Spelunking the Universe
Posts tagged Debate and Discourse
The Failure of Shock Protests
3 years ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
Be it at a speech by the President or the center of transit at the university where I live (and currently go) there is one thing you are bound to see. People protesting. Now I have nothing against protesting by itself, while most of the time it is over really inconsequential stuff at least in the US, there are times when it really does make a difference and has a powerful message.
However there is nothing powerful about shock imagery. In particular to this point is anti-abortion advocacy groups. They tend to show pictures of dismembered fetuses or cover baby dolls in blood and animal guts. Likewise when PETA wants to make people not eat meat they use a shock imager of a cow being bludgeoned or a chicken being beheaded. These things are quick, mindless, and easy.
However are they effective? Statistically there has never been a strong long-term response to these strategies, people will feel emotionally torn for a short period of time and may join the side of the group but it tends to unravel within a week and generally before a couple days are over.
Likewise not only is it ineffective in the long term, but frankly it is childish. I could not keep my food down if I watched a surgery take place, but does that mean that there should be no surgeons? It is unfair to try and equate gore to the legitimacy of a lifestyle choice (in the case of eating meat) or in a hard life choice (in the case of abortion). There are plenty of things that disgust me to know end but that in no way rates their importance in the world.
Birth for instance puts me in a state of such sheer horror that I barely retain my consciousness, yet this is a vital event to sustain the life of basically any organism. So in closing, if you really want your opinion to be heard, to have your passion ring loud, you should get your message across with level headed dialogue. Anything less isn’t worth the time and many times will be counter productive.
The Digital Sea: Piracy
3 years ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
Note: I apologize for missing my update yesterday. I’m pretty glum about losing track of time, ah well. Onto the discussion.
I was thinking recently about the entire debate over the legitimacy of piracy of digital media. As the cogs were turning I was reminded of a famous quote that anyone familiar with the Civilization video game series or just human history in general should be familiar with.
Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it.
- Publilius Syrus
(~100 BC)
With this in mind. I believe that Piracy may be an adequate measure of the quality of a product. There are first some misconceptions that must be clarified before we move on with this thesis. The first is that when an item is torrented by a new person that it is officially a lost sale. There is absolutely no direct connection between the sales of a product and the amount of people pirating it. There are however connections with piracy and quality.
It is an irrefutable truth that quality sells. There are many real world companies that sell products that at one time were militantly marketed, at this point however they sell primarily on word of mouth, while you will indeed find pepsi or coke commercials they are nowhere near as prolific as they once were. Their products sell by word of mouth and a compounding effect that can be found all over the universe in various forms. Once you hit a certain point in sales you will always see an increase in sales until you over saturate the market.
However there is a strong misconception that the price tag slapped on a product is that products worth. This is only true if people are purchasing it at that price point. If 10 people attend to a product and only 1 person buys it then the price is not indicative of the products worth. A 50 dollar game is only worth 50 dollars if the consumer feels it is, it is in no way decided by the developer. This is true for all products, car manufacturers have tried to slap ridiculous price points on outdated automotive products for a long time and it has more than once hurt them dearly.
You will always be able to find people who will buy something regardless of the price point. However they aren’t buying the product because of its quality or usefulness, in most cases it is a matter of status. Most Apple products aren’t worth half of what they cost when you get down to the nuts and bolts of it all but they sell well to many people because of the status that comes along with them. It’s silly, it’s foolish, but since people traded stones for products we’ve had an unusual desire to put poo on a pedestal.
There are a few major differences between digital products and physical ones. Digital products can be replicated a nearly infinite amount of times for almost no cost. The only literal loss the company suffers from the replication is a loss of time for the employees, which is hard to legislate against because we all cost others precious hours out of their life. We do it by contributing to traffic, by being slow at the grocery store, or simply be not planning things out before we leave the house. Old property laws were put into place not because of the time lost but because of the literal notion of physical products, once someone has stolen your car you no longer have that car. It is no longer a functional option for you, however is someone copies your car screensaver you still have a copy of it.
When a video game is pirated, there are a few outcomes that can result. The people will enjoy the product and will wait until the cost of the product is relative to the quality of the product, which can very well be at its starting price point. They could not enjoy the product and delete it from their PC, which more often than not is the case (more on this later). Finally they could download the product and enjoy it but never purchase it. We’ll start with these folks and work back up.
People who pirate because they want things free are potentially dangerous to an economy. However there is absolutely nothing to gain by fighting them. Since their piracy of a product does not effect the overall number of copies available (as opposed to a corn or car thief) there is no reason to attempt to prosecute. They would never purchase the product in the first place, so if you ended all piracy you wouldn’t gain any sales or at the very least would gain negligible returns.
The next group of folks that pirate a game and then delete it because of its low worth are equally harmless. Considering the state of marketing and the nature of misleading for profit it is unreasonable to assume that people would ever trust a companies description of their product. There are various phenomenon in play as well that cause people to see their own creations with a pretty substantial bias (look at Will Wrights statements on SPORE for instance, he is talking about an entirely different game). These people technically cost you sales because they might have purchased the product, however they only cost you sales because it is almost impossible to return the game. This snatch and grab tactic should never be promoted and it is one of the pillars holding up piracy as we know it.
You can argue for Demos however it is no small secret that Demo’s are about as accurate to the representative nature of a games full worth as the text on the box. They always exaggerate how much more can be experienced with the full game, for instance counting all the renames of a same item to boost the number from 4 unique items to 40 thousand. Not since the mid to late 90’s has a Demo been anywhere near accurate of the full gaming experience and everyone deeply involved with the gaming world knows this.
Finally we have the first group of folks who play a game, enjoy it, and purchase it once the price point matches the worth of the game. These people are incredibly important. They are the strongest estimator of a games actual quality. When a game comes out for 50 dollars and has almost no sales, but later drops to 30 and sells 2 million copies it is quality control in action. The company should spend less time trying to accuse consumers of theft (for reasons stated above) and work more on providing a product who’s worth is accurate to its cost. A thick layer of glitter on a steaming dog turd is not treasure, it is a turd covered in glitter.
The day that we invent means to instantly replenish with no cost physical materials, such as food, or wood, or anything of that nature the rules in the physical world will match this medium. Indeed someone physically stealing a copy of a video game from a store is breaking laws and very literally costing the company money. Not only for the physical costly product but for the reduced quantity to supply consumers. However this is not, and never will be, the case with digital products.
More than likely you will never find a company willing to admit the above. But much like that set of sunglasses on your head that you’ve been looking for for the last half hour, the most obvious information is generally the last information examined. When someone reports the losses they have received from piracy it should be taken with a grain of salt and a shot of bourbon, because it is entirely fabricated. The real damage to their income comes from the glittered turd phenomenon that has swept the gaming world over the last few generations of Consoles (and PC upgrades). The best companies can hope for at this time is that innovative and talented individuals will step forth and bring the next generation of games to a relative quality level that would match the original jumps in gaming. We are in need of another SNES generation, currently the unfortunate truth is that we’ve been stuck in an NGAGE rut for a bit too long and few people are willing to address it honestly.
Comprehension: Color Blue Vs. God
3 years ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
It’s official I have apparently hit a point where I set off at least one persons matchbox. So I figured I’d write a post on this topic so that when they get angry and Google someday they end up here 
. Likewise it provides all of you with something interesting (I hope) to read. Perhaps even a bit of redundancy once again if I brought it up before.
Theoretically since before the beginning of time (to some folks) there was an entity or perhaps entities that defied all forms of logic and decided to create something from the vast nothingness in all directions. Certainly an intro that would sell a couple of books methinks. What we are to take for granted is that something so amazingly vast, powerful, seemingly the pinnacle of all thought power and any other trait humanity finds valuable, a convenient coincidence is an entity that we, beings with noses less accurate than dogs, ears less accurate than bats, and eyes less accurate than a verifiable arcs worth of animals supposedly have good sense enough to just ‘know’ that something out there exists. However I put forth, if we can understand something as vastly powerful and infinitely old as a deity, theoretically we should be able to “in words” explain in good enough detail anything else that is lesser than such a being. For it would come to reason that absolutely anything lesser than god would be child’s play in our hands if we can indeed grasp the thought processes of something that wouldn’t even (one would surmise) belong to any realm of understanding we have, seeing as this being or beings can overwrite or at the very least create laws that all things must follow (and thusly is freakishly gifted in possible activities).
But I would like to take it a big step down, I realize that technologically its unfair to assume that we could explain any of the trillions upon trillions of things that exist outside of our senses. Sure we can’t see almost all life on Earth with our naked eye, but hey that’s just not as important as being able to sense the greatest form of life (well technically not alive in the conventional sense since living things are bound by natural law). It just seems incredibly naive of me to think that man can overcome arguably the greatest question that the universe has to offer yet cannot break down something as simple and elementary as color.
Indeed I would argue that until a language has the power and versatility to describe a base color, without any visual examples (like showing a blue shirt), to a person who has never seen or knows blue, that that same language is entirely incapable of describing something more complex than blue. You can say that a color is merely a frequency of light, but that does nothing to generate the same mental image of blue in others as you. It’s not to say God isn’t real (however my personal belief is pretty obvious) but I feel that it is wrong headed to think that “Yes we can understand God…that’s easy peezy. But color, now THAT’S complicated.”
The Internet Mega-bias
3 years ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
On the internet I’ve begun to wonder if in fact there is a rule for ignorance. Perhaps some sort of internet mega-bias. I’ve often found it funny that you need a license to drive a car but not to have a child or surf the internet. I know this is an old adage that has probably been joked about many times before I even knew about the inner bowels of the internet (which I likely don’t, I’m probably looking at the shoulders and thinking I’m in deeper).
While in and of itself the following is a blanket statement I would err on the side of caution that all people reading the following try their best to agree with it:
“If you think you aren’t ignorant on the subject you are ranting about you most certainly are ignorant.”
It’s in part I feel the nature of ranting, when we don’t understand something we begin to talk about it passionately. If you find yourself using name calling during your rant you are basically setting the level of ignorance in the discussion, the more you discount your ‘opponents’ argument the even more likely that you have no idea what you are talking about.
I’m not about to feign that I’m immune from the issue either, there is not a single topic on this planet that I do not have some level of ignorance in. I don’t fully understand (and for a few of these examples I barely understand) the economy, astrophysics, commercials, psychology, philosophy, English, grammar, or even stream ecology. I’m willing to admit that, and I feel that is likely the first step to hearty debate instead of fruitless childish banter.
If you are looking for very good examples of what incredibly ignorant banter looks like I’d suggest checking out the political forum of absolutely any entertainment site. Likewise just about any thread in the entirety of a site called Topix. There is something about it that seems to brood emotional drivel.
There is something very interesting about the nature of communication, an inverse relationship that seems to come out as follows:
The louder you are is directly proportionate to how little you know.
There are most certainly exceptions to this rule as there are with any rule in the universe of rules. That being the difference between impassioned speech and ‘decibel’ levels. As I’ve stated before people like Dr. Tyson and Dr. Pinker (two people I highly suggest watching speeches by) are incredibly impassionate about what they are discussing and yet they are not loud.
Further clarification comes from what I mean by loud, when a person begins to talk to you in a manner that seems to imply that you are below them they are being loud. Even in conversations via text there are tell-tale signs that this is happening. Italics tends to be a very good indicator for the very savvy ranters of our world. Likewise when a person implies that your sources are some level of meek, while generally not providing any themselves and/or stating theirs are infinitely more reliable (which is the case likely because of Confirmation Bias and other factors I have no real understanding of quite yet).
If you ever cite Wikipedia and the other person shoots that down, I highly suggest citing the sources the Wikipedia entry cites. Even in college this will take your grade from a B to an A and all you have done is left an area with a stigma for areas that don’t. Wikipedia is roughly as accurate (and sometimes more accurate) than Encyclopedia Britannica, yet see which of the two your professor or “Commander_Keen_39” will accept as legitimate.
Study: Wikipedia as accurate as Britannica
Wikipedia survives research test
Wikipedia:Errors in the Encyclopædia Britannica that have been corrected in Wikipedia
Assessing Wikipedia’s Accuracy
I know that might have felt like a bit of a runoff on the conversation but its to prove a point (and admittedly a bit of a tangent…I drift in thought easily), just because you don’t feel a source is legitimate doesn’t mean that it isn’t. You should instead try to provide more sources from places you feel are credible and discuss why you feel they are credible. Otherwise what is the point?
This may in part be why I find myself debating less and less online. At this point most people feel the point of a conversation is to argue, and not in the literal sense of an argument, but in the more Hollywoodesque clash of the titans way. It’s a shame too that a source of such vast amounts of information would be blanketed in a thick layer of ranting banter.
Generally speaking if someone responds to your points in an obviously demeaning manner, it is best just to ignore them. You cannot change the views of the truly ignorant because ignorance is bliss, to jump back on my Hollywood comment think of it like the movie Shallow Hall.
[after Mauricio broke Hal's spell]
Hal: Okay, who do you think is the most beautiful woman in the world?
Mauricio: Wonder Woman.
Hal: Okay… let’s say everyone else in the world thought Wonder Woman was ugly.
Mauricio: It wouldn’t matter. Because I know they’d be wrong.
Hal: See! That’s what I had with Rosemary! I saw a knock out, I don’t care what anybody else saw!
Mauricio: You’re right. I guess I really did screw you, huh?
So think of it like that. The person who just walked into your conversation see’s their Wonder Woman being called ugly. They will battle you because they feel there can be absolutely nothing wrong with Wonder Woman. Likewise if you manage to help them see the light most of the time it’s not for the better. Anyone who is that infatuated with Wonder Woman will not do something positive enough with their newfound information to offset the negative impact on them by the destruction of that veil of ignorance.
Perhaps if you could convince millions of people in a flash that Wonder Woman was ugly you might make something happen. But those one on one bouts on the internet do nothing but sanction your energy and waste your time. At least that’s my thoughts on the issue…who knows maybe someday someone will write a long book on the wonders of the Internet-Mega bias 
.
Drugs are not inherently bad.
3 years ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
It’s a hard pill to swallow for some people. Which is not entirely difficult to understand considering the massive swaths of money spent every single year on the drug war and anti drug advertising + education. Most evidence seems to show that these tactics are not only ineffective but highly counter productive.
Legalized Heroin has been popping up in a few countries around the world, as far as I know the results have been the same. For the exception of foreigners entering attempting to snag some drugs without fear of prosecution it has been an overall success. The amount of people on heroin drops with this program, the amount of people picking up the substance drops, and the amount of crime related to the use of the substance tanks. It’s obvious as well, there are a few things that are required for a drug to be popular or widely used. Firstly you require a condition in which consumption of the drug is more positive than other activities and secondly you require some form of mass advertising. Now some people might be curious as to what sort of advertisement drugs like Marijuana get that would be making them so popular in places like the US (which has tens of millions of people actively using the substance).
Word of mouth is the name of the game with illegal drugs. A combination of users and anti-drug advertisers, its difficult to not think about drugs in a society that is so blatantly obsessed with them. It doesn’t help that most advertising is sensationalist and highly misinformed, which does nothing to raise confidence about the negative repercussions. The natural response for humans (and I imagine any animal if we could speak to them) when told that they are not allowed to do something without proper information on the reasoning is to try that activity. I’m not entirely sure the reasoning behind it but I’m hardly devoid of the allure.
That said I don’t do (conventional) drugs and it has nothing to do with the morality of it, I am a strong believer that morality is a painfully ambiguous concept that is masqueraded as a reasonable way to lead ones life. If anything in this universe should be shot it would be Morality. That aside I don’t do drugs for the biological reasons, I’m already very weird as is and frankly already have a brain full of thoughts that keeps me going. I am a huge fan of working organs and want to milk every last second I can out of my life.
I say conventional because many people use drugs, if you have downed anything with Sugar in it you are using a highly addictive substance with mind altering properties. Sugar is even related to many terrible terrible diseases, obesity and diabetes being two pretty popular outcomes. If you’ve ever ingested caffeine or taken anything for headaches and the likes. But for whatever unusual reason these things are all ok, yes I realize that Sugar is required in certain doses to survive so save those comments for someone else .
There is an unusual assumption that drugs leads to crime, it’s something of a self fulfilling outcome that has to do with the nature of our reaction to drugs. In most cases the substance is legal for quite a while, it gains a sizeable following and begins to impose upon more popular drugs like alcohol and tobacco. A large lobbying project is enacted and the substances are made illegal, now you have a large group of people who went from simply enjoying themselves to being criminals. Likewise instead of getting ‘treated’ when they are caught they are put in jail or fined, they lose their jobs, and in many cases end up losing much more. Nothing that they lose is related to the drug but instead the (very hypocritical) reaction towards the use of the substance.
Even the arguments against illegal drugs is flawed, Marijuana is consistently discussed as the ‘gateway’ drug yet every study I’ve ever read showed that most Marijuana smokers had initially tried Cigarettes and found that Marijuana had better side effects with less noticeable negative side effects (It’s difficult to vomit off a joint but very easy on your first cigarette). Likewise correlating the deaths related to the substance to its harmfulness falls through. The deaths related to illegal substances have to do with the nature of supply and demand with illegal activities, generally the demand is high because of the dark mysterious nature of the item and the supply is low because of the nature of criminal activity which generates HUGE sums of cash (which is lucrative).
The Harrison act was supposedly going to create this fancy new US where there were no drugs and everyone cuddled bears. Well what it did end up doing was (much like prohibition) was create a multitude of crime syndicates, if you are looking for someone to thank for the massive power of gangs and nations like Colombia, look no further than the US’s prohibition on drugs. The amount of money you can make from dealing drugs is preposterous. Legal drug companies know this too and that is why pharmaceuticals are so powerful in the government.
However when you look at Tobacco and Alcohol it is literally a case of the substance being harmful. Which is where the irony comes in, two of the most efficient ways of killing people (or at least causing pretty impressive amounts of biological damage) are the two that are legal. It goes back to the experimental neurosis and the unusual effect this sort of hypocrisy has on the trust and reaction of the people to their government.
There are plenty of dangerous things that people can do that are legal, like sky diving, spanking gorillas, juggling knives, drinking the water in Mexico, saying anything negative about any non-white person, or shooting of fireworks while hammered during the appropriate holiday. While some of these are in jest I find it difficult to argue that most are less dangerous than most (if not all) illegal substances. If you don’t believe me make a video of yourself slapping a gorilla on the ass and live to tell about it.
Most drugs are not shiny nor are they rare, which means that they do not have an intrinsic value. The entirety of their worth comes from the militant nature of our laws against them, likewise the higher their worth the more dangerous activities involving them become. Drugs themselves are not inherently bad, we have to work very hard to make them dangerous and to make them popular.
In a closing thought I find it funny that one of the world’s largest faiths is built off of a story of a man ‘hearing things’ after being near a ‘burning bush’ yet we try to take a morale high ground on drugs. What do you think that bush was?
Determinism
3 years ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
As I sit here realizing that it would cost me 100 dollars to recover my corrupt one note files, I feel that (time permitting) that it may at least be good for the topic of determinism (Note: Time was not permitting). Otherwise its an incredibly crushing experience that gives me a very negative view of Microsoft at the moment (which is a shame because Windows 7 had peaked my interest in them). So to anyone out there make backups of your one notes, there is NO way to recover them (as far as I know) without paying some random asshole 100 dollars. May sound hard but charging that much for file recover is preposterous.
So without further delay:
Determinism: Every event that occurs is completely determined by previous conditions.
E is physically necessary =df E is required by the laws of nature.
E is completely determined by previous conditions =df the combination of previous events and the laws of nature makes e physically necessary.
Now this is important information. For those that do not know =df means "if by definition", likewise if you’ve seen it before iff means if and only if. E is simply a variable much like *.
The idea is that our history is a singular line, each event directed by the previous event which is also governed by its previous event traveling all the way back to the big bang (be that for you a cosmic blast or just some deity doing the ole bang solo). In essence it says that all actions have been predetermined by events that happened even before the agents of those actions were alive.
It goes so far for some as to say that because we cannot control our actions (and instead are merely reacting) that we should not be responsible for those actions. It has caused a few thoughts to spark in my head that make it a very sketchy system.
The second is an example of the life of a simple system. In the beginning it’s as simple as a coin toss, then in this particular case it becomes a 3 way outcome. However if we look back historically the actions of this organism would look like the above line because there would be only one outcome to every one of the actions.
Essentially Determinism says that because natural law is unable to make decisions and must act directly with the world around it that living organisms act entirely in the same way. However essentially determinism says the following.
If every single variable in the past happened exactly in the same way the exact same history would transpire.
This explains everything and in the same manner states nothing (a very popular tactic in philosophy). When an organism is born the actions it makes are at the simplest level a coin toss between two possibilities, the response is so quick to the outside viewer that it can be mistaken for a mere reaction to the environment not unlike how the waves move with the turning of the Earth, the gravitation of the moon and other bodies, as well as the shear orgy of shoving between the forces in the sea. In fact random functions like coin tosses aren’t even negated in the universe of determinism. Because if the coin was tossed with the exact same force, from the exact same point, with the exact same wind resistance, the exact same gravitational pull, landing exactly on the same spot on a surface that is in the exact same condition as the first attempt, and all other variables I cannot even fathom being exactly the same then the results would be exactly the same. However this requires a universal knowledge (omniscience I think its called) for it to be a form of understanding that has any purpose in life.
Even the previous example explained by determinism breaks down when rendered on a PC. If you created a simple program to flip a coin (return the result of 0 or 1 with a 50% chance) you would receive results each time that are completely separate from the results of the former. In theory if you were to rewind time you would get a different set of results each time that you did it (assuming you did it 10-20 times). This is because the forces acting upon the results in the digital realm are not a result of the outside world and thusly would not be held down by the rules of determinism.
There are many different forms of determinism, some harsher than the one I’ve described and some weaker. However in all cases it appears that determinism is very weak. Organisms much like Personal Computers take in information, run it through a series of scripts (or a script if its a really small program on a PC >_>), this is a process that nothing else in the universe does (to my knowledge). There is a point where the outside senses of an organism does indeed directly influence it to a point that trumps the looping processes, but that appears to only be in instances of errors. If you place a person in a room that’s twelve times their body temperature you will find a direct influence on their activities (producing a small set of responses), however if you place someone in a room that is .12 percent warmer than their body you will find a multitude of responses. However in either case when you look back it will only look like a straight line.
It is impossible for history to have more than one result when looking back, philosophy aside, it wouldn’t make any form of sense to expect anything else but single incidents in history. One of the simplest forms of logic known as modal logic says (essentially) the following:
If X can exist without Y then X is not identical to Y.
What this essentially says is that you cannot logically exist and not exist at the exact same time. Likewise in history an event cannot happen and not happen. This means that in history even if an event had 90 trillion possible outcomes, there can only be one to have happened, and I feel this is something that even a child grasps. Which is what bothers me about Determinism. It essentially says that since history only happened in one way then all of time has only one possible outcome. This seems like quite a bold statement, it would be like me saying that if I ran a program to flip a coin and it returned heads, that in all cases in the future I’d see heads. It seems foolish to take an obvious property of history and attempt to use it to explain the future.
I’d have dipped more into this but spending 5 hours attempting to recover my notes has all but crushed my writing spirit… Goodnight all . I should be more chipper next update.
Metaphysics Exam – Studying
3 years ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
Idealism:
Idealism is the philosophy that people are identical to their mind/soul. Their bodies are just tools to an end much like a bicycle is not identical to the body riding it but instead a tool to an end. To be a living person you require a body and a mind.
A mind (or soul) is a nonphysical thing, it is the embodiment of a persons entire self. To put it simpler, it is a “Nonphysical, conscious thing.” When thinking of Idealism the previous statement of the bicycle is probably the easiest way to understand it. Likewise it is important to realize the system of communication is entirely one way in Idealism. The soul/mind commands the body without return information.
Materialism:
Materialism is the philosophy that people are identical to their bodies. The mind/soul is really just physical processes acting out in ones own physical brain via electro chemical responses (or more simply physical processes). It also states that all psychic phenomena are actually physical phenomena.
A phenomena is a process that is seemingly unexplainable, so in the case of a psychic phenomena people tend to bring up things like telekinesis or out of body experiences. Basically in line with all other concrete knowledge it is the assumption that all things involving the person is likewise a series of events acted out entirely in the physical plane.
Dualism:
Dualism is the Philosophy that a person is a composite object, a living person requiring a mind/soul and a body.
The idea being that our mind is the nonphysical thinker and our body is the physical doer. They act in tandem to create a total organic package. When our body dies our mind goes off to live (misnomer?) on its own merry way.
Interactionism:
Interactionism is the Philosophy that a person is a composite object, a living person requiring a mind/soul and a body. Furthermore the mind and body work in tandem communicating back and forth between each other.
When thinking about this it’s easiest to look at the mind and body as the two input/output devices, each sending information to the other and each receiving information from the other. The difference between Dualism and Interactionism is the explicit statement that there is a two way information transfer between mind and body.
In the next section I will present popular arguments against Materialism and my counter arguments to them (these arguments are not of my doing they are from metaphysics).
The Argument from Death:
When a relative dies the common vernacular is to say that “that relative has passed on.” Materialism is wrongheaded because when we enter a funeral and see the dead body of someone we do not say “There they are.” In fact we instead say that they have left us, or passed on, or in some other way departed from there body. Because of this it is certain that the person and their body are not a singular being and thusly Materialism is wrong.
Logically it would be seen as.
(1) Uncle Mort passed on.
(2) Uncle Mort’s body did not pass on.
(3) If (1) and (2), Uncle Mort is not the same as his body.
(4) If (3), Materialism is false.
———
(5) Materialism is false.Justification for line 1 is that when someone dies we say that “They’ve passed on.” Justification for line 2 is that we can see that their body still exists under normal conditions after death. Justification for line 3 is that if a person is not the same as their body then Materialism is false.
If all parts of the logical structure are true, then the argument from death is entirely valid. For an argument to be valid is just to say that if all lines are true then the conclusion must be true. It uses a series of Modus Ponens. For clarification Modus Ponens is the following logical structure. Where each line is a premise.
Modus Ponus
if P then Q
P
—
Q
However while the argument is valid, it is not sound, which is to say that all lines are true. Firstly we look at premise one. Popular opinion is still an opinion, in the same sense that just because you say something does not mean that it is true. It is erroneous to say that uncle mort has passed on, the following example shall illustrated why.
Jerry the Caterpillar
When Jerry enters the metamorphosis stage we do not say that Jerry no longer is with us. Likewise when Jerry leaves the cocoon and is now a Caterpillar we do not say that Jerry is gone and a new being has appeared. Instead we acknowledge that Jerry has just entered one of his many stages. In all cases still being a physical being.
Likewise the same is true with uncle mort. The materialist would argue that Uncle mort is in fact in the coffin in front of us. Uncle Mort has merely entered another stage of his physical sequence, in this case death. Much akin to our desktop still existing when we shut off our computer just no longer being accessible Uncle Mort’s brain has ceased to function and we have been shut off from communication. Likewise it may help to think of Uncle Mort’s brain as a monitor that projects thoughts and ideas and that with the ceasing of his heart he has lost power and is equally ineffective at functioning.
Finally not only is this argument unsound I would further stress that it is a very weak argument. If one is willing to accept vernacular as a decider in real life facts then essentially all things are possible as long as we view them as possible. Yet merely saying something is possible has never been shown to suddenly make it true, to help further understand this it is meant that until something is said it is untrue (or impossible). In essence had everyone who walked into the church said “Uncle Mort is not dead.” would that act alone then make Uncle Mort alive?
The Problem of Other Minds
(1) If Dualism is true, then it’s not possible for me to know that there are other people in the world.
(2) It is possible for me to know that there are other people in the world.
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(3) Dualism is not true.
Now to help understand the above problem is to first look at a concept that shall be known as “Zombies”. Trying your best to not think of fantasy Zombies, it just makes us both look silly if you do.
Zombies for the purpose of this discussion are human bodies without minds.
The Zombie Principle: There is no way for me to definitively prove that other people have minds.
So with this in mind we look at the above argument. Premise one establishes that by the tenants of Dualism that to be a live person you must a composite object of a mind and a body, however there is no process that we can use to prove that people have a mind. They could very well just be incredibly sophisticated machines simulating the same activities that one would attribute to having a soul. Responses, emotions, and all other human activities can be emulated and thusly there is no way for us to know. Likewise it is utterly nonsensical to think of examining a nonphysical entity with physical tools (the only ones at our disposal).
The second premise is equally reasonable, nearly all persons would recognize that there are people around them. It would be a large stretch (and likely a hypothetical only) to say that anyone has lived their entire life and all those they know and love are to them just zombies. Equally simple would be using Materialism which can be proven by stating that all physical people around you are indeed people.
If we take these two lines to be true then the argument is valid, because it is impossible to know whether there are other persons through the tenants of dualism yet it is ridiculous to say that all people around you are not people. It would place you in a position where you couldn’t have a discussion at all since all those around you are mere simulations of an actual living person.
Further I would say that this argument is sound. I could think of no way through dualism that you could prove that there are people with souls. It is entirely possible to even program a software to believe IT has a soul which would take it even further to say that the dualist cannot even prove they have a soul. Ones own brain cannot accurately portray what it is because it cannot exist outside of itself (from the view of a materialist).
If a statement can only be judged off nonphysical evidence it is flawed because all possibilities in life could be explained with ‘because I think so”. If we take this stance once we no longer need to search for enlightenment since our strategy will simply be to ignore physical evidence in the light of it conflicting with nonphysical evidence. I make this bold statement because it would appear if you are willing to omit physical evidence then all knowledge is omitted seeing as all things we know is either based on outside information or inferences based on previously gained outside information. Even knowledge at the genetic level is passed from parent to child, traveling far enough back until the information is first ingrained from the outside world into the DNA.
The Argument of Psychic Phenomena
(1) Psychic Phenomena Occur
(2) If (1), Minds exist.
(3) If (2), Materialism is false.
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(4) Materialism is False
A story and some clarification is necessary. Firstly we have Psychic Phenomena which are designed as follows.
Psychic Phenomena are defined as all events involving the mind that have no explanation, out of body experiences, reincarnation, and telekinesis being a few.
Now for the story. There have been many reported cases of events such as telekinesis, out of body experiences, reincarnation, and other irrefutably psychic phenomena. Because of this it is blatantly obvious to anyone who is not close minded that psychic activities happen, psychic activities cannot happen without minds. Materialism states that the mind does not exist, but this evidence proves it does and thusly the philosophy of Materialism is wrong.
With the above story and definition we find that it is a valid argument. Indeed psychic phenomena (according to the story) occur, thusly minds must exist, and finally Materialism is false if minds exist. I would argue while according to the story and the definition it is a valid argument, I don’t believe in reality that it is a sound argument. See below what I theorize is really happening.
There is not necessarily such a thing as a Psychic Phenomena, instead there are two sub divisions, a perceived psychic phenomena, and a genuine psychic phenomena. It is quite possible people experience what they perceive in all honesty to be a genuine psychic phenomena however likewise they are not actually genuine. If Perceived makes it difficult to grasp instead try “Apparent”. It would then be safe to say the following:
Apparent Psychic Phenomena
(1) Apparent Psychic Phenomena Occur.
(2) If (1), Then Minds Exist.
(3) If (2), Materialism is False.
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(4) Materialism is False.
If you look at it instead in this light you will find that it is not only not sound but it is also not valid. While it is true that Apparent Psychic Phenomena occur they in no way are explainable solely by the existence of a mind or soul. Which means line 2 is false. In fact there is no better an explanation from the side of minds than there is from the side of materialism. Each raises many questions and neither answers them.
In fact Materialism already states that all Psychic Phenomena are actually physical phenomena. This would mean that the apparent occurrence of psychic phenomena does nothing to disprove the existence of Materialism. Which means that line 3 is also false.
For the Argument of Conceivability go back and read this article which is almost entirely on the topic of conceivability and misconceptions with it.
The No Interaction Argument
(1) Causal interaction between nonphysical and physical things is inconceivable.
(2) If (1), causal interactions do not happen between nonphysical and physical things.
(3) if (2), Interactionism is false
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(4) Interactionism is false.
The logic behind the first line is that there is no way to reasonably conceive an interaction between a non-physical and a physical thing. To do so requires very high levels of ambiguity that as I’ve discussed before is inappropriate. The reasoning behind line two is that if there is no way to conceive of it then the operation cannot happen. For a further understanding this returns to previous statements of physical evidence. If you accept natural law then the action cannot happen without negating natural law. If you negate natural law then you essentially rebuke existence which is a bold statement to make while arguing within it. The reasoning behind line three is that Interactionism explicitly states that there is a causal relation between both the mind and the body. If there is no means for this to happen then the philosophy is false.
For reasons stated above the argument is valid, likewise I would say it is also sound. There is no way with any possible outside evidence to prove that nonphysical things interact with physical things. Because by design nonphysical things are entirely undetectable. If we are willing to create new rules to make it possible then we’ve essentially created a precedent to make everything true.
Finally we reach the last possible Argument on the exam tomorrow:
The Argument for Materialism by Taylor
(not me I think I could make a better on and probably did already on the conceivability article about god).
(1) Materialism is no worse off than any non-Materialist view in answering for a persons thoughts, feelings, emotions, etc.
(2) Materialism is better than non-Materialist views in explaining the connection between the conscious self and the physical self.
(3) If (1) and (2), Materialism is True.
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(4) Materialism is true.
Of all the arguments this one requires the most deep explanations to make it make sense. The justification for line one is that when you require non-ambiguity it is shown through comparison that non-materialist views are no better at explaining the difficult questions (many addressed above). Which is a nice way of saying on the unknown Materialism is tied with its competitors. The rational for line two is the idea that a materialist views the conscious self and the physical self as one in the same, there are tools one can use to show physical activities carrying out within the mind when a person is thinking that support it, in the sense that there are many physical means of displaying thought it would appear that Materialism is indeed one up on that.
If then Materialism is no worse at explaining the difficult questions and is better at explaining the critical question of the conscious self and the physical self. With this it becomes apparent that it would be illogical to choose a non materialist view and thusly if you do choose Materialism (as evidence should direct you to) you are then admitting that it is True. Even if you are to say it is “True with all known evidence.” that means at the point of discussion you believe it is true. Indeed why would someone believe in something they don’t think is true, that would be nonsensical.
If we have established the previous reasoning then the argument is sound, you cannot have a case (if you accept the above two paragraphs) where the above lines are true and the conclusion is not. I would further argue that it is a sound argument. The best counter argument I can think to this argument is that one could refute physical evidence but that would to me create the paradigm of explaining everything as true.
However I will likewise admit that while this argument is sound, it’s a very weak or poorly worded argument. It requires far too much explanation to help make its point which is counter productive to the system of logical structure.
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With this I am done with studying for my next exam tomorrow, I hope anyone who reads this enjoys themselves. I realize in the beginning I was erroneously stating what ‘valid’ is but I corrected myself near the end. Regardless my points should still be correct .
The Burden of Proof
3 years ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
Something that has annoyed me for quite sometime is a common strategy used in many debates. “Prove me wrong.” This I feel is entirely incorrect and takes a very immature and utterly pointless road on the journey to intellectual enlightenment.
There are any number of statements that someone can safely make and by the logic of “Prove me wrong” herein called “PMW” you create a difficult situation that does nothing constructive. Some of life’s greatest questions have been defended with this view. What people fail to recognize is the conundrum they place themselves or at the very least their views in. As stated in a previous article it is the case that all knowledge is either from the outside world or previous information gathered from the outside world. Any and all debates should take this into account and consider any information not in this outside world superfluous.
You might ask why such a bold suggestion would be made. However it comes to pass that if you are willing to accept information with no outside support because it ‘feels’ right you essentially can say absolutely anything and it becomes true (at least to you). Example below:
(1) There are invisible creatures circling the earth generating absolutely no information that could aid any other entity in detecting them.
You can easily defend this argument with PMW but does that accomplish anything but superficially making you ‘win’ (one of the poorer reasons to debate). The PMW is another example of something that explains everything and because of this it explains absolutely nothing. It is not a proper response to support absolutely any argument. It’s highly popular because of its simplicity. Essentially the person making this defense is saying the following:
“All things that cannot be explained at current time can justly be explained with any answer.”
For me the burden of certainty lies upon information. If I am not willing to require solid information then why am I trying to learn? It seems to me asinine to scour the world for knowledge and then toss it aside when it doesn’t sparkle with your beliefs. (Kudos to those that get the joke in that last line)
So that’s it, this goes also for any posts in the future that will inevitably link me to linking back to here. In all cases within this Universe (unless you are willing to negate all Knowledge and thusly the entire discussion in the first place) the burden of proof lies upon all things that are not currently understood. If there is no evidence to support a belief then that belief is unfounded and likewise a piss poor citation.
A final note, an equally poor response to evidence is saying “I don’t believe it.” Instead one must say “I don’t believe it because…” and remember not to fall back upon hokey support discussed above.
Common Courtesy: A dying art.
3 years ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
Three daily college realities have seemingly overlooked the age old idea of Common Courtesy, do unto others as you would wish them to do unto you (albeit flawed that logic works pretty well most times).
(Image from Slate)
Spitting is an activity that I’m quite certain has been around since the very first organisms blessed with the ability to do so. Likewise I feel that in some situations it is a very important activity that may indeed save you from certain death (I’ll let your imagination go wild with that). However I find this incessant equation of spitting = cool to be getting out of hand. I have four classes that I walk between every other day, which equates to 3 walks of roughly 5-10 minutes in duration. On each of these walks I see at least two dozen glossy splatters of mucous on the ground. If the wind catches it you’ll even see people walking with snot slathered on their shoes.
This is ridiculous. If you can’t make a walk between your classes without spitting you need to get help. If you can’t make it through a day without spitting you should acquire medical attention this instant. “But it’s gross to swallow spit.” It’s produced in your mouth and frankly spitting and swallowing cause it to cross nearly the same amount of taste spots on your tongue. It’s bad enough that people can’t make it to a trash can without dropping their gum on the ground we don’t need to add piles of disease everywhere.
Oh you didn’t realize that? Whenever you spit you aren’t simply safely discarding of germs from your system. When other people step on it they carry that disease into their home, into classrooms, dining areas, and even into hospitals (yeah thanks). Tuberculosis and similar diseases are spread quite consistently by spitting, whenever the spit dries the germs are carried through the air, so next time you see a beautiful windy day take a gander at all the dried flem on the ground. What used to be camping out on it is likely dancing around in your lungs.
This is one of the three activities that I’m forced to examine with each school day that is disgusting in every meaning of the word.
(Image from winston.hoyhouse (Site not linked because of virus attempt))
Smoking while you walk in a crowded area. I have nothing against smoking as a personal activity, frankly I’m in full support of any drug habit you feel isn’t destroying your life (someday I’ll write an article on that view to help flesh it out) but this is different. There are a few common courtesies that I give to all people that are anywhere in my vicinity, I don’t press their face up against my ass and fart, I don’t pee on anyone, and I don’t carry a campfire with me to blanket all those around me with smoke.
It doesn’t matter what you smoke, be it tobacco, weed, or a chimpanzee, if it’s smoking it’s not good for your lungs. In almost all cases your lungs hate when solid particles are caking inside of them, regardless of it those particles are literally Costco cake particles or crystallized chunks of toxins. Likewise standing a foot away from me doesn’t magically make the smoke not come my way, many times while waiting at bus stops there is a small group of people chain smoking about three to five feet away from the stop that has a prominent “No Smoking” sign on it. I find it an odd paradigm that you can’t drink alcohol in public yet you can smoke. Of the two I prefer the obnoxious drunks behavior to the coal train walking in front of me.
I know in the same breath most people can say its not addictive and ignore the fact they can’t make it through a school day without smoking and frankly that’s not what this post is about. If you can find a way to smoke without me having to inhale your leftovers we have no conflict. Otherwise stop smoking when you are in public, even propaganda aside that is not in the slightest way courteous. Unless we can agree that I can fart directly in your face without recourse. Then I think we have a deal (keep in mind when I have pot stickers you may not survive the incident).
(Image from yorkblog)
This falls back to the last conversation of smoking. I really don’t feel there is anything wrong with texting, it’s a form of communication and I feel that’s a wonderful thing. But much like smoking it has its place. That place is not in a classroom. I am driven to a near homicidal rage when I find the student behind me, the student two kids to the left of me, and the student directly to the right of me all texting. The clicking becomes this haunting orchestra that distracts me and leaves much of the class discussion collapsing beneath its weight.
You are not that important, people CAN survive without you for 50 minutes (much like I feel you can survive without a cigarette when in crowded areas). I don’t have my cell phone on when I am in class, because I understand two major things. I don’t NEED to be available at all times of the day, I’m not the president nor am I the pope. Secondly I am not the only person in the classroom. Much like smoking in the middle of 100 non-smokers is an obvious dick move you should not be clicking away at a tiny keyboard in a course that cost everyone in the class hundreds of dollars.
If you don’t feel the lectures are worth your attention then stop coming to class. If you can’t survive without discussing things with your BFF then start taking all the same courses. This is unacceptable in almost all situations. The only time I feel that you should be texting in class involves situations that warrant you not being there in the first place. This problem is absolutely out of control at my university and one of the major players in my inability to suggest anyone ever attend this place.
There are likely other things but in my daily life these three are rampant. In the last year I have never had a day where I wasn’t dodging smoke clouds, mucous mounds, or attempting to ignore the endless clicking of gossipy texters. If these situations had been played out in a book I’d feel they were exaggerative but this is everyday life at Western.
I have no plans to have rants all the time, these are just some things that are going to cause me to lose years off my life (from stress and disease which each feed off one another) or cause me to end someone elses life early .