My family shared this article with me and, for once, it was actually relevant:
http://theweek.com/article/index/226625/the-rise-of-atheism-in-america
Until now, I had been somewhat dismissive towards “unrealistic” thought experiments like the trolley problem. It turned out I was wrong. I had been wrong the whole time.
Panama: Village of the damned (per Aljazeera English)
They are not unrealistic — at least not all of them. They just don’t happen around us, in our daily life. Had I not been interested in issues regarding indigenous people, I would never notice what’s going on in Panama, or a similar situation regarding Belo Monte Dam in Brazil.
For now, let’s give the decision maker the maximal benefit of doubt. Say it is indeed for the good of many, not a whole bunch of shady business of corruption. Let’s also assume that indigenous people do not unconditionally own their land, river, and forest (to be honest, a fairly strong assumption already). Even then, the issue is not a few people affecting “the rights of the rest of the people”, as minister Jorge Ricardo Fabrega trying to portrait, or “needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few”, as one commentator put it. It’s simply not true that everyone is affected equally in this case. The indigenous people would permanently lose their habitat, along with their way of life. Unlike the modern people who can live essentially anywhere as long as they have money and speak the language, relocating indigenous people alone could be difficult and relocating their culture could be outright impossible: that would be the degree of harm on the few. The degree of benefit on the many would be more plentiful and cheaper energy (again, assuming that the benefit does transfer to the general public). What would be the implications? Would it be more like premature baby getting proper neonatal care, or more like people enjoying air conditioner 24/7 in the summer, instead of fan? Moreover, if the panamanians know the human cost behind the cheap electricity, would they still want it along with the guilt?
I do not exclude the possibility that after proper cost-benefit analysis, dam construction is indeed the right thing to do. But even in that case, it’s obvious that the indigenous people should be heavily compensated/accommodated. In this case, I don’t quite mind indigenous people talking about dios/deus (Spanish/Portuguese for god). What really makes me wince is when that minister says it’s about “rights”. Too many people are flinging all kinds of rhetorics, while too few people have the proper framework to think about these issues.
JDN 2456028 EDT 09:33
“Lying is wrong in all circumstances, even to save someone’s life.”
“We may eat retarded orphans.”
“The problem with Stalin was his inefficiency.”
“Taxation is slavery.”
“Anyone who doesn’t give the majority of their income to UNICEF is a murderer.”
“Under patriarchy, all heterosexuality is tantamount to rape.”
“Accelerating the Singularity is far more important than saving lives today.”
These are just a sample of the weird, extremist, and even appalling conclusions that I have heard people draw as a result of moral theorizing. It’s remarkably easy to start with premises that seem entirely plausible, carry them down a chain of reasoning that seems logically unassailable, and come out with something that is completely absurd and immoral. (Indeed, the real challenge seems to be carrying through a moral argument that doesn’t come out absurd and immoral.) Additionally, we have the finding that ethics books are most likely to be stolen from libraries, and of course the various works of John Haidt suggesting that many of our moral attitudes are largely impervious to reason. (Haidt takes this so far as to say that all of our moral attitudes are completely impervious to reason, which is why he is wrong. But it’s hard to listen to the rantings of a racist, a misogynist, or a global-warming denier and think, “Humans are so rational and sensitive to evidence!”)
It would be tempting, therefore, to abandon moral theorizing entirely. We could just rely on our intuitive judgments and never have to think about the underlying theory. Indeed, it could be argued that we already have done so, if whenever our arguments come out to something counter-intuitive we abandon those arguments. Doesn’t that mean we are really slaves to our intuitions?
But no, we cannot afford to do this. We owe the greatest achievements in human history precisely to moral theorizing. It is because of moral theorizing that we now let women and racial minorities vote; it is because of moral theorizing that we abandoned theocratic monarchy and replaced it with representative democracy. (Saudi Arabia and Iran did not get the memo.) It is because of moral theorizing that gay rights is now becoming mainstream and we are on the verge of a new paradigm shift in animal rights—in a few generations it will be as unthinkable for most of us to eat meat as it is unthinkable to us now to sell Black people as property. Nothing could ever be more important than knowing and doing what is right.
I figured for some time that theism is more prevalent among certain types of scientists than others. Just from a layman’s standpoint, some science fields involve different modes of thinking than others. One field may involve heavy memorization and careful hands when performing experiments while another field may be more concerned with raw logic than anything else. Assuming that most scientists are working in fields that are most compatible with the way they think, this should translate to different rates of theism among those in different sciences as well.
With this thought nagging me, I decided that it was time to take a look at research already done on this to see if my conclusion has some basis in truth. Intuitively, I believed that (among the natural sciences, at least) chemists would have high rates of theism compared to other scientists. I came to this conclusion because chemistry generally doesn’t concern itself with anything that could indirectly relate to the philosophical. With such a top-down view, I believed that this would prevent a religious chemistry researcher’s belief from contradicting with their work. (Also, from an anecdotal standpoint, I’ve come across a higher percentage of people working in Chemistry who were devout Christians than in other sciences.)
So enough of my speculation, and on to the description of articles I looked through. It wasn’t completely exhaustive by any means (only found three studies so far). The second study listed is under a paywall, so if you want to read that paper, let me know and I will give a link to it. In addition, feel free to ask about anything that needs clarification.
Our group historian and avid YouTuber, Monica Harmsen (aka LittleKropotkin), uploaded a new video today. Check it out!
Also be sure to check out her blog and other videos.
In America, we live in a society dominated by screens. Everything is now online. If you want a pizza, order it online. If you want a video game, order it online. If you want a Russian Bride, we have those online too. Our lives are starting to revolve more and more around virtual interactions and wireless relationships. We are starting to lose the ability to communicate with each other. Now, don’t get me wrong, I think the internet is an incredible thing. it has changed our lives for the better in so many ways. We are able to access information so easily, we basically have encyclopedias in our pockets. We socialize, work, and play online as well. It is a wonderful tool that is constantly pushing human society forward.
On the other hand, with this power, people forget the internet is a place where consequences exist. The internet is a changing place now where anonymity is becoming harder and harder to maintain. This fact has pro’s and con’s that I don’t wish to get into here. But, the truth is, we are becoming more and more responsible for the things we say and do online. Whether you believe it or not, the things you say online will have consequences. The things you say online will be read by other people, and depending on what you say, your reputation may become tarnished or even destroyed. For some reason, people tend to be much braver behind a computer screen than they are in reality. The things people say behind a computer screen to someone are things they would never have the courage to say in real life. And again, there are pros and cons with this fact. As I get older I begin to realize that I am accountable for everything that comes out of my mouth, whether it is a conversation with someone else, or just a simple facebook status. I also realize that everyone else is also accountable for their statements. As an adult, if I have problems with another adult, I address them directly and in person. I value passive aggression in the same way as I value the tooth fairy, not at all. Getting to the moral of the story, be very careful of what you say on the internet, especially is you are saying harmful things. Because eventually someone will read those statements and they will not be happy. In addition, we are all adults here, we should not be saying things on the internet that we would not say in real life. I just want people to stop hiding behind computer screens, come out and talk to each other. You know, like the good old days!
I hope you enjoyed my first blog post!!!
JDN 2456012 EDT 14:28.
It was not a total success, I would say. The bus was remarkably cheap, but you get what you pay for—not nearly enough legroom, a schedule that didn’t allow us any time in DC aside from the rally, no wifi access, and a temperature control system that made the front of the bus cold while the back was hot. The result was mass sleep deprivation; by the power vested in me by diphenhydramine I was able to get at least some sleep, but still by the time I got home the one thing I most wanted to do was sleep (and I did so, for about 8 hours). Buses are also quite a bit harder to sleep on than airplanes, because roads are full of bumps, lights, and competing vehicles while airspace is typically clear and smooth.
The rally itself was pretty good. The rain caused a few problems, but wasn’t nearly as bad as it might have been. (If Thor frowned upon our proceedings, he’s getting lazy in his old age.) Depending on your individual tolerance for sogginess, you could have watched most of the rally without an umbrella or poncho. News outlets have estimated the attendance at about 30,000 people, which is respectable but not particularly impressive.
We didn’t have a schedule—indeed, there were no printed schedules made, only an app made available for smartphones. In principle this seems ecologically sound; in practice a lot of people don’t yet have phones with the requisite capabilities. If I’d thought ahead, I would have brought my own printed copy of the schedule posted online. Even worse, the rally didn’t strictly follow the schedule; it started out very well aligned and gradually deviated over the course of the day. This is to be expected to some extent; but as the whole rally went from 10 to 6 with no breaks and our bus arrived at 10 and left at 7, this meant that either you never ate or visited DC, or you missed part of the rally without really knowing which parts you were going to miss.
Why don’t people trust atheists? Clearly, you might say, they have some mistaken notion that only the fear of God can be a foundation of good behavior. Atheists, as a whole, are about as trustworthy as any other group of people (perhaps more so). Surely it’s just ignorance of the facts? But I submit that the situation is more complex. Continue Reading »
A review of Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter
JDN 2456008 EDT 12:09.
Like I Am A Strange Loop only more so, Godel, Escher, Bach is a very uneven work.
On the one hand, Hofstadter is a very brilliant man, and he makes connections between formal logic, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and even genetics that are at once ground-breaking and (in hindsight) obviously correct. GEB makes you realize that it may not be a coincidence that DNA, Godel’s theorems, and the Turing test were discovered in the same generation—indeed, it may not simply be that technology had reached a critical point, but rather that there is a fundamental unity between formal logic, computers, and self-replication, which makes it essential that you will either understand them all or you will understand none of them.
On the other hand, GEB is filled with idiotic puns and wordplay that build on each other and get more and more grating as the book goes on (“strand” backwards becomes “DNA rapid-transit system”, etc.), and it often digresses into fuzzy-headed Zen mysticism (the two are combined when “MU-system monstrosity” becomes “MUMON”). Worst of all, between each chapter and the next there is a long, blathering dialogue between absurd, anachronistic characters that is apparently supposed to illuminate the topics of the next chapter, but in my experience only served to bore and frustrate. (Achilles is at one point kidnapped by a helicopter; that should give you a sense of how bizarre these dialogues become.) Hofstadter loves to draw diagrams, and while a few of them are genuinely helpful, most of them largely serve to fill space. He loves to talk about different levels of analysis, different scales of reduction (and so do I); but then in several of his diagrams he “illustrates” this by making larger words out of collections of smaller words. If he did this once, I could accept it; twice, I could forgive. But this happens at least five times over the course of the book, and by then it’s simply annoying.
JDN 2456002 EDT 19:09.
My radical proposal: Pay them more.
The basic reason is thus: When you replace workers by robots, you do so because the robots are more efficient—they produce more goods for the same cost. Hence, your company ends up with more goods, and hence, if you continue to pay your workers the same share, you’ll end up paying them more in absolute amount.
