We Should See Other Blogs

Tyler Cowen makes a good point about bias:

People who believe that ethics is objective and intuitive are often quite keen to make a lot of detailed pronouncements about the content of those ethics. The agnostics tend to be relativists or subjectivists. It seems to me that people are first choosing a mood or attitude, and then finding the disparate views which match to that mood and, to themselves, justifying those views by the mood. I call this the “fallacy of mood affiliation,” and it is one of the most underreported fallacies in human reasoning. (In the context of economic growth debates, the underlying mood is often “optimism” or “pessimism” per se and then a bunch of ought-to-be-independent views fall out from the chosen mood.)

I think this is fairly robust. But not just in economics or picking what you think is common sense, but also in things like Calvinism vs Arminianism, choosing between different types of eschatological viewpoints, adult or infant baptism, etc.

I wonder how often we choose our views based on our existing biases. Am I the type of person who is inclined to believe in free will? Excellent, Arminian I am. Am I the sort of person who likes an ordered universe with no loose ends? Calvinist all the way.

Mind you, I’m not saying that no-one comes by their views honestly. That very well may happen. What I’m saying is this: No one thinks they arrived at their views dishonestly, because everyone has this inherent mental bias that prevents them from seeing their own motivations.

After all, no one operates under the assumption that they’re wrong. Even if they say they do. They don’t. And no-one operates under the assumption that they stumbled lazily into their philosophy.

Hetan sits astride his horse. Herds of durkhan span the horizon, many small knots of the animals, knots that will form into a massive migration as cooler seasons arrive.

He is the tallest of his tribe, his horse the tallest of its tribe. Three heads or so above all the others, he is the eyes of the hunt. When they approach the durkhan, he spots the vulnerable, the young, the outliers. His word is law to the others. To disobey is death, if not by a foaming durkhan, then later, by the tribe.

They are riding upwind, a leisurely approach to the herds, designed to spook as few animals as possible. Each has a bone knife and a hunting spear. The older among the hunt wear hard leather overcoats, made to deflect a durkhan tusk or a wayward spear.

Hetan alone wears a metal sword. A gift. It will not be useful in the hunt, at least not often, but he never rides without it. He has named it Caution, for many reasons, but mainly because a great weapon deserves a sublime name.

They move slowly, deliberately through the tall plain grasses, the horses picking their way around scrub brush. This is the calm that comes before.

There is something odd about this calm, though, something unnatural. The herds should be sensing something, should be massing together to protect the young. Instead the herds are simply grazing, heads down, tails flicking back and forth.

Then Hetan sees it. A man, perhaps. Walking in the midst of the durkhan. Simply walking.

Hetan holds up a hand and the hunt stops. “I see,” he says, his voice low, “something.”
“Something?” one of his hunters repeats.
“A man by appearance,” Hetan says. “Walking through the herds.”
“Then no man by nature,” says Yemid, one of the oldest among them. “The herds would panic.”
Hetan nods. “Yet…” his voice trails off. “I know this man, whatever he is.”
“How?”
“I do not know. But I will ride to meet him.”
“You are our eyes,” Yemid says. He will not tell Hetan what to do, but he will remind him of his place.
“Nevertheless,” Hetan says.

He breaks from the hunt and rides, alone, toward the figure, towards the herds. He is as naked as a hunter can be, stripped of his companions, vulnerable on the plain. Hetan can see the man now, dark-skinned, tall, and dressed in chain mail. Of all the useless things to be wearing on the plains. Chain mail. Hetan snorts involuntarily. Foolish. But the herds do not hear him. The man, however does.

“I was clothed in these when I died,” he says. And though he is still far away, his words are clear, as if he is riding right beside Hetan. “It amuses me to wear them, sometimes.”
“You have the Tongue,” Hetan says.
“Yes, and the Ears, as it turns out,” says the man. “And you have the Eyes.”
“It was a gift.”
“Yes,” the man says, standing still, facing the rider, still some distance away. “I gave it to you.”
“Then you are…”
“Again. Yes. Demeg Amalen, as your fathers might say. Tip of the Spear. Or Chaelder, in the language of the Frelish. The Helm. And quite a few more, some even I dare not speak.”

Hetan is approaching the man, and realises what he already knew. This is not a man. Not of any kind he has ever met. This is a god. For his tribe, for his nation, this is the god. Amelen, the Spear. God of war.

He dismounts, drops the reins. Kneels at the feet of his god. Who kicks him in the head.

“That’s not really needed,” Amalen says. “Stand up. I have a message.”

Hetan rubs his head. No blood. Good. But still, undignified.

“I’m not much for all the pleasantries of godhood,” Amalen says. “I’ve come to tell you something.”
“To tell me something?” Hetan knows this will be considered a great honor, but with a sore head and a distinct sense of his lack of dignity, he is more annoyed than anything.
“Yes. These herds. Get away from them as quickly as possible.”
Hetan shakes his head. “The tribe must eat.”
Amalen rolls his eyes. “Stubborn. Great. Eat something else. Something small, something that won’t be noticed, something very, very far away from here.”
“And why must we starve?” Hetan asks, indignant now. “What great sin have we done that we are cast out of our lands?”
“Listen to me, barbarian. You have spilled much blood in my name, supposedly for me, and I’m here to answer the prayers you have yet to pray. The prayers that you assuredly will pray if you stay in this place. That herd you are going to prey on? It is no herd. It has never been. Every year this herd disappears, did you ever notice that? Did you follow its tracks to see them diminish until they were nothing but a pair of human footprint?”
“In the winter months we eat from the salted stores or set traps,” Hetan says. “There is no need to follow the herd. It would be a senseless slaughter.”
“And he knows that. Oh yes, he’s willing to sacrifice a bit of himself, those young or deformed, anything you can catch. He know you won’t kill all of him, he know you are almost alone among the people of the world who won’t kill all of him, and so he comes here. Do you know why? He comes here to hide. From us. He hides from the gods!”
Hetan is confused. “He? Who is he?”
“One of the first heroes, Hetan. One of the Great Ones. A power so immense he might even seek to dethrone the gods. He is a man, but he is also the durkhan. Many lifetimes ago he found a way in, he found a way to meld himself to the herds, to become so many animals at will. The ritual… ah, that ritual scoured this plain clean. Did you know this delightful meadow was a range of mountains? He moved the mountains. Do you understand now?”
“We have been devouring the flesh of a man?” Hetan steps back, horrified.
“The flesh of man, the flesh of a beast, is it so different? No matter. We have found him now. We have found him and we are going to chain him to the heart of the mountain that still beats under this plain. And when we do that, we may indeed find a range of mountain here again.”
“I begin to understand, then,” Hetan says. “You seek to warn us.”
“You will probably die,” the god replies. “You will probably all die in this chaining. But it must be done. He must be… put down.”
“Because he challenges you?” Hetan says, beginning to think the gods are as selfish as their legends tell. “You fear the durkhan?”
“Because he challenges everything. He has been melded, his soul has been joined to the soul of an animal for many thousands of years. How sane do you think he might be? Every year his flesh bursts forth into a thousand, a hundred thousand durkhan. Incredible, mindless pain. Did he know how much agony he would see, century after century? If so, can you imagine how desperate a creature he must have been? To forge such a profane ritual. Insanity. Or if not, can you imagine how desperate he is to escape? His power grows with each year. The herds grow. Even I can feel it now, and I am not among the most… receptive of the gods. And where do you think he’ll go to escape his torment? Not to the halls of the dead, no, anywhere but there. He’ll go up. And you know what’s directly above him? Me.”
Ah, Hetan thinks. “This is about position. You chain him to the earth so that you may rest on your ass in whatever realm you call home while my people leave their lands, perhaps to die?”
“You have no idea!” Amelen roars. “No idea what will happen if a beast ascends the throne of war! Everything will be lost. Everything. He… it will lay waste to the dreams of every man. He will not lose his torment, no, not at all.” The god lifts up his chain mail, revealing a gash across his torso. It oozes blood and fluids. It looks… raw. “I have lived with the pain of this wound for every single one of what passes for days in my realm. Every single one. It’s a wonder I’m sane. Perhaps,” he says, “I’m not.”
There is a moment of silence. Hetan does not know what to say to this.
“There is no time left for choices, barbarian. No more time to take stock and make decisions. The gods are as one. We will chain them all. Every single Great One. All the champions. All the heroes. All the swords. We will chain them as far down as we can push their miserable, undying corpses, and we’ll throw away the key.”
“And then you’ll turn away,” Hetan says. It has been revealed. He knows the ending to this story. The great warleader conquers every foe and goes home to die. But gods do not die. Or perhaps they do, but first they turn away.
Amalen’s eyes widen. “You have discovered the plot, then,” he says. “Yes. We will turn away. You will be better without us. No blessings, but no curses. You will, I think, become your own gods of war. Congratulations. None of you prayed for this. But you are given it anyways. It is done. Now, leave. I will protect you on your way back to your tribe.”

With that, Demeg Amalen, the Tip of the Spear, is gone. Not so much as a rustle in his wake.

The herds still haven’t sniffed Hetan out. They can’t hear his footsteps, he realises. They don’t know what is about to happen. To them.

He looks at one grazing, picking at choice bits of green. Its tusks can tear a man open, leave him empty and dying on the plain. He looks into the durkhan’s eyes, but can’t see anything. The dull eyes of a beast.

Before long, he is riding away. Back to the tribe, to convince them to leave the plains that had once been mountains. To convince them that they would be mountains again. To convince them, and perhaps to die.

Microsoft owned the desktop computing space (for while at least) with we now call the “ecosystem”. That is to say, they didn’t just produce Windows, but they produced Windows as a platform. Good developer tools, good office tools, all of this led to them owning that space. Users chose the Microsoft way because the Microsoft way became the only way that really made sense. There’s a lot of really unethical and evil stuff that Microsoft has done and continues to do to keep from losing that space. Windows and Office are their core products.

Everything that Microsoft does (except for, strangely, X-Box, though I’m sure they have a reason for that) is directly tied into Windows. Even their keyboards have a Windows button. Zune, Windows Phone 7 (what a truly awful name), Windows Live, Bing… it’s all built to keep people using Windows. To keep that pipeline of money going directly in Microsoft’s pockets. The chief threat for Microsoft is that people will be able to easily move away from Windows, taking their data (and their money) with them.

Google on the other hand, isn’t building products to protect a platform. After all, you can use Google anywhere. Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android, you name it. You don’t need a particular set of software or hardware to use Google search and be served up Google ads.

The threat for Google is a bit different from the threat for Microsoft. Where Microsoft is afraid their captive audience might slowly drift away, Google is afraid their mostly self-chosen audience might not be able to access Google search. Microsoft’s platform dominance was built on an ecosystem, Google’s search dominance is also being extended through an ecosystem with (and this is crucial) Google by default.

Any time Google is faced with a challenge to their search dominance, they enter that market. Google isn’t the default on your phone? No problem, Google will make software to run on your phone. Google isn’t the default in your browser? No problem, Google will write their own (better, imho) browser. Google isn’t the default on your operating system? No problem, Google will release an operating system.

Defaults are terribly important. Microsoft defaults to Bing. Not because they love search or are even (by a very long shot) a search company or even an internet company. No, Microsoft defaults to Bing because they want to keep you hooked into Windows. Search revenue is incidental. Microsoft’s offerings, such as Bing and especially Windows Live exist specifically to hook you to Windows and keep that cash baby alive. They don’t want cross-platform accessible data freedom. No, they fear that more than anything.

Google on the other hand wants you to default to Google. Not because they want to protect their platforms. The revenue from their platforms is incidental. Google’s offerings, such as Chrome and especially Android exist for no other reason than to keep you searching with them.

And this is why you see Google and Microsoft competing in the same spaces so often. Their operating philosophies are completely different. Microsoft isn’t particularly know (to its detriment) for its whimsy, for example. But they enter the same spaces to do the same thing: Protect their core product. No other reason. They are protecting very different things, and are very different companies, but that’s why they’re there. Make no mistake. Everything Google does comes back to search. Everything Microsoft does comes back to Windows. And so it goes.

It’s the lottery problem. There’s a huge payout in the lottery, so people buy tickets, hoping they’ll get a huge payout. Almost no-one gets a huge payout. The chances of winning a large amount of money is vanishingly close to zero. But people play anyway.

The human mind is far too tuned to all-or-nothing scenarios. Lotteries are a positive all-or-nothing, nuclear power is a negative all-or-nothing.

You won’t win the lottery. Statistically. You won’t. It’s almost impossible.

And you won’t die from a nuclear power plant. Statistically. It’s, again, almost impossible.

But the human brain is silly. We buy lottery tickets, and we fear nuclear fallout. In Japan right now, 20,000 or so people have died from a very, very nasty earthquake and tsunami. That’s a lot of people! But a large chunk of the media attention has been devoted to the nuclear situation.

Consider this: If there had been an earthquake and tsunami and there had been no nuclear power plants in the vicinity, the same number of people would have died.

There’s your brain making you stupid. You pay attention to the all-or-nothing threat, while ignoring the (much more real) constant threat.

If the media was really concerned about people dying, they’d be recommending moving everyone on the Pacific rim to, say, France. Living on the Japanese island is foolhardy in the long term. The city of Tokyo is simply waiting (placidly) to die.

Nuclear power, on the other hand, is safe. It’s the safest kind of power. Period.

Your brain, on the other hand…

The media (pardon the pejorative) has been going into “Wah! No-one wants an election! It’s expensive! Wah!” mode lately. Sometimes I (unfortunately) listen to 680 News in Toronto, or read the Toronto Sun (mostly to see if they can continue their record streak of taking truly horrific photographs of truly undesirable women in bikinis). This is their dominant theme right now. Which, I mean, I understand. They’re both right-leaning hack-or-faux-journalism outlets, and if an election takes the focus away from talking (ad nauseam, for years on end) about how the Toronto Maple Leafs/Toronto Raptors/Toronto Football Club suck at their respective sports, or what reality television show cast member has been ousted (for being a giant douche-bag) or which reality show cast member has “won” (by being a giant douche-bag), or which hare-brained scheme out local gas-bag politician, Giorgio Mammoliti, wants to use to make some quick cash for the city… well, anything else is bad for business.

Okay, so the above paragraph is just a little P. J. O’Rourke impression. Pretty unbearable, right? But, seriously folks:

I want an election. I really do. I get to voice my opinion on the state of the country, have my voice heard, and cast my ballot. This doesn’t happen often. In fact in this country I very rarely get to be involved in the political apparatus. In an election, I can. And I will.

Canada has one of the most fair and one of the cheapest elections in the world. Did you know that? It costs roughly $8.50 per person per Federal election. That’s less than the price of a (cheap) movie ticket. That’s the price you pay for our kind of democracy. And the media would have you believe that’s too high a price to pay.

It’s really, really not.

This year I’m going to be reading the positions papers of all the parties. I’m leaning toward voting NDP. As far as I can tell the Conservatives (not the Progressive Conservatives of years past, but a new name on the Reform party, the most wretched of far right-wing, reactionary, xenophobic, homophobic, anti-education, anti-union, pro-gun, Leave It To Beaver trips back to the Fifties (ten points if you get the reference)) are in the pocket of business, of at least consider “the economy” as a whole more important than individuals as people who need to be able to afford to live. The Liberals are something, but no-one is quite sure what that thing is; they had a pretty good run under Jean Cretien, who was a decent leader, but they seem rudderless at the moment. The Bloq doesn’t have an candidates in my riding, so I can’t vote for them (though if there were an Ontario party looking to excise my province from the rest of the country, or at least expel Alberta from the Confederation, I’d vote for that). The NDP though, despite it’s union roots, seems focused on the plight of the everyman, which is a good thing. Plus they’re the only party to have a decent tech platform. And they’re not beholden to the titans of industry. And Jack Layton seems like pretty upstanding and principled guy.

That said, I’m going to figure out who I’m voting for, and then vote. I’ll add my voice to the pack. I’ll be happy to do it. An election every 2 years is a small price to pay for the democracy we all seem to take for granted. Imagine the people of Egypt looking down on you when you complain about the cost. At least you didn’t have to have a revolution.

To you
I dedicate the language
of quantum mechanics:
the placelessness of electrons,
how they are either/or but not between.

Yours
are effects that precede causes,
spooky action at a distance,
a furious bubbling into and
out of existence.

To you
I dedicate Newton’s still-moving heart,
the antique, inadequate design.
With love, to all the yous
I’ve discovered.

They chained them all to the earth, in barrows, under mountains, in underwater caves. Wherever they could. Anywhere that would hold them. The gods cleansed the world of heroes. They wiped it clean of champions. They made a fresh start.

But the great ones did not go easily. As chains began encircling they fell heavily. If the gods would so abuse their children, well, the children would abuse the grandchildren. So the earth witnessed. Molten stone rained from the sky. New craters became new valleys. In turn new valleys became new oceans. Continents cracked apart and continents merged. Mountain ranges rose and fell.

When the chaining was at its end, when the ritual was over, the gods looked out at a world in birth pangs. A world of fresh fire and fresh ice, where perhaps all that once stood was levelled. Perhaps.

Then the gods turned, as one. They turned and left the world, and took with them all their gifts and curses. The awesome and vile power wielded by the talented ebbed away. Whatever priests remained alive felt a chill steep into their souls. The gifts, the curses, all gone.

The few that could feel, felt, and knew the terror of rebirth. The blindness of change, of newness.

They would get over it. Eventually.

The gods retreated to do what gods do. Some slept. Others pushed the borders of their realms further into the Unmade, became explorers. Others simply fell to dust.

Only one god did what none of the other would. He returned to the mortal world. Oh, it was cheating. They had agreed not to return. Not to step onto the mortal plane again.

But he knew what he was doing. Krastas, god of the harvest, knew what he was doing. He scattered himself on the current of the winds. He made of himself a million seeds.

Where he touched down, a tree sprung forth. Roots sunk down, deep down, seeking. One more link to bind the chains. Should they ever find away. Should they ever seek to escape.

A million strange trees, each bearing nine faces. Nine faces, eight turned to the side, one facing forward. To stare for ever at the world. To bear witness.

I’m almost glad I wasn’t alive in the 60s. I mean, it was an exciting time, full of promise and change, but also a fairly confusing time. It’s nice to have 50 years or so in between myself and those years, if only to sit down and take a good look at what happened.

There was a lot of stuff going on then. A lot. Too much to examine at one time, I think. There’s an entire sea change that took place, apparently overnight. And for better or worse, we live in the shadow of the 60s even today.

What interests me more than anything else about the 60s is how the culture shifted. Or more to the point, how a counter-culture developed (for good reasons; the culture of the 20s-50s was pretty corrupt under its gloss of flag and family), and then how the counter-culture became the culture.

At some point, the rebels won. No-one realised it at the time, but they won.

But at the same time, they lost. Perhaps the rebels and hippies and whatever else managed to inject a bit of their ethic into society at large, but what they got back was more than they could bargain for. I should mention that at no time do I think the culture co-opted the counter-culture. No, I think they are one and the same. Or at least at some point they became one and the same.

It helps to imagine the counter-culture as a consumer class. Because above all else, they defined themselves by what they wore and what they bought. There’s a reason the VW van took off (hopefully not too literally, not too often). They appealed to the counter-culture.

And when the counter-culture bought it, those symbols became the currency of the new economy. Instead of standing apart from the culture, the counter-culture bought a bunch of stuff, created their own culture, and when you do that, people try to sell you things.

So began the cycle of “rebellious” fashions. Why sell a man three suits, a bunch of shirts, and some under-shirts that will last him years and maybe decades, when you can find the next big thing next year and have him cycle his clothes regularly?

Even better than that, have him believe that he’s going against the Man by wearing stuff his parents or his parents parents wouldn’t approve of. Who cares, as long as you sell him something.

This puts the lie to counter-culture right there. Every movement begins as an underground thing, moves mainstream, and then falls out of fashion. This isn’t because the lean, mean capitalist machine is co-opting all the good stuff (most companies couldn’t make something cool if they tried), but because the counter-culture is (as the culture was) inherently capitalistic. It defines itself with things, with fashion, with hair, with jewellery, with music, with anything that can give you some sort of cache, some sort of cool.

I’ll go out on a limb and say that the most rebellious thing you can do in today’s society is opt out of that. Opt out of the cycle of cool. Opt out of the business of status symbols. Opt out of keeping up with the Joneses, but also opt out of the cutting edge.

Materialism comes in all kinds of forms. For me, it used to be chasing cool. Comparative cool, I’d hasten to add, but cool nonetheless. Now I think it might be the desire to be at the forefront of technological churn (as of me writing this, I very much want an iPad 2; someone slap me please). For you it might be something else.

The real insight in all of this is to stop defining ourselves with things. Or, at least, with things you can buy. If you’re looking for a thing to define yourself with, try an empty cross. Try an empty tomb. No-one’s ever going to try to get you to opt out of love. No-one’s going to try to get you to opt out selflessness. Chase qualities. Or, if you want to say it the way Jesus would have said it, store up for yourselves treasures in heaven. There is, after all, no property crime in heaven. The kingdom doesn’t rust. And the kingdom is now.

There’s that.

When I look at my data usage, I specifically want to see my data usage in a certain billing period. I want to see if I’m at my cap. If you can’t be so kind as align my billing period with the actual month, at least let me easily look up my usage within your wonky billing period.

I just found out I went over my cap last month by like 10mb. It’s a very charge, but it’s still a charge.

By the by, I own the HTC Desire, and it’s a fantastic phone. The only things I don’t like about it are the camera and the limited internal storage. The camera is pretty shitty no matter how you look at it, and I find myself bumping up against the insanely low internal storage at least once a week. I think I have something like 14mb left. Now, I’m running CyanogenMod 7rc2, and I’ve moved all the non-essential stuff onto the SD card (browser, google apps, reader, etc), even a few system apps, but still. An SD card just doesn’t cut it for system internals.

Other than that? Absolutely fantastic. Plus I dropped it on concrete once and it didn’t shatter. I consider that a bonus.