Biased Reporting

The Virtues of Bad Art

noreply@blogger.com (Qualia Dodgson) — Wed, 31 May 2017 03:05:00 +0000

There's no real reason for this to be here. I just wanted
a picture and I don't want anyone to think that I'm
some sort of armchair artist. I'm competent enough
to criticize the incompetent, that's all
Also... ordinarily I wouldn't post any art that
I've already given to someone, but I'm no longer
obligated to be nice to the recipient
and he didn't like Bertrand Russell. So.

Now, I have two professional artists in my immediate family, which means, of course, that I regularly hear Browning-length monologues on how people should learn how to draw properly, how calling oneself an artist doesn't automatically mean that one can actually do art, and how "bad is not a style."

But I appreciate people who make bad art. You see, my opinion on their choice of vocation is, to paraphrase Shaw, 'that if they tried to do any useful work some competent person would have the trouble of undoing it: a procedure involving a net loss to the community, and great unhappiness to themselves.' So really, if they're making bad art, then at least they aren't out there screwing other things up for the rest of us. Result: in increase in the world's total utility, and a decrease in the net inconvenience to me.*

If the price of that is a few eyesores and the occasional inane ramble about someone's "artistic vision," then so be it.

I'm not going to quibble with anyone about whether such a thing as "bad art" actually exists; I am entitled to a subjective opinion that there exists genuinely bad art, and I will not be dissuaded. Anyone who thinks otherwise has clearly never been through in The American Wing in the Met. (The portraits I'm talking about are secreted in a rather inaccessible room above the Frank Lloyd Wright section and hidden behind rows of silver pieces, pottery and fine art, all of uncertain artistic merit. Someone might almost think they didn't want anyone to find it.)

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*Like all good naive utilitarians my definition of utility is pretty much contingent on my own notions of personal utility.

This assumes, of course, that I have heart....

noreply@blogger.com (Qualia Dodgson) — Tue, 16 May 2017 23:13:00 +0000

Alternate title: wherein I answer a flippant blogging prompt with a dignity entirely unworthy of the exercise for vaguely satirical purposes and (of course) my own amusement.
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...the prompt being:
Five Ways to Win My Heart

I would like to point out straight away that I'm very grinchy, and due to the commercialization of Christmas my heart is unlikely to grow three sizes anytime soon.

However, though my good opinion once lost is lost forever,* it's not that hard to earn my good opinion. Here's a cheat sheet:

1. Be Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock.

Obviously this one is never going to happen, because even Cumberbatch only pretends to be the world's only genius consulting detective with devastating good looks. Did I say I'm easy to please? I lied. Moving on:

2. Live your philosophy. That is: be consistent.

I don't care what your philosophy is.** I don't need people to agree with me, but they need to agree with themselves, and have the cojones to actually follow through on it.

3. Engage in nerdity.

This requires some explanation: I don't really care what your area of expertise is. If you can make a living by being really enthused about organic chemistry... awesome. If you flip burgers, or fix computers, and spend your free time regaling me with legends of the old Klingon Empire... also awesome. (Maybe?) But have something you can think about deeply, something that you can be creative with, talk to other people about. Care about something.***

4. Even if you don't believe in objective morality, act as if you did. Or rather: even if you think that the rules don't apply to you because you're extra-awesome or something... follow them anyway.

I'm not talking about an honestly held philosophy here. What I mean is: I don't want to hear about how your sloppy, neo-Nietzschean tripe entitles you to do whatever you want. No one ever thinks 'Well, there are simply superior beings out there, that naturally know better than me, and therefore they're well within their rights to oppress me, and to act without regard to societal norms or any bourgeois notions of morality' and so it always implies that you're somehow better than other people, which, even if it were true... if you say it, you're not just a jerk, but an idiot. Jerks I can tolerate if they entertain me and don't trip little old ladies, but idiots and I... we don't get along.

5. Care about your work.

You may not like your job. That's okay. You are not alone. It's a safe bet that most people, throughout most of history have hated their jobs. Seriously. Who wants to scythe grain, and then winnow it, and then grind it, and then cook it, all pretty much by hand? And that's if you're lucky (that is, if you don't have a catastrophic hail/rain/drought, and a local warlord doesn't come by and burn your fields, or press you into service, or tax you to death, and there isn't a plague that year).

My point is that in the grand scheme of things, serving coffee is not so bad. I've done it. I hated each everloving second of it, but it didn't kill me. So I'm not denying that some jobs suck. Some jobs are thankless, menial and demeaning. Some of them shouldn't even exist. But that's not the fault of your coworkers, or your customers (if you work in a service industry). It's probably not even the fault of your bosses.

Obviously if your job involves landing my plane or handling nuclear warheads I have very personal reasons for wanting you to care about your job, but I'd like for you to care about what you do regardless.

Because even if what you do doesn't "matter," you matter. You are connected to other people, whether you like it or not, and what you do affects them. So this isn't about being a good secretary/garbageman/hairdresser/economist/president, this is about being a decent human being. Thinking you're above doing something (whether it's something that you're paid for or not) is a fantastic way to make yourself miserable, even if you're lucky enough to not transmit your misery to anyone else. So please don't do that.

N + 1- This one is somewhat obvious, so it's not on the list proper: Don't be a jerk. Think about other people. Hell, just think.

That is: Don't litter like a jerk. Don't smoke while I'm trying to swim laps in the pool. Like a jerk. Don't leave junk lying around on the floor where little old ladies can trip over it. Like a jerk. Don't call people names. Like a jerk. When you have the opportunity to screw stuff up without suffering the consequences: Don't screw stuff up. (Again, if you do it when you're going to suffer for it, then you're not only a jerk but an idiot.)

See? Not hard. I'm actually super-easy to please.

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*This is basically Jane Austen's subtle way of calling me a judgmental bitch from beyond the grave.

** Okay, not true. I care a little bit. Okay. I care a lot. But I also know that trying to beat sense into people's heads never works. At least if people are consistent maybe they'll eventually see that they don't like the implications of their philosophy/religion/world-view. (I live in hope.)

*** Of course, being a snob, there are some subjects for obsession that I consider better than others. The (obviously and necessarily incomplete) ranking goes thusly:

Mathematics > everything

"Real science" and/or literature > having a useful trade/hobby, e.g. being a knowledgeable outdoorsman, mechanic, jam-maker (I don't highly value jam myself, but it fits the criteria, perhaps that's another blog post), quilter, chess-player etc.

Elaborate Star Trek-type universes > Star Wars and weird/dumb hobbies (e.g. Renaissance fairs, bird watching, stamp collecting etc.)

Weird hobbies > reality TV or cat memes

**** This seems like a non sequitur but it's really not. Also, stop using the word "boobs." Because it's horrible. No really. I'll even allow you to say "bosom" if you promise to stop.

Grammar Ain't Everything

noreply@blogger.com (Qualia Dodgson) — Tue, 09 May 2017 01:23:00 +0000

So I'm a linguistic descriptivist, which basically means that I think the most important part of communication is... actually communicating. Shocking, I know. Basically, if you have something worth saying and you manage to get your point across, I don't really care if you split infinitives, or scatter participles, or fail to conjugate properly.*

...but you know what the second most important part of communication, or rather, writing is? Not sounding like an utter dumbass.

...and the best way to not sound like an utter dumbass? Don't use words when you don't have any friggin' idea of what they mean.

E.g. if you don't know how to use "whom" properly, then don't ****ing use it. If you don't know what "e.g." means: then don't ****ing use it.** If you don't know the difference between "eloquent" and "elocution:" don't ****ing use them. If you can't figure out how to use Elizabethan, Middle, or Victorian English properly, then, please -- for the love of god or some other ontologically valid being who may or may not be a purple spaghetti monster dressed in suspenders, I'm begging you -- don't ever use them. If you don't know how to use a semi-colon: learn how.

In short: I would much rather someone speak and/or write their own dialect/register of English fluently than speak Standard Written English like a second language learner. Because, you know what? Second language learners have an excuse. We don't. (NB: if you went to public school in Florida, Wisconsin or Louisiana you get automatic second language learner status. People from other states have to fill out an application.)

(This comic found on the always-excellent Language Log, because, while I'm crazy, I'm not crazy enough to write my own comic, or to root around and risk getting stranded in my bog of a hard-drive for a picture of Archibald the Asparagus.)

And because I'm already way over my cussing quota for this post (as George Carlin says, - said? is he dead now? - it's like 'the n-word' it doesn't matter if you don't actually say it because you made me think it), here's one from The Oatmeal as well. He actually behaves himself in the comic itself, but normally... well, let's just say that most of them earn their PG-13 rating.
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*Don't get me wrong. I would really, really, really like it if people would stop writing "you're" when they mean "your," "it's" instead of "its," and mixing up "discreet" and "discrete." (That's like, 80% of my freelance livelihood right there by the way; righting/re-writing people's homophones and shifting their apostrophes.) I'd also like them to learn how use the subjunctive, and how to construct the past and present perfect tenses properly. But I can realize that it's not that important in the grand scheme of things. And people do make mistakes. I get that. It's cool. I would much rather than people have imperfectly 'formatted' thoughts that are worth hearing/reading, than read/hear grammatically correct trivialities. It's not like I'm super-careful in casual writing myself (and by that I mean that most of what I write makes my English-teacher auntie weep). But it looks like I'm not going to get that either. So I take my daily dose of Fukitol and start half my sentences with conjunctions in a passive aggressive bid to frustrate humanity out of its stupidity. No results yet. Yeah. I don't know. I really didn't think this through...

**It means: exempli gratia, 'for the sake of an example,' so, really, you could just say something boring and English and simple like "for example:", 'i.e.,' on the other hand, means 'id est' (that is) which usually introduces some sort of clarification or definition. But again, you could just use the boring old English "that is" and never have to think about it again.

Also, as you've probably gathered from the preceding paragraphs, I could totally do without anyone ever trying to write period English. Ever. Again. There is no profanity in any language I know that can adequately express my feelings on the subject. Stop, people. Just stop, okay? I can barely tolerate the Quaker 'thee' in the old Star Trek, and I'm told they're using it correctly.

But it looks like that probably won't happen either. So... que sera sera.

Oh, yeah, and another thing: for god's sake, look up the definition and spelling for foreign phrases; make sure it actually means what you think it means. Google is literally at your fingertips. Even if you've got the wrong spelling, the right one will come up; this is one of the few moments in life where other people's incompetence/ignorance will actually work for you.

And proof read. Do as I say, not as I do.

Illegal Brownies (Venezuela Edition)

noreply@blogger.com (Qualia Dodgson) — Fri, 31 Mar 2017 00:48:00 +0000

So, as far as I know, there's only one sort of brownie that can get you arrested in the US. Of course, if you're living in Venezuela, all bets are off:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/17/bakers-arrested-illegal-brownies-venezuela-bread-war

In an effort to stop the seditious baking of ham-filled croissants, sweetbreads, and other luxury baked goods the Venezuelan government is taking over bakeries that aren't using their flour properly.

Pause.

Yeah.

I know that I'm a bit behind the times, and there are the more recent mass graves, and supreme court take-overs, and silly little things like that, but this is hilarious. I mean, as hilarious as people being starving or malnourished, and generally miserable and oppressed can be. Which, um, in this case, is pretty funny, er, actually?

Sorry?

Besides, there's a long, illustrious history of making jokes about baked goods while the world is crumbling around your ears.

Though I'm pretty sure that Marie Antoinette's quote goes something more like "Let them eat brioche," but good luck trying to correct people on that. And probably it wasn't even her that said it? If it was instead some German nobleman wondering why poor people didn't just eat krosem (whatever that is). I can easily envision the look on his face. I've seen it on the faces of several dime-store philosophers as they peer into the Starbucks bakery case while debating the meaning of life and their duty towards the lower classes. (Not that they would ever put it that way, of course.)

In fact, I can envision a whole Orwellian passion play in which the bakeries are nationalized, marzipan-workers are unemployed and the entire populace is subjected to the tender mercies of the Canilla Brigade. Society begins to crumble at the edges, and eclairs are smuggled from house to house under cover of darkness...

Okay, maybe not. But seriously. I thought this was from The Onion at first. And then I realized that this wouldn't occur to any remotely sane person, even one who comes up with this kind of insanity for a living. And then I realized that I should be really, really upset for all Venezuelans (minus the mass-murdering f**kheads, obviously). And then I realized, hey, there are a bunch of "cake or death" jokes in this.

*Static sound effect*

No one will be surprised to find out than none of the "cake or death" jokes I came up with are fit for public consumption.

Remorse For Intemperate Speech...

noreply@blogger.com (Qualia Dodgson) — Fri, 17 Mar 2017 14:30:00 +0000

Yes, that should be the title of this blog. No, I'm not changing it.

So anyway, this is a picture of last year's post, "the Orange Catholic Bible," in which I managed to simultaneously offend Catholics, Dune-fanatics and atheists. With bonus points for the middle-brow reference which pissed of my less "well-read" friends. Clearly I have a lot to live up to this year.

Unfortunately, I don't really Drink,* so there's a limit to how unintentionally offensive I can be (haven't found it yet, but that's not the point).

I did remember this though. Yeats, being Irish, 'gets it.'

I RANTED to the knave and fool,
But outgrew that school,
Would transform the part,
Fit audience found, but cannot rule
My fanatic heart.
I sought my betters: though in each
Fine manners, liberal speech,
Turn hatred into sport,
Nothing said or done can reach
My fanatic heart,
Out of Ireland have we come.
Great hatred, little room,
Maimed us at the start.
I carry from my mother's womb
A fanatic heart.

Yeah. I know it's a stretch. (It also shouldn't surprise anyone that this is one of the first poems I learned of my own volition.)

*You have never had a less fun drinking buddy. I take wine by the dram and I'm pretty sure that a hobbit could drink me under the table. I don't even laugh at your drunk-jokes. The only thing I'm worse at is hookah.

Anti-intellectualism (and other myths)

noreply@blogger.com (Qualia Dodgson) — Sat, 05 Nov 2016 00:23:00 +0000

I don't think anti-intellectuals really exist. To redefine what has become a hopelessly muddled trope: there are those who tend to think and those who don't. People who think aren't necessarily intellectual, and intellectuals don't necessarily think. This is really, really obvious to any thinking person. Different pro-thinking people choose to spend their time thinking about different things, and there might be various cognitive or emotional factors which affect their ability to think clearly, but the willingness to think should be the most important qualification. Discussing the aforementioned deficits is useless, and it only makes sense to address things that you have some control over.

It's possible to teach almost anyone how to filter the ideas coming towards them, to look carefully at things, test them, and give them all a fair trial regardless of their source. Intellectualism™, though, bundles the trait of being 'pro-thinking' with formal academic achievement (among other potentially useless things). It also has numerous connotations which, depending on your 'clan', tend to make you either favorably or unfavorably disposed towards Intellectuals™.

Now this is a natural (if not epistemologically sound) way of chunking information. But we have a problem when these other distinctions become so important to people that being 'pro-thinking' quickly becomes the least important part of the Intellectual™ Platform. It becomes about whether you vote Democrat, or believe in global warming, or listen to classical music.

I don't care whether someone believes in global warming though. I care why they believe or don't believe. Their belief doesn't necessarily matter. Their process does. The fact that most people who don't believe in climate change have absolutely sodding terrible processes is almost irrelevant, because a disconcerting number of people who believe otherwise have equally terrible ways of reaching their conclusions. Those same people can't be relied on to reach accurate conclusions on any other subject, because they arrived at the right answer by accident.

Yet we still consistently categorize people according to their beliefs and not their willingness to think. It's as if the world is being run by teenagers, where your 'identity' (which is necessarily defined by everyone else and their 'identities') is more important than your thoughts.

Of course I understand that this is part of how people think (or don't). Of course I admit that this happens with other groups as well (hipsters, just for an example, look at the lack of substance that constitutes most people's 'self-expression'* and then perpetuate the problem by doing the exact same bloody thing), but if no other group is defined by their actual beliefs, at least intellectuals should be.The irony of a clique that claims to be pro-thinking simply because they fly the right colors is so absurd that it borders on unbelievable.

Yet rather than being the champions of rationalism and useful abstraction as they should be, Intellectuals™ have managed to set themselves up as a mere class of elites. As with most elitist social structures, eventually the hierarchy stops reflecting the actual merits and abilities of its members. ...and the sad fact is that people outside of the clique can often see this, and their few valid criticisms are written off precisely because they are coming from outside of the group.

This is why 'anti-intellectualism' has the support that it does, because of this clannish way of thinking. This is why politicians can go baby-kissing and hot-dog-eating and basketball-watching and it works; you do the little populist song-and-dance and then you can say anything, because all of that taps into our ridiculous fear of elitism and the fact that someone else be more right than we are. Of course, it is a rather vicious cycle; anti-intellectualism does contribute to Intellectuals™' defensive, cultish ways of thinking and acting, but - guess what? - most people get offended, and offensive in turn, if you imply that you're smarter than them and that you know better. Why, then, are we surprised at the results when there's an entire cohort of people doing just that?

I'm not throwing stones, I've done it myself. Even if you're well-intentioned and widely-exposed, it's easy to write people off because they... say something stupid, misspell something, or espouse an idea which you know is just factually wrong. But the mentality of converting people to a better set of ideas (or, far worse, regarding them as intellectually irredeemable) instead of giving them the tools to think just makes things worse. And it is like a kind of conversion; if I were your average person and it were made clear to me that I had to, say, be a fan of James Joyce, or admire Mirot's work, or abandon my beliefs about the sanctity of human life etc, etc, then of course I would rebel against the idea. Because it's insane. And yet we constantly expect that of people, putting them off of real education and self-betterment because they don't fit our idea of what thinking people should be like.

</pause>

So yes, this post happened because I've had to listen to Trump's neo-Fascist whale vomit for over a year. (I thought I could make it to the end of the election, but no; if I have to suffer, I refuse to suffer alone.) Yes, obviously, Trump is a friendless acid spot on the back-buttock of a weeping society, but it's a much bigger, older problem than this 2016 ****fest. (I'm not yammering on about the decay of society or some sort of academic Armageddon, but individual traditions can fail, and that can affect entire nations and/or people groups.) Western Intellectuals™ should be the ones defending the values of the Enlightenment, and instead -like every other failed academic tradition ever- we've been content with ritualized demonstrations of competence, happy to sit behind the walls, watching the barbarians ululate while true civilization crumbles around our ears. (There must be an anthropology joke in there somewhere, but I can't bring myself to make it.) My point is that true intellectual freedom has to be preserved in the same way as any other freedom, by constant, good-faith application of effort, and there are a lot of fields (and settings) where that's not happening.

Because what people fail to recognize is that you can't preserve culture, leaving it to sit there like a piece in a museum. Which, actually, is a terrible metaphor, because people tend to forget the enormous amount of time spent preserving, restoring, curating and shooing away snotty-nosed children that makes museums possible. And that's the point. Most good things are hard. This isn't a revelation. But since I'm continually running into people who seem to think that it is, I figured it couldn't hurt to say it again.

</pause>

This is wasn't a rant. Honest. It was all a metaphor. Really.

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*Sorry for the scare-quotes there, I try to avoid them, but it's the only way I can type 'self-expression' without breaking out into hives.

A toddler-aged letter about American politics

noreply@blogger.com (Qualia Dodgson) — Sun, 16 Oct 2016 22:55:00 +0000

I feel completely emotionally unequipped to say anything about current events. I don’t think anyone is anywhere near horrified enough by the state of both global and American politics. …and this is not just because of the recent “election.” I don’t think national horror-levels have been where they should be for decades. (I’m also reasonably sure that this is not just because I grew up surrounded by curmudgeons.)

…but while cleaning out my file system I found this; something I wrote explaining American politics to someone within the context of an international class on Framing (i.e. The New Rhetoric) that we were taking, and which communicates my feelings more clearly than anything that I might manage to put into words right now:

The first thing you need to realize is that American political culture is centered around the idea of conflict. For example: the notion of ‘good triumphing…’ wins out over that of ‘problem solving’ a vast majority of the time. Successful frames almost always take the form of “defeating a problem” or “overcoming resistance.” We have what is essentially a two-party system, which precludes any sort of nuance or explicit compromise between the opposing ideologies. Implicit in all of American politics is the frame of ‘you have only two choices.’ As a result there is a sort of “bundling” of ideologies that takes place; you must, in effect, take a political party as a package.

Because of this, American political frames are often very shallow. The ‘conflict frame’ in particular motivates people to get involved, even if they have no real understanding of how the government works. So high voter turnout does not imply that those voters are truly invested in what happens. We are also very event-oriented. What I mean by this is that we tend to think of things in terms of isolated happenings, rather than as systems (i.e. something needs to blow up in order to get our attention). Once the Big Election is over we don’t care though, and very few people bother to participate in local government. Despite the fact that anyone can submit legislation, realistically, only the people we have elected to an office (or crazy people) tend to do so.

This tendency ends up making our process continually less democratic. There are also two other extremely undemocratic factors in American politics. One is that incumbents are rarely replaced in the Federal and State governments. Once you have a seat in the Senate or in Congress you are rarely replaced. Another is that elected officials can establish non-elected “agencies,” effectively extending their political influence beyond their terms of office.

Because of the fiercely partisan nature of our politics, you can never admit that you were/are wrong. This in turn makes actual compromise very difficult, as it is taken as an admission of inadequacy — as if your Party couldn’t solve everything on its own. Implicit in every debate is the idea that Your Party could fix everything if only the Other Party stopped getting in the way. In fact, any frame that denies the omnicompetence of your Party is likely to fail.

The same goes for Nationalism. Anything you say that can be twisted and made to look “unamerican” (an actual word, I’m not making it up, promise) immediately kills a debate. So humility, inclusivity, and the ability to adapt are all framed as negative in the American political scene. This is mostly because we are event-focused, and anything that doesn’t seem actively patriotic can be portrayed as negative.

Additionally, certain kinds of ethos-reliant rhetorical appeals do not work; you cannot claim to have superior knowledge or ability, even if you possess those things. We have a certain fondness for “experts” of course, but they are almost exclusively used when we agree with them, and we simply ignore them when we disagree, because, like everyone, we hate to admit that someone might know better than we do. In America this is socially acceptable, and, while it sounds cynical, misanthropic and just generally awful, we’ve basically managed to institutionalize ignorance.

So because most voters don’t really care about our rich and robust legal traditions, reason, or any of the other machinery of liberty, the thing that tends to work best in American politics is the “I’m just like you” frame. …and it tends to work precisely because it isn’t true; Americans are almost fanatical when it comes to pretending that class distinctions don’t exist. In this we are like Britain’s differently-evil-twin. We don’t want to actually do anything about class distinctions, but god forbid that you should mention them. So if a public figure appropriates certain symbols of Americana (e.g. eats hot dogs, or takes his kid to a baseball/football/whatever game) or talks in a certain convincing, “down to earth” way, that appeals to the average voter, it’s likely to work, even though we know that it’s a total sham. One reason for this is probably because once you’ve decided that you’re similar to someone, it’s much harder to disagree with them, and a lot of those kinds of decisions are subconscious. It’s also absurdly effective because American politics is dominated by catchphrases, watchwords, and shibboleths etc. etc. so much so that we tend to automatically tune those things out, and this particular frame is not necessarily verbal.

All of what I’ve said so far applies to both parties. However, it’s very neat, tidy and wrong to say that both parties are the same, even if it feels that way sometimes. To someone like myself, who is more libertarian (but please guys, should we ever attain a libertarian utopia, don’t be assholes) than anything else, of course they seem the same, but while they may share certain nauseating similarities, they do attract different kinds of people, and that’s not something that can be ignored.

Depending on the Party, appeals to tradition, to nationalism, to “Freedom” and “Rightness,” are all very popular. Basically, the last hundred years has been about how many Woodrow Wilson speeches you can rip off without anyone noticing. Increasingly the Right tends to talk about things like “restoring our former greatness,” and the Left talks about about fixing society and multi-lateralism. The key in American politics is to choose a frame that makes your opponent look passive and defeatist, regardless of your party.

Again, because our politicians rely so heavily on pathos and ethos to sway voters, the notion of… “piety,” is very important. I don’t mean it in a necessarily religious sense, but in older, more Roman sense. Most public figures spend a great deal of effort on proving their (dubious) moral competence. So most public debates center not around “the issues,” but the people discussing the issues, and their status as symbols for a larger political omnibus…

Obviously my political views have only been confirmed by everything that followed.

…and yeah, it goes on after that. And yeah, I write long letters. And yeah, I start sentences with conjunctions, and I write run-on sentences, and I play fast and loose with punctuation, because, hey, I was a grammar nazi for a long time, and there ain’t no grammar nazi like a reformed grammar nazi.

This is also on Medium. I'm not sure which I want to be using in the future, but it's not so hard to copy-and-paste until I decide.

The Newest Year

noreply@blogger.com (Qualia Dodgson) — Fri, 01 Jan 2016 20:30:00 +0000

I don't actually make classical New Year's resolutions. One reason for this is because I think they're pretty much useless; I am a 'concrete goals' sort of girl. Another is that I really don't have the necessary attention span. New Month resolutions are more my speed.

But -in an attempt to have at least something in common with the rest of the humanity- I've decided that perhaps this is the year to make one. Just one; I don't want to get distracted. So I've promised myself that I'll start blogging regularly again. Because I have all the traditional resolutions (exercising, eating healthy, and just being generally perfect) in the bag already.

Now, I don't actually expect to blog regularly this year, but I'm hoping that a failed New Years resolution will satisfy that niggling feeling that nothing has gone wrong yet and that, therefore, something terrible must happen. This is superstitious in a lot of ways, but I do a lot of dumb things to placate my subconscious and, unfortunately, this is nowhere near the dumbest thing I've done.

So there. I'll be blogging again, but not really.

(I have no idea what this next year will bring, but so far it's been pretty good.)

Also, thank you D for making New Years collard greens. I had no idea that was a thing.

Change in Management

noreply@blogger.com (Qualia Dodgson) — Thu, 05 Nov 2015 01:37:00 +0000

I've decided that the funds in my piggy bank are now going towards the establishment of my own country.
In order to prevent certain very predictable disasters -- like, for example, annexation -- it will be based on a small island, lacking in natural resources, with minimal fresh water, no desirable infrastructure, and no recreational value whatsoever.

This will make it a less tempting resource for overbearing foreign powers (like Tonga.) Far away from civilization, multiple species of predators will guard the safety of my new republic. If at all practicable, it should be surrounded by large and dangerous rocks, which would make approaching the island nigh on impossible. I'd also like lasers and a bunker in the volcano; I'll have to look at our budget.

Because of the demonstrable flaws in all previous democratic regimes -- which tend to intentionally or unintentionally subvert the will of the people (i.e. voter's paradox, Arrow's impossibility theorem and a bunch of other things that people with the inclination and some common sense can figure out) -- the illusion of popular government should continue, but law and order will be maintained by a convenient oligarchy. Who knows? We might even call it an ad-hocracy just for laughs.

The original founders will probably constitute the ruling class for some time, so you had better buy in early to ensure that you have a satisfactory degree of control.

Because of preference falsification, all conversations must be submitted in contract form, exposing those with an intent to misrepresent their beliefs to prosecution in accordance with the studiously minimalist, coherently-libertarian justice system. Since this raises the cost of communicating, it should limit the dull, mind-numbingly boring and eye-gougingly frustrating social interactions to a minimum.

Part of our social agreement will be the outlawing counter-productive escalation of social signals (the somewhat arbitrary ends of the spectrum being makeup at one end with blood-feuds and college degrees at the other,) which will doubtless "harm" the non-majority which would benefit by misrepresentation of personal facts or the skewing of information curves, but will greatly increase total utility for the entire population. No one shall be allowed to begin a career unsuitable to them and detrimental to the rest of society simply because they anticipate pay-offs commensurate with their delusions of success in that field.

Also, on a somewhat related note: all accordions and cheap, plastic recorders are banned. Violinists must undertake an hermetic apprenticeship for a minimum of 2 years, and until their master can vouch that they are capable of producing sounds that do not resemble the sound of ligaments breaking, cats careening through the air at high speed, or the implosion of a magnetic train. This is a restriction which I'm sure everyone -- besides a small, automatically-disenfranchised minority -- will agree with. Along similar lines, poets should try out their new pieces on each other, rather than forcing us to experiment along with them. Billy Collins I'm looking at you.

...I haven't come up with a satisfactory solution for dealing with screaming children, perhaps we should all dope with prolactin and endorphins in the interest of continuing the project for multiple generations.
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Note, Edit, Whatever: I was talking with a friend a few days ago who asked some questions about why anyone can't simply decide to form their own state if they disagree with how things are done in their mother country. I laughed. For a really long time. I laughed for such a long time that I think I probably hurt their feelings. Also, as much as I'd love to address the questions they asked (or why we can't form our own country) both they and their questions were both very well-meaning and very politically incorrect. I don't think I'm currently prepared to expand the cohort of people that hate me that much.

So I decided to re-post this because the last few posts have been very whiny, depressing and just generally awful. How does the saying go? 'You have to laugh or you'll end up cackling madly as they strap you to a stretcher and pump you full of sedatives while you giggle about how Alan Greenspan looks like a baby wombat..." Or something like that.

Little House on the Prairie and Topless Protests: two sides of the same flawed coin

noreply@blogger.com (Qualia Dodgson) — Fri, 30 Oct 2015 17:19:00 +0000

I think I need to preface my remarks by saying: I don't have a problem with 'little girl fiction.' I have no unresolved issues with Louisa May Alcott, and I think that some unfortunate part of my subconscious still looks up to Anne (of Green Gables) as a role model. I suppose that I should also apologize in advance to anyone who likes Nancy Drew, Fifty Shades of Gray, Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman, Little House on the Prairie, Christy, American Girls, The Princess Diaries or anything by That Woman, who shall go nameless, but whose initials are: Stephanie Nymphomaniac Meyer.

...but it's not as if I'm going to have a Nancy Drew book burning. After all, what are you going to give a little girl to read? The Scarlet Letter? Really? Try to explain that book to a ten year old. Just try. (Although I do recommend The Literary Sense by Nesbit. Every thirteen year old girl should read it. It will make their adolescence a lot less painful. For everyone else that is.)

I still find something very disturbing in the background of these stories. Look, for instance, at Christy, Little House on the Prairie, even Little Women. These books are popular, at least in part, because they present a romantic view of the past. Yes, yes, we all knew that. Why am I wasting your time? But then think about the fact that these women were in pretty atypical positions of power and independence, completely at odds with the prevailing trends in the societies of the time.

Take Christy: the quintessential good girl. Sweet, and kind, 'always clean and pretty' and just generally impossible to hang out with. In addition to which, she has her own goals, her own purpose. She has control of her own future in a way that few women did at the time. And the men in her life are cool with that. She's eventually rewarded for her insufferable perfection by having a tall, dark, handsome preacher pursue her, as well as a doctor, who, while not tall-dark-and-handsome, has an adorable Scots accent which more than makes up for his other deficits.

Laura Ingalls manages to make trudging miles to school every day -- and having your entire future hang on droughts, freak hailstorms and swarms of locusts -- sound romantic. While she's not exactly a bastion of feminism, she is at least a teacher before she gets hitched, and, because she's the main character, you never get the sense that she has absolutely no control of her life and is pretty much at the mercy of random weather events and the whims of petty little rednecks. (Please note that this is not a "thing about women." This is a thing about people. Most people, in most places, most of the time, have no control over their lives, don't know what they want and are scared to death to try anything new. If you can't relate... congratulations.)

In Little Women the only reason anything interesting happens to "the March girls" is because their father's off fighting. Realistically, life would have been pretty boring with him there, no matter how awesome he was as a father. And Dr. Quinn. Don't get me started on Dr. Quinn. Nothing along the lines of that TV show would ever have been allowed in my house when I was little. But really, a female doctor who heads out into the Wild West? Can we get any more unlikely? Oh wait, we can. Because there are wise old Indians who respect her as a source of beneficent wisdom. And a rugged cowboy/whatever who crushes on her and is perfectly alright with her being a proto-feminist.

Why don't we look at some real women and see how likely this is? Look at Harriet Tubman. Mrs. Pankhurst. Maude Gonne. Nellie Bly. Abigail Adams. Florence Nightengale (she didn't believe in germs, but she was still pretty cool.) Mary Shelley, Jane Austen, the Brontes, Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf... (are you starting to get the idea that pretty much the only thing that women could do was write?)

The fact that I can pull out a random list of women who were either famous at the time, or who have been recently popularized Ada-Lovelace-style, should at least imply that women didn't suddenly start being awesome in the middle of the twentieth century. They've been awesome all along, but these women faced significant sacrifices for their independence. They weren't Dr. Quinn. They didn't have everything. In fact most of them had pretty hard lives, comparatively speaking. It wasn't just because they were women either; going against the flow is always difficult, for everyone, and it probably always will be. If it wasn't, then everyone would be awesome. That is clearly not the case.

The problem is that our standards for awesomeness are totally dysfunctional. Western standards for success have grown continually more narrow. Your status depends on being in control of people, or your salary, or the number of papers you've coauthored etc. Just being good at your job is no longer good enough. This isn't just bad for women, this is bad for everyone.

I'm not saying that being competitive is always bad and I'm not interested in debating whether women are less combative because they're born that way or raised that way. We are, no matter how we came to be so. ...and because women, on average, are less likely to hit somebody over the head (physically or metaphorically) it makes women like me -- who are perfectly alright with grabbing somebody by their shirt collar, getting in their face and/or punching them in the nose -- aberrations. Now I could get all bothered by this and yank my shirt off and go yell at some people to make myself feel better, or I could recognize that maybe not everyone needs to be like me. Possibly more women should be like me. If they were, their salaries might be the same as men's, we might have fewer abusive relationships, women's suicide rates might be lower... but I'm not going to simply assume any of that.

Here's the thing: our view of equality has more to do with a few weird 19th century post-Britannic cultural quirks than any oppressive Patriarchy (I swear, some feminists sound like they're ranting about the Illuminati sometimes.) I agree, the post-Victorian model of women staying at home and managing the housekeeper and wearing white gloves and fainting at the sight of blood is flat-out creepy. Yes, the fact that from the time of Hammurabi women have been valued less and had fewer rights than men is pretty bloody offensive. Throughout history though, your average woman has worked. They had to. And realistically, it wasn't safe for women to be out alone. (When the best thing that you can say about a king is that he chopped off the offending body parts of rapists, you know something is wrong with the world.*) The reason that women have been oppressed is not because they're women per se. It's because it's human nature to control and use whoever is less powerful than you. A lot of the time that means taking your anger out on the closest thing with boobs.

However, at present, here in "the West," the situation for women is pretty good. Of course, women across the world are still horrifically mistreated and dehumanized, and when Western feminists 'get their mad on' about the perceived or actual injustices we suffer, I feel it minimizes and detracts from the incontrovertible human rights abuses that women face globally. I don't mean to say that we should ignore any genuine problem just because it's small, but many of the issues that bother many feminists are, at the very least, up for debate. Global human rights abuses aren't.

I don't think that makes me a bad feminist. I think I'm allowed to disagree on what positive rights are essential and inalienable. Negative rights are not negotiable: I have a problem with jerks who disfigure kids with acid just because they want to go to school. I think it's absolutely unequivocally wrong to prevent a woman from doing anything just because she's a woman. And I have major rage issues with people who circumcise little girls because of their weird hangups.

But all that is very different from the sense of entitlement that I see in most of the feminists I know and come into contact with. There is a big difference between feeling you ought to have something, and saying you don't have it because of discrimination (thereby getting yourself all furious so you can feel better...) and being explicitly categorized as a subhuman.

The 'Angry Feminist' picture of what women are (or should be) is just as unrealistic as the notion of good, sweet little Nancy Drew making her souffles and solving crimes and vomiting up the encyclopaedia at every conceivable opportunity. Whether this propaganda is intentional or not doesn't really matter (in my opinion). It's still there, it's still part of our psychological backdrop, and the stories we hear (real or fictional) are the building blocks with which we construct our personalities. Perhaps it might be better if, instead of modelling ourselves after characters in books or, worse, magazines, we looked at the women (and men) in our lives, and decided to act like the ones we admire most.

Also -- which is what started this whole thing -- what does taking your shirt off prove? Can someone explain this to me?

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*This is in William the Conquerer's obit in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (I think. If I'm wrong, feel free to lord it over me.)

...and actually, while I'm on the subject, I don't apologize to the people who like Fifty Shades of Gray. Or Twilight. But it's become kind of de rigeur to trash both series, and I'm even more of a contrarian than I am a snob.

Other-worth

noreply@blogger.com (Qualia Dodgson) — Wed, 23 Sep 2015 18:51:00 +0000

I'm sorry, but someone ought to say this:

You're not beautiful just the way you are.

In fact, if we're having this conversation, you're probably ugly. And you know what? That's okay. You matter as a person, you are valuable, you are loved. But you aren't beautiful.

It makes me angry to see people confusing beauty with worth, especially their own worth. Sure, some primitive part of our brains confuses being good with being beautiful, with being intelligent/kind/interesting. That doesn't mean it's actually so. If we could all start acting like adults about this that would be awesome. (This goes for a lot of things, but this is a blog post, not the Pensées, so we're sticking to one subject.)

Telling a child he's intelligent doesn't make him smarter. It makes him feel smarter. Which does... well, it does precisely nothing. Until, of course, he figures out that he's not intelligent and people have just been lying to him, or at least confusing the hell out of him, for his entire life.

Just because you love someone and see them as valuable does not automatically provide them with the cornucopia of talents that you wish they had. Sorry, them's the breaks.

So what do you tell a child who maybe isn't quite as smart? You praise them for the actual effort they put in. You tell them you love them. You let them know what their diligence can really earn them. Which, oddly enough, is exactly what you tell the clever child, who will otherwise think that they should have the world handed to them on a platter, from which they can eat with a silver spoon. All this because of some accident of environment and genetics -- which they had no control over, yet which they still implicitly claim credit for.

It's the same with pretty people. Life is genuinely harder when you're not beautiful. Like it or not, people are shallow and our brains like symmetry. And we tend to favor things we like. Pretty children get more positive attention in school. Pretty people get more attention period. They actually can get away with things by simply batting their eyelashes. We automatically assume that pretty people are smarter. So if you're not attractive, you've already started life with one major deficit. That just plain sucks.

So given how people are, do I blame others who spend seemingly ludicrous amounts of time and money trying to alter their appearance? No. Because people are jerks. Life is hard enough without someone immediately judging you, your overall health and evolutionary fitness upon seeing your misshapen nose.

The issue is not that people do any of these things, it's our willingness to delude ourselves. If you mean "valuable" say "valuable," if you mean "beautiful" say "beautiful." It's not that hard.

No matter what we believe, we can't all be above average. It's not possible. This much is obvious. (I hope.) What's not obvious is why we blame people who aren't above average for their "innate" mediocrity. Since most of us are mediocre in most ways, it's kind of a shitty thing to do.

...but what do you expect when you measure people's worth by their intelligence or attractiveness or conviviality? What about someone without any of those pleasant attributes? (Such people exist, I guarantee you.) If all we are is a collection of attributes and affiliations, if you measure a human's worth by their utility to you... such a person is not worth anything. So rather than face the icy implications of being utilitarian, or choose a different philosophical outlook, we lie to ourselves and say that someone is what they are not. Because reality is a slippery concept and truth is painful.

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Edit: Someone pointed out that while Penguin classics can get away without putting the accent aigu on 'Pensées,' I, miserable plebe that I am, cannot. Things have been updated accordingly.

Far From the Madding Crowd

noreply@blogger.com (Qualia Dodgson) — Sun, 09 Aug 2015 13:24:00 +0000

I am generally the last person to complain about movie adaptations. It's ridiculous to expect the same thing from two very different art forms. Personally, I don't want to sit through a seventeen hour version of The Old Man And The Sea (I don't want to sit through an hour and a half version either, but that's beside the point.) Because of that I'll forgive certain film-making conventions and shortcuts. For instance, The Great Gatsby was really good; the frame story was entirely justified and using modern music was necessary to avoid making it feel like a period piece (which would have been directly contrary to the aims of the novel.)

That said, the constraints of a given art form do not entitle anyone to butcher a beautiful (if slightly dated) story. The screenwriter is, of course, completely free to totally alter the tone, timeline, and characters, but he shouldn't expect us to be happy about it. (I'm sure David Nicholls cares deeply about my opinion. Deeply.)

Warning: Spoilers and ranting ahead.

There are some things I understand. Having Bathsheba introduce herself is jarring, but forgivable. And some things, like introducing her on the road, with its little mirror scene (which provides a contrast for her later, totally unselfconscious ride to fetch oat bran) would have been completely impractical. A detailed description of Gabriel Oak would have been likewise impossible to include. The movie's version of Gabriel "Farmer" Oak does present him as modest, diligent, and recently prosperous, but his character doesn't come across in the same way at all. Hardy's Farmer Oak is almost immediately human, and he doesn't take very long at all to go from 'real' to actively endearing. We hear about his watch, which, we are told, has a tendency to either go "too fast or not at all." The hour hand also slips. It's really only a watch "as to shape and intention." And so we learn about his stargazing, both as a way to keep time and for the sake of simple appreciation.

Then for some reason Nicholls begins messing with the characters. In the book Gabriel Oak mentions to Bathsheba's aunt that he was going to propose, and then leaves when her aunt implies that Bathsheba has multiple admirers, instead of proposing directly as he does in the movie. So he retreats, saying that he is only an "everyday sort of man" and he knew his success would have been contingent on being "first comer." Taking that into consideration though, he is still in a better position than Bathsheba, having risen in the world due to his diligence and skill. She still refuses his offer of marriage, and we like her a little for that, even though she seems a bit self-absorbed. In the book the contrast between them is heightened by the differences in how they speak. Oak speaks with a rural accent, in painfully sincere and direct way, and Bathsheba sounds educated, but she tends to blurt things out. In fact, almost everyone speaks on the same register for the entire movie, and Hardy's use of dialect to show power differentials and cultural disparities is pretty much ignored.

So she refuses Oak and then comes a major reversal: she leaves for her uncle's farm, he loses all his sheep through no negligence of his own, and he eventually comes to her as a suppliant, asking if she needs a shepherd.

Nicholls took substantial liberties with Bathsheba's character. I do understand that not everyone is up on the social context of the 19th century, and I thought that some of the explanations/modifications were good. (A prime example would be the Sergeant Troy's kiss being turned into a 'kiss plus grope,' which doesn't really go against anything in the book and makes everything generally more clear for an audience who probably would think 'so he kissed her, what's the big deal?')

It is hard to get across the idea of how independent she is within the context of her conservative rural culture, and I admit that. An interesting thing though is that she never breaks the more explicit rules of her society -- which the less self-possessed Fanny Robin does. She breaks the rules not because she's rebellious, but because she's determined and stubborn. Another thing that doesn't come across well is how impulsive she is. She runs after Oak to correct her aunt's misinformation, she sends the valentine saying "Marry me" to Boldwood on a whim, she opens the casket etc.

Which brings me to my second point. She only considers marrying Boldwood because of how guilty she feels about her thoughtlessness in sending the valentine. She never (as the movie says) has a notion of how unbalanced Boldwood is, but she's genuinely sorry that she caused him distress, and considers marrying him out of duty and pragmatism. She did after all ask him to marry her, even though it was a joke. I'm truly not sure why that was changed. If anything, marriage is a less serious proposition now.

Which brings me to my third point. There are several shameless, and completely useless insertions and/or alterations. The valentine in the movie doesn't actually say "Marry me," shifting a good deal of the blame from Bathsheba, and making Boldwood seem immediately unbalanced. Then there's the insertion of Oak's dog, Old George. Which moves the story along in precisely zero ways. Worse, Movie Troy feels jilted and is portrayed as being totally ignorant of Fanny's mistake in going to the wrong church. Which is far more forgiving than Hardy's characterization, where he doesn't marry her (partly) because he was annoyed at having to stand there embarrassed at the altar. He's much less interesting and far more forgivable as result.

I'm not sure why they made this decision honestly. Sometimes there is just a clearly defined bad guy. Troy is that bad guy. He maliciously plays with Boldwood, letting him think (not unreasonably, given Troy's general character) that he bonked Bathsheba without marrying her. In 19th century England this is Very Big Deal. Boldwood is terrified for Bathsheba -- because it's typically the women who get found out, don't you know -- and offers to pay Troy to marry her. Troy toys with him a bit more and then refuses to take the money, revealing that they actually are married. At which news the reader sighs, knowing Troy to be a complete reprobate.

Oak knows this too, and tries to warn Bathsheba, but -- big surprise here -- she doesn't pay attention. Fanny appears, dies, and Troy says nasty things to Bathsheba, who for once, is entirely blameless. He swims out into the ocean and is taken for dead. Boldwood renews his suit, and it becomes apparent to certain people that he's really losing it.

Disaster ensues, during which Oak is, as always, completely devoted. Troy gets shot by Boldwood. Why the shooting scene was moved outside I'm not sure, but anyhow... Bathsheba cradles Troy's head in her lap, takes complete command of the situation and what follows are the only quotable sentences that didn't get included in the movie:

"She was of the stuff of which great men's mothers are made. She was indispensable to high generation, hated at tea parties, feared in shops, and loved at crises."

Troy dies, Boldwood gets committed, and Bathsheba lives miserably ever after. Except not, because Oak makes sure everything is settled and then informs Bathsheba that he's going to America. Bathsheba decides that she really doesn't want him to leave.

In the book, the climax is a truly nineteenth century discussion, talking about her reputation etc, and Oak admits that he was leaving because people were talking about him and her getting married, which he bitterly refers to as an "absurd" idea. But Bathsheba is now more amenable. The chief point though is that they're friends, and have suddenly become equals (chiefly because of Oak's decision to move on actually.) The movie pretty much loses that, and it ends with them kissing.

That is my issue with the movie. In trying to update and explain the original story the movie morphs the resolution into a cliche. I understand why a modern audience might not be receptive to marriage being the happy ending. But Hardy's point isn't about marriage per se, it's about devotion and independence. Oak's devotion is the same whether he's her bailiff or her husband, though his actions change.

Oak is actually in a more or less subservient position to her for the entire book, either as suitor, or shepherd, or bailiff. Towards the end there he even agrees not to leave for America on her request. It's not to say that he always obeys or agrees with her, but Hardy put him in relatively powerless, dare I say, typically "feminine" position. For example, he's described as having "a quiet modesty that would have become a vestal," and in the denouement Bathsheba says that 'it's almost as if she'd come courting him.' It's not Bathsheba's agreement to marry him that is important, but her willingness to rely on someone (though she's actually been relying on him throughout her entire time as a farmer.)

In the movie though, Oak doesn't change his mind until she shows romantic interest again. This (among other things) changes Oak's character completely, and as a result a book that was a total subversion of gender norms has been completely castrated.

Maybe it's one of those stories that just shouldn't have been adapted. Like the remake of Brian's Song, perhaps it doesn't have any impact when you take it out of context.
_____________________________________________
Note: I did watch the movie at 40,000 ft with a fever, a horrific earache and a head full of snot. So it's possible that I'm being a little unfair, and that a bit of all that carried over into my opinions on the movie. But I actually read the book when I was sick too, so I don't think that's it.

Also: throughout the book Bathsheba seemingly engages in what a less enlightened time might call "coquetry." (Due to modern advances in linguistics we now call a woman who acts in this manner a "cock-tease.") But, as with her valentine to Boldwood, she genuinely doesn't mean any harm, and she doesn't do it intentionally. (I forget the section of the novel that implies this, but it's there somewhere.)

value of a marginal "friend"

noreply@blogger.com (Qualia Dodgson) — Fri, 10 Apr 2015 07:39:00 +0000

The value of a "marginal friend" as a false signal.

"Every additional second you spend thinking allows you to make a slightly more thoughtful answer but also increases what he expects of you. If he is very sharp, he will be read your reply and possibly see deeper into the question than you did making you look bad. "

I become very worried when I find my neurotic thoughts posted on the internet in more eloquent form. The world is far crazier than I give it credit for and everything I say could potentially be that much better....
Because my mental process is something more like this:
"Oh, interpersonal interaction required. Ineffectually attempt to shut down flight-or-fight response. Realize that every second you spend increases the expectation of the initiator. Try to answer quickly and not sound stupid. Look at stupid response. Try to find methods that do not result in stupidity, while understanding that since you've wasted this time the quality of your thought should reflect the extra time that you've "spent." Iterate. Eventually realize that it's not working. Give self a lecture and try to sound intelligent. Marginally better. Understand that you've been thinking about this for a comparatively long time, and you can only blame internet connectivity if it's actually happened because you completely suck at lying. Write a decent response that addresses every point except the single most obvious one that you thought of first (you forgot it because it was so completely obvious)"
Solution: pretend you are actually swamped and exhausted and finally managed to jot off a response, which also has the pleasant side effect of making people think you have a life... :)
(this does work better if you're actually swamped and exhausted occasionally.)

So of course I had this all worked out before, but not verbally condensed (as you can see,) the problem is that I never apply it. Also my brain should be completely messed up because I already have a spot in my brain tagged "the value of a marginal friend" and it relates to a completely different thought process....

Your Controversy Means Nothing

noreply@blogger.com (Qualia Dodgson) — Sat, 27 Dec 2014 15:48:00 +0000

Your "controversy" means nothing.

Not just because I don't care. Not just because we're going to waste the next half an hour -- with you bowdlerizing John Stuart Mill, and me intentionally misquoting Emerson or somebody because you haven't read him and are powerless to stop me -- but because this entire discussion is pointless. Don't care what we're talking about: philosophy, poetry, politics... it's all absolutely, truly, quite literally pointless. Because you're not going to say anything original, and if I do happen to arrive at something new and interesting you're just going to misinterpret it as the orthodox bull shit that you're expecting me to say. People have probably been arguing about whatever it is for centuries, and at least one of us is no Socrates. So why, then, are we arguing? Possibly because abstract discussions like this provide a convenient conduit for our mutual hatred, but I'm not going to bring that up because you'd probably think it was cheating.

Speaking of cheating:

I'd like to point out that I have no particular problem with it. Rhetoric -- whatever poor deluded Aristotle thought -- is all about cheating, but the type you're engaging in is generally considered bad form. First, saying a thing louder does not affect the structure or content of what you've just said. Nor does repeating it. (Hint: rearranging the dependent clauses and using some dressier synonyms to reiterate your original statement is still repeating yourself.)

This stuff happens though. I get it. We're human. In the heat of the moment I might call your mother a sodden pile of misfiring neurons, seemingly incapable of motility, coherent speech or self-awareness, or really of anything more advanced than reproducing increasingly warped replicas of herself. Or I might do it in cold blood later using a transparent evasion like this. Point is: I don't take it personally, I hope you don't either. What I do mind, very much, is that every time I attempt to prune your "thesis" down to a consistent and manageable size you expand on it and each conflation, factual error, or logical flaw sprouts a new dandelion, or two new heads --- whichever hackneyed metaphor you prefer, I'm trying to keep it on your register.

You have, in short, abandoned the ritual forms of debate, but let's just say that Nature did not equip you to be the brilliant, more-flaunting rebel you imagine yourself to be. In fact I seem to remember having this exact same argument, or riffs on it, with various members of your tribe. The tragedy of all this is that each time you open your mouth I will (foolishly) assume that you are making the most logical form of your argument and try skip to the part where I point out the underlying rift in our various worldviews, from which all our disagreements flow. Because if both our arguments are rational (an unfounded assumption, which I'm willing to make for the sake of the argument, and my continued sanity) the only way we can disagree is if our premises/logical priors are different. You, however, are dead set on attacking the limbs and outward flourishes, instead of recognizing that the vast majority of disagreements come about because our central beliefs about the nature of the universe are violently opposed. I don't see why. Is it maybe because none of us can handle being friends with someone who thinks we're wrong, and so we try to surround ourselves with people who think exactly the same things, in exactly the same ways and use exactly the same jargon and even speech patterns as we do? (Bonus points if they look like you too.)

Realistically, it's not as if I can expect you to change your mind, so the only way to get past this and get you to shut up is to make you look like a fool. Which is, I understand, frowned upon in polite company. We're assuming -- again, without a lot of basis in reality -- that we're actually in polite company. Let's pretend though, that for a moment clear-headed, non-egoistic rationality has made a rare incursion into the social sphere, and I can then explain to you why this isn't working:

First, your argument is probably based on a premise which you present as generally assumed by most right-thinking people, but on closer examination fails to line up with what people actually think or do. This is pretty much the definition of "contentious."

Secondly, even if a thing is generally assumed, an appeal to authority, or even consensus, is the worst possible way to win me over to your line of thinking (short of broiling me over a fire and forcing me to recant.) Even if most people agree with you, this is no guarantee that you're right. True, if there's reason to believe a thing, all else being equal, people will believe it. This seems reasonable to believe. However, this doesn't mean rule out false positives, doesn't preclude people jumping on a likely-looking bandwagon and it doesn't mean that all of everyone's reasons are based on evidence. If delusion in one area is the only way you can keep a little finger hooked around the rest of reality, then yes, it 'makes sense' to be delusional. Still, bayesian implication aside, if you have a majority, you've got might, which due to transitivity makes right.

Because of this, if you're unlucky enough to be in a minority you have to fight two battles. You have to make the case that there even is a debate and that you're not just being stupid, then you need to actually win the debate. As a result, if you're going to have heterodox views, you often have to know more than everyone else. By which I mean: if you're going to make the case that we should worship Baal, or that Wittgenstein was actually a time-travelling manifestation of a multi-dimensional entity who liked to troll humans, be my guest, but you're going to need to find a lot of evidence. ...and honestly, though the universe is both rich and strange, most things just don't seem interesting enough to devote your life to. Which both explains why most of us don't spend our careers becoming experts in cuneiform and also (sadly) why your average person has no interest in how their phone or gravity works.

At the same time I don't need to be a climatologist, an economist, or even all that clever to see that carbon credits have enormous potential for abuse. It's pretty obvious what with how a lot of people are greedy bastards. Naturally, the most sensible thing to do when you're a greedy bastard is to hijack other people's altruism and make yourself unassailable. Attacking carbon credits means you don't love the planet etc. This is obvious (to my mind) error, but for some reason people respond to that sort of thing.

Note that the argument I'm making here is not the same as the "I can imagine it happening so it probably has" line. No, in political science you have these sort of corruption attractors. The point is not that I know which companies or people are going to find ways to extract rents -- legally or illegally, ethically or unethically -- from a bad policy, but that someone eventually will. Because: history. It's more an ecological argument than a mechanistic one, and it's one with significant evidence behind it (philosophically, induction sucks, but it's kind of the best thing we've got.) On average, people are going to spot an opportunity for corruption and on average I'm going to being right. Plus, the average and the total effects are all that matter when you're discussing policy.

Speaking of which, it does not matter how short I am, I will find some way to knock you on your ass if you give me another anecdote. Anecdotes are absolutely *insert long string of profanity* useless. They help no one. They mean nothing. Don't tell me how you know someone who reacted badly to a medication. I don't want to hear how badly a tax "hike"/"reform" affected your uncle. It's not important what some professor of yours thought. Yes, they are part of the data set, but don't take them out of context. Anecdotes give the abstract a human face. That's nice, to the extent that it arouses our sympathy, and empathy, and makes us better people, but good journalists, lawyers and politicians are exquisitely, excruciatingly aware of how vulnerable the anecdote makes people to emotional manipulation. So either you're not aware of what you're doing, which is genuinely frightening, or you are, which pisses me off. So stop it.

Sure, if you have no other data, a large collection of anecdotes may help you to begin gathering evidence, and I would even go so far as to say that they might help you act in a better-than-random fashion, but if you don't have anything better than a random third-hand comment on something we should be out there collecting data, not sitting here arguing.

For that matter, we could be doing anything more useful than arguing. But we're not going to do that either are we? Because the reason we argue is not to change things, but to feel like we're doing something, to feel like we're aware and that we care.

I don't need to prove to you that I'm a thinking adult who reads the news and took an undergraduate philosophy class. Maybe you do. Good for you. Find someone else to talk to.

Because if I actually start talking we're going to end this conversation with you thinking I'm a prejudiced idiot and me thinking that you're a unimaginative barbarian, but the good news is that it won't change anything. Because there are other people running the world, and the effect of our personal philosophies on humanity's total utility approaches zero. I'm not talking about cabals and international conferences and whether some ballot gets counted or not. You're drifting along currents of an ocean of convention, instinct and other being's appetites. What, are you actually going to suggest that people are less conformist when it comes to important things? Have you looked at politics recently?

So while you retain the illusion of political/social/moral efficacy I recognize that the my opportunities for change are painfully limited (and while you may not sense my barely contained rage about this let me assure you this is not complacency or even resignation, merely my assessment of the available data.) While it might make your evanescent life more pleasant to feel like an considerate, ethical, effective person, your results indicate that you are just as useless as I am, but you're in denial.

There are a lot of reasons for it. One is that it's just too soul-crushing to admit that most of what most people do is entirely vapid and useless. Another is that even if you want to do something meaningful you are fighting inertia. Also entropy. And a couple of other physic-y things. My point is that if you want to bang your head against several other billion people, a few millennia of tradition and infinite ignorance go ahead. Really. I mean it, go ahead: it sometimes works.

Of course, chances are that if you're an average person with average abilities in an average place and time, you're not going to be successful. But hey, I'm not going to try to stop you, hell, I might even join you. I do feel compelled to point out though that there's almost always backlash. I believe it is possible to change the world. It's just terrifyingly, vivisect-you-and-watch-someone-eat-your-heart-while-you're-standing-there-trying-not-to-bat-an-eyelash hard. So no, I don't blame you for not doing anything. I don't blame most people.

..but if you're not going to do that, just shut up and drink your hipster beer.

Edit: I feel much, much better now.

Food Inc.

noreply@blogger.com (Qualia Dodgson) — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 21:08:00 +0000

I hadn't watched it originally, because I didn't expect it to provide any new information. It didn't...but it was a brilliant piece of propaganda. Propaganda in the perfectly neutral sense, not: the Nazis telling each other how much better the world would be 'if we could grind those dirty Slavs under our perfectly clean boots,' sort of propaganda.

Just as an example: in the beginning of the movie they pan across some of the vast cornfields in the midwest. This was a great move, because you can say that there are around 92.3 million acres (sic) devoted to growing maize and 75.2 million acres (sic) is devoted to soybean production. All of it's true. But trying to make people understand the scale of our grain/seed production is nigh on impossible. Spending a good minute scrolling over vast fields is a start though. It doesn't matter that it was only the tiniest fraction of what's probably in the surrounding area, it makes an impact on people, which is what the entire film is about.

It takes a lot of space to feed the animals that feed over 300 million people, and it would still take a mindboggling amount of space to feed us even if we all became vegetarians at this very instant, but we don't even eat all of it, we export around 1,850 million bushels a year(that's around twice the amount that we use to make HFCs and all that junk.)

Our exports are one of the issues that Food Inc brings up: because curiously the subsidies that create low grain prices here in the U.S affect other countries (we don't live in a vacuum, who'da thunk?) This means (simplistically) that Mexican subsistence farmers who grow maize can't afford to grow their own food and get to look for work here in the U.S. There are only so many menial tasks to go around, but the slaughterhouses have their arms open wide, so a large number of "undocumented" immigrants end up working for low pay in terrible conditions. Why is this not "slavery?" Beats me. There's also a lot of debt slavery, chicken farmers who are hundred's of thousands of dollars in debt and make maybe 20,000 a year (I assume that's after taxes, but still..) because the companies they sell to also loan them the money to build chicken coops and dictate how the chickens are cared for. This happens in other livestock situations, but they talked about chickens. Probably because the daily removal of a dozen or so dead chickens was visually impacting.

"From seed to the supermarket" was a great way to explain this vertical integration (whether it's technically vertical integration or not, that's how they were explaining it) and the consolidation of control in a few large production companies. The good thing about this is that if one company decides to make a beneficial change that makes a huge impact on the whole market; the bad part is that the standardization and lack of variety -- in fact the industrialization -- of our food production has actually increased the quantity, but decreased the quality of our food (compare ancient einkorn and emmer protein percentages to modern wheat's for instance.) This was happening before the Green Revolution, but the process has been accelerated by genetic modification and other new agricultural methods. Not only is our food lower in quality (and flavor, but that's secondary) but because of the antibiotic-resistant bacteria it's actively unsafe.

I felt very uneasy about the meat safety section. They had a mother who lost her toddler to a particularly nasty serotype of E. Coli. Of course I feel bad for her, and of course I understand that one person talking about their little kid has a more personal impact than saying "16 people died yesterday due to contaminated meat," but I still felt like I was being manipulated. What she wanted was more regulation and because of how things work here in America I doubt that it would help much. It's rather like unions, they were wonderful and completely necessary in the first part of the century, but they're of limited utility now that certain well delineated rights and protections are established. Currently they're really only good for hampering decision-making and providing teachers I know with some way to complain about non-voluntary organizations. What meat companies should be forced into is labelling meat batches, and they shouldn't be allowed to impinge on people's free speech. They also should actually pull "recalled" meat off the market, the woman in question later found out that her son had eaten meat that was supposedly recalled some time before and people were still serving it.

They had several people who were unwilling to speak (because they depend on these large companies for their livelihoods,) but there's also the fact that people are prosecuted when they say anything negative about the structure or production methods or either agricultural development companies like Monsanto or livestock processing companies like Tyson.

Documentaries like that are created in order to increase awareness. They are basically proseltyzing, which is a technique that I don't have a problem with. It really depends on what the "cause" is. How else are you supposed to tell people about something? And even if you could do it perfectly neutrally, who would then have an incentive to educate anyone on a specific subject. They don't have any viewpoint that they want to promulgate, so the argumentative basis of human logic is ignored, so not only do people not have a reason to "teach" but other people aren't convinced, they don't understand as easily and they don't remember.

That's one thing I found very striking: the end. A lot of the time you'll leave a movie/documentary feeling all fired up and thinking "This must be stopped! We're going to make the world better!" but without anything real to do. So what they did at the end of the movie was list real, achievable goals for individuals. They didn't say: "We need to stop this" or some other diffuse thing, they didn't even say "buy organic..blah blah." They said "Eat more vegetables... cook at home...buy local produce.. because businesses have to respond to their consumers" all sensible things, which a lot of us could figure out, but they were definite and practical. That's how people remember and how things get changed.

______

by the way, the resources I've linked to may not be the best of everything available, but I didn't link directly to voluminous sources. Those are easily found, but I felt it would disrupt the flow of thought. It's all verifiable. If you have better and equally condensed resources please tell me.

The super-inconvenient truth

noreply@blogger.com (Qualia Dodgson) — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 18:40:00 +0000

I admit, I continue to hold beliefs that are somewhat inconsistent and irrational because it is too painful for me to face the truth. Here are a few of my unwarranted -- well let's just be blunt, they're irredeemably stupid -- assumptions:

There must be a problem with the Google News algorithms, because people can't really be more interested in the Prince of England's wedding than natural disasters, scientific discoveries or actually important political developments.

A vast number of people forged their college certificates rather than managing to escape university intellectually unscathed, without the critical thinking skills or creativity necessary to hold a moderately interesting conversation.

My time could be better spent arguing with the sort of people who try to convince me of the objective superiority of relativism than knitting or repeatedly banging my head against a table.

People do not really spend their time writing what ends up being millions of fanfics, they are all created by simple literary generator with an tendency towards using lurid adjectives. And of course no one reads these fanfics; it's a purely intellectual exercise.

There are not people in the world (whom I happen to know and love) who believe that we should cut government spending while providing more "free" public healthcare. ..and these are not the same people that complained about "socialized medicine" in Britain.

Even if all of the above beliefs are false, I'm not certainly doomed to a life of lonely elitism, which will slowly ripen into a simplistic and undiscriminating sort of jerkiness.

if sanity is determined by consensus.......

noreply@blogger.com (Qualia Dodgson) — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 04:02:00 +0000

God help us.
“Note that we are both skipping the sanity rally. I’m against restoring sanity. My comparative advantage at dealing with insanity is too great. I want to continue to extract rents from it, please.”
from http://thecustomofthecity.blogspot.com/2010/10/shakespeare-festival.html

….and yes Othello does strike me as a very bad choice for newlyweds. Shakespeare is awesome anyhow.

Oxfordians?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 22:10:00 +0000

Justice Stevens' views on who actually wrote Shakespeare's works.

^tourist trap displayed for ambience

The theory that they were written by a nobleman named de Vere was originated by a man named J. T. Looney ( the name probably doesn't help things.) Apparently O'Connor feels the same way, but wouldn't commit herself; though that's okay, because Stevens was happy to do it for her... (I'm really, really trying hard to forget that these people practically make laws) However though Scalia might be right in assuming that Stevens "aristocratic" bias, it is still not as large as a potential "populist" bias supporting Shakespeare's authorship. Seriously who's going to buy the idea that some Earl wrote these plays? Of course Harold Bloom (who's apparently some sort of literary god) thinks that De Vere's :..pale lyrics suggest that he could not write his way out of a paper bag."¹

How you're supposed to figure out any of this out without devoting a lifetime to it, I don't know; considering that his story ideas were popular tales that had been circulating before eitherof them were born (sometimes for centuries.) I don't know why I posted this, except that I think it's funny --- I'm probably biased because I'm very frightened that these people (and de facto legislators) help run the country. It's like a socially acceptable upper-class and highly rarefied thing that appeals to those who might be conspiracy theorists had they been born with a slightly different socioeconomic status.

To be fair, I remember reading an argument that they were all written by Marlowe, and besides a having to construct a conspiracy which framed his death in 1593 it was pretty rational.

________________

1. From the Best Poems of the English Language, 1st Edition, pg 98 (where he also calls Sir Raleigh -- who was actually a decent poet -- a "walking poem")

Map: Population Egalitarianism

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 14:55:00 +0000

Map of the World's Countries Rearranged by Population
I'm not really sure what the purpose of this is; since low-population density countries are that way primarily because they can't support a larger population. So it's useless, but still pretty cool for some reason.
Actually maybe some countries haven't capitalized on climate change, or they are capable of supporting a larger population, but get greater returns from having fewer people with lots of land.

Narrative Therapy

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 02:31:00 +0000

This is great! I was considering becoming an author so that I could work out my issues by writing unbearable fiction and turgid novels, but this is much faster:
http://evolvingthoughts.net/2010/10/08/my-life-as-a-book/
I appear to have skipped ahead to the 'past my prime and tweeting about it' stage already.

There might be a few problems with writing my autobiography at such an early stage (while complete fabrication may be commonplace -- you still need something to start from.)

Blurb: (it doesn't matter what is here -- same thing goes for all of the recommendations on the back cover from the worst writers in your generation.)

Preface: I'm going to have some difficulty with this part as most of the authors that I admire have passed on, are no more, have ceased to be, or have expired and gone to meet their maker.......

Introduction: I was born in an ordinary hospital, on an ordinary day, to ordinary parents, who would have guessed that from such a prosaic entrance into the world..............

Chapter 1: An account of a normal boring childhood that I successfully manage to represent as traumatic.

Chapter 2: In which I overcame the disadvantages of being raised an educated WASP in a WEIRD country, attended Berkley (and annoyed the heck out of every possible non-libertarian there -- in the hopes that their humorous reminicing gets on the special features DVD of the movie that they made from my autobiography.)

Chapter 3: I make my millions selling dog-tracking software, and then spend my leisure time winning Nobel prizes, and confirming the Riemman Hypothesis.

Chapter 4: After becoming famous enough to be persecuted by an opposing religious or political sect, I wrote a book about that.

Chapter 5: Climbed Everest and wrote another book.

Chapter 6: Where I do something unbelievably stupid, and my ashes are sent into space just to annoy Robin Hanson and my bio is finished by my AI named SAM, who also was the ghostwriter for my book about Everest.

Eugenics: Con

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 14:17:00 +0000

"Smart people" regularly imply by their words and the policies that they desire to implement that: "we would be better off if all of those ignoramuses didn't breed." Which is inaccurate, not to mention unethical, and a very dangerous thing to say explicitly----if you like hanging out with the rest of the civilized world. But older and wiser people than myself have more brilliant and concise arguments:

Being smart is better than being stupid, but being stupid and alive is far better than not existing at all." Bryan Caplan Against Hi IQ

(from marginal revolution)

I earnestly beseech you guys..........

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 01:06:00 +0000

A vow to mine own self:

I shall be most careful to refrain from certain methods, that immediately put in one's mind the idea that the author was educated solely in victorian literature (due to the unnecessary explanations, which insult one's intelligence) that with a certainty, gives rise to the pervasive illusion that such persons were incapable of proper punctuation.
Therefore, in order to conscientiously affirm and reinforce this new life-goal, I've prepared a series of notes on the aforementioned subject. So, to remind myself of the peril of such linguistic forays into the diabolically antecedent world, and to avoid the tortuously lengthy and uninformative introductions of my forbearers:

I oughtn't use the word 'must.' In addition, 'hint of' (with it's subtle allusions to a soiree,) I perceive will cause me to be exposed to much mockery.
Use of the words: 'cordiality,' 'chap' and the making references to 'chimney sweeps' as everyday fixtures of contemporary life, is also quite daft.

Therefore, I charge you, in this virtual conclave, a gathering of like minds on the internet, to assidously avoid unwieldy verbage, antiquated memes, and 'tired and worn' sentence fragments.