Several points of happiness in the past couple of days:

1) Got back in semi-contact with Zach and Rob and Stephen. Then AIM broke down and I need to redownload another version. Crud.
2) Met up with Shawn and Max, remembered the good ol' 3DA days. Spoke of Max's Yo and Boom Boom Room and Shawn's debut into Cleo's 50 Most Eligible Bachelors. His number is for sale, ladies. Contact me.
3) Finally met Jeremy from Logicmills, and he's actually pretty cool. He's a continental philosopher though, so we might have to laser him at some point.
4) Had a really good Logicmills session at St. Hilda's. There is no delight like shaping intelligent young minds into eventual psychopathic adults. In my own image. It's better than sex.
5) Received a Kirby limited edition Lego Tshirt. Seriously, how awesome is that. I've been lusting after that shirt.

Also, I watched Superman Returns with the aforementioned puffy pink ball of pokemonic phlesh. (I scare myself sometimes). Way too much popcorn was consumed, and my sperm count took a nose dive from the large Mountain Dew. But the movie was great. It has a rather different feel from the other superhero movies, if only in the lack of whininess. Lesser time bitching about how nobody understands me and my powers, I'm blind so I need a hot girlfriend, my parents got killed so now I must flip out and kill everyone leaves more time for heat-visioning random objects, lifting huger and huger things, and streaking around in the sky in red underpants.

I do need to streak around the sky in my underpants. It's liberating. I'll require digital editing though, for the same reasons as in the movie.

On a slightly more intellectual note, I've been re-reading Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. This book should be read by everyone for the same reason why everyone should read at least a little Nietzsche. Because they provide a counterpoint to the Judeo-Christian Puritanical ethics so many of us take for granted. One might not agree with Rand or Nietzsche, but at least one would have a better understanding of why.

The Fountainhead is a fictitious account of a great man. It follows the life of an architect, Howard Roark, as he courses unerringly through life. It is a book that flies in the face of what we are taught in moral education and by culture and parents and friends. Selfishness is a virtue, and selflessness the greatest crime. Man sees God not at his lowest, but at his highest. I'll rest here with two excerpts, both from the Introduction of the book. The first is a glimpse of what the central battle of the book is, and the second an observation that I share.

"...Man-worshippers, in my sense of the term, are those who see man's highest potential and strive to actualize it. The man-haters are those who regard man as a helpless, depraved, contemptible creature -- and struggle never to let him discover otherwise. It is important here to remember that the only direct, introspective knowledge of man anyone possesses is of himself.
More specifically, the essential division between these two camps is: those dedicated to the exaltation of man's self-esteem and the sacredness of his happiness on earth -- and those determined not to allow either to become possible."

"It is not in the nature of man -- nor of any living entity -- to start out by giving up, by spitting in one's own face and damning existence; that requires a process of corruption whose rapidity differs from man to man. Some give up at the first touch of pressure; some sell out; some run down by imperceptible degrees and lose their fire, never knowing when or how they lost it. Then all of these vanish in the vast swamp of their elders who tell them persistently that maturity consists of abandoning one's mind; security, of abandoning one's values; practicality, of losing self-esteem. Yet a few hold on and move on, knowing that that fire is not to be betrayed, learning how to give it shape, purpose and reality. But whatever their future, at the dawn of their lives, men seek a noble vision of man's nature and of life's potential."


Dear reader, don't lose the fire. Do not go gentle into that good night. Be true. Be true. Be true.

I think the good life is personal, in the sense that it matters only to you that you lead it. At the same time, others matter, in the sense that one cannot lead a good life with enemies of good men. It might be more accurate, I think, to speak of the blessed life, the truly good life.

I cannot see how the good life necessarily requires the presence of others, however. An oak tree can be a good oak tree without there being any other oak tree in existence. A rock can be a good rock, a lion a good lion, without there being a single other of that thing in the universe. Surely, God can be a good God without other Gods in existence. God can be good even if there is nothing else in existence. Why then think that human beings are so ethically odd that we require others at all?

On another note, a conversation with Terence has got me thinking over the past few days. It's one of those questions that stay with you, that most intelligent beings have pondered at at least some points in their lives: If you were a mutant, what power would you have?

Terence called dibs on control over the elements. Fire, wind, water, earth, metal, (heart! Captain Planet!) and so forth would be his to command. Phoenix, we decided, would have some version of control over forces. Between the two of them, they have control over all the physical world. I called command over possibility, so I can play with things not as they are, but things as they could be.

Several thoughts spring unbidden from this:
1) Just how much control does control over elements and forces give you? Where is the mind, or the spirit, or large social movements? Would the mutant power to control, say, traffic conditions, be a subset of control over elements and forces, or something else altogether?
2) What is our obsession with control? I'm as guilty of it as anyone else, but it is a little odd that our first instinct is to pick powers of control. The mutant power of omniscience would be kinda fun, and very powerful. The mutant power of perfect health (ala Wolverine) would be useful too. How about immortality? Or Forge's power to create things?
3) Sentinels really do suck butt.

Back to the important question. What power would I have if I was a mutant, about to be enrolled in Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters?

Okay, dork alert here. Up ahead is some seriously dorky stuff, and somewhat philosophy dorky at that. If your dork tolerance level is low, please refrain from reading further, lest the Uberdork consume your soul.

Anyway, yes, possibility manipulation. Say, there is one actual world: this one. There are a multitude of possible worlds out there, each one slightly or bizarrely different from this one. If you say 'It is possible that Kennedy didn't get shot,' there is a possible world out there where Kennedy didn't. Usually, these possible worlds are real, in the sense that they aren't actually real. (Shut up, David Lewis! Get off my case!) To be able to locally and temporarily realize (ie make real) these possible worlds would be a highly entertaining mutant power to have.

Consider: Rogue Sentinels attacking civilians? No problem, this rock I'm throwing at them happens to be from possible world 633Beta, where granite has a density of a billion g/cm3, and is highly corrosive to metallic compounds. The other Sentinels shooting at you? No problem here, there are possible worlds where photons have as little effect on matter as neutrinos. Watch the laser beams pass through you and marvel. Marvel, indeed.

Of course, omnipotence is boring. One doesn't just start off knowing immediately which possible world to bring into reality. It takes lots of practice, danger room sessions, and getting yelled at by Wolverine for skipping classes. Mom, Dad, I'm going to Xavier's.

Talking to Zim the other day reminded me of how messy ethics can be. This post will just be me rambling, putting down thoughts in the faint hope they'll fall into some discernable pattern. Read at your peril.

It is clearly morally wrong to push a stranger onto the path of an oncoming vehicle.
It is clearly not morally wrong to be shoved in such a way that you push a stranger onto the path of an oncoming vehicle.
It is a little less clear where the responsibility lies, for placing oneself in such a position that one could be used as an object to push someone in front of a car.
It is clearly morally wrong to kill someone while in a drugged stupor.
It is clearly not morally wrong to kill someone while in a drugged stupor, when the drugging was not voluntary.
It is a little less clear where responsibility lies, for taking drugs such that one eventually ends up killing someone involuntarily.
Are we responsible only for actions done in full consciousness?
Are we responsible for actions done involuntarily, under the compulsion of external forces?
Are we responsible for placing ourselves in such a position that we can fall under these compulsions?

These whittle away at the 'should implies could' principle of moral judgment. It might be the case that you should perform an act, even if you couldn't, given that you were the one responsible for not being able to perform the act in the first place. If you fail to save a drowning baby because you lost the use of your arms in a freak orgy-related incident, would you be responsible for that failure? Does responsibility carry across, from 'cause of cause' to the cause?

I suspect the answer is (annoyingly) 'sometimes.' There are cases, like the aforementioned one, where intuition pushes us in the direction that you are responsible for the results of your voluntary actions, even when those results might be involuntary and undesired. There are other cases where intuition pushes us the other way. Consider the person who tries to save a drowning baby and accidentally triggers a massive whirlpool that consumes a passing ship. He might be the cause of the multiple deaths on the ship, but surely he is not morally responsible.

The task then is to determine where the line is. When does responsibility carry across, and when does it not?

I think the right move is to discard all this as irrelevant, and return to an Aristotelian/Greek concept of goodness. Moral goodness shouldn't be somehow distinct from goodness in general. A good person, in the full sense, would not be shoved into someone, thus sending him to his untimely automobile death. A good person, in the full sense, would not be drugged by enemies such that he then goes on to commit murder. A good person, in the full sense, would not contract any limb-paralyzing disease from random orgies. A good life is the life free of evils such as these. While issues such as responsibility might be interesting to a lawyer (and involuntary acts to a bio-psychologist), they are ultimately irrelevant in the question of how to lead a good life. We need to live with wisdom, and courage, and the rest will follow.

I got my first bra today! It's a sports bra, bright green, with a little padding. It's great.

I also have an awesome ninja action figure (not doll!), a flashing penis (uh..genetalia?) cellphone attachment thing, a black dog book (because, apparently, I'm a black dog), a box with a retarded bear, a Hammy hand puppet and plenty of cards. I think the bra might be a little too small though. I'm at least a B.

Carl's Junior, sitting around and deciding on a movie, pool, repairing my mom's MP3 player while listening to the kids play with the electronic keyboard, dinner at Joel's favorite place, Ben and Jerry's, and home. Thanks for a most entertaining day, guys. Between Meikeen trying hard to guess the identity of Kirby, Blackie giggling like a retard and banging tables, Andrew being mocked mercilessly for his love affair with Wisdom, Ernest trying ice-cream for the first time and LIKING IT, Abel being ticklish and writhing like a writhy thing whenever he's poked, it was a good day.

But now I'm tired, and I need my Middle Earth and Xmen fix. I have some thoughts from the conversation I had with Zim about stereotypes that I need to work out and put down into words. Damn feedback loops!

(oh, and Zim, it's Jennifer D'Cotta. It's in my journal.)

My tagboard is full of freaks. Just thought I'd get that off my chest. Yall are very amusing though, so keep up the entertainment. Some responses:

Peixin: I do think acts can be objectively wrong. But as I argued in premise 1, I think an act cannot be objectively wrong unless the person involved can do otherwise. Perhaps you have a counter-example to offer?

Cherry: Don't sell yourself short. I've read your MI paper, remember?

Rayshio: I think we should not stereotype badly, but still would. I think we should keep stereotyping well. E.g, if you've encountered French people on 800 different occasions and they've all been axe murderers, I think you should prepare to run from the next one you see.

Kirby: Pika!

Keen: My implicit assumption was that if something is not wrong, then it is not the case that one should not do it. That is, ~~R(x) -->~~D(x). Where ~ is not, R is (right), X is the action under scrutiny, D is (one should do).

Sarah : is a pokemon. Sarahmon, I choose you! *throws pokeball on ground*

Terence: Iceman is awesome. Nightcrawler pwns. Cyclops' Leadership + Flawless Tactics make my happiness glands go whee.

blackie: What? Who said something?


Okay, now that aside, the past two days have been rather eventful. Lanning with the guys, which involved me rediscovering the awesome might of a shotgun in close quarters, was amusing, because it reminded me of the time I represented the state in CS tournaments, quite a while ago. After a brief stop at Cold Storage (CS too! w00t), we had dinner at Jem's, which involved vast amounts of pizza (Ernest: "I've never seen this much pizza in my life!"), noodles, wings and onion rings (Ernest again: "NooooOOOOooo!"). Then, some of the guys watched soccer, while the cool ones played mucho XMen, Marvel vs Streetfighter, some Mortal Kombat, and some Winning Eleven.

I kicked butt. Mucho butt was kicked, by me. Yes. Fatalities didn't work so well in MK4, and I learnt some new game, which is more or less than Archon Ultra. I loved it...speaking of which, I should go see if it's on some emulator.

Memorable moments of the rest of the stayover:
1) Playing a 9 point game with Ernest, who gives up after losing 4, then having Weiliang win 5 in a row. But I maintain it's only because I let him.
2) Jeremy going into fits from losing a match in Xmen. I was just about ready to perform a frontal lobotomy.
3) Colin walking around the house with "I heart Tira" drawn in marker on his forehead. The joys of writing on people's faces while they're asleep. Names have been changed to protect the innocent.
4) Ernest being thrown bodily in between Daniel and I, and then quickly being removed by Jeremy when his lack of personal hygiene was revealed.
5) Jiayi capturing pictures of Colin being jumped in bed and humped by Ernest and I.
6) Daniel and Jiayi and their 24-point card games. Squaring should be a legitimate operation.
7) Jeremy losing a bet and having to make out with Suzanne Tan. Names have been changed to protect the innocent.
8) Zhirong tonguing everyone.
9) Climbing the RJ gate, and walking around the place after an 8 year absence. Remembering the places where we used to do banners, have lunch, fence, wait for class. Nostalgia hits hard.
10) Talking to Jem's mom, watching her believe Ernest is a muslim-jew-african.
11) Giggling everytime I look at the lamp in Jem's living room, and am reminded of the worst mutant power ever.

And then, a long bus ride home, fortunately with good company. And then I get home to realize my computer has gone KAPUT. Apparently, that's the sound it made as it gasped its last. Yeah, I was surprised too. So, after realizing that the modem, the USB ports (all 6 of them) and the graphics card were all down, I got my friendly neighborhood computer repairman to get me a new graphics card and send it to my place. Now, the long road to recovering the rest of my computer continues. On the bright side, I have a new Geforce 6600GT. Wheeness.

Oh, and I stumbled upon an old journal of mine, from back in ACPS Primary 6, when I was in love with my English teacher. I was such a dork back then, it's hilarious. Who am I kidding, I still am. Sigh.

Tonight, I'm gonna cook a whole kilogram of beeftail I got the other day, as a sort of Father's Day thing, for my dad. I'm excited, and looking forward to it.

Yargh. I woke up this morning needing to move around and do stuff, but I know the pool, the gym, the track will all be crowded on a Sunday. I really need to fence again.

There'll be two parts to this post, a brief account of today's events, and a response.


Part I:

Today started off with the need to write. I awoke from a dream of words, which needed to be set down before they faded, as dreams do. Alas, even as speedy as I was, much of it had faded ere I set finger to keyboard, but the tattered remnants, you see in the previous post. I know once again the frustration of Coleridge.

If I could revive within me, that symphony and song
To such deep delight twould win me, that with music loud and long
I would build those domes in air, those fiery domes, those caves of ice!
That all would heard should see them there
And all would cry, Beware! Beware!

After that, it was lunch and off to Gnome-Rayshio's. Flaminjo and I decided to be adventurous and attempt a shortcut to Gnome's place, walking along canals on paths no mortal men hath tread in centuries. Fortunately, we met two seers, wise in the arts of navigation, who guided us unerringly to our destiny.

Much entertainment was had messaging Gnome's friends (who after what we did, might not be friends any longer). There was also a great improvement in his relationship with several young girls. Some listening to random podcast stuff and amusing soundclips, watching Date Movie and Gandalf clutching his wizardly nuts, a very good dinner, watching Paris and Nicole harass firemen, whacking Flaminjo on the head with pillows, stealing Battle of Middle Earth II.

I think Flaminjo smells of dumb, and I think Gnome has boobies.


Part II:

Stereotyping.

Originally meaning the metal plate used to print with, the word now has very negative connotations, of racial violence, of denial of opportunities, of oppression. At its core, I guess to stereotype is to cast further images from a basic mold. One sees a person of a certain race perform an act of theft, for instance, and concludes that all persons of that race are thieves. The question is, is it wrong to stereotype? Let me offer an argument for stereotyping, then refute some of the points in Rayshio's post (http://unwritten-love.blogspot.com/).

Argument: Should implies could
1) It is wrong to do X only if it is possible to not do X.
2) It is not possible (for us as human beings) to not perform acts of stereotyping.
3) Therefore, it is not wrong (for us as human beings) to perform acts of stereotyping.

The validity of the argument should be clear. I'll argue for premise 1 and 2.

In support of premise 1: It is wrong to do X only if it is possible to not do X.
This is the classical 'should implies could' idea. I'm not familiar with much of the territory, but strong support from this should come from intuition. An act cannot be morally wrong unless the agent could have done otherwise. It makes little sense to blame a person for stealing, if he had a psychological defect that compelled him, despite his strongest desires, to take things that did not belong to him. We could blame him for not seeking help, or allowing himself to be in the position where his defect would result in theft, but we cannot blame him for the act of thieving, since he couldn't have done otherwise.

For clarity, another way of putting the proposition is this:
If it is impossible to refrain from doing X, then it cannot be wrong to do X.

Thus, involuntary motions are never blameworthy. If some crazed alien implants a device in your left arm that fires a deadly laser beam whenever you hiccup, you cannot be held resposible for the destruction caused by the weapon, since hiccups are not under your control. It is impossible to refrain from hiccuping (and thus causing death), and therefore, it cannot be morally wrong (blameworthy) for you to hiccup.

That's a really cool weapon, on further thought. I want one. Make that ....two.

In support of premise II: It is not possible (for us as human beings) to not perform acts of stereotyping.
Put another way, it is necessary, as part of our humanness, that we stereotype. We cannot help but stereotype. Consider the following:

You are hungry. You look across this flat wooden thing near you and see a container of soft white grains. What do you do?

I'm tempted to say the above scenario isn't even possible. Once you know what rice is, you can no longer look upon something like that and not categorize it as rice. In either case, to believe that that substance would nourish you and assuage the hunger is to stereotype. It is to say, such stuff has been nourishing in the past, it will be nourishing in this new instance as well. Induction, right here.

Stereotyping, as such, is just induction. And it should be pretty clear it is not possible to not perform induction. To be a human person is to have a mind, and a human mind cannot exist without an inductive inferential structure (or so I declare, because every human mind I've seen has had one. Shut up.) So, to be human is to stereotype. It is necessary for survival, and growth, and flourishing.

Conclusion: It cannot be wrong for us to stereotype. It is unavoidable, and thus cannot be morally blame-worthy.

Refutations:
As I understand it, a large part (the last two paragraphs) of Rayshio's argument is directed at the possibility of making a mistake in stereotyping. That is, that bowl of rice you thought was nourishing (because you stereotyped it) might turn out to be toxic. In that sense, you were incorrect in stereotyping.

I think this is founded on an ambiguity in the application of 'correctness'. Consider the following (slightly more realistic) scenario.

You meet several people from India, and they turn out to be, say, conniving. You lose a bunch of money. From these instances, you conclude that most people from India are conniving. You then meet a person from India, who in fact turns out to be the most honest person this side of the world.

You would be 'incorrect' to have drawn the conclusion that he is conniving, in the sense that the content of your judgment does not correspond to the way reality is. On the other hand, you could be 'correct', in the sense that the previous encounters might be sufficient for a justified judgment. Specifically, a judgment can be justified without being true.

Stereotyping can be justified, even if there are instances where it turns out to produce false conclusions.


Two conclusions come from this:
1) It is false that we should not stereotype, or place people in categories.
2) Stereotyping is justifiable, just like other forms of inferential rule. There are times when it is justified, and times when it is not. It can be done well, or badly.

Sometimes we wake, words fresh upon our lips and singing like lightning in our minds. Sometimes we are touched with fire.


They say that we begin in darkness
and end in glory but we
lose the way sometimes and we bend
like sunlight does, to the tides.

And yet despite
the newness and the nearness
we (not knowing better)
we fight and we fall and hope is only hope for
what

must lie behind
those hidden paths in bisected air,
slashed pale as fracture,
but such secrets, such secrets there

are given to us without words, perhaps
so we can hear, so we can hear the breakers.

I hear breakers and there is no peace,
there is no peace,
there is no peace, only stillness.


That was carthartic.

Since this is intended in part as an electronic chronicle of the happenings in my life, here is today, forged into words through the brute power of mind and hand, eye and sinew.

Started off the day playing Minesweeper with Kirby and Rambutanwei, and it was amusing. By amusing, of course, I actually mean the opposite of amusing. See, there were stakes involved. I won myself a movie ticket, so that's good, but I also managed to commit to certain acts that might be construed as, well, homosexual in nature. *sigh* Lesson of the day: Save the cockiness for when you actually have Saint Patrick on your side. Lama Sabathani!

Much stuff was also read today, chiefly Chalmers' Mind, Machines and Mathematics. http://consc.net/papers/penrose.html I might comment on it a little in future posts, after I've had a little time to digest it. Which is just another way of saying that I've completely forgotten Godel's Incompleteness Thing. Sorry Professor Cargile.

Then inspiration struck me, and this blog was born. But of course, you already knew that, in a Bloggo Ergo Sum kind of way. Except, not at all.

There is something exhibitionistic about this. And then again, I've always been the person who enjoys running around nekkid in the great outdoors.

That said, it is an odd thing, privacy of thought. The content of thought, surely, is private. The content of cognitive processes, and more so perceptual processes, cannot be open to anyone but the corresponding thinker or perceiver. It is not in our power to make the content public. It is more than opening up your room to guests, and merrily inviting them in. It is not enough that one reveals the content to others. The fall from privacy seems to require that these others know that nothing is hidden. Privacy seems to remain even if these others know all there is to know, as long as they do not know they know it all. And this is not possible except to those telepaths among us.

On a side note, Jean Grey is hot, when she's not starting blankly into space and drooling.
Or maybe she's especially hot then.

You're sick, all of you.

The form of thought, however, is observable (The solipsists are crying, but no one else exists anyway). Be it by the Bene Gesserit detection of dilated irises and raised eyebrow, or the Matrix analysis of electrodes-in-brain, thinking is an act. Acts are, by their nature, events. We need not know the nature of these events (and I can hear the dualists rejoice even here, separately from their bodies which are also performing rejoicing motions), but merely their existence. One cannot keep the existence of thought private.

It seems then that my exhibitionistic streak is not to be appeased. I cannot make public anything that was private. All I can do is reveal a little of the workings of the Great Machinery, and perhaps bring light to the cogs and gears and oscillators that function within.



And wow. I need practice writing. It's been too long.