Maxims #116 — Derek Parfit

Go to the Index of 120 Philosophers Squared

Derek Parfit (1942 – 2017) was a British philosopher who specialized in problems of personal identity, rationality, ethics, and the relations among them. No question is more sublime than why there is a Universe: why there is anything rather than nothing.

A photo of Derek Parfit about the time he wrote Reasons and Persons

 

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Probaway maximizing on Derek Parfit 

1. The Universe needs for humanity to survive our current state and create resource stability to increase the self-consciousness of the Universe.

2. We carbon-burning people must stop overheating the atmosphere and bring our population back into a sustainable balance with resources.

3. Without us, the Universe would not contain any known rational beings, there would be no rational truths, and nothing would value the Universe that created us.

4. We are possibly neglecting our future species value because of the media’s failure to forecast our present actions’ inevitable results.

5. To be a person, an entity must be aware of itself and its non-self surroundings and its continued existence through time via reproduction.

6. What am I, or you, or humanity other than elaborate sentience generated by sophisticated languages that are now understood by Google?

7. Though everything is identical with itself, only I am aware of myself, and I grant that you too are probably aware of yourself.

8. In the past, my life seemed like a glass tunnel separating me from the world but as I approached the darkness at the end it resolved into a void.

9. When we know why something is true, we don’t need to ask why this thing is true. If we accept that 1 + 0 = 0 + 1,  don’t we know 1 = 1?

10. Why does the Universe exist? Is the Universe conscious of itself? If so, how can I communicate with it, and if not, what can I do to make it so?

11. Is looking forward to a probably pleasurable experience better than looking back at it, or even better progressing toward it with actions, or carrying away a trophy, or showing off the trophy?

12. Philosophers should not only interpret our beliefs; when they are true, they should support and enable them, and when false, prove it and stop their harmful effects.

13. If there is a reason why something isn’t done, give me the reason. But  if there is no reason, don’t attempt to stop me from doing it.

14. If too many people took buckets of sand away from a beautiful beach to improve their own gardens, would the beach soon be ugly?

15. In a few years, I shall be dead, but all that means is that the future world’s experiences will no longer be linked to this brain.

16. I know that it is irrational to get angry at cranky material objects like my computer, and knowing that, it is easier not to get angry at people.

17. Utilitarian hedonism works for me because the sum of happiness has been greater than the sum of my suffering so far.

18. We cannot predict if we might someday develop ethics upon which we all agree and obey, but it’s not irrational to have that hope.

COMMENTS on Derek Parfit

I was intrigued by Parfit’s comment, What now matters most is that we avoid ending human history, because that has been a major problem for me too. So far as I know, he didn’t do anything particular to save humanity, and I did many things. None of mine were particularly successful, so far as I know, but I did them and we are still here.

He also wrote, What now matters most is that we rich people give up some of our luxuries, … Let the repeat go, but we all want to live our lives as best we can, and for most of us, that includes physical things that consume nature’s resources. The problem isn’t that we individually consume too much for the Earth to support; the problem is there is an overabundance of us, and the human population is exploding to where the Earth can’t sustain us for very much longer. Science to the rescue? Maybe?

That is where his statement, We might neglect our future selves because of some failure of belief or imagination, becomes meaningful because it appears that human beings collectively cannot solve their population problem without stressing some resource to the failure point. When that natural problem has been encountered historically, a population collapses, usually from wars that precipitate a widespread famine. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in order: War, Disease, Famine, Death.

There is a popular idea circulating lately here in Bend that the only moment in time that is relevant is now, now, now … now. It is coupled with a statement totally discounting any future. Parfit says, To be a person, a being must be self-conscious, aware of its identity and its continued existence over time. With his statement requiring a person’s awareness of its continued existence over time, he thrusts all of these living people into the abyss of non-personhood. Well, Parfit died a couple of days ago so he can’t argue the point anymore, but I agree with him.

It’s a good reason for postponing pleasures then you will then have more time in which you can enjoy looking forward to them. It’s statements like that that make people hesitant to follow philosophers. We have experiences where not taking a pleasure when it is available means the possibility of having it goes away and is lost to us forever. We arrange our investments in pleasures such that depriving ourselves of a small pleasure in the present now will reliably bring a greater pleasure in the foreseeable future now.

It seems that many people are led astray by believing without proof what Parfit said is always true, that —

When we know why something is true, we don’t need to ask why this thing is true.

Sorry folks, it looks like things are going to get worse.

Tags

400 million dead from coronavirus, COVID-19 versus Dove soap, Creating immunity to COVID-19, Dove soap cleans the sinuses, Dove soap kills COVID-19, Health, How to kill COVID-19, human survival, humanity's survival, Keeping Coronavirus mild, Surviving Coronavirus, Washing the sinuses with Dove soap

I don’t like to suggest gloom and doom, but the charts based on data look grim.

Most of this chart is simply a progress report on the previous charts, but a detail that I’ve noticed from the beginning is the intersection of the Speculative Projections lines for total cases and total deaths with the world population. The world population just passed 7.777 billion, and the growth far outpaces the Covid pandemic, so there is little chance of population collapse. However, when the caseload is projected to the total population, and then a line dropped back to where the date concurs with the deaths we arrive at 400,000,000 deaths. That represents about a 5% death rate for the total of those infected. In this projection, it would be the total human population. Those statistics can be compared to the 1919 pandemic of the flu, in which up to an estimated 100,000,000 lives were lost. At that time the population had almost reached 2 billion and now it is approaching 8 billion. Thus, at the same rate, we would lose about the number generated on the chart above.

Probably it will take a couple of years to reach that appalling figure.

I wonder if the Dove soap hand washing to kill the viruses, applied to sinus washing, would be effective in saving some of those people.

Saying goodbye to the tipping point

Tags

survival

I am a cheerful person most of the time and I have been trying for decades to add a little cheer to those whom I encounter. I remember the exact moment and place where that happened. Not the date, but the thoughts and feelings of being depressed about things in general as I approached the Med, my coffee rendezvous for decades. I wasn’t going to visit my gloom upon my friends and decided to be cheerful. I was able to maintain that false cheer for a few minutes, until the conversation became interesting, which it always did, and I forgot to be cheerful and returned to my anxious gloom. Each on the next several days I remade the promise to myself to be cheerful toward my friends and every day the same result. I forgot myself and returned to my gloomy state and proceeded to pull the happy discussions down a notch.

The next experiment was not trying to be cheerful but to watch my friends behavior and try and help them to become cheerful. That worked a lot better because it is easier to watch another person’s expressions than to watch one’s self. I cultivated some habits around that simple strategy for not being gloomy and by helping my interlocutors to be happier I became happier too. I have long given up doing these experiments intentionally, but the habits are still with me, and often when a group as I was today, I notice that people are laughing along with me as I develop my arguments on whatever it is that we are all chewing on.

With that nonsense exposed it is time to face a simple and obvious fact of current reality. The population of the world is still exploding and the resources of the world are about to become too difficult to retrieve. Malthus said that two hundred years ago and was wrong because he didn’t factor in the energy reserves provided by coal and oil and a few smaller energy sources, and the creativity of humanity to develop ways to exploit our planetary resources. Paul Ehrlich brought this to the modern world in his 1968 book The Population Bomb, but once again the creativity of the unified human species was able to delay the onset of population collapse. The bad luck that those two predicted is about to run out because of the infinite capacity of living organisms to reproduce, it doesn’t even have to be a logarithmic growth a simple tiny growth will do if it is infinite it will consume all of the resources available to its species. We are still in a fortunate condition for enjoying the good life the Earth is still providing to us. But, even us geriatrics may witness the tipping point, and young adults will have an increasingly difficult time, and it brings tears to my eyes sometimes when I see happy children and realize that they are unlikely to live to my age without experiencing a wrenching suffering of humanity.

But, I’ve run out of time again and once again my advice is to enjoy yourself.

Philosophers Squared – Derek Parfit

Tags

Derek Parafit, Philosophers Squared, philosophy

Go to the Index of 120 Philosophers Squared

Derek Parfit (1942 – 2017) was a British philosopher who specialized in problems of personal identity, rationality, ethics, and the relations among them. No question is more sublime than why there is a Universe: why there is anything rather than nothing.

A photo of Derek Parfit about the time he wrote Reasons and Persons

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Sources for Derek Parfit quotations: Stafforini, GoodReads, Common Sense Atheism, Wikiquote.

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Parfit quotes

1. What now matters most is that we avoid ending human history. If there are no rational beings elsewhere, it may depend on us and our successors whether it will all be worth it, because the existence of the Universe will have been on the whole good.

2. What now matters most is that we rich people give up some of our luxuries, ceasing to overheat the Earth’s atmosphere, and taking care of this planet in other ways, so that it continues to support intelligent life.

3. If there were no such normative truths, nothing would matter, and we would have no reasons to try to decide how to live. Such decisions would be arbitrary. We would not be the animals that can understand and respond to reasons. In a world without reasons, we would act only on our instincts and desires, living as other animals live. The Universe would not contain rational beings.

4. We might neglect our future selves because of some failure of belief or imagination.

5. To be a person, a being must be self-conscious, aware of its identity and its continued existence over time.

6. What am I more than elaborate sentience?

7. Though everything is identical with itself, only I am me.

8. My life seemed like a glass tunnel, through which I was moving faster every year, and at the end of which there was darkness. When I changed my view, the walls of my glass tunnel disappeared. I now live in the open air.

9. When we know why something is true, we don’t need to ask why this thing is true.

10. What interests me most are the metaphysical questions whose answers can affect our emotions, and have rational and moral significance. Why does the Universe exist? What makes us the same person throughout our lives? Do we have free will? Is time’s passage an illusion?

11. It’s a good reason for postponing pleasures that you will then have more time in which you can enjoy looking forward to them. I remember exactly when, at the age of eight, I changed over from eating the best bits first to eating them last.

12. Philosophers should not only interpret our beliefs; when they are false, they should change them.

13. If there’s a reason why it isn’t done, give the reason—if there’s no reason, don’t attempt to stop me doing it. All other things being equal, the mere fact that something “isn’t done” is in itself an excellent reason for doing it.

14. When some principle requires us to act in some way, this principle’s acceptability cannot depend on whether such acts are often possible. We cannot defend some principle by claiming that, in the world as it is, there is no danger that too many people will act in the way that this principle requires.

15. Consider the fact that, in a few years, I shall be dead. This fact can seem depressing. But the reality is only this. After a certain time, none of the thoughts and experiences that occur will be directly causally related to this brain, or be connected in certain ways to these present experiences. That is all this fact involves. And, in that description, my death seems to disappear.

16. I sometimes want to kick my car[.] Since I have this anger at material objects, which is manifestly irrational, it’s easier to me to think, when I get angry with people, that this is also irrational.

17. When I consider the parts of the past of which I have some knowledge, I am inclined to believe that, in Utilitarian hedonistic terms, the past has been worth it, since the sum of happiness has been greater than the sum of suffering.

18. Non-Religious Ethics is at a very early stage. We cannot yet predict whether, as in Mathematics, we will all reach agreement. Since we cannot know how Ethics will develop, it is not irrational to have high hopes.

COMMENTS on Derek Parfit

I was intrigued by Parfit’s comment, What now matters most is that we avoid ending human history, because that has been a major problem for me too. So far as I know, he didn’t do anything particular to save humanity, and I did many things. None of mine were particularly successful, so far as I know, but I did them and we are still here.

He also wrote, What now matters most is that we rich people give up some of our luxuries, … Let the repeat go, but we all want to live our lives as best we can, and for most of us, that includes physical things that consume nature’s resources. The problem isn’t that we individually consume too much for the Earth to support; the problem is there is an overabundance of us, and the human population is exploding to where the Earth can’t sustain us for very much longer. Science to the rescue? Maybe?

That is where his statement, We might neglect our future selves because of some failure of belief or imagination, becomes meaningful because it appears that human beings collectively cannot solve their population problem without stressing some resource to the failure point. When that natural problem has been encountered historically, a population collapses, usually from wars that precipitate a widespread famine. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in order: War, Disease, Famine, Death.

There is a popular idea circulating lately here in Bend that the only moment in time that is relevant is now, now, now … now. It is coupled with a statement totally discounting any future. Parfit says, To be a person, a being must be self-conscious, aware of its identity and its continued existence over time. With his statement requiring a person’s awareness of its continued existence over time, he thrusts all of these living people into the abyss of non-personhood. Well, Parfit died a couple of days ago so he can’t argue the point anymore, but I agree with him.

It’s a good reason for postponing pleasures then you will then have more time in which you can enjoy looking forward to them. It’s statements like that that make people hesitant to follow philosophers. We have experiences where not taking a pleasure when it is available means the possibility of having it goes away and is lost to us forever. We arrange our investments in pleasures such that depriving ourselves of a small pleasure in the present now will reliably bring a greater pleasure in the foreseeable future now.

It seems that many people are led astray by believing without proof what Parfit said is always true, that —

When we know why something is true, we don’t need to ask why this thing is true.

 

 

Condensed thoughts 2013

Tags

Condensed thoughts, Condensed thoughts from Probaway

January 2013

1 January 2013 – Probaway – Person of the Year 2013 – Plague Inc. These are potentially long-term-memorable events which happened the previous year.

2 January 2013 – “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service,” James Bond pursues a biological warfare virus. Evil lives in the hearts of men, and women too.

3 January 2013 – Exploiting personal freedom is the great goal of life. Be bold when there is no risk and be averse when there is possibility of loss.

4 January 2013 – How much contradiction should we tolerate? Tolerance is to be given to those who deserve it. Who is that? Those who will give it.

5 January 2013 – What is the most important thing for humanity to do? Humanity’s ultimate goal is to avoid extinction for as long as possible.

6 January 2013 – Fear is a good thing sometimes and sometimes not. Right action requires the right thoughts, right training and right opportunity.

7 January 2013 – Steven Colbert is a Tolkien character. Steven plays many people but under the skin he is pure Tolkien.

8 January 2013 – Make a 3×5 notebook, using duct tape across a 3×5 plastic card over the loose paper and stuck to the back. Date the edge.

9 January 2013 – Sudden change is what wreaks havoc. Sudden change is what wreaks havoc. Spend as little as possible to lock in benefits from rare events.

10 January 2013 – Oooooooo the new dollars are beautiful. Okay. When the trivial thing is soon to be the most viewed signature in the world it isn’t toooo trivial.

11 January 2013 – You can’t step in the same river twice. The definitions of words ultimately depend upon understandings of the moment for their meaning.

12 January 2013 – What is the meaning of your life? It’s using your time and attention to survive and reproduce. It’s no different from a worms.

13 January 2013 – How to saran wrap a brownie with a half twist. The twist makes it easy to find an edge and unwrap the brownie.

14 January 2013 – The Million Death Quake. Istanbul, Tehran, Kabul, Kathmandu, San Francisco, Los Angeles. Earthquakes don’t kill people, their buildings do.

15 January 2013 – A way out of the sad state of the world. Poor self-identity is associated with non-separation from one’s mother, and that’s now common.

16 January 2013 – A categorical imperative – To maximize humanity’s happiness. It would seem that people want fantasy above everything else put together.

17 January 2013 – In one group everyone but me is sick with the flu. There was no crossover between this group and a similar one but me, and none had the flu.

18 January 2013 – Love is everywhere if you look, pay attention and listen. That’s true but there is an abundance of self love too.

19 January 2013 – The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt made me realize how very much Lucretius had influenced people whom I valued greatly since my youth.

20 January 2013 – Oxytocin to the rescue. I may not have as much of this as women, but sometimes I feel a sentimental warmth surging through my chest.

21 January 2013 – “Antifragile”, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. This method of design makes things more functional because it prepares for unexpected change.

22 January 2013 – Part of the new UU fellowship hall is to be an exemplar of Meaningful Sustainability, as well as Warm, Inviting and Welcoming.

23 January 2013 – I need nine simple improvements to my standard spell checker.

24 January 2013 – Popular Science magazine is usually on top of breaking events, but their current revelation was about something I posted fourteen years ago.

25 January 2013 – What is the greatest evil ever created by humanity? The belief that our God is the only god and all other gods and believers in them must die.

26 January 2013 – Walking on ice would have been safe if I had on my crampons, but they were inconvenient to use on constantly changing surfaces.

27 January 2013 –3D Printing in zero gravity. Currently impossible things might be created by 3D printing in zero gravity.

28 January 2013 – I’m feeling better sooner from vomiting, diarrhea, norovirus. Treat diarrhea with 1 teaspoon salt, 8 teaspoons sugar in 1 liter clean water.

29 January 2013 – The threat of hell is punishment in itself and generates acceptance of authorities’ teaching, and that’s hells function.

30 January 2013 – Guiding a Doomsday asteroid away from an Earth collision. A Doomsday asteroid might become a huge asset to humanity.

31 January 2013 – The idea of the World Sustainability date is reminiscent of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists Doomsday Clock.

February 2013

1 February – Personalities develop through a natural trajectory throughout life. Find and help our local sages grow. You will know them by their universal goals.

2 February – “Plato and a Platypus,” is a great book for part-time philosophers. It makes them sound good at a party of drunken intellectuals who haven’t read it.

3 February – The world is filled with problems, so there hasn’t been a lack of something to write about, but there is always a brain lag in seeing problems.

4 February – “Act in a way to maximize the total moments of happiness of humanity’s total life.”

5 February – Grabbing onto a near Earth asteroid is an opportunity for a sun orbit space station.

6 February – Protected: Comparing some chalices for beauty, utility and discussion. I was sending these to selected people for discussion.

6 February – A path that will bring more satisfaction is taking big chances, that will make you happier, healthier, wiser and wealthier. The choice is yours.

7 February – The organizing principle of most groups is defining the in-group and out-group, but if all humanity is one entity, who or what will be the enemy?

8 February – Yawn your way to sagehood and beyond, as you finish your voluntary yawn practice the desired behavior for the next half minute.

9 February – What is the difference between overconfidence and arrogance? “The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”

10 February – John Chard, the hero of Rorke’s Drift and me. Great heroes are probably a little nuts, but they do respond to opportunities.

11 February – Sometimes a bad thing turns out to be good or the reverse. There is no replay so it is impossible to know. We just live as best we can.

12 February – ???

13 February – My personal response to my WordPress blog going down for a day. Thankfully, the good people at WordPress were able to fix the problem.

14 February – Use a person’s name when acknowledging and supporting their ongoing work. Using a person’s name can be a kind act.

15 February – The Chelyabinsk meteor of 2013 02 15, was a perfect asteroid opportunity missed because it would take a year to prepare.

16 February – I witnessed an apparent dilation of my perceived time when I noticed an apparent speeding up and then slowing down of some passing clouds.

17 February – The usefulness of a room depends on its qualities. Here are functions I could think of, but with antifragile concepts they should be combined.

18 February – A meeting with Oregon’s United States Senator Jeff Merkley, I talk briefly to him about the coming alcohol crisis, caused by too much promotion.

19 February – Shakespeare had an impostor personality like Ferdinand Demara. Going from family celebrity to outcast sets a youth on a path to imposture.

20 February – I choose to believe our journey has just begun, and we need to build with permanent materials, and with antifragile qualities.

21 February – A few years after graduation the personal employment record will be more important than a degree for holding a well-paying job.

22 February – A new possible categorical imperative. The totality of humanity’s life and choices as may be seen in retrospect by people now living.

23 February – Read “Curious Behavior” and you will have a new and better relationship with your body and everyone else’s.

24 February – What to do when you are dying and don’t want to. Take a few aspirin tablets, call for help, pump blood by pulsing your abdominal muscles.

25 February – The Art of War by Sun Tzu – 1 – Revisited in 2013 by Charles Scamahorn. My one day off per month posting my book, Tao and War.

26 February – How to avoid falling out of a bathtub or shower. Have hand grips every step of the way, and friction surfaces where you step.

27 February – The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris got wiped out when I hit SAVE. This has happen before, so I have been Control A + C, first, but forgot.

28 February – Humans are naturally moral beings. Morality goes much deeper than philosophy; it goes to the very core of our genetic makeup.

March 2013

1 March 2013 – March 2013 – COSMO – Central Oregon Student Medical Outreach. Kindness in actions is the highest form of being.

2 March 2013 – Seeing problems? There is a naked feeling when looking at one’s own faults. That’s soon followed by grief and guilt and hoped-for clothing.

3 March 2013 – We humans need variety to our problems to thrive, and some experience and guideposts to help us along our chosen way.

4 March 2013 – Choose to make the right choices in your life trajectory! Just decide, I’m going to do the right thing, and start doing it.

5 March 2013 – The Humanist Manifesto — The Universe is self-existing and not created, we are a part of the Universe, and our mind exists within our body.

6 March 2013 – “Will in the World – Shakespeare” – Steven Greenblatt – Elizabethan England was a wonderful time to have lived through.

7 March 2013 – What, where and when were the times to LIVE! At the moment, whatever it is, seems to be happening everywhere.

8 March 2013 – We and people like us will be using this building, so we are the ones who must identify the problems before they happen, and fix them.

9 March 2013 – Humanity is not as stupid as it might be, because of a very few people lifting the veil to enlightenment.

10 March 2013 – We are conscious beings questing towards our self-generated reason for our actions; it is not a concept drawing us toward it.

11 March 2013 – Do the right thing, but what is the right thing? To maximum others  personal choice, and let them pursue their own self-interest.

12 March 2013 – Take away the protection of a US aircraft carrier over the horizon and those idyllic Greek islands would soon be stripped of their valuables.

13 March 2013 – Epiphanies are just ordinary thoughts, and are obviously so after they are clearly stated.

14 March 2013 – My belief in karma helps me to be a kinder and more contented person.

15 March 2013 – The horrid new diseases that have come to humanity are traced to their sources by boots-on-the-ground scientists, not armchair dreamers.

16 March 2013 – North America was saved for English-speaking people by Symon Schermerhorn in 1690, warning Albany of the destruction of Schenectady.

17 March 2013 – Triumphs of Experience by George Vaillant — Longitudinal studies discover what works and what doesn’t. It isn’t obvious.

18 March 2013 – David McCandless brings Shakespeare to Bend, and as far as Bend is from the center of the Earth, it hasn’t fallen off, yet.

19 March 2013 – Paranoia can be a useful concept. Accumulated experience conveys a simple fact of when the risk isn’t worth the exposure.

20 March 2013 – Hope versus optimism. Choose to be optimistic about known processes, and reject fantastic unnatural hopes.

21 March 2013 – Would our economy collapse if people only bought what they needed? Live frugally and have money for what you really need.

22 March 2013 – Kate learns to dominate Petruchio by voluntary submission to his whims. “The Taming of the Shrew,” lays out her subtle techniques.

23 March 2013 – This study of evil and war is of vital importance to the peace of the world. Its subject is the life or death of entire peoples.

24 March 2013 – How to make a permanent human society. Be content with the world you live within and live your life as you see fit.

25 March 2013 – Think ahead how enemies will spring up to exploit your difficulties. Then no man, however wise, can prevent disasters that will come.

26 March 2013 – A new computational view of evolution in progress using a shrinking blob computer algorithm.

27 March 2013 – There are obviously an infinity of experiences, thoughts and emotions which we haven’t had before, that are outside of our comfortable box.

28 March 2013 – How can I help you? Practice being instantly ready to see another person’s need and help them to their goal.

29 March 2013 – I was personally shocked by “The world Until Yesterday,” because so much of my childhood was called a primitive lifestyle.

30 March 2013 – How to heat your building forever for almost nothing. Heat the soil beneath the slab to about 70° F. using solar water panels on the roof.

31 March 2013 – I need to tell more stories. People understand narrative stories and are suspicious of abstractions.

April 2013

1 April 2013 – Improvisation standup is for everyone, including you. Improv is for everyone, because everyone needs to be flexible sometimes.

2 April 2013 – Place your confidence in what is knowable, and avoid blind faith in the unknowable.

3 April 2013 – Religious arguments must be upgraded to match the problems that modern scientific experiments have created.

4 April 2013 – Hope is a good thing sometimes and sometimes bad. The world needs a new hope that is based on an achievable stable reality.

5 April 2013 – If you don’t like this suggestion, please offer something better, but just saying no means disastrous deaths to huge populations of living people.

6 April 2013 – Humans are all under similar evolutionary pressures and there are developing a large number of different genes giving similar results.

7 April 2013 – On secure personal wealth it would seem the best advice is to own the place you live, no matter how modest, and avoid all debt.

8 April 2013 – Now, in our times of abundance, is the time to solve the population problem.

9 April 2013 – Spiritual Evolution by George Vaillant,  Ben Franklin wrote, “Drink does not drown Care, but waters it, and makes it grow faster.”

10 April 2013 – If God doesn’t deliver it is your fault. God wants you to have everything you can conjure up in your imagination and state in your prayers.

11 April 2013 – Lab scientists say they can’t find evidence for success for John Perry’s methods, but he says, “… but I say … who cares what they say.”

12 April 2013 – A modern approach to Othello, by Shakespeare – This week Debbie and I watched six productions of Othello the Fool, (my title).

13 April 2013 – My motivation is to discover problems, define them and then offer a solution that is workable, and post it.

14 April 2013 – Personal experiments on happiness. I discovered that I couldn’t fake happiness very long, but that I could sustain cheering others for a hour.

15 April 2013 – Approaching alcohol like it’s a cure is pain looking for a companion in personal disaster. Avoid people who like being drunk.

16 April 2013 – There are an infinity of paths that go wrong, but Lucretius back in 60 BC set us on a good one, but it was ignored for a millennium.

17 April 2013 – Italians have a slightly different sense of morality than typical Americans, and perhaps the folktales, learned in childhood, is the cause.

18 April 2013 – Current human morality isn’t facing our problems. We must have a new morality or die back to what is in balance with the wild animals.

19 April 2013 – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It is unlikely that 100 years will pass without needing stuff from the EarthArk. 

20 April 2013 – To become a brutal killer typically involves several stages. 1. Brutalization Stage, 2. Belligerency Stage, 3. Violent Performances, 4. Virulency.

21 April 2013 – Humanity must do something to control population, and it will be something we all presently think of as drastic, because it must be enforced.

22 April 2013 – “HOWL” by Allen Ginsberg is claimed was written in the Med, but I don’t know personally if that’s true, but both Marty and Julia probably know.

23 April 2013 – Which way do I jump when I see a tiger in a mirror behind me? How would a mother chimp react seeing her child in danger, in a reflection.

24 April 2013 – Some talk about books, never talk about the ideas in books. If they understood the ideas they would be eager to talk about the ideas.

25 April 2013 – If you don’t know your self and don’t know your enemy every battle will bring disaster.

26 April 2013 – A fully functioning Newray, an artificial Ray Kurzweil, may be decades away, but a basic one is almost here, one we might think is Ray.

27 April 2013 – I started off with the idea, “I am conscious but I have doubts about you,” and ended with serious doubts about most of my consciousness.

28 April 2013 – The current human situation is wonderful, but collapse isn’t. A 95 year old said, “Don’t worry those future people will take care of themselves.”

29 April 2013 – A news headline such as 205,479 died of the usual causes today, (=57,000,000/365) gives some perspective to the 3 who died in Boston.

30 April 2013 – Living people will consume everything they possibly can, and will let the dead and the unborn fend for themselves.

May 2013

1 May 2013 – Population growth has no limit, but land supply is limited and so is water, even so elected politicians refuse to consider population control.

2 May 2013 – The concept accepted by many people, and promoted in popular culture, is that if you can imagine something, and ask for it, you can have it.

3 May 2013 – The world was too perfect for me today. Then I started shrieking! Living too close to sybaritic perfection kills the soul’s need to grow.

4 May 2013 – Probaway’s list of existential risks to humanity, with search terms that will help you see the problems and potential answers.

5 May 2013 – Atheism is the luxury granted to people who feel comfortable living within this Universe.

6 May 2013 – What are the unknown unknowns? Albert Einstein told Yuan Lee his ideas were foolish, but Lee got a Nobel Prize when he developed them.

7 May 2013 – These days to be fully human a person must be interconnected to all the world, and the more limited their free speech the less human they are.

8 May 2013 – Is it truth, truthiness, lies or spin? There are subtle judgments we humans must make, but how can we learn to make them well? Experience!

9 May 2013 – Ray Kurzweil thinks ahead and suggests what longer term problems, those over the next few decades, we should be preparing for.

10 May 2013 – Capitalism serves well the human desire for infinite growth, but how can we learn to strive mightily and be contented at the same time?

11 May 2013 – In a world of unlimited desire getting what you think you want doesn’t satisfy, but only sharpens a desire for more.

12 May 2013 – People of The Book will learn parallel lessons from Seneca, and without the overlay of later organizational doctrine.

13 May 2013 – What a sorry fate we humans are compelled to live with. We can’t prevent population collapse, but we can support The Earth Ark.

14 May 2013 – My personal reminiscence of Berkeley’s People’s Park was of people were willing to stand up and demand their legal rights.

15 May 2013 – SARS, H5N9 and AIDS are the nasty things menacing us, but, one thing is certain, humanity can’t keep doubling its population much longer.

16 May 2013 – I am in part an Epicurean, and helping people achieve happiness is my happiness, and their contentment is my contentment.

17 May 2013 – Most adults would probably feel comfortable with level HAP~5 Socialism, with a secure status within a group that itself has a meaningful purpose.

18 May 2013 – How to develop a new habit might seem simple, but it requires laying the book or other task aside, thinking and practicing.

19 May 2013 – This chart is intended as an outline for an objective measure of how good and bad a person’s behavior may have been in the recent past.

20 May 2013 – Philosophers Squared – Imhotep is presently known for building the first pyramid in Egypt, being Socrates’ dying words, and proverbs.

21 May 2013 – All we can hope for at present is moderation, but even that is impossible because in a world filled with advertising people’s desires are infinite.

22 May 2013 – Philosophers Squared – Zeno of Elea. Fate is the endless chain of causation, whereby things are; and the reason by which the world goes on.

23 May 2013 – The examined life that doesn’t result in a change of habitual behavior wasn’t worth the effort of the examination.

24 May 2013 – How to stop itching now! I published years ago, it works well but it is impossible to find with a google search. I am the world’s worst salesman!

25 May 2013 – The Art of War by Sun Tzu 4. A good general first puts his army beyond the possibility of defeat and then makes the enemy to defeat himself.

26 May 2013 – Philosophers Squared — Introduction, and how I came to creating this set of philosophical quotations, pictures, and comments.

27 May 2013 – Philosophers Squared — Socrates — Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.

28 May 2013 – Philosophers Squared — The Pictures — Audacity and brevity is the soul of this enterprise.

29 May 2013 – Guiding principles for success in life. 1. Show up on time. The departure time is when preparations must be started for departure.

30 May 2013 – I try to be as positive as possible, especially in my relationship with people, and optimistic about the future, and find things that work.

31 May 2013 – MERS-CoV may or may not be the deadly pandemic, but it is wise now to prepare the right flu fighting habits. Links to my list.

June 2013

1 June 2013 – The techniques of improv free up one’s natural hesitance for quick thinking on one’s feet, especially when in front of an audience.

2 June 2013 – Copernicus — To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.

3 June 2013 – Xenophanes — One must be a sage to recognize a sage. — No man knows distinctly anything, and no man ever will.

4 June 2013 – Philo — Learning is by nature curiosity… prying into everything, reluctant to leave anything, material or immaterial, unexplained.

5 June 2013 – Occam – Nothing ought to be posited without a reason given, unless it is self-evident or known by experience or proved by Sacred Scripture.

6 June 2013 – Schlick – Only in the hours when life smiles at him without the stern frown of purpose, is he really a man.

7 June 2013 – Philosophers Squared Off In Quotations – Alphabetical Index of Philosophers

8 June 2013 – One billion hungry – by Gordon Conway – Meaningful prediction is based on causal factors and not on past trends.

9 June 2013 – Ayn Rand – All you have to do is look straight and see the road, and when you see it, don’t sit looking at it – walk.

10 June 2013 – Anaxagoras – It is natural for beginners in philosophy to lose heart? For to seek the truth is to pursue a flying fox.

11 June 2013 – Albert Camus – We are all sentenced to death, and if not today it will come tomorrow.

12 June 2013 – Rene Descartes – I think, therefore I am. – Amplify the verifiable assumptions until a working solution can be demonstrated.

13 June 2013 – A. J. Ayer – But it is not sensible to cry for what is logically impossible. – No moral system can rest solely on authority.

14 June 2013 – Adam Smith – By pursuing his own interest he often promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.

15 June 2013 – Alfred E. Newman – Yes we can’t! – What, Me Worry? – Most people don’t act stupid: it’s the real thing!

16 June 2013 – Immanuel Kant – Human freedom is realized in the adoption of humanity as an end in itself. – To be is to do. – Your acts should illustrate Law.

17 June 2013 – Philosophers Squared – What is PHILOSOPHY ? Philosophy is exploring the alternate paths to human contentment.

18 June 2013 – Heraclitus – You can not step in the same river twice. The water has changed and you too have changed. Everything flows, nothing stands still.

19 June 2013 – Anselm – Wisdom will increase your understanding, but belief will shrink it. – Unless I believe, I will not understand.

20 June 2013 – Parmenides – The steeds that bear me carried me as far as ever my heart desired, since they brought me and set me on the renowned Way.

21 June 2013 – Ambrose Bierce – I think that I think, therefore I think that I am; is as close a statement to certainty as any philosopher has yet made.

22 June 2013 – William B. Irvine – Happiness is always beyond the grasp of a consumer,  but tranquility is within easy reach of a stoic.

23 June 2013 – Epictetus – Since it is my reason which shapes and regulates all my being, it ought not itself be left to chance learning of habits.

24 June 2013 – Erasmus – ~In the land of the blind even a one-eyed man is a leader. – I accept what is offered and proceed with optimistic enthusiasm.

25 June 2013 – The Art of War by Sun Tzu, 5 – Select men capable of love, honor and duty so they may be bound together at critical moments.

26 June 2013 – David Hume – Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.

27 June 2013 – Chrysippus – Don’t worry over that over which you have no control.

28 June 2013 – Karl Marx – From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs! – To be radical is to grasp things by the root.

29 June 2013 – Human origins based on throwing rocks. – Throwing hard and accurately, give safety and food, it was a driving force in human evolution.

30 June 2013 – Marcus Aurelius – Guard your thoughts, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and a reasonable nature.

July 2013

1 July 2013 – Philosophers Squared – Seneca – No man was ever wise by chance. – Associate with people who are likely to improve you.

2 July 2013 – Alfred Russel Wallace – Every species has come into existence coincident both in space and time with a pre-existing closely allied species.

3 July 2013 – Thomas Reid  – There is an external world whose laws do not change, is not effected by reasoning, but the immediate consequence of perception.

4 July 2013 – Machiavelli – Men never do good unless necessity drives them to it; but when they are free to choose they do just as they please.

5 July 2013 – Friedrich Nietzsche – All I need is a sheet of paper and something to write with, and then I can turn the world upside down.

6 July 2013 – Mary Wollstonecraft – No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.

7 July 2013 – Zeno of Citium – The goal of life is living in agreement with all nature. – Happiness is a good flow of life.

8 July 2013 – Plutarch – They that are serious in ridiculous matters would be ridiculous in serious affairs. – KNOW THYSELF and AVOID EXTREMES.

9 July 2013 – Hypatia – Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fantasies. A civilization based on lies will be one of suffering.

10 July 2013 – Feyerabend – All methodologies have their limitations and the only ‘rule’ that survives is ‘anything goes’.

11 July 2013 – Michel Foucault – Everything I do, I do in order that it may be of use. – Knowledge is not for knowing: knowledge is for cutting.

12 July 2013 – Martin Heidegger – Man is not the lord of beings. Man is the shepherd of Being. – Why are there beings at all instead of nothing?

13 July 2013 – Turing – Machines take me by surprise with great frequency. We will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted.

14 July 2013 – Ray Kurzweil – A successful person’s pattern-recognition facilities have just learned what problems are worth solving.

15 July 2013 – Cicero – To be content with what we possess is the greatest and most secure of riches.

16 July 2013 – Einstein – Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts. – A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it.

17 July 2013 – Alfred Tarski – “Snow is white” is true if and only if snow is white.

18 July 2013 – Karl Popper – No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude.

19 July 2013 – Jean-Paul Sartre – Life has no meaning a priori… It is up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing but the meaning that you choose.

20 July 2013 – Simone de Beauvoir – Instead of living out my small private existence, I was participating in a great spiritual epic.

21 July 2013 – Epicurus – Self-sufficiency is the greatest of all wealth. – Not what we have but what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance.

22 July 2013 – Ludwig Wittgenstein – My aim is: to teach you to pass from a piece of disguised nonsense to something that is patent nonsense.

23 July 2013 – Diogenes – I ask of you, to stand to the side, that you may not, by blocking the sunshine, take from me that which you cannot give.

24 July 2013 – Cosimo de Medici – We read that we ought to forgive our enemies; but we do not read that we ought to forgive our friends.

25 July 2013 – The Art of War by Sun Tzu 6. By spying out the enemy’s plans and keeping ours hidden we may concentrate our forces and divide his.

26 July 2013 – Spinoza – Every man should think what he likes and say what he thinks. – When one falsity has been let in, an infinity of others follow.

27 July 2013 – Charles Scamahorn – Modern humans were created and are maintained by gossiping women. They choose the best and reject the rest.

28 July 2013 – Empedocles – The nature of God is a circle of which the center is everywhere and the circumference is nowhere

29 July 2013 – Plotinus – The world is knowable, harmonious, and good.

30 July 2013 – Kierkegaard – There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.

31 July 2013 – Anaxagoras – The moon is not a god, but a great rock, and the sun a hot rock. 

August 2013

1 August 2013 – Friedrich Engels – What each individual wills is obstructed by everyone else, and what emerges is something that no one willed.

2 August 2013 – Alfred North Whitehead – There are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.

3 August 2013 – Galileo Galilei – All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.

4 August 2013 – Democritus – Moderation multiplies pleasures, and increases pleasure.

5 August 2013 – William James – It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

6 August 2013 – Émile Durkheim – To pursue a goal which is by definition unattainable is to condemn oneself to a state of perpetual unhappiness.

7 August 2013 – Lev Vygotsky – All human perception consists of categorized rather than isolated perceptions.

8 August 2013 – Scarcity – Why Having Too Little Means So Much

9 August 2013 – Voltaire – I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.

10 August 2013 – W. V. O. Quine – The edge of the system must be kept squared with experience.

11 August 2013 – Garrett Hardin – The optimum population is less than the maximum. That is a new idea, and new is always alarming.

12 August 2013 – Jean-Jacques Rousseau – Let him know nothing because you have told him, but because he has learnt it for himself.

13 August 2013 – Alan Watts – We do not “come into” this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. 

14 August 2013 – Isaac Newton – We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.

15 August 2013 – Mark Twain – Plain question and plain answer make the shortest road out of most perplexities. All generalizations are false, including this one.

16 August 2013 – Antisthenes – Unlearn what is untrue. – It is a royal privilege to do good and be ill spoken of.

17 August 2013 – Thales – Hope is the only good which is common to all men; those who have nothing more still possess hope.

18 August 2013 – B. F. Skinner – The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again.

19 August 2013 – Duns Scotus – Those who deny the existence of contingency should be tortured until they admit that it is possible for them not to be tortured.

20 August 2013 – 147 Delphic maxims 1-Pursue goodness. 2-Obey all laws. 3-Praise goodness. 4-Obey your parents. 5-Honor justice. 6-Use your proven wisdom…

21 August 2013 – Friedrich Schiller – Folly, you may conquer, and it must yield! Against stupidity the very gods themselves contend in vain. 

22 August 2013 – Thomas Aquinas – For those with faith, no evidence is necessary; for those without it, no evidence will suffice.

23 August 2013 – Theophrastus – We must consider the distinctive characters and the general nature of plants from the point of view of their morphology.

24 August 2013 – Antoine Arnauld – Rest, rest, shall I have not all eternity to rest.

25 August 2013 – The Art of War by Sun Tzu 7 – Amid the clamor of battle no one can hear clearly and you must devise efficient telecommunications.

26 August 2013 – Arthur Schopenhauer – Our world is driven by a continually dissatisfied will, continually seeking satisfaction.

27 August 2013 – Aristotle – Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution.

28 August 2013 – St. Augustine – Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of faith is to see what you believe. My life is meaningless without God.

29 August 2013 – J. L. Austin – Ordinary language blinkers the already feeble imagination. – Sentences are not as such either true or false.

30 August 2013 – Francis Bacon – Truth and utility are the very same thing. The great end of life is not knowledge but action.

31August 2013 – Jeremy Bentham – It is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.

September 2013

1 September 2013 – George Berkeley – All those bodies which compose the frame of the world – have not any subsistence without a mind.

2 September 2013 – Plato – Man is a speaking being in search of spoken meaning. – When a tyrant first appears, he is in the role of a protector.

3 September 2013 – Protagoras – Man [ I ] is the measure of all things: of things which are, that they are, and of things which are not, that they are not.

4 September 2013 – Thomas Hobbes – When all the world is overcharged with inhabitants, then the last remedy of all is war.

5 September 2013 – Denis Diderot – All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone’s feelings. 

6 September 2013 – Pericles – Freedom is the sure possession of those alone who have the courage to defend it.

7 September 2013 – Henri Bergson – I cannot escape the objection that there is no state of mind, however simple, that does not change every moment.

8 September 2013 – Friedrich Schelling – All rules for study are summed up in this one: learn only in order to create.

9 September 2013 – John Stuart Mill – The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way.

10 September 2013 – Ferdinand de Saussure – Without language, thought is a vague, uncharted nebula.

11 September 2013 – Bertrand Russell – Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth. – Never try to discourage thinking for you are sure to succeed.

12 September 2013 – John Locke – The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts.

13 September 2013 – Rudolf Carnap – The principal task of the logical analysis of a given proposition is to find out the method of verification for that proposition.

14 September 2013 – It’s vacation time for me at the South Lake Tahoe cabin my friends and I have rented the second week of September for 28 years.

15 September 2013 – Sunset photos over Lake Tahoe, taken with the HDR (High Dynamic Range) setting, from the Upper Truckee meadows.

16 September 2013 – Last week I attended my 60th high-school reunion, and it was quite an experience – highly to be recommended, especially the 60th.

17 September 2013 – Every year I raised a toast to our close friend Don Davis who died in 1985. Thank You, for providing a refuge for us wandering souls.

18 September 2013 – Replace the impossible, “Make your every action suitable for a Universal Law,” with, “Avoid things that harm your body or mind.”

19 September 2013 – Yet how could it be anything but the most shameful ignorance to think one knows when one does not know? 

20 September 2013 – I rebel at a poster – “BOOZE – Better than Therpy!” – Drinking booze to solve personal problems is a path to personal disaster.

21 September 2013 – We have methods to prove certain ideas more valid than others, and a method for pruning off those ideas which were less effective.

22 September 2013 – The Open Society and Its Enemies, vol. 1, Plato by Karl R. Popper warns of governments based on excessive concentration of power.

23 September 2013 – To maintain personal liberty a living balance is needed between the effective power of many independent systems.

24 September 2013 – Every place is a destination when you’re there, and I photograph my shoes taking me to several destinations.

25 September 2013 – The Art of War by Sun Tzu 8 – Avoid – recklessness, cowardice, quick temper, sensitivity to shame, and excess empathy.

26 September 2013 – It seems reasonable to ask our linguists to explore new methods for expanding our language to access new forms of reality.

27 September 2013 – Why did humans acquire so many unusual traits so very quickly? Modern man was created by ancient women selecting our traits.

28 September 2013 – Jacques Derrida – To pretend, I actually do the thing: I have therefore only pretended to pretend.

29 September 2013 – Montesquieu – To prevent abuse, it is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power.

30 September 2013 – Noam Chomsky – It’s the intellectual elites role, as a secular priesthood, to really believe the nonsense that they put forth.

October 2013

1 October 2013 – An experiment, dissolving plaque from my arteries by raising my body temperature to 102°F and drinking 2½ ounces of whiskey.

2 October 2013 – Auguste Comte – The sacred formula of positivism: love as the principle, order as the foundation, and progress as the goal.

3 October 2013 – Charles Darwin – I am almost convinced (quite contrary to opinion I started with) that species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable.

4 October 2013 – <emJohn Dewey – We do not learn from experience…we learn from reflecting on experience. – A problem well put is half solved.

5 October 2013 – Gottlob Frege – Every good mathematician is at least half a philosopher, and every good philosopher is at least half a mathematician.

6 October 2013 – Daniel Dennett – That’s enough. I’ve considered this matter enough, and now I’m going to act.

7 October 2013 – Sigmund Freud – I have not yet been able to answer, “What does a woman want?” – The best man she can get, to improve her condition.

8 October 2013 – Kurt Gödel – The notion of existence is one of the primitive concepts with which we must begin as given.

9 October 2013 – Georg Hegel- Truth is found neither in the thesis nor the antithesis, but in an emergent synthesis which reconciles the two.

10 October 2013 – Christopher Hitchens – Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it.

11 October 2013 – Edmund Husserl – Philosophers are all too fond of offering criticism from on high instead of studying and understanding things from within.

12 October 2013 – Carl Jung – Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.

13 October 2013 – John Maynard Keynes – The political problem of mankind is to combine three things: economic efficiency, social justice and individual liberty.

14 October 2013 – Thomas Kuhn – The success of the paradigm… is at the start largely a promise of success.

15 October 2013 – Gottfried Leibniz – A possibility can be proved, either by proving its cause, or when experience teaches us that it is a fact in nature.

16 October 2013 – Claude Levi-Strauss – The wise man doesn’t give the right answers, he poses the right questions.

17 October 2013 – Ernst Mach – Where neither confirmation nor refutation is possible, science is not concerned.

18 October 2013 – Vladimir Lenin – The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.

19 October 2013 – Malebranche – Our soul is not united to our body in the ordinary sense of these terms. It is immediately and directly united to God alone.

20 October 2013 – Thomas More – If honor were profitable, everybody would be honorable.

21 October 2013 – G. E. Moore – Everything is what it is and not another thing.

22 October 2013 – Thomas Paine – The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason. I have never used any other, and I trust I never shall.

23 October 2013 – John Searle – Accept that consciousness is a biological phenomenon like photosynthesis, digestion, mitosis, and problems vanish.

24 October 2013 – David Chalmers – There’s certainly nothing original about the observation that conscious experience poses a hard problem.

25 October 2013 – The Art of War by Sun Tzu 9 – Awards and punishments given before accomplishments will not encourage cooperation.

26 October 2013 – Blaise Pascal – Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is a fool. If you win, you win all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Fool?

27 October 2013 – A typical Sunday. UU church, coffee shop conversation, a short walk, I took some HDR enhanced photos, and some Graphic outline ones too.

28 October 2013 – Gilbert Ryle – Man need not be degraded to a machine by being denied to be a ghost in a machine.

29 October 2013 – Michael Sandel – To argue about justice is unavoidably to argue about virtues, about substantive moral and even spiritual questions.

30 October 2013 – James Bond Stockdale – You’ve got to get it straight! You are in charge of you.

31 October 2013 – Charles Peirce – Every man is fully satisfied that there is such a thing as truth, or he would not ask any questions.

November 2013

1 November 2013 – Alfred Thayer Mahan – Organized force enables the weak to go about their business, and to sleep securely, safe from the violence.

2 November 2013 – A chronological Index of 128 Philosophers Squared – To assume a fighting stance and be prepared to fight for a philosophical idea.

3 November 2013 – When does a strategy of overshoot work better? You can speed up a little at a time, but you can generally slow more quickly.

4 November 2013 – Forced-air home heating is noisy, cold and drafty. The air at the vent may be warm, but by the time it gets across a room it’s a cold draft.

5 November 2013 – If no one knows a thing can be discovered or even exists, there is no successful preexisting search strategy to find it. Or is there?

6 November 2013 – Starting the search for Probaway Person of the year 2013? It looks like Jennifer Doudna of UC Berkeley is a top contender.

7 November 2013 – A journey into the unknown unknowns. Off we go into the search for the unknown but hopefully knowable unknowns.

8 November 2013 – Camouflage has been a part of living systems for hiding from predators, and prey since near the beginning of life here on Earth.

9 November 2013 – The Inner Citadel, and Courage Under Fire. The thing that brings down a man is not pain but shame!

10  November 2013 – The Evolution of Cooperation is being nice, provocable, forgiving, and clear, and cheat only in the final play of the game.

11 November 2013 – Our sick Ponderosa pine tree comes down. It was a seed in 1829 when Peter Ogden led an early fur trapping expedition near my home.

12 November 2013 – Camouflage – The methods of visual hiding and for perceiving through it to symmetry, continuity, groupiness, closure.

13 November 2013 – To create or see past camouflage we will need to control… a list of 20 things like, Figure versus ground, Symmetry versus chaos…

14 November 2013 – Seeing through camouflage into simple unknown unknowns. Tens of billions of humans had used Newton’s Laws without seeing them.

15 November 2013 – Sometimes a thing confused everyone, until someone an observation, and that after that everyone thought it was obvious.

16 November 2013 – What unknown unknowns should we avoid? Nonexistent unknowns are infinite in number, and believing in one doesn’t make it real.

17 November 2013 – Gallup Poll that 78% of people believe in angels. Another Gallup Poll found only 15% of Americans believe that human beings evolved.

18 November 2013 – How accurate must information be before we act on it?  My dog farted, “I stink therefore I… hum … I think I’ll go back to my reveries.”

19 November 2013 – What is the right action given the reality we must cope with? Seeing through data, information, and facts to get actions right.

20 November 2013 – To eat chocolate, warm your mouth, hold the chocolate and chew and message it slowly, add a little butter and honey and avoid bananas.

21 November 2013 – Learn the techniques of detection of unusual data points in any realm of obscuring factors such as, Camouflage, Crypsis, Mimesis

22 November 2013 – 21 possible ways to make the unknown unknowns into new and useful things by finding alternate uses, and supporting others who search.

23 November 2013 – Start looking for the unknown unknowns! Carry a notebook with you at all times, and write down unusual ideas or they are forgotten.

24 November 2013 – I read “A Thanksgiving tribute to women.” at the UU service, thanking women for making humanity what it has become.

25 November 2013 – The Art of War by Sun Tzu 10. The causes of 18 calamities and how to avoid them.

26 November 2013 – Seeking the unknown unknowns behind veils is different from seeing camouflage, they cling to things, but can be easily penetrated.

27 November 2013 – Augustine laid the foundations for the doctrines that ended any form of serious inquiry into the nature of the world.

28 November 2013 – Seeking the unknown unknowns behind walls, that require great effort to remove physical objects, but once removed they stay gone.

29 November 2013 – Seeking the unknown unknowns – expanding the search to other ways of perceiving and hiding, and finding of things that are really there. 

30 November 2013 – Camouflage in practice isn’t usually evil. In iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma games, positive behavior almost always wins the games.

December 2013

1 December 2013 – An photographic example of camouflage in the forest. Bilateral symmetry is a give away of camouflage in all known animal species.

2 December 2013 – An example of discovering an unknown. Women accelerated human evolution by discussing with their friends which men to marry. Obvious?

3 December 2013 – Photographic examples of failures of camouflage – Symmetry. Bilateral symmetry is a camouflage giveaway.

4 December 2013 – Failure to see known knowns is voluntary blindness. Our daily lives are loaded with information, like advertising, and most of it is best ignored.

5 December 2013 – Cuttlefish are ideal for searching into the theory of unknown unknowns, because they evolved to be voluntarily hidden in various situations.

6 December 2013 – Natural selection is far too slow to create some of the specialized phenomena they we are observing, that doesn’t appear adaptive.

7 December 2013 – Within Natural Selection, is Sexual Selection, and within it is Eveish Selection. The mate is selected for a complex of behavioral qualities.

8 December 2013 – TIME’s Person of the Year 100 list? Xi Jinping, the President of China, during the greatest economic expansion in history is memorable.

9 December 2013 – How my forethought saved a disaster at -21°F. Always have backup on critical systems, and some slack in the backup.

10 December 2013 – It is the removal of obfuscations and the layering of clear perceptions that bring on a gestalt realization of unseen but real facts.

11 December 2013 – TIME Person of the Year 2013 is Pope Francis. It is strange that TIME Satanized Snowden. They are having trouble with the NSA spying.

12 December 2013 – Life at the speed of light to distant planets by J. Craig Venter; send how to build the appropriate machines then send the DNA code.

13 December 2013 – A Brief History of Thought was loaded with deepity, and truthiness. ie. The French Revolution was the foundation of modern liberty.

14 December 2013 – Bilateral symmetry and standard longitudinal arrangement are deep in living DNA, and are giveaways of life and food to predators.

15 December 2013 – Once a bilateral symmetry is seen project a perpendicular line between them, to other symmetrics, and to the head and tail of that line.

16 December 2013 – Sometimes, a partial solution to a whole system of problems is better than whole solutions to each of its parts taken separately.

17 December 2013 – Six types of mimicry have evolved, Partial, Batesian, Mullerian, Wasmannian, Vertebrate, Auto, but I suspect there are more.

18 December 2013 – Lakoff’s book gives illustrations of metaphors, it doesn’t give much in techniques for developing new metaphors, or perhaps it does.

19 December 2013 – When there are synonyms there is possibly of a core idea, that isn’t quite covered by any word or phrase; that needs exposing.

20 December 2013 – Why aren’t all living things nasty to prevent predation. The answer is, it doesn’t maximize a species DNA or they would be nasty.

21 December 2013 – Will the day come when we have technical perfection in everything imaginable, but  we don’t have any food; nobody does.

22 December 2013 – Our hundred year oil splurge will leave only a narrow band in the geological strata of the four billion years of life. Then what?

23 December 2013 – There are millions of insect species and each of them has approached passing on its own genes in its own idiosyncratic way.

24 December 2013 – Will I, our world be better off a year from now if I apply these words, and concepts they imply, to my present decisions for action?

25 December 2013 – The Art of War by Sun Tzu, 11. Walk timidly, appear simple, even stupid, until you can fight desperately and achieve a decisive victory.

26 December 2013 – It wasn’t until 2008 that Google even attempted what I had published in 1999, and ignore flu, poison oak, and heart attack cures of 1994.

27 December 2013 – When you encounter someone purveying hope and asking for money, it’s time to quietly say no, and walk away, as they are lost. 

28 December 2013 – What’s wrong with corporate charity? Charity is an eternal thing and must benefit everyone and not just the corporate entity.

29 December 2013 – New names for the non-visible wavelengths of light, based on  a tag to their higher or lower frequency. red becomes, low-red, or high-red

30 December 2013 – Surround your unknowns with known facts. The Trustworthiness Scale is just expanded definitions in different dimensions.

31 December 2013 – Creating slack around things like time, money, space and people makes for easy flexibility, and a more contented life.

The Sun is God just like the Ancients said.

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Doomsday, Enjoy yourself while you're still in the pink

We humans have a natural and insatiable desire to reproduce our species, and there are powerful political forces to ensure that that appetite is satisfied. Our last unsuccessful presidential candidate has an abundance of offspring and is promoting his fellow co-religious members to follow the Bible and go forth and cover the world with their kind. That attitude might have been reasonable up until about 1825 AD when humans began to conquer the Earth to the exclusion of all other species and even minerals; and because we humans have such a very long life, and are rapidly using up all the consumables, coupled with a rapid population doubling, and explosive ramping up of pollution, there is a snapping point in the not distant future. I am not alone in saying this, but until everyone is subjected to a human law controlling population to a sustainable number we must rely on nature to solve our problem for us.

When population collapses occur the typically drop to below one tenth of their  sustainable population. Our pre-industrial agriculturally sustainable population in 1625, was about half a billion people and in 1825 about one billion. Natural population collapses always shoot below the long term average sustainable number. Human collapse will with little doubt be accompanied with a massive world conflict. When that conflict comes, and it is inevitable with population overshoot, there will be massive amounts of radiation and sun-obscuring dust left over from the A-bombings. That will cause such devastation of the life-support ability of the Earth that our population will drop to one tenth that of a natural collapse below the sustainable population. Thus, a not unreasonable number to speculate about is roughly one tenth of one tenth of the half billion sustainable population, or about five million survivors. Unfortunately, that is supposing an even survival rate across the whole planet, and that is unlikely, and a more likely outcome would be essentially total annihilation in the northern hemisphere and the rate above of about one tenth of one percent in the southern hemisphere.

World population by latitude projected on a map of the Earth. Only South America and Australia are mostly below the equator.

The graphic is from http://www.maproomblog.com

The current population below the equator is roughly 879 million or about ten percent of Earth’s total human population. With my totally abstract reasoning, and total guesstimate, it would seem the number of surviving folks in the south would be about a million.Now when you read about people having large families, like there is infinite abundance ahead, just consider what uncontrolled population growth will bring within the lifetimes of currently living babies.

On the lighter side there is a huge source of energy to support larger numbers of people than are now residing here and it is inexhaustible. Pollyanna optimists aver that gas, oil, coal, uranium and clean air will last for decades, but some kids now living will live for ten decades, which is well beyond their projections. Those natural resources are soon be in short supply, but there is a billion-year supply of energy from the sun. It comes to us in two forms: sunlight and its derivative, the wind. The Earth’s natural heat engine powered by the sunlight is accessible as wind.These two resources are variable on a daily basis but on a yearly or millennial basis they are as inevitable as the sun shining.

The supply of solar energy is vast, but not infinite, and ultimately it can’t compete with our current population growth, which is infinite; and probably energy functionally obtainable directly from the sun can’t sustain our current population permanently.

So what’s the answer to this problem? We must write and accept a post-Doomsday Constitution which enforces population controls. The reason it must be post-Doomsday is because people have very little ability to foresee events which have never happened. With some experience of Doomsday people will be more willing to cooperate, but to impose population control on the world now would cause a major war, and thus it is impossible. What we can hope for at present is moderation, but even that is impossible because people’s desires are infinite. Thus population collapse is in the not distant future.

I wish someone would offer a solution.

What a sorry fate we humans must live with

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Doomsday, Humanity's plight, Population explosion

I am a member of the human species, and part of the responsibility Mother Nature bestows upon every member of every species is to support one’s own against all comers. Sometimes, in the course of life, each individual must contest against other members of their own species, but that too supports the general health of the common genome by assuring that the healthiest individuals are the ones to survive and propagate. We have been improved by our ancestors’ deadly struggles, against our fellows as well as against the world.

We have become temporarily the most successful species the Earth has produced at present, and we are dominating and destroying everything nature has provided in a natural evolutionary process of self-enhancement. That is obvious, and yet what doesn’t seem to be obvious is that our present way of life can not continue forever. The simple end point must come when energy needed to power our way of life becomes scarce. The only source of power that can survive several more doublings of human population is the sun, because all other energy sources here on Earth are finite. Present doubling time is approximately fifty years. In 1925 there were about two billion humans, and by 2025 there will be about eight billion. It seems unlikely that another one hundred years of this kind of growth could support thirty-two billion people, and therefore either people must choose to have fewer children, or Mother Nature will kill vast numbers of people. War within overabundant species is common with overcrowding, and may be considered a natural event. Willing population control is against the second law of humanity. First is to survive and the second is to reproduce. To attempt to control human population worldwide is clearly in direct opposition, not only to the theories of natural selection but to nature itself.

If we can not limit population voluntarily, and the world rebels even at the suggestion that we do so, then we must accept the soon-to-be encountered natural process of population collapse. The farming population of 1625 was only half a billion people, and population collapses will usually go well below a balancing point. Thus with eight billion people going below half a billion would mean that fifteen out of sixteen people would die during the collapse. Of course humanity will never expect that, and will refuse to consider it seriously until it is already in progress. Generally nearly everyone will be living better than they ever have right up to the collapse. The key precursor to collapse will be when there is state-organized confiscation of food.

I have been involved with projects where these types of issues have been discussed for months on end, and they never get very far because they require unpopular actions.

Doomsday with a food shortfall precursor

We can’t prevent population collapse, but we can support The Earth Ark.

Nature magazine reports on how to feed a billion more people.

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Population control is a must, Sustainable versus unsustainable, Unlimited growth will end

There was a major report in Nature magazine, May 2, 2013 on new genetic developments for getting more food out of plants. The report was, “New discoveries of the way plants transport important substances across their biological membranes to resist toxic metals and pests, increase salt and drought tolerance, control water loss and store sugar can have profound implications for increasing the supply of food and energy for our rapidly growing global population.”

These scientific enhancements of human ability to create food are wonderful, and the scientists acknowledge the need for more food, but they don’t face the real problem. Being scientists their job isn’t to face the political problems, but to solve the technical ones, and we must congratulate them for their success. The real problem was stated over 200 years ago by Malthus. Population growth has no limit, and can grow exponentially, but land supply is limited and so is the supply of water. Technology has been fabulously successful, and because of these  achievements the population has been able to grow from 1 billion people in 1825 to 7 billion now. Of course our greater production of food required more demand from poorer land, more water from building dams, more fertilizers from one-time resources, and machinery powered from one-time energy sources like oil. Each of these have physical limits which can not be exceeded, and some of them are one-time use and then they are gone, except for the pollution they leave. When these resources are exceeded the population must collapse back toward the population of 1 billion where it existed before these one-time improvements were implemented.

The real problem is to find a way to voluntarily, on a humanity-wide basis, to control the population to a number the Earth can support. If we fail natural processes will come into play and the population will be forced way below the sustainable population for a long time. Instead of a billion people voluntarily controlling their population there will be less than a tenth that number controlled by nature.

Nature reports, “their findings could help the world meet its increasing demand for food and fuel as the global population grows from seven billion people to an estimated nine billion by 2050.” Those numbers are not impossible, but they are unlikely, and anything beyond that moves even further into the realm of impossibility and into an even more catastrophic collapse.

The new discoveries will permit food to be grown on increasingly poor soil. Soil becomes increasingly fouled by evaporation from irrigation water of natural salts carried in the water. “These membrane transporters are a class of specialized proteins that plants use to take up nutrients from the soil, transport sugar and resist toxic substances like salt and aluminum.” This is a temporary patch, because the soil pollution just keeps coming and there is no way to prevent it.

Already there are estimated to be a billion people of our seven billion who are undernourished. If the population goes to nine billion that doesn’t mean there will be three billion more hungry people, because everyone must be fed, so all the food must be stretched further. Therefore, everyone would be hungry, except for the very rich. The scientists want the policy makers to implement their discoveries as soon as possible, but that is futile, even in the short run. It seems impossible that a child born today will live to old age in a society where there hasn’t been a painful population collapse, and the creation of laws limiting population to a sustainable level.  “During the next four decades, an expected additional two billion humans will require nutritious food. Along with growing urbanization, increased demand for protein in developing countries coupled with impending climate change and population growth will impose further pressures on agricultural production.” … “Increasing food production on limited land resources will rely on innovative agronomic practices coupled to the genetic improvement of crops.”

I don’t like the imposition of population control, but the alternative is far worse, and the alternative will be imposed in the lifetime of people now living.

Elected politicians refuse to consider population control.

A way to avert world catastrophe

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Avoiding world catastrophy, Controlling human population, Human species survival

Humans are a wonderful species and my long-term goal for them is to maximize their lives and their total hours of liberty and personal happiness. Mother Nature has been exceedingly cooperative with us for 50,000 years living the lives of hunter gatherers, and then cooperative again as we became farmers, which brought our population numbers from 3 million to 500 million by about the year 1625. Then population rose to 1 billion by 1825, and the advent of coal-driven productivity brought us to 2 billion by 1925, by which time machines driven by various energy sources like oil and gas permitted a further ramping up of productivity and population continued soaring to what looks like 8 billion by 2025.

All of this progress for our species is wonderful, but after 1825 it increasingly has been based on one-time-use energy sources. Children born today may have a life expectancy of over 90 years, and many will see things one hundred years into the future. But, and it is a huge but, they won’t see much production based on oil, gas and coal. Those things will have been consumed to near exhaustion and what poor quality minerals are still available will be even more polluting than the current ones.

Species that quadruple their population in a single lifetime, and consume their energy source, that is their food base, have a population collapse. It is inevitable for humans within that time frame, that is within the lives of young people now living. I have little doubt that there will be some fantastic discoveries on how to capture more energy coming from the sun, and that is probably the only source of energy that will outlast a hundred years of consumption by humans.  Unfortunately even that will not solve the problem if there are more people than there is food. I don’t like it either, but if we are to avoid a population collapse we will control our own numbers or natural processes will take care of it for us. The question becomes a simple one. Do we want to take responsibility for controlling our population to what the Earth can supply, or do we want natural processes to crash our numbers to far lower than we would reduce them to achieve balance?

Is it possible to determine some realistic projections of what the natural processes would drive our population to? If we assume that technology broke down to the point where it was very difficult to power our farm equipment with gas and oil, then the population would drop to a level where people were farming by hand. The last time we were near that condition was 1625 and only a half a billion people were surviving. Why were there that many people and not more or less? It was because that was all the food they could produce using hand labor. As a friend of mine was used to saying, “No workie, no eatie.” So that would be a population that might be sustainable; unfortunately the world’s topsoil has been depleted and modern agriculture is forced to use artificially produced fertilizers to maintain the soil. That won’t be available, so the soil will provide perhaps only a tenth of what it would have in those centuries past. If there is a major war using atomic weapons during that future one hundred years, then the soil will be even worse, and the food it will produce will be even more limited. Perhaps we will need to divide its productivity by ten again. I hope not! But it could be even worse. So with those grim projections we would be forced to divide the already grim number of a billion potentially feedable people by a hundred and end up with a world population of only ten million. That is the number of people alive in about two thousand BC. Early civilization was getting along just fine with that number.

That ugly scenario is what natural processes have in store for humanity within the lifetimes of newborns at this time. When looked at in that truly grim way it makes the voluntary trimming of human population to some more modest number more palatable, but if we don’t take care of ourselves Mother Nature most certainly will.

Here is a possible plan. I hope someone can come up with a better one, but I think this one has a chance of working. If we set a goal of reducing human population to one billion, a number the Earth might support, how might that be done? How might it be fairly done? First, the number of babies born per year and expected to live to age 100, (for easy calculation) would be one billion divided by 100, or 10 million new babies per year. How could we decide who those mothers would be? It seems the fairest way would be to have a worldwide lottery once a year, and limit births for that year to those women who won the right. Using that method would slowly bring the population back to a billion.

At present with a population growth of 80 million per year that method would limit child-bearing to only one woman in eight who had a child, and that would seem severe, but after a hundred years it would only limit child-bearing to two children per woman, and that shouldn’t seem too oppressive.

The alternative to this voluntary limitation of population is horrible population collapse. Look around—would you prefer seeing 99 out of 100 people starved to death, or voluntarily have women limit their number of children? I know some will prefer to leave things to natural processes but that will be so much grimmer than anything the world has ever seen.

If you don’t like this suggestion, please offer something better, but just saying no means death to huge populations of living people.

What is the most important thing for humanity to do?

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Human happiness, human survival, Humanities progress, Maximizing human happiness

When looking at the question of “What is the most important thing for humanity to do?”, it seems obvious that survival is the primary problem. I have thought of maximizing the long term total hours of human contentment as a goal, and that would require a long survival of the human species. That goal would include at least some of that living community to be content with their world at least some of the time. There are seven billion people now living, so this last year would be measured as seven billion years of human living. With that great a number of humans there is plenty of opportunity for human contentment. Contentment may be defined as complete acceptance of the world as it has been and presently is, and I grant that few people would be comfortable with that definition. However, if people did feel that way, as most creatures do most of the time, then human years would be equal to contentment years and the calculations would be identical, and easy.

Humanity must live on the resources available and in the long run that resource base will vary. For example, oil, coal and gas will not last forever, but sunshine and wind will, so in the long run we will be forced to live on renewables derived more directly from the sun’s energy. It seems more reasonable to have only a billion people consuming natural resources in the long run, because they will last longer. Also, it is easier to calculate, so we may use that number for our generalized estimates. Humanity has been agricultural, and to some degree civilized for ten thousand years, and a billion people was the world population in 1825 just before the consumption of fossil fuels took off. So that seems like a reasonable number for our human projection for population of civilized human life. That population would give us one billion people times ten thousand years, or ten trillion human years of life. If the planet Earth will not permanently support so many as a billion people, but will support population one tenth that number, or one hundred million then we would have to have humanity survive for one hundred thousand years to attain the same amount of total human life. The advantage of the smaller number is that it would be easier for the Earth to support us. If growing our population to a larger number, say ten billion, then to reach the ten trillion human years of life, it would take only a thousand years. The problem becomes how many people will the Earth support, and that is dependent on its resources and our technology for exploiting them.

This rather strange way of measuring humanity gives us a structure. It sets a goal for how we might objectively balance humanity’s goal of maximizing humanity’s survival and individual human contentment with their personal world.

If humanity and its individuals always strive to maintain its maximum short term population at its absolute maximum then there will be constant famine or near famine conditions and therefore constant strife and war. With access to modern weapons that would mean repeated atomic wars, or biological wars, and that would mean repeated population collapse, followed by maximized reproduction in a degraded world. If we as humans insist on living out this famine-style world then natural processes will reach and maintain a miserable state for nearly everyone. In those conditions the world probably wouldn’t support large numbers of people, and the world population would drop to a very low level, perhaps a few million or much less. I don’t believe humans will totally disappear in that ten thousand year time frame, because mammals survived the Chicxulub meteor impact 65 million years ago without intelligence or foreknowledge of how to protect themselves from years of privation. Humans will survive because some of them will store food in caves and survive a couple of years of really disastrous conditions.

A plan for humanity being stable at a large number, perhaps ten million to a billion, seems better than collapsing to a smaller number living in a very distressed world. To some extent humanity is already building toward that more sustainable world. Let’s hope we get there before a real disaster befalls us.

Humanity’s ultimate goal is to avoid extinction as long as possible.