There is one thing about which I hold myself certain. One thing I consider inviolable truth. It is that certainty is poison to the human spirit. The more certain you are of something the less human you become. Witness fundamentalism everywhere.
If you are certain of something then that is something that you must do your utmost to inject doubt into. Examine under the light of many worlds, consider it as the ancient Persian would both drunk and sober, include as many more altered states as your lifestyle allows, consider whether you would believe the same if your moral basis were built upon something else. Perform experiments, physical or social as necessary, to test your understanding and the veracity of your certainty and keep notes. Make it impossible for yourself to ignore the edges of your certainty where logic or fact tells you otherwise. Because once you refuse to allow yourself to see one small facet of reality you begin to blind yourself to all of it. And thence, by all measures of psychiatry, lies madness.
I have yet to find evidence that certainty in any thing does more good than harm. However while there are truths that lack contrary evidence there are no truths that merit certainty. I accept even my initial statement in this post as a poison, it poisons my ability to make statements unambiguously and it poisons my ability to trust in the things that people say. Frankly, that may be a good thing in some cases. I accept that one poison regardless but no further. No other certainty will I knowingly accept into my self.
Showing posts with label philosophy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label philosophy. Show all posts
Sunday, January 11, 2015
Saturday, October 11, 2014
On privacy
Yeah. I'm listening to Glenn Greenwald on TED in Brazil. I quite thoroughly disagree with him though I suspect it's a different kind of disagreement than he's used to.
I value privacy but I value it not as itself (that is, being private from the rest of the world) but as information. Let's face it. In the 'Information Age,' or whatever the hell they're calling it now, privacy is the gold in Fort Knox. The internet and the computing systems we, as a world of people, have built have effectively leveled the walls and we're desperately trying to patch them while yelling and screaming at the looters to stop.
It won't work. The walls can't be rebuilt (and they shouldn't be) and the looters will never stop because, really, who would? People are making money by the boatload on our information. There isn't a force on Earth that can stop them. Look at any pre-digital major corporation; they're all still making money, pretty much the same as they always have.
I have a different proposition. Let the NSA do all their petty spying. Let Google, Faceplant.... er, book, LinkedIn, et al do their tracking. Let them have our webcam feeds. Let everyone correlate to the big 3 credit bureaus if they like and perform statistical analysis with all our Amazon purchases. I frankly don't give a damn. BUT. Not because I have nothing to hide. But because I have one simple stipulation for all the data whores. It's incredibly simple in word (implementation is another story but we're all of us blue-skying here because it's still very new discussion). Let your data free. Publish it; let the public search it (using the same internal mechanisms you use). Scary? No.
What people fear isn't that the NSA knows you bought a dildo or whatever. It's that you have nothing on the NSA (other than they're a bunch of lying, spying, sneaky creeps). You're worried that your nosy neighbor can search through your ... search queries? But you could look at theirs too in such a world. Because the real value of information to an individual or entity is inversely dependent on how many other entities know that information. Let's look at this side for a bit longer. If everyone knew what was in the diplomats' emails that the NSA snooped (which everyone does now, sincerest thanks Mr. Snowden) then the value of that information to the NSA is roughly nil. Similarly in the reciprocal world I envision (and reciprocity is the key here) the same memos are worth just about nothing to any government because all their emails are public also. Before anyone mentions the 'chilling effect' allow me to say that the full effects global freedom of information won't be apparent until the second generation. The same way nobody grokked the internet until people grew up with it. Global freedom of information will force everyone to realize and accept that everyone is human, that everyone makes gaffes, has some opinions we disagree with, that everyone gets naked, and nearly everyone has sex sometimes. It's only when there's an imbalance of information that privacy matters.
Any schoolchild can tell you this about secrets.
Value = Information/(how many people know it)
Bringing this monologue back to Mr. Greenwald's talk let me address his very valid point about black and white. There are, indeed, no Good people. There are people that are good, but everyone has 'dirt'. Everyone is, when considered completely, Grey. We are imperfect, flawed, weak, and corrupt in our own individual ways. When everyone is forced to acknowledge that about themselves and everyone else then knowing someones weaknesses ceases to be something of value. Indeed, it becomes a strength because we would no longer need to guess which politician is the most corrupt.
Mr. Greenwald goes on at some length about passwords but I'm afraid he's missed the point there. Passwords are not privacy. Passwords are authentication. No, you may not have my bank password; not because i wouldn't want you to see my purchases (again assuming reciprocity, I will not give you an imbalance of power either) but because I don't want you to make purchases in my name. Ditto email. That whole section of his talk made my head ache and if I'd been in the audience I'm afraid I would have gotten thrown out for screaming at him that he's an idiot.
However he was trying to make the point that people who claim privacy is dead are hypocrites. He does make that point effectively about Eric Schmidt and Mark Zuckerberg. However I stand by my view. But it is a reciprocal view and cannot be implemented by one individual. To give away my privacy while others refuse to give away theirs (and every entity with the wherewithal is spying on us all and hoarding the data to themselves) is ludicrous. Yes, I make some small measures to maintain my privacy. Not because I don't believe my own rhetoric but because nobody else is willing to reciprocate and freedom doesn't work unilaterally
Meh. I'm tired of properly composing my thoughts, and I've other things I need to do as well. I'm not a journalist either. So I'll just jot down some oneliners during the rest of his talk as I listen to it.
Shame? Judgemental eyes of others? Reference the above about humanity becoming more understanding (even compassionate? O.O ) when everyone can know everything about everyone else.
So there's a correlation between being observed and the actions that one is willing to take. But is the mere observation the cause? If you video yourself (you, observing yourself) do you act differently? I submit that it is the imbalance of being observed while making a choice but not being able to observe the other while the other makes that choice that is the root cause of the behavioral change. But then, I'm not a [psych|soci]ologist.
Panopticon? Holy hell. Can we say imbalance of power and observation? My point still stands.
Oh, yes. The Abrahamic god. Still. Every example he gives posits an imbalance of observation.
I do agree about the destructive lessons in the phrase "only people with something to hide fear surveillance."
Dissidents. Yes, they could be tracked by the government. He follows that immediately with the measure of freedom of a government by how it treats its dissidents. Treatment that, if everyone was watched by everyone else, everyone would know. Catch22.
I will take the 1 or 2 generations of suppressed freedom of choice due to mass observation in order to break through to a more idealized humanity that accepts itself for what it is. Sadly, such informational freedom is unlikely to ever happen for emotional, political, and admittedly practical reasons.
I dislike the ad hominem agains Snowden as well. However the mirror accusation is scathing and probably isn't as universally applicable as it's stated. Of course, it feels as good in my gut as it apparently did to the majority of the audience but one has to vomit those feelings out of the gut and examine them thoroughly or you're going to have a hell of a lot of indigestion when those ideas curdle later.
Closing with a pair of personal definitions:
observation: knowledge of events shared among all entities
surveillance: knowledge of events kept secret by one or a few entities
I value privacy but I value it not as itself (that is, being private from the rest of the world) but as information. Let's face it. In the 'Information Age,' or whatever the hell they're calling it now, privacy is the gold in Fort Knox. The internet and the computing systems we, as a world of people, have built have effectively leveled the walls and we're desperately trying to patch them while yelling and screaming at the looters to stop.
It won't work. The walls can't be rebuilt (and they shouldn't be) and the looters will never stop because, really, who would? People are making money by the boatload on our information. There isn't a force on Earth that can stop them. Look at any pre-digital major corporation; they're all still making money, pretty much the same as they always have.
I have a different proposition. Let the NSA do all their petty spying. Let Google, Faceplant.... er, book, LinkedIn, et al do their tracking. Let them have our webcam feeds. Let everyone correlate to the big 3 credit bureaus if they like and perform statistical analysis with all our Amazon purchases. I frankly don't give a damn. BUT. Not because I have nothing to hide. But because I have one simple stipulation for all the data whores. It's incredibly simple in word (implementation is another story but we're all of us blue-skying here because it's still very new discussion). Let your data free. Publish it; let the public search it (using the same internal mechanisms you use). Scary? No.
What people fear isn't that the NSA knows you bought a dildo or whatever. It's that you have nothing on the NSA (other than they're a bunch of lying, spying, sneaky creeps). You're worried that your nosy neighbor can search through your ... search queries? But you could look at theirs too in such a world. Because the real value of information to an individual or entity is inversely dependent on how many other entities know that information. Let's look at this side for a bit longer. If everyone knew what was in the diplomats' emails that the NSA snooped (which everyone does now, sincerest thanks Mr. Snowden) then the value of that information to the NSA is roughly nil. Similarly in the reciprocal world I envision (and reciprocity is the key here) the same memos are worth just about nothing to any government because all their emails are public also. Before anyone mentions the 'chilling effect' allow me to say that the full effects global freedom of information won't be apparent until the second generation. The same way nobody grokked the internet until people grew up with it. Global freedom of information will force everyone to realize and accept that everyone is human, that everyone makes gaffes, has some opinions we disagree with, that everyone gets naked, and nearly everyone has sex sometimes. It's only when there's an imbalance of information that privacy matters.
Any schoolchild can tell you this about secrets.
Value = Information/(how many people know it)
Bringing this monologue back to Mr. Greenwald's talk let me address his very valid point about black and white. There are, indeed, no Good people. There are people that are good, but everyone has 'dirt'. Everyone is, when considered completely, Grey. We are imperfect, flawed, weak, and corrupt in our own individual ways. When everyone is forced to acknowledge that about themselves and everyone else then knowing someones weaknesses ceases to be something of value. Indeed, it becomes a strength because we would no longer need to guess which politician is the most corrupt.
Mr. Greenwald goes on at some length about passwords but I'm afraid he's missed the point there. Passwords are not privacy. Passwords are authentication. No, you may not have my bank password; not because i wouldn't want you to see my purchases (again assuming reciprocity, I will not give you an imbalance of power either) but because I don't want you to make purchases in my name. Ditto email. That whole section of his talk made my head ache and if I'd been in the audience I'm afraid I would have gotten thrown out for screaming at him that he's an idiot.
However he was trying to make the point that people who claim privacy is dead are hypocrites. He does make that point effectively about Eric Schmidt and Mark Zuckerberg. However I stand by my view. But it is a reciprocal view and cannot be implemented by one individual. To give away my privacy while others refuse to give away theirs (and every entity with the wherewithal is spying on us all and hoarding the data to themselves) is ludicrous. Yes, I make some small measures to maintain my privacy. Not because I don't believe my own rhetoric but because nobody else is willing to reciprocate and freedom doesn't work unilaterally
Meh. I'm tired of properly composing my thoughts, and I've other things I need to do as well. I'm not a journalist either. So I'll just jot down some oneliners during the rest of his talk as I listen to it.
Shame? Judgemental eyes of others? Reference the above about humanity becoming more understanding (even compassionate? O.O ) when everyone can know everything about everyone else.
So there's a correlation between being observed and the actions that one is willing to take. But is the mere observation the cause? If you video yourself (you, observing yourself) do you act differently? I submit that it is the imbalance of being observed while making a choice but not being able to observe the other while the other makes that choice that is the root cause of the behavioral change. But then, I'm not a [psych|soci]ologist.
Panopticon? Holy hell. Can we say imbalance of power and observation? My point still stands.
Oh, yes. The Abrahamic god. Still. Every example he gives posits an imbalance of observation.
I do agree about the destructive lessons in the phrase "only people with something to hide fear surveillance."
Dissidents. Yes, they could be tracked by the government. He follows that immediately with the measure of freedom of a government by how it treats its dissidents. Treatment that, if everyone was watched by everyone else, everyone would know. Catch22.
I will take the 1 or 2 generations of suppressed freedom of choice due to mass observation in order to break through to a more idealized humanity that accepts itself for what it is. Sadly, such informational freedom is unlikely to ever happen for emotional, political, and admittedly practical reasons.
I dislike the ad hominem agains Snowden as well. However the mirror accusation is scathing and probably isn't as universally applicable as it's stated. Of course, it feels as good in my gut as it apparently did to the majority of the audience but one has to vomit those feelings out of the gut and examine them thoroughly or you're going to have a hell of a lot of indigestion when those ideas curdle later.
Closing with a pair of personal definitions:
observation: knowledge of events shared among all entities
surveillance: knowledge of events kept secret by one or a few entities
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
More on the Question of Evil
In The debatable nature of God I considered the nature of the 3 'omnis' as applied to God. Going back and re-reading it the logic doesn't hold up very well. How could an omnigood God predispose His creation to failure and evil? How could the concept of evil even possibly exist in the creation of an omnigood entity? If, as I understand God, He is constitutionally incapable of condoning, experiencing, or contemplating evil?
However God exists at a different scale from humanity. Perhaps, for Him, the short term existence of evil in Creation isn't a paradox against His nature since, as discussed in the linked post, He has balanced it all against Jesus, against Himself. Then there's promise of the cleansing at the end of things. So you could balance it against metaphysical scales or time scales. In either case you have a net 0 change in the 'quantity' of evil in existence. I'm falling back on quantitative verbiage but who can really measure these things? I merely record a refinement to the aforementioned theory.
Semi-Random tangent: I'm also led to wonder, just how does God interact with evil? Does He see evil? Presumably, or else most of Creation would be blank to Him. (I almost used the verb 'witness' instead of 'see' but that verb has other very serious connotations) Which doesn't really make sense. But seeing evil is, in part, experiencing it or having contact with it. Perhaps it is Jesus that sees evil. But all of that consideration will have to go into another post. This one is on another topic.
However God exists at a different scale from humanity. Perhaps, for Him, the short term existence of evil in Creation isn't a paradox against His nature since, as discussed in the linked post, He has balanced it all against Jesus, against Himself. Then there's promise of the cleansing at the end of things. So you could balance it against metaphysical scales or time scales. In either case you have a net 0 change in the 'quantity' of evil in existence. I'm falling back on quantitative verbiage but who can really measure these things? I merely record a refinement to the aforementioned theory.
Semi-Random tangent: I'm also led to wonder, just how does God interact with evil? Does He see evil? Presumably, or else most of Creation would be blank to Him. (I almost used the verb 'witness' instead of 'see' but that verb has other very serious connotations) Which doesn't really make sense. But seeing evil is, in part, experiencing it or having contact with it. Perhaps it is Jesus that sees evil. But all of that consideration will have to go into another post. This one is on another topic.
Friday, July 31, 2009
The debatable nature of God
Slightly misleading title. One thing that I keep coming back to is the problem of evil. Now, here we have a logic puzzle that seems to invalidate the Christian perception of God using its own terminology. How can God be omnipotent, omniscient, and completely good (omnigood?) at the same time and yet still create and allow to exist a world as flawed and full of evil as this. An all good God would eradicate the evil, given the ability and knowledge of it. So taking the omnis as given, poof there goes God in, as Douglas Adams says, a puff of logic.
Except, consider the following. Perhaps God set us up to fall. The world certainly seems rigged against us. Let's say he did, he set up the world in such a way as to deliberately predispose man to fall into evil and sin. And then, He took that fall for us. We still sin, we are still evil, but we are required to pay none of the long term consequences of that. Changes the equation a bit. Here I was thinking I'd never have even a hint of a crack of a solution to this thorny little chestnut, and I expect the average atheist will brush that off as so much religion (which I suppose it is), but I haven't been one of those for some time now and pop this little thought appears in my brain. God is good.
Edit: Oh that's hardly a complete solution, nor by any means airtight I'm sure. But, it's a start. It's a crack in the wall. And one that I'd never have found alone.
Edit 2: Coming back to this some time later, I think a little clarification is necessary. He paid our sins, and by that act cleansed the world of evil. Evil is still in the world doing it's best to wreak havoc, but every evil act was paid before it even gets commited, it is no longer evil; God doesn't permit evil in His world, He only permits humanity to suffer trials in order to give Himself a chance to help us. Interesting ramifications.
Except, consider the following. Perhaps God set us up to fall. The world certainly seems rigged against us. Let's say he did, he set up the world in such a way as to deliberately predispose man to fall into evil and sin. And then, He took that fall for us. We still sin, we are still evil, but we are required to pay none of the long term consequences of that. Changes the equation a bit. Here I was thinking I'd never have even a hint of a crack of a solution to this thorny little chestnut, and I expect the average atheist will brush that off as so much religion (which I suppose it is), but I haven't been one of those for some time now and pop this little thought appears in my brain. God is good.
Edit: Oh that's hardly a complete solution, nor by any means airtight I'm sure. But, it's a start. It's a crack in the wall. And one that I'd never have found alone.
Edit 2: Coming back to this some time later, I think a little clarification is necessary. He paid our sins, and by that act cleansed the world of evil. Evil is still in the world doing it's best to wreak havoc, but every evil act was paid before it even gets commited, it is no longer evil; God doesn't permit evil in His world, He only permits humanity to suffer trials in order to give Himself a chance to help us. Interesting ramifications.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Thoughts on the nature of God
Edit: Yeah, apparently this is wrong. But I leave it up so I'll remember later that it's wrong. I should probably give up on this sort of contemplation but I know I won't.
I was considering the nature of God's omniscience, time, human free will, and the idea that God always responds to holy prayers (not selfish ones obviously).
The thought came to mind that perhaps God exists in all times at once. To clarify, instead of viewing the world like a movie He's already seen (which greatly complicates the idea of Him ever acting on the plot of said movie by requiring the ability to see beyond the present as experienced by humans, which is vastly complicated by the assumption of an infinity of possible futures based on present actions; not to mention making the idea of human agency altogether rather dubious) He instead views it entirely at once, as though laid out on the director's storyboard. If He chooses to create a worldwide flood He can watch the entire storyboard change at once see all hte repercussions thereof. If someone prays for healing and it fits His plans or whatever criteria He uses such that He grants the prayer then He can instantly see every change that makes further down the timeline, both the effect on the physical world of that person continuing to live and the effect on human agency in the world as a result of that person getting well.
In short, God exists out of time in this context. He has no need of fast forward and rewind to see the possible outcomes or adjust a decision. Following that idea then, reality would become something rather like a puzzle. Such a viewpoint would say nothing about the consequences and value of 'solving' the puzzle (or obtaining a best case result). And anyway, I've rambled enough about it. I should have put this down days ago when I first thought it out, but my internet's been down at home and I kept forgetting.
I was considering the nature of God's omniscience, time, human free will, and the idea that God always responds to holy prayers (not selfish ones obviously).
The thought came to mind that perhaps God exists in all times at once. To clarify, instead of viewing the world like a movie He's already seen (which greatly complicates the idea of Him ever acting on the plot of said movie by requiring the ability to see beyond the present as experienced by humans, which is vastly complicated by the assumption of an infinity of possible futures based on present actions; not to mention making the idea of human agency altogether rather dubious) He instead views it entirely at once, as though laid out on the director's storyboard. If He chooses to create a worldwide flood He can watch the entire storyboard change at once see all hte repercussions thereof. If someone prays for healing and it fits His plans or whatever criteria He uses such that He grants the prayer then He can instantly see every change that makes further down the timeline, both the effect on the physical world of that person continuing to live and the effect on human agency in the world as a result of that person getting well.
In short, God exists out of time in this context. He has no need of fast forward and rewind to see the possible outcomes or adjust a decision. Following that idea then, reality would become something rather like a puzzle. Such a viewpoint would say nothing about the consequences and value of 'solving' the puzzle (or obtaining a best case result). And anyway, I've rambled enough about it. I should have put this down days ago when I first thought it out, but my internet's been down at home and I kept forgetting.
Monday, August 4, 2008
Couple random thoughts
Age is often reckoned as wisdom. I take issue with that. I would say, age can give you experience (though it's hardly guaranteed and depends in large part on how you use your time, which I'll leave out of this potpourri post). Experience isn't wisdom in itself. It becomes wisdom when you hold your experiences up to Jesus and se what He has to say on the matter. The Word is wisdom, all else is merely experience.
God gives and takes away, amen. He took something from me a while back and I can give him nothing but praise for it. He took away the pleasure of a particular sin. I asked him to help, and he moved in great (and unexpected!) ways. Praise god for my deliverance from sin.
Also, I don't know what to tag this with, other than philosophy. So that'll have to do.
God gives and takes away, amen. He took something from me a while back and I can give him nothing but praise for it. He took away the pleasure of a particular sin. I asked him to help, and he moved in great (and unexpected!) ways. Praise god for my deliverance from sin.
Also, I don't know what to tag this with, other than philosophy. So that'll have to do.
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