On cranks and bad ideas

Apparently I've reached the point in my blogging career when people start contacting me with crazy ideas. My favorite so far is this one:

You are invited to view the writings of Croatian author Radenko Fanuka

Green Earth

Zero is Not a Number

And that is the reason why this world is physically and mathematically suffering. Compared to the nine numbers, we created, and are creating, too many words. This earth’s soil and the sky is very rich, so why do we need so many words? Are we missing a number, a number from nine to ten? No, we are not. Number ONE, physically and mathematically, created numbers without a zero, but ends them with a zero, and without words. World, we are too soon, too early, adding too many zeroes behind one number, number ONE, and our health, and too many words behind too many lost lives. From nine to ten, we just need to stand behind the one number, number ONE. Why a zero? A zero was already added on. If we don’t stand behind number ONE, this world will physically, and mathematically collapse.

There are words, and they're strung together more or less coherently, but I just don't think they mean anything. I can't make heads or tails of that, can anyone else?

I sometimes wonder about the people who have these crazy ideas. I realize that once in a while an idea is right but is so radical that it gets fought against, but those ideas are usually self-evidently and clearly right (I'm thinking of evolution, relativity, and quantum mechanics, there are surely more). But how do you get to the point where you think that insane ramblings like the one quoted above are actually meaningful?

I suppose this brings up the question of how can one tell the difference between a good but radical idea and a simply crazy idea. Sometimes it's easy, but I wonder how I would have reacted in 1905 (or in the 1860's). I can't say for sure, but I like to think that even if I had been heavily invested in the previous way of thinking (like say, the ether, even though Michelson and Morley had disproved it) I'd be like Dawkins' apocryphal professor, who welcomes the downfall of his life's work because it has been conclusively demonstrated wrong.

On a tangential note, I avoided using the word "paradigm" in the above paragraph because I totally and completely loathe it. For one, I think it's one of those words that has been totally overused. For another, cranks like to say that they're just challenging current "paradigms" and everyone's to attached to "the paradigm" to see that they're right. The only contexts in which I have ever seen the word used are by cranks and middle managers, so it carries this gross connotation of incompetence with it, as though anyone who uses it is just doing so to mask the weakness of their ideas.

Back to my main point, ideas should stand or fall based solely on how well they work in their field. In the case of science, that means how well they fit the evidence. If your idea doesn't have any evidence backing it, then it's a shitty idea.

Now we get into the topic of evidence, but that can be saved for another day.

Over Three Hundred Proofs of God’s Existence

Here's Over Three Hundred Proofs of God's Existence. They're "classic" proofs for the existence of god(s), reworked to show how dumb they are. The biggies are at the top:

TRANSCENDENTAL ARGUMENT
(1) God exists.
(2) If God exists, then if reason exists then God exists.
(3) Reason exists.
(4) Therefore, God exists.

COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
(1) If I say something must have a cause, it has a cause.
(2) I say the universe must have a cause.
(3) Therefore, the universe has a cause.
(4) Therefore, God exists.

ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT (I)
(1) I define God to be X.
(2) Since I can conceive of X, X must exist.
(3) Therefore, God exists.

ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT (II)
(1) I can conceive of a perfect God.
(2) One of the qualities of perfection is existence.
(3) Therefore, God exists.

MODAL ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
(1) God exists.
(2) God, existing, is either necessary or unnecessary.
(3) God is not unnecessary, therefore God must be necessary.
(4) Therefore, God exists.

TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
(1) Check out the world/universe/giraffe. Isn't it complex?
(2) Only God could have made them so complex.
(3) Therefore, God exists.

I really enjoy those ones, (especially the ontological argument) because they're so stupid. By the way, that's really how they go, just look any of them up on Wikipedia. This is also a good demonstration of why I loathe professional philosophy, you can really give a philosophical proof for anything. Unlike math which has a rigorous language where every "word" means only one thing, no human language has such constraints. As such, you can easily make "proofs" which "prove" what they set out to, but prove nothing.

Give the list a glance, there are some funny ones in there, if too many to read in one sitting.

[Via Russel's Teapot]

Thought without evidence is pointless, evidence without thought is meaningless.

Thought without evidence is pointless, evidence without thought is meaningless.

I wanted to write that sentence before explaining where it came from or what it means to me. I want you to remember it.

It occurred to me after reading an article a reader sent me (he didn’t seem to pleased with my response, but I was just giving my opinion as he requested). It was a philosophical argument for god’s existence, specifically the Cosmological Argument. I have very little respect for purely philosophical arguments in general, mostly because an argument can be sound and logical but absolutely wrong.

Don’t get me wrong, thought experiments can be useful, but a real experiment is better. Some very famous and correct Theories in Physics came from thought experiments and were validated later on. However, had they not been proven somehow, they would not be accepted. You simply cannot know if any hypothesis is correct without testing it, and philosophical arguments, I’d say by definition, are untested outside of the realm of thought. (String theory is having some problems with this right now, but that’s a story for another day and a qualified Physicist.)

However, the greatest data in the world is utterly worthless without clear and careful thought and analysis; an incorrect interpretation of data can utterly destroy its potential. I quite frequently see evidence interpreted incorrectly, most often with faulty conclusions drawn from weak correlations (remember, correlation does not indicate causation).

In order to understand the world, our thought must be grounded in reality, and our experiments into nature must be thought about carefully. As the wonders of the scientific age demonstrate, reason and evidence go together remarkably well, but without each other they’re both quite lame.

Free Will Contest Update

I’ve slightly changed my mind about how the Free Will Contest will work.

Originally I said the winner would have to prove free will. That’s pretty much impossible. There are many reasons, here’s one: we can’t rule out dualism. Any mind/body duality means that free will could still exist, but be supernatural in origin. Yes, that’s not particularly convincing, and I’d typically ignore it, but it’s a still a problem. Besides, “proving” something is almost impossible, even when you ignore things that are ridiculous.

Another problem is that, as an entry pointed out, I didn’t define free will. What I mean is that I (whatever that means) have the ability to control my actions. They are not determined by anything else, whether that anything be God, fairies, chemicals and electricity in my brain, quantum interactions, or whatever. Basically, I mean the common-sense definition, as most reasonable people would give it.

The final problem is that I would be a bad judge. It would take a fairly significant discovery to sway me either way, and the evidence just isn’t there. However, good cases can be made.

Also, the people who demanded prizes usually just mentioned cookies, which made me think that they’re really what people want.

So taking all of this into consideration, here’s what’s going to happen. I’ll be soliciting entries for the contest until at least the end of Thanksgiving Break (the 26th). Anyone can enter, although only once. You can enter by E-mailing me (stupac2 at gmail dot com) or leaving a comment at either post. At the end of the time period, I will make a voting website, where readers will score essays. Every entry can receive a score of 0 to 10, 0 being totally unconvincing and 10 being pretty darn good. After a certain amount of time voting will close and the highest ranked entries will receive the prize. The number of winners will depend on the number of entries, if I get 5 there will only be one winner, but if I get 30 or more there will be 3.

The prize will be a package of cookies shipped directly to your door. The winner can choose, but if they don’t I’ll send Nabisco Chips Ahoy - Chewy:



I think these are absolutely delicious cookies, the best that come prepackaged.

I’ll need the addresses of the winners, so either provide it to me when you enter or pay attention as the contest develops (subscribe to my RSS feed! Muahaha!). If you win and I don’t have an address, you won’t get cookies. Which would be a cryin’ shame. Also, you should probably title your post. I’m not entirely sure how the website will work (I’m going to try to follow the Blogger SAT Challenge that a couple of Sciencebloggers did a while back), but a distinct possibility is that it will have a list of linked titles, and the voting past that link. I’m not sure if that’s exactly how it will be, but a good title could never hurt.

So you really have nothing to lose. In the next couple of weeks come up with your best “proof” or “disproof” of free will, and maybe win cookies!

Free Will Prize

(Update on the contest here.)

Free will seems like something of a contentious topic. I firmly believe that we can’t tell either way if we have it or not, but I think that most people disagree with me, some to both extremes.

So I’ve decided to hold a contest. If you can prove conclusively, through any means, that free will either exists or is an illusion, then I will send you:

• A box of cookies, your choice.
  
• A Trophy, engraved with your name and a description of your feat.
  
• A Medal, also engraved with your name and feat. It will be on a big sash so you can wear it around and impress people.

No, I’m not joking. I specifically made the prizes fun and desirable while still being within my means so that, if it is won, I can award it (unlike Creationist prizes for “proving” evolution). The criteria for proving it is that if I think the submission is convincing, I will repost it here and solicit feedback from my readers. If they also find it convincing, then you will win the prize. I will be as unbiased as I possibly can be, and I don’t care what kind of evidence you use (philosophical reasoning, experimental proof, quantum theory, etc), but I need to be able to understand it, so no super-complex math or jargon.

However, as I’ve stated before (and is distilled here in comic form) I’m fairly confident that free will cannot be conclusively proved or disproved at this time, so I doubt anyone will be able to claim this prize.

So give it the best you’ve got. And if you know a philosopher or neuroscientist or quantum physicist who has strong feelings about this subject, show them this page. I want to give this prize away, and all you have to do is solve a millennia-old philosophical conundrum. Not only could you win cookies, a trophy, and a medal, but the respect of your peers and you’ll go down in history as the best philosopher of all time.

Solipsism is Everything That's Wrong With Philosophy

There was an article called Top scientist asks: is life all just a dream? on Digg yesterday. I read that article, and I yelled, “This is what’s wrong with Digg! Solipsism is the stupidest thing ever!”

In case you’re unfamiliar with Solipsism, it’s basically the position that nothing exists outside of your own mind. It’s essentially the philosophical argument that any five-year-old can discover and espouse as elegantly as the best philosopher, and in my experience most children do figure it out for themselves at some point.

It makes me angry for one very specific reason: even if it’s true, nothing changes. Yes, for all we know nothing outside of our consciousness actually exists and it’s all just a construct of our minds. But in that case what changes? Not a thing. Besides, it’s a ridiculously wasteful hypothesis, very unparsimonious, and you’d think it would have been sliced to pieces by Occam’s Razor long ago.

Why is it wasteful? Because in order for it to work, there has to be something that creates our consciousness (in the case of the aforementioned article, a computer simulation). But then we have to explain how that got created. All that it does is add another, pointless layer of complexity to the universe, one that we can never see or test and which is unparsimonious, and as such should be thrown out.

Appealing to the apparent fine-tuning of constants for life is also pointless. Imagine that, beings that can think find themselves in an environment that’s conducive to beings that can think. Quite the surprise! There may very well be no other way the universe can turn out, but maybe not, and either way the fact that we find ourselves in such a universe is not a surprise, and NOT evidence for an intelligent designer of any form, computer or god. To get to that conclusion requires healthy doses of sloppy thinking.

Solipsism embodies everything that I loathe about philosophy: untestable, predictionless, unparsimonious, and absurd. No one who seriously considers it as a possibility should call themselves a scientist.

Free Will and Useless Philosophy

Here is a good example of why I think that philosophy is useless.

Free will is a problem that has pretty much always been around. It certainly does feel like I’m choosing the words that I’m typing right now, but there have always been reasons to think that we aren’t totally in control. First it was gods, then Newtonian science, and now the probabilistic quantum mechanical science. There have always been arguments for us not having free will, and the persistent feeling that we do have it.

So really, what difference does it make? Right now we have absolutely no way of deciding one way or another, so why spend energy trying to think our way to a solution? Thought won’t get us there, but one day medical science just might. Until then, it’s just a waste of time on a subject that doesn’t matter.

That’s not to say that I don’t think we should work on hard problems, but I’m nearly certain that it’s going to be science that tackles them, and it’s usually pretty clear what science is capable of tackling at any given point. Consciousness and free will are far off; the Higgs particle probably isn’t.

Do I have free will? It seems like it, but even if I don’t, I really don’t care.

Philosophy Friday: Existentialism

For the second Philosophy Friday I’m going to talk about Existentialism.

Now, some background explanation. Whenever I write about something, I research it, even if that means just consulting Wikipedia or Google. With existentialism that was quite tricky. I couldn’t get a very consistent definition of it. This one is fairly typical: “Existentialism is a philosophical movement that views the individual, the self, the individual's experience, and the uniqueness therein as the basis for understanding the nature of human existence. The philosophy generally reflects a belief in freedom and accepts the consequences of individual actions, while acknowledging the responsibility attendant to the making of choices.”

But that’s not how it’s normally used (at least in my experience). Most people think of existentialism as the philosophy that our existence is all there is; that we’re adrift in the void, living meaningless, purposeless lives, doomed from birth to die, and after death we cease to be. That is the existentialism I know and love.

You might be wondering, “How can you possibly love that concept?” Some people might answer that it frees me from any moral obligations, but that’s not it at all. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.

I love it because it means that this life is entirely what you make of it. For two examples of what I mean in cartoon form, see here and here. I really love that second one.

Back to what I mean in non-comic form, enjoying life and being a good person should be plenty purpose for anyone. What else can we really do? Sure, when we die we probably cease to be (just like before we were born), but what does that have to do with life? If anything, that just convinces me more to enjoy what little time I have, and try to leave the largest possible positive footprint I can.

When the sun finally gives out its last ray of light, and the earth is encompassed by absolute blackness, none of it will matter. But it means the world now. Carpe Diem.

That’s my take on existentialism.

Philosophy Friday - Materialism

I’ve decided that I’m going to start doing something called “Philosophy Friday”, where I right about some philosophical idea that interests me, a brief history of the idea, and why I like it. Today, the first philosophy Friday, will be about materialism.

Materialism holds than the only thing that exists is matter, and everything action in the universe is governed by matter and the forces between it. More basically, it says that anything that has any effect on anything in the universe (or the universe itself) is material, and subject to the laws of nature.

The first philosopher to detail materialism was Lucretius, working off of the work by Democritus and Epicurus (among others). He wrote that all that exists is matter and void, and that everything is the result of motions and conglomerations of base particles (named “atoms” by Democritus). This would prove to be remarkably prescient.

Materialism is also one of those words that can have heavy overtones, some people use it almost as a slur, as if the world being material is an inherently bad thing. Wikipedia says, “Materialism has frequently been understood to designate an entire scientific, rationalistic world view, particularly by religious thinkers opposed to it, who regard it as a spiritually empty religion.” I’ve found that much anti-evolution propaganda uses in this way (although this is based on only a few pamphlets).

One of the things that lead to be believe that materialism is correct (besides being the most parsimonious hypothesis for how the world works) is a fairly simple thought experiment (that might not remain a thought experiment for much longer). Imagine that every single molecule, every single atom, every single quark and electron have been copied exactly. All umpteen trillion of them. Their quantum states and positions relative to each other have been completely and accurately measured, and faithfully reproduced. Imagine that you had been duplicated, “quantum Xeroxed”, so to speak.

What would the resulting duplicate be? Would it be you? It would have your face, your heart, your brain, your stomach, your bones, your scars, your lunch in its stomach, your neurons in its brain, even your bacteria in its mouth. Would it have your thoughts? Your memories? Your opinions? Would it think like you? Would it be possible to tell the difference between the you and it?

To me, it seems impossible that it wouldn’t have your memories and opinions along with your lunch in its stomach. Which means that dualism is wrong, and materialism is the most plausible philosophical stance. But this thought experiment is one of the best ways I’ve found of examining whether the universe is monist or dualist, because they both predict different outcomes (although I’m not exactly certain what a dualist would expect to happen). But since this is based only upon what you think would happen, it’s really only a gauge of what you personally perceive about the world around you, I’ve just found that, when materialism is presented like this, people find it more plausible.

Thus concludes the first Philosophy Friday.

The Power of Faith

This is probably the best YouTube video I’ve ever seen. The use of “Mad World” in the background is perfect. We live in the maddest of all possible worlds. Or so it sometimes seems.

This made me think about how much I agree with Bertrand Russell when he said, “I am as firmly convinced that religions do harm as I am that they are untrue.” An honest look at historical and contemporary events shows that religion has had far more negative consequences than positive ones. All of the hope and charity and love that would have been there without religion is far outweighed by the blood of innumerable innocents that wouldn’t have spilt without religion.

Diderot had it right when he said, "Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest." Here’s to that day.

Perspectives

A few years ago I was in some kind of south Asian store (Indian, I believe), when I saw a small, glass globe. It had the South Pole on top and the North Pole on the bottom. The first thing that I thought when I saw this globe is, “That’s upside down.” I’m sure most Americans would have exactly the same unwarranted reaction. The direction facing upward is completely arbitrary, but because the North is “more important” globes and maps always have it above the South.

That globe reminded me about perspectives, and that sometimes you have to take a step back from yourself and remember that your perspective influences how you see the world (in this case literally). You have to understand your prejudices, beliefs, morals, and experiences all filter, alter, or color what you see. Often this happens at a physiological level, and it can very difficult for you to be aware of it. But in order to truly understand the world, you have to make yourself aware.

In order to understand some things you have to get outside yourself, and understand how others with different prejudices, beliefs, morals, and experiences see the world the way they do because of all of those things. People with simplistic views of complicated issues who can’t or won’t step outside themselves almost inevitably make situations worse.

That globe sits on my shelf, and still reminds me of the same thing that made me pick it up and buy it years ago: perspectives.