It's fantastic seeing the MAGA crowd on GETTR questioning Trump over his support of Kevin McCarthy.

 

Trump created this monster out of bits of pieces of deplorables. Briefly it was tamed and voted along with the mainstream GOP. But now the monster is unleashed and will not obey its master!

 

On one level it's tragedy. On another, it's "A GIANT & EMBARRASSING DEFEAT".

 

 Ninefox Gambit, by Yoon Ha Lee, is the first of a series (Machineries of Empire - two of three written) of SF set in a distinct and weird universe. It shares with Archivist Wasp some mixing of fantasy and SF (at least as I see it). The milieu is of a spacefaring humanity, but one of the bizarre notions is that society is organized by a calendar. And the not-us make use of 'heretical' calendars. And these calendars have real-world effects... certain activities are more successful or auspicious depending on the date. Although the details are not described, the tastily bizarre feel of a religion (or astrology) tied to calendrical minutiae is interesting.

There are also multiple (well six) families or castes in the Hexarchy, each with its own stereotyped strengths, though many of the characters we see are more of the exception to the rule variety. Our heroine is a soldier-like Kel, known for having a 'formation instinct' that compels them to obey and to align into geometric formations (again that have connections to the calendar for when they are most effective). She is breveted well beyond her experience in order to, well, take on the ghost of an imprisoned genius-general and notorious war criminal. With his know-how, she/they lead a force to defeat some heretics. 

I found it absorbing and the lunacy of some of the world building enchanting. But setting up an ending of you and me against the world left me a little cold. Not sure I'll keep on with the series, but certainly well worthy of a Locus Award for Best First Novel.

<HR>

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, by Jonathan Haidt

A moral psychologist pulls apart the motivations that divide people on the issue of right and wrong. I found the first half of the book solid and enlightening, but it lost me a bit in the turn, and then regained some ground in the home stretch.

The first quarter does a good job establishing that Hume was closest to the truth when he said that "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions [emotions]". In contrast to the uber-rational Plato and the shared (almost non-overlapping magisteria) angle that Haidt ascribes to Jefferson, quoting some tasty correspondence to a dalliance:

Respect for myself [the heart] now obliges me to recall you [the head] into the proper limits of your office. When nature assigned us the same habitation, she gave us over it a divided empire. To you she allotted the field of science; to me that of morals. When the circle is to be squared, or the orbit of a comet to be traced; when the arch of greatest strength, or the solid of least resistance is to be investigated, take up the problem; it is yours; nature has given me no cognizance of it. In like manner, in denying to you the feelings of sympathy, of benevolence, of gratitude, of justice, of love, of friendship, she has excluded you from their controul. To these she has adapted the mechanism of the heart. Morals were too essential to the happiness of man to be risked on the incertain combinations of the head. She laid their foundation therefore in sentiment, not in science.

Haidt's own analogy is the rider and the elephant. The elephant is the emotions... lots of inertia and willfulness. The rider [rationality] in the howdah has limited control over the path of the elephant as it makes its moral judgments.

Next, he explores the roots of morality, and based on extensive testing, finds that they are related to [at least] six separate 'tastes' in explicit parallel to the four (or five) tastes of, er, taste. The moral sense combines our instincts regarding:

Care/harm
Liberty/oppression
Fairness/cheating
Loyalty/betrayal
Authority/subversion
Sanctity/degradation

Although everyone probably rates each of these at a nonzero importance, the results of the studies shows an interesting political divide. American liberals care about the first three much more than the other three. American libertarians care primarily about the liberty/oppression taste. And American conservatives are much more balanced in considering all six tastes.

And here is the reason for so much mutual misunderstanding. With different moral axioms, naturally different conclusions come out. Haidt further describes that conservatives have an advantage, since they have more notes to play on (and liberals are somewhat blind to some of these notes).

While I think there's a lot of validity in what Haidt has built up in to Moral Foundations Theory, his next step goes amiss: his desire to tie this to evolutionary psychology. 

As he says earlier, "For example, in the past fifty years people in many Western societies have come to feel compassion in response to many more kinds of animal suffering, and they've come to feel disgust in response to many fewer kinds of sexual activity. The current triggers can change in a single generation, even though it would take many generations for genetic evolution to alter the design of the module and its original triggers."

Haidt talks about triggers of our evolved instincts, but I can't follow him here. He talks about our snake aversion instinct. It can be triggered by sticks or other objects. But in these cases, this is just a mistaken snake. But people of yesteryear were presumably not mistaken by being triggered by homosexuality. They didn't laugh at themselves (as one might, after jumping at a stick) when they saw it was just some tribadism, and there was no need to be disgusted. So, although Haidt tries to make the point that evolution can be fast. We know it can't be so fast it happens in a single living generation. Cultural evolution can be much faster.

Haidt is probably right that group selection got the short end of the stick for much of the 20th century, but I don't see the need to inject it into the development of these moral senses. Probably this is the genetic (so to speak) fallacy, but when he brings up the idea that Tibetans evolved rapidly to handle low oxygen environments, this brings up the idea that isolated groups of humans have evolved moralities that are inaccessible to the rest of us (any more than we can climb Everest unassisted, before we've had the chance to interbreed with the Sherpas). I don't see how this can be right. No doubt I'm more attuned to the rider than the elephant, but seeing how far moral opinion has changed over decades, it's hard to see a strong genetic component to that change. Riders can influence the elephants that much, anyway. And without looking a thousand years down the line, the influence of the riders will continue to be relevant for discussions we have today.

I"m boring myself at this point, so I'll bring it to a close, but I really did enjoy the insights of the first half as to what motivates people different from myself. With luck, this can be a bridge to communication.

Content has been migrated to dreamwidth.

This is a test of crossposting to LJ.

My rhetorical question appears to have been answered.

If one cannot bring oneself to punch a lady Nazi in the face, you should pepperspray her in the face.

Now, it's almost too good to be true that she had just finished saying "I'm looking to make a statement by just being here and I think the protesters are doing the same. Props to the ones who are doing it non-violently, but I think that's a very rare thing indeed."

So, if you're of a conspiratorial bent, this is a false flag operation or something. But I think it's fair to say that there were plenty of anonymous violent troublemakers there. The police are of the opinion that they were 'outside agitators' (a phrase I knew we would see more and more of) and not Berkeley students. Which is probably the case, since I'm now hearing all about these experienced antifa activists. Who are these experts all of a sudden and where did they get their expertise? There hasn't been a fascist state to fight in some time, and never in the US, so I find myself suspecting that these are just people who like to have fistfights with skinheads. Whoever they are and whatever their movement is about, they know squat about working against the excesses of a Trump Administration.

Instead, of course, they are falling into the trap.

Now some have correctly pointed out that neo-Nazis can be experts at using 'the System' to quash opposition. "Oh, we're the victims, save us, save us, Law & Order!"

So then I ask: Why the fuck would you fall into their trap by punching people on the street? Are you stupid?

Berkeley was literally the origin of the Free Speech Movement and Sproul Plaza is Free Speech Central.



The university did the right thing in not preventing the speech, and they (or the UCPD who made the call) did the right thing in shutting it down for safety reasons.

Of course the Donald had to weigh in on Twitter:

"If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view - NO FEDERAL FUNDS?"

This is literally one of the stupidest things I've ever read. Even among Trump tweets, this is a doozy.

But remember my warning "Fortunately, we on the left are waaaaay too smart to be manipulated by Russian propaganda. Right? Right? No one would be suckered in by the idea that democracy or free speech are inherently flawed concepts"

Don't be down on Free Speech, just because Trump says he likes it. This is exactly the kind of emotional response thing that Trump apparently uses to perfection. Of course, it only works on stupid people. So don't be a stupid person.



Anyway, I'm reiterating my distaste for Nazipunch and the flawed philosophy behind it.

And again I'm warning against falling into the trap.

Because if not, something terrible is going to happen, and years from now, some kid will be walking with his grandfather on the campus, and grandpa will point to the pocks of bullets in a wall and say something like, 'And over there in that field is where it happened. It was a terrible thing those kids died. But these outside agitators (communists or anarchists or some such) came in and caused a lot of trouble, and stirred things up. Setting fires and so forth. Had to restore Law & Order.'

Because no shit that's exactly what my grandpa told me 40 years ago as we visited Kent State.

Why Violence Has Declined takes a long, long, too-long look at rates of violence over the past umpty-thousand years from our hunter-gatherer forebears to today. Pinker has marshalled a shitload of facts and statistics, and though there may be some niggling details here and there, on the whole, he's pretty convincing that rates of murder, war, and violence have declined per capita. This does require an explanation, and I think Pinker certainly outlines many ideas that contribute, but he doesn't seem to present a very strong thesis for an explanation. Rather he takes us on a plodding journey through the museum of ideas that every political philosopher has considered. The book plods so much that I found much of it a chore to get through. Reading through the outline in Wikipedia is good enough -- just feel certain that each point is held up by a few hundred footnotes each.

One of the ideas that did stick with me was that many violent acts are considered acts of justice by their perpetrators. They are not doing wrong, they are taking justice into their own hands. That bitch stole my man -- smack. That driver cut me off -- blam. Obviously, these solutions are not terribly rational, and generally frowned upon by Leviathan. I think it could extend to larger actions -- riots in Watts and LA. It doesn't make any fucking sense, but there was some ache for a justice that was not going to come from traditional channels.

Now, I have plodded so slowly through the book that that idea lodged some time ago. And then as I mulled it over in my mind, I considered the Trump voters in the lead-up to the election. Can a vote be an act of violence? A stupid plea for justice when you're aching for a justice that was not going to come from traditional channels? Mmmmm... no, I can't quite bring myself to consider a vote for Trump to be an act of violence. And then the vote actually happened, and Trump won. I still can't quite elevate it to an act of violence. But I think a lot of my friends may consider it to have been an act of violence. And certainly we have seen (even given some level of pernicious fakes) that some Trump supporters have been emboldened to enact actual violence. And we've also seen protests of Trump that have also risen to the level of violence.

Now I have to tread carefully here, because I think there are significant differences between the two sides. It is not just that I am trapped in my bubble and not their bubble (and I'll get to the bubble later, especially since almost everyone who will read this is in my liberal bubble). At the same time, the people (considered as people) in the two camps. Are not all that different.

Now apparently the worst thing I could possibly do is to suggest that we should reach out and hug the other side and unite. Which is fine, because I'm not suggesting that. When Trump has rotten plans, they should be fought. And many of his plans are rotten.

But possibly I'm saying something even worse. That people are people. And people on both sides are not all that different. And to realize that, it definitely helps to spend time outside your bubble.

Many of you know of the long years I've spent in the mission fields of Christian websites, spreading the good news of rationality and fact-based argument. It is not easy work, because they are beset by demons that deceive them. And again, it's not about compromise -- I think the earth is 4.5 billion years old, and they think it's 6,000 years old. I'm not looking to compromise at 2,250,003,000 years old. Wait, I'm rambling a little too much, but maybe we'll come back to this.

Another bit of bubble escape was listening to the infuriating drive-time talk show on a Christian radio station, though I haven't in many years. Until election night. As I drove home, feeling pretty confident that it was going to be close (my prediction: Hillary 278 EV) but would go blue, I turned that station on hoping for election news and... delicious Christian tears. Because that's a thing now. Enjoying people's tears. And because I'm a bad person.



And I got those tears. But I did not find them enjoyable. pout

A young Latina called in to the show. Her voice shook with raw emotion, clearly crying. Hillary was going to win, and as everyone in the conservative Christian bubble knew (as did I since I'd been visiting), Hillary believed that "deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs have to be changed". And as it was being spun in the bubble, this young woman knew that President Hillary was going to forcibly change religious beliefs in America. She was genuinely, fearfully afraid that hers was the last generation that was going to hear the saving gospel of Jesus Christ.

All bullshit, of course. But the tears and pain in that bubble were real. Just like they were real when Obama was elected in 2008 and was going to take everyone's guns.

Anyway, fast-forward a few hours, and suddenly the tears were on the other foot. (Shut up.) There were organized cry-ins. And, and... the other side mocked it. They were enjoying those tears! How could they be so cruel?



Not all that different.

But they're all racists!

Yes, half of Trump voters hold implicit bias against POC. And only a third of Hillary voters do.

Not all that different.

But Trump's spouting ugly racism!

Well, yeah. Again, I don't want to rest on any false equivalencies. But if you want to characterize the GOP as full of racists, then you should step inside the other bubble and look at yourself.

You support murdering babies. You literally want doctors to crush the skulls of infants with forceps.
You want perverts to molest our delicate American girlhood in the bathroom at Target.
You want religious expression to be locked inside the walls of churches.
You let the biased(*) lame-stream media do your thinking for you.

[* I'm too tired, but to its credit, the media finally decided that he said/she said journalistic equivalency was no longer valid. Trump was lying. They called him on it. They endorsed Hillary. But... it does feed the narrative that the media is biased against Trump.]

You want them to stop being racist and join the correct party? Well, maybe you should stop killing babies, and join the correct party.

You scoff when people say they aren't racist, but voted for Trump? Well, what do you think of Tim Kaine, who personally opposes abortion, but stood for VP of the Democrat Party? And he's by no means alone. There are Democrats who think abortion is murder. If you can be against baby-murdering, and vote for a baby-murdering candidate, then surely you can be a non-racist and vote for a racist candidate. Sure, it must be a terrible internal conflict. Sucks to be them. But they got their racism/baby-killing just like the people-of-yesteryear got Skinemax with the package.

Not all that different.

But they are so very fact-challenged!

Well yes. That's what I combat the most. You give them a snopes link, and they don't believe snopes. You provide the links on the snopes page to the NYT, and they don't believe the NYT. There are some people there whose solitary (it appears) information source is infowars(*). They were primed and ready to believe crap like a Kenyan born Obama, or a Jade Helm takeover of Texas. Because it fits their narrative.

(* I'm too tired, but if you're getting info from occupydemocrats or Huffpo... Not all that different.)

In our bubble, the narrative is that Trump is a sexual predator. And I'm morally certain that Trump has grabbed more unwilling pussies than trans people have assaulted anybody in a bathroom. So the woman who accused Trump of raping her when she was a teenager fits the narrative. But when the press conference was announced, my baloney detector started beeping. Because (for better or worse) before I am a Democrat or a liberal, I am a skeptic. A court of law is where these things are decided, not at press conferences or FBI memos. And when the press conference was cancelled due to 'threats', my suspicion grew. It was not impossible that threats had deterred some poor woman, but I was not buying it at this point. But a lot of other people were. They railed against the Trumpeters who had cowed this woman. Maybe Trump had bought her off. How many millions did it take him? And then two days later, she dropped the suit. No cause given. Bought off? Full of shit? We may never know. But a retracted anonymous accusation is not much to hang something on, unless the narrative is more important than evidence.

And if you point to snopes articles showing that some cases of 'postelection Trump supporter racism' are imaginary... some people don't want to hear that shit. It doesn't fit the narrative.

I've showed dozens of snopes articles to conservatives, and know what it feels like to be ignored. So when it comes from the other side, it just shows that...

Not all that different.

We all laughed (I did, I'm a bad person) at that stupid bint who cut a backwards B on her face.



But we were also mad. She perpetrated a pernicious lie to denigrate a particular political candidate.

We were furious. She lied to say a black man did this. I hate her.

And now Trump supporters tore the hijab off a woman. Stole her wallet. That feeds the narrative.
But it's bullshit. All a lie.

C'mon now, everyone. Let's laugh at her. And hate her. C'mon. She made a pernicious lie to denigrate a particular political candidate. She lied to say white men did this to her. I hate her. I really do. But more importantly...

Not all that different.

As promised, this book review has devolved. Let me pull it back, at least briefly.

"According to Hofstede's data, countries differ along six dimensions. One of them is Long-Term versus Short-Term Orientation: 'Long-term oriented societies foster pragmatic virtues oriented towards future rewards, in particular saving, persistence, and adapting to changing circumstances. Short-term oriented societies foster virtues related to the past and present such as national pride, respect for tradition, preservation of 'face' and fulfilling social obligations.'"

Those are not bad descriptors of the two societies living in their bubbles that exist within America. The liberal and the conservative.

One of my regrets about the election is that so much was about the personalities and less about the issues. I have read that the Clinton campaign gamely released insightful policy statements to the media, but they never reached me. Since the Donald sucked all the oxygen in the primary fight, one would have thought that the Clinton team would strive harder in the general to make sure its message got out, but it didn't. Honestly, perhaps I'm giving them credit for having a message, because from my standpoint, most of what I heard from the Hillary campaign was...

It's her fucking turn. She cashed in her chips to keep the competition away. Only that asshole Sanders and McWhatever didn't get the memo. "Trump is awful. I'm not Trump."

Though true, this is not compelling. She could've done better with "I will be the third Obama term."

Anyway, one of the few policy things that did come out (because I watch closely) is for the coal miners of America.

HuffPo:

"Hillary Clinton has a $30 billion, 4,300-word plan to retrain coal workers that covers everything from education and infrastructure to tax credits and school funding.

Donald Trump’s coal plan is a duckface thumbs-up in a miner’s hard hat and a rant about hair spray, President Barack Obama and China."

Retrain coal workers? That's "adapting to changing circumstances". That's a Long-Term society strategy. And it's right.

A duckface thumbs-up? Well, if you can see through the HuffPo bias, that's a strategy oriented on today. Short-term. For the white working class families that are struggling.

And now, for you in my liberal well-informed bubble. Surely you are cognizant of the current spot price for coal.

No? Well, there are lots of reasons for it, but coal prices have tripled recently. And although US miners have not (yet) seen much of a boon, due to the horrible EPA, and Obama rules about coal-fueled power plants, a Trump presidency is clearly going to change that. Yes, there are certainly problems with burning coal like there is no tomorrow, but... if you are a part of an unemployed coal-mining family in Pennsylvania or Ohio focused on today... then you are part of the Short-Term Society, and I can see reasons other than racism to vote for Trump. And they did. And they are legitimately mad when we say their votes were racist.

In conclusion:

WE'RE ALL A BUNCH OF APES WHO ONLY RELATIVELY RECENTLY LEARNED TO WEAR CLOTHES AND NOT KILL EACH OTHER SO MUCH.

This post has been a long time coming. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean it's particularly good, informative, or insightful.

jimhines' cartoon has been flying around recently:


While this was about science fiction cons, it applies perfectly well to atheist/skeptic/secular cons. That community has had some recent high-profile incidents, and some longer simmering arguments. I've been mostly watching from the sidelines; not because I don't care, but because I haven't been directly involved. I haven't been to any of these conventions. I don't really know the people involved, and certainly have no knowledge of the actual incidents. So I didn't think I had much to add other than a huge chance of foot-in-mouth disease.

( essentialsaltes more than likely puts his foot in his mouth somewhere in here )

You just can't make this stuff up. Representative Roddenbery of Georgia spoke out on the issue of 'traditional' marriage:

"No brutality, no infamy, no degradation [of the past] ... possessed such villainious character and such atrocious qualities as the provision of the laws of ... Massachusetts, and other states which allow the marriage of [same-sex couples].

[It] is repulsive and averse to every sentiment of pure American spirit. It is abhorrent and repugnant to the very principles of ... government. It is subversive of social peace. It is destructive of moral supremacy, and ultimately this ... will bring this nation a conflict as fatal as ever reddened the soil of Virginia or crimsoned the mountain paths of Pennsylvania.
... Let us uproot and exterminate now this debasing, ultra-demoralizing, un-American and inhuman leprosy."

Disgusting. Of course, you're all suspicious of all those freaking ellipses. And rightly so, since I have been lying to you. This did come from Representative Roddenbery. And it was in the House of Congress. And it was December 11th, '12. But it was 1912. But 100 years ago today, Roddenbery (D-GA) was speaking in favor of his Constitutional Amendment to ban interracial marriage. (Do have a look at what I elided, if you can bear it.)

One of the things I find most interesting is his prediction for the future, which was comically wrong. While interracial couples certainly faced legal opposition and stigma (and worse) for many more decades -- and that stigma hasn't entirely disappeared in some quarters, even 100 years later -- I think we can safely say that interracial marriage did not result in civil unrest equivalent to the Civil War. And the same is true of the sky-is-falling predictions of those who disapprove of same-sex marriage.

(awesome 3D photo by Mark Spieckerman)

Zipped down, parked, and then walked under the blazing sun to the brunch. Enjoyed the effort that went into the benediction. I shot some video of our High Priest doing his own riff on "Imagine", but it didn't turn out so hot, alas. Hello, the Future occurred. Next were the author readings. I drew the short straw and went first. I think it went reasonably well, but nerves are an issue. My idea of performance is to peck away at a keyboard in the safety of my own home, with no one around. But I got a couple nice comments about the reading, so I'll say it went well enough. Denise Dumars and Bryan Thao Worra are much better at working a crowd. I think my favorite reading was Denise's poem "EVP".

Then we had our panel, and the above were joined by Cody, Skipp and artist Mike Dubisch. We bandied 'cosmic horror' about, and I think it was really a high point of the brunch. At least for me. People who know their shit had some complementary and contradictory discourse about Lovecraft in the modern age. I said some things that charitable people would consider profound.

During the subsequent schmoozing, I got to make the acquaintance of about-to-be-honored Michael Reaves, who I have just now learned shares my birthday. I started off on the wrong foot, since I was unaware that he suffers from Parkinson's. Production of speech is difficult for him, but through the good graces of his daughter Mallory (whom I know tangentially via Wyrd Con, of all things) we had a good conversation. He was a bit miffed, I think, that we on the panel had not mentioned his script for The Real Ghostbusters. I fell back on the very true statement that it hadn't yet screened at the fest.
( Welcome to the beginning of the films )

Subtitled The Question of Alien Minds, this book purports to investigate that question. Unfortunately, I wasn't too impressed. The author is an expert in animal behavior, who's gone on to work in robotics. Perhaps the best part of the book is the discussion of various interesting results in animal behavior, and some related results in human behavior.
( Read more... )

All Costa Cruises did was kill a few passengers and pretty soon people looking for a luxurious vacation are giving them the cold shoulder. OTOH, you can get ridiculous deals on their cruises.

I dunno if you can see this deal I got through email, but it's much the same Western Med cruise we took with them (and on which they killed a few people a few years later). Was $1840, now just $399. That's a 78% savings, and you even get to wave at the wreck of the Concordia (which should be there until it's salvaged in January 2013).

[Of course, popepat can probably get you a pretty good deal with an outfit that hardly ever kills its customers.]

---

Wasn't so long ago in this country that black people and Mormons got lynched by angry mobs. [Black people still aren't doing so hot, but authentic lynchings are mercifully rare these days.]
And now we have one of each at the heads of our major parties heading for an election showdown. What a country!

---

At long last, my missionary work among the Christians has come to an end. I've been booted from the forum for some reason or other. It would appear to be Chick-Fil-A that did me in somehow, though I'm pretty sure I never mentioned gay marriage at all.
( TL:DR )