Colleen P's post about religion.

My opinion is that theology is simply a projection of internal struggles. Spirutuality occurrs naturally in people, and abstraction of morality is a natural tactic to try and optimize the good and minimize the bad in life. The Christian theological framework is not developed in a vacuum, fully formed in the mind. It forms within the context of spiritual feelings. When removed from the psychology of spirituality, theology makes little to no sense, it is, as you said, "absurd."

However, I think pointing out the logical absurdity of theology will not get you far in convincing people to abandon it, as scientific facts can seem equally as absurd when veiwed from an emotional/superstitious point of view. Logic is a newer way of looking at things, and it may very well be better, but no matter how much an individual studies logic, they cannot remove emotions from their worldview, short of surgery.

Human beings are both emotional and rational. A religious worldview emphasizes the emotional and adds logic in later: belief first, then theology. Science takes the logical approach first, emotional later: first you test the equation, then you call it poetic.

For example, you mention an interesting example of a scientific thought that is also emotional: physics easing existential dread: the fact that we are "star stuff," made of heavier elements that were formed in supernovae billions of years ago. But realize that although it comes from scientific fact, this is kind of an "appeal to imagination," because it is a random fact, that's all. It carries special meaning only when applied to a human being whose biology has led him to fear the unknown and his own subsequent insignificance, causing him to imagine that the uniqueness of a star in the void of space is somehow transferred to him because he is made of things that were created in stars.

But now I read your post i realize you didn't mean it in that context, so maybe that whole point is moot.

What

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say that science is no better than religion. Science has a good track record in healing great amounts of human suffering and providing insight into how the world, including humanity, works. The pursuit of knowledge and the constant questioning and doubting encourages adaptabiliy in a way that religion doesn't seem to do. It addresses dangerous shortcomings of how we naturally view the world.

A better understanding of how religion works on a personal level may help you if you wish people to not feel offended by your comments. 

Thank you for posting because it's giving me the opportunity to reexamine my beliefs.

philosophy

I originally wrote this like, a month ago and didn't post it 'cause I wasn't sure if it was worth posting. I just reread it and here it is.


So maybe Spotify is better, but Pandora is leaving me somewhat non-plussed. I'm listening to Cool Jazz Radio, but they seem to be filtering out any song longer than 4 minutes. Seriously, I have a longer attention span than that.

It's not bad, it's just not as good as it purports to be. No substitute for a good DJ, or a record store.
I mean, think of how specific a database query can be. Would if I could do that with an online music collection? "Computer, find 25 songs from the genre "Jazz," that has >50 but <100 five star reviews, that was from either Blue Note or Colombia, recorded between June 1965 and April 1972."
Statistics and Data Analysis lead to many insightful findings in science. Couldn't these same tools be used to benefit the arts?

IF emotional state is the main factor causing action, and IF art is the best way to affect someone's emotions, AND art could be scientifically controlled to produce a chosen result...

To cause change in someone's life through a piece of art, you need to have the right combination of things: the internal state, that is the state of the person's mind and emotions, and the external inputs, that is, the information that the person's senses pick up. That's all that's really happening right? Would if we knew as much about that interaction as we did about interactions of chemicals? Obviously right now it's impossible, because there is no way to be accurate enough about measuring the internal state. But we can do much to measure the external state.

I mean, why do we keep science out of the arts? Forget writing art about people doing science, I'm talking about scientifically analyzing great works of art! Forty people go into a dark room and experience a bunch of stuff on the stage for about two hours. TWO HOURS and the course of their entire lives could be drastically changed, they may even change dramatically as people, that is, they may become something else. I'm taking these assumptions based on the self-evaluations that I've heard from people who have seen plays, and from my own observations of myself and others. I mean, they're not scientific observations, so they may be worthless, but doesn't the phenomena at least require more specific study?

Some scientists are already doing this, using active MRI scans on people listening to music, seeing movies, etc. I think more could be done, however.

Now here's the science fiction part: Would if we were able to reliably understand and control the outcomes of artistic experiences (between an individual and a stimulus) with the same accuracy as we can understand and control chemical reactions?

Not only could you make someone think or feel anything you wanted at any given time, you could change them into entirely different people (internally). Would if you could cure depression by showing someone a painting? Having them listen to a song?

-Miracle gun: can create the feeling of divine presence in anyone within 15 yards. 99% effective.
-how about this: a lump of intelligent material that can change its form into something that will infuriate whomever is looking at it. It can only do this for one person at a time, and it doesn't work on blind people.

Of course, if you want to be able to provoke any response possible, you'd need something like the Ultimate Holodeck. It would have to be like a programmable universe, that can create any type of sensory stimulus possible for any required amount of time.

You'd also need the Ultimate Tricorder, which would be a device capable of determining the state of all the relevant internal mechanisms of the subject in the Holodeck, hyper-accurately, as they happen, especially their neural connections and brain chemistry.

Of course, both those devices would have to be limited by the laws of physics, especially the current limits on how accurately you can manipulate or observe matter. I'm also assuming that a person is a closed system, that all aspects of the self are able to be determined from a body. I am also assuming that everything that is important to governing a person is measurable and able to be affected.

We already know that it is very difficult for people to change. Most people go their entire lives without changing very much on a deep level. Would if it was a lot easier to change people, all other factors remaining?

With great power comes great responsibility. And I'd say that as a species, our power has increased significantly over the past few hundred years, and we have already done things that have had drastic unintended consequences.

Will our power keep increasing? Will our understanding increase with it?

A narrative that I have been taught is the narrative of power increasing faster than understanding. That is, we usually have the ability to alter something before we have the understanding of how it works. And I suppose that's how it must be.

If we can never know everything,
and all things are connected,
then whenever we understand something enough to alter it,
we are ALSO altering things we don't understand.

long time no post

This 

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 this 

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This

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This

Yay pragmatism!

Here's a little quick post just illustrating my own hypocrisy, or I guess you could call it a change in attitude over the course of time.

I wrote this little stub a long while ago (Not quite sure when, blogger software only keeps one date for drafts: the date last viewed.)

"Entrepreneurshit"


This  is what set me off.

Yes. That is what a real education is. How to bullshit people and get away with it. How to take something that has no value, convince people that it has value and to pay you for it. Fuck trying to find out what things in life are truly valuable. All you really need to do is convince people that you are valuable. 

Thanks for telling us all about your wonderful college experiences Scott. That was so cool how you got people to think that you were taking their opinions into account, but really weren't, when you were writing their "constitution." They were dumb enough or didn't care enough to call you out on it, so who cares? At least you're making money on it. You're being efficient. 

Now, here's another more recent stub: 

Smart people go to jobs that will make them money, and improve those companies, which in turn attracts more smart people, feedback loop

that could be broken by putting more money into important industries that need more help, like education, science and the arts

hell, maybe it's our education that's the problem, teaching us to care about stuff that won't be useful in 90% of the jobs we might hold

Notice especially the last bit there. Haha. 

IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT YOUR POST IS ABOUT!!!!

This is kind of a repost, as I wrote it on facebook, but I'm very proud of it and I got a lot of positive feedback.

My friend from college Drew Gorham was originally a music major, and he changed over to philosophy, and on his wall he posted on of those "photo/caption" chain letter things that are big right now: here.

Here is my response:

"I consider myself spiritual and somewhat religious, and I don't claim to be a very good scientist, but I am sorry to see scientific beliefs twisted and condemned in a story like this. 


I certainly think the story provides comfort, but mostly because of the reasons expressed by Sumair here. I think that the story is bastardizing logic and reason in order to tell a story. As long as you view it as a story and not a proof, I don't think it is very offensive or dangerous, but it is assumed that many people will take it as a scientific proof of the validity of faith, which is a dangerous misconception, and a sorry facsimile of the true power of logic and reason.

The world is a very uncertain place, and people will go through all kinds of effort to find some mental and emotional certainty. I see the crux of science being a devotion to a remembrance of our inherent fallibility, that the most reliable truth is found only through intense scrutiny, through observation and experimentation.


Also, I have found that using Wikiquote and Snopes is a really good idea when dealing with quotes or stories attributed to universally admired figures. A lot of the time, people like to reinforce the perceived clout of their worldviews by projecting them onto those figures, and the emotionally positive association will bleed over from the figure to the worldview."

I am also really stoked about a economic discussion that I started on my timeline by asking people who study economics if lowering federal taxes has been shown to increase economic growth. Unfortunately I didn't understand all of it, but it did reanimate my memories of economics class, which is good. Also it's cool to see two people from totally different parts of my life talk to each other.  

CM Punk "Best in the World" (who is also Straightedge) putting the elbow drop on Mark Henry "The World's Strongest Man" (He actually won the World's Strongest Man competion)

So I don't know if all of you know this, but I've developed a taste for Pro Wrestling, thanks to my roommate and very good friend Odie. Now, in intellectual circles, Wrestling has a bad rap, almost as bad as organized religion. "Don't you know it's fake?" is what Odie often gets asked, and his answer is usually an Irish Whip into a clothesline followed by a moonsault from the top rope. Haha I'm kidding (Odie does like to wrestle, however, and he knows the name of every move...I mean literally every move...) But I have come to enjoy it somewhat and I have some thoughts about it. 

What people usually mean by "fake" is one of two things: that the outcomes of the matches are scripted, or that the combat is staged, both of which are true. Odie tells me that "plots" of the season of wrestling are written sometimes years in advance. The wrestling itself takes great strength and skill, but also involves stage combat techniques that give the impression of a "real" fight. I must point out however, that people who have done intense stage combat can attest that it is not as far removed from actual fighting as one might think. Then again, I've never really been in any real fights so I can't say much to the comparison. But it is dangerous, and people do get hurt, but it looks a lot more dangerous and painful than it is. 

Because what wrestling presents itself as is different from what it "really" is, watching wrestling requires suspension of disbelief, much like you would suspend your disbelief for a play or a television show. The reason I think people feel jilted is that at first glance, pro wrestling most closely resembles a traditional sport, and in traditional sports, a huge part of the appeal is that nobody knows which team will win. In baseball, basketball, fencing, and chess, who will win depends primarily on the skill of the players, and no punches are pulled, so to speak, as the players from opposing teams compete. 

The truth is that pro wrestling is I would say half sport, half entertainment. It is a hybrid, it has aspects of both genres. 

There's a little infographic for you, not in color cause I don't know how to do that easily. Most of the stuff in there is fairly obvious. 

Something I didn't have room to add but I think is worth noting, is that Traditional Sports and Pro Wrestling both have long histories to them. Wikipedia tells me that pro wrestling goes back to the 19th century. Also I'm seeing that Wikipedia has lots more info about pro wrestling than I post here. 

So back to the question, "Don't you know that it's fake?" To that, I offer another question: would you ask someone watching a play if they knew it was fake? The appeal of wrestling comes partly from the fact that it imitates "real" sports, but also largely from the intensified dramatics. Baseball players get to choose what music gets played when they come to the plate, but in Pro Wrestling each "superstar" as they call them has an elaborate, specific entrance involving gestures, pyrotechnics, video graphics on giant screens, catchphrases, etc. that can last up to five minutes. We usually get a very limited glimpse into an athlete's "off-field" life and interactions with other competitors, whereas in wrestling we stop the entire proceedings just to have a backstage interaction played out on the jumbotron. In a way, pro wrestling has more in common with Dragonball Z than it does with "real" wrestling. 

So what's the appeal of wrestling, anyways? I think it really comes down to the phenomenon of a streaker jumping onto the field at a baseball game. He gleefully sprints his way around, dodging the officials, and the crowd cheers. Why does the crowd sometimes cheer for him? Shouldn't they all be annoyed that he's interrupting the game as it's meant to be played? The fact is that sometimes people need to see the rules being broken, as kind of a cathartic, vicarious experience. I think it's healthy sometimes. Pro wrestling does a great job of creating the illusion of breaking rules and going extreme, when in fact they wrote the rules and are allowing them to be broken. 

Both sport and entertainment have been given noble stature over the ages- sport is said to embody the virtues of self-improvement, commitment, and discipline. Entertainment is said to enlighten, to move, to communicate. Pro Wrestling is kind of a bastard child of the two, and as such is viewed as a half-assed version of either: how can the spirit of competition be there if it's scripted, and how can enlightenment and communication be there if characterization and plot are simplified? 

I don't really know what the answer is to that. I'm not a huge fan of wrestling, but after a period of adjustment I'm able to enjoy it to a certain extent. I would say that despite its perceived lack of integrity, it does have value. It does require a high level of skill and discipline, and the superstars have to be excellent entertainers as well as athletes. The stories deal with basic themes such as betrayal, revenge, idealism, narcissism, cruelty, and love, even sometimes touching on harder issues such as alcoholism. It is multicultural, showcasing athletes from all over the world and including cultural aspects of their nations. People from all over the world and all walks of life enjoy it.

Now to bring this full circle, in my facebook post above I mentioned the danger of taking something at face value and believing it wholeheartedly, when in reality it doesn't hold water. I would say that it's really hard for me to enjoy pro wrestling while remembering all the time that it is scripted. Is it dangerous to have such a misleading thing as pro wrestling be "believed" in? Well it certainly doesn't help out the more gullible parts of us, but I don't think it's that dangerous. However, I think it would be true to say that modern American society could use a good booster shot of skepticism. With so much of our culture tied up in television and movies, we need to be able to think for ourselves. With so much money and power being used to convince people of things, and comparatively little being spent to figure out what things are worth convincing people of, we could get into trouble.  

It probably didn't need the analysis. But being out of school, I have to flex my academic brain somehow.   

See below for hyperbole

This.

Seriously, David Fucking Wong is the second coming of fucking Jonathan Swift. And he's writing in one of the pulpiest, low-brow places on the internet.

I just read this article and he described to me almost EXACTLY how I feel- this one article is more insightful than anything I have ever read or heard about gender relations, including from psychiatrists, psychologists, and professors.

Truly there is hope for the world if someone can realize what is going on, and communicate it in this way.

Granted, there is little chance of this article going "viral," which is a shame because it deserves to be.

How the media "market" decides what gets the priority to be communicated, usually mostly has to deal with what will get the most views, therefore the most money for the company. I'm tempted to say that in the modern media, truly useful and insightful public communication is rarer than it used to be, but reasonably it probably hasn't changed a whole lot.


****NOTE****

The article is kind of biologically reductionist, which means that is seems to trace all behaviors to biological causes; that is, the "nature" part of "nature versus nurture." I can't tell if that's part of the author being satirical or if it's just his point of view.

One of the commenters said that in his opinion, "The overwhelming power of the male sex drive is purely socialized," which would be the opposite end of the spectrum, "nurture" instead of "nature."

In MY opinion, the reality is probably a combination of the two, the mixture of which depends on the individual and circumstances.

"According to George Lucas, the design is inspired by a hamburger..."

Just this past week, two of my favorite artists died: Ralph McQuarrie, and Jean Giraud, also known as "Moebius."

Ralph McQuarrie I first got into when Star Wars had captured my imagination. I was listening to the soundtracks over and over on my walkman. I got a couple used books: "Inside the Lucasfilm Archives" and a "making of" book about Episode 1. The Lucasfilm Archives book had photos of some early concept art work for Episodes 4, 5, and 6, including many paintings by Ralph McQuarrie. I later discovered that Ralph McQuarrie was one of the first people George Lucas hired to develop his film, and that Ralph's paintings were key in getting 20th Century Fox to produce the film. Ralph originated the designs for R2-D2 and C-3P0, Darth Vader, Stormtroopers, and many others. Some of his production paintings were copied almost exactly as shots in the films.

The drawings themselves were colorful and exciting. They fascinated me by their mix of the familiar and unfamiliar, that is, in each piece you found both aspects that were key to the "final" version, and those that were scrapped along the way.

Of course, being a fanboy, it was really fun to speculate about alternate versions of iconic designs. "Would if the Millenium Falcon had looked like this? Would if Darth Vader's helmet had these original lines to it?" It excited me that such seemingly trivial decisions had shaped icons that would become recognizable the world over. I thought, how awesome would it be, if I drew something that was made into a film, that little kids would get toys of for christmas? That entire generations would recognize in a millisecond? I guess I've always had some lust for fame. Then again, I would probably be just as happy to draw something, and have someone look at it, and say "Wow, that's cool!"

I was kind of wrapped up in my own head at that age, and often times while riding my bike I would pretend that I was flying on some kind of speeder, like in Return of the Jedi. It was fun, but later I would come to regret somewhat having been so inroverted...I came to realize that personal relationships were essential to any real enjoyment in life, and that you need to invest in them.

The "Making of" book for Episode 1 also included lots of concept art. The artist that stood out most to me was Doug Chiang. I even spent some time on his studio website on the computer during high school.

As I got inspired, I got into sketching myself. I thought maybe I would become a concept artist when I grew up.

Jean Giraud I didn't get quite as into directly, and to be honest I'm not a huge fanboy, I'm bandwagoning a little bit with the fact that he just recently died. But the little that I have read of him has stayed with me, and I considered it very personal. While spending time on a Comics message board, I stumbled across a digital copy of his story "The Goddess," and read it all in one sitting. The spiritual themes and fantastic setting struck me, and I began to research who it was who had written it, at which point I discovered Moebius and his huge influence of science fiction and fantasy in the 20th century. He worked on "The Fifth Element," which is one of my all time favorite movies, both for its visual style and its message. He worked with H. R. Gieger on "Alien," and was concept artist and writer for "Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland" which I had seen a few years before and scared the heck out of me, but still had a bizzare fantastic feel that appealed to me. Jean Giraud also was behind the design of the probe droid that landed on Hoth in "Empire Strikes Back."

Just last night I went ahead and read his story "Le Garage Hermetique," which was just as mind blowing as I remembered the other story was.

To me, Jean Giraud's work is a great example of the philosophy that stories are a way for us to "dream while we are awake." What's interesting about dreams is that they are often bizarre and lack any "real world" logic to them, yet they can still be emotionally profound, and sometimes even help create insight. I believe that this fact should remind us that a good story need not be fanatically devoted to "reality" in order to be compelling.

Through theatrical and film history, there has been a tug-of-war in storytelling between trying to mimic reality, and trying to use more abstract means to communicate. Certainly which tools you use depends on your audience and the type of story you are trying to tell, as well upon your skill as an artist.

I was going to say that art that mimics reality faces a grave danger of bogging down in that attempt, but I think at this point I'm mostly projecting my internal struggles with what I value, and what I think I "should" value. I'm trained as an artist, and I really enjoy it, but sometimes I'm disappointed with how little my work seems to mean.

Sometimes it seems to me that science is the only worthwhile pursuit, because the biggest changes in our world have all come from science, have they not? How else besides with science can a society achieve "progress?" You don't really need culture, even the most monumental of cultural achievements are ultimately a sideshow, an escape.

But then again, art does provide a means to learn about ourselves. And I think that learning more about ourselves is important. Art is good for that, at least until the mysteries of the human brain are deciphered, at which point art will become obsolete.

(the final paragraph is from an earlier draft of this post, which is why it doesn't connect super well to the rest of it.)

We all have needs, both physical and non-physical, and they are not always able to be met. We fill needs in other's lives, we use others to fill our needs. We rely on each other. We rely on the thousands and thousands of people who work in our society, for the electricity to run, for the stores to open. And we rely on musicians and artists to create things that speak to us in ways that nothing else will. Society is like a massive beast, with thousands of eyes, ears, arms, mouths, and fingers. Unlike our individual bodies, this large body has only had a few thousand years to develop and refine itself. The "self" of society is like a newborn baby, wailing in pain and flinging its arms about in desperation. Over time, and through much sacrifice, it has developed and changed, and it is learning who it is, and where it belongs. With the perseverance, inspiration and beautiful acts of its members, it will continue to do so, and grow into its beauty.

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Some more art:

Jean Giraud:

 Ralph McQuarrie:

Doug Chiang: