Holiday Strife

Note: I really need to talk about this but it’s one of those things where other people, nay, family, are implicated, so… intentional vaguebooking.

I’m very upset because some people I’ve known for a very long time, that I do love, are brought into my life again due to the holidays. But we haven’t seen each other much lately due to distance etc., and they are pretty ignorant of where I’m at in life now.

The clenching feeling in my stomach, the strain in my head from the impending headache, and the heat in my eyes. Just thinking about all this hurts. My health, sanity, and safety must come first.

We’ve had arguments recently where they’ve said things that have really hurt. The original reason it started has little to do with why it’s still going now. It’s become about principle for me at this point, because my principle has been ignored repeatedly over the years, and it was violated again during this argument. Simply put: if you claim to care about me, you should care about my feelings.

I’ve grown a backbone in recent years, enough to stand my ground when they’re about to trample on me. It’s like a bull in a china shop, and I’m the china. Before they can wreck everything, I’ve had to ask them to leave until they can learn to play nice. I’ve repeated my request that they acknowledge and respect my needs, and I’ve set an extremely simple gate to pass: Acknowledge you hurt me and apologize for it. And they simply can’t do it.

You should believe me when I say my feelings are hurt. You don’t have to understand how you hurt them. I’m not even sure I can explain it, because I just get so frustrated trying to get through to them. With this whole argument, you’ve demanded repeatedly that I explain how you hurt my feelings. How you hurt me perhaps can be explained after, but the simple fact is that cannot happen until we’ve established the first fact: I’m hurt and you caused it. And you refuse to accept responsibility for hurting me because you claim it isn’t intentional. But whether or not it was intentional, if you stabbed someone, you’re still responsible for the pain you caused. You don’t need an explanation to acknowledge your responsibility in this.

I think they grew up with this very masculine thought process of “you have to be able to take some punishment otherwise you’re not an adult”. It’s a type of toxic masculinity that reinforces the expectations of strength. Compare with “sticks and stones…”. This is simply wrong. Why should we hurt one another at all? This is the sort of schoolyard bully thinking that ruins people’s lives.

I honestly think they have no clue they’re doing it. Well, I think one of them does know he’s doing it, but I think it’s explicitly an attempt to push buttons and say “You want me to recognize your gender, well, here you go, and I’m doing it in the worst way now, you happy?”

My feelings have been repeatedly dismissed. I’ve been called names, accused of being immature and irrational. It has the effect of making me question my perception, which I refuse to do. And worse, gendered slurs too. It’s very classic misogyny, frankly. It follows exactly those patterns.

I trust myself now. But I don’t know how to make them see that what they’re doing is dismissing my needs and disrespecting me other than to stand my ground and demand respect for my perspective and feelings. I do my best to respect theirs. One of the defenses I keep hearing is “you hurt me too”. Probably. You haven’t brought up specifically what you’d like me to do about that, which I’d be more than happy to discuss. But I’ve explicitly asked multiple times for this one thing. So I can’t talk to you until that happens.

Which means I’m not seeing some people for the holidays now that I’d really like to, due to proximity to problematic people. Which hurts a lot. And I cannot fathom having to be in the same room as these problematic people for several days. And now I’m hurting the other people I really care about too because they’re all going to be at the same place.

I love you, I’m sorry.

Writing on the go

So I picked up this really sweet little bluetooth keyboard recently.

It works perfectly with my phone if I want to tap out a little blog post quickly while I’m in between things. This seems to be about the only way I’m going to find any time these days to do stuff like write.

Evenings to myself are so rare… lately, I’m seeing A a lot, and she’s wonderful. I really like her and this all happened so quickly.

I’ve also been trying to see friends more, and figure out identity stuff… like, I’m doing the whole teenager thing constantly while at the same time trying to maintain adult status. It’s this really strange in between stage to things that I’m starting to get done with. I’m getting to know who I am and she’s teaching me things along the way, telling me that I really did have the right idea, or that it’s sometimes a little different than I thought it was.

It’s easy when you’re smart to either be convinced of your own ignorance because you’ve already spent a lot of time thinking about it, or think you know everything for the same reason. It’s kind of ridiculous, actually.

I love the paradoxes of the mind that we’re all cursed with. I love watching other people trip over the little invisible bastards… schadenfreude, yes.

But since people are so rarely interested in trying to correct these things for themselves or improve, I have to keep my mouth shut and not try to beat it into them which is my normal animal reaction. So instead, it’s simply easier to redirect that feeling to amusement.

That’s what 12 years of tech support will get you, I guess.

Writin

The Fine Tuning Argument

I’m going to make some notes about this video at the top, with my thoughts inside the square brackets.

• Star – distance the Planet is from the star [“goldilocks zone”]
• SETI – Silent, no life found
• More factor’s necessary for life? 200+ known?
• “must be perfectly met” – [here’s the mistake.]
• So many factors [assertion: multiply them together, basically]
• Odds against life existing are very high
• Could parameters be met by “accident”?
• Assertion: Due to the improbability of life, science suggests that we cannot be the result of random forces
• Doesn’t believing in God require less faith than believing that a life-sustaining Earth just happened to beat the inconcievable odds?
• [Oh god he actually said fine-tuning I love how they treat this one as valid still]
• Alter a value of 4 fundamental forces and “the universe as we know it could not exist” [tautology]
• “The appearance of design is overwhelming” [Yes, the *appearance*. Anthropocentrism. Well, the whole thing is anthropocentrism]
• “the most powerful argument of the other side” [Hitch also, and I’m paraphrasing, said this is because it’s easy to confuse laymen with… blind them with science]

It’s an argument from ignorance, as Dillahunty would say; it works like this:

“I don’t understand how something so crazy improbable would be possible, so God did it”

Whatever you don’t understand, god did it.

this sort of argument can only point to a deist view of god at best, if we granted the Argument from Ignorance. It certainly makes no suggestion of a Christian God, and cannot.

Lemme break it down. It’s not about the impossibility of so many numbers. It’s about our perspective on that. We can only be here to talk about it if by some chance, we do happen to exist. We do, and we have difficulty in accounting for that when the probabilities appear high like this.

But space is effectively infinite. There’s more galaxies than we can count. When we talk about the Universe, we’re typically talking about the *visible* universe. This doesn’t count what’s beyond what we can see. So there’s a very real possiblity that there’s an infinite amount of space, and NOBODY KNOWS YET. This is why it’s an arugment from ignorance. It could be the case that we live in one universe within a multiverse of practically infinite universes. If this is the case, we must live in the one universe, on the one planet, where the almost infinitely improbable dice happened to land in our favor.
Or it could be the case that there’s all sorts of other things out there. We can’t see it because space is so large.

The counter-factual possibilities go on and on. The point is that it’s a false choice to assert that just because we can’t imagine a thing, it must be that God did it.

So go back to perspective. Yes, it’s a wonder that we’re here. There’s a practically infinite space to explore. It’s Awesome and Wonderful and Amazing. It’s also downright terrifying in an existential way that we’re such an infinitesimal pinprick of organic molecules with the audacity to think that we’re important enough that the creator of all this must look and think and be like us, that he would create us “in his image”. The pure hubris of such a statement is… *almost*, almost more awesome than the universe itself.

And that is why I find the fine-tuning argument insane.

Why?

I’m reading this article: http://killscreendaily.com/articles/homo-synthetica-talks-human-struggle-sci-fi-story/

And it’s got a fantastic line.

“…reminding us that there is no utopia in the future if we don’t engage with the political realities of our present.”

This is why I read a lot.
It gives you a perspective from outside where you currently stand.
This is why I’m involved.
With the world, and everything.
If we don’t get better, we’ll only wreak yet more havoc with more technology.

Technology is not slowing down.
Imagine if you will what sort of ramifications come from having more technology. The sort of tech where we can modify ourselves. Where we can modify our memories, our bodies, our genetics.
This is the reality you live in now.
In the near future, we don’t just modify life, we build it from scratch.
We already make life.
There’s nothing different here, it’s just a different medium, a different canvas if you will.
Parents understand the responsibility it is to make life.
But sometimes stepping back for a second and really realizing, what that means.
And what it demands of us.

What is the value of a life?
Or more accurately, what’s the value of a person?
…what’s your perspective?

Homosexuality and the Bible

From Flickr user http://www.flickr.com/photos/zanthia/

Note on the title: If I was trying to be more accurate and inclusive, it should be read as Interpreting Non-Heterosexual Behavior within the Context of Bible, which is nowhere near as snappy.

I like to dissect and discuss the things I’m reading, but Facebook is problematic for that. I’m going to make an effort to turn this into a real blog and start doing the deep-dive analysis here. We’ll see how it goes. These take a lot longer to put together, so I don’t know how often I’ll do this, but I end up doing it on FB commentary sometimes, which is just not the right place for it.

This link to a Charisma magazine article, which is a well known Christian publication, came up in my feeds. It’s kind of a modern mainline protestant interpretation on homsexuality and the Bible, that fails to address really any of the questions the LGBTQ movement has raised. I’ll try to lay out this case.

First, a warning before going forward. It’s of course possible that Brown, the author, is truly ignorant of modern positions. Understand first that any criticism I lay here will be an attack on the ideas, and never an attack on the individual.

Brown’s position in the article is a pretty standard interpretation that annoys me, due to the fact that it doesn’t address any modern rebuttals to the positions it lays out. Much of this is addressed in great detail on ReligiousTolerance.org, specifically their page on homosexuality. There are five arguments raised, so I’ll lay them out in the context of the headings.

1. The testimony of Scripture remains unchanged: The Bible forbids homosexual practice.

This is just stating what many people believe, but it’s an assertion that is hardly that cut and dry. Some have interpreted this quite differently. The basic problem is that the passages in the Bible that reference homosexual behavior may be applied in a general fashion, or in a much more specific fashion. For instance, many of the laws listed in Leviticus deal with very specific behavior, such as eating shellfish. Which, just so happens, is declared an abomination. Much like another passage in Leviticus that is widely quoted, 20:13 (KJV):

If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them.

It’s often missed in some interpretations that the passage is referring to a man lying in a woman’s bed with a man. It’s a quite specific act. Quoting J. Nelson on the Lev. 20:13 passage: “It is grounded in the old Jewish understanding that women are less worthy than men. For a man to have sex with another man ‘as with a woman’ insults the other man, because women are to be treated as property.”

Most seem to generalize these passages though into a blanket condemnation of non-heterosexual behavior. But be warned, you can condemn homosexual behavior in general, but in order to be coherent, you would also be accepting “women are chattel” as a proposition. You can tell how problematic this quickly becomes.

2.The Bible is a heterosexual book

I think we need to start with a few erroneous statements the author makes. Consider:

Throughout the Word, the only relationships that were acceptable in God’s sight or considered normal for society were heterosexual relationships, and so homosexual practice was either irrelevant (because it had nothing to do with the God-ordained relationships of marriage and family and society) or, if mentioned, explicitly condemned.

The only required refutation of this has been handled brilliantly by Awkward Moments Children’s Bible, specifically in the passage about Samuel 20:41. This story is, as pedantically and dryly as possible, about the relationship between two men, David and Johnathan, whose relationship is being oppressed by their parents and authority figures. It begins “and they kiss one another, and they weep one with another”. It’s certainly not a story presented in a negative light. Most apologists will argue their’s is an innocent relationship, but it’s hard to dismiss the Brokeback Mountain features of the story. Please note that the end of this passage is variously translated as:

• “until David exceeded” (ambiguous bowdlerization, perhaps?)
• “till David exerted himself” (probably the most literal)
• “until David wept more” (wishful thinking, given the context)

There’s a couple of other passages like this that exist, demonstrating that the stories in the Bible are not quite what some would have you believe today. ReligiousTolerance.org again provides some useful context:

The Bible describes three emotionally close relationships between two people of the same gender. They appear to have progressed well beyond a casual friendship. There is, however, no unmistakable evidence that they were sexually active relationships.

The hard-line approach quoted from Brown’s article starts to show cracks once some of the baseless assertions the author makes are invalidated.

3. Gender complementarity is of foundational importance

Forgive me, this is going to get super pedantic for a sec. This assertion is based on an idea of biological determinism of sexual and gender identity. In a nutshell, that means that you “ought” to act a certain way depending on what genes you have, or what type of genitalia is between your legs. For a complete refutation of this line of thinking, I present the intersex. The existence of folks who don’t really cleanly fit the traditionally understood categories of male or female tends to throw a monkey wrench into the idea that who you are is determined by your body somehow. Many of these individuals, in order to fit into our binary society are forced to choose to live as male or female, often at much cost to them.

The argument Brown makes is that men and women are complementary, therefore it’s the only “right” way to be in a relationship. For a logical refutation, please turn your wikipedia to the Naturalistic Fallacy. Anytime someone makes an argument on the basis that it’s good because it’s natural, it’s probably wrong.

Let’s review Brown’s last word in this section:

And in the words of a man who lived as a homosexual all his life (he’s now past 70) but has recently found the Lord, “Even an atheist can understand the lack of anatomical complementarity and therefore biological purpose in male-to-male or female-to-female sexuality.”

As a reminder for new readers, I am an atheist, and as such, I can understand the idea they’re driving at, but it’s nonsensical. The biological purpose of a penis and a vagina is for waste disposal on a far more regular basis than it’s used for sex. As quoted in Forgetting Sarah Marshall: “Let me just say that if God was a city planner he would not put a playground next to a sewage system!” I think this puts a pretty good hole in the biological purpose argument.

This may seem like misdirection, because I’m avoiding the procreation argument that is implied, which Brown also doesn’t directly address. This would be a much longer argument, and I think David Corvino and Maggie Gallagher’s book Debating Same-Sex Marriage covers it much better than I can.

4. Jesus knew exactly what was inside people, including their “sexual orientation”

This is simply a misdirection by Brown. He tries to cut this off by saying:

We’re not talking about the writers of Scripture understanding modern science. We’re talking about them—including Jesus Himself—understanding human nature.

But that is exactly what we’re talking about! He is casting a straw man argument that Jesus or God could not have our modern understanding. If you accept that God exists and is omniscient, then clearly that argument would be wrong. But that is not the argument being made.

The nuanced argument is that the writers of the Bible couldn’t have our modern understanding of social construction theory, biology, philosophy, and so on. Accepting for the moment that the Bible is divinely inspired and true to His intent, it’s still entirely possible that the language and concepts did not exist for the authors of the Bible. They would have had to make do, recording His much more complex concepts in a language of their time, not suited to handle them. This is a subset of the translation argument, basically.

5. The gospel brings good news to homosexual men and women

the message of the gospel brings forgiveness, freedom, hope and deliverance, as countless thousands of ex-gays can attest…

This is the most problematic part for me because it implies support for conversion therapy. This would also be a whole other article by itself. I think it can be summed up like this: the APA condemns the practice on ethical grounds (re:hippocratic oath, “first, do no harm”), and it statistically shows less than optimistic rates of success.

As far as our modern understanding goes, sexual orientation and gender identity are mostly innate characteristics that are not likely to change much. There’s demonstrable fluidity in how people choose to identify or behave, but this does not change the fact that ethically speaking, encouraging people to adhere to traditional societal norms in this context, against their inclinations, seems to do more harm than good.

To close this out, the only interpretation I can come up with, frankly, is it’s a propaganda piece, meant to preach to the choir and bolster their existing beliefs. Brown seems to treat some arguments, such as #4, in a more blatantly specious fashion, utilizing rhetorical chicanery rather than any sound argumentation. It also seems to follow the confirmation bias, where Brown is casting his arguments according to his existing belief, rather than following the evidence where it might lead.

Stay skeptical, friends.

An Atheist’s Response to a Catholic

I’ve been having conversations with a friend of mine about belief and faith for a couple years now. We got talking about it again the other day and she implied that Catholicism has some of the best evidence in her opinion for why I ought to believe. She linked me this article, “Atheists Are Closer to God Than They Think“, in Catholic Answers magazine. The following is my response, I thought it worth sharing here.

I read this article, I appreciate the point of view. The article raises a lot of questions, though, that it leaves unanswered. I wonder if that is because the writer has an agenda? Or is it simply because she wasn’t aware she was leaving open questions? I prefer to assume ignorance rather than malice, it’s the kinder of the two.

I appreciate your point that I should give other opinions a try, and apparently I haven’t made myself clear on this point. I think I’ve done a decent job trying to give other points of view than mine a fair shake. I don’t think you understand the depth I’ve gone to in that attempt.

I have in my life read the bible 4 times from cover to cover. I’ve studied different explanations of it, from various churches of different denominations, schools and thinkers to try and understand it. I have read at least as much apologetics, hermeneutics, and theological philosophy that expounds on the bible, as I have skeptical works. I have *not* devoured the catechism, so I’ll pick through it as time permits, as it’s a large document. I continue to expand my research in many directions as I find time.

I’d like to raise to your attention how the author of the article misses a couple things. She talks about how secular morality fails to satisfy her. But I think she saw parts of the problem, but not the whole thing. There’s a conspicuous absence of certain points.
The author raises Hume’s is-ought problem. But she didn’t raise the corresponding Euthyphro dilemma, which is much older and well known, and which makes her position just as untenable. I think I’ve mentioned it, but it’s usually stated as “Is what is morally good commanded by God because it is morally good, or is it morally good because it is commanded by God?”

Here’s the problem with Absolute Morality and God in a nutshell: If it’s Good because God says so, he could say it’s Good to eat babies, and it would be so because he commanded it, regardless of how we think or *feel* about it. Also, other conceptions of gods command other things and they often disagree. If it’s good in itself, and God just lets us know that, then morality doesn’t originate from God. It’s a thorny problem and I don’t have an answer to it, but it does make me question how the author found answers to the is-ought problem by finding catholicism.

As far as I’m aware, no one has solved these problems of morality. The closest I’ve seen from theological scholars is with work in theodicy, which is attempts to answer the question (the problem of evil):why does God allow evil to exist, if he’s all-powerful, all-seeing, all-good?

I do believe there are moral absolutes, but they’re formulated, in language at least, in less than absolute terms. Trying to explain something in normal human language ends up being quite messy. Try reading Wittgenstein sometime, this is sorta his bag. And he’s quite difficult to understand, lol.

The author also describes her unease with certain styles of utilitarian morality. It sounds like she’s talking about Peter Singer, who to be honest tends to rub a lot of people the wrong way. This is the key passage:
“when I encountered views like my classmate’s or the professor’s or countless others, a part of me wanted to scream, “You don’t kill newborn infants or ignore people in need because that’s just wrong!” All this cool, detached analysis of how we should treat our fellow human beings based on what stood up to the scientific method fell nauseatingly short of capturing the intense feelings that boiled within me when I pondered such matters.”

Everyone, unless you’re a psychopath, gets pretty emotional when we’re talking about death or murder or simply harm caused upon children, in particular. There’s a lot to deal with here. First, when we study morality in academia, *detachment*, or the shackling of the passions, is considered necessary in pretty much any pursuit of knowledge. This is because our emotions will blind us, and we make logical mistakes because of them. Biases become more pronounced when you’re emotional.

On the other hand: “[Hume’s] thesis is that reason alone cannot move us to action; the impulse to act itself must come from passion. The doctrine that reason alone is merely the ‘slave of the passions,’ i.e., that reason pursues knowledge of abstract and causal relations solely in order to achieve passions’ goals and provides no impulse of its own…”

Reason is the slave of the passions. Reason and scientific enquiry mean *nothing* without a passionate, emotional drive behind them.

No scientist, or academic research, or moral philosopher throws out emotions either. In fact, in philosophy, we’re open to being guided by our intuitions. But our intuitions like to play tricks on us. Just look at all the optical illusions for a set of similar examples. Our mind will play tricks on us like that with logic too.

Morality is a very tricky thing. It tends to trip a lot of people up once they start digging into it. It’s useful to listen to your intuitions (killing is bad, mmmkay!) but you can’t let them blind you either. Some moral philosophers like Singer, spend a fair amount of time laying out logical cases that may suggest, out of context, that they are approving of killing the infirm, but that’s not the final conclusion. I’m working through his book right now, actually, that discusses this.

Singer spends 50 pages expounding on the difference between a *person* and a *human being*. There exist human beings like infants and the infirm that do not possess enough mental faculties to be self-aware or reason, so we don’t treat them like *persons* in the same way we treat most people. Singer is not suggesting that we murder them just because they’re not as smart as us. But he does make some arguments that do suggest there’s a relevant difference that’s worth considering in moral reasoning.

Here’s the point with all the morality talk: a group could perfectly represent *your* moral beliefs. But just because it agrees with you, doesn’t mean it’s right. If it disagrees with you, it doesn’t mean it’s wrong, either. The question should be, which is true? Do you care about the truth? Or does it matter more that it agrees with what you feel is right?

How do you establish the truth of morality? What ought we do to be good people? The Bible, Christianity, and Catholicism have a lot to say about this. I have a lot I can say about it too, but I don’t want to open further threads of criticism here that I don’t have time to complete right now, and I’ve already typed a lot here.

I hope you get what I’m trying to say. Time for me to go read some more.

Read

So this JUST happened. Nothing bad, just amusing.

I went to the laundromat across the street to get the load I was running, and I’m walking back down the alley to my place. It’s the city, there’s a lot of people around. I just took a shower and I’m not dressed up fancy or anything but I at least fixed my hair and I’m just wearing a cami and jeans ’cause laundry. Not exactly trying to look feminine or anything.

This dude was crossing the street right behind me, and he’s trying to read me, but he isn’t sure. This happens. It isn’t relevant what sort of man this was. I know the confused look, a lot of people have done it. Can’t figure me out, and people get like, super confused and they have to *know*. It’s like Pat on SNL if you remember it. A lot of people are very uncomfortable unless they can categorize you.

Don’t worry, mother. The alley and a stranger is rightly disconcerting as a combination. But I’m not exactly tiny. I also became quite good at identifying violent intent in high school. Plus, it’s daylight and there’s quite a few people around. So my safety is not a huge concern at this point.

I walk into our gated lot, and I’m closing the sliding gate on it when I notice him still there. He walks up to the fence and says, “Excuse me, this might be embarrassing, but, are you a girl?” And all I can do is grin.

There’s a fence between us, and he was polite about it, so I answer him honestly, that I’m transgender, and I identify as female and I say this jokingly, “I’m working on it.”

He nods slightly with understanding, and says something I can’t really hear over a car passing nearby about, I think attractiveness?

This is happening more often. I don’t think I pass most of the time. For now, I’ll take it as a compliment. I figure, I must be doing something right.

Was going to leave it there and I just thought of this. I’m sure in a lot of other cases, this dude would have just catcalled or ignored me or something perhaps worse. I tripped him up and interrupted that. Not sure how I feel about that aspect of it. I do appreciate that in this case, this stranger was at least conscious enough of the imposition to try and be polite. That’s unusual.

It’s continually strange, having seen life from many perspectives. Not many get the unique perspective of being treated at different times in different ways across the gender spectrum. I still have the ability to pick up and put down some of my privilege here. I’m considering a lot lately, what exactly I think about that.

I have no conclusions. All I can say is what this usually comes down to: treat everyone equally. Don’t be a dick. Try to love your neighbor. That’s all I got.

Apocalyptic Politics

Yes, the climate is changing. There is no argument.

There isn’t even an argument that we have something to do with it. Plainly, it’s our fault.

There’s a lot of different opinions. Some choose to ignore or disbelieve it, and some others scream bloody murder to get the doubter’s attention. And they can never seem to agree. Mostly it’s not about facts, it’s about freedom or liberty or just priorities. The paycheck and the comfortable Ikea furniture, and the 2014 sedan are just more important.

So, yea, some people tend to get angry, and possibly to freak out a bit about this, because it looks as ignorant as a sheltered suburbanite teenager when so many people just say “screw it, the SUV is what I need and I’ll put 50 gallons of gas in it a week”.

But it’s not so much about, well, freaking out about it. I don’t entirely understand what the problem is with considering the impact we have on things. I’ve heard it called “arrogance” to believe we can have an effect on our planet or climate. This bothers me, because it misses a far more key point: survival. It’s not about making judgements of virtue or character, although that can help to incite some people to action… it’s about considering what’s actually good for us now, and later.

We all do these things like burning a little extra electricity to run our fancy TVs. And some of us are deciding individually to make small concessions (where our comfort level allows us to… liberals) and some larger concessions (crunchier leftists). It’s pretty rare for someone to actually cry about apocalypse scenarios… except for when the media needs a good story.

There are a few idealists though, such as radical primitivists, that are actively hoping we scuttle ourselves, I think. The general idea is to get rid of all or most of society and technology and government, to reduce our impact on the environment. I’ve run into one or two. Their views are abhorrent to me; I like my internet and my easy access to basic needs and a comfortable home. That and I think we can still come up with a solution to fix this. So that’s too far to take the whole “protecting nature” thing.

Most of the conservatives I’ve met seem to sort of ignore the science or the warnings, because it’s more comfortable to do so. That seems… morally objectionable on it’s own level, perhaps because I think we ought to do right by our children and our planet, and that level of comfort feels like hedonism for the sake of itself, and comfort can be a distraction from happiness, sometimes. At least I’ve found it to be so. I know there’s different levels here too, some people may care more and research and keep up on things, but just not think there’s a good enough reason to do anything. But we may not have time to consider forever. That’s part of the call for action.

Back to the idea of just considering what’s going on, though. If you enjoy driving your car, you ought to consider what might happen if it gets too hot, cold, or we just run low or out of resources. The further question of nuance is, is it likely that it could occur? What’s the chance, the probability? We have pretty good tools for predicting things now, so long as you control for the right variables. Our models have demonstrable utility. I don’t see it as being particularly far-fetched to believe the models may have something to say about longer term phenomena like climate change, even if there’s a margin of error.

The problem is our model is working with extremely local data, but we’re trying to predict phenomena on the order of decades or centuries. It won’t affect us immediately. We’re potentially screwing our grandchildren if we’re wrong… and I’m not particularly happy with the way the previous generations have left things for us. I don’t the future generations, potentially my children, to be disappointed in me for having left them a wreck of a planet.

This is of course assuming they’re around. I don’t think we’re screwing things up enough to kill large swaths of the population, but it’s certainly possible and not something I really want to test. And even if it’s not that bad, perhaps a good question to ask, how bad does it need to get to do something?

I have also seen a particularly scary form of apocalyptic acceptance in a few people, where they’ve already assumed and accepted it’s all going to end. And they’re just going to ride it out, and enjoy it for what it’s worth. Forgive the over-used phrase, but it would be like re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic to do anything now. But… if we got ourselves into this mess under our own power, why would you expect we can’t also get ourselves out of it?

Ya, it’s a bit of an emotional argument, but that’s how I see it. Well, the whole thing is a bunch of emotional arguments. Hopefully some of them may help to see the issues from different perspectives.

Why is an idea so scary?

You’re wrong. Right now. We all are. And you just don’t know it yet. I guarantee it.

This appears to be a hard thing to accept. You don’t want to think about what you might be wrong about. But we all know we’re wrong, on some conceptual level. Very few of you would disagree with me if I said this to your face right now. Logically, it’s self-evident, given that we know so little. But if we’re discussing something… it could be a simple subject. One you think about every day.

• You don’t want to go to work today, it’s too much willpower.
• Just another drink.
• Voting’s a waste of time, things won’t change.
• I should really exercise, but I’m not going to.
• I want to do the right thing. But I can’t.

I’ve given plenty of advice to friends over the years, and it usually goes the same way. If any of your friends tell you, do you listen? Honestly, would you if they did? If you answer yes to this, then why aren’t you following your own advice in the first place?

Most of the time, these thoughts pass pretty quickly. If they start getting taxing enough, you do something about it and it goes away. Until next time. But how long does it take to resolve itself, given that you ignore it, day in and day out?

Do you ever stop to consider how many times a day you do this?

This has been bothering me. I have a lot of bad habits that I’m consciously aware of, but haven’t fixed. Why haven’t I? Seems pretty obvious now that I think about it. I’m forgetful, lazy, bad at focusing, and just as average a person as everybody else on the planet. I’m pretty good at failing to meet my own expectations.

I don’t think this is really any form of defect, though. It’s all a natural process of my thought patterns. And those I can only adjust so much. I suppose there must be a few gifted souls out there who are capable of achieving everything they want through sheer force of will, but for the rest of us, we have to cope with self-doubt, inadequacy, and everything else that’s an inherent part of the human condition.

And this is where being wrong comes in. Well, you are wrong about all kinds of things besides this, but I’m not here to judge. I want to focus on habits first. But there’s a trap here, that leads to Being Wrong. The first thing I think to do to correct this is to start structuring behaviors to correct my habits. Hack my habits, record things on paper, read more self-help books. But they’re all methods that work for some people, but usually only a self-selected few. It’s pretty scatter shot, in fact. You have to wonder why that is.

Again, a hypothesis speaks without me beckoning it. Perhaps there are various classes of mindset, that some form of self-help program would address. But it only works for someone in that given mindset, that’s similar enough to that neural pattern. Perhaps the problem is better addressed by identifying that pattern, and matching it to the appropriate self-help process. But how do we identify that?

For myself, I’m doubleplus self-analytical, so I’m very conscious of my own brain states. Being aware of them doesn’t help much in altering them, though. I must agree that the longer I’m here, the more it does feel like a passenger sort of relationship. So they must be altered through outside force of some form. I can certainly get myself to start taking more notes and attempting to establish some rituals. Writing more is one of them. This is largely in service to this idea of structured self-analysis. I’m not structured enough at the moment to maintain something like a diary, but it’s certainly possible to start constructing more posts. And this does certainly seem like a good place to begin.

I did promise myself to try to stay working on NaNoWriMo, but I’ve had a hell of a time maintaining consistency, because I was focused on trying to write coherently within a world that exists in my mind, and there’s just not enough structure there. So time for something completely different.