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Jun. 26th, 2008 @ 07:24 pm Bisexual kisses
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The backstory

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jun/24/asa.advertising

Heinz showed an advert where the mother of a family was replaced by a (male) New York deli sandwich maker. At the end, the husband is running of to work, and the sandwich maker says "Hey, aren't you forgetting something" in a humorously New York gruff way, and the husband gives him a little kiss. ( The digressions )

The point

The advert was removed when several people complained it was inappropriate for kids. (Presumably because it showed a gay kiss, although this wasn't actually stated in the article I read.) (People wishing to complain about that, someone linked to contact details here )

However, it's not showing an actual gay couple. Several people verbalised what was nagging me, atreic: "so I find it very nudge-nudge-wink-wink men kissing that's _funny_, and I'm quite glad the damn thing has been pulled.",

foreverdirt summed it up "If it hadn't been for Heinz's actions, I would be torn between quiet cheer that the ad features a same-sex kiss that isn't treated with disgust, and equally quiet fuming about how sexist and heteronormative the ad is. However, I am much, much more offended by the ad being pulled for featuring a same-sex kiss than I am by the ad itself -- it's not that the ad was a great leap forward, but the reasons that it was pulled are a great leap back."

It's a joke about gay kisses, rather than portraying gay kisses as normal. Which could be nasty, but on reflection, I think can be a positive thing.

It's not a nasty joke. There seems a sequence of societal acceptance that starts with jokes because they show [thing that makes people uncomfortable], and have a good marketing reason for showing it, without being as much of a leap as actually showing [thing] positively would be.

I've often thought this about bisexuality, which seemed to lag a number of years behind gay in getting any tv acceptence. Gay portrayal seems to have gone through the sequence -- there's obviously a long way to go, but I think it started with jokes about gay people, and now there are every so often normal gay characters on TV. TV acceptance of Bi seems to be just starting: it's generally only shown where it's funny. But I think that, counter-intuitively, it is a step on the way to becoming accepted.

( Gratuitous quote from Jonathan–Ross-kissing fantasy author[1] )
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Jun. 25th, 2008 @ 04:01 pm Holy Water
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( Read more... )

Thesis

I don't think any excuse for the limited supply of holy water could make logical consistent sense within the story. But I've a suggestion for what could fit narratively, a gut rule-of-thumb that predicts whether or not something would fit into the story or not: you can only use holy water blessed for some other purpose.

You could probably go and fill up a few pint bottles from a convenient tap at certain churches, but not conveniently get gallons of the stuff. Is that consistent with how the availability of holy water in vampire novels us usually portrayed? (Not whether that excuse actually applies -- it plainly isn't, oft contradicted if you take it literally. But does it fit thematically, would it fit the facts that there's always some holy water available, but never lots?)

( Alternative thesis )
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May. 30th, 2008 @ 02:22 pm Pronouns
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"When John was a woman, [he/she/they] said '...' " Which pronoun do you prefer? (That is, "he" is appropriate for John now, "she" would be appropriate for what John was then, and "they" would specify the ambiguity.)

"The things God or Jesus [was/were] recorded as saying are ..." Which pronoun do you prefer? (That is, do you treat them as two separate people (were)? Or one person (was)? :))

Obviously both are arbitrary, and I think both sufficiently specialised that most people wouldn't mind which you used, I just wondered if anyone had a strong opinion :)
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May. 13th, 2008 @ 12:08 pm Democratic primaries
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Wait, what?

I know I shouldn't bother about American elections, there being politics I'm so much more relevant for elsewhere. But as I understand it: the Democrat (and republican) party has primaries (ie. like a general election within all x-ist voters to decide the X-ist candidate for the presidential election).

Four states primaries happen first, before Feb 5, then all the others. This year, a couple of states, notably Michigan, rebelled and held their primary earlier, the democratic convention chose to ignore them, and most candidates removed themselves from the ballot.

Remaining were Hilary Clinton, and a couple of others. Now Clinton[1] says the convention should count that election after all. [Edit: or some people do, not sure if she said that herself.]

* Why are the four states that are voted on first voted on first? Is there a good reason or is it just tradition?

* How did Michigan and the convention manage that snafu?

* How by any stretch of the imagination could you count that election?

Even if you accept that Clinton would have come ahead in it, you can have no idea by how much. That 60% of people voted for Clinton instead of not doesn't tell you anything. The exit poll has Clinton beating Obama 46% to 35% and that's only of people who actually turned up to vote, and she voted and he didn't. And you can't base a result on an exit poll. No result other than an implausible revote could reenfranchise Michigan, so the only argument is which flawed result to take. But since the purpose of the primary is to produce a popular presidential election candidate, surely the fact that Obama is more popular with any likely Michigan result is more important than how the primary was run?

[1] It's pleasantly surreal reading old wikipedia pages which refer to Bill Clinton as "Clinton". Style guides successfully made the switch to "Clinton" being by default Hilary. Though now I wonder, were there no examples of this confusion before? No couples (or other people with the same name) equally prominent? I don't remember ever any ambiguity.
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May. 6th, 2008 @ 03:50 pm Question of Evil
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If you were the God, and all possible parallel universes existed side-by-side, what would you do? Would you delete most, or transform them into copies of the one where people were happiest? Or let them run?

To me, that thought experiment relates to several questions:

* The problem of evil "If God existed, and were omnipotent and good, why would he let there be bad things". If you can even conceive of God not reordering all his universes to be "best", that is one possible answer to the question. (Not that I think that's true, but it's possibly a rebuttal to the argument that "There are bad things, therefore God is at most two of good, omnipotent, and existing")

* A logical extension of local morality. People naturally care more for people close to them (both friends, and people similar to them, and people physically closer to them). To a greater or lesser extent depending on circumstance. This has bad effects, that far away tragedies can get ignored, but good effects, that people can choose to help some people close to them, even if this is a drop in the ocean compared to everything else, but a lot better than just freezing up. But if all possible parallel universes existed, it would make it obvious how every thing you chose to do was an essentially arbitrary decision about how people close to you matter more than everyone else,
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haylp/wacky races
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May. 2nd, 2008 @ 05:02 pm Degrees of X-ist-ness follow-up
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In the last post, I suggested a hierarchy of being pro-X.

1. Thinking that X.
2. Thinking that X needs campaigning for.
3. Actively doing something about that
4. That being a defining feature of yourself
5. Thinking that X is one of few most important issues in society.

It seems many people felt (5) was extremely wrong, I'm not quite sure how to phrase it differently. There's a continuum from thinking X is true/good and I'm an X-ist, to X is overwhelmingly important. Almost any cause has extremists, and they have to go somewhere on the scale, and they go in (5), but (5) also includes people who justifiably believe in the overwhelming importance of X.

( Agh. Look behind you, a distracting Richard Dawkins! )
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happy/hannukah
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May. 2nd, 2008 @ 01:46 pm Livredor and feminism
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Unsurprisingly, I think a lot of it comes down to definition of terms. Identifying as a feminist feels like a big deal, because it's often used in a heated way. But saying you made two related decisions:

1. "I have decided that some problems that affect women are important to me, and something I will do things about"
2. "I have decided that attitude is described by the word feminist"

Are two decisions that are hard to criticise.

( Read more... )

( footnotes )
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Apr. 15th, 2008 @ 01:20 pm Recent links -- Rickrolled
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That's the second biggest rickroll I've ever seen![1]
(link)

[1] I debated with a "Biggest. Rickroll. Evar." Simpsons reference, but decided the Monkey Island reference was better as (a) Monkey Island is the coolest thing ever and (b) it probably does come second best, after xkcd's take.

I get great fun explaining this at work, as people had heard of Astly, but never of the practice of rick-rolling. In short, what happened was the American sports team the New York Mets had a poll on their website to decide their new theme tune.

( Read more... )

Terror law in tatters as extremists go free
(link)

What a marvellously accurate headline. I'm fairly sure there's a subtext that "terror law in tatters" is a bad thing, or a good thing, but I can't tell which. The content is very serious, but I just love how well-chosen words can convey precisely an opinion, even a deliberately ambiguous one (even though I don't suppose the headline was actually intended objectively).
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Apr. 1st, 2008 @ 11:53 am Follow-up: David Hume
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1. Those were thoughts about a post I made, terrifyingly two years ago :( In this time I have failed to read any philosophy.

2. However, I was curious to know how many people actually were familiar with the ideas, and the history of them. I knew some people must have learnt about them, but whether everyone else knew this stuff, or not.

3. Hume's Fork (there's a difference between truths we observe and inherently tautologically true) I think most people now do automatically accept without needing any special name for. However, I'm not at all sure this was always obvious. Many things that are obvious now really have percolated into common thought from some more limited realisation. Maybe it wasn't Hume who put his finger on it, but people, even really intelligent people, did feel like you could deduce how the universe was, didn't they? Witness the ontological argument[1]

4. And even if Hume's Law (a difference between saying what "is" and what "ought to be") sounds obvious, I'm not sure it is. Witness the knots we were tied in on my old post. No-one came along and said "Look, it's easy, it's like this", rather we muddled through.

5. I thought the wikipedia entry on the is-ought problem was fine. I barely read further than the first paragraph, which quoted what Hume had to say:
In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remark'd, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary ways of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when all of a sudden I am surpriz'd to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, 'tis necessary that it shou'd be observ'd and explain'd; and at the same time that a reason should be given; for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it.
Which seemed pretty clear, witty and conclusive to me :)

6. However, despite thinking wasnyë too harsh on wikipedia and Hofstadter, thanks very much to S for linking to http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume-moral/

However, which "S"?

7. In fact, the entry on Hume's moral philosophy starts:
(1) Reason alone cannot be a motive to the will, but rather is the “slave of the passions” (see Section 3) (2) Morals are not derived from reason (see Section 4). (3) Morals are derived from the moral sentiments: feelings of approval (esteem, praise) and disapproval (blame) felt by spectators who contemplate a character trait or action (see Section 7). (4) While some virtues and vices are natural (see Section 13), others, including justice, are artificial (see Section 9).
And I kind of like[2] what else he said too. With some information online I definitely need to read.

8. For instance, the original screenplay for the Incredibles was based on... an essay in Hume's book on man's place in society.[3]

[1] Step 1: No observation.
Step 2: Logical sophistry.
Step 3: Deduction of the existence of God from first principles
Step 4: profit Deduction of the existence of everything else.

[2] Like: Previously thought without being able to clearly put words to. Enjoy thinking about.

[3] Not true.
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Mar. 28th, 2008 @ 12:22 am Follow-up: Hume's Law
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I'm very interested to see the responses to people having heard of Hume's Fork. It came to mind because it was an implicit assumption in some witterings about truth I had a while back, but the comments made me think it wasn't as necessarily as clear cut as it had sounded.

And then lately, I was fascinated to came across the description on wikipedia covering approximately exactly what I'd wondered myself, and couldn't decide to be annoyed that I should obviously have done some more reading on what philosophers had already thought about before thinking myself, or pleased that I came up with/synthesised from current culture the same ideas and that they were hence obviously relevant.

However, what I meant to ask about but failed was Hume's Law. Can anyone oblige with another poll "Have you heard of Hume's Law?". Thank you! Answers might be "Heard of it", "Heard of the concept but didn't know the name" and "not specifically heard of the concept but it sounds obvious"
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Mar. 26th, 2008 @ 07:04 pm Gender neutral pronouns
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I'm sure you all know the history of Gender neutral pronouns. And most think the question is mostly settled, although not agree in favour of what :)

However, it occurs to me some reluctance might come from the fact that although I have a little voice in my head saying "Women and men are the same. Gender neutral is good" I have a great big klaxon blaring "ALL INFORMATION IS GOOD! LEARN THINGS! BE INFORMED! COMMUNICATE FULLY! INF. ORM. ATION. GOOD." :)

That is, apart from not being aesthetically fond of most of the choices of gender-neutral pronouns, I'm not fond that that word choice is deliberately less informative. If you're talking about a genuinely neutral (eg. hypothetical) or ambiguous person, or you don't know, there's no information lost, but I still only use the pronouns where I have good reason.

But today a friend made another reference to the concept of "Geek as gender" and something occurred to me so obvious I couldn't believe it hadn't before.

What if we had two or more pronouns that drew *different* demarcations? We already have special pronouns for royalty and gods. ("Her Royal Highness's" etc and "His" etc).

You could adopt the archaic second-person model and have "te" (pronounced with a long e), "tis" and "ter" and "ve", "vis" and "ver" for intimate acquaintances and others. Or for social acquiantances and work acquaintances.

Or have different pronouns for different groups people can adopt as whatever they feel like identifying as in a certain concept. (Of course, you shouldn't identify solely as one thing, but most people are happy to identify as one thing but others as well.) Perhaps two sets would be most common ("he" and "she" or some other division), but that someone would borrow the Sindarin or Quenya pronouns from Tolkien and use them when affectionately referring to people from the Tolkien society.

Of course, now we near the Chinese problem of having too many, and having to decide when meeting someone whether to use the very formal or the extremely formal version of their pronoun.

But on the other hand, it seems more positive, as choosing to use such a pronoun doesn't sound like "my gender isn't important to me" but "this other aspect of our acquaintance is more important". And if you have a good reason to use other pronouns, it's not so jarring when someone does.

I'm afraid I haven't thought this out in detail, but I thought it was a lovely idea.
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Mar. 26th, 2008 @ 01:14 am Livejournal strike
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I don't know how many people noticed, but last Friday (aka Good Friday) many people participated in a live-journal strike. The key facts are:

* The company running livejournal has been sold again. The ownership do several things which piss off to a greater or lesser extent people using livejournal. Removing the option to create free advertless accounts. Disallowing certain topics which are questionable to some people (eg. slash writers, but eg. breast-feeding and abuse survivors groups get caught in the fall-out). Disallowing certain interests. (Some of my friends barely noticed any of this. Some felt they had to leave.)

* But most importantly a lack of transparency: policies unilaterally decided, and vague and inconsistently used, and lying about why things happen. I can understand why the owners don't want to get into arguments and only care about paid users, but like it or not, livejournal now hosts a massive sprawling community. These things all hit paid users too, (even worse if a paid account is banned), and paid users are here because many of their friends with free accounts are (to a greater or lesser extent).

* Many people feel very personal about this because they made a lot of friends on livejournal and feel they'd have to give this up. That's understandable but not quite true. LJ has less lock-in that web-forums, though more so than newsgroups.

* Many people think the problems aren't really important. I don't think livejournal has become unusable -- it still does what I use it for, and probably will do so for years. But I think it will, it's just too big and will only get more ossified, not less.

* Some people say livejournal has a right to do what they like. That's mostly true -- they provide a service, and can do so as well or badly as they like. Although you might argue that someone who bought a permanent account has an expectation it won't be made useless by policy changes. However, you still have a perfect right to point out that their policies, while allowed, might be counter-productive and an implicit betrayal of what they previously offered people.

* Many people think a strike is useless. Certainly it doesn't directly harm the company at all. And many people do it simply because they feel an entitlement to what they were given before and want to make a fuss. However, if you're genuinely willing to leave livejournal, I think it's a perfectly good way of saying "Here are all the people who wanted to pay for the old service, and don't want to pay for the new service. Go ahead and do what you like, but remember, we don't like it, no longer feel any loyalty, and won't pay for it."

* However, I don't think it will achieve anything. I don't think the company will suddenly change it's mind. I think it's inevitable that the large the company is, the more bureaucracy becomes necessary. If I used a small community on a friend's server, there'd be no policies about what icons were ok apart from what he said, and I'd trust him.

* If livejournal were the first phone company, I'd be worried. A phone company is essentially a monopoly, if you don't like what they do, they have to be nationalised or you're stuck.

* However, I think a combination of openid, rss readers, and other blogging software can nearly replicate what livejournal does, without needing all your friends to move to the new system (or do anything at all) and a minimum of effort on your own behalf. Whether this "nearly" is close enough or not I need to find out. Currently, shifting to insanejournal or an openid website is a certain amount of hassle. But I expect there to be some tipping point where it's easy enough that you can move without losing your friends, when I expect/hope people to move across to independently run servers en mass.

* And if so, that'll also have the useful properties that (a) you're no longer reliant on one server being run in a sane manner, you can use a friend's server, or use a commercial server and leave if you don't like it any more (b) a long laundry list of features LJ never had the time to implement can be implemented on individual servers according to whoever has the time to code them.

* However, a truly distributed system suffers from lots of headaches. I don't know what'll be possible, if anything.
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Feb. 14th, 2008 @ 10:55 am (no subject)
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So, apropos previous post, tell me about Saints Cyril and Methodius? I get some idea from wikipedia, but not what they're best known for.

And tell me about garlic food. If you had a garlic party[1], what would you have that you can have garlic in? Off the top off my head (1) raw/fried garlic for the macho value (2) anything savoury (3) ice-cream. But while I love the idea, I've too little experience cooking, what would actually make sense?

For that matter, what else can you do with garlic? The only thing that springs to mind is to go around not nibbling on each others necks, and I've never found not nibbling on necks to be a very fun choice activity :)

[1] If you had a garlic party, it would probably get overwhelming sooner or later.
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Feb. 13th, 2008 @ 11:49 am (no subject)
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Last year I posted http://cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com/296126.html. The response was sufficiently positive I felt I should repost a slightly cut down version here.

                     /-_-\
                    /  /  \
                   /  /    \
                   \  \    /
                    \__\__/
                       \\
                       -\\    ____
                         \\  /   /
                   ____   \\/___/
                   \   \ -//
                    \___\//-
                       -//
                        \\
                        //
                       //-
                     -//
                     //
                     \\
                      \\


Every year there's a bit of a blat-blat about valentines day, with some people (and all advertising) going over the top, many people feeling pissed off, many people justifying it.

Is it worth celebrating valentines? Certainly. Love is a great thing, we have days to celebrate all sorts of crap, why not this?

Is there a good reason people get annoyed? Certainly. The problem isn't people who celebrate themselves, but a lot of advertising suggesting you have to.

Should we cancel valentines? I don't think so. Do we cancel Christmas to avoid upsetting people with no families? Do we cancel New Years to avoid upsetting people who can't drink? Do we cancel Easter or Ramadan to avoid upsetting people of different or no religion? Do we cancel sysadmin appreciation day because 99% of the population think it's stupid? All (except the last) are too noticeable to simply ignore. But we do make an effort to reach out to people without families on Christmas, etc.

Why not tomorrow take the opportunity to think of people you love in different ways? Is there anyone you owe a kiss? Have you told your best friend that they are your best friend? Did you ever ring your father up just to say you love him?

OK, I'm being sappy, but I know about 30% of you need some cheering up. Everyone else please continue being sappy or sarcastic as appropriate.

ETA: For that matter, two alternative celebrations have been suggested, too late for this year, but good, in that they're not anti-romantic, but a-romantic, an alternative for people who don't want to complain about romance, but want to do something else:

1. Garlic party day
2. Randomly chop some heads off or burn people on wheels or whatever supposedly happened to supposed St. Valentine.
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Feb. 7th, 2008 @ 10:35 am Follow-ups: Pullman
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Pullman

* I think "God is bad, therefore doesn't exist" is a humorous paraphrasing and simplification of how many people, including me, saw the books [expanded below] whether or not they agreed with it, or the books intended it.

* However, I assumed Pullman intended that, but it seems quite probably not. Not everything is covered by what an author says, but from interviews eg. http://www.thirdway.org.uk/past/showpage.asp?page=3949 it sounds like it was deliberately anti-organised-church but not anti-god.

* He also specified that there was a deliberate portrayal of the bad aspects of organised religion, which he does feel are sometimes overwhelming in this world, but that there would naturally be good churchmen in that world (and there certainly are in this, he describes as a child knowing a very unobjectionable, nice sort of church community) even if he didn't portray any in the books.

* He described God as, if I interpret correctly, plainly to him absent from current influence on the world, but may or may not be out there somewhere.

Wanting to believe

A lot of interesting views arose from the discussion. Specifically, the relationship between wanting to believe and believing. Several people pointed out (with very articulate, interesting views, actually, thanks) that a common progression might be someone becoming disillusioned with God, and then naturally progressing to being a hard no-evidence-occam's-razor-doesn't exist atheist. And conversely, an appeal of the idea ("Maybe there never was any Narnia, but I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't,") certainly is part of people believing it.

For that matter, in real life, people often believe things they want to be true -- apart from normal statistical difficulties, if you're examining a complex social or card-play situation, you often seize on the chance you want to be true, and almost expect it, although a sober calculation would lead you to expect otherwise.

Which is normal, but I don't think sensible, it'd be better not to if you could (in most situations). However, I don't think that's all that's going on with religion, I have an instinctive feeling that the progressions I describes *do* make sense in some way, but can't explain what.

Can anyone expand on that?

ETA: cf. [dagger]

The underlying point of the previous post

I described Narnia, in the ways it talks about Christianity, as potentially being described by two thrusts:

(a) Factual, painting a picture of how God could goodly, justly, etc run a world
(b) Emotional, explaining why we might want to live in such a world

And that correspondingly, the Northern Lights argument (that Pullman maybe didn't intend, but many people saw) might be described as:

(a) Factual, drawing attention to the problems of a world where people follow a God who isn't there
(b) Emotional, comparing the situation with the authority to this world, that God (in this argument) appears absent and non-intervening, so if he exists, is as disastrous as the situation with the authority.
(c) And conflating not liking the evolved conception of God with not thinking he exists
(d) And for that matter, having an uplifting metaphor of instead of *rejecting* god, having to successfully *rebel* against God.

(And if that seems complicated or potentially flawed, well exactly, that's the point I was making, that's why people seeing the books in that light feel uncomfortable about it.)

However, despite many people seeing them more as anti-church than anti-god, some people said they *did* feel more atheist afterwards, or at least more sympathetic. If anyone's willing to share, how did you think you saw the argument -- more atheist as in less organised-religion-y, or less theistic, and if so, does my description make any sense to you?

Replies later, but ETA:

Does anyone know, "Job: A Comedy of Justice" by Heinlien? I thought it was funny, but weird. However, I just remembered it as that was a one-view-of-Christian-theology that seemed to share God-sucks with being perceived as an atheist position (at least by me).
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Feb. 6th, 2008 @ 10:15 am Is it moral to click on web ads over curiosity?
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Is it moral to click on web ads over curiosity? OK, it matters very little. But what is right? It's most honest to, if you see the link, click on it. However if you just want to laugh at their name, if it's a click-through ad, you're costing them money. Would it be better if only people interested clicked through, and you copied the address manually? On the other hand, presumably they want as many people as possible to see their web site, so you should click to show their ad did in fact interest you. I guess it depends which half of the process they're working on -- is their website a good sell but they want more people to see it, or do lots of people see it but they want more people who are actually interested?

This musing occurred to me after seeing some really quite amusing entitled google ads:

* "Afgan Poetry"
* "Join the Fake Society" ["The society for societies" No idea what it actually is, though]
* "Six Thinking Hats Course" [Depressingly, some sort of business awareness technique]
* "How to kiss a girl"
* "101 Cookbooks, a Twist on Guacamole."
* "Does 1+1=3?"
* "The atheist's riddle: cosmicfingerprints.com" [The riddle is: DNA is a language. All (other) languages are invented by a Mind. Then why isn't DNA invented by a mind?]
* "MCSE Boot Camp £3995."
* "2,000 DVDs for only 35p." That's a pretty good deal, even just for filler. Imagine, for 35p, you could wallpaper your room.
* "Emo goths -- Date emo goths" [Seriously wtf?]
* "Female Cougars: www.DateACougar.com" [Seriously, what the fucking fuck? A closer examination, however, reveals that cougars are a sort of woman. In fact, both this and the previous one look very suspicious, more like a front page than a site really for goths.]
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Feb. 5th, 2008 @ 12:02 pm (no subject)
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One of the thoughts about different aspects of atheist belief is that the natural one is not believing "God exists", but some people do believe something like "If He does exist, He's a bastard."

But it occurred to me, that's basically the point of the Northern Lights trilogy. The central message is "God doesn't exist because he's a bastard". If that sounds confusing, well, exactly, that's why the message the books send seems to be confusing :)

It's not a wrong way to go about it. Narnia could be described as partly carrying the message "God *does* exist because he's nice," and does it very well indeed. Using God's metaphorical absence as a metaphor for his literal absence is a good metaphor -- I can see if the books had clicked for me more, it might be quite exciting, if instead of having no unifying message, atheism was a crusade against an uncaring God and a malicious power-hungry arch-angel. Yay!

For that matter, in some sense, it's a real argument: if you say "If God were running the world, I don't like it," you might get from there to "then He isn't," via "if he's not doing it right, he's not God or not there".

But Pullman's presentation didn't really work for me, and so all the flaws in the presentation continued to bother me.

Contrariwise, sometimes people do over-seize on the second aspect of atheism, especially if they're used to their religion being the default and assume an atheist *is* not someone factually thinking God doesn't exist, but someone morally choosing not to follow Him.
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Feb. 1st, 2008 @ 02:34 pm Followup #1: 50 States
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Aha! I hoped I'd find someone talking about that QI episode and here it is.

http://www.qi.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=10008&start=12&sid=8da3f18e501905ad74133159e6526839

(Worryingly, MY post is now practically the top hit for the subject.)

Thoughts:

* I don't blame QI. Although its a shame I think they were misleading, the look on Alan Davies face when he gets a "do you know the obvious" question wrong to flashing and buzzing is worth it

* And he lost about 30 points guessing wrongly (the highest score was about 2, the lowest, about -30) so it didn't make any difference.

* And he was successfully funny, which is the real point.

* There's a few more nuggests. The CIA thinks there are fifty states, and you would think they have grim-faced men in charge of collecting this sort of intelligence.

* The Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has this to say: "Massachusetts, like Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Kentucky, is called a 'Commonwealth'. Commonwealths are states." He seems like the kind of person that ought to know.

* If the question could be phrased in such a way as to ask whether they are *called* states (a bit like asking how many countries are kingdoms, perhaps) then 46 could be the best answer.

* However, I don't think 46 is the pedantic answer. It's the answer at a very very specific level of pedantry. Sufficiently pedantic to be aware that four of the states are not entitled states, and consider that more important than what the most obvious and useful answer is. But insufficiently pedantic to consider that they are, in fact, states, and thus the literally correct answer, whether they're also commonwealths or not, is 50.

* I have a love/hate relationship with that level of pedantry. I lived in it for a while (some would say between the ages of 4 and 21). I have a lot of sympathy -- it's a genuine effort to spread correctness and knowledge of obscure topics. However, I also feel obliged to help combat it, and expand people's perceptions into more pedantic and more helpful responses.

* And, while googling, I show its not universal, but intelligent, knowledgeable people do give the 46 answer.
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Jan. 31st, 2008 @ 06:05 pm Four of the Fifty U.S. States are Commonwealths
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The other thing was the old chestnut about how many US states there are. The question is confused because several of them are commonwealths. I ignored this trivia question for ages, not knowing anything about it, but when it came up there, I finally felt impelled to look up a definitive answer.

Before that, I couldn't even have told you the traditional number with confidence. For the record, there are:

* 50 entities commonly referred to as states, including Alaska and Hawaii not contiguous with the rest
* DC
* Puerto Rico
* Some incorporated territories (mainly inhabited atols)
* Some unincorportated territories (mainly uninhabited atols)
* Some regions that may overlap with an above case (water, indian reservations, etc)

People often seem to think there are 52 states. Perhaps because 50 sounds too round a number. There are a couple of suggestions for why this is. (1) People remembered Alaska and Hawaii, but thought they were as well (2) That's how many cards there are in a deck.

I certainly suffered from the second factual false friend :)

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread212402/pg1 has a humorous description of the situation, and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_divisions_of_the_United_States a more sober one.

However, the "trick" question is about the states.

How many US states are there in the USA?

This typically crops up in trivia questions and the like. It generally goes something like,

Person A: How many US states are there in the USA?
Person B: 50
Person A: Ha ha! You're wrong! [1, 2, 3, or 4] of them are Commonwealths!

And sometimes you get:

Person C: Ha ha! No, you're wrong!

QI stopped at line three. (Did I remember that correctly?) But I think I disagree, I think its best to say there are 50. Although, of course, if anyone ever asks the question, the Commonwealth of Virginia had better be the first thing out of your mouth if you guess that's what they meant, or they'll ignore your citations and consider you an idiot for the next week.

As I understand it, "state" was originally referring to a political entity the way "country" does. The articles of independence talk about severing ties from the state of Britain.

I use Virginia as an example. There seem to be two possibilities.

(1) Virginia is a commonwealth, not a state, although shares all properties with a US State.
(2) People are fooled into believing in false dichotomy that it must be a commonwealth OR a state, the Commonwealth of Virginia is a state the way the Kingdom of Great Britain is a country.

Or possibly somewhere in between. However, the second case looks most convincing to me.

Evidence

As far as I can see, the evidence that Commonwealth of Virginia can be described as a US State is:

* It was a state in the sense the framers of the constitution were thinking of, a political entity
* It signed the Articles of Confederation that referred to the thirteen uniting units as states
* The constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia refers to itself as a state in at least one section
* It is one of the entities having all the rights and responsibilities of a state as described in the US constitution
* It is commonly referred to as a State, official documents mentioning US States don't have to add "and commonwealths"

And the evidence that it isn't a state:

* It doesn't use "State" in its official title, whereas other states do.

It comes down to the meaning of the words. I think the meaning I'm thinking of for "state" is the only reasonable one in the context, and normally intended. I think "commonwealth" is more fuzzy, to some extent it describes entities having some philosophy, but a lot it just refers to several sets of entities that have come to be identified in that way. Like, if you ask "How many kingdoms are there," you might have to ask "Do you meant, how many countries technically ruled by a monarch? Or how many countries called 'kingdom'?"

If so, it sounds to me like the Commonwealths mentioned are definitely *also* states. So mentioning this distinction is sensible, but "50" is the only correct answer.

However, I've probably missed *something*, possibly something important. Can anyone add anything? Does the constitution treat them in any way differently (I thought I remembered that it did, but couldn't find anything.)

ETA: Followup post here
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Jan. 21st, 2008 @ 02:40 pm Credit isn't real money
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Again, life questions from Drop the Dead Donkey. I maybe view credit differently to many people, being fortunate to normally have enough money, and being weaned on traditional views of fiscal responsibility, and think of a credit card as the least inefficient way of acquiring certain legal protections for quirks of historical reasons.

Using DTDD as an example. At one point Sally's purse goes missing with a large amount of money in. She suspects Dave, which he and everyone is extremely shocked by. At another, in revenge on Damien for something, George lets his daughter smash his car. Which is seen as harsh or vicious, but not unscrupulous or evil.

However, when Damien leaves and Dave spends a similar amount of money from his credit cards at Ladbrooks [gambling], everyone sees this more like the second than the first. I've seen it elsewhere too, that charging something to someone's credit card is seen as a bit cheeky (both whether or not you might expect them to mind buying it), when taking money from them to buy it is seen as wrong.

Why is that? (Is the implication that they might be able to recover the money with hassle? And it end up being stealing from a big bank, which isn't seen as so bad? But surely that involves reporting it as theft, which would get the friend arrested, wouldn't it?)
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