We're All Wrong On This Bus

In this instance, I will link, because while I may disagree, the comic is funny.

The relevant text, as usual:

No matter who (if anyone) is correct in their beliefs about a deity or deities and the nature of any afterlife that may or may not exist, at least two-thirds of humanity is wrong.

At the very least. The actual number of people who are wrong in their beliefs about such things may well be significantly closer to 100% than that.

At any rate, no matter what the afterlife is (or is not), it's going to be acutely embarrassing for most of humanity.

This quotation typifies the problem I have with religion, or organized atheism, or any number of opinion/belief-systems. Because to some extent, it's true. If some people are right, well, a lot of us are going to be wrong, me in particular. If fundamentalists of any stripe are right, then anyone who's not right with them is wrong.

Obviously (well, I hope it's obvious), this is a bit of a tautology, because what I'm essentially saying is that if one isn't right, one is wrong. And logically, that would seem to be true; proof implies proof, and all things disproved make up the set of disproved things. I won't point out the problems with this statement, but from a basic standpoint, being wrong implies not being right, therefore all those people who are not right must be wrong.

Leaving aside logic, because we're talking about axiom and thus logic has very little to offer, I certainly hope that those people who hold the belief that their beliefs are right and all others are wrong... are not right in their beliefs, at least the belief previously stated. Which brings us to our second issue: the incompatibility of belief. Many people, in fact I think probably a majority of people, good or not, believe that differing belief systems are mutually incompatible, and thus we'll wind up, when the universe comes to an end, with a lot of people being wrong in their beliefs and being embarrassed (well, embarrassed if they're lucky).

Which is what gives so many people a hard time with belief. Either they feel that they must save others from this sorry fate of being wrong when the angelic choir rings down the curtain, or they are paralyzed by indecision, not wanting to pick a belief in fear that they might, as seems likely, be wrong. It seems like a crap-shoot to a lot of people: there's probably some correct religion or ethos, but which it is won't be certain until Judgment Day, when SkyNet kills us all (yes, I am making that joke). I think this explains the religious attitude of a lot of people, honestly.

And it's not just religion; atheists seem to feel that they will be right, and thus anyone who believes in God (Gods, divine power, what have you) will be wrong. The word is dualism, either one way or the other, and ne'er the twain shall meet. We don't hold with it in morality any more, but a lot of people seem to hold fast to it, of whatever stripe, when it comes to belief in general. Either you're with us, or agin' us. The attitude has been satirized by numerous people ("Yes, the Mormons was the correct answer."), and perhaps the above quotation is an example of this, although if it is, it's not good satire.

Well guess what? Maybe we're all wrong. Maybe every single being that professes an opinion on this subject in the Universe and all parallel universes is wrong. Maybe, being real, we cannot form the proper opinion on something which is, for all intents and purposes, surreal, ab-real, ur-real, something other than what everything else is. Maybe it's Gödel, maybe it's Heisenberg or Schrödinger. Or maybe it's something else completely. You can be scared of that if you want.

Or maybe, and I consider this far more likely, nobody's wrong. The above quote assumed that there is one answer. Maybe it's not multiple choice. I'm not saying, "Oh, tolerance, yay!" I'm just positing that maybe that's the thing to bet on in the Pascal sense, because if everyone is right, then I'm right, and really, what do I lose by someone else being right too? I'm not going to be bitter. Why should I try to convert people from their beliefs, if those beliefs don't really harm me, and seriously, how does someone not believing in an afterlife, or believing in one, harm me?

Again, this is not to say that I think that belief should be allowed to ruin life on earth, just because you happen to believe that God wants us all, right now, so you're going to blow up the world. But I hope that, when you die, you get what you want, whatever that is. I hope we're all right about it.

Morals

I'm going to go fairly heavy on philosophy here for a minute, but I'm basically only going to ask questions, because I don't know the answer. Sure, I could offer an answer, but I might not agree with myself a few minutes after.

I was reading something about atheism vs. theism and the subject of morals, where the author was positing that atheists get their moral compass from within, that atheists are really very moral people, and that they have to think about their morals perhaps even more than a religious person might. Now I'm not going to argue with any of that. I may be misstating this person's position, and I'm not telling you who it was or quoting it, because I don't really care about the statements themselves. But they got me to thinking.

In all the argument about whether people are moral or not, I don't think anyone thinks about why this is a problem. In other words, whether you get your morals from God or from introspection, why are you moral?

Some of religious bent might answer that one is moral because of God, and only by being moral can one attain salvation, or whatever benefit of the religion is offered. Some people act morally because of fear, or some other motivation having less to do with the desire to be moral and more to do with avoiding the consequences of immorality. Some people argue about the evolution of moral behavior from a sociological standpoint, or even a genetic standpoint. You can talk game theory, you can talk philosophy, you can talk simple human feeling.

But why don't we do bad things, even when we can get away with them, even if there are no repercussions. And I mean "no repercussions;" no guilt, no lingering unpleasantness, no nothing. Is the desire to avoid our conscience sufficient to keep us moral, and if so, how is that any different from fearing any other result of immorality? How does subjective morality play into it? Is subjective morality really morality at all?

I'd like to ask an atheist why they are moral. I don't mean that in any insulting sense, but why are people who don't believe in any higher power moral? Why do they listen to that inner compass? It's not that I expect a better or worse answer than if I were to ask a theist, it's simply that I don't know. And I'd wager that a lot of people don't know either. "I'm good because it's good to be good," is circular reasoning. If morality is moral, then being moral because of morality... yeah, you get the point.

So think about it: why are you a moral person? Not, "Are you a moral person?" but why. I'm willing to give anyone a right to their own morality for the purposes of this discussion. Why do you listen to the angel on your shoulder? Why do you follow the compass? Why do you pay attention to God? Why are you moral?

To Whom Does Art Belong?

I know, I swear up and down that I'm not simply going to link to other sites and comment, but I just keep seeing things which inspire commentary, and lord knows I'm not going to comment on the other site, for reasons of my own sanity. In this case, I really don't want to talk about the news item so much as I want to talk about a bit of philosophical tripe which the Internet seems to be inspiring in people.

The relevant article is here.

The relevant text is:

"[The National Portrait Gallery] honestly think the paintings belong to them rather than to us," [Wikipedia volunteer David Gerard] wrote.

That attitude pretty much typifies the attitude of a lot of people on the Internet. Everyone believes that content, data, art, what have you, belongs to the public, and only the public should own it or profit from it. I confess that this point of view has its moments of seduction: for instance, Star Wars ("Free Hat! Free Hat!"), or those times when you really want to consume some form of data for free, but it's not currently free.

But sadly, David Gerard is wrong. The paintings do belong to them rather than us. Someone owns those paintings, whether it be the gallery or some other person who has loaned their paintings to the gallery. The image that the artist created may be locked in our collective artistic memories, never to be returned, but the physical canvas is owned by someone. It's not that hard a concept to understand.

Content isn't free. I'm not sure it ever should be. There are, as I said, tempting moments when I thing, "Gee, wouldn't it be nice if everything was free," but that's just my inner thief talking. If anything, artists should retain more ownership of their works than they currently do. If said artists want to relinquish ownership to the public and make those things free, that's their business. But just because the artist no longer owns their art, that doesn't mean that it's free or that no one owns it.

These are the facts of the matter. Wikipedia volunteers can believe anything they like, but the facts are that the paintings are owned by someone, and it's not "the people." That someone may, for whatever reason (goodness of heart or money-grubbing capitalism), have provided these paintings to be viewed by people, but that doesn't change the ownership of the paintings, just as going to see a movie in the theater doesn't make one part-owner of that movie, or reading a book in the library doesn't make one part-copyright-holder of that text. Nothing is free. Either you pay for it directly or indirectly.

We do not live in a Utopian paradise of free data and share-and-share-alike, where everything is open-source and there is no world hunger. We don't. Get over yourselves.

Surely They Aren't Serious

No, I'm not calling you Shirley. I try not to spend all my time simply linking and commenting (and I also try not to make bad jokes with movie references) but in this case, I thought I would let you in on my process.

It started with this article on the BBC which, based on its headline (Woman held for noisy sex 'breach'), I just had to see. I do occasionally succumb to the desire for pulp news and silliness. The relevant portions:

Earlier this month [the woman in question] was given a four-year Asbo banning her from making excessive noise anywhere in England.

But she appeared in court on Monday, charged with three breaches of her Asbo in just 10 days.

And I thought, "Huh, banning someone from making excessive noise, that's pretty silly. Anywhere in England, eh? Can she still travel to Scotland and have loud sex? The BBC said England, not Great Britain or the UK. I wonder what an Asbo is." You're no doubt wondering that last bit yourself, if you don't happen to come from the UK.

Enter Wikipedia, source of all things knowable and editable. For those who don't care to read the full article, Asbo stands for "Anti-Social Behaviour Order," and is basically the British way of keeping people from committing various petty crimes or disturbances of the peace. I'm not really interested in saying that they're a good or bad idea; I think they should speak for themselves. For instance, to quote Wikipedia, here are some things which can earn you an Asbo:

• Vandalism
• Theft
• Abusive behavior
• Harassment
• Flyposting (putting up flyers in illegal places)
• Organizing illegal raves
• Begging
• Whistling
• Suicide attempts

Just some. Certainly not all, because making excessive noise isn't on that list. It reminds one rather of the Old West: "Son, we'd better not see you whistlin' 'round these parts again."

I should like to strongly emphasize that I am in no way saying that the UK is alone in this type of civil law; the US has acres of strange civil codes, as, I'm sure, do many other countries. I just think some of them are... a little silly. I could go through the list, but I'd rather let Wikipedia give some further amusing examples.

• Two teenage boys from east Manchester forbidden to wear one golf glove.
• A 17-year-old forbidden to use the word "grass" as a term of abuse in order to threaten people.
• A 15-year-old forbidden to play football in his street.
• An 18-year-old male was banned from congregating with more than three youths, and subsequently arrested when he entered a very popular youth club (The subject scheduled for that day was how to deal with anti-social behaviour).
• The first farmer to be given an ASBO was instructed to keep his geese and pigs from damaging his neighbour's property.
• The oldest recipient of an ASBO, an 87-year-old man who was abusive to his neighbours.
• The youngest person to be threatened with an ASBO, a two-year-old boy accused of kicking a football at windows over a fence 7 feet (2 m) high and verbally abusing residents when asked to stop. This, however, turned out to be a police error.

Actually, what's really amusing is that, in the previous quote, "geese" and "pigs" were considered important enough to be linked to other Wikipedia articles about, you guessed it, geese and pigs. Ah, the wonders of technology.

Yep, this is just silly. Much of life is. Learn to revel in it.

Fascism

In another of my series on arguments you shouldn't bother to have, let's consider fascism.

If someone calls someone or something else "fascist," they are too stupid to bother arguing with.

Most people don't know what fascism is. It's like calling someone a Nazi, or a socialist, or a communist, or any one of a hundred political epithets with which one may attempt to tar one's opponent. People have a basic understanding that fascism is bad and has something to do with government, so using it turns on those two circuits in everyone's brain. And then they either cheer or disagree, without really knowing what they're cheering for or disagreeing with.

But there's really no point in trying to argue; that's like arguing that something isn't spicy. The circuit got turned on in the brain, and thus, "fascism." Never mind that calling someone a fascist is silly unless they are seriously espousing a set of political doctrines which jive with the tenets of fascism. Because the person who uses the word doesn't know what the word means, most likely (unless they're in history class talking about Mussolini, and even then, they may not know what the word means), they're just using the word to mean "politically bad."

Even if that weren't true, it's a point of belief with most people who use the word. Their opponent is a fascist, and arguing that they don't know what "fascist" means is like arguing with someone about God: it's a general opinion of negativity.

I'm beginning to feel the same way about "terrorist," except there's some point in arguing that, because terrorist is something which has more far-reaching repercussions than what is, essentially, schoolyard taunting. Perhaps at some point I'll waste my time trying to point out that terrorism is not the killing of occupying forces, or talking about how terrorism is used for pretty much everything bad that happens these days, or how it's being retroactively applied to situations in the past which have as much to do with terrorism as the Internet has to do with a blank piece of paper. It would be a waste of my time, because for a lot of people, terrorism is just another word meaning "bad and having to do with death and the military."

Watch those lazy reaction words. Don't argue with their meanings. In fact, you probably shouldn't argue at all with people who use them. They're too stupid to bother with.

Yes, I'm being misanthropic. I don't believe that everyone who uses the word "fascist" is too stupid. Some of them know darn well what they're doing, in which case they're too evil to argue with. I'm addressing these comments mostly to people on the Internet, where "fascist" gets bandied about so often, you'd think every comment section was a discussion of Franco-Era Spain. It's not, and I wouldn't be surprised if discussions on the Internet of Franco-Era Spain have people calling other people Nazis, an even stupider epithet. At least fascism is a system of government. It's like going around calling people Baathists... wait, never mind, I'm sure people do that too.

Blank

Dear Sir Tim Berners-Lee,

The Internet is not a piece of paper.

Sincerely, Me.

The internet, said Sir Tim, should be like a blank piece of paper. Just as governments and companies cannot police what people write or draw on that sheet of paper so they should not be restricted from putting the web to their own uses.

"The canvas should be blank," he said

Well, we can argue about what the Internet "should" be until the cows come home, get milked, and die of old age. However, to say that the Internet should be like a blank piece of paper is like saying that books should include video: the two are fundamentally different.

Consider: certainly, you can obtain a blank piece of paper and write or draw almost anything you want on it. Almost anything. You can write a screed about how you're going to kill the President (or some other leader), you can tell blatant lies about people, places, or products, you can do almost anything. And it's true, the government cannot, nor should it be able to, control what it is you write, within reason.

But consider: how is taking a picture and printing it on a sheet of blank paper any different from drawing or writing on that sheet? It isn't. You've made a choice of something to put on the paper, you didn't use anyone else's information, and now the image is on the paper as surely as if you were the greatest artist in the history of humankind and you painted on that blank "canvas" in photo-realistic detail. But guess what: if you take a picture of a naked child and print it on the blank paper, you're doing something illegal. Possession of that sheet of paper, even if you never show it to anyone else, is illegal. That's putting that sheet of paper "to [your] own uses." But the government can police that, and I think most people would agree that they should.

There are numerous other examples I could make, demonstrating various different things one could write or draw (or some form of that) on a piece of blank paper which the government would police. But that would be beside the point, because the Internet isn't like a blank piece of paper. It's like a blank piece of paper that you mail to the rest of the world. It's a poster on the wall. It's a giant billboard which anyone can see. And you'd better believe that there are things you can't put on a piece of paper and then display to the world. There are lots of laws governing what you can and can't write in things you show the world, things you can and can't share with others, even if possessing them isn't illegal.

Now again, we could argue that this shouldn't be so, that information should be totally free. Child pornography should then be legal to own or transmit, as long as you didn't create it (the creation being what harms the child). It's not an easy point to argue, and I don't think Sir Tim is arguing that there should be no policing of the Internet, just that perhaps it should be limited. In fact, that's exactly what he's arguing: "While governments do need some powers to police unacceptable uses of the web; limits should be placed on these powers, he said." But using a piece of paper as a comparison for the Internet is just plain incorrect. Plus, it wouldn't even be correct if it were correct (wrap your heads around that one). And that's kind of odd, coming from the man who invented the Web.

The Internet is public space. Comparing it to a blank piece of paper is at best a gross oversimplification, and at worst disingenuous.

What's Your Definition?

So despite the silliness raised in this article (which is about the fact that apparently men are redundant now that scientists can produce sperm in the lab from female stem cells), there's something to be said in the defense of the idea. But what it comes down to is one's definition of parthenogenesis.

Some people seem to think that, if a man isn't involved, a pregnancy is parthenogenesis. Well, by one definition, that's true. Princeton seems to feel that one definition is "human conception without fertilization by a man." Of course, by that definition, a "virgin birth" would be parthenogenetic, but so would cloning, even if (and this is the tricky part) the cloned person was a man, because there was no fertilization by a man involved. The clone was simply created.

At issue is the comment: "This is really parthenogenesis, or procreation by one sex alone. This might be good for amoebas, but it is not good for human beings, and certainly not good for the children who come about by such a process." Because if you define parthenogenesis as asexual, as several dictionaries do, then this makes sense, because asexual reproduction doesn't offer the benefits of diversity (which, despite what anyone else might say, is the reason we have sex). And for amoebas, that's fine, but not for humans.

But the problem is, generating sperm from stem-cells isn't asexual at all. If you still use sperm and egg to produce fetus, no matter where you get the sperm from, you're doing sexual reproduction. These people are worried about cloning, which is asexual, or true parthenogenesis, where a female can give birth without sex to what is, essentially, a clone of the mother. Turkeys do it, supposedly. It's a little more complicated than simply dividing in two down the middle, as some asexual reproduction does, but it's still asexual.

Is creating sperm from female tissue really parthenogenesis? It depends on your definition. But would it be a concern (for the above-stated reason) if it were parthenogenesis? No, no more than our current ability to have sex. Because the only problem with asexual reproduction is insufficient genetic diversity, and the only way that's going to happen is if you either fertilize yourself, or someone closely related to you. And except for the self-fertilization which was, up until now, impossible, there are laws and taboos against incest which pretty much take care of it (no, I'm not interested in debating the morality of this, or whether incest is really so bad. From a diversity standpoint, it's not as diverse).

The other thing is that, even self-fertilizing, you're not going to get a clone. For one thing, while a woman self-fertilizing would be guaranteed a woman, a man would not be guaranteed a man (barring some genetic-engineering intervention, anyway, and despite the fact that, currently, only women can do it). Study Mendel and you'll see that, in a situation where an individual has a dominant and recessive gene, self-pollenization means that the offspring will not necessarily be a copy of the parent. I'm not going to get into that here. Suffice to say that, if you're looking to clone yourself, self-fertilization is not the most efficient way to do it, and you'd have to do considerably genetic tinkering to make sure.

Be that as it may, the long and the short of it is that two women being able to conceive is no more dangerous, from a genetic-diversity standpoint, than a man and a woman. Are men obsolete? Dunno. Would the elimination of men (or at least the reduction of their numbers) cause problems beyond genetic diversity? Dunno. Is that quote about parthenogenesis fear-mongering? Possibly. Is it incorrect? Probably. Are people scared about lesbians being able to have children? Probably. Are you bored now? Definitely.

Do What You Must Do and Do It Well

Dear Google,

It's your turn. I've bashed Microsoft for this, and now I'm going to bash you, based on your new and exciting desire to become all things to all people.

Why can't you just do one thing well?

Seriously, did the world really need yet another operating system, or browser? Did the world need yet another email provider? In point of fact, what the world needs from you is a decent search engine.

But no, that wouldn't be growth. I'll admit, I like certain other of your offerings. I'm using one right now. But really, innovation in searching technology would be nice, rather than, like certain other companies whose initials are M.S. (well, not really, because Microsoft should only have the initial "M."), spreading yourself over everything, trying to make everyone use your products for every purpose... branding life, as it were.

It's exactly what I don't like about Macs; it's all Mac. Obviously, that's not totally true, nor is it true that Google or Microsoft will do everything... yet. And I understand the appeal of getting all your services from one company which, one assumes, would make its various services play nicely together (but that assumption is repeatedly challenged by reality). But really, what happened to doing one thing and doing it well? It doesn't have to be "one" thing, but finding one's niche, so to speak, rather than becoming a behemoth, spanning everything but never making any one thing quite as well as one might if one simply concentrated on a limited subset of "all things."

Basically, Google, your "one thing" was search, which then could reasonably grow to encompass a certain subset of the web experience. But an operating system? You'll be making processors next.

Love,

Someone who casually quotes Bob Dylan