Capitalism, atheism, and the meaning of life

"Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor. Seizing the results of someone's labor is equivalent to seizing hours from him and directing him to carry on various activities." -- Robert Nozick, Harvard philosopher

What do the three items in the title have to do with each other? The above quote is a hint.

The quote from Nozick sums up a common libertarian and capitalist sentiment, and is itself a somewhat radical, but also concrete, concept. It boils down to this: taxation is functionally equivalent to slavery. Do you disagree? Think about it. What is slavery, but one human forced to turn over his life's efforts and the fruits of his labor to another, against his will and under threat of severe punishment? The slave at best owns only part of his life. When he works for his master, the meaning and purpose of his life are subjugated to that of his master's. Taxation is simply another form of slavery. How much of your taxes--income, property, sales, etc. etc. etc.--would you pay if they were 100% optional? Like today, you still wouldn't get to choose how they were spent, just how much you would give. And indeed, much of your taxes would be squandered on pork and other spending you would not agree with. You are, in short, giving up your life's time and labor involuntarily to others for uses that neither benefit you nor are agreeable to you. You may partially benefit from some of the taxes collected, but black slaves also "benefitted" by receiving food and shelter. That certainly doesn't mean slavery was good for them though, because they lacked the freedom to control their own destiny, to create their own meaning and purpose in life. Similarly, taxation means the meaning and purpose of a part of your life are no longer yours to control--no longer your own.

What does this have to do with atheism? Many theists believe (see article linked to in title) that meaning and purpose in life are determined by, or handed down from, god. That we are all a part of "god's plan." Many of these same theists find it hard to imagine how an atheist can have any meaning in their life. "If you don't believe in god or an afterlife, then what's the purpose of living? Why don't you just kill yourself now, since in another 100 years it won't matter anyway?" I have actually been asked that, though I'm paraphrasing. My response, is that meaning and purpose in life are something we each need to create for ourselves. We have to. To have meaning and purpose handed to us from an external source, be it from god or gov't, means that it is not truly our own. Indeed, our lives cannot have true meaning or purpose unless we create it ourselves.

Religious theists, many of whom claim to be of a capitalist bent, should take a lesson from free-market economics. The law of supply & demand states that a finite good is more valuable than an infinite good. Life is like that too. How valuable would--could--life really be, if we knew for a fact that there was an eternal afterlife afterwards? Eternity, it's been said, is a really, really long time. Any finite lifespan is infinitessimal and worthless by comparison; if you had an infinite amount of money, what value would there be in picking up a dollar off the street? What value would a few decades of flesh-and-blood life have compared to an infinitely-long afterlife? Contrary to theist thinking, life is all the more precious when you know that this life is all you have.

Liberals, on the other hand, tend to be more individualistic and/or irreligous than conservatives, but many liberal economic policies seem to either ignore or flat-out oppose the laws of supply & demand. They also tend to support many programs requiring high levels of taxation. So there's a bit of learning to be done at the opposite end of the political spectrum as well. How much of our lives and destinies are truly our own when taxation takes nearly half our earnings?

This life is the only one we get, though even if you don't believe that, it's still wise to behave as if you did. We can achieve maximum happiness in life only with the maximum liberty to find and pursue that happiness. Intellectual liberty, civil liberty, and economic liberty. In the end, all three of those are the same. Only within the framework of liberty can we create a meaning and purpose for our lives which is truly our own.

Goodbye Millenium, Hello XP

Today I moved up in the world of computers. Gone now are the days of running an obsolete operating system, now I'm running a merely soon-to-be-obsolete OS.

I bought Windows Millenium (ME) not long after its release, and have been running it on my computer continuously until just earlier today, when I finally upgraded to XP Home Edition. Despite the shocked looks of horror whenever I tell someone I was running ME on my computer, it's served me well these past 6 years or so. True, it can be unstable at times, but on my computer at least it was unstable in a fairly predictable way. I leave my computer on 24/7, and I averaged maybe a bit over one reboot a week. It helped that I have a gig of RAM in my computer, seldom install new programs (and I uninstall them if they seem to make the system unstable), and also make liberal use of the "winmgmt.exe /kill" command. Winmgmt seems to be a primary cause of memory leaks, and when the system starts acting funny and I do a cntl-alt-del it's often found there. Winmgmt /kill will often restore stability to my system.

I stuck with ME because it worked for me. It was stable enough, ran the programs I used, and didn't consume gobs of RAM or hard drive space. Also, I run a lot of older programs on my computer (mostly games from the early 90's), and I was concerned about compatibility should I upgrade to XP.

As far as network security is concerned, ME is not as advanced as XP, but I keep Windows updated, my computer clean of malware, and I'm behind a NAT firewall. When XP first came out, it was touted as more secure but soon was revealed to be a security swiss-cheese. The Blaster worm and others caused much grief for the ISP I work for, not to mention all the poor souls whose computers got infected sometimes just seconds after going online. So that was another reason to stick with ME.

XP has definitely improved over the years in security, but still I found no real reason to upgrade. But over time, the obsoleteness of ME started to sink in. More and more programs nowadays are XP-only. I also wondered if having an OS built on the more stable 2000 platform might improve my computer's stability even more. So early in 2006 I figured OK, maybe it's time to upgrade to XP, but not if I have to pay full price for it. So I watched for it to go on sale.

A couple times this year it did, but as luck would have it, both those times coincided with some financial stress, so I missed out. Finally though, this week Best Buy put it on sale for $60, with--get this--no mail-in rebates. That's the price you pay at the register! So I finally sprang for XP and got it.

After being sure to back up my important files, I installed it on my computer this morning. The upgrade took a bit over an hour, with about another hour of tweaking it to my preferences, and downloading & installing all the current updates. (Over 50! And 50+ MB, excluding .NET which is another 22MB or so. The install CD was SP2.) I really haven't had a chance to twiddle with it and really check it out, as I had to go to work. When I finish up my third job today at 10pm (yes, I work 3 jobs!), I'm looking forward to converting one or both of my drives from FAT32 to NTFS, and also doing test-runs on my most commonly-run programs to see how they run under XP. A few programs I'll probably uninstall if there's a newer, XP-specific version I can replace them with. (E.g. Adobe Acrobat Reader.)

From the (very) short amount of time I used the new OS this morning, it seems stable, and I'm actually somewhat surprised that the upgrade process went error-free. Still, there are a few, albeit minor disappointments already. First, the Home edition I got does not support NTFS file encryption. That's partly my fault, as I didn't want to splurge to get XP Professional. Second, despite the repeated claim during the setup process, XP doesn't seem to load any faster than ME on my computer, though it doesn't seem much slower either.

My biggest disappointment so far though is its stupendous hard drive requirements. My C: drive used 4.35GB under ME; it now uses nearly 9GB. Where did those 4+ GB go? The package says XP only needs 1.5GB of hard drive space, and the updates, even uncompressed, couldn't be more than 100-200MB more. My C: drive is only 10GB big, so that's a major chunk of it that's gone. Similarly, my D: drive, which used 49 of 60GB under ME, now uses 57GB, an 8GB increase. And Windows is on my C: drive! WTF did it do to take up 8GB extra on my D: drive? I turned off the paging/swap file, so it can't be that. Maybe when I convert to NTFS I'll regain some or all of that, but still, that's a big annoyance.

Well I guess I'll see how XP works out. Hopefully for the better. Windows Vista will be released sometime early next year it looks like. Vista is something that actually looks pretty darned good for a Microsoft product; it may just be their first true "OS done right." Still, I think I may wait at least until they release SP1 for it before upgrading from XP, or better yet, wait a few more years until I can get it on sale for $60. :-)

Tainting science with politics

This article shows the dangers of what happens when an inherently political institution is put in charge of policy for a scientific endeavor. The inevitable: politics and dogma trumps science and evidence.

The article in question is about yet another display of corrupt incompetence and power-mongering by the FDA, this time in regards to medical marijuana (MMJ). Using old data--because old data is all there is, since the gov't has quashed any new research from being done--they have declared that MMJ has no medicinal value. Funny thing is, from what data there is, that scientists disagree with them. But saying that MMJ is a beneficial drug might lead to calls to have it downgraded from its current status as being slightly less harmful than drinking a barrel of cyanide. And that, in turn would send a "mixed message" to the American public, who are all too stupid to know what a bad, evil, lethal thing MJ is.

Now I should offer the standard disclaimer that I've never done MJ, medicinally or otherwise, so I don't have any first-hand experiences with either its benefits or hazards. The legal status of MJ is still of interest to me, though, for the same reason you don't need to be black to be concerned about civil rights or female to be concerned about womens' suffrage. It's a freedom thing--freedom isn't one of those things you can pick-and-choose who you're going to offer it to. All of us should have the freedom to live our lives as we please, constrained only so far as is necessary such that we take responsibility for our actions, and do no harm to the health, property, or freedoms of others.

And if ever there was a prime example of how drug prohibition has harmed society far more than the drugs themselves, MJ is it. Corruption of law enforcement, ruination of countless lives, a gov't that engages in blatant and untruthful propaganda, erosions of fundamental liberties, and untold billions of dollars pissed away are all part of the legacy of drug prohibition. And to the MMJ controversy one can also add denial of the will of the people, as the federal gov't continues to resist and deny referendum after referendum where clear majorities of the people say they want MMJ legal.

Addendum: on a separate issue, climate change, here is another example of a politician trying to sway, punish, or chill scientific research he disagrees with. While I myself may have some reservations about the methodologies and/or conclusions drawn from climate research, nevertheless it is critical that the research itself be conducted free from political influences or persuasion.

Birth of a new religion?

Sometimes I'll spot a trend of some sort and I'll think I'm one of the few people to see this trend, but then someone else will write about it. The latest observation is the emergence of a religious-style environmental movement, or depending on your point of view, an environmental-style religion.

I'm not talking about anything as concrete as, say, the Wiccan religion. Not yet at least. But there are some segments of the environmental movement which are developing some strong similarities to a religion. Some of these similarities include:

• A strong Puritanical streak. Humans are inherently impure or evil. These enviros see humanity as a figurative, or literal, cancer upon the Earth. Only those who "see the light" are worthy of being associated with, or ultimately of salvation.
  
• A strong resistance to modernity. Fundamentalist religion is not so much a zealous, literalist interpretation of holy texts as it is a resistance to modern culture, modern living, and modern traditions. It is a desire to return to some perceived "simpler time" when humanity was supposedly more conscious of his place and closer to god/nature than today.
  
• A profound ignorance and dislike of particular biological concepts. Just as most creationists and ID'ers know very little about the actual workings of genetics and evolution (despite what they may claim), so too do most "enviro-fundamentalists" know little about genetics as applied to technology and modification. Fear of and resistance to genetically-modified organisms (GMO's) is mostly founded on ignorance of the process involved in creating GMO's as well as how genes behave.
  
• Periodic doomsday or end-of-the-world predictions. Enviros have been tossing out doomsday-scenarios as fast as the media will lap them up. In recent years they've probably out-stripped the xtian end-timers in both the number and urgency of predictions. Abrupt climate change, global pandemics, Malthusian overpopulation, lethal pollution everywhere, out-of-control Frankenfoods rampaging down Main Street...one way or the other, humanity is apparently doomed, and it will be Any Day Now.
  
• An "us vs. them" mentality. Are you a capitalist, an entrepreneur, a Republican, a xtian, an SUV-owner, or simply someone not obsessed with saving the environment? Then you're part of the problem; you're one of them.
  
• Behaviors and beliefs which are considered not just bad, but sinful, as an affront to the object being worshipped (in this case, nature). Such behaviors include technological innovation (especially in the service of a corporation), capitalism (or anything involving obvious profit-making), being of another religion (particularly xtianity), polluting (or contributing to pollution), tampering with nature (e.g. genetic engineering), etc.
• Pop-culture phenomenons which, despite being based on junk science or outright fantasy, are taken almost as "gospel truth" the way xtians view such fiction like The DaVinci Code or the Left Behind series.
  

It is kind of exciting to watch all this play out: the birth of a new religion before our eyes. To be sure, environmentalism isn't a full-fledged religion yet. It is still, for the most part, lacking in such things as houses of worship, ceremonies, and common symbols. It does have, however, organized assemblies, various denominations, growing political involvement, and even a holiday. Like traditional religious denominations, enviro denominations are mostly united on the overall theme but differ on some of the details. For instance, some enviros are opposed to wind or hydroelectric power for various reasons, while others see these as essential alternatives to fossil fuels.

The enviro movement claims to be based on science, and to a degree it is. Where they depart from science, though, is in their misuse and abuse of science. Cherry-picked data, overreliance on and overconfidence in modelling and predictions, trotting out worst-case scenarios as what "will happen," and relying on emotional arguments. To be sure, they also accuse anyone who disagrees with them of doing the same, and in any "us vs. them" situation that is probably true. But the environmental movement, particularly its more radical elements, is much less science-based than they would like people to believe.

And indeed the point of this article isn't so much a condemnation of the entire movement as it is a comparison of its more radical fringe (the stereotypical "bitter enviro") with its supposed polar opposite in the Religious Right. Both of these groups have much more in common than a penchant for teeth-gnashing. They are, literally or figuratively, both religions, and both prone to the same type of dogmatic thinking and zealous beliefs found in religion.

Customers--gotta love 'em!

I work for two ISP's in the local area where I live. As a network technician, I handle Internet installations and troubleshoots. Most of the clients are college students, so most of the installs occur at the beginning of each semester, leaving most of the rest of the year's work as troubleshoots.

It is a most unfortunate fact of life that Shit Happens. Here in central Illinois, quite a bit happens. Much of it can ultimately be traced back to either the weather, or the crappy electical grid we have here. We don't seem to get nearly as many blackouts as people do up in northern IL with ComEd, but that's more than made up for with frequent brownouts, power spikes, and the occasional lightning strike.

Anyway, sometimes when crap happens we get some rather unreasonable customers calling in. Not that they don't have the right to be frustrated when their service goes out, but I've just gotta chuckle at the way some of them behave.

One common thing I hear is, "My Internet's been out for two days!!!" Translation: it went down at 11pm yesterday, and they're calling in at 1am today.

One unfortunate side effect of the local university's vast computerization of many of its classes, including homework assignments, is that students are now dependent on the Internet like a crack addict is to his rock. As a result, when a site goes down now I hear a lot of, "I've got homework to do and it needs to be done tonight!" This is usually in a voicemail left at 11pm or so.

Now, both the ISP's I work for are what you might call economy service providers. The prices for service are cheap, about half what the local cable company is charging. AT&T/SBC DSL is cheaper, but they require you to have a land-line phone with phone service through them, and that isn't cheap. We don't, and that's a big plus with college students nowadays, the great majority of whom only use cell phones. And while our networks probably aren't as reliable overall as cable or DSL (though I don't have exact figures to compare), our response times are a helluva lot quicker. Most of our troubleshoots can be solved in an hour or two, compared to maybe a day or more for cable, and good luck getting anyone from AT&T/SBC to come out and look at your DSL. (If you can, expect to get charged through the nose for it.)

But of course the customers don't know this. Not that they should be expected to, but it's kinda frustrating to know this, and it's not like that's something I can tell the customers. Still, I have received numerous compliments from them on the quick response time, and actually had some customers switch back to us after they got frustrated with the Big Names.

My job could be a stressful one, but I'm usually a pretty mellow guy and it takes a lot to make me lose my cool. In three years I've never snapped at a customer or treated them poorly, though I have bitten my tongue on several occasions. Customers usually mouth off the most when leaving a voicemail message. They're not so bad when I'm talking to them live on the phone, and are usually quite well behaved when I visit them in person. Interesting psychology there....

I encounter a broad spectrum of customers. Like I said most of them are college students, but even so there's a lot of diversity, especially since there's a large foreign student population here. (Most are from India or China.) Some are pretty mellow, others are high-strung. Some are obvious boozers. There are quite a few prima-donnas and spoiled brats too, of both genders.

Some are chronic complainers who call in the minute something happens. These are the people who expect you to wait on them hand and foot, and can't understand why at $25/month they can't expect a technician to be sent out immediately at 2am in the morning when their net goes down. And we're not talking about some mission-critical situation where someone is remote-piloting a plane or doing tele-operation surgery. No, it's some student who procrastinated for two weeks on some assignment that's now due the following morning.

A few other students are just the opposite; I've actually had several calls along the lines of, "Yeah my Internet went down a week ago, but I just never got around to calling you about it."

Then there's your Internet morons who download half a dozen spyware and adware programs onto their computer, along with at least one virus, then wonder why they're having so much trouble with their net. Looking at their computers, these students are usually pretty easy to spot. Their desktop is an icon farm, and all the programs loaded into their taskbar stretch across half their screen. Their Internet Explorer (or as I call it, "Inter-nyet Exploder") has at least two 3rd-party search bars installed, from companies you've never heard of, complete with shortcut icons for shopping, gambling, and other spam sites.

But all in all, I like my ISP jobs. I get to use my brain, the physical activity keeps me fit, I'm forced to keep up on the latest tech advances (but this is a good thing), and I've also honed my customer-relation skills. The customers, for better or for worse, always keep things interesting.

Customers...ya gotta love 'em!

Why Iraqis & most others in the middle east hate us

This story pretty much says it all: paranoid, trigger-happy, undisciplined troops indiscriminately shooting unarmed women and children. This is the sort of story you'd expect to hear describing the actions of Nazi SS troops during WW2. For something like this to have happened, not just one thing but many big things must be going terribly wrong over in Iraq, and I doubt that relieving 3 senior officers of duty will do much of anything to fix it.

Disgraceful. We're supposed to be better than this! We're supposed to be the good guys, but the Iraqis are saying they fear our troops more than the extremists and insurgents.

What fundies & alien-abductee believers have in common

This article provides an interesting scientific explanation for the phenomenon of near-death experiences (NDE's). The gist of it is that NDE's may best be explained by a phenomenon called REM intrusion, which is a mid-way state between dreaming and being awake. During this state the muscles of your body may be disengaged as during sleep, while your visual cortex is highly active. This may lead to a sensation of paralysis, or of leaving your body. As hearing may not be affected too much, this could explain how some people can recognize or "know" who is around them during the NDE. The visual part is essentially hallucination, albeit a fairly convincing one.

The article didn't mention alien-abductees, but I couldn't help but notice the strong similarity in the description of symptoms. Many who claim to be "visited" by aliens during the night also report feeling paralyzed and/or detached from their bodies. The only real difference would seem to be the type of visual experience, seeing aliens instead of a bright light. The aliens could easily be the result of their dreaming mind, while the bright light is quite likely the result of the end-stage hyperactivity, randomization of neuronal firings, and decreasing oxygen supply of a dying brain.

I highly doubt this new research will change anyone's mind, though. Those who believe strongly in an afterlife, or in alien abductions, are not the type to be swayed by contrary scientific evidence or explanations. Personal convictions, especially when bolstered by personal experiences or sensory perceptions, will very often override one's objectivity and rational judgement on the issue at hand.

Why I'm a pacifist

War on Poverty: Social programs designed to help the poor have made us all poorer and threaten the financial future of this country.
War on Drugs: Have increased crime & violence, made drugs highly profitable, corrupted law enforcement, and decreased purity & consistency, leading to more deaths & illness.
War on Tobacco: This regressive tax has enriched gov't tax coffers and trial lawyers by billions of dollars while sending up in smoke many simple, everyday freedoms like the right to smoke in public outdoors or the right of business owners to establish their own smoking policies.
War on Gun Violence: Blatant abridgement of peaceful citizens' Constitutional right to own a firearm.
War on __(insert country name here)__: Has made America-hating the #1 sporting event in the world.
War on Improper Entertainment: Mandatory gov't rating of TV shows & video games, mandatory for all TV's to have censorship chips (V-chips), and repeated attempts to censor lawful Internet content.
War on Fast Food & Obesity: This one's still heating up, but rest assured we'll soon have fewer choices and higher prices for the food we buy.

Is it just me, or does it seem like politicians just need to have some holy crusade going on against some perceived Threat du Jour in order to feel like they're accomplishing anything important? Though truth be told, 99% of what politicians do is not important in the grand scheme of things....

Torture and the decay of gov't

While there are, sadly, quite a number of apologists for torture in this country (most of whom appear to be conservatives who argue its necessity for the all-encompassing "national security"), the good majority of Americans are still repulsed by the notion, and sickened that our gov't should engage in it, or even appear to engage in it.

Torture, secret prisons, and imprisonment without charge or trial were, pre-9/11, things that only dictatorships engaged in. (One could very well argue that that is still the case....) They are, in and of themselves, terrible acts of pain, suffering, and gross injustice for their victims. There are, however, reasons why even those not involved in it should oppose it. The damage done by such practices are not confined to their victims, but also infect the offending gov't with the seeds of its own eventual downfall: secrecy & unaccountability, destruction of vital checks & balances, a dampening of citizen engagement, undue presumption & practice of power, and the inevitable abuses and corruption that follows from any and all of these.

The dynamic between citizenry and gov't can be a fragile one. If the citizenry gets free reign over gov't, you get tyrannies of the majority, and gov't run by desires rather than reason. France would seem to be a good example of this, with its whiny citizens calling national strikes for any little thing they don't like, and the gov't usually caving in. At the other end of the spectrum, with gov't having free reign over the citizenry, you have dictatorship, kleptocracy, and brutal rule. The examples of this are all too numerous.

It is probably much better to err on the side of a too-powerful citizenry, though the results can be the same: a tyranny of the majority can be every bit as harsh as a dictatorship of one. Oddly, though, the two also have a similar root cause. In both cases, the gov't has too much power. Who wields that power, a leader or the masses, is less important than the fact that too much power in the first place always leads to bad results.

The ideals that America was founded on recognize this key fact, and our Constitution is one of the few ever to place explicit limits on the power of gov't, as well as to set up checks and balances against the accumulation and abuse of power. The Founders knew that the way to maximize both liberty and prosperity was to minimize the power of gov't. Checks & balances, accountability, and transparency were all designed to keep gov't from growing into the monster that so many previous regimes had.

Torture. Secret prisons. Imprisonment without charge or trial. Widespread, secret surveillance of citizens. These are acts that no just, healthy gov't should ever engage in, for any reason. They are a sickness, an infectious agent that can turn a healthy gov't into a deranged one, a responsible one into an unaccountable one, and a gov't for the benefit of the people into a gov't that exists only for its own benefit. For several years now America has been sliding down the path of gov't decay. It's time we stopped it.

Addendum: Another good article on Emperor Bush's steady slide into dictatorship can be found here.

Anti-abortionists' poor grasp of English

It seems as if many people in the anti-abortion movement persist in redefining words to suit their purpose. The most common example is, that you rarely hear them call a fetus a fetus. It's always a "baby" or "child." The fact that it hasn't been born yet seems to be one of those annoying facts to them that's best swept under the carpet, much the same way Bush thinks of the Constitution's limits on gov't power and protections for individuals.

The idea behind this anti-abortionist propaganda technique, of course, is that they want to humanize something which is, at best, a future human. This is also why they're fond of showing pictures of fetuses that have been airbrushed to make them look more human and more developed.

But when you stretch the meaning of words beyond all reason, you lose the definition altogether. I mean, if calling a fetus a child is legitimate, then why not call a sandwich a child? If a kid eats a sandwich, it will be digested and some portion of it will become a part of him, used as material for building more cells. And, in a whole lot less time than a fetus takes to become a child, too.

Of course even the anti-abortionists know you can't go as far as calling a fetus an adult. They know that doing so would stretch credulity too far. Besides, it might remind people that many anti-abortionists also are strong supporters of the death penalty. And anyone who's anti-abortion but pro-death penalty is lying if they call themselves pro-life.

So yesterday I'm driving around town, and I see a minivan with the following bumper sticker on it:

"If it's not a baby, then you're not pregnant!"

What an example of abusive wordplay! Here, they are being quite explicit in equating a fetus to a baby in the present tense. Never mind that everyone else defines a baby as having already been born. So I would argue, that if it is a baby, then you're not pregnant, at least not with the same baby in question.

It's a pity that anti-abortionists feel the need to be linguistically deceptive in order to get their point across. Perhaps they don't realize that others are on to their word games, and that persisting in doing that only turns people (smart ones, anyway) away from their cause. Does the anti-abortion movement care more about having sheer numbers on their side as opposed to having smart proponents who can make valid arguments? Perhaps; as most anti-abortion efforts have had a legislative focus, it could be that they simply want enough numbers to pass a ban by law, without the bother of having to justify their views on a rational basis. Now this is not to say that anti-abortionists have no rational basis for their beliefs, maybe they do, but they don't seem to put forth anywhere near the effort they do in emotional propaganda.

The meaning of life

What is the meaning of life? That's been a question pondered by philosophers, theologians, and laymen for ages. The answers, it seems, are many. Some of the more popular responses are:

1. To serve others
2. To serve god
3. To live a good life
4. To live a meaningful life
5. To create a legacy for yourself, either through offspring or your accomplishments
6. 42 (Trivia fact: 42 is also the ASCII code for the asterisk [*], which in computer jargon is aka the wildcard character, meaning it can represent anything and everything.)
7. There is no "universal" meaning of life, it's something we each have to create for ourselves

Many people of a moderate to strong religious persuasion seem to believe in one or both of the first two. Aristotle was one of the proponents of the 3rd & 4th choices. Goal-oriented people often live by the 5th choice, and most sci-fi fans should be familiar with the 6th. And me? I'm a firm believer in the 7th, that meaning is something we each create.

You could call me a moral relativist, though not in the sense most MR critics think of it in. But it's not the reason I don't believe in any universal or pre-ordained meaning, at least not entirely.

I suppose if you look at life from a strictly genetic viewpoint, a strong case could be made that the meaning and purpose of life is simply replication. Our bodies are no more than vessels for the genetic coding contained within. Indeed, in much of the animal kingdom (and in humans up until the invention of medicine) there are not many physical adaptations for living significantly longer than the time needed to reproduce and successfully raise young. (There are exceptions, of course, but they are mostly that--exceptions.)

But even those of us who don't believe in gods would argue that we are more than the sum of our genetic material. Sentience and self-awareness may have arisen as a survival technique, but through evolutionary pressures or sheer accident (or Design, if you're of that thinking) it has blossomed into something much more, especially in humans. As clever, tool-using creatures we've become so successful as a species that we now have the luxury of devoting a significant portion of our time and energy into efforts that have nothing to do with survival or reproduction. Blogging, for instance. :-) What we choose to do with this surplus of ability, is up to us.

Even for theists (at least those not of a Calvinistic persuasion), the idea of self-determination and self-invented purpose should follow, at least roughly, from the concept of a god who created humans with free will. Free will, and sentience itself, would only detract from being able to use us as part of some Divine Plan. For a car engine to run smoothly, all its component parts need to perform as intended. If a spark plug decides it would rather study opera or an intake manifold is more interested in starting a business, your car isn't going to run very long, if at all.

Some theists may respond that we have a choice as to whether to accept god/religion or not, but this is not the same as being able to say, "there is a universal plan and this is what it is." Indeed even among people who believe in preordination or a universal plan, there is little agreement as to just what that would be. Seems to me if god wanted our lives to have some meaning external to any meaning we may create for ourselves, he should have been a lot less ambiguous about it. Or better yet, just not have free will in humans at all. Perhaps if there was a god though, he might just realize that our lives can only have meaning with free will, i.e. with the ability to create that meaning for ourselves.

One argument used in favor of a "divine plan" or some other external meaning to life, is that without it, life would have no meaning, and thus no value. This assertion simply denies any possibility that humans can create meaning and purpose for themselves. I would respond that without any ability to create meaning for our own lives, this is when our lives really don't have much value. Whether your life's meaning is "assigned" to you by some greater authority (a god or dictatorial gov't), or simply has no meaning at all, how can it have value to you? For our lives to mean something and have value, we have to create it ourselves.

This is also why I place so much value on personal freedoms. When we live unfree lives, we lose the ability of self-determination, the ability to create meaning for, and value in, our lives. Loss of freedom is a loss in the value of life. When the purpose of our lives is not our own, then neither is the value of our lives; we are reduced to interchangeable cogs in someone else's purpose.

For another blog perspective on meaning and purpose in our lives, check this out.

Global warming solutions that won't break the bank

Global warming (GW) has become a crusade for environmentalists. Although many still warn against threats such as pollution, rainforest loss, and biodiversity reduction, most of the attention--and dire warnings--now center around GW and in particular, CO₂ emissions. The growing scientific consensus seems to be that GW is a real phenomenon, though there is still debate over how much (if any) is of human origin.

For those who acknowledge GW, and especially humanity's involvement (or culpability) in it, the next obvious question becomes: What do we do about it? To this, most responses have polarized into one of two camps. The first, claims that either GW is not significantly anthropogenic, or that GW might actually be good for us, but that either way it's not really a concern we need do anything about. The other side, claims that the solution is both simple, and singular: We need to significantly reduce CO₂ emissions, and we do that by significantly reducing energy consumption. (Or make major changes in how that energy is generated.)

To enact CO₂ reductions large enough to have a meaningful effect on GW will require major changes in energy generation and/or consumption--and accordingly, will have major costs and major negative effects on economies and standards of living. The Kyoto Protocol alone, which even its proponents admit will have negligible effects on global climate (it is intended as a starting point toward more draconian and costly measures), will cost the world hundreds of billions of dollars annually and have a measurable dampening effect on economies. Indeed, several of its most supportive signatory nations are now saying they will probably not be able to reach its target emission levels by the deadline date.

This dichotomy of actions--do nothing, or do major damage to the world's economies--seems to be a self-polarizing phenomenon. Both sides refuse to give any consideration to the other, and both sides also see no point to any kind of mid-way compromise. A half-strength Kyoto Protocol, for instance, would be unacceptable to both sides. The economists (for lack of a better term; I don't want to use "anti-environmentalists," as that is a loaded term and inaccurate) would point out that it would still fail a cost/benefit analysis, while the enviros would say that it doesn't go far enough to be meaningful. So, both sides seem stuck in their respective camps.

There may be other solutions to the all-or-nothing tug of war, though, which have the potential to make both sides happy. Pollution credits are one solution with potential, though many enviros still get severe allergic reactions to anything having to do with "market-based." Some have also tried to bridge the gap between ecology and economy, with mixed results. This article, then, accomplishes a major feat: it may offer a workable solution to GW with measurable results, while also actually being minimally destructive towards economies.

The solution is not so much a specific course of action as it is a general concept: GW mitigation. The idea is that rather than cutting off GW at its (most significant) source, thus attempting to "save the planet" at the expense of human well-being, we should attempt to use a variety of cheap yet highly-effective forms of geo-engineering. Geo-engineering might be described as "terraforming lite." This idea recognizes that it simply isn't feasable to roll back the clock on human economic development.

To be sure, there will be some knee-jerk opposition to this from enviros who view any human activity as destructive. Such enviros also tend to view humanity as a figurative, or literal, cancer upon the Earth. I'm not sure how widespread such anti-human sentiments are in the enviro movement, but if enviro postings on Yahoo science message boards are an accurate sampling, such views are certainly not merely in the fringe. (I would post links to some specific examples, but Yahoo message board posts are subject to rapid link-rot.)

Still, if enviros are serious about reducing mankind's effects on the climate, this is something they should seriously consider. And unlike actions like the Kyoto Protocol which need global compliance (and thus global agreement), GW mitigation can be done regionally. The exact technique used, in fact, depends on the region where it's used.

Some examples of GW mitigation include increasing Earth's albedo to reflect more sunlight back into space before it can be absorbed as heat, and ways of removing CO₂ from the atmosphere. Methods of the former include slighly altering the composition of concrete to make it doubly reflective, making rooftops white, increasing the presence of sulfuric acid in the upper atmosphere (fired directly from naval guns, or included in remote sulfur-burning operations), and/or adjusting jets to burn a more fuel-rich mixture, thus increasing cloud cover. To remove significant quantities of CO₂ from the air cheaply, we can seed the oceans with iron (thus greatly increasing phytoplankton production), and/or plant many more forests in currently unusable or marginally-usable wilderness or farmlands.

GW mitigation has several big advantages going for it. The first is that for most of these techniques, "just a little bit'll do ya." They have the promise of being incredibly effective.

Another advantage is that, especially compared to Kyoto and other onerous enviro regs, these techniques are a comparative bargain. Most are in the range of a few tens of billions of dollars, about a tenth the cost to achieve similar results using Kyoto-style CO₂ reductions. This would deflate much of the opposition from concerns over economic harm.

And a big appeasement for "don't-mess-with-nature" enviros, is that most of these techniques are relatively short-term in their effects. If further research shows one of these techniques (e.g. oceanic iron-seeding) to be ineffective or even harmful, they can be stopped, and their effects would dissipate away in days or weeks.

That last point may be something of a weakness for the concept, though. The prevailing winds of politics can be fickle, and although gov't bureaucracies tend to be immortal, the actual programs they administer are not. Still, many of the techniques outlined in the article could conceivably be carried out by NGO's and other grassroots orgs. (The Nature Conservancy, for instance, has been very successful at buying up land for conservation purposes.)

So, GW mitigation can appeal to both sides, those who put the economy at a higher priority than the environment, and those who value the environment above any economic concerns. It is effective, technically feasable, safe to try, scalable, and economically feasable. This may just be the solution both side have been looking for.

And finally, as a futurist, I can't help but hope that GW mitigation could increase our knowledge and expertise in eventual full-scale terraforming, so that one day we may be able to transform Mars into a planet full of life. The promise of GW mitigation is enormous, the risks few. We just need to give it a try.

The evangelical meme

It's been about a week since my last blog entry, I've been quite busy with work as well as a family medical emergency. I've just started a third (yes, third) job, with a potential fourth weekend job on the horizon, and two more potential jobs which may replace 1 or more of the 3 jobs I'm holding now. Anyway, on to our feature presentation....

This article provides an insightful look into the evangelical movement. One point of interest is how, despite their vocal support for "family values" and the "traditional nuclear family," the evangelical movement of both past and present actually practice a form of worship designed to segregate members from their families through an active and controlling presence in their personal lives. This intentionally strong influence is designed to blur familial lines, by firmly integrating members into the "flock," thus inserting itself as a sort of substitute family. This has the effect of making it easy for new, lone converts to feel comfortable and welcome, while also providing cover for those members whose other family members are not part of the congregation. This likely goes a long way in explaining the rise of evangelicalism from fringe cult to, um...mainstream cult. :-)

(Standard disclaimer: I think all religions are cults to some degree, not just evangelical xtianity. :-) )

New "featurette" for this blog

I've just added another little block-column to the right-hand sidebar of this blog, titled What I'm "Reading" Now. "Reading" is in quotes because some of the books I don't actually read, but listen to on CD or MP3. My job requires me to spend enough time in my car each day that audiobooks are a good alternative to music or talk radio. (Plus the antenna's broken on my car, so radio reception is kinda crappy.)

In the past month or so I've also taken a liking to the wonderful world of podcasting. I can download a podcast MP3, burn it to CD-RW, and listen to it in my car. My current podcast faves: Scientific American, and NPR's Science Friday. What can I say, I'm a science geek. :^)