DavidV
-
Posts
2935 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
13
Posts posted by DavidV
-
-
Warning: relying on magic and anecdotes is bad for your health:
In my post on evidence-based medicine, I said that “when valid scientific principles are not followed, no valid conclusion can be reached.”
Why not? Why don’t anecdotal claims (such as personal experience) count as evidence? Here is an example of what I mean:
A young woman who was a Christian Scientist told me that various relatives of hers have been healed by prayer. For example, her sister was revived from death by the prayer of her family. I have two comments about her story:
- The observations that she told me about (that her sister was physiological dead, that her family prayed for her, and that she was revived) are probably true.
- There was no dishonesty on her part: she sincerely believed her story
This was the essence of my reply:
I cannot object to the events you observed, as I was not there. But this does not mean that I must accept your causal explanation for those events. I have three reasons for this:
- I have a certain understanding about the nature of the universe and of the means by which things happen. We call this cause and effect. In my experience, cause and effect happens according to certain rules, which we formally call the “laws of nature.” If someone presents an explanation that is inconsistent with my basic understanding of the laws of nature, they should have overwhelming evidence. Otherwise, I must conclude that their understanding of causality is wrong, even if their observations are true. This is especially true in observations regarding human health.
- There are good reasons for scientists to reject personal experience and informal observations as sufficient basis for conclusions. There are many forms of cognitive bias can we can honestly make unless we follow strict rules to eliminate errors. In many fields (such as fixing a car) trial and error is good enough. There are no lives depending on a car working perfectly. In others, such as human physiology anecdotal evidence cannot lead to correct conclusions no matter how honest or smart you are. The forms of error take many forms: availability bias, post hoc ergo propter hoc, hasty generalization, placebo effects, selection bias, regression to the mean, bias by prior beliefs, social influence, etc. Even if you are aware of the biases, you cannot fully escape their effects; only try to structure your research to minimize them. In other words, when trial and error is not good enough, there is no substitute for proper science.
- I categorize causal explanations into three kinds: true, false, and arbitrary. True explanations correspond with what I know. False explanations contradict what I know, but with further evidence may be proven true. Arbitrary explanations are neither true nor false because they do not refer to anything. They are “magical theories” because there is nothing that we can point to as the causal mechanism. How does prayer work? It just does – no mechanism is possible because it by definition exists outside of causality. Because arbitrary claims they cannot be proven or disproved, once identified as such, we can only dismiss them from consideration. We should be extremely skeptical of anyone who makes causal claims based on arbitrary/magical explanations. In the rare cause they point out a true causal connection, it is only by accident, and has no value to anyone as we have no more basis to believe that idea than any of their other claims.
- is supported by many different kinds of observations
- is consistent with existing knowledge
- is possible to confirm by repeating the observations
- has high predictive value: it should predict what will happen as well as what will not happen
Further reading:
- The Role of Anecdotes in Science-Based Medicine
- How Anecdotal Evidence Can Undermine Scientific Results
Original entry: See link at top of this post
-
Parasitism and intentionality: lessons from the cuckoo:
Many species of the cuckoo and cowbird reproduce exclusively by sneaking their eggs into other birds nests, where their chicks kill or starve their nest-mates and so steal resources from the host mother, who often has to raise chicks bigger than her. So why doesn’t the host kick out the foreign eggs?In many cases, the parasitic eggs evolve to match those of the victim species. Yet in other species, the intruder egg is clearly different yet is left alone. Why? It has been experimentally observed that the mother cuckoo regularly monitors the nests she invades and completely destroys them if she sees that her egg was rejected. According to the “Mafia hypothesis”, it is cheaper for the host birds to allow their nests to be parasitized than to have them destroyed in response to rejecting the egg.
Here is what I find interesting: neither the cuckoo nor the host bird have any notion of how to run a protection racket or make complex statistical calculations about whether it is worth rejecting the invader egg. Their minds are far too primitive for that. The host keeps the foreign egg because the gene for not rejecting the egg is reinforced by the higher survival probability of her chicks. And the cowbird destroys nests with rejected eggs because her gene for “revenge” behavior is reinforced by the higher reproductive success in the nests of victims who accept their fate. The two species interact by threats and bluffs through gene expression, without any real communication going on. The mechanism is imperfect – sometimes the parasite bird destroys innocent nests and sometimes the victim kicks the invader out and pays the price. Parasite and victim continually test each other to maximize their reproductive success.
Does this behavioral pattern have any analog in human society? Of course humans don’t need to wait for the slow pace of genes to engage in Mafia-like behavior. But whether the threats are communicated consciously or not, the behavior itself is reinforced for the same reason: because it works. In human society, money, not reproductive success is the reward mechanism which rewards and punishes certain behavior. Money is not a guarantee of reproductive success, nor can be it be exchanged for just any values. But it is the best and most universally convertible proxy for value that we have.
As with animals, activities which generate money are reinforced. And just as with animals, that reinforcement happens whether or not the participants are consciously aware of it. Socially, the majority of people disapprove of protection rackets. We teach our children to act morally and we spend resources to stop crime. Yet parasitism happens anyway, in many forms, in every society, and often without any conscious intent. It is a successful evolutionary tactic.
Is all this to suggest that humans are powerless against parasitism? Certainly not. We are only powerless to stop parasitic relationships as long as we don’t recognize them for what they are. Once they are exposed, we can do what no other animal can: replace a short-run reinforcing behavior (grab the loot and run) with a long-run rewarding behavior (we’ll all have more loot if we don’t steal from each other).
The point is this:
There are two forms of parasitism: explicit and implicit. In explicit parasitism, both parties are aware of the parasitic behavior. So it is with crooks and invading armies. They know they are criminals, but they don’t care because one of them has superior firepower. Explicit parasitism can certainly be very destructive and expensive to stop, but it is unsustainable, as human beings get better at diplomacy and policing.
But in implicit parasitism, one of the parties is not aware that they are the victim or aggressor. When our taxes pay for things such as farm aid or money to foreign countries or people on public aid or “social security”, or make-work schemes neither the parasite not the victim may be aware of the nature of their relationship. Or they may be aware, but believe that the parasitism is beneficial or morally justifiable. As we get better and better at stopping explicit parasitism, our peaceful and wealthy society becomes more and more ripe for implicit parasitism. That is the danger. But there is an upside: once implicit parasitism is recognized, it is much easier to stop than explicit parasitism, since the parasite is usually not able or willing to use superior force to continue the parasitism.
As we become more educated and form large-scale social-economic-political units, we learn to recognize and stop petty parasitism and form social taboos and laws against it. We imagine that we twitter away less funds on miracle cures, mass delusions, and Ponzi schemes. But by eliminating “simple” parasitism, we “reward” large-scale, hidden, and entrenched parasitism. The remaining parasitic relationships are able to deter their own exposition by using survival “tactics” such as very large scales (the lower the cost to individual victims, the lower the benefit to organizing against them), the spread of ethical principles defending the parasitism, and by embedding deeply in the social fabric. Successful parasitic relationships in human society thus have two aspects: the physical act of redistributing values and the intellectual memes justifying that activity.
As with evolutionary patterns, there is no need for there to be any direct causal connection between, the act of parasitism and the formation of social structures, memes and taboos that defend it. For example, wealthy people can support the redistribution of wealth to the poor even though it does not benefit them materially. It may in fact lead to more poverty, the discovery of which feeds altruistic memes and thus encourages more wealth distribution. (This is just a hypothetical example – the cause & effect and the spread of ideas can have much more complicated relationships.)
Entrenchment in social-intellectual structures is key to parasitic relationships which display high evolutionary fitness. It’s hard for the victim of outright robbery and fraud to justify as morally proper or necessary. Parasitism engrained in basic social functions such as schools and roads is much harder to end. It may not be necessary for government schools to be run by parasitic (in the sense of demanding above-market-rate resources) teacher’s unions, but it is much harder to reorganize educational institutions than to stop gambling or seeking fortune tellers.
I have here tried to use relevant but non-emotionally or politically laden examples, but it is impossible to speak of this topic without engaging the defensive mental mechanisms of my audience, as aspects of the parasitism tied to ethical memes and group identity politics trip mental circuit breaks as part of their defensive mechanism. As with the birds, without any grand conspiracy, malice or even conscious awareness, all of civilization organizes in a way that opposes both the anti-parasistical behavior and the very recognition that the relationships are parasitical. Even by writing these thoughts, I am acting against the parasitic memes and so both opposing my own social-educational worldview and alienating myself from the mainstream intellectual dialogue that enables the parasitic behavior. The evolved behavior+meme entities have done their job well: the chance that I or anyone will affect the mainstream is extremely slim.
I hope the above does not sound too pessimistic. After all, as a global civilization, humanity is doing pretty well. Parasitism is bad in the sense that it a wasteful allocation of resources, but there are many other forms of inefficiency. If you want a simple takeaway, it is that destructive relationships can develop without any malicious intent, and that by examining all our relationships, including the “voluntary” ones and those that we see as “essential,” we might discover that many of the premises we held for granted are false.
Original entry: See link at top of this post
-
Evolution is not just a part of biology. It is the foundation which shapes our understanding of life. It is meaningless to speak of living things outside the context of evolution. It is like trying to learn about human civilization by iterating the appearance and sounds of individual people without any idea of history, leaders, movements, or ideas.
This is not merely a condemnation of creationism. The vast majority of education material about life leaves out the evolutionary context. There is more to this than the influence of religion on science education. There are serious philosophical errors deep in our culture that are responsible for much more than scientific illiteracy. The concrete bound mentality, the mind-body dichotomy, the rejection of causality, and of identity itself are the common threads uniting many evils.
Does that mean that teaching good philosophy will fix our ignorance and social ails? No, because philosophy is only the master plan by which we build the mental models of reality that become our worldview. We cannot build those models without a stream of experience and understanding to supply the raw materials. But equally so we cannot build valid mental models merely by supplying more raw materials if the master plan is corrupt. A properly functioning mind requires both a proper philosophical framework and a supply of facts to form a rational perspective of the universe.
Original entry: See link at top of this post
-
I just want to add that the best way to detect life on earth may be to measure the atmospheric spectra of our atmosphere. This would give you a bigger target than radio and give a pretty good indication both the presence of life and the level of industrial output. You could also measure nighttime luminosity with a big enough telescope.
-
-
(I got this long ago from some decent-quality, science-type TV show.)
I think the movie "Contact" popularized that idea by playing back the alien's recording of the 1936 Olympic Games. But the games were send over a primitive local cable line and not broadcast over the air. The idea seems to have become universally accepted despite the fact that anyone with basic knowledge of physics or astronomy should know better. Another sad example of the lack of media/public understanding of science.
-
Earth has been spectacularly radiating radio signals for over a century now.
This is not true. Radio waves fade in strength according to the inverse-square law. They are undedectable before they reach the nearest star. To communicate with our father-flung satellites (Voyager) requires massive antenna arrays that know exactly where to look - and they have not left the solar system. To communicate inter-solar distances would require massive concentrated EM bursts with energy draw on a Kardashev type 1+ scale.
- realityChemist and th3ranger
-
2
-
Is there a legal loop-hole that would allow to build a physical or virtual community that can avoid paying taxes ? Let's say "income taxes" ?
You realize that by asking this question you are showing intent to evade taxes and this can be used as evidence against you even if you find a "legal" loophole?
-
On the one hand, we should all want our politicians to strictly uphold the Constitution. On the other hand, what if military action were required to protect Americans agaisnt a lethal threat from abroad, but a bunch of hippie pacifitst in Congress refused to delcare war to neutralize that threat? Would the President be justified in breaching the Constitution in such a scenario?
Why does this only apply to war? What if a bunch of hippie pacifists in Congress refused to make abortion illegal or to ban gay marriage? Shouldn't the president be allowed to do what's right, not what some crusty old documents or stupid voters say.
-
Wasn't most of their traffic perfectly legal?
I think its another case of the government only having a hammer and everything it sees being nails.
Actually almost all their activity was illegal. But this is actually irrelevant. What is relevant in this case is that their property was seized and their business shut down without due process. That is unconstitutional and illegal.
-
it is a real moral question, whether it is right to hack into somebody else's computer or not. I am not sure how to answer that question.
I am not sure whether I misunderstand your question, or you are seriously suggesting that there is any uncertainty about whether it is immoral to hack into other people's computers - that is, to use other people's property against their consent.
I think you are also confusing a DDOS attack with "hacking." Hacking is like breaking into someone's home and using their possessions. A DDOS attack is like blockading the front of a business so customers cannot get in. They are both property rights violations, but of a very different nature.
-
Can you sign out and try now?
-
Thanks, this is fixed.
-
I've decided to try .com as it is easier for people to remember. Please let me know what you think of this change.
If you have issues logging in, you can email me directly: [email protected]
-
The image gallery for this site is back: http://ObjectivismOnline.com/gallery/
Currently it's hosting club fliers uploaded by members. If you have any other creative use for it, feel free to do so.
-
Loving strange food or: how I learned to stop being picky and love food:
Like most Americans, I used to hold some self-evident beliefs about food:
The three dogmas of the food phobiac:
- There are foods I “like” and foods I “dislike” and I ought to stick to the things that I like.
- The better something tastes, the more unhealthy it must be and vice versa. You must choose between a long life of disgusting food or indulge yourself and die early.
- There is a value hierarchy for all the edible parts of any animal. For example, top sirloin is the ideal for beef. There’s a similar value hierarchy for animals themselves. Decisions about which animal and which part of the animal to eat are therefore a simple cost/benefit equation.
Two things completely changed by attitude on food: getting married, and moving to China.
The psychology of taste
Our perception of taste is closely associated with our memories of things such as the taste of past meals, our emotional states, and sensory associations with similar foods. We come to associate foods with sensory reactions based on many factors such as familiarity, the quality of most meals, the people we were with, etc. By dissociating taste as such from negative experiences we can learn to appreciate food for its inherent taste, without emotional baggage. We can learn to prefer the taste of healthy foods by the same process.
Sensory integration therapy for food phobiacs
The first step to fixing food phobias is to recognize the problem: it’s not OK to exclude foods because of food sensitivities. All the “most hated” American foods are delicious when prepared properly. Having recognized the problem, here is the program that worked for me:
The strategy is to gradually introduce foods in different settings, gradually building exposure and positive associations with certain foods. For example, when my wife learned that I hated zucchini, she gradually introduced it into my diet starting with small amounts balanced by other flavors, and growing to having zucchini be the dominate ingredient. Here is what she cooked:
- Stuffed peppers with zucchini and sausage
- Potato and zucchini frittata
- Roasted vegetable meatloaf with zucchini
- Grated zucchini topped with marinara
- Lasagna with zucchini noodles
- Zucchini gratin
- Zucchini latkes
- Zucchini fried in butter with onions
- Parmesan crusted fried zucchini
The same program was used for eggplant, brussel sprouts, avocados, cabbage, and okra. Once I learned to appreciate food for its taste and texture of foods rather than negative associations and new textures, it was no longer necessary to disguise the ingredients. When I have a negative reaction to something, I isolate the components of the food (source, flavor, smell, texture) and think about which aspect I reacted to. Oftentimes I react to negative memories and associations and not the food itself. Consciously understanding that a negative reaction has no rational basis is often enough to overcome it.
The importance of ceremony
The ceremonial aspect of dining is very important when learning to appreciate food. If you merely try to inhale as many calories as quickly as possible, any unusual tastes will be an unpleasant distraction. A proper sit-down meal is required to take the time to really analyze the taste of foods and form new positive sensory-conceptual associations to replace the old negative ones.
A cosmopolitan attitude to dining
One of the main differences between the Chinese diet and the Western diet is that the entire animal is considered edible. Whereas Americans stuff everything other than “choice” cuts into burgers, sausages, and McNuggets, the Chinese proudly consume the head, claws, organs, and other miscellaneous parts of animals as delicacies. This is not because they’re poorer – the head and feet are the most expensive parts of the animal. Neither do they restrict themselves to a few “blessed” animals – the entire animal kingdom is on the menu.
The difference is that of the food elitist versus that of the food connoisseur. The elitist believes that only a narrow socially accepted list of foods is good enough for him. The connoisseur is an explorer, who uses his palate as the universe-expanding sensory organ it was meant to be. The elitist lives within the small dietary-social circle he was born into. The connoisseur traverses the biological and cultural realms.
The approach I now take to eating new things now is exploratory one. Instead of responding with “like” or “dislike” I try to understand the flavor components and texture of food. I appreciate meals from many perspectives – sensory, anatomical, social, and historical, to fully integrate it with my worldview.
Note: I have found that adopting a Paleo diet enhances flavor discrimination. For example, a carrot is actually quite sweet and delicious to eat raw, but a typical carb-addict wouldn’t know it.None of this is to claim attitude alone will make everything taste good. Meals must be prepared skillfully to taste good. The notion I want to dispel is that taste is either genetic or set by undecipherable psychological factors we cannot affect. Human culture has a rich history of many culinary traditions and we ought to learn to appreciate them without emotional baggage or provincial bias.
Original entry: See link at top of this post
-
A second idea would be a wikipedia style online dictionary with perhaps, a slightly more strict contribution standard. Objective definitions, genus, differentia....ahhh...so much clarity of thought.. especially if it was all hyperlinked and grouped by genus and differentia. Ill make the first contribution
You should consider contributing to the Objectivism Wiki: http://wiki.objectivismonline.net
-
If you had a $1,000,000 budget to spend within a year, how would you use it to help people discover Objectivism on the web?
There is no commitment or promise entailed in this post, but if have a good suggestion, don't be surprised if your idea is implemented, or someone contacts you for more details.
-
Charging interest is essential to guiding the investment process, which cannot be sustained by charity even it were forthcoming due to the economic calculation problem. (In other words, interest rates are required to direct investments to their most productive use.) Interest-driven investment is essential to economic growth, and therefore to the very existence of industrial civilization. If charging interest were outlawed, industrial societies would quickly collapse due to the inability to efficiently allocate savings.
Loan-sharking (charging high interest rates backed up by the threat of violence) reflects the fact that the loans are being given to creditors with a high risk of default. The need for violence is due to the failure of governments to see this fact, or to adequately enforce the loan contracts (such as with overly lax bankruptcy laws), rather than any immorality inherent in moneylenders. There is no such thing as a single “just” interest rate because interest rates in a free market move towards an equilibrium determined by the time-preferences of individual debtors and lenders.
See Also
Original entry: See link at top of this post
-
Socialists, Capitalists and Moderates on the Facts:
(Reposted from my Facebook.)
Fact: There are poor people.
Socialist: Give me all your money, I will take care of them. Or else.
Capitalist: I can make lots of money from them because they’ll work for less.
Moderate: Give me half your money, so I can pay them not to work, then hire anyone who doesn’t want your money for free. If you make a profit, I’ll take it to pay more poor people to not work.
Fact: People lie.
Socialist: The government ought to teach people how to think and decide who is allowed to say what because people can’t tell lies from truth.
Capitalist: Honesty is just good business. Suing frauds for everything they’ve got is also good business.
Moderate: Say whatever you want, as long as no one is offended. But just in case, a “truth board” will censor anything anyone might find objectionable.
Fact: Some people are more successful than others.
Socialist: Since men are all equal, differences must be due to education and inheritance. We must seize inheritance and other gifts, and replace education with standard government schools. If anyone is still more successful than anyone else in school or in their career, they must have cheated, so we must punish them until they are equal.
Capitalist: Let’s find out what makes people successful so we can make a fortune doing or selling it.
Moderate: It’s OK to be successful as long as you don’t make anyone jealous. You must make those who envy you feel better about their failures by sharing your success with them. Or else.
Fact: Some people don’t like each other.
Socialist: Since men are equal, they must all love each other equally. We must take away anything that make them different or special away from them so that they cannot tell any group apart.
Capitalist: More customers is always good for business. If someone doesn’t want to work with someone for irrational reasons, I will happily take their customers and employees.
Moderate: People ought to learn to get along. Therefore, I will force people who hate each other to live and work together so they can learn to appreciate their differences.
Original entry: See link at top of this post
-
The purpose of the Bill of Rights is to make a fundamental and clear statement about the rights of man. The rights are fundamental because all Congressional acts are subservient to them and clear because, unlike the complex legal code, the basic rights were intended to be known by all.
Having lived through war, the Founders recognized that during war, it is necessary to suspend the normal function of law, as "law" is a concept that is only possible in civil society. But they also recognized the danger of allowing any exception that would lead to the violation of rights. So, they provided strict limits: the President is the Commander in Chief, but he may only act with the consent of Congress, and that consent expires after two years. Furthermore, Congress has the power to issue letters of Marque and Reprisal, which authorizes specific individuals to attack specific groups and bring them to admiralty courts. In both cases, enemies were to be explicitly identified by Congress and enjoyed the protection of the rules of war.
We may argue about how practical these principles are and how earnestly they were followed from the start, but it is worth considering how grossly they are violated in the so-called "war on terror" going on today:
There is no actual war: "Terror" is an emotion, not a group of people. Therefore, no actual "war" (which requires clearly identified parties) is possible. This makes a congressional declaration of war impossible.
There is no enemy: The Constitution provides for Letters of Marque and Reprisal in cases where a war is not possible or desirable. But there is no enemy in the "war on terror." "Al Qaeda" is a quasi-mythical entity which has more existence as an entity in the minds of those who hate/fear and/or admire it than as a physical organization of material command and support. Most of its "followers" are non-violent. Many more advocate violence (not admirable but not an act of war) than practice it. Many of those killed as "terrorists" have only some vague emotional bond with its ideology, others none at all. Certainly there is no physical network in which all such individual can be proven to be involved.
Killings are extra-judicial: The executive branch has created a new category of enemy: the "unlawful combatant." This person is exempt from both civil protections as well as the rules of war. (By the way, the purpose of so-called "rules of war" is not to protect the enemy, as in any conflict at least one party is by definition willing to violate rights. Their purpose is enable peaceful coexistence possible afterward. By contrast, the historical purpose of disregarding the laws of war is to dehumanize the enemy and thus make post-conflict peaceful coexistence impossible.)
No one is off limits: in a war, combatants and non-combatants are clearly defined, and non-combatants are off-limits. While this is never perfectly practiced, at least the enemy and the conflict are clearly identified and so are violations can be exposed. But by identifying an emotion as the enemy, no end to the conflict is possible, and no one is off-limits.
For example, the U.S. government has no problem killing its own citizens without any judicial process for advocating violence outside of the country. That is a crime within U.S. territory, but not an act of war when conducted abroad, so it violates both the legal rights of U.S. citizens and the sovereignty of other nations.
Most "terrorists" tried in the U.S. since 9/11 were actually recruited and provided with their targets and plots by the FBI. They are not guilty of plotting any attack, as the government did that for them, but of the emotion of hate and/or the desire to spread fear in the public. In fact it is the U.S. government that terrorizes the public by finding peaceful but angry people and training them to be terrorists - and then prosecuting them for the same thing.
Guilt is tautological: While the "war on terror" is nominally against "terrorism," it is actually defined not in terms of any particular action, but by the potential emotion created in the (hypothetical) victim. The ultimate result is that anyone may be imprisoned or assassinated for the sole reason that something they thing did scared someone. Until there is a fundamental change to human nature, no end is possible for such a conflict.
Why was Anwar al-Awlaki (and his 16-year old son) killed? Because he is a terrorist. How do we know that? Because he is dead. If he were not guilty, he would not have been assassinated. No legal proof is needed because this is a military decision, and military decisions are outside the realm of civil law. Why is killing unarmed U.S. citizens for their violent rhetoric a military matter? Because we're in a "war on terror" and fear is now an act of war.
Conclusion:
The ultimate purpose of making an emotion the enemy is to take the rules of military action (which are properly outside the realm of civil law) out of the limited context of war and allow them to be applied to anyone. Thus is justified endless war, unchecked expansion of the power and size of the state, and a total end round around Constitutional checks on the State's power to violate individual rights.
-
An observation:
American airlines have the ugliest and the fattest flight attendants! Living in China, I've flown on a number of Asian airlines. The flight stewardesses are usually young and attractive and wear pretty uniforms.
One flight attendant on my last American airline flight was too obese to permit passengers get past her in the aisle! I think this has something to do with anti-discrimination laws in the US.
-
Russia, Sweden and France are not actually socialist - they are mixed economies. From personal experience, I can say that the USSR was socialist and what I said applied to it (I grew up there in the 1980's). The Moscow metro was in fact built for military and propagande reasons.
The Moscow Metro was one of the USSR’s most extravagant architectural projects. Stalin ordered the metro’s artists and architects to design a structure that embodied svet (radiance or brilliance) and svetloe budushchee (a radiant future).[10] With their reflective marble walls, high ceilings and grandiose chandeliers, many Moscow Metro stations have been likened to an “artificial underground sun”.[11] This underground communist paradise[12] reminded its riders that Stalin and his party had delivered something substantial to the people in return for their sacrifices. Most importantly, proletarian labor produced this svetloe budushchee. -
Today Sarah asked me why China is only now building subway systems in all its major cities. I pointed out that non-local mass transit is a capitalist phenomena: totally aside from the fact that you need the wealth generated by capitalism to pay for such systems, there is no need to travel in a socialist economy.
Under socialism, the work unit is the basic unit of social structure. The vast majority of people are born, educated, work, live, and die under a single work unit (a city block, village, or factory). One cannot buy or rent a dwelling (that requires property rights) so one cannot move away from work: the State assigns nearby housing. One cannot change chose or change jobs, so one cannot move work away from home. Housing assignments are hereditary and based on local connections, so it is impossible to move away from relatives: thus no need to travel to see family.
Furthermore, there is no need to travel in order to shop: since all goods are identical commodities sold by identical state-owned stores. There is little demand to travel for tourism either, since all monuments are variations on the same state-promulgated patriotic themes. There is no incentive for entrepreneurs to promote any non-approved attractions – in fact, such activities can be quite dangerous.
Neither is it practical to marry someone across town: the work unit either regulates marriage directly (the work unit leader must approve the marriage) or indirectly: since permission is required to live together and often to have children as well.
Thus, even in places where the State created subway systems prior to the introduction of capitalist elements, they were/are vastly under utilized. In fact, their primary purpose was military defense, not transportation.
Cross-posted from Metablog
Reblogged: Bob the Intelligent Designer creates the Universe
in The Objectivism Meta-Blog Discussion
Posted
Bob the Intelligent Designer creates the Universe:
People who claim that the earth is younger than it is (4.54 ± 0.05 billion years) tend to do so for two reasons: either because they claim the evidence points to it or because it was created recently but made to look as it were old. Considering that all the evidence shows the universe to be 13.75 (± 0.11) billion years, a claim that it is literally millions of times younger requires massive ignorance of obvious observations – such as starlight or canyons cut into bedrock. But let’s consider the other common argument – that the universe was only made to appear young. Perhaps the stars were put in place with the light beams already in progress. That is an interesting philosophical question. What are the implications of an Intelligently Designed universe?
To avoid taking sectarian sides, let’s call our creator Bob the Universe Builder. How would Bob’s universe-creating activity change the way we look at the world? Let’s consider a few scenarios:
Some people believe that Bob “got things started” via the Big Bang or some other mysterious event, and then let things run on their own, much as they would in a purely naturalistic universe. In that case, cosmology would certainly be different, but biology could generally be left alone. This view was plausible until recently, when physicists and cosmologists
Whether the universe was created 13 billion or 6 thousand years or yesterday, we can generalize the creationist argument and make some conclusions about it. Suppose we grant that the universe looks as if it evolved purely by natural laws, but in fact some intelligent agent created it more recently. What would that imply?
Let’s first consider the universe going forward. If the universe is naturalistic from the present onwards (gravity causes rocks to fall, horses don’t become unicorns, etc.), then we can assume that it will remain so in the future. So as far as our understanding of new phenomena around us, the existence of a non-interventionist creator makes no difference. But what about the past? If we assume that all the evidence points to a natural universe (for example the stars look billions of years old, even if they were only put up there yesterday), then it makes no difference whether the universe only looks natural or it really is natural.
Before he could create the universe, Bob would have to calculate the precise makeup of the universe on his computer (which could be his “brain” – the details are irrelevant) to determine the initial state of his Creation. For example, if he creates the universe after the Triassic period, he will have to figure out where to place all the dinosaur fossils. If he wanted to maintain the pretense of age, he could not place them just anywhere. He would have to carefully arrange sedimentary layers to simulate geological processes.
The only way to do this consistently would be to simulate the entire history of the observable universe on his computer. There is no way to shortcut the process. So, for example, if a dinosaur fossil is 200 million years old, Bob must calculate its gravitational effect on every atom and subatomic particle in a light cone expanding to 200 million light years over 200 million years. Alternatively, consider the implication for evolution: even if did not happen in “real” reality, to create a plausible explanation for the variety of life on earth and their fossil predecessors, Bob would have to calculate the form of every ancestor by playing out the life of every plant, animal and bacteria in his “virtual” earth to derive their fossils and their present form. Because the present state of any object in the universe is the total of all the interactions of that object with all the other objects in its sphere of influence, and there is no way to know the sum of all these states without calculating all of them sequentially.
To avoid glaring inconsistencies from being discovered by scientists, Bob would have to calculate the interaction of every entity in the universe with every other entity in its causal sphere to the minutest level of detail. And given the sub-atomic perspective granted by modern science, that detail must be very fine indeed. This would mean that there couldn’t be any observable difference between a simulation of the universe and the real thing. Whether the universe was ever a simulation in someone’s “imagination” or is simulation today makes no observable difference and this has no relevance to our understanding of reality.
My conclusion from this chain of thought is this: There is no essential difference between “Young Earth” Creationism and the more “respectable” theory of Big Bang Creationism. Neither is there any point speculating about a perfectly simulated universe (aka various theories that the universe exists “in the mind of God”.) The only logical conclusion is to regard the universe as always having been purely naturalistic.
Original entry: See link at top of this post