The Gentle Genie

A New Beginning

Insanity Grip

Interview with a Rock

Abandoned

A Tough Nut to Crack

Descartology

Props to René Descartes for setting up the punchline. It was a big decision to focus on the host and not God following their split. Ultimately I thought it was better to advance the plot by sticking with the Host. It's also easier to get the lulz since God is a more serious character than the Host. Where did God go? What is he up to now?

Collatz Conjecture

(from xkcd.com)

The Collatz conjecture was proposed by the German mathematician Lothar Collatz in 1937 and remains unsolved. The conjecture is as follows: start with any natural number, divide by 2 if it is even or else multiply it by 3 and add 1. If one takes the resulting number and recycles it as the input a certain number of times, one will eventually have an output of 1. Go ahead and try it with some small numbers (trying this manually with large initial numbers may require lots and lots of iterations, so choose carefully!).

What draws me to this particular conjecture is the simplicity in understanding it (which is good since, admittedly, I am by no means mathematically inclined). A few months ago, I spent the day reflecting on this conjecture and had a blast just thinking about it. While this is in all likelihood totally meaningless and irrelevant, I thought I'd share what I thought was curiously interesting found by working on the problem backwards.

If you look at the function of the conjecture ("half or triples plus one"), it's apparent that the iteration that yields an output of 1 will always be by halving the number--you can't triple a natural number and add 1 to get 1. Furthermore, it's apparent that for any number that will yield an output of 1 by continuously halving it will be a power of 2 (i.e., 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, etc.). Given this, we can safely say that once the output is ever a power of 2, the function will eventually yield an output of 1.

We know that if we are halving a number that is a power of 2, the resulting number will also be a power of 2. The question, then, is how this function yields an output that is a power of 2 from a number that isn't a power of 2. For this, we look at the "triple plus one" part of the function and how/when it will yield a number that is a power of 2. I began by looking at the first few numbers that are powers of 2 and tried to see if they were derivable by tripling a whole number and adding 1. I saw that, in a sequence of powers of 2, only every other number was derivable by tripling a whole number and adding 1 (e.g., 16=3(5)+1, 64=3(21)+1, 256=3(85)+1, etc.). The resulting numbers were all powers of 4--probably irrelevant but interesting, or at least I thought so.

I then decided to look at these numbers that yield a number that is a power of 4 by tripling and adding 1 to: 5, 21, 85, etc. While this is probably a big stretch, I decided to see what these numbers looked like in their binary form, as I felt that the "power of 2" element was related to how numbers are represented in binary form (see this Wiki page on numerical representations in binary). Here's a short list of the numbers that, by tripling and adding 1 to, will yield a number that is a power of 4 in both their decimal and binary representations:

Dec	Binary	Binary after 3x+1
1	1	100
5	101	10000
21	10101	1000000
85	1010101	100000000
341	101010101	10000000000

And this pattern continues which I thought was interesting. What the pattern reveals is that, if one continues the sequence in the table above, the following number is always the preceding number plus the next power of 4 in the binary. Perhaps that last statement isn't too clear and so I'll try to illustrate my point here:
In binary, "101" can be translated into decimal as "4+0+1", and "10101" as "16+0+4+0+1", and so on. So, 341, which in binary is 101010101, can be translated into "256+0+64+0+16+0+4+0+1". [Green text will represent 341]. The next number in the sequence will be, then, be the translated "...0+1" with "[next power of 4]+" inserted into the beginning (e.g., 1365 in binary is 10101010101 which can be translated as "1024+0+256+0+64+0+16+0+4+0+1", or simply the translated binary of 341 with "the next power of four" added to it--that is, 256*4=1024).

If I remember correctly, a cursory glance at this showed me that only the numbers in the sequence outlined in the table above will yield a number that is a power of 4 by tripling and adding 1. I stopped thinking about the problem here mainly because I got tired but I recall tinkering a bit with division, multiplication, and addition in binary and not being able to find a significant pattern.

Of course, the difficult part of this conjecture is how understanding even numbers that are not powers of 2 eventually yield a number that is a power of 4 by the "halve or triple plus one" function as a whole, and not just by considering either part of the function independently. Also, resorting to binary was probably totally unnecessary, but being not at all mathematically adept, it helped me to better think in a domain of base 2.

Godbye

Lady GaGod

The dress texture is a real Lady Gaga dress. The lighting bolt under the right eye is originally associated with David Bowie but Lady Gaga co-opted it for the "Just Dance" video. I also couldn't resist associating God with the lightning bolt, which we've seen him use already.

Zoology

The host has discovered that he can manipulate God's avatar. It's operating principle lets the beholder call the shots. This gives the host a power over God he is quick to exploit. God's temper is showing as he verbally rebuffs the host. A showdown is looming.

Godpher

This strip explores the nature of God's avatar. The way it operates allows the perceiver to call the shots. God appearing as gopher was originally conceived for a retelling of the flood story. God would go back and shepard each animal to the Ark. The storyline was scrapped because it deviated too far from the strip's format.

Illusionism

Illusionism is a metaphysical theory that there is no such thing as free will but that we should not let people know that this is the case. Illusionists argue that there would be dire consequences for society if people were come to think that free will does not exist, but in some cases these illusions may affect the normal functioning of a man's life. Illusions make a man a "pure thinker", which not only affects his life, but he himself forgets about his creation.

Illusionism suggests that blame and morality are artificial but nonetheless useful as incentives and deterrents. Even though men cannot be held culpable, they can nonetheless be guided towards certain conduct and away from others. For instance, police can effectively deter crimes by threatening to punish people who commit them. In fact, the law can serve three purposes without implicating moral concerns: rehabilitation, incapacitation and deterrence. Illusionism has much in common with utilitarianism, as it suggests that morality and the concept of 'free will' are useful to improve the general welfare of man--even if somewhat disingenuous.

God Vibrations

LOST Explained

Now that LOST has concluded its six season run, we are left with nearly as many unanswered questions as we started with. The final episode promised a ‘big reveal’ but didn’t deliver one as thorough as many fans would have liked. Nonetheless, Christian Shephard’s speech in the final ten minutes was as close as we will get—and with it we can reason backwards to explain many, if not all, of the mysteries of LOST. Christian’s speech was one of those rare moments of revelation on LOST and will be considered truthful in its entirety. As we know, the characters on LOST are frequently dishonest or misinformed when they explain events—so to the extent that anything they have said conflicts with Christian’s speech (either explicitly or implicitly), Christian’s speech will control. Other character’s statements can be used to expand and explain it but never contradict it.

So what exactly did Christian tell us? (1) The afterlife exists and (2) Jack’s life and the people in the church were real. The Island could have been explained scientifically, or as a dream, or as an illusion perpetrated by a tiny slug—but Christian told us that at the core of the mystery was the afterlife. You could argue this only explains the sideways timeline universe, but if the sideways timeline universe has no bearing on the main universe—why show it at all? The main timeline also regularly depicts life after death in the forms of countless ghosts and whispers who talk to the characters.

How exactly does the afterlife work in the LOST universe? The line between real world and the afterlife is blurred, if not non-existent. A place that seems real can be supernatural (see: the sideways timeline) or a place that seems supernatural can be real (the island). Death is a gradual process—souls transition from reality to an illusion thereof to heaven. They don't always move forwards and different people take different routes. The Island is an early step towards death, and roughly akin to purgatory. What the island does, like purgatory, is keep people from returning to their old life or moving on to the next one. We’ve seen how it keeps them from leaving in countless ways: it conceals its location; it prevents ships from sailing out, etc. And even if someone does escape (like the Oceanic Six) it will call them back--like a moth to a flame, Jack and Michael and Locke cannot resist being drawn back to the island even after they 'escape' it. The only people it lets come and go are the ones it knows will return (see Jacob, Ben, Richard).

How does the island prevent people from moving to the next life? It keeps their flesh alive. It heals the infirm (see Rose’s cancer). It can revive the dead (See Sayid). It keeps people from aging (see Jacob & Richard). It provides food and water (see the DHARMA drops and Christian leading Jack to water). And if people aren’t cooperating, it prevents them from committing suicide (See Jack, Richard, Locke, etc.). Despite many people referring to the island’s “rules” (like those governing the Ben/Widmore or Jacob/Smokey conflict), the only rule that seems to be inviolable and independently enforced is the prohibition on suicide.

But most of all, the island provides distractions—it manufactures conflicts and mysteries to keep people attached to their mortal lives. All the polar bears, buttons to press, magic numbers or huge birds that screech “HURLEY,” are simply there to divert people’s attention like a magician’s slight of hand. The stakes are often high (pressing the button and fighting Smokey were to “prevent the destruction of the world”), although it’s unlikely the Island could deliver on its threats. But the island will say whatever is needed to keep people on it, engaged in its drama. Perhaps this is most evident in some of its longest residents. The island kept Jacob busy for two millennia as a ‘guardian’ before he passed on. It kept Desmond in the Swan pressing a button for three years. Who knows how long it kept Hurley and Ben there? The island can trap people in more direct ways too: like the Smoke Monster, who could neither die nor leave, and Michael, whose soul is “stuck on the island.” Despite Jacob and the Smoke Monster being seen as the highest authorities on the island, they are just some of its victims.

I will go a step further and say that I do not believe that the Losties died on Oceanic 815. Although the island is where the dead go, the living can go there too. Like Orpheus traveling to the Underworld to see his deceased wife Eurydice, the land of the dead is not necessarily closed to the living. This is supported by Christian’s statement that all the people in the church were real and with each other during the most important time in their lives. If the Losties did not survive Oceanic 815, they would have never met Desmond, Penny & Ben--who were in the church. However, this point is immaterial as the bulk of the theory works either way.

Animal Suicide

Readings: "The Nature of Suicide" - Endeavor via Mind Hacks: Do Animals Commit Suicide

Can animals commit suicide? Do they have the capacity for the range of emotions, thought, and behavior that the commonsense notion of suicide requires? The above reading details several historical accounts in which animals seem to deliberately terminate their own existence, some records of which were written millennia ago. People as early as Aristotle have described animals engaging in behaviors (sometimes repeatedly after failed attempts) that resulted in their death. Aristotle's account mentions a horse that leaped off a cliff to its death after it discovered that it was duped to mating with its mother. The paper notes of other such accounts made in the 1800's; for example, a dog that repeatedly jumped into waters and submerged itself; a cat that strangled itself after the death of its kittens; dogs that would starve to death waiting at the grave of their masters.

But how are we to determine whether animals are capable of something as complex as suicide? Is it even possible? While I can't answer these questions, I am lead to believe that, for of 2 main reasons, that animals are simply not capable of it; at least not with the knowledge we currently have at hand. The first of these reasons pertains to the ideas underlying the notion of suicide and how several animals that seemingly engages in suicidal acts simply do not meet the necessary criteria for suicide. The second (and in my opinion, the more important) reason deals with the level of understanding and comprehension that seems to be necessary for a suicidal act and whether such levels can be found outside human cognition.

The examples in the paper are easy to mislabel as suicidal acts. The paper even mentions a (fabled?) story of an animal as simple as a scorpion that stung itself on the back when surrounded by a ring of fire. But I believe that using the word "suicide" to describe such actions is, even if only mildly so, a mistake. The word suicide, as I believe most people will agree, suggests that self-destruct behaviors are planned and intentionally executed with the purpose of terminating one's own existence. The breadth of that statement is rather wide and its constituent elements are many. First, intentions are a requisite to suicide, and intentions in turn require an awareness of the relationship between their actions and consequences.

There are several examples (these are not mentioned in the reading) in which the organisms engage in self-destruct behaviors (or rather, have self-destruct mechanisms) that we would clearly not label as suicide. Take, for example, the giant octopus (reference: BBC's Life series) that ceases to feed once it lays its eggs in order to protect and nurture its eggs. The octopus is biologically designed to release self-destruct hormones soon after it completes its reproductive process. However, my intuition tells me that the octopus is not committing suicide, but only that it was "mechanically" designed to self-destruct. By this, I mean to say that the self-destruct mechanisms are independent of conscious thought (a requisite for the act of suicide) and absent of any intentions (lest you say the act of reproducing entails the act of suicide, which would then require that the organism is cognizant of the fact that reproduction and death are one in the same; not likely in my opinion). Also, consider another organism: the Japanese foliage spider whose young often feed off of the mother (quite literally) before leaving their nests. Would you say that the mother committed suicide by allowing herself to be devoured by her young? Or is this merely an evolutionary mechanism to promote the survival of her offspring? It seems clear, to me anyway, that it's not suicide as they simply do not have the capacity for it (though, to be clear, that is not to say that they don't have the capacity to self-destruct).

Note: The octopus is especially interesting, as they have proved to be highly intelligent organisms. They have been found to be extremely adept at manipulating their environments: something that many consider a hallmark of intelligence. They even distinguish between HD and SD TV's (or rather, they are not fooled by SD TV's).

But the second reason, I think, is a much more compelling one. In the case of suicide, not only must an organism be capable of having intentions behind their behaviors, it must also be capable of understanding the consequences of their behaviors; namely, they must comprehend that the goal of their actions is to terminate their very own existence. For this, I think, a sense of self is necessary. Such a concept is difficult to articulate, so I'm simply going by my own intuitions on the matter. Some animals may have this, such as dolphins and certain primates. And the only scientific test of such a sense that I know if is the mirror test, and while it's far from a perfect test that reveals whether an animal has a sense of self, only a few animals can pass this test.

Chiasmus

"Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country" - President J.F.K.

"Fuck the state pen, fuck ho's at Penn State" - Notorious B.I.G.

Chiasmus is a literary technique for structuring sentences in which two or more clauses are switched. Chiasmus are memorable and tend to stick in the listener's head. They are often employed for non-nonsense advice and folk sayings, like "when the going gets tough, the tough get going" and "what counts isn't the size of the dog in the fight — it's the size of the fight in the dog."

The structure of chiasmus is A B B A. Although usually the letters correspond to words, they can also refer to sounds as in "I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy." Chaismus can also be achieved by reversing the meaning of clauses without changing the word order as in "never kiss a fool or let a kiss fool you."

Why are we Alive?

Any man has the capacity to end his life. Yet few do. So the answer to "why are we alive?" is relatively simple: because we choose to live. Explaining why we choose to live is more complicated. In Thoughts on the Nature of Intelligence, I suggested that the universe is guiding us towards a certain direction. The rules of survival of the fittest favor the strong over weak, the intelligent over stupid. But even more dramatically, survival of the fittest favors beings that want to survive over suicidal ones.

The continuation of life is in some respects inevitable. Even if a species decided that life was miserable and devoid of meaning and chose to kill itself, it would be replaced by a species that did not feel that way (or was incapable of suicide). Our predisposition to prefer life over death is something of a biological illusion, a necessary corollary of the rules of nature. Nature does not fill our lives with joy or meaning, it only provides a biological command to stay alive. It does not give us a purpose but instructs us to survive without one.

Most creatures lack the intelligence to meaningfully consider the point of their existences. Mice scurry about, satisfying one hunger after another--never contemplating why they do what they do. Socrates wrote, "the unexamined life is not worth living.” I do not know if he is right. I refrain from passing judgment on the quality of life of your average field mouse. I only know that nature does not distinguish between the unexamined and examined life as sharply as Socrates.

Thoughts on the Nature of Intelligence

It is easy to conceive of a universe without anything. A universe without matter or space or time. This might not fit our definition of a universe at all, this great singular nothingness might be the absence of a universe. Some scientists believe that before the Big Bang, the universe was like this. They also believe that billions of years from now, our universe will be like this again.

However today we have a universe that is quite unlike this. Our universe, by luck or design, is full of matter. And once you have a universe full of matter, it is inevitable that things will happen to it. Survival of the fittest is used to explain the evolution of life--but its principles could be applied to inanimate life as well. Atoms that bond with each other to form molecules may be more likely to endure than solitary atoms. Particularly strong molecule configurations are more likely to form and endure than weaker ones. Eventually you will have planets and stars, brimming with oceans and rocks. The rules of physics inevitably favor some configurations of matter over others. In this sense, the universe itself guides inanimate matter into order.

The line between the animate and inanimate is not always clear. In many ways, a tree might have more in common with a rock than a primate. If we try and imagine a tree's thought process, we imagine like a rock it has none. The crucial difference between the two is that a tree is able to react to its environment in a way a rock cannot. The tree grows toward sunlight. It will store water in a drought. On some very basic level, the tree seems to have a brain. Or at least some internal process guiding it one way and not another.

I could argue that a mountain is guided in a similiar way. Like a tree that 'grows' towards the sun, a mountain might build up on the side away from the wind. But life is fundamentally different from the inanimate--and it becomes more obvious with more sophisticated forms of life (like mammals). That crucial difference is intelligence.

Intelligence allows configurations of matter to actively participate in their own survival. It seems inevitable that our universe favors intelligent life. In the war of survival of the fittest, an object that can stand up and move away from danger (say a tsunami) will do better than a stationary one. Likewise an object that can dig into the earth to stay put in a good place (like a tree's roots) will do better than one that floats around with every breeze.

The universe favors the strong to the weak, the enduring to the fleeting. The rules of physics are a powerful engine which guides development in certain ways. That engine guides all things towards a certain order: it produces solar systems and star, which produce life, which in turn has produced intelligence.

Godfellas

Guernica

Picasso's Guernica depicts the bombing of the Basque town by the same name by German planes causing widespread destruction and civilian deaths during the Spanish Civil War. The year is 1937 and World War II is looming in the horizon. Picasso shows us the chaos of the attack. Guernica is about the tragedies of war and the suffering it inflicts upon individuals, particularly innocent civilians. This work has gained a monumental status, becoming a perpetual reminder of the tragedies of war and a call for peace.

Technically, Guernica is a triumph of cubist linework. All the figures blend into eachother. Finding where one ends and the next begin adds much complexity to this painting. Searching for answers is a theme of this work reflected in the content of the painting. For the sake of highlighting the composition, I have colored in the figures to identify them.


On the far left in orange is a bull. In the center in red is a horse. On top, in yellow, is a sun/eye/lightbulb. The remaining six figures are all people in various states of unrest. The man in green on the bottom is dead. On the left, the pink woman clutches a dead infant (in blue). On the right we see a burning building and a person trapped inside it (the light green figure). Two people (in purple and blue) look on in curiosity and horror.

The purple person on top showcase Picasso's abstract minimalist style. Only the face and arm are shown but it is enough for someone to recognize him as a person. Picasso only gives our brain the bare minimum we need to register figures. He conceals as much as he reveal with every line. His impossible geometry hides many secrets. The horse, which initially appears to be trampling the man, has in fact been injured and we can see it collapsing on its right knee. The dead green man is a casualty of armed conflict--he holds a broken sword in his right hand (highlighted in yellow). Despite Guernia depicting war, it carries a powerful non-violence message. Hidden in the background flies a dove (between the bull and horse).

Reflections on Moral Luck

This is a follow up to Moral Luck

I find the idea of Moral Luck both compelling and flawed. It is a central to our moral system that people are accountable for intents and not results. It is oft said that the difference between attempted murder and murder is ‘bad aim.’ The moral value of an action (say, throwing a penny off the empire state building) is equal regardless of whether the penny hits just concrete or kills a person. For unintended harms like this, it helps to consider the moral value of the action as a statistical average of possible outcomes.

It is necessary to separate one’s moral standing form the public perception of one’s moral standing. The difference between the penny dropper who kills someone and the one who doesn’t is the same as the murderer who gets caught and the one who doesn't—both their moral standings are tarnished. Likewise the attempted murderer, the successful murderer and the murderer who go undetected are all equally culpable. Man’s limited powers of observation means that our perceptions of others’ culpabilities will never fully capture a God’s eye view.

But the problem of Moral Luck goes deeper than this. David Enoch writes, “While we should all feel bad for the fate of the injured pedestrian, you [as an agent of the accident], it seems, should feel that extra bit of agent-regret.” If I hit someone with the penny, I now have an obligation to apologize, compensate them, etc. or I am immoral whereas the man who didn’t hit anyone can do nothing and be no more morally culpable.

In writing on moral luck, Thomas Nagel identified three varieties of it: (1) resultant moral luck, (2) circumstantial moral luck and (3) constitutive moral luck. Resultant moral luck concerns the consequences of actions. Both penny droppers were affected by resultant moral luck in that a particular action turned out two different ways: in one situation, a person appeared below; in the other, one did not. Circumstantial moral luck concerns the surroundings of the moral agent. Consider Nazi followers in Hitler's Germany. They are worthy of moral blame for committing morally reprehensible deeds or failing to oppose them. But, if those people had been moved to another country in 1929, away from the coming hostilities, it is quite possible that they would have led very different lives, and we could not assign the same amount of moral blame to them. Constitutive moral luck concerns the personal character of a moral agent. It refers to the role that education, upbringing, genes and other largely uncontrollable influences shape personality. For example, moral blame is assigned to an individual for being extremely selfish, even though that selfishness is due at least in part to external environmental effects.

In my mind, Enoch’s account of agent-regret can simply be seen as an example of circumstantial moral luck. Enoch himself provided an example of circumstantial moral luck creating different obligations for otherwise similar situated people: consider two people who would not give a dime to charity, one lives in a poor community, the other lives in an affluent one. One has a duty to give and fails; the other never encounters such a duty. You could also say that whether someone was or wasn't under the penny is circumstantial. If we are to vanquish moral luck, our theory must be durable enough to explain all three varieties of the phenomenon.

Circumstance plays a large role in assessing culpability. Consider two judges who would both accept a bribe: one is never offered a bribe and retires 'uncorrupt' whereas the other constantly accepts bribes. To push ‘luck’ out of our moral system, we must say both are equally culpable. But for this to be so, culpability cannot be based on their actions or even their results—it's must be because of their underlying predisposition. There is a special significance to bad decisions produced by underlying character flaws. There's an important temporal element here: one cannot look at predispositions over a lifetime, you can only consider a snapshot and determine what moral failings it demonstrates. Theoretically, anyone who "if they were a judge, would accept a bribe" is as guilty as the judge who actually does.

However, whenever we push moral luck out of one part of the system, it just seems to pop up somewhere else. Once we're looking at snapshots of predispositions, we must consider constitutive moral luck. Whatever predisposition one has is just luck of the draw. Their predisposition is just a single point on a distribution of possible moral attitudes. I could say that people are responsible for their predispositions; certainly the law asks people to change their predispositions on occasion . However this feel unsatisfactory, as holding one accountable for their predisposition is tantamount to holding them liable for being born a certain way or to certain parents.

Since we've already established that predispositions change over time, perhaps morality lays in guiding how one’s predisposition changes. However, by the same token, isn’t that 'guidance' guided by one’s predisposition? We are treading close to a nature/nurture debate, which is a debate that morality doesn’t exist in, because one is not 'responsible' for either their nature or their nurture. For now, let us just say that it is possible that there is enough ‘wiggle room’ in the process of shaping our evolving predispositions that classical, luck-free morality might continue to exist.

Qui-God Jinn

This strip explores omnipresence--being everywhere simultaneously means you're in no one specific place. God's manifestation is just an illusion for the audience. Thus his avatar doesn't have the same properties as a functioning body. God's perspective is not limited to his body nor are his senses pegged to them.

God Will Hunting

The pregnant pause is a staple of 4 panel comics. In the host's head, he's thinking, "Yes, that sounds right" "No" "Maybe" "Why's asking me? he should know!" "Damn I should eat a mentos and hope to stumble upon a clear solution." In the end, he's sore from his defeat by God so starts getting rude.

Lord of Lords

Since the 4th Wall was broken last strip, the gloves are off. God is no longer limited by the rules and the host responds by citing his own super-4th wall power over the strip. I like God's speech in the third panel, it feels like an Old Testament style raw display of power.

Breaking the 4th Wall

The fourth wall refers to the imaginary "wall" at the front of the stage through which the audience sees the action in the world of the play. The term refers to the imaginary boundary between any fictional work and its audience. In this cartoon it also refers literally to the four walls that make up a single panel of the strip. God manages to move the immovable rock not by lifting it but pulling out the ground from right under it by altering the structure of the cartoon itself.

the Zeus Method

The bolt is a creative and convenient little solution to the rock problem. Instead of moving it, God takes a hammer to it. Although, lightning has appeared previously as a manifestation of God's emotions, this is the first time we see God's lightning powers put to use. I suppose technically he controls all the elements but lightning seems to be his tool of choice.

The God, the Bad & the Ugly

In this strip I experiment with different color backgrounds. I like how the red in the third panel augments the frustration and futility, kind of like a red stop sign. The Man vs. Logic logo on top of the site comes from the second panel, which is one of my favorite actions shots of God. He just looks so into it.

God Rocks!

This strip begins the paradox of the stone storyline, which explores the nature of omnipotence. Asking God to create an immovable rock means creating two things—an ability, and also a weakness. Whether God can or cannot create the rock, He would no longer be omnipotent because He has a weakness, when the definition of omnipotence is not having a weakness.

God Old Boy

This interview explores God's ability to do the impossible, like divide by zero or add two plus two and get five. The final panel is meant to show a creative solution to a seemingly impossible problem by creating a sort of non-Euclidean shape that is both square and triangle. The question still remains though, could God divide by zero? tune in next week! (no, not really)

War

War bring out some of the most profound parts of human nature. It shows man at his best and worst, often in the same action. I have been watching The Pacific lately; it is a truly incredible miniseries. Much attention is paid to the indomitable will of the Japanese in combat. In the first episode, an injured Japanese soldier calls for help and two American medics come to him. The solder detonates a grenade, killing himself and the two medics. He could have saved his own life but instead he choose to take out two Americans. This pattern is repeated over the course of the show, as Japanese troops choose to sacrifice their own life to take out one or two Americans. Perhaps the most famous example of this strategy is the kamikaze pilots of WWII.

To the Americans, this strategy is both alien and monstrous. Their combatants have abandoned their own hopes of survival out spite. As Leckie writes in a letter home, "The jungle holds both beauty and terror in its depths, the most terrible of which is man. . . There are things that men can do to each other that are sobering to the soul." It is easy to see the monstrosity of the suicide attacker: they vehemently choose death over life. Their actions could be seen as those of a sociopath; however even sociopaths are usually deterred by self-interest. Perhaps the Devil is a better comparison, since he is said to care only about how much harm he causes other and is reckless to the costs of his actions even to himself.

However, self sacrifice is typically associated with the most noble of man's endeavors. And perhaps a noble motive explains the Japanese suicide attacks as well. Whatever is driving them, it is certainly not self-interest. They believe that their actions will keep their comrades safe or will decisively lead to a victory in the war. It is easy to understand how the men who the Americans feared as representing the most monstrous and spiteful aspects of human nature could represent the most heroic and noble aspects of it too. Therein lies what makes war so compelling--it reveals the best and worst sides of man's nature, often in a single act.

Interview with God

God shows off his impressive knowledge of pi

In Defense of Gossip

This is a response to In Defense of Jesse James by John DeVore. In case you don't feel like reading DeVore's piece, it can be summarized as follows:
- "Moral vigilantism" is bad
- "He who points a finger has three pointed back at him"
- "Leave Jesse James alone!"

Although I think DeVore's article is very well written, I disagree with him on basically every point. I think that public spectacle, for lack of a better term, is a good thing. Public spectacle is beneficial for the same reason as greek plays. It shows our morality. It allows us a society, to decide what our standards are and sends a visible message to the rest of the society on what is permissible and what's not. There are a lot of cultures that do the opposite. In Korea, if a man cheats and the wife says anything; she's the one shunned. Silence is valued over monogamy. What's the result? Men cheat, and women suck it up or are punished. Make no mistake about it, silence favors the man.

So let the world know. Let them vent, let them threaten and point fingers. Maybe it'll keep some other man to control his impulses. Keep some other family together. Some men will always cheat, some never will--but most men are somewhere in between those two poles and society can sway them one way or another. This is precisely why we need the public drama of Jesse James to play out to show the consequences. I'd like to think that most people, men and women, look at Jesse James and think, "what a poor decision." Any maybe some man will consider that the costs of an affair may far outpace the benefits.

I think it's important that people recognize social reprecussions as one of the consequences of cheating. People LIKE you less. The tragedy of the Tiger Woods story is that despite running around town with every woman with a pulse, he's no less of a golfer. But Jesse James is an entertainer--he makes his money off a profession that is taste-based. There's a lesson to be learned there. Personally, I'm interested in seeing the rehabilitation aspect, "can these guys stop cheating now?" or will they just get better at covering their tracks? or neither? That's important for people to get a sense of, in case they should ever catch a cheating spouse. For every Jesse James or Tiger Woods, there's a million non-celebrity cheaters you don't hear about. Not to mention, a million small-town wives, who I hope that hearing these stories gives them a sense that they're not alone and maybe helps them find the strength to leave a bad relationship.

Interview with God

Moral Luck

Moral luck is a phenomenon whereby an agent is assigned moral blame or praise for an action or its consequences even though it is clear that said agent did not have full control over either the action or its consequences. This problem is perhaps best illustrated by an example that many moral luck philosophers employ – that of a traffic accident.

There are two people driving cars, Driver A, and Driver B. They are alike in every way. Driver A is driving down a road, and, in a second of inattention, runs a red light as an old lady is crossing the street. Driver A slams the brakes, swerves, in short, does everything to try to avoid hitting the woman – alas, he hits the woman and kills her. Driver B, in the meantime, also runs a red light, but since no woman is crossing, he gets a traffic ticket, but nothing more.

If a bystander were asked to morally evaluate Drivers A and B, there is very good reason to expect him to say that Driver A is due more moral blame than Driver B. After all, her course of action resulted in a death, whereas the course of action taken by Driver B was quite uneventful. However, there are absolutely no differences in the controllable actions performed by Drivers A and B. The only disparity is that in the case of Driver A, an external uncontrollable event occurred, whereas it did not in the case of Driver B. The external uncontrollable event, of course, is the woman crossing the street. In other words, there is no difference at all in what the two of them could have done – however, one seems clearly more to blame than the other.

This is the problem of moral luck. If it is given that moral responsibility should only be relevant when the agent voluntarily performed or failed to perform some action, Drivers A and B should be blamed equally, or praised equally, as may be the case. At the same time, this is at least intuitively problematic, as – whatever the external circumstances are – one situation resulted in an unfortunate death, and the other did not.

Interview with God with Conan O'Brien

Interview with God 12

Interview with Edward Cullen

No, your Sink doesn't Drain Clockwise based on Hemisphere

This is a myth in need of busting. The erroneous bit of folk wisdom says that water always drains in a clockwise direction in the Southern Hemisphere, and in a counterclockwise direction in the Northern Hemisphere. The explanation is the fabled Coriolis effect. The Coriolis effect explains why big things such as hurricanes rotate in a clockwise direction in the Southern Hemisphere and counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere. However, when you get down to small phenomena such as the water draining out of your bathtub, the Coriolis effect is insignificant.

This was demonstrated in 1962 by Ascher Shapiro, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Shapiro filled a circular tank six feet in diameter and six inches high in such a way that the water swirled in a clockwise direction. (The Coriolis forces in the Northern Hemisphere act in a counterclockwise direction.) Shapiro covered the tank with a plastic sheet, kept the temperature constant, and waited for two hours hours. When he pulled the plug, the water went down the drain clockwise, presumably because it still retained some clockwise motion from filling.

On the other hand, if Shapiro pulled the plug after waiting a full 24 hours, the draining water spiraled counterclockwise, indicating that the motion from filling had subsided enough for the Coriolis effect to take over. When the plug was pulled after four to five hours, the water started draining clockwise, then gradually slowed down and finally started swirling in the opposite direction. Needless to say, most people do not wait 24 hours (or even 4-5 hours) to drain a sink. Hence the influence of the Coriolis effect may be safely described as slight to insignificant.

Interview 11

Interview 10

Interview 9

Grim Trigger

Grim trigger is a strategy in game theory for a repeated game, such as an iterated prisoner's dilemma. Initially, a player using grim trigger will cooperate, but as soon as the opponent defects (thus satisfying the trigger condition), the player using grim trigger will defect for the remainder of the iterated game. Since a single defect by the opponent triggers defection forever, grim trigger is the most strictly unforgiving of strategies in an iterated game.

To employ a grim trigger strategy effectively, it is important that the player communicate their intentions before the first defection takes place. Once a defection occurs, cooperation cannot be restored. 'Grim Trigger' is essentially the nuclear weapon of strategies--it threatens mutual destruction to ensure cooperation and is therefore a more effective threat than tactic. To successfully force cooperation using a 'grim trigger' strategy is it important that opponents believe in the credibility of your commitment to the strategy--whether its true or not.

More Interview!

Evolutionary Ethics

American evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers believes that moral emotions are based on the principle of reciprocal altruism. His theory posits the different emotions have different reciprocal effects. Sympathy prompts a person to offer the first favor, particularly to someone in need for whom the help would go the furthest. Anger protects a person against cheaters who accept a favor without reciprocating, by making him want to punish the ingrate or sever the relationship. Gratitude impels a beneficiary to reward those who helped him in the past. Finally, guilt prompts a cheater who is in danger of being found out, by making them want to repair the relationship by redressing the misdeed. As well, guilty feelings encourage a cheater who has been caught to advertise or promise that he will behave better in the future.

To understand how evolution promotes ethics, we must consider the perspective not of the individual but of a gene. In particular, when organisms act altruistically, against their individual interests (in the sense of health, safety or personal reproduction) to help related organisms reproduce, can be explained as gene sets "helping" copies of themselves (or sequences with the same phenotypic effect) in other bodies to replicate. Interestingly, the "selfish" actions of genes lead to unselfish actions by organisms.

Interview with Tony the Tiger

Will LHC Kill us All?

You have probably heard rumblings about the sci-fi dangers of the Large Hadron Collider, but didn’t know what they were about. Well, let me break it down for you:

A strangelet is a hypothetical particle that has an up quark, a down quark, and a strange quark — or at least equal numbers of them in that ratio. The worry is that the LHC will create a strangelet in one of its experiments. If a strangelet comes in contact with a lump of ordinary matter such as Earth, it could convert the ordinary matter to strange matter.

This doomsday scenario is as follows: one strangelet hits a nucleus, catalyzing its immediate conversion to strange matter. This liberates energy, producing a larger, more stable strangelet, which in turn hits another nucleus, catalyzing its conversion to strange matter. In the end, all the nuclei of all the atoms of Earth are converted, and Earth is reduced to a hot, large lump of strange matter.

Interview 7

Interview 6

Interview 5

Interview 4

Interview 3

Interview 2

Interview 1

Come back tomorrow for part II of the interview!

Anomy: Part III

This is the conclusion of Anomy: An Epic Poem in Three Parts

Anomy means a violation of divine law. A related term, anomie, is associated with sociologist Émile Durkheim, who characterizes it as the loosening of moral values which leads to social alienation and increased rates of suicide. The term 'anomy' had been used for at least three centuries before Durkheim to mean disregard for divine law. It often described anything or anyone against or outside the law, or a condition where the current laws were not applied resulting in a state of lawlessness.

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Eden is a green sea of seeds,

Overrun with fruits and leaves.

With every step, flowers bloom;

If you pick up soil, it isn’t long

Till you hold a plant in your palm

It is so fertile in Nature’s womb !

Red strawberries kiss the ground,

Oranges and tangerines abound

Next to yellow melons and pineapple,

Blueberries bloom as far as I can see,

Alongside raspberry and green kiwi

But nowhere could I find an apple.

I wandered through this lush maze

For so long I lost count of days

Eventually, by chance I did stumble

Upon a clear dell in the bramble

And there stood the colossal tree of life !

Its’ branches reach heaven and roots reach hell

And apples hang where its shadow fell

And I grabbed one and took a bite !

It taste sweeter than any food ever

And with this nibble, I'll live forever.

But in Eden, rebels have no place

And we who sin cannot stay

So God showed me the door.

My destination is civilization

To celebrate my transformation

And enjoy the earth for ever more.

Time is on my side, yes, it is

I live alongside all my kids

But I do not age with any generation

I’ve now lived a million years

and lingered on beyond my peers

I’ve even outlasted many a nation.

I bought a chess board one day,

And for twelve thousand years I played

Until I mastered the game;

I know every configuration of the board

But I must confess I have grown bored

And no longer want to play.

Though I don’t need sleep to survive,

I often slumber for years at a time;

I have for so long been alive.

On occasion I try to end my life

But when flesh fails, the apple provides

And my body will revive.

Man’s will to survive is a curiosity;

That now feels very strange to me.

I’m eons older than Methusaleh

And can’t wait till kingdom come;

It’s long past time I left the stage.

They say good comes to those who wait

But I now see no potential in my fate

For time itself has become my cage.

There is nowhere that I can flee

My endless sentence of apathy.

I pray God play my enemy;

And with his might, smite me

But He casts a blind eye to we

Who have committed anomy.