I’m rambling, and I’m well aware of it. Can you believe it’s been months, again, since I blogged about anything? Life is rolling right on along. I’ve been visiting all sorts of family and spending quite a bit of my spare time outside. Not to say that I have too much spare time…

Minnesota was gorgeous nearly the entire time that I was there. I bought one of those fancy state-park passes for a meager $25. The view from a 100-foot observation tower in one of the state parks was worth the price all on its own. My sister and I attempted to go canoeing at one of the state parks, but upon the realization that life-jackets were required inside any water vessel… we packed up the inflatable canoe and continued on about our day. (I wonder, if we were just swimming alongside of the canoe for a few miles down the river, would our chances of drowning go up? Because then we are not required to have life vests. Go figure.)

A piece of my past decided to make an appearance the other day, which was rather startling. It’s funny how we connect things in our minds. One little memory can cause an entire avalanche of flashbacks, reconsiderations, and reflections. Luckily, things went fairly smoothly this particular encounter. It is fun how you can never anticipate when something like that might happen.

On to other news… I’ve been reading Les Misérables for a good month now and am still only about half-way through. It is an absolutely fantastic read, and I highly recommend it to you. It positively grips the soul and then proceeds to force it to submit to an entire spectrum of emotions. The book is much less directly philosophical than most of the books I enjoy, but it still leaves plenty open for critical evaluation. If you do read it, just know that it’s slow to start and littered with painfully long asides. Have patience and read leisurely – it’s well worth it.

Last, but not least, on my list of basically meaningless banter topics – I’d like to tell you that I got a new highly-portable laptop. It’s the Acer Aspire TimelineX 4830T – and it is a truly fun little machine. I’m going to post a review of it soon over at my Computer Correct website, so keep an eye peeled.

Hopefully, this new domain will allow me to capture more traffic for “Andrew Anderson” – since, I’m sure, most of those searches are in fact for me . Anyway, we’ll see how it goes.

On a side note, I want to write a little bit about the companies involved in the transfer. Especially since I couldn’t find much information on one of them when I was trying to make sure that I wasn’t being duped. OfferBase.com was where I first expressed my interest in the domain name. It allowed me to do the bidding on the name, and communicate with the previous owner. For the actual money side of things I used Escrow.com – and that all went very smoothly. So, as far as I am concerned, both companies are reputable.

That’s about all that I have to write about at the moment, but I’ll try to come up with something more soon.

I got out of college, stuffed my philosophy degree in a box, moved out of my little apartment in Chicago, and hit the road with my uncle. Together we drove (actually, he drove and I rode along) all over the Midwest and some of the Southwest and Northwest. I got to see more country (and more freeway) in a short six months than most people see in a decade. I got to visit more casinos than most people visit in their a lifetime. It wasn’t always fun, and I can’t say that I anticipate missing casinos anytime soon, but it was nifty time nonetheless. There is something about living in a small camper for an extended period of time that makes you profoundly aware of everyday comforts such as well-equipped kitchens, full-sized water heaters, and plush couches. Most things in life begin to fall into place as luxuries rather than the necessities most people regard them as.

Over the course of those six months, I managed to obtain enough money to pay off my student loan debt… and am now completely debt free. It’s an awfully cozy feeling. Now, with breathing room about me, I am resolved to making a living on the internet. I have the domains, a reliable, basic server paid two years in advance, and a general direction in which I want to take things. All that I’ve got to do is make it happen.

So, if time itself were infinite, then would right now always be the midpoint?

If time had a speed limit, it seems like it would be set by the speed of light – since that sets the limit for everything else.

Time itself may be setting the speed limits.

I take issue with infinite divisibility.

Because most things in nature cannot undergo such a division.

From here, we can see that nature gives us lower bounds on the size of things.

Time is a natural thing, right?

What is it made of? That usually determines the lower bound.

Can time exist without motion?

If not, then maybe time is made from movement – and more reason to take light as a possible limiting factor.

If so, then what might it be made of?

It won’t do to say time is made of seconds, etc.

Assuming that some class of particles x were the smallest in the universe. Then might that set a limit on the smallest movement?

We line up these x particles in front of some thing y, and we move y. on the line We know y moves because it displaces an x. If it doesn’t displace an x, do we still want to say that it moved?

If not, we have discreet steps of movement. Lower bound is the size of x.

There is nothing actual about a fraction of an x then.

Likewise with time?Eventually, there is nothing actual about a division…

Then things tick along in small steps, not in an infinite number of steps.

Infinity would be unnatural.

But is that how it is? Do these bounds exist?

I’m not sure things are any more obvious, but maybe my train of thought is a bit easier to follow. I’m going to be back here soon. If I can ever get there.

This goes back to Mike, because one of the tidbits he once left me to mull over was: “light is like a river, and nothing within the river can go faster than the river goes” – of course, he was trying to explain to a ten-year-old that the speed of light is a kind of universal speed-limit. It sounded neat, I didn’t really fully buy it then, and I’m still not sure if I do now. However, recently, I’ve been having the oddest thoughts about light-speed, midpoint paradoxes, and discreet mathematics. I’m basically under-qualified for discourse in all of the subjects, but let’s bundle them up for a bit and draw out what’s been bothering me.

The midpoint theorem is simple enough, to get from point A to point B on a continuous function you must pass through the points on the function between A and B. There are more rigorous definitions available, but that one should do for now, I hope. So, you walk in a straight line from point A to point B, and you must pass through the midpoint C. The paradox arises that you can never get to point B. There is always a point half-way between wherever you happen to be on the line and where you want to go; you must always get halfway before you can get where you want. You can always get to the midpoint, but you can never get to the end.

Now, here’s the catch, or so I think… for the paradox to hold, there must be a midpoint at every one of an infinite number of divisions. I do not believe that can happen. I’m highly suspicious of attempting to apply the conceptualization of infinity to the actual world. (Calculus is nifty and useful, right, I know… and I don’t think that I take issue with the use of infinity in that sense… as a symbol, or a designator of a mathematical process…) I’m thinking that the world does not have the kind of domain that permits of infinite divisions.

Naturally, things appear to have bounds… movement is bounded by the speed of light, the physical dimensions of objects by the size of atoms (or components thereof)… so that at some point it makes no sense to talk about dividing a step along a natural function. Maybe everything moves in discreet steps, with the number of possible divisions bound by the speed of light. When you try to divide time itself into a segment smaller than light can travel, maybe that just doesn’t make any sense… perhaps it’s an impossibility… and if it is – then maybe the paradox is misleading about the way the world is.

More than that, maybe the idea of infinity is misleading about the way the world is. Maybe the idea of continuity as applicable to the natural world is nothing more than a pleasantry…(though, would it make any practical difference if we changed our way of thinking about the number of possible midpoints on our walk  from our front door to the mailbox?) If we can’t divide time into infinity, then I don’t think we can divide anything else into infinity. It’s like time is the river, and everything that can happen can only happen as fast as time will permit.

Using Mike’s analogy: the speed of time can only bound by the speed of light (because, mustn’t time itself be in the river… or could it be the river?) – and then that’s our actual continuity stopper. We’re not moving continually, we’re taking a bunch of really, really small steps. Really small, but not infinitely so.

What happens at 299,792,459 meters per second? Nothing…? And light’s speed is constant… so we know where it must be at each time between any A and B. Take that with the limited dimensions of the light particle itself… and you have all the bounds you need to prevent the infinite division, or not? We can’t divide to any point that would make that little light particle move faster than it can move. Dammit, is time bound or not? I’m regressing into confusion…

What do you think? If you’ve read something somewhere that would help me think about the issue further, or have personal insight into what I’m confusing myself over, then please leave a comment and let me know.

Two weeks of the good life passed and my other uncle called. Two days later my two uncles and I were in Chicago. Me, back in Chicago. I haven’t been gone long enough to feel nostalgic about my return… or to mentally prepare myself for another bout with the nearly-intolerable weather here.

There’s really no telling how long I’ll stick around the midwest, but I’ll try to keep updating. At least mobile internet works well here.

Last Tuesday, moving my things went well – the thunder storms abated a bit and that was certainly a welcomed change.  The entire farm was unkempt and somehow a poor bird (actually two birds, but one was deceased) had wandered into the house. When I noticed it, I didn’t even take it to be real. It was eerily still and staring out the window. I grabbed it, brought it outside, and gave it some water. It was so weak it hardly tried to get away from me. That was basically the only noteworthy part of my move. Well, ok, the oats were really nice too, but I think they flooded the day after I left the farm.

Two days later, Thursday, the flight I was taking out of Chicago was originally scheduled to depart at 1930, but ended up being delayed over three hours. I was fretting that the unfortunate delay might be a sign of things to come. Really, things since then have been pretty good. I didn’t get the promised tour around Seattle, but it is still scheduled for the weeks to come. Instead, I was treated to a midnight Jack-In-The-Box hamburger and a half-day long drive from Washington to Idaho the next noon. The drive was peaceful – there are so many trees and mountains in Washington that one cannot help but feel calm.

Somewhere between Seattle, WA and Coeur D’Alene, ID – after the Washington mountains – the beautiful scenery abruptly becomes a desert. It’s strange just how sharp of a transition it is; luckily it just as quickly reverts to greenery.

So, for the next week (or possibly more), I’ll be around northern Idaho. If I see anything noteworthy I’ll make a point to blog. Maybe I’ll even take a few pictures worth sharing.

Specifically, if you are already rooted and looking for this EASY way to get tethering online see the thread here: moment wifi tethering how-to

I’ve personally followed the instruction and everything works without a hitch, although it is currently being *tested* so… ymmv. Many thanks to the guys over at SDX!

In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person’s becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American…There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag… We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language.. And we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.

-Theodore Roosevelt 1907

It is unfortunate, I think, that this quote from Theodore Roosevelt is being forwarded without any kind of discussion or close interpretation. It does not simply stand in support of immigration reform (and I only guess that was what the forwarders’ intended) – if interpreted as appropriate for modern times, as I doubt it should be, it has much stronger implications for all modern American people.

How would you identify someone that was “in every facet” an American by Roosevelt’s definition – one with no divided allegiance and complete loyalty to the American people? Would they buy only American products, speak and think only in English (do you get to pick the language you think in?), invest only in American companies, burn their family heirlooms wherever another flag was present, disassociate themselves with their family history – for, seemingly, these are Roosevelt’s prescriptions.

And if that is what it took… then how many Americans would Roosevelt commend – certainly not the foreign-product-buying kind, employees of or investors in Toyota, Sony, et al., or even customers of American companies that outsourced jobs to reduce costs for the America consumption-addiction. All of these actions, and others, ingrained in modern American life, are certainly highly suspect for anyone claiming to be a Roosevelt-approved American loyalist.

Of course, we must ask ourselves, how many of these (apparently loyalty-subverting) activities were even possibilities over 100 years ago when Roosevelt spoke these words? The answer, certainly, is “very few of them”. The world has changed and America has changed with it. Looking to hundred-year-old quotes for normative advice can only go so far.

If you found these words to be compelling instructions, I am afraid it was only because you did not realize that they do more work against all supposed “actual Americans” than they do in support of tougher immigration laws. If you, in fact, did realize that broader implication, then I am sure you see we have much bigger issues in modern America than how to think about immigration.

I, personally, think that the quote is only worth interpreting within its own time – which leaves it normatively neutered and of simply historical value.

–
Andrew D. Anderson

http://www.AndrewDAnderson.com

The people would be taxed using a flat sales tax for necessary government services, but extra projects would be funded by inflation-indexed rate-capped government bonds. This way debt would be more fine-tuned by individual communities – and the nation would have less chance of overspending (especially on a national level).

Because communities would own patents collectively (granted by the national government), to foster innovation and productivity, large one-time cash awards and honors should be given to innovators. Say 10x the median income. This would ensure people were still excited about innovating, but prevent multi-billion dollar entities, groups, or people from concentrating power. Because local governments and people would benefit from innovators, they would be highly sought after. The local governments would set wages accordingly to keep and attract promising people. This would ensure that mediocrity didn’t run rampant.

Everyone would own arms, and participate in government/community at some level (even if it was just picking up trash in the park). This would make people feel connected with their community, and likely lead to more voluntary government involvement. Decisions at the local level would be made via direct democracy. State and national decisions would be made via representations. The overarching system would be a republic.

Governments would not be able to turn people away, but they could have policies in place to provide very low wages to new members of the community. Children would also become new members of the community when they were able to vote (which should require some type of national test, rather than an age requirement). This should lead to relatively normalized living conditions, and starting wages would not go too low (to deter new members) if people knew it would also affect their children.

I think that under a system like this, people would be guaranteed basic wages, but innovation would still be highly prized. Communities would become meaningful and cohesive, and people would not be making as many decisions while being removed from the effects of those decisions. Power would be with the people – political and economic power, both.

I’m not sure that this makes talking about artificial intelligence more difficult, but it may confuse the picture if not mentioned at the onset of a discussion. It can make the term “computer” somewhat ambiguous to the modern mind – and the object of artificial intelligence potentially elusive. If we inspect the hardware of a machine apart from the software, say, powered off – there would be very little of interest going on. If we took the software apart from the hardware, say, printed out – I think we’d have a hard time finding signs of intelligence then too. Only when the software is coupled with the hardware do interesting things become possible. Even when software can be embedded into hardware, it is easy for the concepts to admit separation. This may simply be due to the familiar organization of modern computers, but it may also be indicative of something more interesting – we should at least keep it in the back of our minds.

For now, at least to start, when discussing computers in relation to intelligence, it seems clear to me that we would do well to always discuss them as a bundle of software and hardware to avoid confusion. Despite the fact that one may install some “intelligent” program along many other programs, every program requires hardware to run. It is all too easy to think of the program itself as the sole cause of certain behavior – it should not be forgotten that the hardware is no less important in manifesting that behavior. So we are on the same page, in all that follows, unless I specify otherwise, when I talk of computers or computing machines, I am referring to a hardware-software couple. I am regarding the machine then, in that sense, as indivisible as a man.

So, the reasoning goes, for every atom to be directed just so, for the temperatures, distances, and elements all to be just as they are in order to support life – the odds of that are mind-numbingly low – god must have intervened to get life going. Further, it is sometimes added, conditions to sustain this fragile state are improbable in their own right. Praise the lord, for making this system!

I’ll start from the last statement and work my way back. Ridiculous. I think we can get rid of the sustenance part all together. We’re in a system that has safeguards built in – we’ve got more-or-less predictable orbits, an atmosphere, a sun that doesn’t move much, and energy that doesn’t just disappear whimsically. The system itself appears to be in a reasonably steady state (at least locally or practically). Most people would agree that seems reasonable. We act on the principle all the time, we constantly rely on a predictable system that is bound by some laws to act as it always has before. (Even if we have little reason to do so, we do rely on that.) Creating a system that’s self-perpetuating might be more improbable than creating one that isn’t, but lets assume that’s what we’ve got. Then we don’t have to deal with the probability of existence second by second, we just account for the potentially increased improbability in the original system itself. Now, we’ve got an even more highly improbable system that basically acts like it doesn’t have many options at all (that it’s law based).

Right, so in making now easier to explain by appeal to yesterday, we’ve made day one more improbable. That’s alright. All kinds of thing are improbable, but reality trumps statistics. You might double-check your numbers upon winning the lottery, you might exclaim “this isn’t happening” because it is so very unlikely, but if it is… well, then it is. Our system looks like that, it looks like it is happening. We rely on it happening systematically, and it looks like it does. So set down your numbers and go for a walk.

Of course, that might not convince you. Fair enough. It’s much more improbable, after all, than winning the lottery. It’s like winning the lottery every day. (Again, if you did, you did… but I see the concern while you didn’t). So what are you saying? That you don’t think this system actually happened on its own. You crunch your numbers, gaze at the astronomically large negative exponent and disregard the sand under your feet. As if the god idea has better odds. Well, I’m a bit short on words for you here. If you’re using math to back up your line of thought, mustn’t you provide two sets of numbers? What calculations can you give for the god claim? What’s more, is that you’re acting like you think the system is self sustaining (or possibly god intervenes every nano-second), at any rate, you’re not constantly double-checking the math. At least we agree on that part. It appears self-sustaining. Come back when you’ve imbued your god model with a probabilistic number. Things will be the same.

If you can actually give me a number, arrived at by convincing methodologies, I’m going to have to assume it’s going to be quite improbable too. And the deal with probability is that its bound to happen sooner or later, so that your god number and the self-organizing system number might both have happened, or at least enough time has passed for either (eternity anyone?). If you could give me a number, I’d probably grant you that possibility. But you’d need to grant me my possibility too. Because we’d both just have an astronomically small number. Then what do we do? Have a cup of tea? Flip a coin? Can I double check your number?

Maybe we don’t need to go that far, maybe there’s another way of looking at this. Consider this before you go… if you happened to be in an improbable system could you actually use it against itself? You use the numbers provided by the system, because that’s where you are. Does it make sense to say that the system furnishing the numbers is improbable? Improbable where? Within that system? I don’t think you can. You’ve got your numbers, but they only work within the system. Not before the system or outside the system. There numbers for here. The way they work, whatever they mean, reaffirms that the system is actual, or at least like it was yesterday. All your logic, words, thoughts, they are not somehow able to be divorced from what we’re in.  They are part of it. So it might make sense to talk about the odds of the Earth being where it is in a universe like we have, but not to talk about the odds of the system itself. That doesn’t make sense.

But in this system things are like they are, seemingly, because of how they were before. The odds of that are pretty good. So the fact we are here in the system is a practical inevitability in this place. In this system. Its part of how it works that we’ve got to be where we are. Even random quark models don’t disrupt the hitting of a golf ball or the smell of sulfur.

But who created the system then? Hell if I know who did… or didn’t, but don’t give me a probabilistic model to talk about meta-system possibilities. Things there need not conform to what you think of things here. It’s an unconvincing argument, on my view. In this system things are apparently deterministic, the probability of here and now is 100%. Now, if you think god is incessantly following his own laws, I don’t think you’d have much to argue with a physicist about anyway. In that case, you’re just giving different names to the same phenomena. (Never-mind the difference in “feel”, you’re then bound to scientific claims about what’s going on inside the system.) We’re all on the same page here in the system. And we’ve got no clue about the meta-system.

http://vikram.eggwall.com/computers/nxt.html

for tips about getting bluetooth, usb, and nxc to work the NXT under Ubuntu 9.10.

It all worked well for me. I’ll likely be doing some of my own write-ups on Linux and the NXT robot, so if you’ve got questions… leave them.

Rant aside, if you’d like to see the real misery, boredom, hopelessness, and outlets that the University of Chicago provides its students… I advise you to look here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/quinnanya/collections/72157622661408694/

It’s a great set of real graffiti from the university. By the looks of it – completely uncensored. It’s probably not very reassuring, but it’s closer to truth than the propaganda the admissions department puts out.

Hey, but look on the bright side… you’ll be a well paid worker-bee when you’re all done with your time in hell.

P.S.
I stumbled on this other site that has a real and current discussion of the UofC as an educational option. It may be useful for some of some of you parents weighing in on your child’s university education:
http://therealrevo.com/blog/?p=14506

http://magazine.uchicago.edu/0910/arts_sciences/philosopher.shtml

it’s worth the time, in my opinion.

Specifically, I think that the Subject hits a few ideas right on the head. Most importantly, to me:

“Too often,” he declares, “the defenders of free markets forget that what we really want is free men.”

and, following close behind:

Rejecting the false dichotomy between thinking and doing …

I’ve got another six months of institutionalized education, and then it’s off to the “real world”. That fact has me thinking about what I want to do, where I want to go, what kind of a person I should struggle to be. (I’m convinced that in a capitalistic system “being” is a struggle.) A mode of thinking that’s always been useful for me before is to look at what isn’t or shouldn’t be – and those thoughts leave me rejecting the corporate rat race. Sure, the money is nice – but the time stolen is irreplaceable. The exploitation is insulting and the alienation nauseating. I’m with Marx on at least one idea, alienation is not good: I want to have a connection with what I make. And I do want to make things. Those things don’t necessarily have to be tangible, but they ought to be perceptible.

There’s something about being a cog that just upsets my very being. The quote on “free men” speaks to me loudly and clearly. It’s hard for me to believe that the idea could ever be received with dismissal. Which leaves me wondering if it ever is, or if the more pressing demands of life (hunger, shelter, etc.) simply push the more philosophical and principal-based ‘necessities’ clear out of the picture.

To what extent must rigorous thought, freedom, and “success” be opposed? Clearly, there are some of us out there who simply reject the existence of the opposition as an insurmountable obstacle, but why is that so rare? (Why does the story usually go like: pick two.)

Food for thought… (foreshadowing my future, albeit in an externally-inaccessible way.)

sudo apt-get install myspell-es

Then, in your document, just go to Tools > Language and pick Spanish for the line, paragraph, or all text – if you don’t see Spanish as an option, then click “more” and change the default language for the document. Ok?

Bien. Adiós.

For whatever reason, you’re on a mission to be frugal. You can’t NOT buy food, so you head on over to your local discount grocer. You proceed to buy grits, powdered milk, cheap hotdogs and then you reach for the cheap bread…

Ah, but should you? Well, you inspect the little tag with the price and then you probably notice two things 1) the squishy white enriched bread is cheaper and 2) the price per ounce is closer than you might have thought – possibly even in favor of the more expensive loaf.

So, what do you do? What metric do you use? loaves or ounces? The cheaper loaf, or the loaf that costs less per ounce? It plagued me for a good ten minutes a few years ago, and then I decided to go with the cheaper loaf. My initial reasoning was actually based on the slice metric, ie. cost per slice. Those long, squishy, cheap loaves of bread have more slices than their more expensive counterparts. This trumped, in my mind, even the price per ounce benefit of a few competing loaves.

So I mozied on home – particularly pleased with myself for making the frugally-intelligent choice of price per slice. Then I made a sandwich while reviewing the receipt. I was a genius! …

And I was still hungry – so I made another sandwich. By then end of sandwich number two I felt terrible. No, I didn’t over-eat. I realized I had mad a mistake, my metric choice was flawed.

You see, the better bread generally has more fiber and is heavier per slice. You eat one sandwich made with the more expensive bread and you’re satisfied. It takes two with the cheap stuff. That means you’re actually eating double the slices per meal, not to mention the cost of the extra sandwich fillings. That cheap white bread costs your more money than you realize.

Lesson learned – the proper metric is price per sandwich-meal. I’ve been eating more expensive (per loaf) bread ever since – and that’s why.

(This doesn’t necessarily hold if you’re a chronic snacker, or making sandwiches for someone that normally wastes half of them regardless, ie small children.)

If it’s the best in its class – then you bought it here and it comes with a 100% money-back guarantee!

Well, it turns out that, strictly speaking, they haven’t made their statement false by refusing to give you your money back. The antecedent is false – or so the assumption goes – so regardless of how the consequent turns out, the statement is logically true. Odd, you think…me too. I’m more in favor of pegging such statements as “maybe” or “unknown” statements. I’m not sure if I’ll be given that option this quarter.

It’s cold here. 37° F now. Rainy too. I’ll write more later.

On to other news – the final year of school starts… today. I’ll be writing more. I’ve got plenty of plans for the next two years.

First, jump into a terminal using ctrl+alt+Fx (where x= 1-6 on ubuntu).
Start a new X client session using xinit — : x vtX (where x = a number > 0 that is not already in use for an x display, and X equals 11 or 12… this allows you to switch to the new gui using ctr+alt+X)
Next, you’ll be on a blank screen with a terminal in the upper left. ssh while forwarding the remote x via ssh -X user@host
you’re set! you can start your window manager or individual programs now.

Now… there… I’ll remember.

I’ll blog soon – and I have photos to post shortly, too.

It seemed so clear to me when I was a child: fairness is when I got the good things I saw other people get. Fairness was ice cream and toys. Fairness was goodness. Group punishment was not fair, head lice was not fair, and the chickenpox was not fair – because they were not good, I did not want them. I wonder how this early idea of fairness as goodness may linger in my thoughts. I will try and shed my prejudice: fairness may not necessarily be goodness. Bad things may be fair things.

I am also inclined to think of fairness as something rank-able – possibly even quantifiable. “The game is fair only half of the time”, “this game is more fair than that game”, or “make this adjustment to your rules and they will become more fair”. These are certainly ways that are very natural for me to talk about fairness. I should like to try and suspend this way of thinking. A game that can be made more fair may simply be NOT fair. “Unless you adjust your rules they will not be fair”, or “a game that is fair half of the time is not a fair game”. These seem reasonable to me as well, although I tend not to think about fairness as absolute in my everyday life. I’d like to start with the possibility that it might be.

Also, it seems to me that fairness often requires interference. That nature is not fair – although it may be unbiased. It kills some children, it lets others grow up with severe handicaps, or allows others with no troubles at all to grow until a very old age – that does not seem fair. Not only because it does not seem good, but because it seems random. It does not pick the strongest-willed mother to rob of her child – it picks any mother at all – it may pick the weakest mother. Randomness does not necessarily seem fair to me. In some cases it seems that fairness is separate from chance.  I am, however, going to entertain that randomness MAY be fair. I will not dismiss the possibility just because it does not seem intuitive to me.

I occasionally have trouble with the idea that awareness is required for fairness. I don’t intrinsically feel that it is unfair to withhold something from me that I do not desire. This can include good things that I may simply be unaware of. If I don’t know they exist, if I don’t know they can be had, it seems to me that I can’t integrate them into my own idea of fairness. But, I think this is likely the most problematic idea of them all: for it would seem to suggest that enhancing ignorance can enhance fairness – and that seems to pose a real difficulty. At any rate, I am going to consciously consider that fairness may have nothing to do with what I know or can conceive of – it may, after all, not be fair of my peers to keep me in ignorance.

Lastly, it seems much too commonplace to imagine fairness as a common starting ground. If we start out on an equal footing, well that seems fair. I’m not going to assume that is necessarily true. I can imagine a scenario where starting fair does not mean things stay fair – it might mean nothing is really fair but the start itself.

Those are some conceptions of fairness that come easily for me – and because of this I am going to be very cautious with them and make a real effrot to entertain alternatives. This investigation of fariness will be continued in a second part.

It will consist primarily of summarization, although if I find something exceptionally problematic and decide to grapple with it immediately… then I will post a link to my further analysis.

— 1st week of April :: robustness, universality, recognizing consciousness —

This image was attached to a spacecraft and was intended to depict its ideas in a “universal language” – can you decipher it in its entirety? What would a universal language look like?

In his book, Aesthetics: Key Concepts in Philosophy, Daniel Herwitz introduces a real conundrum: what is beauty? Indeed, it’s not a problem of his own invention… it’s a real problem that has been bugging philosophers for centuries.

“Wait”, you say, “I know what beauty is, at least for me – beauty is in the eye of the beholder – show me beauty and I will see it!” – said with a confidence only parental sources can instill. Indeed, you’re not explicitly wrong in what you’ve said – beauty sometimes feels subjective. It’s in you, its yours, but… are you so sure? For what reason then do you argue with a friend over what piece of art is better (more beautiful)? Surely we normally don’t argue about the subjective. We argue about what we think we can prove – we argue over the facts, we try to convince each other of the truth… and how might you do that with, say, a piece of art?

The fact that we can argue at all over what’s more or less beautiful seems to point to some objective conception of beauty. We try to persuade our friend by pointing to the artwork itself… “look here, THIS art is beautiful”. As though the beauty of which we speak is something we can point to, something anyone ought to be able to see (or hear, taste, etc). A part of us might want to say, beauty it “out there” – not just in us.

That’s really the gist of the aesthetic problem – is beauty subjective or objective? Why do we so strongly insist Shakespeare is better than John Grisham?, then recite our deeply held belief about beauty as a subjective experience? Herwitz spends the first part of his work fleshing out this issue, then he turns to Hume and Kant for possible clarification… we’ll go there next week.

[I'm going to rant about this, because I don't believe it is much of an issue at all.]

— 2nd week of April :: Humian arguments about aesthetics —