philosophical bits

now poetical bits

2010-08-04T14:54:00.000-07:00

now

poetical bits

one jump away

2010-08-03T11:09:00.000-07:00

ebook reader

2009-10-15T15:48:00.000-07:00

[ http://gizmodo.com/5380942/exclusive-first-photos-of-barnes--nobles-double-screen-e+reader ]

"The layout will feature a black and white e-ink screen like the Kindle has—and a multitouch display like an iPhone underneath. Pow!"

This could be the first ebook device that makes sense.

Where to find the answer to: Is Wikipedia reliable?

2009-10-15T14:59:00.000-07:00

[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia ]

Designers, whiners

2007-04-13T07:32:00.000-07:00

How many designers from the Dallas design district will show up today for the Darwin vs. Design conference at SMU, expecting, with that catchy title, to learn something about their craft? Probably not any.

How many Darwinists from SMU will show up? They are, after all, playfully 'invited' with a Discovery Institute schoolyardtaunt. We'll see. (If they can stay awake though the talks.)

Is it by luck that SMU is the site for Discovery Institute's roadshow and also the leading site for a germinating Bush Institute? Or is it by design?

April 14, 2007

Zachary Moore (of Goosing the Antithesis) is one blogger covering the Discovery Institute promotional event at SMU. First up: Lee Strobel.

As anthropology student Ben Wells writing in the The Daily Campus notes, technically the 'host' of the event is SMU Dedman Law School's Christian Legal Society. (Junk science and junk law—a marriage made in heaven?)

April 15, 2007

In this week's news:
CBS Radio kills Don Imus show over 'ho' slur
Entertainer Don Ho dies at 76

(the Designer is a Joker?)

God's Talk and Archimedes' Point

2007-04-11T09:16:00.000-07:00

From a subversive christian:

As the title of my post on Dawkins explicitly says, my point is more modest: there are better champions of atheism than Dawkins. For all I know, he's an absolute genius when it comes to genetics and evolutionary theory. I'm not competent to judge. But when it comes to Godtalk--not so much.

This is my take as a curious observer:

Dropping the word "God" into a conversation can be like dropping a turd into a party punch bowl.

I think this is generally the case. Even among a party of Godtalkers¹, there is suspicion of the purpose of the entering of the word. Did the person who entered the word do it to make a point about politics, moral codes, or something else? (One example: a Godtalker can introduce the word to say that prohibiting gay marriage is morally wrong with another Godtalker at the same party believing something different. Most everyone is familiar too with how social progressive Christians and social conservative Christians parse and pick Biblical texts differently.) Does Godtalk give the speaker an advantage of authority, or an appearance of authority?

To take a position at an Archimedes' Point² is to take a point outside of a system to achieve an unbiased viewpoint³. What is the Archimedes' Point for Godtalk? One observation could be: Political—or more commonly, sociological—beliefs precede religious beliefs, and hence the Godtalk that results. (The heated Iraq War debate among churchmen is a good example that would support this view.) The Archimedes' Point would be to the place sit back and observe how Godtalking and Godtexts are used in the world.

1. Those who are not Godtalkers themselves—But wait! I have just used the G-word so that makes me one, no? Would I then be a ~~God~~talker?—might want to know: What does it take to be a competent one?
2. This term is derived from Time's Arrow & Archimedes' Point by Huw Price, who uses Archimedes' vantage point outside the earth ("Give me a place to stand and with a lever I will move the whole world") to motivate the idea for standing outside time to understand perplexities of cosmology and quantum mechanics.
3. This may be a progressive process, if one is naturally suspicious that "complete" unbias is achievable.

Religiously scientific

2007-04-07T08:22:00.000-07:00

I'm not enough of a busy bee to be a registered participant in this Easter weekend's blogswarm Blog Against Theocracy 2007, but some aspects of this interest me. For example, The Barefoot Bum asks Is science a religion?. I tend to think this swarm would would say the answer is 'no', but I'm not so sure this is the right answer. So I will proceed with the alternative answer that 'yes', science is a religion.¹

A problem to answering 'no' to the previous question is that then there is distinction between non-religion (which supposedly includes science) and religion, or that there are two 'spheres' that should remain separate. Call the two spheres N and R. The problem with this is that now the R-sphere can claim immunity from criticism from the N-sphere. The R-sphere can continue to perpetrate all sorts of anti-humanistic dogma. (There are countless examples of that, of course.) When R-sphere people enter the N-sphere, you are not allowed to question them. Could N-sphere people, by excluding R-sphere subjects, actually be unwittingly perpetuating R-sphere influence?

Say, on the other hand, that science is a religion. (It just happens to be the God-less religion of naturalism. So what?) So when R-sphere subjects are now included in classrooms, they would not have any protection from critical analysis. (Everything would be a religious subject: Bible, physics, poetry, math, government, woodshop, Buddha, economics, Shakespeare, sex education, ... .) Wouldn't, in effect, the R-sphere disintegrate, no longer being a protected domain?

1. In my attempts to 'deconstruct' the distinction, you can decide which 'side' I am helping. (Although of course I am very sympathetic to Richard Dawkins viewpoint, but don't tell anyone that.)

C.R.A.Z.Y. (review)

2007-04-05T05:56:00.000-07:00

One of my sporadic movie reviews, is here.

Random thoughts

2007-04-03T08:11:00.000-07:00

Materialists today can be divided into two camps: those who view nature as (fundamentally) random and those who view it as "gnarly"[1].

From an upcoming talk by Rudy Rucker:

We're presently in the midst of a new intellectual revolution: were coming to realize that physics, biology, minds and societies all emerge from interacting laws that can be regarded as computations. Everything is a computation, more precisely, everything is a gnarly computation. I use "gnarly" to mean richly complex --- or what Stephen Wolfram calls class-four. A tree's growth, the changes in the weather, the flow of daily news, a person's ever-changing moods --- all of these are gnarly computations*. Although law-like and deterministic, gnarly computations are --- and this is a key point --- inherently unpredictable. The world's mystery is preserved. I'll explain the notion of gnarly computation, focusing on ways in which we can usefully think of biological systems and human societies as computations. The goal is not to deny the complexity of the natural world, but rather to fully appreciate it. One formal result is of particular relevance: the "Principle of Unpredictability," which states that the behaviors of naturally occurring complex processes are formally impossible to predict by any conceivable means. This principle opens up new ways of thinking about biological evolution, about artistic creation, and about human history.

“Life is a Gnarly Computation,” Lecture in Rochester, NY Rochester Institute of Technology, NY, 8 PM Wed, April 4, 2007

* [slides from previous talk]

In fact, one could find some aspect of this divide in ancient Greek atomist philosophy between Democritus and Epicurus:

ii. The Swerve

The second modification of Democritus' views is the addition of the 'swerve.' In addition to the regular tendency of atoms to move downward, Epicurus thinks that occasionally, and at random times, the atoms swerve to the side. One reason for this swerve is that it is needed to explain why there are atomic collisions. The natural tendency of atoms is to fall straight downward, at uniform velocity. If this were the only natural atomic motion, the atoms never would have collided with one another, forming macroscopic bodies. As Lucretius puts it, they would 'fall downward, like drops of rain, through the deep void.' The second reason for thinking that atoms swerve is that a random atomic motion is needed to preserve human freedom and 'break the bonds of fate,' as Lucretius says. If the laws of atomic motion are deterministic, then the past positions of the atoms in the universe, plus these laws, determine everything that will occur, including human action. Cicero reports that Epicurus worries that, if it has been true from eternity that, e.g., "Milo will wrestle tomorrow," then presently deliberating about whether to make it true or false would be idle.

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(Also see [2].)

Determinism doesn't mean predicatability, but just because something is unpredicatible doesn't mean it is determistic.

There is one place where determinism is particularly suspect. When one goes to HotBits and begins requesting string of numbers, one is expecting 'truly random' numbers (and not pseudo-random ones). For example, here are some. (These just happen to be expressed as 'bytes'.)

61, 2, 51, 146, 83, 245, 46, 153, 90, 43, 218, 177, 52, 241, 126, 67, 115, 137, 129, 239, 186, 185, 25, 44, 236, 83, 96, 177, 132, 186, 58, 159, 100, 91, 95, 161, 35, 159, 3, 96, 25, 47, 210, 199, 107, 169, 69, 143, 89, 69, 120, 3, 21, 50, 176, 110, 4, 76, 107, 99, 190, 19, 131, 255, 16, 56, 57, 181, 51, 249, 118, 250, 41, 164, 83, 155, 199, 151, 106, 247, 17, 94, 157, 97, 175, 183, 106, 246, 149, 38, 144, 160, 249, 22, 122, 206, 251, 79, 15, 80, 57, 209, 242, 192, 46, 142, 92, 76, 206, 69, 135, 242, 241, 106, 64, 82, 241, 238, 191, 164, 249, 178, 61, 154, 215, 178, 38, 82, 2, 76, 187, 241, 150, 0, 23, 213, 200, 224, 8, 224, 44, 81, 206, 251, 251, 182, 151, 85, 215, 61, 125, 222, 224, 96, 0, 101, 14, 242, 144, 6, 4, 74, 143, 156, 219, 201, 172, 97, 203, 97, 87, 71,106, 109, 194, 77, 31, 120, 44, 233, 96, 108, 45, 154, 121, 169, 245, ...

One can embed a routine in a program to get HotBits as needed. Now if one discovered these 'quantum' numbers were in fact merely unpredictable (defined by a pseudo-random, chaotic process), then one would be in line for a Nobel Prize in Physics.

But is nature inherently random, or is it gnarly? I find it more comforting to accept the former. Otherwise I fear that I (along with everyone else reading this) am just a pawn of Laplace's demon.

1. deterministic, but inherently unpredictable. Also see Wikipedia: Randomness versus unpredicability. I would actually label the 'random' camp materialists, and the 'gnarly' camp quasi-materialists, since quantum randomness seems to have withstood countless experiments. Rudy Rucker in a Sci Fi Weekly interview: Suppose our world is in fact a giant deterministic computation and that we can discover the underlying computational rule, and quantum mechanics be damned.

2. From SpringerLink:

Epicurus on 'Free Volition' and the Atomic Swerve
Jeffrey S. Purinton

Abstract The central thesis of this paper is that Epicurus held that swerves of the constituent atoms of agents'' minds cause the agents'' volitions from the bottom up. De Rerum Natura 2.216-93 is examined at length, and Lucretius is found to be making the following claims: both atoms and macroscopic bodies sometimes swerve as they fall, but so minimally that they are undetectable. Swerves are oblique deviations, not right-angled turns. Swerves must be posited to account both for cosmogonic collisions quite generally and for every "free volition," including those of animals. All volitions are fresh starts of macroscopic motion, caused by that "something in our chests" which later philosophers would call ''the faculty of will.'' Since nothing can come to be from nothing, volitions must be caused from the bottom up by swerves, fresh starts in the mind''s atoms motions caused by the atoms'' inherent swerviness. This is what Lucretius is saying, and what Epicurus had to say in order to defend both libertarianism and atomism. Modern scholars are wrong, then, in rejecting the interpretation of Guissani and Bailey, which was crudely stated, but substantively correct. The rival interpretations of Furley, Fowler, and Englert do not do justice to Epicurus'' libertarianism, and that of Sedley does not do justice to his atomism, which entails universal bottom-up causation. Epicurus did not himself draw much attention to his positive doctrine of the swerve, preferring to emphasize the untenability of the deterministic alternative. The notoriety of the doctrine in Cicero''s day is due primarily to Chrysippus, who insisted that swerves cannot occur, since they would be "uncaused" motions, and secondarily to Carneades and Zeno of Sidon.

Sweet Jesus

2007-03-31T12:17:00.000-07:00

The Associated Press - A planned Holy Week exhibition of a nude, anatomically correct chocolate sculpture of Jesus Christ was canceled Friday after Cardinal Edward Egan and other outraged Catholics complained ...

more at ABC News

STATEMENT OF CARDINAL EGAN ON JESUS "STATUE"

March 30, 2007

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: MARCH 30, 2007

STATEMENT OF CARDINAL EGAN, ARCHBISHOP OF NEW YORK

"The media have reported that a so-called "work of art," manifestly intended to offend the Christians of our community, will be displayed during Holy Week in the Roger Smith Hotel in Manhattan. It is a scandalous carving of Jesus Christ allegedly made out of chocolate. What the Roger Smith Hotel would hope to achieve by this sickening display, no one seems to know. The Catholic community is alerted to this offense of our faith and sensitivities. This is something we will not forget."

From ABC News - The hotel and the gallery were overrun Thursday with angry phone calls and e-mails about the exhibit. Semler said the calls included death threats over the work of artist Cosimo Cavallaro, who was described as disappointed by the decision to cancel the display.

"In this situation, the hotel couldn't continue to be supportive because of a fear for their own safety," Semler said.

The troubling aspect of this was how Cardinal Egan's (as a Catholic 'authority' figure) 'alert' contributed directly to the atmosphere leading to death threats. So much for his (and the Catholic Church's) moral code. (Again.)

But I'm all in favor of Cardinal Eqan quitting his job and becoming an art critic.

Or perhaps:
"Civilization will not attain to its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on
the last priest." - Émile Zola

April 2, 2007

For a liberal Christian perpective, see Jesus penis.