Philosophy of the Void

In general, I believe human concepts do not apply to the divine. Like our hammers, engines, and superconductors, the concepts we utilize are tools developed in sync with our temporal world. In this world, objects can be counted. Recognizing and developing this insight has benefited human civilization. The same can be said of concepts like intention and existence.

Precisely because our thought systems have come to revolve around concepts like these, we often apply them directly to realms beyond our own. That is why humans can fight wars over issues like how many deities there are, what is intended by the divine, and whether or not God exists. Why are these questions any more relevant than whether or not God is pink? What could an ameba tell us about macroeconomics? I believe the difference between an atheist, agnostic, and believer is rather trivial.

PS: As I am abroad, updates will be sporadic for the next couple of weeks.

It is possible to have faith in some higher entity and be an agnostic at the same time. Fitzgerald once said, “The measure of a first class intelligence is its ability to hold contradicting ideas simultaneously without going mad.” The same is the case with faith and agnosticism. Since there are so many religions with frequently contradicting creeds, I think the best method of religious education is that of the agnostic sort. Teach children what we know, not what we believe. There is no conclusive evidence that God exists or does not exist. The same is true with the issue of creation. This is what should be taught to pure, untainted minds. The decision to subscribe to a particular faith or not should occur through free will rather than brainwashing. This way, if we are to go to hell for making the wrong decision, we will have nobody but ourselves to blame.

My advisor at Stanford, Professor Daniel Okimoto, once told me one of his colleagues at Princeton had conducted a study on the relationship between appearance and success. Apparently, the results showed that a subjective indicator of appearance (i.e. a rating of how “good looking” somebody was) correlated very well with annual income. Intuitively, I don’t find this terribly surprising, but I wonder what underlies this phenomenon if it’s true. After all, it’s a clich

I believe assumption lies at the heart of most human conflict. Any belief system can be deconstructed to basic assumptions or postulates. At this level, no criteria exist by which to judge the superiority of one assumption over another. Therefore, conflicts of this sort cannot be resolved rationally or logically. Paradigmatic conflict within academia often follows this pattern, as Thomas Kuhn points out in his Structure of Scientific Revolutions. When camps of academics analyze the same problem from different underlying assumptions, it is often impossible to declare a winner based on empirical evidence alone. The same can be said of conflicts between religions and cultures. Is the group more important than the individual? Should seniority and experience be valued more highly than innovation and creativity? What is desired by the divine? Whether passed down over the ages or concocted arbitrarily, the answers to such questions cannot be answered rationally, at least without reference to other assumptions.

How do assumptions propagate? There are many mechanisms – indoctrination, material or spiritual bribery, or the mere process of growing up in a particular society. However, the most crucial mechanism is probably peer pressure. Oftentimes, assumptions become “common sense,” and deviation comes to be considered uncool, awkward, or unethical. The most influential source of assumptions can be close people like friends or relatives, or people who command great respect. This makes sense, since there are probably advantages to coordination. I’ve always thought that truth lies in the absence of assumption. That, I suppose, is my assumption.

One of the jobs of national central banks is to engage in countercyclical monetary policy. In the US, this function is carried out by the Federal Reserve, chaired by Alan Greenspan. Basically, when the economy is stagnating like it is now, the Fed lowers interest rates to get things going, while if the economy is growing too rapidly, the opposite is done to cool things down.

I think one way for people to avoid emotional distress is to have a central bank for their emotions. Needless to say, when one is feeling down, it’s often helpful to cheer up a little bit and do something fun. On the other hand, when one is feeling excessively happy, or if things seem to be going too well, I think it’s equally necessary to do something to feel a little down – thinking about suffering or how things could go wrong, maybe. From my own experience, this seems to have an effect similar to monetary policy – overall stability and relatively mild swings in emotion.

Of course, unlike the national economy, stability is not necessarily the primary mission or goal in life. The excitement of a roller coaster ride might be something to strive for. In either case, I think deliberate control is both possible and desirable.

In the medium-term future, I think the modern metropolis will cease to exist. This is because of two factors. First, the ability of terrorists and antisocial beings to inflict large-scale destruction on urban areas is increasing asymmetrically compared to our ability to deter them. The balance between technologies enhancing and undermining order has shifted back and forth over the course of history. In the present, a terrorist attack employing weapons of mass destruction is already conceivable, even perhaps probable. In the future, the technological trajectory appears to favor destructive forces. Knowledge continues to diffuse and costs continue to decline. As the threshold for obtaining or producing nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons becomes lower, the probability of a catastrophic incident is bound to increase.

Second, information technology is making it increasingly feasible for most economic and social transactions to occur over large distances. Location and network effects remain relevant, but I suspect this will not be the case for very long.

These factors lead me to believe that future generations will increasingly opt out of cities. The demography of the future will most likely resemble something like that of the pre-industrial world. In historical terms, we probably live at the closing stages of the era of the metropolis.

From a strictly utilitarian perspective, all rational, good human beings should believe in the afterlife. There are two relevant possibilities: there is an afterlife, and there is no afterlife. In the former case, disbelief in the afterlife would be mistaken. In the latter case, our extant beliefs about the afterlife exist in order to comfort us. Thus, disbelief will decrease our utility. The only exceptions would be the overly pessimistic, the downright evil, and those who value unverifiable proximity to truth more than tangible utility.

Yesterday we had a power outage for two hours or so. I think the heavy rain over the past few days damaged the electric lines. It really reminded me of being in California during the energy crisis. At the time, I lived in Haus Mitt (the German theme house) at Stanford. Stanford has its own source of power, but Haus Mitt was located on a different grid. Consequently, our house went dark many times.

One night, my roommate Don and I were sitting in front of our computers in our third floor room. The lights dimmed a bit, but then they came back. Then they dimmed again, and came back. This was all very unusual, but I just assumed we were going into a rolling blackout until Don climbed out of the window onto the roof and said, “Whoa.” Outside, the sky was turning all different colors – pink, green, red, etc., one after another. The lights dimmed and came back as if in sync with the changing colors of the sky. Finally, the lights all went out. It was a fitting prelude for a UFO to descend from the clouds. Combined with the eerie, silent darkness that came afterwards, the moment was bizarre and surreal.

Turns out a local transformer station had blown up, lighting up the entire sky. Actually, maybe the aliens replaced my memory after bringing me back to earth. It doesn’t really matter. It was an interesting, harmless taste of Armageddon.

Economists often talk about “missing markets” where some physical, legal, informational, or other impediment makes it impossible for a market to exist for some commodity. It struck me recently that there is a missing market for prime advertisement targets. I always wondered how commercials were profitable. I couldn’t recall the last time I felt influenced by an ad. I often suspected a psychological effect.

I changed my mind after sitting through a set of commercials recently with my friend. While I retained some conceptual sense of what a commercial contained (a vacuum cleaner, a talking dog, people drinking in a bar), my friend identified each commercial with a unique brand name or product. When we went shopping, my friend would say things like, “Oh, that’s that vacuum cleaner in that TV ad” whereas I wouldn’t even recognize the thing after being told.

I suspect ads are more effective on people who memorize things by symbols and names rather than by concepts. Those with bad memories, the oblivious, and the absent-minded are probably also affected very little. Since this missing market is not likely to be resolved anytime soon, those of us who fit this profile can rest assured that our free riding will continue well into the future.

Another issue that will probably become salient in the next few centuries is the political status of non-human sentient beings. Should genetically modified “smart” dogs and other animals receive the right to vote? Should robots, computers, or other non-organic entities be granted Constitutional protection? Such questions pose a fundamental challenge to our concept of humanity and the institutions that protect our civil liberties.

In the end, I think fundamental rights will have to be extended to non-humans. To deny these based on biological premises strikes me as a form of crass racism. This raises the tricky issue, though, of what qualifies a being for legal rights and protections. Should it be based on merit? If so, at the individual or species level?

One solution to this dilemma might be to genetically modify all living species so that they become intellectually akin to human beings. Mechanical beings could also be designed to understand elections and other political processes. Hopefully, future generations will devise a solution more creative and less diabolical than the familiar follies of our time.