Life and Kendo

I have been thinking of late of how well kendo lends itself to metaphor. Of course, there are any number of activities out there which make fine metaphors for life. One that springs particularly readily to mind is juggling, seeing as I've been down that road before*. Indeed, if one simply takes the trouble to connect the dots and make the right generalizations to any learning activity, one will find that the universe has many lessons, all around us, for those who will but open their eyes.

But I find myself drawn time and again to kendo. I think it lies in its austerity. In kendo, the efficacy of every technique is tried and tested in combat. Garbed in armour, behind the mask, secure in the knowledge that it's nigh impossible to cause any significant harm to one's opponent, one encounters in every training session a kind of tightly focused ferocity that is rarely seen in other martial arts, save in the most intense and dedicated dojos. It is a profoundly liberating experience. And there is a sense of sincerity in seeing your opponent release himself against you. And it is absolutely exhilarating to fight one's peers with all the strength you can muster.

In the crucible of combat, any useless movements are quickly weeded out, leaving behind a small set of techniques, tactics and strategies. They are deceptively simple, yet take years of dedication and training to master. It's a bit difficult to appreciate how simple with words alone, so here are a few samples of kata or forms from selected martial arts.

From Wudang, the real Wudang, not this lot, 8 Immortal Staff:


Cheng-style (no relation) Baguazhang:


Shinshinkan's Chatanyara no Sai, just too pretty not to include:


And finally, kendo:


Some straddle the interesting line between dance and martial art. Others function as a small library of basic techniques, teaching the way they flow into one another. All have their merits and share the same trait of being a form of moving meditation. Kendo's kata is a relatively slow, stately, tense affair. Ideally, the attacker should execute his cut like he really means it, forcing his partner to be very serious indeed about defending himself. This tension between the two kendokas adds a powerful dimension to the practice of kata, demanding a measure of concentration and alertness from both that is quite hard to appreciate until you're actually performing the kata yourself.

Which brings me back to my point of kendo as a metaphor for life. I have, from the very beginning, taken a very cerebral approach to kendo. Before even picking up my first shinai, I'd read books on the matter. Even now, having trained in armour for well over a year (it ain't much, I know), I still consume a steady stream of kendo books. In Japanese, of course, as the ones in English are prone to drift in the direction of mysticism and romanticise about the age of samurai and basically miss the whole point of kendo altogether. The memory of my first time crossing blades with a sensei in free sparring is still very fresh in my mind. For those of you with the JCKL dojo reading this, it was Toyoda sensei. Yes, I know. I'm grateful to be alive.

That engagement made it very, very clear to me what it meant to be completely, utterly defeated before even raising my sword to strike. Before that moment, I had committed dozens of techniques and tricks to memory, devised strategems to break past any guard, theorized how I could transfer the skills of deceit learnt in capoeira to the art of the sword. It all came to nothing when I stood against the sensei. In the sheer fury of his kiai and the resoluteness of his stance, my spirit broke. All my attacks, far, far too slow. My mind raged against the absurdity of it. This man is at least twice my age! I should be faster! But back then, for the life of me, I could not see his sword, and was hammered at least a dozen times, hard, on my head and hand before the sensei let me limp away. By then I was seeing stars, and my right hand was trembling so badly I could no longer grip my sword.

I took that as a harsh lesson that, just as metaphysics and theology could never compare to science, no amount of theorizing can hold a candle to learning by experience. I have since thrown myself into many more engagements and can say with great certainty that though I'm some way from the dearly coveted shodan, I've lot more steel in me than I did back then. It's very strange to think about it now. When I'm there, panting and sweating in my armour during free training, what pushes me to go a little further each time to take a point is not some high ideal to be a better kendoka or sheer pride making me refuse to acknowledge defeat, but just a very simple, humble, mantra mouthed under my breath when the going gets tough:

"Earn your beer, you bastard."

I once calculated that from the first time once picks up a shinai, one must do about 15,000** cuts before you have what it takes to wear armour and really start kendo. 15,000, give or take a couple thousand, depending on your motor skills. With every cut, your body learns a tiny bit more. Then when you get in armour, you start learning all over again. Every training session is an exercise in mindfulness. Every cut must be done to the best of one's ability. And in every engagement, regardless of the disparity in rank, there is something to be learnt. Vita sine litteris mors. Life without learning is death.

I believe there's nothing quite as beautifully human as learning. I've held that belief since I was very young and my dad cleverly left cartoon versions of the Confucian classics in my room. But it is kendo that constantly reminds me of the right attitude towards learning. Knowledge is the brightest of jewels to be treasured and sought. This is to be done with both earnest and vigilance, and at the end of the day, evidence, the crossing of swords in combat, decides all. On the path, there will be passions and urges pulling and pushing us in all sorts of directions. They are not to be fought, because they are a part of what you are. They are to be understood and harnessed. If you doubt, if you hesitate you will lose, not because your opponent is better than you, but because you defeated yourself. Is this not shameful? But it happens to the best of us, and so we learn.

In terms of kendo, I am still young, barely a pollywog in a big, big pond. The mystery of my future beyond shodan is well within the realm of fantasy and speculation. But I know that, as long as I throw myself into the next training session with vigour and really, really work myself to earn that beer, the future can be very bright indeed...

* Note to self: Haven't done torches in a long, long time. Must pick up some kerosene in January...

** Revised from a previous estimate of 10,000.

Intermission

Regulars to this blog (both of you, at last count) may have noticed I've kind of drifted from topics pertaining to philosophy, science and politics and in the direction of more mundane, happy things. There's any number of reasons for this, and I suppose I should explain myself.

On the front of politics, frankly, I'm fed up. On the local (still Malaysian) side, I skim through the papers daily to check for any sign at all of real progress. I find none. Nothing more than empty platitudes, cheap propaganda and, with dismayingly increasing frequency, outright backsliding. And the thing is these wonderful specimens were in fact democratically elected, which does not speak well for the intellectual capacity of the Malaysian public at large. As such, I've nothing more to say about Malaysian politics, but will continue to keep a weather eye out for any sign that it might crawl out of the hole it's digging for itself.

As for politics elsewhere, I'm not really paying much attention, to be honest, though I do keep an eye on what the Yanks are up to. I think it's a worthwhile exercise, because I suspect that today's Republican party represents a stance that guarantees the destruction of the human race, or at the very least a profound decline in one's standard of living. They chant the praises of freedom and faith when in fact it is merely a mask to justify ruthless social Darwinism (thanks to their special brand of capitalism) within, and a foreign policy based on fear and loathing without, all against a background of unbridled consumption at great cost to the environment. It is difficult for any thinking man to look upon the antics of such figures as Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Dick Cheney and their ilk with anything other than revulsion. But the fact remains that these people have risen to their positions of influence. Why?

Because deep down we're all really selfish, and we all want as much as we can gain for ourselves and our kin.

Because anything different from us is obviously wrong and must be wiped off the face of the Earth.

Because Democrats have been too busy pussyfooting about while the Republican propaganda machine marches on.

Because we're monsters.

Because we're human and that means that, for all that we've created for ourselves over our history, we are animals inside. We have passions and urges that drive us, many of which most people don't really understand nor do they care to understand. I suspect it is this blind acceptance of certain ugly aspects of our psychological makeup which, to paraphrase Russell, makes the stupid so cocksure. Most of us understand that there is usually more to be gained from patience and discipline, yet we are, at some base level, inexorably drawn to instant gratification. A lack of self control in enjoying material goods leads to rapacious consumption. A lack of intellectual vigilance allows the mind to be tainted with all manner of useless myths concocted to comfort the weak.

I have little doubt that the next great step forward in human endeavour will be the spiritual conquest of the human animal*. It will not be easy, and, if the Republican party is any indication, there is still a great swathe of humanity who knows too little and is sure of too much. While I've great faith in humanity's resourcefulness in surviving, particularly in times of great adversity, I can't escape the feeling that we are blithely bumbling onward to a great adversity of our own making.

On philosophy, what can I say? I was educated a physicist, and as such, find myself sympathetic to logical empiricism. And that's that. I suppose at some point I'll write something about my views on A J Ayer's principle of verification, but for the most part, I'm totally with Ayer and Russell in writing off metaphysics and theology as a lot of pseudointellectual mucking about.

On the popular science side, I've been slacking a bit on that front to focus moar on my Jap skills. I've been more fascinated by language than ever these days, not least because for me, studying the Japanese language involves:

1) consuming large chunks of Japanese culture to make sense of the vocabulary. This in itself is a subject to cover many books...

2) thinking about the contrast between English and Japanese and how it affects one's thinking.

I consider myself to be reasonably well acquainted with the English language, i.e. I have almost no trouble expressing any thought that comes to mind. In the process of learning Japanese, I find myself quite enthralled by the process of new words and sentence structures clicking into place. A lot of the time, I try to think every sentence that pops into my head in English a second time in Japanese. Obviously not with this blog post, else I'd be here til November. As my skills with Japanese improve, it feels like a 2nd brain is growing in my head. Ultimately, I hope to reach the same level of skill with Japanese as with English, or at least be able to read this.

So, that aside, I'd say that I'm more satisfied than I've ever been about my understanding of the human animal. I'm not sure if I'll quite have the fire of some of my previous posts again, but I consider that a good thing. Precisely how much of this understanding I'll divulge on this blog is, as yet, unknown to me. My grasp is still a bit hazy, and the subject matter is immense. As I think more, and more becomes concrete to me, I'll lay it down here, I suppose, 'ere the ravages of old age claim my hard-gotten spoils.

Until then, I'll be puntuating this blog with random natterings on various things that happen to entertain me. I'm in total agreement with Russell on many, many points, not least being:

"The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time ."

I am led to wonder if Bertrand Russell would have revised this opinion on encountering Facebook. Anyway, until the next post, here's a cute little kitten to "Awwww!" at:

* More on this later, you can be sure of that!

Quick thoughts on thinking

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about the way we think. About things like how we learn, how we so easily delude ourselves, why we feel what we feel, about emotions and decision-making and the like. The material floating about on the intertoobs re: the brain is voluminous, to say the least, so I thought it best I make some effort to record some thoughts on the matter before a particularly vicious bout of kendo knocks something loose. As it is, I get the feeling that I'm horribly confused about certain aspects of the brain, but what the hell, getting myself organised means I can weed out the crappe easier.

So, the basics are:
1) The mechanism for neural plasticity is more or less summed up by the Bayesian brain. It's quite heavy reading and I'm not quite sure I get all of it, but from what I can understand, the long and short of it is, the way the brain learns is to function as a predicting engine, to minimize the amount of surprises we experience. For instance, we see a physical phenomenon as a baby, like a thrown ball rising and falling back to the ground, then bouncing away. Since everything is new at first, as a baby we'd be surprised by this. As we see more of the world, we build up an intuitive set of physical laws in our head. But the thing to remember here is that the brain will try to do this in the simplest, most economical manner possible. For instance, by the time we're, say, 5, we'd know it to be blindingly obvious a thrown ball will fall back to earth, but we've no idea how to express it as a mathematical law.

So, from the moment our sensory apparatus are activated, the brain is subject to a constant stream of sensory data which builds up our understanding of the world, not all of which we are consciously aware of. The thing to remember is that, in every way, the brain always looks a little bit ahead in time an quietly tells all of our senses what to expect. If anything deviates from this, say, the experience of misjudging how many steps there are on a staircase, we get a sharp "DANGER!" signal, in the form of surprise, a brief switch into fight-or-flight mode.

2) The brain will take shortcuts. This is probably most apparent when we consider vision. There's any number of optical illusions out there which have our brain trying to shoehorn what it sees into a framework built from what it has seen. In ambiguous illusions, like the diabolical Duckrabbit below, our brain is in a little conflict with itself, trying to tell your consciousness that it sees a left-facing duck on one hand and a right-facing rabbit on the other.

DUCK season! RABBIT season!

Funnily enough, with a little effort, we can actively choose what we want to see, which leads me to wonder what effect our desires have on our perception. Yes, I am most certainly looking in the direction of religiously inspired hallucinations.

3) The brain comes pre-packaged with some software. Most notably, the capacity for language, as detailed by Chomsky and his Universal Grammar. More recently, Marc D Hauser, author of Moral Minds, has pushed the notion that we all carry a certain sense of Universal Morality. I've a feeling it runs deeper, but for the life of me I know not how. For instance, take phobias. I have never been bitten by a spider. No spider has ever harmed me in any way whatsoever. I've heard any number of stories from people who keep pet tarantulas that they're absolutely lovely. But when I see this:

Look up at ceiling. See this. What do?

... a part of my brain is screaming: "HOLY FUCKING SHIT RUUUUNNNNN!!!" Happily enough, I'm sufficiently in control of myself to continue this blog entry, albeit with the hairs on the back of my neck standing at attention.

Another example would be the revulsion many of us feel on encountering a cockroach. Perhaps you may recoil or grimace when I tell you that once, in a public toilet (in Malaysia, of course) while taking a leak, a whopping 2.5-inch-long roach did fly down from the ceiling, buzz around me for a bit and land next to my feet, drumming a tattoo on my left shoe with its feelers. To this day I marvel at how I managed to muster enough self-control to actually finish what I started, zip up my trousers and quietly leave the cubicle. But when you think about it, the revulsion has no real basis. I'm orders of magnitude bigger than said roach, and it is completely incapable of harming me. Even if I were to grab it and crush it in my fist (I really feel like washing my hands now) it's a mess that's easily sorted out with modern cleaning products. But even now I feel like I'd rather kill one from 2 miles away with an artillery barrage.

4) The brain has some leftover hardware. What I'm referring to here is the human's unique place in evolving on two different fronts at once, i.e. genetically and memetically. As such, urban dwellers, whose lives are more heavily influenced by memes than by genes, are sometimes led astray by hormonal urges better suited to aid in the survival of a savannah dwelling primate. And of course, some of this hardware may have something to do with the software mentioned earlier in 3).

5) Objective reality is not just an input. This is most clearly seen in the form of the placebo effect and its evil twin, the nocebo effect. In believing that an inert lump of sugar is a ground-breaking new treatment, the brain can actually convince the body that its condition is improving, a very strange case of delusion defining reality. Of course, it's a double edged sword. People convinced they're on the nasty end of a witchdoctor's curse can actually find their physical condition deteriorating.

Anyhow, that's briefly what I've got, off the top of my head (aha) re: the way the brain works. I'm-a just leave this here for now. May come back and edit this, when the mood takes me...

Oh, and before I forget, I came across a very interesting statement in Susan Blackmore Conversations on Consciousness which firmed up the way I look at the relationship between science and philosophy. I forgot who said it, and I may have put it on this blog before but I can't be arsed to check right now. What he said was something like:

Don't look to modern philosophy for answers. It has none. BUT, it has very, very good questions.

And somewhere later he mentioned that it's good old empirical science that provides the answers. It looked about right, to me.

More on Trolleys

I've beeen reading Marc D. Hauser's Moral Minds lately and came across the Trolley Problem again in there. I know I've an entry somewhere on this blog on it, but some new thoughts on it popped into my head which I thought were worth recording. Besides, this is the first blog post that I'm banging out on a recently liberated wee little Vaio, so I figured this piddly little machine deserved a proper baptism under my overly large, callused fingers.

Here are the 5 variations of the Trolley Problem I'll be looking at.

Case 1 - The Simple Switch
An out of control train trolley is hurtling down a track, on which are 5 hapless victims, tied there by a mad philosopher. You happen to be in the control room, and in front of you is a swtich. Flip the switch, and the trolley will be sent off to another track, on which is tied 1 victim. Do you flip the switch or not?

Case 2 - Push the Fat Guy
As before, trolley hurtling towards 5 people. This time, instead of the control room, you're at a platform between the trolley and the 5 victims. Standing next to you is a very large man. We assume that pushing him in front of said trolley will be quite sufficient to stop the trolley and save the 5. Do you push the the Fat Guy?

Case 3 - Loop and Fat Guy
Again, trolley and 5 victims. This time, you've got access to a switch, and flipping it will send it off to a loop of track where it comes back and squishes the 5 victims anyway. What's the bloody point of that, you ask? As the heading suggests, there's a fat guy on the loop, who is, of course, large enough to halt the trolley. Flip the switch?

Case 4 -Loop and Boulder
Same as case 3, but this time, instead of a conveniently placed fat guy, we have a boulder. BUT there happens to be some poor sap, not necessarily fat, standing in front of said boulder. Flip swtich, off goes the trolley, into the boulder and turning one hapless victim into jam in the process. Oh, well. Flip the switch?

Note: If, like myself, you are a truly cold-blooded utilitarian with a heart of igneous rock, you may not immediately the difference between cases 3 and 4. It was only on reading Moral Minds that the difference was made clear to me. Basically, in case 3, you are consciously using a Fat Guy as the means to save the 5 lives. In case 4, the guy in front of the boulder just happens to have the crap luck of being there. In 3 you are wilfully killing someone to save 5. In 4, he's collateral damage. Geddit?

Case 5 - Organ Donor
This time, the problem is set inside a hospital. You're a doctor and you've got 5 patients, each of whom are in dire need of various organ transplants. And who should walk in but a random hiker who just happens to have lovely, healthly organs ripe for the picking? Assume, of course, that harvesting the hiker's organs guarantees survival of the 5 patients. So... slice and dice?

The first 4 cases were covered in Moral Minds, the last is one I remembered from a Wikipedia article on the Trolley problem. More often than not, the usual answers to the above cases of the Trolley Problem are as follows:

Case 1 - Yes, flip the switch.
Case 2 - No, don't push Fat Guy
Case 3 - No, don't flip the switch. (About 60% of the time, so I hear)
Case 4 - Yes, flip the switch. (This can be alittle uncertain, depending on the answer to Case 3.)
Case 5 - Hell, no, don't dissect the hiker! It's icky!

Considering the similarities of the 5 cases, the divide in the distributions of the answers strikes me as interesting. Do nothing, 5 die. Do something, 1 dies. Case 1 is almost invariably answered 'Yes'* on the simple irrefutable grounds that, assuming no knowledge of the vicims identities, 5 is more than 1, so tough luck to the 1. They say this with such certainty, then funnily enough, they balk when faced with Case 5.

I suppose Case 5 as a certain element of grey about it. Faced with such a situation, our minds are drawn to the uncertainties of surgery. Are the diagnoses of the 5 patients really correct? Can the hiker's organs be extracted flawlessly? Can they implanted with no complications? What if someone finds out and the hospital gets in trouble for it, denying access to medical help for hundreds more? Even with all these doubts addressed by idealizing assumptions, rare indeed is the person who unflinchingly says, 'Well, tough luck for the hiker. 5 is more than 1.' In my experience, when I present the 5 Cases in person, whoever I'm asking will say 'No', and then comes an interesting display of mental gymnastics as they try to justify their position.

Anyway, I'm not here to natter on about my justifications for the answers that pop in my head. What I wanted to bring up were some subsequent questions to the above 5 cases. For instance, what if all the lives being weighed against each other were replaced, by animals, say? By chickens, cows, cats, penguins, whatever? I'm thinking that, in most minds, the 5 cases all simply become a case of 5 is more than 1, so bye-bye to the 1. In fact, if Case 5 becomes all about animals, anoter question arises on whether it's even worth expending such effort to save the lives of animals in such an elaborate fashion in the first place!

This led me to another iteration, much in the same vein as the Philosopher's Cyborg** - what if the lives in the 5 Cases were replaced with robots? Again, it becomes simple mathematics. 5 is more than 1. But what if those robots were androids, each with a unique accumulation of many years of memories sitting inside a processor so absurdly advanced that there is no way whatsoever of replicating said memories? Is it still simple math? What is the difference between these androids and the humans in the original 5 Cases? What if these androids are even older, each a perfect repository of hundreds of years of accumulated memories?

In my eyes, every variation of the 5 cases, assuming no knowledge of the identities of those whose lives are being weighed, is a simple case of 5 is more than 1. Apart from the practical considerations of Case 5, i.e. the possibility of some sort of failure at some stage of trying to save the 5, there doesn't seem to be any logical reason to value 1 over 5.

But then again, this is a philosopher's question. I find the single most important lesson I've learnt about philosophy is that while philosophy teaches us to ask very important questions, these days, it offers no answers. Answers come from science, and I'm still only halfway through Hauser's exceedingly interesting book.


* And to those I've encountered who answer 'No, I wan't nothing to do with making such a choice!', seriously, you are spineless below contempt.

**I think I wrote about it somewhere earlier, though I didn't call it that at the time. There will be a post on it shortly, 'onest, guv.

Eat meat?

Sometime last year, I posted a question on Yahoo! Answers, re: Would you kill for your own meat? The occasional (and with Yahoo! Answers, inevitable) drooling, slack-jawed idiot answer aside, quite a few answered no, mostly because they were too squeamish to deal the killing blow with a boltgun or whatever. I ask this question a lot (not to vegetarians, obviously) in person, too, and usually meet with a negative response.

Not to mince words about it, I think that's terribly hypocritical. That having been said, I also think it's a very easy trap to fall into, given how far removed the fresh, clean, happy little packets and cans of meat we see in the supermarket are from the bloody horror of the abbatoir. When you eat meat, you take life. There's no two ways about it. Life is a valuable thing (particularly to the entity from whom you are taking it), and I do think it's important for people to realize just what they're buying into when they bite into a ham sandwich or fried chicken or some such. Most will easily understand the price tag one puts on a brattwurst, but far too few really think to draw the connections between calf to cow to lowing, screaming, wide-eyed, twitching, dying beast drowning in its own blood to hamburger.

But, it's unrealistic to expect everyone to go up to an animal and kill it themselves. One of these days, I do hope to go to a farm and really understand with these two hands what it really means to kill to eat, but I'm not so sure how feasible it is to demand this of every meat-eating city-dweller. So I was quite pleased to stumble into Earthlings*. More details on Wikipedia. If you're not vegetarian, I very strongly recommend watching this. In fact, I insist. And don't avert your eyes - you don't have that right.

There were, I felt, a couple of blatantly cheap attempts at yanking on the heart strings. I suppose it would be kinder to say that it was a bit melodramatic at times, but appeals to emotion on matters of any importance strike me as annoying more than anything else. Still, the actual video footage was more than a bit harrowing, and a sharp reminder of how, in the name of profit, humans will sink to such depths. And though I disagreed and doubted (particularly on the veracity of the numbers and the reliability of their sources), the Earthlings experience did have me thinking.

Naturally, while watching Earthlings, I automatically looked at how I live my life in relation to how I impact animals. So here's my thoughts on Earthlings, subject-by-subject:

Pets- My 2 cats are adopted, spayed/neutered and from all outward appearances, have bamboozled me into being their butler, these very words being typed as Haruka slinks across the table, running her stubby little tail under my nose.

Truth be told, I do not consider strays to be an actual, looming, economic threat in and of itself, but a symptom of a deeper, more insidious malaise in modern urban society, namely how little each of us gives a shit about the world around us.

Food- I'm Malaysian Chinese and have therefore consumed an absurd amount of chicken and pork, though I generally loathe having steak of any kind. Nevertheless, I felt a bit guilty having always been aware about battery farms, though not quite so aware about the horrors of pig farming. Just knowing this, the movie Babe seems like a sick joke. As such, I shall endeavour to cut down on meat. And continue to discourage those I know from the consumption of shark's fin soup.

What I was left wondering, however, is this: What kind of person would I become if I was the one handling the boltgun/knife every day? It's very easy to look at these butchers and think ill of them, completely ignoring the situational forces that shape human personalities. So I think it's worth wondering what it would be like to be in their blood-soaked wellies, slitting throats, sidestepping fountains of blood, ears filled with the screams of the dying, nostrils clogged with the stench of death and fear, day in, day out...

My readings into the ideals of Bushido tell me, time and again, that to take life is a very serious matter indeed. Such high ideals seem to ring so very hollow in the face of the gory realities of the modern abbatoir. If animals are to die to feed us, I want it to happen with the least suffering possible. I want them to have a life of blithe contentment before death takes them, swiftly and without warning, with surgical precision. And as we see in Earthlings, what I want is very far removed from the realities forced upon the modern farm by simple economics. To produce more meat at the lowest prices, this is what it has come to. Would you be the one to buy meat at, say, triple the price, knowing it came from a happier cow? And even if you did, what stops corruption from setting in and having you pay higher prices for the same old meat with a different label? What a hole we have managed to dig for ourselves...

Clothing- I have 1 Fossil wallet, which has served me since December 1999. And some of the bits which hold my bamboo blades together are thick leather. Oh, and belt and shoes. Other than that, I've never considered wearing bits of animal about my person, other than woolly sweaters, which saved my hide in the bitter winters of China and Germany.

While the footing was quite shocking (particularly the Chinese fur farm) one is left wondering about the scale of the problem, that is, what I want to know is whether this activity is causing large-scale damage to ecosystems.

Entertainment- I totally consider bullfighting to be unnecessarily barbaric, and do confess to feeling a little glow of schadenfreude** on seeing the bull put one over the men in tights.

Research- Now on this part, I think Earthlings drifts into the realm of the naive. For instance, if, say, I wanted to test a facial soap for whether its irritating to the eye, is not the quickest way to determine whether this is so to squirt some into a living eye? Now, I really don't think all that many research labs have the benefit of enlisting the services of Johnny Knoxville or Steve O and gang, so when there's no way round testing on living tissue, what do you do? Make full use of criminals on death row? Are there not guidelines regarding the use of animals in research? Research grants are not provided to abuse animals on a whim!

In any case, I think the whole business of attacking animal testing is mixing up cause and effect. The long and short of it is, this section of the documentary did not have any impact on me whatsoever because it failed to cite any relevant numbers thus obfuscating the actual scale of the problem.

Now, the reason scale is particularly important with research is because use of animals in food, clothing and as pets is so ubiquitous that it's quite obvious that even small changes in attitudes will have tremendous effects on society in general. Entertainment isn't quite as common but reflective of base, ugly barbarity in the human animal, i.e. deep, dark desires to watch terrible violence inflicted on others or to lord our supremacy over others, whatever form it may take.

Research, on the other hand, is a cold, calculating affair. It is not carried out to satisfy any desires other than the desire for knowledge. Even if it was, rare indeed is the scientist who can afford to ask for grants to dismantle animals simply because he likes the noises they make when their heads explode. It seems to me that the focus would be better placed on the market forces driving the research, i.e. what is the research for? Cosmetics? Weapons? Genetics? Psychology? Neuroscience? Furthermore, to say that research on animals "tells us about animals, not humans" is a painfully ignorant statement worthy of that tiresome Word Salad-monger, Sarah Palin, who famously pooh-poohed research on fruit flies. Suffice to say, this knocked the credibility of this documentary down a few notches.

In sum, Earthlings struck me as a sharp and harsh and absolutely necessary reminder of one aspect of what it is we build the comforts of modern living on. I say one aspect, because, really, there are many, many other ways we exploit our environment or even other nations (human, of course) to feed the machine of capitalism. To what extent the issues raised in Earthlings are a problem to humanity is left fuzzy, thanks to a near total lack of numbers and statistics to bring things into perspective. However, even with the purely qualitative treament given by Earthlings, it is clear that humans as a species are trotting obliviously towards their own destruction. The manner in which we ravage the planet and the natives makes it blatantly obvious that we are a very, very long way indeed from achieving a stable equilibrium with Earth.

* 95 minutes long. I really don't recommend eating while watching this. Have a cup of tea.

** I fucking love that word. I shouldn't. But I do.

Ippon vs Life in Malaysia

In case I hadn't mentioned it before, I love kendo. I haven't really been at it very long, and at the time of writing bear the grade 7th kyu, that is, the minimum required to wear armour. That will, hopefully, change soon, seeing as my next grading is on 11 July. I wouldn't say I'm qualified to speak with any authority on the technical points of kendo, but I'd like to record a little something I've noticed, as a Malaysian doing kendo.

The world seems more real from inside that armour.

A little background is needed here, I think. I am part of generation whose creativity and passion has been crippled forever by the hamfisted mucking about of Malaysia's Ministry of Education. For decades, the meaning of 'education' was utterly lost, reduced to nothing more than having children jump through meaningless hoops for decades of their lives. The subjects being taught became pale shadows of what they were really about, mere collections of bullet points to be swallowed, regurgitated and forgotten.

Today's Malaysia is the inevitable product of such wasted youth. A nation driven by nothing more than consumerism. Ideals have faded into saccharine platitudes. Culture is dictated by MTV, Channel [V] and the criminally insipid Hong Kong entertainment industry. Language on all fronts has decayed into the vulgar mash that is Manglish, the subject of much misplaced pride and yet another contributing factor to the miasma of anti-intellectualism that grips the nation. Am I exaggerating? Answer me this: When was the last time you saw someone reading on the train in KL? And then ask yourself: When was the last time you saw some Malaysian Chinese person dismiss something they couldn't understand (because it wasn't shoehorned into Manglish) with "Mm chee kui ngup mut"?

I'm a dyed in the wool empiricist. I'm the kind of person whom you'd say "Good morning" to, who'd look up at the overcast sky and retort, "Is it really?" I live every moment constantly making sure I'm doing my utmost to cut through bullshit and grasp the reality of the world I perceive. Being in Malaysia means I've a *lot* of bullshit to cut through.

Now contrast this with kendo. Specifically, duelling in kendo, i.e. shiai. I think there's a certain austere beauty to it, everything you've ever known in your life, shrinking down to the immediate reality of your situation, that every fibre of your being is now focused on the task of scoring the killing blow, ippon, on this one opponent in front of you. There is no conversation to be had, no words that need to be spoken except for the occassional ear-splitting kiai to break your opponent's spirit. There is no luck. Whoever scores is, for that brief moment, the superior swordsman, and that's that. Luck is merely a polite way to downplay the truth of the matter: "I was better than you."

But this is kendo. Bamboo blades and heavy armour make sure we survive each encounter practically unscathed, no matter how viciously we throw ourselves at each other. We bow, we reflect, we learn. Perhaps in the near future we will fight again and see who is worthy of ippon. Ippon is everything. It is the culmination of your countless hours of harsh training. It can only be bought with the one true currency of life - sweat, blood and tears. Who you were and who you will be fade into the distance in the face of ippon, because all that matters, there and then, is who you are and the answer to the question: Are you good enough to take ippon?

And there we have wee slice of my understanding of kendo. I expect in the future, when I've climbed up a few more ranks, I'll come back to this post and think on how I have or haven't changed. For now, I've a shinai that needs repairing before the next class, and maybe, the next ippon.

Quick question: On the decay of beauty

Was in a traffic jam today, which means I had some time to do a little thinkin', and what I was thinking about was this:

At what point does something stop being beautiful and turn crass, tasteless, cliche, etc?

Anyway, what brought this on was sitting in my car, listening to Malaysian radio and despairing, for verily Malaysian radio advertisements are, possibly without exception, the most revolting perversions of humour and/or aesthetics ever aired in the history of man. Seriously, just listen to it and tell me you don't want every Malaysian radio marketing exec shot for crimes against culture.

So, yah, I'm-a just leave this question here for now. Might come back and discuss it further, if the urge takes me.

Here's hoping mine will come on a white horse called Binky...

I just attended a funeral today. Well, for the past 3 days, actually, being Chinese and all. A grandmother* whom I suppose I'll now be referring to in the past tense. I did what I could to hold my peace, seeing as there were a few services held by her church, led by her pastor and his wife (herself a reverend, apparently), who are, frankly, the most atrociously tactless, pious, self-righteous, smarmy, God-bothering goits I've ever encountered on this side of the Pacific.

Anyway, I've no mood to be angry at fundies right now - there's a kitten purring on my desk, trying to paw my nose. Moving right along, I was asked at the funeral, "What's the point of life?" - a wonderfully existential question that all thinking atheists will have pondered at some point or other. What do we, the infidels, have to look forward to? Suffice it to say, this led me to ponder the subject of death and how drastically different my own outlook was compared to those in my immediate vicinity at the time. Admittedly, most of them were the pastor's sheeple who viewed such things as art, science and philosophy as "stuff smartass gweilos do". It's like being surrounded by little yellow Republicans.

In any case, I found myself just about to say something about my heathen outlook on death and the afterlife, but stopped short, deciding I'd best put something like this down in writing, where I can better structure my thoughts. So, here's me on death.

To be honest, I think I'm fairly comfortable with it. Well, with regards to my own death, I won't be in a position to object or even care after it happens, so there's not much of a fuss to kick up about it, other than to plan ahead and help those remaining to deal with the consequences of own's own expiry, timely or not. Anyway, as Steven Wright said, "I intend to live forever. So far, so good."

A lot of people have trouble dealing with death. Ok, I read that again and just realised the sheer magnitude of understatement there. What I meant to bring up was the fact that as living organisms, we have a big stake (which is to say, everything) in our own self preservation and as such, our genes program us to do everything in our power to stay alive. Hence, part of the software (or hardware, depending on who you ask) that comes with our marvellous brains is a fear of death. As we form relationships with and become attached to the people around us, our fear extends to losing them, as well. And so it is that one of the cornerstones of the Abrahamic religions is to exploit the sheeple's fear of death, to cast that most seductive of illusions - death is not the end, but a beginning. Charming, probably reassuring, but utterly baseless.

In a sense, the Abrahamic religions have pulled off (and are keeping up!) the biggest, most heinous scam in human history, that is, they are selling a product that cannot be claimed until the customer is actually dead, i.e. a happy afterlife. There is no way whatsoever to verify the authenticy, or even the existence of said product, yet people will expend ludicrous amounts of money and effort securing it, keeping the clergy's pockets very well-padded indeed, with absolutely no way of expressing one's dissatisfaction upon failure of delivery.

And it was while considering this that it occurred to me that I'd read of another, very similar situation. When the first human explorers first landed on Mauritius, they encountered a plump, flightless and endearingly naive bird, that is, the Dodo. Apparently, this critter had evolved happily on that island with no natural enemies, and hence viewed the newcomers not with fear or caution, but with curiousity. Indeed, when the first hungry sailor reached out, grabbed one inquisitive bird and broke its hapless little neck, its fellows, rather than run away with fear, crowded around wondering what the hairless beach ape had just done with their suddenly very relaxed comrade. Seems to me that the seduction of faith is not unlike the doom of the Dodo - a pit of ignorance with little to no hope of escape.


But what about the secular understanding of death? I can't speak for all us infidels, but I can speak for myself and the happy few who share my view. My view is quite simple and nigh impossible to sugar-coat - death is the end. Of the individual, of course. We live, we procreate and so we must die. As sexually reproducing creatures, each new generation represents a shuffling of genes, with time and experience selecting for the individuals most fit for their environment during their lives. For each successive generation to evolve, older generations must die. From the point of view of the gene, immortality simply means stagnation, nothing more.

In the most simple terms, we strive to be the best and brightest we can, marry, have kids, raise them to be the best and brightest they can be, fulfilling the imperatives set for us by our genes: survive, evolve, prosper. Even looking at life and death from this simplistic perspective, one may be inclined to slip towards despair. Such temporary creatures we are! What's the point of it all? Oddly enough, one encounters a surprisingly witty and charming response to this painful question from a movie with, of all people, Jack Black:

"Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift. That is why it is called the present." - Master Wu Gui, Kung Fu Panda, 2008.

Pleasure and pain are all too real for us, regardless of race or creed. If we are here for such a short while, why waste so much effort visiting misery upon others? Is it not better to live for our happiness and that of those around us? And by happiness I don't refer to the raving, frenzied hedonism of pubs and clubs, but just simple contentment. A full stomach, a healthy body and mind, companionship, a wide universe to explore - what more can one ask for? In my eyes, the only thing more one could wish for is the same for those who haven't. In that cute old tortoise's words, I see a touch of Zhaozhou Congshen's Zen of everyday-mindedness.

To me, this world is what this life is about. No childish promises of angels, houris and immortality in the hereafter. No empty threats of eternal damnation, lakes of fire and everlasting torment. And definitely no hurting or killing people trying to convince them otherwise.

This, in itself, is justification enough for living my life the way I do. My sense of morality leans towards the utilitarian, and so I am very much convinced that I do indeed serve the greater good of humanity in trying to tear down religion and open closed minds to new ways of thinking. But, shortly after encountering Dawkins, another element to the purpose of life came to light, in the form of memes.

Artists and poets have known this in their gut for thousands of years, and it is only in recent years we see scientists and philosophers looking closely at memes as a concept. But its no new revelation that an individual's ideas (if the idea is catchy enough) will far outlive the individual. Shakespeare, Archimedes, Al-Khwarismi, Einstein and other such luminaries will live forever in human memory for their contributions to the sum of human intellect. Note that I say catchy. An idea does not necessarily have to be good, or even true for it to gain a healthy following, but I digress. The point is, in memes, we may live far beyond our corporeal forms. What will we leave behind? A cute habit? A fad? A scientific breakthrough? A trail of blood? A better world? A dazzling wit?

So there's a little something more to keep a guy motivated. Granted, one won't actually be conscious to admire how your memes are doing, but I think it's kind of fun to try putting together something nice to stand the test of time. I suppose that's why I write what I write. When I was a kid, I thought the coolest thing in the world would be to have a unit of measurement named after me. I must confess, to this day, I haven't the damnedest idea what one could possibly measure with a Cheng.

Right, this post is way longer than I'd expected. Will continue elaborating in later posts as the whim takes me. Or on request, I suppose, rare as those are. But, next couple of posts will be happier stuff, 'onest guv...

* Not sure what's the right term here. My maternal granddad, who expired long before I was even a gleam in my father's eye, had 4 wives. My mum is the daughter of the 3rd, the one who just expired is the 4th. My parents tell me I still refer to #4 as 'grandmother'. I'm not sure that's quite right, and so would be grateful for clarification on the matter.

Fuller crap...

I'd read Steven Fuller's The Intellectual a couple of months ago (almost entirely while sitting in KL traffic jams, I might add) and was left with a bad taste in my mouth. After wading through a veritable quagmire of erudite gobbledegook, mostly directed towards glorifying the intellectual based on his own narrow definition of the word, I closed the book, and the lasting impression was as follows:

What a lot of sanctimonious, pseudo-philosophical masturbation!

I dug around a bit for more information on him, finding on his Wiki entry that he defines himself as a 'social epistemologist', which, in empiricist circles, I understand translates best into common parlance as 'poser'. I bunged the wretched book into the arse end of the shelf o' books I'd never read twice, though admittedly I felt kinda bad about putting that waste of paper next to Tolkien*.

So it was that this evening I found out on Panda's Thumb that the irksome goit had been debating for the cause of IDiots, going so far as to fill a book with irrelevant nonsense entertaining his infantile theistic fantasies. Happily enough, A C Grayling rose to the challenge of tearing down this silliness with a brutal book review, which Fuller duly responded to in the manner typical of theistic debaters everywhere: straw men, sidestepping and misdirection with a further deluge of irrelevant rubbish. Oh, and ad hominem attacks. Grayling replied with a vicious volley, his words dripping with the condescension infidels worldwide save for either theists or extremely stupid and wilful small children.

At first sight, I'm inclined to disapprove of adopting such a tone in matters of intellectual debate - why should good infidels sink to the level of arrogant, delusional theists? Then I realised after a while that, given the content of theistic silliness, it's actually impossible to tear down articles of faith without sounding condescending, which is something of a Catch 22 as this makes the more open-minded theist that much more repelled by the infidel's arguments. Quite vexing!

But long story short, I'm just bitchin' here. I'm grouchy that I've wasted precious hours of my life reading The Intellectual. I'm annoyed that Fuller continues to waste everyone's time with his epistemological wank. A word of caution to the wise: Don't waste your time with Steve Fuller.

* Tolkien's got skills and everything but really, I can't be arsed to wade through his descriptions of scenery twice in this life, however poetic.

It's NOT a debate...

... but I won't fault Scientific American for making the effort to stamp out a very tenacious delusional meme on their home turf. A page is up on SciAm's website compiling lotsa goodies detailing the efforts of religious dogmatists in trying to sink science through sheer volume of childish bullshit.

Just as 2 girls 1 cup and BME Pain Olympics have shown us that there's no lower limit to human depravity, Kent Hovind, Ben Stein and VenomfangX have shown us that there's clearly no lower limit to human stupidity, either. Seriously, those three should just do the world a favour and go shoot themselves. Not familiar with them? Lucky for us, a certain comrade thunderf00t has a hilarious series of videos dissecting the continuous stream of garbage churned out by the creationists. Do go check his page out and be amazed! I know I was. Mostly by the incredible shit that Kent Hovind comes up with that could only have been conceived by a drug-addled mind, e.g. his "scientific hypotheses" that Earth was once enclosed by a 3-mile thick layer of ice, which melted and caused Noah's flood. Yep.

I'm quite aware that a lot of people, particularly personal acquaintances not involved in the education of children, don't see the Creationist mindset as a serious issue. They say, "So what? These people go to church, try to do good, and what they believe about the origins of life on Earth has no bearing on their ability to function as good auditors, lawyers and the like." And this is where they are wrong. Not just wrong, but hideously, naively, dangerously wrong.

Creationism is not just about undermining the most powerful known explanation for the diversity and origins of life on Earth. Consider for a moment what it takes to believe in biblical creation. Over 150 years have passed since Darwin's Origin of Species was first published. 150 years of observation, collection of evidence and an occasional absurd court case later, regard for Darwin's theory has risen from derision to reverence. In science, a theory doesn't survive simply because some scientist or other wants it to be true. Evidence is needed. Results must be replicated. Peers in the field must scrutinize every aspect of it. This is how theories are made or broken.

Yet in the face of scientific rigour, Creationism survives. The proponents of Creationism have no clever arguments turning the evidence against Evolution. They have no evidence, for that matter. More often than not, they don't actually have an understanding of scientific method, empiricism, let alone Evolution itself. The Joe Average Creationist's understanding of Evolution is nigh invariably a crude caricature, which almost always omits the timescale involved in evolutionary processes. They are not merely ignorant, but wilfully so. I for one find this utterly abhorrent, but putting my own opinions aside for now, look closer, and think: What does it take to deny Evolution?

Faith. Friend of the friendless. Like love, it is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise. The final refuge for the brutish, fearful animal in every human mind. Religion places it on a pedestal and reveres it as the virtue of virtues. In science it is worthy of nothing but scorn.

In Creationism, the religious dogmatists have drawn a line in the sand. Faith or science, nothing in between. Choose Creationism, and you explicitly reject science and its foundations. In so doing, you reject empiricism, the very backbone of the knowledge that has allowed us to establish civilization as we know it, and with it all the technical wizardry at our disposal.

But of course, they don't really go to such lengths. Well, there's the Amish, I suppose... But the point is, just as how they pick and choose the bits of scripture that suit their purposes, the religious dogmatists will in fact pick and choose what products of science suit them, with no regard for the framework of empirical truth.

And that's what it comes down to: Acceptance of Creationism is a massive step in either wilful ignorance or hypocrisy. In accepting Creationism, they have chosen to abandon intellectual rigour, they have turned their backs on an honest, sincere acceptance of empirically verifiable truth, preferring instead to fill their ears only with whatever suits them, to see what they want to see, and live by their word if and only if it is convenient to their purpose. Furthermore, without a solid backbone of intellectual rigour, this leaves their simple little minds open to all manner of childish myths, e.g. Heaven, Hell, God, Lucifer, 42 (or is it 72? meh...) virgins on the other side, Original Sin, and the like. The word of a Creationist is worthless.

Such laxity on an individual level is bad enough, but when, as in the case of the US Bible Belt, or Malaysia*, such intellectual laxity is the norm, rather than the exception, this allows people to rise to prominence on the basis of memetic strength, rather than actual ability to govern. That is, we find large numbers of highly malleable (read: gullible) people submitting to the rule of salesmen, rather than leaders.

This world is small, and getting smaller. There is no more room for the Creationist lie, or for the hypocrisy and wilful ignorance which it perpetuates. And that's all the time I could be bothered to waste on them, for now.

* Which isn't subject to highly energetic, obnoxious folly of Evangelical Christianity, but rather the infectuous, can't-be-arsed stupor of intellectually bankrupt Islam. Slipper theft optional.

Yeah, that's about right...

This came to my attention from the RDF forums. Make of it what you will:



I for one prefer the term "ape".

Progress in Tyranny?

While it's easy to marvel at the dizzying new heights we reach, particularly in communications, energy and transportation technology, culture and especially decadence, it's well worth nothing that there are some aspects of human civilization in which progress is sorely lacking. The following is an extract from Bertrand Russell's analysis of Aristotle's Politics in The History of Western Philosophy, in which tyranny is discussed:

There is an interesting section on tyranny. A tyrant desires riches, whereas a king desires honour. The tyrant has guards who are mercenaries, whereas the king has guards who are citizens. Tyrants are mostly demagogues, who acquire power by promising to protect the people against the notables. In an ironically Machiavellian tone, Aristotle explains what a tyrant must do to retain power. He must prevent the rise of any person of exceptional merit, by execution or assassination if necessary. He must prohibit common meals, clubs, and any education likely to produce hostile sentiment. There must be no literary assemblies or discussions. He must prevent people from knowing each other well, and compel them to live in public at his gates. He should employ spies, like the female detectives at Syracuse. He must sow quarrels, and impoverish his subjects. He should keep them occupied in great works, as the king of Egypt did in getting the pyramids built. He should give power to women and slaves, to make them informers. He should make war, in order that his subjects may have something to do and be always in want of a leader.

It's quite depressing to go down the list, comparing it with the behaviour of modern day governments. I think pretty much every sentence in that paragraph could apply to the BN government, except maybe for the one about war. Malaysia doesn't really have the stomach for an all-out war, and if the National Service curriculum is anything to go by, Malaysia certainly doesn't have the ability, either. Which is perfectly all right, truth be told, seeing that in the 21st century, war is simply a Bad Idea.

Bertrand Russell was the epitome of the intellectual secular humanist, and a great fan of democracy built on the premise that all humans should be treated as equals. I really do wonder sometimes what he'd have thought of the coming Singularity. Or what he'd have to say about Malaysian politics.

I for one have pretty much given up on reading Malaysian newspapers. These days it's like reading a cheap tabloid, with stories about some guy accusing some other guy of buggery, gossip about who's talking to who, random spouting of meaningless platitudes, and columns of such mind-numbing inanity there's simply no point in constructive criticism and one is forced to come to the conclusion that a Malaysian newspaper is best used to light fires, straighten out uneven tables, wrap nasi lemak or even use as emergency toilet paper. Just don't read the wretched thing - it's worse than Pokemon fan fiction.

But back on the subject of tyranny, could we not compare the tyranny above to, say, the US? Seems to me that the Bush administration meets most of the criteria listed, except for the one on "great works". Looking back, has the US, as a nation, done anything positive of note under Bush? Things being the way they are now, Obama's got a lot of work to do, cleaning up Bush's mess, and the Republicans have a hell of a lot more work to do, winning back back their credibility. Democracy at work, indeed.

But for all it's failings, it would appear that democracy is still the way to go. The social experiment of communism is clearly a failure, though from it's ashes, we now bear witness to the rise of the most ridiculously powerful corporation in the history of Man, that is, China. Monarchy is good for nothing except to fill space in a gossip magazine and highlight to the common people the dangers of inbreeding*. Dictatorship is only as good as the dictator, and even the most capable and (somewhat) benevolent dictators have only one life to give before the reigns are inevitably taken over by some woefully inadequate schmuck, with an accompanying cadre of unscrupulous, avaricious slime.

So it's with a twinge of regret that I look back at Malaysia's March 8 elections, because back then, having completely lost faith in the system, I'd been resigned to planning my escape from Malaysia to search for greener pastures and so did not cast my vote. Not for a moment did I expect my vote to make a jot of difference, and so I found myself greatly surprised by the result. On the morning of the 9th, I found myself thinking that maybe, just maybe Malaysia can save itself from the socio-economic timebomb it set in motion.

It's now been over 4 months since that day. The bickering in Parliament has only intensified. The Mongolian Murder is yet to be resolved, with overwhelming amounts of evidence being ignored for the convenience of the very, very high ranking culprits. Crime is up, fuel prices are way up and corruption is through the roof, with the only difference between a policeman and a triad member is that the triad member dresses better.

It ain't much, but hey, it's home!

* With the notable exception of Queen Rania of Jordan, who is the hottest royal since Nefertiti. She can rule me any day of the week.

Ayer's Language, Truth and Logic in 5 minutes

I received a tertiary education in Physics and learnt about finance and accounting the hard way. As such, postmodernist philosophy is pretty much alien territory to me, though not for long, once I haul my raggedy ass through Russell's History of Western Philosophy*.

Anyway, I picked up and read Ayer's Language, Truth and Logic, under the foolish assumption that, being such a slim volume, I should be able to get through it quickly. 2 months later, I've finally finished reading it (though I've yet to polish off the appendix) and have decided to summarise my understanding of it here, in the hope that somebody with the m4d skillzorz to comment can indeed do so and maybe tell me if I'm missing something. So, here's the long story short...

Ayer's book champions the cause of logical empiricism, and so all human knowledge can be broadly divided into 3 types:

1) A priori truth. This comprises axioms that are, by definition, true, and the theorems that we derive from them. The only fields of human knowledge and inquiry that has ever offered this kind of truth consistently is maths and logic.

2) Empirical truth. i.e. Propositions that can be verified empirically. This is the foundation of science as we know it and all of the theorems and propositions we arrive at are assumed to have the qualifier "until proven wrong". For instance, the Theory of Evolution is an empirical truth and nothing has yet been observed to prove it wrong. The good scientist will accept this as true but must always keep his mind open to evidence against it. The criterion of how one verifies an empirical truth is codified in the verification principle, which is a bit heavy, so here's a link to the Wiki.

3) Anything which is neither an a priori truth nor verifiable empirically is in the realm of bullshit**. But it is important to realise that, limited creatures that we are, bullshit is in fact a necessary part of life. For example, we speak glibly of 'good' and 'evil' to get people to behave***, or we use bullshit as a sort of scaffolding with which we build our understanding of the universe. Like anything else, bullshit can be used for good or ill, but it's vitally important that we recognise it for what it is, that is, we remember to strip off the scaffolding when it becomes unnecessary.

Metaphysics, that is, "the branch of philosophy investigating principles of reality transcending those of any particular science" as stated by Wikipedia, offers neither a priori nor empirical truths. As such, metaphysics is useless bullshit. This conclusion drew much ire from philosophers who staked pretty much their whole careers on metaphysics.

The Truth - No such thing. Truth is a property of a proposition. i.e. A proposition can be true or false. Looking for the Great Truth of Life, the Universe and Everything is in the realm of metaphysics, and therefore useless bullshit.

The existence of God - Since most definitions of God fail to be either a priori or empirical, God is quite likely bullshit. Moderates and fundies alike seem to favour a definition of God that involves Him being outside our universe and therefore unobservable, so empirical verification is out. Hence any statement either denying or affirming his existence is useless bullshit. From this we can imply (though it's not stated in Ayer's book, coz he'd have been lynched) that all religion is in fact bullshit of the most meaningless and unnecessary kind.

The book goes on to use this framework of logical empiricism to scrutinize some of the major philosophical conflicts of the day, e.g. Rationalism vs Empiricism, Realism vs Idealism and Monism vs Pluralism. Seeing as the conflicts all occur on metaphysical fronts, it's quickly revealed that there is no conflict, and that said conflicts were in fact grounded in, you guessed it, useless bullshit.

I've decided I like Alfred Ayer. What he says is very much in concordance with my own outlook on Life, the Universe and Everything, and with my conclusions from my readings of Zen and the works of Bertrand Russell. A truly remarkable book, when you consider the fact that Ayer wrote it at the age of 23.

Comments particularly welcome for this post. Just don't come here with useless bullshit ;-)

* Which I thoroughly recommend to any student of world history, though only as a complement, not an alternative.

** Actually, the word he uses is 'nonsensical', but 'bullshit' has the right kind of umph to it, yes?

*** Or in some cases, to get people to do what you want.

Cognitive dissonance is your friend!

I was doing a little more thinking about cognitive dissonance today and a few things hit me all at once. Here's hoping I can make some sense of it.

It's actually quite hard not to be a hypocrite. As we grow older and, sometimes, more mature, our thoughts coalesce into set patterns, defining who we are. We'll settle into certain worldviews, adopt certain modes of speech, walk a certain way, hold our chopsticks a certain way, that sort of thing. It seems to me that the conscious mind (human, of course) does not actually take shape as a cohesive whole but comprises several "zones", if you will. I'm no neuroscientist, and I haven't done my homework on it lately, so all these jottings will have to be checked against the appropriate literature at some point. Anyway, back to the zones.

Because the conscious mind doesn't quite develop as a single, harmonious whole, which is to say, they are not necessarily closely connected to one another, we may sometimes find that the mechanism of cognitive dissonance is sometimes overlooked. i.e., 2 contradictory propositions may coexist inside the same mind as long as they are somehow kept apart, like the scientist who is a biochemist in the lab but a Christian at home. Anyway, that's one way of looking at cognitive development.

The other which occured to me is that the mind is very much connected, but cognitive dissonance is overcome by rationalisation. For instance, with the biochemist example, he may say that his roles as a scientist and as husband/father as so totally unrelated that he can essentially be 2 different people. The long and short of it is, either by the mechanism through which the mind develops, or through rationalisation, one can circumvent cognitive dissonance. But this strikes me as odd, and I have trouble empathising with this sort of behaviour.

Taking myself as an example, I require of myself that I be Me every moment of my life. Whether I function as store clerk, capoeirista, physicist, juggler, consultant, swordsman or googly-eyed geek at a laptop, I will always be Cheng, and I carry and apply my values and experiences with me in every aspect of my life. So when it struck me a few months ago that I simply didn't believe in my job as a consultant anymore, I knew I could no longer function, so I had to quit.

Others in my position may stay, rationalising that, no matter how much the job went against their beliefs, they'd stay, because a job is a job, and it's just something you do to pay the rent - Nick Naylor's Yuppie Nuremberg Defense. I don't like lying and try very hard not to, not so much as a result of upbringing as much as because I realised (far too late in life, alas) that I'm actually rather lazy, lies take too much effort to maintain, and everybody could save themselves a hell of a lot of trouble just by being honest all the time*. I think you can see how this attitude, coupled with a brutally skeptical empiricist mind, led to my eventual inability to function as a consultant in a Big 4 firm.

This is a trait I share with almost everyone I know, and certainly everyone whom I would call friend, seeing as I'm very averse indeed to spending too much time in the presence of vapid, consumerist hypocrites**. I suppose this is what they mean by "being true to yourself". We live in a very noisy world these days. It's becoming increasingly difficult to sort genuine wisdom from meaningless platitudes. As such, though it's increasingly difficult to maintain a skeptical mind, it's also that much more important, lest we lose track of what it is to be human and become what the marketing executive wants us to be: a walking wallet.

As for what it is to be human, I'm-a save that for another post.

* Granted, some feelings would probably be hurt, but I think happiness is drastically overrated anyway.

** Yet another reason I had to leave my previous employment.

Debate...

... is not de ding you use to catch de fish.

Oyaji gyagu aside, I'm not an experienced debater myself, so do take what I have to say here with a pinch of salt.

It seems to me that there's something fundamentally flawed about the art of debate. In the sciences, the strength of hypothesis is ultimately tested through observation. Evidence decides all, though in some fields, particularly archaeology, a scarcity of physical evidence means one has to base one's conclusions on very little indeed. Still, the scientific method has been the truest engine of building knowledge upon knowledge since the meme rose to it's present place in human evolution. There is discussion, there is exchange of ideas, and experimentation and observation, but things will have come to a pretty pass indeed if knowledge was based merely on the oratorical skill of whoever put forward an idea.

Which brings me to the matter of debate. On the face of it, a debate pits two opposing viewpoints against each other, each represented by one or more people to present their cases. It seems reasonable enough in theory, but having witnessed a fair number of debates on Skeptic.com and the RDF forums the reality of it seems so very, very far removed from the purity of the scientific method.

In debate we will see all manner of trickery to press home one's argument and undermine the opposition's. There will be straw man and weak man arguments, ad hominem attacks, plain old ignoring of the other's questions and, what I find most annoying of all, mismatched semantic frameworks. In the event that the debate is carried out in person, i.e. with both parties face-to-face, as opposed to a written debate on a Net forum, we also find that the party with the fundamentally weaker argument will resort to use of humour, ridicule or even shouting to win over the audience. And the thing is, none of these tactics, considered part and parcel of debate, necessarily have anything to do with the quality of information being brought to the table. And so it just seems to me, as a true blue empiricist, that debate is just a lot of hot air.

And one other thing about debate: It gives the impression to those ignorant of the subject matter that the viewpoints being presented stand on an equal footing. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don't. There's a painfully absurd myth among those not versed in basic evolutionary biology that there is an ongoing Creation Vs Evolution debate - there ISN'T. It's been about 150 years since Darwin first laid out the basic theory. It takes very, very little evidence to bring it all crashing to the ground. In 150 years, no solid evidence whatsoever has been brought forward, and yet we still find that such debates take place. And for complete and utter lack of evidence on the Creationist front, the faithful resort to the petty tricks mentioned above. Especially shouting. I find that those lacking in any solid basis for their arguments with a little too much pride are especially prone to shouting fits. Dawkins gets shouted at a lot, poor devil.

So that's my tuppence on debate. Sometimes it's a good way to hear to opposing viewpoints, other times it's just an ugly mess of linguistic mucking about. And it certainly doesn't have a place in the scientific method.

Stack o' razors

Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatum.* - William of Ockham

Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.** - Same guy

If a thing can be done adequately by means of one, it is superfluous to do it by means of several; for we observe that nature does not employ two instruments where one suffices.*** - Thomas Aquinas

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. - Leonardo da Vinci

Brevity is the soul of wit. - William Shakespeare

It seems that perfection is reached not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. - Antoine de Saint Exupery

We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances. - Isaac Newton

The supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience. - Albert Einstein

The simplest explanation is almost always, "Somebody screwed up." - Dr Gregory House

No need so complicating one lah. - Mr Tan, my 4th Form Maths teacher


Ah, the wonderful irony of this list...

I must say, though, on purely aesthetic grounds, I think Shakespeare's the winner here. Also, my opinion of Thomas Aquinas has dropped drastically.


* Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity.

** Pluralities ought not to be posited without necessity.

*** WARNING! WARNING! BULLSHIT DETECTED!

A Glimpse of Memetic Coolness

Alrighty, I've noticed that I've been on a string of posts that are either really depressing or really angry, so today I'm a-going to churn out something on a more positive note. Here's a little something I picked up from Susan Blackmore's Meme Machine.

Well, not really Blackmore, seeing as she got it from Daniel Denett. It's a very interesting metaphor regarding memetic evolution. As we are all no doubt aware by now, evolution is largely a trial and error thing. A mutation pops up, and the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune decide whether the organism is fit to survive. That's the good old-fashioned Darwinian way of doing things. For the benefit of those not heavily read in modern evolutionary biology, Darwinism, i.e. evolution as hypothesized in his Origin of Species is something of an incomplete theory. It's more of a baseline from which modern biologists have since built a more complete picture.

Anyhoo, the metaphor is called the Tower of Generate and Test, and the way it works is that you can basically slot an organism onto any of the four floors of the Tower, depending on it's method of generating and testing survival strategies.

On the ground floor are the Darwinian creatures. Basically, these creatures' cognitive abilities are completely pre-programmed into their genes. They cannot learn, and their behavioural traits are bought in the lives of it's members. This floor is mostly inhabited by simple creatures that can reproduce really quickly and hence afford to survive in this manner, e.g. amoeba, plankton, plants.

On the 2nd floor are Skinnerian creatures, named after B F Skinner. These creature's are a wee bit smarter because they can learn from their mistakes. Through conditioning, behaviour is killed off rather than the whole body. Think Pavlov's dog. This creature "evolves" much faster because many different behaviours can be tried in a single lifetime.

On the 3rd floor are the Popperian creatures, named after Karl Popper. These go one up on the Skinnerians because they can imagine possible outcomes to their actions. i.e. By simulating the action in their minds, their hypotheses are the only things put at risk.

On the 4th and final floor are the Gregorian creatures, named after Richard Gregory. They have the ultimate ability of imitation, and are thus able to carry their cultural artifacts with them through the generations, building knowledge on knowledge and accumulating information as a species, enhancing their overall intelligence.

And that's the whole Tower. No, I don't know if there's a possibility of a 5th floor. As it is, I find it very heartening to be on the 4th. It strikes me as something worth thinking about. I'm pretty convinced that humans are defined by their memes more than any other organism on the planet. When a calf is born, it knows instantly to shy away from anything that's not a cow and stick close to cow-like things. A bee comes pre-programmed with it's repertoire of dances to point out pollen to the colony.

But a human? A human has to be educated for years and years before he becomes a useful part of society. If Singapore is anything to go by, it would appear that humans even have to be taught how to make babies... The human species, viewed through the lens of evolutionary biology is a truly fascinating battleground between the gene and the meme, each driving or impeding the other.

I've mentioned before that, beyond the wildest dreams of our ancestors, advances in genetics, cybernetics and nanotechnology are quickly rendering the gene irrelevant. This leads one to the conclusion that soon, the human is going to be all about the memes. And that I've really got to get down to writing that introduction to memes I mentioned earlier. Oops... :-)

I hate Ragnar Redbeard...

Seeing as it's Mother's Day, I figured I'd have an entry more or less in the mood of it. That having been said, it's not going to be a pretty one. There, you've been warned.

I was peeping in a newspaper lying around my aunt's place and I saw an article about some guy in a village on the other side of the country having trouble supporting his wife and 8 kids. Nothing unusual about that around here, but here's the stinger: 3 of the kids are paralysed and incapable of communication.

2 of those children are in fact in their 20s. Apparently, due to some neurological disorder, they are vegetables, can't speak, and the scope of their daily activities comprises eat, sleep, shit and piss. Judging from the pic in the paper, they couldn't even sit up.

And it was while looking at that picture that a question popped into my head. And it's a fucking ugly question so I'll just spit it out:

Is there such a thing as mercykilling?

That those 2 men/veggies survived as long as they did is a true testament to a mother's love. We are genetically predisposed to protect our kin. Most of us will come from cultures that program us from an early age to believe that a mother's love is unconditional, that it's the most powerful of human emotions.

But looking at those 2 skeletal figures in their T-shirts and diapers, staring blankly at whatever direction their heads happened to loll, knowing full well that that was IT for them... That was all this life could offer them. From cradle to the grave, eat, sleep, shit and piss. Genetically and memetically, they are already dead.

So what do you think is the right thing to do? And most importantly, why?

Eschew obfuscation!

"Brevity is the soul of wit," said the Bard. Apparently this phrase was completely lost on the bulk of postmodern philosophers. The following is from an article by Tom Shipka in Philosophy Now bemoaning this fact:

Him: I love you and I would like to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me?

Her: Yes, of course. But let's negotiate a pre-nuptial agreement to protect both of us.

By contrast, a postmodern philosopher's proposal of marriage...

Him: Given that there is a traditional transcendence of social antinomy and polarity in a variety of culturally-sanctioned paradigms of persisting mutuality and reciprocation; and given that a multiplicity of precedents in our interactions predispose one to envision the practicality and workability, and indeed the desirability, of our acquiescing in an appropriate mode of combating social antinomy and polarity, it seems prudent that you and I launch the culturally-sanctioned paradigmatic transcendence of antinomy and polarity such that the overall consequence will be a maximization of multiple utilities and benefits that are beyond the reach of the isolated and not uncommonly forlorn individual.

Her: In respect to the foregoing hypothesized possible future, the proffer is deemed meritorious but only contingently, the contingency being that the implementation be predicated on a mutually satisfactory and culturally-sanctioned agreement assuring that the proposed paradigmatic transcendence is non-hegemonic and liberating.

Ah, l'amour! :-D

Never stand between a utilitarian and a train

I was reading an article in an older issue of Sci Am and came across some interesting responses to the Trolley Problem. For those not familiar or who can't be bothered to click the generously provided link, the Trolley Problem is:

A trolley is running out of control down a track. In its path are 5 people who have been tied to the track by a mad philosopher. Fortunately, you can flip a switch which will lead the trolley down a different track to safety. Unfortunately, there is a single person tied to that track. Should you flip the switch?

That's the basic version. Do nothing, 5 die. Flip the switch, 1 dies. Easiest thing in the world. The version being discussed in the article was a little more close and personal. Only a little. Instead of flipping a switch, this one places you behind a really fat dude at a platform next to the track. Pushing him onto the track would stop the trolley. According to Judith J Thompson, a philosopher who has extensively analysed the Trolley Problem, many people willing to flip the switch wouldn't go so far as to push the fat dude.

The utilitarian approach is simple enough: 5 is more than 1. 1 must die. I must confess, it sounds perfectly reasonable to me. The response I was reading that interested me was as follows:

"No, I would not push a bulky person in front of a train in attempt to stop it to save five. Why? (1) Physics: there is no way in God's green earth that a 200- or 300- pound person is going to stop several thousand tons going even 30 miles an hour. Children should be raised with that understanding, and anyone who does not understand that should go back to grade school..."

The reader went on in that vein for a bit longer, then explained her anal retentiveness on the physics of it with the following:

"Yes, I am not in the "spirit" of the question. Yet the moral dilemma was presented to me to THINK about, to evaluate and respond. So I did."

To which I have to say: I think I know exactly who I'd push in front of the train/trolley. Spoken in the most neutral terms, her decision means that in the choice between allowing 1 or 5 to live, she would choose 1. And she covers her self-righteous hide with appeals to laws of physics in a hypothetical question. AND she even goes on to play the "think of the children" card! Pathetic!

Anyway, no more time to waste on idiots... The Trolley Problem has a few other versions worth thinking about. Here's one that gave me pause:

A brilliant transplant surgeon has five patients, each in need of a different organ, each of whom will die without that organ. Unfortunately, there are no organs available to perform any of these five transplant operations. A healthy young traveler, just passing through the city the doctor works in, comes in for a routine checkup. In the course of doing the checkup, the doctor discovers that his organs are compatible with all five of his dying patients. Suppose further that if the young man were to disappear, no one would suspect the doctor.

I know my answer, and I'm fucking glad I'm not a doctor. There's also the matter of who those people are on the track. e.g. What if the one person was:

- Your mother?
- The President of the US? (ahahaha... trick question...)
- The Pope? (Atheists! Ssh!)
- Richard Dawkins?

And what if the 5 people were:

- convicts?
- children?
- [insert ethnic minority here]?
- cancer patients?
- Ann Coulter, Shirley Phelps-Roper*, Deepak Chopra, Donald Rumsfeld and George W Bush? (Ah, now I'm just fantasizing... :-D)

And lastly, what if YOU were on the trolley with a whopping huge bomb which you could trigger and would annihilate you AND the trolley, saving the 5 on the track?

But hey, it's just a thought experiment. There's only ONE way to know for sure what you'd do in that situation. May none of us ever have to find out...

Oh, and on a side note, you've probably realised by now that the Greater Good I follow most certainly means a very utilitarian outlook on life. As such, I'd really like to hear solid justification why somebody should NOT flip the switch in the basic version of the Trolley Problem. I try to keep an open mind, but I honestly cannot see any reason not to flip the switch. As such, comments are really, really welcome for this particular entry.

*or anybody else from godhatesfags.com, really.