Ignoring the dystopia

Instead of committing any words to my own novel, I spent the last month or so reading Pride and Prejudice.  It was research, I say.  Research!

Pride and Prejudice of course takes place in the dystopia that is Georgian England.  True to the dystopian genre, there are multiple fantastical constructs which are slowly introduced to a horrified audience.  For instance, there's the idea of an "entail".  I don't really get the purpose of it, but apparently it's a restriction on whether an estate can be passed on in your will.  And then there's "elopement" which just means that a woman runs away with her lover.  It doesn't sound like there's anything wrong with that, but within the dystopia it's a horrible thing to do, and a complete disgrace to the entire family.

There are also many neat world-building details.  I like how the servants are always there, but no one ever thinks about them much, because that's just how wealthy people in this universe think.  At the same time, rudeness towards servants signals an unsympathetic character, and kindness towards servants signals a noble character.  That's the only way the lower classes are ever important: in relation to wealthy people.

I also like how we know exactly how many pounds each character is worth.  In Capital in the 21st Century, the great literary critic Thomas Piketty explains that this is because there are relatively low inflation and constant returns on capital.  Thus, an author can list exact money amounts and expect readers decades in the future to have the same understanding of how much it is.*  Jane Austen really put a lot of thought into that one.

*Upon research, I discovered that Piketty's claims are disputed by quantitative literary theorists.

Changing the subject, the other day, my boyfriend and I saw Never Let Me Go, a film based on the book of the same name.  I had read the book and thought the movie was a terrible adaptation.  My boyfriend, however, detested the movie, because of the way it ignored its own dystopia.  Without any spoilers, the movie involves some extremely questionable bioethics, and nobody ever questions it, much less gets angry at the system.  Bioethics simply isn't a theme in the movie.  Instead, bioethics is just a plot device, a metaphor for the brevity of life.

My boyfriend thought the story wasn't very American.  Which figures, since the writer and screenwriter are British.

But actually I think there's something interesting about that idea.  A dystopia where nobody fights the evil of the system, or even notices that it's evil.  Evil is simply there, and the story addresses completely different themes of love and life.

Although come to think of it, maybe that's too trite.  Maybe that describes every story ever.

Pride and Prejudice ignores the evil of its own dystopia, and instead criticizes smaller evils.  Like how some people are so proud, other people are so prejudiced, and some people are so depraved as to join the priesthood, or to elope.  But sometimes those people learn that they were in the wrong, and eventually come to admit it.

I love that there's a classic romance where the central plot is about two people changing their minds about each other.  Changing minds!  What a rational value!  This also implies that the woman in the romance has a mind to be changed.  A romance where the woman has agency?  It feels like the most progressive romance I've known in ages!

Probably the worst part of the book is that the main reason the woman changes her mind is in response to the man's display of financial generosity.  He's so wealthy, and sometimes he sometimes assists other wealthy people who are on the verge of losing their wealthy status!  The main problem with this part is that it reminds us, the readers, of the dystopia which we were so carefully pretending to ignore.

Generally, I'm not a fan of so-called "classic literature", particularly when people praise it as "timeless".  There is no way that I am reading classic works of literature the same way that contemporaries did.  I don't think I should read it that way.  But Jane Austen was a pretty decent writer, and this novel was worth reading.

In praise of the most important relationship

Where much of fiction is devoted to the most tumultous kinds of relationships--those of lovers, family, and enemies--let us never forget that there is another kind of relationship which is much more important, and in fact essential to everyone's daily functioning.  I speak, of course of the stranger.

I am infinitely grateful for all the strangers in my life, all seven billion of them.  I am enriched by the fact that they don't know who I am, and waste no time thinking of me.  The great number of conversations we don't have is a source of great joy.  And it's heartening to think about how much we care about each other, under a thick layer of distant abstraction.  It's a special kind of love, the kind that is tolerable in large quantities.

And yes it is true that I don't mind losing a few strangers, that losing a stranger can even be a happy occasion.  But that's just the kind of relationship that strangership is.  Another way of looking at it is that strangership is such an abundant gift that it's no problem to skim a little off the top to form more mundane relationships.

On the other hand, to lose even a few percent of my strangers, say a hundred million, that would just be unimaginably awful.  It is already difficult to imagine the lives of celebrities, who don't so much lose their strangerships as have them be unrequited.  But I suppose even one-sided strangerships can lead to great rewards.

Indeed, there seems to be a great deal of flexibility in strangers.  While the bread and butter stranger never interacts with you at all, there are many ways that strangers can interact briefly or incidentally.  There are all the people I walk by and don't look at.  There are the people who provide service at stores, restaurants, and banks.  And of course there are many strangers who interact with me online.  Of course, not all these interactions are positive, which is why I'm glad that this is not the default kind of stranger.  But the few strangers who do interact with me make me feel connected, and part of a larger society.

I very much look forward to a life which continues to be filled with so many strangers.  If you are a stranger, thank you!

How masculinity is like a white Christmas

I grew up in Los Angeles, and every winter it would snow--but only in Hollywood in front of the movie cameras.  We Los Angeles kids, we didn't really know what snow was like, but we knew very well it was supposed to snow in winter.  Also: Santa Claus is supposed to exist and kids are supposed to believe in him, even though he doesn't and I didn't.

Masculinity is also featured prominently on the movie screen.  It's about being the protagonist, shooting everything up, and getting the girl in the end.

Sometimes movies show masculinity and snow simultaneously.  From upcoming James Bond movie, Spectre.

If you ask feminists, they talk extensively about toxic masculinity, which is a collection of expectations of men that hurt men.  Men must always want to have sex, they must never show emotion, and they must solve problems with violence.

I have a hard time believing that this masculinity actually exists.  Next you'll tell me that snow is real!  I'll have you know, I grew up near the movie studios and I've seen what their "snow" looks like close up.

So, given that the masculinity we're presented in movies is totally fake and doesn't affect anyone, I'm left wondering what the hell real masculinity is like.

Here's a thing I used to think about men.  Men are not supposed to care how they look.  They are supposed to generate a random number every morning, and use it to select clothes from a nearly identical line-up of unremarkable clothing.  It turns out, this is a total lie.  Apparently, being a man means dressing up in a suit and tie on special occasions.  People pretend that this is a "neutral" costume, like practically not a costume at all!  I find this such a bizarre belief, that I've begun to question whether my own belief in "neutral" clothing might in fact be equally bizarre.

Here's a thing I used to think about manliness.  Being manly means being a jock.  But then it seems really puzzling why geeks, who are like anti-jocks, are made up entirely of men.  Well okay, there are geek women too, but I've been told there are so few of the real ones that it would be economically impossible for geek culture to ever cater to them.  I sure can't see any way out of this paradox, it's as airtight as a whistle.

Here's a thing I used to think about masculinity.  Masculinity means wanting sex, or at least being expected to want sex.  Except... apparently this is not true of Asian-American men?  It's baffling that my whole life I thought I was expected to fit into one stereotype, but apparently I've really been expected to fit into a different one.  Only, since I'm half-Asian, I guess somewhere between those two?  Gee, I'm glad all these expectations are as fake as snow or they would be quite confusing!

One thing I'm sure about is that there's no point in aspiring to be any more masculine than I happen to be already.  It would be like believing in a religion without knowing what the religion believes in.

Five awful things about "God's not Dead"

I saw God's Not Dead, a Christian film that appears to be based on that absurd chain e-mail about the brave Christian student who faces down an atheist professor.  This movie got a 16/100 on metacritic, but still ended up a big box office success.  If you want to know what happens in it without watching it, I recommend this synopsis.

In the world of God's Not Dead, atheists are horrible people who mock their girlfriends in public, abandon people close to them when they're dying, and secretly hate god.  The movie joyously depicts atheists dying by cancer or car accidents, and gloats over their last minute conversions.  Also, all atheist arguments are arguments from authority or assertion (oddly, so are the Christian arguments).

But a lot of that has already been said.  So here I present five things that were awful or bizarre about God's Not Dead that had nothing to do with atheism.

1. The girlfriend from middle school

The main character, Josh Wheaton, mentions that it's his sixth anniversary with his girlfriend.  He's a college freshman.  ...  I suspect the writers didn't think the math through, and just wanted it to seem like they had a long-time commitment.

The six-year commitment makes it all the more devastating when they break up!  Josh's girlfriend demands that he stop trying to challenge his professor, because they need to get good grades so they can go to law school together, like God wants.  Josh stands his ground, so she threatens to break up with him, and then she does.  Wow, how did they stay happy together so long in such an obviously abusive relationship?  Josh, naturally, has no emotional reaction to the breakup whatsoever.

2. A distillation of Muslim stereotypes

Another character, who is utterly unrelated in any way to the protagonist, is Ayisha.  In the presence of her "traditional" Muslim father, she wears what I think is supposed to be a niqab, although it's not remotely accurate.

Her whole plot arc seems to be based on the view that Muslim women wear covers because of direct coercion by male figures in their life, such as their husbands or fathers.  This is pretty much explicit when a student goes up to her and says, "I wish you didn't have to wear that".  Later, when Ayisha converts to Jesus, her father, who loves her very much, beats her and kicks her out.  Gee, I knew these were Muslim stereotypes, but I've never seen them represented so succinctly.

3. The car that won't start

Two Christian pastors are trying to drive... somewhere.  It was explained at some earlier point in the movie, while it was still throwing random characters at us, and I didn't know there was anything worth paying attention to.  But they can't get there because their car won't start.  And then a car rental guy drives a car over to them, and that car won't start either!  And then the scene with the car rental guy is repeated again, for good measure.

Get this: the car rental guy is going to audition for a role in Death of a Salesman.  Why is that relevant?  Who the hell knows?  I don't even understand how he gets to his audition without any transportation.

This whole time I'm thinking, obviously their car doesn't start because God doesn't want them to get on a train that God plans on crashing.  Turns out it's actually because God wants them to convert an atheist and then dance over his grave.  Props to the movie for being unpredictable.

4. That Chinese kid

There's one Chinese student on campus, and he is a visiting student from China.  His entire story arc is that he converts to Christianity, which his family finds inconvenient because maybe the Chinese government won't let his brother visit the US anymore (??).

I am Chinese American, and this is one of the most blatant examples of tokenism I've ever seen.  Couldn't they imagine that some Chinese people actually aren't from China?  It's also suffering from White savior syndrome, wherein a white American male hero rescues a foreigner from his ignorant foreign culture.  I'm pretty sure the Chinese Christian communities are much more effective at converting Chinese people, thanks.

5. The Duck Dynasty cameo

Early in the movie, a character has an interview with the guy from Duck Dynasty.  This served no purpose whatsoever, except to allow some celebrity to spout stuff about Jesus and ducks.  Later I found out from the synopsis that the interview was supposed to be hostile, because the character is an angry blogger.  I totally missed that because the rest of the blogger's story arc is about how she's dying all alone from cancer.

In case you didn't get enough of Duck Dynasty, he makes a second cameo.  For no apparent reason, he shows up at a music concert and encourages everyone to participate in a viral texting campaign (send "God's not dead" to all of your contacts!).  This is, of course, a very good idea, and is well-received by all.

Made in Criticalland

Massimo Pigliucci started a new blog Scientia Salon, which is already bearing fruits.  I enjoyed this essay by Alan Sokal (yes, that Sokal) about academic postmodernists and extreme social constructivists.  In the 80s and 90s there were many such academics claiming that science was entirely based on prejudices.  Interestingly, Sokal claims that they have now backed off from the most extreme views, particularly because they were upset at the way the Bush regime used postmodernism to justify its anti-science policies.

Sokal's primary citation for this is "Why has critique run out of steam? From matters of fact to matters of concern" by sociologist of science Bruno Latour in 2004.  I thought it was worth a read.

 Latour actually says a lot of great, quotable things about critical theory:

What has become of critique when my neighbor in the little Bourbonnais village where I live looks down on me as someone hopelessly naı̈ve because I believe that the United States had been attacked by terrorists? Remember the good old days when university professors could look down on unsophisticated folks because those hillbillies naı̈vely believed in church, motherhood, and apple pie? Things have changed a lot, at least in my village. I am now the one who naı̈vely believes in some facts because I am educated, while the other guys are too unsophisticated to be gullible: “Where have you been? Don’t you know that the Mossad and the CIA did it?” What has become of critique when someone as eminent as Stanley Fish, the “enemy of promises” as Lindsay Waters calls him, believes he defends science studies, my field, by comparing the laws of physics to the rules of baseball? What has become of critique when there is a whole industry denying that the Apollo program landed on the moon? What has become of critique when DARPA uses for its Total Information Awareness Project the Baconian slogan Scientia est potentia? Didn’t I read that somewhere in Michel Foucault? Has knowledge-slash-power been co-opted of late by the National Security Agency?

Of course conspiracy theories are an absurd deformation of our own arguments, but, like weapons smuggled through a fuzzy border to the wrong party, these are our weapons nonetheless. In spite of all the deformations, it is easy to recognize, still burnt in the steel, our trademark: Made in Criticalland.

Latour uses an extended war analogy, although it's not clear who he thinks his enemy is.  It's something something capitalism something.  He talks about reassessing our tools of war as the times change, which seems to really mean changing his epistemology to better fit the conclusions that he had already decided on.  He only knew his epistemology (ie scientific facts are purely social constructs) was wrong when other people used the same epistemology to come to conclusions he didn't like.  But okay, his epistemology was terrible, so it's probably a good thing if he gets rid of it.

A third of a way through the paper, it takes a sudden turn towards the incomprehensible.  I found it so baffling, that my mind could only interpret it as a series of non sequitur jokes.  So I laughed.  I feel the same way I do about many an unwanted commenter on my blog.  "It's not that I disagree with you, it's that I literally don't understand what I would be agreeing or disagreeing with!"

It begins with Latour introducing his solution to critical theory's problem:

What I am going to argue is that the critical mind, if it is to renew itself and be relevant again, is to be found in the cultivation of a stubbornly realist attitude—to speak like William James—but a realism dealing with what I will call matters of concern, not matters of fact.

Curiously, "matters of concern" and "matters of fact" are crucial to Latour's thesis, but they are not immediately defined, nor ever defined.  I can only guess at the definition based on contextual clues scattered throughout the article.

This is immediately followed by a long discussion of Heidegger's distinction between objects and things.  (I can see why Heidegger is famous for being so opaque, even compared to other philosophers.)  A handmade jug is a thing (which is a celebrated category), while a can of Coke is merely an object.  On first glance it sounds like Heidegger is merely conveying his prejudices, his romanticization of handmade objects.  Latour appears to agree.

But rather than dismissing the distinction between objects and things, as I would, Latour argues that objects and things have been complicated in the modern era.  For instance, when the space shuttles Challenger and Columbia had their disasters, they transformed from objects into things.  I don't know what conclusion Latour draws from this, because I cannot make sense of how he describes his conclusion:

My point is thus very simple: things have become Things again, objects have reentered the arena, the Thing, in which they have to be gathered first in order to exist later as what stands apart.

 Latour goes on to describe the current state of critical theory:

We can summarize, I estimate, 90 percent of the contemporary critical scene by the following series of diagrams that fixate the object at only two positions, what I have called the fact position and the fairy position—fact and fairy are etymologically related but I won’t develop this point here. The fairy position is very well known and is used over and over again by many social scientists who associate criticism with antifetishism.

To Latour's credit, he at least immediately defines what the fairy position is, though I don't understand his definition.  I'm not sure why it is necessary to observe the etymological relation between fact and fairy--perhaps in Criticalland, unlike everywhere else, etymology is destiny?

 

 Figure 2: I think that the dark circles represent "facts" and the white circles are "fetishes".  I think the circles on the left might be the "fairy" position, and the ones on the right the "fact" position?  I'm honestly not sure.  This is the first in a series of diagrams, none of which have captions.  I'll spare you from the others.

Latour goes on and on about this.  But to be honest I couldn't read the whole thing, because at this point my palm was in the way.  I'm not saying that Latour's article is nonsense because it's incomprehensible--papers in my own field, condensed matter physics, are also notoriously impenetrable.  But I get the sense that the underlying things being described are rather simple, and that nothing really justifies being so opaque.

Ragequitting is ineffective

I had in mind a post whose central thesis was, "Ragequitting a blog (as a reader) isn't very effective at whatever it's supposed to accomplish."  Ragequitting is when you announce loudly that you're going to stop reading.  This hasn't happened to me recently or anything, I was just thinking about the general phenomenon.

Alas, this will not be a very substantial post, since my argument is too brief.  When you quit reading something for political reasons, the blogger knows all too well that you are vastly outnumbered by people who quit reading for much more mundane reasons.  For example, length.

For my part, I have stopped reading a number of blogs simply because there were too many fluff posts.  I stopped reading Skepchick because I didn't care about their various regular posts.  After many years I stopped reading Bad Astronomy, because of too many posts about... I don't remember exactly.  Nothing political about it, and nothing against those blogs.

I might as well still be at UCLA!

UC Berkeley's atheist/skeptic student group has renamed itself from SANE (Students Advocating a Nonreligious Ethos) to BASS (Berkeley Atheists and Skeptics Society).

This is hilarious for me, because back when I was an undergrad at UCLA, I was president of an atheist/skeptic student group called BASS (Bruin Alliance of Skeptics and Secularists).  No kidding.  I used to blog about it.

The best part is yet to come.  Here's a photo of BASS at UCLA.

And here's the logo being pitched for BASS at Berkeley.

Notice any similarities?  Yeah, they both have the ichthyostega facing to the right.  It makes sense because otherwise you'd have "ASS" on the fish's ass.

In all seriousness, I believe that BASS at Berkeley came up with the acronym and logo independently, and are not trying to cramp on the territory of BASS at UCLA.  Personally I do not feel slighted at all.  Rather, I am tickled and amused by the coincidence.  Also now I can use the same tag on my blog, haha.

Ref: BASS at Berkeley, BASS at UCLA

The topology of opinion space

The purpose of an analogy is to explain an idea by relating it to something simpler.  Unfortunately, what I consider to be simple is not the same thing as what most other people consider simple.  Because of my math and physics education, I often think of analogies relating to math and physics.  To most people, these "analogies" only end up making things more complicated.

Here's an analogy in that vein:

When we want to describe people's views and opinions, we usually don't simply list out their views and opinions.  Instead, we try to simplify by describing it with an axis.  For example, liberal vs conservative is an axis.  If this axis isn't enough to describe what we want to describe, then we add more axes.  Religious vs secular.  Socially liberal vs socially conservative.  Isolationist vs interventionist.  We also invent axes to describe various other things in life, like sexual orientation or personality.

We sure love our axes!  That's why we have such things as the Political Compass, the Klein Orientation Grid, and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.

But what is the mathematical structure of an axis?  Most people are implicitly thinking of the interval (0,1), or possibly (-inf,+inf).  All the above quizes basically use an orthotope in Rⁿ, where n is the number of axes.  The greater n is, the more sophisticated the model is, supposedly.

But speaking as a student of maths, why R?  R, the set of real numbers, is a mathematical space with an awful lot of unnecessary structure to it.  R has addition, multiplication, subtraction, and division.  What does it even mean to take the sum or product of two opinions?  0 is defined as the addition identity element (ie x+0=x for all x), but there is no need for this concept if there is no addition.  Likewise, 1 is defined as the multiplication identity element, and there is no need for that either.

If you take all that away, what remains is not R, but a special metric space, which we'll call S.  It's a metric space, because we're imagining that we have defined the distance between any two points in S.  A distance function is basically a special function which takes an unordered pair of points in S, and outputs a positive real number (unless the two points are the same, in which case it outputs the distance 0).  The distance function must also obey the triangle inequality.  S also has some additional properties beyond being a mere metric space.

But I find myself wondering, is it necessary to even have a metric space?  I feel like it doesn't really make sense to say that my political view is equally distant from two other political views.  In other words, I find myself puzzled by the idea that between any two political views, there is another one which is exactly in the "middle".  What does the "middle" even mean?  In my humble opinion, what we view as the "middle" is very subjective and reactionary.

We could also define distance according to the results of the questionnaire.  But I do not think this solves the problem of subjectivity.  Instead, it merely pushes aside the problem of subjectivity onto the person designing the questionnaire.

To try a more objective distance function, we could define the distance as the percentage of people between the two points.  For example, if I'm introverted, and you're more introverted, we can say that the distance between us is equal to the percentage of people in the world who are more introverted than me, and less introverted than you.  But this would give us weird results.  For example, we could never say that lots of people are gathered in one particular part of the axis, since by definition people are evenly distributed along the axis.

My preference is to not think of an opinion axis as a metric space at all.  Instead, I think of an opinion axis as a topology, one that is topologically equivalent to (0,1).  However, there is no distance, and there is no middle.  Or at least, there is no natural way to define a distance or middle.  Instead, we can only talk about whether one opinion is to the left or right of another.  And we can talk about whether a third opinion is between the first two opinions.  But we can't talk about whether the third opinion is closer to the first or the second.

This isn't much to go on, but we can add a little structure by adding landmarks.  For example, the Kinsey Scale defines 7 landmarks of sexual orientation with the integers between 0 and 6.  Calling the landmarks by numbers is misleading, because we can't talk about the distance between two landmarks.  We can't, for instance, say that the distance between 3 and 4 is the same as the distance between 0 and 1.  Nor can we say that there is anything "special" about these landmarks, any reason we couldn't have chosen different landmarks.  But we can talk about being to the left or right of various landmarks.  For example, a person could be between 4 and 5.  That tells us something.

What are the advantages of thinking of an opinion axis as a topology?  It seems like we actually get less information this way, since we simply can't talk about distances.  But I prefer it this way because I think it eliminates the bad information, or at least emphasizes that it is bad information.  The fact that we can't talk about distances is an advantage, because distances don't really make sense.

Dream: Rowling's book

I dreamt that I read a negative review of J. K. Rowling's new book on tumblr.  The reviewer's main complaint was that she kept on referring to the island as "Duji", which is basically like calling it "dinosaur poop".  So I thought, "Okay, whatever, now I want to read this book."

And then the feeling remained after I woke up.  Of all the reasons to want to read a book, this has got to be the most irrational.  What was it even called, The Unclaimed Houseguest?  (Nope, it's The Casual Vacancy.)

Platonic origami

Check this out:

I now own copies of Beginner's Book of Modular Origami Polyhedra: The Platonic Solids by Rona Gurkewitz and Bennett Arnstein, and Exquisite Modular Origami by Meenakshi Mukerji.

 

At this rate, I will soon be able to complete another one of my life goals.

miller's life goals:

1. Be a physicist.
2. Get in the top 25 of the US Puzzle Championship.
3. Write a novel.
4. Learn to play "Pyramid Song".
5. Create the second brillouin zones of the fcc and bcc structures using origami.

Tumblr is terrible

One of the biggest developments in the ace community over the past year is the growth of the ace tumblverse, which has been accompanied by the death of the blogosphere.  I'm one of the last blogging holdouts.  Growth is great, but tumblr is terrible and blogger is better.  Here's why:

Tumblr has no comments.  This is what makes me the most angry.  I can't comment on tumblrs without getting my own tumblr.  And not just a tumblr account, I have to start an actual tumblr.  That's such monopolizing bullshit.

In case you're not familiar with tumblr, the comment system is replaced by a reblogging system.  People comment by reposting quotes on their own tumblr, with added comments.  At the bottom of the original post or any rebloggings, you can see all the people who have reblogged the post, with a one-line excerpt of anything they added.

Reblogging is a terrible substitute for comments.  For one thing, you have to visit many many tumblrs just to see what people are saying.  Most people say nothing of importance, and you just wasted a click!  Other people engage in these long comment threads full of nested quotes, and it's a real pain to root the whole thing out.

If you follow any tumblr user that wishes to comment on other tumblrs, it brings their tumblr down to commenting quality or worse.  I comment on a lot of blogs, but you should be happy that the comments don't appear here because it would just be a lot of noise.

There is no comment moderation.  It's said that tumblr is a drama machine, and this is why.  The "comments" do not belong to any particular tumblr, so there is no moderation.  Additionally, if anyone from a far-flung community makes a comment, their whole community sees it as well, leading to these huge community clashes.

There is some value in having diverse perspectives, but when uncontrolled (as is always the case on tumblr), it can also just lead to a lot of unproductive flame wars.  I say this as someone who takes a laissez-faire approach to comments.  Blogs are often derided as "echo chambers", but at least they have relatively controlled conversations.  (And ironically, since reblogging is uncommon, they have less echoing.)

There is a culture of no citations.  Last year I talked about how it is good to cite your opponents.  Because for all we know you're making up opponents, or mischaracterizing your opponents.  Also, some of us may want to respond to your opponents as well?  But on tumblr, I've been shocked at all the blatant omitting of citations.

Since then, I've come to understand why tumblr people don't do citations.  People don't cite because they're afraid they'll attract unwanted attention and start more drama.  Also, tumblr lacks effective search and archive functions and contains a lot of reblogging noise, so it's really hard to find a post that you recall.

There is a culture of memes.   This is obviously a personal preference, but I really hate memes.  I will stop reading a blog if there is too high a density of captioned animals, I am not even kidding.

Blogger is better.  Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer the way blogs connect to each other.  If someone leaves a comment, you can choose to go to their blog if you like what they say.  If you think you have an important response to a blog, you can choose to respond on your own blog.

I suppose one of the major advantages of tumblr is that you can follow a particular tag, while with blogs you basically have to find bloggers who'll track that stuff for you.  But I think the greater effort is worth it to eliminate the noise.

In other news, I was considering starting a tumblr so I can comment on tumblrs.  Good idea, bad idea?

Interlude: God is infinite

This is a continuation of "A few things wrong about the cosmological argument," an ongoing series. This will be a lighter post.

In William Lane Craig's formulation of the Kalam Cosmological argument, he argues that infinities cannot exist, therefore the universe began, therefore God exists.

But... surely God is infinite?  You know... actually infinite.

This seems like such a jarring inconsistency in the argument.  I give William Lane Craig more credit than that, and I'm sure he has a functional response somewhere.  Let's just pretend that I've put in the effort to find his response, and that I've been suitably convinced that of all the problems with the cosmological argument, this is not one of them.  *wink*

As many of you know I went to a Catholic high school.  It wasn't so bad.  Actually a really good high school, run by Jesuits.  But yes, it was a religious education.  Morning prayers.  Religiously infused mission statement.  Monthly services.  Retreats.  A few teachers who were Jesuits.  I was Catholic at the time, so I didn't mind. Except for the monthly services.  Mass is boring!

I also took some religious classes, learning about the Bible, social justice, and apologetics.  They didn't call it apologetics, but that's what it was.  The teacher for that class was pretty good.  He had a flair for the dramatic and comedic.  He used lots of creative teaching techniques, and frequently showed videos.  From a high schooler's perspective, showing videos in class was like the best thing ever.

I think he was a fan of William Lane Craig.  When I later encountered Lane Craig's arguments, they seemed utterly familiar to me.  I consider them to be classic apologetic arguments, though this is perhaps only my perception.  "Classic" is just whatever I learned about in high school.

Along the same lines, I also believe that one of the "classic" understandings of God is The Infinite.  God isn't merely infinite, God is The Infinite.  You can't possibly comprehend God with your finite mind!  That would be like trying to comprehend the integers, or quantum field theory!  (Silly physicists...)

I took all this stuff with just a grain of salt, but he said one thing that really bothered me.  Paraphrased from memory fragments:

God is defined as The Infinite.  Suppose there were two gods.  Then there would be two infinites.  But there can only be one infinity, because all infinities are overlapping and identical.  Therefore, there can only be one God.

Arrrgh!  I mean, I don't mind arguing for a single God.  Whatever.  But man, that is some bad math!  The set of even numbers and the set of odd numbers are both infinite but they don't overlap!  Also, neither odd nor even numbers are identical to God.  This got me to thinking along other lines, like what is God's cardinality?  Does God's power set have greater cardinality than God?

This series on the cosmological argument is in about the same spirit.  I don't particularly care if people argue for the existence of God.  I definitely don't care if people argue about whether God is single or multiple.  At least, I don't care in the abstract.  But sometimes I see these arguments, and wow!  Bad math, bad physics, bad argumental form.  If someone argues that we're justified in believing an invisible conscious being that can only touch us in our "hearts", that's okay on some level.  (Well, no, it's ridiculous.)  But when you start talking bad math?  Blasphemy!

A few people have accused me of hiding behind lots of complicated logic, math, and physics.  It's all an attempt to dazzle people in to agreeing with me.  But that's not the point.  The point is to trick you all into reading about logic, math, and physics, when you just wanted a refutation of the cosmological argument.  Ha!  Ha ha ha!

...
Tune in next time for more of...

"A few things wrong about the cosmological argument"
1. Actual and potential infinities
2. Actual infinities in physics
3. What is real?
4. The "absurdity" of Hilbert's Hotel
5. Interlude: God is infinite
6. Forming Infinity, one by one 
7. Uncertain beginnings
8. Entropy: The unsolved problem
9. Kalam as an inductive argument
10. Getting from First Cause to God  

Science vs Acne

I have pretty bad back acne.  No, I will not show you photos.  This is not that kind of blog.

I don't really care about my acne.  I've shown it scientifically!  In the past when I've tried acne medication, my conclusion was that I don't have the motivation to apply the medication on a regular basis, and that medication applied on an irregular basis is ineffective.

But I have new motivation.  I have what I'm worried is another abscess.  After how painful it was last time, I'm taking someone's suggestion that I apply hot packs to kill the bacteria before it grows big.  As long as I'm boiling this water, I might as well kill some acne!

Of course, I'm not actually going to do any science.  I am participating in what has been called the "coffeeshop fallacy" (via The Thinker).  I like the idea of doing science, but I'm not actually willing to put in the effort.  I'm a PhD student, and I have real science to occupy my time!  So what I'm actually going to do here is an affectionate parody of science, whatever amuses me.

The hot pack idea comes from Brian Dunning.  He cites a study which says you can treat acne by applying 120 farenheit for three minutes twice a day.  There's no way I will use such stringent protocols.  Brian suggested using a laptop power adapter, but I'm going to use a rag with a bit of boiling water poured on it.  I can use the extra boiling water for tea!

The other day I had some Yogi tea called "skin detox".  On the label, it said:

Goodness should become human nature because it is real nature

This so that I can credit the tea later if I get rid of the acne.

I'm taking another idea from XKCD:



On one side of my back, I'll apply the hot pack.  On the other side, I may just try some acne medication.  Then I will ask my boyfriend to say which side looks better, without telling him which is which.  Actually, I will probably use really shoddy blinding, and he'll find out which side is which.  But he will appreciate the excuse for me to be topless.

And my excuse for writing about the experiment before it's done is to avoid reporting bias.  As you know, scientists are less likely to report negative results than positive ones, which can lead to systematic errors.  Therefore, if I never write about this again, you may assume that the results were negative, or that I lost all motivation.

Dream: the little girl

I dreamt the story of a little girl with pigtails.  Much of the details are lost, but the point was largely to show how bitter she was.  Also, there is something wrong with her eyes.  She's not blind, but her eyes look strangely dark, and no irises are visible.

I remember the end.  The end comes in the form of a flashback.  She's walking with a little black boy, her friend.  She says bitterly to him, "You know, a black person once stole my eyes."  The camera slowly shifts so that we see that at this younger age, her eyes still look mostly normal.  She goes off, as the little boy stands there, somewhat angry.  After a minute, the boy goes running after her, following her into a room where her mother is.  Her mother is black.  The boy shouts, "A black person didn't steal your eyes... you are black!"  Suddenly, the audience understands... she is an albino black girl, and that's why she's so bitter.

Then my dream replays an earlier scene.  There was one scene where it was said that the girl has to stay out of daylight at certain hours and undergo some light therapy.  A white woman and man appear in this scene to help her, referring to themselves as "Your father and I".  But in retrospect, it seems that they were really talking to a boy who was with her; they were the boy's parents.

The reveal seems like such a shameless and nonsensical retcon.  For one thing, the girl obviously couldn't be albino since her hair was black (obviously based on Zimmy from Gunnerkrigg Court).  One day I would like to write a work of fiction, but it's never gonna happen if my subconscious comes up with such terrible ideas.

Google adventures: Ys and infinities

I was thinking of writing a post about the (bad) math in the cosmological argument.  But you're not going to see it yet.  Instead let me tell you something funny that happened during research.

For reference, I decided to use Lane Craig because he is widely cited.*  And I used this article, which was recommended by a friend who like Lane Craig.

Lane Craig says this:

The sign of this sort of infinity, which is used in calculus, is ¥.

At first I saw that symbol, the Y with double-strike-through, and thought, "What the hell?  Is he using some obscure concept of infinity that was mentioned once by who knows which mathematician?"

To Google!

I quickly found another website which used the same symbol.  Apparently, the double-struck-Y was a symbol invented by John Wallis in 1655.  Who also, it seems, invented the sideways-8 symbol for infinity, the lemniscus.  But the website didn't explain why there were two symbols, or even seem to acknowledge it.

To Google?

I could not find a single other article which mentioned the Y-with-equals-sign as a symbol for infinity.  It looked pretty suspicious!  And whenever I tried searching John Wallis, only the lemniscus was ever mentioned.  I thought maybe the lemniscus was just so much better-known that it overran any mention of the plus-plus-Y symbol.

Eventually, with more Google, I was able to solve this mystery.  It's a Symbol font problem.  With certain browsers, using the Symbol font will cause the wrong symbol to appear. In particular, if you try to make the lemniscus symbol, ∞, it will appear as the Yen symbol.  If your internet browser does not have this problem, I guess you've just solved the mystery of WTF Is Miller Talking About?

You learn something new every day.  Sometimes things you didn't really want to learn.

*Okay, it's more like, I have had three or four independent personal experiences where someone mentioned William Lane Craig.  Funny how we form impressions out of such scant evidence.

The pink beast

I heard this story, which at first, I didn't know what to make of.

The story focuses on a YouTube sensation.  In the YouTube video, he and another man are dressed in big body suits that look a bit like Big Bird.  They're playing with a little baby, who is crawling all over their big fluffy costumes.  The other man needs to go, so he turns to leave and starts walking away.  And then our man delivers the punchline.  Holding out the baby he says, "Hey!  You forgot your baby!"

But the YouTube video itself isn't really relevant.  Later, the guy hears a legend about a great pink beast somewhere at the bottom of a particular lake.  Somehow he becomes convinced that this pink beast is the spirit of his dead wife.  So he meets with a local man, who is extremely skeptical, but willing to help.  To get the beast to reveal itself, he drives a car into the lake, as the local man stands by to help.

After he swims out of the car and lake, he starts shouting that there's something there.  The local man rushes to the edge of the lake, and watches the water, which has suddenly become clear.  The dirt at the bottom moves around until a small ledge appears, which lifts up, becoming the ceiling of an impossible cave.  Inside, clear as day, is the pink beast.  I saw clear video documentation of this, and I thought the beast looked like a buffalo.

The story ends there.  I puzzled about the explanation.  Clearly the beast isn't really his dead wife.  Could the two men be liars and hoaxers?  Maybe Brian Dunning should do an episode about this.

Then I woke up, and the explanation became obvious.  This also explains why the man was wearing his Big Bird costume as he drove into the lake.

Pascal's swindle

Blaise wanted to borrow some dough
For an investment he said would grow.
"I'll pay back tenfold,
Before fall takes hold!"
But I frowned, and let my doubt show.

To every concern he'd reply,
"How can you ignore stakes so high?"
Then he'd up the reward
Infinite! Absurd!
All I could say was, "Nice try."

Suddenly I think we should turn all arguments for and against God into limericks.  Give them the level of seriousness they deserve.  But I don't like poetry, so someone else would have to do it.

Dream: monkey men

I dreamt that I was watching a preview for a movie.  It was based on a book written by Michael Crichton, author of Jurassic Park.  It was about an alternate history where instead of humans, evolution produced a very violent and sexual race of monkey men.  Michael Crichton said that it was not meant as an attack on evolution, but just about the moral depravity that evolution allows for.  But I thought this statement was disingenuous.

In the real world, Crichton is a climate change denier, not an evolution denier, but in my dream I forgot this.  My dream self really doesn't like Michael Crichton, huh?

Thanks, where it matters

I'm thankful for the universe for all the ridiculous amounts of math and computation it does.  I'm not sure if all that work was strictly necessary, or if it's just going the extra mile for us, but either way, thank you universe.  It is my hope, that as you calculate the evolution of innumerable particles, wondering if anyone will ever appreciate such small details, if it's worth going on so diligently, that you think of us.  We really appreciate it, it's just that we can't keep track of it all.

I would also like to thank my family for giving me all the support I could hope for.  I want to thank my friends for all the good times and ideas.  I want to thank them for putting up with my egocentrism. I want to thank them, but I also realize that this is nonsensical.  We live in a deterministic world.  People are just products of the initial conditions.  They just keep doing what they're doing and feeling how they're feeling, regardless of what they read or hear.  So what is the point?

Wait, I got that backwards!

Happy Thanksgiving!

My first crank mail

One of the perks of being a physicist is that you occasionally get letters from cranks.  See, physicists are the great arbiters of truth, and therefore best able to recognize a good idea when a lone genius sends them one.  How flattering!

I just got my first e-mail from a crank!  (To be fair, I got a few of these when I was running a secular student group.)

When a professor gives a lecture to a classroom full of students, the students learn new things.

The changes in the neural wiring of the student's brain while he's learning aren't caused simply by the low-level electro-chemical signals resulting from the sound waves of the professor’s voice. Instead, the intelligence is located at the interpreted level of the professor’s words. Otherwise the professor could expect the student to learn the same lesson whether he spoke to the student in English or Chinese, since the same intelligence would be located in both sets of auditory signal data. 

In conclusion, thoughts exert the physical forces needed to change the neural wiring in a person’s brain when he’s learning new things. Since new forces emerge at the thought level and add into the net sum of all forces, they affect the path of reality and therefore reality isn’t determined solely by the four fundamental forces of physics, as required by the theory of predeterminism.

Emergent living forces are caused by subcomponent forces, but the living forces aren’t determined by those subcomponent forces because the living forces exist in a different field, and forces located in different fields don’t add directly with one another.

I wonder what he thinks of voice recognition software.  Wait, why am I wasting logical arguments on this?  Let's try again.

Clearly, living forces cannot arise from subcomponent forces, because the dimensions are wrong!  Living forces are three-dimensional, and normal forces are two-dimensional (a product of infinite largeness and infinite potential).  Furthermore, the changes in neural wiring are already explained by the fact that reality has two axes, as explained in the Book of Isaiah.  Anyways, there is no point in fighting the theory of predeterminism because it's all a scam knowingly created by physicists who misinterpreted the words of Einstein.