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.

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.

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 —

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 :: different types of moral luck, empirical vs theoretical components —

Thomas Nagel, in the third chapter of his book Mortal Questions, raises a real issue – what he calls a paradox – with moral accountability in a world of uncertainty. The problem is simple enough to appreciate after only brief reflection – almost any action you take is subject to outside interference. What’s even more problematic is that your motivations behind any action at any given time may be a result of luck as well. The closer we look, the more luck we can find. Nagel explicitly identifies three types of luck:

• constitutive – your biological luck. ie. sex, temperament, dispositions, etc.
• circumstantial – the luck involved with where you happen to be (or have ever been) and what is going on while you are/were there
• resultant – the luck involved in your completion (or incompletion) of an action, and how that action is interpreted

For specific scenarios refer to the book, or simply roll your own. The interesting issue at hand is that on some level everything you do seems to hinge on some sort of luck. Your responsibility for action seems to melt away, and your agency vanish. You are left simply as a sum of happenstances. This is problematic for most people. But this result is derived through mostly unproblematic premises:

1. [intuitive] People cannot be morally assessed for actions outside of their control.
2. [result of our analysis] Everything depends on factors beyond our control.
3. [empirical] We can be morally assessed for our actions.
4. [but, 1. and 2.] We can not be morally assessed for anything.

This is the problem we are left to deal with. It’ll be interesting to see where other authors might have us go from here.

— 2nd week of April :: next —

Certainly there are no shortage of biological possibilities for explanation (at least while assuming the more popular man-woman coupling). Biology equips us with a desire, so the story goes, to spread our genetic material. So, we desire a mate. Fair enough, seems sensible – most have felt biological effects that can reasonable be attributed to this assumed desire. But, why then does it stop at one partner? Perhaps it makes more sense in the short-term, human children are frail, and it does no good to spread your genetic material if you’ll not bother to ensure it survives. The couple endures to rear their young. But, could there not be one man and two women? Would it be much more difficult for the man to protect/provide for two children from different women than two children from a single woman (twins)? Why not diversify your portfolio of genetic successors? Which leads to the next wonder… why does the ideal biological union linger for a lifetime?

The answers may very well not lead us out of the biological woods just yet. Blame it on biologically-inspired jealousy. You’re not simply equipped with the desire to spread your genetic material, but to do so more successfully than your peers. It is easier for me to justify jealousy on behalf of a woman than a man. The woman is vulnerable during her pregnancy, she needs her partner’s undivided attention to ensure he provides optimally for her needs – thus ensuring a healthy child. If the man won’t commit – well, he just wont be spreading his genetic material. He commits, because he must. Of course, we now jealousy isn’t a one-sided ordeal. Many men are jealous. It could be that this jealousy is simple a restrained version of – kill your opposition. I suppose it is not too far-fetched.

However, I’m still not convinced this accounts for long term unions. It seems to me that these explanations of jealousy would mostly dissolve after the short-term child rearing. Based purely on biological motivations – the couple should separate and try numerous other genetic combinations.

And, well, we can’t pretend biology answers most of the aspects of this couple setup. What about the couples that don’t ever have (or want) children, and the same-sex partnerships, or the kids that talk about getting married long before they ever hit puberty? What can biology say of these? What advantage here does the two-person organization provide?

Financial stability would likely be better ensured by much larger groups, so too would entertainment value. Intimacy might suffer with groups that get too large, but not in smaller three or four person configurations. Are there social constraints? Sure – four people can’t get legally married – but marriage rates in many countries are slumping, and social constraints were not strong enough to suppress same-sex unions. I doubt they could overcome a strong desire for alternative social units.

What can we make of it? Simply some desire to emulate our parents, or the parents of pop-culture? Might society one day fill itself with groups of four or five partners – or will couples linger? And if they do, to what can we owe their success?

I’ve a few more thoughts on this subject… but they’ll have to wait. Until next time…

As long as I have been alive, and for as long as my uncle before me, the United States has been infatuated with capitalism – and Americans have benefited from it. We have been the winners, and the people making our cheap products have been the losers (at least arguably, and for a time). After being thoroughly exploited, most of these countries have gone on to have their own economic expansions, and so, perhaps capitalism actually helped them along. At any rate, capitalism is all about this cheap “stuff” we  seem to so enjoy. It has always required human labor, and in many cases that labor has been cheaper outside the USA.

That’s all well and good, and most of that last paragraph isn’t too debatable. Capitalism, in pioneering new stuff (new technologies, too) has made the world a much less “boring” place. In the hunter-gatherer society I discussed in a previous post, you’d likely have a lot more time on your hands… but you would have far fewer ways to spend that free time. Maybe this is why capitalism and industrialization have made hunter-gathering an obsolete way of life. Maybe, among other things, people were just too bored.

All I really want to say about the relationship between hunter-gathering and capitalism is that the transformation from the former to the latter has been evolutionary. At some point in history, hunter-gathering seemed like a stellar social system, and out of it led agricultural systems… and eventually we had capitalism. (More free time breeds less free time, go figure… although it seems the trend hat been reversing in the past few centuries.) Now, few people would consider (or do consider) non-industrialized ways of life preffered ways of life.

Ok, so here is the issue a I have with capitalism. It has invented technologies that are on the verge of reinventing themselves. Artificial intelligence, robotics, computing in general – these areas emerged from a capitalistic system. (For which we should all be very grateful to capitalism.) However, once these technologies become relatively self-evolving, capitalism has a real issue on its hands. Namely, there will be very few jobs. Almost everything will be benefit from new technologies that can work faster and smarter than humans. Massive unemployment… not simply single digit, but high double digits. Then what?

Capitalism is very poor, in my opinion, at dealing with unemployment. Which is perhaps why socialistic legislation gets passed when unemployment gets too high. At any rate, capitalism’s success is going to cause real issues. Not just for the worker, but for the capitalist. The technology will be so cheap that it would make little sense for anyone NOT to have their own machines working for them. Every man a capitalists, every machine a laborer – errr, capital.

Some new system will have to emerge to deal with this. The system will have to deal with the sky-high unemployment, the serious possibility of resource depletion caused by an exponential increase in output, the social issues that will emerge (after all, this setup looks a bit like a new form of slavery). I posit that system is going is going to look a little more egalitarian than capitalism – dare I say, a bit more communistic or socialistic.

Machines will be exploited rather than people, and what’s so wrong with that? It is hard to comprehend now (for some people), but so too was our capitalistic system to the hunter-gatherers that necessarily came before us.

Some day, capitalism may look as disagreeable as picking berries six hours a day – but it will be remembered as a stepping stone. A system that bred technologies capable of furthering social evolution. Bravo!

On the verge of such a change we need not hold on so tightly to the system in which most of us are comfortable. Thank capitalism, and lets move on.

This man has few constraints. He requires food and water. To obtain these things it costs him significantly fewer than eight hours a day. With his free time he may do whatever he pleases, granted his options are somewhat limited. Since he is on his own schedule, he can dry enough meat in one month to live for a few months, or he can hunt more often. He answers only to himself, works only for himself… and I think he has the purest form of freedom.

Now, this man must have learned to hunt, or what vegetation is edible. In some sense, this man starts of with a sense of obligation. He owes his parents or his teachers for his knowledge, and so he may wish to take care of them in their old age. He acquires more constraints. The elderly cannot move too often, so the man builds more stable shelters and procures more food. Still, this can be done in fewer than eight hours a day. He cannot move as often, but otherwise he is free to do what he wishes.

We may realistically assume that the man does not know how long he will live. He knows that when he is elderly he will have a harder time procuring food, and so he takes out an insurance policy – he has children to care for him in his old age. In so doing he must aquire a few more constraints – a woman and a child. Still, he can feed all of his dependants with not much more work. Emotional constraints are bound to emerge – and the man’s free time will likely not be quite as discretionary. He will be somewhat obligated to spend time with these people. Which, given the few other options he has, may actually enhance his free time.

At any rate… this small group is relatively flexible. They enjoy a freedom that is absolutely unobtainable in our society.

We are not born into a world where we can wander the land (there are property rights), and if we want land to wander upon we must have money (we must satisfy the wants of others) and we must continue to have money to pay taxes. The way in which we can use our land is often restricted as well, and should we not abide by these laws it will cost us more money. At every turn we must procure money, so we must satisfy the wants of others. What’s more is that we do not have a few hand-picked and personal dependents, we have a whole number of them that we do not know (funding welfare programs).

How, or why, is this system better than the the one that came so many years before? Why did it emerge, and for what reason does it linger? If freedome is the ideal, for what have we sacrificed so much of it? Is our technological system completly opposed to this free system? Could the two somehow merge?

I’d like to investigate answers to these questions.

Exactly how we got on the path of discussing happiness, my minds fails to recall. I do know, however, that at some point we were looking at the happiness – actually, lack thereof – of people we had been close to at some point. What was interesting to me, is that the sources of “happiness” here cited also had similarities. Their effects were temporary, they were physical or material, they were rarely if ever examined – and for the most part left little room for exploration. In the cases of which I spoke, I had personal accounts of an underling, lingering unhappiness. What’s more, is that in all cases of unhappiness that we brought up, there was a sense that we could hardly know – truly – the person so afflicted. (I have made the argument before that they can hardly know themselves.)

At any rate, this is what we discussed. Not in a condescending matter, though there were traces of sadness for the unhappy, but it was all discussed rather frankly and matter-of-factly. I’m wanting to explore some of those ideas. Here I will look at how stability plays a role in happiness.

***

As I have discussed before, externalized sources of happiness seem problematic for me. They seem necessarily unstable. This instability seems less than ideal. It is not obviously clear to me that a happiness that will necessarily be followed by unhappiness is desirable. When you pursue such a temporary happiness, it seems only a means to an eventual unhappiness. Are you then, actually causing happiness, unhappiness, or both? Assuming you want as much happiness as possible, this unstable route seems undesirable.

What, then, if you externalize the source of your happiness to something permanent? Say, you depend on a star for your happiness – a star that you know will outlive you. I might wonder, could you still be happy if you could never see the star again? If you were locked in a small room with no windows, could the star make you happy? If you tell me “no” – I would suggest that the star was not your complete source of happiness. Rather, your happiness is dependent on the fact that you can see the star. This is an unstable form of happiness. Your vision of the star can be taken away – I can poke out your eyes, the sun can drown out your star. If you say to me, “I can be happy without seeing the star” – I would conclude your happiness was based on the idea of the star. The source of your happiness is an idea – it is stable. Right on.

Of course, rarely is externalized happiness on something permanent. If happiness is derived from a substance – it is necessarily unstable. Your next glass of beer is dependant on your ability to buy it, or collect the materials to brew it yourself. The former is dependant on your ability to retain employment, the latter is constrained by time and materials. The more expensive the substance, the more unstable the happiness.

If your happiness is from the newest “stuff” – you are also constrained by time and money. If your happiness comes from a pet – your pet may/will die. If your happiness is dependent on another human – they will/may die too, or the may leave you.

Of course, the possibility of your source of happiness vanishing, does not necessarily mean it will happen, I know this. If your source of happiness never becomes unobtainable, it will never necessitate unhappiness. It is likely just as good in the end as a genuinely stable form of happiness.  The real issue here, of course, is that most of the time externalized happiness is guaranteed to be actually unstable. Most people do not have enough funds to procure their substances indefinitely. If they have a job – most will be forced to abstain from their source of happiness while at work – and most need work to procure the substance. If it is a pet – most live for less time than a human. If it is a partner – unfortunately divorce is on the rise. The person is likely to change; it is nearly guaranteed that they will do something to make you unhappy. Admittedly, the partner is probably a more stable source than most materialistic sources of happiness.

***

I am well aware that in order to make these arguments, I have to make some assumptions. I assume that the source of happiness can be chosen or altered at some point, I also assume that the most happiness is the most desirable, I must also assume that YOU will not change so significantly as to make your once genuinely stable form of happiness a source of unhappiness.

These are some pretty huge assumptions. I’m going to explore them more later, but I’m using them now because I would use them in conversations today. In other words, I know I still have some thinking to do.

That is precisely what makes me happy.

1. Morality does not stick. You may be moral some times and not moral other times. You are immoral only while you are breaking some moral stipulation below.
2. Enforcing any contract is immoral. A man cannot be bound to what another man said he would do. This includes marriage. A man may be constantly changing.
3. It is immoral for any man to involve himself in the free decisions/actions of others without invitation. An invitation can come from any directly involved person.
4. It is immoral to not preserve one’s own mind, body, and moral way of life by any means required.
5. It may not be immoral to kill another immoral human being. It is immoral to kill a moral human being.
6. It is immoral to tell a lie that would not preserve the mind, body, and/or moral lifestyle of another individual. This is the only case when honesty enters into morality.
7. It is immoral to distribute any information as true or false without understanding why it is true or false. One should not claim to know/believe what one does not truly think they understand.
8. Any action involving only non-cognizant entities is amoral, so long as it does not interfere with the preservation of  the mind, body, and/or moral lifestyle of another individual.

There, my preliminary work on morals. A fairly accurate portrait of my own moral system, though I may be neglecting a few ideas. More work to come on these statements and their implications at a later date.

I’m going to tell you today about something I’ve done.

***

A few weeks ago I had the interesting experiencing of helping load three monstrous pigs into a trailer. The first went easily… the second and third proved more stubborn. Since they would not go of there own “free will”, a tactic was devised. The tactic was this: approach pig with a large metal bucket, put bucket over pig’s head, back pig up to chute and up ramp into trailer. Genius! So well planned, in fact, that no one dared volunteer to execute the bucket’s role… so I did. 135lb me vs 700+lb pig.

Bucket in hand, I approached the pig and covered her head. I move the bucket left or right… the pig moves too, all the while backing up. I get her right up into the chute, almost to the trailer and then… she sits down. Bucking the bucket and leaning forwards with her massiveness. She’s scared and whining, ready to bolt back into her pen if given the slightest opportunity. That bucket and my arms are being thrown every which way. My uncle is behind me pushing. Pushing me right into the front legs of the pig… which is using those legs to kick for her life. Its noisy, chaotic, and we keep pushing. I’m not so sure if she’s gonna be able to go over backwards that easily, but I am sure that I’m not letting that bucket get off her head for any reason.

After a minute of pushing, my uncle gets his long arms on the door of the trailer and pulls himself (along with the pig and me) in towards the trailer. The pig flips right on over backwards into the trailer… and the door is closed. I’m battered, my hands are bloody from being slammed into the walls of the chute, but the job is done.

***

Following the suggestion of a commenter, I read the book Illusions, by Richard Bach. It fit in so well with my own theory of existence that I was downright startled. Although I’ve never blogged about my “creation” theory, or even directly about my life philosophy… it is something I discuss regularly with friends. None of them have ever had my same views… or read about anyone who shared them. The book is very close to what I have believed since I was old enough to fathom existence and its implications. Fourth grade… when I abandoned christian answers for ones that I made up. I’ve always wanted to write my thoughts on the subjects down, but now… I may as well just add a few sentences to Bach’s work. Really, its eerie that Illusions exists and says what it does.

***

I can’t stop thinking that in some ways reality is like the bucket. It is blinding and forceful… directive too, backing us right up into a corner. But, everyone can overcome the bucket… its just having more faith in your own strength. Not backing down just because you can’t see what is ahead. Going against instinct.

So, the parallel is mostly true in my mind, but I realize it comes out a tad bit strange. I’d delete it, but then I’d also have to delete that part above about my experience. Because its what I think about what I do that is truly important… without that… it is not really worth writing about doing anything.

Micro-economists have a fairly simple notion of why people do anything: to increase their “utility”, which I am told roughly translates to “happiness”. This has always bothered me, because I felt as though, at some point in my life, I have done things I did not want to do. Things that did not make me happy. Here, the economist might reply, that I did what made me the least less happy. More colloquially, one might say: I chose the lesser of two evils. Fair enough, the term can be stretched enough to envelop all human action. I am not, however, satisfied just yet… I’ll come back to this.

In a play, The Good Person of Szechwan, there is a character with two personalities. A woman that helps the poor and needy some days, but runs a ruthless tobacco operation other days under the guise of a fictional brother. The story is not so unique, surely you know someone who donates to a charity some days and, to earn the money for charity, contributes to killing people other days. I am assuming most people know some soldier with a “good heart”… or a politician.

Now, consider you do not take it quite that far. You bake your mother cookies. Cookies, that you do not enjoy and will not eat. You hand them over, and presumably you feel good watching mom nibble her cookies away. How selfish! Baking cookies so that you can feel good about giving them away. What’s next, voting down public welfare programs so that you can feel good about your personal contributions to the homeless man on your street corner?

Now, instead, suppose you do not bake mom those cookies, because you do not want to waste time baking goodies you will not consume. Well then, selfish you! Worried only about your own consumption, your mother will never again eat her favorite cookies. Give her your favorite, peanut brittle, as a substitute… and then what have you become? Selfish still because of your original choice, or saved now by your own sacrifice of much-love peanut brittle?

Taking our hypothetical example to extremes, imagine that you decide to take the feel good route and bake mom her cookies after all. After hours of work you deliver to cookies to mom, who proceeds to scream at you. She calls you a stranger, rejects your cookies, and you go home pitifully sad. Your mother was not being selfish or selfless: she is plagues by memory loss outside of her control. You, however, have to make a choice. Do you make more cookies and try again later, or do you give up? If you know that 95% of the time your mother will reject your cookies and leave you feeling terrible, but you do it anyway… then you might actually have some negative expected utility value. Maybe then you can act selflessly. In the face of the unknown, may you and your mother both be able to escape selfishness?

So then, perhaps you hate buying Power Ball tickets, but selflessly decide to fund your state’s education. You buy one-hundred tickets a week, and of course, you have a negative expected return. Now, it is hard to imagine you are indeed acting outside of selfish motivation. For one, you know that you are bolstering your state’s educational budget. For two, you may win quite a bit of money. In some sense, there is still some unknown result, but it is not as unclear as the previous example… it is just clear enough to make you seem somewhat selfish.

How little information must you have to be selfless? And isn’t that very notion, of having to be less informed, counter intuitive? Throwing hundred dollar bills out of your car as you drive, completely randomly, around Chicago… is that selfless? Or does your imagination, creating some scenario where a poor homeless woman benefits, make you selfish still? In reality, all of your money may end up in the hands of thieves or drug dealers, but is that reality what is motivating you? It is possible to act without motivation? To what extent is art selfish?

To exercise my (sense of) free will, I occasionally try and do things that make me less happy than alternatives. I might eat grits instead of pancakes, walk instead of take a bus, climb stares with arms full, as opposed to taking the elevator. While carrying out the less satisfying action, there is a part of myself that really detests me. Hostility sometimes surfaces, but when the forced action is completed… I have a sense of will power. I am not not taking the easy way out, and not trying to maximize short-term utility. But I know what I am doing, so it would seem that proving things to myself must be selfish, because the outcome it not unknown… because I would be more unhappy in the long-run doing everything I wanted to do.

Aside from that potentially bizarre motivation, my quasi-conclusion remains: that all informed activity must be selfish. Maybe even if there are no alternatives. Mental justification can make all action selfish. The only selfless scenario I have been able to fathom is one where the actor is demented. When the actor loses what makes them human.

Selfish. Human. No escaping the connotation or the motivation.

I have not read that condensed anti-autobiography in many years. But I’ve been having a desire to do so lately. So, for the purpose of comparison, I am going to use that technique to describe myself today. So let me begin: I am not sure where to start.

You find yourself in a loud room with lots of people around you and smell some type of alcohol… I am not there. You imagine that someone avoids these type of gatherings because he/she is very dry, shy, or too busy. None of those apply.

Sometime else, someone is sitting in the park with their feet dangling over the water and a book in their hands – it is not me either. You will not find me in a coffee shop making small-talk with strangers. You will not find me acting on emotion unless you are directly related to the action at hand and have made me smile at some point in time.

You may look at me, and I may smile at you; you almost never induced the smile. Smiles are quite rarely an unconscious decision.

Something about you is truly hideous… I am not in your company. I do not spend time with ugly artwork. I do not loath time spent with interesting people. I do not find projections interesting; transparency is the most interesting complexity.

I do not smoke, I do not drink, I do not attempt to escape reality, I do not run from anything (I do not NOT run towards somethings.), I do not value anyone simply because they exist. I am not convinced you do exist.

You think I am looking at you, but I am usually looking beyond you. You think you go unnoticed, but I am aware of you. I am no drowning my mind in noise and images and fantasies when you might see me.

I am not a hopeless romantic. anymore. I am not going to proclaim that love is dead. I will not pretend you are special. I am not you, as far as you know.

I do not sleep with stupid women. Even if they are gorgeous. anymore. I do not think small. I do not act gently. I do not hide anything. anymore.

I am not dead. I have never been dead. I am not opposed to logic. I am not opposed to beauty. I am not opposed to love, or ideas, or the dark. I do not like anger, or weakness, or fear. I will not watch you bear those things. I am not opposed to taking them for you, or carrying your luggage if I am in the mood. I will not, however, mindlessly heed your demands.

I do not like to swim. anymore. I do not think you are a genius because you can recite others’ ideas. never have. I do not respect authority without personal investigation and approval.

I cannot stand humidity.

I make few guarantees. I make fewer promises. I never fail a promise. I think it is impossible to fail yourself. I do not watch network television. I do not like commercials. I do not require myself to speak to anyone.

I do not forget what is important. I do not remember what is unimportant. I do not pretend interest. I am not impatient.

I am not. I am not. I am not.

I am not, more or less than I am. anymore. yet.

Perhaps spurred by my own self-doubt over the past few days, I’ve been contemplating originality. What it means to make something new. What must be in place before the thought of creation can even be entertained. How many contributors are involved in something as simple as this sentence.

I write for myself here, using borrowed words and shapes from centuries of inherited forms of communication. I type on technology perfected by at least thousands of minds. To some extent, I think it must be the case, my thoughts are bound by an environment that has surrounded me. How I write, what I write, in what form I publish those writings. They are not mine. The thoughts – I feel I make them – but perhaps I only pull them from some prefabricated knowledge store. A librarian for the ideas of others – organizing, distributing, gazing upon them – so familiar with some of them I take subconscious possession.

You too, certainly? Every author I’ve read. Every quote I adore. Not mine, not theirs. I detest the notion that man is some innately social creature – but how can I escape assigning true ownership of anything to anyone but “us”?

I painted last quarter – charcoal, paints, graphite, paper, marker, gel ink – I made marks. But now I wonder if I did not steal them. I took some-one’s line, shape, color – I took them and threw them down and called them all mine based on the way they fell. It bothers me slightly.

But, there is no escape. It must always be this way. I have tried to tame raw thoughts – wordless, shapeless, soundless mental activity. My own – but overwhelming. Unintelligible. Headache inducing. Nearly maddening.

I don’t know how to relate my frustration here. Lend me your thoughts… I need to put them on the shelf.

Today is your day to take front-and-center. Which is funny, because I thought I saw you do that yesterday. You have that really confounding habit of being at once so unique and too generic, so I can’t really be sure if it was you or not. I mean, I remember a smile…

Regardless, today is your day. And I’m cooking for you; well, me and millions of others. We are glad to do it! (I’ll refrain from mentioning the millions of others that are starving today.) I doubt you’ll be joining me for dinner directly, but that’s fine. It’s the thought that counts.

I’d like to take this day, your day, Thankful, to thank you. For being so optimistic, fun-loving, and cheap. Aside from today’s preparation costs, which are usually needlessly over-the-top, you don’t cost a whole lot to keep around. I mean, you’re just as happy today, with all the extravagance, as you were yesterday. Heck, I could have you over any day, and you’d just be grinning away. Tickled with life. That’s what I love about you.

I mean, that is something much easier said than done. Overlooking any bumps in the road, appreciative that you’re on the road to begin with. Glad simply remembering how you got to where you are. Chuckling, never fretting, at the memories that knocked you down. An attitude like that really enlightens others, too. Thank you for being pleasant.

Let us not, of course, forget your humility. While quick to acknowledge your fortune, your never impose it on others. You never make them feel less successful or less fortunate than you. That kind of humbleness is hard to come by. It’s probably what makes us all keep mimicking you annually.

I could carry on – about your wisdom, your thoughtfulness, your sensitivity, and your own ability to whip up an impressive meal, but I’ll stop here. I can see you’re already inching your way to the door – never one to take all the attention for too long…

I just want to say – thank you, Thankful, for being you. Not just today, but everyday. You’ve really set the bar high for the rest of us, and I could not be more thankful for that.

I have a problem with the way people run this country and the way many people run their lives. I dislike indirect democracy, taxation, and the idea that all people are equal (created – yes, existing – no). I have big problems with chemically altered states of being (I don’t even like aspirin), dense people reproducing, and structured education. I’d rather not talk about government licensing, land ownership, or five-day-a-week jobs — but I can’t stand any of those things either.

Now, I’m not one for idle complaints – let me be the first to rock the boat, or take problems straight to the top. Problem is, for many of the things I’d like to see be fixed, even those that realistically could be fixed, there is no one to address. Ask anyone where the problem comes from – and you’ll hear “them” – “they” are the bastards. Problem is, “they” can’t be identified. “They” have been abstracted away.

I’m left with solutions in an envelope, and no mailing address. But, this post isn’t about what I’m going to do about that – had us both fooled, didn’t he! [WHAT?!]

I hear it over and over again, that this world is not about what you know, its about who you know. I hope not. I don’t like many people well enough to get to know them.

It seems to me, that used to have to be the world. I mean, you wanted to find a good hairdresser, you had to ask your mom. Then came the phone book, more importantly – then came the Internet. Suddenly, information was there in front of you faster than you could call your grandmother. As an employer, I have many more options now for finding truly skilled workers. It’s more difficult for me to be misled by Frank, the guy in IT, recommending his brother-in-law Bill for that empty position that I know nothing about.

For one, I can Google Bill. For two, I can easily become more familiar with the open position by asking question in an objective forum. On top of all that, I don’t just have Frank for recommendations, I have monster.com. In short: I have much more information for any decision I will ever make than my grandfather ever had access to. Suddenly, any single person’s input becomes much less important.

Obviously, the employee and the consumer are benefiting from more information too.

And that information continues to expand – “transparent” organizational operations, open software, free books, Wikipedia. Things are becoming more decentralized and accessible. There are fewer unrevealed abstractions. And at the same time, things are becoming more communal.

How long before “they” have to show themselves, or vanish? It would seem that the gatekeepers’ and all their fancy tricks, are finally running out of time. Goodbye copyrights, see you later IRS, now, how about that direct democracy?!

Maybe I’m way off. Maybe I will not live to see any sweeping changes in the way people live and think about the world and the people in it. Maybe their will always be a “they” because there may always be some invisible force of society. Perhaps you’ll always call your mom for the name of her hairdresser instead or reading 28k reviews online. Maybe you weight Frank’s advice as one million times more important than what anyone else can tell you.

In that case, can you forward my resume to your highest-paying associate? Because I’m going to need a job.

And therein we isolate the problem.

The same shed. Well, identical, in any case. All of the same pieces were used; nothing was added, nothing was removed. The real crux of the issue was whether it was the same shed. Was it?

I’ve been working on an article for a few weeks now that I intend on posting here, which investigates some loosely related questions. I’m finding more and more, that their answers may hinge on how you interpret that shed.

In fact, life may hinge on how you interpret that boat, I mean… shed. Especially now, today, in this world of digital everything. Digital creations can cost thousands of dollars, Internet pornography is a huge money maker, digital scent machines have existed for years… and virtual reality seems the likely outcome of it all.

A few days ago I was working on a problem that brought into question the countability of all computer programs. Since they are merely represented as finite length strings of binary digits, the result is that they are countable. Something you probably already knew, is that all programs have to fit somewhere. So, they are not infinite either. So now, you see, anything digital must not have unlimited potential.

Then, can digital reality ever replace real reality? If it can, what does that mean for you, or me? If it can mimic it perfectly… will it be the same? [Gasp! digital job?!] And if it was, would it be useful?

Who you are today, who you’ll be tomorrow, and what it means to “be” in the first place – all keep bringing me back to: shedboatshed. Whatever that is.

After reading about mathematically described recursive data structures all day, I’m taking a little break to write. So, here we are. You, me, and some extemporaneous thoughts to follow:

Well, the holidays are quickly approaching… and that means expectations are in place for everyone to mingle with family and friends. Which gets me wondering if that is a worthwhile use of time. More generally I start to wonder how much time people should really be spending outside of solitude. Refrain from deeply gasping, it will interfere with your attention.

I’ve known a few hundred people, and have had some type of observational opportunity for thousands of others. What I always enjoy discovering, usually directly, is who people are. Specifically, what they want, where they want to be, how they intend on getting there, what’s driving them towards tomorrow, and what other common thought they entertain frequently. Very rarely do I meet someone who can answer those questions.

I know many college graduates that never put their degrees to use. They took on thousands of dollars of debt, only to work in unskilled jobs. So many people detest their employment.

Another common question I like to ask: is the person happy. So often I have seen people flee from the answer, and many times tears accompanied my prying investigation.

Everywhere people enjoy drugs, alcohol, sex, food in excess, etc.

My meandering thoughts are trying to get at a few simple ideas. In my experience, most people do not know what they want or who they are, and happiness is often dependent on things external.

These issues are insurmountably problematic for me, because they seem to warrant the severest form of personal attention, but are so often masked or neglected.

If someone’s happiness has external dependencies, it must be unstable. Revocable, destructible, temporary. A happiness like that would seem destined to cause unhappiness at some point. Assuming happiness is the ideal state, it seems like a person should devote plenty of time to cultivating a stable source of happiness. An internal source. And to do that, it seems like one would need to minimize the external. Spend time alone, with internally spawned ideas, looking for a happiness that can exist when nothing else is there.

Spend enough time alone, and one is bound to uncover things about one’s self. Which eliminates wasted time – trying to find yourself using someone Else’s directions is ridiculous. And once you’re fully aware of who you are, you’re much better equipped to enjoy others.

I’m running out of time to flesh out these thoughts in more detail, but I’m going to revisit these ideas soon.

For now: if you have issues with unstable happiness or an uncertain self, consider spending the holidays alone. The last thing you need is distraction from fixing problems that could potentially linger for life.

Seriously, that number represents the number of people in the world a few seconds ago. I find it humbling to watch the world population (albeit it only a rough estimate) – it keeps going up. I was born over one billion births ago. I am a small man on a large planet, in an expansive unknown; for all practical purposes – I might as well not exist.

Setting chaos theory aside for a moment – my life will never really accomplish anything. In the grand scheme of everything – I will live… and I will die… and the universe shall not abate. It has no reason to notice my existence – it will have no reason to notice my death.

I put a lot of effort into this existence – most humans do – and for what? Some justify life through a religion, some find motivation in affecting the lives of others, still some seek pleasure from life. In the end, all are based on what is here now. What we can see, touch, taste and feel – what we can control. People fight for these things – foolish people die for these things. These things are fleeting, but they are in front of us. As a race we feel compelled to act like what is here is all that is. What we have (in this life) is, in fact, so much less.

I think this is getting to people. More and more people are running from this existence. I have seen so many get lost in substances, pleasure, money… I have battled with this observation for as long as I can remember.

I am reminiscing, I am wondering, I am realizing – man is less than he thinks himself to be because he thinks himself so much.

There are others that will tell you kindness can contribute to laziness. That generosity is not always as it seems. That if you don’t work for it yourself, its not worth having. I sometimes think this way.
In both situations you have your gift-givers. The generous, sometimes more fortunate, people that make kindness “happen” – if you will. They love smiles, opening doors, and introducing hope. I have run across a few of these givers. I have been the giver a time or two myself.

Now you ask (or I ask) – how, at one time or another being a giver can I be so reluctant to take? I’m not sure myself. Something about kindness is unsettling. It feel almost unnatural, wrong even, disturbing sometimes. When does your ability to take undermine your ability to work – or, even more importantly – to appreciate the fruits of work? At what point does your acceptance of a gift transform into your actual “ownership” over the gift. Can it ever be yours?

I’m asking today… because I am trying to sort this whole thing out in my mind. The universitys to which I applied have offered my thousands of dollars – I do not feel bad to accept their offer based on my impersonal “need” or “stats”. A dear friend hands me an envelope of cash with a personal note – I feel hesitant to accept. What is this? Why isn’t the converse true? Should it be? Is one feeling more accurate than another?

In due time I hope to change the world in which I find myself now. I hope to make it a better place. No doubt kindness will be integrated into my plan of reformation. How would I respond if my kindness went unaccepted or shunned? How would I define eligibility for those wanting to receive it?

In the end – there seems no correct answer. It appears a matter of personal ideals and pros and cons of a situation. Yet to write them down side by side and make a through decisions – seems to defeat the purpose of random generosity – or any kindness – all together. Doesn’t it? For these acts are fairly illogical themselves…