Regruntled.com

One argument against eating meat is that it causes suffering in animals.  Adam Shriver argues in Neuroethics that if we genetically engineer animals that don’t suffer, then we can eat meat without feeling guilty. 

(1) We should prevent unnecessary suffering when possible.
(2) Intensive factory farming is responsible for a
considerable amount of unnecessary suffering.
(3) Replacing the current animals used in factory
farming with genetically engineered animals
who lack the affective dimension of pain would
decrease the amount of suffering caused by
factory farms.
(4) Not enough people are willing to become
vegetarian to completely eliminate the suffering
caused by intensive factory farming.
(5) People would be willing to eat genetically
engineered food if it meant they were no longer
responsible for suffering and if it did not impose
too much of a burden on their lives.
(6) Animals can be genetically engineered and used
in food production in a way that does not impose
much of a burden on people’s lives.
(7) Given (2), (3), (4), (5), and (6), replacing current
livestock with genetically engineered animals
who lack the affective dimension of pain would
prevent unnecessary suffering.
Conclusion From (1), and (7), we ought to replace
current livestock with genetically engineered animals
who lack the affective dimension of pain.

On the other hand, suppose we figure out the genetic basis of guilt in humans.  Should we reason that guilt is a form of suffering, and therefore genetically engineer humans that feel less  guilty?  Or should we reason that guilt inhibits unethical behavior, and therefore genetically engineer humans that feel more guilty?

The title was irresistible, and I recognized the author from his Finite and Infinite Games.  The author compares and contrasts belief systems and religions.

Belief systems are about answers; belief systems are total, in that they have answers for everything.  Belief systems are characterized by boundaries, with a false certainty within the boundary and a willful ignorance about everything outside the boundary.  For example, the Young Earth Creationists are certain that the earth is 6,000 years old and are willfully ignorant about geology and carbon dating.

Religions, on the other hand, are about questions ( a “higher ignorance”) rather than answers, and have horizons rather than barriers.  A horizon is not a fixed barrier; as one approaches the horizon, the horizon recedes, revealing new territory.  In the author’s view, Christianity as a whole is a religion, encompassing the Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant and Evangelical belief systems.

The horizons vs. boundaries imagery is very intriguing, but the author is not very clear on what, other than beliefs, constitutes a religion.  In a way, one can’t fault him for being vague, since he says religions are more about questions than answers.  This seems just a bit too convenient.

It turns out that the boundary metaphor is recycled from Finite and Infinite Games.  The higher ignorance is rather similar to Nicholas of Cusa’s “learned ignorance” from the 1400s.  And Wikipedia says of the author:

He does not believe in any God, but describes himself as religious “in the sense that I am endlessly fascinated with the unknowability of what it means to be human, to exist at all.”

That explains it.  “In the sense that…”  This animal is a cat, in the sense that it barks at the moon.  I’m not sympathetic.  The purpose of philosophy is to clarify our thinking,  and abusing the English language doesn’t help.  The book should be titled The Philosophical Case against Belief.  A religion without beliefs is indistinguishable from philosophy.  A religion with beliefs is on its way to becoming a belief system.

Clay Shirky writes in Boing Boing about the traits that make good programmers.  He quotes a study using questions like the one above, given to students on the first day of an introductory programming class:

To write a computer program you have to come to terms with this, to accept that whatever you might want the program to mean, the machine will blindly follow its meaningless rules and come to some meaningless conclusion.

Shirky coins a great phrase, but the study itself is about consistency and rule-following as much as it is about meaninglessness.  The authors themselves introduce meaninglessness by giving  the students a test in a language they don’t understand.  They might as well be giving English speakers a test in Swahili.

It is true that some good programmers have come to programming from mathematics, and that one point of view in the philosophy of mathematics (formalism) holds that mathematics is a game played with meaningless symbols on pieces of paper.  So it is certainly possible to see a connection between programming and meaninglessness.

On the other hand, engineers tend to make good programmers, too, and they’re mainly interested in getting things done in the real world.  If a guy programs a simulation to make sure that a bridge doesn’t fall down, it’s hard to accuse him of meaninglessness.  The shared element is the consistent application of logical rules.

A graphic commentary on Plato’s Allegory of the Cave.

The Life of the Skies, by Jonathan Rosen, is subtitled “Birding at the End of Nature”. It is nominally about bird-watching, but really about a symbolic interaction with nature.  The author points out that birds are the only wild animals that most people ever see, which is not exactly true.  Squirrels are an easy counter-example, and depending on where one lives, one may see deer, or lizards, or whales.  However, birds can fly over fences and across borders, so the bird in your back yard may have come from thousands of miles away.  I think it would be more accurate to say that there is not much wilderness left, and migratory birds are the closest connection that most of us have with that wilderness.

And so the author touches on poetry, literature and philosophy.  He rambles from Thoreau to Whitman to Frost, from Audobon’s drawings to Darwin’s finches, from Adam’s naming the birds in Eden to modern birders with their classification, nomenclature and life lists.  In between the more abstract discussions, he takes us on canoe trips through Louisiana and Arkansas looking for the ivory-billed woodpecker.  And yet, even here the birds are symbolic.  The search is real enough, but the birds may or may not exist.

About the only the thing he doesn’t discuss is the symbolism of dreams.  For example, I don’t dream about birds, or about being a bird, but I do dream about flying.  Maybe I like birds just because they can fly, and it has nothing to do with a connection with nature.  Flying symbolizes freedom, as in free as a you-know-what. 

Well.  My review is all over the place, which is appropriate because Rosen’s book is all over the place.  It’s a fantastic book, but it’s not for everybody.  I hope I’ve either piqued your interest or warned you off.

Scott Aaronson at Shtetl-Optimized notes a correlation between libertarianism and the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, of all things. Many-worlds says that Schroedinger’s Cat, instead of somehow being alive and dead at the same time in this world, is actually alive in one world and dead in another. This is an over-simplification, of course. Since cats have nine lives, a complete many-worlds explanation of Schroedinger’s Cat requires at least ten alternate universes.

Aaronson says the connection is a tendency to follow logical reasoning to extreme conclusions:

The entire world should follow the line of reasoning to precisely this extreme, and this is the conclusion, and if a ‘consensus of educated opinion’ finds it disagreeable or absurd, then so much the worse for educated opinion! Those who accept this are intellectual heroes; those who don’t are cowards.

He also mentions computer nerds and science fiction, and the connection between computer programmers and libertarians is well-known. Eliezer Yudkowski at Overcoming Bias draws a connection between libertarianism and science.

I think the common thread is something closer to “alienation plus logic”, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. Science fiction is pure escapism. The online world is a substitute for the real world. An imagined ideal libertarian world is a substitute for a messy real world. Logical alternate universes are a substitute for a single paradoxical world.

See also:

• Schroedinger’s lolcat

Ken Wilber defines Boomeritis, the characteristic psychological condition of Baby Boomers, as Narcissism plus Relativism.

Using the language of the “story”, narcissism is the notion that the story is about oneself, while relativism is the notion that one story is as good as another. Combining these, we get the notion that we can have whatever story we want. This appears in various forms:

I don’t feel the need to limit myself to linear logic.

I choose to live life on my own terms and not be guided by charts based on statistics.

I like to consider myself a co-creator with the powers that be in the story of my life.

Like my fellow Boomers, I’m so vain, I think this song is about me. I acknowledge that there is no one right way to be. There are, however, wrong ways to be. The universe sets limits on our stories.

The problem with Boomeritis is that Mother Nature has a story too, and that story is not about us. In Mother Nature’s story, our survival is a matter of complete indifference. In Into the Wild, Alex thought he was living an adventure story, but in fact he and the Alaskan wilderness co-created a story in which he starved to death.

Voluntary Simplicity is a lifestyle choice for those disgruntled by modern life, who want to quit the rat race, get off the treadmill, drop out or walk away. The idea is that by simplifying one’s life, by working less and consuming less, one can enjoy life more.

Sometimes I find the complexity of modern life aggravating. For example, I have a digital camera with features I’ve never used, and a 200-page manual I’ve never read.

On the other hand, I like to do Sudoku. A Sudoku, with the squares and the numbers and the zillions of possibilities, is a rush of pure complexity. Maybe you have your own favorite obsession, like crosswords or chess or bridge.

If I simplify my life so I can spend more time doing Sudoku, am I practicing Voluntary Simplicity or Voluntary Complexity?

The Voluntary Simpletons see a spectrum from complexity to simplicity and conclude: complexity bad, simplicity good. I think they’re looking at the wrong spectrum. The right spectrum is the one from aggravation to satisfaction, from disgruntlement to regruntlement, and the goal is to find a more satisfying mix of simplicity and complexity.