Monthly Archives: February 2016

Leave verifying to smart people

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The worst thing you can do to a stupid person is tell them they should not take things on faith, but that they should personally verify things, because that’s what science and independent thinking are all about.

This is an incredible load of bullshit, because science is not at all about verifying everything yourself. Science is about organizing human knowledge in such a way that everything you deal with in the sphere of science has been verified by multiple people, and most people only verify one or two things personally, while having faith that the rest of the scientific community has been doing their job with the same diligence in the sphere of their personal competence. Essentially, a particle physicist can only verify statistical data obtained from an accelerator, he doesn’t verify that the Earth is round or that there’s a black hole in the center of the galaxy. A geologist only verifies things regarding tectonic plates and their movements, and the nature of the minerals recovered by deep drilling, he doesn’t verify things in the sphere of influence of meteorology. You only specialize in that one thing, and the rest you take on faith. So, basically, if you organize a system in such a way that in every sphere of scientific interest you have multiple scientists peer-reviewing and fact-checking each other, you create what is known in cryptography as the web of trust. You don’t need to personally verify everybody’s PGP key. What you need to do is personally verify PGP keys of the people you personally know. The groups of people overlap, and if you have people A, B and C, and if A can verify B, and B can verify C, A can trust C without being able to personally verify. There’s also the criterion of results, which is probably the most important thing of all because that’s the main difference between hard science and a circlejerk. The criterion of results is when you can produce technology based on your science. It’s when you can use what you know about photography, lithography, chemistry and quantum physics and produce a microprocessor. The fact that it works proves that you know what you’re talking about; without that, it could all be bullshit. One religious fanatic told me, more than a decade ago, that science is unreliable, it’s never the complete truth and certainty (that he, presumably, gets from some bronze age scripture). I told him that science and technology indeed contain a certain degree of unreliability, but I put it this way: you have a screen in front of you, that reliably produces the same picture refreshed some 60 times per second. This picture is not garbled. There might be a dead pixel somewhere on the screen. There might be a difference in backlight illumination in the corners. The computer itself performs millions operations every second in order to display the picture. It is able to connect to the network, get data, process it, display it in client software, you then read it, understand it, reply to it and send it back through the server, and I download it on my side and see the exact same message that you sent. Not a single bit was corrupted, despite all of the supposed unreliability of it all. You don’t see people complaining on forums that they can’t understand the text because it’s garbled, because those computers, they make mistakes every now and then. Actually, it’s all incredibly reliable, it’s so reliable you have air traffic control which uses radars and computers to reliably detect position and speed of multiple aircraft simultaneously, they use the data to predict future and issue specific orders to pilots, and this happens all over the world every day, and every other decade you have an accident due to an air traffic control error. This stuff is so reliable you can use it to make bricks. Yes, there’s some possibility for error, there’s an innate degree of unreliability in there, but you need to understand what it is. My computer is so reliable it works for years on end without any issues, and if there’s an issue, it’s not with the computer, it’s with some program that’s not the greatest, or with the operating system which can be configured to just reboot in order to install updates while I’m in the middle of something. The unreliability is not of the degree where you can’t tell what the red color is supposed to be or where you can’t read the letters because they came out garbled, and the random pixels are just flaring up on the screen like white noise on the old analogue TV sets when the reception is bad. The unreliability is that you don’t always have good base station coverage for your GSM phones, the unreliability is that you sometimes have no mobile data connection because you’re in a canyon and there are no base stations nearby. The unreliability is that out of thousands of planes that fly every day, every year you’ll have several bad accidents. It’s not that it sometimes works and sometimes not. It almost always works perfectly. I’d trust air traffic control more than I’d trust my eyesight, and that’s not because I have poor eyesight or because I’m a gullible person, it’s because they are so incredibly good at what they do, and because they are tested all the time and they reliably deliver the goods. They are not tested by me, but they are, and I believe it all because I’m not a fucking idiot, like those people who would say that the Earth is flat and that you’d believe that too if you actually tested it like they do, and it never crossed their small shallow minds to just go from northern to southern hemisphere and look at the night sky, because the constellations are different, which is an absolute proof that you’re on a sphere. So be wary of those who tell you to go verify things for yourself, because they are usually either stupid or evil or both. Testing things yourself is something that’s so sensitive to sample bias, ignorance and manipulation it’s usually the worst thing you can do. Your best option is actually the PGP system, the web of trust. You need to figure out who is it that reliably knows something, and if you want to learn something, learn it from a person in a web of trust, because that person has been peer reviewed. Maybe you can’t verify him because he’s above your pay grade, but there are people on and above his pay grade who can and do verify him, and if he tells you how something works, this information is of better quality than anything you could come up with using your senses and “common sense”, because let’s face it, if common sense of most people was worth a damn, it wouldn’t take us most of history to figure out formulas for inertia and gravity and to figure that light can be broken into separate wavelength components, and it was mostly done by one guy, because common sense of everyone else wasn’t worth shit.

There are certain things one can and should personally test. I personally test cameras and lenses and see how they behave, because I’m a photographer and I can. I know what to look for when I test them and I know how the equipment works well enough that I can figure out the way lens designers set up the spherical aberration by the way the out-of-focus areas look. That’s because photography is within my sphere of competence and I know what I’m doing. I can also find flaws in other people’s reasoning, because that, too, is within my area of expertise: I’m actually very good at thinking. There are many things I can personally verify, but even more important is that I know the difference between what I can check an what I can trust. I can trust that people at Intel know a thing or two about quantum physics, because if they didn’t, their shit would fail much before the 14nm level of integration and I wouldn’t be able to overclock my CPU to 4.6 GHz. I can trust that people at NASA know calculus and that the Newtonian physics work, because without them we wouldn’t have the communication satellites. I can trust that the Earth is round because if it were flat I’d see the Magellanic Clouds and the Southern Cross from Europe, which I don’t.

What I can’t trust is that people are smart enough to use that mythical “common sense” in order to verify complicated things personally. For instance, it’s quite easy to figure out that there are communication satellites in the sky, which basically proves the entire modern physics if you’re a competent enough thinker to do the necessary reasoning. You buy a satellite dish, point it at a random part of the sky, see what you get on your TV. Then point the dish at the satellite, good reception. Voila, proof that you have a radio transmitter in the sky at a very precise location. Now, think about how it can be there, who put it there and how, and how can one transmit images from a station on Earth, relay them through a satellite in the sky, so that you can pick the signal up and amplify it, and then reproduce it on your TV. But if you don’t know how a TV converts radio waves into RGB pixel intensities and how PAL encoding works, fuck off with that “I’m not a sheep, I’ll verify things” shit. You’re a stupid sheep alright, go back to eating your grass and bleat. Leave verifying to people with functioning brains, and you stick to blind following because that’s actually the safest thing for you to do, because finding someone smarter and following him is the only way for you not to fuck up everything.

What I find objectionable in Christianity

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One might ask what I find objectionable in Christianity. It’s an easy question to answer. What I find objectionable is that they canonize people like Theresa of Calcutta, that they sanctify groveling before God, that they sanctify humility and vilify power. Essentially, Jesus is what Hinduism and Buddhism would aspire to produce as the end-result of their teachings, but Christianity would be aghast at the very thought, because He is God, and they are worms. That’s what I find objectionable about Christianity, that it is shocked and aghast at all the things that I find to be the greatest parts of my personal spiritual practice.

Sure, there are versions of Hinduism, like the Gaudiya Vaishnavas, who are basically the Hindu version of Islam, who would find nothing objectionable about the Abrahamic approach to God, but that’s because they took their theology from Islam and their theological understanding of Krishna is indistinguishable from the Islamic understanding of Allah, if you ignore their extensive use of visual aids like statues and images. Their concept is that God is one, he is a person who lives in some very physical description of heaven surrounded by his worshipers, he’s the ultimate lawmaker and judge and if someone has a problem with that, there’s reincarnation in lower forms, instead of hell, but the basic principles are all similar. That is so because their cult was born under Islamic rule, and as someone who has Bosnia in his neighborhood I know what a country looks like after centuries of Islamic rule.

Their worst crime, in my mind, is that they stole Krishna, and turned him into something contemptible, into a faggot deity with the vile character of Allah.

Krishna is an example used by Vyasa, probably the smartest man of all times, in order to carve pathways into a human mind that will make it possible to understand God – what God is like, what would God do, what would God say, how would God react to something, how would certain people react to Him. It’s a masterpiece of the highest order, there are very few things like it in the history of literature. Tolkien, for instance, used similar literary means to illustrate his views on spirituality, in a very subtle but profound way. Krishna is something of a blend between Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas and those two silly Hobbits, Merry and Pippin, who are always planning some fuckery and getting themselves into trouble. He’s the super-sage who impromptu pulls Bhagavad-gita out of his sleeve just because his friend needed some advice on the battlefield. He’s the exiled heir to the throne who was forced to live with foster parents in some village while his parents were imprisoned in a dungeon by his demon uncle; growing up, he killed the bastard and restored order. He’s the super-warrior who kicked so much ass he became a legend, and was best friends with another super ass-kicker, Arjuna, and they both combine incredible power with incredible poise and grace; they are relaxed and funny yet deep, gentle yet horribly powerful, illustrating both similarities and differences between the aspects of Vishnu and Shiva, allowing each other the opportunity to show a subtle relationship between two major Gods that are not revealed in interactions with mere humans. What you can see, for instance, is God’s distress and anguish when his friend vows to do something that is almost certain to get him killed, and he walks in circles, distressed, talking to himself about how he, too, will then choose to die because a third of his being is in Arjuna and what draw is there in this world without him? You have Arjuna, who had to make a choice between Krishna (who vowed not to fight) and his vast army, to fight alongside him in a war, and he immediately chose Krishna. When Krishna later asked what the hell that was about, Arjuna smiled and answered that it’s a great opportunity for him to catch up to Krishna’s high score because he won’t be able to do anything but watch him kick an enormous amount of ass from the best seat in town.

God is funny. There’s an explosive, bright spark of humor and joy in His smile that can light up the whole world, that can dry all tears, because it shows that light, consciousness, bliss, reality that is beyond this videogame of an illusion that we take so seriously here. It is true that heaven is full of souls who worship God, but that’s not because he’s a narcissistic asshole who wouldn’t have it any other way, it’s because he’s so incredibly fucking cool there’s nothing better in the whole world than just looking at him do things his way, showing what God is all about, what absolute reality is all about, what it looks like, what it feels like, and when you look at it, you don’t just look at it, because a light in your own being reacts to him and grows brighter, and as you glow worshiping Him His light grows within you and at one point you lose the difference, you no longer see it as you worshiping His light and beauty and love and power and reality and greatness, because as you worship the highest reality you become realized, as in, turned into that which is real. You become enlightened, as in, filled with light, becoming of light. You understand that that brahman, that factor of all that is cool and great about the Gods, that brahman am I, I am That, and that is the moment where I both fall to my knees before God and I am God, because in God everything is first-person, everything is I, and everything is now, it is the eternity beyond space and time and limitation of any kind.

That’s what I find objectionable in Christianity, that it finds enlightenment to be something sinful.

Acceptability of evidence

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Who decides what is considered to be evidence?

It’s a serious questions, because one of the common forms of demagogic trickery consists of confusing this issue, and so the opposing side implicitly assumes it has the right to arbitrarily accept or refuse the offered evidence. So basically I say that trees are living organisms, and the guy I’m talking to says “I dispute that”, and then what, I have to prove that trees are living organisms, or do I simply get to say “you are an idiot”? I actually prefer the latter option, because it is almost impossible to prove anything within the context of a discussion. You can only refer to research and evidence that has already been produced in a more formal setup, experimentally, and if someone refuses to accept that, you have a serious problem if you want to proceed with any kind of a discussion, because if you allow the opponent to control acceptance of evidence, he in fact gets to control who wins, because victory is defined by having the prevailing evidence on your side, and if someone decides what is accepted as evidence, he can rig the game.

For instance, I’ve seen extensive IQ studies based on statistical evidence proving racial differences, and it is all dismissed out of hand with the statement that “this has been refuted”. No, it wasn’t refuted, it was confirmed again and again and again, and it is being summarily dismissed by the leftists because it doesn’t agree with their beliefs and so “it must be wrong”, because racism or because Nazism. So if I allow my opponent to simply dismiss enormous body of work that is offered as evidence, and then proceed to say that my claims are unsubstantiated because there is no evidence for them, can the discussion really be continued? There really isn’t anything to talk about because it’s like dismissing spaceflight as evidence because someone says that nothing NASA publishes can be trusted. If you can’t rely on scientific research as evidence, what can you rely on, in a debate? You can’t really demonstrate any significant physics in a debate, except that water is wet and glass is breakable by smashing a glass of water on the floor. This very much limits the possibility of a debate between very different philosophies and worldviews, because admission of evidence is the point where the debate is decided in advance. Another problem is when your opponent cites a bullshit study you’ve never heard of, which for instance “proves” that there’s no gravity and that the impression of gravity on Earth is created because it keeps accelerating upwards at a rate of 9.81 m/s2. First he dismisses NASA as evidence, and then he offers this bullshit study as the truth, and when you dismiss it, the result is a false impression of equal fanaticism and stubbornness on both sides. The real truth is, you’re talking to an idiot, and if that truth isn’t openly acknowledged, you’re fucked by merely participating in a debate.

And now we come to the more important issue. In your personal life, who decides what is evidence, and what is acceptable? Is it you, or is it dictated to you? Are you free to make a personal judgment about acceptability of evidence?

How do you decide that your wife loves you? Do you say it can’t be determined because there’s no scientific backing for the claim? Do you dismiss your emotions as evidence because someone says they are not reliable? Or do you trust your own judgment and make up your own mind? How do you approach the question of God’s existence if you feel that God is present in your life and you feel that there is compelling evidence for accepting that He exists? If you cannot communicate this evidence to others, does it stop being evidence to you, personally? Is it a requirement that others must accept it, or it isn’t evidence? I don’t think so. It’s a complex thing, and what is evidence for a person, doesn’t necessarily need to be admissible to a court, or to science, but it doesn’t necessarily cease to be valid. For instance, there isn’t a reliable way for someone outside my room to tell whether I’m writing this text on my desktop computer or a laptop. When I connect to the CMS, it only sees the IP address of my router, with no identification of the internal IP address on the LAN which could indicate which machine was used to make the connection. The text would be the same in both cases. Anyone inspecting the CMS database wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. You won’t be able to tell the difference. But I know which machine I used, I know I’m typing it into the desktop machine. I cannot reliably prove it to you, but I know it’s the truth – only I know the truth. The courts cannot know it, science cannot know it, but I know it. Is it less true because it isn’t scientific or communicable? If I write on this keyboard do I write less reliably because you cannot reliably know that I do? If I drink coffee from a cup, did I drink it less because there are no witnesses and you cannot know that I did? If I experienced God, directly and without any doubt on my side, is it less true because you cannot confirm it? But if that is the cornerstone of my personal understanding of reality, and it is not admissible as evidence in a debate, if others will not accept it and I cannot deny it, if my personal experience is incommunicably wider than others’, of what use is a debate? I can write my narrative, and it can be compelling or not to others. I can actually use spiritual powers to create spiritual experiences in others, but what it does is just create one more person that believes me, and one more person you will call crazy or deluded. So what it all comes down to is faith. You choose to believe certain things, and you accept evidence that supports your belief, and dismiss evidence that refutes your belief. Until you change your internal reasoning for acceptability of evidence, there’s nothing anyone can do to convince you. Long ago, I decided that it doesn’t matter. I will do my thing based on what I believe, and you will do your thing based on what you believe, and each choice will have consequences.

Leftist approach to reason and evidence

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It’s interesting how some people, usually on the left political and intellectual spectrum, recommend that we all disregard our prejudice and make up our minds based on reason and evidence, and yet, when people do just that, and based on reason and evidence come up with conclusions different from theirs, they go absolutely fucking nuts.

Well, you can’t have it both ways. If you say that I should reject prejudice, I will do exactly that. I will reject the prejudice that people are equal and see the evidence. I will look into the statistics, I will look at the results, and I will make up my mind. If I don’t come to the same conclusion as you doesn’t mean that I did anything wrong. Maybe it’s you who are not following your advice. Maybe it’s you who are prejudiced, only your prejudice is that of equality.

If you say that people should reject religious dogma and make up your own mind about the existence of God based on the available evidence, and I do exactly that and conclude that God indeed exists, and that religions are just a primitive way of dealing with that truth in an inept and clumsy way, similar to the ways in which cavemen dealt with subdural hematoma. They actually invented trepanation, removal of a part of the skull in order to let the brain expand and relieve intracranial pressure, and it was widely ridiculed in medical circles until quite recently the modern neurosurgeons discovered that craniotomy is the best way of dealing with that exact problem. So yeah, the cavemen were the stupid dumbasses who bored holes in people’s skulls to let the evil spirits out, except that the modern doctors also bore holes in people’s skulls in order to… what? So yeah, we follow the evidence. But I will also make up my own mind on what I consider to be evidence. If I’m to make up my own mind, I’ll be damned if I’ll allow someone else to dictate what I’m to do with this freedom. I will see for myself. So, if God exists, are there people who can attest to that? There are. Are they credible? Yes. Are there multiple testimonies that can be correlated? Yes. Do I have personal experiences that confirm that God exists? I do. So well, there you have it. I followed the evidence, I approached those things rationally, and I made up my own mind.

The fact that my mind didn’t turn out into a replica of yours should not surprise you, since you profess your support for “multiculturalism” and accepting differences. But that isn’t really the case, isn’t it? It’s only a pose. You only accept different opinions if they are the same as yours. You only say we should follow the evidence and reason and reject prejudice because you think you can order people around and dictate what the prejudice are, what the evidence is and what is the reasonable conclusion. Essentially, you have a playbook you want to impose on everyone, and the story about freedom and reason and evidence is just a collection of nice words that are supposed to cloud one’s judgement and blind him to the ugliness of what’s actually going on.

Can atheists go to heaven?

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There’s that recurring theme with atheists who, wanting to portray religious people as close-minded, intolerant and limited, ask if they think that atheists can be good people, and, alternatively, if atheists can go to heaven.

The answer to this is to first define “good”, and then to define “heaven”, or salvation.

Accepting the most usual definition for “good”, the answer is yes. Most atheistic solutions to ethics are benevolent, tit-for-tat ones, which will be aggressive only if provoked, and even then only in a limited way, in order to deter further provocations. The dynamics of the cold war were essentially an example of two inherently godless camps doing self-serving things and thus avoiding any widespread violence and evil. There are, of course, very evil atheistic ethical frameworks, which we can see in the history of the age of enlightenment and socialism, so let’s not delude ourselves: atheism is actually wide open to bad ethical choices if they are seen as reasonable and self-serving.

The answer to the third question, whether atheists can go to heaven, is more difficult. If you define heaven as a state of permanent, eternal union with God, then my answer is a decisive “no”, because an atheist simply doesn’t have the kind of internal urge that makes one explore everything related to God because all his motivations drive him there, as if everything depends on it. If you really want God, you will find him, and then I can be quite certain that you’ll go to heaven when you die. If, as atheists often proudly say, you feel no need for God, you won’t go to heaven because what you are looking for is not in heaven. It’s that simple. You may now answer that it’s not right, but my response is that it’s exactly right, and it wouldn’t be right to put you in heaven so that you can annoy saints and angels with your sarcastic remarks about how stupid they are to love God so blindly when you see nothing special about Him. Since you see nothing special about God and nothing attractive about heaven, get the fuck out. It’s only logical.

Since you don’t need God anyway, you won’t be missing out on anything, apparently.