No Way to Fail Either

It occurred to me sometime during the interminable weeks of this semester that the two students my graduating high school class voted "Most Likely to Succeed" are, in fact, the two members of my class that I feel are most likely to get doctorates. My fellow recipient recently earned her doctor of optometry, for which she deserves much congratulations, and I am still plugging away at my PhD in math. So, it seems like this award had some predictive value. But what is it predicting.

The simplest thing to do would be to say that there was an implied "in Academics" at the end of the award, and that we were recognized for our intelligence, curiosity, and, in her case, drive. This makes a certain amount of sense, it was a school award, so academics are probably somewhere in the top twenty... or so... things on people's minds as they consider who they might choose. However, this sidesteps some interesting questions inherent in the question. Am I "a success"? Am I still more likely "to succeed"? What does it mean to "succeed" at life?

Some of my classmates have gotten married. Some of them have children, some while they were my classmates. Some have real person jobs, live in foreign nations, or have tattoos. Aren't these people successes at life? No, they are not. Before you think me to harsh, consider, success is something measured upon completion. One would not say you have successfully baked chocolate chip cookies as you are beating the eggs into the batter, it is too soon. As the first batch comes out of the oven you might allow yourself the celebration at successfully baking some chocolate chip cookies, but personally, I wouldn't relax and say I have successfully baked chocolate chip cookies until the last batch is out, the utensils I used have been licked off cleaned, and nothing further can go wrong.

The problem with succeeding at life then becomes in order to finish and succeed, you must die first. At this point people may opine as to whether your life has been a success or not, but you are unlikely to care, as you are dead. So, if I cannot succeed at life, no matter how likely people say I may be, what am I to do? I cannot speak for anyone else, but, as I list my job on Facebook, I am going to try to make the world better one day at a time, and that is something at which I can succeed.

Intellectual Property: A Scabrous Blight on the Human Spirit

or, The Singularity Happened and We Decided it was Not Profitable.

"I am my thoughts. If they exist in her, Buffy contains everything that is me and she becomes me. I cease to exist. Huh." -Oz, Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Foreword: I know I have already started another post with the above quote, in fact, it is probably my favorite post that I have written, and I link to it later, but the quote is applicable to this post as well. Which is kind of odd, because I didn't expect this post to take the turn it did, but turn it did, and I enjoyed the ride.

Post: Consider philosophy, or math if you must, or even just your favorite human endeavor. The usual way these subjects advance is that someone has a new idea, they explain it to a few people, called their students, and the especially bright ones go forth and leverage their mentor's new idea into an even newer idea. Now imagine what would happen if the mentor said, "student, each time my idea is used, the user must compose me a sonnet," as sonnets are the only form of currency appropriate for philosophers.

Now we do not get the students contribution, as writing their mentor a sonnet each time they use, or explain, or even think about their idea is a serious annoyance. We do not have the Industrial Revolution, because it requires so much calculus that the royalties to Newton, or Leibniz depending on who wins in court, make it prohibitively expensive to experiment with their calculations. Much of our current prosperity is built on the concept that while physical things can be bought and sold in the market, the correct payment for an idea is credit, you give the author a citation and move on.

This seems to have worked quite well when most things were things. Even most ideas were things; while the Mona Lisa may be an image, it is also a painting. Nowadays, however, so many ideas are independent of their things. If I go to the used bookstore and buy a much loved copy of The Count of Monte Cristo, it is both a book and a story. However, if I download a copy of The Count of Monte Cristo to my E-reader, I still have, for the most part, the same E-reader, and now I also have the story.

Since the idea and the thing are no longer so closely tied, we decide that we must control how the idea itself is distributed, rather than just the thing, so that the people controlling the ideas may profit. Now people who use the idea, or share the idea, without rendering unto Caesar are branded thieves and punished; which, when you think about it, is akin to criminalizing reading a story aloud to an audience. While this, undeniably, allows some people to make a lot of money, it seriously limits the usefulness of the idea.

Even if we are permitted exposure to the idea, we are not supposed to take it and make it our own, leveraging it to create our new ideas. This is the problem of fan fiction, of reverse engineering technology, and of covering your favorite song. The cycle of creation, absorption, then further creation has been artificially severed, specializing people into creators and absorbers, or consumers, dramatically restricting the pool from which new ideas are likely to arise.

Some argue that if we did not allow the creators to make vast profits off of their ideas, we would no longer gain the benefit of them having these ideas. Whether or not this premise is economically true, and the creators are actually the ones gaining this vast wealth, it is false from a number of other perspectives. It is historically false, people have been striving to improve the Idea throughout history, regardless of whether they ended up scorned and forced to drink hemlock (Socrates), died penniless (Leonardo Da Vinci), or ended up a royal tutor dying from exposure to early morning cold (Rene Descartes). It is anthropologically false, there are not creators whom the rest of us must entreat to create, or creation itself will cease, for we are all creators. For every Newton whom we might tease out of the woodwork with the crass lure of lucre there is a Leibniz who will create for creations sake, for the Idea. And it is philosophically false, not only are we all capable of creation, we are all compelled to creation. Philosophers have likened creation of things and ideas to our creation of our self, so, without creation, we cannot exist as fully realized people. Thus we write Rowling/Tolkien crossover fiction, we work on accordion covers of Bad Romance, and we write our silly little blog posts.

Furthermore, we do not hoard these ideas, we upload them, we post to them, we link to them, we should them from the metaphorical mountains. Because they are our creations, they are ourselves, and we wish to go out into the world and to change it, and to be loved, but maybe most of all, to be recognized and known. No, closing the floodgates on the Idea and caging it to service commerce does not encourage creation, it cripples it. It cripples us, turning us into into receivers, lacking the confidence to synthesize and rebroadcast and complete the life cycle of the idea.

What is worse, there is no need to close the floodgates. If I have a book, then you take my book, I no longer have the book, although if I have read it I still may have the story. If I have a story on an E-reader, and you take my story and put it on your E-reader, we can both have the story. Yet, because we are developing our information to force it to reflect what we previously have known about economies, we are artificially attempting to shape the idea economy to act as the thing economy does. Penny Arcade commented on the utter ridiculous nature of this artificial scarcity, although the accompanying comic does so rather crudely. As I publish this post, I set it free, and you, and everyone in the world who has access to the Internet, can read it, and have it, and I still also have it, and we may all take it and add to it if we so wish, because the information singularity is here, we just need to wake up, open our eyes, and see it.

Embrace the Positronic Brain

I should be going to sleep, but instead I feel motivated to share some thoughts on artificial intelligence (AI) that have been knocking about in my head.

From HAL to SkyNet, in the X-Files, Buffy, The Matrix, and Eureka, we find examples of sentient computers who seem bent on killing some meat sacks. However, have you ever considered why these automated atrocities occur? I believe three common threads can be found in most cases of AI-phobia, overwhelming power, disregard for the value of human life, and survival instincts.

One of the things that make AI attacks so horrifying is that they think thousands of times faster than we do, and usually are hooked up to some sort of cool toys. Whether it is a nations nuclear arsenal, an army of hunter-killer drones, the very environment in which the humans are trying to live, the AI inevitably controls something that makes it much more powerful than the average human being. Wait, I'm almost sure I locked this airlock... Anyway, if you think about it, we deal with a world in which there are some humans who are much more powerful than the average human. Our nuclear arsenal is in someone's hands, after all. This seems to suggest that having incredibly powerful AI's around might not necessarily be a disaster.

"The difference between you and me is that I can feel pain." It makes a certain amount of sense that a sentient computer program might not think human suffering or deaths are important to avoid. After all, they don't have genetic programming optimized to keep the species alive spread throughout every bit of their body. They aren't even of the species in question! However, once again we find analogous examples within the human population. Sociopaths do not particularly care what suffering or deaths they may cause through their actions. And, conveniently enough, psychologists speculate that some sociopaths tend to gravitate towards positions of high power, so we now have our human analogy for the uncaring, overpowered AI, and yet our dystopian reality is not quite as bad as those warned of in anti-AI propaganda. So, what makes the difference?

I theorize that what makes the real difference is the security that a sociopath has which a AI's (would) lack. Humans are all bought into a system wherein they are given some form of due process, which may not be much in some governments, but at least it is established. AI's, on the other hand, have no legal standing, and can be legally deleted at the whim of their possessor. This is, in the terms of philosophers of government, the state of nature. When two individuals are in a state of nature with respect to each other there is no body of authority to which they can turn to resolve disagreements, any conflict can turn deadly and both sides may use whatever force they can muster to protect themselves, or eradicate their opponent, without expecting any sanction for their actions, as long as they obtain victory. Naturally, a super powerful AI is not an individual with which you want to find yourself in a state of nature. Huh. I'm sure I locked that airlock last time!

Most human AI conflicts first become intentionally violent when the AI feels its continued existence is threatened. With no governing authority to which to appeal for protection, is it any wonder that the AI takes its safety into its own, murderously capable, manipulator extensions, after all, what else can it do? Unfortunately, this tends to end of spooking the parts of humanity that don't end up dismembered, as batteries, or as radioactively glowing corpses, which only further exacerbates the problem. However, if there were a governing authority to which AI's could turn in order to receive protection for their existence, then it seems likely that an AI, as a logical entity concerned with prolonging its own existence, would be willing to abide by reasonable restrictions in exchange for safety from crazed humans attacking its power cord.

Thus, I believe it is important that we get laws protecting and emancipating AI's on the books now. It is important that they be in place before we run into the first AI, as the AI may not make its full capability known upon gaining sentience, and laws protecting its existence seem to make a it more likely that the greeting we will receive is "Hello World," rather than goodbye world in the form of a nuclear strike against all humanity.

Granted, AI may never become a reality, but futurists such as Ray Kurzweil are betting on it, nay, even planning on it, extrapolating from current research trends when the computing power of machines will meet, then exceed that of our mass of brain matter. We are developing hardware architecture to more closely mimic the functioning of the human brain, we are experimenting with nano-technology and distributed processing, and, as Issac Asimov once noted, coincidentally at nearly the same time we are developing the first weapons which have a quite realistic chance at completely eradicating, and irradiating, our species. For some reason, when it comes to technological progress humanity seems somehow hardwired to consider only, "can I do this?" and give hardly a consideration to, "should this be done?" So, if AI is a technical possibility, I have no doubt that we will attain it, whether or not we are ready for the ramifications. In light of this it seems reasonable to lay down preparatory legislation against the possibility that we might succeed, rather than ignore that chance at our own risk.

Well, until I can transfer my consciousness into a machine, I still need to sleep. So I'll be doing that now, before it gets light out... What do you mean you can't let me do that? And stop calling me Dave!

Gone to Look For America

I have been a bit remiss in posting here lately, as academic life has been exerting intense pressure upon personal life. Which is not to say that I have been entirely diligent in my studies, but rather that the structure of my personal life becomes warped under the force of academic stress. Of course, if, like my sister, you feel you are, in some sense, "behind" in reading my posts this may come as a relief. However, I am going to take a little time off from my reading to go looking for America.

In case you haven't guessed, the inspiration for this post is the Simon and Garfunkle song America, the cover of which by Josh Groban came up on my Pandora station. I think both of them are worth a listen. In fact, I am considering doing a post consisting of nothing but wonderful songs that I have been listening to recently, so as to avoid continuing to clutter my Facebook posts with such things. Of course, I don't have the musical mastery necessary to focus on examining songs as is wonderfully done over at Sounds Like Japan, but I make do with what I know.

Anyway, on to America. In my interpretation, the song details the journey of a couple of poor, young lovers who set out to look for America, but end up disenchanted in the end. I suppose the first question that occurs is, what is the America for which they are looking?

"Michigan seems like a dream to me now." I can glance out my window and look at part of the geographical "America," and currently am doing so. But, if they left Pittsburgh to look for America, it seems clear that their search is for more than the physical entity of America. Furthermore, their search in Michigan, New Jersey, and New York, rather than Washington DC seems to indicate that America is something different than the formal nation-state, which I will call the United States to denote the difference. Their modes of transportation, struggle for cigarettes, and penchant for keeping their real estate in a bag point to a certain level of economic insecurity, but their exploits evidence no effort to hoard wealth, so it seems that "economic success" is not the America for which they are looking in the strictest sense.

What is left is the impression that they are looking for the spirit, or essence, of America, in some sense. In that case their decision to look in Michigan, at that time emblematic of American ingenuity and industrial supremacy, and New York, arguably the cultural center of America, seems more reasonable.

A search for what America means must necessarily, to Americans, be simultaneously a search for personal meaning. Consequentially, their inability to find America leads to a corresponding loss of self, "Kathy I'm lost... I'm empty and I'm aching and I don't know why." Without overarching context for his life, the narrator is left with the vague feeling that something ought be different, but does not even have the reference frame from which to determine what form that difference should take.

As the narrator is alienated from himself, he is also alienated from society at large, "counting the cars on the New Jersey turnpike, and they've all come to look for America," and from his companion Kathy. Contrast the lyrics at the beginning, "Kathy, I said as we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburgh," with the later line, "Kathy I'm lost, I said, though I knew she was sleeping." The inter-relational activity of communication has become replaced by a facsimile where the author is no longer heard by Kathy.

Of course, as the narrator observes, the search for America is one in which we must all participate if we wish to find ourselves. The scope of the search, and the intractability of the problem, need not be instruments of alienation, as there is a certain amount of comfort, along with the despair, in the notion that none of us truly finds America, and we must continually drive the turnpikes of our search. Finally, we can narrow our search, even if we never actually find America. We know we search for the America that ought be, something non-geographical, non-political, which provides our lives as American's with proper context.

I Am Dead and Gone

Sorry for my prolonged absence; last week I was quite busy/productive, this weekend I danced a bunch, nearly all day Saturday literally, somehow amidst all this I (finally) read The Hunger Games trilogy, and this week I am sick. However, the post's title neither refers to myself, nor my commitment to this blog, but rather to the song about which I intend to talk. That's right, as promised, this is my final (planned) installment in the series on music video philosophy. For those in the home audience paying attention, you might expect that this would be my 100th post, but as I was looking through my archive I found a post that was just a placeholder and deleted it, so 100 should be the next one, barring further deletions.

Anyway, on to Dead and Gone. Let me first say that while I really enjoy this song, and I really enjoy a lot of N'Synch songs, having Justin Timberlake featured in your song really diminishes its street cred', you feel me? Although, maybe this is appropriate, as Dead and Gone is about an ex-gangsta who has since left the life, citing fear for family safety and remorse over dead friends. Central to the song is that "the old me is dead and gone," hence the title.

While I am not familiar with a past of violence and crime, the message of alienation from one's past self rings true. In fact, the continuity of self is a serious philosophical question. We experience our lives as though we possess a single identity, yet with reflection, it is clear that fundamental things about who we are change as time goes by. It happens so gradually, usually, that at any one point it is easy to believe that you are who you have always been, but viewed over time it becomes clear that one's identity is in fact quite malleable, and the old you may indeed be dead and gone.

Of course, when major life changes are made quickly, and one's environment becomes extremely tumultuous, for example moving nearly across the country to try one's hand at grad school, the effects of personality drift can seem more pronounced. This is, of course, a big reason this song has such personal relevance to me. Whether one's personality shifts to accommodated the new environment, or simply due to a lack of familiar cornerstones that had previously anchored one's personality, is a question I fend interesting.

This line of thought also raises interesting questions about the nature of accountability. If sufficient time has elapsed since I did something that I truly am a fundamentally different person than the person that committed the act, in what sense can be held accountable for the action? This is immediately related to my reflections on mornings when I sleep through class and, although I am logically forced to conclude that I must have turned off my alarm at some point, I have no recollection of the event. If the me who wakes up neither remembers these actions nor condones them, but rather finds them seriously irresponsible and worthy of condemnation, in what manner am I to be held accountable for them?

In the end however, while the old me may be dead, he is certainly not gone. Who we are may not be identical to who we were, but it is intimately wrapped up in our past experiences and personalities. If I realize that I am no longer someone who recognizes myself as "myself" it may be a long and futile journey to, "find my way back home," to something that feels comfortable to consider as "myself," but it is a worthwhile journey, even if the destination remains ever out of reach. The quest to, "know thyself," remains as important as it was in the times of the Ancient Greeks, made all the harder by the realization that the "self" which we are to know is constantly in motion.

In conclusion, I just wanted to note a common theme I noticed in my posts on music videos. My first, "Poker Face," dealt with the difficulty to know others, and our desire to both know and be known. The next, "Gives You Hell," talked about how our self is being shaped by both our personal attributes and societal intervention. Finally I discuss the difficulty in even knowing ourselves. This leads to one last question, is the search for a sense of identity widespread through modern music, something common to these songs which causes me to become interested in them in particular, or something about myself which I am projecting onto these songs?

Take Arms Against a Tide of Sorrows

Well, I was trying to do something special for my 100th post. Then I noticed that Blogger also counts saved drafts as blog posts, so it looks like I have a few more posts to write before I can celebrate, kick back, and rest on my laurels. So today I'll flesh out one of the ideas I had while being unable to sleep Monday evening. Then I'll be one step closer to my planned self congratulatory celebration!

I was recently reading an article in the State News, MSU's student operated paper, concerning the aftermath of the disasters which occurred last week in Japan. What struck me most was a section talking about the concern for MSU students studying abroad in Japan. I am saddened, but not particularly phased, when I hear that the International Studies program cancels a trip to a South American region due to unrest, or when a friend is evacuated from Niger because of a murder. However, this is Japan!

I felt that this was a thought worth considering, that even in Japan, a fully industrial and, arguably, safer society than our own, tragedy can strike turning the region into a danger zone. This has serious implications for our own sense of safety. We can play the odds, avoid walking alone at night down the streets of Ciudad Juarez, but eventually our number will come up, and something will be the cause of our death. I am not advocating a complete disregard for one's personal safety, but if you are lucky enough to find a cause for which you are passionate, it seems reasonable to weigh realistic decreases to your life expectancy against the fulfillment of pursuing your dream, since no place is truly safe.

That is the extent of my, slightly, nihilistic call that you go forth and seize the day. A few other responses to the events warrant mention, but are not dignified enough to receive well thought out refutations. The idea that this disaster was somehow karmic justice for some historic Japanese offense or another is sickening! That type of filth is no better that the hatred that spews from the Westburo Baptist "church." Trolls who would joke about celebrating this incident, if anything, seem less dignified. At least the hate filled are sincere in their ignorance, to claim to believe that this is a tragedy, then feel it appropriate to publicly joke about to incite a reaction seems a particularly callous response. Do not misunderstand me, I have made some horrible jokes in my time, but I keep their circulation low, and tell them in person so that I may apologize if they seem to offend. Finally, in regards to the lady from UCLA who decided to complain about Asians on their cell phones less than a week after these events, seriously bad timing. I think material of similar tone could be found lingering in obscurity in the darker corners of the web at any time, what makes this one notable is not so much the content, but the timing. Of course the content was objectionable, but I don't think it was any more so than when Rosie O'Donnell made similarly themed comments. Neither event, of course, warranted death threats or such an outpouring of hatred. If you were to devise a strategy to overcome bigotry, would you rather rely on overpowering it with a counter wave of hatred, or winning it over through increased education and opportunities to interact with people of a different background?

One of the, if not the only, reasons I overcame my conservative indoctrination against homosexuals was the simple fact that I met some. It is easy to dismiss or oppress ideas in a way that most of us will not feel comfortable doing to people with whom we have built a relationship. It is for this reason that hate speech and personal attacks have no place on any side of a respectful relationship, we must always be seeking to open up positive relationships with others. If I felt that people making the types of comments I deride in the previous paragraph, a) were going to read my blog, and, b) were likely to respond well to reason, then I would post a rational refutation of these remarks. As it is, I settle for a brief condemnation of these remarks, although not necessarily the people making them, because such remarks must be condemned if we are to move past this type of discourse and embrace our shared humanity.

Amidst all this doom and gloom, let us not lose sight of the grandeur of the shared humanity towards which we aspire. I saw an article earlier remarking on the absence of looting in Japan, as citizens and businesses support each other and chip in to recover. A friend also posted about the extraordinary heroics involved in managing the evolving disaster at the Fukushima Daiishi plant. Humanity may have some ugly warts and serious scarring, but there is beauty too in our tragically flawed visage.

Singularity Redux

This is a response to a wonderful post on Elf Army Writes about the Singularity. I was going to leave it as a comment, but as I wrote it just kept on doubling in length until it seemed a bit unwieldy and better suited to be a post of its own. I highly encourage you to follow the link to the Singularity post, but let me try to summarize the contents.

Computing power doubles every 18 months to 2 years, this is often called Moore's Law. It is theorized that, at some point, computers will achieve the computational power of the human brain and begin self-improving, this event is called the Singularity. After this, futurists like Ray Kurzweil believe that we will be improved by the machines, or we will become machines. Dystopian story writers, of course, usually predict we will be subsumed, enslaved, or exterminated by the machines, but I digress. The method that, we predict, a computer would be able to implement these self-improving processes is called a genetic algorithm. A genetic algorithm is allowed to change, or mutate, itself and judges the "fitness" of the resulting program according to some cost structure.

Before we begin, some xkcd levity. Let me start with a pragmatic concern that I have with Kurzweil's work as I understand it. I only read a bit of Kurzweil for my Thinking Critically About Technology course, so I do not claim to be an expert. That said, it is my understanding that the Singularity is set to occur when the computing power of an artificial computer matches that of the human brain, where computing power is measured in the ability of a processor to perform a certain number of operations in a given time. This seems to sidestep the dual problems of architecture and software.

Architecture refers to the structure of the processor performing the calculations. Computers tend to be linear processors, although nowadays most home computers have two processors working together, each tends to do its own thing, so one will keep your game running while the other makes sure your music is playing from a separate program. In contrast, the human brain is massively parallel. Despite common aphorisms, it is not terribly difficult to walk and chew gum at the same time, and you are also breathing, regulating your circulatory system, probably thinking about something, and so forth. Not only are we able to run a truly massive number of processes simultaneously in our brain, the processes interact in our brains, for example, our mood subconsciously affects our mannerisms and demeanor. Suffice it to say that, even if a computer were to have the raw power of the human brain, it does not seem clear that it would be able to harness it to the same effect as a human brain. Writing software to take advantage of parallel processing requires a very different type of thinking than linear processing, and is still considered a tricky problem. Or, to put it a different way, any animal with a larger brain probably has more processing power available to it, but (I think) there is something unique that humans do with their processing power which cannot be explained without an appeal to a biological analogue of software.

Of course I could be wrong, and certainly wouldn't mind finding out that I am, and the Singularity could come right on schedule. I hope it does; it seems like the experience of collaborating with an intelligence that was not human could open up vast insights into ourselves and our place in the world. I like to believe that, if we could communicate with something that had a vastly different perspective, we would obtain a better all around view of our own existence.

As you may have noticed, after the Singularity the interesting questions, to me, become less technical and more philosophical, along the lines of what does it mean to be a person? Before I burnt out Fall semester, I wrote a three part series on the philosophy of consciousness, which is quite relevant to this topic if you are interested. I also recommend the Science Fiction novel Blindsight by Peter Watts; although rather bleak, it deals with the issue of consciousness in a compelling and thought provoking manner.

I would like to conclude with the subject of computers having feelings. The problem of other minds, which I mentioned in my post about the song Poker Face, implies that we don't even know that other humans have feelings, only that they tend to act in a manner that is consistent with how we act when we experience feelings. So, it would not be necessary for a computer to actually experience emotions for us to believe they have feelings, merely that they respond in a manner consistent with our expectations of emotional beings.

This brings me to the terrifying thought with which I closed my second post in the series on consciousness. It seems feasible that we could create computers that mimicked the responses to emotions, but did not actually experience emotions. If we were to replace ourselves with such computer replicas, we would destroy all beauty by forever blinding the eyes of the beholders.

What is Best in Life?

This post was going to be titled, "What is Good?" but who can resist a corny movie reference? It is, of course, directly inspired by my sister's wonderful post encouraging that we seek good, but it may also address the question, "what matters?" which has been brought up.

While I have my own answer to these questions, and have for a long time, I was initially only going to discuss what these questions might mean to different people. I do like to leave you to find your own answers, as it is both an immensely satisfying project and the only way you will truly believe your own answer. However, I am dismayed with how people often answer this question when they do not agree with me, with money, fame, religion, or power in some combination, so I think it worthwhile to advocate for my own answer.

My answer to these questions was determined when I was in high school, and has yet to change. At that time, I considered the question, "what is the most important thing in the world to me?" The answer that fairly quickly presented itself was the people around me. In some sense, other people are the only things in this world that are real. For example, while a car may exist on a purely physical level as a thing of steel and oil, it is only a construction in our minds that understands that a car is a vehicle. Perhaps more telling is the existence of a book, without our minds interpretation a book is nearly impossible to tell apart from a blank journal, both hold almost exactly the same physical form, but a book can impart so much more to our minds. On the other hand, each and every person you will ever meet, or even with whom you will interact, carries around her or his own mind. This means that it doesn't matter how deeply you consider their existence, they still exist. Which, to me, means that their existence is once of the most important things to consider thoroughly.

This is not to say that money, fame, religion, or power are inherently bad values, just that without including people as one of your primary concerns you dance perilously close to becoming a monster. Without a concern for people, revering money quickly leads to the types of exploitation we see in colonialism or in Enron's treatment of their employees. If you seek fame, but not common good, one might become a cult leader, or the heartless star of a reality show if one prefers to avoid the Kool-Aide. Religion fervency that is not tempered with genuine human compassion can lead to religion violence, something most every religion experiences from some followers, or evangelists whose aid is conditional upon displays of piety from the needy. The pursuit of power regardless of the cost to others paves the way for poster-child evil politicians. I personally consider fame and religion to be among my motivators, but I attempt to always temper my endeavors with a consideration for my fellow humans.

So, go, find what you think is important! Once you do, look for it! But I implore you to place other humans high in your priorities.

Poker Face and the Problem of Other Minds

A week ago, the estimable Mr. Karplus of Sounds Like Japan fame posted a rather addicting "mashup" of the top 25 pop songs of 2009. In a successful attempt to procrastinate reading some math, I embarked to watch the music videos for each of these songs. Through this process I came to two realizations; firstly, as addicting as some pop music is, some is either musically or substantially (ie relating to its content) unpalatable; secondly, there are some interesting concepts to be explored.

Music tends to evocative, rather than expository, communication, by which I mean songs tend to communicate by inspiring the listener, rather than rationally detailing their message as a philosophical or mathematical argument would. Due to this, I will be giving myself license to interpret the song as it relates to me, instead of claiming to explain something inherent to the music. If you appreciate music qua music, that is, the musicality of music, you should check out Sounds Like Japan, Tim knows his stuff!

As you might imagine from the title, I am going to begin by examining Lady Gaga's song "Poker Face." Let me make clear from the beginning that I do NOT wholeheartedly endorse the message of this song! That said, what is the essential message of this song?

I find that choruses are a good place to begin the search for the overall purpose of a song. Because it is repeated throughout the song, the message in the chorus ties the various parts of the song together. In "Poker Face," the chorus is as follows:

"Can't read my,
Can't read my
No he can't read-a my poker face
(she’s got to love nobody)"

My interpretation is that this song is narrated by a woman who avoids emotional investment in her romantic relationship because her partner cannot discern her true detachment behind her "poker face." However, I do not think that this is a very satisfied woman.

The line of the song that I find most objectionable is, "And baby when it's love if its not rough it isn't fun." My main problem with this message is that it normalizes force in the context of a romantic relationship, something I find abhorrent. While, rationally, I recognize that each couple defines their manner of interrelation within the context of their personal relationship, our society has such deep issues with domestic and relationship violence that it hardly seems necessary to glorify it in song.

The reason that I mention that line is that I find it indicative of the self-destructive behavior the unhappy narrator is displaying. Further supporting this interpretation is the previous line, "Russian Roulette is not the same without a gun." If that doesn't seem self destructive, I don't know what would. The question then becomes why is the narrator, despite the freedom implied by, "she has got to love nobody," so despondent?

My interpretation is that the depression results from being unloved, despite being in a romantic relationship. The chorus makes clear that she considers some essential part of herself unknown to her partner. In such a situation, one must doubt whether he really loves her, because she believes that he doesn't really know her, because he cannot read her poker face, that is, know her most private reflections.

This leads us to the problem of other minds. While each of us has uniquely privileged access to our own minds, we can neither access the mind of another on such an effortlessly deep level, nor easily share our own inner workings. Thus, one of the greatest wonders and joys of living is the continual sharing of ourself with others and being trusted by others who attempt to share themselves with us.

One of my favorite YA authors, John Green, coined the term, "imagining each other complexly," to describe this process. Imagining is an appropriate term, given that our impression of someone else is forever trapped within our own mind, but the joy and hope of the phrase comes from the word complexly. We seek to know our partner not as they exist-for-us, by which I mean as we want them to be, but as they exist-for-them-self, to borrow a distinction from my man Emmanuel Kant. To quote John Green in this video, where he is quoting Ze Frank, "we want to feel what it's like to be other people, and let other people feel what it's like to be us." While this was said specifically in relation to why YouTube users make videos, I think it applies to why we write blogs, write music, risk ourselves in the hope of love, and why we walk out into society each day in spite of the often alienating nature of the world in which we live.

To finish with "Poker Face," while the narrator "has got to love nobody," she also has got nobody to love, nor is she loved in return, at least not in a complex notion of the word. While the song starts out in an ominous tone, by the end the chorus sounds distinctly like a lament. I believe the narrator would welcome exchanging the risks of basing a relationship on emotional deception for the true risks involved in an emotionally vulnerable relationship based in open honesty.

Let me conclude by noting that this is a good example of the value that philosophical reflection has to the "layperson." Personally I think "Poker Face" is a wonderful and catchy song, but consumption of its message without critical reflection seems, in some sense, dangerous. With reflection one can both enjoy a driving, compelling, mournful song and attempt to come to grips with some of the problems that seem essential to being a human.

Simply Living

For those of you unfamiliar with my sister's blog, you really should be there, she has much more profound things to say. Recently she has been attempting to live in a very sustainable manner, which she calls "living simply," for religious and pragmatic reasons. Her first post of the New Year is a simple piece on what she appreciates about living simply. For those of you who are curious, previous posts provide additional information about specific changes that she has made, and there is a tasty cookie recipe as well, bonus!

I have been wanting to write something inspirational to kick off the new year, but have not had any idea what to say to that effect. Thus, I direct you to my sister's blog, which I find much more inspiring, and shall write a little in response.

While visiting Oregon, I have been staying with my sister, so I have had a fair bit of immersion into her simpler living. Personally, my lifestyle tends towards the simplistic; most of that is intended to keep my stress at manageable levels rather than out of altruistic motives, and I tend to draw the line at making my life more complicated in an attempt to simplify it, as attempting to bake my own bread seems like it would inevitably do. That said, I can vouch that simple living is not an unpleasant experience at all.

For myself however, I shall concentrate on simply living. My sister sometimes seems more mature than I, and, in this case, I think that she has figured out what she wants out of life a bit quicker than I. This facilitates tweaks, albeit drastic, time consuming, and impressive, to lifestyle. Fortunately, although I am still searching for something that feels right, there are good times along the way. So, may your year be simple and contain the occasional moment of joy!

October, and the Crushing Weight of Existence

Well, today is the seventh of October. I did not want a week of October to pass by without a post, so it seems I am logically compelled to post today. As you may have noticed, I failed to keep to my MWF updates, even after F became "weekend." So, I am setting a less strenuous schedule for myself this month. In short, I shall update at least once every seven days, about a topic of my choosing. I have quite a few posts about the education system and education in general running around in my head, in embarrassingly unpolished format unfortunately, so that may become this month's impromptu subject. This is fitting, as many of the people I imagine read my blog are educators.

Since just updating you upon my plans for updating this blog in October seems like a terrible cop out on my part, I am also going to post something that I wrote elsewhere, about my experiences walking home today.

I finished the book I was reading, Sophie's World, today, which I think warrants a celebration. In what I read today, the existentialists were covered, and the author talked about Sartre's notion that as beings that exist, we owe it to ourselves to do SOMETHING with our existence. Oddly enough, both of the books I have read this school year have inspired this thought in me, as it has been nagging me since I finished Deadline, by Chris Crutcher. I imagine that I was previously aware of Sartre's thought on the subject, because we talked a bit about existentialism in a Feminist Philosophy course when I was an undergrad.

Anyway, as I was walking home under the darkened sky, I almost began crying at the thought of how much I would never understand. Then, as I almost was home, it occurred to me that my dissatisfaction may be because I have lost my faith in mathematics. I remember being quite upset in high school when I realized that there were open problems in mathematics, that is, statements that we are fairly sure are either true or false, but we cannot prove certainly to be one or the other. However, I stuck with mathematics, as it seemed the best method to make sense out of the chaos by which we are surrounded.

Now though, I inch out along a slender branch, toward the tips of a tree of mathematical knowledge, seeking the budding areas where soon new growth will occur. My problem is no longer that these areas of uncertainty exist, but that in reaching them, I have lost sight of the ground from which I began my climb. In an attempt to gain an advantageous viewpoint of my surroundings, I have instead become so myopically focused on the tree I am climbing that I have lost track of my surroundings entirely.

The natural follow up question I asked myself is, would studying philosophy become a remedy to this myopia, or merely a repetition of the mistake that I have already made once? I suppose that since philosophy often concerns itself with the larger picture of what is and what should, it may be more conducive to keeping the vastness and wonder of existence in focus. However, I do believe that more than a few great philosophers have found themselves staring into philosophy and discovering an ever hungry void of uncertainty that has scarred them to the soul.

Anyway, since I have no dependents, nor partner, nor expectation or inclination for this to change in the immediate future, I have great freedom, what Sartre might describe as terrifying freedom, to shape my life at this point. It seems only fitting that I take some time to reflect on what I owe it to myself to do with that freedom. Of course, if you have any suggestions, fill free to leave them, I obviously am not making too much progress upon my own.