Today is the First Day of Autumn

Why? Because I say so and I really like autumn. That's why.

There are those who say that solstices and equinoxes mark the beginning of each season. In which case we're still three weeks away from autumn. Others say that solstices and equinoxes mark the midpoint of each season.

Nonsense, I say! Solstices and equinoxes have to do with the alignment of Earth's tilt to the Sun. Seasons have to do with the weather and the temperature. The two are related, but not the same.

If you say solstices mark the beginning of seasons, then a week before Christmas isn't winter yet, which seems kind of ridiculous. If you say equinoxes mark the midpoint, then Valentine's Day is already spring, which is even more ridiculous.

And more importantly, there is no first day of any season. As my brother and I were discussing on Facebook, everything is continuous, and seasons are a prime example of that. It's not like there is one single day where the temperature drops from 30°C to 20°C and all the trees change color. It's a gradual transition, like red turning to orange in a rainbow. Any line of demarcation is going to have to be arbitrary.

And since it has to be arbitrary, it might as well line up with another, well established arbitrary date-point. In this case, the first of the month.

And so, I decree: The first day of autumn is September 1st. By extension, the first day of winter is December 1st, the first day of spring is March 1st and the first day of summer is June 1st. And it lines up much better with the weather that way.

AlDraw, Version 2.0

AlDraw is the program I use to make things like this:

(By the way, I just uploaded a bunch onto my picasa album)

I've been working on improving it. I've decided I want to do a major overhaul, and make it version 2.0.

There are three big things I want to focus on:

• Improving code design. -- When I first wrote it, I didn't really give any thought or attention to making it good code and easily maintainable and extensible. As I gradually expanded it, I rewrote the worst parts to make it more flexible. But for the scale of changes I want, I don't think that's going to be enough. Also, I want to be able to show the code to another programmer and not have them think "What the hell were you doing?"
• Improving usability. -- This is probably the worst thing about the program right now, because I'm the only one who uses it. There are a lot of things about the program that make perfect sense to me, but wouldn't to anyone who just started using it, because they didn't write it, or get used to its shortcomings as they worked to fix them. If anyone is willing to help test it, let me know.
• Add features. -- Copy and paste to make repeated designs like tiling easier. Make zooming and panning more fluid. Add colors. Pretty straightforward.

Also, as I want this to be a big step forward, now would be a good time to rename it. I would welcome any suggestions. Possible ideas: keep AlDraw, GeomeDraw, Constructomatic, Euclidomizer...

The Problem of Evil

A lot of Christians claim that God is all-powerful, all-knowing and perfectly good. And yet, earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, tornadoes, floods, fires and all sorts of other natural disasters happen everyday which destroy infrastructure and kill people.

I'll let a Greek philosopher (probably not actually Epicurus, though usually attributed to him) make the connection.

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?

One of the most common solutions to the problem of evil is to say God has "mysterious ways" and these acts serve some greater purpose. But God is supposed to be omnipotent. Not just really, really powerful - all-powerful. If he were all-powerful, he could achieve the same purposes without the killing and destruction.

Some people say that God can't be morally judged the same as humans, but I don't see why not. Whether something is moral or not isn't determined by the actor's power or knowledge. (Note to self: write a post going into more detail about this.)

One of the most... interesting... solutions to this problem that I've seen is that natural disasters are caused by human evil and sinfulness and for God to prevent them would interfere with our freewill. Of course, there was no explanation of how humans cause natural disasters, or how God would be interfering with freewill by eliminating them.

And then of course, there is the solution that there is no such entity that is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent. Personally, I find that to be the most parsimonious solution.

Questioning

I know you won't believe me, but the highest form of Human Excellence is to question oneself and others.
-Socrates

In my previous post I talked about why truth is a good thing. Continuing that, questioning is also good. Because questioning is one of, and perhaps the single most important tool in finding the truth.

Not everything you believe is true. Not everything I believe is true. In order to discard our false beliefs, we must first find them. And the only way to do that is to question our beliefs.

Consider the modern fable of the five monkeys. The monkeys continued believing that it was a bad thing to try to get the bananas, even though conditions had changed. Just because something was true doesn't mean it still is.

This is why I so strongly support the freedom of speech and more generally the freedom of belief. The only way for the truth to prevail is for it to be critically examined.

Truth is Important

Truth is important.

It may sound obvious. That's what we've been taught since childhood. Lying is bad; honesty is good. But our parents and teachers are not infallible. They could have been wrong. Lying and bullshitting certainly seems quite prevalent in the behavior of those at the top.

Also, a major component of philosophy is to check your assumptions. Wrong assumptions lead to wrong conclusions, which is bad philosophy. So, are we sure that the truth is a good thing?

My answer is yes. First for practicality. If you're pursuing another goal, the truth will only help you get there. If you're trying to make people happy, you need to know what will actually make them happy. If you do something that you believe will make people happy, but are mistaken, you will achieve the exact opposite of your goal. And this is true of any goal. Even if your goal is to dissemble and mislead, you'll be able to do it better if you know the truth.

But beyond that, I feel that truth is good in and of itself. I can't really articulate why. It's a non-rational preference, the same way preferring pleasure to pain or happiness to unhappiness is non-rational. And I feel it's a very important preference, of the magnitude of pleasure or happiness.

Government and the DRY Principle

I recently read a book called The Pragmatic Programmer, by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas. One of the things they repeatedly stress is the DRY Principle. Don't Repeat Yourself.

Any good programmer practices this rule, to a limited extent. Calling a function instead of rewriting the same block of code  over and over again follows the DRY Principle. But Hunt and Thomas suggest taking it even further, further than I would have thought practical.

Most people take DRY to mean you shouldn't duplicate code. That's not its intention. The idea behind DRY is far grander than that.

DRY says that every piece of system knowledge should have one authoritative, unambiguous representation. Every piece of knowledge in the development of something should have a single representation. A system's knowledge is far broader than just its code. It refers to database schemas, test plans, the build system, even documentation.

-Dave Thomas

They say to do that by using code generators, automated scripts and other such tools.

But I think this principle can be good outside of computer contexts. I think that it could be applied to the government, at least in some situations, to make it more efficient.

What brings this to mind is changing my address. You shouldn't have to change your address twice (once for the Post Office, once for the BMV). You should be able to change your address once, in one place and have that communicated to other relevant agencies. This would make the system somewhat more complex, but also more efficient and more consistent.

I'm sure there are other bureaucracies and other real life situations this would apply to.

Why Do Atheists Talk About God?

If atheists don't believe in any god, why do they spend so much time talking about it? This is something that comes up when engaging in such theist-atheist discussions. It's usually used as a cheap attempt to discredit an atheist's points, or prove that atheists don't really disbelieve in god. Of course, such attempts are ridiculous, and, well, stupid.

But it's not an unreasonable question. Why would you spend so much time talking about something that you don't think exists? I can't speak for anyone else, but here are my reasons.

1. It's interesting. Just because something doesn't exist doesn't mean it's not interesting to think about. I also like talking about elves and alternate histories. 
2. I want to know the truth. If a god does exist, I want to know about that, and I won't find out by sticking my fingers in my ears.
3. Finally, and most importantly, because people use their belief in god to support teaching creationism, banning abortion, bashing gays, mandatory public school prayers, and many other flagrant infringements on rights.