Random Clicking

2018-01-14. Computers. Rating 3. ID 1893.

Nowadays, most people need to access information through computers, especially through web sites. Many people find the process involved with this quite challenging, and this isn't necessarily restricted to older people who aren't "digital natives", or to people with no interest in, or predisposition towards technology.

In fact, I have found that many young people find some web interfaces bizarre and unintuitive. For example, my daughter (in her early 20s) thinks Facebook is badly designed and often navigates using "random clicking". And I am a computer programmer with decades of experience but even I find some programs and some web sites completely devoid of any logical design, and I sometimes revert to the good old "random clicking" too!

For example, I received an email notification from Inland Revenue last week and was asked to look at a document on their web site. It should have taken 30 seconds but it took closer to 30 minutes and I only found the document using RC (random clicking).

Before I go further, let me describe RC. You might be presented with a web site or program/app interface and you want to do something. There might be no obvious way to get to where you want to go, or you might take the obvious route only to find it doesn't go where you expected. Or, of course, you might get random error message like "page not available" or "internal server error" or even the dreaded "this app has quit unexpectedly" or the blue screen of death or spinning activity wheel.

So to make progress it is necessary just to do some RC on different elements, even if they make no sense, until you find what you are looking for. Or in more extreme cases you might even need to "hack" the system by entering deliberately fake information, changing a URL, etc.

What's going on here? Surely the people involved with creating major web sites and widely used apps know what they are doing, don't they? After all, many of these are the creations of large corporations with virtually unlimited resources and budgets. Why are there so many problems?

Well, there are two explanations: first, that errors do happen occasionally, no matter how competent the organisation involved is, and because we use these major sites and apps so often we will tend to see the errors more often too; and second, large corporations create stuff through a highly bureaucratic and obscure process and consistency and attention to detail is difficult to attain under such a scheme.

When I encounter errors, especially on web sites, I like to keep a record of it by taking a screenshot. I keep this in a folder to make me feel better if I make an error on any of my own projects, because it reminds me that sites created by organisations with a hundred programmers and huge budgets often have more problems those created by a single programmer with no budget.

So here are some of the sites I currently have in my errors folder...

APN (couldn't complete your request due to an unexpected error - they're the worst type!)
Apple (oops! an error occurred - helpful)
Audible (we see you are going to x, would you rather go to x?)
Aurora (trying to get an aurora prediction, just got a "cannot connect to database")
BankLink (page not found, oh well I didn't really want to do my tax return anyway)
BBC (the world's most trusted news source, but not the most trusted site)
CNet (one of the leading computer news sources, until it fails)
DCC (local body sites can be useful - when they work)
Facebook (a diabolical nightmare of bad design, slowness, and bugginess)
Herald (NZ's major newspaper, but their site generates lots of errors)
InternetNZ (even Internet NZ has errors on their site)
IRD (Inland Revenue has a few good features, but their web site is terrible overall)
Medtech (yeah, good luck getting essential medical information from here)
Mercury (the messenger of the gods dropped his message)
Microsoft (I get errors here too many times to mention)
Fast Net (not so fast when it doesn't work)
Origin (not sure what the origin of this error was)
Porsche (great cars, web site not so great)
State Insurance (state, the obvious choice for a buggy web site)
Ticketmaster (I don't have permission for the section of the site needed to buy tickets)
TradeMe (NZ's equivalent of eBay is poorly designed and quite buggy)
Vodafone (another ISP with web site errors)
WordPress (the world's leading blogging platform, really?)
YesThereIsAGod (well if there is a god, he needs to hire better web designers)

Note that I also have a huge pile of errors generated by sites at my workplace. Also, I haven't even bothered storing examples of bad design, or of problems with apps.

As I said, there are two types of errors, and those caused by temporary outages are annoying but not disastrous. The much bigger problem is the sites and apps which are just inherently bad. The two most prominent examples are Facebook and Microsoft Word. Yes, those are probably the most widely used web site and most widely used app in the world. If they are so bad why are they so popular?

Well, popularity can mean two things: first, something is very widely used, even if it is not necessarily very well appreciated; and second, something which is well-liked by users and is utilised because people like it. So you could say tax or work is popular because almost everyone participates in them, but that drinking alcohol, or smoking dope, or sex, or eating burgers is popular because everyone likes them!

Facebook and Word are popular but most people think they could be made so much better. Also many people realise there are far better alternatives but they just cannot be used because of reasons not associated with quality. For example, people use Facebook because everyone else does, and if you want to interact with other people you all need to use the same site. And Word is widely used because that is what many workplaces demand, and many people aren't even aware there are alternatives.

The whole thing is a bit grim, isn't it? But there is one small thing I would suggest which could make things better: if you are a developer with a product which has a bad interface, and you can't be almost certain that you can improve it significantly, don't bother trying. People can get used to badly designed software, but coping with changes to an equally bad but different interface in a new version is annoying.

The classic example is how Microsoft has changed the interface between Office 2011 and Office 2016 (these are the Mac versions, but the same issue exists on Windows). The older version has a terrible, primitive user interface but after many years people have learned to cope with it. The newer version has an equally bad interface (maybe worse) and users have to re-learn it for no benefit at all.

So, Microsoft, please just stop trying. You have a captive audience for your horrible software so just leave it there. Bring out a new version so you can steal more money from the suckers who use it, but don't try to improve the user interface. Your users will thank you for it.

Trust Experts

2018-01-08. Comments. Rating 4. ID 1892.

I recently listened to a podcast which discussed the trust (or lack of trust) we have in experts, and how that might have become a more significant issue in recent years. Many people interpret the election of Trump as a rejection of the "elite experts" in society, for example. Trump represents the average person - he was not a politician - but Clinton represented an experienced politician who had spent most of her life as part of the "political machine", and she was rejected.

Experts which are usually trusted include doctors, scientists, and (dare I mention) computer professionals. In most cases people will trust what these people say. For example, the majority of people go to a doctor and trust the treatment they are recommended. But there are a significant number who don't have such a high level of trust and prefer to be diagnosed by "Doctor Google" or be treated by a local practitioner of some form of alternative medicine which often has limited credibility (homeopathy, naturopathy, acupuncture, etc).

In general it is best to trust the opinion of experts, and in most cases people do. But everyone has their weaknesses and there might be times when anyone would reject expert opinion or advice. So I started wondering which experts I might have trouble accepting and I think I have thought of a couple.

In fact, anyone who reads this blog should already know the areas of expertise I have the most problems with. The first is management, and the second is economics.

So am I just as bad as the person who ignores the facts presented by experts about global warming? Or am I just like the creationist who ignores the conclusions of experts in biology and evolution? Or am I just another conspiracy theorist who ignores the opinion of experts and thinks the WTC could not have been destroyed by an aircraft collision?

In some ways, yes, but there is one critical difference. Look at the example I gave in paragraph two where some people prefer to trust a homeopath instead of a conventional doctor. Is that person really rejecting expert opinion? Maybe not. Maybe they are accepting the opinion of one expert (the homeopath is presumably an expert in homeopathy) and rejecting that of a different expert (the doctor).

So this isn't so much a rejection of expertise per se, it is more choosing which expert to accept as better.

And this gets to my three main points regarding trust in experts: first, not all experts are equal; second, not all fields of expertise are equal; and third, even the greatest expert in the most credible field can make mistakes and everyone should be treated with a certain degree of skepticism.

So accepting the expert homeopath's opinion should be rejected based on point 2, above. That is, while it is true that homeopathy is a field of expertise, it is not one which can be taken seriously because homeopathy has been shown, beyond any reasonable doubt, to be ineffective.

The other points might also have occasions when they are important. For example, there is a geologist (who is presumably an expert) who thinks the Earth is only 6000 years old even though he knows all the evidence shows it isn't. His opinion is clearly warped by religious faith so, even though he is an expert, he does not have the same status as experts with no bias. And there have been many occasions where the greatest experts failed to assimilate new evidence and rejected new theories which later turned out to be true, so no expert is infallible.

But the main point of this post is to discuss point 2, the fact that some areas of expertise have less validity than others making rejecting opinions of experts in that area more reasonable.

The big problem is trying to establish which areas are trustworthy and which aren't How would we know? Should we ask an expert? That sort of just gets back to the same problem we had at the start!

I think there are various, fairly unbiased, ways we can evaluate different areas of expertise. These include their philosophical framework (are they based on empiricism, logic, faith, etc), has scientific research on the subject shown it to be viable, and a general evaluation of its practical contribution to society.

So with homeopathy I would say its background is highly questionable. There has been little positive empirical research, there is almost no logic in it, and the whole proposed mechanism for its action is nonsense. And research on homeopathy shows almost no positive results above placebo level which is exactly what we would expect if it was fake. Finally, using homeopathy has some significant negative consequences, including people wasting their money on remedies which don't work, and using homeopathic remedies instead of real ones which leads to worse health outcomes.

Because of this, I think it is clear that a homeopath, no matter how expert he or she is on the subject, should not be taken seriously because the subject itself lacks any credibility.

But how does this apply to my two areas of skepticism: management and economics?

Well, I would say neither of those are totally based on a firm philosophical basis. I do have to say that some forms of economics, especially behavioural economics which uses a lot of psychology, do have a quite high degree of credibility, but economics in general not so much. And I'm fairly sure there has been a certain amount of empirical research applied to management practices but in general they seem to be uniformly corrupt, both morally and intellectually.

So I think I have some rationale in being doubtful about the opinions of many economists and managers. Sure, they are experts in their respective fields but those fields have limited credibility. Of course, that doesn't mean they are always wrong and can safely be ignored, but it does mean that the default position should be neutral or even negative rather than being positive as it would be with other experts.

If a doctor recommends a certain treatment I would normally accept that unless I have good reason not to. I might have already tried it without success, or I might think it is bogus in some way for example (some doctors recommend alternative medicine which has poor scientific support).

But it a manager recommends a particular action I would be very doubtful from the beginning. In fact, I would begin with the assumption that it is a bad idea. Of course, I should also try to look at the idea fairly and accept it if it turns out to be the exception to the rule.

In an ideal world we would all have enough time and expertise to research all the knowledge we needed for ourselves, but that is totally impractical, so we do need to trust experts to some extent. And that trust should be moderated by some doubt. And that doubt should be apportioned according to the validity of the field of knowledge under consideration.

Everyone's estimation of this validity will vary but there should be certain areas which are always out in front and some lagging far behind. Here's an example of some fields of knowledge rated from highest to lowest: maths, physics, chemistry, biology, climate science, medicine, psychology, general social science, philosophy, economics, business, management, politics, marketing, alternative medicine, mysticism, religion.

Note that I'm not saying the stuff near the end of my list is less valuable or less interesting, just that it is less trustworthy.

In summary: you can trust experts, but trust some a lot more than others!

Introduction to the Elements

2017-12-30. Science. Rating 1. ID 1891.

The Greek philosophers were incredibly smart people, but they didn't necessarily know much. By this I mean that they were thinking about the right things in very intelligent and perceptive ways, but some of the conclusions they reached weren't necessarily true, simply because they didn't have the best tools to investigate reality.

Today we know a lot more, and even the most basic school science course will impart far more real knowledge to the average school student than what even the greatest philosophers, like Aristotle, could have known.

I have often thought about what it would be like to talk to one of the ancient Greeks about what they thought about the universe and what we have found out since, including how we know what we know. Coincidentally, this might also serve as a good overview of our current knowledge to any interested non-experts today.

Of course, modern technology would be like total magic to any ancient civilisation. In fact, it would seem that way to a person from just 100 years ago. But in this post I want to get to more fundamental concepts than just technology, mostly the ancient and modern ideas about the elements, so let's go...

The Greeks, as well as several other ancient cultures, had arrived at the concept of there being elements, which were fundamental substances which everything else was made from. The classic 4 elements were fire, air, water, and earth. In addition, a fifth element, aether, was added to account for the non-material and heavenly realm.

This sort of made sense because you might imagine that those components resulted when something changed form. So burning wood releases fire and air (smoke) and some earth (ash) which seemed to indicate that they were original parts of the wood. And sure, smoke isn't really like air but maybe that's because it was made mainly from air, with a little bit of earth in it too, or something similar.

So I would say to a philosopher visiting from over 2000 years ago that they were on the right track - especially the atomists - but things aren't quite the way they thought.

Sure, there are elements, but none of the original 4 are elements by the modern definition. In fact, those elements aren't even the same type of thing. Fire is a chemical reaction, air is a mixture of gases, water is a molecule, and earth is a mixture of fine solids. The ancient elements correspond more to modern states of matter, maybe matching quite well with plasma, gas, liquid and solid.

The modern concept of elements is a bit more complicated. There are 92 of them occurring naturally, and they are the basic components of all of the common materials we see, although not everything in the universe as a whole is made of elements. The elements can occur by themselves or, much more commonly, combine with other elements to make molecules.

The elements are all atoms, but despite the name, these are not the smallest indivisible particles, because atoms are in turn made from electrons, protons, and neutrons, and then the protons and neutrons are made of quarks. As far as we know, these cannot be divided any further. But to complicate matters a bit more there are many other indivisible particles. The most well known of these from every day life is the photon, which makes up light.

Different atoms all have the same structure: classically thought of as a nucleus containing a certain number of protons and neutrons surrounded by a cloud of electrons. There are the same number of protons (which have a positive charge) and electrons (which have a negative charge) in all neutral atoms. It is the number of protons which determines which atom (or element) is which. So one proton means hydrogen, 2 helium, etc, up to uranium with 92. That number is called the "atomic number".

The number of neutrons (which have no charge) varies, and the same element can have different forms because they have a different number of neutrons. When this happens the different forms are called isotopes.

Protons and neutrons are big and heavy and electrons are light, so the mass of an atom is made up almost entirely of the protons and neutrons in the nucleus. The electrons are low mass and "orbit" the nucleus at a great distance compared with the size of the nucleus itself, so a hydrogen atom (for example, but this applies to all atoms and therefore everything made of atoms, which is basically everything) is 99.9999999999996% empty space!

When I say protons are big and heavy I mean this only relatively, because there are 50 million trillion atoms in a single grain of sand (which means a lot more protons because silicon and oxygen, the two main elements in sand, both have multiple protons per atom).

When atoms combine we describe it using chemistry. This involves the electrons near the edge of an atom (the electrons form distinct "shells" around the nucleus) combining with another atom's outer electrons. How atoms react is determined by the number of electrons in the outer shell. Atoms "try" to fill this shell and when they do they are most stable. The easiest way to fill a shell is to borrow and share electrons with other atoms.

Atoms with one electron in the outer shell or with just one missing are very close to being stable and are very reactive (examples: sodium, potassium, fluorine, chlorine). Atoms with that shell full don't react much at all (examples: helium, neon).

There are far more energetic reactions which atoms can also participate in, when the nucleus splits or combines instead of the electrons. We call these nuclear reactions and they are much harder to start or maintain but generate huge amounts of energy. There are to types: fusion where small atoms combine to make bigger ones, and fission where big atoms break apart. The Sun is powered by fusion, and current nuclear power plants by fission.

After the splitting or combining the resulting atom(s) has less mass/energy (they are the same thing, but that's another story) than the original atom(s) and that extra energy is released according to a formula E=mc^2 discovered by Einstein. This means you can calculate how much energy (E) comes from a certain amount of mass (m) by multiplying by the speed of light squared (90 thousand trillion). This number is very high which means that a small amount of mass creates a huge amount of energy.

Most reactions involve a bit of initial energy to start it, then they will release energy as the reaction proceeds. That's why lighting a match next to some fuel starts a reaction which makes a lot more energy.

So water is a molecule made from one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms. But gold is an element all by itself and doesn't bond well with others. And when two elements bind and form a molecule they are totally different from a simple mixture of the two elements. Take some hydrogen and oxygen and mix them and you don't get water. But light a match and you get a spectacular result, because the hydrogen burns in the oxygen forming water in the process. The energy content of water is lower than the two constituent gases which explains all that extra energy escaping as fire. But the fire wasn't an elementary part of the original gases and neither was the water. You can see how the Greeks might have reached that conclusion though.

Basic classical physics and chemistry like this make a certain amount of intuitive sense, and the visting philosopher would probably understand how it works fairly quickly. But then I would need to reveal that it is all really just an approximation to what reality is really like.

There would be a couple of experiments I could mention which would be very puzzling and almost impossible to explain based on the classical models. One would be the Michelson–Morley experiment, and the other would be the infamous double-slit experiment. These lead to the inevitable conclusion that the universe is far stranger than we imagined, and new theories - in this case relativity and quantum theory - must be used.

Whether our philosopher friend could ever gain the maths skills necessary to fully understand these would be difficult to know. Consider that the Greeks didn't really accept the idea of zero and you can see that they would have a long way to go before they could use algebra and calculus with any competence.

But maybe ideas like time and space being dynamic, gravity being a phenomenon caused by warped space-time, particles behaving like waves and waves behaving like particles depending on the experiment being performed on them, single particles being in multiple places at the same time, and particles becoming entangled, might be comprehensible without the math. After all, I have a basic understanding of all these things and I only use maths like algebra and calculus at a simple level.

It would be fun to list some of the great results of the last couple of hundred years of experimental science and ask for an explanation. For example, the observations made by Edwin Hubble showing the red-shifts of galaxies would be interesting to interpret. Knowing what galaxies actually are, what spectra represent, and how galactic distances can be estimated, would seem to lead to only one reasonable conclusion, but it would be interesting to see what an intelligent person with no pre-conceived ideas might think.

As I wrote this post I realised just how much background knowledge is necessary as a prerequisite to understanding our current knowledge of the universe. I think it would be cool to discuss it all with a Greek philosopher, like Aristotle, or my favourite Eratosthenes. And it would be nice to point out where they were almost right, like Eratosthenes' remarkable attempt at calculating the size of the Earth, but it would also be interesting to see their reaction to where they got things badly wrong!

Is Apple Doomed?

2017-12-20. Computers. Rating 2. ID 1890.

I'm a big Apple fanboy. As I sit here writing this blog post (flying at 10,000 meters on my way to Auckland, because I always write blog posts when I fly) I am actively using 4 Apple products: a MacBook Pro computer, an iPad Pro tablet, an iPhone 6S Plus smartphone, and an Apple Watch. At home I have many Apple computers, phones, and other devices. I also have one Windows PC but I very rarely use that.

So the general state of Apple's "empire" is pretty important to me. Many of the skills I have (such as general trouble-shooting, web programming, scripting, configuration, and general software use) could be transferred to Windows, but I just don't want to. I really like the elegance of Apple's devices on the surface, combined with the power of Unix in the background.

But despite my enthusiasm for their products I have developed an increasing air of concern with Apple's direction. There is the indistinct idea that they have stopped innovating to the extent they did in the past. Then there is the observation that the quality control of both hardware and software isn't what it was. Then there is just a general perception that Apple are getting too greedy by selling products at too high a price and not offering adequate support for the users of their products.

These opinions are nothing new, but what is new is that people who both know a lot about the subject, and would normally be more positive about Apple, are starting to join in the criticism. Sometimes this is through a slight sense of general concern, and other times through quite strident direct criticism.

I would belong to the former class of critics. I think I have noticed an increase in the number of errors Apple is making, at the same time as I notice an apparent general decrease in the overall reliability of their products, and to make matters worse, these are accompanied by what seems to be higher prices.

You will notice I used a lot of qualifiers in the sentence above. I did this deliberately because I have no real data or objective statistics to demonstrate any of these trends. They might not be real because it is very easy to start seeing problems when you look for them, and negative events often "clump" into groups. Sometimes there might be a series of bad things which happen after a long period with no problems, but that doesn't mean there is any general trend involved.

But now is the time for anecdotes! These don't mean much, of course, but I want to list a few just to give an idea of where my concern is coming from.

Recently I set up two new Mac laptop computers in a department where there was a certain amount of pressure from management to switch to Microsoft Surface laptops. The Surface has a really poor reputation for reliability and is quite expensive, so it shouldn't be difficult to demonstrate the superiority of Apple products in this area, right?

Well, no. Wrong, actually. At least in this case. Both laptops had to go for service twice within the first few weeks. I have worked with Apple hardware for decades and have never seen anything remotely as bad as this. And the fact that it was in a situation where Apple was under increased scrutiny didn't help!

In addition, the laptops had inadequate storage, because even though these are marketed as "pro" devices the basic model still has only 128G of SSD storage. That wasn't Apple's fault, because the person doing the purchasing should have got it right, but it didn't help!

Also recently Apple has suffered from some really embarrassing security flaws. One allowed root access to a Mac without a password, and the other allowed malicious control of automated home-control devices. There were also a few other lesser issues in the same time period. As far as I now none of these were exploited to any great extent, but it is still a bad look.

Another issue which seems to be becoming more prominent recently is their repair and replacement service. In general I have had fairly good service from Apple repair centers, but I have heard of several people who aren't as happy.

When you buy a premium device at the premium price Apple demands I don't think it is unreasonable to expect a little bit of extra help if things go wrong. So unless there is clear evidence of fraud, repairs and replacements should be done without the customer having to resort to threats and demands for the intervention of higher levels of staff.

And even if a device only has one year of official warranty (which seems ridiculous to begin with), Apple should offer a similar level of support for a reasonable period without the customer having to resort to quoting consumer law.

Even if Apple wasn't interested in doing what was morally right they should be able to see that providing superior service for what they claim is a superior product at a superior price is just good business because it maintains a positive relationship with the customer.

My final complaint regards Apple's design direction. This is critical because whatever else they stand for, surely good design is their primary advantage over the opposition. But some Apple software recently has been obscure at best and incomprehensibly bizarre at worst, and iTunes has become a "gold standard" for cluttered, confusing user interfaces.

When I started programming Macs in the 1980s there was a large section in the programming documentation about user interface design. The rules were really strict, but resulted in consistent and clear software which came from many different developers, including Apple. I don't do that sort of programming any more but if a similar section exists in current programming manuals there is little sign that people - even Apple themselves - are taking much notice!

So is Apple doomed? Well probably not. They are (by some measures) the world's biggest, richest, and most innovative company. They are vying with a few others to become the first trillion dollar company. And, in many ways they still define the standard against which all others are judged. For example, every new smart phone which appears on the market is framed by some people as an "iPhone killer". They never are, but the fact that products aspire to be that, instead of a Samsung or Huawei killer says a lot about the iPhone.

But despite the fact that Apple isn't likely to disappear in the immediate future, I still think they need to be more aware of their real and perceived weaknesses. If they aren't there is likely to be an extended period of slow decline and reduced relevance. And a slow slide into mediocrity is, in many ways, worse than a sudden collapse.

So, Tim Cook, if you are reading this blog post (and why wouldn't you), please take notice. Here's just one suggestion: when your company releases a new laptop with connections that are unusable without dongles, throw a few in with the computer, and keep the price the same as the model it replaces, and please, try to make them reliable, and if they aren't, make sure the service and replacement process is quick and easy.

It's really not that hard to avoid doom.

Management of Change

2017-12-15. Comments. Rating 5. ID 1889.

My friend Fred (not his real name), who works in a similar organisation and role to me, recently regaled me with a tale of woe regarding the "restructuring" his organisation is going through (I use the word "organisation" here because I would prefer not to say what it is and whether it is a private company or a public institution, but it really doesn't make any difference to the core message of this post).

One of the farcical aspects of this process is something called "management of change" which basically involves a propaganda campaign which attempts to persuade the participants what a good idea it all is, and to dispose of those who cannot be persuaded as quickly and quietly as possible.

A common complaint made by the perpetrators of these misdeeds against their unwilling victims is that they are resistant to change. That is, they just don't like new ideas or new ways of doing things, and if they would just be a bit more open-minded and accepting they woud see that the new ideas are good and everything would be OK.

Of course, if the victims really were resistant to change in general then this would be a good point, but Fred always mentions one very pertinent point: that is that it is not change in general that he is resistant to, it is just the type of change which usually occurs.

The managers might say something like "But you don't like any of the changes we want to make." and Fred would respond "Exactly. You seem to be incapable of making fair and reasonable decisions, and everything you do is grossly flawed. If you started implementing changes that we actually wanted then we would be fully supportive. Until then, we will resist and sabotage your efforts as much as possible. You are grossly incompetent and we have no confidence in your decisions."

I can see his point exactly, although he could be said to have a slight tendency towards ranting. I sometimes wonder about Fred's ranting because it often tends towards the extreme, and having that degree of cynicism and distrust seems a bit unhealthy in some ways.

But here are sorts of changes Fred almost always sees and doesn't like: more bureaucracy, paperwork, timesheets, accounting records, and other mindless time wasting; more control by management and less self-sufficiency for the actual professionals doing the work; budgets cuts making it harder to get the equipment necessary to work efficiently, to attent conferences, and to get training, at the same time as the organisation wastes huge amounts on pointless projects; and more extreme control and micro-management by managers even though they have no idea what is really required.

And here are the sorts of changes he would fully support: reducing paper-work so that the professionals could actually do the work they are both good at and are ultimately paid to do; letting the workers make decisions based on their expertise and experience instead of following dysfunctional policies devised by people entirely ignorant of the real requirements of the job; diverting some of the funds going to wasteful management projects and using it for basic equipment and training for the people actually carrying out the organisation's core tasks; and giving the staff the freedom to work the way that works best for them and their clients.

If more (or any) changes came from the second list and not the first then Fred assures me he would be fully supportive of them.

But the saddest thing about these "management mongrels" (Fred's words) is their total ignorance of how much their staff actually despise them. I mean, Fred often speaks with an air of genuine hatred towards these "worthless scum" (his words again) and he's not the sort of person to be so negative in general.

He recounts an incident where he was treated with total disdain by the HR department of his organisation, including threats to possibly involve the police, and it was only the intervention of his lawyer which made them back off (and pay him a moderate sum for the stress they caused, because they were obviously wrong). Yet a week after that a senior HR staff member who had been responsible for his persecution casually greeted him on the street as if they were the best of friends.

It's as if these people are sub-human monsters (his words) and cannot connect with real people. They like to think they are all part of the same team, all working towards the same greater goal, and all good friends, but the complete opposite is true. In fact, they are the enemy and must always be treated as such.

Thomas Paine said that "the duty of a patriot is to protect his country from his government." Fred would say that it is the duty of every worker to protect his company, institution, etc from its management.

Racist Misogynist Xenophobe

2017-12-13. Politics. Rating 4. ID 1888.

Apparently, according to some people, I am a racist and/or a misogynist and/or a xenophobe, plus there might be a few other vague insults I can't recall right now. The people making these opinions known don't really know me at all, and the opinions are generally based on single comments I have made on discussion forums, so I don't take them too seriously.

I know I have discussed this issue before, that is, the ease with which these generic (and I would say ultimately meaningless) insults are used today, but I think it is one of the defining issues of the modern era, so I want to say some more about it here.

So first, what are some of the comments I have made to incur the wrath of these critics?

Well, one example might be recently where I said I didn't like the religion Islam. Apparently, according to some people at least, that is racist, even though Islam is a religious and political idea rather than a race.

I also said I had no real interest in learning the Maori language simply because I have other things which I personally think are more valuable for me to spend my time on. And that is also racist, according to some, even though I'm not trying to stop anyone else learning Maori if they want to.

Plus there have been occasions when I said I was not impressed with the performance of certain female public figures, and (as you might be able to predict by now) that was labelled sexist, even though I make similar criticism of male figures without receiving any opprobrium at all.

Finally, if I mention various ways I disagree with some forms of overseas investment and excessive migration to New Zealand then I am also xenophobic, even when it is only when that criticism involves certain countries and when equally critical points are made about others it is considered OK.

It's really quite disturbing what a terrible person I must be. I really had no idea!

But here are a few points which I really must make in defence of my comments, which I believe reveal a deeper understanding of my perspective...

First, I criticise ideas, not people. I have never said that I don't like Muslims, for example. It's Islam that I don't like, and I know and like some Muslims, despite the fact that I don't agree with their religion.

And I have nothing against the Race Relations Commissioner of New Zealand. I don't criticise some of her statements because of who she is, or because she is a woman, it's because I disagree with both her apparent underlying philosophy and many of her specific pronouncements.

And I don't criticise some Chinese investments in New Zealand because of their country of origin. It's because I think they are exploitative and not good for the country overall, and I also criticise many similar investments from the US and Australia.

Second, I don't judge people based on one aspect of their personality. Sure, if a person is seriously religious (especially Muslim) it will make it harder for me to like them, but there are many parts which make up a person's overall values, and everyone has positives and negatives. In fact, I welcome differences in opinion because that gives me an interesting basis for meaningful debate.

Third, I try to be consistent. So I think Islam is responsible for most of the terrorism in the world today and I condemn it on that basis. But I equally condemn Christianity for some of the atrocities it has been responsible for in the past. And the same applies to non-religious ideas such as Stalinism.

Fourth, I try to avoid trendy catch-phrases and ideas based on what is currently fashionable. So I try to avoid the unthinking condemnation of Donald Trump, even though I disagree with a lot of what he does. And I don't use silly words like "mansplaining" or "white privilege". These are often used in the wrong context and as a way to reject a person's opinion without having to come up with any genuine objection.

Fifth, I try to offer some balance in a discussion I think is too one sided. So if I see a discussion where Islam is being excused of any blame for terrorism I will point out that it must accept some degree of responsibility because of the way its written material can be quite reasonably interpreted as being a call for violence. But I will also defend Islam if I think it is being excessively blamed, because there are equally parts of that material which are moderately tolerant and peaceful.

There's a fine line between this and just being a troll, and it is easy to just cause trouble rather than offering a genuine alternative opinion, but it's just something I do.

Sixth, I try to offer a nuanced view which avoids one extreme or the other. Nothing is totally good or bad so it is sensible to argue based on that perspective. For example, I might say that immigration is causing a lot of social problems here, but I don't think it is totally bad and I don't think we should shut it down completely.

Or I might disagree with many of the economic principles of libertarianism while agreeing with its emphasis on maximum individual freedom. The world is complicated and it's too easy to over-simplify it.

Seventh, I enjoy debating for its own sake, and I enjoy being in the minority and being controversial. Sometimes this leads me to taking a side I am not totally committed to and sometimes this means my arguments are shown to be deficient. And this leads to my final point...

Finally, I do try to admit when I'm wrong, and when other people make good arguments, and when an issue is ultimately a matter of opinion. This does happen occasionally and I try to look at it as if I don't correct my view on some issues then I am not really improving my overall philosophical perspective. If I still believed exactly the same things today as I did a few years ago then it would be disappointing in many ways, so being wrong about some things should be welcomed - as long as it doesn't happen too often!

And sometimes a debate just has to end with a comment like: "well that's your opinion, which I can appreciate, but I think mine is more reasonable. However, since we are both really just offering opinions on a matter which cannot be resolved through logic or facts I think we need to agree to differ on this issue and leave it there."

If, after all of this, someone still wants to use an ad hominem against me then in many ways I welcome that. It's almost like an admission on their part that they are wrong and are out of ideas. If they want to call me racist then fine, I embrace that label if it means I am being more honest and realistic.

I'm sure that is anyone examines my record of debating on Facebook, on YouTube, and in this blog, amongst others, they will find times when I have failed to live up to the high standards I presented here. But I do make the effort at least, and I do think that I am at least aware of these as being worthy of aspiring to.

If other people would just think about these (especially number 4) before they write a comment I think the general standard of debate would be higher. Then we would have less debates with meaningless words like "racist", "mansplaining", "white privilege", "xenophobe", and all that other stuff which is so over-used that it has lost any value it might have had.

So hopefully I will never again be accused of being a privileged, chauvinistic, close-minded, misogynistic, deluded, elitist, imperialistic, ethno-centric, fat-shaming, hate-mongering, heteronormative, hyper-masculine, Islamophobic, mansplaining, middle-class, straight, narrow-minded, nationalistic, heterosexual, nativist, Eurocentric, alt-right, oppressive, patriarchal, hateful, racist, transphobic, woman-hating traditionalist! (thanks to the SJW insult generator for this list of meaningless insults)

Cosmological Musings

2017-11-30. Science. Rating 2. ID 1887.

Recently I have listened to a few podcasts featuring some of the most well known scientists of today. Specifically, I mean Lawrence Krauss, Sean Carroll, and Neil deGrasse Tyson. These aren't general scientists obviously, since they all specialise in physics and cosmology, but that's the area I want to concentrate on in this post.

I admire these three in particular for a number of reasons: first, they are clearly brilliant and highly intelligent people, or they wouldn't have got to the positions they have; second, they are good public communicators of the often difficult subjects they specialise in; and third, they aren't scared to call out BS where they see it, and Carroll and Krauss in particular are very critical of religion and other forms of irrationality.

But it isn't the politically or socially controversial topics I want to cover here, it is the scientifically contentious or speculative stuff instead. So let's get started talking about some of the more speculative ideas I have heard discussed recently. Note that these aren't necessarily directly attributable to the people I mentioned above, and they represent my interpretation of what I have heard, and I am not an expert in this subject. But that has never stopped me before, so let's go!

The origin, and underlying nature of the universe is not well understood. This has been a problem for a while, because the actual point where the Big Bang started is hidden in a singularity of infinite density. Physics breaks down there, just like it does in a black hole, so nothing much can be said about it with any certainty. It is possible to use existing theories to get really close to time zero - a tiny fraction of second - but beyond that is inaccessible to current theories.

And the best direct evidence we have comes from the light of early galaxies and the cosmic microwave background (CMB). But even the CMB only formed after 300,000 years, which is s small fraction of the age of the universe (13.7 billion years) but still not as early as we would like.

So clearly this is a difficult subject, but here are a few observations and speculations about the universe which might assist in understanding what is going on...

The first point is that the total energy of the universe might be zero. This seems totally absurd on the surface, because of all the obvious energy sources we see, like stars, and all the mass which we know is the equivalent of energy through the famous equation E=mc^2. But that's where a convention in physics makes the reality quite different from what most people intuitively believe.

Gravitational energy has always been thought of as negative. This is nothing to do with the Big Bang or cosmology, it is just a natural consequence of the maths. If we accept this it turns out that the gravitational energy of the universe cancels the other energy exactly. So the universe has zero energy which means that any process making a universe can do so easily, meaning there could quite conceivably be an infinite number of them.

While some people dismiss this as a "trick" it really isn't. If cosmologists had said something like "we need to get the total energy to zero so let's just say gravity is negative and voila!" then that would be a trick. But this was an established fact long before the total energy of the universe was being considered and this gives it far more credibility.

And while we thinking about the idea of more than one universe, what about the idea that there could be many universes - each with slightly different properties - which might explain why many of the properties of our universe seem to be quite well tuned for the existence of life?

What I am saying here is that various constants seem to have values which make chemistry possible and that, in turn, makes life possible. But there seems to be no reason why the constants could not have totally different values and this could lead to a universe where stars could not form, and no stars means no energy source for life.

And the old argument about life which is entirely different from the type we see now doesn't really save us because any form of life needs both energy and heavy atoms, and stars are the only likely source for these.

But if there are an infinite, or very large, number of universes, with different constants, then it is inevitable that some will have the values which make life possible. In fact, it's possible to imagine a universe which is even better than ours for life, so there could be many which have life. In fact, if there are an infinite number of universes, there will be an infinite number with life as well!

A concept I have sometimes heard in both pop science and science fiction is the idea that at very large scales and very small scales there might be other universes hidden. For example, an atom could be a universe made of its own tiny atoms which in turn could be universes, etc. And going the other way, our universe could be an atom in a bigger universe above ours, ad infinitum. This idea might arise from the popular notion that an atom is like a miniature solar system (which it isn't).

It's a cute idea, but unfortunately it can be ruled out by applying the laws of physics. Sub-atomic particles have no details and no uniqueness. For example, every electron is a single point (or "cloud" of probability) with no structure and which is completely indistinguishable from every other electron. This doesn't seem like a good candidate for a whole universe!

What about the "oscillating universe" or "big crunch" theory? This is the idea that the universe expands but the expansion slows down until it stops at a certain point, then it starts contracting again, reaches a singularity, and is "reborn" in a new Big Bang. At this point any vestige of the old universe is erased and all the energy is replenished. This would be a process which recurs infinitely in both the future and past.

This is quite an appealing notion, because it tells us what was before the current Big Bang, and previously it was thought that gravity might have been slowing the rate of expansion. Unfortunately for this theory new evidence shows us that the rate of expansion is actually increasing, because of dark energy, so the contraction and "Big Crunch" can never happen.

There's nothing fundamental in physics which seems to stop processes running backwards in time. I have heard an idea that maybe the universe was created as a result of a signal sent backward from a future form of the universe itself. This removes the need for an initial cause which in turn might need a cause, leading to an infinite regress of causes.

Signals going back in time should be considered somewhat controversial, of course, because of the principles of causality, so I would be hesitant to take this too seriously unless some clarification on the exact mechanism arose.

Here's another one: new universes appear inside black holes created in existing universes. These universes all have slightly different attributes than the universe they came from, but inherit the starting parameters from them.

This is nice because it sets up an "evolution" model where "the survival of the fittest" applies to whole universes! Only universes which can make black holes will create new universes. To create a black hole the universe needs to have a fairly long life, a way to concentrate matter, a way to allow matter to "condense" out of energy, etc. These attributes also lead to laws and constants suitable for the development of life.

Clearly this is difficult to evaluate because we don't know what happens inside black holes, because as I said above, the infinite density of matter causes current theories to break down. There is no compelling reason to think universes are formed from black holes so it's probably best to disregard this idea unless some new, relevant information becomes available.

Finally, how about the idea that the purpose of a universe is to allow intelligent life to form which, in turn advances to the point where it figures out how to make universes?

This also sets up a potential evolutionary scenario, but we have no idea whether any intelligent life form, no matter how advanced, could create a universe, so again this seems to be somewhat unworthy of spending too much time speculating about at this stage.

Well, wasn't that fun! Obviously we don't know the truth about the origin or fundamental nature of the universe, not because we have no ideas, but because we have too many! I'm fairly sure that when real theories are created to explain these phenomena that none of what I have said here will be the real explanation, but it's still fun to speculate!

Genesis Version 2.0

2017-11-27. Religion. Rating 3. ID 1886.

Chapter 1: Prologue

Yahweh needed a purpose. He was the most powerful entity in the metaverse, yet what had he ever achieved? It was time to do something great, and the only thing which would be worthy of his abilities was to create a universe. In fact it seemed like this was his entire reason for existing. Yahweh performed the calculations and determined what would be needed.

And he started creating...

First, he created a planet where he could experiment. It was covered with water because that was the basis for the chemistry he had decided to use. Despite the water, he called it Earth.

Then he created light, because, obviously his new universe would need to be visible to everyone, including the various conscious entities he might create.

But he realised the light might hide most of the magnificence of the universe he was creating, because the stars and galaxies - which he would soon create - could only be appreciated in darkness. So he decided to stop the light regularly and made darkness.

Then he built a realm where his creations could be brought to so they could interact with him. While he wanted to remain mostly seperate, some intervention might also be needed. This was hidden from everyone except him, and he called it Heaven.

And he needed some dry land so that there would be another habitat for the various species he would bring into existence. So he caused the waters to recede and uncover the solid earth.

And Yahweh was happy so far with what he had done. He thought it was good.

With the basics out of the way, it was now time to start on the interesting stuff. He needed some organisms capable of using the light to make energy for themselves, and ultimately all living things. These would be plants and he devised a clever trick he called photosynthesis to allow them to do this.

Again, Yahweh saw that things were going according to plan. This was good.

But at this point he realised he had made a small mistake. The light had no obvious source and he didn't want his part in making this universe to be too obvious. So he created the Sun to be the main light source, and just for some added interest, a Moon as well. Of course, not being content with a single solar system, Yahweh created a few trillion galaxies of hundreds of billions of suns, for no real reason except to show just how powerful he really was!

After that he considered the universe so far wasn't yet great, but it was good.

Now was the time to create animals to populate his world. He made many species to live in the seas and fly in the sky, then he made animals to live on the solid ground. And here he used his most subtle and clever idea: the animals had a fixed life-span, but could reproduce with minor variations in the next generation. He figured this should create many interesting new forms in the future.

So yes, Yahweh also thought this was good.

Finally it was necessary to carry out the final step: to create an intelligent species modelled, somehow, on himself.

And that was it. His universe was completed. Yahweh congratulated himself, pronouncing it "very good"...

Chapter 2: A Lesson in Theology

Dan looked up from his control console, turned to his colleague, Jerry, and said "any idea what's gone wrong?" only to receive an exasperated shrug in return.

The power use had been far over what they expected for some time now, and no one seemed to be able to figure out why. The initial testing should have been carried out at a low level of computation, and that would have meant low power use too - at least as low as a computer with a quadrillion bytes of storage could be expected to use.

If things didn't get better soon they would need to call the old man himself. He designed this contraption so maybe he could get it to respond to basic instructions. But Dan didn't want to do that yet because he was treated like a modern prophet by his colleagues, and his reputation was on the line. They would work on regaining control and bringing the power down for a bit longer before calling for help.

He said "Do you know anything about the old man? He created this thing but I've never seen him around here. He seems to live in his office upstairs but we never see him - it's almost like he's invisible. And he really is an odd one - I heard he still believes that old religion that was popular 50 years ago. Do you know anything about that?"

Jerry knew he was being baited about his "useless" qualifications but replied, "You know I did a theology degree, don't you. That's why I work in IT. But yes, you're right, he still believes in a religion called Christianity, which was very big a few decades ago. It was an odd mixture of traditional superstition, sacrifice, and strange rituals, and had some quite interesting ideas about pacifism and tolerance, too."

"Well it's all crazy as far as I can tell," observed Dan, "what use could it be in solving problems like what we have here now?"

Jerry saw his opportunity to tease his friend a little bit, and said "Why do you think he gave the computer the name he did? Does the name mean anything to you?"

Dan looked indignant, but said "Well, he called it YAHWEH, which stands for yottabyte analytical hypothesiser with extended heuristics. I've never heard the name before in another context, but it seems to make a lot of sense to me, after all that's what it does. What exactly are you trying to suggest?"

Laughing, Jerry said, "Did that name ever seem a bit contrived to you? I mean, sure it has a yottabyte of memory and heuristics are an important part of its super-intelligence, but the rest seems more made up to fit the name, rather than the other way around. I know there is an old tradition in IT of doing this, but why would he choose the name of the old Christian God?"

Dan wasn't convinced so he replied, "Well you could be right, but so what? Even if he named his computer after the god from his old fairy story, that doesn't prove anything, except that he is even crazier than we previously thought."

Jerry decided to take a different tack. "You know he is also interested in the ideas of the philosopher Nick Bostrom, don't you. He specifically warned us against super-intelligent computers, but here's another thing he is well known for that might interest you: he also had an argument, which he didn't necessarily believe himself, that our universe is a simulation running in a super-intelligent computer in another, presumably real universe. It was called the simulation argument."

By now Dan was starting to look a lot more uncertain, and said "You don't think that's what the old man is up to, do you? I mean, is this computer running a simulation of another universe? Does it really have the capacity to do that? Has it just created its own universe, with living conscious people like us? With a name like that, maybe it really does think it's a god."

Jerry looked thoughtful and said, "If it had created a universe with conscious simulated life do we have the right to terminate it? After all, if Bostrom is right, we could be part of a simulation too. How would you like if it the computer our universe is being simulated in was reset?"

But Dan wasn't accepting any of this. He argued, "That's the problem with theology, you can make a story full of intersting details but without a scrap of evidence to support it. Surely you don't think we will ever need to make that decision, do you?"

Jerry glanced down at his console and suddenly went pale, he whispered "I don't know, but I just found the name of the program it's running. It's called Genesis..."

Good or Bad

2017-11-19. Religion. Rating 3. ID 1885.

While I'm in the middle of a phase of religion bashing I thought it might be a good time to resurrect (an ironic choice of word) the old subject of religion in schools. This has appeared as an issue in the media here a few weeks back, so the subject is topical.

In the past, I have sort of shrugged off the issue saying something like, the young people nowadays are too smart to be taken in by some blatantly transparent myths and are likely to consign religion to the same category of fiction as the Lord of the Rings, or Game of Thrones.

This is no doubt true in most cases. Because, there is certainly reason to think that our civilisation's childhood, where it relied on ancient traditional stories as a basis for cultural identity, is now starting to reach a conclusion, and we are growing up and abandoning the imaginary invisible man in the sky.

Here in New Zealand the "no religion" group is about to reach 50% of the population. Additionally, as I have said in the past, most people who indicate Christian as their religion on the census don't really have any commitment to that belief and never attend church, read the Bible, or even really know much about it.

But it's when previously powerful belief systems are threatened that they can become most dangerous. It's a bit like a wild animal's attack reflex when it's cornered. So we should be especially careful now that churches don't make a last ditch stand before they are consigned to the rubbish heap of bad ideas like all their predecessors. And maybe even more worryingly, we need to be careful that even worse religions, like Islam, don't fill the void left by Christianity.

As I said above, most kids will not be taken in by the silly stuff they are taught in Bible in schools. But it is not the well-balanced, sensible, practical majority we need to worry about. It is the out of touch, emotionally and intellectually immature minority which are most at risk.

As I write this I realise that perhaps I have "shot myself in the foot" to a certain extent, because you might make a case to say that it is those who are not coping well who might have most to gain from joining a church and getting extra support and friendship.

I'm sure that there are some people who actually are better off joining a religion, and I have never argued for complete eradication of religion - at least I can't recall an occasion, although I might have done during one of my more extreme rants! On the other hand, there might be more appropriate groups than a church those people could gain even more from, without the need to resort to superstition.

At this stage it is apparent that I am still conflicted on this subject. Don't misunderstand, I am totally committed to the idea that religions are fake and have little purpose beyond that which can be provided far better by other knowledge systems (science for facts, philosophy for values), but fake stuff can still have value for certain people.

In the final analysis, this subject is just like every other: it is not a matter of black and white, or good and bad, just like I have so often said in past blog posts. I think that if kids were taught positive philosophical beliefs or given instruction in comparative religion in schools that would be of far more value than simple indoctrination in the dominant religion of the time, but maybe traditional Christian instruction - as along as it is controlled and doesn't turn into aggressive proselytising - is OK.

Unfortunately the temptation to regress to aggressive conversion - with the threats of torture in Hell for unbelievers, etc - is just too likely according to many reports in the media. So maybe it would be be best just to expel religions from schools because of current bad behaviour.

Well, this blog post has certainly turned out to be one of my most indecisive ever! So, in summary, religion in schools. Good or bad? Well, yes... yes, definitely good or bad.

Is This Paradise?

2017-11-08. News. Rating 4. ID 1884.

It seems that there has been a continuous stream of leaks showing the greed, dishonesty, and utter lack of moral values of the rich elite in society. The latest leak, the so-called "Paradise Papers" is the biggest yet, and although it doesn't show anything technically illegal (at least not when this post was written), it does show us yet another loathsome exhibition of self-centered and cynical greed.

It's not the people or organisations who are only just surviving and cannot afford to pay any more tax who make use of these tax havens, it is more those who have so much already that they could afford to pay out far more tax and barely even notice. Yes, too much is never enough for these people. They always want more, no matter what the consequences.

And there are consequences. All around the world people are dying by the thousands every day because health systems are failing. Education standards are dropping because schools are increasingly under-funded. Infrastructure in even the richest countries is failing. And at the same time the Queen of England, Apple, Microsoft, Google, and all the other usual suspects have so much spare cash they barely know what to do with it.

Is this what we signed up for when we gave tacit approval for modern capitalism to control our lives? I don't think so.

When we are told that people are dying on waiting lists because there is no money to treat them in hospitals, I say that is a lie. The money exists but it is tied up in dodgy deals in Bermuda. The rich are almost literally murdering people every day because of their grossly offensive need to have more. No matter how much they have it is never enough, and no price is too much to pay for more, as long as it is not them who has to pay it.

It is a truly immoral and disgusting system we have in place. But to add insult to injury, it is even worse when we acknowledge how widely supported this is, even by those who are the most disadvantaged. Because as well as being skilled in the fine art of greed the ruling elite are also masters of propaganda!

So let's have a look at some of the arguments they use to justify the situation we find ourselves in.

1. The rich earned their money and they deserve to keep it.

It is rare for any rich person to have actually done anything to earn their wealth. Most wealth is generated by investing in profitable deals. This might be currency trading, investing in a new company which has become successful through its creator's hard work, buying property then gathering rent. Do these sound like worthwhile activities which should be rewarded with millions or even billions of dollars per year? If you think so then you really should reconsider your moral standards.

2. The rich pay taxes according to the rules, just like everyone else.

Everyone, the rich included, must know that the rules are easy to avoid if you can afford to pay for enough expensive but unethical lawyers and accountants. Even if it is possible to bypass tax laws the rich don't have to do that. They go to extraordinary lengths to avoid paying tax and they must know that it is bordering on illegal. If they have so much already what would be the harm in paying a bit more tax and making a fair contribution to society?

3. Big business must be encouraged because it provides a lot of jobs.

But does it? Let's look at an example. A new branch of McDonalds opens in my street and provides work for 5 to 10 people. Isn't that good? Well, superficially it is, but what is the overall effect of big companies like McDonalds? How many small food outlets close because they cannot compete with the big multinational? I suspect that over the long term far more people lose work than gain. The same applies to big retailers, and every other form of business.

4. Without big business we would have no innovation.

This is clearly untrue. There are certainly some examples where real innovation has come from private business (Xerox and IBM come to mind) but only in a tiny minority of cases. The real progress on the cutting edge of science and technology is coming mostly from universities. Sure, companies like Apple are very good at taking the new technology and turning it into sometimes quite spectacular products, but this isn't true innovation. Big companies seem to gain new technology more through acquiring new, small startups than doing anything genuinely new themselves.

5. Anyone can join the rich if they just put in the effort.

Well this obviously isn't true because there is only a certain amount of wealth to be distributed. And when the top few percent have more than everyone else put together, there will obviously always be an inequitable distribution. There are people in all modern countries working far longer hours than most CEOs yet making barely enough to survive. Effort has very little to do with it.

6. The current situation is the natural result of free markets and we can't change it.

Well markets aren't free, they are creations of governments. If you think a system where the vast majority of people who are poor pay for an infrastructure that the rich then exploit is an example fo a free market then I think you need to re-evaluate the meaning of the word "free". And even if the market was free, so what? If it brings the gross inequity we see today I say we should forget about free.

7. Since the world adopted a market economy the majority of people are better off.

This is a difficult one to evaluate but I would say that many people actually aren't better off compared with how they were under the less extreme economic system of 50 years ago. Also, most of the improvements in life today - such as longer lifespan, better communications, better treatment for disease, etc - comes from science and technology, not business. Again, it's not as simple as saying the corporate world has had no positive effects on society, it's more that the benefits often quoted are deliberately over-stated.

But why am I bothering? There should be no surprises in this latest leak. Most people already know how the world works: how the poor subsidise the rich, how the rich are immune to the rules which control the rest of us, how politicians are "owned" by corporations. We all know this, but still it continues, in fact it gets worse.

Well, changes do happen and often quite unexpectedly. I don't remember the fall of the Soviet Union (another grossly corrupt, yet powerful entity) being predicted by too many people, yet it happened suddenly and rapidly. The same can happen to the current extreme form of global capitalism.

And even if nothing happens I still need to blog about it. It is sort of a cathartic mechanism for me. The indignation and disgust I feel when I hear about the latest excesses of the ultra-rich must be assuaged in some way, no matter how ineffective it might ultimately be.

As I have said in past blog posts: bring on the revolution!

Revolting and Primitive

2017-11-01. Religion. Rating 5. ID 1883.

I like to get involved with controversial topics when I debate people on-line. This sort of makes sense because what sort of interesting debate are you going to have over something that isn't controversial? When it comes to controversy two topics tend to come to the fore: politics and religion. And if you read this blog you will see these are two of my favourite subjects!

The "discussion" I want to consider here was about who is to blame for the anti-immigrant sentiment which is giving right-oriented politics traction in various parts of the world (the US and Europe in particular).

My hypothesis was that moderate governments have been too lenient - largely through a propensity towards political correctness, and a wish to implement a quick and easy boost to their economies - regarding Muslim immigration into countries like Germany, the UK, and France.

So I made the following somewhat inflammatory remark on the subject: "I'm sure many Muslims are nice people but Islam is a revolting, primitive religion, and you can't blame people for being worried about it. If moderate parties won't control the power of Islam then people have to vote for more extreme parties. It's unfortunate but you can only blame the moderates."

Notice that, while this could be seen as controversial, I am sticking to my standards of criticising ideas rather than people. I genuinely believe the bit about many Muslims being nice people, because I know some, and they are. But that doesn't detract from the second idea that the Islamic religious/political belief system itself is not so nice, although "primitive" and "revolting" is possibly a bit on the extreme end of the potential range of criticisms!

Of course, the SJWs immediately jumped on their band-wagon (do they ever leave it?) and criticised me by saying something like "it is you who is revolting and primitive".

And that's exactly what I wanted, because I replied with "yes, I often blow myself up and kill innocent children, I don't let women participate as equals in society, I use stoning and amputation of limbs as a punishment, and I support the death penalty for apostasy".

Strangely, the SJWs seemed to shut-up after that, although I did get a couple of messages of support!

Often in that situation I would get some reasonably fair counters to my point. People might say I am choosing the worst aspects of Islam and ignoring the best. Or they might say someone who supports those ideas is not a true Muslim. Or they might say other religions and belief systems are just as bad.

I don't believe any of those ideas hold up to much scrutiny, but at least they are orders of magnitude better than the simple-minded ad hominem I got.

But enough of that indignation at being castigated in such insulting terms, because, as I said, that was exactly what I wanted. What about my response to the possible reasonable responses I listed above?

What about the criticism that I am concentrating on the worst aspects of Islam? Well yes, I am in a way, because those are the aspects which affect me, and the culture I most identify with. If there were a lot of positive aspects which I felt an affinity for I would have mentioned those, but quite honestly I cannot think of anything, except for the very general wish for more diversity to make life more interesting.

Remember that I am criticising Islam here. If I was asked to give my opinion on an individual Muslim I would very likely say that I liked them, because there is so much more to most people than their religion. But for some people there actually isn't much more. The people who are prepared to kill themselves and others for their religion are very much defined by it. This gets back to my oft-repeated idea that "religion is OK, as long as you don't take it too seriously"!

But what about the second point, that the people committing atrocities around the world are not motivated by religion, or aren't true Muslims? This is probably the most pernicious lie that the PC left tell themsleves. We know these people are directly motivated by their religion because they tell us they are. And there aren't many ideologies, apart from religion and it's promise of entry into paradise after death, which people are prepared to die for.

And then there's the idea that other religions (and other "belief systems" such as political ideologies and even atheism) are just as bad as Islam. But are they?

Look at a list of who is responsible for most of the revolting and primitive (there are those words again) acts around the world. In almost every case these are directly motivated by a belief in Islamic religious and political doctrine, including the idea that those who sacrifice themselves for the cause will be admitted to paradise in the after-life, the idea that non-Muslims can be killed or enslaved, and the wish to initiate a final battle where Islam will emerge dominant.

Do we see that from Christians? No, not any more at least, because Christianity has been tamed by modern secular politics. What about Buddhists? Well disappointingly we do to some extent, but not in such a wide-ranging way. Do we see it from atheists? Of course not, because how can having no belief in a religion lead to acting on the associated dogma, because there is none! Do we see it from neo-Marxists or neo-Nazis or any other extreme political group? Again, no, not much.

So it seems to me that my criticism is fair and that none of the responses to it really make much sense, unless you are really desperate to find a way to defend an idea that you think you must defend, irrespective of it's true harm to the world.

So I don't regret my comment. As I said, it was on the extreme end of what I really think, but I think I made my point effectively, and that was my intention.

Blog Posts and Podcasts

2017-10-26. Comments. Rating 2. ID 1882.

It has been a while since I created a new blog post, but if you are feeling neglected, never fear! I have not given up writing them, and still have many ideas I want to discuss. I'm sure the world is relieved to hear this news!

The reason I haven't posted anything for 10 days is that I have been concentrating on podcasts.

Just in case you haven't caught up, a podcast is an audio recording (usually a spoken discussion or reading) which can be downloaded from the internet and listened to at any time, usually on a smart phone, but also possibly on a computer, tablet, or similar device. There will be a feed which allows you to "subscribe" and be notified of new podcasts, which are usually created regularly as a series. Alternatively individual programs can be accessed through a normal web page.

My podcasts are at http://ojb.nz/owen/XuPodcasts/Podcasts.html
and the RSS feed is http://ojb.nz/owen/XuRSS/RSS2.xml

At one point in the past I was creating these fairly regularly, but have gone through a period where I neglected them a bit. Recently I got back into the fine art of podcasting, which is quite involved. My podcasts are usually between 5 and 10 minutes in length but most require about an hour to create.

First I need to record the program. I find a quiet space and read the material into my computer. Including errors, phone calls and other interruptions, re-reads, etc this usually ends up being twice as long as it should be!

Then I edit the audio file I recorded using an audio program. I currently use the quite powerful, free program, Audacity. I remove the errors and repeats, fix the spacing by adding and removing gaps, improve the overall tempo, standardise the volume level, and improve the pitch dependent on the room I did the reading in. On a few podcasts I also add music or sound effects. Finally, I export the file as an MP3.

The last step is to write the XML and HTML (don't worry if you don't know what these are) so that the files can be accessed through a news aggregator program (I use NetNewsWire), a podcasting app (I use Downcast on my iPhone), or a web browser (such as Safari or Chrome). And I put all of those components on my web server (ojb.nz), of course.

So what is in these podcasts? Well mostly they are just audio versions of my favourite blog posts and web pages. There's nothing new in them and the podcast just provides an alternative way to get my valuable thoughts!

So if you are already bored with reading this stuff then now there is a new way for you to get bored. Now you can also achieve this by listening!

If you want some recommendations from the (currently) 74 podcasts on my site, try these...

2012-04-27 - Its Five Day Mission
2014-04-25 - The Libertarian Dream
2017-05-23 - A Ticket to Heaven
2014-02-19 - All My Macs
2016-03-16 - Sadness and Beauty
2017-10-16 - Child or Picasso?
2015-09-21 - Insulting Sir Pita

Remember, these are all available at http://ojb.nz/owen/XuPodcasts/Podcasts.html

There's a combination of stuff there which I hope most people would find interesting. If you do listen and have any thoughts, let me know in the comments for this blog post.

Child or Picasso?

2017-10-16. Philosophy. Rating 2. ID 1881.

I love thought experiments, and I'm in pretty good company because so did people like Einstein! If you don't know, a thought experiment is a way to test an idea by applying logic to it through pure thought. It often leads to new ideas (as it did for Einstein in developing the General Theory of Relativity) which might then be tested with experiments in the real world.

So General Relativity is an example of where a thought experiment was used in physics, but they can also be used in other areas, such as philosophy. In previous posts I have talked about the famous "trolley experiments" (originally in "More Morality" from 2007-11-27, and "Would You Press the Button?" from 2013-07-16) which are probably the most well known thought experiments in the area of ethics, and I have a few more in that area I want to discuss in this post.

This is interesting stuff but you have to go from one point to the next honestly. So let's go through some of these experiments. Here goes...

Philosopher, Peter Singer, likes to challenge his students with the following question: "I ask them to imagine that their route to the university takes them past a shallow pond. One morning, I say to them, you notice a child has fallen in and appears to be drowning. To wade in and pull the child out would be easy but it will mean that you get your clothes wet and muddy, and by the time you go home and change you will have missed your first class."

Unanimously, the students say they are morally obliged to rescue the child. He then asks, "assuming you could still perform the rescue, would the distance to the pond, or the nationality of the child matter?" The vast majority say no, they are still obliged to act to rescue the child. He then points out that a similar "rescue" could be achieved with very little effort in time or money by donating to a charity, like Oxfam, who are concerned with saving many lives every day.

Yet few of the students do this. Why not?

Now imagine a burning building with a child trapped inside. You can rescue the child relatively easily, and almost everyone says they would. But there is also an extremely valuable Picasso painting in the house which you will get a $1 million reward for. If you remove it from the fire you won't have time to rescue the child as well. What should you do? Almost everyone would value the child's life more and rescue her instead of the painting.

But what could you do with that $1 million? You could save hundreds of lives by donating it to charities, such as the one which provides mosquito nets in Africa. Still, most people would save the child instead. Also note that, if you did do the "logical" thing and saved the painting in order to help thousands of people later, you would probably be charged with a crime for not making a reasonable effort to save the child, as well as suffering the contempt of your friends and family!

But now imagine the building had two rooms. The first room contains the child and the painting, and the second has 5 children. If you grab the painting from the first room and ignore the single child, you can use the painting to prop open the door to the second room and rescue 5. Do you grab the painting then? If you do, what is the difference between doing that and taking it for the monetary value which could be used to save far more than just 5 lives later?

Finally, consider the burning building again. Behind the painting is a lever which releases the 5 children in the room next door. Do you ignore the single child, remove the painting, and activate the lever? Most people would. What about if the lever, through a complex mechanism, activated a food distribution system in Africa and immediately saved a thousand lives? You might still use it. And if the mechanism had a delay of 6 months before the lives were saved? Well maybe and maybe not. And is that any different than distributing the funds from the reward for the painting? In the final analysis, no, but most people treat it as if it is.

It should be clear by now that people's ethical choices do not depend on a logical treatment of the facts involved in a particular situation. Not only do most people ignore the possibility of making a much more significant contribution later rather than a lesser one immediately, but they also treat the directness of their action as a major factor, rather than the final outcome.

Consequentialism is a philosophical doctrine which states that the best course of action should be judged by its final consequences. Superficially this seems to make sense, but no one can follow this in the real world. And if they tried they would very likely be condemned by others. Not only that, but trying to analyse the options available in a situation like those mentioned above would probably result in a paralysis of uncertainty to many people.

Maybe it's just as well we act on immediate instincts rather than a careful analysis of the situation we find ourselves in. No philosophical system, including consequentialism, can really answer these questions. And although the answers are usually not obvious there is a significant amount of agreement in what people would do.

Decisions like this are a complex combination of logic, emotion, and social conditioning. And that's OK, because the end result is usually fairly reasonable even though they make no sense. General Relativity thought experiments are so much easier!

Too Much of a Good Thing

2017-10-11. Politics. Rating 4. ID 1880.

I would broadly classify my political views as liberal left but, as you will be aware if you follow this blog, I have drifted away from a conventional view of that type and increasingly disagree with other people in that particular political camp.

I'm not suggesting at all that I have become a conservative, and when I do political surveys I seem to be just as far left as ever, but I do have difficulty with one area where the left have become intolerable recently: that is in their excessive political correctness.

I have heard the claim that there is no political correctness, just correctness, but this is total nonsense. The views that political correctness supports are all very much a matter of opinion and could easily be argued both ways. For example: is affirmative action just another way to treat one group unfairly in comparison to another? Does it simply create another instance of the problem it is supposed to solve? Even if you are a strong supporter of affirmative action you should at least admit that another interpretation is possible.

But that's not what happens. In various environments where the PC left rule, even suggesting that an officially condoned measure, like affirmative action, might not be fair or reasonable automatically makes you the enemy and liable to a totally mindless barrage of abuse regarding what a "bigot" or "sexist" or "racist" you might be.

It has got to the point where I welcome those labels, because if you have to be a bigot, sexist, or racist to speak the truth, then that's just what I will need to be.

But that is an example of another phenomenon the left are guilty of: concept creep. Originally to be a racist (for example but other insulting labels are equally relevant here) you would need to exhibit some fairly extreme behaviour, such as refusing to socialise with another racial group, or actively trying to stop that group participating in society, etc. But now all you have to do is suggest that the same group shouldn't get extra privileges that others don't get.

In fact it is the other side who are really the racists. I want everyone to be equal. And I know the argument that to make some groups equal they need extra help. Fair enough, but I disagree. But let's have a reasonable discussion about this instead of just getting abusive.

The problem here is that by not being reasonable the left actually reduce the potential effectiveness of what they want to achieve. Many people are sickened by the ridiculous political correctness they espouse and that just drives them more to the right (it's happened to me and to many others).

So it's like too much of a good thing. Getting equal rights for everyone is good, but by giving extra rights to a group who, in the past were disadvantaged, they go too far and negate the good work already done.

And the failure to engage in reasonable debate about a contentious subject indicates to me that they maybe haven't thought about it too carefully. I enjoy debating my beliefs because I am confident I can defend them, and if I can't defend them that suggests maybe I was wrong and should change what I think is true. This is a healthy approach to arguing these points, but it's not one you see very often from the PC left.

The underlying phenomenon powering this set of beliefs seems to be defending marginalised groups. These groups would include non-whites, women, LGBTQs, the disabled, and Muslims. That is OK. If certain groups have genuine disadvantages let's try to fix that, but don't go too far.

These groups should still be open to scrutiny and it should be OK to criticise them when it is appropriate and when the criticism is true. And this word, "true", seems to be one the left are completely oblivious to.

So if I criticised Muslims because surveys show a large percentage of them partially or totally support some of the violence perpetrated by Islamic extremists, then answer that criticism. Show me why it's not true, or justify it in some way. Don't just call me a bigot.

And if I say a lot of the rhetoric created by the "Black Lives Matter" cause is nonsense because, in proportion to the number of crimes involved, blacks actually aren't targeted by US police to any significant extent more than anyone else (despite there being a few clearly racist cops) then show me alternative statistics which show I'm wrong, or explain why the stats aren't fair. But don't just call me a racist.

And if I say that it is girls and women who are by far getting the best outcomes in our education system now and, why do we need to create new programs to make this advantage even greater, then show me the facts that counter this idea. But don't just call be sexist.

But people very rarely even attempt to come up with points to counter mine, because they don't know them. My opponents just follow an ideology because that's what they hear in the politically correct echo chamber they live in. When they do see an alternative view their only reaction is pathetic name calling.

There are points which can be made to counter all three statements I made above, but I don't think they are very compelling. But a person from the PC left stating those points really well might convince me I'm wrong. But that's just not what they do.

Until this behaviour ends, the left are doomed I'm afraid. We're just going to get more of the sort of politics that elected Donald Trump. That was mainly the fault of the left being completely out of touch: of refusing to criticise Muslims, of treating police actions unfairly, and of making the presidential campaign a feminist contest, which they lost.

So to anyone on the left still reading this, please take notice. Your excessive political correctness is just destroying your own opportunities to convert more people to your ideals. Do what you think is right, but avoid too much of a good thing.

Some More Quotes

2017-10-02. Religion. Rating 4. ID 1879.

Occasionally I like to discuss some of my favourite quotes, usually from figures from science, history, philosophy, etc whom I admire to some extent. It has been a while since I did one of these, so let's have a look at a few good quotes I have seen recently...

Here's the first one. Quote 1: "The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion." - Arthur C. Clarke.

I don't think that religion should be totally rejected as a potential source of ideas around morality, in the same way as I would not reject fiction as a source. But the idea that religion is *the* source is absurd, insulting, and dangerous.

It's absurd because all the main religions of the world have been found to be hopelessly inadequate in their truth claims. it is insulting because very moral people can be shut-down just because they don't follow a particular religion. And it's dangerous because people stop thinking about what is really true when they surrender their critical thought processes to a religion.

Additionally, different religions, and even different sects within large religions like Christianity, have quite different ideas on what is moral and what isn't. The fact that many of these groups feel justified in killing each other over these, sometimes quite trivial, differences indicates that their overall claim to be the guardians of moral standards is questionable.

And religions have given support to many ideas in the past that we would now consider immoral, such as slavery, lack of equality for women, rejection of contraception and abortion, and many others. In fact, even today religions have far too much influence and hold back moral progress when they try to impose their doubtful moral standards on both their own members and others.

Just one last point on this before I move on. The tired old strategy the believers use when they say "how can we have morals without a god to impose them" is totally ridiculous. First, morality could easily be seen as an emergent property of the behaviour of a highly social species. Second, if a god created moral standards we would expect them to be more consistent amongst religions and not to change over time. And third, even if a god was required (one isn't) how does this relate to the childish fairy stories which are human religions?

On a related subject, I present quote 2: "So it's not God's fault for all the evil and bad things? Oh really? I form the light and create darkness, I make peace and create evil. I the Lord, do all these things. (Isaiah 45:7)" - Anonymous

This one relates quite well to a recent debate I had on my blog with a religious believer. He thought his god was justified in torturing good people (like me) with eternal torment in Heil just because we couldn't believe in the god's existence. He is a good person, and he didn't like this "fact", but he still insisted on worshipping a god who is clearly immoral and evil.

How anyone could think that any religion which included this disgusting belief has any relevance whatsoever to morality is beyond me. And the fact that it is all fantasy and Hell doesn't exist is irrelevant, because these people would clearly be OK with any real torture for unbelievers as well.

Remember that all of this comes from the New Testament, the alleged teachings of Jesus, who supposedly espoused peace and forgiveness. It might sound very moral on the surface, but dig a bit and it's the same old crap as every other religion.

So having demonstrated how grossly immoral religion is, let's move on to how stupidly fictitious it is as well. Here's quote 3: "Science: Many different people study many different sources and arrive at the same conclusions. Religion: Many different people study the same source and arrive at many different conclusions." - Anonymous.

Of course, this cannot be taken too literally because there are disagreements in science, even over the same data, and there is some degree of agreement amongst religions, but the general principle is sound.

Science tends to converge on an agreed conclusion, but religion tends to split into more divergent ideas. For example, several theories on the origin of our universe have been tested and found lacking until the Big Bang was developed and is now fairly universally accepted. But at the same time religion has split into a number of mutually exclusive, irrational ideas. Even within Christianity there is a range from Biblical literalism to complete acceptance of science, and everything in between. And none of these are really based on any religious evidence, apart from Creationism of course, which is the one most obviously wrong!

Note that the agreed science, such as the Big Bang, is not always the complete truth, but because it is based on real observations it is always a good approximation to reality. Religion on the other hand rarely has any relevance to anything in the real world at all. It is just completely irrelevant as a source of knowledge.

I have a cartoon in my collection showing a man watching TV news with the following caption (AKA quote 4): "Atheists rioted in the streets worldwide today, reacting to a Danish cartoon depicting nobody with a bomb on top of his head."

This is a reference to the Danish Muslim cartoons which caused riots and at least 200 deaths worldwide in 2005. The point is that it takes a strong belief system for people to become so irrationally violent over something so trivial. As an atheist I just have a bit of a laugh at any cartoon mocking atheism, although I might feel compelled to point out why it's wrong.

I know that today most religions might protest any perceived insult, but would not generally indulge in violence. It's usually Islam which uses violence in these situations today, but Christianity was at least as bad in the past. But the point is that if you don't believe in fairy tales you won't feel so inclined towards violence to defend them.

Here's quote 5: "The difference between a cult and a religion: In a cult there is a person at the top who knows it's a scam. In a religion, that person is dead." - Anon

All religions are scams because that is a requirement for a religion to survive. Unless a belief system has a mechanism to ensure its proliferation it will die out. That's why many people compare religion to a virus of the mind. It's like a living organism feeding off a host to ensure its own survival.

Then there's quote 6, which is another cartoon which shows a sign outside of a church with the following text: "Gather together to shout down your doubts. Sunday 10-11."

I really think this is true. Most belief systems require some sort of reinforcement over time to ensure their followers remain loyal. Regular meetings with like-minded people must be a significant element in keeping people trapped.

Finally, here's quote 7. I saw this on Twitter, and it's a tweet from God, who says: "Stop praying. I'm clearly not listening." - God

Now I do have to admit that this probably isn't really God, but he makes a good point I think. I have another quote which says "nothing fails like prayer" and it's true. Imagine all the people in poor countries who have signed up to the religions (especially Christianity) introduced by European invaders over the past few hundred years. These people are often afflicted by natural and man-made disasters and they must offer a lot of prayers for help. And what do they get? Nothing. Or at least nothing beyond what the normal laws of chance would dictate. No, apparently God really isn't listening.

So those are my quotes for this post. They prove nothing in themselves, but I think they are effective ways to communicate the bigger truth behind the simple facades. That truth is that religion is just immoral, irrational BS.

The Least Bad

2017-09-22. Politics. Rating 3. ID 1878.

It's general election time again here in New Zealand, and although we don't have much of the incredibly tedious, sanctimonious claptrap of some other countries, such as the US, it is still starting to get a bit annoying, especially the tendency for using "alternative facts" by the right.

But I do have to say that in other ways it is quite an intriguing contest, because the polling seems to indicate a lot of uncertainty over the preferred major party in the next government, whether the minor parties are worth voting for, and who would make the best prime minister.

I tend to look on the democratic process as a sort of interesting sociological event which can be observed a bit like an anthropologist would watch some primitive rite carried out by a stone age tribe from the depths of the rainforests of New Guinea. In other words, it's hard to take it too seriously, and even if you could it's best not to if you want to retain your sanity!

In fact, everyone I have talked to so far is extremely cynical about the political system we currently have. This attitude is reflected in real statistics too. A poll conducted a few months ago indicated a great deal of disenchantment with politics in general (this was before we got the new Labour leader whose promotion might have improved people's view of politicians a bit).

Here's a few of the findings from that poll...

The majority of people polled think the economic and political systems are rigged against them. Also, women and those earning less are even more likely to consider the system broken.

Less than half (45%) disagree with the phrase "the country is in decline", 25% agree with it, and 30% are neutral.

Over half those polled (56%) say traditional parties and politicians don't care about people like them. And 64% think the economy is rigged to advantage the rich and powerful. But just 50 per cent of people want a strong leader willing to break the rules.

So it seems to me that most people see the current system as defective at best and a complete failure at worst, but they clearly aren't sure what to do about it based on the figure of only half wanting a strong new leader capable of pushing through change.

And that is fair enough, because past experience with change does not exactly inspire confidence. The last time we had a strong leader determined to push through major change here in New Zealand was 1984. Yes, that ominous year was when a neo-liberal inspired Labour government pushed through massive changes which are only being corrected now, almost 35 years later.

And Donald Trump could be seen as a strong leader determined to force change on the current system, but most people are concerned about his actions (to say the least). I don't partake in the mindless bashing of Trump that many others do, but there is a lot to be concerned about there.

Having a strong leader is not always a good thing, because strength is only beneficial when it is connected with knowledge, honesty, and fairness, which Trump is sometimes lacking. In fact the worst thing possible is a strong leader with bad ideas!

So it almost seems hopeless. People don't like the system as it is, but they are (quite rightly) afraid of change too. Maybe we are trapped in a no-win situation.

But that's not to suggest that participation in the political system is pointless. Not all of the options are equally bad, even if none of them are absolutely good. Voters need to be realistic and remember that voting for the least bad party is better than not voting and effectively giving an advantage to a party you might support less than others.

So we should just be realistic and realise that, unless we are a member of the rich and powerful elite, we cannot really win in any meaningful way, we should just choose based on how we lose the least.

It's rather unfortunate that our current systems don't give us the freedoms and other benefits they promise. But the sooner people realise what the true situation is the sooner they can make meaningful choices about how to make it better. And don't take it too seriously!

Laugh about it, shout about it
When you've got to choose
Every way you look at this you lose...

Facts, Logic, Morality

2017-09-18. Religion. Rating 4. ID 1877.

I recently spent some time with a colleague discussing how to deal with a fundamentalist Christian's irrational ideas that he had recently become aware of. I have to say that this fundy keeps his crazy ideas pretty much to himself and is otherwise a perfectly pleasant and reasonable person, so there was no real need to try to "convert" him, but sometimes the need to try arises - such as in a debate situation - so I thought I might describe my technique here.

I have had varying degrees of success with this in the past, from complete rejection (because some people are never going to change their views) to moderate success (for example, a person admitting to changing his opinions, or one who was on the road to enlightenment: that is, believing the same thing as me, and I am fully aware of how arrogant that sounds).

But where I have had some successes it has never been using just one technique. In addition, it is never easy to tell which method of persuasion is likely to be effective for a particular individual, so I have created a three step process which formalises by debating technique...

Step 1. Use facts.

My first instinct when debating controversial issues is to use facts. In general the issues I support can be easily supported with good evidence. But most people who believe in irrational ideas didn't get to that point by following the facts, because there never are many supporting them. So it often follows that they can't be moved by using facts either.

In addition there are always facts on both sides. Sometimes the "facts" on one side are barely facts at all (hence the quotes) but many people will believe an extremely doubtful or weak fact if it supports what they want to believe, even if there are a hundred which are much more certain against them.

Step 2. Use logic.

When step 1 fails it is often useful to try a process of logic. A complex idea can be broken down into a series of steps which logically follow and are difficult to deny. There doesn't necessarily have to be any facts involved in this because logic usually transcends facts.

Step 3. Use morality.

If both facts and logic fail a good backup strategy, depending on the actual subject under discussion, is to use a moral or ethical argument. While morals vary from one person to another to some extent, there are common concepts shared by most people, including fairness, non-violence, and freedom.

So now I should give an example. Obviously I'm not going into details because half my readers won't have even got this far and are unlikely to want to read 20 pages on the subject, but I will use a very condensed version of how I would handle the issue. So here's an imaginary debate between me and a fundamentalist Christian...

Fundy: The Bible says that God created humans, so evolution cannot be true, and following events described there it makes it obvious the world is only 6000 years old. The Bible also says that it is the inerrant word of God and that the devil is always trying to find ways to deceive us with false truths. Without the Bible to guide us we will have no moral compass and there will be increased violence and evil around the world.

Me: You say that evolution cannot be true yet almost every expert in the world has concluded it is. Also there are many lines of evidence which anyone can understand which show evolution is an accurate theory to describe the variety of life on Earth. The age of the world cannot possibly be that short and I can show you evidence from geology, biology, astronomy, physics, chemistry, and many other areas of science to show it is almost 14 billion years. The time light has spent travelling from distance galaxies shows this, for example. Let's get these fact-based claims out of the way before we move on to the other stuff.

Fundy: But the Bible has been shown to be accurate, so how can it be wrong? Also there are many scientists who don't believe in evolution or an old Earth. Here is a list of URLs for you to look at. Not following the Bible leads to you rejecting God's offer of salvation and you just don't want to admit his authority.

Me: The Bible is full of errors if you are prepared to accept scientific and historical evidence. For example, there is no evidence at all of major stories like Genesis, the Flood, Exodus, etc. These so-called scientists you cite are not publishing in scientific journals so I would say they are not practicing scientists. In fact most of them work at Answers in Genesis. If they are only looking in one place they will never be able to look at all the evidence. Let's keep to facts and forget about God's salvation for now.

Fundy: You have your facts and I have mine. Many serious researchers are religious and you cannot reject their research so easily. Also science changes all the time. Who can tell when a new theory might come along and contradict the Big Bang or evolution? You say yourself that science can never prove anything with 100% certainty, so why are you so sure that science is right and religion is wrong?

Me: Instead of just offering an opinion on who is doing science and who isn't, we should look at a standard which is widely accepted. People who are engaged in science publish in reputable journals. Anyone who isn't doing that isn't really doing science. They might still be right, but based on past experience the scientific consensus is far more reliable than anything else. And you are right, we can never be 100% certain of anything, but it is still reasonable to accept a theory which is 99% likely to be at least a good approximation to the truth (like evolution), instead of one we can be 99% certain is wrong (like creation).

Fundy: You may say that but because you have no moral basis for your views they are really arbitrary. Without God to guide you and tell right from wrong, how can your views be taken seriously?

Me: Well this gets back to an old question in philosophy regarding the goodness of god. But first, let me say that using a god who probably doesn't even exist as the basis of your morality seems worse than admitting that we really don't even have a basis. And even if we pretend that your god does exist, how do we know he is good? Is it because he says so? And if your god is good, is he good because he's god, or is he god because he's good? In other words if we know he's good then there must be some external criterion to judge that against, in which case why do we need a god anyway? And if whatever he does is good because he's god then that seems a dangerous view to take because any dictator could make that claim.

Fundy: Wait, what? We know God is good because that's one of the reasons we know he's the one true God. Can you not see the logic in this?

Me: All I can see is a circular argument: God is good because he's God. How do we know he's God? Because he's good. How do we know he's good? Because he's God.

Fundy: You know, that is a ridiculous simplification of a position that theologians have been debating for centuries. Do you really believe you have the answer to such a deep and meaningful problem?

Me: Well, yes. I think it really is that simple. The only reason it becomes complex is because many people want to reach a conclusion that supports the existence of a god. If they just followed the evidence they would see that it's really quite simple: that there is no good reason to believe a god exists.

Fundy: The Bible talks about people like you who use false logic to try to lead believers away from the truth. You do realise that you are risking eternal damnation for your excessive pride and inability to accept the authority of God, don't you?

Me: I know that according to the narrative of the New Testament your god prefers to inflict people who refuse to accept his dominance with eternal torture. This is the same god who is advertised as being the "God of love" and who has a prophet (Jesus) who preaches understanding and acceptance. This seems somewhat contradictory to me.

Fundy: God gives you the choice of believing in him or not. If you don't accept his offer you deserve all you get. He sacrificed his son so that you could have this hope of salvation, yet you refuse to take it.

Me: It's not a choice I make. I simply cannot believe your god exists. Should I pretend to believe when I really don't? Would God not know that I'm not being honest with him? And if your god wants me to believe in him why doesn't he make his presence more obvious? Why do I have to rely on faith which I cannot force myself to do that?

Fundy: His presence is obvious to most of us. Why do you think that most people in the world are Christians?

Me: Actually, they're not. Only a third of the population identify as Christians and even then that is purely a matter of their societal norms. You are a Christian because that is the history of the country you were born in. If you were born in India you would almost certainly be a Hindu. If you were born in Iraq you would be a Muslim. It seems that the god you follow depends on your culture, not on which (if any) god really exists.

Fundy: Well you seem to have convinced yourself that these false beliefs are true. I have tried to show you the truth but your pride prevents you from accepting it. Don't complain when you end up in Hell.

Me: Am I a bad person? Have I been guilty of any terrible crimes? I donate to charities, I am a productive member of my society, I don't harm any other people. Why do I deserve eternal damnation from this "loving God" of yours?

Fundy: God is just, and he is only doing what you deserve. It is not for me or you to judge whether he is right or wrong - he is God and can do whatever he likes.

Me: So a person who spends his whole life torturing, killing, etc and then accepts Jesus as his saviour shortly before dying goes to heaven, but a person who spends his life doing good, but cannot accept the teaching of your religion because there is no evidence, suffers forever. If that is how your god works then, even if he did exist, I would not accept him.

Fundy: And there's the proof that you are evil.

Me: OK, let's leave it there. Thanks for the discussion.

As you can see, in the fictitious example above (but one based on real experience) the fundy isn't converted on the spot, but I would hope that amongst the points I made: that the evidence is against him, that logic is against him, and that an understanding of basic fairness and morality is against him; there might be something to make him a little bit less certain than he was.

Or, maybe, he might exhibit the backfire effect and just "double-down" on his beliefs because they are shown to be probably untrue. But the three pronged attack makes that less likely because I have found that the final argument (the unfairness of God's punishment) often gets through to people when the more rational points don't.

Whatever the end effect is, debating this way is fun, and any progress - no matter how small - is OK with me.

Don't Take it Seriously

2017-09-12. Philosophy. Rating 4. ID 1876.

They say that people who cannot laugh at themselves leave the job for someone else. I think there is a lot of truth in that idea because too many people take themselves, and their beliefs, far too seriously, and they don't usually look good as a result.

In the end, most everyday issues which people get upset and very serious about are really unbelievably trivial. As an amateur astronomer and science enthusiast I know enough about the universe as a whole (or maybe even the multiverse) to know that practically everything that people take so seriously is nothing more than the tiniest, most frivolous absurdity when you look at the big picture.

To provide examples I would like to pick on some of my usual targets: managers and other bureaucrats, and religious people.

Recently I commented that a good test for Muslims who would like to move to New Zealand to live would be to have them prove that they don't take their religion too seriously by eating a pork sausage. That was deliberately provocative, because eating pork is haram (forbidden) by the Quran, except in extreme circumstances such as starvation.

Why would I want to impose such an offensive (according to some people) test? Well, I wouldn't really, of course, because it was a rhetorical point I was trying to make, rather than a serious one, but this does show how a non-serious point can be effective. Maybe a better test would be to have them have a laugh at a cartoon featuring the prophet Mohammed. Yes, I'm only somewhat more serious about that.

But why have a test at all? Well, people who have extreme views on religion tend to be dangerous. They might be more likely to carry out terrorist acts, for example, because despite the protestations of the politically-correct left, religion is the major motivating factor for most terrorists.

And even if their serious religious "philosophy" doesn't motivate them to wanting to blow themselves up, along with whatever other innocent people might be in range, it might still encourage them towards other regressive ideas, such as being against equality for women, wanting to punish homosexuals, or wanting to enforce their primitive social standards on others.

Naturally, I would not want anyone to think that this process would stop at Islam. Extremist Christians would also need to be vetted by a similar process. I have plenty of "offensive" cartoons featuring Jesus that they could have a little laugh at. For example: Jesus is hanging on his cross, after a while he dies and the Romans dangle him on strings from the cross like a puppet and reanimate him, people see this and think Jesus has risen from the dead, and the Romans think it's hilarious!

And it could go beyond religion, too. For example, Apple zealots, like me, could be challenged by having to laugh at a cartoon of Jony Ive making some pretentious pronouncement about his design philosophy (I just Googled that and there are plenty out there).

Many might say that an "offensive" computer cartoon hardly rates at a similar level to an "offensive" religious one, but I disagree. If someone takes their religion more seriously than I take good design of computer technology then they are taking it too seriously, and that's my whole point. After all, their religion isn't actually true, so treating it with a bit less sincerity seems entirely sensible.

I know religious people who I like to gently and respectfully debate regarding their beliefs, and I expect to get the same back again. If someone wants to criticise me based on my "beliefs" (I am atheist, pro-science, liberal but anti-political correctness, pro-Apple) then that's fine - I don't take it too seriously, at least as long as they don't.

When I look at the latest HST image of the universe and see thousands of galaxies in a small area of sky smaller than the Moon, and I realise there are hundreds of billions of stars (and presumably hundreds of billions of planets, and probably life, and maybe intelligent life, and just possibly some civilisations far more advanced than ours) in each one, then it's pretty hard to take the inane assertions of any religion seriously.

It's also hard to take any debate on what the best type of computer is seriously, it's hard to take any pathetic rules and regulations created by bureaucrats seriously... hey, let's just take this to the logical conclusion: you cannot take anything seriously.

So lighten up everyone. We live in a magnificent universe and our problems, thoughts, and beliefs are of no consequence at all, really. Why not just accept the obvious absurdity of human existence and not take things so seriously.

Shades of Grey

2017-09-06. Comments. Rating 4. ID 1875.

When I decided to title this blog post "Shades of Grey" I first Googled the phrase to make sure I had the meaning correct. Of course, about 99% of the hits were about the movie "50 Shades of Grey" which I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised about given the power of pop culture. But, of course, I'm using it in the traditional way: to mean that many things cannot be simply seen as good or bad, or black or white, because there are always shades of grey.

So after the disappointment of discovering that I am not discussing the movie the natural question the reader might ask is: exactly what am I on about this time?

Just that too many people like to categorise every person, every organisation, every belief system as either good or bad, when they really should be assigning a shade of grey instead. So instead of calling a political movement (for example) evil, they should say something like mostly bad but with a few good characteristics too. I really believe there is nothing in this world that is wholly evil or entirely good.

But there is a corollary to this idea which is perhaps even more important. That is that two things which might seem to occupy the "darker" end of the spectrum cannot be classified as equally bad. To use the colour metaphor: they're not both black, one might be really dark grey and the other mid-grey.

At this point I should be more specific. The one I want to use, because I have been guilty of falling into this trap myself, is to equate two sides in a conflict as being equally bad because they both have done bad things.

For example, I have heard some people say that the US was as bad as Iraq under Saddam Hussein, because of the many deaths from US air strikes in the Iraq War. Or similarly, that the US is as bad as the Taliban because they both have been guilty of causing the death of civilians in Afghanistan. Or to take it even further, that the Allies were as bad as the Nazis in World War II because of some of the more controversial actions like the bombing of Dresden.

Many people might look at these examples and scoff, saying that they see no equivalence there. That is good, but I would make two points. First, many people (especially those on the politically correct left) do see an equivalence; and second, these particular examples might not have suited your concept of morally equivalent actions but almost everyone will have something which does.

Just to make the shades of grey concept totally clear, I am not saying that the Allies were totally blameless in World War II. Many people have said that various actions (the bombing of Dresden being the most well known) might have been classified as war crimes. But while those actions were certainly far from sparkling white, they were far ahead of some Nazi's conduct, such as the Holocaust, which were surely amongst the blackest of modern times.

An interesting contributing factor to this debate is the motivation for action. When the US is involved in a conflict it isn't there to force people to adopt a religion, or to take over territory, or to even acquire resources. I will concede that there is an element of economic benefit in some cases, and in others getting involved in a conflict would be uncharitably seen as a political distraction, but these are lesser evils than the motivation of ISIS or most other opposing groups.

So saying that the US is as bad as ISIS because sometimes US drone strikes kill innocent civilians just like ISIS suicide bombers do, is missing the point. If the US could perform strikes against military targets with no collateral damage I think most people would say they would do that. But ISIS makes a deliberate effort to kill civilians as part of its military strategy.

Sure, either way innocent people are dead, but I don't think it's fair to say the two actions are equivalent. Killing innocent people accidentally from a drone strike is bad, but killing them deliberately using suicide bombers is worse according to any reasonable moral code.

If you have got this far and are still saying "well, duh" because everything I have said so far is obvious then that's good, but I can tell you I meet a lot of people who would not accept any of the above.

Here's a few more examples of people, or groups, or actions which tend to be seen by some groups as obviously black and white (good and bad) or as equally bad when there is one which is genuinely worse than the other...

The Israeli security forces versus groups such as Hamas in the Palestinian conflict. In this case the Israelis are far from innocent but at least there tactics are more moral than those used by the opposing forces.

Donald Trump versus Barack Obama. I cannot justify Trump's aversion to dealing with facts, but I also find the constant demonisation of him to be tiresome. I'm sure there are some things he has done that the PC left would approve of. Maybe closing down the TPP would be a good example.

Poor people who commit welfare benefit fraud versus rich individuals and corporations who engage in tax evasion and avoidance. I don't give either side a free pass although I think it is more morally justifiable to commit fraud to feed your family than it is to avoid paying a fair amount of tax just so that rich shareholders and directors can get even richer.

It's just too easy to assign a good or bad, pass or fail, black or white to everything, usually based on existing political preferences, or in-group habits, rather than a genuine analysis of what is really happening. I think from now on people should assign a score instead. This will encourage a more nuanced view of the situation being evaluated.

So Allies versus Nazis: 90:10, George Bush versus Saddam Hussein 60:40. the US versus ISIS 80:20, etc. Those numbers are just first guesses and I could be persuaded to change them by a good argument. But the point is that it's a lot easier to adjust some numbers than to change from a good versus bad situation.

So yes, it's all about shades of grey, and there are at least 50 of them.

The Hard Problem

2017-09-03. Philosophy. Rating 2. ID 1874.

Recently, while purchasing a few items at a wholesaler I was asked what I was listening to on my phone (because I had my Apple earphones on). I told the person I was listening to a podcast, and when that got a blank response I explained it was like a recorded radio program automatically downloaded from the internet, and that this one was by a philosopher and was mainly about politics. I was asked "are you listening to parliament?" and decided it was best to not try to explain further by making a joke like: "I wouldn't listen to that because I want to retain what small scraps of sanity I still have."

But it did emphasise how little most people know or care about many of the things that interest me, including some of the most difficult and obscure problems in science and philosophy today. Now, please don't think I'm being elitist or arrogant because I know that I am no expert on any of this stuff, I just find it interesting, and knowing more about it is part of my aim to be good at everything but brilliant at nothing!

More recently I listened to another podcast in the same series which dealt with a subject which exactly of the type I mentioned above. That is the hard problem of consciousness. What is consciousness, where does it come from, and what else possesses it, apart from me?

Before I continue I will say what I mean by consciousness here. Basically it is the feeling that I (and presumably others) have that I am an individual, that I have some continuity of existence from the past, that I have some form of free will (or at least the illusion of that) to control the world to some extent. Where does this come from?

The idea which I find most compelling, and the one which I think is generally accepted by the majority of scientists is that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon of the processes which occur inside a brain of sufficient complexity. But some people, especially some philosophers and a lot of theologians, believe it is better explained through dualism. That is the idea that there is something beyond the physical processes of thought occurring in the brain. Maybe that there is a "soul" (not necessarily in the religious sense) which is in final control of the physical processes.

At this stage, all the neuroscience I have heard of gives me no reason to think that anything beyond the purely material exists. But I want to ignore the good, solid stuff like that and consider some idle speculation and thought experiments instead!

Imagine my personal identity, my mind, my consciousness is an emergent property of my brain processes. What would happen if an exact copy of me was made (in something like a Star Trek transporter which copied the original person instead of moving him). Where would my consciousness them lie? The copy would be identical, with an identical brain and identical processes. If my thoughts arose from physical processes would I experience them in both bodies simultaneously?

Alternatively, imagine it was possible to "back up" all the information in a brain and upload it to a computer, then re-establish it after death or injury. What would happen if it was downloaded into a different brain? What would happen if it ran on an artificial brain in the computer itself?

Another disturbing question is how complex does a brain need to be before it becomes conscious? It certainly seems that many animals are self-aware. Surely chimps, dolphins, etc have similar levels of consciousness to humans. What about cats and dogs? Rats and mice? Flies? Where does it end?

And if consciousness arises through the processing power of a brain, can it also arise in an artificial brain, like a sufficiently complex and properly programmed computer? Or does it only arise in "naturally arising" entities. What about in an alien? What if that alien evolved a silicon brain very similar to a computer?

We know that our cells are constantly being replaced, don't we? Well no, that isn't exactly true. Different cells have different "life spans", from a few days up to apparently the life of the individual. Significantly, it is some types of brain neurons which are never replaced. Is it these cells which give us our individual identity?

Now let's imagine that duality is a better explanation. There are some anecdotes indicating that consciousness apparently exists independently of the body. There are out of body experiences, various phenomena such as ESP, reincarnation, and near death experiences. Some of these seem quite compelling but they have never been confirmed by any rigorous scientific study.

Maybe the brain is just an interface between the non-physical seat of consciousness and the body. If the brain is damaged or dies the consciousness still exists but has no way to interact with the world. It would be difficult to distinguish between that and the emergent phenomenon hypothesis I outlined above so maybe this is one of those theories which is "not even wrong".

Finally there is computation and maths. The way maths seems to reflect and even predict reality has been a puzzle since the article called "the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences" was published almost 50 years ago. Some physicists have noted that reality seems to almost arise from a form of computation, which seems to explain the effectiveness of maths.

So now we seem to be getting back to the idea that the universe might be a simulation (see my blog post titled "Life's Just a Game" from 2016-07-06). If it is then the universe was created by someone (or something). Would that thing be a god? And if the individual entities are "just" part of a simulation do they have any less moral rights as a result?

Maybe all of this stuff is "not even wrong" and maybe it is pointless to even speculate about it, but sometimes doing pointless things is OK, just as long as we don't take it too seriously.

So I think I will continue to listen to philosophical musings rather than the rather more mundane business of politics I hear in parliament. Actually, I think there is room for both, because politics is also a subject I include in my "good at everything" strategy. And one thing is clear: in most subjects being above average isn't difficult!