I have been writing for about four months now and I still have no followers on my page. I am not complaining. I really have no desire to have followers. I write mainly for myself. I want to have all of my ideas presented in front of me so I can go back to them again. But I figured I can at least write on the internet than in private because other people can benefit from what I say. I write what I write entirely for myself with no concern for anyone else. Thus, I could not care less why I have no followers. I know that some people read what I write from time to time. They try to challenge me in what I say. Thus, I know I was not entirely unread.
But the question is why I have no followers? There are two reasons that I can think of. The first one is that I am uninteresting. Perhaps I write in the most boring or incomprehensible way, I realize I write sometimes excessively long posts. But I doubt it. I seen more boring and incomprehension posts by others and they have more popularity than I have. The second one is that what I write about does not interest people. I think this is what is likely. Even if you disagree with my point of view in my posts you have to acknowledge it is for the most part an intellectual post. Some of the ideas I write about I have heard in other places and I repeat them in my own words here because I find them interesting and important. While other of my ideas are original, at least to me, I have not heard anyone say them anywhere. For instance, my post on "Altruism vs Self Interest" is partially original. Part of what I said can be found among Adam Smith's works and others. But my explanation of where the hatred towards our self-interest comes from I made up myself by comparing it Nietzsche's works. I am not just trying to show off my super amazing intellect here (I am not humble as you can easily tell and quite arrogant) but more importantly I am trying to explain why my posts are oriented towards the intellect and philosophy.
It seems that people are uninterested for the things I write about. If I wrote about mathematics, my best and favorite subject, I will have no views at all. If I write about religion and skepticism I will only have a few atheist viewers. If I write about political philosophy, my favorite kind of philosophy, I will probably lose a lot of my atheist viewers because my posts clearly have a pro-liberty, anti-state, conservative right-wing bend to them which alienates secular liberals from my pro-atheism posts. While a religious person might be interested in my political philosophy he would be discouraged from my negative views towards religion. Thus, it seems that from my content it is hard to find people who can find interest in what I write about to actually follow me.
I can understand why I would be unpopular for the above reasons. But I cannot understand no matter how much I think how typical average blogs get more popularity than I do. Most blogs are written about everyday life. Wow, how amazing! Why would anyone care to read boring stuff like that? Or if some guy who writes about his Jewish gay battles gets followers in the dozens. Or a person who writes pro-gay marriage blogs. Seriously how much is there to say in support of gay marriage? And besides the arguments are not very interesting, it is the same arguments used by many people before. Where is most of the intellectual content? This is what I cannot understand. Why they are more popular than I am?
Do not misunderstand me. I am not complaining. I know people have different interests. But I am still confused and cannot understand why. I am not against gay Jews who write about their daily experiences, I am not against typical authors writing about their average typical day, I am not against authors writing only posts on gay marriage with no new interesting material to add. I am just confused to why this is interesting to people to read. It is the average, typical, and no new intellectual content is added.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Monty Hall Paradox
The Monty Hall problem comes from a game show. There are three doors one of which has the prize. The contestant picks one of the doors and then a wrong door is opened thereby leaving the contestant with two doors. The contestant now is asked if he is happy to stick with his door or would he rather switch. The problem asks if it better for the contestant to stay with what he has, switch, or it does not matter at all if he switches or stays?
The reason why this problem is called a "paradox" is because it is counter intuitive to most people. Most people say that it does not matter which door he chooses because there are two doors. Thus, they falsely conclude, it must be 50% chance of being right on any one of the two doors. When I first heard this problem I think I was 16, I thought about it for a little bit and concluded that the switching increases your chances by 100%. So definitely one must switch in such a game! I did not find this problem to be challenging. And I still do not understand why people today are still so confused by it. Here are some of my explanations that I came up with. Some of these were already observed by other people, but some I never heard anyone else remark before. Hopefully, you would find one of my many explanations behind the Monty Hall Problem to be satisfying if this problem every confused you.
Empirical Method: Here is what I think is the simplest way to see that the probability of winning by playing the "no-switch strategy" is 1/3 and the probability of winning by playing the "switch strategy" is 2/3. This is the simplest way because it does not involve any deductive arguments or probability theory, only by doing basic experiments. There is something called the "empirical probability" and the "theoretical probability". The empirical probability is the probability that is attained by experiments. We simply compute our successes divided by our total experiments. This ratio is the empirical probability. The theoretical probability is the probability attained by probability theory, it is done mathematically without the use of any experiments. For example, suppose we would like to determine the probability of throwing a seven with a pair of dice. The theoretical way to do this is to notice that there are 6 times 6 = 36 choices for a pair (x,y) where x is between 1 and 6 for the first die and y is the between 1 and 6 for the second die. To get a seven we need x+y=7. There are exactly 6 such candidates (1,6),(2,5),(3,4),(4,3),(5,2),(6,1). Therefore, the probability of tossing a seven is 6/36 = 1/6. We computed the probability in a theoretical manner. The empirical way of doing this is by just throwing dice and counting the number of times you thrown them and counting the number of times you got a seven. Take the number of times you got a seven divide by the total number of experiments and that is your empirical probability. The Strong Law of Large Numbers says that the empirical probability converges to the theoretical probability. Thus, the more and more you do these experiments the better your estimate of the actual probability will be. If you do this experiment 600 times you are expected to get a seven about 100 times. Maybe 101 or 102, or perhaps 98 or 99. But it will be really close to 1/6. The empirical method is sometimes of an advantage over the theoretical method because at times the theoretical probability can be hard to compute (in particular, what is the probability of taking five dice throwing them then throwing them again to the same arrangement of numbers? This is a much more complicated probability question, it can be computed, but it is a little involved). To do the Monty Hall experiment find a friend. Ask him to take two red aces and an ace of spades. Mix them up and put the three cards face down on the table. The winner in this case would be the ace of spades. First do the switch-strategy. Pick one ace, your friend would turn over another card which is wrong, and then you would switch your pick to the other ace. Mark your successes and total attempts to compute your empirical probability. You will realize it is close to 2/3. Then do the experiment again with a no-switch-strategy. You pick an ace, your friend turns over a card which is wrong, but you do not switch your original pick. Mark your successes and total attempts to compute your empirical probability. You will realize it is close to 1/3. You should now be able to conclude that it is a good idea to switch in the Monty Hall game because it increases your chances by 100%.
Self Experiment Method: If you are uninterested in finding someone to help you with this experiment, as it was in my case, this is an experiment you can do by yourself. Again take three aces, two red, and one ace of spades. Mix them up and put them face down on the table. Pick an ace. Now flip over one of the two remaining aces. But there is a problem. When you have a partner to help you out he will always flip over the red ace since he knows where is the ace of spades. Since you have no idea which ace is where you might on occasions flip over the ace of spades by accident. But this is not a problem! If you are playing with the switch-strategy and you flipped over the ace of spades by accident then you win! Because if you had a partner he would have flipped over the other ace and you would have switched over to the ace of spades anyway. Thus, flipping over an ace of spades is a success in the switch-strategy. And if you are playing with the no-switch-strategy and you flipped over the ace of spades by accident then you lose! Because if you had a partner he would have flipped over the other ace and you would have stayed on your original pick, but since the last remaining card is the ace of spades it means you lose. This is a way to compute the empirical probability for the Monty Hall problem by yourself. The steps are the following to summarize. If you are playing the no-switch-strategy flip an ace over and stay with your pick, but if you flip over the ace of spades then you automatically lose. If you are playing the switch-strategy all you have to do is pick an ace and flip one over, if you flipped over an ace of spades, then you win. Now compute your successes over your total attempts to get the empirical probability. You will again realize that you have about 1/3 for no-switch and 2/3 for switch-strategy.
Common Sense Method: Here is what I think is the easiest way to see why the probability of the switch-method is 2/3 and no-switch-method is 1/3. This uses no probability theory just basic common sense. Let us consider the switch-strategy. Under the switch-strategy if you pick the wrong door then you win. Why? Very simple. If you pick the wrong door then among the two remaining doors the wrong door will be opened. Thereby leaving you with a wrong door and a right door. If you switch you must be switching to the right door. Thus, you win. This means that under the switch-strategy if you pick the wrong door you win. There are two wrong doors out of three doors, therefore your chances are 2/3 to win. Now suppose you use the no-switch strategy. If you pick the right door that can be your only way to win. Because you are not switching you are sticking with what you pick. Thus, your chances of winning is the same chances are picking the right door initially, which is 1/3.
Probability Argument: Here is a method that uses very simple probability theory. The sum of the probability of each door is equal to 1. For definiteness say you pick door one and door two is flipped over. The probability that door one is correct is 1/3 (since there are three doors and only one door is correct). The probability that door two is correct is 0 because it was revealed to us to be wrong. Therefore, the probability of the last remaining door must now be equal to 2/3 because 1/3 + 0 + 2/3 = 1, the sum of the probabilities must be equal to 1. Therefore, by switching you are switching to a door which has probability 2/3 of being correct.
Exaggerated Problem: People who still foolishly insist that there are two doors therefore the probability must be 1/2 should consider the following exaggerated example. Assume there are a 100 doors. One of which is correct. You pick one and 98 of the doors are flipped over showing that they are wrong doors. Now you are left with two doors. Can you really say now that the probability is still 1/2 just because there are two doors? You have to be foolish to propose something like that now. If you followed the arguments from above you should realize that the probability of being right by switching is now 99/100. Just use the probability argument again. The sum of the probabilities of each door has to add up to 1. If you pick one door and 98 are shown to be wrong then you picked a door with probability 1/100 so the other 98 doors have probability 0, which forces the last remaining door to have probability 99/100. You can exaggerate this even move with a million doors. It should be clear now that the fact that two doors remain is irrelevant to saying that the probability of each door is equal to 1/2. It would be 1/2 only to an outsider who has no knowledge of what happened before, but to the contestant it is increased to 99/100.
Reverse Problem: A case in which it is better to use a no-switch-strategy would be in the reverse Monty Hall problem. There are three doors and two are winning doors but one is empty. If you use the switch-strategy then your chances of winning are 1/3. If you use the no-switch-strategy then your chances of winning are 2/3. The derivation of these numbers is based exactly on the same ideas already developed in the previous paragraphs so you should see why this is so.
An interesting application of the Monty Hall problem is to increase our belief whenever there is uncertainty. If there are various choices or possibilities that I want to take but I do not know which one would result in the correct choice then I can apply the ideas of Monty Hall to increase my level of belief. Say there are a number of choices and I pick one. Then in the future it is revealed that some of these choices are false. In the manner of Monty Hall I should switch over from my former choice to one of the remaining choices. This will increase my chances of being right and so increase my level of belief. To illustrate what I am saying let us consider the game Who Wants to be a Millionaire. A question comes up and you have no idea what the right answer is. A strategy to use is to pick one of the four choices, then use a 50-50 to eliminate two choices. If your choice is still up there then switch over to the other choice. This will increase your chances by 200%! From 1/4 to 3/4.
I hope that all of these explanations really make it clear that there is no mystery to the Monty Hall problem. It really is a straightforward and easy problem if you think about it correctly.
The reason why this problem is called a "paradox" is because it is counter intuitive to most people. Most people say that it does not matter which door he chooses because there are two doors. Thus, they falsely conclude, it must be 50% chance of being right on any one of the two doors. When I first heard this problem I think I was 16, I thought about it for a little bit and concluded that the switching increases your chances by 100%. So definitely one must switch in such a game! I did not find this problem to be challenging. And I still do not understand why people today are still so confused by it. Here are some of my explanations that I came up with. Some of these were already observed by other people, but some I never heard anyone else remark before. Hopefully, you would find one of my many explanations behind the Monty Hall Problem to be satisfying if this problem every confused you.
Empirical Method: Here is what I think is the simplest way to see that the probability of winning by playing the "no-switch strategy" is 1/3 and the probability of winning by playing the "switch strategy" is 2/3. This is the simplest way because it does not involve any deductive arguments or probability theory, only by doing basic experiments. There is something called the "empirical probability" and the "theoretical probability". The empirical probability is the probability that is attained by experiments. We simply compute our successes divided by our total experiments. This ratio is the empirical probability. The theoretical probability is the probability attained by probability theory, it is done mathematically without the use of any experiments. For example, suppose we would like to determine the probability of throwing a seven with a pair of dice. The theoretical way to do this is to notice that there are 6 times 6 = 36 choices for a pair (x,y) where x is between 1 and 6 for the first die and y is the between 1 and 6 for the second die. To get a seven we need x+y=7. There are exactly 6 such candidates (1,6),(2,5),(3,4),(4,3),(5,2),(6,1). Therefore, the probability of tossing a seven is 6/36 = 1/6. We computed the probability in a theoretical manner. The empirical way of doing this is by just throwing dice and counting the number of times you thrown them and counting the number of times you got a seven. Take the number of times you got a seven divide by the total number of experiments and that is your empirical probability. The Strong Law of Large Numbers says that the empirical probability converges to the theoretical probability. Thus, the more and more you do these experiments the better your estimate of the actual probability will be. If you do this experiment 600 times you are expected to get a seven about 100 times. Maybe 101 or 102, or perhaps 98 or 99. But it will be really close to 1/6. The empirical method is sometimes of an advantage over the theoretical method because at times the theoretical probability can be hard to compute (in particular, what is the probability of taking five dice throwing them then throwing them again to the same arrangement of numbers? This is a much more complicated probability question, it can be computed, but it is a little involved). To do the Monty Hall experiment find a friend. Ask him to take two red aces and an ace of spades. Mix them up and put the three cards face down on the table. The winner in this case would be the ace of spades. First do the switch-strategy. Pick one ace, your friend would turn over another card which is wrong, and then you would switch your pick to the other ace. Mark your successes and total attempts to compute your empirical probability. You will realize it is close to 2/3. Then do the experiment again with a no-switch-strategy. You pick an ace, your friend turns over a card which is wrong, but you do not switch your original pick. Mark your successes and total attempts to compute your empirical probability. You will realize it is close to 1/3. You should now be able to conclude that it is a good idea to switch in the Monty Hall game because it increases your chances by 100%.
Self Experiment Method: If you are uninterested in finding someone to help you with this experiment, as it was in my case, this is an experiment you can do by yourself. Again take three aces, two red, and one ace of spades. Mix them up and put them face down on the table. Pick an ace. Now flip over one of the two remaining aces. But there is a problem. When you have a partner to help you out he will always flip over the red ace since he knows where is the ace of spades. Since you have no idea which ace is where you might on occasions flip over the ace of spades by accident. But this is not a problem! If you are playing with the switch-strategy and you flipped over the ace of spades by accident then you win! Because if you had a partner he would have flipped over the other ace and you would have switched over to the ace of spades anyway. Thus, flipping over an ace of spades is a success in the switch-strategy. And if you are playing with the no-switch-strategy and you flipped over the ace of spades by accident then you lose! Because if you had a partner he would have flipped over the other ace and you would have stayed on your original pick, but since the last remaining card is the ace of spades it means you lose. This is a way to compute the empirical probability for the Monty Hall problem by yourself. The steps are the following to summarize. If you are playing the no-switch-strategy flip an ace over and stay with your pick, but if you flip over the ace of spades then you automatically lose. If you are playing the switch-strategy all you have to do is pick an ace and flip one over, if you flipped over an ace of spades, then you win. Now compute your successes over your total attempts to get the empirical probability. You will again realize that you have about 1/3 for no-switch and 2/3 for switch-strategy.
Common Sense Method: Here is what I think is the easiest way to see why the probability of the switch-method is 2/3 and no-switch-method is 1/3. This uses no probability theory just basic common sense. Let us consider the switch-strategy. Under the switch-strategy if you pick the wrong door then you win. Why? Very simple. If you pick the wrong door then among the two remaining doors the wrong door will be opened. Thereby leaving you with a wrong door and a right door. If you switch you must be switching to the right door. Thus, you win. This means that under the switch-strategy if you pick the wrong door you win. There are two wrong doors out of three doors, therefore your chances are 2/3 to win. Now suppose you use the no-switch strategy. If you pick the right door that can be your only way to win. Because you are not switching you are sticking with what you pick. Thus, your chances of winning is the same chances are picking the right door initially, which is 1/3.
Probability Argument: Here is a method that uses very simple probability theory. The sum of the probability of each door is equal to 1. For definiteness say you pick door one and door two is flipped over. The probability that door one is correct is 1/3 (since there are three doors and only one door is correct). The probability that door two is correct is 0 because it was revealed to us to be wrong. Therefore, the probability of the last remaining door must now be equal to 2/3 because 1/3 + 0 + 2/3 = 1, the sum of the probabilities must be equal to 1. Therefore, by switching you are switching to a door which has probability 2/3 of being correct.
Exaggerated Problem: People who still foolishly insist that there are two doors therefore the probability must be 1/2 should consider the following exaggerated example. Assume there are a 100 doors. One of which is correct. You pick one and 98 of the doors are flipped over showing that they are wrong doors. Now you are left with two doors. Can you really say now that the probability is still 1/2 just because there are two doors? You have to be foolish to propose something like that now. If you followed the arguments from above you should realize that the probability of being right by switching is now 99/100. Just use the probability argument again. The sum of the probabilities of each door has to add up to 1. If you pick one door and 98 are shown to be wrong then you picked a door with probability 1/100 so the other 98 doors have probability 0, which forces the last remaining door to have probability 99/100. You can exaggerate this even move with a million doors. It should be clear now that the fact that two doors remain is irrelevant to saying that the probability of each door is equal to 1/2. It would be 1/2 only to an outsider who has no knowledge of what happened before, but to the contestant it is increased to 99/100.
Reverse Problem: A case in which it is better to use a no-switch-strategy would be in the reverse Monty Hall problem. There are three doors and two are winning doors but one is empty. If you use the switch-strategy then your chances of winning are 1/3. If you use the no-switch-strategy then your chances of winning are 2/3. The derivation of these numbers is based exactly on the same ideas already developed in the previous paragraphs so you should see why this is so.
An interesting application of the Monty Hall problem is to increase our belief whenever there is uncertainty. If there are various choices or possibilities that I want to take but I do not know which one would result in the correct choice then I can apply the ideas of Monty Hall to increase my level of belief. Say there are a number of choices and I pick one. Then in the future it is revealed that some of these choices are false. In the manner of Monty Hall I should switch over from my former choice to one of the remaining choices. This will increase my chances of being right and so increase my level of belief. To illustrate what I am saying let us consider the game Who Wants to be a Millionaire. A question comes up and you have no idea what the right answer is. A strategy to use is to pick one of the four choices, then use a 50-50 to eliminate two choices. If your choice is still up there then switch over to the other choice. This will increase your chances by 200%! From 1/4 to 3/4.
I hope that all of these explanations really make it clear that there is no mystery to the Monty Hall problem. It really is a straightforward and easy problem if you think about it correctly.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Honoring the Dead
One thing that does not make any sense to me is why do we have to honor the dead? They are dead. Once they are dead they do not care if they are honored or not. All the hopes and dreams are non-existent for the dead, all the suffering and the joy are removed from the dead. The dead could not care less if they are honored or condemned. I do not care what happens to dead people, for me they are just objects. But I do care what happens to living people. Instead of being concerned about honoring the dead, which makes no sense, how about we put more emphasis on caring for one another when we are still alive? You see this phenomenon I am talking about with so many people. There might be people that some person dislikes. But once these people die he starts to give them honor. Why? He should have given them the respect, if they earned it, while they were alive, not when they become dead. It just makes no sense to me. Can someone explain why we need to honor the dead?
Live Each Day as if it Was Your Last
I have heard people say that we should live every day as if it was our last day. Their reasoning is that if we do so then we treat every day more preciously than if we were to life it as a typical day. I have never heard anyone object to this before, perhaps because this idea sounds reasonable and enlightened. But I will object to it. Because it makes no sense. If I life today as if it was my last then it follows I cannot live tomorrow as if it was my last because I do not plan for tomorrow, for dead people never think about tomorrow. If I life today as it was my last day then I do not care what happens for tomorrow because it will never come again, that is what living today as last day means. Thus, if I start to life my day today as if it was my last then I have to pretend that all the following days will never come. This is a terrible idea. If I really was to live my day today as if it was my last then I should go and take out a big loan because I am not concerned about the future, for I am pretending it is my last day. Dead people do not pay of their loans so they do not have to be concerned about their loans. This means if I was to start living today as if it was my last then it will do damage to my future days. So this idea of "live each day as it was was your last" that many people preach is actually a bad idea. Most people say that they agree with this view but they do not live by it because it is too hard. But I reject it mainly because it is too stupid.
Atheism is Easy
There have been so many different kinds of philosophers over the years. On so many issues. Whether it is philosophy of mind, political philosophy, economics, ethics, and so forth. Many great scientists in the past and present. All of these people disagree with one another on some issue. Always there is disagreement with people on these kinds of questions.
But there is almost one unanimous issue that every serious thinker has agreed with. That religion is false. Almost every philosopher, scientist, and rational thinker will agree with this conclusion. They might not all necessarily be atheists, though most are, but among those that are not, they are still not religious. Of course, I am not saying that because these people say that religion is false it follows that religion is false. That would be a terrible argument. I have arguments on this site that explain why religion is false. But my point rather is that atheism is simple.
Coming to the conclusion of atheism is actually one of the simplest intellectual accomplishments in a person's life. It is the starting path of any rational thinker. Beyond that questions become more and more complicated which is why there is more and more disagreement on the more complicated questions. But the starting point, religion, is nearly unanimously rejected by all serious thinkers. Even during the religious history of mankind the rational thinkers were prepared to go against fundamental religious teachings. Galileo and Newton were not atheists, I will not deny that. But Galileo was nonetheless prepared to violate the basic religious teachings for the sake of determining the truth. Newton, though marveled at God through the study of physics, rejected the trinity entirely. Nearly all rational thinkers first must have done battle against religion and defeated it, either by rejecting it entirely or committing heresy.
This is why some time ago, not so long ago, after I was a skeptic for a significant period of my life, I started to despise the "atheist movement" or whatever it should be called. Because I realized that many atheists have this attitude that because they are atheists it therefore follows they are smart and religious people are dumb. For example, the Bill Maher attitude. Now I like Bill Maher even though there are a lot of fundamental issues I disagree with him on. But one thing about Bill that really bothers me is his attitude that because someone is an atheist it follows that the person is smart and that because someone is a theist it follows that the person is dumb. Of course he does not really believe in this false principle, he is too smart to believe in it. However, his attitude testifies to this idea. I seen many of his programs when he refutes a conservative not by explaining why his conservative policies are wrong but rather by saying, "why should we listen to this guy, he after all believes in an imaginary being in the sky". It is not only Bill Maher, it is many other atheists who have the same attitude. I keep on seeing atheists constantly who oppose people who they disagree with essentially because those people are theists. This is why I always hated Thunderf00t on YouTube and still hate him. His fans think he is some towering intellectual because he can refute people who believe in imaginary being? He is an intellectual because he can refute people who believe the world was magically created? That is not an intellectual accomplishment because atheism is the easiest intellectual accomplishment in the world. It only means he is smarter than an average person. But he is far from possessing an intellectual respect from me on those issues alone.
So I started to despise the atheist movement when I realized this. I also despised it because it should not be called "atheist movement" but rather "skeptic movement". Atheism is pointless, skepticism is the key. Skepticism is the method, atheism is only a conclusion. Singling out atheism over skepticism misses the entire point. But I changed my attitude again. I no longer hate the atheist movement and am supportive of it. Because I realized that with all of its drawbacks as I explained above it still have an important function. I became a skeptic precisely because I was influenced by the atheist movement. Thus, it is unfair for me to hope for its destruction when I was influenced by it. I will have to put up with the problems inherent in the atheist movement for a more important purpose, and that is freeing people's mind from tyranny.
But there is almost one unanimous issue that every serious thinker has agreed with. That religion is false. Almost every philosopher, scientist, and rational thinker will agree with this conclusion. They might not all necessarily be atheists, though most are, but among those that are not, they are still not religious. Of course, I am not saying that because these people say that religion is false it follows that religion is false. That would be a terrible argument. I have arguments on this site that explain why religion is false. But my point rather is that atheism is simple.
Coming to the conclusion of atheism is actually one of the simplest intellectual accomplishments in a person's life. It is the starting path of any rational thinker. Beyond that questions become more and more complicated which is why there is more and more disagreement on the more complicated questions. But the starting point, religion, is nearly unanimously rejected by all serious thinkers. Even during the religious history of mankind the rational thinkers were prepared to go against fundamental religious teachings. Galileo and Newton were not atheists, I will not deny that. But Galileo was nonetheless prepared to violate the basic religious teachings for the sake of determining the truth. Newton, though marveled at God through the study of physics, rejected the trinity entirely. Nearly all rational thinkers first must have done battle against religion and defeated it, either by rejecting it entirely or committing heresy.
This is why some time ago, not so long ago, after I was a skeptic for a significant period of my life, I started to despise the "atheist movement" or whatever it should be called. Because I realized that many atheists have this attitude that because they are atheists it therefore follows they are smart and religious people are dumb. For example, the Bill Maher attitude. Now I like Bill Maher even though there are a lot of fundamental issues I disagree with him on. But one thing about Bill that really bothers me is his attitude that because someone is an atheist it follows that the person is smart and that because someone is a theist it follows that the person is dumb. Of course he does not really believe in this false principle, he is too smart to believe in it. However, his attitude testifies to this idea. I seen many of his programs when he refutes a conservative not by explaining why his conservative policies are wrong but rather by saying, "why should we listen to this guy, he after all believes in an imaginary being in the sky". It is not only Bill Maher, it is many other atheists who have the same attitude. I keep on seeing atheists constantly who oppose people who they disagree with essentially because those people are theists. This is why I always hated Thunderf00t on YouTube and still hate him. His fans think he is some towering intellectual because he can refute people who believe in imaginary being? He is an intellectual because he can refute people who believe the world was magically created? That is not an intellectual accomplishment because atheism is the easiest intellectual accomplishment in the world. It only means he is smarter than an average person. But he is far from possessing an intellectual respect from me on those issues alone.
So I started to despise the atheist movement when I realized this. I also despised it because it should not be called "atheist movement" but rather "skeptic movement". Atheism is pointless, skepticism is the key. Skepticism is the method, atheism is only a conclusion. Singling out atheism over skepticism misses the entire point. But I changed my attitude again. I no longer hate the atheist movement and am supportive of it. Because I realized that with all of its drawbacks as I explained above it still have an important function. I became a skeptic precisely because I was influenced by the atheist movement. Thus, it is unfair for me to hope for its destruction when I was influenced by it. I will have to put up with the problems inherent in the atheist movement for a more important purpose, and that is freeing people's mind from tyranny.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Public Education: Legal Kidnapping
What is kidnapping? There are different definitions for "kidnap". Answers defines it as, "to seize and detain unlawfully" while Dictionary defines it as, "to steal, carry off, or abduct by force or fraud, especially for use as a hostage or to extract ransom". Basically, kidnapping is stealing a person, these two definitions should have made that more explicit, but that is what kidnapping refers to. These two definitions might seem as identical to most people, but to the eyes of a rational thinker they are very different. The first definition is biased towards the state, the second one is not.
It is important to always remember that what is legal and what is moral are two separate issues, here. The reason why, I think, that some definitions define "kidnapping" as "to seize a person unlawfully" is that the state cannot be accused of kidnapping people. Take for example conscription, more commonly knows as the "draft". The state demands a population group to go into war. If this population group refuses then they will be punished by the state for their refusal, the state will use violence against those who refuse to participate in conscription. The state demands this population group to go into war, possibly die, and if they refuse, they will have violence done against them for disobedience. Under the second definition of "kidnapping" the state practices kidnapping. Thus, if you believe that kidnapping is evil then the state is evil. However, under the first definition of "kidnapping" the state cannot be seem to kidnap, since what it does is legal, for it is the state. This is why I say that the first definition of kidnapping is biased towards the state, it defends the state from being seen as evil. Thus, I do not like the first definition, a definition should be more objective, and my definition for "kidnapping" that I use is the second one, that is, "kidnapping is stealing people".
I oppose public education the way it currently is for many reasons. These include education methods, economics and costs. But my main objection to public education is that it is compulsory. The state demands parents to send their children to a school and if the parents refuse then the state will take their children away from them. This is kidnapping. If it was done by the mafia or by some other person we would not hesitate to call this "kidnapping". But why is it that so many of us are so hesitant to refuse to the situation of what I just described as "legal kidnapping"? Many of us are even uncomfortable to hear people, like myself, describe public education as "legal kidnapping".
One can object to me and say that public education is not kidnapping because parents have a choice. They can send their children to a private school or home school them. But one who proposes such an arguments misses two very important points. If I point a gun next to your head and demand you to give me money I am sure you would say that being able to decide if you want to give money or die is not a choice. To be a "choice" means the person must have the ability to deny the proposal, otherwise it is not a "choice". The state does not give a choice to parents. The parents do not have the ability to deny their demand. Parents must send their children to a school, they have no ability to say "no". This is the first problem with such an argument. The second problem is that private schools and home schools need to be approved by the state. They are not part of the state but they need approval of the state. Thus, even if one thinks that private or home schools are a "choice" misses the point that these schools must be approved by the very same entity that demands their children if the parents do not comply. This will not be called a "choice" by any reasonable person. These two common arguments against my accusation of public education as legal kidnapping fail to refute my argument. There is one more problem. In some countries public education is all that is available. There is no private option.
I want to make it clear that I am not opposed to public education. I see no problem with having such a state program. However, if such a program was to exist it must undergo a lot of radical changes. First of all, most importantly, it must stop being a form of legal kidnapping. Second of all, it should be the responsibility of the parents to educate their children. Third of all, bad public schools should be allowed to fail and good ones should be allowed to prosper.
The first reason is clear as I explained. The third reason I do not want to go into so much now because it will take me off topic. Basically my reasoning behind the third reason is that it is very common for failing government programs to receive more and more money if they are failing. In the market a business that is failing will be allowed to fail. Businesses that do well make more money and prosper. I think a big problem with public education is that good schools have a cut from the government while bad schools get more money thrown at them. This defies all common sense. Bad public schools must fail. The competitive forces of the market should be brought into government schools too so that they can improve their performance.
Now I want to get into my second reason. In general, the people who love and want the best for children are their parents. It is the responsibility of parents to take care of their kids. Even if parents are not the best parents it is still their responsibility. Because even bad parents love their children. I can guarantee you the state does not love children and it will not take care of them as well as parents. How can I possibly believe in this if I see the evil every day that is performed by the state? You expect me to believe that the state will care for children? The state enslaves millions of people for crimes (like marijuana and other drugs) that they should not be enslaved for. The state kills hundreds of thousands of people in other countries that are innocent. The state threw its own citizens in internment camps during the war. The state dehumanizes people on a day to day basis. How can I possibly believe that the state cares about children and it will take care of them if it does not care about human life? I must be a mad delusional person to come to such a ridiculous belief. Forget about the state taking care of your kids. It is madness to entrust the responsibility of children on the state especially if the state is willing to kidnap your kids for your failure to comply.
It is important to always remember that what is legal and what is moral are two separate issues, here. The reason why, I think, that some definitions define "kidnapping" as "to seize a person unlawfully" is that the state cannot be accused of kidnapping people. Take for example conscription, more commonly knows as the "draft". The state demands a population group to go into war. If this population group refuses then they will be punished by the state for their refusal, the state will use violence against those who refuse to participate in conscription. The state demands this population group to go into war, possibly die, and if they refuse, they will have violence done against them for disobedience. Under the second definition of "kidnapping" the state practices kidnapping. Thus, if you believe that kidnapping is evil then the state is evil. However, under the first definition of "kidnapping" the state cannot be seem to kidnap, since what it does is legal, for it is the state. This is why I say that the first definition of kidnapping is biased towards the state, it defends the state from being seen as evil. Thus, I do not like the first definition, a definition should be more objective, and my definition for "kidnapping" that I use is the second one, that is, "kidnapping is stealing people".
I oppose public education the way it currently is for many reasons. These include education methods, economics and costs. But my main objection to public education is that it is compulsory. The state demands parents to send their children to a school and if the parents refuse then the state will take their children away from them. This is kidnapping. If it was done by the mafia or by some other person we would not hesitate to call this "kidnapping". But why is it that so many of us are so hesitant to refuse to the situation of what I just described as "legal kidnapping"? Many of us are even uncomfortable to hear people, like myself, describe public education as "legal kidnapping".
One can object to me and say that public education is not kidnapping because parents have a choice. They can send their children to a private school or home school them. But one who proposes such an arguments misses two very important points. If I point a gun next to your head and demand you to give me money I am sure you would say that being able to decide if you want to give money or die is not a choice. To be a "choice" means the person must have the ability to deny the proposal, otherwise it is not a "choice". The state does not give a choice to parents. The parents do not have the ability to deny their demand. Parents must send their children to a school, they have no ability to say "no". This is the first problem with such an argument. The second problem is that private schools and home schools need to be approved by the state. They are not part of the state but they need approval of the state. Thus, even if one thinks that private or home schools are a "choice" misses the point that these schools must be approved by the very same entity that demands their children if the parents do not comply. This will not be called a "choice" by any reasonable person. These two common arguments against my accusation of public education as legal kidnapping fail to refute my argument. There is one more problem. In some countries public education is all that is available. There is no private option.
I want to make it clear that I am not opposed to public education. I see no problem with having such a state program. However, if such a program was to exist it must undergo a lot of radical changes. First of all, most importantly, it must stop being a form of legal kidnapping. Second of all, it should be the responsibility of the parents to educate their children. Third of all, bad public schools should be allowed to fail and good ones should be allowed to prosper.
The first reason is clear as I explained. The third reason I do not want to go into so much now because it will take me off topic. Basically my reasoning behind the third reason is that it is very common for failing government programs to receive more and more money if they are failing. In the market a business that is failing will be allowed to fail. Businesses that do well make more money and prosper. I think a big problem with public education is that good schools have a cut from the government while bad schools get more money thrown at them. This defies all common sense. Bad public schools must fail. The competitive forces of the market should be brought into government schools too so that they can improve their performance.
Now I want to get into my second reason. In general, the people who love and want the best for children are their parents. It is the responsibility of parents to take care of their kids. Even if parents are not the best parents it is still their responsibility. Because even bad parents love their children. I can guarantee you the state does not love children and it will not take care of them as well as parents. How can I possibly believe in this if I see the evil every day that is performed by the state? You expect me to believe that the state will care for children? The state enslaves millions of people for crimes (like marijuana and other drugs) that they should not be enslaved for. The state kills hundreds of thousands of people in other countries that are innocent. The state threw its own citizens in internment camps during the war. The state dehumanizes people on a day to day basis. How can I possibly believe that the state cares about children and it will take care of them if it does not care about human life? I must be a mad delusional person to come to such a ridiculous belief. Forget about the state taking care of your kids. It is madness to entrust the responsibility of children on the state especially if the state is willing to kidnap your kids for your failure to comply.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Life from Non-Life
I am sure you heard the big news that biologists were able to create life. This is a victory for reason over religion. Religious people kept on saying how evolution cannot be true because life cannot come from non-life. First of all, evolution is not related to abiogenesis, disproving abiogenesis would not disprove evolution. Second of all, wrong, life can come from non-life. It was created. That is another gap that has been filled in the God of the Gaps. Now I wonder what else will come from the religious people? What other excuses would they still use for rejecting science? I guess they will say that "well where did the non-living parts come from?". Religious people do not impress me. They been playing this game of ignorance for thousands of years and each time they retreat one step back. For every discovery there is a new shadow, and they always retreat into that shadow. It is not interesting anymore. Religious people are out of arguments. They have been doing nothing than hiding behind ignorance for millenia.
Friday, May 21, 2010
Civil Rights Act
We get to see the intellectual dishonesty again from the liberal left when Rand Paul, like a pussy, was unable to tell her straight that, "I do think that people have a right to discriminate". The lefties are all complaining now. Saying, "oh look Rand is a racist". Am I surprised to see the word "racist" would again? No, I hear that word used every day from the left regarding almost every issue, this is part of the reason why I never watch or read news. As I explained before the word "racist" is a word used to silence opposition, it is the word of a person who fails at intelligent arguments, someone who needs a way to silent his opponents. But I am not afraid. Call me "racist" as much as you want. Back in the 1600's the few who were against religion were called "heretics", another word to silence opposition. But there were few who were not afraid to be called heretics. Likewise, I myself am not afraid to be called a racist or a sexist or whatever other word the left uses every day to silence their opponents. Call me as much as you like. Because the truth does not care who speaks it, it does not care if a racist says it or not. The truth is independent from evil. And I will continue to speak the truth as much as I can and let others call me whatever words they please. Because I am a free thinker, I am capable of thought without it being enslaved to religion, or society or social pressures. The same cannot be said about most people.
Yes, I oppose the Civil Rights Act. And for a typical liberal that translates into, "oh my God, he is a racist and he wants to segregate blacks". The simple reason why I oppose the Civil Rights Act is because I believe in freedom and in free speech. Part of freedom and free speech is that we do not take it away from people who we despise, our enemies. We fight to defend freedom and free speech of even the most hated of all people. I consider this to be one of the great virtues that we should strive towards. The Civil Rights Act makes it illegal for private citizens to discriminate against people for whatever reason. That is a violation of the freedom of the people, even if discrimination is morally wrong.
A member from the KKK can choose to discriminate against those that he pleases. He can hang up a sign on his own house that says, "black people not allowed". Why should it be illegal for him to do that? He is not harming any black person. He is not interfering with the life of any black person. He simply wishes to disassociate himself entirely from black people. Besides it is his house. He chooses who he wants to invite and who he does not want to invite. Now consider the same situation with a restaurant. Why should it be illegal for a KKK racist to discriminate against black people or gay people or Jewish people or women or whatever other group of people it happens to be? It is his restaurant, like his own house, and he can set his own standards on what he wants. It is certainly morally wrong, but it is the freedom of the people to conduct themselves that way. He is not doing any harm to a black person, he rather disassociates with them entirely. So I do not understand how someone can argue that it should be illegal for people from the KKK to do that.
There is something important that needs to be understood about the ways black people were treated. The injustice that were done to black Americans was the result of laws! Do not forget that. Under Jim Crow laws blacks were segregated against. It were laws that have enforced blacks to be separated to whites, or to go to different bathrooms, or to sit on back of buses. It was the government that discriminated against black Americans. Sure there were private individuals that have discriminated against blacks, they still exist today, but the problems that blacks endured in the south was the result of the law discriminating against them. Compare black life in the north and the south, they had it much better in the north, racism did exist everywhere, but the problems that black went through were dominantly the result of laws against them. There were restaurants that served both black and white people before the Civil Rights Act. But restaurants were required to create a separation between blacks and whites because of the laws on segregation not by their own standards. So do not forget where the segregation came from. It came from the state.
I am certainly against discrimination of the law. Because I believe that all people are equal, equal in rights. I would have completely opposed the segregation laws, and I would have deeply distressed if I was alive at the time when they were passed. Indeed, if I am so bothered by Arizona's immigration law, the law that bothered me more than anything else every since Barack Obama was in office (I am not blaming this on him by the way), I can only imagine how much I would have been bothered by Jim Crow segregation. Thus, the law and the state cannot discriminate against anyone. State functions or entities that work for the state/city, like the police department or fire department or hospitals cannot discriminate. Roads which for the most part are owned by the government cannot discriminate. And so forth. But I will defend the right to be a racist and a discriminator of any individual against another individual. This is what freedom means, sometimes it implies evil, and we must be willing to put up with temporary evils.
I would have certainly supported the federal government to abolish segregation laws. But once segregation was abolished things should have progressed to their natural conclusion. We cannot legislate morality against discrimination or racism. Racism was already dying out in the US at that time, and if it would have progressed it would have honestly died out because the people would have eventually opposed it. When you go to most forums or most servers you will find that one of the rules that they have is a rule against racism. They are not required to have that as a rule on their forum or server, I do not think so, there are KKK forums after all. But most forums do make that their rule. Why? Because the members are against racism and so the forum is tempted to take on that rule. This all happens naturally with no imposition of legislature.
There is also an economic reason to oppose the Civil Rights Act. If a business owner discriminates against blacks then his competitor, that does not discriminate against blacks, would have an advantage over him. Racism and discrimination is a cost incurred on anyone who practices it. What is the capitalist creed? It says, "I do not care what color you are, whether you are black or white, or brown or yellow, there is one and only one color that I care about, and that is green". Any good capitalist would act to capitalize against his competitors who were racist. If there was no segregation imposed then the good capitalists would have a big advantage over the racist ones. The racist ones would be hurting themselves with the cost for racism. The Civil Rights Act, paradoxically, from an economic point of view, defends the racist businessman because the non-racist competitors cannot capitalize on non-racist practices. There were businesses that opposed the Jim Crow segregation laws because they realized that they would be losing money under those laws.
If the federal government was to do anything at all after abolishing segregation laws, I would say, it would be to give aid to black that suffered as a result of this injustice. That is the least that they can be done for them. From then and on it should have been up to the natural progress of society to get rid of racism. Racism is a social problem. But social problems are never ever solved through the use of violence. If you fail to see what I mean by violence, you can read this. Whenever something is banned the hidden implication is that violence would be used against those who fail to comply. Racism is certainly evil, but it does not give us an excuse to replace one evil for another evil (violence).
I am not one of few among many who takes a stance against the Civil Rights Act or much of the civil rights movement in general (much of what later came forth with the civil rights movement, just like with feminism, as I explained in my long series, is that the movement promoted equality of results, not equality of rights, it started with a desire to have a desire for equal rights, but later pushed for equality of results), there are many who would agree with me. My favorite living economist at present, Thomas Sowell, would be on my side. Thomas Sowell is an older economists, close to his 80's, who lived through the civil rights decisions, furthermore, he is a black American. The fact that we would be in agreement with me should give you a suspicion that perhaps these civil rights laws are not as sacred as you like to think. For many people it is not allowed to criticize various civil rights laws, because Science forbid, if you do so it must mean you are a racist or a sexist. Civil rights laws, just like everyone else, are not sacred, we can rationally study them.
There is a book that on this subject that I hope to read in the future, but I never read. I have been recommended this book by other people who said it was an excellent book. It is by Thomas Sowell, called Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality? Here is an article I found by Thomas Sowell on segregation which would say a point of view that you probably do not often hear, here. I would like to also post an excellent YouTube video. It is a mirrored video by TheAmazingAtheist (original one was taken down), it is filled with a lot of angry, screaming, swearing, but it gets an very good point across, here
Yes, I oppose the Civil Rights Act. And for a typical liberal that translates into, "oh my God, he is a racist and he wants to segregate blacks". The simple reason why I oppose the Civil Rights Act is because I believe in freedom and in free speech. Part of freedom and free speech is that we do not take it away from people who we despise, our enemies. We fight to defend freedom and free speech of even the most hated of all people. I consider this to be one of the great virtues that we should strive towards. The Civil Rights Act makes it illegal for private citizens to discriminate against people for whatever reason. That is a violation of the freedom of the people, even if discrimination is morally wrong.
A member from the KKK can choose to discriminate against those that he pleases. He can hang up a sign on his own house that says, "black people not allowed". Why should it be illegal for him to do that? He is not harming any black person. He is not interfering with the life of any black person. He simply wishes to disassociate himself entirely from black people. Besides it is his house. He chooses who he wants to invite and who he does not want to invite. Now consider the same situation with a restaurant. Why should it be illegal for a KKK racist to discriminate against black people or gay people or Jewish people or women or whatever other group of people it happens to be? It is his restaurant, like his own house, and he can set his own standards on what he wants. It is certainly morally wrong, but it is the freedom of the people to conduct themselves that way. He is not doing any harm to a black person, he rather disassociates with them entirely. So I do not understand how someone can argue that it should be illegal for people from the KKK to do that.
There is something important that needs to be understood about the ways black people were treated. The injustice that were done to black Americans was the result of laws! Do not forget that. Under Jim Crow laws blacks were segregated against. It were laws that have enforced blacks to be separated to whites, or to go to different bathrooms, or to sit on back of buses. It was the government that discriminated against black Americans. Sure there were private individuals that have discriminated against blacks, they still exist today, but the problems that blacks endured in the south was the result of the law discriminating against them. Compare black life in the north and the south, they had it much better in the north, racism did exist everywhere, but the problems that black went through were dominantly the result of laws against them. There were restaurants that served both black and white people before the Civil Rights Act. But restaurants were required to create a separation between blacks and whites because of the laws on segregation not by their own standards. So do not forget where the segregation came from. It came from the state.
I am certainly against discrimination of the law. Because I believe that all people are equal, equal in rights. I would have completely opposed the segregation laws, and I would have deeply distressed if I was alive at the time when they were passed. Indeed, if I am so bothered by Arizona's immigration law, the law that bothered me more than anything else every since Barack Obama was in office (I am not blaming this on him by the way), I can only imagine how much I would have been bothered by Jim Crow segregation. Thus, the law and the state cannot discriminate against anyone. State functions or entities that work for the state/city, like the police department or fire department or hospitals cannot discriminate. Roads which for the most part are owned by the government cannot discriminate. And so forth. But I will defend the right to be a racist and a discriminator of any individual against another individual. This is what freedom means, sometimes it implies evil, and we must be willing to put up with temporary evils.
I would have certainly supported the federal government to abolish segregation laws. But once segregation was abolished things should have progressed to their natural conclusion. We cannot legislate morality against discrimination or racism. Racism was already dying out in the US at that time, and if it would have progressed it would have honestly died out because the people would have eventually opposed it. When you go to most forums or most servers you will find that one of the rules that they have is a rule against racism. They are not required to have that as a rule on their forum or server, I do not think so, there are KKK forums after all. But most forums do make that their rule. Why? Because the members are against racism and so the forum is tempted to take on that rule. This all happens naturally with no imposition of legislature.
There is also an economic reason to oppose the Civil Rights Act. If a business owner discriminates against blacks then his competitor, that does not discriminate against blacks, would have an advantage over him. Racism and discrimination is a cost incurred on anyone who practices it. What is the capitalist creed? It says, "I do not care what color you are, whether you are black or white, or brown or yellow, there is one and only one color that I care about, and that is green". Any good capitalist would act to capitalize against his competitors who were racist. If there was no segregation imposed then the good capitalists would have a big advantage over the racist ones. The racist ones would be hurting themselves with the cost for racism. The Civil Rights Act, paradoxically, from an economic point of view, defends the racist businessman because the non-racist competitors cannot capitalize on non-racist practices. There were businesses that opposed the Jim Crow segregation laws because they realized that they would be losing money under those laws.
If the federal government was to do anything at all after abolishing segregation laws, I would say, it would be to give aid to black that suffered as a result of this injustice. That is the least that they can be done for them. From then and on it should have been up to the natural progress of society to get rid of racism. Racism is a social problem. But social problems are never ever solved through the use of violence. If you fail to see what I mean by violence, you can read this. Whenever something is banned the hidden implication is that violence would be used against those who fail to comply. Racism is certainly evil, but it does not give us an excuse to replace one evil for another evil (violence).
I am not one of few among many who takes a stance against the Civil Rights Act or much of the civil rights movement in general (much of what later came forth with the civil rights movement, just like with feminism, as I explained in my long series, is that the movement promoted equality of results, not equality of rights, it started with a desire to have a desire for equal rights, but later pushed for equality of results), there are many who would agree with me. My favorite living economist at present, Thomas Sowell, would be on my side. Thomas Sowell is an older economists, close to his 80's, who lived through the civil rights decisions, furthermore, he is a black American. The fact that we would be in agreement with me should give you a suspicion that perhaps these civil rights laws are not as sacred as you like to think. For many people it is not allowed to criticize various civil rights laws, because Science forbid, if you do so it must mean you are a racist or a sexist. Civil rights laws, just like everyone else, are not sacred, we can rationally study them.
There is a book that on this subject that I hope to read in the future, but I never read. I have been recommended this book by other people who said it was an excellent book. It is by Thomas Sowell, called Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality? Here is an article I found by Thomas Sowell on segregation which would say a point of view that you probably do not often hear, here. I would like to also post an excellent YouTube video. It is a mirrored video by TheAmazingAtheist (original one was taken down), it is filled with a lot of angry, screaming, swearing, but it gets an very good point across, here
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Altruism vs Self-Interest
In the minds of the masses, as it seems to me by observing what people say, self-interest is looked down upon and in some cases even vilified, altruism is treated differently, altruism is never vilified, altruism is praised. What is puzzling is that between the two extremes of people, a person who lives entirely for his self-interest and a person who lives entirely for the desires of other people, the selfish person is preferable over the altruistic one. Thus, we have an immediate question, why is self-interest vilified and altruism praised?
Any society which sacrifices some of its members for other members is condemnable for its actions. An individual who sacrifices other members for the sake of other members is also condemnable. This is not a progressive society and this individual is not enlightened. This is the kind of action we should expect from primitive animal or human sacrificing civilizations not from modern age nations or people. Almost everyone would agree with me regarding these points. But what is strange is when the human sacrificing individual chooses himself as the individual of sacrifice many of us praise him. If the sacrificing individual chooses another for sacrifice we condemn him. But if he chooses himself for sacrifice for another then we praise him. Why do we condemn him if he chooses someone other than himself but not when he chooses himself? Someone is nonetheless being sacrificed for another despite if he chooses himself or not.
It is appropriate to use the word "sacrifice" in regards to the altruist. Because we are deliberately considering the case between an extreme altruist and an extreme egoist. The altruist in our case can be said to be "sacrificing" because he goes out of his way to deny his own interests for the interests of others. Whether it be possessions or happiness or even his necessities. The word "sacrificing" is appropriate in his description, even if it does not mean actual sacrifice of life.
The economic reality of the altruist is another problem with him. When two people trade with one another, they both benefit. One person gives his possession for an exchange of something else because his possession is less valuable to him than what he wants, his trading partner feels likewise. Thus, both people benefit. This is why there is often a double "thank you" moment in such an exchange. We buy food from a store and say "thank you", the store receives our money and says "thank you". We double thank because we both benefit. Thus, trade is a positive sum game. Now we get to the altruist. The altruist does not gain anything, he only sacrifices at the expense of himself. In fact, from an economic point of view, there is no difference at all between an altruist and a person who sacrifices other people for the sake of others. In both cases a gain is attained at the loss of someone else, this is a zero sum game. Thus, the altruist does not add anything positive to the economy. Indeed, if every person was an altruist then there would not be no economic growth at all. Where would it come from? One altruist would sacrifice himself for another, the other, if an altruist, would sacrifice himself for another, and so forth. No one would have a long-term gain, only short-term gain, which they will sacrifice for someone else. In fact, what is even more likely, is that the altruist economy is a negative sum game. Because whenever a sacrifice takes place there is friction, something else loses within the sacrifice too. Thus, the benefit an altruist gives must be a little less than the benefit received from another. If the other altruist is to sacrifice his gain for someone else, then his benefit would be even less valuable now. This would continue until the benefit is entirely eliminated. Thus, the economic model is actually a negative sum game.
Now consider the egoist. The egoist is a man of no action rather than action with regard to altruism. The egoist does not do anything for someone else at the expense of himself. Thus, the egoist has no responsibility for another person. If another person is suffering, whether by his own errors or by his circumstance, there is nothing that the egoist has done that brought about his suffering. Therefore, if the egoist did not exist the suffering of this individual would still exist. Thus, the egoist is not responsible for the suffering of another. To condemn the egoist here would be the same as condemning a non-existent egoist whom we conjured in our minds, it would not make any sense. The egoist cannot be condemned for bringing suffering, but the altruist can, the altruist brings suffering, namely of himself.
Whereas the altruistic economy is unattainable, the egoist economy functions for a greater prosperity. Two egoists who trade with one another do not think about the other person but think of themselves. To satisfy their self-interest they need to satisfy the self-interest of others, thus, an economy is born, an economy with a positive sum game, where more wealth would be created. To quote Adam Smith, "But man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and show them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages." An egoist is one who can satisfy millions of people indirectly all for his own self-love in an egoist economy, the same cannot be said with an altruistic economy.
Every ounce of my reason points to the egoist as being more preferable to have in any society over an altruist. But I cannot understand why the altruist is praised but the egoist is not. If anyone is to be praised it should be the egoist. But I do not think that anyone should be praised. What we considered was the case between an extreme egoist, who only acts for his own self-interest, and an extreme altruist, who only acts for the interest or others. These are not the only two possibilities. Most people fall somewhere in between the two extremes. Some people are mostly altruistic but do act for their own selfish desires. Some people are mostly egoistic but do act for others in benevolence. Wealth and a strong economy is a blessing but it is not the only thing which we should strive for, there are many other goals that we can have. Indeed, if wealth was our only goal then we should start working 120 hours every week, that would increase GDP, but we do not do so, because we realize that wealth is not the only goal. Wealth is one goal among many goals. Even though we cannot condemn the egoist for the suffering of others for it is not his responsibility, we can, perhaps, condemn him for something else. And that is the lack of compassion that he feels towards others. Human compassion is a beautiful thing, benevolence should be encouraged whenever we have more than enough. But the love of others, compassion, and benevolence cannot run an economy. It all comes down to our self-interest. Thus, my ideal human being, is not an egoist, and certainly not an altruist, but what I would call a "charitable capitalist". The charitable capitalist mostly acts for his self-interest, thereby creating more wealth indirectly, but once he gained, he never forgets his fellow man, and is willing for give away a small portion for the compassion of others. I give praise to the charitable capitalists, people such as, John Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet. (It is interesting to note that three of these great men where atheists, whoever says that atheists cannot care for other people is being delusional).
What is the birth of the vilification of self-interest? For most of history the lower class either was part of a feudal system or a slave. Their position in life was fixated. The slave class lived under the master class. The slaves were unable to attain what their masters had. The masters were able to strive for their self-interest and more possessions. But the slaves were unable to. The will to power of the slaves was unable to will for their self-interest. The priest taught the slaves to resent the will to self-interest of the masters, for the will is so terrified of a horror of a vacuum that is rather will nothingness than not will at all. This is the meaning of ascetic ideals. The ascetic priest lead a slave rebellion against their masters, when the morals of the slaves triumphed over the masters, the human species was enslaved to slave morality. We, the slaves of the past generations, now continue on our tradition of resentment of self-interest, which the ascetic priests, by their own madness, preached to the slaves. It is time to put an end to this vilification and escape the morality of the weak!
Any society which sacrifices some of its members for other members is condemnable for its actions. An individual who sacrifices other members for the sake of other members is also condemnable. This is not a progressive society and this individual is not enlightened. This is the kind of action we should expect from primitive animal or human sacrificing civilizations not from modern age nations or people. Almost everyone would agree with me regarding these points. But what is strange is when the human sacrificing individual chooses himself as the individual of sacrifice many of us praise him. If the sacrificing individual chooses another for sacrifice we condemn him. But if he chooses himself for sacrifice for another then we praise him. Why do we condemn him if he chooses someone other than himself but not when he chooses himself? Someone is nonetheless being sacrificed for another despite if he chooses himself or not.
It is appropriate to use the word "sacrifice" in regards to the altruist. Because we are deliberately considering the case between an extreme altruist and an extreme egoist. The altruist in our case can be said to be "sacrificing" because he goes out of his way to deny his own interests for the interests of others. Whether it be possessions or happiness or even his necessities. The word "sacrificing" is appropriate in his description, even if it does not mean actual sacrifice of life.
The economic reality of the altruist is another problem with him. When two people trade with one another, they both benefit. One person gives his possession for an exchange of something else because his possession is less valuable to him than what he wants, his trading partner feels likewise. Thus, both people benefit. This is why there is often a double "thank you" moment in such an exchange. We buy food from a store and say "thank you", the store receives our money and says "thank you". We double thank because we both benefit. Thus, trade is a positive sum game. Now we get to the altruist. The altruist does not gain anything, he only sacrifices at the expense of himself. In fact, from an economic point of view, there is no difference at all between an altruist and a person who sacrifices other people for the sake of others. In both cases a gain is attained at the loss of someone else, this is a zero sum game. Thus, the altruist does not add anything positive to the economy. Indeed, if every person was an altruist then there would not be no economic growth at all. Where would it come from? One altruist would sacrifice himself for another, the other, if an altruist, would sacrifice himself for another, and so forth. No one would have a long-term gain, only short-term gain, which they will sacrifice for someone else. In fact, what is even more likely, is that the altruist economy is a negative sum game. Because whenever a sacrifice takes place there is friction, something else loses within the sacrifice too. Thus, the benefit an altruist gives must be a little less than the benefit received from another. If the other altruist is to sacrifice his gain for someone else, then his benefit would be even less valuable now. This would continue until the benefit is entirely eliminated. Thus, the economic model is actually a negative sum game.
Now consider the egoist. The egoist is a man of no action rather than action with regard to altruism. The egoist does not do anything for someone else at the expense of himself. Thus, the egoist has no responsibility for another person. If another person is suffering, whether by his own errors or by his circumstance, there is nothing that the egoist has done that brought about his suffering. Therefore, if the egoist did not exist the suffering of this individual would still exist. Thus, the egoist is not responsible for the suffering of another. To condemn the egoist here would be the same as condemning a non-existent egoist whom we conjured in our minds, it would not make any sense. The egoist cannot be condemned for bringing suffering, but the altruist can, the altruist brings suffering, namely of himself.
Whereas the altruistic economy is unattainable, the egoist economy functions for a greater prosperity. Two egoists who trade with one another do not think about the other person but think of themselves. To satisfy their self-interest they need to satisfy the self-interest of others, thus, an economy is born, an economy with a positive sum game, where more wealth would be created. To quote Adam Smith, "But man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and show them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages." An egoist is one who can satisfy millions of people indirectly all for his own self-love in an egoist economy, the same cannot be said with an altruistic economy.
Every ounce of my reason points to the egoist as being more preferable to have in any society over an altruist. But I cannot understand why the altruist is praised but the egoist is not. If anyone is to be praised it should be the egoist. But I do not think that anyone should be praised. What we considered was the case between an extreme egoist, who only acts for his own self-interest, and an extreme altruist, who only acts for the interest or others. These are not the only two possibilities. Most people fall somewhere in between the two extremes. Some people are mostly altruistic but do act for their own selfish desires. Some people are mostly egoistic but do act for others in benevolence. Wealth and a strong economy is a blessing but it is not the only thing which we should strive for, there are many other goals that we can have. Indeed, if wealth was our only goal then we should start working 120 hours every week, that would increase GDP, but we do not do so, because we realize that wealth is not the only goal. Wealth is one goal among many goals. Even though we cannot condemn the egoist for the suffering of others for it is not his responsibility, we can, perhaps, condemn him for something else. And that is the lack of compassion that he feels towards others. Human compassion is a beautiful thing, benevolence should be encouraged whenever we have more than enough. But the love of others, compassion, and benevolence cannot run an economy. It all comes down to our self-interest. Thus, my ideal human being, is not an egoist, and certainly not an altruist, but what I would call a "charitable capitalist". The charitable capitalist mostly acts for his self-interest, thereby creating more wealth indirectly, but once he gained, he never forgets his fellow man, and is willing for give away a small portion for the compassion of others. I give praise to the charitable capitalists, people such as, John Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet. (It is interesting to note that three of these great men where atheists, whoever says that atheists cannot care for other people is being delusional).
What is the birth of the vilification of self-interest? For most of history the lower class either was part of a feudal system or a slave. Their position in life was fixated. The slave class lived under the master class. The slaves were unable to attain what their masters had. The masters were able to strive for their self-interest and more possessions. But the slaves were unable to. The will to power of the slaves was unable to will for their self-interest. The priest taught the slaves to resent the will to self-interest of the masters, for the will is so terrified of a horror of a vacuum that is rather will nothingness than not will at all. This is the meaning of ascetic ideals. The ascetic priest lead a slave rebellion against their masters, when the morals of the slaves triumphed over the masters, the human species was enslaved to slave morality. We, the slaves of the past generations, now continue on our tradition of resentment of self-interest, which the ascetic priests, by their own madness, preached to the slaves. It is time to put an end to this vilification and escape the morality of the weak!
Whence Cometh Negro?
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, on the sixth day he created man, from man he created woman. The man and woman were fruitful and multiplied very very greatly. This story has many questions that one can ask, but one that I think is quite interesting that is hardly asked is where do black people come from?
This is an excellent question. What makes it so excellent is that it challenges even strong believers in religion who reject evolution. Fossils, evolution, age of the world, do not really challenge strong believers that much. But this question does. Because it is asking a question on a topic which everyone knows, that is, that there are so many races in the world. Not everyone knows evolutionary biology. People can understand that if originally there were two white people then everyone must be white. If there were two black people then everyone must be black. I am actually not sure what happens if one was black or white, however, we can conclude from the passage that Eve came from the Adam that she must have been the same race as him. Thus, the mixture of races is not a possible candidate to consider in this question.
I will give you one answer which Rashi gives. Rashi is the grand Jewish commentator on the Torah. Rashi says, in the story when Noach cursed his son Ham, in a commentary, that part of Noach's curse was that Ham turned black. How does Rashi know? He quotes a Medrish. How the Medrish can possible come up with such an answer is beyond me.
The generation of Ham was cursed to be "the slaves of slaves you shall become". This was used by some people to justify slavery in a Biblical way. They said that black people were the slaves of slaves i.e. black people enslaved other black people to sell them Europeans. Thus, for many religious people during slavery, slavery was a Biblical issue, so they did not object to it, they used this for justification.
What I want to say here is to try to imagine the anti-black attitude that must be in the minds of Orthodox Jewish people because of this evil Medrish. The Medrish/Rashi basically say that black people are to incur the curse of Ham and they were destined to be slaves. I have heard these "justifications" against the evils that were done to black people when I was in yeshiva, so do not tell me I am exaggerating, I am not.
If this Medrish/Rashi was actually true and did not attempt to make Jewish people feel negatively towards black then it would not be racist. It would not be racist because it would be trying to explain the truth of black origin, not to condemn them. See this for a longer explanation of what racism is to see why it would not be racism in such a context. However, since this Rashi/Medrish is not just false but also induces in Jewish people an anti-black feeling it must be racist. Therefore, God is racist since the Torah is racist. Thus, God is evil. Evil Commeth from God! God is the father of evil! Alas, Epicurus can now rest!
This is an excellent question. What makes it so excellent is that it challenges even strong believers in religion who reject evolution. Fossils, evolution, age of the world, do not really challenge strong believers that much. But this question does. Because it is asking a question on a topic which everyone knows, that is, that there are so many races in the world. Not everyone knows evolutionary biology. People can understand that if originally there were two white people then everyone must be white. If there were two black people then everyone must be black. I am actually not sure what happens if one was black or white, however, we can conclude from the passage that Eve came from the Adam that she must have been the same race as him. Thus, the mixture of races is not a possible candidate to consider in this question.
I will give you one answer which Rashi gives. Rashi is the grand Jewish commentator on the Torah. Rashi says, in the story when Noach cursed his son Ham, in a commentary, that part of Noach's curse was that Ham turned black. How does Rashi know? He quotes a Medrish. How the Medrish can possible come up with such an answer is beyond me.
The generation of Ham was cursed to be "the slaves of slaves you shall become". This was used by some people to justify slavery in a Biblical way. They said that black people were the slaves of slaves i.e. black people enslaved other black people to sell them Europeans. Thus, for many religious people during slavery, slavery was a Biblical issue, so they did not object to it, they used this for justification.
What I want to say here is to try to imagine the anti-black attitude that must be in the minds of Orthodox Jewish people because of this evil Medrish. The Medrish/Rashi basically say that black people are to incur the curse of Ham and they were destined to be slaves. I have heard these "justifications" against the evils that were done to black people when I was in yeshiva, so do not tell me I am exaggerating, I am not.
If this Medrish/Rashi was actually true and did not attempt to make Jewish people feel negatively towards black then it would not be racist. It would not be racist because it would be trying to explain the truth of black origin, not to condemn them. See this for a longer explanation of what racism is to see why it would not be racism in such a context. However, since this Rashi/Medrish is not just false but also induces in Jewish people an anti-black feeling it must be racist. Therefore, God is racist since the Torah is racist. Thus, God is evil. Evil Commeth from God! God is the father of evil! Alas, Epicurus can now rest!
Monday, May 17, 2010
Grammar is Garbage
I wanted to make a post about grammar because I do not really see people object to grammar. Most people are under the impression that grammar is a great thing and we should respect it. I do not. I think that grammar is pointless, and I think that grammar scholars, or whatever they are called or call themselves, is one of the biggest waste of jobs that exist in the world.
I understand that basic grammar is necessary to express our thoughts in a clear way. Primitive men first developed nouns to describe objects and then verbs to describe the actions that go along with these objects. More complicated words did not exist yet. So all thoughts were simple combinations of nouns and verbs. A more complex language enables us to express complicated ideas, and sometimes very abstract ideas, like what I am writing at the moment. But to make our ideas clear we need some really basic grammar. Without it, we may still be clear, but it would be more confusing to understand us. Rules for periods and commas are really helpful. They help separate and organize our thoughts. So yes, I acknowledge that basic grammar skills are useful and should be learned by people who wish to understand and be understood more clearly.
The kind of grammar I am objecting to is the radical grammar. Grammar that insists that we put a comma just because it said so. Grammar that insists that we speak in a certain way just because it said so. What really makes me want to vomit is that these grammar scholars debate on these questions. Debate?! Who needs to debate about arbitrary made up rules that we pulled out of our own anus? I can understand that we debate about evolution and creationism because we are making a truth claim. I can understand that we can debate about the correct economic model because we would like to understand the economy more precisely. But who debates about arbitrary made up rules? If I make up my own board game I do not have to debate it. I get to assign my own rules.
Take for example the debate in grammar of whether we need to use a comma after "and" or not. Thus, should I say, "guns, drugs, and pussy" or should I say, "guns, drugs and pussy"? My question is, "WHO CARES?!". Why does this trivial point matter? Some people will put a comma because they like to put commas and some people will not put commas because they do not like placing commas. Why does it matter? Why should it matter? Whether a comma is put in place or not in this particular case is irrelevant, the thought is clear. As I said, basic grammar is necessary to make our thoughts clearer. However, there is a line not to be crossed over. Those grammar scholars who spend their time figuring out which rules need to apply to some trivial instances of grammar are wasting time. That is why I consider them to be among the most wasteful jobs that can exist. Their labor has no value.
Another example that really bothers me is spelling grammar. Some grammar scholars insist that we spell one way and not another. Do I write "labor" or "labour"? That is more of a distinction between American and English. Do I write "color" or "colour", "center" or "centre", "generalized" or "generalised"? My question, again, "WHO CARES!?". These are two separate spellings of the same words. English people learned to spell one way by their tradition. American people learned to spell another way by their tradition. American and English people can perfectly understand each other. So why should it matter? These grammar scholars cannot allow a peaceful coexistence of different languages. It bothers them. They want one absolute rule for everyone.
But what bothers me more than anything else is that these grammar scholars object to certain language. For example, "aint" is considered to be grammatically wrong? Basically, what "grammatically wrong" here means, is that it is a word that does not agree with arbitrary made up rules by these grammar scholars which they pulled out of each other's anus. Who cares? Language is always evolving. It is always changing. Different people developed one way of speaking a little different from a more common way of speaking. Black people often say "aint" and they also use double negative. For example, "I dont know nothing". That is a double negative. I agree that double negatives should be avoided, because logically two negations on a statement is same as not putting any negation on a statement. But in other languages this is not so. In Aramaic for instance there is no rule against double negatives. The Gemara often uses double negative language. But here is the thing. Even though I disagree with double negative usage, I am not bothered by it. In fact, I am entertained by it. It has a nice sound to it. Or the practice of putting "at" at the end of a word. A black person may say, "I aint got no knowledge were da money is at". Notice the double negative. Notice the usage of "aint". Notice the practice of attaching "at" at the end of a sentence. This is a nightmare for a grammar scholar. But not for me. I like that phrase. Even though it is English, it is a different dialect.
Language is always changing. There are many versions of speaking here in the US and no version is the correct one. I like the black version, it is artistic, and has a nice sound to it even though I do not speak it. But what bothers me about these grammar scholars is that they insist on one uniform standard of speaking. That is too boring. It is more exciting to have minor different versions of language. Language today is so different than what it was 200 years ago. These grammar scholars want to only live in the present and not evolve the language into some new one. So that is why grammar scholars have a pointless job and they can sit on my middle finger.
I would like to conclude about people who are obsessed about grammar even though they are not grammar scholars themselves. From time to time when you debate with someone, they will come along and tell you, "what you said is grammatically wrong". I get that sometimes. They say that in order to make themselves feel smarter than you. They want to correct you in something. Telling you that, "you are grammatically wrong", essentially translates into, "you would break my language rules which I arbitrary pulled out of my anus". So for me, "you are grammatically wrong" is a worthless response in a debate. What is important is to respond to my ideas, not to my grammar usage. It is fine to point out an error in my grammar if you happen to think it is basic grammar. But do not act as if you scored some debate points on me. Grammar does not make your smart.
I understand that basic grammar is necessary to express our thoughts in a clear way. Primitive men first developed nouns to describe objects and then verbs to describe the actions that go along with these objects. More complicated words did not exist yet. So all thoughts were simple combinations of nouns and verbs. A more complex language enables us to express complicated ideas, and sometimes very abstract ideas, like what I am writing at the moment. But to make our ideas clear we need some really basic grammar. Without it, we may still be clear, but it would be more confusing to understand us. Rules for periods and commas are really helpful. They help separate and organize our thoughts. So yes, I acknowledge that basic grammar skills are useful and should be learned by people who wish to understand and be understood more clearly.
The kind of grammar I am objecting to is the radical grammar. Grammar that insists that we put a comma just because it said so. Grammar that insists that we speak in a certain way just because it said so. What really makes me want to vomit is that these grammar scholars debate on these questions. Debate?! Who needs to debate about arbitrary made up rules that we pulled out of our own anus? I can understand that we debate about evolution and creationism because we are making a truth claim. I can understand that we can debate about the correct economic model because we would like to understand the economy more precisely. But who debates about arbitrary made up rules? If I make up my own board game I do not have to debate it. I get to assign my own rules.
Take for example the debate in grammar of whether we need to use a comma after "and" or not. Thus, should I say, "guns, drugs, and pussy" or should I say, "guns, drugs and pussy"? My question is, "WHO CARES?!". Why does this trivial point matter? Some people will put a comma because they like to put commas and some people will not put commas because they do not like placing commas. Why does it matter? Why should it matter? Whether a comma is put in place or not in this particular case is irrelevant, the thought is clear. As I said, basic grammar is necessary to make our thoughts clearer. However, there is a line not to be crossed over. Those grammar scholars who spend their time figuring out which rules need to apply to some trivial instances of grammar are wasting time. That is why I consider them to be among the most wasteful jobs that can exist. Their labor has no value.
Another example that really bothers me is spelling grammar. Some grammar scholars insist that we spell one way and not another. Do I write "labor" or "labour"? That is more of a distinction between American and English. Do I write "color" or "colour", "center" or "centre", "generalized" or "generalised"? My question, again, "WHO CARES!?". These are two separate spellings of the same words. English people learned to spell one way by their tradition. American people learned to spell another way by their tradition. American and English people can perfectly understand each other. So why should it matter? These grammar scholars cannot allow a peaceful coexistence of different languages. It bothers them. They want one absolute rule for everyone.
But what bothers me more than anything else is that these grammar scholars object to certain language. For example, "aint" is considered to be grammatically wrong? Basically, what "grammatically wrong" here means, is that it is a word that does not agree with arbitrary made up rules by these grammar scholars which they pulled out of each other's anus. Who cares? Language is always evolving. It is always changing. Different people developed one way of speaking a little different from a more common way of speaking. Black people often say "aint" and they also use double negative. For example, "I dont know nothing". That is a double negative. I agree that double negatives should be avoided, because logically two negations on a statement is same as not putting any negation on a statement. But in other languages this is not so. In Aramaic for instance there is no rule against double negatives. The Gemara often uses double negative language. But here is the thing. Even though I disagree with double negative usage, I am not bothered by it. In fact, I am entertained by it. It has a nice sound to it. Or the practice of putting "at" at the end of a word. A black person may say, "I aint got no knowledge were da money is at". Notice the double negative. Notice the usage of "aint". Notice the practice of attaching "at" at the end of a sentence. This is a nightmare for a grammar scholar. But not for me. I like that phrase. Even though it is English, it is a different dialect.
Language is always changing. There are many versions of speaking here in the US and no version is the correct one. I like the black version, it is artistic, and has a nice sound to it even though I do not speak it. But what bothers me about these grammar scholars is that they insist on one uniform standard of speaking. That is too boring. It is more exciting to have minor different versions of language. Language today is so different than what it was 200 years ago. These grammar scholars want to only live in the present and not evolve the language into some new one. So that is why grammar scholars have a pointless job and they can sit on my middle finger.
I would like to conclude about people who are obsessed about grammar even though they are not grammar scholars themselves. From time to time when you debate with someone, they will come along and tell you, "what you said is grammatically wrong". I get that sometimes. They say that in order to make themselves feel smarter than you. They want to correct you in something. Telling you that, "you are grammatically wrong", essentially translates into, "you would break my language rules which I arbitrary pulled out of my anus". So for me, "you are grammatically wrong" is a worthless response in a debate. What is important is to respond to my ideas, not to my grammar usage. It is fine to point out an error in my grammar if you happen to think it is basic grammar. But do not act as if you scored some debate points on me. Grammar does not make your smart.
Unnecessary Fear in Religion
Fear is necessary when its function is to protect people from danger. Fear has been evolutionary developed to protect people from death. People are afraid to walk into a forest at night because they are afraid they might be killed by some wild animal. People are afraid of height because they are afraid to fall down and die. These fears make sense, they are necessary, their function is to protect people from death.
There are fears which are also unnecessary. Someone who is afraid of going out in the street on Friday the 13th has an unnecessary fear. There is no danger, no threat, by going into the street on Friday the 13th. Someone who is afraid to cross the street after a black cat crossed it has an unnecessary fear. This fear does not protect someone from death, this fear only is a response to superstition. People who are afraid that aliens will abduct them while they sleep have also an unnecessary fears. There are no aliens, no one ever gets abducted, this fear is completely unnecessary.
The big difference between necessary and unnecessary fear, besides that unnecessary fear is foolish, is that unnecessary fear is like a shadow that is eternally cast over the person. Those who have unnecessary fears constantly have them, they never go away. Necessary fears are not so. When I do normal everyday things I am not worried about being killed by animals, I am not worried about being struck by lightning, I am not worried of heights. When I go to sleep these fears never distress me. Because necessary fears function as an alarm system in people, people become afraid when there is potential danger. Unnecessary fears do not function as an alarm system, they prey on the emotions of people and their stupidities. This is why people who are superstitious always have to worry about which superstition they have violated. Their fear of the superstitious is eternal, never a moment for a peace of mind.
The beautiful thing about skepticism, besides for that we throw away all the false ideas, is that skepticism does not contain any unnecessary fears. I am never afraid that an alien will land in my room as I sleep at night. I am not afraid that some demon or ghost is residing near me. I am not afraid that some curse placed upon me shall come to pass. I have real things to worry about, such as to make sure no person can break in and steal my stuff. But my fears are not eternal. They come and go. For most of the time I have a peaceful mind. There is no eternal shadow cast over me.
Religion is not so. Religion preys on the fears and emotions of people. People are afraid that they will die one day, so religion comforts them by telling them there is a place where they go to when they die. People are afraid that they might be alone, so religion comforts them by telling them there is a God who loves them and wants a relationship with them. Religious people feel comfort from their religion. But they also feel fear from it. Religion makes its practitioners happy as they stay obedient, but they are fearful of the imaginary consequences that will take place if they happen to rebel against it. Religion brings comfort as a substitute for fear, and it instills fear in its members who dare oppose it. Indeed, Judaism teaches to love God but also to fear God.
Religious people have an eternal shadow over them of constant fear. A Jewish teenage boy who tries with all his might to not masturbate will eventually give into the temptation. But once he gives in he will feel this guilt and fear in the action that he is doing. We is afraid that God is watching him masturbate. And he is also afraid that God will judge him for what he is doing at the particular moment. Religious people also carry with them superstitions. If they do something which is not part of their religion then perhaps an evil spirit will haunt them. All of this is an unnecessary fear.
Skepticism can break this fear. It can help free the minds of religious people by allowing them to overcome their eternal fear.
There are fears which are also unnecessary. Someone who is afraid of going out in the street on Friday the 13th has an unnecessary fear. There is no danger, no threat, by going into the street on Friday the 13th. Someone who is afraid to cross the street after a black cat crossed it has an unnecessary fear. This fear does not protect someone from death, this fear only is a response to superstition. People who are afraid that aliens will abduct them while they sleep have also an unnecessary fears. There are no aliens, no one ever gets abducted, this fear is completely unnecessary.
The big difference between necessary and unnecessary fear, besides that unnecessary fear is foolish, is that unnecessary fear is like a shadow that is eternally cast over the person. Those who have unnecessary fears constantly have them, they never go away. Necessary fears are not so. When I do normal everyday things I am not worried about being killed by animals, I am not worried about being struck by lightning, I am not worried of heights. When I go to sleep these fears never distress me. Because necessary fears function as an alarm system in people, people become afraid when there is potential danger. Unnecessary fears do not function as an alarm system, they prey on the emotions of people and their stupidities. This is why people who are superstitious always have to worry about which superstition they have violated. Their fear of the superstitious is eternal, never a moment for a peace of mind.
The beautiful thing about skepticism, besides for that we throw away all the false ideas, is that skepticism does not contain any unnecessary fears. I am never afraid that an alien will land in my room as I sleep at night. I am not afraid that some demon or ghost is residing near me. I am not afraid that some curse placed upon me shall come to pass. I have real things to worry about, such as to make sure no person can break in and steal my stuff. But my fears are not eternal. They come and go. For most of the time I have a peaceful mind. There is no eternal shadow cast over me.
Religion is not so. Religion preys on the fears and emotions of people. People are afraid that they will die one day, so religion comforts them by telling them there is a place where they go to when they die. People are afraid that they might be alone, so religion comforts them by telling them there is a God who loves them and wants a relationship with them. Religious people feel comfort from their religion. But they also feel fear from it. Religion makes its practitioners happy as they stay obedient, but they are fearful of the imaginary consequences that will take place if they happen to rebel against it. Religion brings comfort as a substitute for fear, and it instills fear in its members who dare oppose it. Indeed, Judaism teaches to love God but also to fear God.
Religious people have an eternal shadow over them of constant fear. A Jewish teenage boy who tries with all his might to not masturbate will eventually give into the temptation. But once he gives in he will feel this guilt and fear in the action that he is doing. We is afraid that God is watching him masturbate. And he is also afraid that God will judge him for what he is doing at the particular moment. Religious people also carry with them superstitions. If they do something which is not part of their religion then perhaps an evil spirit will haunt them. All of this is an unnecessary fear.
Skepticism can break this fear. It can help free the minds of religious people by allowing them to overcome their eternal fear.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Stupid Brain Center Hypothesis
It seems to me that there is a part of the brain, whether this is an actual physical region of the brain, or whether what I am saying is just metaphorical language, that is the "stupid center". The stupid center of the brain is that part of the brain which is responsible for people having dumb ideas.
The stupid center of the brain also obeys two properties. First, the stupid center is like a void that needs to be filled in. If the stupid center has no dumb ideas in it then it will search for dumb ideas to collect into itself. Second, the stupid center is limited in what it can hold, that is to say, once the stupid center is filled up it will not take any more stupid ideas into it.
One example of the stupid center of the brain that most people have is obviously religion. But once the stupid center absorbs religion it is filled up with "stupid stuff". And so it would mean that the stupid center would not absorb any other stupid ideas other than its religious ones.
Religious people, in general, are normal people outside of their religion, and they can apply common sense well to those matters outside their religion, they simply turn off their reasoning skills in matters of religion. But outside religion they are rather normal. Many secular people are not the same with matters outside of religion. Secular people are reasonable when it comes to religion, but when it comes to other matters they give into dumb ideas.
When was the last time you ever saw an Orthodox Jew who was some insane environmentalist, or a feminist, or some crazy animal rights activist working for PETA? Or who was obsessed into eating organic food or buying only low-fat vitamin D yogurt? Or an Orthodox Jew who brought himself a Prius because it was pro-green, or a big fan of Al Gore? Never. I never met any such Orthodox Jews. Or perhaps if they do exist, you hardly ever hear of them.
When the stupid center of an Orthodox Jew has been filled up with religion, it will no longer take into itself any dumb ideas. So when it comes to all of those dumb ideas listed above one would hardly ever find an Orthodox Jew who follows through with them. Orthodox Jews are quite reasonable when it comes to being an insane environmentalist, or a feminist, or some crazy PETA supporter. They, in general, have good common sense against these dumb ideas.
But how often have you met secular people in your life that were insane environmentalists, or feminists, or some crazy animal rights PETA members? Or how many secular people have you met that were obsessed with eating only organic food or buying themselves only low-fat yogurt with vitamin D? How many people secular people are proud that they drive around in a Prius? How many secular people adore Al Gore? Not that many in percentages, but the secular people far exceed religious people in these matters of stupidity.
The reason being why secular people are so much more likely to fall for these dumb ideas than Orthodox Jews (or very religious members of other religions) is because Orthodox Jews (and other very religious members) have filled up their stupid centers. It will not take any more dumb ideas. Secular people, however, do not have their stupid center filled up with religion (or even if they are slightly religious, it is only a little portion of the center) and so they are more likely to accept the dumb list of ideas mentioned above. The stupid center of secular people needs to be filled up with some other non-sense.
The stupid center of the brain also obeys two properties. First, the stupid center is like a void that needs to be filled in. If the stupid center has no dumb ideas in it then it will search for dumb ideas to collect into itself. Second, the stupid center is limited in what it can hold, that is to say, once the stupid center is filled up it will not take any more stupid ideas into it.
One example of the stupid center of the brain that most people have is obviously religion. But once the stupid center absorbs religion it is filled up with "stupid stuff". And so it would mean that the stupid center would not absorb any other stupid ideas other than its religious ones.
Religious people, in general, are normal people outside of their religion, and they can apply common sense well to those matters outside their religion, they simply turn off their reasoning skills in matters of religion. But outside religion they are rather normal. Many secular people are not the same with matters outside of religion. Secular people are reasonable when it comes to religion, but when it comes to other matters they give into dumb ideas.
When was the last time you ever saw an Orthodox Jew who was some insane environmentalist, or a feminist, or some crazy animal rights activist working for PETA? Or who was obsessed into eating organic food or buying only low-fat vitamin D yogurt? Or an Orthodox Jew who brought himself a Prius because it was pro-green, or a big fan of Al Gore? Never. I never met any such Orthodox Jews. Or perhaps if they do exist, you hardly ever hear of them.
When the stupid center of an Orthodox Jew has been filled up with religion, it will no longer take into itself any dumb ideas. So when it comes to all of those dumb ideas listed above one would hardly ever find an Orthodox Jew who follows through with them. Orthodox Jews are quite reasonable when it comes to being an insane environmentalist, or a feminist, or some crazy PETA supporter. They, in general, have good common sense against these dumb ideas.
But how often have you met secular people in your life that were insane environmentalists, or feminists, or some crazy animal rights PETA members? Or how many secular people have you met that were obsessed with eating only organic food or buying themselves only low-fat yogurt with vitamin D? How many people secular people are proud that they drive around in a Prius? How many secular people adore Al Gore? Not that many in percentages, but the secular people far exceed religious people in these matters of stupidity.
The reason being why secular people are so much more likely to fall for these dumb ideas than Orthodox Jews (or very religious members of other religions) is because Orthodox Jews (and other very religious members) have filled up their stupid centers. It will not take any more dumb ideas. Secular people, however, do not have their stupid center filled up with religion (or even if they are slightly religious, it is only a little portion of the center) and so they are more likely to accept the dumb list of ideas mentioned above. The stupid center of secular people needs to be filled up with some other non-sense.
Generation of Pussies
I do not wish to substitute the past for the present. In general the future is always an improvement over the past except for a few sudden ruptures in history, but in an overall view history always improves. And the future shall continue to improve over the past. Thus, I have no longing to live in the past. However, there is something about the past that I greatly do admire over the present. People in the past were so much more braver than people today. Our generation is a generation of pussies. Indeed, the very fact that the expression "generation of pussies" insults many people and makes them uncomfortable only vindicates my point that we are a generation of pussies! Our generation consists of weak-minded people. Myself included, I am not saying that I am a super brave person among everyone else, I am a pussy just like everyone else, the only distinction between me and others is that I recognize this distinction.
Go back to 1776. Back in those days if you had an enemy, someone who insulted you, or something with whom you had a dispute, or you opposed each other philosophically, you might challenge each other to a duel. Of course, you or your opponent can back away from a duel, but one who did this retreat was seen as a pussy. The mechanics of the duel are very frightening. First, both opponents shoot at eachother with dueling pistols at a certain distance. If both of them are still alive then they take turns shooting back and forth until one opponent is dead. Try to imagine the horror of looking down a barrel of a loaded gun and not knowing whether you will stay alive or not. That is what people did back in those days. Some of our Founding Fathers have also dueled. But today many people are even afraid of a gun, let alone dueling!
I am not saying that dueling is great. All I am saying is that I admire the bravery that existed in those men. Those men were brave men. This element of bravery is missing from us today. I would certainly love to see people duel with another today, it would revive our dying bravery. Our death is a way to bring back to life our bravery! Of course, dueling would not exist today because guns are just way too efficient, dueling requires terrible pistols where there is an element of surprise. But that is besides the point.
But what do people do today? If one insults another, by calling him a "fag" or "nigger" or whatever other term or expression, what do they do? Many of them form special interest groups where they talk about their feelings. And then try to call up lawyers to get their enemies into trouble. We seriously have turned into giant pussies. Words scare us! Words! What have we become? What pussies have we turned to? It is just so embarrasing comparing the sensitivity of men from 18th century to men today. We are like little delicate flowers, men back then were made out of stone.
Or consider Alexander the Great. Now there was nothing great about him, he was a tyrant who went around from country to country killing out millions of people, but he was certainly brave. That is an honor we can give him. He stood and fought together with his troops at the front of the army. Hannibal, perhaps the greatest general from history, was the same. He too stood, not on a mountain top on a white horse, or in the end of his army, but all the way in the front, fighting side by side with his men. This is bravery that I admire. Of course, I am not encouraging massacring people, but I am encouraging us to become a little more brave. To grow a penis. To stop being so sensitive. To stop being so scared of words or expressions. To not to be afraid to be "intolerant" by disrespecting other people's beliefs.
Go back to 1776. Back in those days if you had an enemy, someone who insulted you, or something with whom you had a dispute, or you opposed each other philosophically, you might challenge each other to a duel. Of course, you or your opponent can back away from a duel, but one who did this retreat was seen as a pussy. The mechanics of the duel are very frightening. First, both opponents shoot at eachother with dueling pistols at a certain distance. If both of them are still alive then they take turns shooting back and forth until one opponent is dead. Try to imagine the horror of looking down a barrel of a loaded gun and not knowing whether you will stay alive or not. That is what people did back in those days. Some of our Founding Fathers have also dueled. But today many people are even afraid of a gun, let alone dueling!
I am not saying that dueling is great. All I am saying is that I admire the bravery that existed in those men. Those men were brave men. This element of bravery is missing from us today. I would certainly love to see people duel with another today, it would revive our dying bravery. Our death is a way to bring back to life our bravery! Of course, dueling would not exist today because guns are just way too efficient, dueling requires terrible pistols where there is an element of surprise. But that is besides the point.
But what do people do today? If one insults another, by calling him a "fag" or "nigger" or whatever other term or expression, what do they do? Many of them form special interest groups where they talk about their feelings. And then try to call up lawyers to get their enemies into trouble. We seriously have turned into giant pussies. Words scare us! Words! What have we become? What pussies have we turned to? It is just so embarrasing comparing the sensitivity of men from 18th century to men today. We are like little delicate flowers, men back then were made out of stone.
Or consider Alexander the Great. Now there was nothing great about him, he was a tyrant who went around from country to country killing out millions of people, but he was certainly brave. That is an honor we can give him. He stood and fought together with his troops at the front of the army. Hannibal, perhaps the greatest general from history, was the same. He too stood, not on a mountain top on a white horse, or in the end of his army, but all the way in the front, fighting side by side with his men. This is bravery that I admire. Of course, I am not encouraging massacring people, but I am encouraging us to become a little more brave. To grow a penis. To stop being so sensitive. To stop being so scared of words or expressions. To not to be afraid to be "intolerant" by disrespecting other people's beliefs.
Free Bernie Madoff
This post will require what I said here.
Bernie Madoff should be freed from jail. His is a non-violent criminal. He is not dangerous at all. He never harmed a person in a physical manner. He is definitely a thief. That makes him a criminal, but he is non-violent nonetheless. Thus, there is no excuse to jail him in a system that claims to be "just". With Bernie all his money must be taken away from him. From his bank accounts and from all of his assets. That money should be used to repay back as many people as it possibly can. Of course, this is too much, but at least some repayment will do. Bernie would not get away with anything. He will repay and have all of this property gone. So one cannot accuse me of letting him go. Furthermore, his life is ruined at this point. He will not be able to make a career for himself, people hate him and despise him, he is finished as far as his life goes. There is absolutely no reason to enslave him.
Actually, there is a reason to enslave him. Just one reason. And only one reason. And that is vengeance. People want vengeance. They love vengeance. They want to see him suffer because he wronged them. Many say that 150 years (or whatever he got) is not even enough. Because for these people no time is enough. If it was 300 years that would not be enough. There is no limit that would satisfy them. Because all these people want is vengeance. I absolutely hate it how nearly everyone who supports him going to jail talks about how "just" it is. I fail to see this "justice" that everyone talks about. I want to hear "vengeance". Vengeance! Vengeance! Say it, I want to hear it, because I know your psychological motives. I am not stupid. I want to hear you openly admit that all you want is vengeance because you are unjust and that is what makes you feel better. But many do not admit that, they realize that it is no longer just, so they hide behind other excuses. I would certainly love to hear one person confess "vengeance!". If you admit to me that it is only about vengeance then I shall leave you alone. But do not tell me what you want is "justice".
Our system, the government, is actually run on the exact same scheme that Bernie pulled off, instead the one by the government is more massive and is legal, and not even optional. Social Security is the first example that enters my mind. It is taking money from the young generation to pay off the old. It might sound nice except for the fact that if Bernie was doing that he would be in jail, that and also that this system will bankrupt the social security of the current young generation. The Social Security system runs on the same ponzi scheme, there is no difference between Bernie and social security. In fact, I seen this joke in a newspaper, it was a comic of an agent interrogating Bernie. The agent asked Bernie, "okay, tell me where you got the idea of paying off the late investors with the early investors?", and Bernie responded, "from social security".
Our "justice" system is not about justice. It is about vengeance. And it is hypocritical. We enslave a person who did wrong despite the fact that the entire system that we live in runs on the very same scheme that he is punished for. I am not defending Bernie. Clearly, what he did was wrong, he ruined lives of so many people. All I am doing is exposing the truth. Exposing our hypocrisy, our deceit and our injustice. On the day Bernie was sentenced to jail for his injustice a bigger injustice was done to him.
Bernie Madoff should be freed from jail. His is a non-violent criminal. He is not dangerous at all. He never harmed a person in a physical manner. He is definitely a thief. That makes him a criminal, but he is non-violent nonetheless. Thus, there is no excuse to jail him in a system that claims to be "just". With Bernie all his money must be taken away from him. From his bank accounts and from all of his assets. That money should be used to repay back as many people as it possibly can. Of course, this is too much, but at least some repayment will do. Bernie would not get away with anything. He will repay and have all of this property gone. So one cannot accuse me of letting him go. Furthermore, his life is ruined at this point. He will not be able to make a career for himself, people hate him and despise him, he is finished as far as his life goes. There is absolutely no reason to enslave him.
Actually, there is a reason to enslave him. Just one reason. And only one reason. And that is vengeance. People want vengeance. They love vengeance. They want to see him suffer because he wronged them. Many say that 150 years (or whatever he got) is not even enough. Because for these people no time is enough. If it was 300 years that would not be enough. There is no limit that would satisfy them. Because all these people want is vengeance. I absolutely hate it how nearly everyone who supports him going to jail talks about how "just" it is. I fail to see this "justice" that everyone talks about. I want to hear "vengeance". Vengeance! Vengeance! Say it, I want to hear it, because I know your psychological motives. I am not stupid. I want to hear you openly admit that all you want is vengeance because you are unjust and that is what makes you feel better. But many do not admit that, they realize that it is no longer just, so they hide behind other excuses. I would certainly love to hear one person confess "vengeance!". If you admit to me that it is only about vengeance then I shall leave you alone. But do not tell me what you want is "justice".
Our system, the government, is actually run on the exact same scheme that Bernie pulled off, instead the one by the government is more massive and is legal, and not even optional. Social Security is the first example that enters my mind. It is taking money from the young generation to pay off the old. It might sound nice except for the fact that if Bernie was doing that he would be in jail, that and also that this system will bankrupt the social security of the current young generation. The Social Security system runs on the same ponzi scheme, there is no difference between Bernie and social security. In fact, I seen this joke in a newspaper, it was a comic of an agent interrogating Bernie. The agent asked Bernie, "okay, tell me where you got the idea of paying off the late investors with the early investors?", and Bernie responded, "from social security".
Our "justice" system is not about justice. It is about vengeance. And it is hypocritical. We enslave a person who did wrong despite the fact that the entire system that we live in runs on the very same scheme that he is punished for. I am not defending Bernie. Clearly, what he did was wrong, he ruined lives of so many people. All I am doing is exposing the truth. Exposing our hypocrisy, our deceit and our injustice. On the day Bernie was sentenced to jail for his injustice a bigger injustice was done to him.
Punishment and Vengeance
An inquiry concerning under what conditions is enslaving other humans beings into cages justified. By "enslaving into cages" I mean to say "jail", I use the more vulgar expression because that is exactly what jailing means. Under what conditions is it justified to jail another person? We live in a world where people are jailed for the strangest of all offenses. A person who decided to smoke some marijuana gets enslaved into a cage. A person who cheated on his taxes gets enslaved into a cage. A person who is a doctor without a license can, if caught, also get enslaved into a cage. While a person who murdered another gets enslaved for a shorter sentence than others. Why is our system called the "justice" system? Where is the justice?
Those who defend enslavement of people into iron cages in the examples listed above, sadly a very large percentage of our population, will defend their position in one of the following arguments. The first argument that the these people use is that when a person breaks the law he does wrong, putting a person into a cage undoes this evil, jailing, therefore, is a form of atonement. The second argument is that a person who does wrong often does wrong to another person, the wrongdoer must repay back the one he wronged, jailing is a form of repaying the debt to the one who was wronged. The third argument is that punishment is a form of creating fear in the people who want to do wrong, therefore, jailing creates a disincentive for people doing wrong. There may be many more arguments for people who support the system that we have or at least some support of it but these are the main ones that I hear.
A major problem that we need to realize is that what is legal and what is moral are two separate issues. You can read more about it here. Defenders of the current jailing system or some form of it have to deal with the major difficulty that many laws are completely immoral. Like the laws against drugs, such as marijuana. But we will keep things simple and pretend that we have a perfect legal system, all the laws are moral laws in our simplifying assumption. Even in such a system these three arguments that were brought up above which are in favor of a jailing system fail.
The first argument pretends as if we live in the bronze age. What are we, primitive animal sacrificing Hebrews who believe that an animal can atone for the evil that a person did? If a person did an act of evil then the act has been already done. There is nothing that can be done to the person that can undo the evil that was done. Putting a person into an iron cage for twenty years will not undo the evil that was done. There is no sense in the first argument. The second argument does not do anything to repay another person for the same reason. If one person did wrong to another then putting him into a jail does not repay back the one who was wronged. How can it possibly repay back another person? A defender would object to me and say that it does repay him back, his repayment is knowing that another person is now in jail. However, the problem that the defender of jailing is missing is that repaying the one who was wronged by keeping the wrongdoer in a cage is no longer "justice", it becomes vengeance. The second argument rests upon seeking vengeance against people who did wrong. How is that justice? Where is the justice in that? All it is, is taking enjoyment in the suffering of others because it makes us feel better. If what people did was simply say "all I want is to have revenge on the person who did wrong to me" then I will not say anything to him, because at least such a person is intellectually honest, but when people, by their true motives, psychologically seek to attain vengeance but mask it under "justice" then I have a problem, that is no longer intellectually honest, it is a lie. The third argument is the stronger of the three but it too fails. It fails because it pretends that jailing is the only way to disincentivize criminals from doing wrong. There are other ways. For instance, those who did wrong would have to pay damages. A fine for the amount that he damaged another with an additional fine to pay more some extra percentage of the damage and a fine imposed on him by the court system. This would also disincentivize people from doing crime. And my proposed solution actually makes sense, because it repays back to the one who was wronged. Or instead of jail there can be public service. My point here is, that there are many other ways of disincentivizing people from doing crime, jail is not the only way.
Those who would not agree with me that are reading this post will probably ask me, "do you actually propose that we never jail anyone?". No, I do not. What I do is reject the three standard excuses for human enslavement for my own excuse, which actually does make sense. My position regarding jailing is very simple. We need to put the dangerous people into jail. The reason why we put a bomber into an iron cage is not because of any of those non-sense reasons above. We put a bomber into a cage simply because he is dangerous. We cannot have him around people. He is a threat to the lives and property of others. Thus, we need to put him into a cage. That is the only thing we can do. My position is actually just, it is not derived from vengeance, and furthermore it actually makes sense. Thus, murders (though not all) and rapists and pillagers and terrorists would have to be put into a cage. Everyone else will have a fine imposed on them.
Therefore, the answer to my question asking for a condition for having an excuse for jailing a person is simply if a person is a threat to others. Non-violent criminals, like thieves, should not be jailed, instead they would have fines imposed on them as one way to deal with their crime.
Those who defend enslavement of people into iron cages in the examples listed above, sadly a very large percentage of our population, will defend their position in one of the following arguments. The first argument that the these people use is that when a person breaks the law he does wrong, putting a person into a cage undoes this evil, jailing, therefore, is a form of atonement. The second argument is that a person who does wrong often does wrong to another person, the wrongdoer must repay back the one he wronged, jailing is a form of repaying the debt to the one who was wronged. The third argument is that punishment is a form of creating fear in the people who want to do wrong, therefore, jailing creates a disincentive for people doing wrong. There may be many more arguments for people who support the system that we have or at least some support of it but these are the main ones that I hear.
A major problem that we need to realize is that what is legal and what is moral are two separate issues. You can read more about it here. Defenders of the current jailing system or some form of it have to deal with the major difficulty that many laws are completely immoral. Like the laws against drugs, such as marijuana. But we will keep things simple and pretend that we have a perfect legal system, all the laws are moral laws in our simplifying assumption. Even in such a system these three arguments that were brought up above which are in favor of a jailing system fail.
The first argument pretends as if we live in the bronze age. What are we, primitive animal sacrificing Hebrews who believe that an animal can atone for the evil that a person did? If a person did an act of evil then the act has been already done. There is nothing that can be done to the person that can undo the evil that was done. Putting a person into an iron cage for twenty years will not undo the evil that was done. There is no sense in the first argument. The second argument does not do anything to repay another person for the same reason. If one person did wrong to another then putting him into a jail does not repay back the one who was wronged. How can it possibly repay back another person? A defender would object to me and say that it does repay him back, his repayment is knowing that another person is now in jail. However, the problem that the defender of jailing is missing is that repaying the one who was wronged by keeping the wrongdoer in a cage is no longer "justice", it becomes vengeance. The second argument rests upon seeking vengeance against people who did wrong. How is that justice? Where is the justice in that? All it is, is taking enjoyment in the suffering of others because it makes us feel better. If what people did was simply say "all I want is to have revenge on the person who did wrong to me" then I will not say anything to him, because at least such a person is intellectually honest, but when people, by their true motives, psychologically seek to attain vengeance but mask it under "justice" then I have a problem, that is no longer intellectually honest, it is a lie. The third argument is the stronger of the three but it too fails. It fails because it pretends that jailing is the only way to disincentivize criminals from doing wrong. There are other ways. For instance, those who did wrong would have to pay damages. A fine for the amount that he damaged another with an additional fine to pay more some extra percentage of the damage and a fine imposed on him by the court system. This would also disincentivize people from doing crime. And my proposed solution actually makes sense, because it repays back to the one who was wronged. Or instead of jail there can be public service. My point here is, that there are many other ways of disincentivizing people from doing crime, jail is not the only way.
Those who would not agree with me that are reading this post will probably ask me, "do you actually propose that we never jail anyone?". No, I do not. What I do is reject the three standard excuses for human enslavement for my own excuse, which actually does make sense. My position regarding jailing is very simple. We need to put the dangerous people into jail. The reason why we put a bomber into an iron cage is not because of any of those non-sense reasons above. We put a bomber into a cage simply because he is dangerous. We cannot have him around people. He is a threat to the lives and property of others. Thus, we need to put him into a cage. That is the only thing we can do. My position is actually just, it is not derived from vengeance, and furthermore it actually makes sense. Thus, murders (though not all) and rapists and pillagers and terrorists would have to be put into a cage. Everyone else will have a fine imposed on them.
Therefore, the answer to my question asking for a condition for having an excuse for jailing a person is simply if a person is a threat to others. Non-violent criminals, like thieves, should not be jailed, instead they would have fines imposed on them as one way to deal with their crime.
Friday, May 7, 2010
I Oppose Gay Marriage
I oppose gay marriage. No seriously. Despite the fact that in this previous post I made is implicitly clear that I got no problem with homosexuality. Moreover, I admitted there that I am bisexual, so 1/2 of me is gay. People would probably find it strange how I can oppose gay marriage if that means that I oppose 1/2 of myself.
There is nothing strange to my opposition because I oppose straight marriage too. I oppose all marriage equally. When I say "marriage" I mean the state being involved in the relationships between couples or polygamists. That is not the proper function of a state. The state needs to stay out of marriage and let people settle their own affairs. Be they traditional straight couples. Be they homos. Be they polygamists. Or even be they gay polygamists. Let people live the way they want and the state should simply stay out of people's own lives. My opposition to gay marriage would be strange if I opposed gay marriage but supported straight marriage. But in actuality I oppose all marriage. People should be able to live how they please and they can define their relationship in whatever way they want. If they want to call it "marriage" they can, if they want to call themselves "butt buddies" they can, if others do not want to acknowledge butt buddies as "married" then they do not have to. Whatever is up to the people to decide.
There is also another problem that I have with legalizing gay marriage. Namely, the term "legalizing gay marriage" is rather insulting. Let me ask the question, is straight marriage legalized? No. Straights do not need to be legalized, there are simply no laws prohibiting straights from getting married. The more appropriate term is that straight marriage is "not illegal" rather than "legal". What "legalizing gay marriage" sounds to me is that the straights giving permission to the gays to get married. That is quite insulting. The straights never got permission from anyone to get married. Yet they can decide whether or not to give the gays permission to get married. This is why, again, I think the best option is to simply remove the state from marriage and let the people live how they want.
What I said above is my opposition to gay marriage (and to all marriage) in principle. But knowing that there is nothing so permanent as a temporary government program I must conclude that it will be forever until straight marriage is abolished, if ever; I support gay marriage. I support it even though it violates my principles above because I just do not see how it is possible to get rid of marriage entirely from the people. It is so much more easier to simply legalize gay marriage and then in the future to work to abolish marriage altogether. That is my final take on gay marriage. Legalize it now, then work in the future to get rid to marriage altogether, hopefully before the polygamists demand to be legalized (they would demand equality under the law and rightly so), otherwise marriage would be so much more complicated.
There is nothing strange to my opposition because I oppose straight marriage too. I oppose all marriage equally. When I say "marriage" I mean the state being involved in the relationships between couples or polygamists. That is not the proper function of a state. The state needs to stay out of marriage and let people settle their own affairs. Be they traditional straight couples. Be they homos. Be they polygamists. Or even be they gay polygamists. Let people live the way they want and the state should simply stay out of people's own lives. My opposition to gay marriage would be strange if I opposed gay marriage but supported straight marriage. But in actuality I oppose all marriage. People should be able to live how they please and they can define their relationship in whatever way they want. If they want to call it "marriage" they can, if they want to call themselves "butt buddies" they can, if others do not want to acknowledge butt buddies as "married" then they do not have to. Whatever is up to the people to decide.
There is also another problem that I have with legalizing gay marriage. Namely, the term "legalizing gay marriage" is rather insulting. Let me ask the question, is straight marriage legalized? No. Straights do not need to be legalized, there are simply no laws prohibiting straights from getting married. The more appropriate term is that straight marriage is "not illegal" rather than "legal". What "legalizing gay marriage" sounds to me is that the straights giving permission to the gays to get married. That is quite insulting. The straights never got permission from anyone to get married. Yet they can decide whether or not to give the gays permission to get married. This is why, again, I think the best option is to simply remove the state from marriage and let the people live how they want.
What I said above is my opposition to gay marriage (and to all marriage) in principle. But knowing that there is nothing so permanent as a temporary government program I must conclude that it will be forever until straight marriage is abolished, if ever; I support gay marriage. I support it even though it violates my principles above because I just do not see how it is possible to get rid of marriage entirely from the people. It is so much more easier to simply legalize gay marriage and then in the future to work to abolish marriage altogether. That is my final take on gay marriage. Legalize it now, then work in the future to get rid to marriage altogether, hopefully before the polygamists demand to be legalized (they would demand equality under the law and rightly so), otherwise marriage would be so much more complicated.
Homosexuality is not Natural and not Normal
I hear often from people who say homosexuality is immoral (*cough* *cough* religious people *cough*) because it is not natural and not normal. They say that homosexual activity is not part of the natural order, and furthermore homosexuality is a like a disease, it is not normal, people who are gay suffer from this disease.
There are various kinds of people when it comes to the issue of homosexuality. You have the crazy fundamentalists who openly condemn homosexuality and say that gay people are going to go to hell if they life a gay lifestyle. These are the people who say that being gay is a choice. Then you have the conservative but not crazy fundamentalist. Those are the people who secretly are opposed to homosexuality but they do not want to make it seem as if it is a religious issue so they try to invent a secular reason to why homosexuality is immoral. The common objection that these theists have is that homosexuality is not natural and it is not normal therefore it must be that it is not moral. Then you have the moderate/liberal theist and sometimes secular people who object and says that homosexuality is perfectly normal and it is natural. And finally you have secular people like me who are the most rational with regard to the whole homosexuality thing (yes, I know, I am not very humble, but whatever, deal with it).
Before I begin to say what I want to say on homosexuality I want to express the hidden motive behind conservative religious people who are opposed to gay marriage. These people, unlike the crazy fundamentalists, are capable of realizing that in the United States there is a separation between church and state. Therefore, if they have an objection to homosexuality it must be a secular reason. It cannot be based on any religious idea. Thus, these conservatives must pull some secular reason out of their anus (kind of ironic, they are opposed to homosexuality, but they have no problem shoving their hands up their anus) to oppose gay marriage. Their real psychological analysis is obvious, they are against homosexuality for religious reasons, but they do not want to openly admit that so they hide behind secular reasons.
Let me return back to the topic that I started with. Is homosexuality natural? Is homosexuality normal? As far as natural goes, I have to ask the question, can you name me something that is not natural? Everything is part of the natural universe, governed by natural clockwork laws, everything that has happened and shall happen is the direct consequence of these laws. Thus, I ask, what is unnatural? I do not understand what it means to say "homosexuality is unnatural". In fact, I have the same problem with enviromentalists who say that driving cars is "unnatural". What does it mean to say that "driving cars is unnatural"? I do not understand. Cars are made from metals, those are natural, they are made by people, those are natural, it runs on gasoline, that is natural, so the entire thing is natural. How can it not be natural? The whole unnatural objection does not make sense to me. Let me therefore move on to the next point, that homosexuality is not normal. Normal means to be part of the norm. Being a homosexual is not the norm. It is a small precentage. Indeed, if people were homos then our species would not exist. It is a necessity of evolution for people to be hetro. It can only mean that being a homosexual is not a normal condition, it must be some neurological mental disease. I agree with this statement. Being gay is not normal. This is my take on the conservative objection to homosexuality.
Now let us examine the moderate/liberal theist and a secular take on the conservative objection to homosexuality. They refute the conservatives by saying that homosexuality is in fact natural. We see homosexuality in the animal kingdom. Other animals, besides human beings, practice homosexuality. Therefore, not only is homosexuality perfectly natural, but it is also normal because we find it in other species.
I have problems with what religious moderates and some secular people say in the above paragraph concerning homosexuality. First, the same problem about what "unnatural" and "natural" means. Moderatres and some secularists point to the fact that animals engage in homosexual behavior, therefore it is natural. I do not understand. And if animals did not engage in homosexual behavior and humans did then that would be "unnatural"? Humans have advanced communication language, does it mean that language is also "unnatural" because animals do not speak? Second, I do not see why homosexuality being natural (whatever that even means) implies that it is normal. I explained that normal means being part of the norm, deviation from the norm, is therefore "not normal", and so homosexuality must be a neurological condition, or a "disease" if you want to make it sound more harsh.
Before people think of me as "intolerant" and "homophobic" for daring to suggest that homosexuality is a neurological disease know that I am bisexual. Therefore, I have a neurological disease too. I think some guys are sexy too. That is not normal.
My whole problem with the whole "is homosexuality natural?" and "is homosexuality normal?" is that these questions are not moral questions! Homosexuality is not normal. So what? Who cares? Why should we care? People who only have one eye are also not normal, does it follow that they are immoral? No. Of course not. It would be retarded to conclude morality from what is normal or not. Besides what is "normal" is often unimportant. Consider this thought experiment. It is not normal, and therefore a psychological illness, to be obsessive-compulsive. But consider that we lived in a world where almost everyone was obsessive-compulsive. Then the normal people (in our world) would be no longer normal in this other world. The message behind this thought experiment is that what is normal and what is not is not a big deal. In fact, normal is boring, every talk with normal people about normal things? It is so brain numbing. I like eccentric people who talk about insane things. If anything being not normal is more moral. Besides, being no one is normal with regard to everything, each one of us deviates from something else, thus, in a strange humorous way, it is not normal to be normal.
That is my problem with people who try to argue for or against homosexuality by seeing it as normal vs not normal and natural vs unnatural. Who cares? What does this has anything to do with whether or not homosexuality is moral or not. People who spend time on these questions miss the point entirely.
There are various kinds of people when it comes to the issue of homosexuality. You have the crazy fundamentalists who openly condemn homosexuality and say that gay people are going to go to hell if they life a gay lifestyle. These are the people who say that being gay is a choice. Then you have the conservative but not crazy fundamentalist. Those are the people who secretly are opposed to homosexuality but they do not want to make it seem as if it is a religious issue so they try to invent a secular reason to why homosexuality is immoral. The common objection that these theists have is that homosexuality is not natural and it is not normal therefore it must be that it is not moral. Then you have the moderate/liberal theist and sometimes secular people who object and says that homosexuality is perfectly normal and it is natural. And finally you have secular people like me who are the most rational with regard to the whole homosexuality thing (yes, I know, I am not very humble, but whatever, deal with it).
Before I begin to say what I want to say on homosexuality I want to express the hidden motive behind conservative religious people who are opposed to gay marriage. These people, unlike the crazy fundamentalists, are capable of realizing that in the United States there is a separation between church and state. Therefore, if they have an objection to homosexuality it must be a secular reason. It cannot be based on any religious idea. Thus, these conservatives must pull some secular reason out of their anus (kind of ironic, they are opposed to homosexuality, but they have no problem shoving their hands up their anus) to oppose gay marriage. Their real psychological analysis is obvious, they are against homosexuality for religious reasons, but they do not want to openly admit that so they hide behind secular reasons.
Let me return back to the topic that I started with. Is homosexuality natural? Is homosexuality normal? As far as natural goes, I have to ask the question, can you name me something that is not natural? Everything is part of the natural universe, governed by natural clockwork laws, everything that has happened and shall happen is the direct consequence of these laws. Thus, I ask, what is unnatural? I do not understand what it means to say "homosexuality is unnatural". In fact, I have the same problem with enviromentalists who say that driving cars is "unnatural". What does it mean to say that "driving cars is unnatural"? I do not understand. Cars are made from metals, those are natural, they are made by people, those are natural, it runs on gasoline, that is natural, so the entire thing is natural. How can it not be natural? The whole unnatural objection does not make sense to me. Let me therefore move on to the next point, that homosexuality is not normal. Normal means to be part of the norm. Being a homosexual is not the norm. It is a small precentage. Indeed, if people were homos then our species would not exist. It is a necessity of evolution for people to be hetro. It can only mean that being a homosexual is not a normal condition, it must be some neurological mental disease. I agree with this statement. Being gay is not normal. This is my take on the conservative objection to homosexuality.
Now let us examine the moderate/liberal theist and a secular take on the conservative objection to homosexuality. They refute the conservatives by saying that homosexuality is in fact natural. We see homosexuality in the animal kingdom. Other animals, besides human beings, practice homosexuality. Therefore, not only is homosexuality perfectly natural, but it is also normal because we find it in other species.
I have problems with what religious moderates and some secular people say in the above paragraph concerning homosexuality. First, the same problem about what "unnatural" and "natural" means. Moderatres and some secularists point to the fact that animals engage in homosexual behavior, therefore it is natural. I do not understand. And if animals did not engage in homosexual behavior and humans did then that would be "unnatural"? Humans have advanced communication language, does it mean that language is also "unnatural" because animals do not speak? Second, I do not see why homosexuality being natural (whatever that even means) implies that it is normal. I explained that normal means being part of the norm, deviation from the norm, is therefore "not normal", and so homosexuality must be a neurological condition, or a "disease" if you want to make it sound more harsh.
Before people think of me as "intolerant" and "homophobic" for daring to suggest that homosexuality is a neurological disease know that I am bisexual. Therefore, I have a neurological disease too. I think some guys are sexy too. That is not normal.
My whole problem with the whole "is homosexuality natural?" and "is homosexuality normal?" is that these questions are not moral questions! Homosexuality is not normal. So what? Who cares? Why should we care? People who only have one eye are also not normal, does it follow that they are immoral? No. Of course not. It would be retarded to conclude morality from what is normal or not. Besides what is "normal" is often unimportant. Consider this thought experiment. It is not normal, and therefore a psychological illness, to be obsessive-compulsive. But consider that we lived in a world where almost everyone was obsessive-compulsive. Then the normal people (in our world) would be no longer normal in this other world. The message behind this thought experiment is that what is normal and what is not is not a big deal. In fact, normal is boring, every talk with normal people about normal things? It is so brain numbing. I like eccentric people who talk about insane things. If anything being not normal is more moral. Besides, being no one is normal with regard to everything, each one of us deviates from something else, thus, in a strange humorous way, it is not normal to be normal.
That is my problem with people who try to argue for or against homosexuality by seeing it as normal vs not normal and natural vs unnatural. Who cares? What does this has anything to do with whether or not homosexuality is moral or not. People who spend time on these questions miss the point entirely.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
What Free Speech Is and Is Not
I have noticed how much confusion there is about what "free speech" means. The confusion goes both ways. First, people say that certain kinds of speech should not be allowed because it is not free speech. Second, people say that certain speech should be allowed because it is free speech. I will give two simple examples of what I am talking about. A person who says that speech against the government is no longer free speech because it is sedition is an example of a person who argues against this speech. A person who says that an employee can preach Christianity at his job without the fear of being fired by the employer because his speech is protected religious speech is an example of a person who says that a certain kind of speech should be allowed. I will explain what free speech means, and show that speaking against the government is free speech while preaching at your job is no longer free speech. Free speech a fundamental issue, I really hope that people can finally understand what it is and is not.
Free speech is actually a very simple concept. All what free speech means is that speech is free from the government. Meaning that the government does not control speech whatsoever. Government keeps its hands (magical hands which ruin just about everything they touch) off speech. It is just like separation of church and state. The state stays out from the management of religion. Free speech is the same idea, government stays out of controlling speech. Speech is completely free in its entirety. What I will do now is apply this very simple concept to various issues regarding speech. One thing to keep in mind, just as separation of church and state does not imply that religion (church) can do whatever it fancies, likewise free speech (separation between speech and state) does not imply that the speaker can get away from whatever speech he says.
A simple consequence of what free speech means is that the government cannot ban any book. No matter how offensive it is. Because if the government can ban a book then it would follow that they are controlling what is okay to say and what is not okay to say. It can even be "Mien Kampf" or a book on Holocaust denial, the government, under free speech, can do absolutely nothing to ban those books. (I happen to think the Bible is a more reprehensible book than Mien Kampf, and so if the Mien Kampf needs to be banned then it logically follows that that Bible must be banned but that will take me off topic). Nor can be government ban any religious book, even if it comes from the most evil religion today (*cough* *cough* Islam *cough*).
However, and this is extremely important to understand, Amazon, or any other bookstore, does not have to sell these reprehensible books. The reason being is very simple. Amazon, and other book stores, are not the government. They can decide themselves what they want to sell and what not. In general, book stores sell books which will return them the highest profit, which is determined by what people are willing to read. Since reprehensible books, like the "Mien Kampf", are not that willed by the people, the demand is less, so the supply of these reprehensible books shall be limited, some markets might even not have them on sale because they are offensive.
The same is true with private businesses. A business, whatever it happens to be, can mandate various restrictions on what can be said. For example, suppose an employer does not want to hire overly religious people who preach their religion at his work. Then he does not have to. The business is not the government. The business decides itself what to limit and what not to limit. An employer can also tell his employees not to use swear words when they speak, because the employer is not the government and he can mandate his own rules to his own business. I have been on many forums on the internet. Most of these forums have speech codes. Restrictions against swearing or racist speech generally apply to every forum or server I have used. They are not required by law to have these restrictions rather they make up their own restrictions because they want to have a friendly environment. All of this is fine. No person can claim that a forum or a debate session or a server or a business is violating free speech. Violation of free speech, when it happens, only comes from the government, never from the private sector. Therefore, a preacher cannot break into your house and start preaching Christianity, because it is your house - you make the rules, he can however, stand in the street and preach Christianity.
Most people object and say "there has to be limitations to free speech". I understand why they say that but they object to total uncontrolled free speech because they misunderstand what free speech means. For instance, consider that I wrote a book about your personal information (credit card numbers, your health records, your bank statements, and so forth) and put it on sale. Let us ignore the fact that this book will never sell because it would be extremely boring to read and just pretend that it becomes a New York Times bestseller. Most people would say, "this example illustrates exactly why we cannot have total uncontrolled speech". This example does not bother my support for complete free speech in the slightest. For the following reason. Recall how we explained free speech, "government is free from speech". Therefore, a person can never get in trouble by the law for the kind of things he said because speech is not controlled, however he can get in trouble for other things that do not relate to free speech. What other kinds? In this case I, who wrote a book about your personal information, has violated your privacy rights. Not to mention I have committed theft against you. I have taken information that you did not intent for me to expose and I exposed it. I will certainly get into trouble for this, and rightly so. But the law cannot trail me for what I said! It can only trail me for my violation of your privacy rights.
The above paragraph is crucial for understanding what free speech is not. I will use another example to illustrate my point. The classic (idiotic) objection to free speech is a guy who yells "fire" in a theater. People who oppose free speech in its full meaning reply by saying that this example shows that people cannot say whatever they please. But there are two problems with this objection. The first one is that this case is not different from a forum or a server or a business which prohibits the people from using swear words or racist expressions. You cannot come on some one's property (in this case a theater) and desire how you wish to speak! But even without this point we can refute this classic non-argument against free speech. Freedom comes with responsibility, if one is not responsible for his actions then he cannot be treated freely. I cannot call up the fire department and tell them there is a fire. This has nothing to do with free speech. When I call the fire department I am implicitly entering into a contract to tell them that I or someone else needs help, they come and realize it was a fake call, thus I have diverted their attention from something that could have been a real emergency. My deceit is violating my contract with them. If I get sued by the fire department they will not sue me because of what I said, but because I have diverted their attention. In this particular case my diversion was done through speech, speech was my agent, but speech is not being controlled here, it is my deceit which is unlawful, indeed, it did not have to be speech, I could have diverted their attention in a different manner and still would have been sued by them. Thus, speech is not being controlled by the government, what is being controlled for is that I cannot divert the attention of the fire department. In the same manner I cannot call up a repairman to come to my house and then decide to fire him the moment he comes, he will probably sue me, he will sue me for my false alarm on him without notifying him. There is no law that says "you cannot tell a repairman to come and be deceitful". This is not a matter of free speech, but really a matter of diverting the attention of people. The fact that speech is the agent in these cases of the diversions does not in any way imply that the laws are against free speech.
Let us invent another illustration of something which is not free speech. In a quiet neighborhood (like Lakewood) a protester starts preaching against Judaism on a megaphone in the streets. He has no right to do that. The police can come over and tell him to stop. The protester cannot respond back to the police and say, "this is a matter of free speech and I will not leave". Well, he can respond that way, but that would be a terrible response. Because the police are not telling him to stop protesting for what he says against Judaism, but the police are telling him to stop because he is making a lot of noise. It does not matter what the protester was speaking about. What matters in this case is that the protester was disturbing other people. Disruption is a violation of the property of another person. When a noisy protester is in a quiet neighborhood his noise penetrates through your house walls and disturbs your peace time. A protester has a right to stand in a street with a sign, but he cannot be disruptive about it. This case falls into the very same category as a person who screams "fire" in a theater. Also, if the police arrest the protester for he would refuse to leave, the protester would be trailed not for what he said, but for public disruption. His speech will be completely irrelevant to the entire case of the judge. Thus, his speech throughout the entire court session was free from law, in other words, free speech was still protected. However, if the protester was also trailed by the court for what he said, then the court would be violating free speech, for in that instance speech would be controlled by law.
Now consider the case of a man who writes mail to another person telling that he is going to murder him. This is again not a matter of free speech. The man who threatens murder will be trailed for threatening the life of another man. But not trailed for what he said to another man. Free speech is not the issue over here. This entire case is a case of a man who threatens the life of another man. People do not have the right to threaten the lives of other people. It is true that the threat was done through the use of speech, but as explained above, speech is only the agent of the threat. There are no laws for wishing a person dead, or telling a person that you wish he was dead, or saying how you would be happy to kill him if you had a way of doing it. There is no law for talking about death of another person. Such speech is free speech, for it is only the things that are being said about death and murder. However, when speech makes it clear that one wants to kill another, then it is not a matter of speech, it is a matter of threat. The one who threatens will only be charged for threat in a court room, what he said will not be used against him for the words that were used are a matter of free speech. If the court was able to charge him for threat and for the things that he said to another then that would violate free speech for in such a case the law is deciding what is okay and not okay to be said.
There is a difference between what is in principle and what is really being done. What I have said above explains what free speech is and is not. But what is actually being done in the United States violates some of the things I have said above. I will concentrate on three issues that come up from time to time regarding speech which the United States has a wrong stance on. Those are: hate speech, libel laws, and blackmail.
Hate speech. I have already brought this up in my "Feminism Sucks" series. And I gave a video which revealed how silly the whole "I am for free speech but not hate speech" position is: here. Free speech most certainly refers to hateful speech. What is the point of defending speech that never bothers anyone? The goal of having free speech is that unpopular ideas, and even wrong ideas, enter into a marketplace of ideas, the ideas battle out against each other so that the best one wins. If one is saying the common opinion which never bothers anyone, who cares? It does not add anything new to what we know. Indeed if you go into history all the big ideas, including wrong ideas, have always came from people who had positions that a lot of people found uncomfortable. In general when there is a deviation in thought or speech people get uncomfortable. Having laws on hate speech defeats the whole point of having free speech. And it does not matter how pointless something else. Even saying "nigger". That is rather pointless to say, but if we can pass laws against "nigger", then we can pass laws against "fag", then we can pass laws against something else. And before we know it we have a list of speech codes. It is a slow path to censorship. Every idea must be expressed no matter how unpopular it is and even if it is not an idea, even if it is just an insult. However, everything I have said is regarding the government. A business or a college can control the speech of their employees or students if they feel like it is a good idea to have a certain level of respect. Now I happen to think it is wrong for a college to have speech codes in place for the sake of protecting feelings because the point of college is to express ideas, but that is irrelevant here, I am only talking about what the college can do if they want to take action against hate speech.
Libel. This one is really silly. The argument is that a company has an intangible asset, its good name. When one libels against a company then they destroy their asset. Thus, one can be sued for libel. No, sorry, a company has no good name asset. The good name of a company exists in the minds of the customers. It is not a piece of property. When one libels all he is attempting to do is change the ideas of the customers in their minds. That is all what free speech is about. If the libeler can change the mindset of the customers, then he did not damage any piece of property. He simply changed the opinion of the people. Too bad for the company if they lose money, sorry, but that is free speech. Free speech is not always a moral thing but we still do not control it. I would certainly be unhappy if a libeler made me lose a lot of money, but that is his right to speech. We cannot control it just because some find it unpleasant, just like we do not control speech simply because a few people do not say "thank you". Not being grateful is certainly an impolite behavior but we cannot control for this. We have to grow a penis (in a metaphorical sense) and deal with it.
Blackmail. Blackmail is a very simple concept that is best explained with an illustration. Suppose that I catch you masturbating to anime porn. I find that so funny that you love that kind of stuff that I plan to tell your friends of what you did. Now we will consider two options. The first option is that I run off and tell all your friends, that would be, as called in Judaism, "lashon hara". I agree that it is certainly wrong for me to do that, but we hear it everyday with the Hollywood low lives. The TV is filled with "lashon hara", most people engage in this kind of hobby on a day to day basis. I do not defend this low practice, all I am saying is that there is no law against this and there should be no law. The second option is that I walk over to you and tell you that I will suppress my "lashon hara" if you pay me money. Basic common sense will give light to the fact that the second option is not as bad as the first. Because you at least have a choice with the second option. You can decide if the price of me keeping quiet is enough to avoid the dissatisfaction that you get if all your friends find out about your anime obsession. However, for some messed up reason the second option, which is "blackmail", is illegal. I do not understand. It fails to have any common sense whatsoever. Yes, blackmail is part of free speech and we need to even protect the blackmailers.
I conclude with my favorite quotation regarding free speech by Voltaire that I keep very dear: "I might not agree with what you say but I will give up my life to defend your right to say it".
We must be prepared to defend speech in all its forms. Especially what we hate the most. Defend the speech of neo-Nazis and KKK members even if they are willing to kill you. Because free speech is a more important virtue. If you do not defend the speech of those whom you hate, then you do not support free speech.
Free speech is actually a very simple concept. All what free speech means is that speech is free from the government. Meaning that the government does not control speech whatsoever. Government keeps its hands (magical hands which ruin just about everything they touch) off speech. It is just like separation of church and state. The state stays out from the management of religion. Free speech is the same idea, government stays out of controlling speech. Speech is completely free in its entirety. What I will do now is apply this very simple concept to various issues regarding speech. One thing to keep in mind, just as separation of church and state does not imply that religion (church) can do whatever it fancies, likewise free speech (separation between speech and state) does not imply that the speaker can get away from whatever speech he says.
A simple consequence of what free speech means is that the government cannot ban any book. No matter how offensive it is. Because if the government can ban a book then it would follow that they are controlling what is okay to say and what is not okay to say. It can even be "Mien Kampf" or a book on Holocaust denial, the government, under free speech, can do absolutely nothing to ban those books. (I happen to think the Bible is a more reprehensible book than Mien Kampf, and so if the Mien Kampf needs to be banned then it logically follows that that Bible must be banned but that will take me off topic). Nor can be government ban any religious book, even if it comes from the most evil religion today (*cough* *cough* Islam *cough*).
However, and this is extremely important to understand, Amazon, or any other bookstore, does not have to sell these reprehensible books. The reason being is very simple. Amazon, and other book stores, are not the government. They can decide themselves what they want to sell and what not. In general, book stores sell books which will return them the highest profit, which is determined by what people are willing to read. Since reprehensible books, like the "Mien Kampf", are not that willed by the people, the demand is less, so the supply of these reprehensible books shall be limited, some markets might even not have them on sale because they are offensive.
The same is true with private businesses. A business, whatever it happens to be, can mandate various restrictions on what can be said. For example, suppose an employer does not want to hire overly religious people who preach their religion at his work. Then he does not have to. The business is not the government. The business decides itself what to limit and what not to limit. An employer can also tell his employees not to use swear words when they speak, because the employer is not the government and he can mandate his own rules to his own business. I have been on many forums on the internet. Most of these forums have speech codes. Restrictions against swearing or racist speech generally apply to every forum or server I have used. They are not required by law to have these restrictions rather they make up their own restrictions because they want to have a friendly environment. All of this is fine. No person can claim that a forum or a debate session or a server or a business is violating free speech. Violation of free speech, when it happens, only comes from the government, never from the private sector. Therefore, a preacher cannot break into your house and start preaching Christianity, because it is your house - you make the rules, he can however, stand in the street and preach Christianity.
Most people object and say "there has to be limitations to free speech". I understand why they say that but they object to total uncontrolled free speech because they misunderstand what free speech means. For instance, consider that I wrote a book about your personal information (credit card numbers, your health records, your bank statements, and so forth) and put it on sale. Let us ignore the fact that this book will never sell because it would be extremely boring to read and just pretend that it becomes a New York Times bestseller. Most people would say, "this example illustrates exactly why we cannot have total uncontrolled speech". This example does not bother my support for complete free speech in the slightest. For the following reason. Recall how we explained free speech, "government is free from speech". Therefore, a person can never get in trouble by the law for the kind of things he said because speech is not controlled, however he can get in trouble for other things that do not relate to free speech. What other kinds? In this case I, who wrote a book about your personal information, has violated your privacy rights. Not to mention I have committed theft against you. I have taken information that you did not intent for me to expose and I exposed it. I will certainly get into trouble for this, and rightly so. But the law cannot trail me for what I said! It can only trail me for my violation of your privacy rights.
The above paragraph is crucial for understanding what free speech is not. I will use another example to illustrate my point. The classic (idiotic) objection to free speech is a guy who yells "fire" in a theater. People who oppose free speech in its full meaning reply by saying that this example shows that people cannot say whatever they please. But there are two problems with this objection. The first one is that this case is not different from a forum or a server or a business which prohibits the people from using swear words or racist expressions. You cannot come on some one's property (in this case a theater) and desire how you wish to speak! But even without this point we can refute this classic non-argument against free speech. Freedom comes with responsibility, if one is not responsible for his actions then he cannot be treated freely. I cannot call up the fire department and tell them there is a fire. This has nothing to do with free speech. When I call the fire department I am implicitly entering into a contract to tell them that I or someone else needs help, they come and realize it was a fake call, thus I have diverted their attention from something that could have been a real emergency. My deceit is violating my contract with them. If I get sued by the fire department they will not sue me because of what I said, but because I have diverted their attention. In this particular case my diversion was done through speech, speech was my agent, but speech is not being controlled here, it is my deceit which is unlawful, indeed, it did not have to be speech, I could have diverted their attention in a different manner and still would have been sued by them. Thus, speech is not being controlled by the government, what is being controlled for is that I cannot divert the attention of the fire department. In the same manner I cannot call up a repairman to come to my house and then decide to fire him the moment he comes, he will probably sue me, he will sue me for my false alarm on him without notifying him. There is no law that says "you cannot tell a repairman to come and be deceitful". This is not a matter of free speech, but really a matter of diverting the attention of people. The fact that speech is the agent in these cases of the diversions does not in any way imply that the laws are against free speech.
Let us invent another illustration of something which is not free speech. In a quiet neighborhood (like Lakewood) a protester starts preaching against Judaism on a megaphone in the streets. He has no right to do that. The police can come over and tell him to stop. The protester cannot respond back to the police and say, "this is a matter of free speech and I will not leave". Well, he can respond that way, but that would be a terrible response. Because the police are not telling him to stop protesting for what he says against Judaism, but the police are telling him to stop because he is making a lot of noise. It does not matter what the protester was speaking about. What matters in this case is that the protester was disturbing other people. Disruption is a violation of the property of another person. When a noisy protester is in a quiet neighborhood his noise penetrates through your house walls and disturbs your peace time. A protester has a right to stand in a street with a sign, but he cannot be disruptive about it. This case falls into the very same category as a person who screams "fire" in a theater. Also, if the police arrest the protester for he would refuse to leave, the protester would be trailed not for what he said, but for public disruption. His speech will be completely irrelevant to the entire case of the judge. Thus, his speech throughout the entire court session was free from law, in other words, free speech was still protected. However, if the protester was also trailed by the court for what he said, then the court would be violating free speech, for in that instance speech would be controlled by law.
Now consider the case of a man who writes mail to another person telling that he is going to murder him. This is again not a matter of free speech. The man who threatens murder will be trailed for threatening the life of another man. But not trailed for what he said to another man. Free speech is not the issue over here. This entire case is a case of a man who threatens the life of another man. People do not have the right to threaten the lives of other people. It is true that the threat was done through the use of speech, but as explained above, speech is only the agent of the threat. There are no laws for wishing a person dead, or telling a person that you wish he was dead, or saying how you would be happy to kill him if you had a way of doing it. There is no law for talking about death of another person. Such speech is free speech, for it is only the things that are being said about death and murder. However, when speech makes it clear that one wants to kill another, then it is not a matter of speech, it is a matter of threat. The one who threatens will only be charged for threat in a court room, what he said will not be used against him for the words that were used are a matter of free speech. If the court was able to charge him for threat and for the things that he said to another then that would violate free speech for in such a case the law is deciding what is okay and not okay to be said.
There is a difference between what is in principle and what is really being done. What I have said above explains what free speech is and is not. But what is actually being done in the United States violates some of the things I have said above. I will concentrate on three issues that come up from time to time regarding speech which the United States has a wrong stance on. Those are: hate speech, libel laws, and blackmail.
Hate speech. I have already brought this up in my "Feminism Sucks" series. And I gave a video which revealed how silly the whole "I am for free speech but not hate speech" position is: here. Free speech most certainly refers to hateful speech. What is the point of defending speech that never bothers anyone? The goal of having free speech is that unpopular ideas, and even wrong ideas, enter into a marketplace of ideas, the ideas battle out against each other so that the best one wins. If one is saying the common opinion which never bothers anyone, who cares? It does not add anything new to what we know. Indeed if you go into history all the big ideas, including wrong ideas, have always came from people who had positions that a lot of people found uncomfortable. In general when there is a deviation in thought or speech people get uncomfortable. Having laws on hate speech defeats the whole point of having free speech. And it does not matter how pointless something else. Even saying "nigger". That is rather pointless to say, but if we can pass laws against "nigger", then we can pass laws against "fag", then we can pass laws against something else. And before we know it we have a list of speech codes. It is a slow path to censorship. Every idea must be expressed no matter how unpopular it is and even if it is not an idea, even if it is just an insult. However, everything I have said is regarding the government. A business or a college can control the speech of their employees or students if they feel like it is a good idea to have a certain level of respect. Now I happen to think it is wrong for a college to have speech codes in place for the sake of protecting feelings because the point of college is to express ideas, but that is irrelevant here, I am only talking about what the college can do if they want to take action against hate speech.
Libel. This one is really silly. The argument is that a company has an intangible asset, its good name. When one libels against a company then they destroy their asset. Thus, one can be sued for libel. No, sorry, a company has no good name asset. The good name of a company exists in the minds of the customers. It is not a piece of property. When one libels all he is attempting to do is change the ideas of the customers in their minds. That is all what free speech is about. If the libeler can change the mindset of the customers, then he did not damage any piece of property. He simply changed the opinion of the people. Too bad for the company if they lose money, sorry, but that is free speech. Free speech is not always a moral thing but we still do not control it. I would certainly be unhappy if a libeler made me lose a lot of money, but that is his right to speech. We cannot control it just because some find it unpleasant, just like we do not control speech simply because a few people do not say "thank you". Not being grateful is certainly an impolite behavior but we cannot control for this. We have to grow a penis (in a metaphorical sense) and deal with it.
Blackmail. Blackmail is a very simple concept that is best explained with an illustration. Suppose that I catch you masturbating to anime porn. I find that so funny that you love that kind of stuff that I plan to tell your friends of what you did. Now we will consider two options. The first option is that I run off and tell all your friends, that would be, as called in Judaism, "lashon hara". I agree that it is certainly wrong for me to do that, but we hear it everyday with the Hollywood low lives. The TV is filled with "lashon hara", most people engage in this kind of hobby on a day to day basis. I do not defend this low practice, all I am saying is that there is no law against this and there should be no law. The second option is that I walk over to you and tell you that I will suppress my "lashon hara" if you pay me money. Basic common sense will give light to the fact that the second option is not as bad as the first. Because you at least have a choice with the second option. You can decide if the price of me keeping quiet is enough to avoid the dissatisfaction that you get if all your friends find out about your anime obsession. However, for some messed up reason the second option, which is "blackmail", is illegal. I do not understand. It fails to have any common sense whatsoever. Yes, blackmail is part of free speech and we need to even protect the blackmailers.
I conclude with my favorite quotation regarding free speech by Voltaire that I keep very dear: "I might not agree with what you say but I will give up my life to defend your right to say it".
We must be prepared to defend speech in all its forms. Especially what we hate the most. Defend the speech of neo-Nazis and KKK members even if they are willing to kill you. Because free speech is a more important virtue. If you do not defend the speech of those whom you hate, then you do not support free speech.
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