Thudfactor

The Sprout is two

2009-07-05T17:36:45+00:00

We just had the Sprout’s second birthday. Birthdays are going to be very interesting for Cory in the future, seeing as they are immediately preceded by a giant national cookout / fireworks / summer party called “Independence Day.” (Not to be confused with the crappy movie with the same name.)

The Sprout was certainly more interactive this birthday than the last, although it will probably be the next one before he really understands what is going on and can anticipate it properly. He still won’t eat cake and I can’t convince him to try ice cream unless it has already melted. But someday. And then we won’t be able to convince him to eat anything else.

Anyway, happy birthday, Sprout! Now please put down that fork, you can’t play with th… wait, that’s my keyjmjd jmd j dejdcj dfjxxznnnn give thatnn nnnnna wywywbbbbbb b crap bb22333333333333w 333333333333333333333333 w 43333333 33333333444444444 333333333333 33333333e

My atheism didn’t last long.

2009-07-03T12:17:26+00:00

I give up. Richard Dawkins’ lazy approach to his subject material goes well beyond intellectual neglect, pushing into the realm of willful malpractice. After a stunning, bare-faced admission of intentional ignorance in the second chapter of The God Delusion, I can’t take him seriously any more.

Photo of Richard Dawkins by Matti Á, used under a Creative Commons license.

Well, my new-found membership to the atheist club lasted until the second chapter. He says:

This is as good a moment as any to forestall an inevitable retort to the book, one that would otherwise—as sure as night follows day—turn up in a review. ‘The God that Dawkins doesn’t believe in is a God I don’t believe in either. I don’t believe in an old man in the sky with a long white beard.’ ... I know you don’t believe in an old bearded man sitting on a cloud, so let’s not waste any more time on that. I am not attacking any particular version of God or gods. I am attacking God, all gods, anything and everything supernatural, whereever and whenever they have been or will be invented. The God Delusion, p. 57

This is a surprising statement, since a scant five pages earlier he said:

I am not attacking the particular qualities of Yaweh, or Jesus, or or Allah, or any other specific god such as Baal, Zeus, or Wotan. Instead I shall define the God Hypothesis more defensibly: There exists a superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us. Ibid., p. 52. (Italics in original.)

These two things seemed so contradictory I wondered if Dawkins had an editor, and if so, should that editor be sued? But there is a stepping stone between the two:

Was Venus just another name for Aphrodite, or were there two distinct goddesses of love? Was Thor with his hammer a manifestation of Wotan, or a separate God? Who cares? Life is too short to bother with the distinction between one figment of the imagination and many. Having gestured towards polytheism to cover myself against a charge of neglect, I shall say no more about it. For brevity I shall refer to all deities, whether poly- or monotheistic, as simply ‘God.’ Ibid., p. 56

Shorter: “I am aware of the differences of belief but do not care to investigate them, therefore I will pretend all belief systems are the same.”

This is classic circular argument: since gods don’t exist, I do not need to consider differences in belief when attempting to prove gods don’t exist. Dawkins argument uses itself to prove itself.

And that pretty much takes all the wind out of my sails. What do you do with a person who announces his intention to ignore all counter-evidence and ask you to presume he’s correct in order to buy his position? The God Delusion is not an argument or a hypothesis, it is propaganda and screed.

We shouldn’t expect too much, I guess

After all, Dawkins argues that polytheistic Hinduism is actually monotheism because all gods are manifestations of the one, yet also argues that Christianity is a polytheism because the Trinity are three seperate gods that Christians claim are just manifestations of God. [ Ibid., p. 53-54 ] You’re allowed to make one or the other of these arguments, I think, but you should not be allowed to make both of them in consecutive paragraphs.

He is also the person who argues that we should never call a child a “Christian child” or a “Muslim child” because they are too young to have an opinion (Ibid, p. 25), yet has started an “Atheist camp” for children as young as eight.

The fact that he can’t be bothered to tell the difference between a Wiccan and a Fundamentalist really shouldn’t come as a surprise.

But what this means for me is that eighty pages into the book, I realized that I didn’t care what he had to say any more. When a person is arguing with a fictional world in his head, you might hope to persuade him that world is fictional.

But when he tells you he knows it’s fictional but it’s more convenient to argue with than the real thing, well, there doesn’t seem to be much point.

Heavens to Mergatroyd, I’m an atheist

2009-07-02T11:30:14+00:00

Dawkins says the following about definitions of God:

If the Word God is not to become completely useless, it should be used in the way people have generally understood it: to denote a supernatural creator who is ‘appropriate for us to worship.’ The God Delusion, p.33

The belief structures of indigenous people—extinct or extant—as well as many dharmic and asian religions (Buddhism, Jainism, Shinto), along with their centuries and millienia old traditions and millions of adherents, are with a sentence dismissed. So, too, are the more modern Pagan religions.

The only religions that matter are the major “Religions of the Book” : Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This is one of the reasons I say atheists are very similar to Fundamentalists—they often define religion using the same narrow terms.

But Dawkins goes further than I’ve seen before, and suddenly I find myself (an animist and pantheist) mostly fitting Dawkins much more broad definition of an atheist than I supposed:

An atheist in this sense of philosophical naturalist is somebody who believes there is nothing beyond the natural, physical world, no supernatural creative intelligence lurking behind the observable universe, no soul that outlasts the body and no miracles—except in the sense of natural phenomena that we don’t yet understand. If there is something that appears to lie beyond the natural world as it is now imperfectly understood, we hope to eventually understand it and embrace it within the natural. Ibid., p. 35

You could have knocked me over with a feather. I thought maybe I had misunderstood, but later Dawkins is even more firm:

Pantheism is sexed-up atheism. Ibid., p. 40

To quote the master swordsman: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

To Dawkins, Pantheism is what Einstein meant when he talked about God—a “poetic” or “metaphorical” expression describing the natural world. But many religions, both new and old, are either pantheisms or pantheistic. And yet they are still religion, not just atheism in lipstick.

That Dawkins doesn’t seem to grasp this is frustrating, but to be expected. In the preface to the Paperback he responds to criticisms about his incomplete knowledge of religion as though we’re picking over details.

Stating that a detailed analysis of theology would have tanked his sales, Dawkins insists:

Unlike Stephen Hawking (who accepted advice that every formula he published would halve his sales), I would happily have forgone bestsellerdom if there had been the slightest hope of [19th century theologian] Dun Scotus illuminating my central question of whether God exists. The vast majority of theological writings simply assume that he does, and go on from there. Ibid, p. 14.

The idea that those theological writings—or, indeed, the writings and traditions of non-Abrahamic religions—might contradict some dozens of his own truth-claims about the nature of religion apparently hasn’t occurred to him. Or he’s chosen to ignore it. Either way, I apparently now belong to the “atheism” club. I wonder what my aggressively rationalist friends will think of that.

[ Photo of a Shinto shrine above by Stéfan, used under a Creative Commons license. Shinto is an ancient animistic religion that has been contributing to the meaninglessness of the word “God” since prehistoric times. ]

Believe our converts but not theirs

2009-07-01T10:26:42+00:00

Do ex-atheists exist? How about converts to atheism? Dawkins appears to be of two minds on the question depending on the needs of the argument at hand.

I know it’s going to be a long haul with a book when I get a couple of pages into the preface and think to myself: “I’m going to need a pen for this.”

Just for giggles, let’s take the question of whether or not atheists and fundamentalists can change their mind. Dawkins warns against people who say: “I used to be an atheist, but…”

That is one of the oldest tricks in the book, much favored by religious apologists from C.S. Lewis to the present day. It serves to establish some sort of street cred up front, and it is amazing how often it works. Look out for it. Preface to the Paperback Edition, p. 12

I take from this that Dawkins doesn’t believe people when they claim to have been atheists. Or, perhaps he thinks that an atheist who has changed their mind was not really an atheist anyway.

In response to people who claim Dawkins is not arguing persuasively but instead being a kind of Michael Moore to the anti-religion set, Dawkins says:

“Convert’s Corner” on RichardDawkins.net gives the lie to this premise…Ibid., p. 17

So we should believe that people convert to atheism but not from it. I guess that’s not necessarily contradictory, but I’d love to know why I should value “I used to be religious, but…” any more than the opposite.

I’m also having a hard time squaring that with the distinction Dawkins draws between atheism and fundamentalism. In response to the charge that atheism is just fundamentalism in another guise, he says:

It is all to easy to mistake passion that can change its mind for fundamentalism, which never will. Ibid., p.18.

He goes on to explain that some fundamentalists (he has quotes) have said that no amount of scientific evidence can change his mind. But damning evidence against evolution would change his.

So what he seems to be saying, at least in this argument, is this:

Atheism is open-minded and based on scientific evidence, but don’t believe anyone who tells you they’ve actually changed their minds.
Fundamentalism is close-minded and unchanging, but do read about all the people who have “converted” to atheism.

Is that what he’s saying? Or have I missed a step?

Richard Dawkins is a media personality

2009-06-26T21:09:44+00:00

Over to the right is a screenshot of the Official Richard Dawkins web site, with a cover overlay classifying different kinds of content on the page.

Blue items indicate site branding and navigation.
Green items indicate editorial content.
Yellow items indicate visitor content.
Pink items indicate sales content.

It’s not that I’m opposed to marketing yourself. Authors really have to do that. But I am amazed at the quantity of material here and how in-your-face it is. What this tells me is that atheism is big business and Dawkins is a businessman.

There will probably be more about this later as I work my way through The God Delusion.

Should government get out of business?

2009-06-24T20:51:36+00:00

Government protects major companies from the “piracy” of derivitive works like those from Rifftrax.

Is it really true that the best thing the government can do for business is just get the hell out of the way? I don’t think so. I don’t think most businesses think that way either. I mean, the Republicans had a golden opportunity to operate that way for well over a decade, and yet we saw explosive growth both in government spending and in no-bid sweetheart deals going to private businesses like Haliburton.

Beyond infrastructure, government provides businesses with legal frameworks that protect them and their interests. Here are some of the things that government laws and regulation provide for businesses that they absolutely depend upon:

Patent law
Copyright law
Enforcement of contracts
Anti-corporate espionage laws
Disclosure requirements for acquisitions and mergers
Personal liability protection through incorporation

There’s also infrastructure they don’t have to worry about as much.

Fire protection
Police protection
Transportation networks
Water and sewer services
The Internets
Cheap and reliable mail service

And if you’re Wal-Mart (for example) you can pay your employees crappy wages and depend on the government to keep them healthy and fed enough to continue to work for your crap wages. (Wal Mart employees often still qualify for medicaid and other poverty-level government services).

Of course, there’s also all the wonderful regulatory laws that are great for keeping small operators from ever competing with you—broadcast regulatory law, for example, makes it really difficult for me to take on broadcast monopolies.

Just for the corruption value alone, if there was no government business would have to invent it. Which is—if you think about it—if not the reason government was invented in the first place, at least one of the reasons it still exists. Government is not a parasite on business. In fact, it’s often the other way around.

News-like Entertainment Substitute

2009-06-21T19:46:59+00:00

I completely unplugged from television news years ago, but I understand that television is leaning pretty heavily on Twitter these days for news coming out of Iran. That’s interesting, but it’s good to keep in mind that the unfiltered news is not necessarily reliable. Mark Ambinder wants us to treat Twitter the way a CIA analyst would, and I think it’s a skill we’re all going to need regardless of the situation or the medium. Even before the Civil War a lie could travel halfway around the world before the truth got its boots on. Now it happens before the truth can even find its socks.

That’s not to say what’s coming out of Iran is a lie. Or even true. But it’s people’s emotions, street rumor, hearsay, propaganda—maybe even potential misinformation. So we should all take a few moments to upgrade our bullshit detectors.

I’m with Fred on this: journalism is serious work, requiring real effort and training. It plays a critical role not only in our democracy but in our daily health and well-being. So it’s disappointing to read things like this:

Why is Al Sharpton on my teevee talking to Geraldo Rivera about Iran? LGM: Befuddled

Why indeed? In fact, why is the news reading Twitter on the air? I understand it may be difficult to do real journalism in Iran at the moment, but real journalism is often difficult. If you can’t get the sources, maybe you could talk about the background for a bit. Give people some context. There are maybe half a dozen people in the United States who understand Iranian politics, and none of them are Al Sharpton or Geraldo.

I have not been keeping up with the news in Iran. I don’t trust the Twitter news feed and I don’t have the proper background to have a functioning bullshit detector. I would like to rely on traditional news sources, but they’ve all been gutted for profit and replaced with News-Like Entertainment Substitute.

Also, I have a toddler who makes it difficult to concentrate on anything for more than thirty minutes. My thirty minutes is up. Sorry if this isn’t coherent. Feel free to leave your suggestions in the comments.

Either on the news or the toddler.

Sprout firsts

2009-06-20T19:19:36+00:00

New things Sprout has done today:

Tasted faux-chicken Morningstar Farms buffalo wings.
Learned to dip his finger in honey-mustard dressing to see what it tastes like.
Tried drinking honey-mustard dressing.
Seen a dog parade.
Gone to his first community festival.
Waved at a couple hundred people
Eaten kettle corn.

Prematurely declaring the death of fail

2009-06-18T11:14:28+00:00

Anil Dash has had it with “FAIL:”

FAIL is over. Fail is dead. Because it marks a lack of human empathy, and signifies an absence of intellectual curiosity, it is an unacceptable response to creative efforts in our culture. “Fail!” is the cry of someone who doesn’t create, doesn’t ship, doesn’t launch, who doesn’t make things.

[* * *]

So, fail is dead. I won’t accept it in dialogue from those I communicate with, I won’t permit those I’m connected to on social networks to use it around me, and no, you’re not the first to think you’re clever enough to use it as a comment here. The End of Fail

This is called “setting yourself up.” You cannot critique people’s use of “FAIL” because, when they use it on you, they are not interested in your critique. If you tell people not to use “FAIL” they will use it on you. If you tell them not to do it just because you told them not to do it, they will get double frission out of disobeying you twice. And if you then respond to that with something like:

Take a look at the Wikipedia page about me, which lists a series of gags I’ve done over the years [ * * * ] while I think there are many fair criticisms that could be leveled at me, “lacks a sense of humor” is just an absurd assertion. Anil’s response

Well, you ... just ... FAIL.

The crowds of people who like to gather around and shout “FAIL” are not interested in having a conversation. They think they are being clever. Among their peer group, they are. If they are shouting “FAIL” at you, they don’t have enough respect for you for your reasoned critique to matter to them. The only way to respond to this contempt is with contempt. Ignore them. Delete their comments. Insult them back.

Anything other than “look at my Wikipedia page.”

But please don’t attack the word. The word has been around for ages in different forms. When “FAIL” passes it will reincarnate in a different form. Even now there are roving bands of clever teenagers searching the land for the next FAIL like some infant Dalai Lama.

And when you attack words instead of behavior you weaken your argument. “You are acting like an ignorant asshole” is a moral position. “No one is allowed to use the word FAIL around me” is just whining about words.

Why customer service sucks (AT&T Version)

2009-06-09T08:40:30+00:00

AT&T iPhone owners are a little bit upset. The new phones are out, but if you want to upgrade you have to pay the full price of the phone ($700 for the 32 gigabyte model). Or you can wait until you are eighteen months into your two-year contract and get the subsidized price — as long as you sign up for another two year contract.

I know you are upset. I know this is no way to run a railroad. I know this will generate ill-will among customers.

I am also pretty sure that AT&T doesn’t care. They are very well insulated from customer opinion. Here’s what it looks like from AT&T’s point of view:

First of all, you’re on a contract

To get the phone cheap, you signed a two-year contract. This two-year contract includes punative fees for early cancellation and locks you into the hardware you’re using for at least eighteen months. This is not uncommon, and it is the terms of the agreement. So if you get mad and cancel now, you will owe them a large wad of cash. The same is true at Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon — your other three options. No one is competing on these terms.

If you want a fancy phone for a bargain price, those are the terms regardless of how bad you want to upgrade.

What this means is that most people won’t cancel. Some will take their business elsewhere, but AT&T is probably getting customers from Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon because those services have also pissed their customers off as well.

By benefit of their contract and very little market differentiations between the cell phone companies, AT&T is pretty much insulated against you having a snit-fit and changing services.

Secondly, the horizon is too far away.

Having two-year contracts kicks the ball pretty far down the road. If churn increases, it will do so slowly. For example, it only moved 0.3% between March 06 and March 07. That’s thanks again to the contract.

If this move really is going to kill the company (it won’t), it’s going to do it over the space of many, many quarters. AT&T won’t see a wave of cancellations because most people are going to wait until their contract is up. By that time, maybe Sprint will have done something reprehensible. Or other market forces will encourage people to think more kindly of AT&T.

Either way, a noticeable drop — if it happens at all — will certainly not happen this quarter. And this quarter’s financials are all anyone really cares about.

Thirdly, management doesn’t care about the company

AT&T’s executive team has little interest in the company itself. They are well-paid. They most likely have enormous severance packages coming to them even if they are fired. If the company does well, they do well. If the company does poorly, they still do well. If they get fired, they still do well. If the company goes bankrupt, their private fortunes are protected. They will still have enough to start over. Or retire. Or get a job screwing up another company.

Fourthly, they have the hardware.

Do you want an iPhone? Really, really want one? Well.

Fifth, all cell phone companies suck.

Customer service is universally terrible, the terms universally abusive, the options dramatically restricted. In the absence of federal regulation forcing more competition — by requiring cell networks to open up to small providers, for example — it’s going to stay that way until another disruptive technology comes along to make cell phones themselves obsolete.

That will happen. But there are a lot of financial quarters between then and now. And a lot of money to be squeezed out of people in the meantime.

“But they’ll destroy the company!” So what? If you think the execs or investors really care about whether or not AT&T is going to be around for another two centuries, see point four above.

Frankly, they have no incentive.

What incentive do they have to please the Apple customer? They have very little incentive. They are protected and insulated by contract law, scarcity of resources, and scarcity of competitors. The business people in charge don’t answer to customers, they answer to shareholders. And if the shareholders think they can get more money out of ripping off customers, well, they will rip off customers. And pray they time flipping the stock right.

If AT&T fails, the store clerks will scrambling to find a job before they get evicted, but the executive team will take their sacks of money and find another corner office somewhere.

In fact, it sounds an awful lot like socialism. Except in this socialism, a very few people are getting rich, and none of the rest of us have health care.

——-