Inane Ramblings of a Deceased Insomniac

Just be a good person.

Is that so hard?
 

There was a time when being a "good person" was defined by ethical, religious, and legal concepts which were easily identifiable by all.   The big 10, anyone?  I mean, honestly, how hard is it to go through life without murdering, stealing, etc?   The answer is simple, way too hard for us.  If it were so simple for us to abide by principals like those, then we wouldnt have the need for police forces and militaries and canadian mounties.  Instead, we find it so difficult to live within any confines, either moral or legal, that we have established subcultures which tell us that it's perfectly ok to not be a good person, because that's what makes us good people...  I only bring this up because today I was told that I was a good person, and it disgusted me when I realized that it actually means nothing anymore.

I was reading PT (I call it that, because it continually refers to itself as such, probably in an attempt to be "hip", but it stands for "Psychology Today",  which despite it's name is actually a monthly publication not a daily) today, and it had several topics of interest which I thought I'd share with my millions of adoring fans (the 6 of you).  Also, I havent written anything other than psychotic hippy-babble in a while, so I thought something of substance from me to you would be appreciated =D

So apparently there is a large subculture of Thailand that identifies heavily with the cowboy.  That's correct, I said Thai Cowboys.  And not fake cowboys, no assless chaps and buckaroo boots ponying up to a bar and ordering an appletini, no skin-tight jeans and manufacturer-faded red/black plaid dancing the boot-scootin boogie to old Alan Jackson albums while they chew their dip, we're talking real life cowdoods and cowdoodettes.  It's gone so far as to have an entire jungle cut down...  to create a dude ranch where they can raise cattle herds the old-fashioned way.   You havent had Thai Food until you've had a pot of beef and beans on a drive across Chao Phraya, prepared by a guy named NIran Hank (which as far as I can translate means "Hank the Eternal, the greatest cowboy in all of Thai cowboydom) and his band of grizzled bandidos.   I find this phenomena of great interest because they embrace the cowboy for the same reason that I would imagine America did for so long.  The Cowboy was the renegade that refused to submit to the cultural standards of refined society, and in a Thailand that is becoming increasingly bourgeois, the marginalized masses need some hero-archetype to identify with.  Much as the Greeks, and later the Romans, could empathize with the horrendous hardships that their heroes endured merely to carry on as men, the Thai people are identifying with the culture of the old american west as a last-ditch desperate effort to find an identity of strength as they watch their world slowly erode away under the pressure of increasing europeanization.   Fight the power Thailand.  You can take their lives, but you can never take their amazingly incorporative combinations of folk western and traditional thai music  (imagine a ballad played in constant dissonance on eastern stringed instruments, sung in Thai with an Autry-esque warble). 

It also turns out that psychologists can do more harm than good following traumatic experiences in a patient's life.  While the contemporary belief has generally held that one should be nearly-forced to express oneself after a traumatic occurance, in order to prevent the bottling up of emotions and the sticky aftermath that the subsequent explosion would cause, this is now being debated against in the academic psychiatric/psychological community.   While it can be true that bottling things up has detrimental effects long term, it has now been found that removing the natural defense mechanism of bottling, in the short term, can have more dire long-term effects than if people had been allowed to progress at their own pace through their grief.  Incoming, Jared Analogy.  The following paragraph is the express view of James Ensor 1313, and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of Livejournal, PT, or the American Dead Belgian Painters Society.

When one gets sick, if one were to actually follow their body's advice rather than the advice of that most fickle of organs, they should experience an urge to spend a great deal of time laying down, sleeping, eating, fulfilling the most basic requirements of the body.  The reason that we experience this is not necessarily that fighting off the disease requires so much of our body's precious resources that we have none left for such strenuous activities as reading the mail, or cleaning the bath-tub.  This urge is meant to aid not only in supplying extra resources toward fighting away the infection, but also as a protection mechanism against further infection.  See, unlike a demented drug-crazed Hitler in the 1940's, our body understands that it can wage war on one front much more readily than on two.  So rather than risking the wrath of the yet-undiscovered Stalin, our psyche goes into recovery mode.  We withdraw from social circles and keep our feelings bottled up, to prevent any misuse of the information that might cause further psychological damage, until such time as we feel we have comfortably built up our psychological defenses again.   This is, of course, only my interpretation of the study results.  I recommend reading the study for yourself to draw your own conclusions!  But know this, if you have gone through a traumatic experience and everyone is telling you that you need to talk it out, make that decision yourself.  Talk it out because you're ready to talk it out, not because of societal pressure screaming "TALK IT OUT OR YOUR BRAIN WILL EXPLODE IN A FIERY MESS OF EMOTIONAL NAPALMITUDE".

Also, I got the soundtrack to Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, and I discovered that the tracklist may be a big part of the reason I loved the movie so much... it is amazing.   (And yes, Chad, the soundtrack is only 15 tracks long, far short of the title-suggested "infinity", so the cost per track comes out a lot closer to $0.85 than to the $0.00 we had originally estimated, dividing ridiculously by infinity.  It's worth the eighty five cents per track though!)

Sorry about my attitude of recent, I've had a very stressful and strenuous few weeks, and it got me down quite a bit.   Also, my phone works again, hooray.

 

 If it was any more miserable outside, the miserableness outside would surpass the miserableness inside by the difference between the two.  

I'm going to write a "This is what's going on with me" update, as much for my own "wtfzness" as anything else.


1)  Way of the Five Rings

Daniel has introduced me to another fantasy world, Rokugan, and to be frank (cuz i am so often diplomatic and tactful, of course), if it were possible I would put a ring on the finger of this lore, marry it in a small civil ceremony, and have irrationally dangerous s&m sex with it on a nightly basis until we both broke from the strain.  I am normally very wary of new campaign settings for RPGs, and I'll admit have no experience with the system used in the tabletop game of L5R.  I have, however, learned the card game basics, set up a deck (Crab Clan represent), and read an amazing amount of the stories (though I concede that it is but a small portion of the available lore).  For those who are not familiar with it, I recommend reading the story of Tadaka and Itagi,  the story where Hantei Fujiwa (the mofakin emperor) places himself under the leadership of Hida Ichido, and the storyline from Kyuden Seppun involving Kachiko Watchyourfuckingbackushi.

2)  Select * From Training_Course Where training_worth > 0  Order By Tacos

Work is a beast and a half.  I am sitting through SQL and PL/SQL training this week which seems to remind me vaguely of sitting in a High School statistics class where I had to continually instruct our teacher on how to do the equations because she had the statistical ability of a crab rangoon.   We have spent two days going over the basics of SQL (Joins, DML, DDL, RPCC, NAACP, NCAA, etc..) and will be moving on to PLSQL tomorrow AFTER we continue a riveting debate I had with the instructor when he tried to claim the following.

"If i have 50 balls.. 49 blue and 1 white.. and i place them in a bucket.  When I draw a ball there is a 50/50 chance that it will be white"

After argueing for almost 20 minutes on the situation, he informed me that we would "open with this tomorrow" and I had better be prepared!  This was after we had an hourlong discussion because he kept trying to infer that Rownum was assigned semi-permanently based on the order data had been placed in the database... rather than being able to understand that Rownum is, in fact, a pseudocolumn assigned at the time of query.

Queries that proved him wrong, I was told, do not count.. because "You can make it look like anything you want in a query."  Which was, to be sure, the truest thing he'd said so far.  Good cookies with lunch though, and a diet coke (btw, i hate diet coke).

3)  Of Mice and Men

Mice are invading my face.  For the second time in 5 days, I have mouse blood covering my kitchen.   You see, those neat little "humane" traps that they sell... what they dont explain to you is that humane is actually HUMANE, an insidious acronym for "Have Underestimated Mice,  Assume Necrosis Eventually".  A mouse, after being eaten by the trap which is supposed to "humanely" kill them instantly, proceeded to drag the trap UP MY STOVE, across the stove, and die on the counter next to the sink with a look on its face that seemed to hauntingly whisper "Get the more expensive traps you monster."

4)  Laura loves Eminem... in the face

Laura, I'm doing what you said in your message.  If it doesnt work, I blame you!  If it does, I also blame you.  But at least you'll be happy that it's public?

5)  Knock Knock.... Who's there? .... Boo

For the first time in a long time, I have nothing to say about politics.  Instead, just understand that I have a very sad face at this point in time, but not the kind where you think "Holy crap, what a pussy" or "God damn he's been crying uncontrollably and is ugly as hell!", but more like "Look at that poor fella with the adorable, yet sad, face.  Let's rally to find a candidate he can support in the 2008 election!"

6)  Albino Brain Chiggers

20 inches of snow tonight they say.  That's not a mistype.  The inches of snow will be approximately 5 times the length of the average WoW players rinkydink.

You're welcome for not posting more brainspam today.


 

WARNING :  RUBBISH BELOW.  You continue to read at your own peril, as the proceeding prose is generally unfit for human consumption, contains several logical disconnects and tangents.  Such is the price of insomnia.

******************************************************************************************


I find it increasingly difficult in my life to abide by some of Christ's mandates.   And not just any mandates, but those that some would consider rather foundational to a Christian perspective.  Don't mark my difficulty as abandonment of these, or as utter failure, merely as struggle in a world that seems to be increasingly devoid of moral compass.  The one that struck me today is the '2nd' among all of his commands, it reads as follows.

Love thy neighbour as thyself.

It would seem that this command is a fairly simple one to understand, if not to follow.  I find however that the requests of God must be read in spirit rather than in letter in some contexts (This is not to say that I dismiss the Bible as a "storybook" or that I believe that it is written in fictional ethical perspective rather than in fact, but to say that I believe sometimes the spirit of the law is beyond what we may dismiss within the letter of the law), and this is to be one of those.   It seems irrational to me that God would want us to love our neighbour only as much as we love ourselves, especially in times of great self-loathing.  Not that God would want us to loathe ourselves, but rather that it does not provide adequate excuse to forego our love of our neighbours.

Immanuel Kant addressed this in his Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, providing the following criticism of fundamental "Quod tibi fieri non vis, alteri ne faceris"ism in a footnote concerning his Categorical Imperative (Imperatives, theories of ethics; the "Categorical" are those which stand securely as their own ends, morality).

"Let it not be thought that the common "Golden Rule" could serve here as the rule or principle. For it is only a deduction from the former, though with several limitations; it cannot be a universal law, for it does not contain the principle of duties to oneself, nor of the duties of benevolence to others (for many a one would gladly consent that others should not benefit him, provided only that he might be excused from showing benevolence to them), nor finally that of duties of strict obligation to one another, for on this principle the criminal might argue against the judge who punishes him, and so on. "

And so it was that I began to explore the context of the Golden Rule on my life, and on our society as a whole, to attempt to discover where it is that Jesus was trying to lead us with this.

From a purely rational perspective, The Golden Rule can be seen as a mandate of cooperation.   In any given situation we may be given the option to either cooperate with those around us or to defect.  Is God calling us to cooperate in the hopes that all others will cooperate, and through mutual cooperation we will be stronger as a whole?  I dont believe this can possibly be the case, as it seems to be clear in the New Testament that Christianity will be the narrow path upon which few will tread, so we cannot as Christians expect that a mandate of Christ will be rewarded with any reciprocative cooperation from the secular world.  (Note:  Yes, I'm aware that Jesus was not the first religious figure to put forth the Golden Rule, it came from sources much older... it was present in Leviticus, it was written in similar form by Confucius, etc...  But I believe it's safe to argue that in a world of 6 billion people, those who follow the aforementioned rule do not constitute a significant majority of the population)

It seems to me that Christ has put us in the ultimate Prisoner Dilemma concerning our treatment of those around us.  He calls us not to treat others as we desire to be treated, but rather to treat others as we would desire to treat Christ.  Is our body not the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit?  And it is with that belief that I continued to evaluate the potential requirements that this places upon us. 

Our society, whether you realize it or not, is held in place by a very thin cord of rational fear of defection.  Some call this an example of the "Free Rider" dilemma.  "If I jump the subway turnstyle... it will not really matter, they wont notice the loss of one passenger's fare", but if everyone followed the same free rider belief, then the subway would quickly be fundless and noone would be able to ride.  Because of this, we choose in general not to defect from the societal norm.  In large part the games of our youth teach us this virtue of societal conformance.  You may play the game, but if you do not play by the rules you will be subject to penalty and possible exclusion from playing the game at all.  It is near unmistakable truth that the reduction of competitive childhood games in our school systems and the "everyone is a winner" attitude that has been adopted has bred not only non-competitive slackards, but also a generation unaware of the greater implications of personal defection.

Even the fundamental political differences in our society can be traced to the cooperative dilemma.  Liberals seem to be those who believe that we should behave cooperatively, giving to the homeless etc, in the belief that they will reciprocate with cooperation and become productive members of society.  With this in mind, they wish to enforce this cooperative mindset on others and through taxation provide these services that they personally feel are, in a spirit of benevolent cooperation, mandate by our rational humanity.   Conservatives on the other hand expect defection, not irrationally from the plethora of historical evidence supporting this expectation.  With this expectation of defection in mind, they cannot rationalize a mandate of cooperation such as welfare.   Cooperative action when there is an expectation of defection on the other end results in the "sucker's payoff".

To illustrate the payoffs a bit better, let's look at the classic "Prisoner's Dilemma".  Although some have issue with the use of the prisoner allegory due to its inherent ethical questions (is there honor among thieves?), I'm going to use it anyway, since what we're talking about directly involves moral and ethical postulates.

"2 criminals commit a crime together.  In time, the police arrest both criminals, and while in custody place them each in solitary confinement negating any possibility of communication between the 2 prisoners.   The police realize that they do not at this time have enough evidence to convict either of them without a confession or testimony.  The police offer the same deal to each prisoner, the deal reads as follows.   "If you testify against your partner, and he does not testify, you will go free and he will receive 10 years in prison.  If you both testify, you will each 5 years in prison.  If neither of you testify, you will each receive 6 months in prison.  Both of you have had the same offer placed before you."

In this situation a payoff chart can be constructed as follows, with Prisoner 1's payoffs on the right, Prisoner 2's on the left...


Now it may seem rational at first that if they both cooperate, they each only get 6 months which is much better in total than either of the other 3 payoff choices, which each are 10 years split somehow between the 2 criminals.  The problem is that they have no means of communicating with each other, and thus no true expectation of whether their partner will cooperate or defect.  To receive the 10 years is considered the "sucker's payoff", the payoff you receive when you choose cooperation and the other participant chooses defection.

It is this "sucker's payoff" that we seem to receive from liberal politics, as the precedent seems to be to accept our cooperative assistance and not reciprocate.  For this reason, conservative politicians would much rather the money stay in the hands of individuals, who can choose their own participatory level in societal benevolence, rather than mandating cooperation in a continuing line of reciprocative defection.

I believe that the level at which Christ asks us to love our neighbour as ourselves is a very personal one.  Taxation is, in essence, devoid of any personal participation in the compassion.  Because of this, those who receive the cooperative benefit of taxed benevolence do not see the cooperation as having come from a society of cooperative participants, but rather having been ripped from their hands by an impersonal government that will probably never realize whether "I" continue to defect. 

A bit rambling... and more to say but it is late.  I think the main gist is that we should treat others, on a personal level, the way that we believe that we would wish to treat Christ.  It is easy for us to dismiss our duty as Christians by rationalization about the possible defective reflex of those we help, but while I support the removal of benevolence through taxation, I do believe that Christians should start stepping up to the plate more and getting involved in direct compassion.

The next time a bum asks you for a dollar, don't think .. "Well he's going to buy a beer with it" and brush it off.  If you are truly that concerned about their defection, offer to buy them a snack rather than give them cash.  A few weeks back I was blessed to be able to provide 2 cans of potted meat product to a beggar asking me for cash (and a can of sardines...), and while part of me cringes at the societal impact of rewarding begging with success, the other part of me believes that the conversation we had while I walked him into the store and purchased the odd request was personal enough to have provided something more than a welfare check ever will.

So today I found myself in a decent mexican restaurant pouring over a book of Game Theory and discovering just how integral it (it being game theory in this case, not the mexican restaurant) is to our lives. The waiter asked me what I'd like, and having a fairly cordial relationship with this particular waiter (yes, I frequent this place) I asked him for his opinion on the Chile Rellenos. And then it had begun, the mini-game of "Chile Rellenos" in my larger game of "What to order". Now this game was clearly skewed towards my benefit as the tip of the waiter is going to be tied to my enjoyment of that which I order... having given him a say in what I order I have thus given him an advantage in his game of "Earn the tip" expecting a complimentary advantage in my game of "Eat something tasty". When all was said and done, we found a Nash equilibrium in our cooperative culinary version of the driving game, he got a 50% tip and I had an enjoyable lunch with satisfyingly crispy and spicy Chile Rellenos.

What does this have to do with God? Well, nothing really... and yet everything. Since the beginning of history (that is my favorite cliche in this paragraph btw), religion has been a colossal experiment in Game Theory. For the purposes of this entry I ask that you suspend your disbelief and we accept the following as Truths (or in the case of some of them, "True Maybes".

1. God may or may not exist.
2. A perhaps-existant God may have set the Universe in motion, but allows it to play out according to predefined laws which are both generally unchanging, and within the realm of human reason and rationality (Human beings have free will in which he/she does not intervene, nor does she/he use "miracles" in such a way as to affect free-will decisions regarding religion).
3. Rational choices are based on perceived outcomes of these choices at the time they are made, and may later appear irrational to those looking back at the same choices under different circumstances.
4. The possibility of entering heaven will be defined as "the possibility of eternal bliss" and the possibility of entering hell will be defined as "the possibility of eternal damnation". These will constitute the negative and positive caps on our utility chart. Hell = 0 utils, Heaven = 100 utils.
5. While there are alternative religions with similar promises of eternity, this discussion will be limited to a look at Game Theory's effects upon Christianity. This does not exclude other religions from having committed the same pitfalls, but I will assume that logical corollaries can be made to other religions where appropriate without me beating the dead horse.

Now that we're all on the same relative page, let's begin a quick dissection of Christianity. There are several tenets that seem to hold true across the board, and certain variations of Christianity will be slightly exclusionary to some of these concepts, strict-predestinationists for example. The skeleton we will use to define a "christian" religion is as follows, this is not to dismiss the denominative quarrels of the last few centuries, but rather to sum up those concepts which the majority of defined "Christians" would profess to believe as true.

1. Jesus was the Christ, the son of the living God through the Virgin Mary (This virginity specifically refers to the conception of Christ, and makes no comment regarding her continued chastity after the birth of Jesus).

2. There is a heaven, and a hell.

3. The way to heaven is through belief in Christ and submission to his precepts (the signs of which are generally considered statements of faith and baptisms).

4. Without belief in Christ and the atonement which his bloodshed provided for mankind, Hell is your destination.

5. Hell in this instance will be defined as the location of eternal damnation, with no additive references to specify the torment provided or the means in which it is exacted

Now we can chart a simple plot of the God-assumed Game of "Believe in Christ. Note that there is only a single vertical level, due to God's inherent inability to not believe in himself. This is not a standard game template, but we will be moving the boundaries a bit to incorporate our aforementioned pieces in our game.

 

In the case of the game above we are assuming the existence of God to be fact, and assigning the utils as follows.

For the subject (northeast corner of result sections)

0 = Eternity in Hell

100 = Eternity in Heaven

For the Deity. These utils are oddly assigned and for the purpose of this experiment we will assume the total population of the history of the world to be 100, so as to keep the util number manageable. For each person who does not believe in Christ, the measurable payout is decreased by 1 for God. This does, of course, assume infinite benevolence on the case of God, and that he does not, when given the option, ever prefer that a person go to hell rather than heaven.

100 = Belief in Christ

0 = No belief in Christ.

Now we can compare a similar table without the existence of God. For the purpose of assigning the utils on this table we will assume the difference between two standard people, disregarding in this case the left and right portions of the cultural equation and staying in the heart of the curve. The following equation will be used to assign utils, which is not perfect but should give us a rough estimate of the payout of each in a world where God does not exist.

 

In this equation, the sum of m and d will always be 100, where m is the belief that we understand the world and d is our doubt in that understanding. As belief in correctness increases, doubt decreases and vice versa. This is the key element in any scale of comparison between religious and non-religious people in a world where we assume the non-existence of a greater power. At that point the only tangible effect of religion becomes it's psychological and social effects on the believer's life, outside of the payout associated with the afterlife.

In other words... if we play this game in a world without a Christ, can Christians win?

 

The results seem to be fairly inconclusive. The average Christian derives enough benefit from Christianity in life that his payout is not substantially different from the atheist who does not believe. While the eternal payouts of heaven and hell being removed benefit the non-believer greatly, removing the eternal payout of heaven from the side of the believers changes the architecture with which we measure their payout. In a world where heaven and hell exist we can assume that there is eternity for human consciousness (or souls), in a universe of conscious eternity the payout that was received during life is on a scale of infinite reduction until all that matters is which of the 2 eternities (assuming 2 in this instance, as outlined above, heaven and hell) a person ended up receiving. When removing the eternity from the payout scale, the payout is not reduced to 0 as many atheists have argued ("You have wasted your whole life believing in a Christ that wasnt there, and now you're dead"), but rather the expected payout has been removed. There is of course a flipside to the "Wasted your life" argument, in that non-believers must assume then that in another variation of the game results they would have received eternal damnation, and there is no eternal damnation awaiting the Christian who comes to the end of a mortal life with no attainable afterlife.

The payout in life is of course about average for the two. We can even view this on a logical scale without the use of mathematics. Consider the intangible benefits of being a true believing christian and being a true believing atheist. There is of course one game result which I'm sure some would clamor to see included. The afterlife payout in a world where there is no Christ.

 

So I suppose that I have two points that I will just sum up here.

Point 1 - Rationality of Christianity

Many atheists regard belief in a supreme being as irrational. In a world without absolute proof in either direction, Game Theory would show us that Christianity is actually the more rational solution, as it has the highest expected payout on average, and even if atheists turned out to be correct they have no higher payout than those who believed in Christ. The truth of the matter is that faith is beyond rationality, and it is one of the few pieces of the human puzzle that we have as of yet been unable to unravel. Animals behave instinctually and generally exhibit behavior which would fall into the realm of the rationally expected, human beings do not. While faith in God and Christ may seem irrational to some, it is just as true to say that Atheism is irrational given the fact that both require almost equal amounts of suspended disbelief. Human beings do act irrationally, it is our ability to do this which separates us. Belief in Christ, however, is not an irrational belief.

Point 2 - Game Theory's view of Christianity

While I have summed up here just basic game theory concepts (there is a lot more involved in Game Theory as you get into complex games such as this), it is important to note that regardless of the outcome of this particular game, it is not a game of pure competition. Human religion is a grand experiment in cooperative Game Theory and it should be noted as such. Too many Christians turn Christianity into a competition, and too many atheists view atheism as a competition to see how much of Christianity can be "turned". Christianity is a religion of compassion and love, it is about the sacrifice of our God to bring salvation to those who had none and bringing hope to the hopeless. Atheism is a religion (yes, a religion) of calculation and determinism. While Christianity compels us to play dove in any 2 for 1 game, it also promises to repay 10-fold that which is lost in doing so. Atheism calls for us either to play hawk, or to play dove in the hopes that our opponent will play dove as well for equilibrium payout. Studies have shown that while human beings may choose to play dove a little over 50% of the time on average, that in evolutionary theory as they learn the outcome of game after game, their odds of playing hawk are increased after each successive view of the results.

Disclaimer 1 - While attempting to write this from a fairly neutral position, it is important to note that I am not suggesting that I hold an unbiased opinion of the relationship between atheism and Christianity. Although, it is also important to note that in the comparison of religion to atheism there will never be an unbiased opinion presented on the subject due to the simple fact that the outcome of any such comparison has direct effect on the researcher as well as the subjects of the study. Personally, I believe Christians are Christians for reasons that cant be justified through mathematics, and trying to quantify faith is akin to bottling up a ghost that can walk through walls. It just struck me as oddly fitting that one of the prime mathematical concepts of our time can show us the rationality of faith (faith and reason... all in one... wowzers?).

Disclaimer 2 - Forgive my Von Neuman'esque disregard for Mixed theory and evolutionary theory. Maybe at a future time I'll go through the analysis of the Mixed Theories.

Disclaimer 3 - Yes, this essay was written with religious blinders on to the other umpteen religions in the world which promise an afterlife of bliss or damnation. And yes, I realize that this can be posed in many of those to make equal case of rationality. I stand by my belief that faith, while rational, cannot be rationalized (haha, yeah i said that).