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.

Some Thoughts About Existentialism

I just finished writing essays for my take-home philosophy final. So, what better way to celebrate than to write some more about philosophy on my blog? Perhaps I'm just a masochist...

Anyway, a few years ago, I came across existentialism, and it resonated with me. I'm sure I had heard of it before then, but for whatever reason, it didn't stick. But this time, I looked into it, decided that I rather liked it, and so started considering myself an existentialist. I particularly like the idea that we create our own meanings. Meaning doesn't exist independent of us, waiting for us to find it, rather we create it.

Anyway, I needed to take an elective course, and Intro to Existentialism fit, so I took it. We went over four philosophers - Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Sartre, and read The Grand Inquisitor by Dostoyevsky, The Metamorphosis by Kafka and saw the movie District 9.

After about a month into the class, I knew less about existentialism that I did before. Being slightly wiser, realizing how little I knew, I decided I should stop considering myself an existentialist until I knew more about it, and so could make an informed decision.

So, being done with the class, I gave it some thought. The first thing is that I disagree with most of what was said by most of the philosophers we studied. Interestingly, I disagreed with each philosopher a little bit less than the last. If I don't agree with what most existentialist said, how can I be an existentialist? Well, first it's important to remember that most existentialists didn't consider themselves existentialists. Hell, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche predated the term.

Further, if there was only one idea that all four philosophers shared (and there were damned few things all four philosophers agreed on), it was focusing on the individual over the group. So, I can disagree with them, and chalk it up to individualism. Seems appropriate. Also, the ideas I found appealing in the first place, I still find appealing, and while they are less central to the philosophy than I thought they were, they're still there.

And as a special bonus, here's a joke about existentialism. Don't forget to read the mouseover text.

Even More Geometrical Constructions

Swirled Hexagons

Countercycle

Tunnel

Celtic Knot

Cross

Geometric Series

Infinity

Similarity

Starwheel

Spider

Layered Flower

Tree

Shockwave

Substructure

Pebbles

Shuriken

Caltrop

Stellar Nursery

Penrose 1

Penrose 4

Penrose 2

Penrose 3

The Bat-God

Do Jews, Christians and Muslims worship the same god? Is the God of the Torah the same as the God of the Bible the same as the God of the Koran?

Here's my (atheistic) take on it: God is like Batman. I don't mean that he's a superhero who fights crime under the cover of darkness (though that would be pretty cool). What I mean is that the different versions of Batman are like the different versions of God. There's the Batman of the comics, the Batman of the early Batman movies and the Batman of the rebooted Christian Bale Batman movies.

In each version, certain important characteristics stay the same. Batman is always dresses up as a bat to fight crime, has a batmobile and a batcave, etc. God is always the omnipotent creator of the universe, who personally cares about humans.

But also, important characteristics change. Who killed Batman's parents and where did he learn to be an expert in hand-to-hand combat? Who was God's most recent prophet and does he care if we eat pork?

So, is God the same God? Well, in the most important aspects, yeah, pretty much. But, that doesn't mean they're interchangeable regardless of context. You can't talk about why Michael Keaton's Batman never mentions Ra's al Ghul because it's not the same continuity. Similarly, you can't ask why the Christian God allows pork when the Jewish God prohibits it.

Of course, this is approaching God as a purely fictional literary character. A real entity can't be three different versions at once. Wait a minute...

(As a sidenote, I find it somewhat interesting that Aphrodite is another god(dess) who rather different versions of herself.)

The Efficiency of Captialism

Proponents of capitalism like to say that it's the most efficient economic system we have. I think it would be more accurate to say it's the least inefficient, similar to how democracy

is the worst form of government, except all those other forms that have been tried.

-Winston Churchill

Capitalism works well - very well - in certain controlled circumstances. When a resource is scarce, but not too scarce. When there are few barriers to entry. When there is strict regulation preventing monopolies from forming and other predatory business practices. When there's not too much unemployment, but not too little. When there's an increasing population. When income inequality is not too high, but also not too low.

If all these conditions, and others I haven't named, are met, capitalism is quite efficient. But too frequently, these conditions aren't all met. And when that's the case, capitalism kinda blows. Other forms of economy may blow even worse (though I'm sure other forms can outperform capitalism in certain circumstances), but that doesn't make capitalism good.

What brings this up is farmers destroying their crop, because they have too much. From a capitalist point of view, they're making the right decision. Reduce supply to increase price and profit. I can't see how any economic system rewards destroying a resource (especially one as valuable and necessary as food) more than distributing it could possibly be considered efficient. It seems to me to be an incredible failing of the system of capitalism.