The Population Vacuum

The Population Vacuum is a method by which major metro areas maintain affordability, efficiency at high population, and high living standards to “vacuum” up surrounding population growth. This limits urban sprawl and confines greater and greater numbers into as small an area as is feasible.

Requirements:

• Living must be affordable. A frequent reason for urban sprawl is the availability of large housing at prices that are in line with the average person OUTSIDE of already developed areas. Thus, people either in search of starter mansions or those merely in need of expanded housing for a new family have great incentives to look into virgin land. By ensuring large amounts of affordable, large housing in cities, and then making those cities eminently attractive, a metro area can act as a vacuum and attract those people and even cause a reduction in extant areas of sprawl.

• A city must be eminently attractive. It must match non-urban areas in as many aspects of attractiveness as it can. This will result in fewer people being driven to small towns. A drop in overall property taxes would result, but that should be offset with room to spare by taxes from the increased economic activity resulting from such population density. Areas to match as follows.

o Crime: A city must work hard to keep crime rates low. This does not mean more cops, it means better efficiency overall and finely targeted laws to reduce inefficiencies.

o Availability of nature: A city must not just have parks, it must be tightly integrated with parks. Gardens must be built into the overall design of buildings, blocks, and sections of the city. A 5/1 ratio of urban area to garden area is a target.

o Lack of pollution: Pollution must be a primary concern for city leaders. It must be kept under control at almost any cost.

o Elbow room: The design of the city must allow for “movement space,” or space in which an individual can move about without bumping into other people. This obviously applies to house size, but it must also be integrated into the side of streets, sidewalks, and general city layout. Sidewalks need not be actual sidewalks, but merely walkways that traverse the city. In a city of 10 million, walkways of 100 feet wide or more would be ideal.

o Noise: Perhaps the hardest area to match, noise must be kept under control without squelching the vibrancy of the city throughout the day and night. This could be achieved through heavy construction of underground roadways, walkways, and buildings. Separate the living areas from the noise-generating aspects of the city, the major perpetrator being traffic.

o Ease of automotive movement: Complex integration of major roadways and smaller transit lines to reduce the stop & go of city driving. Eliminate stop lights and intersections in favor of ramps and rotaries.
The city must also highlight, expand, and nurture the many aspects of a city that rural areas cannot match. These are as follows.

o 24/7: A city of sufficient population can remain active 24 hours per day. This allows for restaurants, entertainment, and destinations at any time. A city must foment this sort of behavior and stimulate activity at all times.

o Variety: A city is a complex mess of things. A city must encourage this variety and diversity through aggressive immigration campaigns from other cultures, encouragement of small business, and facilitation of mixing between areas of the city and different groups.

o Support: A strong system of governmental support is possible within a condensed population. Transportation, medicine, education, and economic support are all superior to rural areas.

• Ideal Sufficiency: A city must strive to be self sufficient in as many ways as possible. This increases efficiency by streamlining supply routes and reducing travel times. Prime candidates for self-sufficient industry are agriculture through gardens and hydroponics, and power through solar, wind, and if coastal, tidal power generation. Nuclear power is also a viable option but less ideal than the totally non-polluting forms.

• Over-stimulation: A city must have areas of quiet rest. Less-populated areas of the city without major structures with a substantially smaller degree of stimulation.

• Under-capacity: A city must always keep its population under the capacity of the city’s infrastructure. If it doesn’t the vacuum will suck up surrounding populations, pressurize them, and then eject them back into rural areas and actually encourage urban sprawl. If the population exceeds capacity *cough*LONDON*cough*, all of the previously listed things that make rural areas attractive will deteriorate within the city and efficiency will dive.

A Question Begged

I've just discovered the modal ontological argument. I'd been aware of the ontological argument for some time and actually consider it a rather strong argument, although not for what its proponents had thought.

The ontological argument is an argument for the existence of God. It goes something like this.

• God is that which no greater can be conceived


• It is greater to exist in reality than in idea alone


• Therefore, God cannot simply exist in our heads, because a God that actually exists is greater than a God that doesn't actually exist

I've always felt that this is a completely sound argument for the existence of an ultimate entity. Entities seem to exist on a spectrum, and there must be something at the ends of either spectrum. Be it free-floating amino acids on one end, and some sort of galactic intelligence on the other. But the argument says nothing about the ultimate intelligence, only that it must be there.

That's my take on it, but regardless of any novel interpretation, the argument is not widely supported. Alvin Plantinga is perhaps the most notable proponent of the argument, and being a logician, he's applied what he knows to the argument and created a modal ontological argument.

Modal logic deals with possibility. E.g. it is possible that "A". But the corollary to possibility is necessity. It is necessary that "A". Modal logic also uses as the core of its thought a concept that's getting a lot of play recently, what with string theory and all that: possible worlds. Anything that is possible is actually happening in different realms of existence. There is a world where I am the king of England and another in which I died at birth. If it's logically possible, it exists.

Thus, something is possible if it exists in at least one possible world. It is necessary if it exists in all possible worlds. And it is contingent if it exists in some possible worlds.

Using these concepts called modal operators, Plantinga sets out to argue for the existence of God. I find the entire argument to be, like everything else in the philosophy of religion, to be circular; a giant, begged question.

I stole this specifically from here.

(1) If God exists then he has necessary existence.
(2) Either God has necessary existence, or he doesn’t.
(3) If God doesn’t have necessary existence, then he necessarily doesn’t.
Therefore:
(4) Either God has necessary existence, or he necessarily doesn’t.
(5) If God necessarily doesn’t have necessary existence, then God necessarily doesn’t exist.
Therefore:
(6) Either God has necessary existence, or he necessarily doesn’t exist.
(7) It is not the case that God necessarily doesn’t exist.
Therefore:
(8) God has necessary existence.
(9) If God has necessary existence, then God exists.
Therefore:
(10) God exists.

Premise 2 is a restatement of premise one. And premise 3 adds nothing. It's a rejiggering of "either God as we conceive of him exists or he doesn't."

1. If god exists, then he has necessary existence.

• Basically Iff (if and only if) G (God exists), then N (he is necessary)


• Which is G = N


• If God exists, then God exists.


• Oh yeah. There's a masterpiece of logic.

2. Either God has necessary existence or he doesn’t.

• Basically, either God exists or he doesn’t exist, because if he exists, he has necessary existence.


• This is the first part where the usage of existence jumps around. He both exists and has existence as though it's a property.

3. If God doesn’t have necessary existence, then he necessarily doesn’t.

• Once again, semantic dodge. If God doesn’t exist, then he doesn’t.

4. Either God has necessary existence, or he necessarily doesn’t.

• Either God exists or he doesn’t exist.

5. If God necessarily doesn’t have necessary existence, then God necessarily doesn’t exist.

• If God necessarily doesn’t exist, then he doesn’t exist.

6. Either God has necessary existence, or he necessarily doesn’t exist.

• Either he necessarily exists or necessarily doesn’t exist.

7. It is not the case that God necessarily doesn’t exist.

• It was dealing with possibility earlier on to reach this point. IF God doesn’t exist, then he necessarily doesn’t exist. The first “if” is not answered. Only IF God exists, does he exist. Only IF God exists, does he not necessarily not exist. And ONLY IF God doesn't exist, does he necessarily not exist.

8. God has necessary existence.

• He only has necessary existence if he exists, which has not been determined

9. If God has necessary existence, then God exists.
10. Therefore, God exists.

My slight re-wording of the argument might seem like I'm playing with words to achieve my goal, and I am. But that's because the argument is playing the same damned game. The argument jumps back and forth between existence as a property or a state and conveniently forgets that the actual question is never answered.

Socialized Loss for the Masses.

I've been getting all self-righteous over the bank bailouts, recently. I started off not caring too much, but have since managed to work myself up into such a froth that I could be used as shampoo.

I recently saw an interview with some guy on Frontline about the economy and how strongly people's perceptions fluctuate (more on this later). I'm always one to point out the stupidity of most people. Or, perhaps stupidity is too strong. Maybe contempocentric is better. Some study who's author is lost to bad memory found that a majority of people perceive time strangely. Namely, for the average person, events that are five years away are perceived identically as those six months away. Meaning that people only start thinking about events in a "is imminent" sort of way is after they start being less than six months off.

What this means is that people are fabulously good at not thinking about the past after events have passed and finished and events that are going to happen in the future. We're a fundamentally reactive species that exists in the "now."

This is obviously not an inherently bad thing. If we spent all of our time worrying about the past and future we'd go nuts. Being contempocentric to a degree is actually important. The problem is that humans take it to its limit and behave in a contempocentric way, while living in a world that allows consequences to carry on for decades. Behold climate change, credit cards, and over-eating.

But that also means that political winds will blow based on events that are only a year in either direction. Now back to that Frontline documentary. Some talking head pointed out how people get very conservative during good times and very liberal during bad times. Noam Chomsky talks about privatized gain and socialized loss, but he specifically attacks big business. And while that's true, the average person is the same way. They just have less clout than a big company.

When times are good, the conservative ideal of "succeed for yourself" feels great. "Keep your hands off of my money!" people will yell. But when the world turns, and they lose their job, they start crying for help. And sure enough, the people who have to help bail that previously-conservative person out will likely yell to stay away... that is until they lose their job.

This type of systemic hypocrisy is most rampant in those so ignorant that they have NO idea about how the system around them functions. They live in their little world, controlling their little things, thinking about stuff that's six months off and six months past. This type of person is no better illustrated than the man who yelled to "keep your government hands off [his] Medicare!" at a South Carolina (natch) town hall meeting.

I've uploaded that talk Chomsky gave on socialized loss. It's worth a listen.

Caution. Time-Traveling Children

Seriously, who the hell drew this sign? And who approved it?! Was the artist 120? The last time children dressed like this was 1905.

Innovation

It's unfortunate that our culture is so obsessed with the magical afflatus that crashes into some haggard inventor, and after facing the standard array of road-blocks and obstacles, succeeds as justice dictates he should. This idea that the inventor is what is important, and that he/she deserves success is just plain stupid. Unfortunately, our patent system is built around that idea.

What should be exalted is the discovery of how to use the invention. This aspect of the scenario is never discussed in the fables of invention. In those stories, the application is already widely known and the haggard inventor's creation is somehow an immediately accepted Godsend to all it touches. See Flash of Genius.

Reality is much more complex, and in most cases, the most difficult aspect is taking whatever was created and figuring out what the fuck to do with it. The computer had been around for years before Apple, but it was the innovation of the package and software that created the digital age.

Techdirt is an utterly fantastic blog discussing the nature of innovation, invention, and technology. It's also a great blog to read if you'd like a crash-course in applied economics and patent/copyright law. UPS has sponsored a series of short videos discussing technology and innovation, they'll take up less than ten minutes of your life and will hopefully inform and entertain.

Auto Tune the News.

It actually makes you wonder if Kanye West can sing at all.

Hacked E-Mails.

So some e-mails between scientists have been hacked that has added fuel to the climate change-skeptic fire.

Obviously, if you view the things quoted in the e-mails from a, um, pro(?) climate change perspective, it just sounds like a bunch of scientists discussing the best, delicate path to walk in a public debate defined by idiots. But if you are one of those idiots, your paranoid belief that scientists are perpetuating a massive, global conspiracy to trick the world into believing that climate change is real. This is apparently because Al Gore hates Africans.

My vote, we just keep going. I'd much rather see all of the idiots just burn. Granted, lots of fun animals will die, but I'll survive. I'm at the point of not caring. You want to drive the bus into a wall? Fine. I'll put my helmet on and do my thing while you do that.

The Purpose of Movies.

Movies are meant to entertain. That is it. They are not paintings. They are not meant to challenge or be though-provoking. They are meant to entertain. The best movies do that and challenge you, but things that are so avant garde and artsy fartsy that they become moving paintings stop even being movies. They do not entertain.

Juxtapose the experimentation of the French New Wave with Italian Neorealism. The French understood that a movie should entertain. It should be about being a movie. Italian neorealists were depressed because the war had just ended, so they started making films that were depressing and pointless.

Go watch The Bicycle Thief. It's boring as fucking hell. Yes, yes, it was groundbreaking and has had a generations-long effect on cinema all around the world. That doesn't change that it is tearfully boring. Anyone who says otherwise is lying to sound intelligent. I respect it. I comprehend it. I appreciate it. I still say it's barely a movie.

I mean for Christ's sake, the films were so pointless and depressing (and that was the point) the government told them to stop making them. Compare this to Schindler's List. It's depressing, moving, heart-wrenching, but also entertaining. It fills us with emotion and tells us a story with a beginning, middle, and end.

Socialized Loss.

I'm not one to side with Noam Chomsky on too many things. While I generally agree with many of his points, it's his paranoia where I diverge. Where he sees grand schemes and conspiracy, I see happenstance and even stupidity. He sees cabals, I see groups of greedy people rambling about in what appears to be a group.

But one of his biggest points year after year is the idea of privatized gain and socialized loss. Namely, capitalism is good for you, but for me, I need the protection of the government.

The last year or so has really driven home how true that is. Obviously, this was an extreme example, but worldwide, every year, events similar to these transpire. To argue that we have a free market is silly. We don't have anything close to a free market. The banks reaped massive profits and then socialized the massive losses.

It's kind of depressing. I guess I'd feel better about all this if the Republicans had been voting against the bailouts for some reason other than just being contrarian buttheads.

I don't usually get up in arms about things for any sense of self-righteousness, but this got my goat.

Two Types of Country

Well, we're finally bringing some of the guys from Gitmo into the country for trials. As expected, those from the "right" have started lampooning the decision, basically saying we can't apply the same rules to them as we do to ourselves.

I find this perspective interesting. The problem with our country is that we have a nationwide case of severe cognitive dissonance. We want to think that we are a country predicated on ideals and not simply a group of people, but when the realities of being a group of people pop up, we act in accordance with those.

I always said that I had no problem with invading Iraq, if we said that we were going in there for oil and control. Think about that, we need oil, is it not our mandate to acquire what we need? Let's kill everyone in Iraq and take their oil. There's nothing morally wrong with it.

The problem is that under that interpretation, we're just a group of people. The American flag is nothing more than a logo. The American Dream is an advertising campaign. The Statue of Liberty is our mascot. And the national anthem is just our theme song. Most people have a problem with that idea.

The real argument is whether we're just a group of people or an set of ideals. We might give the ideals a high-falutin' status, but there's nothing about them that is fundamentally superior to seeing us as just a group of people trying to get what's best for us. If we're correct in our self-service, then we are a group of people and not ideals. If we are a set of ideals that "transcend" the people, then our actions are pretty easy to determine.

Too bad that latter interpretation has never been true. We've never been the good guys. Remember Nuremberg: many Nazi's got off for some action because they showed how Allied forces did the same thing. Well, if we did it, it can't be wrong. Case dismissed!

A View Askew

I just found out about the gang rape of a 15-year-old girl in San Francisco, early last week.

I feel pretty safe in assuming that this will go down in psychological and sociological history in the same way as the Kitty Genovese murder in New York. Professors for decades to come will discuss what this says about the human animal and the society we've built for ourselves.

I feel for the girl in a way I usually reserve for fat women watching The View. I can't even begin to imagine what the experience was like. I mean that phrase truthfully and without cliche. I can't even imagine. I think I would rather be attacked by a lion and killed, at least the goal of the lion is to end it. Here, the torment was the goal. I feel like crying.

My partner and I have had arguments about the nature of life vis a vis sex. I have argued that things like "Gift of Fear" and the argument that women lead a different life from men to be foolish and fear-mongering. She has said otherwise, and says that I may have a hard time understanding this since I was always not only a male, but a large, loud male. I've never felt fear of my fellow humans.

Still, I argued that the fear she and other women feel is primarily the result of fear programming in our brain going haywire since there is very little to be afraid of, anymore. We no longer have to worry about sabertooth tigers and whatnot, so our brain finds things of which to be afraid.

This wasn't rooted in sexism. This was rooted in the deep-seated belief that men and women are not from Mars and Venus. That our lives are fundamentally the same. The world is identical to us both. Because, if that's not the case, we are not equal. We are different. The world, for men and women, is fundamentally and essentially a different experience.

This case has basically changed that perspective. While I still think that most of the fear that women, and truly people in general, feel about the world is the result of a scare-obsessed media and evolutionary mechanisms meant to keep us safe in the wild, this does not happen to men.

There has never been a case of women gang-raping a drunk man and then beating him nearly to death. It just doesn't happen. Say what you will about the baseness of the men involved. Argue that they are an extreme minority. Argue that women are just as likely to get killed by a coconut as be gang-raped. I'll agree with pretty much all of it. With just a modicum of caution, women will likely never be raped or even assaulted.

But that's the thing. That modicum of caution. That one, little inch. That seemingly insignificant thing permanently and inexorably separates men from women. Men need not exercise that caution. They have no need or worry. But women do. Women and men are fundamentally different. Their world, my partner's world, is fundamentally different from my own.

And that makes me want to cry.

Government With Purpose

It's difficult to decide what should and shouldn't be taxed. There are tons of arguments out there saying that taxing inheritances is fine, taxing alcohol is not, estate taxes are death taxes, etc.

I propose a purpose-oriented perspective on taxes. Basically, a tax must be predicated on the relationship that whatever is being taxed has with the point of the tax. For example, people argue that cigarettes should be taxed since smokers cost more medically to society. This argument would be fine if 100% of the taxes went towards medical ends. That's not the case at all. Truly, 100% of the revenue goes to general funds and is spent on things ranging from roadways to generous severance packages for government employees.

For example, 100% of the costs associated with roadwork should be shouldered by tolls and automobile taxes. This has the added benefit of letting people know, on a personal level, how much of their tax money is going to what areas of the government. It forces absolute clarity onto the clusterfuck that is taxation.

But what about things for which there is no taxable representation in society? What about schools, or firefighters? Frankly, I think income and property taxes cover this just fine. Income means money, and money requires a stable governmental system in which to spend it. Income taxes are literally paying for the system that allow the money to exist in the first place. I consider that a fair trade. This same argument applies to sales taxes.

Property taxes pay for police and firefighters. For example, what good are fire fighters if there is nothing to put out? Firefighters need houses, as such, owning a house pays for the work. I've got some problems with property taxes based on how nice your house is, but the size of your house could matter. Regardless, I consider property taxes based on value to be a progressive tax that amounts to robbery. Theoretically, if you mow your lawn regularly, you will end up with higher taxes.

If no good reason can be found for taxing something, the tax must be eliminated. If the money is truly needed for the government to function, the tax must be moved elsewhere so people know what money is being spent where.

Schools are difficult. We cannot put the burden on only the parents, or school becomes unaffordable. An uneducated society is unbearable harmful to everyone alive now and to be alive later. There are many ways I could rationalize education to fit with my general logic, but I think it's sufficed to say that education is undeniably a public good. An educated populace is what has allowed us to reach the heights we have reached and it must be furthered.

The End of an Era

Well, in a few short days, the Rhode Island state assembly will vote to criminalize prostitution. They will vote to make it wrong to do something people have been doing for all of human history. They will vote to eliminate a fundamental freedom: the freedom to do as you wish with your own body. They will vote to eliminate one of the few things that made Rhode Island at all special or progressive, and replace it with the same moralistic claptrap that dominates the rest of the country. Such garbage. All I can say is that I am disgusted with my state.

Prostitutes should be very happy, though. When prostitution is criminalized, its value goes up.

R.I. prostitutes speak out against bill to close loophole (Projo.com)

I Like Economics

I love economics. It's the best way to win arguments that really shouldn't be winnable.

I guess I should say I like econometrics, as opposed to economics. Economics includes groups like the Austrian and Chicago schools, which rely very heavily on intuition, which is no way to win an argument. Your intuition is just as good as mine, and it's very easy to point that out. But for example, the argument of prostitution. Is it right or wrong?

Correct answer: it doesn't matter. We cannot stop it. It has existed since the beginning of time, and exists even in countries where prostitution is punishable by death. So, if it cannot be stopped, why have laws against it? People still kill, regardless of laws. So why bother outlawing that? But, then, we're comparing prostitution to murder, which is pretty stupid.

Moreover, countries without laws against murder are usually on the edge of coherency, and as such, the lack of the law isn't really what is causing murder; it's the lack of social order. Laws against murder and stealing sprout spontaneously from a social order because they're fundamentally necessary for that order to exist. Laws against prostitution hold no such honor.

Truly, prostitution frequently held the opposite stature in past civilizations. Frequently, prostitution was seen as a necessity for grown men, and that prostitutes did a public good. Even in modern times, during periods of war, the military tolerated and understood the job that nearby brothels performed.

Economics gives us the ability to develop a scenario and then seek out data. Just find the data and make your argument with that. Freakonomics had it right. Trying to argue right and wrong, or develop models to determine things gets you nowhere. Just find the data.

Yuck! A Penis!

“When You Marry”: 1962 Textbook (Contexts.org)