philisha.net

I’m playing a game of blog-pong with Ron Garrett: entrepreneur, scientist, and Lisp hacker extraordinaire. Join in the fun!

That’s a straw man. No one (except perhaps Richard Dawkins—we scientists have our fanatics too) argues that empiricism is the only valid form of knowledge.

I’m not so sure about that. I know I was wrong in assuming you believed that, but I think it is a very widespread worldview. In our culture, science is considered the gatekeeper of knowledge. Consider the stem-cell debate. (I don’t want to get into the debate itself, just to point out the way the questions are phrased and what that indicates about our culture.) At the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Ron Reagan, son of the former president, said people who are morally opposed to embryonic stem cell research have to realize that “their belief is just that—an article of faith.” “They are entitled to it,” he went on, “but it does not follow that the theology of a few should be allowed to forestall the health and well-being of the many.” Since it’s a “morality” issue and not something that has been decided by science, there is no right answer. Since there is no truth, people must come up with their own truths and follow those. The debate should be about the human status of embryos, but since science refuses to give a final say about it, the entire argument is neatly sidestepped.

Again, I don’t mean to say that all scientists believe this. In fact, from what I’ve seen most scientists and hackers are too smart to fall for moral relativism. But I do think that it is an attitude our culture has embraced. (If you want me to, I can post more examples.) It’s quite possible that some scientists (such as yourself) reject the idea simply because they spend so much of their life doing science, and at that point it becomes clear that there is more to life and more to truth. Perhaps people who are further removed from science can see it as a far-off ideal that can solve all problems. (Perhaps I’m conjecturing too much!)

C.S. Lewis’ The Abolition of Man deals with the same questions of truth on the plane of literature—I’d recommend reading at least the first chapter.

It’s been a long time since I was in school so maybe things have changed, but in my day such topics were only ever touched on in history class, and then only in advanced placement classes, and then only to mention in passing that there was this philosopher named Locke who had these ideas that turned out to be very influential and so forth. Never once did anyone even hint at the idea that Lockian empiricism was “true” in any metaphysical sense.

Well you see, that is part of the problem. It’s more subtle than that. If people outright stated in schools that science is the only valid way to gain valid knowledge, people would see that for the narrow-minded worldview it is. No one actually says “Look, here’s Locke—read it and agree!” because (a) no student wants to read Locke (textbooks are marvellously condensed) and (b) then the bright students would argue with the ideas. Ideas that are conveyed subtly and never spoken of directly have a much easier time spreading.

It’s you saying opinion is inferior to empiricism, not me. I have actually argued the exact opposite.

Opinion is indisputably inferior to fact in this: opinions cannot be true or false. The prevalent moral attitude of the day says that one may believe anything he wishes about religion, since it is merely opinion. But this is much worse than saying that his religion is untrue—it goes so far as to say that religion is something that cannot be true or false, since it is merely opinion.

I’ll try to respond to your next post later. In the mean time, thanks for the engaging discussion.

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This fellow I know named Mar is in a position where I believe he could put Xanga out of business fairly easily. I hope he takes my advice—it would make the world a better place.

So Mar—here’s what you need to do:

1. Get popular. Get your name out. This will bring in the crowds who want to see your nifty artwork.
2. Start posting all your images in BMP instead of JPG. (This is the sneaky bit.)
3. Listen to the weeping as Xanga’s bandwidth costs go through the roof.
4. ???
5. Profit!

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Wow, Pope Benedict XVI “gets it” big time:

From the beginning, Christianity has understood itself as the religion of the Logos, as the religion according to reason…It has always defined men, all men without distinction, as creatures and images of God, proclaiming for them…the same dignity. In this connection, the Enlightenment is of Christian origin and it is no accident that it was born precisely and exclusively in the realm of the Christian faith….It was and is the merit of the Enlightenment to have again proposed these original values of Christianity and of having given back to reason its own voice… Today, this should be precisely [Christianity’s] philosophical strength, in so far as the problem is whether the world comes from the irrational, and reason is not other than a ‘sub-product,’ on occasion even harmful of its development—or whether the world comes from reason, and is, as a consequence, its criterion and goal…In the so necessary dialogue between secularists and Catholics, we Christians must be very careful to remain faithful to this fundamental line: to live a faith that comes from the Logos, from creative reason, and that, because of this, is also open to all that is truly rational.

From the Wikipedia article on Logos.

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My dad’s in China!

Cool, huh?

Some day I’ll go there.

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From the Common Lisp Wiki:

CLiki pages can be edited by anyone at any time. Imagine a fearsomely comprehensive disclaimer of liability. Now fear, comprehensively.

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I know, I know, you don’t need another reason to hate Internet Explorer. I can practically hear the groaning from here. Well, shove it. It’s worse than we thought.

Proper Unicode:

Internet Explorer:

So my beautiful piratical character decoration was lost on those of my viewers who by ill luck, lamentable ignorance, or blatant unabashed laziness remain users of the worst browser. Oh yeah, and the fonts are grinding on the eyes. A pox upon them! A pox indeed.

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Planet Gnome is dressed up to celebrate the wonderful occasion of Talk like a Pirate Day.

Pirate-related links:

• Pirate Keyboard
• Pirate Jenny (Unfortunately they seem to be defunct.)
• The Best Pirate Song Ever
• Past TLAPDs.
• Pirate Blog
• thepiratebay.org has lots of fun mocking incompetent copyright lawyers!

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If you’re in the area and have time tomorrow, Fullerton Library is having a book sale which is pretty sweet. Tomorrow they are all half-off, and later in the day it’s a dollar for a whole bag of books. Alisha and I cleaned the place out earlier today; we spent way too much, but we got great deals. (There’s still some good stuff left though.)

Since we got so many books, we figured now would be as good a time as any to sell our excess. So please have a look at our list!

Some highlights:

• Hardcover Idylls of the King
• Hardcover Le Morte D’Arthur
• A set on ancient civilisations
• A set on how things work

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