More Reasons Why Politics Is Stupid and Other Disconnected Ramblings

I am less often attacked by self-righteous liberals who see me as a conservative than by scared ignorant conservatives who think I am a liberal, or by libertarians who brand me a monarchist.  Monarchists of course assume I am an anarchist, because that's how their particular little world is divided.  I have never met a true anarchist, so I don't know what they think of me.  Anyway, the weather cares little for the opinions of people, so why should I?

The cost of being original and thinking for one's self is that you never have any allies.

Being an egalitarian, I am equally critical of conservatives and liberals, and for that matter of all politicals.  They all make the same stupid mistakes.  They attack each other for being what they are, merely for the labels they carry, and not for anything of substance.  They see only what they wish to see in order to confirm their own limited fantasies.  Politicals try hard to make sure there is only ever one side (their side) to every question; while workable solutions to problems require that all aspects be acknowledged and addressed.  Therefore politicals are incapable of solving anything and they never produce anything of value.

The major flaw in Conservatism (the thing, not the people) is that it fails to acknowledge new facts, new realities, and is incapable of responding to changes intelligently.  It only knows what USED to be true.  Example: Man-made global warming is a verified, proven fact and by far the most dangerous thing happening in the world now.  Conservatives refuse to open their eyes to empirical truth and will therefore fail to act until it is too late.  And then they will blame someone else for their xenocidal intransigence.

The major flaw in Liberalism is that it fails to acknowledge what has always been true that continues to be.  It thinks it is more clever than a thousand generations of humans; and its strange theories, when tested, fail again and again.  Example: Wealth is the only thing that has ever prevailed against poverty, suffering, injustice, and environmental degradation.  The natural facts of how wealth comes about (i.e. through individuals acting with individual freedom) and the natural human right to retain one's own property and direct one's own labor are fundamental to life itself, and not merely a fungible "system" that can be re-engineered to suit some arrogant, self-righteous academic theory.

The major flaw in Libertarianism is that government and community actually do have legitimate roles in the world.  Generally speaking those roles are in concentrating capital for purposes that benefit the broadest categories of people rather than those narrower needs best served by for-profit enterprises.  There are certain things we will always do better as a city, as a nation or as a planet than we do as individuals or as self-selected corporate entities with a necessarily limited focus.

The major flaw in Totalitarianism is that the State rarely innovates and quickly stagnates without risk-taking individuals creating wealth to begin with.  It collapses in on itself leaving mass suffering in its wake, or like any purported perpetual-motion machine, it runs down and stops unless there is a continuous artificial outside subsidy.  The State can never hope to successfully provide all things to all people, nor should it ever be thought of as having that responsibility.

This flaw is only slightly ahead of the equally fatal flaw of being a complete violation of basic human rights, particularly the right to ownership over one's own labor or stored-labor (wealth). In other words the state that controls everything is essentially mass-slavery. Unfortunately there are many forms of Totalitarianism, and it lies at the valley of every slippery slope upon which both liberals and conservatives vigorously dance.  All politicals, right, left or center, crave power and any quantity of it is never enough for them.

The key to a balanced, prosperous and healthy world is keeping the politicals strictly in check; limiting their power and insisting instead that power reside within a necessarily small, efficient set of equitable laws.  It lies in actively resisting the impulse which assumes that more and stricter laws are always the answer to every question, the solution to every problem.   It lies in not valuing security over liberty and human rights; in accepting risk in the world and not fearfully clinging to notions of control over "the other people."  It lies in abandoning the futility of subduing enemies with force while avoiding any meaningful engagement, but instead engaging with them as peers and relinquishing control to at least the extent that they have some kind of recourse other than death (yours or theirs).  It means allowing individuals to retain and exercise meaningful power, and accepting the consequences of that necessity - being that people will not always act as you would wish, and sometimes your rights may be encroached upon.

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.  Everyone needs freedom, though a few may experience some inconvenience to themselves as a result. Only slaves are 100% secure; free people must accept and bear the risks of freedom. That means that the people you are afraid of will not be under your control.

One consequence of freedom as a basic human right is that those who mentally cannot endure racial, gender, cultural or religious integration are free to separate themselves and form enclaves in which they can fantasize about the world without interruption and without inconvenient facts being laid before them.  I do not recommend this at all since it damns them to a state of stagnation, intellectual in-breeding, idiocy and poverty.  But they remain free to do so, and we, rather than make enemies of them, must be mature enough to treat with them as peers, understand what they want and why, and be open to exchanges in our mutual best-interests.  Exporting ideology is nobody's legitimate business.

And that's why politics today is stupid: it is an overt attempt to export ideology and impose it upon others rather than seeking to understand others and treat with them.  The constant vilification of "the other guys" is the main reason that I loudly denounce Conservatives as stupid, Liberals as stupid, Libertarians as stupid, Socialists as stupid, Greens as stupid, Communists as stupid, Islamists as stupid, Christian Fundamentalists as stupid, Monarchists, Oligarchists, Militarists, Separatists, Aryans, Racists, Gays, Homophobes, Feminists or any of these smug artificial identities as stupid.  Any such identity is fundamentally based on a false assumption that "the other people" unlike you are your main problem.

And that just isn't so.  Your main problem is always you.  My main problem is always me.

Fake Things Are Stupid

Have you ever owned a fake Rolex?  It's worse than not owning any sort of Rolex at all, because every time you look at it or feel it on your wrist you are unconsciously reminded that what you have is a fake.  Not the real thing.  Worthless junk.

The unconscious mind for all its vast power and intelligence can be a simpleton at times.  If it tries to process the thought "I own worthless junk" too often it will  make a false association and begin to process "I AM worthless junk" as well.

And if you have ever tried to do anything whatsoever without your unconscious mind on board such as lose weight, get fit, wake up early, stop smoking, practice a musical instrument, get a university degree, pass an algebra class or stare down a creepy disgusting spider, you know that it is virtually impossible to make yourself do something that the unconscious mind refuses to let you do.  You need it to be 100% on your side.

That's why allowing it to believe that you are worthless junk is a disaster in the making. And that's why my advice has always been, that if you must own something, then own as close to the very best that you can obtain.  No junk, no rubbish, no fakes.

Fake ideas and ideologies are also just as damaging to you, both in mind and body.  The following are some particularly destructive fake ideas, things that are not actually real in spite of the many fake examples out there, that I encourage everyone to discard permanently from their minds and lives.

Ass-trology.  The basic premise of "astrology" is that there are twelve signs of the zodiac (the annual path across the stars that our Sun takes, or at least appears to take from the perspective of the surface of the Earth in its yearly orbit) and that these "star signs" fixed your personality and destiny at the moment of your birth, and not a moment before or after. The truth is that there are really 13 zodiac signs and that their positions relative to our calendar have shifted significantly since their identification some 3,000 years ago.  At best, ass-trologers today are all getting the wrong answers.  But in fact your personality was neither fixed by the stars at the moment of your birth, nor has your destiny been pre-determined at all.  Your personality is actually the product of your conditioned neurology, and people can and do change their neurology whenever they want.  It is not fixed from the moment of birth or from any other time.  The random arrangement of stars visible from our solar system exert no influence whatsoever on the earth or its inhabitants except through the beliefs (neurology) of said inhabitants.  It is the conditioned mind that determines your destiny, not which stars were behind the sun when you were born.

Numb-erology.  The premise behind numerology is that certain numbers associated with your birth and life determine your personality and destiny, in particular your name and your date of birth.  Practitioners assign numbers to letters of the alphabet in your name to find out your numbers.  The reality is that the alphabetic order of letters, even the existence of an alphabet, is not a cosmic, universal or fundamental thing but an arbitrary random convention.  Many languages have a different alphabet with varying specific letters and orders, and some languages even lack any kind of alphabet entirely.  Numbers are not mystical things, but simply names of quantities invented for counting.  Those names are not cosmic, universal or fundamental in any way, but are arbitrary words and symbols the meaning of which depends on the numbering system used, e.g. base-10, base-8, binary, sexagesimal, or roman numeral (tally) systems.  The date of your birth is also arbitrary.  Only by random, meaningless convention is January the "first" month instead of, say, the fifth month.  Even the existence of months and their numbered days is also an arbitrary convention containing no meaning or significance whatsoever, nor is the date of the start of the year significant in any way whatsoever, even astronomically.  In fact, the calendar as we know it is a recent invention, and if birth dates were ever meaningful at any time in the past, then they can no longer be so after the introduction of our modern calendar.  Your name was given to you by your parent(s) and not by some universal cosmic force.  The meaning and significance of your name is only relative to your local culture, and is not universal or cosmic.  Just try moving to China and see how meaningful your name is. As with ass-trology, numb-erology is a fake external factor that has nothing to do with your personality or destiny, both of which are actually determined by you internally in your conditioned mind, which you are at liberty to re-calibrate any time you wish.  You do not need to change your name to be a successful person.

Psych-icks.  There's no such thing as a psychic.  There are people who will try to deceive you or deceive themselves, or both, but none of them are really "psychic."  It's all magicians' parlor tricks.  People do not talk to the dead, nor do they read your mind or see or feel your future.  The fakery of psychics has been proven beyond doubt many times.  I refer you to the work of The Amazing James Randi and the excellent recent documentaries made by British non-psychic Derren Brown .

Chiropractic.  The basic idea as postulated by the 19th-century American quack who made it all up it is that all disease is caused by constricted nerves, and that misaligned vertebrae are responsible for these constrictions.  Modern chiropractics still assert that vertebral misalignment causes some if not all disease, and that they can cure everything from asthma to AIDS.  The truth is that the basic premise has not only failed to be proven, but it has been positively proven to be false.  Pure fantasy.  Nothing in it whatsoever!  Disease is not caused or even made worse by compressed nerve fibers.  What is more, misaligned vertebrae DO NOT ever come close to compressing nerves in any way that affects their function. If you have had a beneficial outcome from visiting a chiropractor, then you would have had as much if not more benefit from visiting a qualified remedial massage therapist.   Chiropractic is also not without risks, as people (perhaps as many as 200) have died as a result of completely unnecessary spinal manipulations.  Don't waste your money or risk your life.

Spin Doctors: The Chiropractic Industry Under Examination

Chiropractic the Greatest Hoax of the Century?

At Your Own Risk

Problems Are Stupid

I have a brother-in-law who is an extremely sincere unpaid lay minister for his church.  His responsibility as head of his congregation covers the spiritual and physical well-being of about 450 people.  Even with more than a dozen volunteer assistants in various roles, this task occupies him from 6 AM to 4 PM every Sunday, half the day on many a Saturday, and two or three solid evenings during the week.  It's like being CEO of a small corporation.  This is in addition to his actual full-time career and raising a large, extremely active family. How the hell does he do it all?

I don't think I could. I mean, aside from the whole religion thing, I don't think I could be bothered to spend that much time and energy at it.  He can do it because he's interested in people.  He's compassionate and cares about their problems.

I care about people too, sort of.  That is, when I'm not consumed by my own little projects.  I try to help people when I am able and if I happen to have a solution to their problems.  But that's the thing:  I don't really care all that much about most people's problems, because a problem that has already been solved once is no longer at all an interesting problem to me.

Whatever problem you have, it is almost certain that another person in a worse situation than you with fewer resources, less support, poorer health, more kids, fewer limbs and greater disadvantages has already had your problem.  And they have either solved it, or come to realize that it was never really a problem to begin with.

Your problem has already been faced, many times over by many people. So why are you still wasting your time with that problem?  Here's why.

People love their problems.  Their problems gives them a sense of identity, a feeling of significance and a sense of community with those havers and lovers of similar problems.  People love getting together to compare, magnify and complain about their problems.  The bigger, more complicated and intractable the problem, the more significant and attached to that problem community ("problemmunity") they feel.  If you love your problem, you will NEVER be rid of it.  It will always be a focus of your life and creative energies.

People who love their problems will always defend them.  If you offer them a solution, they will counter with all sorts of reasons why the solution will not work.  They will come up with many detailed and closely reasoned arguments for why their problem is quite impossible to solve.  A great deal of imaginative effort goes into making their problem as air-tight as can be.

People who identify themselves through their problem feel angry when anyone shows the slightest doubt about or disrespect for their problem.  Many of them are probably angry at me right now just for writing this.  If you are feeling angry now, then you are probably problem-identified too.

People with chronic problems often don't realize that they love their problems. But their responses always give it away.  Do you justify your problem by taking any opportunity to explain why it is someone else's fault?  Why it is impossible to solve?  Or how the bad ol' government, church, school, parents, ex, neighbors, kids, cops, drugs, booze, food, genes, germs, leprechauns, corporations, aliens, lasers, immigrants or cats did this to you?  Then you love your problem.  I know, because I used to do it, too.  (It was my ex, who I once suspected of being an alien leprechaun cat sent by the government to drug me.  With lasers.)

All human behavior is in response to need.  If any of your behavior, voluntary or otherwise, planned or not, conscious or unconscious, prolongs or intensifies the problem you have, or at least does not actively implement the well-known, proven solution to that wholly unoriginal problem you have, then you are doing it because of something your unconscious mind thinks it needs:

Sympathy.  Significance.  Community.  Identity.  Validation.  Punishment.  Familiarity.  Excitement.  Security.

You unconsciously love any problem that gives you these things, and you will never get rid of it in spite of your loud protests and bellowing indignation at my words.

"You are wrong!  I don't want my problem at all!  But there's nothing I can do about it."

Aha!  You are justifying and defending your problem again.  Will you please say that again, except for the last bit?

" . . . I don't want my problem anymore?"

Good. Thank you.  Now, if you please, . . . Prove it.

Prove it by first understanding that there are no problems, only opportunities.  What opportunity does this so-called "problem" give to you?  What opening is it creating for new things to enter your life?  How might it allow you to grow, expand, increase, and learn?  How is it eventually going to make you a better, more resilient person, more enlightened, joyful, fulfilled and happier?  Oh, yes it will!  If you only stop coddling and nurturing the problem long enough to put it down, see its true nature and get on top of it.

The fear of change alone keeps many people clinging to their "problems."  Don't let such a filthy lie as that keep you weighed down.  Anyway, only your old problem-loving brain stuff is afraid, not you.

Now adjust your conscious and unconscious beliefs about your identity as distinct from your current situation.  Do this in any of the many well-known ways: prayer, meditation, hypnosis, affirmations, brain plasticity, visualizations, NLP, cognitive behavioral therapy, and so on.  This will begin to alter your behavior.  That behavior will implement those well-known solutions to the so-called "problem."  Most people already know what to do; they just don't act because they're too busy defending their problems and remaining dependent on them.

As your mind wakes up out of that problem-centered trance you will begin to doubt the doctrine that other people or things are to blame for your "problem" and start to believe less in their power to create or control your identity.  You may need to forgive certain people who have hurt you, or whom you have hurt.  You may even need to forgive yourself.  As you do, you will discover that you have more and more power to design and control your own life.

You will begin to accept the current situation as just that - a situation, nothing more.  It is no longer an identity or a problem.  You will begin to accept each new situation as it emerges out of your new behavior.  Fast or slow makes no difference, because they are all just situations, never problems. Time is also not a problem.

Finally, look back at that horrible old "problem." It's the one that caused so much pain and suffering and pushed you right to the brink until you were ready to try anything - ANYTHING - no matter how bizarre it sounded or how indignantly your brain stuff reacted at first.  Realize now that the "problem" was actually the greatest blessing of your life because of the place to which it has brought you now:  the end of all problems.

The people who don't do this and who decide to keep their problems have simply not had enough pain and suffering yet.  When they have finally had enough, then you can show them what to do (but you can't do it for them).  Until then, all anyone else can do for them is to help them continue to have the stupid problem.

Some people think I must be devoid of all compassion to say that Problems are Stupid.  Problems are not required for true selfless compassion to exist.  When you no longer have problems, you will still have situations.  They will often be fewer in number, however.  It is nice to have compassionate friends who know how to help you with various situations without turning them into problems or without being motivated by selfish feelings like guilt, obligation or fear.  Helping your friends out of an occasional uncomfortable situation is also a fulfilling thing to do, when you can do so without drama, attachment, suffering, or problems.

I suppose that is how my super-awesome brother-in-law is able to cope with the problems of 450 other people who depend on him.  Though he might not use quite these words, he probably knows that problems are indeed stupid and is able to treat them as nothing more than situations at worst, great blessings and opportunities at best.

How Money Works II: Perpetual Motion Is Stupid

Cash is only one manifestation of Money.

Last time we discovered that money is merely a storage medium for value, and the concept of value encompasses the needs, wants and survival of all life.  In this post, we wish to elaborate on those natural laws that money (or "wealth" as some prefer) obeys.

But why do I say that Perpetual Motion is Stupid?  And what does that have to do with money?  I say Perpetual Motion is stupid because it is a lie.  It is in direct opposition to Nature's Laws, and therefore it has never worked, does not now work, and never will work in the future.  People who believe in, pursue and promote Perpetual Motion including so-called "free energy" devices and schemes are therefore Stupid.

Likewise, people who pursue and promote financial or economic schemes that attempt to violate the laws of money are also Stupid.  This includes certain well-known philosophers, politicians, ideologues  reformers, do-gooders and, basically most of your garden-variety hippies. But when we learn exactly how money works, we will no longer be stupid, will we.

How can I say that Money obeys natural laws when it is just an arbitrary human invention?  I can say it because money is NOT a human invention at all, nor is it arbitrary.  It is a natural phenomenon.   And as we learned last time, money is not the same as cash.  The ability to store, transport and exchange value arises naturally whenever life takes an opportunity to create more value than it requires in that moment.  Ants gather in the summer ahead of the coming cold and dark.  Bears feast on salmon brains at certain times, ignoring the tasty flesh entirely as the most efficient way to prepare for hibernation.  Humans exchange their time and products to each other and store that value to be exchanged later at the grocery store.  We may flatter ourselves by thinking we invented this system, but it is actually a natural extension of the fundamental biological economy of life.

Recall also from the previous post that the willing exchange of two dissimilar items always creates value.  This additional value is the driving force behind trade, commerce, and specialization.  The exchange itself is of value because in a willing trade, both parties gain.  The sum of value after the trade is more than the sum of value before.

An economy is nothing more than a vast number of single exchanges happening continually.  You exchange an hour's labor for an hour's pay, and an hour's pay for a tank of fuel for your car.  You exchange some of that fuel to locate a mate or gather your offspring, then drive to the store and exchange yet more of your stored labor for some food.

No matter how complex an economic system becomes, it must always reduce to increased value for value in every willing exchange.

To introduce the natural laws of value and money, consider the following somewhat silly tale of woe.

Imagine a refugee camp.  There are ten thousand refugees who for various boring, tedious reasons may never leave the camp.  They have no resources in the camp, and every day they are given a specific amount of food that must be consumed on the spot.  It cannot be stored, traded, or used in any other way.  It has no potential value.

Nothing can enter or leave the camp - no materials, resources, tools, goods of any kind.  The people sit and do nothing all day, because there is nothing to do.  One day a multi-billionaire suddenly gets religion and decides to help these unfortunate souls trapped in the refugee camp. He bestows upon each of them One Million Dollars in cash.

Now, that much cash is a problem in a refugee camp, where it is impossible to secure.  But since they are all thieves to a man, each stealing as fast as he can from all the rest, at any given moment they still each have on average one million dollars more or less.   Still, as no goods may enter the camp, there is nothing to actually buy, so pretty soon they get tired and stop stealing each other's money back and forth.

No matter how much they exchange the money with each other (and none are stupid enough to actually lose money by being swindled or cheated), nobody ever gains anything.  The total amount of money in this "closed system" remains constant, and it remains perfectly evenly distributed.  Nobody has anything to gain, and nobody has anything to lose.  Nobody has anything to buy or to sell.  Even though they are "rich" according to some people's stupid definition, there is no value, no economy, no exchange, and no real life in this camp.

You might propose that prostitution would inevitably spread through the camp like wildfire, and pretty soon only the hoes would have all the money. But if the hoes were to reflect that the so-called "money" does not actually have any value, then solicitations would be refused.

Unlikely, you say? Hoes with that level of insight?  Then we'll exclude that possibility by insisting for the sake of discussion that there remains nothing of value inside the camp to trade for.

What about gambling?  Even to just pass the time?  Fine - but we stipulate that their games are 100% chance, no cheating and no skill involved.  The average refugee will still have one million dollars more or less, and the distribution will be random yet fairly uniform around the camp.

Perpetual Motion is like this ridiculously rich refugee camp.  There is money all around, but none of it is useful for anything.  Perpetual Motion imagines it can create more money, more wealth, more value within this closed system simply by having the money pass from one person to another and back again.  In this closed system, the amount of money is constant and fixed, and the distribution is as uniform as it gets.  Like all closed thermodynamic systems, it obeys the First and Second Laws: energy is always constant and maximum entropy always reigns supreme, barring statistical fluctuations due to random events (e.g. gambling).

Money obeys these laws too.  If you have a closed system (like this refugee camp) then there can be no increase in money and the distribution is, if not initially then certainly before very long, more or less uniform.  The laws of money stipulate that for an increase in value to occur, the system must be open, and there must be resources from which the participants can create value.  As soon as that is the case, then value-producing exchanges can begin and wealth expands at a more or less predictable rate.

The $6 Million Dollar Chicken.

Now suppose some enterprising outsiders learn about this camp full of millionaires. Imagine they cut a hole in the fence, and offer to sell a breeding pair of chickens to some of the inmates.  How much would they be worth?  A million dollars?  Each?  A quorum of inmates might see the potential value and pool their money, outbidding the others, and buy the rooster and chicken for as much as, say, $12 Million.

This one small hole in the fence completely and fundamentally changes the dynamic inside the camp.  Eggs start to sell for $100,000 each.  Chicks sell for $1,000,000 each.  Businesses spring up, skills suddenly become valuable, and wealth begins to be created.

Let's imagine that one person pays $50 Million to another to build a chicken coop.  An interesting thing happens the moment it is finished.  The wealth of the camp jumps by $50M.  How?  Well, the builder now has $50M, and the owner has a $50M chicken coop.  That's a total wealth of $100M.  Where resources are available, wealth expands as fast as people can create value.

One thing we learn is that the total amount of money in open economies is never fixed.  For one person to get rich does not mean that another must get poor. In fact, exactly the opposite is true.  When one person gets rich, it is virtually always because he or she created a lot of value for a lot of people. All those people are actually ENRICHED by that one person's rise to riches.  Logically, we should be celebrating our successful rich people, not tearing them down or blaming them for problems that have nothing to do with them.  Those are the irrational superstitions I mentioned last time and false emotional associations people have about money that cause them to react in such an illogical, irrational way. They choose to focus on the few exceptions, like the occasional airplane that crashes. Those are the aberrations where people have taken money for which they did not create equivalent value.  In the long run, that type of activity is unsustainable and ultimately fails.

But like airplane crashes, those are the flights we hear about on TV while ignoring the millions of successful landings that happen every year.  There are over ten million millionaires in the world today, and over 1,200 billionaires.  The vast majority of them got rich by making YOU richer.  Think about that next time you ignorantly disparage the rich.

*   *   *   *   *

The improbable refugee camp of this parable demonstrates another essential point.  In the closed camp, how much was the one million dollars that each  inmate owned actually worth?  When there was nothing to buy and the distribution was uniform, the value of the money was zero.  That's right: one million dollars can sometimes be worth nothing at all.  That is an extreme example, but the same mechanism of currency devaluation applies elsewhere, even in open, productive systems.

When a government prints large amounts of currency, unless there is an equivalent amount of value being produced somewhere in the country, the currency becomes devalued.  In other words, you have inflation of prices since each dollar contains proportionally less actual value.  Cash has value only when it has been exchanged for value.

Devaluation of currency also occurs when you give away large amounts of cash.  There is no exchange of value, and therefore the cash has no value initially.  This lack of value diffuses thorough the economy, and the total circulating currency is devalued in proportion to the amount that was handed out.  Giving cash to the needy is therefore harmful to the needy as well as to everyone else. It is a gross unkindness to give them something of no value that they do not actually need.

If you want to relieve the needy, give food, clothing and shelter, and then only in emergencies.  To do otherwise creates a dependency that is an even worse unkindness to those you are attempting to help.  It's like giving away free morphine for everyone to take in case someone gets a headache.  Using it routinely creates addiction and diminishes humanity.  But use in an emergency does not result in dependency and can be extremely beneficial.

If you want to help the long term needy, do not give food and clothing, and do not under any circumstances give cash.  Instead, give education and opportunity in generous measure.  Give them the means to labor for their own support with human dignity.  Giving someone meaningful work even if it is hard, unpleasant labor is the greatest kindness you can give.  And before you call me a heartless scrooge, you should know that someone was once kind to me in exactly this way, giving me the chance to do some very hard, hot, dirty uncomfortable labor, for which I am extremely grateful.  It added tremendously to my humanity, whereas cash handouts would have dehumanized me.

We are creators - that is our nature.  Being human means being a creator of value, and to deny someone the opportunity to be human is inhuman.

Artificial Intelligence Is Stupid

Deep Blue was stupid.

Yes, I have heard all about Deep Blue, the chess-playing machine that kicked Garry Kasparov's ass (sort of - only by the skin of its chips, but chickened out of a rematch and never even had a look at the Great Bobby Fisher).

Yes, thank you, I also know all about Watson, the hands-down all-time Jeopardy! champion of the universe.

And yet I assert that today we are as far from true Artificial Intelligence (AI) as we were in the days of mechanical adding machines. Deep Blue and Watson are enormous feats of computer science, but they are not intelligent.  They do not think, do not have any awareness, have no understanding of the data that they process or the rules they follow, and they do not have any level of consciousness whatsoever.  They are, in their essence, just algorithms.  Programs.  Deterministic mechanical data processors.

But if beating every single person in the world at Jeopardy! isn't intelligence, then what is?  A correct understanding of intelligence actually leads me to see playing games like Jeopardy! and chess as not intelligence itself, but as a kind of suspension of intelligence.   Computers and machines are far better than us at things like calculating, data processing and large sorting tasks.  In order for humans to do these tasks well, we actually have to suspend our real organic intelligence while we discipline the mind to follow the rules of an algorithm.  And we have to have a damn good reason for it.  Part of intelligence is instinctively or analytically knowing when to suspend consciousness and which algorithm to run.

Deep Blue and Watson did not have to consider those problems at all. Their programmers decided for them what algorithm to run and when to run it.  All they had to do was follow the rules laid down.  And yes, you do not need to remind me that the fine-tuning of those myriad rules was done by "playing back" thousands of human moves in these games, which implicitly contain the parameters of the most effective, creative human strategies.  At its core this detail is just another deterministic algorithm and, in fact, only further emphasizes the point that human intelligence cannot be synthesized by a machine.

Why is that?  Because the foundation of intelligence is not logic or facts (sorry, all my scientist friends!)  Intelligence is not being able to associate one set of stimuli with the memory of another.  Even flatworms can do that.  That mechanistic activity does not necessarily accompany an understanding of what those stimuli mean.  The core of intelligence is a consciousness of the meaning of facts or events. So, how do humans create meaning and gain consciousness of it?

To begin with, the human mind is integrated into a living organism which has at its very core the instinct for survival.  It wants to survive, needs to survive, and fears annihilation with absolute physical, organic terror. Being integrally connected to living flesh, blood and bone allows the primitive brain to be aware of the internal state of the organism and its prospects for ongoing operations.  It can control the organism and correct for situations that threaten the organism.  It does this not because it is artificially programmed to do so, but because it is terrified of death and therefore of anything that takes it in that direction.

With eyes, ears and other external sensory organs the core brain can assess the organisms environment and its prospects for nourishment, safety, sex and health. The brain is conscious of the meaning it assigns to any set of stimuli because it associates them with either survival or death. These primitive emotions are at the core of all our more complex human emotional states, and that same mind makes assessments of the meaning of all events relative to the organism's health, survival, and genetic success.

Our intelligence derives entirely from our ability to be conscious of and to make meaning of events, situations, and objects in our environment.  It should be noted that these meanings are usually subjective to the conditioning of the mind; hence we have optimists and pessimists making distinctly different meanings for the same events.

Please do not dismiss this as that "emotional intelligence" artsy-fartsy nonsense.  Let's take Garry Kasparov's brand of kick-your-ass braniac intelligence, for example.  How does his brain so aggressively, cunningly and accurately prosecute a game of chess?  Where does the will to do so come from?  Because the primitive brain wants something.  Garry's brain associates winning at chess with organic survival, and so his vast resources of memory, cogitation, creativity and gut feel combine in a highly trained mind to be virtually unbeatable in an extremely logical, cerebral activity that is unquestionably "intelligence" in action.

Once the will, drive and organic resources are in motion, then the champion (in whatever game - chess, Jeopardy!, quantum physics, stock trading, or jazz) must suspend and master his emotions to keep the required outcome firmly in consciousness.

Here is the one issue that AI proponents are not able to solve:  How do you make a program WANT something?  I mean really, desperately, deeply and irrationally WANT something?  Or to be afraid of something?  Or to feel anything at all?

Without that, a machine can never understand the context of information and be conscious of its meaning.   Until machines can be in any way concerned for their organic existence and be conscious of the emotional context and meaning of events relative to its well-being, then machines will never be intelligent.

My Prediction:

Artificial Intelligence will always be stupid.

Politics Is Stupid

There seems to be yet another election coming up soon, as there so often seems to be.  Many people (okay, two) have asked me which candidate I plan to vote for.

Let's see . . . there's the incumbent who is intelligent, well educated, compassionate and progressive - all traits that the conservative republicans find repulsive and unforgivable.  There hasn't been this much vehement right-wing hatred and loathing of a sitting president since the last time a democrat occupied the White House.

And then there's the conservative challenger.  He's a religious family man with a successful business who actually understands what money is, where it comes from and what it's for.  These are traits that the liberal democrats find repulsive and unforgivable.  There hasn't been this much vehement left-wing hatred and loathing of a candidate since . . . since, let's see. . . probably since the last election.

So where do I stand?  Well, here's the thing.  A politician is not a person who cares anything about me, or about you.  Politicians do not care about your issues or about my issues.  They have no interest whatsoever in legalizing garden-gnome-marriage, or banning the environment, or whether or not we should fund birth-control for the endangered green-spotted gerbil-snail.  Politicians do not care about jobs, taxes, trade, or about that dodgy foreign country you sometimes read about in magazines.  Politicians are politicians because they care about one thing and one thing only.

Power.  The getting and keeping of it.

When you vote for a politician, you vote for giving power to someone who wants it, who craves it more than anything else.  And as Douglas Adams pointed out, someone who wants power that badly can under no circumstances be trusted with it.  You vote for these politicians time after time, America, and time after time you have been disappointed, have you not?  Admit it.  Doesn't anyone but me see the trend emerging?  That is why I cannot in good conscience support anyone who purports to be a politician.

"Okay, smart-ass, so what do you suggest we do?"

Fair enough. Anyone can complain, right?  But who offers solutions?

I do.  This is the solution:  Vote for whomever.  Doesn't matter - flip a coin if you really can't decide.  In the end it won't make a hill of beans difference.  When the "wrong" guy gets in, or even if the "right" guy wins but turns out to be a dud, and when the whole country goes to hell in a handkerchief, here's what you do:

Turn off the TV news.  Your life goes back to normal!


Eventually, people will get tired of this meaningless charade, this fake "democracy."  Sooner or later it will all fall in a heap under its own ponderous, quivering bulk and it will be time for some changes.

For your convenience, should you or a nation you know encounter a "quivering heap event" or QHE, simply follow these easy steps for rebuilding society:

Step 1:  The Jury-Duty model of leadership.  Heads of State and other officials are chosen at random from the population for 6 - 12 month terms.  This dispenses with the huge waste of time and money we facetiously call "elections" and makes public office completely incorruptible.  People chosen at random are statistically guaranteed to be no more evil or incompetent on average than those potential Hitlers who now actively seek power for their own inscrutable ends.

Step 2: The Social-Media model of democratic governance.  With communication and transport being what it was in the 18th century when nothing moved faster than the Speed of Horse, electing representatives was a necessary evil, a compromise of practicality.  But with modern technology, such as The Telegraph, The Wireless, The Horse-less Carriage and other such modern inventions, why do we saddle ourselves (har!) with outmoded systems of government that we no longer need?

Why not throw off this fake democracy in which we vote for our favorite TV celebrity and bicker endlessly about which one of two middle-aged men we despise least (two men chosen for us by the Powers That Be, by the way)?  Maybe our civilization is mature enough for real democracy, in which the Voice of the People directly makes all decisions of real consequence.





Wait a minute . . . Mature?  Civilization?  Yes, I see your point.

American Health Care Is Stupid

Yes, you read that correctly. I know you were expecting the title to be "Australian Health Care Is Weird" because that be more in line with the overall tenor of this blog.  But this is one area that I think Australia has a few things it could teach its bigger, fatter cousin to the north.  And I'm not talking about China.
Obamacare, obamacare, obamacare!
In Australia, whether you're a permanent resident, a naturalized citizen, or a citizen by birth, YOU HAVE BASIC HEALTH INSURANCE.  Automatically.  For FREE!

All you have to do is walk in to your local Medicare office (or Mediocre if you're a smart-ass like me), fill out a form, and get a plastic card with your name and your Mediocre number embossed on it.

Then, anytime you feel yourself coming down with a broken leg, a brain tumor, ADHD or the Spanish Flu, you can make an appointment at any local family doctor of your choice (called a General Practitioner or "GP"), pay a few dollars and get it checked out.

If the "GP" has enough turnover to employ an office staff, then they might do something called "bulk billing."  That means you pay only the $20 or so co-pay for the office visit, and the doctor sends Mediocre a bill for the rest.  Otherwise, you pay the full bill, then later take it in to the Mediocre office yourself and get most of it refunded back to you.

Now, let's say you have a serious condition that requires a specialist.  Acne, for example.  Then, your GP would write a referral to a specialist, a Dermatologist in this case.  (If you have Lizards, he might refer you to a Herpetologist.) With that referral, most of your costs incurred with that specialist are covered by Mediocre.  But if you are content to pay out of your own pocket, you are perfectly at liberty to see any specialist anytime as much as you want without a referral.

Sounds like a Hypochondriac's Utopia, doesn't it. Well, it has some down sides too.  Because it's almost free, it is sometimes over-used by idiots who smoke, drink, eat and screw themselves into poor health.  Consequently there can be lengthy waits to get an appointment at a GP, get into the hospital, or to finally have that brain transplant you've been so desperately needing.

Also, Mediocre stipulates how much Mediocre money a doctor can receive for their mediocre services, and often this is below the doctors' costs.  As in America, the cost of health care has risen dramatically as scientists have invented ever more expensive ways to not die a little longer.  Consequently, most doctors only have enough time in your appointment (average length: 1 hour in the waiting room, 14 seconds in the "surgery" or examination room) to give you a randomly-generated prescription for some pills that may or may not make frogs grow out of your armpits.

In other words, "free" health care is no exception to the maxim that you get what you pay for.

That is why in Australia you also have many opportunities to purchase "private" health cover which gets you into the medical fast-lane, better hospitals, smarter doctors with better English skills and TWICE the amount of time (28 seconds) to give you a prescription for something guaranteed to make you go away and not bother him anymore.

Private health insurance in Australia costs about a tenth of what health insurance costs in the US.  It also covers "unnecessary" extras like dentistry, hand-washing before surgery, and boob-jobs.  Though what exactly constitutes "necessary" medical procedures is the subject of intense debate in pubs and bars across Australia.

Shouldn't America adopt a similar system?  Perhaps not.  Australia has just eight or nine states or territories (we're not sure if Christmas Island and the Cocos Islands count), and just 22 million residents. It's quite a different thing to administer a Mediocre-type system across 50+ states and 300 million people.  There is a strong argument in favor of running these things on a State level under Federal laws.  Except if you live in Arizona.  In that case there's a strong argument in favor of moving to Colorado.

Another problematic issue is this.  If someone is paying for your medical care, can that person reasonably have some say in what you can and can't do that may affect your health, and consequently your medical costs?  I personally think that would only be fair.  But good luck banning all the things that could put you in the hospital!  Food, drink, drugs, tobacco, sex, sitting, standing, working, playing, walking, driving; virtually every aspect of life eventually comes under government control if we follow this line of reasoning.

But there is a solution!

My solution to the quandary of a single-payer health care system which does not simply reward idiots and bums while punishing healthy people with higher taxes is this:  Free basic health care with a slight twist.  If  you drink, smoke, do drugs, overeat, don't exercise, are overweight, have unprotected sex, or are really, really accident-prone, you pay for the privilege and freedom of doing as you please with an extra co-pay for each voluntary behavior that increases the burden on the health care system.

When we examine the extraordinary costs of providing emergency-room care for the poor and the cost of interventions that would have been cheaper to fix sooner, then the single-payer system is the cheaper option by far, as long as you don't inadvertently reward behavior that makes people sick.

But in the end, as all of us will, you will eventually die.  In Australia, it will almost certainly be in the jaws of a shark, crocodile or wombat.  From this perspective, America's obsession with Obamacare seems a silly, silly, silly, silly silly thing to worry about.







Find out more.  Understanding Australia's Health Care System:

 

Stupid Science, Stupid Religion

Lest anyone imagine that all religious beliefs are equal or that everything called Science is awesome, I'd like to get a few things off my chest and open things up a little.

It's sort of like comparing smart girls to particularly dumb boys, or smart boys to really dumb girls, and then trying to conclude that either boys or girls are generally the dumbest.  There is such a thing as stupid religion, and also stupid science.  Neither has a monopoly on being completely lame once in a while.

It is this flawed method of biased comparison that is largely responsible for the falsely perceived incompatibility that people often pretend exists between Science and Religion.

The real incompatibility is between smart and stupid, and my life has been entirely committed to becoming gradually less stupid in both areas and striving to be slightly smarter, bit by little, as a scientist/engineer as well as a spiritual being whenever an opportunity to do so comes along.

Stupid Religion happens when people use Religion when they should be using something else instead.  Like Science,  The Emergency Room, or Birth Control.  Or something called a Brain.  Religion is particularly stupid when it makes testable statements.  These are claims that can actually be checked or verified through a bit of investigation, experimentation, or mathematical analysis.  This is very dangerous for Religion, because once testable claims are made and they happen to prove false, that Religion's credibility takes a major hit.

It gets worse, though.  Because many people can't tell the difference between these testable "beliefs" and real beliefs, they may feel social pressure to continue believing in statements that have already been disproved.  Basically, they are believing in lies and will sooner or later suffer because of it.

This credibility hit and the attending suffering is something to which the Catholic Church can testify.  It is a lesson that all other religions should carefully consider.  Catholics once persecuted Galileo for examining some of their stupid testable beliefs and proving them wrong.  Eventually, though, they had to eat humble pie and admit they were wrong and he was right.  This is actually much to their credit, because some Religions would rather cease to exist than to ever admit being wrong.  It pleases me immensely to observe the Christian teaching of Humility over Pride being put into practice in this way.  Even though it took a few hundred years.

But too often I find religious people adamantly and pridefully clinging to some false testable statement that has already been disproved.  They are certain that there is no possible way they could ever have been mistaken in the way they interpret ancient texts written in some long-dead language by people they know nothing about.  If there's anything more arrogant or prideful than that, I surely don't want to know about it.  The earth is only 6,000 years old?  That has not only been proven completely false, but the bible doesn't even say this.  Readers of the bible made up this statement out of pure ignorance.

Beliefs that can be tested are Stupid.  Nobody ever needs to believe them, because they can be tested and either proved or disproved.  "Do you believe in evolution?"  No!  It's not a matter of belief, it's a proven fact. You don't need to believe in it any more than you need to believe that your cell phone really can make phone calls or that airplanes really can fly.  And really believing as hard as you can that 2 and 2 make 7 will never make it so, and will eventually lead to your spiritual downfall.

Believing in something that is false has only one spiritual or practical benefit.  If this is happening to you, it is probably what should be happening.  The reason you're here is not to have a perfect existence and to be right all the time.  This world is a classroom, and we are here to learn and grow.  Everything is an opportunity to fulfill this Divine purpose, including getting yourself into and then out of some stupid, testable beliefs.

Powerful, spiritual beliefs are those that cannot be tested in any way except within your own character.  If they improve you, end your suffering and make you stronger, keep them.  They are proved for you.  But everyone else on the planet needs to do their own work.

Tell us, John, what religion are you anyway?

Why?  So you can label me?  So you can judge me according to your perception of that religion, as totally clear and perfect as that perception surely is?  Forget it.  I, like every person on the planet, am far more complex than even a whole dictionary of labels could contain.  I might be Catholic, Bhuddist, Hindu, Methodist, Muslim, Jewish, Evangelical, Coptic, Greek Orthodox, Baptist, Adventist, Jehovah's Witness, Mormon, Quaker, Mennonite, Anabaptist, Baha'i, Eckankar, Jainist, Zoroastrian or Pastafarian, and it wouldn't make any difference to the validity of ideas that have an independent existence.

My Religion isn't the church I go to in order to participate in community life.  My Religion is my personal spirituality, untestable beliefs, and the growth that hopefully occurs once in a while as a result.

_____


Stupid Science happens when scientists do the opposite, and make statements that are not testable.  They make proclamations that their data do not support.  Sometimes this happens when they perceive only what their personal bias and preconceptions allow them to see, or they filter every new experience according to  their past experience. In other words, when they are acting perfectly human.

But scientists are supposed to have more discipline than that, especially before opening their mouths in public.

The worst example of Stupid Science is when scientists publicly announce that There Is No God.  Now, how the hell were they able to work that out?  What data do they have to show this conclusively?  What peer-review process did they follow?  None:  they are just being Stupid.  They are messing with untestable hypotheses which are not within the domain of Science at all.  They are overstepping their bounds.

"I'm WATCHING you!"

Other examples of Stupid Science are found everywhere on the internet:  free energy scams; dubious anti-aging cosmetics, drugs and devices; "alternative" medicine; Climate Change Denial; Ass-trology, Numb-erology, bible codes, or anything else that uses scientific-sounding bullshit but with no methodology for eliminating bias from the evidence, or which claim proof of untestable or poorly-formed hypotheses.

Science is really very simple.  You draw conclusions based on real evidence, and only based on the evidence.  



Anything and everything that is objectively testable is the property of Science.  Anything that is subjective to the mind belongs to Religion.  They have nothing whatsoever to do with each other, nor does either one pose any kind of threat to the other.  There is no conflict between them.

Unless, of course, they are being Stupid.


Next:  Science V. Religion, Round 2

See also: Certainty or Self-Deception

and:  So it's Religion you want?









.