you might wonder what the harm is in being positive. Well, the problem with faux optimism is that it appears positive to make you feel positively. More importantly, it makes you want to reciprocate positively. Faux optimism is just a form of manipulation. It doesn’t come from the truth of what you think about something, but rather it comes from a place of what you want the truth to be about something instead. It may not be the case you GENUINELY like an article that you read, but what you DO like is that when you praise an article by someone else, it ups the odds of their praising one of your articles. You become engaged in what is more crudely known as a “circle jerk”. I stroke your ego, you stroke my ego, when all is said and done our egos will be all happy and if we are LUCKY we might be able to establish our egos in the broader context as the truth.

Faux Pessimism

Faux pessimism is easier to identify because people naturally don’t “like” pessimism. In other words, if someone is OVERLY critical, then people simply avoid that person. However, often times if a person is critical AT ALL, people will tend to avoid that person. If a person is honest, then often people will listen to what they have to say if they recognize that person as being honest–whether what that person has to say is positive or negative.

Ugly face

Faux Optimism: This is so creative! You'd be good at abstract art!

The Question to Ask Yourself

Usually, the question to ask yourself where faux optimism or pessimism is concerned is what does the person stand to gain. If it is a sales pitch and someone is REALLY excited about it, odds are high they have a conflict of interest. Every company wants a positive image so that their products and services are viewed as worthwhile. As a consequence, it becomes harder to distinguish those companies that actually ARE worthwhile, because you have so many that are creating a smoke screen. The same is true of individual people. On the basis of the facade many people create, you might be led to believe that they are genuinely happy, caring, people when in reality they are not any such thing. They’ve learned to manipulate the appearance, but they have none of the substance. When you ask yourself the question do they have substance, you should feel a definite answer within yourself. If your answer is foggy, then it is better to err on the side of distrust than trust. Trusting someone you shouldn’t is a sure fire way to cause yourself harm.

Appearance is the New King

For the most part, appearance is what the world is most preoccupied with. Services like Facebook and Twitter bear out the ascendency of the ego and the idol worship of appearance. Employers use these services as a means of trying to figure out whether or not they should hire you. If you have a picture of you out enjoying a drink with your friends, your image may not be “professional enough”. If your friends use crass language or talk about who they screwed the previous night, that might be enough for an employer to decide you are not professional. You are charged, when you have Facebook or Twitter, to project some semblance of what is deemed as professional EVEN when you are out having fun. We can’t have anything that might “reflect badly” on the company where employees are concerned. The problem, obviously, is that what a person does in their personal life or what their friends have to say matters not one whit to whether they can do the job to which they are appointed. Assume the worst–a person is completely a drug addict in all of their leisure time. When they show up, can they still do the job they are being paid to do? Well then, that’s all that matters.  That you have an employee that does drugs doesn’t really reflect at all on the company. That you decided to have sex with the local bar skank doesn’t reflect on the company either. Those are your personal decisions, and as long as they don’t get in the way of the performance of your job, you ought to be free to do them. Obviously, you should also learn to have common sense and not post up every thing about your life, but the point to be made is that Facebook, even if such things are posted, should not influence whether you do or do not get a job. Your image where that is concerned should not be that important. How you interview–how you perform–those are important.

Look Professional, Don’t BE Professional

We live in an age where it is more important to look professional than it is to be it. Again, faux optimism and pessimism enters here. If you use faux optimism in a business meeting for your bosses ideas, odds are decent your boss will “like you” even though you will have become a “yes man” or woman. If you like a bunch of stuff your friends on Facebook do, there is a good chance they’ll like some crap of yours. The problem is that it isn’t sincere. There’s no sense of “I actually like this” vs “I like this because when I like things people like my stuff back”.

What Do YOU THINK?

Do you think faux optimism and pessimism are running rampant? Have you seen examples of these in action? How much do you think they influence the opportunities you do or don’t get? Are you okay with employing them if it gets you what you want? Comment! Let’s hear your perspective!

 

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Neptune: The Astrological Soft Spot

Neptune is a blue little planet that has the appearance of being very watery. From an astrological point of view, it is a transpersonal planet, meaning that what it does is not entirely under a person’s personal control. It is a planet of ideals.

Planet of the Ideals?

Damn dirty apes aren’t the issue with this planet. A bigger problem is that the ideals Neptune embodies cast a haze over what would normally be a clear perception. In photography, if you want to make a scene look more “romantic”, you can take the step of smearing vasoline on your lens. (Or anywhere else that suits you, but I’d stick to the lens) When you smear vasoline on the lens, a hazy ambiance is created that makes the light look softer and lighter. You can’t see wrinkles as easily. Everything has a softer, more diffuse glow. Wipe the lens off, however, and reality returns in full force. This is a very easy way of thinking of Neptune. For the sake of ideals that it represents, it hazes everything up. This is markedly different than Uranus and the ideals it represents. Uranus reveals the reality by means of some swift trauma. Neptune can remain hazy for as long as it cares to. There is no end brought about by trauma. Instead, the end is often brought about by sacrifice.

Apes

I am NOT AN ANIMAL!

Ain’t No Sacrifice, Just a Simple Word

So how is sacrifice different than trauma? Well, think of Uranus as a scientist with a chemistry set. He mixes different ingredients in in a rather objective way just to see what will happen. When the experiment blows up, he knows his mixture was off. The ideals he had are subject to experiment, and the experiment usually has some form of trauma which reveals something truer about life than was previously held. Uranus is PROGRESSIVE. Neptune isn’t progressive per se. Neptune is sacrificial, and escapist. There is no sense of sacrifice where the scientist is concerned. He’s experimenting and figuring out what’s what. Neptune, on the other hand, will seek a route of escape such as alcoholism or drugs when its ideals are shown to be not in play. When the experiment blows up, Neptune still holds to the ideal of the ingredients it put into the mix, and seeks to forget about what it has just seen because it is far uglier than what it was hoping to receive.

Neptune is a SOFT Planet

So as we can see, Neptune is a softer planet. Most romances and artists have Neptune somewhere prominently. People need the “ideals” and “sacrifice” to have such things as art and love. If you knew the REALITY of the person you loved from the very beginning in entirety, you might change your mind about the challenges the two of you are going to face as a consequence of that initial ideal being not QUITE the reality.  For example, if you knew that the two of you would be married and THEN divorced, you might skip out on the getting married part, or forget the whole relationship entirely. You wouldn’t have to face any crisis of ideals engendered by Neptune. You could just keep trying to find that which your ideals says must exist, and probably sacrificing along the way. Wherever Neptune is, we are very, very sensitive.

Lifting Some of the Clouds

I was once in a relationship with another person who had Neptune transiting the 7th house. Basically, this means that a person will experience ideals in a partnership and possibly sacrifice via their partner. They’ll PROJECT that energy onto their partner. The day the transit finished and moved to the sixth house, she called me up and told me several things just to make sure we were both seeing things “clearly”. I chuckled to myself.  Where Neptune moves, the fog lifts. It is very easy to deceive ourselves with Neptune afoot. We’ll sacrifice anything and everything in the name of our ideals. Where Neptune lands natally, we tend to do this our whole lives. By transit, it is more temporary.

Mastering Neptune

If you want to master Neptune, it isn’t as hard as it sounds. Ask yourself where you are willing to sacrifice the most in an ideal way. Once you have the answer to that, realize that having such ideals is a gift, but that you should not allow those ideals to fog up the reality. Think of it like the window in your car on a cold morning. If you allow it to fog up, it is very hard to see where you are driving although you might arrive without incident. You hold the ideal, and turn on the heat or defrost so you can see where you are going. You keep driving where you are, and you glance once in awhile at the ideal. If you are sacrificing on the altar of the ideal and not seeing any results other than sacrifice, then you have fallen victim to Neptune’s foggy depths. This is doubly true if you turn to drugs or alcohol or engage in any extreme form of escapism. These addictions are self-sabotaging, and move you no closer to your ideals. They just numb the ideals out of you.

What Do YOU THINK?

How have you experienced Neptune? Does it align with what astrology would say should be true, or not? Where do you have ideals that you are willing to sacrifice in a major way concerning? Are you an addict? Did you get that way because you were trying to escape something? Comment away!

 

 

 

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False Consciousness: Problems At the Group Level

Think very carefully for a moment about people that you don’t know well, but of whom you have an opinion. Why do you have that opinion? Odds are high you have that opinion because everybody else “thinks so”.  You’ve “heard things” or the person has a certain image they portray and people relate to them as such. When we lack information, we tend to go on the experiences of others. Sometimes this is a valuable shortcut. The dangers of it, however, are multitude.

Establishing Expectations in a Society

If you were to pretend you were an alien interested in learning about American culture, you would likely look at the behavior of the culture at the level of the group. The reason this would be an appealing alternative is that the variability at the individual level is so high that it would become difficult to form any generalizations. At the group level, you can get a general feel for what being an American means on average. So, you might turn on the television, and quickly discover a lot of sex and violence. Interspersed with the sex and violence would be commercials promoting sex or status. If you listened to the music, you’d find most of it reflected sex or status. Sometimes an ephemeral thing called love is mentioned, but not out of the context of a lot of suffering and heartbreak and often vengeance. You could be forgiven for thinking that American culture is about finance, fighting, and fucking. At the level of the group, these are often the themes that get the attention of people.

 

The Borg

Resistance is Futile

But Life is More Than Finance, Fighting and Fucking

We all clearly know this, but we don’t often acknowledge it. Our alien researcher would be wrong if he concluded that being an American was “only” these things, but he’d probably be right if he said it was “mostly” these things. Let us shift our attention to an individual as our hypothetical alien researcher. Perhaps our alien follows this person from childhood into adulthood. He notices that the child comes in with certain ideals. Certainly, the child has “childish behaviors” that must mature before the ideals the child carries come into fruition. Assume for a moment that the child in question is male, and decides to kiss another boy. The feedback he gets from this experience from others is everything from how morally wrong it is, to how completely permissible such acts are. How do you suppose he makes up his mind about the matter? Probably whatever those closest to him believe he takes on as his own, and what those closest to him believe is likely to be whatever people believe at the group level.  If, for example, people at the group level “hate fags”, he will come to see such actions as inappropriate and undesirable EVEN if he still has those desires within himself. The group acts as a context in which an individual can place himself such that he has meaning. The problem is at the group level, the meaning and prejudices derived don’t necessarily have a useful implementation. “Hating fags” is more a product of prejudices and fears. Even if every last person on Earth were to adopt such a perspective, it wouldn’t make it essentially any more “correct”.  It would just be a well-established belief. Likewise, if everyone believed the Earth were flat, as once they did, it wouldn’t make it “the truth”.

Entrenched Beliefs Do Not Go Quietly

The problem with entrenched beliefs is that they discourage examination. You can’t question what is widely held without simultaneously being ostracized. Historically, this is what scientists faced who made claims that clashed with the interpretation of religion. In a modern way, scientists, despite claims to the contrary, hold certain beliefs and opinions that if one questions are likely to be looked upon unfavorably and will be equal to career suicide. Where free inquiry breaks down and sacred cows graze, polarization results. Where polarization results, persecution is not far behind.

All of Our Ideas Are Smoke

In our search for some semblance of permanence, groups and opinions held can offer a refuge–or put more lucidly–the illusion of refuge. There is no fact or philosophy that can be held such that circumstances change causing the fact or philosophy  not to permute. It is BECAUSE ideas and knowledge are on an endless treadmill that anyone staking a particular claim as “the way it is”  is going to lose. Even the laws of nature are DESCRIPTIVE of how nature currently stands. They do not suggest that nature must “obey” these laws. Nature does what it does, and laws try to describe nature as best they can. When they no longer apply, such laws are discarded and new ones formulated. When something is elevated as beyond question, the danger of groupthink becomes high. The idea is no longer free to evolve. Certain knowledge is seen as “incorrect” without even bothering to give it its due. It becomes a given that “hating fags” is the proper order of life. It is a paradigm that nothing can travel faster than light, so anything suggesting otherwise we can “skim” because it is probably “wrong”.  The Bible is infallible along with our literal interpretation of it, so evolution must be incorrect.  When we move these matters beyond question, we hinder our ability to find additional knowledge. Our curiosity must remain unfettered and free. When chains are placed upon us, we are forced to choose between the love of discovery, or maintaining the fences and walls established by the group. We become slaves to what others “want” to hear–or what they will listen to. Our lives become about ego stroking and not stepping on toes instead of discovery and coming into ourselves. We start to maintain false consciousness, because that’s all we can do if we want our jobs.

What Do You Think?

Have you seen examples of the variety of false consciousness described above? Do you think such a thing exists?  Ever seen any benefits of groups having beliefs held beyond question?  How about around the blogging universe–ever seen what amounts to mutual ego stroking? Comment!

 

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Premises: How To Evaluate Evidence Presented

Evidence is one of those words people toss out casually as though everyone agrees on what it is. In a criminal trial, it is not uncommon to hear all sorts of references to evidence, however what constitutes it is not exactly so clear. A knife can be evidence. A phone call can be evidence. A phrase uttered can be evidence. What is typically meant by evidence, I’m going to argue, is stuff that SUPPORTS a particular perspective. So, evidence is not meant to be evaluated in a neutral fashion, but rather it is meant to convince or persuade.  It would be strange, for instance, to hear a prosecutor submit evidence of the defense’s client’s innocence. That isn’t his perspective. His job, if at all possible, is to convict the defendant. The defendant has the task of presenting evidence to the contrary. The hope is that somewhere between these two perspectives, one can find truth. Probably, though,  it is more a matter of who is the most convincing not just based on evidence, but emotion. After all, if both sides have equal evidence, one must still render a guilty or not guilty verdict. There is not a “we aren’t sure” option.

Science and Evidence

What constitutes evidence in science is somewhat different than what constitutes evidence in court, but not radically so. For example, in hard sciences, evidence is often produced by experiment. However, there are “natural hard sciences” that, by the nature of the science, cannot produce many experiments. Cosmology is one such arena. Psychology is another example of a science that can’t always provide evidence in an experimental way. Such sciences are more descriptive rather than predictive. The problem is that the description is always under flux. The description is statistical as opposed to something deterministic. Statistics, by definition,  admit for uncertainty. As opposed to evidence being something that is compelling on its own, we now have evidence we can be some percentage sure of.

Underpinnings of Each Science

In each science, there is a certain underlying philosophy. This underlying philosophy determines the methods used and found acceptable in the science. The methodology of psychology, for example, is quite a bit different than the methodology in physics. Consequently, a lot of results that “fly” in psychology would never ever “fly” in physics. The methods would be considered too unreliable or too variable.

Why Philosophy Likely Came First

It is likely that philosophy superseded all the sciences as we understand them. If anything, science came fourth first as a philosophy. It is only a modern peculiarity that philosophy is considered “inferior” to science. What has been lost, as a consequence, is the understanding of how a certain philosophical outlook can produce evidence by merely asking some questions and not others. It is well known that if you ask survey questions one way, you are likely to get one set of answers, and if you ask them another way, you are likely to get another set of answers. How you frame the discussion is going to influence the evidence you get as a result. Even if an experiment is reproducible statistically, what it may be showing you is just the evidence you bothered to look for, and nothing more. The physical sciences cannot even escape this issue. If you design an experiment to test whether or not light is particle-like, you will likely get results that show it is. If, on the other hand you want to design an experiment to see if it is wave-like, you will likely get results that reflects that reality. Modern science grudgingly admits it is both, but then, where else is the claim “it is both” applicable that we don’t know simply because we asked one set of questions and not another?  Likewise, what have we refuted or said wasn’t the case on the basis of the framework we erected?

The Industrial Revolution

When the Industrial Revolution bloomed, the common way of thinking of people was as though they were cogs in a machine. Factory work was repetitive and boring, but employers assumed that workers would be willing to put up with it for the paycheck. Economics came along and formalized the thinking. How much shit could you possibly tolerate for the least amount of money?   The question was not how can we make our workers happy, or what do workers need to be the most productive? The human element was completely neglected. All the models that arose and are still somewhat in play concerned only how to coerce someone into working and tolerating horrible working conditions for “just enough money, but not too much.” The only dimension examined was the incentive of money. Nothing more. All the evidence that came back concerned this very narrow perspective.

Mill

How Much For You to Put Up With THIS?

The Right Frame of Mind to View Evidence

When someone is overly skeptical of any claim, they will consider evidence against the proposition, but never for it. Any evidence adduced FOR a claim can always be met with “Yeah, but I’m still skeptical”. A skeptical position, from the outset, is one of disbelief. Hence, the type of evidence sought is of the disconfirming variety. It is, more or less, like the prosecutor’s position in the courtroom.  The innocence of the defender is automatically assumed, except that the prosecutor does not assume this. His or her job is to be skeptical of the innocence of the defendant, and so he puts his case together in LIGHT of the defendant being guilty. Anything that issues forth from his or her mouth must be viewed as this. It would be a terrible mistake, for example, to automatically view what the prosecution says as true without question. A juror is supposed to be neutral so they can hear both sides and evaluate the evidence. Likewise, in science it would be unfortunate for skepticism of a claim to become an attitude that becomes systematized to the point that neutrality is abandoned and the questions posed only reflect the “company line” of the field. The most science should ever say is that there was no evidence in experiment z with assumptions x and y to support the hypothesis. When an attitude becomes prevalent, especially at a community level, you no longer have science.

Positive Claims, Negative Claims

The issue then, becomes underlying attitudes. Underlying attitudes drive the questions asked, and the evidence sought and evaluated. When, for example, James Randi is skeptical of a claim, we cannot be surprised by that because James Randi IS a skeptic, and he is likely to have an attitude of disbelief from the onset that is going to bias his results. Likewise, when a fundamentalist Christian is evaluating evidence for the existence of God, he is going to tend to ask questions that confirm the conjecture as opposed to refuting it. His attitude of belief from the onset only allows him to see the evidence FOR the case and not against it.

The Correct Attitude

The correct attitude is one of ignorance and humility. If someone makes an outrageous claim, there is nothing wrong with asking them to explain what they mean, or to have them show you what they think. You may not be convinced by what they show you, but you cannot then go the extra step and say they are full of shit. To do that implies that they are a liar and trying to be deceptive. It may be they are simply mistaken. It may be that what they are saying is true because of the attitude they hold, but isn’t true because of the attitude YOU hold. When the line is crossed into “This person is full of shit” then a person is biased. They cannot hear the claims and evaluate what a person is saying, regardless of what that person says. The problem with the Randi’s of the world is the unstated assumption is that Randi  as a magician thinks that everyone else who makes an “outrageous” claim is TRYING to be deceptive. Maybe. However, you can’t assume that from the onset, or if you do, you have to admit that you have serious, serious, bias. A believer that thinks non-believers are ignorant is in no better position to evaluate the claims made. The only position that can be held realistically with the hope of learning anything is “I don’t know, but I’ll willing to be open and learn.”

What do you think?

Can you think of an instance where not hearing another person or the claims they are making is actually useful? If someone is being outright racist is it justifiable then to not listen?  Comment away!

 

 

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How Nothing is Not the Opposite of Everything: Getting Clear On Nothing and Everything

Remember that song nothing from nothing leaves nothing? No? Well, here’s a reminder. Now that you have some musical styling to frame the discussion, we’ll talk about nothing. Ironically, when we get done, we’ll have something, but soon I hope you will understand how that isn’t an issue.

Nothing

So what do we mean when we say the word “nothing”? What are you up to? “Nothing.” We mean that there is an absence of anything important we want to talk about. If we were ACTUALLY doing nothing, we’d be some sort of zen master, and that isn’t very likely. So, nothing basically means absence.

Mathematical Nothing

Mathematical nothing, or zero, is defined as the empty set. It is tempting to think of this set as the opposite of the infinite set, or the set of everything, but that’s not really correct. Is one the opposite of two? Is three the opposite of four? Zero is peculiar in that in indicates the quantity of not having a quantity. Everything else “has something” with the possible exception of infinity, but we can say it “has everything”. Equivalently, we might be able to say infinity “has nothing” because it is infinite. If I tell you that something has 0 as a value, or something has infinity as a value, information-wise I really haven’t said anything contradictory. You might be able to say nothing would give you the impression of the absence of, but what does infinity give you the impression of? Everything? Nothing? “A whole lot of”? Infinity is a little bit of all those things, and nothing equivalently is infinite in that it denotes an absence of everything. The two values are more complementary than contradictory–they each tend to have the other implicit within themselves. Mathematically, however, the definition doesn’t necessarily involve the conveyance of information. Null is the empty set or zero, and infinity is the full set of something continuing on forever.

Absence is not Opposite Everything

If in one hand I have a coin, and in the other I do not, we cannot say that my empty hand is the “opposite” of the one with something in it. Presence, we might say, is the opposite of nothing. Yet, in the set of everything, we could have a set of all zeros–infinitely so. Is that the set of everything, or the set of nothing? The problem with the definition of infinite is that it means both “a bunch of stuff” and “continuing on forever”. Zero is a lot simpler in that it means “empty”, “null”, or “nothing”. Infinity does not automatically imply presence. In that a zero is a something instead of a pure absolute nothing, then one might be tempted to say zero is something. In such a case, the only way we could define nothing is the sound of one hand clapping, or as Wittgenstein said, we just wouldn’t be able to talk about it.  So, we can take zero to be as close as language can get to discussing the concept of nothing.

Weird Thing About Nothing

One of the weirder properties of nothing is that anytime you use a zero in addition, whatever you get back is the same number as before. We don’t really think of this as weird, because we are accustomed to thinking about it. Pause just a second, though, and you’ll understand why it is weird. Under WHAT possible circumstance would you ever have a something that you then decided to add nothing to? It just doesn’t make any sense to do this. If you have something, you have something. There is no need to reference the idea of adding nothing to it, because it is a complicated way of saying, “well, I have this something”.  This is the reason why the number zero was historically a contentious addition to numberhood. It won the point on utility, but from the perspective of application to the real world, the real world was getting by without zero at all.

Why You Can Get Everything from Nothing

It is possible to get all the natural numbers from zero using set theory. You basically define zero to be the empty set, and then you define the successor to that to be one, and the next successor as two and so on. The trick is, though, you are defining ALL the numbers in relation to the empty set. From the empty set spring forth all the natural numbers. This helps to demonstrate how within nothing is the potential for everything. The implicit “infinity” in zero is thus revealed. If you want to read a little more about this, see this link.

Beanie Baby

Beanie Babies: Proof that something comes from nothing, and returns to it.

Why This is Important

Many arguments for and against God discuss concepts such as nothing as though it would be impossible for God to BE nothing. In other words, if God is infinite, then God cannot be nothing. This logic has never made sense to me. If there were nothing but God, then in a sense, there would be nothing. God isn’t necessarily a “something”. God isn’t necessarily a nothing. It just is whatever it is up to and including nothing. You can object and say that if you are saying God is there that’s something, but inasmuch as God can be either everything or nothing at all, God can be a pure nothing. The attribute of nothing can easily be given to God. This is why any existence that is infinite is difficult to fathom. It doesn’t have to be one or the other, because it can be both or neither.

What Do You Think?

Is it the case the nothing is the opposite of everything? Do you think nothing means no entity? Does it strike you that an infinite entity can’t be nothing? Let’s hear it!

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Confusing Is-A and Has-A Relationships: Why a Phd Doesn’t Mean a Thing

If you ever get into object-oriented programming, you get to learn about is-a and has-a relationships. If something “has” something, it is in  the object definition. If it IS something, it is in a class definition.  So, for example, a hand has fingers, so fingers would be viewed as in the object definition, whereas a hand IS a hand, so hand would be defined at a class level. To some extent, the cutoff is arbitrary. A finger, for example, has a fingernail, but a finger is a finger, so it might have its own class which would be called in the hand class. Knowing the right level of abstraction is what differentiates between a good programmer, and a GREAT programmer.

The REAL World

So, in the real world the distinction isn’t all that problematic for us most of the time. It doesn’t matter to us usually whether something is a something or has a something. We transition easily. However, we are prone to a certain error in thinking. If someone HAS an expensive car, for example, we might think that they ARE successful. We move from what someone has to a general statement about what they are. Sometimes this is true by definition. If Tom has no wife, then he IS a bachelor by definition. However, such a statement overlooks the qualities Tom is embodying. What if he is living with a girlfriend? What if he has been doing so for 16 years? Under such circumstances, we might say Tom is no bachelor at all.

Where Things Get Convoluted

Things get very, very strained when we start discussing matters such as education. We might say that Tom has a phd in philosophy, and therefore he is a philosopher. However, Tom having a phd in philosophy says nothing whatsoever about what Tom is. He could be a total idiot when it comes to philosophy, but REALLY good at academics.  Or, perhaps Tom had a lot of money to spend on his degree, and got one, but that he only got one because he had a lot of money and therefore is not a “philosopher”. Or, perhaps it works oppositely and Tom IS a philosopher, but he has no phd.

Which Came First?

So part of the problem is that whatever it is that is, is whether or not we “have-a” or not. Tom can be a bachelor and be married in the sense the quality of bachelorhood never leaves him. He is still a “bachelor” effectively, but he’s married so by definition he isn’t. The qualities that are you, are you, distinctly.

Qualities are More Stable in People

For the most part, qualities, when it comes to people, are more stable than definitions. If Tom had the quality of being an asshole, he probably still is. If I say Tom IS an asshole, I’m not exactly defining him as I would be if I said he is a bachelor. An asshole is a definition by a quality Tom embodies. If he was an asshole, he probably still is, although if he was a bachelor, he may or may not be. Bachelor is not a quality by definition, unless specifically otherwise indicated. He is a bachelor by definition means not married, but uttered in the context of marriage, it defines a quality instead.

Qualifications

So when it comes to getting a job, we are supposedly looking at qualities, or qualifications, but we aren’t typically doing that. We look to see if the relevant degree is held. That is a has-a relationship. We look to see what past employment history is, also a has-a relationship or “had-a” anyway.  We look to see what accomplishments are there or are not there, which is more of a “has-a” scenario than an “is-a”. About the only time we explore qualities is with regard to what the applicant says about themselves, and what others say about the applicant. We are assuming all the “has-a” relationships translate into “is-a” relationships.

 

Clown

Has a tie. Has a hat. Has a suit. Is a businessman!

 

It Doesn’t Matter What You HAVE if you AREN’T IT!

I see this happen all the time. I see people who hold many qualifications and have many high-sounding words, but categorically are not what they are claiming to be.  You MIGHT have had ten million sales, but that does not make you a salesman. If you ARE a salesman, I’ll pick up on it when we talk, not on the basis of what you did. You are not a nurse because you have a nursing degree. You are a nurse because it is who you are, and you have a calling for it. The quality of nurse and you are the same.

Has-A Mistakes

Too frequently though, the mistake is made that because someone has-a something or another, they are it. This creates a kind of chaos as there are ill-matched people doing things they have no business doing. Using the nurse example, if you are sick, you are going to want someone that embodies nurse qualities and IS a nurse therefore, not someone who holds a nursing degree who is not a nurse. You will be able to tell the difference instantly. One person is suited to the position, the other is not. One person is concerned about your veins and starting IV’s carefully, the other jams the needle in any old place.

What Say You?

Have we started to mistake has-a’s for is-a’s? Can you think of a way to ameliorate that issue if so? Comment away.

 

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How The Internet Was Lost

My generation was the last one to exist before the internet became a staple. I can remember having to “actually go” to the library to do research. I can even remember when the internet first started taking hold and teachers would give assignments that required the use of it before I had access to it. What the internet represented was the freedom to access information on an unprecedented scale. A library paled in comparison. The internet was still being visualized as a way for people to share information left over from the academic roots of it.

Pay Walls

There was an era of Geocity pages and Angelfire stuff where individual people who had passions could post up their stuff. There was a sense of individuality, and of the internet being a frontier. If you wanted to look up how to make pipe bombs, you could do that as easily as you could how to factor equations.  Not all of the content was good quality, but you did get a sense of the individuality of the authors and nothing was considered “too radical” or “off limits”. No one had figured out exactly how to harness the internet to make lots of money besides a few companies that provided search engines and portals. No one had thought much about “censoring” it. If you don’t want to see donkey porn, don’t go there. Soon, however, business began to figure out how it could use the internet. The first thing it could do is create restrictions on hardware which translated to making restrictions in software. This piece might talk to that piece, but not this one. Somewhere along the way, it became about doing the same with information. Pay walls began to increase in number. Being near a privileged data node meant potentially millions of dollars. The Garden of Eden was destined for a fall.

Great Wall

Was Anyone Really Surprised by China's Internet Solution?

Freedom of Speech, Not So Much

Every day, the freedom of speech where the internet is concerned diminishes. Some governments will go so far as to jail dissenting citizens for what they write. The tool that was formerly used for the spread of free information has started to become the opposite–the means to control what is said–to punish people who use their freedom of speech in a way someone else doesn’t like. It never seems to fail that when something begins to fall under the control of money, it is not long before it is also under the control of some government. The government can always threaten to shut your site down. It can threaten to ruin your source of income, your money. It can threaten to bend the interpretation of the law to such an extent that it needs no evidence to punish you.  At the level it can monitor all communication, it can become the arbiter for the context that appears. Now the law extends to the internet–but not equal law. It managed to gain this toe hold by having enough companies with a financial interest in the internet that  lobbies could exist, and begin to influence legislation designed to benefit business at the expense of everyone else. Capitalism, as an economic engine, can not support free information. It’s chief interest is in roping off information so you can be charged for it.

ISP’s Policing Traffic

I suppose it was only a matter of time before ISP’s that make money off the internet began to feel the pressure to do the bidding of government. We are not far now from Internet Service Providers policing the traffic on their networks in defense of  “copyright”. This makes about as much sense as having electricity companies police for people using soldering irons to make patented circuits. That someone can infringe on a copyright with the internet is a fact, but that isn’t the internet’s fault. If the legal system is too inefficient to deal with technology, then the law needs to be updated to deal with it. If copyrights no longer make sense in a modern context, then they need to be re-visited and re-drafted. Technological progress means progress all the way around, not that technology progresses and everything else stays the same.

Whatever Rests with the Government…

Most people aren’t aware of the DNS system that underlies the internet, but it basically converts IP addresses into names. The root servers are mainly government-controlled. So even though no one “owns” the internet, someone does own all the mappings of IP addresses to names as a centralized authority. This has allowed for the government to seize domains and freeze certain sites without any good reason for doing so. It’s too much power, and governments, if nothing else, always demonstrate their inability to handle too much power. It is beginning to be more common to have alternate domains hosted in other countries. The more “web-like” the internet is, the less likely it can be used and abused for special-interests. The more “top-down” it is, the more likely someone will take it and use it and police it for things they shouldn’t.

You Make Google Money By Existing and Using Their Services

Google is a good example of a “top down” orientation toward data. Google is huge, and more or less owns the information on the internet by controlling access to it. Hence, governments such as China can turn to Google to censor results, and so on. Google is not “web-like”. In order for google to be “web-like” there would need to be many search providers with equal market share. Instead, google has enough power now to make or break a business with search results.

A Light That is Dark at the End of the Tunnel

The only way I see of turning this whole mess around is having something like a darknet. A darknet is an internet, but one that doesn’t exist on the main internet in an easy to find way. Otherwise, maybe using something like encryption on all communication would help. In both instances, it removes the “centralized authority” into something more “commonly held”. It’s not that the internet needs to be lawless, but it is that the internet needs to be lawless if the solution is going to be to “control the content” on it.

What Do You Think?

Have we “lost” the internet? Is there still time to turn it around before it is gone? Is it still here as it was before? Do you feel “free” on the web, or hemmed in? Comment away!

 

 

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Should Values Be Determined By Intrinsic Properties or External Desires?

A fundamental divide in thinking about economics exists. To make this divide crystal clear, I’m going to make use of a simple example. Suppose for instance, that you need antibiotics. The price of these antibiotics is $200 a bottle. The manufacturing and research cost of these antibiotics is roughly $50. Are the antibiotics worth $200?

Demand is Desire

When we speak of demand, what we are really speaking of is desire and potential profit. If a product is in high demand, and people are willing to pay $300 dollars for something, then hasn’t the market made that something worth $300 dollars?

Let us consider it from another perspective. You are in the line at the grocery store because you need to pick up some food. Mid check-out, you receive a cell phone call that you are needed urgently at home as there has been an accident but nothing fatal. Suddenly, the cashier has become the most valuable thing in the world to you, and you’d be willing to pay her $300 just to have her hurry through the rest of your items, right? No. That isn’t actually what happens. Instead, your attitude becomes greatly rushed and you expect the cashier to take notice of your attitude and care and then respond appropriately to your emergency–all for the low, low price of minimum wage. If she doesn’t speed it up, you may become rude or discourteous.

When it comes to people, the valuation of your skills and what you are worth is not as subject to “desires”. That there is a job market is certain, but a business holds more of the aces than does a market. While it is true if a business desires a certain candidate they may pay them more than someone else, it is not true that the job market is “free” in the sense that buying a product is. Somehow, some way, you have to survive. You don’t necessarily have to have an Ipad.

Desires Are Not Reflective of Worth

Desires, in and of themselves, have little to nothing to do with worth. Desires are fickle and subject to change. In my opening example, I referred to antibiotics. Antibiotics are not exactly a “desire”. They become “necessary” at some point. However, when you have confused desire WITH worth, then your ability to differentiate between necessary and desire begins to blur. Do people desire medical attention or do they require it? Do people desire a Rolex or do they require it? To treat the Rolex as being in the same category as antibiotics is to make a mistake that borders on something like a crime against humanity. A market than fails to take this into account is no better than Pol Pot.

So What Makes Something Worth Something?

Clearly, there are some substances deemed valuable because people look at them as valuable. Diamonds are viewed as precious gems, for example. Likely, this had to do with the properties a thing has. Diamonds are sparkly, and they are rare. The scarcity and “prettiness” makes them intrinsically valuable. The same thing can be said of gold. Food is also inherently valuable, because you have to eat. Food, though, is in a different class again because it is not so much a desire so much as it is a necessity. You may not be able to afford a diamond, but you better be able to afford groceries. In that people desire diamonds, it influences their worth. However, their “actual” worth is more fixed. They are worth anything at all because they are scarce. The “perceived” goodness of them doesn’t matter to what they are actually worth. Perceived worth is not actual worth. If you doubt this, purchase a diamond ring, get married, get divorced, then pawn your ring back and see what you get in return. My bet is your personal return will be a lot closer to what it was “actually worth” than what you paid. Nothing about the ring is any different. It’s just not in a jewelery store.

When Quarters Aren’t Worth 25 cents

Another example is when a quarter says it is worth 25 cents, but because of the content of silver in it it becomes worth say, three times as much. Silver is worth something because it is scarce. It has inherent worth–it cannot beyond a certain point be replaced. When money becomes “worthless” people fall back to things that are inherently worth something because they are scarce. They recognize the difference between “desire” and “intrinsically valuable”.

Desire Based Worth Always Creates a Mess

I don’t believe that anyone has an issue with someone making “some profit” off of what something is actually worth. For example, say times are good, and I sell you something that makes me double my profit on an item that is non-necessary. If it is actually something I did all the labor concerning, good for me. If, on the other hand, other people did the labor on it, and I don’t pass some of this profit on to them, then I have exploited them for my gain. To a certain extent, this can be tolerated so long as there is enough prosperity to “go around”. When there is no longer enough prosperity to “go around” and things that are not desires but necessities cannot be afforded while someone else is profiting in a profligate way from working people who cannot afford these necessities, then we have a problem because there is nothing to differentiate this sort of working environment from slave labor–except that you do in fact feed your slaves.

slave

Yes, You Are a Sex Slave, but You Should See the 401k

Hard Times

Hard times demand that “desire based” value be reigned in and that intrinsic value be uplifted. Hard times demand that an economy look carefully at necessities and doesn’t confuse them for desires. What drives an economy in hard times into the mud is acting as though desire based value is the same as intrinsic value. When an economy is built on something that is desirable not because it is scarce and therefore valuable, then it is subjecting itself to caprice. One shift in desire, and the house of cards tumbles. Additionally, hard times demand a return to valuing the generators of worth at all–people. Without people, it doesn’t matter what anything is worth because there is no one to buy it or sell it. An equilibrium has to be reached in such a situation where there are not “extremely rich people” and “extremely poor people” if an economy is to sustain itself. Sooner or later, poor people are going to get tired of dying from lack of resources for the sake of those that are rich. When that happens, nobody will be rich and nobody will be poor, because something will happen to equalize the disparity.

What Do you Believe?

Do you think that any economy can exist solely on desire based worth? Is desire based worth actually worth? How about scarcity and inherent worth? Let’s hear your thoughts.

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