I think that I'm going to stop talking about economics. I do have some background in it, but econ has become much like politics in that everyone has an opinion. My background is worthless against an asshole. The Wall Street Journal is seeing big increases in sales, and it's not because we have more bankers being born. EVERYONE is an economist these days. Because, like, reading the Journal is like being there. Like, yeah.
That's one of the reasons why I hate Austrian economists (the school, not the country). They reject most econometrics, which is the only thing that gives any structure to the conversation! This likely explains why most armchair economists are conservatives. You don't need credentials or evidence when your official position is that credentials and evidence are useless!
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Monday, November 15, 2010
Marketing People are Retarded
This subject is near and dear to my heart: Suits and ties and marketing people.
These people are the scum of the universe. They go out, get degrees in whatever, feel self-important, learn a vocabulary of impressive-sounding words, then weasel their way into positions of power
People like the guys in PBS's early 2000's Frontline, Merchants of Cool. They talk like they know what's going on, labeling behaviors, both group and individual, with semi-scientific sounding words, but their actions say that they don't. Their actions say that they don't have a fucking clue.
Why do these marketing people fail? Why do they not understand people? Well, because they're stupid. The merchants of cool have no idea what cool is because they themselves were NOT COOL when they were young. They were the freaks and geeks. That's the reason why they've become so obsessed with what is cool. They've dedicated their lives to trying to quantify the nebulous qualities that they so sorely lacked when they were younger.
Do you want to know what cool is? I'll tell you right now, and you don't even have to pay me. It's confidence and sexiness. That's it. You're selling them what they don't have. They aren't confident with themselves and they don't feel sexy. If you market like that and have a quality product, you're golden. It's that simple. Any marketing guy who says otherwise is saying so because he doesn't want to lose his job.
This isn't directly connected other than being the brainchild of retarded business people. Video game companies are raising prices and using tricks associated with online content to try and force more money out of people. Why would they be doing this? Why wouldn't they be using the wonder of the always-on digital age to try and create even more value for users? Why wouldn't they expand into services that the old paradigm of physical media didn't allow?
Because they're retarded, that's why. Books written ten years, reworked, edited, and finally published two years ago, don't have answers for the problems of today, and no matter how much time you spent in MBA school, that reality is inescapable.
For example, Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 2 are two games with downloadable content that is unavailable if you buy the game used. Game companies hate the used game industry, so they're trying to step over it.
Instead of, I dunno', raising value or decreasing prices, they're trying to squeeze more money from the balls of consumers with downloadable content that costs extra or by raising the prices, thus making used games even more attractive.
What will the $15 extra, to access the online content, mentioned in this recent lawsuit do?
Well, it will immediately drop the value of the used games a further $15. This on top of the $5 discount from buying used. So $20 off. Instead of $60-$70, the game is $40-$50. And even worse, the reduced value of the used copy will reduce the value of the new copy for hard-core gamers who frequently sell back games to buy new ones, just like cars. You pay more than a Kia for a Honda, but you can later sell it for more than the Kia, either equalizing the equation or, frequently, making the Honda actually cost less.
This is not a difficult concept! This is Econ 101 at a community college taught by Sloth from The Goonies! What the fuck!
These people are the scum of the universe. They go out, get degrees in whatever, feel self-important, learn a vocabulary of impressive-sounding words, then weasel their way into positions of power
People like the guys in PBS's early 2000's Frontline, Merchants of Cool. They talk like they know what's going on, labeling behaviors, both group and individual, with semi-scientific sounding words, but their actions say that they don't. Their actions say that they don't have a fucking clue.
Why do these marketing people fail? Why do they not understand people? Well, because they're stupid. The merchants of cool have no idea what cool is because they themselves were NOT COOL when they were young. They were the freaks and geeks. That's the reason why they've become so obsessed with what is cool. They've dedicated their lives to trying to quantify the nebulous qualities that they so sorely lacked when they were younger.
Do you want to know what cool is? I'll tell you right now, and you don't even have to pay me. It's confidence and sexiness. That's it. You're selling them what they don't have. They aren't confident with themselves and they don't feel sexy. If you market like that and have a quality product, you're golden. It's that simple. Any marketing guy who says otherwise is saying so because he doesn't want to lose his job.
This isn't directly connected other than being the brainchild of retarded business people. Video game companies are raising prices and using tricks associated with online content to try and force more money out of people. Why would they be doing this? Why wouldn't they be using the wonder of the always-on digital age to try and create even more value for users? Why wouldn't they expand into services that the old paradigm of physical media didn't allow?
Because they're retarded, that's why. Books written ten years, reworked, edited, and finally published two years ago, don't have answers for the problems of today, and no matter how much time you spent in MBA school, that reality is inescapable.
For example, Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 2 are two games with downloadable content that is unavailable if you buy the game used. Game companies hate the used game industry, so they're trying to step over it.
Instead of, I dunno', raising value or decreasing prices, they're trying to squeeze more money from the balls of consumers with downloadable content that costs extra or by raising the prices, thus making used games even more attractive.
What will the $15 extra, to access the online content, mentioned in this recent lawsuit do?
Well, it will immediately drop the value of the used games a further $15. This on top of the $5 discount from buying used. So $20 off. Instead of $60-$70, the game is $40-$50. And even worse, the reduced value of the used copy will reduce the value of the new copy for hard-core gamers who frequently sell back games to buy new ones, just like cars. You pay more than a Kia for a Honda, but you can later sell it for more than the Kia, either equalizing the equation or, frequently, making the Honda actually cost less.
This is not a difficult concept! This is Econ 101 at a community college taught by Sloth from The Goonies! What the fuck!
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Health or Education
I saw an interesting post in regards to Afghanistan asking whether it was more important for us to push for education or health. You can easily see the issue. People can't learn if they're sick, and people have a hard time not being sick when stupid.
From a foreign policy perspective, it's certainly a sticky issue. The organic growth of increasing health, education, and social stability that the west went through is something that would take multiple generations. We could wait that long, but we might not need to.
I think that it's a false dichotomy. Obviously, health must be covered first, but only for the students. If we can create an island of health in an otherwise destitute area, as long as violence doesn't take that away, we can then focus on the education of the healthy. A very small degree of health must be ensured before education becomes paramount, but after that point, education is without doubt the most important element in society building.
From a foreign policy perspective, it's certainly a sticky issue. The organic growth of increasing health, education, and social stability that the west went through is something that would take multiple generations. We could wait that long, but we might not need to.
I think that it's a false dichotomy. Obviously, health must be covered first, but only for the students. If we can create an island of health in an otherwise destitute area, as long as violence doesn't take that away, we can then focus on the education of the healthy. A very small degree of health must be ensured before education becomes paramount, but after that point, education is without doubt the most important element in society building.
Friday, November 05, 2010
Anti-Suffrage Propaganda
While I admit that the progressive perspective might be incorrect, the fact that "conservatives" are so damned stupid, they can't possibly be correct. If we incorporate a historical perspective, modern conservatives must own that their... ilk, were the same who, a generation ago, did shit like this. No, conservatives today would not argue that women shouldn't be allowed to vote, but the building blocks that underpin the beliefs are the same.Anti-Suffrage Propaganda (Buzz Feed)
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Macchiavelli Was Right
The events of the past few years has had a strong if gradual effect on my political, economic, and moral opinions. I started off this century quite conservative, I guess it's a side effect of being intelligent, young, and living in a well-off area. But I finished the first decade having experienced a huge shift to the left. The core of my political leanings are inherently conservative and I think that anyone who doesn't have that is an idiot, but my belief in ideals has grown. Is our country currently capable of complete medical coverage for its population? Perhaps, perhaps not. Should making it so be a social imperative? Most certainly.
But the two-fold election of George Bush and the economic crash have sent me reeling. George Bush was a terrible president, his staff were self-serving people (at best fools, at worst evil), and yet people elected him twice. People continue to rack up credit card debt while happily becoming indebted to corporations that try very hard to fuck them. I live for my ideals, because what other reason to life is there, but the realities of life in a world of blithering idiots can't be ignored.
I don't mean to absolve myself of idiocy. I am very idiotic about many things. They are things about which I think I am knowledgeable but am not. It's one of the reasons why the dialectic is so important to me. That clash is the only thing that reveals me to be an idiot, and revealing areas of idiocy are the goal of any truly inquiring mind.
The extreme idiots that populate the world aren't of that nature, though. They are ignorant and willfully happy about it. They do not desire to discover where they are wrong because they aren't wrong. They're right, dammit. They watch Glen Beck, roil themselves up with self-righteousness, and then take to the streets and scream and holler about it to anyone who will listen. I have been randomly taken up in conversation about the conspiracy that is global warming THREE TIMES. I wasn't doing anything else but walking.
I have since taken a sort of Machiavellian approach to life. This is actually a new thing. It's an exhaustion, really. I've given up. I can't care, not any more. If banks are out to fuck us, let them. If the government is out to fuck us, let them. My goal, now being aware of that dynamic, is to avoid being fucked and try as hard as I can to throw other people in front of the train. It's not really a pessimistic position, nor is it realistic. It's a deferred idealistic position. I'll have ideals when I think that they'll actually do something. Currently, ideals have no place on the national scale. Hell, ideals on a local scale are even on life support.
But the two-fold election of George Bush and the economic crash have sent me reeling. George Bush was a terrible president, his staff were self-serving people (at best fools, at worst evil), and yet people elected him twice. People continue to rack up credit card debt while happily becoming indebted to corporations that try very hard to fuck them. I live for my ideals, because what other reason to life is there, but the realities of life in a world of blithering idiots can't be ignored.
I don't mean to absolve myself of idiocy. I am very idiotic about many things. They are things about which I think I am knowledgeable but am not. It's one of the reasons why the dialectic is so important to me. That clash is the only thing that reveals me to be an idiot, and revealing areas of idiocy are the goal of any truly inquiring mind.
The extreme idiots that populate the world aren't of that nature, though. They are ignorant and willfully happy about it. They do not desire to discover where they are wrong because they aren't wrong. They're right, dammit. They watch Glen Beck, roil themselves up with self-righteousness, and then take to the streets and scream and holler about it to anyone who will listen. I have been randomly taken up in conversation about the conspiracy that is global warming THREE TIMES. I wasn't doing anything else but walking.
I have since taken a sort of Machiavellian approach to life. This is actually a new thing. It's an exhaustion, really. I've given up. I can't care, not any more. If banks are out to fuck us, let them. If the government is out to fuck us, let them. My goal, now being aware of that dynamic, is to avoid being fucked and try as hard as I can to throw other people in front of the train. It's not really a pessimistic position, nor is it realistic. It's a deferred idealistic position. I'll have ideals when I think that they'll actually do something. Currently, ideals have no place on the national scale. Hell, ideals on a local scale are even on life support.
Monday, October 25, 2010
The Genius of Design
The BBC produced a five-part documentary called The Genius of Design. It's absolutely fantastic and is currently airing in the US on The Smithsonian Channel. As with lots of BBC content, they're trying their hardest to prevent it from being seen online because... I don't really know why.I found all five parts online here. It's a Chinese website and as such takes forever to load the videos. You can also go to Isohunt.com and download a torrent for both it and the producers previous series, The Genius of Photography.
It is easily the best television retrospective on design ever produced. It's thorough, detailed, wonderfully shot, and managed to straddle the line between design porn and legitimately informative.
Africa Needs More Help Than We Can Give
George Ongere has an article over at Skeptical Inquirer about superstition in Africa, specifically sub-Saharan Africa. Basically, he's arguing that all of the economic advancement in the world won't help them since that will cause a greater rift between the haves and the have-nots, and a strong, deeply engrained superstitious culture will hamper if not outright ruin any attempt at education and development.
I've ranted about Africa before, basically saying that the West can do two things. They can continue what they're doing and keep Africa in the dark ages, or they can invest in business and take a strongly moral stance. Namely, we will only do business if you knock off this garbage. No superstition, no killing albinos, no corruption, and if we catch so much as a whiff of this, we're out. We'll come back in another decade and see if you're ready.
We're not doing this anywhere else. In China, human rights violations are rampant, but we don't care. Same as India. We can't do that with Africa. We have to put our money where our moral mouths are and pay more than lip service to our quest to actually help them. Because, let's face it, Bono ain't doing shit.
Will Africa Still Be Immersed in Deep Superstition by the Year 2030? (Skeptical Inquirer)
I've ranted about Africa before, basically saying that the West can do two things. They can continue what they're doing and keep Africa in the dark ages, or they can invest in business and take a strongly moral stance. Namely, we will only do business if you knock off this garbage. No superstition, no killing albinos, no corruption, and if we catch so much as a whiff of this, we're out. We'll come back in another decade and see if you're ready.
We're not doing this anywhere else. In China, human rights violations are rampant, but we don't care. Same as India. We can't do that with Africa. We have to put our money where our moral mouths are and pay more than lip service to our quest to actually help them. Because, let's face it, Bono ain't doing shit.
Will Africa Still Be Immersed in Deep Superstition by the Year 2030? (Skeptical Inquirer)
Suck On It
I'm not one to hate on someone else's lifestyle, but vegans piss me off. Veganism can be necessary for health reasons, for example, I had a friend who developed a build-up in his joints of animal proteins, but it usually is a moral decision. Vegetarians are off the hook, mostly, since that can just be a really healthy diet.
The overcharged moralizing of vegans results in nonsense like the organic movement and PETA who make explicit, public statements that I am evil because I eat animals and animal products. As you can imagine, being called a bad person doesn't sit well.
We are animals. We eat animals. It's the only damned reason that our brains are so large. At one time, a moral drive was critical for the survival of our species. Understanding right and wrong made sure that we never fell out of the good graces of society to die in the woods. Now, that moral drive is still there, but even if we're amoral assholes hated by everyone, we can still survive just fine. Without a serious need on which to focus the moral drive, it runs amok trying to find something about which to moralize.
There Is No Escape From Cows (Gizmodo.com)
The overcharged moralizing of vegans results in nonsense like the organic movement and PETA who make explicit, public statements that I am evil because I eat animals and animal products. As you can imagine, being called a bad person doesn't sit well.
We are animals. We eat animals. It's the only damned reason that our brains are so large. At one time, a moral drive was critical for the survival of our species. Understanding right and wrong made sure that we never fell out of the good graces of society to die in the woods. Now, that moral drive is still there, but even if we're amoral assholes hated by everyone, we can still survive just fine. Without a serious need on which to focus the moral drive, it runs amok trying to find something about which to moralize.
There Is No Escape From Cows (Gizmodo.com)
Thursday, October 14, 2010
I Believed the Darndest Things
A new study shows that kids are especially prone to believing things that they're told. The obvious connections to religion are worth a mention, but nothing more. It reminds me of when I was younger. I was around nine and read an interview with Weird Al in the magazine Disney Adventures. He said that when he was thirteen he sold his family's house for a lifetime supply of wax lips. Even at nine years old, I believed it! So yeah. Funny story.
Young children are especially trusting of things they're told (Eurekalert)
Young children are especially trusting of things they're told (Eurekalert)
Fuck You And Your Manly Men
I hate gender stereotypes. I hate masculinity and femininity. I hate the nebulousness of it all. And, most importantly, if you want men to be MEN, and conversely demand similar things from women, I hate you.
I've talked about it before, and here it is again. Shocker(!), this complete garbage is being spewed by someone who fashions herself a "conservative." I mentioned that these ideas are nebulous, and Katherine Miller does nothing to bestow clarity on the subject. She simply embraces facile, insulting ideals and runs with them. As you would expect, a good chunk of society's ills can be explained by men not being manly enough, oh, and skinny jeans.
Fuck you. I am who I am. If I'm a man and I want to wear make-up and dance to Lady Gaga, THAT'S MY FUCKING BUSINESS. Idiots such as these seem, to me, to be embracing 300 like it's actually tenable. Rock Hudson, James Dean, and Alexander the Great were all fudgepackers. The bouncers dressed as Dorothy at a gay club could easily kick the shit out of you and your entire cavalcade of conservative friends.
So don't give me this bullshit about indecisiveness and mamby pamby feelings being what actually annoys you. You want Pa, smoking a pipe, working his job, mowing the lawn, and grilling on weekends. You've got nothing concrete. Because anything concrete can be said of both men and women (because we're all people!). No, you want the same arbitrary differences that allow you to fantasize about being a sitcom from the early 60's.
Fuck you. Happiness, no matter how I achieve it, is good. You can take your comical ideals and shove them so far up your ass that you puke out Donna Reed.
I've talked about it before, and here it is again. Shocker(!), this complete garbage is being spewed by someone who fashions herself a "conservative." I mentioned that these ideas are nebulous, and Katherine Miller does nothing to bestow clarity on the subject. She simply embraces facile, insulting ideals and runs with them. As you would expect, a good chunk of society's ills can be explained by men not being manly enough, oh, and skinny jeans.
Fuck you. I am who I am. If I'm a man and I want to wear make-up and dance to Lady Gaga, THAT'S MY FUCKING BUSINESS. Idiots such as these seem, to me, to be embracing 300 like it's actually tenable. Rock Hudson, James Dean, and Alexander the Great were all fudgepackers. The bouncers dressed as Dorothy at a gay club could easily kick the shit out of you and your entire cavalcade of conservative friends.
So don't give me this bullshit about indecisiveness and mamby pamby feelings being what actually annoys you. You want Pa, smoking a pipe, working his job, mowing the lawn, and grilling on weekends. You've got nothing concrete. Because anything concrete can be said of both men and women (because we're all people!). No, you want the same arbitrary differences that allow you to fantasize about being a sitcom from the early 60's.
Fuck you. Happiness, no matter how I achieve it, is good. You can take your comical ideals and shove them so far up your ass that you puke out Donna Reed.
Monday, October 11, 2010
Science Can Answer Moral Questions
Scientific American has lent a perspective on Sam Harris' new book The Moral Landscape, where he argues that science is the best choice for answeing moral questions. Both surprisingly and sadly, the criticism is terrible.
The one point that the article touches on by proxy, via a link to an article in the New York Times, that is valid is Harris' actual moral statement: morals are a function of human suffering. This sounds like utilitarianism, which as you would expect, has some problems with it. But what's important is that this perspective is empirical and thus scientific. We can analyze and determine the best ways to get the best outcomes for the most people. It allows of a discussion, a dialectic, on the subject. Religious morals are not based on anything empirical! They're based on books, scriptures, and are, arguably, total nonsense.
He brings up the issue of scientists who did lots of damage in the past, but that misses the point entirely. Scientists did what they did while "rogue." It's like saying that scientists who falsify data negate all of science.
"Some will complain that it is unfair to hold science accountable for the misdeeds of a minority. It is not only fair, it is essential, especially when scientists as prominent as Harris are talking about creating a universal, scientifically validated morality. Moreover, Harris blames Islam and Catholicism for the actions of suicide bombers and pedophilic priests, so why should science be exempt from this same treatment?"
There is so much wrong with this I barely know where to begin. You can not hold a process accountable for what people do with it. You don't blame physics for the atomic bomb. Religion is a pre/proscriptive belief system, science is a process for achieving things. If we can all agree that morals are the rules defining right and wrong, and that wrong is wrong because it causes suffering, science applies! With morals as a function of suffering and happiness at the core, science is all we need.
Moreover, religion can be blamed where science cannot because science is a process to try and determine truth, religion is a system of posited statements. Moreover, we don't do things in the name of science, but truth and all of the good concepts that result from science. People do perform actions in the name of their religions. Finally, we don't blame religion, per se, for the pedophillic priests, we blame the system that claims to be moral and righteous that then hides them. What we do is mock the idea that the religion can have any weight or truth to it when the supposed arbiters of God are some of the biggest assholes on Earth.
Be wary of the righteous rationalist: We should reject Sam Harris's claim that science can be a moral guidepost (Scientific American)
The one point that the article touches on by proxy, via a link to an article in the New York Times, that is valid is Harris' actual moral statement: morals are a function of human suffering. This sounds like utilitarianism, which as you would expect, has some problems with it. But what's important is that this perspective is empirical and thus scientific. We can analyze and determine the best ways to get the best outcomes for the most people. It allows of a discussion, a dialectic, on the subject. Religious morals are not based on anything empirical! They're based on books, scriptures, and are, arguably, total nonsense.
He brings up the issue of scientists who did lots of damage in the past, but that misses the point entirely. Scientists did what they did while "rogue." It's like saying that scientists who falsify data negate all of science.
"Some will complain that it is unfair to hold science accountable for the misdeeds of a minority. It is not only fair, it is essential, especially when scientists as prominent as Harris are talking about creating a universal, scientifically validated morality. Moreover, Harris blames Islam and Catholicism for the actions of suicide bombers and pedophilic priests, so why should science be exempt from this same treatment?"
There is so much wrong with this I barely know where to begin. You can not hold a process accountable for what people do with it. You don't blame physics for the atomic bomb. Religion is a pre/proscriptive belief system, science is a process for achieving things. If we can all agree that morals are the rules defining right and wrong, and that wrong is wrong because it causes suffering, science applies! With morals as a function of suffering and happiness at the core, science is all we need.
Moreover, religion can be blamed where science cannot because science is a process to try and determine truth, religion is a system of posited statements. Moreover, we don't do things in the name of science, but truth and all of the good concepts that result from science. People do perform actions in the name of their religions. Finally, we don't blame religion, per se, for the pedophillic priests, we blame the system that claims to be moral and righteous that then hides them. What we do is mock the idea that the religion can have any weight or truth to it when the supposed arbiters of God are some of the biggest assholes on Earth.
Be wary of the righteous rationalist: We should reject Sam Harris's claim that science can be a moral guidepost (Scientific American)
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Brian Cox
Brian Cox, the host of Wonders of the Solar System, keeps pronouncing "geysers" as "geezers." Such as "this geezer erupts once every twenty four hours," or "this geezer is volatile." If I was high, right now, I'd have peed myself laughing.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Islam Is As Bad As We Think
Nicholas D. Kristof opens an article with great snark, saying that if we request Muslim moderates to reject the extremism in their religion, us moderates should also not be bigoted against Muslims. I'm not sure if I've ever read anything by Mr. Kristof before, but if I have, I'm sure I thought he was an idiot then, too.
Mr. Kristof's simpering, simplistic, "can't we all just get along" piece of fluff made me a little bit angry. First, he asks me to be tolerant of a group who has shown no tolerance of its own, and as a great Robot Chicken sketch shows, turning the other cheek to those who don't care just gets you two bruised cheeks.
I refuse to tolerate people who have never shown toleration themselves. No leaders, or politicians, or even people in the Muslim world have rejected actions and violence taken against the Western world. There are moderates, to be sure, there have to be, but we don't hear about them. They never say anything, and silence is damnation with this. These extremists fly the same flag as you and you must explain yourselves. Because as it stands, Islam on the whole, not simply the extremists, seems as atrocious as we think. Some people blow themselves up, others simply approve. Both are bad places to be.
Mr. Kristof then pays due attention to the reasons behind our hatred of Islam. He also compares our hatred of Muslims to hatred directed at Jews, Catholics, Asians, and Mormons. Someone provided a rejoinder, saying that “Catholics and Jews did not come here and kill thousands of people.” His response to this is so intellectual corrupt that it boggles the mind.
"That’s true, but Japanese did attack Pearl Harbor and in the end killed far more Americans than Al Qaeda ever did. Consumed by our fears, we lumped together anyone of Japanese ancestry and rounded them up in internment camps. The threat was real, but so were the hysteria and the overreaction."
First off, comparing a religion to a race is ridiculous. Our hysteria with Japanese-Americans was stupid because they were simply people who looked alike. Looking alike is not a unifying characteristic of behavior, which is what we are fearful of. If being Japanese was highly correlated with a particular type of behavior, our fear would have been warranted. But it doesn't, so it wasn't. Believing certain things IS highly correlated with behavior. So our fear of Muslims is entirely, completely, 100% warranted. As Sam Harris put it so eloquently in his book The End of Faith, "belief is a fount of action in potentia."
Kristof continues with a line that seems ripped straight from a peace-loving flower child's notebook, "Radicals tend to empower radicals, creating a gulf of mutual misunderstanding and anger." There is no misunderstanding, here. I am completely aware of my bigotry and hatred. The difference here is that I do not think it the slightest bit unfounded.
He continues, again comparing this sort of fear with racism,
Many Americans honestly believe that Muslims are prone to violence, but humans are too complicated and diverse to lump into groups that we form invidious conclusions about. We’ve mostly learned that about blacks, Jews and other groups that suffered historic discrimination, but it’s still O.K. to make sweeping statements about “Muslims” as an undifferentiated mass.
I said it before and feel that it bears saying again, this is a ridiculous comparison. The two examples he chooses were both of racist origin. I don't care about race. White, black, Asian, green, Plutonian, it doesn't matter. What matters is their beliefs. His argument up to this point could be equally applied to white supremacists. We are talking about beliefs, not race!
Kristoff continues to smear on the simpering, liberal, P-C platitudes. He expresses how bad he feels that those good Muslims who help rape victims in Pakistan, or feed children in Afghanistan, are having the faith that they hold oh-so-sacred excoriated in public. Well, first off, what is he not telling us about these so-called good Muslims. What backwater, racist, sexist beliefs do these peaceful men of Allah hold? I'd wager quite a lot.
And if they don't hold these beliefs, the question I pose to them is, why be a member of a religion that embodies the opposite of all you do? Islam is a terrible religion, and all of the terrible actions enacted by those who follow it is entirely defensible by scripture. If you are not terrible, you are not Muslim. Perhaps you should try Buddhism. It seems pretty cool.
Message to Muslims: I’m Sorry (New York Times)
Mr. Kristof's simpering, simplistic, "can't we all just get along" piece of fluff made me a little bit angry. First, he asks me to be tolerant of a group who has shown no tolerance of its own, and as a great Robot Chicken sketch shows, turning the other cheek to those who don't care just gets you two bruised cheeks.
I refuse to tolerate people who have never shown toleration themselves. No leaders, or politicians, or even people in the Muslim world have rejected actions and violence taken against the Western world. There are moderates, to be sure, there have to be, but we don't hear about them. They never say anything, and silence is damnation with this. These extremists fly the same flag as you and you must explain yourselves. Because as it stands, Islam on the whole, not simply the extremists, seems as atrocious as we think. Some people blow themselves up, others simply approve. Both are bad places to be.
Mr. Kristof then pays due attention to the reasons behind our hatred of Islam. He also compares our hatred of Muslims to hatred directed at Jews, Catholics, Asians, and Mormons. Someone provided a rejoinder, saying that “Catholics and Jews did not come here and kill thousands of people.” His response to this is so intellectual corrupt that it boggles the mind.
"That’s true, but Japanese did attack Pearl Harbor and in the end killed far more Americans than Al Qaeda ever did. Consumed by our fears, we lumped together anyone of Japanese ancestry and rounded them up in internment camps. The threat was real, but so were the hysteria and the overreaction."
First off, comparing a religion to a race is ridiculous. Our hysteria with Japanese-Americans was stupid because they were simply people who looked alike. Looking alike is not a unifying characteristic of behavior, which is what we are fearful of. If being Japanese was highly correlated with a particular type of behavior, our fear would have been warranted. But it doesn't, so it wasn't. Believing certain things IS highly correlated with behavior. So our fear of Muslims is entirely, completely, 100% warranted. As Sam Harris put it so eloquently in his book The End of Faith, "belief is a fount of action in potentia."
Kristof continues with a line that seems ripped straight from a peace-loving flower child's notebook, "Radicals tend to empower radicals, creating a gulf of mutual misunderstanding and anger." There is no misunderstanding, here. I am completely aware of my bigotry and hatred. The difference here is that I do not think it the slightest bit unfounded.
He continues, again comparing this sort of fear with racism,
Many Americans honestly believe that Muslims are prone to violence, but humans are too complicated and diverse to lump into groups that we form invidious conclusions about. We’ve mostly learned that about blacks, Jews and other groups that suffered historic discrimination, but it’s still O.K. to make sweeping statements about “Muslims” as an undifferentiated mass.
I said it before and feel that it bears saying again, this is a ridiculous comparison. The two examples he chooses were both of racist origin. I don't care about race. White, black, Asian, green, Plutonian, it doesn't matter. What matters is their beliefs. His argument up to this point could be equally applied to white supremacists. We are talking about beliefs, not race!
Kristoff continues to smear on the simpering, liberal, P-C platitudes. He expresses how bad he feels that those good Muslims who help rape victims in Pakistan, or feed children in Afghanistan, are having the faith that they hold oh-so-sacred excoriated in public. Well, first off, what is he not telling us about these so-called good Muslims. What backwater, racist, sexist beliefs do these peaceful men of Allah hold? I'd wager quite a lot.
And if they don't hold these beliefs, the question I pose to them is, why be a member of a religion that embodies the opposite of all you do? Islam is a terrible religion, and all of the terrible actions enacted by those who follow it is entirely defensible by scripture. If you are not terrible, you are not Muslim. Perhaps you should try Buddhism. It seems pretty cool.
Message to Muslims: I’m Sorry (New York Times)
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Faith in Schools
This is a documentary by Richard Dawkins. It's primarily concerned with British schools, but the arguments apply equally well to our own system.
Dawkins' first argument is undeniable. If the government is spending taxpayer money, faith should not be a component in the schooling. If schools want to maintain religious aspects to their school, and thus discriminate based on religion, government funding must drop to zero.
Dawkin's second argument is not nearly as definite, though. He argues that faith schools in general are bad for children. While I agree, allowing the argument of "doing it for the children" opens the door to all of the abject stupidity we see with grandstanding politicians day-in and day-out. If you can't figure out how to argue your position rationally, pull out the "children" card. I think that it's dangerous to allow the "for the kids" argument at all.
From a more libertarian perspective, I also think that it's the right of the parents to raise their children however they see fit, even if that leads irrevocably to the child's death. Again, doing otherwise introduces to the concept of "for the children." While I think that the argument is valid, and we can, in fact, come up with objective variables by which to measure the "good" for the child, the subject is far too easily hijacked by grandstanding politicrits looking for easy hay. We need to avoid areas of discourse that are easily perverted.
So, in a sense, I'm not actually against Dawkins in the meat of his argument. He says that we can determine if something is good or bad, children are their own people and not property of their parents, and as such the government must enforce a standard on parents. I just think that it's a terrible idea in practice.
Part 2 is my favorite part. An Islamic faith school allows them to film the lessons, apparently the only school that did, and the students and teachers are then interviewed. It's almost uncomfortable to watch the students and teachers squirm in their seats as they try to explain the disconnect between the government science curriculum and their faith vis-à-vis evolution. Everyone in the room reiterated that everyone gets to make their own choice. It's convenient how everyone made the same choice. I find it interesting because of the societal difference between Britain and the US. In Britain, the school seems almost aware of how stupid what they're doing is, while US schools will proudly declare that evolution is wrong and the scientists who advocate for it are all imbeciles.
Dawkins' first argument is undeniable. If the government is spending taxpayer money, faith should not be a component in the schooling. If schools want to maintain religious aspects to their school, and thus discriminate based on religion, government funding must drop to zero.
Dawkin's second argument is not nearly as definite, though. He argues that faith schools in general are bad for children. While I agree, allowing the argument of "doing it for the children" opens the door to all of the abject stupidity we see with grandstanding politicians day-in and day-out. If you can't figure out how to argue your position rationally, pull out the "children" card. I think that it's dangerous to allow the "for the kids" argument at all.
From a more libertarian perspective, I also think that it's the right of the parents to raise their children however they see fit, even if that leads irrevocably to the child's death. Again, doing otherwise introduces to the concept of "for the children." While I think that the argument is valid, and we can, in fact, come up with objective variables by which to measure the "good" for the child, the subject is far too easily hijacked by grandstanding politicrits looking for easy hay. We need to avoid areas of discourse that are easily perverted.
So, in a sense, I'm not actually against Dawkins in the meat of his argument. He says that we can determine if something is good or bad, children are their own people and not property of their parents, and as such the government must enforce a standard on parents. I just think that it's a terrible idea in practice.
Part 2 is my favorite part. An Islamic faith school allows them to film the lessons, apparently the only school that did, and the students and teachers are then interviewed. It's almost uncomfortable to watch the students and teachers squirm in their seats as they try to explain the disconnect between the government science curriculum and their faith vis-à-vis evolution. Everyone in the room reiterated that everyone gets to make their own choice. It's convenient how everyone made the same choice. I find it interesting because of the societal difference between Britain and the US. In Britain, the school seems almost aware of how stupid what they're doing is, while US schools will proudly declare that evolution is wrong and the scientists who advocate for it are all imbeciles.
American Prudishness
There's an article over at The Register asking whether American prudishness is ruining the internet. The author's thesis is, essentially, that most of the internet is dominated by American companies, American companies are beholden to American advertisers, and American advertisers are beholden to the American people, who are morons who hate naughty words and naked bodies.
I do not take a pessimistic perspective on this. In fact, my perspective is downright Pollyanna. Even though major corporations rule the web and, in many ways, force American cultural norms onto their users, this sort of restriction is almost always fleeting. The internet has shown that it is repulsed by censorship and restriction, and while a system or company that advocates and/or uses those two tools may succeed in the short term, in the long term it crumbles. I can think of no better example than AOL.
In comparison to AOL's sleek interface, the internet of the late 1990's and early 2000's was a no-man's-land, but it won out. Not only did it win out, but by the end of the conflict, one of the world's biggest corporations had been reduced to a website. Apple is a good example that is playing out right now. Apple won over users and got them to buy into Apple's ecosystem of products with sleek design, wonderful user interfaces, and great advertising.
This had s snowball effect, where users bought one or two Apple products, but eventually bought more and more, until a god chunk of their digital life revolved around Apple products and services. But see what is happening, now. The flagship of the closed Apple system, the iPhone, is seeing its market share and dominance give way to the inherently open Android OS. Whether Android is actually open or not is open for debate, but it's certainly far more open than Apple. Once people buy one or two products outside of the ecosystem, they're far less likely to buy back in (I actually have data to back that statement up... just wish I could find it).
We can also look at cultural movements over the course of the past ten years. Remember when the Paris Hilton sex tape came out? Remember the controversy? The news coverage? We now have sex tapes released almost every month... and no one cares anymore. Or for examples more quantifiable, look at acceptance of homosexuality in America. Five years ago, a majority of Americans did not support gay marriage. Now, less than half a decade later, even in the face of ceaseless attacks from the religious right, a majority do. Staggeringly, men also now outnumber women in their support of gay marriage. Cultural shifts of this speed and magnitude have never happened before. Why did it happen? The only variable I can see that didn't exist before is the internet.
It is perhaps the "wild west" nature of the web that has made the major companies act the way that they do. The internet at large is free and uninhibited. To differentiate themselves, they hew closely to the tactful ideal, with no naughty words, nudity, or raunchiness. While I understand this strategy, I think that it's dangerous. They risk damaging their brand when cultural norms begin to accept the very activities that the big companies now censor. When that shift happens, people won't want to be associated with the companies that now represent the censorship they are escaping. Why do you think that CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News, and every other old-world news service have demographics with an average age in their 60's?
So while I think that major American companies are stupid to try and censor, because of the damage it can do to their brand, I don't think that it's a problem for the rest of the world. The internet is free and freedom is better than no freedom --people like the ability to do things-- so any shift towards censorship will be isolated both in time and digital space. It is this seemingly inherent mechanism to the internet, perhaps because it's as direct an extension of the human psyche as is technologically possible, that will keep it free and will continue to have an increasingly large effect on society at large. I think that the greatest decades of cultural change are in front of us.
I do not take a pessimistic perspective on this. In fact, my perspective is downright Pollyanna. Even though major corporations rule the web and, in many ways, force American cultural norms onto their users, this sort of restriction is almost always fleeting. The internet has shown that it is repulsed by censorship and restriction, and while a system or company that advocates and/or uses those two tools may succeed in the short term, in the long term it crumbles. I can think of no better example than AOL.
In comparison to AOL's sleek interface, the internet of the late 1990's and early 2000's was a no-man's-land, but it won out. Not only did it win out, but by the end of the conflict, one of the world's biggest corporations had been reduced to a website. Apple is a good example that is playing out right now. Apple won over users and got them to buy into Apple's ecosystem of products with sleek design, wonderful user interfaces, and great advertising.
This had s snowball effect, where users bought one or two Apple products, but eventually bought more and more, until a god chunk of their digital life revolved around Apple products and services. But see what is happening, now. The flagship of the closed Apple system, the iPhone, is seeing its market share and dominance give way to the inherently open Android OS. Whether Android is actually open or not is open for debate, but it's certainly far more open than Apple. Once people buy one or two products outside of the ecosystem, they're far less likely to buy back in (I actually have data to back that statement up... just wish I could find it).
We can also look at cultural movements over the course of the past ten years. Remember when the Paris Hilton sex tape came out? Remember the controversy? The news coverage? We now have sex tapes released almost every month... and no one cares anymore. Or for examples more quantifiable, look at acceptance of homosexuality in America. Five years ago, a majority of Americans did not support gay marriage. Now, less than half a decade later, even in the face of ceaseless attacks from the religious right, a majority do. Staggeringly, men also now outnumber women in their support of gay marriage. Cultural shifts of this speed and magnitude have never happened before. Why did it happen? The only variable I can see that didn't exist before is the internet.
It is perhaps the "wild west" nature of the web that has made the major companies act the way that they do. The internet at large is free and uninhibited. To differentiate themselves, they hew closely to the tactful ideal, with no naughty words, nudity, or raunchiness. While I understand this strategy, I think that it's dangerous. They risk damaging their brand when cultural norms begin to accept the very activities that the big companies now censor. When that shift happens, people won't want to be associated with the companies that now represent the censorship they are escaping. Why do you think that CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News, and every other old-world news service have demographics with an average age in their 60's?
So while I think that major American companies are stupid to try and censor, because of the damage it can do to their brand, I don't think that it's a problem for the rest of the world. The internet is free and freedom is better than no freedom --people like the ability to do things-- so any shift towards censorship will be isolated both in time and digital space. It is this seemingly inherent mechanism to the internet, perhaps because it's as direct an extension of the human psyche as is technologically possible, that will keep it free and will continue to have an increasingly large effect on society at large. I think that the greatest decades of cultural change are in front of us.
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