Self-Consciousness and Existential Angst

I was watching this video, and a thought occurred to me. Self-consciousness, by that I mean not simply the feeling of being overdressed for a social event, but more generally being aware of your state of being, reflecting on your own existence, is generally an unpleasant feeling.

It's not exactly an original thought. Buddhism came up with it 2500 years ago. In order to achieve enlightenment and hence nirvana, you have to let go of your ego. It's also a fundamental part of existentialism, the idea of angst.

It's odd that one of the few things that seems to be uniquely human is so apparently negative. It makes you wonder why that is. I have a couple wild ass guesses, but they aren't worth mentioning without further research.

It also makes you wonder what you can do about it. The simplest answer I can think of is to maintain a state of flow as much as possible, to do things that are engaging and challenging, so you can think more about it than yourself. (And it is apparently possible to achieve a state of flow by philosophizing about angst, paradoxically enough)

Cargo Cults Get a Bad Rap

Cargo cults are religions that formed in pacific island cultures when they came into contact with Europeans. They sought to replicate the Europeans' material wealth and technology by imitating it. They didn't know how those things were made, so they thought they were gifts from the gods. They built imitation airstrips and control towers thinking those were rituals to summon planes.

The term cargo cult has also been applied in other contexts, such as cargo cult science or cargo cult programming, to mean imitating techniques and procedures without what they're for or why they're used. I don't object to that usage, because it seems pretty accurate, but it does give a poor representation of cargo cults.

As far as I can see, cargo cults are the most rational religion in existence. They're still wrong and irrational of course. But compared to more mainstream religions like Christianity and Islam, they're downright sane. Cargo cults have real evident miracles.

Airplanes and radios and all sorts of magical things. You don't need to have faith in those things. Their explanation for those things was wrong, but that's not necessarily irrational. The irrational part of cargo cults is refusing to give up that explanation when it fails to work. Compare that to Christianity which is entirely based on irrationality and faith.

But You Did Not Persuade Me

For the most part, I don't disagree with Jeff Atwood's most recent post. On a factual level, he's correct. When coding, it's more important to market than to code. In fact, for anything you want to do, from plumbing to politics, it's more important to convince people that you do a good job than to do a good job.

But that's not a good thing. Everyone shouldn't have to be a marketer. Specialization is a powerful thing, and it'd be nice if that could be applied to marketing too.

I don't know how or even if such a change is possible. And I'll admit I'm biased by my sub-par social skills. But it still seems like something to strive for.

Also, I disagree with his interpretation of that scene. The unavoidable truth it exposes is that Idi Aman is crazy and incapable of recognizing good advice.

"Alright" is Alright

Pedantic prescriptivists claim that "alright" is not a word. That it's merely a misspelling of "all right". I disagree. I claim that "alright" is a word with a meaning distinct from "all right".

The distinction is similar to the differences between "already" and "all ready", and "all together" and "altogether". In each case, when "all" is a separate word it means just that, all. If a group of something is all ready, then all the members of that group are ready. As a single word, the "al" doesn't mean anything separate from the rest of the word.

It's the same with "all right" and "alright". "All right" means everything is correct. "Alright" is synonymous with OK.

Here's another blog on the same issue. Oddly, it says that "alright" isn't a word, and then goes on to describe the difference between the two.

Can You Choose What You Believe?

It's a simple yes or no question, right? Either you can choose what you believe in the same way you can choose what to have for breakfast, or you can't in the same way you can't choose to obey the law of gravity.

Well, no. Whether or not something is a choice is not a simple binary yes or no. It is, as nearly everything else is, a continuum. We don't normally notice it, because we usually only encounter examples at extreme ends of the continuum, like breakfast or gravity.

But there are examples of in-betweens. Consider a person with OCD. Does such a person choose to wash their hands over and over? To a degree, they do, but to a degree they don't.

It's the same with choosing what to believe. You form beliefs based on what you see and hear, and you can't really change that. But you can choose what to look at and who to listen to. And even when beliefs are deliberately chosen, it still takes a long time to really convince yourself of it.

If You Can't Explain It...

There is a common saying with a variety of forms that generally goes like this:

If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.

You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.

If you understand something, you can explain it in its simplest form.

If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it.

I disagree with this saying. The ability to explain something well is a skill separate from the thing you're trying to explain.

Consider a watchmaker who can make intricate watches that work correctly, but who can't tell you why certain pieces go where they do. Not only can he build watches, but he can also innovate designs to make them better. Does he understand watchmaking? Clearly, he does, otherwise he wouldn't be able to make them work at all. His inability to explain is a problem with his communication skills, not a problem with his understanding.

Further, how difficult something is to explain depends not only on how well you understand it and how good you are at explaining, but also who you're explaining it to. This is the concept of inferential distance. It's a lot easier to explain calculus to someone who understands algebra than it is to explain it to someone who doesn't even understand arithmetic.

And if you're really good at certain forms of communication, you can explain something that you don't understand at all (though not correctly).

Equality of Opportunity

But there's a fundamental question on the meaning of "fairness." Does fairness mean everybody makes the same amount of money? Or does fairness mean everybody gets the opportunity to make the same amount of money?
-Rick Warren

This is a common thing among right-wingers, talking about how the left wants equality of outcome, but the right wants equality of opportunity. But it's not true.

I don't think anyone is especially interested in achieving either of those things (though democrat positions are a little closer to it). If you were really interested in having equality of opportunity, you know what one of the first things you should do is?

Ban private schools. Or at least make it so everyone can get in regardless of how much money their parents have, which would effectively just make them public schools. A better education means more and better opportunities. That's hardly equal, and it's not like it's poor kids' fault that they have poor parents.

But no one wants something like that. And I can't blame them. It's a bit too Harrison Bergeron, making things worse to make them more equal. Nonetheless, allows private schools allows inequality of opportunity.

Beyond that, "It takes money to make money". By accepting inequality of outcomes, you're accepting inequality of opportunity. A person who has spare money lying around can invest it, and make more with it. A person living paycheck to paycheck doesn't have that opportunity.

And that's only a couple of examples of how our system supports inequality of opportunity. There are lots more if you look, and those ones don't help the poor much either.