On the Illusion of the State

Consider for a moment; that the 'State' is not a real thing. Not real like your table, or your hat, or your house. It is just an idea. It is an agreement, between individual actors to act in a certain way, or according to certain rules. But this agreement, these rules, they also do not exist.

Perhaps they are written down somewhere, they exist as ink or as digital numbers, but really, that ink isn't anything serious either. It does not serve a function by its self. It requires thoughts. It requires understanding. It requires a concious, active, aware human brain to make a decision.

This human brain, makes mistakes, and more importantly, has its own aspirations and desires acting only for the purpose of furthering its own interests.

A truly alien perspective on this, would to ask why so much pomp and frills around the replication of DNA?

The answers of course lie within a mistaken belief that these illusions keep us safe some how, or that without them we would lose our humanity.

I'm not sure; I'm really not.

When I look at shit like this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/13judge.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/video-watch-judge-jail-teenager-1589558

I mean, really, a judge is just a man who wears a dress and bangs a wooden mallet. Even worse, the so-called law-enforcers doing his bidding are just psychotic apes that have devices capable of lethally throwing metal around... for what?

For an idea in their head.

Perhaps in the days of the Khans, with roving barbarians, when war-fare was fought with steel, blood, and sweat, maybe then the State was an idea worth holding onto.

As I see it now, in this modern age with modern communicative abilities, it is a way to rob us of our humanity; the only apparatus capable of creating terrible, pointless weapons of mass destruction, and even worse, capable of senselessly unleashing those weapons upon human beings. Not for reasons of a single rational mind, but rather because of the kind of hodge podge decisions and outcomes that come naturally from group decision making.

What Science Doesn't Do

Science does not tell us why. It is not a value judgement tool. It's really not either a tool for helping to describe what reality is, only does it tell you what reality does.

Science is a tool for giving us useful information. Science is not necessarily in competition with other information sources.

Science only needs to do one thing; produce reliable and measurable results. Nothing more, nothing less.

Its important to understand this. Gravity might as well be caused by invisible, weightless, scentless, ethereal gremlens who have very strict mathematical guidelines for their actions. Science does not care about that which is non-predictive and that which does not leave detectable evidence.

Those who work to "undermine" Science, really must not understand it; for viewed through the lens of those who understand what it is; all a science denier is really doing is screaming at a trendline on a graph.

Unless you have some radical new set of points to place onto that graph; no amount of pleading, begging, or snide remarks will change that trend line.

Simply because you can find collaborative evidence for what you beleive is true; does not mean that it is true. What is true must be determined by a natural repeatable occurrence upon the trend line. Anything else is called Cherry Picking.

Starting with a single idea, and building like a tree upwards and outwards in several branches is not the way your knowledge should be; but rather it should be the conclusion of reoccurring, predicatable, likley activities, which survive the null hypothesis as well.

Quick Explanation on the Meaning of Life

So, real quick here.

A loong loong loong ass time ago, there was this chemical reaction, right? And it was really special, because it kind of had a sort of avalanche effect wherein it would just keep repeating itself. A sort of resonance if you will.

Then. Then something amazing happened. That resonance gained the ability to sort of like, infect, the area around it. Think like how a crystal grows, how it starts small, and then just spreads and spreads.

Or like a fire. And like a fire, this chemical reaction consume's the energy around it.

Eventually, a most important thing happened; the resources to consume became limited. The fire began to die out. What was once a thriving mass of the first organisms ever ate up all the energy sources it had, and then promptly came to the edge of extinction.

Until, and no one perhaps will ever know for sure exactly how, one of those self-replicating avalanche fires, through some kind of accident perhaps in its replication, discovered that it now had an ability new to its species. Totally randomly, and without reason, the thing, this creature, this life now could move. It was mobile.

And this was a big deal, because now this fire could jump across distances that did not contain the energy resources it needed to grow, and could move to a new area where, in fact, it could grow and spread and replicate.

This kind of competition for resources, over millions and billions of years, has lead to a most fascinating arms race that is the amazing display of life you see before your eyes today. The hardware and the drivers and software used to run it has changed, has become dramatically complex; but the game itself has not changed. and here is my conclusion, right at the end, after the tldr; :

tldr;

Life is merely the self-sustaining consumption of available resources. It has no meaning beyond that; and every action taken outside of consumption and replication, are to the interests of successfully achieving consumption or replication in a most effective way.

Even simpler, if it wasn't obvious; everything thing you do is to achieve your own interests, and those interests are limited to securing as much safety, sex, and food as possible for your DNA.

Even even simpler; safety (lack of unhibition of the replication), sex (replication), and food (energy for replication) as possible for your DNA, is really just... you know... replication of your DNA.

The simple point is that you work to further your DNA's interests in every action as you perceive it. That's all; no more complex than that.

The simple simple simple point is replication.

The point is to replicate.

That's it. That's why you are here. Game over. No more searching.

Done.

RE:Objective vs Subjective Morality PART I (the importance of functional definitions)

This is going to be a multi parter

This post is in response to a post made by Steven Novella at Neurologica Blog entitled 'Objective vs Subject Morality'

Steven Novella is one of my long time heroes. The work that his colleagues and he at  The Skeptic's guide to the Universe has done is beyond compare. I have nothing but love and respect for the man, and the work he does.

Writing a blog post on his coat tails is really an act of hubris on my part, and done more for my own edification more than anything else.

So here goes:

On a recent blog post Steven Novella explains why he thinks objective morality is not only unworkable, it’s a fiction.

Steven is kind enough to define morality for us. He defines it as "a code of behavior that aspires to some goal that is perceived as good."

Unfortunately he has not defined what he considers to be the definition of 'objective' and 'subjective'. And here is the reason this blog post will have to be a multi parter.

sub·jec·tive

  [suh b-jek-tiv]  Show IPA

adjective

1.

existing in the mind; belonging to the thinking subject rather than to the object of thought ( opposedto objective ).

2.

pertaining to or characteristic of an individual; personal; individual: a subjective evaluation.

3.

placing excessive emphasis on one's own moods, attitudes, opinions, etc.; unduly egocentric.

4.

Philosophy . relating to or of the nature of an object as it is known in the mind as distinct from athing in itself.

5.

relating to properties or specific conditions of the mind as distinguished from general or universalexperience.

ob·jec·tive

  [uh b-jek-tiv]  Show IPA

[...]

adjective

4.

being the object or goal of one's efforts or actions.

5.

not influenced by personal feelings, interpretations, or prejudice; based on facts; unbiased: anobjective opinion.

6.

intent upon or dealing with things external to the mind rather than with thoughts or feelings, as aperson or a book.

7.

being the object of perception or thought; belonging to the object of thought rather than to thethinking subject ( opposed to subjective ).

8.

of or pertaining to something that can be known, or to something that is an object or a part of anobject; existing independent of thought or an observer as part of reality.

If you take the time to read these definitions, and then read Steven's definition, and then read the dictionary.com definitions a couple of times, you may come across the same problem that I have.

When Steven defines morality as part of a perception, it is de facto subjective, seeing as how objectivity deals with pure factuality as OPPOSED to your own thoughts (read: perceptions) and feelings.

I'm sorry Steven, but it would appear to me that the rest of your post is a lot of long-winded hand waving as you have clearly already tipped the game in your favor by setting the definitions to your personal world view.

If things which are subjective are non-facts which are part of perception, and morality is a code to achieve perceived goods, then ipso facto these perceived goods are subjective therefor the code itself becomes based upon subjectivity, making the whole mess complex, with some subjective aspects and some objective aspects.

There is a very real, very important, and very long conversation to be had on whether or not morality is objective or subjective; but that conversation needs to start in a place where definitions are not rigged.

Introduction

The Offensive Contrarian is a new blog I am starting as an outlet. The mission of this blog is to just lay it on the table. Whatever I may be thinking about (usually politics), especially the things that piss me off. Here I will give my honest and ernest opinion on them. More importantly, I will not be giving them on Facebook where everyone gets all pissy at me for saying 'mean' or 'hurtful' things.

Heads up:   I consider myself a Libertarian/Voluntaryist/Anarchist whatever you wanna call it, I have a natural distaste for the establishment; I would also consider myself part of the 'Skeptic' movement... You know, those guys who promote the scientific establishment...

I chose the name 'The Offensive Contrarian' because, at my core, I suppose that's what I am. An attention hungry loudmouth ass-hole who just loves to side with the under-dog and generally seems to love everything you fucking hate.

Here's to me posting here instead of my Facebook and somehow getting the same satisfaction of sharing something insightful/clever.