Genius

fitting vs fortune --> In fact

2011-01-03T22:45:00.000-08:00

What if at the limit they remove the causality between beliefs and actions?

So they do everything fortunate - acording to your moral theory (hedonism, concequentialism...) however the internal life is fitting and epiphenominal.

unlikely/weird - but we are talking about an hypothetical ideal.

utilitarianism

2011-01-03T21:43:00.000-08:00

Richard looks at defending utilitarianism. He starts off below

...in case of ethics, we should likewise distinguish 'morally fortunate' from 'morally fitting' character. The fortunate character is that which serves to promote the good. The fitting character is that which embodies an orientation towards the good. This is the sense in which someone might have "good intentions", even if the intention has bad consequences, and so is unfortunate. Talk of "virtuous" character also plausibly concerns the 'fitting' mode of evaluation.
...
Critics of consequentialism often object to how a consequentialist agent would (allegedly) think. They claim that the consequentialist agent is, in some sense, a bad character. Defenders of consequentialism typically dismiss such objections by citing the distinction between 'criteria of rightness' and 'decision procedures'. (Utility provides the criterion that determines the moral status of an act; it's a further question whether agents ought to attempt to calculate utilities themselves.) This is not entirely satisfactory.

This is a good and useful seperation (not entirely new of course but nothing is)

Interestingly in the comments on the thread I see from X. Trapnel

I don't see any reason to think that "being a consequentialist just means rejecting" the 'fitting' mode of evaluation. (That would certainly be a surprise to readers of Parfit's Reasons and Persons.) It merely means that given a choice between being fitting or fortunate, we should prefer the latter.

Richards response is
I don't see any reason to think that "being a consequentialist just means rejecting" the 'fitting' mode of evaluation. (That would certainly be a surprise to readers of Parfit's Reasons and Persons.) It merely means that given a choice between being fitting or fortunate, we should prefer the latter.

no more comments after this but I take that as Richard conceding the whole debate at least for a normal utilitarian... why?

Well because consequentialism says somthing about almost everything. it is the classic objection to utilitarianism that it is hugely demanding becuase every action influences an almost infinite number of future actions. Well this is also relevant here because fortunate and fitting overlap in EVERY case. If you prefer any degree of fortunate over any degree of fitting then you have no regard for fitting.
----

Also possible I suppose is an ideal agent where their desires etc are completely decoupled for their actions. Ie that their having a friend or enemy has absolutly no influence on what they do in regard to that person. Like a person in your brain watching the world operate according to utilitarian rules. I suppose that sounds like some sort of torture for this fellow but I also envisage the minor fix (in fact i think this would be natural) that they dont care about the fact that there is a discontect between their desires and actions.

the Zombie Argument

2011-01-02T11:11:00.000-08:00

In Refuting the Zombie Argument, part II screw plato looks at the zombie argument.

As occurs in most dualist debates - He argues "faith in our intuition is unjustified" in response to the dualists apparent over confidence in the value of their intuitions. The dualists response to this was "we have nothing else so intuition is some evidence".

So to look into this let's look at how intuition works.

from wikipedia "The term intuition is used to describe thoughts and preferences that come to mind quickly and without much reflection"

These thoughts are defined only by that they are not intermediated by the rational format. In this sense thy by their nature are inferior IF they include only the same set of data - but often this will not be the case. So again from wikipedia

"The reliability of one's intuition depends greatly on past knowledge and occurrences in a specific area. For example, someone who has had more experiences with children will tend to have a better instinct or intuition about what they should do in certain situations with them."

Intuition is a way for your brain to sift through experience without having to formally state what it is doing and because of that it can sift through more information faster but is more prome to error.

There are certain situations where intuition would add value - there is a very complex set of facts that you know of but are unable to formalize at that particular moment. What you can bring to this problem is a set of vague rules that were created off the back of those facts, then you find that those vague rules dont fit with the hypothesis.

So can we say that this is likely to be the case?

a) if you are not really concentrating on resolving the problem
b) you have reason to believe there is a lot of evidence available that you can access in theory but not directly.

The problem is a is false and for b the dualists have not proposed specifically what that evidence is or why they expect it to be there - in fact in the case of epiphenominalism it can't exist (because in epiphenominalism qualia have no effect on the arguments you make so they can't create evidence that would lead to an argument).

philosophy

2011-01-01T15:13:00.000-08:00

from philosophy etc roundup.

False Dichotomies, Deism, and Religious Bundles highlights a very annoying thing that ones sees often in politics. Bundeling of ideas is a classic tool to manipulate people. So I like the principle - and yet in practice most people do find themselves making a decision of tribal affiliation - somthing an aloof philisopher might not understand but for the average joe it is usually do I belong to the christian tribe or the athiest tribe. then where do I fit within that tribe. So I understand the position even if I agree with richard it is to a large extent irrational.

In Giving What We Can section he adresses charity - which I am usually pretty cynical of (vs public programmes) but in the context of givewell this is a good idea. The issue this raises for me is how the UN can be so stupid as to leave so much low hanging fruit as givewell is able to find. Maybe we should spend some of our time trying to fix that system.

He covers utilitarianism - nothing much to disagree with here for a utilitarian, except that as usual I dont see the moral problems that he strugles to defend utilitarianism from as having much prima face value in the first place.

Non-Physical Questions asks "Would you still be conscious if your neurons were replaced by (functionally identical) silicon chips?" and then infers from this
"But clearly there is something more we can wonder about. So if there's a substantial fact we remain ignorant of, it must concern a matter over and above the physical facts."

Well tht doesnt seem odd to me - I'd say Block's "Chinese Nation" and the silicon brain are in theory (although in practice it may be ridiculous/impossible) concious. This should be automatic for a functionalist which I believe richard is supposed to be (although I counld be mistaken). So my sugestion is that I have nothing to wonder about and the argument falls flat...

the standard on 2010

2010-12-31T21:16:00.000-08:00

" Well 2010 has been a year for some political surprises such as Brown’s landslide victory over Banks "

Um to who was that a surprise? It is like if you combined germany france and italy and were surprised that the german candidate won. Simply he was hte mayor of the largest area, he was also standing against a candidate who is very poloarizing and so inspite of his making a total arse of himself, people hated banks more than they hated him.

Why do I bring this one up? well it jsut annoyes me when the media sells a election as a surprise. they either do it to pretend that their story is interesting - or they do it to make their victory look more like a swing to the left/right and to ppaint themselves as winners.

I suppose both are true here. I wish that the media would just say the truth and emphasise the most relevant facts.

Various from no rightturn

2010-12-31T20:21:00.001-08:00

Unsuppressed: Urewera 18 to be denied jury trial

1) I dont see why that would have been supressed so I agree with NRT there.
BUT
2) I dont agree at all with this
"Juries aren't just a fundamental protection for the accused, the ultimate check on abuses of state power - they are also the primary signifier of a fair trial in this country."
In fact I think the opposite is true. Juries are the way to get an unfair trial - if that is what you want. A lawyer would probably advise you to go for a jury trial if he figured the facts didn't support you If they did and were complicated he would suggest you go for a judge and if they do and they are simple it doesn't matter much.

If the public "just doesn't believe that." then there is a much greater good to be resolved here - one that will be harmed if one validates the belief that judges are unreliable by denying them this case based on them being unreliable. this is an issue even if juries are indeed better for some reason because as long as you plan to use judges for anythign you dont want to undermine the publics respect for them on anything other than the pure facts.

Various from Norightturn

2010-12-31T20:09:00.000-08:00

First on the recent news story that the NZ soldiers were involved in a raid where civilians were killed

"So, can the NZ SAS soldiers apparently responsible for killing two civilians in a botched raid in Kabul on Friday be prosecuted? Not by the Afghans, they can't. The SAS in Afghanistan are working as part of the "International Security Assistance Force", and their presence there is covered by a one-sided Military Technical Agreement [DOC] imposed on the provisional government of Afghanistan by their occupiers. "

1) If the suggestion is that NZ should abide by standard local laws that would probably rule out any intervention like peace keeping in East Timor.

Well... I am opposed to that sort ofthing (as well as our presence in afganistain... but simply military should only be involved in very special cases and when it is that sort of special case they will obviously require special laws to act.

2) From what I have heard (and i could be wrong) the case in question is one of poor intelligence (which is of course sometimes wrong) resulting in the soldiers entering a building where some civilians with machine guns failed to hear them identifying themselves (or figured it was just a standard trick) and opened fire, then the NZders returned fire.

It sounds like more of the fault likes with the intelligence and possibly the civilians who opened fire (even if the latters reaction was to some degree understandable). Of course an investigation can look into that (and that should happen) but prima face I think we are looking in the wrong direction here.

Assange

2010-12-30T22:36:00.000-08:00

Two things I've learnt abut Assange

1) His philosophy regarding Wikileaks is not just the usual conspiracy theory - it is actually quite realistic and intelligent take on the world , and while you might or might not agree
that those with power should use that power to control those without power (ie you might argue that they are smarter and thus will use that power in a good way - for example how we might not want the public of zimbabwae to know that their priminister supported sanctions against their country (even though all the politicians and your average westerner already figured that one out).

2) he is quite an arsehole when it comes to women with scant regard for their safety regarding STD. Probably to the point of being guilty. And I say that from carefully looking at the evidence. *

*That being said I dont think he will be found guilty - this sort of case is damn hard to prove beyond reasonable doubt and the Sweedish authorities would probably in the normal course of events drop the case if he was not who he is.

Political plot or Foolish Journalism

2009-08-14T17:38:00.000-07:00

Apparently a recent survey showed that
As Usual, Public Wants Lower Deficit Without Cutting Spending or Raising Taxes.

As usual its interesting to look at the details. TThis is what they said

"Fifty-six percent of respondents said that they were not willing to pay more in taxes in order to reduce the deficit, and nearly as many said they were not willing for the government to provide fewer services in areas such as health care, education and defense spending."

Now lets use a couple of brain cells and ask ouselves what the likely positions of a thinking person will be.

1) the steriotypical left leaning poor person will say "I dont want to pay more taxes, however the rich should pay more taxes and we should increase services and we should decrease the deficit."
2) the steriotypical right leaning rich individual will say "I dont want to pay more taxes, we should cut services and maybe we should decrease the deficit"
3) a debt tolerant person (particularly in these recession times) "dont increase taxes, dont decrease services dont decrease the deficit

so my simplified survey gets
66% dont raise taxes (on me) to reduce the deficit, and
66% dont reduce services to reduce the deficit
and 66% decrease the deficit

So what does that say? well the individuals may all be quite rational - it is jsut that when there are many options it isnt surprising htat less than 50% will support even the most popular one.

So why the title? well surely the media knows this - and they know how the steriotypical individuals feel so why do they want to eroniously perpetuiate the idea that the public doesn't know what it wants?

Labours recession busting strategy

2009-07-19T23:09:00.000-07:00

Labours newest policy is to offer the unemployment benefit to spouses of people with incomes so high that they would not normally qualify. The Labour party notes how this will efectively act as unemployment insurance and give a little help with paying morgages and such - National and hte media note how this would result in the government paying benefits to very rich couples.

But it seems there is an easy solution here.

What if we adjusted the way the benefit works to force those on the benefit to jump through a few extra hoops. What we are trying to do here is take advantage of the fact that those who dont really need the benefit wont be willing to do much wpork in order to get it. Obvipously if you are the wife of a man on 3 million dollars (as per the example on the TV) you are unlikely to be willing to go downto the local Work and Income every week because it would "cost" more in your time than you get back.

At present I understand there are some requirements to be actively searching for a job as assesed by your caseworker - but they are pretty simple. But what if we added a set of other requirements?

Possibly a requirement to do some sort of charity work if your case worker nominates you.
- in this case you can eliminate the complete non hopers who need lots of supervision or are dangerous by the fact that the caseworker would never nominate them - while including most of the spouses of rich people who might be very useful.

Or Possibly a requiremejnt to take suitable jobs (I believe there is some sort of requirement along these lines but it could be made stricter)

Or just having to report in on how the job search is going constantly, or having to get some sort of budgeting advice or to keep a record regarding how the benefit is being spent

Or even recieving some of that benefit as some sort of food stamp or rental credit

Mostly these are very simple things for a person on a benefit (I was on a benefit a couple of times and there was pleanty of time to do this sort of thing) But probably somthing that would be pretty annoying for a millionare. If the millionare is so determined and stingy to go through all the hoops to get the money then we can either live with it or get far more than value of money back via things like the charity work.

against the knowledge argument

2009-07-11T16:29:00.000-07:00

the knowledge argument is this (taken from Parableman)

Consider a color scientist named Mary who has never seen red. She lived in a black and white environment with special contact lenses all her life, so she'd never seen most colors. Then she went on to learn the neuroscience of color perception. She now knows everything there is to know from science about color perception. She knows what color words apply to which wavelengths of light. She knows what goes on in the brain when people see various colors. But she's never seen red. Then she takes off the contact lenses, and someone gives her a tomato. She now sees red for the first time. Does she learn something? Jackson says she does - what it's like to perceive the color red.

Mary knows every physical fact about color perception.
There's a fact about color perception that Mary learns when she sees red - namely, what it is like to experience seeing that color.
Therefore, there are more than just physical facts (so materialism is false).

I suggest the main intuition tweeked by the mary argument is that mary does not have the brain power to know everything there is to know about experiencing red and to process it at a speed that would give the same feeling as seeing red and that even if she did this activity would occur in a logical part of her brain rather than a visual one so to mary as a whole it would seem different.

Because everyone has these limitations it is hard to imagine mary not having these limitations. But the existance of such limits dont threaten physicalism.

Or more simply we seem very far from being able to imagine "all the physical facts about colour perception". Because we are so far from doing this it seems unclear why we should expect our intuition (sense of implausibility) to be accurate regarding what isn't part of that set.

Zombieophile counter arguments

2009-06-26T12:58:00.000-07:00

1) In an ideal world dualists and physicalists can agree on what is physical and non physical.
And some physicalists do implicitly believe in dualism so it might convince someone.

2) Even if conception is just in a negitive sense this is somthing.

3) We can reject the causal theory of reference.
Maybe intuition and conception have some sort of cross world presence.

4) You don't need to fully concieve of something all you need to do is fail to find contradictions to get (weak) evidence somthing is true.

5) If the trees are fundiemntially identical then there is no issue.

6) science doesn't apply for two reasons, first because this is an a priori question and second because we have reason to believe first person experience is not reducable to third person experience. the only reason why science applies else where is bcause other things are not seperated in this way.
So yes qualia may be weird things indeed but we expect that.

7) any other argument would outweigh such considerations.

Zombie arguments (refined)

2009-06-25T12:46:00.000-07:00

1) dualists and physicalists cant agree on the definitions. Simply - If a physicalist accept a definition of Qualia such that Qualia is non physical he is either debating nonsense (which doesn't threaten physicalism) or he has already surrendered the debate. Therefore The zombie argument never gets off the ground with a real physicalist.
The Zombie argument is simply question begging.

2) The zombie argument uses negitive concievibility but it requires positive concievibility.
For example - You can concieve of a HOLLOW ball in a negitive sense without thinking about the inside of the ball but your conception is not meaningfully different from one of a solid ball. Similarly you can imagine a zombie in the negitive sense but to imagine it in the positive sense would requireconcieving of a first person experience that is hollow but we have no logical acess to others expericence, and regardless it is a straightforward contradiction.
This is the complex form of the simple argument "but what is it like to be a zombie"?

3) Kriple approach - reference and knowledge require us to be causally affected by what is known or referred to (Kripke 1972) if zombies are conceivable, so are epiphenomenalistic worlds. But by the causal theory of reference, epiphenomenalistic worlds are not conceivable; therefore zombies are not conceivable.

Or in more detail - in epiphenominalism there is a wall between qualia and the physical world.
Intuition and the logical part of concieving are things that occur on the physical side and are a result of evolution and experience's refining. If we are to say there is no reason to believe qualia obey any laws (what we use to deflect the science arguments against qualia) then there is no reason to believe intuition and concieving will be any better than random noise in investigating qualia.

In the same way intuition is best for investigating familiar scenarios - of limited use in very unusual scenarios it is completely useless in scenarios where it has no logical acess to the data .

4) Even if it did get off the ground when philosophers claim that zombies are conceivable, they invariably underestimate the task of conception (or imagination), and end up imagining something that violates their own definition (Daniel Dennett).

5) Zombie Philosophers
- Imagine zombie chalmers (pro zombie) and zombie Dennet (anti zombie) arguing about the existence of zombies. what does zombie chalmers mean when he talks about a zombie?
- Well Dualists argue, since our zombie twins, in contrast, have no experiences, their quasi-phenomenal judgments are unjustified and even if qualia have no causal influence on our judgments, their mere presence in the appropriate physical context ensures that our thoughts are about those qualia.

This appears to be like saying that if there is a duplicate of you on mars talking about a tree, and you are talking about a tree, you are talking about the tree on mars.

6) science provides a number of tough questions for zombeophiles if they permit the discussion to begin.
- Most objects in the universe obey laws - why not qualia?
- If qualia dont obey laws why are qualia at all consistent with reality in the ways that they are.
- Are more valid questions raised and unanswered by this? What is the nature of qualia? If we state that it doesn’t obey natural laws what laws do they obey? Ideally can these be documented? What would such a documentation look like?
- why are qualia seem to be so poorly developed as a model.
there are lots of thought experiments seldom done to elaborate on the model - what would happen if you took a trip to zombie world - what if you came back again? what would it be like? what if you steeped halfway into zombie world? what does the answers to that say about the relationship between qualia and matter?
- if you dump causality as important for connecting qualia with eachother you raise issues regarding all sorts of things including your definition of yourself – if someone recreates some pattern that happens to trigger similar qualia somewhere else is that all of a sudden ‘you’?

7) Defensiveness - Most of the argument for ep zombies is extremely defensive, Ie it relies on the burden of proof of concepts like inconcievability lying with the physicalist. If the physicalist was to take that burden he deserves a quid pro quo in terms of credibility.

Regarding the filibuster

2009-05-17T09:58:00.000-07:00

Labour has been utilizing the filibuster against national to block our super city bill -. hte idea of the supercity itself is pretty widely popular although Labour could say they have a popularist position in that they want various unspecified amendments - a nice way to catch everyone who is dissaffected.

Noright turn says
"Tuning in for half an hour tonight, I heard the government vote against requiring the Minister to appoint a woman to the Auckland transitional Authority to represent the region's 700,000 women - and then vote against requiring the ATA's members to actually be from Auckland. Both of these are reasonable, sane amendments - but they weren't National's amendments, and were therefore mindlessly opposed (besides, they'd clash with their plans to appoint 5 dead white male businessmen to run Auckland). "

First - obviously national is going to vote down every bill in the filibuster - they barely have time to vote against them let alone to read them. If Labour wanted National to consider them properly it should have not also submitted the thousand odd committee name changes with them.
Second the old (dead) white man line. First, to any other race that would be surely considered racism but the ironic thing is that this line is so 'on message" for labour that I actually heard this recently in regard to Melissa Lee. Now in case anyone doesn't get the irony there - she is a relitively young (by politician standards) asian female.

Dolan at just left gave us a nice history of the filibuster mentioning it's sue by cato and also by the New democratic party in Canada. He implied Labour hopes to follow in their footsteps. A couple of facts he missed out however

In April 1995 the Ontario new democratic party got 20.6% of the vote
in 1999 after the filibuster they got 12.6%
Cato on the other hand committed suicide (by tearing out his own bowels) after failing to stop Caesar.

Zombie wars

2009-05-13T00:54:00.001-07:00

the zombie wars are well and truely reignighted the following seem to be the main points

1) P and NP should be expanded out so that htey are 'de re" as opposed ot 'de dicto' RB qwould like this to be done to the base facts and RC would prefer it jsut to stop at an arbitrary common moddle ground

Problem is I dont think (and I presume RB would agree) there is any possible meaningful middle ground. Under Reductionism if the "ultimate truthmakers" say Q is impossible so to does any other list of complete facts. that is why knowing that the UT disprove P~Q would be useful.
RC on the other hand would take that as long as there was some tension there between the apparent description at the mid level and the UT description he might get a little intuitive leverage and thus give his argument some sort of 'dialectic effectiveness'.

2) The Zombie argument seems to be stronger when phrased as a reducitonist argument

This might be an illusion of the fact that Richard is a hard core non-reducitonist, but he seems to reject the standard zombie argument which is a interesting development in itself.

To take the metaphore of a war a bit further the argument seems to feature RC retreating from all the usual psoitions and drawing RB to follow him down a narrow path. If the strategy works I suppose you catch the enemy over extended fighthing a battle they didnt expect to fight at the beginning. Dont know if that would happen or not.

Reducitonism (zombies)

2009-05-12T02:57:00.000-07:00

Just a thought I thought i might throw out there....

The basic principle of reductionism is that a complex system is nothing but the sum of its parts, and that an account of it can be reduced to accounts of individual constituents.

Now in one way that seems true - I can say P = all the physical facts of the universe and if that is true P = the universe. If I take this to its extreeme I can say P includes explicitly everything in its definition including atoms etc, or at least in my definition it includes everything I think exists.

But at some other level it seems false to say the universe and the physical facts that make it up are the same - because what I am thinking isn't really identical. 1+1 and 2 are identical, and they should be entirely interchangable in a concversation - ie any where 2 occurs should be jsut the same with (1+1) in it... but they don't quite feel identical.

so what is the difference? well as a scientist might say - it is the level at which I am looking at P. In a sense, the perspective.

So why do I find this interesting? well it is a bit like how I explain first person experience or as zombie philosophers might say "the hard problem" except that it applies to a physicalist view of quantative ones. Ie that first person experience is a required perspective as is the low level analysis (the basic laws of hte universe) and the high level one (the universe). the latter two are far enough apart to give the same sort of feeling of incompatability as the first two and yet in a different sense we know they are compatable.

So lets say i concieve of a planet. I am visualising me seeing the earth from outer space as an astronaught - a perspective that could exist. Now I'll concieve of a molecule - now I'm imagining a model from a text book (because it wouldn't look like that in real life). I might even imagine a molecule as a set of facts like having a certain weight (as if I had some sort of 'weight vision").

If we dont shift the perspective like this then when I imagine a chair and imagine the molecues that make it up I could not tell the difference at all - it would just be a chair. Similarly if I imagine a human sans qualia and a human without using some sort of 'super qualia vision' I can't tell the differnce.

Christine Rankin

2009-05-11T23:34:00.000-07:00

Christine Rankin has been apointed to the families comission. She was also a strong advocate for the repeal of the anti smacking bill. As such Sue bradford argued she was an inapropriate appointment.

I think that Sue may be right but she put her argument badly. She thinks Rankin is wrong because the anti smacking bill is a good thing - but that isa obviously disputed by the other side.

the question I as is, is the families comission supposed to be advocates for children like a union leader is supposed to be an advocate for workers. Right or wrong smacking is primarily alack of a right of the children (right to protection from it). In the same way as an employer might want the right to force employers to work overtime. If a union worker was openly advocating that bosses be able to force staff to work overtime it would be a bit odd to say the least. that would be true EVEN IF it was proven that forcing staff to work overtime was beneficial for them (afterall they get more money). Similar examples exist in law with defence and procecution.

Utilitarianism

2009-05-11T22:49:00.000-07:00

Ruchard Chappel is back on one of my favourite topics utiltiarianism . And as usual he fires off all my "somthing is wrong on the internet" instincts.

he argues that it is bad to ignore higher-order evidence of our own fallibility. Well the confusing thing is that in one sense I cant imagine a utilitarian arguing that you should ignore your own falibility. I get the feeling there is a straw man being bashed with a stick - and to a degree this is supported by the fact that noone seems to comment on these posts - or at least not with substance. Still maybe he just needs to reference someone who does actually believe that you can ignore "higher order evidence" and still be a functional utilitarian.

There are lots of contentious statements in the post that would be tempting to challenge, but in the end that would just get off topic. Maybe if he directed his position at a real person/philosopher he might avoid that issue - but his current line doesnt seem to attract any substantive comments. I hope he's getting that debate somwhere else.

bailout

2008-12-10T21:50:00.000-08:00

I don't, in principle, oppose intervention like positive liberty does (ht by the way), but they have a fair point here.Is the US going to bail out the car makers every year for the next century? because I don't think they will become profitable.
I suggest if there is a bailout the government should consider how to get the USA out of the car business - but I seriously doubt the Democrats will do that - and so I think the bailout will be a failure.

Zimbabwae

2008-12-08T11:08:00.000-08:00

this really pisses me off
apparently the leaders of the world are insisting that Mugabe stand aside, and they are releasing press releases to that effect. What annoys me is that this is probably the same thing they have been saying for the last few years in private if not in public, and after that not working they are now unleashing their ultimate weapon - a piece of paper with some insults on it.
At the bottom the EU adds the note "by the way we are too far away to do anything about it we hope that the south African nations will do something" (fat chance)

If you don't plan on doing anything substantive please just dont say anything - otherwise its jsut using zimbabwae to get extra votes domestically by conning the public into thinking you are "active" on the issue.

Al catch'em sends in Pikachu

2008-11-30T21:16:00.000-08:00

In a desperate attempt to free up the airport in Bangkok and allow them and their families to be reunited, a group of pokemon collectors threw their best Pokemon Pikachu into the PAD protest.
Meanwhile PAD protesters scattered in fear.

Calls of "thunderbolt attack" could be heard as the daring team sped away in a taxi.

thai take on the election in the USA

2008-11-28T17:21:00.001-08:00

http://www.notthenation.com/pages/news/getnews.php?id=637

SEEN IN "NOT THE NATION (THAI)" NEWSPAPER

2008-11-28T16:56:00.000-08:00

LOST. The plot. Last seen somewhere in mid-2005. Please return to once famously easy-going, care-free people of Thailand before it is too late.

Thai protests

2008-11-26T11:06:00.001-08:00

Word on the street is that PAD is drawing support from the south of Thailand, the Muslim states that want independence (and are willing to do stupid things to achieve it) and busing them in to Bangkok as protesters. In that case no wonder they have lots of knives and guns at their protests. If they are offering some sort of deal to those groups I'm sure the Thai people would like to know. Although it is possible that they are just buying their support like they buy the support of so many of the other protesters.

More on situation in thailand

2008-11-26T11:01:00.000-08:00

Thailand's media and foreign news outlets have become key battlegrounds in the country's divisive political conflict.The PAD has repeatedly criticised the foreign media from its stage at Government House — from where proceedings are beamed live to around 10 million viewers of PAD co-leader Sondhi Limthongkul's cable channel ASTV.

The PAD says the foreign media fails to understand Thailand, insists on projecting “Western-style democracy” as the ideal, and has been seduced by former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra who addressed his “friends in the international media” and pointedly remarked that they were more balanced than the Thai media.

Writing on the New Mandala blog, academic Michael Connors of Australia's La Trobe University said that most overseas commentary had “whitewashed so-called democratic pro-Thaksin forces”. But the foreign media has sent reporters to the north and northeast, where there is more support for Thaksin, while the Bangkok-based Thai media remains almost exclusively focused on the capital, where the PAD has most of its support.

That might have something to do with the fact that the foreign media is not the only target of the PAD.

The daily Kom Chad Luk, which is controlled by the Matichon group, was the only local newspaper — apart from the little-read pro-government Prachatouch — to report Crown Princess Sirindhorn's remark in the United States three weeks ago to the effect that the PAD was fighting not to protect the monarchy as claimed, but for “themselves”.

The PAD responded with a call to boycott the Matichon group, and there was a notable silence from the rest of the Thai print media over this attack on one of their own.

The pro-PAD coverage of events by Thailand's mainstream print media led respected media analyst Supinya Klangnarong to call the current atmosphere one of “fear and uncertainty”.

Also at the FCCT discussion, Supinya noted that it was the foreign media which many Thais had come to rely on for balanced news, while at home “it is very difficult to criticise the PAD, or even the government”. “Under Thaksin, there was fear and self-censorship. Now there is institutionalised censorship on sensitive issues.”

— The Straits Times --

Mortgage defaults in Australia worsen

2008-11-26T10:55:00.000-08:00

Mortgage defaults in Australia are worsening and becoming more widespread. According to a new report by ratings agency, Fitch Ratings, Perth is suffering as property prices fall there. The ABC reports the pain is being felt in Sydney's affluent eastern suburbs for the first time.
..............

It's just going to get worse....

Thailand vs PAD

2008-11-25T21:58:00.000-08:00

the PAD really needs to be put in a room with the door locked and slapped until they see sense.

Now they have taken over the airport, closing the huge pipeline for money to come into the country and thus generally inflicting harm on the country as a whole. Whilst there they appear to have thrown a bomb at themselves (probably some stupid over excited protester) and thus don't want the police to investigate the incident since it would show how stupid some of their supporters are. Meanwhile they cost thousands of thai workers their jobs by disrupting trade at the worst possible time (during hte crisis and coming up to christmas).

The PAD actually want to set up a Fascist state in Thailand, where the brown shirts (which just happen to wear yellow this time) force the democratic government to put in place a government made of appointed members appointed by various interest groups. Ironically it is both not democratic and also highly susceptible to corruption. sure you don't get people buying the votes of poor people with policy and cash (as thaksin did) but that is because you dont need to bribe them, the corrupt people have direct control of the government!

The PAD are becoming les popular and if the government can hold out a litle longer maybe the military will step in on their side and kick the remaining protesters out. But how much damage will they have done in the meantime....

I also have some advise for tourists - dont worry aobut the protests - the protesters wont target foreigners and if you stay away from the protest sites you wil be as safe if not safer than in your home country. it may make traffic really slow so forth, which may be annoying and may cost exta money but safety isn't an issue (as long as you stay away from the guys dressed in yellow, ... no.... it is not a tourist attraction).

w

2008-11-25T10:31:00.000-08:00

Do Merely Possible People Matter?

2008-11-22T14:29:00.000-08:00

Lets say you have a small world with a million people everyone has a small house and there is enough food for everyone.
you have a couple of buttons you can press and you want to know if you are morally obliged to press them

1) the first button immediately creates a million slaves that will make the lives of everyone in the world better but their lives will be miserable.
2) the second button makes half a million people disappear but makes everyone else's life better
3) the third button instantly creates half a million people with average lives at the cost of happiness to the others (they need places to live food etc)

the question is how do you weight the future interests of current people with future people who might or might not exist/continue to exist depending on what buttons you press. I presume most people would choose to press no buttons or press button 3, but neither of those options seems to follow a consistent rule.

I guess Richard would consider pressing button 3 but for an odd reason. Richard argues we DO have reason to bring more good lives into existence, but not for the good of that person but for the good of the world. but that seems silly to me - he is trying to get around allocating value to a non existing person and he does so by adding value to a non existing world? Seems Richard has just confused himself enough to not see the problem remains.

here are a couple even better thought experiments
1) imagine that you have a series of machines that support your brain functions by duplicating them. As time goes by they get more refined until a point where if disc0nected from you they are able to become a independent person. Is it a good thing to create people in this way? does that decision depend on how good a life they would have?
2) imagine a ray gun called the 'never existed ray gun" if you shoot someone with it it doesn't kill them - instead it goes back in time and ensures they never existed. You could thus remove peopel youdont like without 'harming' them in the narrow sense of the word.
3) imagine a gun that if it shoots you changes something small in your past that makes you a fundamentally different person - is it morally bad to use the gun (because it 'kills' real people and replaces them with alternate people.

asking an invalid question again

2008-11-22T14:17:00.000-08:00

Here is another example of how philosophers can ask a question that doesn't have any meaning to a scientist
Richard asks What is the ultimate locus of value, or 'end in itself'?
He proposes either
(1) Each particular individual.
(2) The world as a whole.
So in one formulation of this you might ask “do we make people happy in order to make the world a better place or do we make the world a better place in order to make people happy?”
Well to me this sounds like asking does 1+1=2 or does 2=1+1
If your definition if (2) is the sum of all (1) then the question is equivalent to the one above – and makes just as little sense. If that isn't true then we are saying that there is another factor involved like 1+1+x=(2) but there is no sense to saying there is an ultimate locus.

rational but behave irrationally?

2008-11-21T13:54:00.000-08:00

Is it possible to be rational but behave irrationally?
Well there are two definitions involved in this sentence- one is the definition of the person and the other is the definition of rational. the latter is quite simple although there is a degree to which one might tolerate irrationality without terming a person "irrational" butthe former surprisingly is a bit more complex.
take for example a person addicted to drugs but doing all the right things to stop. Are they irrational drug takers or are they rationally dealing with a drug problem. Well it depends if you take the "addict" part of their brain to be "them". If you take that as obviously being part of them ask yourself what if your irrationality was caused by a disease in your leg or some drugs you got from your doctor or maybe some family members? What if the root of the problem is a decision you made years ago (for example you would have been a better engineer than a doctor but you studied medicine instead of engineering).
Basically the question of 'who am I" is much more complex than many people (esp the links) give it credit.

Zombie stuff

2008-11-21T13:31:00.000-08:00

Richard presents A New Knowledge Argument which apparently strikes him as being really strong...

1. It is a factual question whether you and I experience the same color sensations when looking at an object.
2. This question cannot be settled by any physical information (or scientific inquiry).
3. So there are non-physical facts.

Now there are obviously some questions that cant be settled by physical information, these include things like "what is inside a black hole" or "will the photon go left or right".
In physics we would tend to say, depending on how we want to look at the world "so what? If we can't see the answer that doesn't mean it doesn't exist" or "that shows we are asking the wrong question" (i.e. there is "nothing" in a black hole or the photon goes left in one universe and right in another).

So 3 is a non sequetor and 2 is not something an informed physicalist would deny.

In the comments Michael Vassar raises the issue that
scientific inquiry can ... settle the question of whether Mary and I perceive the same thing when we see red with at least the same level of confidence that it settles the question of whether my perception of "red" today is the same as that of "red" yesterday

But I think there is more to this line of argument. I can propose a bridging law that has no other effect between any two facts or add a factor that has no effect into any process.
meters.
e.g. 1+1+god = 2+god
and that is impossible to disprove.

the point is that if we accept (2) for the reasons Richard wants us to do so then we admit that we cant say much useful using this language because we can never make any sort of useful identity statement because we can never exclude the possibility of a bridging law between the two facts.

Richard counters with the question begging argument that this situation is different "because third-personal inquiry isn't even heading in the right direction." Oh come on...

he then seems to summarize much of physicalism with
he only response I can immediately think of is the 'old fact new guise' response, which claims that the phenomenal fact mentioned in #1 is actually identical to some physical fact, albeit in a new (hence unrecognized) guise. But which physical fact is it? I find this claim very mysterious.

but to claim that colour can be represented in a different way that can be tied to other facts in the universe (and thus described in different terms) is basically what physicalism is. - he seems to be saying "I find physicalism mysterious" well... so what?

Meanwhile Richard and Anton are debating physicalism over here

Hmm.... I obviously think about zombies to much...

Selling papers

2008-11-11T10:33:00.000-08:00

I wish the media would stop using terms like "the greens LASHED OUT at national's plans" or "labour REFUTED national's claims"

The problem is that the media seems to pick these terms at random and yet they have very different connotations. In fact the later statement is usually untrue. To me refute means you have unambiguously proven incorrect, but generally the media uses it to mean "they presented a counter argument". And in the "lashed out" case the politicians probably just released to the media a letter explaining some issues. Hardly the imagery 'lashed out' presents.

Why not just say - Labour presented its counter arguments or the greens explained their issues with national's plans?

Good start

2008-11-10T23:01:00.000-08:00

National is of to a god start - as No Right Turn notes: treating us like adults by changing their minds and admitting they are doing that.

Sensible people change their minds when they are wrong, and admit their mistakes. And I'm glad that Key has done so and recognised the very definite strengths of the loose coalition model. It would be nice if more politicians followed his lead, treated us like adults, and told us when they'd changed their minds - and why.

NZ election results in an alternate world

2008-11-09T22:33:00.000-08:00

Graeme Edgeler has calculated what Parliament would look like if there was no 5% threshold.

New Zealand National Party - 55 seats
New Zealand Labour Party - 41 seats
The Greens - 8 seats
New Zealand First Party - 5 seats
Māori Party - 5 seats
Act New Zealand - 4 seats
Jim Anderton’s Progressive - 1 seat
United Future New Zealand - 1 seat
The Kiwi Party - 1 seat
The Bill and Ben Party - 1 seat

You need 62 seats to be Government with hte overhang. So...

National 55 + ACT 4 + United Future 1 + Kiwi Party 1 = 61/122

Labour 41 + Greens 8 + NZ First 5 + Progressive 1 + Maori 5 = 60/122

And we are left with Bill from the Bill and Ben party (a joke party started up by two tv comedians). Classy.

Labour looses

2008-11-08T09:47:00.000-08:00

Well National/ACT and maybe the Maori party have won the election.

New Zealand is a liberal country and the Labour party had a big advantage. So Big that after one of the worst campaigns ever they still come within a few percentage points of being able to form a government.
So how did they loose?

1) the anti smacking bill
parties need to know that the electorate forgets some things in the voting booth but others it doesn't forget - this is one of the things it doesn't forget. Parents are reminded of this issue every day. Not that it matters - but I don't smack the child in my photo.

2) Strategy of attacking Key
If you have a neutron bomb this can be a good strategy - but they didn't and they should have known it. If you have nothing of substance then al this does is advertise the other leader and help the public get to know that he DOESN'T have any evil secrets. It also resulted in them puting out ads like this. What a irritating add.

This has a secondary problme if allowing national to look like it hasa vision and Labour to look like at best a protest party against National. I note that some people I know just stayed home because they could not find a party to vote for.

3) keeping Winston on side
Now Helen didn't need to sack Winston, she didn't need to do much at all except to not stitch up the privileges committee and not to go out of her way to defend him. That is unless he WAS blackmailing her.
It was going overboard on defending Winston that brought Owen glen back to NZ and actually sunk Winston's boat.

4) the electoral finance act
If you are going to design a law like this it needs to be very well designed. Instead we had hundreds of amendments and it had parts that looked like they were specifically designed to keep a labour party in power.

5) Getting strategy wrong where it mattered
Its hard for labour to throw maori seats or to suggest some people vote for winston - because there would be internal political costs but some slightly less subtle hints / dog whistles could have been put out to get winston over 5% (he only needed another .7%) and to throw another maori seat or two. Or they could have tried the opposite strategy of trying to wipe winston out. This could be via more asertations he doesn't have a show of helping labour much earlier.

6) Kees Keiser
the tape scandal was good for one release - but to drip feed it to the public lets us wise up to the fact that we are being manipulated.

7) Mike Williams
he is the president of the labour party. he is effective in many ways - but no one likes him - so you should hide him under the bed somwhere during a political campaign.

Also picking the good bits from Whoar
they also failed in selling michael cullen as the person to guide us through the upcoming economic shit-storms..
a slightly risky strategy but better than just attacking key.
and in the vein of some of my points
..that ‘bomb’ has been spoken of for months..why the fuck wasn’t it checked out..?
..clark/labour..in their focus on key..also failed to expose the williamsons/smiths/mccullys..

What I don't think is a meaningful reason is the following
Dr Raymond Miller says
Labour lost because experience proved less appealing than the mood for change.
That just begs the question why thee was a mood for change and why the public did not choose experience over it. Simple answer is that Labour seriously annoyed a lot of people. Why they overlooked experience was because the national team doesn't strike the public as a weak team for a financial crisis.

TV1 Election debate

2008-11-04T23:25:00.000-08:00

I would like to say that this debate was vastly better than the debate hosted by John Campbell. Now I really like John but Mark Sainsbury has blown him out of the water with this debate. Mark drew out all sorts of interesting issues here with great questions like whether Helen Clark has ever changed her opinion based on evidence (i.e. a flip-flop) , a hospital pass that I think Helen fumbled.

We got to know the leaders a bit better and they were cornered into positions where they either conspicuously avoided the question or were forced to make tough calls - like when Key was asked if he was able to make tough calls that were unpopular and when he talked about the environment.

If the world could vote

2008-10-26T12:25:00.000-07:00

This is quite cool

It is basically a survey of which way countries would vote if the US election was a global election.
It is a bit more democratic than I would expect but not much more. the republicans win Cuba 'democratic republic' of Congo., Nambia, Iraq, Georgia and Macedonia.

Of note however is that the vote for the USA is hugely in favor of Obama - indicating the survey might be democrat biased. Possibly economist readers tend to be democrats.

Biden/powell

2008-10-26T01:54:00.000-07:00

Both Powell and Biden seem to be predicting a international event (presumably military). Now he media have focused on how this is politically foolish. But anyone stop to think about hte other aspect - like they might know something we don't?

So what is this event? Biden mentioned Russia and the middle east.
I imagine the main issue they have in mind may be a collapse in Iraq related to withdrawal. I.e. blood on the streets sort of collapse. But do we have any other ideas? Also why is it that we have a system where it seems the politicians are making gaffes and deserve our distain if they veven hint at what they honestly think will happen?

Quotes
Powell : "there’s going to be a crisis which will come along on the 21st, 22nd of January that we don’t even know about right now. And so I think what the President has to do is start using the power of the oval office and the power of his personality to convince the American people and convince the world that America is solid."
Biden : "Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy. And he's gonna have to make some really tough - I don't know what the decision's gonna be, but I promise you it will occur."
"And he's gonna need help. And the kind of help he's gonna need is, he's gonna need you, not financially to help him, we're gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right."

Lockwood smith and media reporting

2008-10-21T22:24:00.001-07:00

Lockwood Smith has been caught up in a bit of a scandal. He was caught saying

"the physically smaller Asian people are better at some of the jobs in the vineyard, the pacific people are better at some of the jobs in the vineyard, the Asian people are better at some of the jobs they just have smaller hands, I mean I wouldn't be that good at some of the nimble finger work"

Now there are some shall we say unproductive undertones to this and another other quote where he talks about RSE training which are worthy of consideration - they may reveal somthign about Lockwood Smith. I personally wouldn't want him in charge of a portfolio.

Maybe lockwood smith has been caught saying hte same thing twice (mine comes from a tape of him) but I note that the quote most people are using below

“There are some skills in the vineyard that some people are perhaps better at. For example some of the pruning … some of the Asian workers have been more productive … because their hands are smaller.”

I supose I an nitpicking but it seems that has a lot of "..." in it. I wish people would actually repeat the whole quote without taking artistic licence or not pretend it is a proper quote. That might even remove the defence by the politicians who say "the quote is out of context".

One child policy/ Keith Locke

2008-10-18T12:32:00.000-07:00

here is a gem from keith locke (a NZ politician

Keith Locke saying its policy had been misinterpreted.

"There is no way the Green Party would ever dictate to any parent how many children they should have," he said. "Every child is a loved and wanted child. It would also be racist to try to dictate family size, given that the various ethnic groups in our society have different birthrates."

that means enforcing almost any policy is racist since it will effect different races to different degrees due to variations in culture... Keith must have been rather flustered - either that or he is crazy.

Bank pay

2008-10-18T01:42:00.000-07:00

Apparently:

Financial workers at Wall Street's top banks are to receive pay deals worth more than $70bn (£40bn), a substantial proportion of which is expected to be paid in bonuses, for their work so far this year - despite plunging the global financial system into its worst crisis since the 1929 stock market crash, the Guardian has learned.
Staff at six banks including Goldman Sachs and Citigroup will pick up the payouts despite being the beneficiaries of a $700bn bail-out from the US government that has already prompted widespread criticism. The government cash has been poured in on the condition that excessive executive pay will be curbed.
Now I suppose much of this was agreed before the bailout plan - and there might well be employment law issues if they went back and reviewed it.. but still - I get the impression the policies of the company have been at least to some extent co-opted by the interests of the senior staff. Actually in my experience this seems to occur to some degree in other businesses too so I should not be surprised.
I wonder if there will be a massive drop in the wage bill for these banks next year - I presume there will be. Of course the problem there is there might also be a huge loss of talent. that might be less of a problem if the banks had never had that talent but there is a danger that systematically less talented and much less experienced people might try to hold together systems built up by more talented and experienced folk resulting in disaster. Imagine if the banks had the lowest budget of any significant company for a CEO - as a result being unable to hold a CEO for more than 6 months before some IT start-up poached him. that would be interesting...
So easy to screw it up - but still... maybe those banks don't need to pay those guys quite so much.

Election predicitons

2008-10-17T13:42:00.000-07:00

here is some of my old predicitons
well i predicted hillary in 2004 to win 2008 but had to change that to Obama as he started to pull ahead. I also thought Romney would win the republican (although even further out I picked McCain but for a while he went into hte wilderness) one but as with the Hillary prediciton I did make that prediction very far out. Maybe party nominations are a little to hard to predict 3-4 years out but at least both my picks made it to the 'final two serious contenders' from a much larger feild.
Anyway elections are where I havent made any errors - so I'm still backing a Democrat win in the USA,
For NZ Im sticking with a Labour coalition win despite all the silly things labour has done maori party will go with labourand so labour/maori/green/nzfirst will be a hard total to beatby act/UF/national.

A new problem for psychological hedonism?

2008-10-17T12:55:00.000-07:00

Toby Ord comments
PH claims that one’s acts are all ultimately chosen to maximise one’s pleasure. However, there is a tension between immediate pleasure and lifetime pleasure. Indeed, it is easy to think of cases where people choose immediate pleasure at the expense of their total lifetime pleasure and to think of cases where people deny themselves immediate pleasure in order to increase lifetime pleasure. It thus seems that we can’t be attempting to maximise either immediate pleasure or lifetime pleasure. PH therefore lacks a coherent maximand and must therefore be false, or at least in need of considerable additional explanation.

in the comments I think Owen Weddle demionstrates why so many more philosophers should take psychology degrees with this.

Human behaviors consist of both of trained behaviors and extemporaneous behaviors. The former come about mainly from our sociological groups, such as family, religion, political party, occupation, military, etc, along with incidental events not attributed to human causes. As such, the groups “train” the individual in certain to follow certain behaviors, either through reward, punishment or the individual reflecting upon the value of such an action (which may even result in a oppositional behavior). All of which are motivations that can, at least in part, be explained by PH. All new untrained behaviors, are then caused by the PH, but many our actions become trained. By in large, from sociological groups, who themselves seek the maximize pleasure and minimize the pain of the group as a whole. So, altruistic behavior can be explained by the group’s (to coin a phrase that may not exist) sociological “hedonism”

Owen actually hedges his comments more than I would. When I make a decision like whether to dance a jig there are a number of determining factors. One of them is "do I have legs?" if I was born without them most peopel would not see that as a coice that PH needs to explain. The next is do I know how to do a jog? well maybe there were lessons finishing five minutes ago - maybe I could have chosen to go. Is doing a jig still a choice? what if I DID go and yet I'm too embarassed to try? What if I try and I mess it up (by conci0usly placing my foot in a place that happens to be the wrong place) just enough for it not to be an actual jig?

Now if I believed in PH I could say "all the PH choices are real choices and all the non PH choices are emvironmental factors" and suddenly my argument is water tight despite being bit circular. I could also argue that habit based 'choices' are choices and blow that out of the water (although that gets pretty unintuitive). So it would seem that there is a hidden semantic debate to be had here unless one wants to argue at cross purposes.

The NZ institute

2008-10-11T19:48:00.000-07:00

I'd liek to generally support the sentiment of this from the NZ institute.

We keep hearing about how how the G7 are going to cooperate to solve the problems of hte world or how National has the solutions. But I heard the G7 solutions and their comment seemed to amount to 'its every man for himself". Sure they stood next to each other but as long as they talk about every country working out what their best strategy is it means they couldn't agree their way out of a paper bag.

That means that this problem will get much worse before it gets better. So what will national and labour do? continue to vastly overestimate the economy like they have for the last few years? well.. yes. Will they have any new strategy? apparently not...

they need to come up with a new and innovative plan and the suggestions of the NZ institute are a starting point for debate. Of course National's strategy is "me too" so they cant come up with anything innovative at all - and Labour's strategy is "desperate pragmitism" which means they don't really care what is good for NZ anymore.

Do we have any good third parties?

John Ansell

2008-10-11T19:10:00.000-07:00

John Ansell has a great new idea for a national campaign board

Underage gymnasts again

2008-10-11T18:39:00.000-07:00

debating the Chinese gymnasts at foolsmountain Charles says

GNZ, I hope you and yours will never be convicted on so little as [fill in the argument here], nor should you and yours ever be presumed guilty because “it takes years to prove otherwise”.

There ain’t no higher authority on this; FIG is the messiah of gymnast age. Until the FIG changes it’s verdict, that’s it, He Kexin is not guilty.

Well there is a certain logic to this except that this is not the appropriate way to apply the innocent until the authority finds them guilty logic.

so I constructed an analogy

The policy that the Olympics has regarding age is the equivalent of he anti child labour policy that many countries have. the idea is that if you ‘buy’ the product of underage Olympians you effectively pay for child abuse (you might agree or disagree but that is the logic behind it so this part of the analogy is pretty tight).

Now the highest authority on child abuse is the country in question. But many people in the west will indeed refuse to buy products from companies that aid agencies (just people - the equivalent of Stryde) tell them are using child labour (especially if they provide photos of documents where they admit to doing it). The argument seems to imply that it would be morally abhorrent to question the innocence of such companies until their own government convicts them.

The question is -
1) do we accept the FIG (or the government of the country which may use child labour) as a trustworthy final authority? Even if we see a mountain of evidence and noone seems to have made a serious attempt to tackle that evidence? Or where the authority has had a poor record of catching such things and where it has caught them it was blindingly obvious for years beforehand.
2) do we apply the innocent until proven guilty to al decision making? for example should a politician be considered innocent until proven guilty? should a business be considered innocent of using child labour until a court proves it guilty?
3) is this even about he kexin? the punishment for north Korea (the only country caught for breaching the rules) was a 2 year ban - so it amounted to a punishment of the country's gymnastics federation for what the gymnastics authorities see as a sort of child abuse (as opposed to child crime).

New Stockmarket Terms

2008-10-11T15:11:00.001-07:00

CEO –Chief Embezzlement Officer.

CFO– Corporate Fraud Officer.

BULL MARKET — A random market movement causing an investor to mistake himself for a financial genius.

VALUE INVESTING — The art of buying low and selling lower.

P/E RATIO — The percentage of investors wetting their pants as the market keeps crashing.

BROKER — What my broker has made me.

STANDARD & POOR – Your life in a nutshell.

STOCK ANALYST — Idiot who just downgraded your stock.

STOCK SPLIT — When your ex-wife and her lawyer split your assets equally between themselves.

FINANCIAL PLANNER — A guy whose phone has been disconnected.

MARKET CORRECTION — The day after you buy stocks.

CASH FLOW — The movement your money makes as it disappears down the toilet.

YAHOO — What you yell after selling it to some poor sucker for $240 per share.

WINDOWS — What you jump out of when you’re the sucker who bought Yahoo @ $240 per share.

INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR — Past year investor who’s now locked up in a nuthouse.

PROFIT — An archaic word no longer in use.

Quantum mechanics and Lotto

2008-10-11T01:25:00.000-07:00

Here is a interesting hypothetical argument for not buying a lotto ticket - or possibly how you could bend the odds of winning lotto in your favour.

First let me introduce you to the Born rule which put really simply says

"I could predict probabilistically which world I would find myself in. Out of all the times the world was about to split 2:1, into a side of two-thirds width and a side of one-third width, I [would find] myself on the thicker side around 4 times out of 5, and on the thinner side around 1 time out of 5. When the world was about to split 3:1, I [would find] myself on the thicker side 9 times out of 10, and on the thinner side 1 time out of 10."

Or put even more simply
if I had a random lotto generator that could produce numbers and it showed 1 5/6 times and 6 1 out of 6 times my subjective experience of that would be to see 1 only 1 out of 26 times. If bob offers be 1:7 odds on that I subjectively should accept even if objectively it sounds stupid.

So at first glance it would seem I could create a situation where I artificially make results where I win money to be always part of the majority if situations - and thus artificially increase my probability of winning.

the solution might be to have a system that records the result of the lotto machine and instantly triggers the death of one of a set of Schrodinger's animals (mice stuck in a box separated from any information exchange with the universe) or, more humanely, produces a word that I must them memorize.

OR if that is impossible - I should never by lotto - its always a subjective loosing bet

Palin found guilty of power abuse

2008-10-10T21:54:00.000-07:00

Palin found guilty of power abuse

Now I imagine a add on TV all in appropriate battle ground states with a picture of Cheney and a picture of Palin - with the line underneath, which of the above are guilty of abuse of power, and something about whether you can trust them.

US military hedging

2008-10-03T21:25:00.000-07:00

Mathew Yglesias has a good post on US hedging against the threat of China.
Simply

I’ve long felt that was somewhat counterproductive insofar as it doesn’t so much hedge against the possibility of a deterioration in US-Chinese relations as it does make such a deterioration more likely. But Ilan Goldbenberg uses the column I published this morning as the jumping off point for the more provocative point that spending so heavily now is likely to counterproductive even in terms of the military balance:

The economy acts as the base of military power. It can be transformed into immediate military power at any time but at a long-term cost of reducing your military power. A country can invest in its economy in the short-term causing long-term economic growth, which creates a bigger base from which it can invest in military power. Or, it can invest in military power in the short-term understanding that this will have a cost to it’s economy and thus long-term military effectiveness.

The problem right now with the Bush administration sreategy is that we are investing well over $500 billion per year in defense once you include Iraq and Afghanistan, while China, the country most likely to present a significant long-term strategic challenge to the U.S., invests only $60 billion. That is a pretty dramatic handicap that we are creating for ourselves, especially when most of the spending is for weapons programs that might be obselete by the time the Chinese really are ready to compete and the fact that we still hold a dramatic military advantage.

To me this is the computer game strategy - you always focus on building up economic power territory and population with almost no military capability - then when forced to you build up a overwhelming strike force with just the right sort of weapons to fulfill that specific purpose as fast as possible and crush the enemy quickly and fairly painlessly. then you demilitarize after you have suppressed resistance. Using that strategy I have won many a game in record time.

Election 2008 (for NZ)

2008-10-03T20:38:00.000-07:00

The Electoral Commission has finalised its list of registered parties for the general election, the full list of registered parties is here.

I'm hoping the Bill and Ben party win at least two seats - one for Bill and one for Ben, not 3 seats though...

flawed idea for the bailout plan

2008-10-03T20:06:00.000-07:00

No Right Turn has a rather flawed idea for the bailout plan

The bailout was supposedly necessary because the banks had stopped lending to the real economy. The "solution" was to buy their bogus assets at vastly inflated prices in a dirty backroom deal cooked up between the US Treasury Secretary and his former workmates at Goldman-Sachs. A better solution would have been to cut the banks out entirely, and instead get the government into the lending business by setting up or buying their own bank and providing credit directly - bail out the real economy, and let Wall St burn. But that, apparently, would be "communism".

Now what could be the issue with his plan and why would it be communism?
Well the current banks have the current loan books. If we instituted communism we could take those loan books off the banks and desolve all the private banks. Amongst the many downsides to that one is that the rest of the world would be extremely angry because the USA doesn't wholly own it's banks anymore.

But of course NRT says his plan isn't communism - so he must mean the government starting it's own bank and out competing the private banks. But over the years that it would take to set that up banks would already be sucking money out of hte economy and would not be sellingthier business to the government because there is no incentive for them to do anyhting other than try every trick in the book to stay afloat.

So lets imagine it - banks starts charging high interest expecting high deposits offering low interest rates and caling in all it's morgages while companies cant get credit and start going insolvent. the government steps in and starts to offer cash to people - but who exactly is it going to offer that cash to? on what terms? does it jsut guarantee to extend every morgage at a fractionally lower rate than any bank that refuses to extend a morgage? If it had years up its sleve it could easily build a bank and hire the right people and run a bank at a huge loss in order to drive all the other banks out of the market (much to the anger of the WTO and the rest of the world) but it doesn't have that time - the economy would be in meldown.

Frankly it is lucky NRT isn't in charge. His policies sem based on anger and revenge rather than finding the best solution.

As to what one should do? the smart thing to do is very simply - not to pay vastly inflated prices. Maybe as David Brin says we could give money to Warren Buffet to manage.

'predatory' lending

2008-10-03T13:18:00.000-07:00

As with readers at Scott Adams blog - I'm always a little irritated when I hear the term predatory lending. it sounds like a political strategy, to say that there is a problem but it isn't the fault of any significant part of the voters. that means you can sound like you are on their side even if you aren't really adressing the problem.

there seem two ways to look at it. the first is who is in the best position to determine if a loan should go ahead. As Scott notes that person SHOULD be the borrower in most cases. And in normal commerce it is, as the comments noted we don't get told at the local bar that we should buy less drinks so we can pay for the shopping tomorrow.

the second is who benefits unfairly. Well if I bought a house I cant afford and now was given assistance to stay in that house - it is probably me who is benefiting compared to the poor smuck who bought the rotten house that he could afford (with the same income), put up with all the mold and dampness and now finds him self no better off financially. To paint these people who spent far more than they could afford as victims rubs me the wrong way.

Frankly this overconsumpition is probably Americas's number one economic problem and the US system cannot bring itself to call it what it is.

Palin vs Biden Debate

2008-10-02T22:39:00.000-07:00

So who won?
Well I have a pretty old fashioned view of debating - Palin didn't answer questions straight or with specifics - so she lost by a mile. She did however sound folksy - so she lost even worse.

That being said, this isn't a fair competition and I am not the judge that matters - therefore the best measure of who wins is what happens to the poll ratings straight afterward. For that answer I guess we need to wait.

Attacking Palin

2008-10-02T00:53:00.000-07:00

Obsidian wings has another hit piece on Palin.

Now I'm no fan of Palin's , I think she was a cynical political choice - and would make a below average president - but I don't get some of the attacks against her.

here is the interview transcript

COURIC (to Palin): Do you think there's an inherent right to privacy in the Constitution?

PALIN: I do. Yeah, I do.

COURIC: the cornerstone of Roe v Wade

PALIN: I do. And I believe that -- individual states can handle what the people within the different constituencies in the 50 states would like to see their will ushered in in an issue like that.

Couric seems to have done this with the 'bush doctrine" phrase too.

To me that means the doctrine bush has (which is a complex thing) - I suppose I'm not exposed enough to the liberal media in the USA and neither is she - but that would be the literal interpretation.
Similarly here She asks a question about the right to privacy which to me reflects 1st amendment protection of 'privacy' of religion, 4th amendment protection against unreasonable searches and 5th amendment privacy against self incrimination.

Is there some secret American language in which the right to privacy implies roe vs wade? If so then I suspect it might be a secret democratic language which could explain why Palin does not know it. the same language where 'bush docterine' is a direct translation for 'preemtive strikes' and maybe 'republican' = 'fascist'.

Maybe Palin should know this language - in which case the critique may be valid - but in the absence of this assumption it is the critics that start to look bad to me.

Comments on Stryde Hax

2008-10-01T22:34:00.000-07:00

Stryde Hax's blog regarding the underage gymnasts. I think it probably says something when one side is entirely made up with people with clearly flawed arguments.

first "lex" argues that Yang Yun must have been 1 when she started gymnastics if she was 14 at the olympics and was a gymnast for 13 years when she retired. the obvious mistake here was she did not retire during the olympics - she was around for another 3 years or so making her 4-5 when she started - which is normal for a top level gymnast in China. If she had been 6-7 that would have been a late start.

then "denglinlinfan" rants about how the girls should not be punished and accuses stryde of being a jellious american etc. really that is flooded with so much nonsene about other commenters to be hard to make sense of. His main point seems to be that he sees the issue through the eyes of the girls and thinks that even if htey were too young then we shouldn't talk about it because that might make them loose their medals and then they might be sad.

I don't know what to say to that....

rtdeep@gmail.com says they competed and had no advantage over other gymnasts. Well in case he didnt know they had a huge advantage over the other 14 and 15 year old girls who had to stay home. And often gymnasts are at there best at 14-15 (take for example the most famous gymnast, Nadia Komenich who competed before the age restriction).

bobby fletcher highlights that yang yun 'mispoke" when she said she was 14. thanks bobby for using the same phrase as Hillary Clinton used when she wanted to excuse herself for lying.

Ironically the article goes on to quote one of the girls saying "If the FIG wants to investigate this matter," she added, "I will provide every form of documentation." interesting that she feels so confident she can provide that.

Ashamed on the otherhand seems to want to encourage a moral 'race to the bottom' by sayng that if the US cheats then China should cheat too... how about you maybe try enforcing the rules? regardless america giving pasports for competing in the olympics refers to for example how the US gave a passport to a australian athlete who had lived in the US for a decade so he could compete for hte country where he actually lived with his family as opposed to the one he was born in - oh the humanity! More seriously drugs are an issue - and if he has any evidence like the documents stryde cane up with them I hope he will show them.

Senate rescue package

2008-10-01T21:56:00.000-07:00

The senate has passed a rescue package - leaving it up to the house now.
but in a classic example of the flaws in this system, the senate republicans have tacked a hundred million dollars in tax cuts onto the bill something that the fiscally conservative democrats will hate.

I don't know the details but this seems like so much pork attacked to what should be a purely rescue/investment* package. It seems a bit silly that a lawmaker could be faced with a sufficiently important and urgent bill that they had to vote yes, regardless of what bad policies were piggybacking on the same bill, or that it might end up getting thrown back and forth between the two houses as each rejects the others pork.

the best rescue package bill, I think, would have been a simple one with appropriate oversight.
Anyway - the lesson seems to be that the American system does not appear to be well designed for good quick decision making.

* the investment part comes from the fact that if done well the government can and in fact should make a profit.

Climate change: urgent

2008-10-01T11:49:00.000-07:00

Norightturn highlights a IPCC report on climate change. I agree climate change is an issue - still I see a bit of the classic green strategy here of creating artificial targets and claiming that they are fundimental scientific ones.
First - there is no such thing as a "safe zone" for temperature change - or rather, if htere is a nearby tipping point (which I doubt) the IPCC has no idea where that tipping point is and neither does anyone else. So cutting emisions by 3% a year might be too litle too late or it might be easily enough. I know htat makes the argument less forceful - but I dont think we should be lying either.
Second - we talk about temperature rises by the end of hte century - that doesn't matter. What matters is the total temperature rise in the long term or if we are very selfish - the temperature rise in our lifetime.
Third - the temperature rate rise of 5.5 - 7.1 C is menitoned but hte rise with the plan that is suggested is sugesting is not - I suspect it is somthing like 3-4 C, so the marginal difference is a less impressive 2.5-3 C

Anyway I repeat my position on global warming that it really needs pragmatists and not socialists at the helm if we want somthing done. treaties like the kyoto protocol are flawed.

Chinese Gymnast's age - FIG ruling

2008-10-01T11:16:00.000-07:00

The Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique (FIG) has completed its investigation into the ages of Chinese team gymnasts who competed at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.

Originals of official documents received from the Chinese Gymnastics Association, specifically passports, identity cards and family booklets or ‘Household Registers’, confirm the ages of the athletes.

The FIG has shared its conclusions with the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which originally requested the inquiry. It is considered that the case is now concluded.

However the FIG - with the agreement of the IOC - intends to investigate further the age of Chinese gymnasts Dong Fangxiao and Yang Yun who participated at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney (AUS). The FIG does not consider the explanations and evidence provided to date in regards to these athletes as satisfactory.

I think that they are still looking at Yang Yun and Dong Fangxiao shows hat they are having a serious look at the facts, but it is interesting that the harshest ruling they feel they can give is "the evidence is not satisfactory". I'm not surprised that they had to let the 2008 team go - I still think they were under aged - but if a country is willing to falsify multiple official documents in order to hide it then it is hard to pass the very high bar that the FIG needs to effectively alienate a country of 1.3 billion people.

Jewish holiday for congress II

2008-09-30T22:43:00.000-07:00

An anonymous commenter notes that Rosh Hashana is actually one of the Big Jewish holidays. I'm not sure that he/she is factually correct in saying it is one of the big two, but I will correct myself and say that it is significant - probably 4th by observance rates and 2nd in terms of 'philosophical importance' (although I sugest the former is the one that matters in this case).

I know that congress is something like 8% Jewish - does anyone know how many of them are practicing? In the country I think it is about 51% so can I assume 4%? Anyway, even if it was christmas and the vast majority of members celebrated it - I'd still say they should work through on this bill.

Congress takes a Jewish Holiday

2008-09-29T22:07:00.000-07:00

Anyone else a little confused as to why Congress has taken a Jewish new year holiday (from what I hear not all that important a holiday) in the midst of the financial crisis and an attempt to pass a 700 billion dollar bill?

First - I think government should be secular - i.e. it should not hold special holidays for religion - if those people with those religions choose not to turn up - so be it, but don't make everyone else take the same holiday.
Second - Financial crisis anyone? How many billions of dollars does it cost the economy for the congress to delay their decision?
I suppose I am making the assumption that congress actually makes good decisions which could be flawed...

National

2008-09-24T12:33:00.000-07:00

No right turn has a post on the upcoming elections

Seven weeks out, and the New Zealand election campaign has yet to really get under way. While the date has been announced, Parliament is still sitting, and the campaign proper won't begin until it rises (which is likely to happen late tomorrow night, or maybe Friday afternoon.

the blog highlights what National would do in government

First, National would offer tax cuts. Great stonking ones, if you believe their finance spokesperson. Whether they'll actually be able to deliver in an economic environment which has their own leader warning against "lolly scrambles" is an interesting question, but they've previously expressed some willingness to run deficits if necessary - "balancing the books" apparently now being some sort of socialist plot.

Now I am usually against tax cuts - Im a fiscal conservative and have been for the last 6 odd years I have been blogging. But there is a time that tax cuts are a good idea - and that is when the economic environment is BAD.

But he politicians always talk about being able to afford tax cuts and we cant afford them now!
well that is because they think you are economically illiterate. In the long run the state needs to gather enough tax to pay for it's services - but that is averaged out over a very long time frame. In the short term the Government has an opportunity to pump money into an economy when it is short of money and take some out when it overheats.

Soooo... that means IF this is a significant economic problem for NZ we better get to cutting taxes and running deficits not chastising parties for suggesting we do the right thing.

The exact shape of their tax cut programme will be announced some time after Treasury opens the books on October 6, but traditionally National has favoured the rich (sorry; "average" New Zealanders, which it defines as the 15% of the population who earn over $60,000 / year) over actual ordinary New Zealanders.

tax cuts to the richer groups probably feed into the economy faster, so might do the job I mentioned before better - however I'm asupporter of having higher tax rates for higher incomes and would not want to make regressive steps that can't be undone. Actually I expect National's tax cuts to not be excessively regressive because of the style of policy htey have been going for.

Secondly, National would shift employment law back towards favouring the interests of employers. They have ruled out a return to the hated Employment Contracts Act, instead saying that they would "reform" the existing Employment Relations Act, but their announced policies indicate a clear desire to roll back Labour's reforms around union access to workplaces, collective bargaining, public holidays and annual leave, while introducing a 90-day "probationary" period in which workers could be fired at will. They are also likely to reduce employee and possibly government contributions to the KiwiSaver workplace savings scheme, and are highly unlikely to continue Labour's policy of regular increases to the minimum wage.

In bad economic times increasing hte minimum wage jsut makes some peopel poorer via unemployment so the last point is an issue, and some regulations are a little paperwork intensive - however otherwise I'm with labour on these issues.

Thirdly, reforming the Resource Management Act - our core planning and environmental legislation - is a high priority for National, featuring in most of their policy announcements.

the RMA is a disaster - it gives power to 'activists' regardless of the validity of their positions. Weakening it COULD improve environmental protections.

Fourthly, National have promised both to abolish the Maori seats, and to hold a referendum on MMP.

I find it hard to argue against referendums. that seems anti democratic in itself.

They have other policies - privatising ACC (our no-fault universal accident insurance scheme which keeps lawyers out of business), capping the number of public servants, using public-private partnerships for roads (which worked so well in Australia), and tweaking the Emissions Trading Scheme to favour polluters - but the above are the main ones.

that is all stupid policy from national.

ACC is more efficient than normal insurance, capping public servants might be god but it is far to arbitrary, public private partnerships for roads are generaly inefficient because the state is the party most able to carry that risk and tweaking hte ETS seems to be saying we will save money on theETS and pay it back with interest via Kyoo protocol - not smart.

Influence

2008-09-18T03:15:00.000-07:00

NoRightTurn notes that the European Union is loosing influence, he then also notes that the US is loosing influence .

Both very true, and he has a fraction of the explanation when he highlights the US's exceptionist attitude to international law and the EU's attitude towards diplomacy. He thus suggests that it is their own fault. But he seems to be missing hte big picture here. China and the world outside the US and hte EU are on the rise - the EU and the US have been,relitively speaking, on the decline since the 60's. That trend doesnt look like stopping.

It is natural then that the EU and the US can expect to see their influence over othercountries diminish. the US wont be able to push China around on tibet if China can defeat it in a war just like the EU wont be able to push around places like fiji if india and china give them more aid than the EU does.

If either of those two countries have a long term goal of continuing to dominate the world's political structure they better get to fixing their fundimental economic issues, because otherwise they are just dreaming.

Priviledges Comittee

2008-09-16T12:35:00.000-07:00

What really maters in the Winston Peters saga.

One of the highest courts in the land - a court with no chance of appeal is going to give a verdict next week on whether Winston peters is most likely guilty of lying to parliament hundreds if not thousands of times blatantly about matters pertaining to electoral fraud.

the bad news is that it will most likely be split along party lines with all the labour ministers protecting him and the national members saying he is guilty. It seems obvious that any fair court would indeed find him guilty based on the evidence that Owen glen has provided - most significant of which the phone records of Ownen glen calling him him calling his lawyer and his lawyer emailing the billionaire asking for the donation (which turned out to be illegal) all within minutes of each other.

If labour instructs its members to vote based on party lines and not on the evidence we have corruption of the highest order in the very system supposed to stop this sort of denigration of our political system. this is something worth taking to the streets about.

Survey of economists care of Scott Adams

2008-09-16T12:32:00.000-07:00

here is a survey of economists opinions
http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/dilbert_survey_of_economists/
of note McCain is better on international trade and waste (except wasteful wars I guess), Obama is better on almost everything else.

Winston peters

2008-09-10T01:17:00.000-07:00

Watching Winston peters online
(winston the leader of NZ first a NZ political party - up on charges of lying to parliment and possibly cheating our electoral law)

- his intro was not too bad. His strategy seems to be to ignore the hard facts and nitpick about issues where he might be able to win. the impression given is that he might be winning. He seems to be insisting that glenn provide evidence for everything and infers conspiracy from the fact that we don't have them yet. He looks at his notes a lot.

Bill Ralston thinks he isn't and says he has nothing.

Now questions are starting - when facing hard questions like "why did his bank details get sent to Glenn straight after the phone call - he provides no solid defence at all besides "i can't remember" and something to the effect of maybe he asked for it for some unknown reason.

so far - Winnie is toast

Winnie is still covering for Helen Clark (ie going out of his way to defend her) - good boy. I guess he has to now.

8:24 - Winston is warming up he is starting to sound more confident and aggressive.
Winston agian talks abut Glenn not remembering someone, more attacks on Glenn as a reliable witness - not very convincing though.

8:42 - Winston seemed to struggle to handle a pasty question about maybe he was thanking glenn for his help in the racing community rather than for the donation.
Echo makes it a little hard to listen to.
Apparently lots of people don't remember incriminating evidence against Winston Peters

http://tvnz.co.nz/view/video_popup_windows_skin/2068342

Harm theory

2008-09-07T11:31:00.000-07:00

Lets say (as has been proposed) there are two broad classes of harms:
(1) qualities of experience - e.g. pain; and
(2) qualities of a life - e.g. global preference satisfaction for beings with a personal identity.

Death is a harm of the second type (if we subtract out any pain that comes with it) and so death does not harm beings without personal identity* or global preferences.

Makes sense? maybe - lets see what sort of hypothetical's we can make from it.

Lets say that we have one person who has intense and complex global preferences. Lets say he is a person who compulsively wants every object to be in a certain place and has derived a very complex strategy to put it there. Nothing this person does is 'in the moment'. Now the average person is nowhere near this intense with their global preferences - so maybe he is 50 times more that way inclined. Is it reasonable to say his life is worth that of 50 normal people?

What if you had a planet of people who live in the moment and have no particular global preferences - is it OK to kill them all?

what if a group of people don't follow their global preferences - and so have low value to their 'death' by this scale, lets say there is some 'prima face' reason for them to be killed (eg someone elses preference) Should we threaten people with death in order to drive them to obey their global preferences?

I think it sounds much less plausible a theory when we are not the beings with the maximum amount of global preferences.

* not sure personal identity is very well defined (in the relevant sense here) but we can overlook that.

National "re-releases" environment and conservation policies

2008-09-07T01:21:00.000-07:00

Seems to me all this debate about leaks in national should by all rights reflect worse upon Labour than upon national. Sure national has some staffer who is a "mole". But it would not be that hard to put a mole in a party and do we really want parties that are so secretive that it would be impossible to do that? that surely would result in an ideologically in bread policy formation.

But what is of concern is that Labour is probably seeking out people in order to play this sort of trick and is then running around smugly as if we should think that playing this sort of game puts them in a good light.

anyway like the PAD Mallard is an asshat.

and that is from a person who voted labour last time - and might still do it - although I really haven't made up my mind this time - just it wont be NZ first, everyone else is in play.

Tony Veitch hospitalised

2008-09-07T01:18:00.000-07:00

Veitch hospitalised after fears for his safety.
Apparently he attempted suicide.

the PAD are asshats

2008-09-07T01:10:00.000-07:00

For those that don't understand Thai or Chinese - here is a comedy sketch regarding the leaders of the PAD who are the group protesting against the government in Thailand.
They basically say "we don't care who the government is we hate them anyway" and generally "screw you".

Which is funny because it's true.

Biased media

2008-09-05T21:31:00.000-07:00

here is a great clip from the daily show showing how certain people in the media had - differing opinions on Hilary Clinton and Sarah Pailin apparently due to her party membership.

Existing

2008-09-05T12:11:00.000-07:00

Scott Adams writes

One of my favorite thoughts, and I think it came from a movie, is that the reason to get married is to have a witness to your life. It's the sort of idea that might not strike you immediately as brilliant, but over time it unfolds.
...
The key to life is picking the right witnesses. Thanks for being mine.

Nicely writen - I'm now expecting a movie to steal it :-)

Hikaru Utada

2008-09-05T04:24:00.000-07:00

Geezzz Hikaru Utada is the Queen of Japanese pop and is fabulous in "Automatic" and "First Love"
but in English she is absolutely terrible come on
she sings
"i'm eazy breazy, Im Japaneezy...."
oh my .... stick to Japanese please...
the album was lucky to make 160 on the US billboard charts...

Republican convention

2008-09-05T02:27:00.000-07:00

This seems quite perceptive

It kept popping up in all the speeches tonight -- Romney's, Guiliani's and of course Alaska Barbie's:

I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a "community organizer," except that you have actual responsibilities.

On the face of it, it's a pretty weird repetitive theme.

The words themselves have generally positive connotations, particularly that first one: everybody is in favor of "community" (as long as its their community).

Which is exactly the point, I think. Used the way the GOP speakers used the words tonight (i.e. with a sneer), community = ghetto and organizer = activist.

If there isn't a bit of that why is community organizer warrant such a sneer? I know it might not have the punch of being a Governor in terms of running a country - but since when was it a useful attack?

thinking about commenting

2008-09-04T23:10:00.000-07:00

I note this comment thread wherein RC arrives in the thread and asserts

But isn’t (1r) clearly false?

then thinking a little more

Looking back to the original post, I guess there’s meant to be an implicit “about red” appended to the premises...So even with the restriction, (1r) still seems clearly false.

after a little clarification from Richard Brown

Ah, thanks, that clarifies the argument... I must say I no longer have the faintest intuition that Mary learns any such thing (and I doubt anyone but a confirmed physicalist would have any such intuition)

Ironically if he had looked a little further up the thread he would have seen that Brandon someone he knows is not a physicalist understood the argument as did another commenter who, I expect to his confusion, RC would term a dualist (because RC considers dualism to be about non-reductionism).

And that combines with the fact that the whole point of the argument is a proof that the argument form doesn't work, that a hard core dualist might not find it intuitive is symetrical with a hard core physicalist not finding the knowledge argument intuitive. Except he was trying to argue against it...

Hmm... one wishes some peopel would think a little before they comment.

Is it the media's job to ask questions, no matter how stupid?

2008-09-04T12:23:00.000-07:00

Is it really the media's job to "ask questions," no matter how batty?

Michael C. Moynihan busts Andew Sullivan for his frenzied attack on Palin, where

despite the chronological impossibility—to which he was previously so attentive—of the child actually belonging to the governor's daughter, Sullivan proclaimed:

"Now all we need is confirmation from the obstetrician who delivered Sarah's baby, Trig."

Oh please... how on earth did the baby become a story at all, let alone some crazy idea of it being hers.

Underage gymnasts

2008-09-03T00:30:00.000-07:00

Fr those that don't know here is stryde hax's latest on the gymnasts

What if [Marion Jones] went on to become a television reporter, and the mayor of her town gave a speech about her Olympic performance in which he bragged about her steroid use? And what if nobody cared? That would be a very interesting, very different world, wouldn't it?

Consider for a moment the strange case of Chinese Olympic gymnast Yang Yun. Competing in the same games as Jones in Sydney, Yun won the bronze medal on the uneven bars. Soon thereafter, she was featured in a state sponsored documentary film, "Yang Yun: My Olympics". In this film she states that she competed as a 14-year-old at Sydney, two years underage. A confidential source forwarded me a copy of this film recently, and I have posted it at the Internet Archive. If Yang Yun's videotaped admission isn't enough, consider this jubilant speech still hosted (for now!) on the government web server sports.gov.cn. How old is this document? Annual copies have been saved by the Internet Archive dating back to 2002. The Google Translated version from 2002 is in agreement with the currently hosted version. This document is a transcript of a speech given 17 October 2000 by Fu Guoliang, the head of the Hunan Provincial Sports Bureau, to his colleagues. In addition to the automated translation, I've had this document inspected by multiple contacts who speak Chinese because of the translation subtlety I'm about to share with you.


体操运动员杨云实际年龄才１４岁，在悉尼初试身手，
就引起体操界的注目并夺得一枚铜牌，前程不可限量。

Gymnast Yang Yun's real age was only 14. She tried her hands in Sydney for the first time and attracted
the attention of the gymnastic community by winning one bronze medal. Her future is limitless.

Nice...

Pompous

2008-09-02T12:30:00.000-07:00

Richard Chappell is upset about people using his blog as a soapbox and questioning the fundamentals of his posts.

and then he does this
The pompous linking back to his web page in order to help out his page rank and to pretend that he actually won the previous argument (that requires quite a bit of self delusion) is particularly irritating - although Richard B manages to overlook it.

I suppose it is the academic coming out in me but it irritates me when people use references that don't exactly prove what they say they prove. I suggest people should be held to quite a high standard here because almost no one will follow the link but they will assume it contains supporting evidence and that a piece of work with many references is well supported by many documents.

I remember one particularly bad breach of this in the form of a professor's thesis that I read because it sounded relevant - I began to wonder a bit about some of the references and on checking some/many did not support his positions at all. A similar issue arises on blogs where some people prolifically reference sources and sound informed until one realizes they haven't read the sources properly.

Palin's daughter

2008-09-01T23:23:00.000-07:00

Maybe its just that I am from NZ but the situation with Palin's (the Republican VP candidate) daughter seems like a vote winner (not that she would intentionally subject her children to that sort of thing). And quite a significant one.

First, Palin has a few skeletons in her closet and it provides good cover - I note that NZ news at least only mentioned her daughter - while I know there are other things worth talking about that are much mroe relevant (trouper gate and her previous membersip of a secesionist organization not to mention actual POLICY).

But he main reason is that it says nothing bad at all about her personally (even if you think it does about her daughter - you aren't voting for her daughter) and causes a lot of people on the left to wonder if they are going too far and to start to look at others on the left sideways.

One of the lefts problems has always been the difficulty in keeping the far left under control - for example I think Mike Moore despite his best efforts was probably a component in Bush wining the election against Kerry.

Proving Philosophy

2008-09-01T12:31:00.000-07:00

If you could really prove something substantial in philosophy it wouldn't be philosophy.
For example - lets say I prove (imagine a physical experiment) or that mind exists independent of the body, or god comes down to earth and says hello and asks us to do some tests on him to confirm it.

It seems that in each of these cases it ceases to be philosophy and becomes another science. Agree? In general philosophy seems to be is about constructing consistent world views - like utilitarianism or nihilism (ethics makes a good example for that but it carries over to other feilds).

Rioting in thailand

2008-08-31T22:32:00.001-07:00

recently there have been a lot of news articles about the protests in Thailand.
It seems to me that this has exposed a typical weakness in the western media. the stories about the protests have been fairly neutral as to their root causes, and not hugely informative. the main point they have covered is that there are protests. the image this gives is that there is some sort of popular uprising against the "corrupt government". Well that is partly true, but it's not the main story.

To get that we need to go back a few years and sell you a little story that is told about recent thai politics.

Some time ago there was a rich man very influential in the media industry. He ran into a little trouble and needed a bailout, so he asked his 'friend' Thaksin. Thaksin told him it wasn't going to happen. Now Thaksin acquired a fairly influential enemy. In the following years he spend a lot of time trying to get back at Thaksin - and for that matter get the other party into power for his own financial benefit.

Thaksin is helped in this regard by the fact that Thaksin's party appeals to the poor people. they arrange subsidies to the chicken farmers and otherwise developed the rural areas. The other party, on the other hand, has networks within Bangkok so is much more able to get together city based protests.

Now the next importnat thing to realise is that while Thaksin was deposed in the coup but the new leader of Thailand is his puppet. Not nearly as competent - but just as unacceptable as a leader to the Bangkok brigade.

Now thaksin has the suport of the poor peopel in the north - so much so that his allies will absolutly win an election. they can have a coup every year and his allies will win the subsequent election every time. As a result any question of overthrowing his government is fundimentally undemocratic. Many of the protesters against Thaksin are openly hostile towards democracy - and talk about how Thailand isn't ready for democracy. I guess they want to sound like the Chinese.

the silly thing is that thaksin presided over good times for Thailand - corrupt as he may have been he was the equivilent of the Chinese government - stamping out drug dealers and growing thailands economy, while the opposition are not percieved as being very competent, except by their own propaganda. It is sad that they call themselves the People's Alliance for Democracy. Its like the democratic republic of Congo or the DPRK.

the one thing the PAD has on it's side is the sympathy of the king - but this is an issue he would be wise to tread very carefully on.

Networked Dmocracy on the gymnast scandal

2008-08-31T00:43:00.000-07:00

“She actually put her age as younger to compete in a previous event.”

I love this one. The TimesOnline reports a Chinese sportsman as saying

in his youth he had once changed his age to participate in competition with younger players. “It used to be very common, but it is getting less and less so,” he said.

So…you admit you lied before…so we’re supposed to believe you now?

Aka alias on the gymnast scandal

2008-08-31T00:39:00.000-07:00

Aka alias on the gymnast scandal

Do the math, Cui Dalin, if you're capable. After you finish working with your calculator, maybe you could also explain why a government that has naught to hide would take the step of blocking access to many of the registries since the first report surfaced last month accusing the Chinese of having played loose with the facts.
What happened to the ruling that says Olympians must be 16 in the year of the games in which they compete? One has to ask, if that rule can so obviously be sidestepped, then why couldn't other rules be bent to benefit athletes who are not Chinese? In the men's 200, Wallace Spearmon was first placed as the winner of the bronze, and Churandy Martina as the silver medallist, but then both were disqualified for having stepped outside their lanes. Really, what could possibly be so bad about stepping outside their lanes while they ran, when He Kexin was taking medals even though she was outside her lane too, so to speak?

why am i continuing to post on this issue after the olympics? well I just noticed not many others are doing it - and yet the evidence is piling up...

underage olympics competitors?

2008-08-31T00:03:00.000-07:00

the media attention in this has died down.
But people Like Stryde Hax are still gathering more and more information that the gymnasts were underage - and countering the arguments made by the Chinese sports authorities.

Cui Dalin, the vice minister of the General Administration of Sport of China, said He Kexin, the uneven bars Olympic champion, had moved from one team to another last year, and a wrong birth date was written on the registration forms for the new team.
“During the registration, there were some discrepancies in the age of the athlete, therefore that mistake has led to a series of misunderstandings afterward,”

But

Last year was 2007, and as alert readers of this blog will recall, the Internet Archive has kept two copies of a document published to sport.gov.cn which establishes Kexin's birthday as 1-1-1994. The problem here is that the Internet Archive saved one of these copies in June of 2006, two years ago. Additionally, when the document was stored in the Internet Archive, the document contained a publication date of January 27, 2006. Neither of these dates is in the least bit consistent with Cui's statement.

The most important document, however, is 05ticao.xls, still saved in the Baidu cache at the time of this writing. Turns out "ticao" is the Pinyin for "gymnastics", so this document is basically "05gymnastics.xls". It predates the team transfer that Cui is speaking to. And all four documents show He Kexin's birthday as Jan 1 1994. How can a mistake a "year" ago made during a team transfer have affected He Kexin's records well before the team transfer, in 2005? Here's a link to Baidu cache of 05ticao.xls

this year was not an exchange year for He Kexin. This was He Kexin's first registration year, see row 799:

799,"何可欣","女","1994.1.01","北京","北京","北京市体育局","首注"
799, He Kexin, F, 1994.1.01, Beijing, Beijing,
Beijing Municipal Sports Bureau, First Time Registration

Now that Chinese officials have broken their silence on the inconsistencies that are surfacing, I'm hoping we can all expect a statement soon on the case of Jiang Yuyuan, whose name and government ID number appear in a government-hosted spreadsheet I linked to earlier this evening. Alert readers will of course realize that Chinese government ID numbers embed the birth date, hence the string "19931001" inside this government ID number should be addressed in any future clarifications.

In conclusion, here are links to the Internet Archive's 2006 copies of the athlete exchange agreement hosted on www.sport.gov.cn, Ciu Dalin's General Administration of Sport China.

Internet Archive history of document
Translated version of 2006 copy

Interesting indeed

summary of secular philosophy debate

2008-08-30T13:40:00.000-07:00

Secular philosophy summary

Massimo writes the main post - in it he claims that he can conceive is squared circles. Robert Newsome also asserts he can conceive of such a scenario and Jay insists that no one can.

To explain this I indicate that there are two types of conceivability - one is a matter of fact about the brain of the person conceiving. that is that they have placed a certain concept in two bins in this case squares and circles. Surely this is undeniable. This I contend is is doing all the work when Jay "i can conceive of a zombie". that is the main reason why the 3 of us contend that it proves nothing that zombies are conceivable (in the simple sense). Ie it is very obviously a cheap sense of conceivability. Jay seems to accept that theologians have used this sort of cheap sense of conceivability of a rock so heavy god couldn't lift it.

The second type of conceivability is ideal conceivability something I suggest neither square circles or zombies have. Now Zombies MIGHT have it since I cant positively disprove that but I expect they don't

Jay argues that "the *logical* possibility of zombies seems to illustrate nicely the hardness of the hard problem. "

My problem with this is that from the argument above I believe you can create a scenario that LOOKS possible but isn't - so the fact that Chalmers may have found one of those is completely consistent with expectation - and no need to revise ones world view.

Jay asks "Which molecule is the one which guarantees experience? "

well simple - all of them together even if you are then going to say that all of them together evoke qualia or a spirit you still need the first step.

Karl indicates that Chalmers believes that matter might have an inherent conscious aspect to it. I extend on this by suggesting that this inherit consciousness is what I call ATE "ability to run an equation" and that this is just a fundamental part of physics - and needs no re-explaining. as per steele man's request I give a formula for conciousness

Me = Brain (including ATE)
Bottle of water = ATE
Zombie = brain - ATE

wherein Brain contains all that information about processing power that would give you IQ and so forth. In case you are in doubt - the IQ of a bottle of water is of course 0.

Jay asks for a reason why the hard problem is not a hard problem. my problem here is that he seems to want a disproof of dualism. I don't propose to have that - I just mean duelists haven't established there is a problem so it doesn't even make it onto the table.

"had not realized that we had pin-pointed why or how the arrangement and activity between these molecules fully explained consciousness."

depends on what you demand from a ful explanation. Sure you might not know exactly how fast a rock will fall if I drop it through the branches of a tree - but I understand it.

Jay continues to assert/dispute

"Ideally" conceivable is not a helpfully distinct from any other modest type of conceivability.
The impossibility of your 100 mile high unicycle is quite a contingent fact, but something is not conceivable if it is not possible by definition, which is the category square circles fall into... you still have not demonstrated that you understand this distinction.
The oddity of zombies is quite irrelevant (to the ability of us to conceive of them usefully)

Sara Palin

2008-08-29T23:10:00.001-07:00

Sara Palin is the republican candidate for VP - a woman! ok Im being sucked in here - shes an anti abortion conservative but not part of the old boys club. Not a bad choice I think from a strategic perspective.

Zombie philosophy

2008-08-29T22:14:00.000-07:00

Interesting debate here
The zombification of philosophy (of mind)

the bad news is that Jay seemed to want me to do
the hard
I.e. to give him a problem where he cant concieve it is possible and then to show him it is impossible

and worse yet
the contradictory
I.e. to explain why square circles are impossible for different reasons than a physically impossible structure (which was exactly my point - they aren't)
and to show that bottles ae diferent from humans for reasons other than that humans are physically humans (but the latter was my point and a fundamental part of physicalism)

Oh well I knew that debate probably would end up in that sort of frustration.

Epphenmominalism and knowledge

2008-08-29T18:24:00.001-07:00

Lets say you are a epiphenominalist. Is the knowledge argument available to you?

here is the knowledge argument again

Mary is kept in a box and taught all the physical facts but no qualitative facts
she is then allowed out of her box and shown the colour RED

(1) If qualitative facts are reducible to, or deducible from, physical facts then May shouldn’t learn anything new
(2) Mary learns something new
(C) Therefore qualitative facts are not reducible to, or deducible from, physical facts

Now if you are an epiphenomenalist you have to explain why qualia match brain states. The normal method would be to stipulate that that is a fact of this universe that brain state X (a result of evolution etc) causes qualia Y. that means that in THIS universe (2) is impossible because one of the physical facts is entailed by that brain state.*

Now it might be possible in a hypothetical other world, but that isn't stipulated in the hypothetical.

*maybe they can argue that the brain state caused by red isn't a physical fact relating to red?? seem silly

The Anti knowledge argument

2008-08-29T18:17:00.000-07:00

Richard Brown presents the knowledge argument

Mary is kept in a box and taught all the physical facts but no qualitative facts
she is then allowed out of her box and shown the colour RED

(1) If qualitative facts are reducible to, or deducible from, physical facts then May shouldn’t learn anything new
(2) Mary learns something new
(C) Therefore qualitative facts are not reducible to, or deducible from, physical facts

and the anti knowledge argument

Now Maria knows all of the qualitative facts about red she knows none of the phsyical facts she is then exposed to those facts

(1r) If qualitative facts are not reducible to, or deducible from, physical facts Maria should not learn anything new
(2r) Maria learns something new
(Cr) Qualitative facts are reducible to, or deducible from, physical facts

Interesting although I'm still thinking about it. However that make me think of a thought experiment of my own.

Lets say I take Maria before she has seen green and ask her what green is. Answer is "I have no idea"
Now lets say I show Maria green - now she says "yes I know green"
Now I use my high technology to recreate a duplicate of her by carrying over all her physical data but not any historic qualia (whatever that is?). I plonk all this info in a biological computer. I now ask it what green is - does it know? Well it tells me it does. Also because it is a biological computer - it is alive - it isn't a zombie.

and yet I only transfered physical data.

the main defense seems to be that colour qualia have some special properties - for example that they are associated with a person if and only if they have the physical data for that colour but if that is the case the original knowledge argument fails - i.e. if you tell maria those attacked physical facts about green then she knows green.

Positive influence and Winston Peters

2008-08-29T14:58:00.000-07:00

No those two topics are separate parts of this post.

Genius deferred writes a post on internet encouragement. Its about me - I think :) It is good to know I am having a positive influence on people in the blogosphere.

And for any international visitors the last post relates to a NZ politician called Winston Peters who is being investigated for serious fraud (something to do with corruption and potentially 'cheating' in our elections) so I did a parody.

I'm not asserting I know he broke the law - please don't sue me Winston!! (because you know thats exactly the sort of thing he does - very litigious our friend Winston) But lets just say about 90% of NZ thinks he did.

Winston (Shaggy- it wasn't me)

2008-08-29T12:37:00.001-07:00

here are some possible lyrics

Winston: yo man
Winston's Lawyer: yo
Winston: open up man
Winston's Lawyer: what do you want man?
Winston: The Hellen and the SFO just caught me
Winston's Lawyer: you let them catch you?
Winston: I don't know how I let this happen
Winston's Lawyer: with who?
Winston: damn near everybody, you know?
Winston's Lawyer: man...
Winston: I don't know what to do
Winston's Lawyer: say it wasn't you
Winston: alright...

chorus 1 (Winston)
Hellen came in and she caught me red-handed
in potentially serious and complex fraud
picture this Bob Jones donated me money
and I didn't declare it at all

how could I forget that I had given the money to NZ First
all this time they were donating money they never said a word to me

(Winston's Lawyer)
how you can grant them access to your accounts
trespasser and a witness while you cling on your money
you bettah watch your back before they turn into killahs
best for you and the situation not to admit a thing
to be a true player you have to know how to play
if she say you're not, convince her, say it's just not your day
never admit to a word when she say
makes a claim and you tell her baby no way

chorus 2
Winston: but she caught me with money from he Vela's
Winston's Lawyer: it wasn't me
Winston: saw me spending money from Glen,
Winston's Lawyer: it wasn't me
Winston: I even spent it on my legal fees
Winston's Lawyer: it wasn't me
RikRok: they even caught me on camera
Winston's Lawyer: it wasn't me
RikRok: she hear about Simunovich fisheries
Winston's Lawyer: it wasn't me
RikRok: heard the about a bribe, Rodney told her
Winston's Lawyer: it wasn't me
RikRok: heard the screams getting louder
Winston's Lawyer: it wasn't me
RikRok: she stayed until it was over

(chorus 1)

I had tried to keep her from what she was about to see
why should she believe me when I told her it wasn't me

(Winston's Lawyer)
make sure she knows it's not you and lead her on da right prefix
whenever you should see her make da giggolo flex
as funny as it be by you, it not that complex
seein is believin so you better change your specs
you know she not gonna be worrying bout getting elected
hardly recollecting and then she'll go to parliment mass
boy your answer: go over there
but if she's readyto sack you, you know you better run fast

(chorus 2)
(chorus 1)

I'm not gonna tell the country that I'm sorry for the pain that I've caused
I've been listenin' to your reasonin' it makes... complete sense
we shouldn't tell them that I'm sorry for the pain that I've caused
they may think that they are players but they are completely lost

(chorus 1)

Housing prices in NZ

2008-08-26T23:08:00.000-07:00

Housing prices in NZ

Complicating the Zombie dualist argument

2008-08-22T14:50:00.000-07:00

Zombie philosophy is one of hte most interesting parts of philosophy to me. why? well it seems that there has been a lot of debate that has resulted in a sort of cold war, but in spite of that there are a number of lights at the end of the tunnel that threaten to do some serious harm to the dualist argument. The other key factor is the religious like confidence of both sides as they present their often dubious arguments - "something is very wrong on the internet".

Richard Brown presents us with, three thought experiments

First the players

Zombies are creatures that are identical to us in every physical respect but which lacks qualitative consciousness.
A Zoombie are creatures that is identical to us in every non-physical respect but which lacks qualitative consciousness.
Shombies are completely physical creatures who are identical to their real world twins in every mico-physical way. The difference between zombies and shombies is that shombies have qualitative consciousness.

now lets assume being able to concieve of something means it is possible.

now we can 'conceive' of a zombie so that seems to imply that consciousness is non physical - but we can also 'conceive' of a Zoombie - which implies conciousness is not non physical - or at least it cant be reduced to non physical facts that dont explicitly reference them. And now we can also 'conceive' of a Shombie - which means conciousness must be physical (because it is physical for a shombie).

anyway here is keith frankish on Erics blog - arguing for anti zombies

The point can be made independently by considering the unique world that is a physical duplicate of ours and where no further, non-physical properties are instantiated. This should be a zombie world, if any is. But it's also the only candidate for an anti-zombie world. Thus, the possibility of zombies is incompatible with that of anti-zombies. And if conceivability entails possibility, then the conceivability of zombies is incompatible with that of anti-zombies. So defenders of the zombie argument must deny that anti-zombies are conceivable.

Now of course physicalism is the view that we are anti-zombies, so if anti-zombies aren't conceivable then physicalism isn't conceivable either. In short, if you want to endorse the zombie argument, then you have to maintain that physicalism is inconceivable.

keith also puts forward another version

Incidentally, it is possible to run a metamodal version of the AZ argument, which by-passes the step just mentioned. It goes like this. Let P be the actual physical facts and Q the phenomenal ones. Then it is conceivable that P -> Q is necessary. If it is conceivable that P -> Q is necessary, then (by the CP thesis) it is possible that P -> Q is necessary. If it is possible that P -> Q is necessary, then P -> Q is necessary (S5 principle MLp -> Lp). If P -> Q is necessary, then consciousness is physical. Hence consciousness is physical. Peter Marton's version of the argument was along those lines.

In the comments interestingly

gualtiero said...: I gave an argument similar to the anti-zombie argument in a paper presented at Tucson VII - Toward a Science of Consciousness 2006. One of my conclusions was, as you say, that a zombie-file must hold that physicalism is inconceivable. I had a conversation with Chalmers about it, and he confirmed that that's precisely his view.

So there is the dualist defense - the zombie argument fundamentally assumes physicalism is inconceivable?

Usain Bolt

2008-08-22T14:13:00.000-07:00

Some are questioning if Usain Bolt is on drugs,
well to me the fact that Bolt won by so much and looks so different from the other competitors like with Phelps (with his long arms) makes me think they are both just "freaks of nature". I suspect if they are on anything it's the same thing all the pother competitors are on.

But the real evidence is that he was the best age-group athlete in the world while he was in high school. Breaking the world junior 200m mark when he was only 15. If he has been on drugs he has been on them for a long time.

But maybe I'm just likeSimon Barnes thinking romantically about it

It’s not merely that I don’t believe Bolt is a drugs cheat: even more, it’s that I don’t want to believe it. I want Bolt to be real. It’s more fun that way: more meaningful.

And I think much of the world is in the same position: the imagination utterly caught by the impossibly languid nature of the fastest man in the world, revelling in the sight, the memory, the story. A failed test would rob us of all that: and more. Trust in athletics might be terminally affected if Bolt failed a test. He has lifted us so high, it’s far too far to fall.

Why is this so different from the gymnast? Well I guess i care about sprinting - it is a nice clean sport with clear winners based on a simple ideal like speed. I am also sympathetic towards a small country like Jamaica and it's pride in winning a few medals.

But regardless truth is what matters so both should be fully investigated.

Chinese Gymnast underage?

2008-08-22T01:22:00.000-07:00

OK here is the evidence
first Billy Pan says probably*. So too does the blogger stryde hax who alerted the media**.
牛博 counters with the alternate possibility - translated here that the local authorities have been falsifying her age to make her look younger. Why? Well the documents the blogger found were related to competitions that were a proving ground for the 2012 Olympics, that mean that she needed to be 13-15. for the purposes of trading her skills between various interest groups it was more valuable for her to be 13 (which would make her 14 now). Then as suggested here the chinese media is collectively guilty of poor reporting and exaggerating her youth.

So where does the balance of the evidence lie?
First, obviously someone is lying and doing it on purpose. Either it is the government with their passports or the Chinese sports association on their files. The latter is a more simple theory so has the advantage on those grounds - however the girl does indeed look young (and I mean looks young to experts).

I wonder if there is a reason why her birth day (as opposed to year) doesn't also vary on these documents - I think 31/12/92 is the perfect age for her to compete and still be as young as possible and any day around there might have made sense as a potential fake date - then again its likely her family and other corrupt people would not have fully understood that.

But in the Sydney Olympics Yang's passport said she was born on December 24, 1984 and turning 16 in the year of the Games, making her eligible but she later confessed in a television interview that she was only 14 at the time of the competition and that she and her coaches had lied about her age. Also as Huffington post shows, there has been some sort of effort to "correct" the ages on online articles - smelling rather like a cover-up.

In the end I'm not sure - I think I'm leaning on the side that she is 14, but regardless it deserve some serious investigation. The bottom line is that if the Olympics are going to have rules they need to be enforced, otherwise you just penalize those that obey the rules.***

* in Chinese but the pictures say everything
** well OK the NYT already knew - but they obviously didn't think it was a interesting story
** being younger is an advantage - Nadia Comăneci, the girl who got perfect score in the Montreal Olympics, was 14. She would not have been able to compete under current rules and someone with a much lower score would have won. It is to do with your size and the obvious damage puberty does to womens ability to do gymnastics

forcing men to have babies

2008-08-16T21:04:00.000-07:00

From discussions with a lot of the girls I know it seems that many - quite possibly most women in NZ at some stage in their life attempt to have a baby with a man against their will.

Usually the man is saying something like "i don't want to have kids right now - just want to wait until we are married."
the woman in the other hand is thinking "I'm getting a bit older now and it may be hard to have a child soon."

The man is probably following the strategy of using condoms to prevent pregnancy. Anyway the usual method seems to be to pierce the condom with a needle.

First my friends need to realize that most condoms have spermicide on them - piercing the condom with a needle will cripple their ability to stop STDs but causing pregnancy - I think that is pretty unlikely.

But lets assume that this strategy was a very effective one - how moral is the strategy? I presume we can say it is somewhat immoral but immoral like a simple lie or is it a deeply immoral thing? Should such an activity (if it can be proven) have legal implications regarding child care or justification for divorce or anything along those lines? Does it's apparent commonness mitigate that?

Intuition

2008-08-15T23:58:00.000-07:00

Brian Weatherson argues that intuitions are generally reliable. He does this by showing that intuitions are right about things like "steak eating is bad for your waistline".

Well yes indeed that is correct. In fact intuitions almost certainly beat random guesses, in familiar situations they beat random guesses by a very wide margin. the problem then is not the use of intuitions - in many contexts they do provide some sort of evidence - it is instead what weight we place on that evidence and whether we are indeed using it in a context in which it is relevant.

Now first the reason why we can guess that steak eating is bad for your waistline is because we have been told that by doctors - and even if we had not we have been told by doctors similar things (like eating fat will make you fat and fat is found in meat). this brings us to the first point - are philosophers using intuition to solve problems that are very similar (in the relevant sense) to problems we have correctly solved and verified before?

the second issue is related to what we do once we have come to a conclusion. I expect that eating steak will make people fat - interestingly I eat lots of steak and it hasn't made me fat at all in fact if anything I'm unnaturally skinny. I could base my philosophy of dieting on the fact that steak is bad for my waistline but obviously it's not a hard and fast rule. this however is the sort of vague rule that intuition tends to produce.

On moral experts

2008-08-04T19:26:00.000-07:00

Jen Wright writes: In the empirical literature, they make a distinction between performative and epistemic expertise, which I think is applicable here.

To the extent that moral philosophers are experts at all, they are epistemic experts -- that is, they have expertise about the domain. But, there is no reason to suppose that this gives them performative expertise, which is what we are looking for when we talk about moral excellence (as expressed in virtuous actions).

The development of performative expertise is an entirely different animal than the development of epistemic expertise. Performative expertise, regardless of the domain, involves the development of trained perception (which, in the moral domain, would involve the ability to recognize the morally relevant features of a situation as morally relevant) and automatic responsiveness -- i.e. the linking of perception and action in such a way as to 1) make deliberation often unnecessary and 2) make appropriate/successful action highly likely.

This is actually a topic of great interest to me, which I've been writing on quite a bit lately. I think that moral excellence is not only quite different from the skills one develops as a moral philosopher, but also that we shouldn't expect moral philosophy (at least, as we do it) to result in moral excellence. Indeed, it seems to me that moral philosophers, insofar as they emphasize rational deliberation and conformity with moral principles as the ultimate moral achievement, do a poor job of understanding and instructing others how achieve moral excellence.
Good stuff and apparently from a bit of an expert.

caplan notes

Recently Tyler Cowen publicized one of his periodic challenges to me:

I often joke with Bryan that the time has come for him to accept the consensus of what the experts in moral philosophy (or atonal music) tell us (him) to do.

One of the perks of attending the Social Philosophy and Policy conference was that I was able to ask philosophers the critical question: "You philosophers are definitely experts at something. But what is that something?"

Profs and grad students alike largely seemed to accept the following list of topics where members of their occupation actually have expertise:

Accurately describing the views of other philosophers, living and dead.
Checking arguments for logical validity/internal consistency.

No one claimed that the philosophy profession was good at figuring out true answers to philosophical questions. One even claimed the the primary product of philosophy is "broken arguments." Furthermore, no philosopher made an argument analogous to one economists often make: "Outsiders underestimate the degree of consensus because our debates focus on marginal controversies."

david brin on epublicans

2008-08-04T16:23:00.000-07:00

david brin as usual is having a rant about republicans in the last few threads.
He has a point in that bush's presidency is a disaster. I measure that in terms of the same sorts of things david mentions such as
- national debt,
- military readiness
- international respect (ie good will credit with other countries)
and so forth

But first I don't see republicans as evil (potentially wrong, but not evil) and I disagree somewhat with regard to how he views the Democracts. Clinton did an OK job for a US president - but for a long time the US has run poor strategic policy. It has build up trade deficits , funded things through printing money, set up greater fool tricks in their market in debt securities and shares, allowed crime and prison populations to get out of control and otherwise mismanaged almost everything that requires large scale planning. I'm tempted to blame it on either their excessive belief in individualism, private enterprise or lack of systems to prevent corruption... But really I don't know.

Still it has been like watching a train hurtle towards a mountain with no tunnel. What is happening now is just the very beginning of the inevitable result. I had that impression when Clinton was in just as much as now - although I think Clinton did a better job he didnt get anywhere near stopping the train.