Thought Experiments ...

Make More Than GPA

Robin Hanson at Overcoming Bias on a theme dear to my heart:

You don’t have to step very far outside scheduled classes and clubs to start to see how very different the world is when you have to organize it yourself.

For example, if you try to study a subject in depth without following a textbook or review, you’ll have to decide for yourself which sources seem how relevant to your topic. If you try to add something to the subject you’ll have to decide what changes are how feasible and interesting. Doing these may feel awkward at first, but they will be very useful skills later in life. Similar skills come from writing your own game or starting your own business or composing your own album.

The full article is at http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/11/make-more-than-gpa.html

Killing animals is wrong because ...

Here's an article on not killing animals in the NYTimes. The argument seems to be that we shouldn't kill animals because some guy in a novel once had fellow-feeling for a mouse. But lots of people have lots of different feelings for animals, and fellow-feeling towards all kinds of things.

I have a hard time believing a professional philosopher wrote this - I suspect the thoughtless hand of an editor intervened.

The Stuff of Thought by Steven Pinker

March 6, 2009

• We watched the TED talk, the Stuff of Thought as narrated by Steven Pinker -->. (Stuff of Thought)
• By doing so we gleaned basic knowledge of language and sentence construction.
• In regards to Indirect Speech Acts: Polite requests, bribes, and threats can be misconstrued based on improper sentence construction.
• Language is a tool used to negotiate relationships: Communality (families, fraternities, sororities), Mismatches (one relationship is assumed to be of a different status with a person who perceives it in a different way), Reciprocal transactions (shopping), or Dating are all examples of negotiations
• There are two states that muse be satisfied by language: It must convey the content, and negotiate/maintain relationships. This is the most important because Political Philosophy seeks to do just that, while questioning the notion of addressing the correct context, in what manner it should be questioned, or are we even asking the right questions? Do policies, especially those involving science convey what they mean to do and do what they were meant to do?

False Tolerance: The Danger of Casual Relativism (Dr. Patrick Goold)

February 26, 2009

Dr. Goold set up his talk against the backdrop of a modern religious example of FalseTolerance. Pastor Mark Driscoll posts youtube videos of his sermons and this one was The Tolerance Rant.

Dr. Goold gave definitions of things that he referred to often so that the members of the audience could have a small working knowledge of the vocabulary he used. The first was Philosophy, which is "thinking about how we think about things". In the scope of the talk he discussed "how to think about tolerance...arguments for tolerance," and he made central the argument that "none of these arguments can persuade those at whom they are directed," and they can possibly "be demoralizing to them". Secondly, he defined Religion in the context of his talk as "those whose followers see themselves as led by divine will...fulfilling the will of God with respect to the present life," Pastor Driscoll being the present day example. Finally, Tolerance was the last definition, which is "a position possessed by human beings; how we cope with others".

The central question which arose from this information was "To what extent is patience for the opinions or practices of others a virtue?"

Dr. Goold argued that "we should not be tolerant of indifference based on naive relativism" and that there are different levels of toleration; inquisitive, mutual indifference, pluralistic, and pragmatic. Attached to pragmatic toleration is prophetic scientism. 

He arrived at the conclusion based on the definitions and challenges against these different types of toleration that, "one must engage the argument of one's interlocutor...one cannot argue for a premise the interlocutor won't accept". "Denying in advance a claim, leaves no room for dialogue. Toleration should at least argue with rather than at one another". In practicing proper communication within the vocabulary of the other interlocutor the goal is to gain "growth and mutual understanding of our own opinions". We must question ourselves as well and our beliefs. It does not mean that you do not have to hold on to truths, but we should "be aware of the whispers of a better world". In practice this is our "conscientious toleration of each others intolerance".

To answer the central question, Dr. Goold stated that "patience is a virtue only when it is in the service of truth".

Religious Freedom and the "Other" Religions: American Attitudes Toward Unconventional Religious Groups

February 19, 2009

Dr. Timothy Miller summarized the history of Christianity as a movement and the persecution of it's followers over quite a number of centuries.

Some interesting things that he mentioned:
*Human beings have a tendency to think they live in unique times. They behave as though "new" religions are cults, even though their histories go back further than the eye can see.
*Arguably, Christianity is not the only religion to exhibit such a history of persecution in all of it's denominations because the fact of the matter is people are people no matter where you go. Under other religions persecution is just as bad, if not worse. The issues of persecution are largely a matter of point of view--we cannot get away from considering the contexts of the situations, both historically and religiously.
*Exemptions based on religion are dissipating (especially in the Supreme Court) because religious constraints are becoming so diverse that there cannot be an exception for everything and anything.

Questions to consider:
*In NY, a man beheaded his wife under religious pretexts. The U.S. is supposed to advocate religious freedom, but how do we protect innocent people without stepping on anyone's religious freedom? What should the state of the law be in order to deal with this?
--> It has to be at our discretion, but where do you draw the line?
--> At what lengths does religious freedom get to extend before it affects public safety or the stability of the public/society?
*What about children? (Parent's get to teach kids, not the state)
-->But if religious practices put a child in danger (like not allowing blood transfusion), should the state intervene? (parens patriae)

Genetically Engineered Foods

The Future of Food is currently available on Hulu. Recommended.


Here's another documentary about Montsanto that a friend referred me to. Haven't watched this one yet myself.

Can We Know our Own Minds?

February 13, 2009

Trying to tie together this week and last week, we asked the question, "Is it rational to play the lottery (for a prospective adrenalin high, maybe)?" and we explored the issue of recognizing reality and not deceiving ourselves. If telling someone that they need to recognize reality is so simple, then why do we have such a difficult time putting it into play even when we practice? We decided that Bernoulli's explanation of not worrying about infrequent things like terror attacks, but actually worrying about poverty is way to start distinguishing between varying realities, but I would argue in order to do so, we must understand how our mind works. Specifically, as it involves consciousness.

This week we will be looking at a TED talk with philosopher Dan Dennett, exploring this issue. "Can we know our own minds?" For those of you who cannot make it, as always here look on ted.com, Can we know our own minds?
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As mentioned previously, we looked at the TED Talk "Can We Know Our Own Minds?" as narrated by philosopher Dan Dennett. From the discussion we gleaned that we are not authorities on our own consciousness. The self is possibly an illusion. It just makes you think you're a you, the you being 100 trillion cellular robots (what we are made of).

Dan uses several demonstrations to show us how the mechanism's in our minds work to manipulate, fill in, or interpret the data before our eyes and where it works very well and when it does not benefit us--which happens because we do not pay attention to things we are not looking for or being attentive to. Because of this, magicians (his most prominent example) can "saw a lady in half" before our very eyes. Dan's point is that the lady is not actually being sawed in half, but the magician merely makes you think she is. Things like magicians make you think your mind is a mysterious entity that cannot be explained or explored, but Dan's point is that this is not true. We just do not know our minds as well as we think we do.

Your consciousness is a bag of tricks (like the magician's act), i.e. it's explicable, but it works like magic because of your overactive brain. Our overactive brains work to fill in details that are missing, or suggested to be present. It is interesting however, that the brain does not seem to have any necessary affinity to filling in color. Color is accidental, but structure is important to neural efficiency. That is why when we see something like the "Nekkar Cube" we fill in geometric endpoints of the cube that aren't really there. Therefore, consciousness is possibly a magic trick that the brain plays on itself. You're both the magician (your mind) and the audience (the self) and your interpretations and manipulations create your world.

Exploring the Frontier's of Happiness

February 5, 2009

At the meeting this evening we looked at a TED talk by Dan Gilbert. If you could not attend, look at, Exploring the frontiers of happiness on ted.com.

The main focus of the discussion was that people make errors in predicting the odds that they will succeed at something and errors in predicting the value (how much they gain) of that endeavor. Most of the talk is based around Bernoulli's formula which is that the expected value of something is equal to the odds of the gain multiplied by the value of gain.

From the discussion we gained that, "we underestimate the odds of our future pains and overestimate the value of our present pleasures." We concluded that in order to gain a consistent Bernoulli approach to choices we would need to institute training and practice and it was suggested that RELIGION has done this very well.

From a psychological standpoint, we examined the nature of "Illusions of the Temporal Perspective," discussing the idea that people believe more is better, and it's best for them when they can get it NOW, but we should recognize reality and not deceive ourselves into finding short-lived gratification in present pleasure tasks.

From an economic standpoint we do this with the lottery and many other things that involve saving, spending, or investing money. But as a devil's advocate, Prospect Theory points out that these things depend on how much money you have. Still it is a psychological and economically swayed choice.

Our Relationship to Animals - Butchering Meat; Eating Offal

Here's a video about butchering a side of beef...

Meat Appreciation: A NYC Restaurant Honors the Whole Animal from SkeeterNYC on Vimeo.

Update 26 Nov. 2009: Here's an article about eating the internal organs of animals.

Resources for Eating Ethically, Vegetarian & Vegan

I humbly recommend the left column of the New Earth Farm blog as a store of information on where to eat ethically in the Chesapeake watershed.



Update 25 Nov. 2009 - Dr. Noe sends this link, to the Vegan Culinary Experience

Stevie Wonder on Sesame Street

Stevie Wonder and band playing Superstition on Sesame Street, 1973.