The General Life Blog

Goodbye Blogger! Writing Moved to WordPress!

2013-06-24T23:15:00.000-07:00

Thanks for visiting my Blogger website!

After using this site for years I have decided that it's time to move on. Check this site out from now on!
I have done this for many reasons, but basically it amounts to 4 things:
1) I wanted a clean, focused start with a better website name.
2) WordPress supports Bitcoin, Google doesn't.
3) I have only accrued 6 followers on Blogger despite using the platform for years, WordPress experimentation matched that in a week.
4) WordPress simply seems to have a flat out better product.

So thanks for stopping by! I hope you like what you've seen and I hope we can continue this conversation over on the WordPress site!

5 Ways to Properly Cite Wikipedia and Dynamic Information Sources

2013-06-21T13:09:00.001-07:00

Tldr - Archiving, screenshots, videos, Google Chrome's "Print as PDF" and other techniques allow proper citation of Wikipedia articles.

Wikipedia is an amazing aggregation of information. Usually it has a combination of balanced scholarship, thorough sourcing and in-depth information. While that does not hold for all of their pages, and while some of the sources are dramatically less reliable than academic or other sources, it is still an exceptional starting point for anyone seeking to gain a good introduction to nearly any well-known topic.

The beauty of Wikipedia is also its curse: Anyone can edit it! It is dynamic. There are some restrictions and safeguards in place to be sure, but the underlying principal of this issue is not addressed by them. The underlying principal of the issue is that, if the article is used as a source, it may change by the time the reference is sought as verification by a reader. I may say, "According to Wikipedia, Dolphins are a purple-grey color." It may even say that on the page. Perhaps there was only one dolphin ever photographed and it appeared a purple-grey color in the photo. Perhaps then a multitude of dolphin discoveries are made and photographed and it turns out they are all blue and the picture, previously considered as the cutting-edge of dolphin research, had been found erroneous. Perhaps they found the purple-grey appearance was only the work of that particular camera model, the lighting that day, a thin layer of grenadine on the lens, or whatever.

What's worse is that the dynamic nature of its pages lend plausible deniability to liars! I could make up fictitious information about Mitt Romney and cite Wikipedia. If someone comes and says, "Hey, you used a false source because Wikipedia says no such thing. Are you lying?" I could respond, "I'm sorry! I really thought it was true, and it did say that on Wikipedia at one point in time, but I guess it has been edited out since then." On the other hand, perhaps no one ever checks my source. So I have a risk-less opportunity to perpetuate whatever garbage I see fit.

As a response to these two issues, Wikipedia has many times been looked down upon or even flatly forbidden as an academic reference. This is a huge missed opportunity, but there is a way to address this issue. We can turn these dynamic pages into static ones. There are several way this can be done and some are rather simple. The two essential features are that we create a cloud-based static document and that we can time-stamp the document. Here are my top 5 ways that we can properly cite Wikipedia:

1) Wikipedia Permanent Link and Other Methods of Online Archiving

James Redford noted in a comment to an earlier version of this article that Wikipedia and other online sites often allow for creation of static pages via archiving. For example, Wikipedia has a menu entitled "Toolbox" that enables retrieval of citation information including a permanent link to that particular revision of that particular page. Wikipedia also has a record of changes made to each version which allows us to detect trends over time in what is written! Other great sources for archiving stable versions of webpages include website and Archive.is.

2) Copy and Paste the Text
You can simply copy the text and dump it to another source, then cite that source. It could be a blog or a text document that you upload to the cloud. The simplicity of this feature is made less attractive by at least one drawback. When you copy and paste large chunks they may be poorly formatted and require some clean up. Be sure to include the references Wiki uses, and realize that any bad information in the article will be blamed on you, not Wikipedia, since there is very little proof that you did not write the thing yourself. Often times if you are going to stick to text, you might just look over the sources Wiki references and write a short article yourself, then cite that article, referencing the same sources Wiki referenced, but omitting reference of Wikipedia.

3) Google Print to PDF
One nice feature here is that when you print directly from a Wiki page using Google Chrome's "Save as PDF" feature the document is automatically time-stamped. Here is an example from Wikipedia's page on the Federalist Papers.

4) Screenshot
Screenshots are useful because the technology is built in to most Operating Systems without the need for additional software. Furthermore it can be useful to have a diverse array of file types for this technique. While Chrome PDF is one, screenshots allow for saving to all manner of image files. Two drawbacks would be that if you are going to screenshot an entire Wiki page it may take an album's worth of screenshots, and that you may accidentally screenshot something else on your screen which was not meant to be.

5) Screen Capture Videos
Videos are particularly resilient to manipulation, which may or may not be helpful because any of these can be faked with enough effort. The question is not so much whether the source is valid as whether the information contained is true, although these questions are often related. Videos can capture a long article more quickly than screenshots. They can also be readily uploaded to sites like YouTube where other kinds of file formats are not supported. Finally, you are able to overlay audio on top of the video which can be extremely helpful in some cases. Be sure not to scroll too quickly, utilize zooming if necessary to read the text in the article, be sure to record the sources, try to record a time-stamp in the video and try not to record information on your computer you don't want people seeing. If you don't record a time-stamp that's alright, but be sure to upload to a source that can time-stamp in that case. I recommend the free and open source CamStudio for this. Here is an example of this technology used to record the same Federalist Paper document linked as a PDF example above:

Camstudio outputs in AVI format by default. AVI has an extremely large file size and you may want to convert to MP4 or similar.

Take these and upload them to a cloud source such as MEGA, DropBox, YouTube, Imgur, a blog, a torrent or another source and be sure to try and get a source with a time-stamp in order to increase reliability of your source.

In conclusion there are several ways to properly cite Wikipedia. You can even use these techniques on other dynamic information sources. This will make it easier to increase the reliability of the information inside of non-academic writing and maybe even lead to an academically accepted process of citing dynamic information sources!

Calling Didier's Economic Bluff

2013-06-20T18:29:00.001-07:00

Tldr - While Didier's talk is interesting, he fails to sufficiently defend or even describe his methodology.

There is a great debate in economics about the ability to control economic systems. The Austrian, Classical and Free Market views emphasize that markets are not fully controllable. These views are opposed by Neokeynesianism which, while allowing that markets are sometimes useful, considers that economic systems can and often should be manipulated in order to, supposedly, produce superior-to-free-market outcomes. A variety of economic schools fall in between.

Didier Sornette is an interesting economist with a background in physics and a decided bent toward Neokeynesianism. Physics-based and other hard science based economic modelling has been a trend lately and fits in nicely with the NK view that economic systems are more mechanical than psychological.

Sornette has done research into the so-called "King Effect." Sornette's research continues the evidence that economics obeys certain metaphysical regularities. Here is his recent "TED Talk," which goes over his theory and applies it in the prediction of an upcoming bubble:

Sornette calls the outliers "Dragon Kings." How fitting as the Dragon is the image of Satan in Christianity. As such, in Christianity it represents the height of deception and pride. Sornette apparently misses the irony of his own use of the word, thinking that name Dragon King evokes a sense of empowerment.

Sornette talks of the Black Swan as well. The idea of the Black Swan well encapsulates the idea of the weakness of the human condition. A man who has only ever seen white swans sees a black one and suddenly realizes that he can not trust his own deductive reasoning. It captures the idea, as Sornette says and I agree, "of unpredictability, unknowability, that the extreme is fundamentally unknowable." (5:00 mark in video.)

Sornette animates his Dragon King burning the Black Swan in a satanic metaphor. Sornette is smart enough to clarify that his predictions are only accurate to within a statistical confidence interval, however even that is flawed in the absolute as demonstrated in the logic of my old LUP. Long story short, statistics are useless if you don't know the data you are looking for and not all causes of all bubbles can be known as per the LUP, which is the same general principle as the Black Swan, but with a more thorough proof, that the extreme is fundamentally unknowable.

Sornette compares economic signals with mechanical signals such as acoustic emissions of a rocket, Braxton Hicks Contractions before birth, precursor signals to epileptic seizures and others. Economic signals are partly mechanical and also partly intelligent. This is demonstrable via Austrian economics via Thymology, that people make economic choices as a predictable result of their particular worldview. I wonder if the fact that economic signals resemble these other kinds of signals so closely implies that there is in fact an intelligence underlying these other signals, as we can demonstrably prove there exists inside of economic signals.

Sornette interestingly apparently predicted the April Bitcoin correction. In my view Bitcoin corrected because it was overvalued. Even the term overvalued implies an objective value, which I have created a proof for and will disclose in later posts, but which both Austrians and Neokeynesians reject. Sornette also talks about the fact that his work of bubble analysis is based on the idea that a market can be overvalued, but he doesn't give specifics into how they identify overvaluation. Furthermore, he doesn't give specifics as to whether or not or how the direction of correction is predicted. Will the "dragon" explode up or down when it corrects? Will it possibly shift pressure to a different market and how so? Maybe I expect too much from a small TED Talk.

The specific bubble that Sornette predicts will occur in this presentation is a USD monetary bubble resulting from quantitative easing (9:20 in the video). How will this bubble correct? Hypervaluation of the USD or a drop in value of the USD? Will there be predictable political acts? Will the pressure be shifted from currency to commidities, securities or war in a predictable fashion? Knowing that there will be an outlier is interesting but ultimately useless unless we are informed of how to cope with or prevent that situation.

One great technique Sornette talks about, and I think more people should use, is a method of being able to predict something about a market without causing a self-fulfilling prophecy. One problem with market information is that if a big academic, investor or news agency says X will happen in a market, the expectations of the market often adjust so powerfully so as to bring that event into reality. Sornette has pioneered a method of encrypting his predictions such that they will be documented before an event but not understood until after the event in order to prove that his prediction was true or false regardless of the self-fulfilling market expectations feedback loop! That is a straight up stroke of genius and something I want to try myself. He mentions that because of self-fulfilling prophecies the world has really been unable to create a truly stringent economic science until cryptography, and I agree.

He talks about the fact that he was able to avoid a bubble in a certain isolated case. Where is his method? I want to see this. Austrians like Ron Paul predicted the Great Recession with a priori reasoning. What is amazing is that he seems to have been able to do this, at least in a few cases, alongside a time table, whereas others like myself using a priori reasoning have been able to make predictions, but only into broad categories of time such as long run, short run or mid run. The one example he gives hard data on was a 6-month timetable of prediction. Is this because he decided a priori there would be a short run effect and 6 months, halfway through the standard prediction of a short run, was the least error prone possible guess? Or did he have an advanced methodology?

In conclusion Sornette states that his research will help guarantee that a Great Recession or other economic shock will never occur again. As interesting and useful as his research is, in particular because he didn't disclose the details of his analytic methodology, I have to call his bluff on this one. The black swan wins, extremity is fundamentally unknowable, and, while I encourage him to continue his research, that doesn't mean I'm for the empowerment of economic manipulation or centralization which his NK bent would probably call for.

3 Ways Google Says Education Changing

2013-06-20T14:03:00.000-07:00

Education is changing. I have talked much about it including the superiority of homeschooling and the replacement of degrees and certifications with badges. Turns out Google is noticing the same thing.

Laszlo Bock is the Senior Vice President for People Operations at Google. That is basically Google's Human Resources (HR) department and they make hiring and firing decisions among others.

This article is an interview with Bock conducted by Adam Bryant, a New York Times columnist. The article contains some surprising information on trends Google, an information industry leader, has noticed. Here are the big 3 that I took note of:

1 People Can't Hire Well.
Google did a study and found that the correlation between how well people in charge of hiring thought someone would do and how well they actually did was, "Zero relationship. It’s a complete random mess, except for one guy who was highly predictive because he only interviewed people for a very specialized area, where he happened to be the world’s leading expert."

Bottom line? Personal interviewing is a waste of resources. Let the computers hire. Filter a pool of applicants according to various requirements such as possession of a degree, badge or certification and then allow the computer to randomly select people. Introduce a try-out system where people are deliberately over-hired and fire the ones who don't perform on the job. After a small amount of time the statistics will come to bear and accurate numbers can be hired to compensate for expected flunks.

2 GPA Has a Limited Importance
According to Bock GPAs, "Are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless — no correlation at all except for brand-new college grads, where there’s a slight correlation." Bock goes on to elaborate that the correlations are statistically insignificant 3 years after graduation. He also notes the reason, saying, "the skills you required in college are very different." Exactly. We are measuring skills here, and degrees these days don't do a good job. Certifications do a better job, and badges will one day rule them all. Badges micro-measure skill, certifications measure competency in a particular skill, and degrees measure general education and ability to adapt. In some ways all are useful, but collections of badges can mimic or exceed the power of certifications or degrees, even in those areas which the others may be useful.

3 College is Going Away
Bock says, "What’s interesting is the proportion of people without any college education at Google has increased over time as well. So we have teams where you have 14 percent of the team made up of people who’ve never gone to college."

Why? I would presume because Google is a tech company and tech companies have been the first to realize that certifications in specific skills are far superior to the overgeneralized educations presented by degrees. Certifications and badges represent an educational information diet and are therefore simply more efficient.

If the idea that GPA and college are going away is a shocker to you, all the more reason for you to watch the following video as I conclude. Note in particular from 6:30 onward as the speaker begins to question the modern way schools are usually set up:

Obama: Murderer of 90,000 Babies

2013-06-20T09:15:00.000-07:00

A USA Today article printed in the June 19, 2013 newspaper was entitled "House OKs Bill to Ban Abortions After 20 Weeks." You can also read online sources here and here among others.

This house is Republican and largely conservative. They are pro-life and they represent most of the people in the US. The article goes on to mention that the Democratic Senate under Harry Reid has not scheduled a vote and does not plan to do so. Why? Not because it couldn't pass the Senate. Rather, it is because Obama has promised to veto the bill even if it does pass, so why bother?

How on earth could anyone be opposed to late term abortion? Do you know what late term abortion is? Obama sure does. Watch this video for an overview:

Obama's promise not to pass the bill amounts to murder. Millions of murders. For the past 30 years in the US we have had averaged far over 1.2 M abortions per year. 20 weeks is considered a late term abortion. The CDC, conveniently for liberal-controlled Big Science, doesn't usually track late term abortion. In this paper from 2008, however, they made a temporary exception. Even that paper obfuscated the number of abortions at 20 weeks or later by dividing statistics at 20 weeks. They report as follows:

"In 2008, most (62.8%) abortions were performed at ≤8 weeks' gestation, and 91.4% were performed at ≤13 weeks' gestation. Few abortions (7.3%) were performed at 14--20 weeks' gestation, and even fewer (1.3%) were performed at ≥21 weeks' gestation. During 1999--2008, the percentage of abortions performed at ≤13 weeks' gestation remained stable, whereas abortions performed at ≥16 weeks' gestation decreased 13%--17%. Moreover, among the abortions performed at ≤13 weeks' gestation, the distribution shifted toward earlier gestational ages, with the percentage of abortions performed at ≤6 weeks' gestation increasing 53%."

Let's calculate the number of lives that would have been saved by the bill that Obama single-handedly killed. All abortions 21 weeks or later, plus an estimate of the abortions taking place at 20 weeks. To estimate the later number will assume that 17-week abortions = the average of the 14-20 range, while 14-16 are 25% more often and 18-20 are 25% less often, in keeping with the observation of the distribution leaning toward earlier gestational ages. In other words we will assume that 20 week abortions occur half as often as 14 week abortions because, in the absence of accurate statistics, 50% is the least erroneous number to use. We therefore estimate that 20 week abortions account for (7.3%/7)*.75 = .8% of abortions. Therefore 20 week or later abortions should account for .8+1.3 = 2.1% of abortions.

1.2 million baby murders per year nicely approximates to about .1 million baby murder per month in the US. The bill, if it was going to be passed by Obama, would likely have been brought to the Senate and passed by the end of this month, June 2013. Obama will be replaced as President when the 2016 Presidential winner takes office at the end of January 2017. Let's be very generous to Obama and say that he is only directly responsible for those baby murders which actually occur during his presidency. We are being generous in this because the reality is that he is setting a precedent that will extend beyond his presidency, and that even if the next President wanted to immediately fix the problem it would still take significant time to get the appropriate bills back through the house again. From the start of July 2013 until the end of January 2017 would be 7 + 36 = 42 months of Obama directly killing babies.

Let's again be generous and ignore the fact that passing the pro-life bill would create a pro-life precedent in the country and would end up saving many more lives than the ones it directly protects. This is generous to Obama because I could argue that he is also killing those other babies.

(.1 million babies per month killed by abortion)*(42 months)*(.021 babies that Obama has directly killed per baby that abortions in general kill) =

90,000 babies. 90,000 babies will die because of the veto of this legislation, or even the threat of veto which gives the Senate a reason not to schedule the vote.

We all sure like to blame Obama don't we? It's easy! It wasn't me it was him! Well Obama is largely, even directly, to blame for many of our country's problems, but he's not the only one. He had to get support and votes from somewhere. This month think about writing your Congressman or Senator. Consider volunteering for pro-life efforts or engaging in some super easy online activism. Consider committing to vote only for conservative candidates and leaving the Democratic Party. These are all things we can do to help. Consider not watching TV anymore. Not the news, not the pop culture shows and not even the supposedly "conservative" Fox network. It's all garbage. Instead, go on an information diet and soon you will be a powerhouse of mental ability, able to make strong steps in changing not only your own life but even the entire culture!

This Juneteenth, Let's Discuss the Real History of Rascism

2013-06-19T18:19:00.000-07:00

Juneteenth, also known as Freedom Day or Emancipation Day, is a holiday in the United States that commemorates the announcement of the abolition of slavery in the U.S. state of Texas in 1865.

This is a Texan thing and we Texans better know our own history. Furthermore this story highlights principals and historical trends which are important in the larger American context and around the world. Juneteenth is now celebrated in 42 of the states and even in some foreign countries! Yet we still don't understand the story.

In 1865 Texas was controlled by racists. Just a little while earlier, though, it hadn't been.

Not that acceptable kind of awareness of the correlation of certain statistics to race inside of a particular causal situation, rather, I mean the out-and-out, "Niggers ain't really people" kind of senseless and bigoted racism that haunts the history of America. How did Texas get this way?

Let's remember how Sam Houston helped Texas gain independence in 1836. Sam Houston embodied everything that was Texas from its founding. First he signed the Texas Declaration of Independance, then he became Commander-in-Chief of Texas, then he whipped Santa Anna by the grace of God when all odds were against him in San Jacinto, then he became the President of Texas. Later, after the Annexation of Texas, Houston became the first Texan Senator in the US Senate, then was elected as Governor of Texas.

Here is the part where everything that is usually taught gets turned upside down - Houston was not racist. Selected excerpts from, "Sam Houston" by Thomas H. Krenek, reads:

"As senator, Houston emerged as an ardent Unionist...He stridently opposed the rising sectionalism of the antebellum period and delivered eloquent speeches on the issue. A supporter of the 1820 Missouri Compromise...Houston voted in 1848 for the Oregon Bill prohibiting the "peculiar institution" in that territory, a vote proslavery Southerners later held against him...Houston again clashed with his old nemesis who led the proslavery forces when he opposed John C. Calhoun's Southern Address in 1849...He incurred the permanent wrath of proslavery elements by supporting the Compromise of 1850, a series of measures designed to ensure sectional harmony. In 1854, Houston alienated Democrats in Texas and the South even further by opposing the Kansas-Nebraska Bill because it allowed the status of slavery to be determined by popular sovereignty, a concept he saw as potentially destabilizing to the nation...As a lame-duck senator, Houston ran for governor of Texas in 1857. He was defeated in a rigorous campaign by the state Democratic party's official nominee, Hardin R. Runnels...Houston ran a second time for governor in 1859. Because of his name recognition, a temporary lull in the sectional conflict, and other factors, he defeated the incumbent, Runnels...When Abraham Lincoln was elected president of the United States, the clamor of discontent in Texas prompted Houston to call a special session of the state legislature. Adamantly opposed to secession, Houston warned Texans that civil war would result in a Northern victory and destruction of the South...when he refused to take the oath of loyalty to the newly formed Confederate States of America, the Texas convention removed him from office on March 16 and replaced him with Lieutenant Governor Edward Clark two days later."

Did you see when things changed? Did you see the big event? The racist Democratic party kicked Houston out. Houston was in the American Party not the Republican Party, but Texas didn't have a Republican Party at that time. There were a number of what we would consider conservative or classically liberal parties around the US at that time including the American, Union, Republican and Whig Parties. Houston was anti-slavery and pro-union just like Lincoln. Houston didn't want Texas engaged in the Civil War on the part of the confederacy. Lincoln, the Unionist, was a Republican! That's right! The Republicans were the pro-union, anti-slavery party. Don't believe people on the lie that the times have changed either. President Lyndon Johnson was a Texas Democrat as late as the 1960s who saw fit to honor the very same Texas Democrat Governor Edward Clark that kicked Sam Houston out by awarding his grandson, also named Edward Clark, an ambassadorship in 1965 to Australia. On an interesting side-note, the younger Ed Clark has been accused of playing a hand in the assassination of JFK.

The Democratic Party took over Texas in 1859 and it hasn't been pretty since.

The Democratic Party is the racist party of America. They even founded the Ku Klux Klan! That's right, the Klan was first founded in 1865 by Democrats. Their terrorist klansman attacked many white Republican abolition supporters, just as it did black freedmen. "The Prescript," the first official document of KKK beliefs, was written by Confederate Army Veteran and Democratic Congressman George Gordon. The Klan acted as the terrorist wing of the Democratic party for years, intimidating the South into a racism it otherwise wouldn't have had. See the two videos below for an overview of a comparison of the Democratic Party vs the Republican party on issues of race:

According to the videos, Democrats:
-Opposed black rights in their party platform by opposing the Dred Scott decision
-Founded the KKK
-Fought against the 13th-15th amendments
-Instituted Jim Crow Laws
-Fought against the civil rights act
-Continue to promote cultural racism and division in the modern day not only around whites and blacks but also Hispanics and others.
-Bob Byrd served as a Democratic Senator for many years, until he died in 2010. He had been not only a member, but a leader in the KKK.
-Are mutually cooperating with the media in their perpetuation of racism

Rather than saying the cause is the Democratic Party, however, we need to realize that the Democratic Party is made up of people. These people are ideologically unified and are therefore strongly motivated to band together and form a political party. While it may be true in our modern time that being raised in a Democratic culture leads to racism, originally, when there was no such party, that was not the case. Ideology comes first. It is the ideology that we should be tracing as the root evil, rather than the political party per se, although the two are exceptionally correlated.

The reason I bring up the ideology point is multifaceted:
1) We know that liberals constitute the democratic party and therefore have evidence that (modern, not classical) liberalism is the real problem
2) We know that there are some ideological liberals which have infected the Republican party and pretend to be conservative. They are called neoconservatives and arguably include Marco Rubio, the Bush family, Boehner, McCain and others.
3) Ideology pervades more than politics and may be identified as an enemy in business, academic thinking, religion, personal behavior, and other locations, structures or manifestations.
4) In case we defeat the Democratic Party entirely, don't pretend that the fight is over.

As I come near closing this article I would mention that liberals and the Democratic party are making their strongest racist actions yet in abortion. More than 55% of abortions are on minorities. According to the article just linked:

"In the history of America, immigrants, minorities and the poor have often been treated as social outcasts and blamed for all sorts of social ills. Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, argued that “all our problems are the result of overbreeding among the working class.”

Today Planned Parenthood, America’s leading abortion promoter and provider, identifies its “core clients” as “young women, ‘low-income women, and women of color."

In conclusion, remember this Juneteenth that the real racists are the Democrats, the liberals, and, more than any others, the abortionists...Who are usually also liberal democrats.

Useful Badge Sites

2013-06-18T22:07:00.000-07:00

After looking around the web a bit the following lists the useful badge sites I have encountered. I will continue to update as I find more. The following video specifically talks about Mozilla Open Badges, which are the bleeding-edge badge technology, although not the only badge technology by any means:

See this article for more commentary on what a badge is exactly, including a more general idea of a badge, not necessarily an open badge.

On to the list of badges! ("Open" in parentheses indicates that the badge is Mozilla Open Badge compliant):

Khan Academy
P2PU (Open)
IP&T EdTec (Open)
Coderbits (Open)
Mozilla Webmaker (Open)
Credly (Open, but using the Open Credit API...However this article seems to imply that the Open Credit API is Mozilla OBI compatible.)
3DGameLab (Open)
Codeschool

Expect more familiar and mainstream names to pick this up soon. Numerous universities including well known ones like UIUC are picking this up in the near future as well as numerous businesses including microsoft.

Below are major gaming sites where badges are used. I will have to research this, but I believe a correlation between intelligence, learning ability and ambition can be established relative to gaming ability. Maybe in the distant future gaming badges will serve as real badges:

Steam
Kongregate

Many others are Open Credit API based and I will get to some of those soon!

Destroying a Weak Attack on the Modal Ontological Argument

2013-06-18T16:06:00.000-07:00

Some poor logician my atheist friend sent me in a facebook post attempted to attack Plantiga's Modal Ontological argument and did a horrible job. Find the article here.

First of all, what is PMOA?

He attacks it in 3 ways:
1 He attempts to say that the argument is logically valid but meaningless
2 He attempts to show the argument is informally absurd (ie leads to unreasonable conclusions)
3 He attempts to show the argument is formally absurd (reductio ad absurdum)

1 - He takes issue with the idea that we can both posit "X possibly exists" and "X is necessary." He says this is the equivalent of simply saying that God necessarily exists. No shit! That's the point of the argument! He doesn't discredit the logic, in fact he agrees the logic is sound, rather, he attempts to tell us that it is meaningless. He does so by citing Plantiga saying that the argument doesn't prove the God of the Bible, which it of course doesn't, but Plantiga does, in the same statement, assert that it is rational to believe in the God of the Bible because of the argument. Is this a contradiction? No! Plantiga is stating that his argument supports the God of the Bible but is not able to single-handedly prove that God. In other words it is a partial, circumstantial and indirect evidence consistent with the Bible rather than an out-and-out mathematical proof. The argument is simply saying that if something could exist then something must also exist necessarily. It is a proof of the existence of at least something being necessary. Whatever that thing is, the argument simply defines as God. This doesn't out-and-out prove the Bible but it is consistent with the Bible and it is not meaningless. Something exists necessarily. According to Christianity that something is called God.

2 - He tries to show the argument is informally absurd by replacing God in the MOA with Goldbach's conjecture, an unproven mathematical conjecture. He seeks to "prove" this unproven conjecture and implies that, by doing so, he has invalidated the argument. His argument is in error and I will show you why in a second, but the hilarious part is that if he wasn't in error it still wouldn't invalidate the argument! Let's say he correctly substitutes God with Goldbach's conjecture...For all he knows Goldbach's conjecture is true! He would have just proved it and yet is arguing against it! He would need to prove the conjecture false first, then go on to use the MOA to prove it true and in this contradiction that would prove that either the proof he used or the MOA was in error. He did not do this.

"The ultimate reason of things must lie in a necessary substance...and this is what we call God. .. God alone is the primary Unity, or original simple substance, from which all...are produced." (Leibniz)

See: Divine Simplicity (Which may or may not be true but is related, especially since it is Plantiga's view of God.)

Regardless, his positioning of G's Conj. was inappropriate. He substitutes MOA propositions 1 and 2, which read as follows:
1 A being has maximal excellence in a given possible world W if and only if it is omnipotent, omniscient and wholly good in W; and
2 A being has maximal greatness if it has maximal excellence in every possible world.
With the following:
1 If Goldbach’s conjecture is correct, then it is necessarily true.

This is an inappropriate substitution! His reasoning is that Goldbach's conjecture would constitute a metaphysically necessary mathematical rule if it were true. While that is true, the thing that he overlooks is that the truth of metaphysical law is determined by God! In other words, metaphysical law is contingent not necessary. Furthermore in the absence of God, who makes knowledge possible, how would you know whether or not a mathematical law were true? If knowledge is possible, and I think it is, then it proves God's existence. Not just any God, but the particular Christian God!

3 - Lastly he tries to show it is formally absurd by plugging in perfect evil instead of God. There are two problems with this method:
1 - It is impossible for a perfectly evil being to exist because 1) existence itself is a quality of goodness and 2) perfection is a quality of goodness. Therefore something would be less good than a perfectly evil being if it did not exist, was only mostly evil, or both. In any of these cases the idea of a perfectly evil being existing is a logical contradiction.
2 - If a perfectly evil being could exist then he didn't manage to prove that God was perfectly evil simply by swapping words. Rather, he would have proved that a perfectly evil being exists, which doesn't mean that God can't also exist, it would mean there is both a good God and an anti-God. However, as already shown, an anti-God is a logical contradiction.

In conclusion Plantiga's MOA holds as true and is consistent with, although only circumstantially evidences, the Christian Bible.

Digital Badges are the New Skill Indicators

2013-06-18T15:02:00.000-07:00

The digital age is taking over and the old methods of education are being out competed. The old method is degrees and diplomas. More recently in the 90s and later we started getting into certificates. Now we have badges.

The following video defines badges as an indicator of accomplishment, skill, ability, quality or interest. They are a tangible version of the idea of a milestone. They can be used on a resume, in an application, or as a conversation point. Digitized badges also have the ability to interact with automated systems. They can be used to automatically grant opportunities or identify interests and other important information. The video is from hastac.org and is specifically relevant to the Mozilla conception of badges, but the principles here apply to all badges whether Mozilla's or not:

Badges have long been around in the game world and have also been called achievements. Using badges has come alongside the rise of social media as the two are naturally synergistic. Using badges has been called gamification. Some badges matter and some don't, but the trend as a whole does. It allows for an instantly verifiable, meaningful, more resistant to manipulation and more detailed resume.

Let me give you an example of how a badge works. Khan academy awards badges for successful completion of courses. The badges accrue on a Khan Academy Profile page which can be shared with others, showing the collection of badges you have gained. You can mention the profile page across social media or on a resume in order to describe things you have learned. You can mention specific badges for specific skills as well. Treehouse awards badges which are simply certificate equivalents for completion of courses including test satisfaction and completion of work tests. These badges directly represent learning new programming and web development skills in this case.

Games also often badges. Some of these badges are useful and others not so much. Many of these I wouldn't put on a resume. Kongregate is one example of a site with that feature, and Valve's Steam uses this feature as well. Yet there are useful for social reasons as a computer can realize which badges you have, gauge your interests and skill level, find people who are a near match and make recommendations for a multi-player game or other such things.

One big mover in the badge realm is Mozilla Open Badges. Open Badges is an open source, distributed and unified method of creating and distributing badges. Using this I could have a single profile that I share, like a LinkedIn page, which shows the collection of badges I have gotten from around the web rather than just from a particular website.

Here is a list of organizations which participate in the Mozilla style Open Badge...Keep in mind that Open Badges are not the only kind of badges that matter!

You can then use these badges as prerequisites for entry to courses and other such things. I could create a diploma system based on a system of badges! Anyone can create badges therefore the identity of the issuing body is as important, if not more important, than the identity of the recipient. I could create a badge that says that I slayed a dragon, became president of the US, own Bank of America, and have the recipe for KFC's chicken. Is this true? No! Therefore the issuing body becomes extremely important as you can see.

Steve Lonegan - Defining Conservatism With The New Jersey Conservative!

2013-06-07T15:48:00.001-07:00

Tldr - Steve Lonegan demonstrates what constitutes a proper conservative.

Hardcore Christian Conservative superstar talk show host Bryan Fischer interviewed a contender for a New Jersey Senate race named Steve Lonegan on Friday 6//7/2013. Clip below from the show Focal Point on AFR Talk:

Bryan is known as a hardcore conservative and he hails Lonegan as a conservative after a thorough interview. What we can do with this of course is vote for Lonegan to gain a conservative point in politics, but another thing we can do is help define conservatism. This post will examine what is considered to be conservative these days.

1) Lonegan Criticizes the Opposition:
At 2:30 Lonegan criticizes his opposition as "pro-abortion, pro-gun control, pro-gay marriage, pro-illegal immigration...supporters of Obamacare, cap and trade, Dodd-Frank, and they're all going to have to be apologists for Benghazi, the IRS scandal and the DOJ scandal..."

These things are what a conservative is NOT. According to Lonegan and, by virtue of his strong support, Fischer, a conservative does not support abortion, gun control, gay marriage, illegal immigration, Obamacare, cap and trade, Dodd-Frank, the way Benghazi was handled and the recent activities of the IRS and Department of Justice. I would imagine this includes all the recent Eric Holder scandals as well since the DoJ is his department.

2) Bryan Tests Lonegan for Conservative Values:
At 4:00 Bryan states that his listening audience, "primarily consists of social conservatives, economic conservatives, national defense conservatives..." He goes on to say, "Tell us why a social conservative, someone who believes in the sanctity of life, somebody who believes in the sanctity of marriage, somebody who believes in the nuclear family...Would want to vote for Steve Lonegan?" Using this method of questioning which Bryan later continues with regard to other types of conservatism Bryan implies definitions of conservatism by first breaking down conservatism into subsections and then listing off the ideology of each subsection. Combining Bryan's questions with Lonegan's responses we have:

1 Conservatives who hold at least one sub-section of conservative values and often hold all subsections in some kind of way.
2 Social Conservatives who are comprised of people with Evangelical Christian values.
3 Fiscal Conservatives, or Economic Conservatives, who are comprised of people who advocate cutting the size of government including minimizing government spending, free-market economic reform, and heavy tax reform such as an altogether elimination of the Federal Reserve.
4 National Defense Conservatives who are concerned with securing our boarders and combating Islam and Islamism.

Are you a conservative by these definitions? Do you think other kinds of conservatism exist? (Hint: Yes.) While there is unlikely to be any well-known ideology which tailors exactly to the views of every person, self-identification with one or several kinds of types helps people to join networks and teams and organizations and movements which can get stuff done. So what side are you on? Or how would you modify politics to eliminate this team dynamic?

Zerocoin and Bitcoin: Taking Anonymity to the Next Level

2013-06-05T17:28:00.000-07:00

Bitcoin has been changing. Drastically. Business Insider says that Bitcoin is selling its soul. Bloomberg, on the other hand, continues the line that bitcoin is a revolution bound to change the world for the better.

What has changed? Basically there are three major events going on in the bitcoin world right now: Mt Gox is involved in a legal scandal and Liberty Reserve and some other similar virtual currency-sh places have been shut down by the government. These events combine to form a fear of high regulation of bitcoin. High regulation of bitcoin would largely defeat the purpose of bitcoin as some of the main purposes include the fact that it is a stateless, impossible to manipulate currency with a large degree of anonymity. Mt Gox has already tightened some requirements to comply with what laws are on the books in the US although Mt Gox is a Japan-based BTC exchange.

Which brings us to the third event. It turns out bitcoin is not as anonymous as we thought it was. Enter Zerocoin. Zerocoin is a proposed modification to the Bitcoin code. According to the linked zerocoin homepage they are expecting to submit it as an official Bitcoin Improvement Proposal this month, June 2013. It acts as a nonstop money laundry inside the blockchain itself. It makes bitcoin fully anonymous. Check the following presentation from one of its creators which was given at the recent Bitcoin 2013 conference:

So what does this imply? A true anonymous currency makes black market transactions significantly easier. Look at this calculator made by angel investor Joshua Seims. According to that calculator, if bitcoin only has a 10% chance of success and, upon success, only captures 5% of the black market and 0% of global currency or value storage, each coin would already be worth over $190. Putting my more realistic assumptions into the calculator I got an estimated worth of about $3300. However zerocoin is a needed step first. Expect the price to increase when the proposal goes through (or even when it is only approved or officially proposed because of speculation).

Economic Efficiency Found in New Models of Education

2013-05-28T20:08:00.000-07:00

This article by Discovery News notes that a Masters Degree can be obtained from Georgia Tech in cooperation with an online educational organization called Udacity for a mere cost of $7,000. The cost is about $40,000 at Georgia Tech's physical campus according to the article. In other news Ron Paul recently released a home-school curriculum.

Education is changing. To summarize the statistics public school is garbage and private school is helpful as long as you can afford it, which most people can't. That's where technology comes in. Technology dramatically lowers these costs. The following is an example of a course offered at Udacity:

The video highlights that these courses can do things regular class courses can't. A field trip everyday is impossible for the normal amount of resources in a normal class. Furthermore in a normal class it is extremely burdensome, even impossible, for a teacher to reteach the lesson over and over to every student. With video-based classes, however, the student is free to repeat as many times as necessary and go to the teacher much less often, enabling more students per teacher and thereby decreasing cost per class per student, given a teacher at a particular pay grade.

Homeschooling, the OER movement, MOOCs, and other technologies are more efficient either by leading to better outcomes or by leading to outcomes more cost-effectively or both. As such these technologies will eventually displace older technologies. Unfortunately because of political obstacles these technologies will take longer than they would in a free market to displace the older ones. As a policy I would advocate elimination of the Department of Education as well as all of those burdensome regulations relative to teacher certification, licensing of universities, and other government interference. Insert a quick plug for anarchism here while observing the light at the end of the tunnel.

Here's a crazy experiment: Peer to Peer University?

An Update on 3D Gun Printing and The Liberator

2013-05-25T15:50:00.000-07:00

The Liberator the first fully plastic 3D gun, has been built and tested. In the YouTube video in which Corey Wilson demonstrates the gun's durability the gun survives a round with no apparent damage. In the following video, on the other hand, an official Australian police agency, the New South Wales Police Force, tested the gun and observed failure on the first round. A dangerous explosive failure, which would have injured even the person firing the gun:

Both videos were accurate and they highlight certain points:
1 The police used a 3d printed firing pin and screws and did not mention having used a metal bar insert.
2 Corey's gun used a nail as a firing pin, metal screws and a metal bar insert. He claimed the insert was to bring the gun into regulation by allowing it do be detected however it may have had the (known?) side effect of greatly increasing durability.
3 The police printed the gun on a non-HD printer and did not mention the kind of plastic they were using.

The non-HD printing is insignificant as demonstrated by the advent of The Lulzbot Liberator. The Lulzbot Liberator is a Liberator printed on a Lulzbot, using proper metal screws, which only cost $25 to build and survived 9 rounds during testing. The Lulzbot itself cost under $1800. As the article states the Lulzbot Liberator was printed using ABS plastic. Check out the printing results for yourself:

ABS plastic is one of two kinds of common plastic used in 3D printing, the other being PLA plastic. ABS is significantly stronger and able to bend. This is an important consideration when printing functional mechanical structures like a gun.

In conclusion, note the website www.makexyz.com. There you can rent a 3D printer rather than buy one for as little as $.25 per cubic cm of printing. Maybe you should give it a try :)

Top 5 Ways Mother Jones and the Left Heading the Right Direction! (For Now at Least)

2013-05-14T19:42:00.000-07:00

This article sums up a barrage of far left political sources who have been remarkably sympathetic to the right in recent times here in the USA. One main source is the far left and very well known blog Mother Jones.

1 - Mother Jones admits horrible discrimination against conservatives by the IRS:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/05/irs-tea-party-scandal-congress-nonprofit-obama

2 - Mother Jones admits the White House mislead the public on Benghazi:
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/05/benghazi-not-watergate-white-house and http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/05/finally-real-scandal-conservatives-chew

3 - Jon Stewart finds the IRS and Obama guilty of attacking conservatives, even giving Ted Cruz some credit:

4 - To quote the article directly, "Even Bill Maher thinks California taxes are too high."
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/bill-maher-taxes-too/2013/03/17/id/495069

5 - The far left news agency The New York Times corrected (a small part) of their false reporting on the Gosnell trial by changing the word "fetuses" to "babies" (Note the update at the top of the article):
http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/new-york-times-reports-gosnell-murdered-fetuses-not-babies

Yet Another Pro-Life Article (What About Rape?)

2013-05-13T16:00:00.001-07:00

Sources show that over 99% of abortions are not from rape victims (1,2 and 3). See the screenshot of a modest Google search for top results:

Rape also rarely, about 5% of the time to be precise, results in pregnancy due to rape's wide definition encompassing attempted rape and also all kinds of sexual acts which cannot result in pregnancy. I won't be detailed but you can imagine. Even women who were raped and had a pregnancy result still choose not to have an abortion 75-85% of the time. Perhaps this is because they understand that although they have been through hell and back, their pregnancy is nonetheless still a live human being. Committing murder of an innocent does nothing to hold the rapist accountable, as this article points out.

Of those who don't die and are able to respond to surveys, about 94% regret their abortion for various reasons. Sad as it may be for those 6% of 1%, it would benefit the millions of unborn babies as well as the hundreds of thousands of traumatized regretful post-abortive women if abortion was simply absolutely outlawed. It is legally irresponsible to allow abortion, even for rape.

The following Facebook conversation, modestly edited for privacy, raises some other points:

One strong point raised is that the term "Pro-Choice" is a misnomer from the get-go. Another point is that to refute the Pro-Life argument you must not see an unborn baby as a human which takes some kind of foreign and morally bankrupt thought process. Perhaps this explains the tiny fraction of women who don't regret abortion. They don't have a morally coherent thought process. In the conversation you can also see the leftist ideology clearly emerging as the Pro-Choice arguer brings up the similarly leftist and morally bankrupt idea of homosexuals being able to marry.

Don't even get me started on the international trends such as China's forced abortion or India's extreme sex-selective abortion.

In conclusion, I hope this article has convinced you that abortion is wrong and should be outlawed. If my points didn't convince you perhaps Beyonce will. If she doesn't then perhaps you may need some of the grim details of what exactly an abortion entails, according to testimony heard in the recent Gosnell trial for example (Tldr: "It was literally a beheading"). Note that Gosnell was later found guilty of several counts of first degree murder of babies. Lastly, if that doesn't convince you, perhaps these women will:

Misdiagnosing the God of the Gaps

2013-05-12T16:59:00.001-07:00

There is a gap in the knowledge of each and every person and there always will be. The gap extends directly from the human condition in a number of ways at least consisting of human nature's imperfect ability to ascertain, process and retain information.

Other sources of the gap may exist as well, including some which I haven't mentioned because the knowledge of those limits itself lays in the gap. This gap is ironically demonstrated by the improvement of our knowledge rather than direct observation of the thing of which we are ignorant.

When Louis Pasteur invented pasteurization the resulting efficiency illustrated the fact that a particular gap had existed prior. Some of the brighter minds of the time would have known their limits and said, "We don't know why milk spoils." They would not have said, "We don't yet know about bacteria," at least with the term 'bacteria' meaning anything beyond the unknown cause of milk spoilage. If used in that context perhaps 'bacteria' would only mean something milk itself does rather than the name of an external agent. No one would have known prior to the appropriate verification of some theory such as the germ theory.

Theists have often been accused of invoking a God of the Gaps. It is true that our ignorance cannot be used to prove God exists, but it is equally fallacious to conclude that our ignorance discredits God's existence. There is a related fallacy discussed by Dembski:

“Scientists rightly resist invoking the supernatural in scientific explanations for fear of committing a god-of-the-gaps fallacy (the fallacy of using God as a stop-gap for ignorance). Yet without some restriction on the use of chance, scientists are in danger of committing a logically equivalent fallacy - one we may call the “chance-of-the-gaps fallacy.” Chance, like God, can become a stop-gap for ignorance.”
― William A. Dembski

Certainly the logical progression from I don't know what the cause is to therefore God exists is fallacious, however indirect reasoning is often misdiagnosed as God of the Gaps reasoning. One form of indirect reasoning would be:

1 A exists.
2 A fits the explanatory pattern of B.
3 Therefore, B may explain A.

If I can demonstrate that B explains A better than B', or better than competing explanations, B is a justified belief, although not necessarily true. This is not an argument from ignorance, another name for the gap fallacies such as the God of the Gaps argument. See the video below for Dinesh D'souza's more in-depth and in-context discussion of the misdiagnosis of indirect reasoning as an argument from ignorance:

Indirect reasoning is valid. Even mainstream science is based on indirect reasoning. See the section entitled "Fuel for the Fire" near the bottom of the first page of this article for an example of indirect reasoning being used for mainstream science.

In conclusion all people are necessarily subject to the Great Gap. Ignorance cannot support any form of position or it is not real ignorance, but indirect reasoning doesn't constitute the real ignorance of the gap and is justified in use.

Occam's Razor: You're Doing it Wrong

2013-05-11T19:24:00.000-07:00

Occam's (or Ockham's) Razor has been called a heuristic device. Heuristic means a guide or suggestion. It appears in various forms including versions which are useless tautologies, supposedly useful rules of thumb, fallacious positivist philosophy and lastly it is occasionally used properly as a distillery for information. One example would be in the video from the sacrilegious fool Edward Current at :17:

This claim is bogus. Given a result with two necessary prerequisites, a sale of goods for example, this rule will always fail because an explanation with one necessary cause can be posited but that doesn't make it true. Furthermore, given any explanation with only one necessary cause an infinite number of other explanations with the same number of complications or assumptions can be contrived, all of which are false, destroying the likelihood claim which he lacks data for anyway.

Case 1:
A + B = C is known to be true.
Edward's version of Occam's Razor falsely implies that the statement A, B or D = C is preferable to the known truth.
Some other interpretations of Occam's Razor would imply that C = C which is true but useless.

Case 2:
A = B is known to be true.
According to Edward's Occam's Razor the possibilities C, D, E, F... = B are just as likely as the known truth.

This is because Edward's standard says that logic, usefulness, observational consistency and truth don't matter. Rather, the likelihood of the truth of a statement is explained simply by the number of presuppositions and complications. Well I'm sorry if not all reality breaks down to a prekindergarten level, Edward, but some explanations are flat out complicated and that doesn't preclude them from being true nor preferable. Even on a statistically normative basis which you provide no data for and which can be easily refuted from simply thought experiment.

Positivism is of course fallacious because something can exist without being observed. Tautologies, such as the statement, "a statement should be as complicated as it needs to be but no more," are true but useless and discourage deep thinking. Not to mention they are contradictory since tautologies themselves are nothing but redundant statements. In reality how can one know whether or not one has obtained an ideally complex statement? You can't know without further investigation, but therefore, by virtue of not getting things complicated, you shouldn't try to know.

In reality Occam's Razor is useful for one thing. To distill information. If the same information is contained in two phrasings, one of which is shorter, that one is preferable because it is more efficient. If the information contained, the assumptions necessary or the implications defer at all then Ockham's Razor is philosophically unjustified and will result in what I will call an "Occam fallacy." Occam's Razor is essentially a tool that says that using tautologies is a waste of time. I agree. Ironic that some would invoke it as such.

Example of proper use:
Possible phrase 1:
0*((A/A)*(B+C+D+E/H))^N = Y
Possible phrase 2:
0 = Y

Possible phrase 2 is preferable because the two phrasings contain the same information and one does so in a more efficient fashion.

Dembski on Miracles and Nature

2013-05-11T18:27:00.000-07:00

I have written from time to time on the plausibility of miracles and what exactly should be considered a miracle. One such article was my relatively recent word study "Defining a Biblical Miracle." I had recalled a great video by Dembski where he touches on the subject of miracles and nature but had not been able to find it until now! Turns out the 8-minute video is one in a series constituting an interview of Dembski by Dr Robert Lawrence Kuhn. Please note in particular the section from :36-3:30 where Dembski talks on miracles and criticizes the false dichotomy of natural vs supernatural:

To summarize:
- Dembski thinks a miracle is classically something which causes wonder and better described as something which we wouldn't expect to happen without God.
- Dembski thinks the term supernatural is a misnomer because in his view nature encompasses more than the material world. In other words, God and other things such as meaning and purpose are not separate from the natural realm though they may or may not be immaterial.

Why Bitcoin Sucks

2013-05-10T20:31:00.000-07:00

With all the positive talk out there about the new digital currency called bitcoin, I thought I would write a bit about why bitcoin sucks. Keynesian economics is really great in case you haven’t noticed. All the success in Europe and the US is of course due to brilliant work by governments to allow for better-than-free-market economic performance. Obama’s stimulus curbed the recession or depression or whatever it was, and Bernanke’s Quantitative easing via the Federal Reserve helped out even more! These guys got their degrees from really classy universities and, no surprise, they were taught the leading economics of the day, Keynesian economics.

Keynesian economics basically says that you spend money to get an economy going and it has a multiplied effect in the economy as a whole, eventually ending in drastic growth! There are several ways to get this round of spending going. Ways to push the snowball if you will. One way is simple government spending! Like Obama’s stimulus. Once people have more money they will spend it and when they spend it the people who get it will also have to spend it! It will start a snowball.

Another way is through inflation. If the Federal Reserve prints more money inflation will result. That means all the old money they already printed is now worth less and the truth of inflationary spending is proven by the “quantity theory of money.” This creates a cost of holding money. If I don’t but my pizza for $10 today then it will cost $11 tomorrow! I better buy it now! This starts the ball rolling.

The third way is through legal regulation. The government doesn’t really have to cause inflation or spend money themselves as long as they have a way to force other people to spend money on each other. This is a win-win because the government gets to punish people they don’t like and help people they do like at the same time! For example the government can make people get a certification or license. Sometimes the government issues the license themselves. This is more like a tax. Other times they allow a private firm to issue the certification. Those are the times I’m talking about. For example they do that with teaching, insurance, starting certain kinds of businesses and more! In these cases they are making people spend on each other and getting the ball rolling.

Bitcoin sucks because it encourages hoarding money. Not spending money is bad. How can we start the snowball? These people are like people in the great depression that put all their money in a mattress. How stupid is that. Bitcoin is also anonymous. How can the government get any taxes or fines this way? Lastly, bitcoin is decentralized. How can the government help us with inflation now? Clearly Bitcoin is very stupid. The money multiplier will never work like this!

In case you can’t tell I have been talking sarcastically. There is no money multiplier and this is one of many foundational weaknesses in Keynesian economics. The snowball effect does not exist. Unless you are talking about the reverse-snowball effect created in governments with the power to print money and tax. In the reverse snowball effect they steal your money, waste some of it, give less of it back to you and start over. Then they tell you what you’re allowed to do with it, “Or else.” Like a school yard bully; the kind that needs a kick in the teeth.

Bitcoin will be the final nail in the coffin of these primitive and corrupt government and financial systems. Of course they’re going to whine about it. Smart people pay that no attention.

Here's some icing on the cake, a great video uncovering many flaws in Keynesian thinking in under 5 minutes:

If you valued this article John would appreciate your support by way of comment, like, share or tip!
Litecoin - LWghE5cAP3HKXNoXbfDSW6qUjCscJuPof4
Bitcoin - 1HT3ykSwHM6oHCjSvQVC9gwdXdHtWnjNkp

The Odds of Evolution

2013-05-09T19:59:00.001-07:00

On May 9, 2013 I did a simple Google search for "odds of evolution." This article summarizes the top 3 results. Why? In order to support the evolutionary objection that without guidance, as in guided evolution, the odds are far against evolution.

What is natural selection? What is a random mutation? Is random just a word for unpredictable? Is there any such thing as random? Or do God's arbitrary choices simply seem random?

Article 1
The top search result was a relatively small page with some excerpts from the book "A Closer Look at the Evidence" by Richard and Tina Kleiss. The excerpts mostly fail to take into account the effects of Natural Selection. They prove that evolution is impossible without natural selection but not much else. They also perhaps beg the question of how first life arose and whether or not natural selection applies to chemicals. The origin of first life is another difficult question for the atheist evolutionist.
Article 2 a.
A pro-evolution blogger points out issues with an article from Answers in Genesis. See Article 2 b. for the article they respond to. One error includes the reference to a calculation of the odds of evolution without natural selection, that is, by pure chance. That would be an impossibility even the pro-evolutionist admitted. Another error is that computer programs are used in poor analogy to human evolution. The author admits that modern humans have a huge genetic burden which has been accumulated over time, but says that this is due to a lack of natural selection in modern times due to the presence of advanced medicines. I wonder why production of advanced medicines is not traceable to evolution and therefore considered as a product of evolution? The pro-evolution blogger claims that all this medicine and technology is "an unnatural situation nowadays." I think The Amazing Atheist would disagree (watch at least until 2:18):

The author makes one last point in which he fails to correct a point from AiG about "genetic cancer" which I will in Article 2 b.
Article 2 b.
The author points out that the Neo-Darwinist relies on genuine random mutations. He doesn't make this point but I will. What has ever been shown to be truly random? Statistical randomness only means that there is no known data relation, not that there is no data relation. It means ignorance. Could it not be that the genuine randomness behind mutation is the arbitrary selection of God? Of course it could!
Back to what he says. The author makes a good point against natural selection by pointing to the apparent genetic deterioration in humans. He argues that mutations clearly exist but they do not usually foster evolution, rather, they foster decay. He notes that natural selection as a theory could address this concern, but finds the theory wanting. He cites biologist Richard Nocick who made the discovery of "evolutionary crippling." He found that when a lab-beneficial mutation occurs the mutated population usually has a reduced growth factor and survival expectancy outside the lab. He notes that antibiotic mutation doesn't evidence demonstrate evolution. Rather, it demonstrates artificial selection and variation "with the kind."
The article mentions C. H. Waddington and Post-Neo-Darwinism which is an emerging school of thought that basically claims that evolution exists, but that it cannot be explained even with the combination of mutation and natural selection.
I love his example which highlights major weakness in evolutionary theory:
"No evolutionist argues that destruction of the earth’s ozone layer is good because it increases mutation rates and, therefore, speeds up evolution. Evolutionists know that decrease in the ozone layer will increase mutation rates, but they, like everyone else, recognize that this will lead only to increased skin cancer and to other harmful changes. Perhaps a helpful change might occur, but it would be drowned in the sea of harmful changes."
He also highlights that natural selection is a short-sighted process, sighting sickle-cell anemia flourishing in Africa as a resistance to Malaria, despite the fact that such a selection will damage the populations long-term. Finally he wraps up by noting that mutation pre-supposes a gene exists and that the only reasonable way for genes to exist is through creation.
Article 3
I was glad to find that the third article focused on odds of origin of life. Unfortunately it was radically biased, coming from infidels.org, and a bit dated. The author was actually Richard Carrier, a well known metaphysical naturalist atheist. Regardless it had some information on Creationism and Intelligent Design. It even mentioned Dembski! Although in mistaken fashion, and completely omitting Stephen Meyer.
Carrier is going through various statistics on the impossibility of life and disproving their validity. Nearly all of them involve the flaw of not taking natural selection into account. Carrier puts forth the common assertion that beneficial traits will always eventually flow through the whole population and he ignores genetic burden when supporting a Dawkins computer model. Apparently Carrier thinks the Gerald Shcroeder model, while completely wrong, is the best of those he criticizes. I have wanted to try these calculations myself so maybe I will revise his later on.
Carrier notes the discovery of tetrahymena which can self-replicate and is an early form of RNA. One tricky thing is that the chemical cannot copy itself, only other versions, which means you would have to have 2 copies independently spawn.

Defining a Biblical Miracle

2013-05-07T19:29:00.000-07:00

A Christian miracle is not the same as a Wiccan miracle, an Islamic miracle, a Buddhist miracle, or many other kinds of miracles. There are a set of specific words with distinct meanings that are translated to "miracle" and they are different words than many other languages have used in their writings which are translated to the same modern English word. Unfortunately this has resulted in a confounding of the modern English term. To prevent fallacies of equivocation a Christian should know what is meant by word miracle when it appears in his or her Bible.

I have had a long-standing definition of a miracle being "Any supernatural intervention of God into the natural realm." I laid out this definitions in an old Youtube video of mine:

Two problems exist with my old definition. One would be that I never did an intensive word study so I couldn't justify whether or not my definition was actually in line with biblical definition. The second would be the false dichotomy of natural vs unnatural vs supernatural and so on. I have revised my definition to be more simply that a miracle is "anything God does or anything which evidences the existence of God." The reason for this definition is the purpose of this article, which basically consists of a word study of the biblical words translated in English to the term miracle.

According to this article, the English term "miracle" derives from the Latin "miraculum," meaning an object of wonder. "So, in English, a miracle is something that people are amazed at," that author accurately surmises.

However "miraculum" is never used in any original text. The aforementioned article as well as this detailed article agree that three greek words are translated in the Bible to the word miracle. The first article also states that there are three Hebrew words translated to miracle. The latter article also covers use of the word "ergon" usually translated as "work" or "working." However, despite being translated as the word work, it is used in ways that people often consider as miracles. The author of the second article states:

"When Jesus healed the lame man at the pool of Bethesda in John 5, the Jews began to persecute Him because the healing took place on a Sabbath. In response to them Jesus says, “My Father is working [ergon] until now, and I am working [ergon].” There a many miraculous healings and supernatural acts of Jesus where ergon/works is used in the New Testament, but his verse shows something else. With ergon meaning ‘active’ work, this attributes God as a proactive, non-passive God. He was actively working supernaturally in behalf of His people before the time of Jesus, and continues to do so. He is not a passive God who sits on His throne and waits around with no earthly intervention, and I believe this was Jesus’ point here."

I think another point Jesus was making was that people can do work on Sundays under certain conditions, while the Jews thought all manor of labor or significant effort was forbidden on the Sabbath. The point is simply that the term ergon, meaning work, is also often considered to describe miracles, although the term in no way implies mystery, supernaturalism, exclusivity to God, or any of the other meanings we often hear imputed into the word miracle.

To surmise words and definitions of the term miracle from the two articles:

Greek
1 dunamis - ability. Eg My ability to make lemonade.
2 semeoin - indication. Eg When a light turns red.
3 teras - Something you desire to consider. A curiosity.
4 ergon - labor or the product thereof. Eg Actually making lemonade, or the lemonade itself.

Hebrew:
1 pala' - an accomplishment which requires great power
2 'owth - indication
3 mowpheth - Something you desire to consider. A curiosity.

I agree with John, the author of the Custardy blog word study, who basically said that the three Hebrew words translated well to the three Greek words for miracle.

The term mowpheth has its origin in the word yaphah according to biblestudytools.com, however the term also implies conspicuousness which yaphah does not. Yaphah means something beautiful or pleasurable to consider. I would interpret this to mean a curiosity or a mystery that you are taking pleasure figuring out. It is usually translated "(a) wonder." Something you like to consider but feel as though there is something hidden to it, especially as in a hidden meaning.

Every time mowpheth is used it is paired with 'owth. 'Owth means an indication, sign or evidence, just like semeoin. The pairing implies that the thing described is at once both an indication and a curiosity. Semeoin, when used in the greek, is also paired on every occasion with the term teras.

Dunamis and pala' are also highly related. Dunamis means power or ability. Pala' means a difficult or impressive work. To do pala' you must of course have great dunamis, but dunamis is potential while pala' is actual. Furthermore, dunamis can be high or low (easy vs hard) while pala' implies high dunamis (if it's not hard it's not pala').

I agree with David Causer, author of the second article, who makes the point that because there are distinct words with distinct meanings, we shouldn't force them into a single concept of a miracle. Rather, there are 3 or 4 different kinds of Biblical miracles:

1 - Abilities, especially above common abilities. Ability in and of itself, that is, free will, is a miracle. Higher then normal ability, and taken to its extreme point perfect power, also reflect God's nature and are miracles.
2 - Indications of God are miracles. Anything which is evidence for God's reality can be called a miracle.
3 - Curiosities are reflective of God's nature. The desire to want to know more which always ends in an indication of God's reality.
4 - Labor can be miraculous but it is not necessarily so. It's opposite, rest, can also be miraculous.

I think the bottom line is that the terms translate as "miraculous" all reflect the Christian idea of God's nature. That Biblical miracle description falls into 3, or 4 if you include labor, general categories and should not be confounded with inappropriate straw men definitions.

Foreknowledge or Science?

2013-05-07T14:51:00.002-07:00

One common atheist claim is that science and the Bible are at odds with one another. I disagree completely. However, if the atheist refuses to allow that science and religion are in fact complimentary, as Albert Einstein claimed, what they are forced to admit is even more interesting.

Some of the claims of the Bible are demonstrably in line with mainstream science. Examples include the existence of a finite beginning of time, the spherical shape of the planet, the hyrdologic cycle and others. See the following video for those and more, including scripture references:

If Biblical writers didn't use use observation, theory and verification, but still managed to make true statements this actually gives the Bible huge credibility! The source of the information, under the assumptions we have made, must never have been a source which ultimately derived its information from observation. It must have been the kind of being that simply had information, correct information, without ever needing to obtain it to being with.

This implies a clear case of divine revelation! The information source described is necessarily an omnipotent being and able to reveal information to people. Therefore saying the Bible is incompatible with science gives it much more credibility, not less.

If, on the other hand, you think that the true statements in Bible aren't based on divine revelation, but are rather based on observation, hypothesis, testing and conclusion, you are clearly claiming that the writers of the Bible used science in its very creation which would make it fully compatible with science.

So which is it atheist? Is the Bible compatible with science or an even greater source of divine revelation than we Christians already thought?

Data and Method for Bitcoin Valuation as a Fiat Hedge

2013-05-06T15:02:00.000-07:00

This article goes over my methodology for the guest article I authored on the Mineforman website found here.

The spreadsheet I used, complete with all my little self-notes and summaries, is available in its original Gnumeric format here, and in the more common Excel format here. Simple Excel conversion resulted in some errors on that version. I recommend Gnumeric for all spreadsheet and basic statistical work.

Google Trends information was used to determine the rate of information spread by looking at search rates relative to a "common knowledge" standard rate. "Business" was chosen as the objective standard search term because it was 10th most popular keyword over a long time frame. All search data was analyzed from January 2011, when bitcoin searches were notable by google, until May 2013, using data from the first of each month. See the following graphical visualization:

The average interest level for "business" was 89 on this chart. The peak measured data point for bitcoin was 11 which occurred over the interval including April 1, 2013. When we eliminate "business" from the chart we are given richer data on bitcoin searches. See the following:

Since this chart provides richer data I actually took monthly data from this chart, using the first of the month. The interest level matching the 11 on the other chart is 53 on this chart and all data is proportional, therefore I knew that I would need an interest level of about 430 (about = 89 on the other chart) to constitute a "common knowledge" of "bitcoin" as a search term.

Information typically spreads according to a growth curve pattern, also called an S-Curve or a sigmoid. This pattern is well approximated by an exponential or logarithmic curve in the early period of growth, before saturation is approached. I used a logarithmic regression yielding a best fit line of:

Log(Interest level for "Bitcoin") = .026*(Number of Months After January 1, 2011)+.237

Plugging in an interest level of 430 we obtain Log(430) = 2.6 and finally we expect Number of Months = 92, or 8 years after rounding to the nearest year. This is how I did the information modelling portion.

For the dilution portion I used market cap. I defined the cryptocurrency market as Litecoin Mkt Cap + Namecoin Mkt Cap + Bitcoin Mkt Cap after observing that these were the most valuable currencies as per Vircurex and BTC-E. Other currencies constituted very small market caps, although that will change in the future. While small, the growth rate of Feathercoin makes it an example of a noteworthy currency to perhaps include in future calculations. It is also fundamentally similar to Litecoin, the most stable of the alt coins.

All coin values were converted into their Bitcoin equivalents. Pricing information obtained, as noted in the spreadsheet, from here. Prices were multiplied by number of coins on a particular day to obtain market cap over time. Number of coins were obtained on a particular day by raw guess-and-check method research through each appropriate block explorer, where time information is recorded for each block. As noted in the spreadsheet, the Litecoin block explorer is located here, Namecoin here and Bitcoin here.

The actual bitcoin market cap was taken as a percent of the entire bitcoin equivalent cryptocurrency cap and modeled linearly dependent on time. This is how we accounted for dilution over time.

Finally we modeled block number by month to find the expected number of bitcoins in december! Alternatively we could have used the widely accepted theoretical 10 minutes per block, but we chose to use historical data instead. Historical data yielded 9.08 minutes per block. The difference between theoretical and historical data is possibly significant.

Lastly, if you aren't aware of why gold can be used as a hedge against fiat price fluctuations to begin with, watch this great interview with Ron Paul on the topic:

Compilation of Guest Articles and Contact Information!

2013-05-01T15:46:00.000-07:00

This article is a directory of articles which I have written as a guest for other websites. They are in reverse chronological order starting with the most recent and ending with the oldest. This article will also include my guest article pitch video in which I make the case that I would be valuable as a guest writer for your website. Please contact me via a comment on this page or email vandivier_john at yahoo with guest writing opportunities.

Format:
"Article Name." Date. Website name. Article Link.

"Bitcoin Valuation as a Fiat Hedge With Information and Substitution Effects." May 14, 2013. Mineforman. http://mineforeman.com/2013/05/14/bitcoin-valuation-as-a-fiat-hedge-with-information-and-substitution-effects/

"Waiting For Mt Godot – A Litecoin Market Cap to GDP Analysis." May 1, 2013. CryptoJunky. http://cryptojunky.com/blog/2013/05/01/waiting-for-mt-godot-a-litecoin-market-cap-to-gdp-analysis/

"An Odd Argument for Belief in God – The Vandivierian Wager." April 6, 2013. JTHMISHMASH. http://jthmishmash.com/2013/04/06/guest-blog-an-odd-argument-for-belief-in-god-the-vandivierian-wager/

60+ Places to Transact with Litecoin, Adam Kokesh on Litecoin

2013-04-30T15:32:00.000-07:00

In my last article I linked to the Litecoin Github's List of Litecoin related services as evidence that you can really spend litecoin on real goods and services. In this article I would like to reference many, many more places I have recently found.

First I would point you to the best compilation I have found, uselitecoin.com, which taken alone already lists 60+ merchants who accept litecoin for goods or services. It has 85+ links to the litecoin community, but not all are merchants.

Next I would point you to the single best shop with litecoin called Atlantis. It is Silk Road only better because it supports both bitcoin and litecoin and is a bit faster as I understand it.

I would then point out 3 places where you can transact litecoin which were not mentioned at uselitecoin.com:

1 Reddit's Litecoin Market
2 The Litecoin Official Forum's Marketplace
3 Reddit's "Girls Gone Litecoin" Which I do not support and will not link, but trust me, it has been a major area of litecoin transaction recently.

Keep an eye on cryptojunky.com where I will be writing an article soon using these sources as a minimum measurement of the litecoin economy!

Finally, as I mentioned in my last post, Litecoin has recently been found to be extremely secure, even more than bitcoin! What I didn't mention in my last post is that Adam Kokesh has taken notice and is now a litecoin fan: