Good Reason

It's okay to be wrong. It's not okay to stay wrong.

Category: life (page 4 of 4)

More questions from the search logs

29 February 2008 / / 6 Comments

People posed questions to Google, searching for wisdom, and instead found themselves here, looking at posts that were only tangentially related. Well, now I’m answering their questions. Too bad they left in disgust before they could read these responses, but you’re in luck.

is there ever a good reason for children to work

Why, yes, there is. My boys and I have just finished cleaning up Australia. (It took a while, but now it’s done for another year.) We spent a couple of hours picking up rubbish at a public park nearby with other volunteers. The boys got to do some public service, and they now have little patience with people who litter. I also learned that every volunteer thinks they’re going to find a body in the leaves, like at the beginning of a CSI episode.

But I think the question refers to child labor. Employers would love to get their hands on children because they’re cheap, compliant, and don’t unionise. Thank goodness progressives in the last century worked to pass laws to stop the exploitation of child workers. But you’d expect the current generation of conservative vipers to wish for a return to the Gilded Age, and argue for rollbacks. And so they do.

Meet Connor. He’s a constitutional conservative, a Mormon, and is currently in training to become a member of the next generation of apologists for unreconstructed small-government conservatism. He sharpens his rhetorical chops on his blog, where you’ll sometimes find me disrupting the social fabric. And the most jaw-dropping post so far has been this one where he argues that government has no business dictating the terms of child labour, and that it should be left up to financially desperate parents and their children. Can’t see any problems coming there!

This is why I say that movement conservatism is a pathology. Allowing employers to exploit children like in the old days would cause untold problems. And what problems would it solve? The problem of not enough conservatism? It’s madness. And since no one’s going to implement their program in totality, there’s no way to show them it’s madness. They’ll always claim that their program hasn’t been followed in an ideologically pure fashion.

Have a look at the post and prepare to shake your head in amazement. This is the logical conclusion of small-government libertarianism. They really are amoral cretins.

fatherly quotes

My father had a lot of quotes, mostly because he liked to say the same things over and over. As an educator, he called it ‘reinforcement’, but as a kid I called it ‘boring’. But at least I still remember a few things he said, so maybe he was onto something.

When, as a kid, I would get my shoelaces in a knot, Dad would untie them for me, and as he did, he’d say:

If a string is in a knot,
Patience will untie it.
Patience can do anything.
Have you ever tried it?

And now I say it to my boys, and the cycle continues. Cycle of what, I won’t say.

And my favourite:

When in danger,
When in doubt,
Run in circles.
Scream and shout.

I have followed this advice many times.

does milk cause mucus
do dairy products cause mucus
does dairy cause mucous
does dairy cause mucus
milk causing mucus

How many ways can we ask this question? Can we spell ‘mucus’ any differently? What if we include the various spellings of ‘yoghourte’?

But however you ask it, the answer is still: nope, milk does not cause mucus or mucous. Here’s a recent (2005) study entitled Milk Consumption Does Not Lead to Mucus Production or Occurrence of Asthma. From the abstract:

There is a belief among some members of the public that the consumption of milk and dairy products increases the production of mucus in the respiratory system. Therefore, some who believe in this effect renounce drinking milk. According to Australian studies, subjects perceived some parameters of mucus production to change after consumption of milk and soy-based beverages, but these effects were not specific to cows’ milk because the soy-based milk drink with similar sensory characteristics produced the same changes. In individuals inoculated with the common cold virus, milk intake was not associated with increased nasal secretions, symptoms of cough, nose symptoms or congestion. Nevertheless, individuals who believe in the mucus and milk theory report more respiratory symptoms after drinking milk.

So if you believe dairy causes mucus, and if you think you’ve just drunk some, you’ll report more mucus. Even if you haven’t had any.

40 and still in grad school

Hey, that’s a bit harsh. Go somewhere else if you’re going to be like that.

Is it better to be right or happy?

6 February 2008 / / 1 Comment

Oldest Boy’s school diary has some suggestions for a successful year. Some are uncontroversial, like smiling at people and getting to school on time. But one of the suggestions got me thinking.

It is more important to be happy than right.

Is that so?

Most of the time, there’s no conflict. I feel happy when I’m found to be right, don’t you? And believing wrong things tends to lead to unhappiness. Sure, people can be happy with false beliefs for their entire lives. But I’d guess that knowing what’s right would be more conducive to happiness. Your world-view will match reality a bit better, and there’s less cognitive dissonance.

On the other hand, lately I’m equally happy being shown where I’m wrong. Then I don’t have to believe those wrong things anymore! And when you ‘have to be right’, then ego gets into it, you start defending territory instead of conducting honest inquiry, and you’re very unlikely to find out anything new. No thanks. Show me where I’m factually wrong, and I’ll thank you.

Maybe “being right” means two separate things:

1) Being ‘proven right’ in a discussion. This I don’t care much about, though it’s nice. I’d rather be the kind of person who cares what is right, rather than who is right. If this is the definition, maybe Oldest Boy’s book has a point. Let’s leave this aside.

2) Knowing what’s really going on, as close as we can get.

This second sense of ‘being right’ is, I’d say, more important than being happy. Like I say, usually there’s no conflict. But if there were, I’d want to know what’s true and be miserable.

Lots of people in the USA believed wrong things — that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11, that invading Iraq was a good idea, that Bush was a good president who deserved a second term. They’re pretty happy in their safe houses. They still send emails round to each other about freedom and so on. But they were wrong. And with their false beliefs, they have happily created hell on earth for a lot of people. That kind of happiness looks self-serving and empty to me.

I was pretty happy in my religion of origin. I believed some ideas that are demonstrably false. I could have done so happily (mostly) for the rest of my life, believing that I would live again with my family after I died. But then I would have spent my life in the service of a story, with someone else getting all that tithing money, and no eternity at the end of it. I’ve given up on those stories now, and that was painful. It kind of sucks thinking I’m just going to die someday. But if that’s true, I’d rather know it, and live my life by sound principles.

Is self-deception happiness? Is ignorance bliss? Reality, though tinged with sadness, is all the happiness I need.

Daniel answers your search queries

3 January 2008 / / 2 Comments

I’ve had a gander at the blogstats. People use all kinds of search terms to find this blog, including some questions (e.g. ‘what is good reason in critical thinking’). And it’s often not even questions I treat in blog posts. So as a public service, I’d like to answer the questions that people used to get here, even though it’s too late for them.

where did the phrase ‘take them out to the woodshed’ come from?
The woodshed was where Dad would take you out for a whipping. From Wordcraft:

…to ‘grill’ someone brutally, in private; to subject to no-holds-barred questioning 2. more commonly: to criticize scathingly.
From the image of a pioneer father taking his son “out behind the woodshed” for a serious talking-to, perhaps using a leather strap to emphasize his point.”

would you vote for an atheist
I would, if any vocal atheists would ever run for office. Unfortunately, there seems to be some kind of rule against it. A kind of religious test. Either that, or we’re shy.

does talking about something good jinx it
It may seem that way. But when was the last time you talked about something good and it happened anyway? Can’t remember? That’s because annoying things are easier to remember. So talk about the good things and they’ll happen anyway. Wait — isn’t that how ‘The Secret’ works? Never mind.

reasons couples are good together
This is a tough one. I know lots of reasons why couples are bad together. They usually involve differences in fighting style.

But as of late, I’ve been lucky. I’ve found the Perfect Woman. All of our relationship success I attribute to her kind, patient, and loving nature. I suppose that’s not much help to anyone else, because no one else gets her.

I can tell you that we do have similar styles of conflict resolution. When there’s an issue, we’re able to stay present and listen to each other without feeling (too) threatened. John Gottman describes three things that can happen: couples can ‘turn away’ from each other, or ‘turn against’ each other. Somehow we find it easy to ‘turn toward’ each other and talk about the problem.

are you more likley to be killed by and asteriod or lightning
Actually, no; I’m not. I’m more likely to be killed by irate students.

Happy birthsecond!

14 December 2007 / / 3 Comments

I use Time and Date.com all the time for their time zone and calendar info. But I’ve just discovered their Birthday Calculator. When will you be one billlion seconds old? (At about age 32.)

I plan to have a party when I’m 15,000 days old — that’s June 8th next year. I suppose I should call it Nerdmas.

Do you find it sobering that we only get about 30,000 days of life, if we’re lucky?

Meme tag: Life and how to live it

11 December 2007 / / 3 Comments

I’ve been tagged by snowqueen to answer these questions.

1. How did the world and all that is in it come into being?

My son says that it was barfed up by Burunfa, the Great Sky Dog. Dinosaur fossils are just stuff that Burunfa had eaten. He also says that if you do what Burunfa says, you get to go Barunfa-land, which is a really great place. Also, he says that he is the sole emissary of Burunfa, and you have to do what he says, including giving him money and chocolate. He could be wrong, but with so much at stake, can I afford to take the chance? Or perhaps he’s just a clever scam artist, like everyone who runs a religion.

You should probably ask someone who knows about physics.

2. What is reality in terms of knowledge and truth?

Reality is that which an idealised scientific community agrees is true, over the very long term.

3. How does/should the world function?

I don’t have an answer for this. I don’t have any special understanding of how the world works, or else I’d be better at navigating around its systems.

4. What is the nature of a human being?

Human beings are bundles of desires, preferences, and memories. They have generally good intentions and brains that make reasonably good decisions when conditions are not too complex. Otherwise, they fall victim to short-term gratification, perceptual bias, and paralysing fear. The antidote to these less-than-helpful behaviours is to behave ethically, use the scientific method, and calm the fuck down.

5. What is one’s personal purpose of existence?

I used to think there was a purpose that was the same for everyone, and if only we could find that purpose in life, then we could all just do it and be happy.

Now I think it’s more individuated. My purpose in life is to raise my children, do well in my work, and have loving relationships.

Rather than ask, “What’s the purpose of existence?”, I’d like to ask, “What purpose are you bringing to your existence?” It may not be out there to be found. You may have to make it.

6. How should one live?

One should survive, and seek ethical pleasure, in that order.

7. Is there any personal hope for the future?

If by ‘personal hope’ you mean ‘continual existence as an individual after your death’, then no, there is no evidence to suggest that this is the case. Hope is in humanity and in the monuments you create and leave behind.

8. What happens to a person at and after death?

As an LDS missionary, I used to teach that we had a spirit inside us that went to the spirit world. I even used the metaphor of a hand in a glove — the glove dies, but the hand lives on (wiggle fingers). But that’s just a metaphor, not evidence, and I was wrong to teach it.

I might just as well have said that we’re like a lightbulb. A light bulb is a machine for making light, but once the filament goes, the machine doesn’t work anymore. But we don’t treat the light like some kind of entity that persists after the bulb burns out. Our bodies are like machines for living, and our brain is the filament.

Now maybe that’s wrong too, but it’s just as good a metaphor as the spirit idea, and I think it’s backed up by evidence better.

9. Why is it possible to know anything at all?

Your question presumes that we can. In fact, it is very difficult to say that we know something.

In the church I used to go to, they would perform a kind of communal reinforcement ritual every month. People would tell each other, “I know the gospel is true.” After 35 years, it really grated on my ears every time I heard it. They did not know it was true, they were merely certain, which is different.

To say that a claim is true, we need to have factual evidence for that claim. Even then, we may need to adjust the claim if new and better evidence comes in. So the things that we ‘know’ are true will all probably be disproven or updated beyond recognition in 200 years’ time. What we should be saying is not ‘I know X is true’ but ‘At this point, the best evidence we have suggests that we can be pretty certain that X is the case.’

That doesn’t give much room for certainty, does it? Welcome to the universe.

10. How does one know what is right and what is wrong?

Let’s say you have two tribes of humans. In one tribe, they never help each other. In the other, they sometimes do. The second tribe will do better at surviving, since two people together can do things that one person can’t.

We’re like the second tribe. We’ve survived long enough that human evolution has given us some traits, like compassion and altruism, that help us to live together in a somewhat orderly and helpful fashion. When we feel that something is right or wrong, we may be drawing upon our evolutionary heritage.

11. What is the meaning of human history?

Human history is an enormous bunch of cases where things happened. We use them to figure out what’s going to happen in the future, and how to stop it.

12. What does the future hold?

My future holds love, some sadness, time with people I love, good food, and a lifetime of striving for the good. I hope your future is good to you.

Life from conception: How likely are they to be right?

19 November 2007 / / 20 Comments

Women of the world: think of yourself as a box. LGM has the video.

Are you surprised that Catholics might think of you as some kind of holy receptacle? Hope not.

This is an argument I’ve heard a few times: if there’s even a chance that life starts at conception (whatever that means), then we should err on the side of caution and prohibit abortion. My answer is: who are we taking care of here? A fetus that might be alive, or a real woman who is alive, and whose quality of life will be messed with by forced childbirth?

But there’s something else to add to the equation that I haven’t yet heard. My work in machine learning deals a lot with probabilities. I use computer algorithms to classify text, and I hope the computer sorts the text into the right bins. But I don’t just want to know what answer an algorithm gives me. I also want to know how likely that answer is to be right. It’s not enough to say what might somehow be possible. I want to know some likelihoods. So let’s add that into the mix: how likely are the various parties to be right?

The pro-choice side: Claims that women are alive. Pretty good evidence for this. Very likely to be correct.

The pro-life side: Claims that there’s a chance that a just-conceived fetus might be alive as a separate being, like you’re alive. I suppose there might be a small chance. But how often have religions been right before? Well, let’s just say they don’t have a great track record. They’ve gotten so many things wrong, including heliocentrism, evolution, the age of the earth, language, geography, astronomy, and more. And they get things wrong because of their methods. They start from beliefs, and ignore contradicting evidence. And it’s all true if you feel it’s true. Why should they be right this time, when their methods haven’t improved in thousands of years? So while it’s good to be cautious in uncertain conditions, we have to take into account the likelihood that our caution is justified in view of the expense to real live people.

This ‘just in case’ argument is convincing to some people because of the minimax principle. Because humans are usually risk averse, we try to avoid bad outcomes rather than go for good outcomes. This argument takes advantage of uncertainty, in the interest of a socio-political agenda. And so, as always, religions find and exploit our congitive blind spots.

I’ll take it anyway.

3 May 2007 / / Comments Off on I’ll take it anyway.

Ever wanted to find every Calvin and Hobbes cartoon with the word ‘afterlife’ in it? Now you can, thanks to the Calvin and Hobbes Searchable Database.

This cartoon matches my feelings about life and dying. Hobbes’ perspective, not Calvin’s.

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