still so mad

George Bush is going to torture you if you play online poker because that's what Jesus would do.

What the fuck is wrong with our country

America is a fucking joke right now

Every day I'm more embarrassed to be an American.

They slipped online gambling into this bill, the Safe Port Act of 2006. It seems to say that financial transactions to fund a gambling account are now illegal and will be blocked.


I don't even know what to say. This is a disgrace.

If I go back to school

9/27:

I need to update this. I've put a lot of thought and effort into this subject, especially over the last few weeks. Writing about it all should be good to help get my head together and also to get advice from people. The very short story is that I'm leaning away from Economics and towards Anthropology, and considering trying to get an application together in the next few months to start in fall 2007.

---

update April 15: leaving for Vegas in about 12 hours, but wanted to get a few ideas down. I'll fit them into the rest of this later.

• One thought that has occurred to me over the last month or so is that I've never been a "motivated self-starter," which is mentioned somewhere below as important for a career in academia. How much does it matter that I never have been? Could I be? What happens if I can't be? On the other hand, when I was working and I had stretches where I was really busy for a while, I started to feel antsy when I finally didn't have much to do. So maybe once I got used to being busy all the time, I'd keep up that inertia?
  
• A PhD in psychology or economics seems more widely marketable outside the academic world than philosophy or anthropology, at least in areas that interest me or that I have some experience with. I think it would also be easier for me to get into an economics or psychology program than something else.
• The comment conversation that developed in this post was very interesting I thought. Thanks to steak for his input. The idea I came up with at the end intrigues me, and seems like the kind of idea I could take and make a thesis out of. That would probably fit best into an economics program, but I could probably make it work somewhere else as well.
• I still don't really know what I'm talking about, because all these ideas are mostly just in my head. I don't have much idea how anything works. If I want to make something happen it is going to require me breaking out of the protective cocoon I've built around myself over the last year. I'll need to actually talk to people. I don't really like talking to people. I hate picking up a phone and calling anyone. This is a hurdle I'll have to get over.
  

---

I don't expect that I could indefinitely make a living playing poker, which is convenient because I don't want to. I'm considering going back to school to pursue a Ph.D.

I'm going to use this entry to keep track of my thoughts on the matter. I'll keep updating it as I think about and research things.. I'd much appreciate any comments on any of it - ideas for how I should approach the decisions, questions I should ask, reasons why this is a terrible idea, programs I should consider, etc.

So you want to do a PhD? (funny)

What can I get from a Ph.D.?

I got this from here.

The Ph.D experience is about much more than learning to do deep work in some technical area. Here are some of the more general things I expect you to get.

You should get a sense of confidence in the power of rational thought and the range of its applicability. Everything in life is a problem of some sort of the other. How often do we think about it that way, and approach methodically the job of solving it? After a Ph.D you should have the inclination and ability to research anything, whether it be mortgages, biology, cooking or Toyota engines, and the expectation that you will understand it.

You should get the confidence and inclination to question all that is around you and seek out new ways of doing it or seeing it. You should be more likely to ask why things are done a certain why, and how it could be made better.

A Ph. D should give you the confidence that you can jump into a new area, pick it up quickly, and have something interesting to say about it, even if other people have looked at this area for a long time. More than depth in any one area it should give you the courage to jump from area to area.

You might increase your appreciation for creativity, in other people and in all areas of life. You might view art differently, or think differently about music you hear, more appreciative of what it took to do this and how it departed from the previous works. You should learn to value creativity and seek it out.

It will install a sense of taste and a critical sense. It should make you unwilling to accept the common standards and norms, and to put them to the test of your own intellect and opinions. You should naturally find yourself questioning things. You should be willing to contradict conventional widsom. That doesn't mean being a rebel just for the sake of it; you are too mature for that. It just means being constructively critical.

Sounds pretty good, right?


What do I do with a Ph.D.?

The most obvious career path is being a professor.

• On Being a Professor
• Teaching, Scholarly activity, Service
  
• Career Profile: Professor -
  
• "a professor’s time is largely spent on research, preparing class material, meeting with students, or however else she chooses"
• "this profession is thus best suited for motivated self-starters"
• "The most difficult years of being a professor are the early ones, when there is great pressure to publish a significant body of work to establish the credentials that lead to tenure."
• "the profession offers intellectual stimulation and freedom to all its members."

Other options? I imagine they depend on the type of study...

What should I study?

Ok so I think I'm more likely to enjoy an academic career than any of the careers I've tried so far, and I believe in the power of rational thought, questioning and creativity. Now I need to figure out what to study. And I'm not sure how.

I know I want something scientific and focussed on people. I think I want interdisciplinary freedom. I want a central goal of my career to be encouraging people to think and act rationally - probably not just through teaching but through the research I do as well..

I have a broad idea of the kinds of programs that interest me - anthropology, psychology, philosophy, economics...

I know some slightly more specific topics that interest me - evolutionary psychology, cognitive science, consciousness, belief, science education, game theory...

I don't really know very what very specific topics interest me enough to do my doctoral thesis, but I don't imagine I have to figure that out yet.


Where should I study?

It will depend on what I want to study probably. How much does a prestigeous name matter? Where would I like to be geographically?

How does this fit in with the reality of my life?

My girlfriend? Money? Relocation?

Mark Cuban feels FANTASTIC

Maybe I need an entire section of this blog dedicated to Mark Cuban.

Procrustes and Eden 2

Eden

My list of distractions included things like video games, junk food, fantasy sports, and alcohol. They keep me away from my priorities. Last time I wrote about how the only reason my list of priorities looks like it does is because we've made so much progress that our lives have changed into something we aren't built to handle. We make all of our technological and cultural advances and for what?

XBox. Text messaging. Terrell Owens. CSI: Miami: Brazil: Round Brown Asses. Cheetos. MTV. High Fructose Corn Syrup. Lazy Boy. Coors Light. McDonalds. Marlboro Reds. Prison Break. Pro Wrestling. Soap Operas. Girls Gone Wild. Las Vegas. Diet Coke.

Cheap thrills. Empty enjoyment. Artificial stimulation.

Our minds and bodies evolved pleasure mechanisms to reward behaviors that increased our chances of survival and reproduction, the prime example being the orgasm, the ultimate physical pleasure payoff moment, so pleasurable that men spend all of their waking (and many of their sleeping) hours trying to get to their next payoff. But nature made that payoff so strong that we found a way to trick our bodies into giving us that pleasure payoff without earning it by successfully finding a reproduction opportunity.

All of our distractions are various forms of masturbation. We evolved a taste for sweet and fatty foods because such foods were rare enough that they were nutritious for us in the quantities that we were likely to encounter them. Now we can pick up a Big Mac on every street corner and take 12 days off our life expectancy. We enjoy exchanging tidbits of news about the personal lives of the people around us because that information was valuable to our decisions about who to trust or be wary of in trade, battle, or sexual situations. Now we have tabloids and The Real World. We use drugs and video games and online chat rooms to stimulate some pleasure center in some way that is easier to achieve than nature intended.

Eden is of course a reference to the biblical garden of Eden, specifically the story of the 'apple' and the fall of man. The story more or less goes that God creates the first people - Adam and Eve - and gives them a wonderful place to live where they'll be quite happy. He specifically tells them not to eat fruit from one tree, a simple instruction that Adam and Eve ignore. Once they eat it, all hell breaks loose and God kicks them out of paradise and dooms them and all their descendents to a life of pain and inevitable death. All because of a stupid apple. And the thing is, Adam and Eve were perfectly happy before they tried that stupid fruit and realized how much else they were missing.

I've never smoked, but that's the best example of a behavior that gives people pleasure while inflicting damage upon them. And the weirdest thing is that smokers never knew they liked or needed cigarettes until they tried them. They could have gone their whole lives never needing a cigarette if they just didn't have that first one. Adam and Eve could have gone their whole lives happy as pigs in shit if they never tried the damn apple.

And the real beauty of the Eden myth is that the tree they got the fruit from was the "tree of knowledge." It opened their eyes and showed them that there was more to the world than their little garden, but that also opened up pain and suffering and poisonous snakes. I've written before about how freedom to choose isn't always such a good thing. Often times people are a lot happier if they don't have choices.

But I can't let go of the simple economic concept that options have value. Choices are supposed to be good! Where is the disconnect? I think it is that people don't usually understand the full meaning of the choices in front of them. If I've got the option to read a book that would educate me on the legal system or to sit in front of my TV and watch 4 straight Law & Order reruns, I reach for the remote control. TV is more entertaining. It is easier.

But what if I didn't have that choice? What if my options were to read the book or to stare at my wall? Now the book looks like a lot more fun. Plus I'd learn a lot more and be better for it. But when I'm confronted with the choice of how to spend my time, my stupid stone-age brain chooses the TV. Our fucking genius space-age technology is built for the specific purpose of tricking our minds into making us completely worthless.

We as a society are so damn good at producing highly effective entertainment. We make booze and reality TV and video games. They all push our pleasure buttons more effectively than the stimuli by which our pleasure buttons were made to be pushed, except we don't get the same rewards. Pretty much everything on my personal list of distractions is man-made, fake pleasure, cheap thrill, Garden of Eden fruit, masturbatory emptiness.

So my hope is that by realizing and openly acknowledging the problems these distractions cause, it will help me to be at least somewhat less distracted by them. By fully calculating the costs and benefits of my decisions, I'll be able to happily chose the more valuable option, even if it isn't as immediately gratifying. So that is my hope.

But my concern is that those calculations in the rational part of my brain won't be enough to override the other pleasure mechanisms already in place. That ends up sounding a lot like addiction, which is why I've cross posted this entry to my laziness addiction support group.

quote

"There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths. Almost inevitably some part of him is aware that they are myths and that he believes them only because they are comforting. But he dare not face this thought! Moreover, since he is aware, however dimly, that his opinions are not real, he becomes furious when they are disputed."

- Bertrand Russell, "Human Society in Ethics and Politics"

Gays in the Military

Eden part 2 is almost ready, but until then, enjoy this.

H.L. Mencken

Wow this is an awesome Baltimorean.

I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind--that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.

I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious. . .

I believe that the evidence for immortality is no better than the evidence of witches, and deserves no more respect.

I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech . . .

I believe in the capacity of man to conquer his world, and to find out what it is made of, and how it is run.

I believe in the reality of progress.

But the whole thing, after all, may be put very simply. I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant.

-- Mencken's Creed, cited by George Seldes in Great Thoughts

I found this at GifS.

PZ about science and religion. Read it!

He's baaaaack!

The legendary commenter of badassdom, NostalgiaDrag@gmail.com, is back commenting on my badass movie thread, and living up to his reputation. Check it out. Feel free to chime in the discussion.

Procrustes and Eden 1

Lists

In an effort to organize my life and make some changes for the better, I just sat down with a pen and paper and made some lists. The first list was of my priorities, and the second was a list of my distractions. After thinking about those two lists I made a third list of comments and observations about the first two, and the last items on that third list were "Procrustes" and "Eden." I want to write about those. It will take at least 2 entries. Here is the first.

Procrustes

My list of priorities broke down into 5 major categories. In no particular order they were: Making a living, relationships, health, enjoyment, and education. Each had several subpoints, for example health broke down to include sleep, diet, and exercise. Looking at my list of priorities reminded me of my favorite word: procrustean.

Procrustes was a bandit in Greek mythology who invited travelers into his roadside house, offering to let them use a bed that he claimed would precisely accommodate anyone regardless of their size. His invitation didn't mention that Procrustes guaranteed the bed's perfect fit by mutilating his guests - chopping off legs if they were too long, or stretching his short visitors on the rack. In modern English, "procrustean" is an adjective defined here as "producing or designed to produce strict conformity by ruthless or arbitrary means."

For the overwhelming majority of human history, defining one's priorities like I did (making a living, relationships, health, education, exercise) would have been preposterous, because they all were so interwoven that separating them would be silly. People made a living by doing whatever their parents did, usually hunting and gathering, in recent history farming, and very recently by specialized trades. They worked with the small tribe of family and friends that they spend their entire lives with, and they got their exercise from the work they did to put food in their bellies. Almost everything they learned was from watching and listening to elders and observing the world around them as they lived. Maybe if they were lucky they had some free time to sing songs or carve some wood, which was probably great fun they wished they could have more often.

Our world is bizarre compared to that. We can choose from almost unlimited ways to make a living. We can spend our lives with anyone we want (who will agree to it) and not necessarily anywhere near the family and friends we grew up with. Most of our career options won't involve much physical labor, so we'll have to get exercise another way if we want to stay in good health. An astonishing diversity of food is widely available for relatively little cost. The education that is emphasized is highly formalized, the education that is most valuable is ridiculed, and entertainment is at our fingertips any time and fully customizable to our every whim.

My point making this contrast isn't to romanticize and glorify my imagined version of primitive life, though I am tempted to do so. I know enough to realize that the vast majority of human existence is a violent, cruel and painful story and I wouldn't want to give up my place for that. Nor is my (main) intent to criticize our world, though I certainly tend to do that as well. And it would also be terrible to overlook that fact that most of the people alive today are struggling just to survive, and that the silly problems I'm writing about are nothing compared to their struggle.

My point is that we were built for the primitive world, not the First World, and that's why it is so easy to lose track of our priorities. In the primitive world, all of those priorities were mashed together in a daily struggle for survival, so it wasn't important for evolution to weave into our minds a specialty to prioritize our lives the way I did with that list. In modern times we've made so much progress in so many real ways that daily survival isn't a struggle, but an inadvertent cost of that progress is that we're confronted with problems we aren't good at solving. Those problems aren't as bad as Procrustes cutting off my feet, but I still feel like I'm being forced to fit where I don't quite belong.

Religion Explained and the crazy pills

Most of the world is obsessed with superstitions about imaginary invisible friends and enemies. Watching people, friends and loved ones, contort their minds around inane delusions can sometimes be enough to make me feel like I'm on the same drug as Mugatu:

Who cares about Derek Zoolander anyway? The man has only one look for Christ's sake! Blue Steel? Ferrari? Le Tigra? They're the same face! Doesn't anybody notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!

To answer the question of why religion is such a part of humanity, I just finished Pascal Boyer's Religion Explained, an examination of religious beliefs through the lens of evolutionary psychology. I can't recommend it strongly enough. This is exactly the kind of work people need to be doing, and the kind of book you should be reading.

Denver

I was in Denver from Sept 10-13. Denver is like a ghost town. There is nobody anywhere. I don't get it.

Highlights:

• Tour of the Flying Dog brewery and the Stranahan's Colorado Whiskey distillery next door. Including Kira and myself, there were 3 people on the tour. We learned a lot about making booze, and they were generous with free samples. I'd highly recommend checking out this tour if you ever get a chance.
• The Dave Matthews Band setlist that included Last Stop. I've seen this band probably 20 times now and The Last Stop had been #1 on my list of songs I've never seen them play that I want to hear. Now I just need to see Halloween.
  
• Tigers at the Denver Aquarium. I like tigers.
• 16th street is pretty cool.
• Being awoken at 7am by a Mexican construction worker perched outside our open 2nd story window yelling something to his buddy. That was awesome.
  

Dave wearing Robert Randolph's hat during All Along the Watchtower

Boyd and Dave dancing

Nice picture of the full stage.
Rashawn Ross is the biggest man in the world.

I think this looks pretty realistic

Where is everyone? This was like 12:30 on a Tuesday.
Denver is a weird ghost town.

Mile-high adspar on the steps
of the state capitol

I just like this picture Kira took
of the sweating beer taps

Dave Matthews Band
Pepsi Center, Denver, CO

One Sweet World
Proudest Monkey ...>
Satellite
Dreamgirl
Big Eyed Fish ...>
Grey Street
The Idea Of You
Loving Wings
Crash Into Me
The Last Stop
Can't Stop
Dancing Nancies
Warehouse
You Might Die Trying
Hunger for the Great Light
All Along The Watchtower

Encore:
Sister
So Right
Ants Marching

just now

me: I'm lovable
her: No, you're barely tolerable

So much for school

It seems like I haven't been posting my own thoughts on here very much the last few months. I kind of feel like for any thoughts I have, there's always somebody who has already said it better, so I just link to them. Bleh.

I decided to drop my class. Success in that course depends on a comfort level with math that I just don't have right now. To illustrate consider this excerpt from some class notes:




I can understand that, but just barely. It takes me a long time to read it and make any sense of it, but in class they fly through it in less than half the time it would take for me to understand it. (By the way, if you're actually trying to understand it, there's some information missing that was on another page of notes, so don't go crazy.)

It's kind of like a foreign language that I used to speak reasonably well, but it has been years since I've used it. And I could probably pick it up again fairly quickly in the right setting. But instead of being in the right setting, I'm thrust into some French government meeting and asked to report on the proceedings. It is just too much to try to relearn the French language while using it to try to understand other advanced concepts.

I decided to sign up for it in the first place for two reasons. One, to get a flavor for what the first year in an Economics PhD program would be like and see if I'd want to do that. And two, by getting an A in this class I'd greatly improve my application to such a program. But after a couple lectures it was obvious to me that getting an A would be probably the most daunting academic challenge of my life, and I'm just not willing to pay $1500 on such a gamble, especially on the first class I've taken in over 4 years. And to the first point, I'm not positive that I'd want to do this anyway.

To get an A in this class I think I'd need a refresher on calculus, linear algebra, and statistics. Then I'd need to probably learn a lot more about multivariate calculus and real analysis than I ever learned. I suppose it might have been possible for me to try to struggle through this class, study the math on my own and try to apply it as I go. I really hated dropping it. It wounds my pride. I liked being in a class, if only for a week. I'm hoping I can find a way to take some other class that won't be so overwhelming.

I start my new job tomorrow. I'm going to have to somehow wake up at like 7:30am, which won't be fun.

Yup

Ed Brayton:

Our government has arrested yet another executive from an online gaming company, this time Peter Dicks, chairman of the board of Sportingbet, a British company. Jacob Sullum, writing at Reason.com, captured this whole situation perfectly a few weeks ago:

If an executive of a U.S. media company were arrested in Beijing for violating a Chinese law against "subversive" online speech, or in Tehran for creating "indecent" Web content viewed by Iranians, Americans would ask what right these countries have to impose their illiberal policies on us. Sadly, our government is giving people in other countries good cause to wonder the same thing about the United States.

This whole thing is becoming insane. I've reached the point where, for the first time in my life, I'm ready to vote for one of the major parties. I'm thinking seriously about voting Democratic this fall and in 2008, regardless of who is actually running, simply because the constituent groups that the Democrats have to please are less frightening to me than the constituent groups the Republicans have to please.

sad

Steve "Crocodile Hunter" Irwin's death makes me sad.

And this asshole pisses me off. "Make sure to use this evolutionist's death as an opportunity to spread creationist lies!!"

wow

impressive



edit: since there's been some discussion about this topic, here's 2 more relevant links. The text of Rumsfeld's speech. The text of Olbermann's commentary on the Rumsfeld speech.

god damn jopke

Poker player busted for gambling. I hate the world.