Revenge is bad

Rihatsu: Revenge is bad.
Interlocutor: Why? Other than because it's acting on emotion rather than reason.
Rihatsu: Because when one seeks revenge, one is putting one's creativity into harming someone, and thus forcing them to put theirs into fending off that harm. So one ends up creating nothing, and using two people's creativity. You could both have spent that effort producing something valuable.
Interlocutor: If you have a policy of revenge, though, it should put people off harming you in future, which would mean as long as people know you have the policy and avoid harming you, you won't actually need to get revenge.
Rihatsu: That's bad firstly because it's coercion—so if someone does something they think is good but they're mistaken, or if you have bad ideas, then you will end up seeking revenge mistakenly. For example, if someone hated criticism, and sought revenge every time they were criticized. It is as bad as enacting any coercive force on people. Secondly, because if you had that policy and then met someone new, it might take a long time for them to realize that that was your policy, so a lot of hurting would occur before they submitted to your coercive attitude. Note that "submitting" ought not to be the aim of interaction for any civilized group of people.
Interlocutor: You could make it clear that that's your policy and only do it to people who actually do something harmful to you (so that even if it is a mistake, they still had a chance to work out how you'd react). For a big example of the former, we have the state, which punishes people who break it's laws to stop them harming it (and lots of other stuff).
Rihatsu: We are not discussing populations here, but interpersonal relations. One can use reason much more creatively, as the choice here is not between Rule of Man or Rule of Law. Additionally, you're presuming there to understand what "actually harmful" means; but that is not infallibly obvious, and two people may have different ideas of what constitutes harm depending on how mistaken they are. So I believe that proposition was meaningless. Surely it would be better to have a policy amongst your friends of not hurting each other, so if someone is hurt then it was almost certainly accidental and therefore easy to solve.
Interlocutor: That might not discourage strangers, who think they'll be unlikely to gain anything from participating in a not-hurting system, or very irrational people.
Rihatsu: Rational strangers would recognize the value of not hurting people. Why would you want to be friends with irrational people? Unless you had a specific reason that mitigated the irrationality, in which case... it would be worth it anyway, or else it wouldn't quite be worth it, so you wouldn't know them. Two wrongs don't make a right; one right makes a right.
Interlocutor: You might be forced into associating with them, like if they work or study at the same place as you or if you run a state and need to account for all your citizens.
Rihatsu: I don't see why it wouldn't be better to find ways of not being affected oneself by their irrationality, rather than finding ways of lowering yourself to their level.
Interlocutor: Their irrationality might be very hard to avoid, like if, say, a co-worker makes the whole workplace less efficient by being distracting and bad at the job.
Rihatsu: Then why would more people being irrational make things more efficient?
Interlocutor: if you do something for revenge (like not car-pool for them) they'd have incentive to be more productive.
Rihatsu: That never happens. People do not like to be humiliated, and would just seek more counter revenge. And besides, if the problem is that they are irrational, and as a result unproductive and inefficient, then that won't change properly until they are persuaded. And force does not contain knowledge.
Interlocutor: I see. I agree.
Rihatsu: Not to mention, hurting people is unpleasant. I dislike situations in which people get hurt. I wouldn't want to create one, or prolong one.

Hating Mathematics

It doesn't make sense to say that you don't like math. Math is simply a tool, an alphabet—if not a language*—which we use to convey our theories on the nature of the physical world in the most precise way we can. It isn't actually a thing that bears liking or disliking, except that one may like the skilful manipulation of the tool itself, or the beauty of the resulting theorems. One normally would not do the opposite, that is, dislike handling the tool badly, because if one is bad at wielding a tool one either learns quickly how to wield it well, or goes on to something one finds easier to do. Myself, I blame school for this irrational hatred of mathematics. It is one of those few environments where one may be forced to consistently do a job one is bad at, and therefore, one of the few places that one can learn to hate a means of communication.

Sorites Paradox refutation

I was recently introduced to something called the Sorites Paradox. The person explaining it to me also referred to it as 'the vagueness paradox'. My response, before hearing its explanation, was that perhaps if one is more precise, the paradox ceases to exist. The Sorites paradox can be explained as follows:

Imagine a heap of sand. Take one grain away. Is it still a heap? Presumably so. Now remove another, and another, and another, and... at what point does it cease to be a heap?

However, a heap is an imprecise idea. It is an approximate, not a specific, measure. It makes no sense to talk of heaps in terms of the number of grains of sand; grains of sand are a very precise numerical measure. The paradox arises only when this precise measure is applied to this imprecise concept.

One ought to use only the degree of precision in one's language that is correct to the problem. This is because seeking appropriate degrees of precision helps to solve problems most efficiently. There will be some problems that do not require more than a certain degree of precision in the definition of their terms, and insisting on seeking further precision is unnecessary and, in fact, would just distract from solving the actual problem.

Indeed, it seems that this paradox does not take into account that a heap is an imprecise concept. It assumes that a precise definition of a heap must be necessary in order for it to be meaningful, and that a paradox arises when it is not. The value of having terms like 'heap' or 'pile' is in fact that they are vague. We need not measure them precisely and can use approximations. This is very useful in one's day-to-day existence and does not benefit from being defined more precisely.

This is apparently a paradox that confounds many an Oxford philosophy student, and presumably their professors as well since the solution has not been explained to them to resolve their confusion. I must say that I was very unimpressed.

Paris Freedom Fest

A heads-up: I've been invited to speak at the Paris Freedom Fest this September. I'm thinking of focusing the talk on something relating to the Enlightenment, possibly America. A little pro-Americanism wouldn't go amiss, I'm sure. However, if there are things other than that that people would like me to deliver a talk on, mention them! I'd like to have suggestions as there might have been something I didn't think of.

Common misconceptions, Rand, and reasonableness

A little while ago, I was asked by a person of the internet why I liked Rand. My response was as follows:

I like her insistence that we have to use reason to get anything done (even if she doesn't always stick to it herself [ie, romance]), and her stress on absolute individual sovereignty/liberty, and most of all I like how utterly joyful she is about human acheivement. Advocating taking joy in truly magnificent things is one of the best aspects of her worldview imo. :)

My interlocutor—in interests of privacy I won't say where this conversation took place, but I will say that the man was purporting to be a philosopher—responded thus:

Ok, celebrating our use of reason is definitely a cool thing. But a lot of the Rand stuff I read, if you are going to be intellectually serious, really didn't give a joyful picture of human achievement per se, it was much more a celebration of luck + ability + fuck everyone else. And that is much less cool. Taking joy in truly magnificent things is as well and good, of course, but doing that by ignoring all the shit in the world is simply the unjustified province of the privileged.

Hum, and he says he values being intellectually serious. Actually, that's a significant part of how bad that was as a response. The addition of that little phrase, "if you're going to be intellectually serious", is very telling. It's blatant argument by authority. Amongst philosophers (admittedly, in the conversation in question, I was half-purporting to be one too—though far more humbly than he!) one's intellectual integrity is basically one's currency. This man says he likes reason, but then in the very next sentence he threatens my claim to my own intellectual integrity if I don't go back on my previous post, and agree with him that Rand does not believe that human acheivement is joyful. Removing that sentence would not have changed the meaning of his argument; it is superfluous meta. Evidently he doesn't think enough of his arguments to believe that he can rely on them to persuade me, and adds in a bit of bullying just in case.

I didn't mention the above in my response, however, to avoid getting into a pointless meta-discussion with the man. Instead I wrote this:

Which Rand did you read? I think that's a wilfully negative interpretation of what she advocates. For example in Atlas Shrugged, she tells the reader that Dagny was determined since age 12 to run the railroad, to the degree that it didn't even occur to her that it might be socially unacceptable until age 15, whereupon she dismissed that as unimportant. If that's what you mean by "fuck everyone else", I think that's most unfair. Many, many novels have the theme of "following what you think is right contrary to social stricture".
However it is true that she does not actually tell us where Dagny's determination/enthusiasm comes from. I think that that part just wasn't relevant to the point of the novel, and in order to explain it properly the book would have had to have been about half as long again, rendering it completely unreadable. ;) But there are lots of ways we can easily figure out where it might come from. If you'd like to go into these, we can. :)

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by privileged? Do you mean rich? If so I would point out that the idea that "Rand hates the poor!" is quite misguided. In The Fountainhead, Roark spent most of the novel in dire poverty, and never actually became massively rich. Wealth wasn't his reward. Wynand, however, the billionaire that made the most money, was cast in a light less good than Roark's. He was one of the flawed characters, and his money had a lot to do with that (I'm thinking of the scene in which he says something like, 'the priest in the cloister gives up worldly possessions and retains his soul; I have given up my soul and my compensation is cars and yachts and money'. He says outright in this scene that the priest's position is preferable). Also there's Cherryl, in AS, who is only virtuous so long as she is poor-but-hardworking, and the moment James Taggart impresses her and marries her, and she sells out to his values—again taking money in exchange for the loss of personal integrity—she's doomed. So by privilege you can't possibly mean wealth, but I'm not sure what you do mean, exactly?

Note, by the way, that as an advocate of laissez-faire, Rand couldn't possibly advocate 'fuck everyone else' seriously. You have to cooperate with people in order to participate in free trade, otherwise you won't make a trade agreement. Perhaps you confuse the idea of staying true to your own personal integrity and not compromising what you think is right, with the idea of giving everyone else the finger? If so, I'd point out that through finding mutual preferences, it is not hard to separate cooperation and sacrifice. In other words, when interacting and trading with others (I mean trade in the less vernacular sense of, 'swapping ideas'—since this is what all trade technically constitutes, though I'm aware that's a disingenuous usage—so this would include things like having conversations as well as standard trade), you don't have to lose out or compromise your morality.

What do you include under truly magnificent things, and why doesn't the invention/realization of the skyscraper or the construction of the railroad fall under this category?

It was afterwards pointed out to me that of course, as false is the "privileged" claim is of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, it is even more false of Anthem and We The Living. The main characters of those books aren't even privileged enough to live in free societies.


It's interesting to note that a lot of the very best ideas seem to be subject to the most misconceptions. I hear people getting Rand wrong much more often than I hear them getting Marx wrong. Same goes for, say, Popper vis a vis Nietzche. Thinking about it briefly, I imagine this might have something to do with the fact that there are reasons for the bad ideas being bad. A common one is that they are indistinct or imprecise. This would contribute to people saying things indistinguishable from what the originator said, although each may be subtly different even if only in the speaker's head. On the other hand, the better (and more precise) ideas take more work to understand, so less people understand them and there are more misconceptions.

I'm not sure about this theory though. Antirational memes seem to have a lot to do with it too, especially with regards to Rand. Hum.

Another thought; reasonableness. When people say "please be reasonable" or "I'm not being unreasonable", I think this seems to have definite connotations of compromise. Insistently pursuing your own principles in an argument might prompt one's interlocutor to say, "Rihatsu, please be reasonable!" Qualifying one's argument with the words, "now I'm not being unreasonable here," has implications of, "I'm not unwilling to slightly compromise with you on this matter". It's not the direct meaning of the phrase, but I think there are some definite connotations. This may be worth either pursuing, or at least bearing in mind.

Dear Diary...

I stumbled across this on the internet just now.

I hate school. I really think that it's a form of slavery. The teachers are making me write essays, stories, assignments... when in the hell am I going to need to know how to write a formal descriptive essay if I'm just going to be a mom??? It makes no god-damned sense... but here I am, needing to do it. *sigh* I just hope they're right and that school is really important for the rest of my life.

That was written on September 30th, 2001. There's an interesting juxtaposition to note here, of the most primary kind when it comes to TCS: "I hate school. It's a form of slavery. I don't understand why I need to do it, but, I'll trust in authority for now and assume I'm doing the right thing and that it will all become clear to me later." "I'm going to be a mom."

Then, five days later on October 4th:

I just found out that the last six years osf my life have been a complete waste of precious time!
I've been busting ass this year to keep my grades up, keep my attendance up and to finally graduate high school, only to find out that there is no point.

She couldn't take the courses she wanted to take in college. How much do we all bet that when she does become a mom, she will definitely send her children to school?

Also, a note on second-handing:

It may sound lame, but I see what it's done to everyone else around me, and I really don't want that for myself. Angelo is the only one of my friends who has made something of himself. Everyone else is still trying, or still in school trying to try.
How unfair is it that just because my parents don't support me or make millions of dollars a year that I have to suffer with a course I don't really want to take?
It's not.

She admires Angelo because he made something of himself. She sees that her other friends and herself are all failing in some way or another, and it's largely school related. Then she says, in essence, that she doesn't want to make anything of herself; or rather, that she doesn't see "making something of yourself" as an action that you do (and therefore, without realizing, renders the act of admiring Angelo for succeeding at it senseless). Instead she sees it as something that only happens if your parents have already made something of themselves and just confer the benefits on her. "But I was never given a chance!" Well, rather; isn't the point of making something of yourself that you, well, make it yourself? In other words, her whole appraisal of her situation is littered with contradictions and un-thought-out (and false) assumptions.

Gibbon on the unequal distribution of property

I'm reading Vol. I of Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and whilst discussing Roman taste in terms of the expanse of their empire, he says this:

"But in the present imperfect condition of our society, luxury, though it may proceed from vice or folly, seems to be the only means that can correct the unequal distribution of property. The diligent mechanic, and the skilful artist, who have obtained no share in the division of the earth, receive a volutary tax from the posessors of land; and the latter are prompted, by a sense of interest, to improve those estates, with whose produce they may purchase additional pleasures."

Wow! Although his comment on the "present imperfect condition of our society" may imply that he's a bit of a socialist utopianist (like Godwin or Popper), he does recognise that free trade and self-interest are what solve problems like poverty.