Delusion I - The Back page blurb

Let's see, "The God Delusion" is to Atheism as _________ is to Christianity? Well, it ain't its' bible! My definition of atheist has always been one who believes that the non-existence of God can be proven. Now, the best way to disprove something is to assume it is true, and then come up with a contradiction through logical mathematical steps. I have read books and articles that go down this line, and although no authoratitive contradiction comes up, many difficulties do. The blurb mentions "the grievous harm it (the belief in God) has inflicted on society". This is actually an assertion that can be scientifically tested. My interpretation of the various evidence in the world is indicating the harm that is attributed to the belief in God is independent of the belief in God: ie. analogous real situations without the belief in God have equal or greater "harm" than than those attributed to religion. The various arguments I have been given to back up his claim play hard and fast with their definitions of "religion" and "harm". I will be keeping a very close eye for definitions of those terms and "God". Having randomly chosen sections in the book I have noted that Dawkins does state unequivocally that the non-existence of God cannot be proven using purely science. Thus, my answer to my question at the start is an evangelical document such as an "Alpha course" supplement. Thus Dawkins is not writing a scientific document here but an "evangelical" one trying to "convert" people to his point of view (Atheism) and threatening that if you don't, you will be party to society's harms. Using science anecdotes to convince is not the same as a scientific demonstration/proof.

Drrrrriillll, Crrreeeaak... Ok Mind is open now

I am going to backtrack and change my mind and actually try to read "The God Delusion". As is my want, I will abstract what the absolute essence of what his argument is and get agreement on that before I actually criticize or praise any particular conclusion or logic. I will just start with the title. The title itself is an indication that the book is aiming to demonstrate that those that believe in God are almost certainly deluded, and that this is a bad thing. I presume that he will define what he means by God, and from this definition and using scientific analysis and reasoning demonstrate the badness of believing. I would hope that somewhere along the line, he would define what he means by bad and demonstrate a causal link between the perceived problems and the belief in God. Is this what he is trying to demonstrate?

Tobacco for the masses

Why do some people reject evolution as scientific reality given all the evidence? Why do smokers keep smoking given all the scientific evidence? To me the second problem is the one worth fixing. I still can't get over the reality that there exist doctors that smoke. That is like a geologist that believes in young earth creationism. It's not as if their life depends on finding a coal deposit - but surely the one important goal in life would be to give up smoking.

Weird Cult

I can't remember where I read about this cult that had a strange way of converting people and convincing them of the supernaturality of their God. The new convert would be invited to a seance/prayer room. A small number of desciples or just the spiritual leader would demonstrate his God given powers and rattle of a series of personal details about the would-be convert that they hadn't ever told anyone, and that there was absolutely no way they could have been guessed, and didn't rely on any input from the newby at all - just astonishment as his private details were rattled off to him/her. As it happens, the newbies were put into a hypnotic state in the initial prayer. The leader would then ask for a series of personal details while they were in a hypnotic state. Then they would repeat them back later when they were out of the hypnotic state. Now the weirdest thing was that the leader (and any desciple)was also in a trans-hypnotic trance while asking the questions as well, such that he had no idea how the details were getting into his head - it just seemed like a mystical power to him also. So confident was he of his powers, that years after starting his cult, he decided to film the process as a demonstration of the power in which he had complete confidence was from God. Of course, reviewing the film he saw the whole elaborate mutual trickery unfold, and was so mortified that he committed suicide and the cult unravelled soon after.

Criticizing Dorkins

In part a protest against the implied basis of the book dorkins has written, I am refusing to read it (1). I do not believe this disqualifies me from criticising it, as long as I stick to criticising the basis of the book, and use whatever quotes from the book I get from reliable sources. Now, it is a Provable Fact that the existence of God cannot be proven, nor disproven. As a corollary to this fact, talk of the improbability, or probability of the existence of God is completely meaningless. Therefore, any author who goes to any length to convince someone otherwise is either delusional (2) or a fraud. From this, I can speculate that since he tries to convince the would be reader anyway, that a lot of his "logic" and "reasoning" is not watertight. I would recommend a would be critic to start as given that God doesn't exist, and that therefore those that believe in God are in fact delusional. His assertion that "religion is bad" and that "the mistaken belief in God is the root of the badness of religion" appears to be a theme he talks about, but never gives tight definitions and solid reasoning to back it up. If "bad" and "good" are pretty well taken care of by our moral sense, these are extremely arbitrary assertions.

(1) I might read parts of the book down the track, who knows?

(2) This is not really the "stick him in the mental asylum" delusional, but a common, fairly harmless delusion with anyone with a non-self-consistent World view.

In defence of usury

This economist article finds that a "consequentialist" analysis of the results of lending money at extortionate interest rates to the poor is better for the would be borrower than being refused the loan. An "Absolutist" would not believe such a one-off study to be relevant and defer to the scriptures, which probably state one way or another that usury is evil in general and should not be allowed. I for one, have come to the conclusion that usury IS evil, but possibly a necessary one for modern civilisation to keep prospering.

Grocery Shopping Adventure

After dinner monday night, I had to get a few groceries. I was feeling obsessive so I decided I would calculate the exact grocery bill item by item and have the exact amount withdrawn from the eftpos with my card before the checkout operator had even finished scanning. Since this included bananas and tomatoes which are sold by the kilo ($7.98 @ $5.98 per kilo respectively) this was going to require accurate measurement. I decided I would take the average of two scales in the shop that were supposed to be accurate to the nearest 5 grams. For my 6 bananas one said 405g, the other 1.065kg(1), hmmm. After moving an obstruction on one of the scales they both measured about 1.060 kg. 5 tomatoes was .905 kg. After buying ten items (including prepacked smoked salmon on special at $49.90/kg) , I was confident I had it to $23.15 + or - 5 cents. Of course the checkout chick scanned it as fast as I could load it up, so my original plan was thwarted, and much to my surprise, the total was $22.15, exactly one dollar out. Suspiciously looking like a copying error on my part, I had a quick scan of the docket. Bananas 1.056 kg, fine. Tomatoes 0.705kg ? huh. Smoked salmon $5.49 (100g) instead of the advertised special of $4.99. I went to the service desk to claim my 50c ripoff, but low and behold, I got $5.50 back and the salmon. I had thought that "scan's wrong and it's free thing" had disappeared long ago from Coles. Apparently it still pays to meticulously check the docket. I didn't argue the toss on the tomatoes against my better judgement, assuming I misread my measurement, but I re-checked at home and my measurement was the correct one.

(1) That's $1.35 per banana - Almost Larry level. Still think Aus would be better off with free trade in bananas.

Worm Farm

One of the things that I did back in 1999 was to buy and use a worm farm. My main motivation was to use the worm casts in the garden. Also to have less smelly garbage in the bin. If I had calculated whether this reduced or increased green house gases, my thought would be that it was much of a mulchness. Whether my food scraps rotted slowly in my wormfarm and garden, or in a landfill was not much different. In fact I would have thought that in a landfill the carbon would be buried deep underground to become coal in the distant future ie - sequestered. However, recent studies have shown that in a typical landfill and typical worm-farm, the worm farm would absorb the CH4 very well, and the landfill not at all. So it would seem that I was inadvertently helping the environment... Not so fast. As I recall at about the same time, we had a child and to give ourselves more time for gardening, we switched from reusable to disposable nappies exclusively. So instead of nappy-waste going down the drain and into sewage treatment plants to fertilise golf courses etc; it was ending up in the landfill generating methane. Besides which, I never really had enough worms to absorb all foodscraps, so plenty still goes in the bin. And the worm casts in my garden? Myriad tomato, rockmelon, pumpkin and pawpaw seedlings pop up from the casts. I never know whether to try to cultivate them, or to pull them out to leave room for the plants I'm trying to fertilise with the casts.

What our energy policy should be

There has been a lot of talk about what our energy policy should include. Running themes are global warming, energy security, privatisation of utilities, subsidies and taxes.

- Global Warming: (*disclaimer: Carbon strategy should be about one countries standing and reputation to achieve things cheaply while others spend heaps with nothing to show for it. Therefore other countries (and global) failure is as much a positive as meeting domestic targets*)A dual strategy of long term goals, GHG metering and measuring in the short term. I see no economic harm in signing treaties that are not binding, such as Kyoto. We should also not fear "exporting" our emissions to third world countries. This will help them develop in a market-friendly way, and they may be better able to adjust to sea rises etc. with less fatalities/burdens. (We should be) Reducing subsidies on carbon intensive energy sources but not be tempted to waste money on new subsidies (on solar/wind). Subsidies are way less efficient than direct investments in the carbon market. When the carbon market becomes more trustworthy, this will be the cheapest way to meet targets. Carbon taxes and reducing fossil fuel subsidies will be the cheapest way to reduce emissions in the long term.

- Energy Security: The absolute highest security must surround all fissile materials handled in Australia. The biggest security risk to the world is nuclear blackmail and mega-terrorism. With such a bright future for nuclear, one must not forget its security-risk implications which dwarf its cost per KW as an associated input cost. As far as energy imports go, ethanol from Brazil is preferable to oil from the middle-east, and subsidies should not be used to favour domestic energy sources, but only to favour lower risk sources if at all.

- Privatisation of Utilities: Retail energy supply should definitely be privatised, but associated infrastructure MUST remain Nationalised (NB. price controls on infrastructure access count as near-nationalised). Privatised energy supply is the only way to account for demand/supply unbalances fairly (if this unfairly punishes the poor, the poor should be singled out and helped. No point rewarding the rich with cheaper power just to marginally help the poor)

It's the one-dimensional political continuum

Back when I was researching what was meant by "left" and "right" in politics, I realised that peoples political views are highly correlated, and that the position on a one-dimensional line that you reside in determines the kind of political authorities and peers one believes and therefore debates tend to try to push a swinging voter one direction or the other along the line, ignoring all possible tangents.
This is especially true for the global warming debate, the imaginary line having alarmist, environmentally conscious, act locally kind of view on one end, and highly "skeptic", globalisation friendly, optimists on the other end. Unfortunately, the skeptic end is associated with some rather dodgy pseudo-scientific arguments that global warming is natural, cyclical and unrelated to human activity, as described in the "Great Global Warming Swindle" show I watched part of the other day. This rather annoys multi-dimensional thinkers like myself, and that is why I tend to debate along the action axis, debating which actions are sensible and which are not in terms of energy and environmental policy.

Blog Etiquette

I don't really know if it really exists; bloggers just write what they feel like writing. However when it comes to naming names, it freaks some out, and I get the feeling that trust becomes lost in a mesmerising field of aliases. Of course if one states a real name of someone else, that becomes googlable - with unknown future consequences.

As an example, mentioning my children by their names is a double edged sword. My daughter's teenage friends found her mentioned here to her great embarrassment. Luckily, I can usually edit any misleadingly embarrassing or revealing information.

Sometimes when I quote someone here from somewhere else in the WWW, this is where it gets found more often in different contexts. This seems to be positive, especially if they were quoted in an optimistic light. People often get googled after a job interview, partly as a character reference. Be aware of this if you are the kind to get people angry habitually. Revenge is spreading info about various dishonours or disrespects. Flattery is ever greater when mentioned in published print.

Mad World

Even though, it is a fairly obvious plucking of heartstrings this Queensland Police Union Mini-documentary is a watershed.

Younger Dryas - Why can't it happen again?

Apparently, the most likely theory of the cause of the younger dryas involves a comet impact. The Younger Dryas is a rapid cooling event of about 13K years ago, going against the trend of moving into the current interglacial period. The reckoning is that a comet caused a catastrophic melt event which rapidly sent fresh water into the northern polar region: This caused a severe disruption of the thermo-haline current, plunging the Northern hemisphere back into ice age temperatures. Extra snow and ice cover caused an albedo effect which somewhat affected the temperature of the whole Earth somewhat, giving a thousand year pause to the interglacial warming, which even more suddenly corrected globally to a warm temperature consistent with the interglacial.

Climate scientists are almost unanimous in stating that a similarly triggered iceage could not happen due to the ice melt in greenland etc. due to global warming. The two prongs of this argument are 1) that the melting is too slow to give enough fresh water to similarly disrupt the currents, and 2) the base climatic conditions are too different - ie. there are less chance that there would be enough snow/ice cover to affect the albedo enough.

Most of the fearmongering however is that the icemelt and northern polar warming is going to be much more than had been calculated just a few short years ago, and quicker than anything since the younger dryas. That, to me, means that if Europe has a sudden cooling event (whithin the next 40 years), climate scientists could still claim that they were correct.

Top end of the "Marriage Gap"

Reading this Economist Article:marriage in America, I feel vindicated, because almost all of the pressure and "education" that I received from others was directed to me about the risks. That divorce is bad, and that the divorce rate is high is self-evident. Clearly, the trick is not to avoid marriage, but to get it right when you do marry or otherwise commit to a life partner. I think the most important thing to instil in ones peers and children is to look at precedent. Ie. does the person come from a broken home? What history do they have with committment? etc. I have been trying (with variable success) with my daughter that these are important questions right from the first time you decide to date someone. Unfortunately, she is getting mixed messages from tv shows and peers.

Happy New Financial Year!

Next year will be better!

Education - Nationalise or privatise?

My simple rule of thumb is: that for the longer the term of the investment (before being profitable), the further it should be towards nationalisation on the continuum. Pre-school children are basically a very long term investment before what they have learnt makes an impact on society. University students, however, in a few short years, can go from being smart to being an asset to an employer, society or whatever. Therefore, the efficiency of competitive private finance is critical for universities, but almost meaningless for kindergarten. This is why I think "The Economist" is correct when it states that governments should deregulate and privatise higher education.

No! It is nothing like New Orleans!

Re: Australian outback alcoholism, child abuse in remote communities.
The comment by the prime minister is quite irresponsible. Let's see, Sending the army and police whom know little about the regional culture, don't really know which are the worst criminals because most crimes have been done in high secrecy; The problems are not amenable to "one-off" surge of interest, intrusion and intervention. Really, the only hope of "fixing" the problem would take 35 years and billions of dollars. This is more like IRAQ than New Orleans! I guess the political technique is, move out after a few months, claim victory, then re-bury our heads in the sand.

Finally back over 20 degrees celcius

Since Wednesday here in Townsville, the temperature has dipped below 20' C and on thursday we had our lowest EVER maximum of 13.9' C. Today the maximum was back up to 20' C. I blame all those internal migrants from Melbourne bringing their depressing cold rainy weather. On the other hand, I could blame global warming for triggering a severe antarctic blast that permeated all the way to the tropics, as temperatures differentials suck away the cold air.

Marconomics predicts longterm failure to reduce CO2 emissions

Going straight from my axioms,
- The judgement on policy is essentially which country does well in a typical competitive environment in the ideal where the policy concerned is the only point of difference.

Policies which involve ignoring, lying about, or failing to meet targets will put countries at a competitive advantage economically. Geopolitics, for good and ill, is optimised such that any policy which gives a distinct competitive advantage to any country, becomes policy in competing countries. The average citizen is completely oblivious but complicit, just by their own cost-benefit analysis in their own head. This process for say fifty years into the future is pretty much immune to global targets of any sort. The trick is to globally constrain the economy such that "doing well" CO2 reduction wise, is going to be "doing well" money-wise. This is just not going to happen without a global government with teeth. A global government with teeth is not compatible with the benefits gained from the competitive aspect of nations. Basically for the future 50 years or so, we will all be talking about CO2 global targets, but have no chance of meeting them. Regional CO2 targets will occasionally be met, but only by accident of say economic ruin, or accident of geography (eg. Soviet breakup, France's love of Nuclear/hydro)

Lamarckism returns?

New information as explained in this Economist Briefing RNA - Really New Advances seems to discredit what I call the "Darwinist Triumphalists". That is, those scientists that believe we know all that there is to know about evolution and natural selection. That there is easily possible avenues for direct Lamarckian adaptation which doesn't depend on random mutations, to me, means that there almost certainly is. The competitive advantage of organisms directly mutating appropriately to environmental inputs would mean that organisms that don't would become extinct more often.