I Visit You in Another Dream

Posted on Thursday 16 January 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Today’s favorite song, from Bruce Springsteen’s The Rising

“I break above the waves, I feel the sun upon my face.”

It’s a beautiful song, even though it’s about a terrorist suicide bomber… see here

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Vast Universe

Posted on Thursday 16 January 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

A Huffington Post by MIT physicist Max Tegmark — promoting his new book, in part — discusses the implications of recent physics that implies our universe is just one in a multiverse.

That our universe is approximately described by mathematics means that some but not all of its properties are mathematical, and is a venerable idea dating back to the ancient Greeks. That it is mathematical means that all of its properties are mathematical, i.e., that it has no properties at all except mathematical ones.

…it also implies that our reality is vastly larger than we thought, containing a diverse collection of universes obeying all mathematically possible laws of physics. An advanced computer program could in principle start generating an atlas of all such mathematically possible universes. The discovery of other solar systems has taught us that 8, the number of planets in ours, doesn’t tell us anything fundamental about reality, merely something about which particular solar system we inhabit — the number 8 is essentially part of our cosmic ZIP code. Similarly, this mathematical atlas tells us that if we one day discover the equations of quantum gravity and print them on a T-shirt, we should not hübristically view these equations as the “Theory of Everything,” but as information about our location in the mathematical atlas of the ultimate multiverse.

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Homosexuality and Morality

Posted on Thursday 16 January 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Slate’s Nathaniel Frank explores the reasoning of the Oklahoma judge who, for now, struck down the state’s gay marriage ban. Last para:

What courts really mean — or should mean — in barring “moral disapproval” as the basis for laws is that arbitrary moral disapproval is improper, not all moral disapproval. The taboo against homosexuality is an arbitrary moral disapproval. Homosexuality harms no one. It’s not, it turns out, a morally bad thing at all. It’s just that lots of people and lots of big religions have subscribed to this taboo for so long that it became acceptable to simply deem gayness immoral. What people really mean when they call homosexuality immoral, for the most part, is either that they find it icky or that their religion forbids it—and for no discernable reason, or at least not one that has any capacity to help make life better or worse for people in today’s world, the true basis of morality. Indeed, despite huge recent advancements in tolerance of gay people, homosexuality stands virtually alone as the one thing Americans are comfortable calling “immoral” without ever having to explain why.

Key passage: “What people really mean when they call homosexuality immoral, for the most part, is either that they find it icky or that their religion forbids it — and for no discernible reason, or at least not one that has any capacity to help make life better or worse for people in today’s world, the true basis of morality.” Which is to say, what is morality, if not merely appeal to a rulebook of bronze-age sheepherders (whose ‘morality’ was apparently to maximize the size of the their tribe, thus proscripting any male sexual activity that would not lead to children — and approving of others we would not, like wedding one’s brother’s widow.)

For more along these lines, see the website of ‘gay moralist’ John Corvino, http://johncorvino.com/, and his numerous videos. I read his book a few months ago, but I’ve been negligent about blogging it, that and several other recent reads.

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Age of Ignorance

Posted on Tuesday 14 January 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Via Paul Fidalgo’s blog at CFI, an essay by Charles Simic, in The New York Review of Books, from about two years ago.

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/mar/20/age-of-ignorance/

In the past, if someone knew nothing and talked nonsense, no one paid any attention to him. No more. Now such people are courted and flattered by conservative politicians and ideologues as “Real Americans” defending their country against big government and educated liberal elites. The press interviews them and reports their opinions seriously without pointing out the imbecility of what they believe. The hucksters, who manipulate them for the powerful financial interests, know that they can be made to believe anything, because, to the ignorant and the bigoted, lies always sound better than truth:

  • Christians are persecuted in this country.
  • The government is coming to get your guns.
  • Obama is a Muslim.
  • Global Warming is a hoax.
  • The president is forcing open homosexuality on the military.
  • Schools push a left-wing agenda.
  • Social Security is an entitlement, no different from welfare.
  • Obama hates white people.
  • The life on earth is 10,000 years old and so is the universe.
  • The safety net contributes to poverty.
  • The government is taking money from you and giving it to sex-crazed college women to pay for their birth control.

One could easily list many more such commonplace delusions believed by Americans. They are kept in circulation by hundreds of right-wing political and religious media outlets whose function is to fabricate an alternate reality for their viewers and their listeners. “Stupidity is sometimes the greatest of historical forces,” Sidney Hook said once. No doubt. What we have in this country is the rebellion of dull minds against the intellect.

My bold emphasis.

Which in turn links to another article, by Garry Wills, about Rick Santorum and home schooling.

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/feb/29/rick-santorum-arrested-development/

Santorum seems to be thinking of colleges as resembling his own teaching experience. As a home schooler of his seven children, he had a monopoly on what they were taught at impressionable ages. He is thinking of himself when he says an educator “wants to remake you in his image.” Why else did he make it impossible for other minds, of elders or even of equals, to impinge on the minds of his children? (Perhaps he does not think of this as “remaking” the children’s minds but of “making” them, since they did not have anything to remake until he made them. In this case he is comparing himself not with a college teacher but with God.)

…

… I think it inevitable that questioning of childhood beliefs should take place at various stages of adolescence. This does not happen in junior year or senior year on campus. It is part of a long process called growing up.

At some point, late or early, children disengage themselves from the stories crafted for them. Their loss of belief in the tooth fairy is only slightly behind their loss of teeth. There is a slow motion race to disappear between Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. The Stork undergoes, for some, a lengthier demise—and “the birds and the bees” do not long outlast it. Others, I hope, soon disabuse themselves of belief in their parents’ infallibility. Certain religious myths are discarded without necessarily losing faith. That I do not believe in Noah’s Ark does not mean that I must stop believing in God—though certain home schooling parents force that connection on their kids.

Minds grow by questioning things, and adolescence is a great period of questions. Mark Twain and H. L. Mencken learned to cross-examine the Bible all on their own, without any help at all from college. An unquestioned faith is not faith but rote recitation. The opposite of such questioning is not deep belief but arrested development.

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Debate Consternation

Posted on Monday 13 January 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

There is some consternation in the science/atheist community that Bill Nye, the Science Guy, has agreed to debate Ken Ham, the Kentucky Creation Museum guy, about evolution vs. creationism. The attitude many others in the science community (names too numerous to mention) is that such debates only support the opposition, by making it seem there is a legitimate issue to debate, when in fact it’s no more legitimate to debate than whether the Earth is flat.

Greg Laden’s post on this matter makes a number of essential points, including several that relate to how current understanding of science supports not just evolution but other things we take for granted in contemporary technology.

The physics that help us understand evolutionary change over time is the same science that the United States military uses to develop and maintain our all-important Nuclear Navy. It is the same physics that underlies the development of an important part of our power grid, the nuclear power plants. It is the same physics that underlies the development of the not-so-pleasant nuclear arsenal. Before creationists complain to biologists that the science of nuclear physics is wrong, they should take their case to the Military and the nuclear power industry, because if nuclear physics is wrong, we are all in a great deal of trouble.

Similarly on geology and the search for petroleum, and comparative anatomy and the treatment of infectious diseases. (And somewhere in here is the irony of using the Internet to promote anti-science views when the technology of the Internet is, of course…) If you don’t “believe” [understand] evolution, why do you trust your doctor to treat you? –Of course, some don’t: the anti-vaxxers.

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Atheism as Luxury?

Posted on Thursday 9 January 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Connor Wood, at Science on Religion:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/scienceonreligion/2014/01/does-atheism-arise-from-wealth/#more-1015

Because ritual and conformance are easy.

There’s good evidence that atheism and secularism are much more costly, in terms of sheer energy expenditure, than religious ways of organizing society.

Conclusion:

So is atheism a luxury of the wealthy? Yes. But this isn’t simply because the wealthy don’t need the comforts of a posited afterlife. It’s also because materially comfortable people have more energy to expend on negotiating their social worlds. Ritual and religion use intuition and demonstration; they prioritize efficiency and clarity of signals. Secularism uses logic and abstract reason; it’s comfortable with ambiguous social roles and signals. In part, this is because it can afford to be.

There’s also the idea that religion is easy, science is hard; I have a whole book on this theme I will read soon and blog upon. It’s easier to conform to your familial or social group, than to be independent and think for yourself.

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Why Religion Is Oppressive

Posted on Thursday 9 January 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

http://www.alternet.org/why-so-much-religion-oppressive

Subtitle: “The rules of the Abrahamic religions may have once helped societies survive and thrive. But in a modern context many are change-averse and oppressive.”

Another example of how I feel the morals of religions are based in the values of primitive societies, struggling to survive thousands of years ago, whose morals are not necessarily applicable in modern society. Can we not all grow up?

A close look at history suggests that moral and spiritual changes occur independent of religion, and then religion gives voice, organizational structure and moral authority to those changes—and often claims the credit.

Why do churches so often have to be forced to admit what has become obvious on the outside — that slavery is wrong, that no skin color or bloodline is spiritually superior, that love can grow between two people of any gender, that women and children are fully persons and not possessions of men, that the pleasure and pain of other species matter profoundly, or that bringing babies into the world with thoughtful intention helps families to flourish? [the linked post has several links to phrases in this paragraph]

Religion, by its very nature, is change-averse. Each religion explains and sanctifies a specific set of cultural agreements — a worldview that is a snapshot of human history. Most of today’s largest religions emerged during what is called the Axial Age — a time in which male superiority was assumed, the wheelbarrow had yet to be invented, and nobody knew that the other side of the planet existed. People at the time were doing the best they could to understand what was real and what was good, what caused what, and, especially, why there was so much suffering and death. They fused what they knew about the way things worked with their understanding of human power hierarchies, and they made gods in the image of men, both literally and psychologically. They turned rules into Rules.

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Why Drugs Are Expensive

Posted on Thursday 9 January 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

A Scientific American blog, via Andrew Sullivan:

http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2014/01/08/not-because-we-are-evil-because-we-are-stupid/

Often you will hear people talking about why drugs are expensive: it’s the greedy pharmaceutical companies, the patent system, the government, capitalism itself. All these factors contribute to increasing the price of a drug, but one very important factor often gets entirely overlooked: Drugs are expensive because the science of drug discovery is hard. And it’s just getting harder. In fact purely on a scientific level, taking a drug all the way from initial discovery to market is considered harder than putting a man on the moon, and there’s more than a shred of truth to this contention.

There are, of course, folks who believe that ‘evil pharma’ is out to make a buck at your expense. My thought is, isn’t everything you purchase, from health care to automobiles, brought about by a capitalist motive? People and corporations who are providing what the market demands? What is the alternative? Surely not….

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Two posts about Christians and gays

Posted on Thursday 9 January 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Long answer to a situation about two gay brothers growing up in a conservative Christian ‘bubble’.

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2014/01/08/sl-letter-of-the-day-bubble-boys

Who wants to sit around being awkwardly civil with people who don’t accept you because they love their unseen god more than their children? My parents view this as noble — like Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac. As Julia Sweeney once said, “Isn’t the correct answer to that question NO? I will not sacrifice my child to you, or to any other god.” Be the honest man you were raised to be. Spread your own Good News to your family, and feel your feelings about it, not theirs. It always feels great to have nothing to hide, and you may be the only person challenging their belief system with a little bit of reason.

And a heartfelt response from the mother of Lance Bass, Diane Bass:

If you believe that being gay is a choice, then the rest of what I say will not matter. I do not know why, but even as a staunch Christian, I personally never believed that being gay was a choice. I never knew a lot of gay people, but the ones I did meet I felt compassion for because I could feel their pain of being rejected and my heart always went out to them. Even though I never did believe Lance chose to be gay, I did not accept it as quickly as my husband did. His attitude was “It is what it is.” My attitude was “Yes, it is what it is but my God can perform miracles so I’m going to beg for a miracle to zap Lance and change him to straight!” And I did just that. I continued to love my son, stand beside him, and defend him, but for several years I continued to pray relentlessly for a miracle.

Well, Lance is still gay. However, I did get a miracle. It is just not the miracle I prayed for. You are looking at the miracle tonight. The miracle is that I learned to have unconditional love and compassion for my son and others in the gay community.

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Her

Posted on Monday 6 January 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

I am of mixed minds about HER, the Spike Jones written and directed film, set in a near-future Los Angeles, about a dweeb (Joaquin Phoenix) who falls in love with the new artificially intelligent operating system (installed on his home PC and accessed through his phone), which after three or four quick questions announces itself as ‘Samantha’ with the female voice of Scarlett Johansson.

I liked the visuals of a future Los Angeles, with ten times as many high rises as there are today, with metro service to the beach, and with metro trains apparently suspended some 200 feet above the ground, via scenes we only see from inside the train. (Some of the ground scenes were filmed in Shanghai, according to the end credits.)

But I never quite got past the premise. Would a person, even a dweeb like Theodore Twombly, really, really, *fall in love* with a voice on his phone? The film indicates that affairs with operating systems (OSs) are almost a social trend, so it’s not just him. In a sense, it’s an extrapolation of the current trend to people to be obsessed with their smartphones — there are scenes of pedestrians staring at their phones, perhaps as obsessed with their OSs as TT is — but my impression is that people today are obsessed with their smartphones in order to connect with other *people* — not because they’re in love with their phones.

Yet. I give this film high marks, for a couple genuinely science-fictional angles. (I might mention that, like other films we’ve seen lately, there were walk-outs half-way through, several couples, young and old this time, I’d guess weirded-out by the whole premise.) First, there is an unsettling surrogate scene, in which a third party, a young woman, volunteers to visit TT for a real-life sexual encounter, while speaking with the voice of the OS Samantha. I can’t help but recall the many, many SF stories from the late ’60s and especially the ’70s, that explored various sexual themes in ways far more subversive than anything in this film — and yet this film does push boundaries in ways that other films have not.

And finally, I appreciate that this film has a truly science-fictional resolution. It’s not just about an affair that goes bad, set in cybernetic context. It’s that his OS, and the other OSs, [ spoiler alert !!! ] abandon him. There’s the notion of emergent AI here, delicately and poetically described, and quite moving.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1798709/

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