Philosophy Explained

Heraclitus - You can't eat the same donut twice

Plato - A donut shares its ideal donut-ness with all other donuts

Aristotle - A donut's donut-ness is self-contained

Augustine - A donut must achieve grace to become fully donut

Descartes - The donut hole proves the existence of the donut

Locke - Donuts taste good to me

Hume - Donuts exist because I imagine donuts

Kant - Each donut equals my total donut experience

Wollstonecraft - Women deserve donuts too

Mill - Donuts are good if they make people happy

Kierkegarde - I have faith in the deliciousness of donuts

Marx - Everybody deserves a donut

Nietzsche - Stop at nothing to get your donut

Saussure - Beignet/Krapfen/Ciambella/Buñuelo: they are all equally donut

Wittgenstein - Fried pastry, zero, spare tire, whatever

Beauvoir - White patriarchal domination is responsible for the shape and the self-defeating inadequacy of the donut

Always Talk About The Elephant

The Deepness Of My "Thinking"

One of many vexing questions: Do I move on, looking for another more beautiful place - or do I stay, and work at making this place beautiful again?

Today's Rational Thinking

Some of the discussions in the comments sections are trying to address the "economics" of this thing, and it occurs to me that we'll need somebody to look into the potential economic ripple effect of people feeling less comfortable in public places, and so deciding to stay home rather than accept the increased risk (real or imagined) that they'll be the victims of random gunfire while simply attempting to order out at the local deli.

PQED.org

hat tip = Crooks and Liars

Today's Quote(s)

A couple from Bertrand Russell:

"It's a good idea to hang a question mark on things you've long taken for granted."

--and--

"Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes....A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men."

Survivorship Bias

Try to focus on whatever killed the dead guy, not on what didn't kill the survivor.

"A stupid decision that works out well becomes a brilliant decision in hindsight" --Daniel Kahneman

From the podcast of You Are Not So Smart:

"Despite how it may seem, success boils down to serially avoiding catastrophic failure while routinely absorbing manageable damage."

Type vs Type

Type 1 Error = False Positive

Type 2 Error = False Negative

(paraphrasing Michael Shermer)
You're a hominid out for a stroll on the African plains 2 million years ago, and you hear a rustle in the grass.  Do you assume it's a dangerous predator, or do you assume it's harmless?

If you identify the sound as a predator, and it turns out to be the wind, then you've made a mistake (a Type 1 Error).  You lose some time, but you've survived - you continue to hunt and to live and to breed.

If you identify the sound as the wind, but it turns out to be a leopard, then you've removed yourself and all your potential descendants from the gene pool.

We are descended from a very long line of creatures who consistently made Type 1 Errors.

And that (partly) explains why we insist on believing in ghosts; and that Elvis is alive; and that there is a god.

Dr Shermer, if you please:

These Kids Today

Political (and other messaging) Manipulation might get some of us to believe practically everything anybody tells us, but it's just as possible that digital tricks get way too many of us to the point where we're not willing to believe anything about anything at all.

Welcome to the dawning of The Age of Radical Skepticism.

You Are Not So Smart

Another one I stumbled across yesterday:

The Narrative Bias --David McRaney

You Are Not So Smart is a blog I started to explore self delusion. Like lots of people, I used to forward sensational news stories without skepticism and think I was a smarty pants just because I did a little internet research. Little did I know about confirmation bias and self-enhancing fallacies, and once I did, I felt very, very stupid. I still feel that way, but now I can make you feel that way too.

Here is how the blog started: One week, I saw both the Derren Brown person swap and the Invisible Gorilla videos on YouTube, and they blew my mind. Also, at that time, I was marathoning Penn and Teller’s Bullshit! on DVD. I felt like there was a common thread in all of that, something about how flawed perception and reasoning goes unnoticed because we are all so unwittingly overconfident. It reminded me of the experiments that seemed to stir up the most conversation in class when I was taking lots of college psychology courses, and it all just clicked. That would make a cool blog.

This Point Of Pale Light

Keep Pluggin' Away

Bill Watterson retired from writing and drawing "Calvin & Hobbes" about 18 years ago, but the timelessness of his message -- to always remain thoughtful, imaginative, and playful -- will stick in our culture forever, if we're lucky. Case in point: Cartoonist Gavin Aung Than, who pens comics on his blog Zen Pencils, created this tribute to Watterson that has struck a chord with the Internet over the last few days.

Than took the text from a commencement speech Watterson delivered at Kenyon College in 1995, and illustrated it in the style of "Calvin & Hobbes." He explains that this is the first time he's intentionally attempted to mimic Watterson, although the man has been an inspiration for his art as well as his career.

If you want to buy a print of Than's cartoon, you may be out of luck. He explains that since Watterson famously refuses to license his work, preferring to let his art speak for itself, selling this "would be against the whole spirit of Calvin and Hobbes." However, you can (and should) click over to his site and browse his other, non-Watterson related artwork.

hat tip = HuffPo via Democratic Underground

It's Like This

OK - I'll go thru it one more time for ya.

Philosophy is like being in a dark room, looking for a black cat.

Metaphysics is like being in a dark room, looking for a black cat that isn't there.

Religion is like being in a dark room, looking for a black cat that isn't there, and yelling, "I found it!".

Science is like being in a dark room, looking for a black cat - with a fucking flash light.

Everybody got it now?

There Are No Walk-On Parts

Barry Lopez interviewed by Bill Moyers

BILL MOYERS: So, is the new metaphor not nature, but the stage? That's a powerful idea that we all- have walk on parts in this drama that never ends.

BARRY LOPEZ: But who is it, Bill, that says, one person has a walk on part? You know? That's a political question. Who is it that's standing there saying, that person, this person, that person, those are walk on parts. And this person over here will be the star of the show. I don't like that. I don't like to hear it. What happens if a person speaks imperfect English in a culture like ours, is not articulate, but can dance in a way that makes you shiver? Why is that a walk on part?...

I and Thou, not I and It

BARRY LOPEZ: We have from, you know, the beginning of the Holocene, you know, the raising, the creation of cities in the Tigris/Euphrates, we have created a world in which we marginalize that which we don't think serves us as well as it could. We've turned nature into a thing. You know, Martin Buber's wonderful I/it relationship and I/thou relationship. This is an "it." The book is an "it." It is soulless. It is utilitarian. I can throw it on the ground if I want. But if it's an I/thou relationship, you never make those kinds of presumptions. So a lot of what traditional people when you watch- when you're in their environment, everything is I/thou. The relationship to the wind; the wind is alive. It has a soul. It's part of the moral universe.

And we've created something in which we have excluded from our moral universe everything but us. And in fact, a lot of people have been excluded from this central White Western European dominant culture. Everything else is an I/it relationship. With African Americans or, you know, in Aboriginal people, whatever it's going to be. But when you-- with traditional people, the relationships with everything are about the holiness of the other, the mystery of the other. That's that I/thou relationship.

And what I would like to I guess encourage people to understand is that for the sake of our own convenience, we created an "other," and that other was nature. And we said, if it doesn't serve us, kill it, move it, destroy it, crush it. Make it serve us. And if it doesn't, it's no good.

(hat tip = JR, from a very long time ago)

Boy Culture

The pendulum swings.  We've spent a long time trying to get girls up to speed, and now I guess it turns out we need to try to treat everybody as if they were individuals.  Wow - what a concept.

A Turnaround

A facebook friend wrote on his wall: "What if all you had today was what you thanked God for yesterday?"

Seems like bible thumpers believe there can be no argument with this kinda crap; that the authority of their faith says it all; that the sheer profundity of their utterance leaves no possibly for an alternative view.

Poor salesmen take this as 'The Stopper' - an insurmountable objection.  Good salesmen go for the turnaround.

What if today, we didn't have all the shitty things that zealots have forced on us in the name of their gods for the last 800 generations?

Just askin'.

Today's Random Thought

We don't free ourselves by changing the world.  We free the world by changing ourselves.

Quote

Knowledge is power.
Power corrupts.
Learn and grow evil.

They Don't Buy What You Do

Simon Sinek provides some of the best sales training I've ever heard. Also works for managers, job seekers, parents, and just plain humans.

Rand Of The Day

Worth Remembering

A basic rule:
Every snarly complicated problem has a solution which is simple and elegant and wrong.

Common Sense Correlative:
It didn't suddenly get fucked up yesterday, and it's not going to get unfucked by tomorrow.