Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 12, 2016

"Locker Room Talk" - Some Thoughts


OK, I feel the need to weigh in on the recent comments made by Donald Trump from his Access Hollywood appearance back in 2005. If you haven't heard about it, Trump got caught on a hot mic saying that he kisses married women without their consent, and he tries to fuck them, and he likes to grab women by the pussy, also without their consent.

Aside from the fact that we've never had a presidential candidate caught on recording saying such things in the modern era, I want to talk about Trump's explanation that this was all just "locker room talk."


Now as a man I am very familiar with so-called "locker room talk," but bare in mind that it doesn't include talking about sexual assault. Yes, many men talk about women in very sexual and sometimes very degrading ways, and I too have been guilty of it, but that's different from bragging about sexual assault. In heterosexual male culture there is a kind of expectation that you're supposed to talk about women as sex objects and brag about all of your sexual exploits with them. And yes, there is an incentive to exaggerate on the juicy details whenever necessary. This has been going on probably since we've had language as a species, and it might not ever end. Not all men or boys do this, and not all the time. But generally speaking, your average male has done this at some point in his life.

For a long time this kind of behavior was chalked up simply as "boys will be boys." But now of course this excuse is increasingly not being accepted by society. Here's my view on this. First, we have to keep in mind that what Trump talked about was actual sexual assault, not just having sex with women consensually. We cannot have any tolerance for sexual assault or rape of any kind, period. Second, when it comes to talking about women in sexually degrading ways, my view is that we men should refrain from it, but I wouldn't go so far as to say two men should never talk about women in sexual terms. It's possible to talk about someone as a sex object while being able to fully recognize them as a human being. We've evolved to look at each other as sex objects. That's how nature gets us to reproduce. But you can look at a women as a sex object and as a human being without being a hypocrite, because how you see her depends on the context.

So I'm not asking that all people all the time talk and act as if they were on national television because that would make the world into a politically correct 1984 dystopia. We should be free to say what we want in private but know that it might become public and we should be prepared to deal with the potential consequences, however frightening that may be.

Most men who engage in "locker room talk" are not rapists or would ever sexually assault a woman and so they know how to understand the context. But again, remember what Donald Trump did: he bragged about having had sexually assaulted women in the past. I'm not justifying that. I'm just saying that it's OK to talk about women in sexual terms when men are together alone, so long that they treat women with respect when they're near them. That also means not referring to women as "bitches," which is still very prevalent, especially in the black community — but referring to them as "women." It almost seems like an expectation in some circles to refer to women as "bitches" to the point where if you don't you must be a pussy. We've got to stop that.

There are at least two ways that I've thought of where we can remedy the situation:

Tuesday, October 4, 2016

What's Wrong With The TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership)?


Hillary Clinton called it the "gold standard" for trade deals before allegedly reexamining it and finding it to be bad for the American people. Many neo-liberals and pro-business types still tout the TPP as a good trade deal but rarely acknowledge the problems with it. Here's an excellent video detailing some of the harm it will do.

The TPP would:
  • Give corporations the power to sue the governments of the countries involved in secret foreign tribunals over any law or regulation they claim affected their future profits, including laws that allow for cheap access to medicine, or protect the environment.
  • Allow you to be fined or sent to jail for downloading copyrighted material.
  • Make it so that ISPs have to monitor your internet habits.
  • Once the TPP is signed it is here forever as it is difficult for countries to withdraw and there is no expiration date.
  • And much more

Monday, October 3, 2016

Religious Leaders Pray Over Donald Trump For God To Make Him President


This is why people think religion is silly.

The faithful gathered last year to infuse Trump's campaign with the power of the lord in his luxury high rise tower. One woman even says while praying over Trump that "any tongue that rises against him will be condemned according to the word of God."

Yeah.

If Donald Trump is the man Yahweh has sent to deliver us from Satan, wow.

But hey, it looks like Yahweh has delivered. This was recorded a year ago and since then Trump has won the all the primaries and became the nominee. He's also close to tying Clinton in several key swing states but will still have difficulty in the electoral college. But who knows, as anything can change in the next month. We'll have to see what's going to happen in November to see if Yahweh's going to deliver.

Thursday, September 8, 2016

The Rise And The (Ostensible) Fall Of The Religious Conservatives In The U.S.


In 2014, Pew showed that 72% of Americans think religion is losing its influence in public life and that there's been a recent slight uptick of Americans who say religious institutions should express views on political matters (49%). It further showed that a growing minority (32%) say religious institutions should come out and support political candidates, and 59% think it's important for members of Congress to have religious beliefs.  As expected, Republicans lean more towards wanting more religion in public life.


Furthermore, 56% of Americans who think religion is losing its influence think it's a bad thing, and only 12% think it's a good thing. I'm definitely one of those 12 percenters who think it's a bad thing. I think religion needs to recede from American cultural and political influence and the faster that happens the better the nation will be as a whole.

But the main question I want to address is whether or not opinion of the majority of Americans is correct: Is religion losing its influence in cultural and political matters?

To answer that we have to look at the recent presidential election as well as demographic data and polls on social issues. The largest and most powerful religious influence in the US has without a doubt been that of white evangelical Christians. Almost all US presidents have been Protestant with just a few exceptions. Even so, and despite a recent uptick of those who think religious institutions should get more political, data indicates that the influence of this large and mostly Republican demographic is shrinking and losing influence.

When it comes to demographics, the first and most important factor in the decline of white evangelical Christians is that the country is getting less white. The US is only 63% white, down from 69% in 2000, and 80% in 1980. As the white population shrinks, the white evangelical population shrinks. Second, the country is getting less Christian. The US is only 70% Christian, down from 78% in 2007, and 90% in 1963. In just the past 20 years the percentage of both Christians and the religiously affiliated began to rapidly decline. And just like with the white population, as the Christian population shrinks, the white evangelical population shrinks—along with their influence. Protestants now make up less than half (46%) the US population. Thirdly, there is a large generational gap with respect to Christian religiosity indicating what's to come. Only 56% of millennials are Christian, whereas 70% of generation X, and 78% of baby boomers are Christian.

Saturday, September 3, 2016

On Libertarianism


Something that I don't often write about is political libertarianism. I have a problem with it. I have a problem with the view that the free market approach works everywhere. But in order to talk about this stuff, one needs to bring in the fields of political philosophy and economics that I am much less acquainted with than with the relevant fields needed to have the religion debate.

In political philosophy, one of the major questions is "what is the purpose of government?" It's an interesting question few of us ask ourselves. We tend to grow up in cultures where government exists and its role is taken for granted. The US was founded by rebels who broke away from a theocratic king and set up a secular democracy. The preamble of the US Constitution reads that its purpose was "to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity". It was the first secular democracy in the world and quite revolutionary.

The purpose of the newly independent US government seemed quite clear. Or was it? What does it mean to "promote the general Welfare?" Libertarians generally believe that the purpose of government is to protect the rights of the citizens and perform a few basic functions like military, police, and the law: The military to protect the country from all enemies foreign and domestic, the police to provide security internally, and the law to provide judges and courts for legal matters. Other than that, most, if not all other areas of society will be handled by the private sector.

Libertarians disagree over exactly how far government should extend beyond the police, military, and the law. They also disagree on taxes. Some support a flat tax, others support no taxation at all and consider any form of taxation the moral equivalent of stealing. People would instead voluntarily donate money to the government in such a system. Voluntaryism, the philosophy that forms of human association should be voluntary is big among the "taxation is theft" wing of libertarians.

I've challenged many libertarians I know on whether an all voluntary taxation system would actually be able to pay for the government they think should exist and the answers I get don't sound too confident. I've asked them what should be done if voluntary tax donations weren't enough to cover the costs of the government functions, like for example, the police to secure the safety of the community, and I haven't gotten a good answer yet. Voluntaryism would also allow free riders to game the system. If your neighbors are voluntarily paying for the police and you're not, you're still going to get the same police protection they paid for. Also, who would build and maintain the roads, bridges, and tunnels? Would the private sector really be able to handle this with the level of coverage government could?

Libertarians are very anti-utilitarian. They are not focused on the end result, but rather the principle being held. So if an all voluntary taxation system failed to pay for the needs of the small libertarian government and it resulted in massive societal problems, like rising crime and civil unrest because of the lack of paid police officers, then so be it. All that matters is that government didn't tax, or "steal" anyone's earnings.

Friday, August 12, 2016

Great Lecture By Jonathan Haidt On Politics, Morality, And Psychology


I just watched this and I thought it was good enough to post. I'm taking the day off to go to a birthday party. It's David Silverman's 50 birthday. He's a president of American Atheists. Should be fun. Please enjoy this video and learn from it. We all — liberals and conservatives, democrats and republicans, independents and libertarians, religious and non-religious alike — need to get better on how we evaluate ourselves and our views.

Saturday, August 6, 2016

Conservatives Have A Point


Growing up in the inner city, the culture that surrounded me in my adolescent years despised intelligence. Ignorance was celebrated as a virtue; it was something to be commended, something to aspire to. I remember back in school dumbing myself down in order to fit in with my peers by pretending to be stupid and not knowing the answers to the questions my teachers asked, when in fact I really did. Thinking back on this reminds me of the conservatives who say that the problems of the inner city, and the black community in particular, are due to culture and not racism. For a while I dismissed that argument, but I've changed my mind. I think conservatives do have a point on this.

Now let me first set the record straight. I am technically a liberal, although I'm beginning to hate labels more and more, especially when it comes to politics. I am a liberal—but—I definitely don't think liberals have all the right answers. They are not 100 percent right on 100 percent of the issues. That's far from the case. We must divorce ourselves from the increasingly tribal mentalities on the political spectrum. We must be willing to listen to the other side, and seek out the best criticism of our own political identifications. And we must put reason and evidence first and foremost over and above everything else, especially when it disagrees with our politics.

On the ongoing problems in America's inner cities with rising crime and stagnant poverty I think that it is undeniably true that culture is at least a part of the problem. You see, what conservatives typically do is they blame all the problems in the inner city on culture, and what liberals typically do is they blame all the problems in the inner city on racism. But as I see it, both of them are partially right. Yes — racism, the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow laws, the predatory lending practices of banks, and many other discriminatory policies have left a negative imprint on African Americans. And yes it is also true that many racist policies have hurt Latino Americans and to a lesser degree some Asian Americans. But that isn't the full answer of why these groups still struggle with poverty, violent crime, and high unemployment and incarceration rates. Culture matters. When you have a culture that nurtures and embraces ignorance as if it was a virtue, treats women like pieces of shit, and thinks that resorting to violence in order to solve your problems is acceptable, what the fuck do you think is going to happen? Do you think a culture like that is going to create brilliant thinkers, scientists, inventors, and entrepreneurs peacefully coexisting in safe, clean neighborhoods? No! You're going to create a culture full of high school dropouts, thugs, criminals, single mothers and absentee fathers, and low skilled wage earners who stay in poverty generation after generation via perpetual bad decision making.

Now you might argue that the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, and other racist policies helped create this culture that celebrates apathy and ignorance as virtues. Fine. I'd agree with you. But that's not in any way a refutation that culture is an important reason why so many minorities in the inner cities across America are committing crimes at much higher rates than the rest of the country and continue to be in poverty generation after generation.

We must cultivate a culture that celebrates and nurtures science and philosophy and reason and facts and the thirst for knowledge and truth. We must also cultivate a culture where we seek to minimize unnecessary suffering, and where we care about the well being of others. It is imperative that we do this in order to resolve the negative issues plaguing inner city minority communities for generations. I want being smart to be cool again. Make that something kids want to aspire to. I want this stupid culture of ignorance to go away once and for all and to be mocked and humiliated into extinction, in much the same way I think should happen to religion. That won't be easy, but it can happen. Here's how:

My Favorite Hitchens Quote



In Letters to a Young Contrarian, Hitchens wrote what has become my favorite quote from him:

"Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence."

It made me think of my life so far and how during much of its duration I regretfully kept silent. I used to be very shy when I was younger. I rarely, if ever, spoke up in public. I'd usually sit in my chair in school, emotionless and timid, afraid to talk to anyone. I had no confidence in who I was. I couldn't make friends. I couldn't talk to girls. I'd keep my opinions all to myself, afraid I'd be mocked by my peers for exposing what they were. The interests that I had, like science and history, were simply not "cool" in the culture I grew up in and I suppressed my knowledge of them, thereby suppressing the main source of confidence available to me.

Then I got older. Towards the very end of high school and into college I began to break free from my cocoon. With some luck I made friends. I started to speak up in class and offer my opinion. I took several public speaking courses that greatly helped my ability to speak in front of audiences. At times I got really good at it, becoming the most outspoken person in the class. In fact, in one professional development class in college, my professor called me the best student in the class. I had achieved this by showing off all my knowledge of history and philosophy, which greatly impressed him. I had finally, right around that time, "found myself" so to speak.

Today I am very comfortable in my skin. I like who I am. I like my personality. I like my interests. I like my sense of humor. I am very outspoken now. Hitchens' quote further inspires me to not stay silent. When it comes to philosophy and politics I cannot even imagine being shy about them at this point in my life. There will be an infinite amount of time after I'm dead when I'm not going to be saying or writing shit. During this finite amount of time I have in this universe it is absolutely imperative that I be heard so that there's at least a chance that my views will makes waves. That's why I can never stay silent. Not anymore. 

Saturday, July 23, 2016

Both Mainstream Political Options Totally Suck


And now for some political rants....

So this week we learned who the republican and democratic vice presidents are going to be. Donald Trump has picked Indiana governor Mike Pence as his running mate, and Hillary Clinton picked Virginia senator Tim Kaine as her running mate.

A few thoughts.

First, Mike Pence is a very socially conservative tea party favorite who denies climate change, evolution, and was even against the medical consensus that smoking causes cancer. He's about as bad as Ted Cruz is on religion and socially conservative issues. Earlier this year he signed a bill in Indiana that would have made it mandatory that aborted and miscarried fetuses be given a funeral and are either cremated or buried. Luckily it didn't pass. He supported a law that would have allowed businesses to discriminate against gays and lesbians due to religiously held beliefs, called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Then when it became controversial he backtracked on it. But still, you can see where his heart is. Pence is a deeply religious social conservative, and as a secular liberal that scares me. Combine this with Trump's arrogant disregard for facts and strong arm bully tactics, this could be a very frightening combination that I do not want to get near the White House. Trump will almost certainly appoint Supreme Court justices that want to restrict abortion rights, violate the establishment clause, and support "religious freedom" bills.

On the democratic side, things are no better. Senator Kaine is everything Bernie supporting progressives like me were fearful of. He's another boring, status-quo establishment politician, with a track record way too favorable to the donor class. He supported giving president Obama the ability to fast track the TPP (trans-pacific partnership trade agreement) which would, among other things, make it easier for corporations to sue the US government for profit losses due to environmental standards. The Clinton campaign has said he would officially come out against the TPP, but he has reportedly praised the TPP as recently as Thursday, making his opposition to it about as sincere as Clinton's is, which is to say he's full of shit. He signed a repeal of the estate tax in Virginia, something conservatives have been vying for. He has also supported bank deregulations. In all, he's a corporate friendly centrist democrat, far from the progressive that many of us had hoped for.

So where does that leave me? I'm in a fix here. I'm not excited about either ticket. They both suck to be honest. I've been thinking that I should vote for the lesser of two evils but I'm being pulled in the direction of voting on principle. There is the Green Party alternative Jill Stein who basically has the same platform as Bernie Sanders. Many Sanders supporters I know will be voting for her. It is hard to see myself voting for Clinton that serves as a vote against Trump. I've even heard a liberal friend of mine say Trump will be better for the country than Clinton. I'm skeptical about that, but it's possible. I'm going to have to wait until November to make my decision.

The interesting thing is that this year, unlike any other election year we've had in recent history, the republican party's platform is to the left of the democratic party's platform on trade and some economic issues. Perhaps what the democrats need is to get their asses handed to them in the general election so that the party realizes establishment candidates like Clinton and Kaine who aren't real populists aren't what the American people want. This will be an interesting general election.


Wednesday, July 20, 2016

America Is A Christian Nation?


I came across this video from a YouTube channel called Counter Arguments. There are some really nice videos on that channel, well produced and edited, and I agree with almost everything I've seen so far. Here is one video on the counter argument to the claim "America is a Christian nation." Please check out his videos and YouTube channel.




EXTRA: Here's another one on the nonsense spewed out by professional Islamic obscurantist Reza Aslan.

Friday, June 17, 2016

Quote Of The Day: The Racism Of Low Expectations


Today's quote comes from Maajid Nawaz, the coiner of the term "regressive left," from his BigThink talk:

… It’s what I call the racism of low expectations: to lower those standards when looking at a brown person if a brown person happens to express a level of misogyny, chauvinism, bigotry, or anti-Semitism, and yet hold other white people to universal liberal standards. The real victim of that double standard are the minority communities themselves because by doing so we limit their horizons; we limit their own ceiling and expectations as to what they aspire to be; we’re judging them as somehow that their culture is inherently less civilized; and, of course, we are tolerating bigotry within communities, and the first victims of that bigotry happen to be those who are weakest from among those communities.

Happy Friday!


Wednesday, June 8, 2016

How To Stop Trump — My Theory


On Real Time with Bill Maher Bill is asking every guest how to stop Donald Trump from becoming president in the fall. Here's how I think Trump can be stopped.

As a thin-skinned narcissist, Trump cannot let any insults or criticism of himself slide. He has to respond to every negative comment and tweet at him. And when he responds, he can get really, really ugly, and that ugliness can turn off many people who aren't already supportive of him. So the way to destroy Trump is to have many high profile celebrities and politicians attack him relentlessly on TV and on social media in a tsunami of criticism. They should attack him exactly where it hurts him most — his business record, his appearance, the fraud he's perpetrated, his intellectual shortcomings on the issues, his mental stability in general. Trump will be spending all his time responding back and when he does the criticisms should come on even stronger so that he spirals out of control and eventually goes way over the line so that he looks so unpresidential, and like such a horrible, ugly, mentally unstable human being, that it will convince enough people not to vote for him, and that will cause him to lose the election. At least in theory.

That's how you take down Trump. Accusing him of being a racist is not going to hit him hard. Ruining his image as a successful business man, showing how much of a liar he is, and making him look mentally unstable will — for at least some of the people not already devout supporters. All you need to convince is a few million people and that's enough for him to lose the election in November.

So what do you think? Will it work?



Yesterday I accidentally created a post on a tweet I thought was really Donald Trump but instead it was a parody account. I didn't fully check out the source. Once I found that out I deleted the post, but here's the original tweet for your information.

Tuesday, June 7, 2016

Reason Rally 2016 Recap


I am back in New York after having attended the 2016 Reason Rally. On my ride home we actually got lost and I didn't make it back to my apartment until 2 AM, with just 7 hours to go until I had to go back to work. Luckily my job allows me to come late. Whew! Anyhow, I wanted to share my thoughts on my experiences.

First off, this was the first atheist convention that I had ever gone to. I honestly didn't know what to expect. For the most part, the speakers were not the reason I went. I've seen and spoke with Lawrence Krauss before. I've seen many big name atheists, including Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris, as well as many popular atheist YouTubers. I went mainly to visually represent myself as an open atheist who supports secular values and to collaborate with like minded individuals. And get drunk and high of course. Atheist events are great places for meeting new people to collaborate with.

Despite the weather being good, turn out seems to have been lower than expected. It was being reported that 30,000 people were going to attend but in my estimation there were less than 7,000 people. There are lots of theories why this is the case.

  • The atheist community has been fractured by divisions among liberals regarding Islam and feminism, and the organizers of the event generally take a side of the so-called "regressives."
  • The line up was not as exciting, with actors like Johnny Depp and Margaret Cho not attending for various reasons, and Richard Dawkins unable to attend due to his recent stroke. Johnny's appearance alone could have possibly drawn several thousand people.
  • Other big name atheists like Sam Harris didn't attend. People like him have huge followings and could draw thousands of people.
  • Time, cost, and travel expenses could have played a factor. The annual World Science Festival was the same weekend and I really wanted to go but in the end decided to go with the Reason Rally because it's not every year (and I had not attended any major atheist events before).

The location of the event was not ideal. We were by the Lincoln memorial right in front of the reflecting pool and so the crowd was split in half making it difficult to get to either side. In 2012 it was located by the main mall which allowed for better navigation. I suppose my problem with the event would be that it wasn't really that atheist-centric. I would have loved it if Dawkins and Harris were there and more high profile atheists who promote atheism and secular values like Sean Carroll, Phil Zuckerman, Richard Carrier, and Aron Ra. That would be my dream, but the purpose of the rally I suppose was not really to preach atheism, it was to show Washington secular people exist and will be voting. In that sense, it failed to visually represent the growing number of atheist people. 

Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Reason Rally 2016



So tomorrow begins the 2016 Reason Rally event in Washington DC. I will be headed down there tomorrow morning and will be meeting several friends who are active in the New York City atheist community. There are many events lined up in addition to the main rally on Saturday. I'm taking part in the Advocacy Days training session for lobbying senators and congressmen about secularism and to put pressure on them to respect the wall (between church and state). It should be fun, especially since marijuana is legal in the city. The Wu-tang clan are going to perform. Bill Nye will speak and Lawrence Krauss, and they're always interesting. Originally Johnny Depp was going to speak but his recent mother's death and divorce hoopla caused him to decline. Damn. I was looking forward to seeing him and possibly meeting him since I know a guy who knows the organizers.

If you can make it to the event I highly recommend you come. It is very important that atheists, skeptics, and secular people are represented and show America that we're one of the largest growing segments of the population and that we're just not going to tolerate the absurdity of religion into the government process anymore. A rally for reason, it would seem, shouldn't be necessary. It's the 21st century. Heck it's the second half of the second decade of the 21st century. We as a people should be past religious dogma hindering our policies. But in reality it's technically more broad than that. Rational thinking is needed in all areas of human existence, not just politics. We absolutely need rational discourse in every aspect of our lives from politics to policy to economics to our personal lives and views. It's not just religion that is hindering rational thinking. There are multiple kinds of irrational ways to think that involve no appeal to religion or any god. I suppose that's what the Reason Rally is really about - at least I hope. We need to stamp out all ways of irrational thinking, especially among religious, but also among the non-religious.

And speaking of which, I will be posting a blog I wrote last year on how to infer ontology that I never published that will outline my views on exactly how to think rationally about ontological claims. Expect that to be done within the next week or two - depending on how busy I am from the rally.

Sunday, May 22, 2016

George Carlin Was Wrong On Voting


I've been running into many people lately who say voting is a meaningless process when I bring up politics. One guy I was talking to recently brought up George Carlin who was very critical on the voting process (among other things). George Carlin said repeatedly in his standup gigs and on TV and other media outlets that voting is pointless because the game is rigged, the country's ruled by a small group of people who have all the real power, and they've set up a system to give you the illusion that you actually have a choice when you go out and vote, but you don't.

Now look. I'm a huge Carlin fan. I love his stand up and his general philosophy. He's genuinely funny as fuck. But he's wrong on voting. First, let me say that I partially agree with him that there are people running the country who don't give a crap about regular working folks like me. This is not to say that there's some secret conspiracy, like the Bilderbergs, or the Illuminati. There is some truth to that but I'm not a conspiracy nut. There are various competing groups in various areas of the world in various sectors who have a disproportionate amount of power. That's always been the case. But aside from this partial truth, to not vote is not going to make the situation any better for thinking and working people who want rational policies. It will make it worse. Here's why.

We have to acknowledge that not all politicians are the same. No one in their right mind would seriously believe that a Ted Cruz presidency would've had the exact same laws and policies passed as a Bernie Sanders presidency. If you believe that you're insane. These two men couldn't be more ideologically different. The same is true of past elections. Do you really think that a John McCain presidency would've had the exact same laws passed that president Obama passed? Do you think universal healthcare, and same sex marriage, and the ending of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would've been passed under president McCain? Do you think McCain would've appointed the same Supreme Court Justices as Obama did? You know the same-sex marriage decision came down to just one vote don't you? A one vote difference would have made the country completely different. Elections matter, and presidents appoint Supreme Court judges and Congress votes them in, and you vote-in the president, the senators, and the congressmen and women.

If you don't think your vote counts, think again. The reason why Bernie Sanders didn't get more votes than Hillary Clinton is because his base is among young people and too many young people have bought this meme that all politicians are the same and the game is all rigged and so your vote doesn't matter, so don't vote. Nothing could be more insane. This guarantees that you will never get your way in the political system. In case you don't know, the people who are not buying this meme are the older religious white conservatives who often vote for religions Christian dominionists who want to turn the US into their Christian fantasy land. The religious right in this country wants to live in a very very different America than secular liberals like me.

Monday, May 16, 2016

The Big Picture Tour



Last week I saw physicist Sean Carroll again for the first stop on his book tour for The Big Picture: On the origins of life meaning and the universe itself at the Bell House in Brooklyn. His latest book is basically a defense of naturalism from a scientist's perspective on how we should see the "big picture" of existence, life, and meaning, in a way firmly grounded by, and compatible with science—but with lots of philosophy thrown in—which is definitely needed in public discourse of this nature. I've been waiting a long time for a book just like this to come out because I think it's very important for the naturalist to be able to have a coherent explanation of reality fully compatible with human experience and with science. I'm also very grateful that Carroll is not allergic to philosophy like Lawrence Krauss is. Philosophy is absolutely essential to having a coherent worldview and I personally am deeply invested in having a worldview as a naturalist from the most fundamental ontology all the way up to the higher level ontologies like sociology and politics. My goal is to eventually work my way to the higher level philosophies over time and I hope this book can significantly help me with rational thinking on how to tie them all in together.

One of the interesting points Carroll argues early on is that notions like "cause and effect" are nowhere to be found in the fundamental laws of physics, they are just a way of describing reality as we see them from our human perspectives. This is very important, because for one thing, if there is no cause and effect as is commonly understood in our experience, all the "first cause" arguments for the existence of god go out the window. I've been coming to the realization that cause and effect aren't really as they seem on my own through my study of Special Relativity. In a block universe, there are simply just worldtubes in spacetime, and one point on the worldtube doesn't really cause a later point on the worldtube. What causality really is would seem to have to be the relationships of intersecting worldtubes as they precede each other or intertwine with another. For example, asking "why do I exist now?" would be explained by the fact that at an earlier event in spacetime my parents had sex. That was the "cause" that resulted in my birth and existence now – but only in the sense that if you trace my worldtube back in spacetime to its origin it’s preceded by my parent’s worldtubes and thus that establishes the "causal" relationship. This is a profound insight that radically changes our notion of causality. The traditional notion we ascribe to our everyday experiences simply doesn't exist.


Saturday, May 14, 2016

Has Political Correctness Gone Too Far? Yes


This weekend I'll be hosting a debate on political correctness and on whether it has gone too far — which is gotten me in a fix because as the host I'm expected to me impartial. I make it no secret that I think modern PC has gone too far. Political Correctness is defined as:

the avoidance, often considered as taken to extremes, of forms of expression or action that are perceived to exclude, marginalize, or insult groups of people who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against.

Let's look at a few examples of where I think it has:

  • Debating/Open Dialogue: Recently, when a debate over campus sexual assault was organized at Brown University, some women on the campus feared such a dialogue would enable trigger warnings and under the university's guide were given a safe space room to retreat to equipped with cookies, coloring books, bubbles, Play-Doh, calming music, pillows, blankets and a video of frolicking puppies, as reported by the New York Times.
  • Clapping: As reported by ListVerseThe National Union of Students Women’s Campaign, a feminist college student group in Britain, announced in March 2015 that they would ban clapping at their future conferences held at UK colleges. The feminist group claimed that the act of clapping could “trigger some people’s anxiety,” and therefore should be banned from all of their conferences. Instead, the feminist students instructed those who attend conferences to use jazz hands—to wave their hands silently in the air—when they wished to display approval.
  • Cultural appropriation: As reported by ListVerseTrouble began for a band called Shokazoba when they were scheduled to play a Halloween concert at Hampshire College in Massachusetts. Shokazoba plays a genre of music called Afrobeat, which is a fusion of funk and jazz music with African rhythms. However, this style proved to be the band’s undoing because of one problem. The band’s members are mostly white.
  • Microaggressions: As reported by The College Fix: The University of California's president recently declared some staples of small talk to be inherently racist or sexist. Saying “America is the land of opportunity,” “There is only one race, the human race” and “I believe the most qualified person should get the job” are among a long list of alleged microaggressions faculty leaders of the University of California system have been instructed not to say. Other sayings deemed unacceptable include:
    • “Everyone can succeed in this society, if they work hard enough.”
    • “Where are you from or where were you born?”
    • “Affirmative action is racist.”
    • “When I look at you, I don’t see color.”
  • Due process: Under pressure from the Obama administration, some universities have abandoned due process in favor of a guilty until proven innocent attitude in sexual assault cases. As reported by the Wall Street Journal, colleges that refuse to curtail the due process of the accused may lose federal funding. Through an interpretation of Title IX of the Civil Rights Act universities will be strongly discouraged from questioning or cross examining the accuser. 
  • Feminism: Critics of modern day third wave feminism, like Christina Hoff Summers, who challenge popularly believed statistics like that 1 in 5 women are sexually assaulted on campus, or that women earn 77 cents on the dollar to men, make “trigger warnings” by their very presence on college campuses and are banned or protested against from speaking.

Thursday, May 12, 2016

Andrew Seidel: America Is NOT A Christian Nation


Not sure if I blogged this before, but just in case I haven't it's worth the watch. Andrew Seidel nicely dispels the myth that America is a Christian nation.


Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Everything Wrong With Political Correctness In A Nutshell



Monday, May 2, 2016

How Do We End Corruption In Our Political System?


I thought this was worth posting and not just tweeting. How do we end corruption in our political system? Here's a rational solution in the form of 5 steps.

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