Thursday, 27th of February, 2003

I thought I’d blogged this ages ago, but it seems not. Since it’s going round email-forward-land again, I thought I’d blog it with the correct URL so you can see where it comes from and stuff.
The straight left and right political divide is, as we know, too simplistic. At Political Compass, a UK-based site, they have a rather good personality-test type thing (usually I hate these things) for you to tell where you stand not just on economic left-right issues but also on the libertarian-authoritarian axis. They draw it up as a nice Cartesian plane, and it’s very interesting to see where one ends up – not likely to surprise one, but interesting to compare with one’s friends and with famous figures.

Since you asked, I came out as follows (remembering that the results are slightly different every time, depending how one’s feeling *g*):

Economic Left/Right: -8.12
LibertarianAuthoritarian: -7.28

In other words: 8.12 to the left economically; 7.28 to the libertarian side.
It’s interesting: I can identify a few questions which I’m never quite sure about – only vacillating between adjacent answers, but still – I’ve moved as much as 0.5 of a point in either direction. No more, so I’m still very much a left libertarian – big shock!

Tuesday, 25th of February, 2003

Here’s an incomplete but very funny parody of the US Department of Homeland Security’s Ready.gov terrorism-info site. A nice alternative to “returning to sender”, as we all (hopefully) did (or tried to do) with Johnny Howard & the Australian Government’s ridiculous terrorism-info-packs…

Saturday, 22nd of February, 2003

This Guardian article, from Feb 19th, outlines the contents of a leaked Pentagon document which shows that the Bush administration is planning a new generation of nuclear weapons… The world becomes more terrifying every minute.

Tuesday, 18th of February, 2003

As this Guardian story shows, justifying the war on Iraq with analogies with Hitler’s Germany is odious in the extreme.

Monday, 17th of February, 2003

Well, it was huuuuuuuuuge. Something like 250,000 people crammed into the CBD. It wasn’t “walking for peace” so much as “standing for peace”. Ange, Dad and I stood on Elizabeth St, where the march “started” for over an hour and went about 20 metres before we decided to somehow get back into Hyde Park and hear some speeches. As we waited for some food we managed to hear Bob Brown and John Pilger, the last two speakers – they were certainly worth the wait. Many of the other speakers said nothing but the same old rhetoric you’d expect (the two Muslim speakers each spending about 1/3-1/2 their time talking about Israel/Palestine rather than about the war in question). But Bob Brown was his usual splendid self, and Pilger said some very worthy stuff which hadn’t been mentioned previously.

I was proud to have been there, almost dropping from the heat and humidity. Around the world the turnouts have been enormous, and it’s very gratifying – although to noone’s surprise, BushBlairHoward won’t be listening.

Mind you, Blair looked incredibly harried on the podium in last night’s news as he had his say… He was talking about the torture and killing Saddam’s regime has visited upon the Iraqi people. He forgot to mention, though, the terrible toll this war is going to take on those same people, and nor has any good argument been given that regime-change-through-war is the way to help those people. Blair also conveniently forgot the West’s sanctions, which have had a considerably greater effect on the Iraqi people than they have on the ruling regime.
Weapons of mass destruction is another question entirely – a completely different reason for declaring war. Bush’s line (pre-emptive strikes and so on) is clearly that Iraq poses a danger to the rest of the world – a patently absurd claim, in the face of the fact that (as ASIO tell us) Al-Qaeda will use the war to increase their influence – and not to mention the continued absence of evidence for “weapons of mass destruction”.

Pre-emptive strike or mercy-mission for the Iraqi people, the war-mongers are either misguided or hypocritical.

Saturday, 15th of February, 2003

“Cannot find Weapons of Mass Destruction”. Hilarious!

Tom Tomorrow’s a very amusing fella. Here too: Outrage overload.

And here, US Democrat Senator Robert Byrd speaks out against Bush’s misguided war. The US is on the brink of war – “the most horrible of human experiences”:

Yet, this Chamber is, for the most part, silent — ominously, dreadfully silent. There is no debate, no discussion, no attempt to lay out for the nation the pros and cons of this particular war. There is nothing.

In other news, over at Reason (home of libertarian free-market loonies who generally get my back up in a big way – but then turn out some really good stuff at the same time), Peter Bagge (comics writer, of Hate fame, who I’m generally fairly so-so about) writes an amusing 4-part comic about going to a peace rally.
I will of course be going to this Sunday’s peace rally (here’s a different link) in Sydney. Despite being anything but a libertarian, I suspect I’ll be somewhat in two minds about being at the rally. I strongly oppose the war, and war in general, and I strongly oppose John Howard and George Bush’s policies pretty much in general; however, I don’t see myself as being of a crowd mentality. There will be opinions represented there which I don’t agree with… There will be chanting of slogans (which inevitably simplift complex issues)… And dammit there’ll be fuckloads of people. Scary. Still, I’ll be there because I think it’s damn important.

Friday, 14th of February, 2003

Charlie Stross’s fantastic story Lobsters, the first in the Accelerando sequence of nine stories which he’s continuing to publish in Asimov’s (up to number six in April’s Asimov’s, can’t wait!) has been shortlisted for this year’s Nebula awards. Not sure why this year’s, since it was first published in 2001, but that’s ok. You can read the whole story via the link above.

Movable Type 2.6 came out today. I’ve upgraded, of course. Not many changes for me to care about, but one great thing is that comments for an entry can be closed. So any existing comments remain there, but no more can be added. They should have an option to close multiple entries at once – I’d like to close all except the last, say, few months…

One interesting thing is that I’ve now been able to license this weblog under a Creative Commons License (see bottom of page). Cool!

You’ll also notice (no you won’t! but go on, notice) that the index page and all archive pages now have .php rather than .html extensions. I’ve got a cute little php script in place that creates the ordinal numbers you now see in the dates – “13th”, “2nd”, etc. I was thinking of making the script come up with nonsensical but consistent ordinals, just for fun – “3nd”; “1th”. Maybe later!
The php change has nothing to do with MT 2.6, mind you – just me learning more about web design.

Fark. Can it really be that long since I last posted an entry? Almost a week! Well in the meantime I’ve played at a Fred Hollows benefit on 2BL (here’s proof), went to Melbourne for a couple of days, and, er… I don’t know where else my time went!

Well, I’ve got heaps and heaps of new music that I just haven’t been reviewing. I’m embarrassed. I’ll get onto that soon. Also been reading, but haven’t finished many books to review recently – plenty of little comics and short stories and whatnot. Hm. Well, I’m back anyway. It’s like I never went away.

Friday, 7th of February, 2003

Butterflies and Wheels is a website whose aims are true to my heart. Have a look at their “about” page, here.

Not that I really did any explaining of my own scientific-materialist resolution of Frank Jackson’s “Mary” thought experiment previously, but I’ve just been reading an essay by Daniel Dennett about it, and once again I’m flabbergasted at just how darn RIGHT he is. He says everything that needs to be said [I had written "just about", but that was before I'd finished the essay]. The disbelievers will probably continue to disbelieve, but what can you do?
Here it is: What RoboMary Knows.
The last essay of Dennett’s to excite me this much was The Fantasy of First-Person Science, a detailed response to David Chalmers‘ “Hard Problem” of consciousness.

Jackson’s Mary is a thought experiment… Frank Jackson is an Australian philosopher; he attempts to use this experiment as an argument for dualism. In his own words, it goes as follows:

“Mary is confined to a black-and-white room, is educated through black-and-white books and through lectures relayed on black-and white television. In this way she learns everything there is to know about the physical nature of the world. She knows all the physical facts about us and our environment, in a wide sense of ‘physical’ which includes everything in completed physics, chemistry, and neurophysiology, and all there is to know about the causal and relational facts consequent upon all this, including of course functional roles. If physicalism is true, she knows all there is to know. For to suppose otherwise is to suppose that there is more to know than every physical fact, and that is what physicalism denies.

Physicalism is not the noncontroversial thesis that the actual world is largely physical, but the challenging thesis that it is entirely physical. This is why physicalists must hold that complete physical knowledge is complete knowledge simpliciter. For suppose it is not complete: then our world must differ from a world, W(P), for which it is complete, and the difference must be in non-physical facts: for our world and W(P) agree in all matters physical. Hence, physicalism would be false at our world (though contingently so, for it would be true at W(P)).

It seems, however, that Mary does not know all there is to know. For when she is let out of the black-and-white room or given a color television, she will learn what it is like to see something red, say. This is rightly described as learning – she will not say, “ho, hum”. Hence physicalism is false.” (Jackson, F. (1982). Epiphenomenal Qualia. Philosophical Quarterly, 32, p.291).

Quite glib, isn’t it? Yet quite convincing: As it’s usually expressed these days, we are told that Mary is basically a neurological specialist on colour vision. She knows everything (and for the thought experiment to work at all, it’s gotta be everything) there is to know about how humans apprehend colour, how they process it, what goes on in the brain. And yet, isn’t it just “obvious” that when Mary finally sees something coloured red, she’ll go “Oh! Gosh!” She’ll have had a new experience; she’ll learn something new about colour.
Well, not so. As I see it, the problem is with how Mary “knows” what she knows. It’s all very well to have all this data available as data; but for Mary to “know what it’s like” to experience red, she has to actually instantiate that data. In other words, she has to not just know what it looks like (in effect) for someone to experience colour; she has to be that. Is it at all clear that a purely physical thing couldn’t do that, by wiring itself up the right way? (ie by using the data to program colour-sensation in)

So if Mary takes all the data about what happens to a human when they experience colour, and alters or augments her own physical make-up in turn, then she really will know what it’s like to experience red! She won’t be surprised at all when she sees a red thing – she’ll just go “oh yeah, that’s red”.
This is assuming that physicalism is true – but the point of this thought experiment is that it’s meant to be a reductio ad absurdum – it has to assume physicalism is true and then produce a contradiction leading from that assumption. It does no such thing. All it does is express a strongly-held belief – that physicalism just can’t be true!

The thought experiment does in a sense say something quite deep; but it’s also something quite obvious (and interestingly, whilst “obvious”, it’s not necessarily true!) – that is, that no amount of third-person information is enough to convey first-person (subjective) information. Even if this seemingly-obvious fact is true, this is not the same as refuting “physicalism” (which I call scientific materialism). The trouble with thought experiments is that often what they purport to prove isn’t a failure in the theory being examined so much as a failure of imagination on the part of the philosopher.
Shades of John Searle’s “Chinese Room” thought experiment, which similarly proves nothing except that Searle doesn’t believe a computer program (or similar) could be conscious.

Dennett doesn’t express his response to the Mary thought experiment in quite the same way I would, but everything that I’ve thought about is pretty much there. In the RoboMary part of the essay (the last section) he virtually says exactly what I would say… I think I’m particularly gobsmacked because of the way Dennett so systematically and carefully covers all the ground necessary in this essay.

Thursday, 6th of February, 2003

I’ve pre-ordered my copy of the UK edition of Daniel Dennett’s Freedom Evolves, which is meant to be published today. Amazon hasn’t got it yet, but will presumably send it as soon as they do. Interestingly, including postage it comes to almost exactly AUD$55 with the current exchange rate, which is exactly what Penguin Australia will charge for it when it comes out here – but we have to wait till May for that!

In the meantime, an exerpt from the book has been published by the US Chronicle of Higher Education: The Mythical Threat of Genetic Determinism.
And from August last year, here’s a fantastic interview with Dennett which teases out some very interesting stuff from the man.

Dennett is also the (presumably ongoing) editor of the humourous Philosophical Lexicon, a collection (similar in a way to Douglas Adams & John Lloyd’s Meaning of Liff) of word definitions punning on philosophers’ names, most of which therefore won’t mean much to non-philosophers, but worth a peek at anyway. Particularly amusing:
foucault, n. A howler, an insane mistake. “I’m afraid I’ve committed an egregious foucault.”
lyotard, n. The new clothes of the present King of France.
searley, adj. Contemptuous of leftist political thought, because of presumed lack of rigor. “When the demonstrators asked whether ‘academic freedom’ meant freedom to pursue war research, the Dean turned quite searley.”

The Fire This Time is an audio document about the Gulf war and “the language of mass media propaganda”, as well as being a 2CD compilation featuring some excellent exclusive electronic music.
At their site they have a page choc full of choice (idiotic) quotes from US politicians. Check it out: Fun Is Allowed.

The US is getting really pissed off with Europe. Apparently France is now a rogue state – “no longer the ally it once was” (of the United States and NATO).

Wednesday, 5th of February, 2003

Via Teresa Neilsen Hayden’s blog, an unfortunate error in CNN’s physics knowledge immortalised here.

From Neil Gaiman’s Journal I discovered a quiz which he discovered via Teresa Nielsen Hayden’s blog.
Turns out I’m a sonnet, which interestingly Neil was too. What I particularly enjoyed about it is that the questions have nothing whatsoever to do with poetry. And you can tick as many or few boxes as you like for each question. Yeah!

Tuesday, 4th of February, 2003

Courtesy of Warp Records, here’s bushwhacked2, the sequel! Another altogether too convincing Bush cut-up. And they didn’t even have to do anything to make him say “nucular”! It has the classic “Our first goal is to show utter contempt for the environment…”, after which Congress applauds wildly… Not hugely original, but very cool.
“The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently had an advanced nucular weapon in his arse… even while inspectors were in his country.”
This is probably the work of Chris Morris, but I’m not sure.

Monday, 3rd of February, 2003

Over at the WELL, Charlie Stross is having a discussion with Cory Doctorow about Cory’s new novel (much mentioned in these pages), and lots of other themes (including Charlie’s fiction, also much-mentioned here, and their collaborative fiction too). Well worth a read.

Update, Tuesday 4th February. I emailed Charlie a question for the forum (entry #73), which has garnered some interesting responses from them both.

Shocking news about Space Shuttle Columbia. The Guardian Observer reports today that Nasa had been ignoring warnings for years about the safety of these incredibly old machines.

Damn. I’m not as obsessed with space travel as some people (science-fiction fan notwithstanding), but still. What a tragedy, in human terms, in scientific, bureaucratic, political…

Meanwhile, in other news, Israel turns further to the right. All I can say to that is, Fuck.
On the other hand, South Australian MP Kris Hannah has resigned from the Labor Party and has been accepted into the South Australian Greens. This is fantastic – the Greens are swiftly becoming a real political force in this country.

Saturday, 1st of February, 2003

Here’s the abstract of a paper named “Reductionism Redivivus? Bionarratological Simplicity in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly“.
*ahem* It’s not parody – really! Which is astounding, because it’s actually considerably more extreme, if anything, than the biopoetics paper in Frederick Crews’ hugely entertaining Postmodern Pooh which I’m reading at the moment.

WOW, this site fucking rocks! Maporama – enter an address. Anywhere in the world. Go on!