The Last Resort

Putting together an omnibus post on the political spectrum to serve as my rant for a while. Then I am going to dive back into fiction. I have one new concept and the Socrates code project that have long term potential. If I spend my time screaming at the corporatists to get off my lawn and shaking my fist it eats up too much of my energy. I will continue to throw the occasional metaphorical brick but this is my parting shot for a while.
I have given my view on theism. I have distilled my view down as simply as my limited language skills allow. Belief in that for which there is no evidence is destructive in all of the forms it takes. This includes pseudo science as well as religion. There are lots of implications from the mathematics of quantum mechanics. One gets many worlds and string theories with 11 dimensions or is it 13. In the hands of well grounded theorists these ideas lead to things like quantum computers and the discovery of dark energy and all kinds of cool things that may or may not pan out in their exact format but that does not excuse the charlatan that hides in the ambiguities. The existence of “Entanglement” does not mean we are all part of a spiritual realm. We all exist as conscious entities and that consciousness is a function of a physical brain conducting chemical processes. In all of the work we have done studying the brain we have seen no evidence for a soul that exists beyond the life of the functioning brain. When you have something get back to us.
Being a rational human requires one to come to grips with the fact that some questions have no answer. That does not mean that anything you make up is possible. We will not be able to tell folks with absolute certainty how the chemical soup that was available to the primordial environment turned into life. That data is simply unavailable. Plate tectonics has recycled that data beyond retrieval. That does not alter the fact that Humans evolved from earlier species through the process broadly known as natural selection. I prefer the term descent with modification as it does less to imply purpose than the other. There is no reasonable, and by that I mean fitting with basic physics, theory for the existence of the universe that requires any god.
By definition the universe formed from a singularity in big bang theory. There for we will never be able to know what happened before that event. We may some day figure out the most likely precursors to life and recreate it from scratch in an update of the Miller experiment. We may even have the opportunity to observe a planet while it is evolving new life over a few million years on another world. We could turn out to be wrong about the singularity and find out something from before the beginning it is just that those chances are infinitesimally small. At a very minimum the idea that there exists an intercessional god is beyond ludicrous as portrayed in any of the sacred texts that reveal all to the snake oil salesman.
As thinking creatures we have the ability to create meaning even if is an artificial construct. I broke my rule in the middle of thinking about this piece and have begun to ramble. As long as your construct allows for others to pursue their construct fine. By definition the dogmatic faiths cannot do this. The word has been revealed and you must remain ignorant of all future developments to remain true to the faith. To Admit that the ravings in Leviticus are not valid is to admit it is all invalid. Either it is all the word of god or none of it is. If you refuse to show us the gold plates or accept the results when your shroud is proven false beyond all reasonable doubt then I say fuck you and your ignorance. I have no time to waste on your ignorant superstition. I will ridicule it at will but not one second of deference or respect. There isn’t anything else I can do but beat the dead idiot and there are already folks making a living at that task.
The course politically is set for the next cycle so I am not going to expend any more efforts in that direction. The centrist has sold us out to oil and pharma interests. The climate bill will be inadequate, the energy bill will include off shore drilling and nuclear energy both disasters. The drift toward a police state will continue as this group is now trying to eliminate rights for citizens while continuing to show contempt for human life around the globe. I won’t vote republican and see little point in continuing to support the rush to compromise of principles that is this failed system. There will be a slaughter in November and then we will get nothing but screwed until 2012 when the right wing will take power once again. This was the best shot at some actual progressive changes to government for the 8 year cycle with the utter destruction of everything the right had been saying and the gutless piece of god wad that won sold us out. I see no point in continuing to point out the obvious for the next two years. It will just serve to make me appear shrill.
Enjoy the break.

Noone Expects the Language Inquisition

The Idea that we can fix our energy problems by drilling more holes is foolish. The concentration of Carbon molecules that lead to greenhouse problems in the atmosphere is already too high. Unless we stop burning fossil fuels and alter our consumption patterns we are already at the point where the next generation is boned.
I have been studying some philosophers of late. Looking for answers to big questions is one of the ways I distract myself from my pain. In the end this would seem to be a pointless endeavor as the big answer always comes up there are no big answers. I have a question for the philosophers that never seems to get answered and that is why they never seem to discard those that get falsified? Why the guys that are on about god are still given credence?
I have been listening to Peter Singer talk about Hegel and his ideas are interesting but the religion aspect confuses me. I am also listening to an Ipod U lecture series on him so I will report back when I have spent a little more time. He is the thesis, antithesis, synthesis guy and very influential. He had a lot of followers not the least among them Karl Marx. I have found him confusing and my bad German skills don’t help. That is one of the problems with philosophers in foreign language that the translation make a huge difference as to what the meaning is. I read the Three Musketeers in the original French and found that the story takes on subtle differences when the original language is translated. Wish I had spent more time keeping up with language both foreign and domestic.
The meaning of language is the line that I am off on today. I really like the mimetic explanation of this phenomenon. The Idea that our higher brain functions evolved as the result of service to language as opposed to other evolutionary pressures is intriguing. Once you get past the advantage of tool use it is hard to find the evolutionary basis for the higher brain functions. That and there appears to be a correlation between lower birth rates and more education. Not a perfect indicator of intelligence but I feel better than IQ tests. It would almost seem that things like theoretical physics have a negative impact on fitness by virtue of the fact that studying Quantum Mechanics makes you freaking weird. This has opened up the debate over group evolution and brought back into the discussion the Neanderthal and did they have language? When I was attending the cutting edge seminars at Evergreen they had not yet found a skull with a hyoid bone so the thinking was no speaking for the Neanderthals but that is no longer the case. They had the physiology but it is unlikely we will ever know one way or the other. With the increase in brain size and skull capacity it has actually gotten harder to give birth so will we be getting smaller brains in the future when we no longer have the economic capacity to maintain C-section births? I find it much easier to come up with odd questions than answers these days but I am trying hard not to fall into despair.
In the end am I nothing more than a habitat for microbes with a head full of viral memes? That is an unsatisfactory hypothesis but it fits all the available data. On that note I think I will take my illusion of free will and make some reservations at the Grizzly Creek State Park for Friday night and check my camping gear. After all one fantasy is as valid as another in the many worlds of the Radmul universe.

Fuzzy Logic

The world is a very weird place and I am so far outside the mainstream I don’t think I can even see the lunatic fringe from my vantage point. As an example I am an anti theist, I actively campaign against religion and spirituality in all forms. The magical thinking is horrible for society and prevents almost all forms of progress. To me the moron chanting with crystals and the preacher condemning gay marriage are equal in their damage. They both promote a belief for which there is no evidence and this is dangerous to all of us. It perpetuates the concept that there are two sides to every story , that all points of view are deserving of equal respect and that is simply a fantasy.
These fantasies lead to a world in which all the candidates for the highest office in my government feel that being bigots is perfectly acceptable because of their religion. This is particularly disturbing in the case of Barack Obama, the man certain to be the democratic parties nominee, as his only qualification it seems is his claim to be a constitutional scholar. How does one become a constitutional scholar without reading one of the seminal court decisions of the 20th century. I am referring to Brown vs. board of education that struck down the terrible practice of Jim Crow and made the concept that separate but equal can never be equal the law of the land here in the U.S. Now because of his religious hatred he states that it is fine for the gays and lesbians among us to be consigned to the ghetto of domestic partnerships because god said it was icky and the rest of the ignorant horde that have the same imaginary friend know in their hearts that this is the way it should be. Sad what passes for scholarship in today’s world.
This acceptance without evidence infects all aspects of our society. The right constantly touts the free market as a solution to the worlds ills with no evidence that it has ever worked to solve any problem. To the contrary all evidence points to the conclusion that the unregulated market is a disaster. I have issued this challenge in the past and offer it again to the Ayn Rand lovers out there, show me an example of the free market solving a problem without government intervention, just one bit of evidence will suffice. I can sight countless examples of the reverse. The California power crisis artificially created from deregulation, the lack of media scrutiny leading to the criminal war in Iraq created by media consolidation as a result of deregulation. The current foreclosure crisis in housing is a direct result of banking deregulation. I can go on but as Einstein once said when confronted with the book “100 authors against Einstein” , responded , “If they were correct it would only have taken one.”
Science and reason do not have all the details but that is not an excuse to make up the answer. We will probably never know the details of life’s origins on earth. We already know the mechanism for the progression but how the first single cell was organized is at this point unknowable because the data is not retrievable. There are a lot of really clever people out there but the fossil record is periodically wiped clean by natural forces so I hold out little hope it will happen.
This is a problem with cosmology as well. There is a time in the history of the Universe that may remain forever outside of our ability to collect data as it is obscured from observation. The difference between the scientific speculations put forth in the String and M theories and the god did it nonsense is that the scientists/philosophers, until they develop a way to test it String theory for me remains philosophy, is evidence as a starting point. There is no I repeat no evidence for the existence of the supernatural but there is particle physics supporting the jumping off point of the String.
Speaking of hanging on by a thread we have the non overlapping magisterial nonsense put forth by Gould.In an attempt to appease the imaginary friend set the idea that science and religion looked at different things and so were not contradictory that religion shouldn’t be subjected to scrutiny because by its definition it requires faith. Sorry but what a load of crap. Since there is no evidence that this realm of the spiritual exists once again it is only harmful to perpetuate it. Christopher Hitchens, a rather loathsome man said it much better than I in the subtitle to his book, “How religion poisons everything.”
I have become fascinated by the argument over free will and whether or not we live in a deterministic universe with all future actions predicted by initial conditions. For me it started when I read “Foundation”by Asimov in which the mathematician Harry Seldon does the math and predicts future history. Then I took physics and came up against Heisenberg and probability waves and observational effects and Fritjof Capra’s Tao of Physics. Libet’s work seemed to answer the question when he showed that the brain is already sending the impulse to act before we are even aware that we have made the decision to act but the question remains open and we are w2ith the help of functional MRI learning more about the function of the brain and the illusion of free will may still become a reality but it will happen with evidence and the persistence of superstition only hampers that investigation.
In conclusion if you are religious and this offends you good. If you have some evidence for your garbage feel free to put it forth otherwise grow up and put your imaginary friend away and join me in the real universe. The actual explanation for the lights in the sky is so much more interesting that the nonsense that god put them there I think you will enjoy it.

Hump day grumbles

Went out riding and thinking. Still have to find a waterproof bag for the bag but picked up a few lighter weight items, I am serious about getting the weight down by a bunch. Found a pillow a voice recorder and a small tarp. Still need a stool. Shooting for 50 lbs on the trailer and 10 on the bike. I am going to return the bag cover if I can find the receipt that was looser but all in all I had a great experience. I am going out again on Tuesday. Think I will go south this time to the Avenue of the Giants. I think that will take me past the home of Big Foot but I am not guaranteeing footprints.

The photo is of Equisetum or horsetails. The first actual science I ever did involved making slices of plants like these to determine whether or not they were a C4 plant. Up until then all the labs I had done were pretty much follow the recipe type experiments, this one I designed myself and executed it successfully the first time out. My hypothesis was that they grew so well because they using both photosynthesis and aerobic respiration as in C4 plants. To prove this I needed to find chloroplasts in the bundle sheath cells. I made these slides with perfect cross sectional views and popped them under the scope and the null hypothesis was correct. Still remember it though.