[Note: This was originally a post I made on a writers' forum a couple of years. It's far enough removed in time that I can approach it as an editor instead of as a writer, which is kinda cool, considering the subject matter.]
Q: How many editors does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Only one, but he has to rewire the whole house.
Q: How many writers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: "But why do we have to CHANGE it?"
I've worked as a writer and an editor at various times, and so both of these jokes ring true for me. The apparent conflict between writers and editors is maybe not inevitable, but it's highly likely considering the nature of the roles, and in particular I think it's often a result of the mindset of the writer. We writers are in the business of expressing ourselves, of crafting an insightful piece of prose to delight and enlighten our awestruck audience. In the natural order of things, we expect to have people read our stuff and be better for it. However, this also tends to attract personality types to writing who are motivated by this sort of adulation: writers have voracious egos. This makes us naturally resistant and resentful to criticism, even (perhaps especially) when it is well-founded. It also makes us especially sensitive to editorial feedback, and likely to focus on personality issues. "Why can't editors understand what it's like to be a writer?"
But it's not an editor's job to understand what it's like to be a writer. In fact, it's very much the editor's job not to understand the writer. As a writer, I'm much too close to my own work; I know exactly what I'm trying to say, so I have no trouble reading and understanding it. But I am not my audience, and that's why I absolutely need a set of fresh eyes, the eyes of someone who does not understand me, to read my work and see what understanding comes off the page. Ultimately, as writers, our job is not to be understood and empathized with and admired as human beings, but to be understood through our writing alone. The text is all there is, and complaining that we aren't understood is really just an admission of failure as writers.
Since editors must also be skilled writers to some extent (i.e. they have a high degree of competence in structuring clearer sentences), they too are subject to the very same sorts of ego issues with respect to text. And all writers have their own approaches to grammatical issues and so on, so there will inevitably be conflicts between writers (including editors) over the best way to express a particular idea. There's just no getting around that; it will always happen. In many professional contexts, it's the editors who have the final say, so they have the power, and naturally we poor writers will lament about how unfair that is. But in my view, it's a very few people who get into editing because they crave power, or their egos need to be stroked by showing everyone how much better they are at writing than writers are. Yes, it does happen, but for the most part, we writers are already predisposed to see it that way, whether it is so or not.
And we editors need to take that into account. As editors, our job is to help the writer be as brilliant and articulate as she thinks she already is. The goal is to preserve the author's own voice, not to impose the editor's own. My greatest successes in editing have been those moments when I've been able to take the text, rearrange things a bit to improve clarity and flow and reduce the length by 20%, and have the author look at it in dismay and say, "But you didn't change anything!" Even when I've rewired the whole house.
Friday, 12 July 2013
Tuesday, 2 July 2013
Does God Matter?
A visitor commented in my last thread, preferring that I talk more about God than ways to reform our child support regime, claiming that at least it matters whether or not God exists. Well, does it matter?
I would argue that it doesn't, or rather, that it shouldn't matter to us in how we live our lives. That is, we may care very much whether or not God exists, and we may very much want Him to exist (or not to), but our behaviour should not be affected one way or the other. I approach this question from a moral perspective, and then an aesthetic one.
I have always been deeply troubled by the idea that God or the promise of an afterlife should be a factor in one's moral deliberations at all. Ultimately, it subverts morality in a profoundly diabolical way. I mean that very seriously: the form of "Christianity" (or Islam or any afterlife-oriented consequentialism) that emphasizes eternal reward or punishment as a reason for moral conduct is genuinely satanic.
Consider: Suppose Satan were to appear and offer you a similar deal. Everlasting pleasure, in exchange for some earthly act. Perhaps some horribly evil genocidal deed, or perhaps some simple, benign consideration. (Wearing a t-shirt praising Satan for an hour? And you could even say you were wearing it ironically. Doesn't matter.)
Obviously, if you consider yourself a Christian, you'd say no. After all, Satan's supposed to be the Deceiver, the Prince of Lies, the bad guy, so either he'd be tricking you into doing something much worse than you expected, or he'd not deliver on the reward, or both. No way could you trust such an offer.
But the same problem applies to promises that purport to be from God. Remember, this Satan fellow is not just a trickster, but the trickster; if anyone can fool you about something, he's the one. And his greatest trick, according to Baudelaire (and The Usual Suspects), is convincing you he doesn't exist, or more generally that he's not the one you're making your deal with. Why could he not, for example, dress himself up as a holy man, pretending to preach the Word of God? Lots of mortals, without divine superpowers, have done so and successfully led people astray; why would this be difficult for Satan himself?
So, disguised as piety, Satan makes an offer: "Buy into this worldview, ignoring its logical inconsistencies and moral perils, and receive everlasting life." And of course, when you buy into a worldview, you take everything that comes with it, such as (for example) the idea that you'll be rewarded in Heaven for carrying out this or that mission in the name of the church/temple/mosque/etc. You will go along willingly, since you have accepted the premises and believe you're doing the right thing because God commands it, and after all, isn't everlasting reward worth it, even if you've got some apprehension about it?
I've argued this point with truebelievers before, and the usual claim is that Satan is somehow prevented from uttering certain magic words, so he could never pretend to be God or misrepresent God's truth. Really? That sounds to me like the Greatest Trick. The possibility of Satan posing as true religion doesn't exist, so pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
The problem isn't with the identity of the person making the deal. It's the deal itself. When you base your actions on consideration of reward or punishment, rather than the good or evil nature of the act itself, you're making what is morally equivalent to a deal with the devil, regardless of who you're actually bargaining with, including if you think you're bargaining with God. A promise of eternal life, and all you have to do is believe? No thanks. The only reason you should need to believe something is that it's likely to be true, and no bribe or threat can or should change that.
The aesthetic argument is inspired by my thinking about fiction and drama. If God exists and is our Creator, it seems reasonable to think of Him as the author of the novel or play in which we are all characters. The setting He's created appears to have been painstakingly crafted to make obvious evidence of His involvement ambiguous at best. As an actor on this stage, I feel obliged to work with the scene I've been given, and it seems to me tremendously tacky for me to break the fourth wall by addressing or even acknowledging the Author while the play is going on. I'm here, I'm in costume, I'm on this magnificently believable set. I'm not going to second-guess the role I've been given; I'm going to play it. I will follow my conscience, I will engage in dialogue (inner and outer), I will strive to be worthy of treading these boards, but for me, even if the Author does exist, I would not be paying my role authentically if I were to seek a "personal relationship" with Him while the curtain's still up.
I would argue that it doesn't, or rather, that it shouldn't matter to us in how we live our lives. That is, we may care very much whether or not God exists, and we may very much want Him to exist (or not to), but our behaviour should not be affected one way or the other. I approach this question from a moral perspective, and then an aesthetic one.
I have always been deeply troubled by the idea that God or the promise of an afterlife should be a factor in one's moral deliberations at all. Ultimately, it subverts morality in a profoundly diabolical way. I mean that very seriously: the form of "Christianity" (or Islam or any afterlife-oriented consequentialism) that emphasizes eternal reward or punishment as a reason for moral conduct is genuinely satanic.
Consider: Suppose Satan were to appear and offer you a similar deal. Everlasting pleasure, in exchange for some earthly act. Perhaps some horribly evil genocidal deed, or perhaps some simple, benign consideration. (Wearing a t-shirt praising Satan for an hour? And you could even say you were wearing it ironically. Doesn't matter.)
Obviously, if you consider yourself a Christian, you'd say no. After all, Satan's supposed to be the Deceiver, the Prince of Lies, the bad guy, so either he'd be tricking you into doing something much worse than you expected, or he'd not deliver on the reward, or both. No way could you trust such an offer.
But the same problem applies to promises that purport to be from God. Remember, this Satan fellow is not just a trickster, but the trickster; if anyone can fool you about something, he's the one. And his greatest trick, according to Baudelaire (and The Usual Suspects), is convincing you he doesn't exist, or more generally that he's not the one you're making your deal with. Why could he not, for example, dress himself up as a holy man, pretending to preach the Word of God? Lots of mortals, without divine superpowers, have done so and successfully led people astray; why would this be difficult for Satan himself?
So, disguised as piety, Satan makes an offer: "Buy into this worldview, ignoring its logical inconsistencies and moral perils, and receive everlasting life." And of course, when you buy into a worldview, you take everything that comes with it, such as (for example) the idea that you'll be rewarded in Heaven for carrying out this or that mission in the name of the church/temple/mosque/etc. You will go along willingly, since you have accepted the premises and believe you're doing the right thing because God commands it, and after all, isn't everlasting reward worth it, even if you've got some apprehension about it?
I've argued this point with truebelievers before, and the usual claim is that Satan is somehow prevented from uttering certain magic words, so he could never pretend to be God or misrepresent God's truth. Really? That sounds to me like the Greatest Trick. The possibility of Satan posing as true religion doesn't exist, so pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
The problem isn't with the identity of the person making the deal. It's the deal itself. When you base your actions on consideration of reward or punishment, rather than the good or evil nature of the act itself, you're making what is morally equivalent to a deal with the devil, regardless of who you're actually bargaining with, including if you think you're bargaining with God. A promise of eternal life, and all you have to do is believe? No thanks. The only reason you should need to believe something is that it's likely to be true, and no bribe or threat can or should change that.
The aesthetic argument is inspired by my thinking about fiction and drama. If God exists and is our Creator, it seems reasonable to think of Him as the author of the novel or play in which we are all characters. The setting He's created appears to have been painstakingly crafted to make obvious evidence of His involvement ambiguous at best. As an actor on this stage, I feel obliged to work with the scene I've been given, and it seems to me tremendously tacky for me to break the fourth wall by addressing or even acknowledging the Author while the play is going on. I'm here, I'm in costume, I'm on this magnificently believable set. I'm not going to second-guess the role I've been given; I'm going to play it. I will follow my conscience, I will engage in dialogue (inner and outer), I will strive to be worthy of treading these boards, but for me, even if the Author does exist, I would not be paying my role authentically if I were to seek a "personal relationship" with Him while the curtain's still up.
Monday, 17 June 2013
Idle Thoughts on Child Support
I recall feeling vaguely unsettled by one of the legal principles of child support in Canada, when I was taking Family Law in law school. The basic idea is that parents are supposed to contribute financially to the support of children while the children are in the care of the other parent, and the amount of this financial support is prescribed in the Federal Child Support Guidelines, based on the income of the contributing parent.
Now, I have no problem with the idea that a parent's duty to contribute should scale with the parent's income. What I felt uncomfortable about was the fact that, under the law, the child of a wealthy parent has a right to more support than the child of a poor parent. It's not that I begrudge wealthy children being well-provided for, but that it strikes me as unjust that poor children aren't seen as being equally deserving. Wealthy parents will naturally provide more for their children than poor parents, and that's a private matter that we can't do anything about. Nor should we want to, even if we could. But it's different when the law gets involved, and the courts officially rule that child A is entitled to only this much a month in support, while child B is entitled to that much.
It's obvious, of course, how this came to be. After all, the money for these support payments is coming FROM the parents and going TO their own children. In the individual case, you can't get more money from a poor parent just because you think that child needs or deserves or even has a right to more support; the poorer parent just won't be able to provide, and that's that. I understand that the courts in child support cases are only dealing with the case at hand, not the income disparity between cases. I suppose it's a question of the rhetoric involved. If we limited ourselves to talking about the parents' obligations, then I'm perfectly comfortable with saying a wealthy parent has an obligation to pay more in child support than a parent of more limited financial means. But we do talk about the rights and interests of the children; indeed, in family law, the best interests of the child are of paramount importance. So when we admit the interests of a child as a matter to consider (as distinct from the obligations of the parent), the conflict arises: Why does this child deserve more support than that child? Is it not inhuman to say that a child living in poverty has less need for support than a privileged child? And we're talking about children here, not the adults who earn the money. Of course wealthy people who earn their money are entitled to lavish as much of it on their children as they like. But the children themselves have not earned this income, and it's a little harder to argue that they are morally entitled to it as against each other. And if a wealthy parent chooses to run a frugal household, spending no more on piano lessons or ski trips than a poorer family, the state will not generally interfere, and no one would argue that the wealthy parent's child is entitled to a more luxurious childhood simply because the means exist. But even if we have a sense that the children of wealthy parents in some sense deserve to benefit from the good fortune of their birth, are we prepared to accept the converse: that the children of poor parents in some sense deserve to live in poverty?
So while deliberating over this, I had a crazy thought. It's not something I could ever see happening in the current political climate, and I'm not quite sure how to square it with my own general philosophy on taxation, but the idea is this: What if a portion of every adult's income were paid into a general child support fund, which was then distributed equally among all children? That is, what if we simply applied the principle of child support universally, without regard for whether or not there was a divorce or separation? Parents who were still together would pay out their child support tax, but they'd receive back child support payments that would in all likelihood be more than they paid out (thanks in part to the contributions of adults without children of their own), thus ensuring that all parents with children in their care would receive some resources to take care of those children.
Such a system would have costs, to be sure, but probably not much on the balance, since the administrative infrastructure for taxation already exists, and here in Canada we've a long history of providing various subsidies for child care, what my parents referred to as the Baby Bonus. It would also have the benefit of removing the issue of child support completely from family court and reducing caseloads accordingly.
One of the objections I can imagine to this approach would come from adults who don't want to have children. I've heard in the past advocates for the "child-free" community argue that the choice to have children is a personal one that shouldn't impose costs on others who choose not to have children. I think we can dismiss this sort of whining by simply recognizing that while having children may be a "lifestyle choice", being a child is not; every single member of the "child-free movement" is a former child. There is nothing in the least bit discriminatory in providing a benefit that applies equally to all children, except in the sense that some of us were unfortunately born too early to benefit from it.
The other likely objection, of course, is that this is just plain wealth redistribution, and of course it is. That's not a point in its favor, but neither is it necessarily a point against it; redistribution of wealth is only a wrong if you assume that the current distribution of that wealth is more just than the proposed redistribution. As a default position, we should generally assume that people have earned their wealth lawfully through informed and voluntary trades, and so we should be reluctant to interfere unnecessarily, but that assumption does not hold here; children do nothing to earn or deserve being born to either wealthy or poor parents.
Now, I have no problem with the idea that a parent's duty to contribute should scale with the parent's income. What I felt uncomfortable about was the fact that, under the law, the child of a wealthy parent has a right to more support than the child of a poor parent. It's not that I begrudge wealthy children being well-provided for, but that it strikes me as unjust that poor children aren't seen as being equally deserving. Wealthy parents will naturally provide more for their children than poor parents, and that's a private matter that we can't do anything about. Nor should we want to, even if we could. But it's different when the law gets involved, and the courts officially rule that child A is entitled to only this much a month in support, while child B is entitled to that much.
It's obvious, of course, how this came to be. After all, the money for these support payments is coming FROM the parents and going TO their own children. In the individual case, you can't get more money from a poor parent just because you think that child needs or deserves or even has a right to more support; the poorer parent just won't be able to provide, and that's that. I understand that the courts in child support cases are only dealing with the case at hand, not the income disparity between cases. I suppose it's a question of the rhetoric involved. If we limited ourselves to talking about the parents' obligations, then I'm perfectly comfortable with saying a wealthy parent has an obligation to pay more in child support than a parent of more limited financial means. But we do talk about the rights and interests of the children; indeed, in family law, the best interests of the child are of paramount importance. So when we admit the interests of a child as a matter to consider (as distinct from the obligations of the parent), the conflict arises: Why does this child deserve more support than that child? Is it not inhuman to say that a child living in poverty has less need for support than a privileged child? And we're talking about children here, not the adults who earn the money. Of course wealthy people who earn their money are entitled to lavish as much of it on their children as they like. But the children themselves have not earned this income, and it's a little harder to argue that they are morally entitled to it as against each other. And if a wealthy parent chooses to run a frugal household, spending no more on piano lessons or ski trips than a poorer family, the state will not generally interfere, and no one would argue that the wealthy parent's child is entitled to a more luxurious childhood simply because the means exist. But even if we have a sense that the children of wealthy parents in some sense deserve to benefit from the good fortune of their birth, are we prepared to accept the converse: that the children of poor parents in some sense deserve to live in poverty?
So while deliberating over this, I had a crazy thought. It's not something I could ever see happening in the current political climate, and I'm not quite sure how to square it with my own general philosophy on taxation, but the idea is this: What if a portion of every adult's income were paid into a general child support fund, which was then distributed equally among all children? That is, what if we simply applied the principle of child support universally, without regard for whether or not there was a divorce or separation? Parents who were still together would pay out their child support tax, but they'd receive back child support payments that would in all likelihood be more than they paid out (thanks in part to the contributions of adults without children of their own), thus ensuring that all parents with children in their care would receive some resources to take care of those children.
Such a system would have costs, to be sure, but probably not much on the balance, since the administrative infrastructure for taxation already exists, and here in Canada we've a long history of providing various subsidies for child care, what my parents referred to as the Baby Bonus. It would also have the benefit of removing the issue of child support completely from family court and reducing caseloads accordingly.
One of the objections I can imagine to this approach would come from adults who don't want to have children. I've heard in the past advocates for the "child-free" community argue that the choice to have children is a personal one that shouldn't impose costs on others who choose not to have children. I think we can dismiss this sort of whining by simply recognizing that while having children may be a "lifestyle choice", being a child is not; every single member of the "child-free movement" is a former child. There is nothing in the least bit discriminatory in providing a benefit that applies equally to all children, except in the sense that some of us were unfortunately born too early to benefit from it.
The other likely objection, of course, is that this is just plain wealth redistribution, and of course it is. That's not a point in its favor, but neither is it necessarily a point against it; redistribution of wealth is only a wrong if you assume that the current distribution of that wealth is more just than the proposed redistribution. As a default position, we should generally assume that people have earned their wealth lawfully through informed and voluntary trades, and so we should be reluctant to interfere unnecessarily, but that assumption does not hold here; children do nothing to earn or deserve being born to either wealthy or poor parents.
Tuesday, 4 June 2013
Crossing the Border: Answering a Xenophobic Chain Letter
A few years ago, before we set her up with an iPad and her own email address, my mother used to give out one of my email addresses to her friends and business contacts in case they needed to get a message to her by email. Since we no longer live under the same roof, it wasn't particularly fast, but we have dinner together once a week, so it wasn't prohibitively slow, either.
In any event, I am now on the contacts list of a number of elderly internet users, one of whom frequently forwards emails of a political and supposedly humorous nature. Most of the time I ignore them, though occasionally I will reply to refute the ones I feel really need to be refuted. The following, however, is one so exceptionally daft I feel a need to share. I've cut the clip art, but left the text verbatim.
First of all, facts: No, you don't get any of that stuff for crossing the border illegally into Canada. To get a drivers license, you still have to apply, take a test, pay a fee and so on. Same applies for all that other stuff. Oh, and to vote, you need to be a Canadian citizen, and it's rather harder to apply for Canadian citizenship if you're in the country illegally. It's harder to get any of those things if you're here illegally.
Second, I think you've confused illegal immigrants with immigrants in general. Illegal immigrants do not generally have a great deal of political influence, and no one who can afford a lobbyist needs to sneak across the border. Printing government documents in a variety of languages is not done, for the most part, for the benefit of illegals; there are lots of people legally in the country who aren't fluent in either official language, and in any event it's often in our interest to ensure that they're informed about things like, say, communicable diseases and traffic rules.
But let's forget about facts and focus on the truthiness of this complaint: that other countries treat illegal immigrants as criminals and punish them harshly, while Canada treats them mildly and even generously. While the precise details of the email are at best distortions, the fundamental truth is that yes, we are nicer to immigrants than the other countries listed. Is there something wrong with that?
"But they're ILLEGALS!" one might protest. "They ARE criminals, so why don't we treat them accordingly, like those other countries do?"
`
Well, for one thing, I don't know what you've heard about the living conditions in North Korea, but you probably shouldn't rely too much on the official propaganda about how gloriously peachy life is under the Dear Leader. The North Korean authorities know perfectly well that their standard of living is not the envy of the world, and they quite rightly are suspicious of the motives of anyone sneaking into their country. Probably, if you're sneaking into North Korea, you are a spy and an enemy of the state.
Contrast this with Canada. Sure, someone sneaking across our border may be a spy or perhaps a terrorist, but more likely they're desperate people who just want to live here. (Spies and terrorists, if they're at all competent, will usually enter the country legally.) So there's a qualitative difference between your typical illegal immigrant in Canada and in despotic countries: Our illegal immigrants come here because they like us and want to join us.
Now, why might that be? The short answer is that we're a rich country. We may not feel rich, but we've got cars and houses and cell phones and lots of food and public health care and clean water and it's generally safe to walk the streets at night. We are fabulously well-off by global and historical standards.
And that's not just a coincidence. Sure, we may like to believe that our wealth is a result of our being hardworking and resourceful, but that's only part of it. People everywhere are hardworking and resourceful. The difference is that we, like the rest of the developed liberal democracies, have embraced the Rule of Law and the basic idea of human rights. That, among other things, makes it more worthwhile being hardworking and resourceful.
It also means that we apply these notions of human rights and such when we deal with lawbreakers, and that includes people who cross the border illegally. We don't, indeed can't, make distinctions between people with rights and people without rights; humans have rights, period. If we did make exceptions for this or that class of people, because they're foreigners or they speak the wrong language or didn't happen to fill out the right paperwork before crowding into a shipping container to escape brutal oppression overseas, well, they wouldn't be human rights anymore. They'd be "people we like" rights. And that's unprincipled, and incompatible with the rule of law and the reason we're so prosperous in the first place.
Seriously, O Anonymous Chain Letter Author, do you really mean to suggest that we should be more like North Korea?
In any event, I am now on the contacts list of a number of elderly internet users, one of whom frequently forwards emails of a political and supposedly humorous nature. Most of the time I ignore them, though occasionally I will reply to refute the ones I feel really need to be refuted. The following, however, is one so exceptionally daft I feel a need to share. I've cut the clip art, but left the text verbatim.
LET'S SEE IF I GOT THIS RIGHT!!!
IF YOU CROSS THE NORTH KOREAN BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU GET 12 YEARS HARD LABOR.
IF YOU CROSS THE IRANIAN BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU ARE DETAINED INDEFINITELY.
IF YOU CROSS THE AFGHAN BORDER ILLEGALLY, YOU GET SHOT.
IF YOU CROSS THE SAUDI ARABIAN BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU WILL BE JAILED.
IF YOU CROSS THE CHINESE BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU MAY NEVER BE HEARD FROM AGAIN.
IF YOU CROSS THE VENEZUELAN BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU WILL BE BRANDED A SPY AND YOUR FATE WILL BE SEALED.
IF YOU CROSS THE CUBAN BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU WILL BE THROWN INTO POLITICAL PRISON TO ROT...
IF YOU CROSS THE CANADIAN BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU GET;
A JOB,
A DRIVERS LICENSE,
SOCIAL SECURITY CARD,
WELFARE,
FOOD VOUCHERS,
CREDIT CARDS,
SUBSIDIZED RENT OR A LOAN TO BUY A HOUSE, FREE EDUCATION, FREE HEALTH CARE,
A LOBBYIST IN OTTAWA
BILLIONS OF DOLLARS WORTH OF PUBLIC DOCUMENTS PRINTED IN YOUR LANGUAGE
THE RIGHT TO CARRY YOUR COUNTRY'S FLAG WHILE YOU PROTEST THAT YOU DON'T GET ENOUGH RESPECT
AND, IN MANY INSTANCES, YOU CAN VOTE.
I JUST WANTED TO MAKE SURE I HAD A FIRM GRASP ON THE SITUATION!!!
A firm grasp on the situation? Where to begin?
Second, I think you've confused illegal immigrants with immigrants in general. Illegal immigrants do not generally have a great deal of political influence, and no one who can afford a lobbyist needs to sneak across the border. Printing government documents in a variety of languages is not done, for the most part, for the benefit of illegals; there are lots of people legally in the country who aren't fluent in either official language, and in any event it's often in our interest to ensure that they're informed about things like, say, communicable diseases and traffic rules.
But let's forget about facts and focus on the truthiness of this complaint: that other countries treat illegal immigrants as criminals and punish them harshly, while Canada treats them mildly and even generously. While the precise details of the email are at best distortions, the fundamental truth is that yes, we are nicer to immigrants than the other countries listed. Is there something wrong with that?
"But they're ILLEGALS!" one might protest. "They ARE criminals, so why don't we treat them accordingly, like those other countries do?"
`
Well, for one thing, I don't know what you've heard about the living conditions in North Korea, but you probably shouldn't rely too much on the official propaganda about how gloriously peachy life is under the Dear Leader. The North Korean authorities know perfectly well that their standard of living is not the envy of the world, and they quite rightly are suspicious of the motives of anyone sneaking into their country. Probably, if you're sneaking into North Korea, you are a spy and an enemy of the state.
Contrast this with Canada. Sure, someone sneaking across our border may be a spy or perhaps a terrorist, but more likely they're desperate people who just want to live here. (Spies and terrorists, if they're at all competent, will usually enter the country legally.) So there's a qualitative difference between your typical illegal immigrant in Canada and in despotic countries: Our illegal immigrants come here because they like us and want to join us.
Now, why might that be? The short answer is that we're a rich country. We may not feel rich, but we've got cars and houses and cell phones and lots of food and public health care and clean water and it's generally safe to walk the streets at night. We are fabulously well-off by global and historical standards.
And that's not just a coincidence. Sure, we may like to believe that our wealth is a result of our being hardworking and resourceful, but that's only part of it. People everywhere are hardworking and resourceful. The difference is that we, like the rest of the developed liberal democracies, have embraced the Rule of Law and the basic idea of human rights. That, among other things, makes it more worthwhile being hardworking and resourceful.
It also means that we apply these notions of human rights and such when we deal with lawbreakers, and that includes people who cross the border illegally. We don't, indeed can't, make distinctions between people with rights and people without rights; humans have rights, period. If we did make exceptions for this or that class of people, because they're foreigners or they speak the wrong language or didn't happen to fill out the right paperwork before crowding into a shipping container to escape brutal oppression overseas, well, they wouldn't be human rights anymore. They'd be "people we like" rights. And that's unprincipled, and incompatible with the rule of law and the reason we're so prosperous in the first place.
Seriously, O Anonymous Chain Letter Author, do you really mean to suggest that we should be more like North Korea?
Thursday, 16 May 2013
How I Defeated the Hornets
Today, a friend linked to a story about a Swedish man stung to death after attempting to mate with a hornets' nest. Having been stung by a yellowjacket myself, I found it difficult to imagine anyone actually inviting such a painful experience in such a sensitive area, but hey, there are crazies out there, right? Of course, this particular story is likely a hoax, according to this site.
Nonetheless, the tale reminded my of something I'd been meaning to write up since last summer, when I discovered a thriving hornets' nest under our deck. While I am by no means an expert on extermination, perhaps my experience will be useful if you find yourself in a similar situation.
It first crossed my mind that there might be a nest there when I noticed a yellowjacket land on the deck and then crawl down between the boards. As I pondered this, another landed in almost the same spot, and also disappeared between the 2x6es. Not wishing to be stung, I fetched a little mirror-on-a-stick gadget I have in my toolchest, and knelt down on the sidewalk next to the deck, a good two meters from likely location of the nest, based on the wasps' entry point.
This was the only time I was stung during the entire operation, and at first I thought I had just bumped my wrist on an exposed nail or something. But there was no blood, no obvious sign of a puncture wound, only the characteristic swelling and pinkness that goes with a sting. And it hurt like crazy.
The sting established a few things. First, it confirmed that there was indeed a nest present, and second, it was probably closer to this end of the deck than I thought, if I was so promptly attacked way over here. But it also established the commencement of hostilities between myself and the Vespulan colony, a war that would end with their utter destruction.
Phase I: Recon
I considered what I knew of my enemy. Yellow jackets, like true hornets, bees and ants, are eusocial. That means the individual workers are more than happy to sacrifice themselves to protect the hive, but there's no benefit to the hive if they throw their lives away attacking something that isn't a threat. So presumably, even when they get all riled up, they probably won't chase you too far. And so I planned a raid to probe their defenses.
I have a nice long stick with a natural hook at the end I use for picking apples. I wrapped cardboard around the end of it to make a kind of giant flyswatter, and approached the deck, after making sure there were no human noncombatants in the area. I saw a yellowjacket returning from foraging, and slammed it to paste with the swatter before retreating to the other end of the yard to observe. Almost immediately a dozen or so angry insects emerged and buzzed around in a combat patrol over the deck, their numbers growing as others presumably made their way from deeper in the nest. But they didn't stray much farther than two or three meters from base, and didn't seem to identify me, five or six meters away, as a target.
I carried out a few more probing raids, standing a little closer to observe each time, but fleeing whenever a Vespulan got too close to me. In this way, I learned just how far they would pursue before breaking off the chase, valuable intel to inform the next phase of my campaign.
Phase II: Harassment and Attrition
Interesting thing about yellow jackets. They are primarily predatory, bringing back insects and chewed up bits of carrion to feed the larvae, who secrete a rich sweet sugary fuel for the adult workers. Later in the season, when they focus on fattening up the breeders instead of feeding new larvae, the adults tend to shift their feeding habits to sweet stuff like fruit, which is why you'll sometimes see them buzzing around your root beer at picnics.
Flying is a pretty energy-intensive activity, which is why the adults need more sugar. This was mid-July, the raspberries weren't falling off the bush yet, and the hive was still growing lots of new workers, so most of the Vespulans' flight fuel was still coming from larval secretions. Strategically, then, they were highly dependent on foraging. This became my target in Phase 2, the war of attrition.
Each day, I made several harassment raids on the Vespulan colony, whacking the deck loudly with my swatter, retreating to just outside of their usual pursuit range, swatting targets of opportunity as they presented themselves. On a typical raid I might kill half a dozen workers, but that was just icing. Six dead workers meant six fewer foragers, but more importantly, forty angry wasps buzzing around defending the hive meant forty angry wasps delaying their foraging trips, burning up fuel, and needing to tank up again before going out to collect protein for the larvae.
The attrition phase took a week or so, and eventually my persistence began to pay off. Fewer and fewer defenders emerged to meet each attack. Even so, I could not assume I had simply killed them all; presumably the higher fuel demands had caused more workers to be diverted to foraging, keeping a smaller combat reserve to defend the hive. But in any case, the groundwork had been laid for the final phase of the campaign.
Phase III: The Ground War
The time had come to finish off the hive. By observing the Vespulans over the course of the campaign to date, I had a fair idea of how long it would take for them to be able to regroup after a raid. I also was fairly certain that the hive was attached to the underside of one of three adjacent 2x6es on the deck, which would need to be removed in order to carry out the final assault. I assembled the gear I would need: crowbar, swatter, a can of Raid (which in hindsight I probably didn't need). I also suited up with my fencing mask, a leather jacket, and work gloves, to reduce the likelihood of being stung.
The assault began with a swatter raid, just like previous attacks, except that at this point my objective was to kill all of the defenders, not merely to harass them. There were few enough at this point that I was able to do so.
Once I was satisfied there was no Vespulan in a position to sting me, I grabbed the crowbar and pried up the middle plank, where I hoped the nest would be attached. I had to move fairly quickly, as I wanted to finish this before returning foragers were able to join in the defense. Alas, the plank I removed was clean; the nest was attached to the next one over. I sprayed a goodly dose of Raid directly into the nest's entrance.
As I said, in hindsight, I probably didn't really need to use chemical weapons. At the time, I didn't know how many adult workers might yet be inside the hive as a last reserve against intruders, but I assumed there would be some. Indeed, there were a few, but I probably could have squished them without being stung, with sufficiently aggressive tactics. Alternatively, I suppose I could have put duct tape over the entrance. I shall always have to live with having made that decision.
In any event, I next grabbed the hoe and used its blade to scrape the nest free from the underside of the adjacent plank, and it fell to the ground under the deck where I couldn't conveniently reach it with my gloved hands. So I trotted to the garage and got a spear-like implement we have for weeding dandelions, and skewered the hive, bringing it out onto the sidewalk. Now it was just the mopping up.
Aftermath
A couple of adult wasps did crawl from the entrance to the nest, but they were in no condition to attack me. The insecticide was already doing them in. With the nest on the sidewalk, some distance from its original location, any returning foragers were likely to go into a confused "Where the heck is my house?" search mode, rather than angrily seeking vengeance. (Insect brains are very small.)
Still clad in my anti-sting armour, I began to dismantle the nest, which was a fascinating and beautiful structure. There were several layers of cells, many with larvae in them. I felt a pang of regret, but only a little. The hive was in a bad place, and as the summer progressed, it would become more of a nuisance, so close to our main thoroughfare to the garage. Besides, one of them STUNG me! They started it!
That said, I am not a sworn enemy of all yellow jackets. They're actually fairly beneficial creatures, preying as they do on many insects we consider pests. They don't seek out people to sting, tending to conserve their venom for when they need to defend the nest. As alarming as it is to have one buzzing around your plate in late summer, I don't think I can remember ever being stung by one that was out foraging, nor seeing someone stung under such conditions. Had they built their nest a bit more remotely, say, behind the garage, out of pursuit range from human routes, we could have peacefully coexisted. Alas.
Nonetheless, the tale reminded my of something I'd been meaning to write up since last summer, when I discovered a thriving hornets' nest under our deck. While I am by no means an expert on extermination, perhaps my experience will be useful if you find yourself in a similar situation.
It first crossed my mind that there might be a nest there when I noticed a yellowjacket land on the deck and then crawl down between the boards. As I pondered this, another landed in almost the same spot, and also disappeared between the 2x6es. Not wishing to be stung, I fetched a little mirror-on-a-stick gadget I have in my toolchest, and knelt down on the sidewalk next to the deck, a good two meters from likely location of the nest, based on the wasps' entry point.
This was the only time I was stung during the entire operation, and at first I thought I had just bumped my wrist on an exposed nail or something. But there was no blood, no obvious sign of a puncture wound, only the characteristic swelling and pinkness that goes with a sting. And it hurt like crazy.
The sting established a few things. First, it confirmed that there was indeed a nest present, and second, it was probably closer to this end of the deck than I thought, if I was so promptly attacked way over here. But it also established the commencement of hostilities between myself and the Vespulan colony, a war that would end with their utter destruction.
Phase I: Recon
I considered what I knew of my enemy. Yellow jackets, like true hornets, bees and ants, are eusocial. That means the individual workers are more than happy to sacrifice themselves to protect the hive, but there's no benefit to the hive if they throw their lives away attacking something that isn't a threat. So presumably, even when they get all riled up, they probably won't chase you too far. And so I planned a raid to probe their defenses.
I have a nice long stick with a natural hook at the end I use for picking apples. I wrapped cardboard around the end of it to make a kind of giant flyswatter, and approached the deck, after making sure there were no human noncombatants in the area. I saw a yellowjacket returning from foraging, and slammed it to paste with the swatter before retreating to the other end of the yard to observe. Almost immediately a dozen or so angry insects emerged and buzzed around in a combat patrol over the deck, their numbers growing as others presumably made their way from deeper in the nest. But they didn't stray much farther than two or three meters from base, and didn't seem to identify me, five or six meters away, as a target.
I carried out a few more probing raids, standing a little closer to observe each time, but fleeing whenever a Vespulan got too close to me. In this way, I learned just how far they would pursue before breaking off the chase, valuable intel to inform the next phase of my campaign.
Phase II: Harassment and Attrition
Interesting thing about yellow jackets. They are primarily predatory, bringing back insects and chewed up bits of carrion to feed the larvae, who secrete a rich sweet sugary fuel for the adult workers. Later in the season, when they focus on fattening up the breeders instead of feeding new larvae, the adults tend to shift their feeding habits to sweet stuff like fruit, which is why you'll sometimes see them buzzing around your root beer at picnics.
Flying is a pretty energy-intensive activity, which is why the adults need more sugar. This was mid-July, the raspberries weren't falling off the bush yet, and the hive was still growing lots of new workers, so most of the Vespulans' flight fuel was still coming from larval secretions. Strategically, then, they were highly dependent on foraging. This became my target in Phase 2, the war of attrition.
Each day, I made several harassment raids on the Vespulan colony, whacking the deck loudly with my swatter, retreating to just outside of their usual pursuit range, swatting targets of opportunity as they presented themselves. On a typical raid I might kill half a dozen workers, but that was just icing. Six dead workers meant six fewer foragers, but more importantly, forty angry wasps buzzing around defending the hive meant forty angry wasps delaying their foraging trips, burning up fuel, and needing to tank up again before going out to collect protein for the larvae.
The attrition phase took a week or so, and eventually my persistence began to pay off. Fewer and fewer defenders emerged to meet each attack. Even so, I could not assume I had simply killed them all; presumably the higher fuel demands had caused more workers to be diverted to foraging, keeping a smaller combat reserve to defend the hive. But in any case, the groundwork had been laid for the final phase of the campaign.
Phase III: The Ground War
The time had come to finish off the hive. By observing the Vespulans over the course of the campaign to date, I had a fair idea of how long it would take for them to be able to regroup after a raid. I also was fairly certain that the hive was attached to the underside of one of three adjacent 2x6es on the deck, which would need to be removed in order to carry out the final assault. I assembled the gear I would need: crowbar, swatter, a can of Raid (which in hindsight I probably didn't need). I also suited up with my fencing mask, a leather jacket, and work gloves, to reduce the likelihood of being stung.
The assault began with a swatter raid, just like previous attacks, except that at this point my objective was to kill all of the defenders, not merely to harass them. There were few enough at this point that I was able to do so.
Once I was satisfied there was no Vespulan in a position to sting me, I grabbed the crowbar and pried up the middle plank, where I hoped the nest would be attached. I had to move fairly quickly, as I wanted to finish this before returning foragers were able to join in the defense. Alas, the plank I removed was clean; the nest was attached to the next one over. I sprayed a goodly dose of Raid directly into the nest's entrance.
As I said, in hindsight, I probably didn't really need to use chemical weapons. At the time, I didn't know how many adult workers might yet be inside the hive as a last reserve against intruders, but I assumed there would be some. Indeed, there were a few, but I probably could have squished them without being stung, with sufficiently aggressive tactics. Alternatively, I suppose I could have put duct tape over the entrance. I shall always have to live with having made that decision.
In any event, I next grabbed the hoe and used its blade to scrape the nest free from the underside of the adjacent plank, and it fell to the ground under the deck where I couldn't conveniently reach it with my gloved hands. So I trotted to the garage and got a spear-like implement we have for weeding dandelions, and skewered the hive, bringing it out onto the sidewalk. Now it was just the mopping up.
Aftermath
A couple of adult wasps did crawl from the entrance to the nest, but they were in no condition to attack me. The insecticide was already doing them in. With the nest on the sidewalk, some distance from its original location, any returning foragers were likely to go into a confused "Where the heck is my house?" search mode, rather than angrily seeking vengeance. (Insect brains are very small.)
That said, I am not a sworn enemy of all yellow jackets. They're actually fairly beneficial creatures, preying as they do on many insects we consider pests. They don't seek out people to sting, tending to conserve their venom for when they need to defend the nest. As alarming as it is to have one buzzing around your plate in late summer, I don't think I can remember ever being stung by one that was out foraging, nor seeing someone stung under such conditions. Had they built their nest a bit more remotely, say, behind the garage, out of pursuit range from human routes, we could have peacefully coexisted. Alas.
Thursday, 9 May 2013
No Laughing Matter
The other day, I was reminded of a joke I had the good fortune, years ago, to use with almost perfect effect. I was at a philosophy seminar in grad school where one of my colleagues was advancing the theory that humour is a weapon of oppression, while I was arguing that it was more effective as a weapon against oppression. At some point in the discussion, I asked the question: How many feminists does it take to change a lightbulb? Fortunately, my colleague had not heard the joke, and it was delicious watching her struggle with her ideology and her desire to hear the punchline. Finally she gritted her teeth and said, "All right, how many?" clearly prepared to object to whatever I offered. When I delivered it, with a moralistic glower, "That's not funny!" it completely deflated her argument.
(To her credit, she did not then complain about how this was just another instance of patriarchy using humour to ridicule and silence the voices of women.)
The occasion that reminded me of this joke was the reaction to short piece on The Onion about how a heartbroken Chris Brown always thought Rihanna was the one he'd beat to death. Not surprisingly it was immediately met with harsh criticism, with the usual admonishments that domestic violence isn't funny. Well, duh. Of course it's not funny. But such objections miss the point of the joke, and more fail to understand the role of humour generally.
The mistake is to think that one cannot take something seriously if one jokes about it. Sometimes this is true; we even use "just joking around" as an antonym for seriousness. Certainly much humour is solely aimed at mere amusement. So, too, is a lot of music. That hardly means that a composer who writes a requiem is making light of someone's death. Music is a powerful expressive medium, and the fact that it can be light and cheerful doesn't mean it can't be somber and profound as well.
The same is true of humour, though perhaps not as obviously so. It's true that humour usually involves some sort of ridicule, or observation that something is absurd, but the crucial thing to recognize is what the real target of the ridicule is. I suppose you could say that's what the sense of humour is all about: being able to sense where the humour lies.
People with little or no sense of humour may recognize that there's humour somewhere nearby, perhaps not by sensing the humour itself but by recognizing the contextual cues that indicate a joke is being made. But lacking the ability to directly perceive the humour, they may think it's targeted inappropriately, and I think that's what's happened with the Onion piece. The critics failed to notice that the real target of ridicule here was not victims of domestic abuse, but the perpetrators, who surely deserve a great deal of ridicule. The sheer absurdity of claiming to love someone, while expressing that "love" through violence, is something we all should recognize, and the Onion's joke zeroed in on that with ruthless accuracy.
Ridicule is a tremendously powerful memetic weapon, when properly used. (Poorly used, it's pretty pathetic.) I've been reading Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of our Nature, about the dramatic decline in violence over the centuries, and one possible contributing factor he mentions is the role of humour. Films like the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup, or even Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, effectively lampoon the insanity of leaders who would take us to war over imagined slights or lunatic ideologies. Leaders who take themselves too seriously. These were very funny movies, but not because war is funny. Indeed, the true depth of the humour of these films depends on the audience's appreciation of how horribly evil a thing war is. And, as bad as domestic violence is, war is many orders of magnitude worse.
I understand the sentiment. After all, who can argue with the statement that domestic violence isn't funny? Of course it isn't. But there is a danger, I think, in saying that certain topics must be treated "seriously", especially topics involving violence: generally speaking, violence is used by people who are trying to be taken seriously. We need it to be firmly established in our culture that violence does not earn you respect. That applies equally to guys who beat their wives or girlfriends and to losers who set off bombs in public places.
These people desperately need to be ridiculed, because they are ridiculous. The fact that they are also dangerous only makes it that much more important to reveal how ridiculous they are.
(To her credit, she did not then complain about how this was just another instance of patriarchy using humour to ridicule and silence the voices of women.)
The occasion that reminded me of this joke was the reaction to short piece on The Onion about how a heartbroken Chris Brown always thought Rihanna was the one he'd beat to death. Not surprisingly it was immediately met with harsh criticism, with the usual admonishments that domestic violence isn't funny. Well, duh. Of course it's not funny. But such objections miss the point of the joke, and more fail to understand the role of humour generally.
The mistake is to think that one cannot take something seriously if one jokes about it. Sometimes this is true; we even use "just joking around" as an antonym for seriousness. Certainly much humour is solely aimed at mere amusement. So, too, is a lot of music. That hardly means that a composer who writes a requiem is making light of someone's death. Music is a powerful expressive medium, and the fact that it can be light and cheerful doesn't mean it can't be somber and profound as well.
The same is true of humour, though perhaps not as obviously so. It's true that humour usually involves some sort of ridicule, or observation that something is absurd, but the crucial thing to recognize is what the real target of the ridicule is. I suppose you could say that's what the sense of humour is all about: being able to sense where the humour lies.
People with little or no sense of humour may recognize that there's humour somewhere nearby, perhaps not by sensing the humour itself but by recognizing the contextual cues that indicate a joke is being made. But lacking the ability to directly perceive the humour, they may think it's targeted inappropriately, and I think that's what's happened with the Onion piece. The critics failed to notice that the real target of ridicule here was not victims of domestic abuse, but the perpetrators, who surely deserve a great deal of ridicule. The sheer absurdity of claiming to love someone, while expressing that "love" through violence, is something we all should recognize, and the Onion's joke zeroed in on that with ruthless accuracy.
Ridicule is a tremendously powerful memetic weapon, when properly used. (Poorly used, it's pretty pathetic.) I've been reading Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of our Nature, about the dramatic decline in violence over the centuries, and one possible contributing factor he mentions is the role of humour. Films like the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup, or even Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, effectively lampoon the insanity of leaders who would take us to war over imagined slights or lunatic ideologies. Leaders who take themselves too seriously. These were very funny movies, but not because war is funny. Indeed, the true depth of the humour of these films depends on the audience's appreciation of how horribly evil a thing war is. And, as bad as domestic violence is, war is many orders of magnitude worse.
I understand the sentiment. After all, who can argue with the statement that domestic violence isn't funny? Of course it isn't. But there is a danger, I think, in saying that certain topics must be treated "seriously", especially topics involving violence: generally speaking, violence is used by people who are trying to be taken seriously. We need it to be firmly established in our culture that violence does not earn you respect. That applies equally to guys who beat their wives or girlfriends and to losers who set off bombs in public places.
These people desperately need to be ridiculed, because they are ridiculous. The fact that they are also dangerous only makes it that much more important to reveal how ridiculous they are.
Saturday, 27 April 2013
Why We're Probably Real, or at Least Simulated
I have always been interested in games and simulations. Most recently I've been playing around with developing a set of self-imposed rules to simulate the growth of villages and cities in Minecraft, but I've been at it since before I got that Apple ][ for my sixteenth birthday. Naturally, when I first encountered Conway's Game of Life, I was intrigued with the possibility that our universe itself might be a vast cellular automata system, in which the various subatomic particles were essentially multidimensional equivalents of Life's glider guns and other emergent phenomena.
Well, last week, a friend forwarded me a link to this article on the question of whether or not we're living in a big computer simulation of reality, and ways we might be able to detect if this was so, essentially by looking for artifacts of the limitations of whatever computing device is running the simulation.
I haven't read the original academic sources, and most of the math would probably be over my head anyway, but my impression is that what they're trying to do is similar to something I described once in an article about conducting science in a roleplaying game. Imagine you are a character in a game, where certain aspects of the gameworld are simulated on a roll of two six-sided dice. If you kept careful records of these sorts of events, over time you might find that their probabilities tended to converge towards certain multiples of 1/36, those corresponding to the odds of a given sum. You might find this an odd coincidence, and while you might not immediately conclude that it was actually a literal roll of the dice that determined the outcomes in your world, it would be evidence for some such explanation. Maybe God really does play dice with the universe.
So it seems to me like a splendid idea for scientists to look for telltale patterns of computational artifacts in our universe, and it would certainly be a momentous discovery to find one. Still, it seems to me it would be amazingly difficult to imagine just what sort of a machine could even be running this simulation, much less make meaningful guesses as what kind of computational artifacts to look for. It's probably running on something a little more powerful than my old Apple ][, but not necessarily. See, in principle, any Turing machine could run any computable simulation, given sufficient time and memory. Sure, it would take a long time, but not for us inside the simulation. We would have no way to measure the passage of time between "frames" of the movie, trapped as we are within those frames. Looking at the text on this page now, there is no way for you to tell how many seconds, hours or days passed between my typing the letters of this word.
But then, why does it actually need to be computed in the first place? We often speak of mathematical facts as having a kind of independent existence, regardless of whether or not any human happens to know them. For example, there is a fact of the matter as to what the googolth digit of pi is, even though no one is ever likely to calculate it.
Now consider the universe of a computer simulation. It, like pi, is really just a vast computational problem. All of the macroscopic phenomena we might experience within it (including the capacity to experience and reflect on phenomena) would be simply emergent properties, like the glider guns and more complex structures of Life, possibly detectable to someone watching the monitor, so to speak, but possibly just lost in the noise, but nonetheless intrinsically present in the data itself.
So whether or not our universe simulation is ever actually executed, there still would be a fact of the matter as to what you're thinking about right now, locked within the complete mathematical description of this universe. So again, why even postulate some computer simulation, when we could simply be an emergent property of an unimaginably vast number? That may be all the existence we have or need. We may have no more "real" solid existence than the googolth digit of pi.
I believe there is an answer. For one thing, if we are just numbers, then we are surely not alone. All mathematically possible universes share the same degree of existence. Of course, this means that infinitely many parallel universes "exist", but infinitely many more chaotic messes of data with no intelligible emergent properties to speak of. The fact that we find ourselves in one of the vanishingly small fraction of number sets that includes the emergent property of consciousness is kind of astonishing, but it shouldn't be, thanks to the anthropic principle; while it's improbable that a universe picked at random will include someone wondering about the improbability of consciousness is, it's a certainty that someone wondering about the improbability of consciousness will be in such a universe.
But there are infinitely many possible wondering consciousnesses, and like the infinitely many universes, most of them may be pretty much random. That is, the subjective experience of a consciousness may just be there, but with little more coherence than that. Most will be nothing like the subjective experience we have here, of a universe that appears to follow coherent laws of physics, where principles of causality seem to hold sway, where there may be mysteries and apparent paradoxes but they fairly consistently tend to be resolved within the rules.
So consider: of all the infinitely many crazy chaotic universes in which conscious could be randomly encoded, we seem to be in one where there are impressively consistent regularities. The odds of being in such a universe are submicroscopically tiny, and yet here we are. The anthropic principle doesn't account for why these regularities should exist wherever we find ourselves. So it's reasonable to look or some sort of explanation for the apparent order we perceive in our universe.
One such explanation is that these emergent properties of planets, solar systems, trees and consciousness really do need to be instantiated in some way in order to become real. In other words, there has to be some sort of physical, mechanical encoding of the data, which by obeying its mechanical or computational rules, generates an orderliness to the pattern.
And that's why I'm satisfied that we must either be in a "real" universe, or at least running as an emergent property of a simulation on a machine in some "real" universe. Not that anyone was really worrying too much about whether or not we were just a matrix of numbers.
Well, last week, a friend forwarded me a link to this article on the question of whether or not we're living in a big computer simulation of reality, and ways we might be able to detect if this was so, essentially by looking for artifacts of the limitations of whatever computing device is running the simulation.
I haven't read the original academic sources, and most of the math would probably be over my head anyway, but my impression is that what they're trying to do is similar to something I described once in an article about conducting science in a roleplaying game. Imagine you are a character in a game, where certain aspects of the gameworld are simulated on a roll of two six-sided dice. If you kept careful records of these sorts of events, over time you might find that their probabilities tended to converge towards certain multiples of 1/36, those corresponding to the odds of a given sum. You might find this an odd coincidence, and while you might not immediately conclude that it was actually a literal roll of the dice that determined the outcomes in your world, it would be evidence for some such explanation. Maybe God really does play dice with the universe.
So it seems to me like a splendid idea for scientists to look for telltale patterns of computational artifacts in our universe, and it would certainly be a momentous discovery to find one. Still, it seems to me it would be amazingly difficult to imagine just what sort of a machine could even be running this simulation, much less make meaningful guesses as what kind of computational artifacts to look for. It's probably running on something a little more powerful than my old Apple ][, but not necessarily. See, in principle, any Turing machine could run any computable simulation, given sufficient time and memory. Sure, it would take a long time, but not for us inside the simulation. We would have no way to measure the passage of time between "frames" of the movie, trapped as we are within those frames. Looking at the text on this page now, there is no way for you to tell how many seconds, hours or days passed between my typing the letters of this word.
But then, why does it actually need to be computed in the first place? We often speak of mathematical facts as having a kind of independent existence, regardless of whether or not any human happens to know them. For example, there is a fact of the matter as to what the googolth digit of pi is, even though no one is ever likely to calculate it.
Now consider the universe of a computer simulation. It, like pi, is really just a vast computational problem. All of the macroscopic phenomena we might experience within it (including the capacity to experience and reflect on phenomena) would be simply emergent properties, like the glider guns and more complex structures of Life, possibly detectable to someone watching the monitor, so to speak, but possibly just lost in the noise, but nonetheless intrinsically present in the data itself.
So whether or not our universe simulation is ever actually executed, there still would be a fact of the matter as to what you're thinking about right now, locked within the complete mathematical description of this universe. So again, why even postulate some computer simulation, when we could simply be an emergent property of an unimaginably vast number? That may be all the existence we have or need. We may have no more "real" solid existence than the googolth digit of pi.
I believe there is an answer. For one thing, if we are just numbers, then we are surely not alone. All mathematically possible universes share the same degree of existence. Of course, this means that infinitely many parallel universes "exist", but infinitely many more chaotic messes of data with no intelligible emergent properties to speak of. The fact that we find ourselves in one of the vanishingly small fraction of number sets that includes the emergent property of consciousness is kind of astonishing, but it shouldn't be, thanks to the anthropic principle; while it's improbable that a universe picked at random will include someone wondering about the improbability of consciousness is, it's a certainty that someone wondering about the improbability of consciousness will be in such a universe.
But there are infinitely many possible wondering consciousnesses, and like the infinitely many universes, most of them may be pretty much random. That is, the subjective experience of a consciousness may just be there, but with little more coherence than that. Most will be nothing like the subjective experience we have here, of a universe that appears to follow coherent laws of physics, where principles of causality seem to hold sway, where there may be mysteries and apparent paradoxes but they fairly consistently tend to be resolved within the rules.
So consider: of all the infinitely many crazy chaotic universes in which conscious could be randomly encoded, we seem to be in one where there are impressively consistent regularities. The odds of being in such a universe are submicroscopically tiny, and yet here we are. The anthropic principle doesn't account for why these regularities should exist wherever we find ourselves. So it's reasonable to look or some sort of explanation for the apparent order we perceive in our universe.
One such explanation is that these emergent properties of planets, solar systems, trees and consciousness really do need to be instantiated in some way in order to become real. In other words, there has to be some sort of physical, mechanical encoding of the data, which by obeying its mechanical or computational rules, generates an orderliness to the pattern.
And that's why I'm satisfied that we must either be in a "real" universe, or at least running as an emergent property of a simulation on a machine in some "real" universe. Not that anyone was really worrying too much about whether or not we were just a matrix of numbers.
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