Justified!

I have noticed that I rarely post things of a philosophical nature. I'm always posting stuff about science. I think it's because science is very much in the public eye, recently, and philosophy is, well, not.

Well that all changes today! For my first trick, I'll discuss these happy little things called theories of justification and truth. The two theories are called foundationalism and coherentism. In a nuthshell, the theories both try to set out a system by which one can determine if the knowledge they have is either true or at least justified.

Both theories have been around for, well, as long as philosophy has been around. Which is, ummm, a really freaking long time. Foundationalism holds that all of our beliefs are based upon basic beliefs which need nothing else to explain why they are true. For example, I know A to be true because of B, and I know it true because of C, and I know it true because of D, and so on, and so forth. Foundationalists theorize that there must, eventually, be basic beliefs which are the "end" of the chain.

These basic beliefs must be self-justifying. They must be true/justified by them self and it must also be apparent. The most famous of these basic beliefs is Rene Descartes "I Think, Therefore I am." If you analyze that statement, it is undeniably true. It says nothing about you. You could be a giant brain in the Matrix. All it does is confirm that you exist, since you couldn't be thinking about this if you didn't exist. A perfect, basic belief. In foundationalism, truth and justification are intertwined. Since you have ultimate justification to believe something if it's true, finding something that is true is also finding justification.

The opposing view is that there are no basic beliefs, and that the chain of justification would actually never end. This isn't a very nice position to argue since it falls into what's called an infinite regress. Basically, that means your line of logic carries on ad infinitum, allowing no conclusion. In the world of philosophy, this is bad. We want conclusions. We yearn for them. We dream about them at night. So two options pop up, you can loop the logic chain around, e.g. A>B>C>D>A. That's circular logic and only works in religion. So our last choice is Coherentism.

Coherentism solves the infinite regress problem by linking beliefs together in a coherent web. A is not explained by B, instead, it is explained by a complex, interconnected system of beliefs B, C, D, E, F, and so on. As long as things "hang together" in the system of beliefs, one is justified in believing things to be true. Well, maybe not TRUE, since modern coherentism isn't too concerned with truth. Whereas Foundationalism has truth and justification linked, Coherentism splits up justification and truth into two, distinct pursuits, and all the better for it.

From this point on I shall be using my own views, as opposed to explanation. It may seem that foundationalism has something going for it, considering how famous Descartes little catch-phrase as become. Unfortunately for the foundationalists, that's the only basic belief they've found, thus far. Going on four hundred years later, you'd think they would have found something else.

Coherentism has taken on a view very similar to that of mathematical positivism. In it, we can never "know" what reality actually is, we can only develop theories that best explain the empirical data we have. This makes a lot of sense to me since it also jives with theories of cognitive psychology stating that we never "know" anything. We only know what our senses allow us to know, and that is not reality. Thus, truth is irrelevant. Since no matter what we think truth is, we could be a brain in the Matrix, and that truth is an illusion. As such, arguments dealing with the coherence theory of truth will be ignored, since I think truth can never be obtained, and trying to obtain it through coherence is, by its very nature, contradictory.

This modern coherentism has answered, I feel, almost all of its detractors sufficiently. Classic arguments are usually truth-centered, and do not involve justification. Such as, Bill can have a system of beliefs, "The sun is made from yogurt, grass is purple, and all dogs have eight legs." In coherentist theory, this is coherent and Bill is justified in believing all of those beliefs. They are obviously false, but that is no argument at all. It is false and incoherent in OUR system of beliefs, not Bill's. This is known as the isolation objection, and I think it's without merit. Bill is fully justified in his beliefs, since he only has three and none of them contradict.

How the system of beliefs "hangs" together has also been a point of some contention. I again see no problem. The system of belief hangs together based on contradiction. We are justified in believing something until another belief enters our system that either directly contradicts or implies a contradiction with other beliefs. If one contradictory belief coheres with more of the system than the other, it is taken as justified and the other belief is discarded or analyzed as unjustified. If both beliefs cohere equally well, we are at a dilemma, which requires more beliefs to enter the system to solve the problem.

Earlier, I mentioned that coherentism cannot be used to determine truth, and that's pretty accurate. The "Matrix" problem, once known as the "brain in a vat" problem before Neo came along, looms like a cloud over coherentism. This is known as skepticism. Don't confuse this with scientific skepticism, which simply calls for evidence to back up statements. Philosophical skepticism is, in a nutshell, the argument that statement "A" may not be true because we are actually in the Matrix. It was in an effort to escape this philosophical dead-end that Descartes formulated "I think, therefore I am." He was a foundationalist, but also a rationalist. He believed that ultimate truths could only be achieved through rational thought, and that no matter how deep a deception (The Matrix) goes, we can think our way out of it to attain truth.

Descartes was also an espouser of innate ideas, also known as a priori knowledge. It was through this that he believed that we could gain knowledge of truth. For example, he believed that God was innate to every human being. We are born with a readiness to know God. This innate knowledge is the basic tool we must use to escape skepticism. He would later use this to formulate one of the most universally derided statements of modern philosophy, otherwise known as the "Light of Nature" argument, since his own skeptical arguments ripped it apart. He was most likely doing this since he was desperate to re-prove the existence of God to himself.

Descartes failed to find truth, and he eventually fell into an argument that was eerily empiricist. He relied on what he saw, not what he deduced, which psychology, physics, and even cheap magic tricks show us, is totally unreliable. I say there is no truth, only coherent beliefs.

But, alas, these are rather old arguments. There is a brave new world of foundationalists vs. coherentists, the world of meta-beliefs. I will continue that discussion next post. I will also discuss my own views on truth, and theories of justification within specific systems.

The Year of Our Fucking Lord.

I can't stand the recent push to change the chronological system that we all know and love, namely B.C. and A.D., to something more P.C. and B.S.

It's a movement by a bunch of politically correct, self-righteous twits who seem to think that it's insulting to non-Christians to recognize dates as based on the A.D./B.C. system which stand for Anno Domini, or Year of the Lord, and Before Christ.

Yes, this is obviously referencing Christian ideology, but at this point, who cares?! The usage of A.D. and B.C. isn't some tacit recognition of the superiority of the Christian faith. It's absurd to think it is. And if you do think it is, I have almost no doubt that you're an idiot since only an idiot would bother to be insulted by such a cataclysmically inconsequential subject. It's like being insulted because the metric system of measurement is based on the Latin language, and that we should make one based on ALL languages because those poor Chinese scientists who must use the system are tacitly recognizing the superiority of the Latin language.

More over, I would be far more likely to be insulted by the idea that simply playing the name game would be nearly enough to assuage any insult I might feel. It's semantics! A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet. It doesn't matter what we freaking call the years, they're the same thing. 100 A.D. is the exact same thing as 100 C.E.

Are you going to try and tell me that the C.E. (Common Era) system of naming isn't based at ALL on Christian history? That the silly gits who came up with the system did so completely on their own and just, coincidently, started their system on the exact same year as the Christian system? It's absurd.

The origins of the system are meaningless. No one cares and a lot of people don't even know. It's arbitrary, just as the change to the ridiculous and vaguely insulting idea of B.C.E and C.E. promulgated by retarded P.C. advocates is arbitrary. I've been using B.C. and A.D. my whole life. I'm a violent, vitriolic atheist. And yet, I don't care. If someone as anti-religion as me doesn't care, no one should. I shall continue to use A.D. and B.C. for the rest of my life.

Long live the Lord.

...

One of the things I hate about philosophy is that it takes forever to write nothing.

Mix It Up.

I've been pretty good, I'd say, in staying focused on my blog in the few months it's been alive. I've avoided falling into the traps of so many bloggers who start a blog about a particular subject and immediately begin writing about other things. I would like to point out that this is INSANELY difficult for me because I love a variety of other things. I just wanted to vocalize this. Not sure why. I think I'm feeling self-righteous. Go me!

I, Doofus.

I never brought it up in my previous post about the Discovery Channel show 2057, primarily because it wasn't mentioned all that much in the show itself, the prospect of robots. Now, considering how fantabulously cool robots are, the fact that robots were barely mentioned, I think, betrays how non-viable robots are as a real aspect to our near future.

Most of our visions of near-future robots were created decades ago, but great sci-fi writers. What's funny is that their near-future musings placed us IN the near-future. We are in the age of robots, as futurists so many moons ago so thought. Where are the butler-bots, Rosies, and Datas? They're not here, that's where. The best we have is a robotic vacuum cleaner that doesn't do a very good job.

As far as futurists go, the age of robots doing everything under the sun is always just a few years away. The pinnacle of our achievement is still Asimo, who is now seven years old, and his abilities are extremely limited and costs nigh on a million dollars to make. Would you pay a million dollars for a robot with limited abilities or three years for a maid/butler with vast, adaptive abilities?

Robots are not viable today and will not be viable for a long time coming. For the far-foreseeable future, robots will be very expensive, which means that they will be the exclusive domain of people with money, who will be much better served with human servants. Think the prices will come down and allow the working stiffs who could actually use the help to buy robots? Think again.

Crap in today's economy is cheap. It's only getting cheaper, too. Unfortunately, this doesn't apply to mechanics. Cars are getting more expensive, not less. Things like computer printers, lawn mowers, and bicycles all cost the same as they did years ago or more. It's because mechanical products cost a fixed amount to make. You can make manufacture more efficient, you can reduce labor costs, and you can find cheaper materials, but you can only go so far. Our crap is getting so hideously cheap because of a move towards inexpensive, easy-to-make, solid-state devices. This only applies to robots to a degree. What we can easily make cheap in robots has been cheap for a decade; the computer parts. The other parts, the motors, gears, servos, sensors, and the like, are expensive now, they were expensive ten years ago, and they'll be expensive ten years in the future.

Robots will not be cheap for a very, very long time. By 2057, they may only cost multiple thousands (In today's money), but for what end? Will people actually decide that they should get a loan to buy a robot to help them around the house so they can work more to afford the robot? I seriously doubt it. I can imagine a market of lazy people with few financial obligations buying a cleaning robot. Or perhaps robot janitors who can clean 24/7 for corporations who have run out of Mexicans. These are very speculative ideas about small markets. Regardless, the idea of a future full of robots doing things is bunk. It was bunk with Asimov, and it's bunk with Asimo.

Well, What About an A-Bomb?

I know that in certain movies, you can not invade them with certain systems of logic if they function on other, distinct systems of logic. For example, a movie about magic (or majiiiqcck as new-agers say) can not have science brought into it or it all breaks down.

Unfortunately, movies about magic are frequently brought together with modern times. Harry Potter is a good example. Yeah, yeah. All the wizards at Hogwarts are very powerful, but, could they stop an A-bomb? Or, again, any one of the 93,476 modern-day vampire movies where vampires are loaded with bullets and knives and whatnot but keep coming. Well, what about an A-bomb? Like the Grand Poobah vampire in John Carpenter's Vampires, what would have happened if he got nailed with Fat Man.

I'm sorry, but this is actually a knock against movies, for me. If the movie is set in modern times it must be subject to the rules of modern times. Like the bus that picks up Harry Potter in the third book/movie. It frantically dodges people on the road as it drives around at warp 5, and it's explained that people don't see because they choose not to see. Well, yeah, but the bus is still physically there, in some way. So whether they can see it or not they could still walk into it. And what about the tracks that carry the train? Do people just not notice them?

My favorites are still vampires, werewolves, and other such ergot-inspired delusions. I guess ol' B-Dogg Stoker didn't imagine A-bombs. What's more, he didn't need to. But now, if you're writing a movie about magic, vampires, or perhaps magical vampires, I beg you to ask the question, "what about an A-bomb?"

My God Man! Do You Sleep?!

Interestingly, Discovery Channel is pairing the "2057" series with another series, the first of which premiered tonight, called Futurecar. It's convenient since my previous post was about nothing BUT the cars. Lo and behold, Michio Kaku is in that too! This guy is everywhere!

In general, I was pretty happy with the show. There was no real fanciful prognostication going on. It was pretty well grounded in actual advances taking place in the world of cars. It didn't offer any commentary on those advances, which would have been a nice touch, but it was entertaining and informative enough.

And, sure enough, Moller and his Skycar tied up the end of the show. The show said, and I quote "[Moller] isn't a realist. He's a futurist." Ok. That's a good thing? A futurist who isn't a realist is an idiot. I could say that in 100 years we'll all have our legs removed and replaced with cybernetic Segways. That makes me a futurist. It also makes me about as far from a realist as you can get. You need to be both a realist and a futurist to make predictions with any weight at all. Without it, you're just blowing smoke out your ass.

It's a Message From the Future-ture-ture-ture!

How many of you saw the show "2057" on the Discovery Channel a few days ago? I knew it was going to be pretty tripe-y, but even I was surprised. I thought we had given up this silly, super-futuristic prognostication back in the days of the World's Fair.

I was blown away by how absurd it was. And also, is Michio Kaku in EVERYTHING nowadays? It seems a documentary can't be made without getting him involved. Does he have any time to teach? Does he have any time to EAT?

Ok, maybe my earlier sentiment needs to be tempered. It was a decent bit of sci-fi/educational stuff. Still, I think it would have been a much better show if the predictions had been less based on how cool the prediction looks with CGI effects and how feasible the prediction actually is.

On that note, I would like to bitch and moan about that dude and his flying car. It sounds like a children's book. A Boy and His Dog, a Man and His Flying Car. Ahhhh. Regardless, I am here to tell people now, and for a very long time, WE WILL NOT HAVE FLYING CARS. Much like Michio Kaku, I see that blasted flying car in every damn documentary about cars or the future I see.

They always hold it up as though it's some kind of proof that we will, indeed, be buzzing around in the stratosphere in fifty years. No. We won't. That guy has been hawking that contraption for years and it's just as unfeasible now as it was when he first got the idea.

Let's look at it and see why. First, the argument that there's TONS of sky up there, and our traffic would never get bad enough to cause air traffic jams is stupid. Yeah. There's a boatload of sky up there, assuming even distribution over an area. But much like traffic now, people will all be going to the same place.

Imagine taking LA's clusterfucked highways and just putting them in the air. Yes, the jam wouldn't extend out as far, but the jam at the actual point of arrival, namely, the city center, would be one thousand times worse. All the people taking off and landing would cause jams and accidents the likes of which we've never seen.

And speaking of accidents, there is one advantage to the flying car. It gets rid of a statistic. We would no longer need to distinguish between fatal and non-fatal accidents. All accidents would be fatal. Much like airplanes, there's really no middle ground. You're either perfect or dead.

And yes, every now and then, airplanes enter a zone that is less-than-perfect, not-quite-dead. But, and this is a big but, they survive because of the immense skill of all involved. Planes that should have gone down land because the pilot is great, forged by thousands of hours and flight and training time.

The average, every-day driver has none of those things and there is no way that we could institute a mass, training program for flying car pilots. Just think about the idiots you meet on your morning commute. Would you actually want those people driving /flying a 3,000 pound bullet at 200mph? It's a recipe for disaster.

Now think about the way people manage their cars. The only reason we don't have planes dropping like flies is because of intense care and maintenance. Large planes are overhauled every set number of miles, and small planes are usually owned by enthusiasts who love to work on their ride. And even then, what kind of plane do you usually read about crashing? The small planes. We have a few small planes go down every year. Multiple that by one million and you begin to grasp the problem.

Imagine all of the broken down cars you see on the side of road. If those had been planes everyone would be dead. And unlike jets or small planes, flying cars would spend almost ALL their time over heavily populated areas like cities. So when a flying car "breaks down" and then "crashes down," it turns into a bomb. Cars are great precisely because they're so forgiving.

There aren't just two states, fine and dead, in a car. Car's can run safely with low maintenance. Look at all the junkers putting down the road. Those are not cars you would want in the air. You can make emergency stops in a car. If you get into an accident, you simply get out and assess the damage. No, 99% of people need that middle ground. It's a buffer between them and dead. The extreme care required for a true flying car is just not feasible. For now, and long time coming, we're stuck on the ground.

Now, that isn't to say we won't have low-level flying mass transit. I think that's very feasible. All of the problems mentioned are gone. A flying bus would have a highly trained pilot, extreme maintenance, and would be forced to fly over specific routes as to prevent mid-air accidents. In fact, a flying bus would be a great idea. Why doesn't that guy get on it?!

P.S.
On a note about the Skycar specifically and not just a hypothetical flying car, it's a death trap. We have a hard time keeping our cars one engine running. The Skycar has multiple engines, ALL of which must run perfectly to keep the car in the air. Even better, they're rotary engines. Yep. The same rotary engines in Mazdas (Well, not the exact same engine). And yep, the same Mazda engines that have a tendency to blow up under heavy load. Moller's website says

"Wankel-type rotary engines in general are very reliable as a result of their simplicity. The number of moving parts in a Moller rotary engine (dual-rotor) is approximately seven percent of those in a four-cylinder piston engine."

That is a blazing simplification. Go down to the local garage and ask them about the Mazda RX-7's reliability. They'll laugh.

And also, the Skycar, but, as any flying car would probably be, is a Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) aircraft. Think about that. In the military, what kind of aircraft goes (Blackhawk) down all the time? And in airplanes, which extant airplane has the worst safety record in the military? Correct! The Harrier. The only plane with VTOL capabilities (well, it and that absurd looking Osprey).

The New Revolution

In a recent issue of Scientific American, well, namely the December '06 issue, there was an opinion article by Rodger Doyle. In it, he opined that the new "digital revolution" does not count as a genuine, new, industrial revolution. He relies on the distribution of the US workforce as a metric to determine the importance of the technological advancements. I feel that the very fact that I can write here as proof that he is wrong.

He lists all the great advancements made during the first and second industrial revolutions (the steam engine, germ theory, etc.), and says that nothing of the late 20th century rivals the changes effected by those advancements. This is an obvious opinion and one that I think betrays a shallow understanding of the digital revolution.

He uses a chain of causation from the lessening of importance for fertility in an agricultural society, since machines instead of children can now care for the farm, to the fading of social taboos such as homosexuality, divorce, pre-marital sex, contraception, and women holding jobs. For starters, I don't think this is the case at all. The social changes were interconnected with technological advancements but were far from reliant on them. The social mores that repressed women and behavior not conducive to child rearing had nothing to do with our agrarian nature. If it did, that means it would have to apply to other cultures, as well, and that's not the case. There have been numerous civilizations that relied on agriculture and didn't have the moral hang-ups that permeated our country for so long.

Social changes would happened with our without the industrial revolution. Indeed, it could probably be argued that social changes fomented advancements within the industrial revolution. I say that the internet and computers have given us grand advancements that have altered civilization. Most of the great technological advancements of today; modern cars, satellites, and massive medical leaps, happened purely because of the massive amounts of processing power given to us by computers. To say that 95% survival rates on cancer, new drugs every week, and the ability to repair physical damage that would have once been permanent hasn't had a profound effect on society is absurd.

Alright, I admit, these advances have been long in the making and maybe don't qualify as late-20th century. If that's the case, let's only take advancements from 1980 and up. That includes the home computer, the internet, and, um... cell phones. I'll go with the internet, for 400!

The internet is one of the great inventions. It's right up there with the automobile and electricity. It has had a profound effect on society and to say that it hasn't is I think both wrong currently and will be very wrong in the future. The internet has been around for a decade, essentially, and trying to gauge its effects now is, I think, pointless. We have no idea what its real effects are, but we can already plainly see that they are immense.

Doyle argues that the second industrial revolution created two new social classes, the industrial entrepreneur (e.g. Ford, Rockefeller), and the blue collar laborer. I think this is correct, but he then says the 20th century's inventions have only added to previous classes and not created new ones, displaying its inferior status as a revolution. The classes may be similar, but they have been fundamentally changed. Anyone, now, ANYONE can open a store. We no long have a merchant class because everyone is a merchant. Idea-men can now become billionaires overnight. They can do it without work or skill. The internet has created a new entrepreneur, one who sometimes doesn't know he's one until the money starts coming in.

Doyle's use of population distribution as the primary measure of the importance of a revolution is also seriousl flawed. I think a more accurate measure would be how people spend their day. Do they spend it working to survive, or working for money? Do they spend it in leisure, or chores? Do they move around? Do they sit still? Who are they and how do they live?

I think I'm getting off track. I guess this is what happens in the intellectual free association that blog entries frequently are. The main point I feel that's missed is that the internet and the personal computer have changed things in the sense that physical stuff is no longer what's most important. It's now data. Information. And the data is moving so much faster and is so easily available that one of the major barriers between classes, the accessibility of information, is gone.

It is also violently, and most visibly, changing the ways the economy works. Borders no longer matter. A store in Tokyo is now real competition to a store in Kennebunkport, Maine. The absurd thrashing that states and countries are doing trying to either open up or lock down the internet proves that the changes the internet will have are only beginning. Look at the law recently passed making it illegal for financial institutions to authorize payments to overseas gambling sites. We are witnessing the death of the old economy.

I think social change is more arguable. While the speed and availability of information changes things, it's not a change in the way things work that would, conceivably, alter life. Still, the massive economic and political changes caused by the internet more than raise the last 25 years up to the level of "possible revolution." Now, of course, do I think is a revolution? Not at all. But I at least think it for better reasons than Rodger Doyle.

And Speaking Of...

And speaking of guns. Here's a funny study. Apparently, states with high gun ownership have high homicide rates! Big surprise. Now, it doesn't matter which hypothesis is assumed, (more guns = more crime or vice versa), since it confirms my statement about gun owners; they are all wackjobs. Causation is immaterial. There is a correlation between gun ownership and murders, so if you own a gun, you're screwed.

Homicide Rates Higher in States with More Guns at Home (Via LiveScience.com)

We Have Idiots in Office Everywhere!

As some of you may have noticed, I have a "Save the Wolves" thingy on the right side of my blog. Well, the 63,000-some people who signed it is not a loud enough voice to hammer through the 40-inch thick skull of Idaho's current governor, C.L. “Butch'' Otter. First off, any man with a nick name, especially one as insipid as "butch," should never be allowed in office. Second, if they ever do somehow get into office, the state which elected him/her should be bombed.

I find it depressing and nauseating that a thundering Neanderthal like this redneck managed to get into office. He's actually politicizing the wholesale slaughter of the local wolf population because the poor, gun-toting loonies in the area are afwaid of dem! Pobrecitas! Jackasses is more like it.

Now, I'm not some weirdo who thinks hunting is wrong. In fact, I've got nothing morally against hunting (Confidentially, I don't really have morals at all. I consider them constructs from which I must escape). Hell, we have so many deer in the damn country we actually need hunters to off them! This is primarily because we've killed all the deer's natural predators, of course, but who needs logic, here? Pishaw!

So, I don't hate hunting, I just hate hunters! Long ago, hunters were important to gather food, but now we have supermarkets, so there must be another reason. It's not to save money. Guns, licenses, armor, trucks, and waiting for hunting season all cost a fortune. It's not for the freshest, most tender meat. That's farm-grown all the way. It's not for raw population control, or these guys would simple off the deer and leave it to be consumed by the natural processes of the woods.

So, in reality, what we have is a bunch of rednecks roaming the woods trying to... do... something. I'm not sure what. All I've ever heard is the macho bullshit about connecting with the primal man. Screw you! Primal man. Ha! I'm sorry, but going out into the woods with a high-powered rifle, scope, camo-flaj-ee, weird pheromone sprays and blowing away unsuspecting fauna is connecting with the primal man only if primal man had high-powered rifles, scopes, camo-flaj-ees, and weird pheromone sprays. If you strip down to your skivvies, clinch a knife between your teeth, and come out of those woods with three dead deer, I will buy you a drink, until then, shut up. You just like playing with guns because it's a big penis that shoots bullets (I don't necessarily subscribe to the object-as-penis idea, but it gets the point across).

Also, I'm not really worried about the wolves. The species will survive. This is more or less a screed I've had building in me for some time. I really, truly hate hunters. In general, I hate any gun-toting wackjob, but hunters earn special venom since they are everything I hate about myself. They are primal and ignorant (most of the hunters I've met border on retarded). And if they aren't ignorant, and are somehow intelligent and educated, then they are arrogant, self-obsessed, still-primal nitwits. They are stunning... no, shining... NO, coruscating examples of the slavering, ravaging, rapacious cavemen about which environmentalists scream their faces blue. They simply consume until their death, which, for me, can never, ever, come soon enough.

Idaho Governor Can't Wait to Kill Wolves (And is Generally Just an Asshole) (Via LiveScience.com)

Gnarly

How many of you knew that Gnarls Barkley was actually two people? I just found out today. Wild.

The Great Diaphragm in the Sky

A great deal of attention has been paid, recently, to the concept of a space "elevator." It's really only the newest idea in a long line of ideas on how to get into space on the cheap. Well, I guess "newest" isn't the right word since it's been around for some time. I guess the right way to describe it is as the most recent idea to become trendy.

Past ideas have included such winners as a giant sling shot, a magnetic lift, a magnetic sling shot, and the ever popular big-ass space shuttle cannon. The lift has really gained traction recently thanks to the emergence of carbon nanotubes, which promise new super materials. The main problem facing the space elevator is out of what we make the cable. When you have a cable that's thousands of miles long, the weight of the cable itself is enough to snap the cable. Ultra-light, ultra-strong materials must be invented before we could achieve the dream.

Well, along with carbon nanotubes, we now have meta-materials. These are atoms of known materials arranged in such a way as to give the final product entirely new properties, as though they were a new kind of material. These two new toys have given futurists and arm-chair dreamers (such as yours truly) the ability to say that the problem will be solved because LOOK AT THESE NEW MATERIALS! We'll undoubtedly get there with these!

Well I think that approach is stupid. In fact, I don't think we need the new wonder-materials. With materials we have now, materials directly on the horizon, and, oh yeah, a butt-load of money, we could develop a space elevator today. First, many of the big problems with the cable's strength can be eliminated if we start the cable at high altitude. The higher up we go, the weaker the gravitational force, the less cable, and the shorter the distance.

The focal point of my plan is rather absurd and dismissed by most, but I'm confident that it's sound. My idea involves balloons. Giant balloons, of course. The biggest balloons ever created. Imagine giant blimps, hundreds of times larger than the Hindenburg, supporting large, aerial, shipping platforms. We could have a ground based elevator attached to one at low altitude. This platform could theoretically be anchored to the ground. The second platform would be connected by yet another (relatively) short elevator to the first platform. By now, altitudes would high enough to be above the weather and storms would only ever be a consideration for the first platform. Finally, a series of higher platforms up into the mesosphere, with a final elevator into the thermosphere, where a station of some sort is waiting.

The second plan, and one I consider more cost-effective, is one where the first station is in the mesosphere. In this scenario, ground-launched airships deliver cargo to the station which is then lifted to two or three more platforms until delivery into space. Obviously, at such high altitudes, debris falling to earth will become a problem, but here is where I get to invoke the deus ex machina of future wonder-materials. The balloon skins will be made from indestructible carbon nanotube skin.

Oh, and to explain my title, I imagine that the large platforms would look similar to giant, inflated diaphragms in the sky. Or perhaps red blood cells.

Emotional Recognition.

A little while ago, some suspected terrorist was picked up in Rhode Island, my stomping grounds, for going to truck driving school. He was acting suitably strange. He was belligerent and didn't want to bother learning to drive in reverse. Suspicious? Nooooooooo.

After reading above the fold, the very first thought to pop into my head was a fear that he was not a terrorist, and that he just was acting weird, and that because of that, his life was now ruined. It wasn't a fear that the terrorists are at the doorstep. No. I was afraid that this guy who could very well want to kill me, was innocent.

This was a great moment for me because it confirmed that that which I fear cognitively is the same thing that I fear emotionally; the loss of freedom. I fear the oppression of our government and the fact that just because someone is acting strangely, a human right, the fear of others can prevent them from doing so.

I think about this with every court case, and every episode of Law & Order. In many ways, I feel that Law & Order gives people a very distorted vision of the world. On TV, the bad guy is ALWAYS the bad guy. The fact that when people get off, they may not be the bad guy, is lost in the show. I would let a thousand truly guilty people go if it meant keeping one truly innocent person out of shackles.

Benjamin Franklin's quote about those who trade freedom for safety deserving neither carries weight, today. It carries weight with me personally. I am not now, nor have I ever been, afraid of terrorists enough to change my daily behavior. On the other hand, I think about my freedom every day. I revel in its presence and fear its elimination. I fear it for myself and for other people, and my heart goes out to those wrongfully jailed. And now I know that is truly how I feel. Which feels great.

All I Know is That I Know Nothing

I've been having some cognitive dissonance, lately. It's a really pesky problem. Basically, I'm worried that I'm not qualified to even be writing for this blog.

I know that I have a broad spectrum of knowledge. I know that I'm better informed than most. Still, I rather embody the cliche "Jack of all trades, master of none." I know a lot about many sciences, but not enough about any to really call myself a scientist of any discipline. My only real area of scientific expertise is psychology, which is pretty simplistic as a science. It's, aside from all the mamby-pamby "study of mind" bullshit that gets bandied around, the study of behavior. I'm very good at it, at least, so I feel confident about speaking on matters of psychology.

But this is a blog about science in general, not just psychology. Hell, I even include philosophy in my title. I'm all over the place! In my own defense, I will have a degree in philosophy soon, so I'll be qualified to confuse you.

I'm not sure where it came from, but this is one of those moments of emotional recognition. I can recognize cognitively that I do NOT know everything, but it's an entirely different thing to recognize it emotionally, and realize, truly realize, that I know very little, and there are others out there who know far more than me. I just don't meet them very frequently. And if I don't keep that arrogance in check, when I do meet them, I'll seem like an ass. I deal with asses every day. I definitely do not want to be one.

Sigh. What can I say? I've managed to knock myself down a peg. I guess it's better than having someone else do it and then pouting for a week. I do that sometimes. So now I'm sitting here, writing for a blog I don't think I'm qualified to write for a readership of what is very likely in the single digits. That's actually kind of funny.

Aw hell. I'm sure if I say something stupid no one will notice.