Truth and Tolerance

(That is not the title of another Jane Austen novel)

If you were to tell me that all truths are relative, would not that truth be absolute? And then, if you had previously believed that there are no absolute truths, until my paradoxical question changed your mind, would that not also destroy the previously established truth? To restate the problem, one would say: It is a TRUTH that all truths are relative. If it were not a truth, it would by definition no longer hold true; yet if it were, it would be absolute, and thus equally untrue.

It’s a ridiculous scenario, a Schrodinger’s Cat of semantics. And strange as the idea may be, the parallel here is uncanny; what we face is not a problem of different opinions or world views, but instead, the impossibility of quantum linguistics. Unfortunately, a google search reveals that this not-so-clever term has already been coined, and is used to mean things which I’m not quite sure I understand (see: http://nats-www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/~joseph/dis/dis/node35.html). I simply intended it to be a phrasal portmanteau of quantum mechanics and linguistics, and I shall use it as such.

We’ll begin with mechanics, returning again to the dead-and-alive cat. Nobody in their right minds (or so thought Schrodinger) would interpret the scenario as a plausible argument for the existence of a cat who is both living and dead; instead, it was a scientific reductio ad absurdum which sought to disprove a common conception of quantum physics through expounding upon its absurd conclusions. Little did anyone expect for it–along with a menagerie of related questions involving trees falling in forests–to be seriously considered as a pseudo-ontological issue. But as it turned out, people still ignore years of complex mathematics and theoretical physics to entertain the notion of quasi-dead animals. In the words of Stephen Hawking, “when I hear of Schrödinger’s cat, I reach for my gun.”

However, as violence is frowned upon, we will forgo the firearm and continue the misapplication of quantum theory to linguistics. If we use a simplified version of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics (the interpretation that inspired the killing of cats in the name of science), we could posit that language, or more specifically, the meaning of words, has multiple possible meanings that could be true, until its actual meaning is determined by an observer. Meaning that, in an abstract discussion, truth can be at the same time both relative and absolute, neatly solving our conundrum.

Except not. As with theoretical physics, it only seems to work in the abstract; when it’s brought to a medium we can perceive, be that a cat or a conversation, the quantum principles that allow for multiple existences seemingly crumble. Thus, a new solution is called for, and I’ve got a radical new idea. I realize it’s nearly an extremist view, but sometimes that’s what it takes. Here goes.

We need to expand our vocabularies.

Language is fluid, dynamic, adaptive. Words are made and used and wasted liberally; just look at Shakespeare. Yet despite the infinite capability of language to give us just the right word to say what we mean, we revert to using slang, or catch-phrases, or try to imitate the words of others–in short, our speech has been morphed for the purpose of manipulation. Why is the abortion debate between pro-life and pro-choice? Because pro-death and anti-choice don’t sound too appealing in a political advertisement. Why do people disagree over what constitutes truth? Because why would you say “opinion” when you could sound so much more authoritative saying “fact”? It’s a degradation of rhetoric and a perversion of communication, but it’s what presses the right buttons for those in the audience.

It’s pretty absurd to say “a false opinion, held by enough people, is factually correct”. Yet it doesn’t seem so absurd to say “truth is determined by what people believe”. It makes me wonder if those who spouted the latter would defend the former.

Now as for tolerance, I’ve only one request: tolerate the intolerant. Trying to change their beliefs does not qualify.

———–

Here’s some links to things I’d have talked about had I the time and energy and patience and etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Derrida

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuralism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-structuralism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_de_Saussure

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebniz

Cosmic Painting

I’ll preface this by saying that I might not be the most qualified person to talk about tonight’s topic of space. I haven’t seen the stars since I arrived here in smog city. I was never much of a stargazer–I didn’t have those little glow-in-the-dark sticker stars you put on your bedroom ceiling–but even I miss our not-quite-next-door neighbours once in a while. It got me thinking about how little value we place in the galaxy beyond our fragile atmosphere. We’re no more than a biodome (or biosphere, rather) among the other planets all around; and yet never do we get the claustrophobic feeling of isolation that should reasonably come with the property. You might say it’s relative size–we’re teensy, so the Earth is pretty roomy by our standards. Yet if you were to take all the spaces that you occupy in an average day–every room and enclosed space–and added up the volume, it’d be pretty darn small. Each building and room and hallway we inhabit is even more limiting than a biodome would be; yet we’d feel more uncomfortable inside the latter than the former.

Why? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that despite the amount of time we spend indoors, the outdoors is always right there, through the window or door. It’s so close, so comfortable, so reachable, that we simply take it for granted. At the same time, it’s full of alien things; our personal contact with the world’s content is extremely limited. It was for this reason that we sought to learn about our surroundings, to discover what’s out there and integrate it into our schematic of what our world is. It’s the focus of political thought today, with people calling for others to act as the world’s citizens, not a nation’s: develop a more complete, global conception of who you are.

However, as much progress as we may or may not be making on our own planet Earth, the heavens above us seem as distant as ever. The more inclusive we are of our planet, the more exclusive the collective conscious seems to focus on outer space.

Doesn’t anyone else here feel claustrophobic?

It seems to me that just as a person isolated to his home would have the Earth to impress upon him his relative size, so should a person ‘isolated’ to the Earth have something within reach to put the Earth in its place. But space is not within reach. Sure we have the technology to send things up there, but an insignificant portion of people have experienced it, have explored and learned it, have taken it back home where it can be absorbed into the earthly schematic. Space is ‘familiar’ in some ways to those in the communications business–what with satellite technology behind cell phones and other apparatuses. Space is ‘familiar’ in some ways to those in the military, or the military industry, or the military-industrial complex; it’s the next frontier of warfare that nations are using to dominate others. Space is ‘familiar’ in some ways to astrophysicists and all those other scientists with complicated labels, with such detailed and obscure knowledge that any average Joe would be baffled by hearing a fraction of it. Yet the ignorance of the average Joe is exactly what should be changed.

Art, I think, has always been able to familiarize people with ideas. Whether it symbolically represents an idea in a sympathetic figure; or it depicts the foreign in the universal language of sight, or music; or it could simply be a representation of a thing beyond an ordinary person’s reach, putting it somewhere available for scrutiny. Through these and a multitude of different communicative mediums, art brings things closer. It’s depressing to think of the prohibitive restrictions that prevent art from reaching outer space and how many potential connections were preemptively severed. Practicality in mind, there are warrants as to why it’s so difficult–my random idea of ‘cosmic painting’, for example, which started this whole train of thought, would involve scattering different magnetic or mechanical particles across a huge portion of space and leaving them in orbit, whereupon the sunlight’s altered reflections would create a grand image against the night sky for those observing from the earth (and even better, if the particles could be moved and rotated to create new images from time to time). The impossibility of this working is clear when you factor the costs involved, the damage it would do to current orbiting satellites, the difficulty it would create for launching further projects into space, etc., but I still feel a loss at the thought that an artistic endeavor such as that one will never come to fruition. We’ve managed to create art out of everything here on Earth, place it everywhere. I’m sure one day art will access the cosmos as well, in a way that is accessible and appreciable by just plain old people like me.

After all, ‘vacuum’ is just another way to say ‘blank canvas’. Let’s paint.

What’s wrong with Eugenics?

Nothing. There’s nothing wrong with eugenics, just as there’s nothing wrong with prejudice, where the problem lies in discrimination; or as with Communism, where the problem lies in Stalinism and the like. And just as proximity and association have tainted our conceptions of prejudice and Communism, so have they misled our views on eugenics.  After all, when you strip away all of the connotations, eugenics simply means selectivity in breeding; and who isn’t selective when it comes to relationships? Anywhere from arbitrarily objective requirements–”I won’t go out with anyone shorter than 5’11″!”–to purely subjective preferences–”she should be sweet, and funny, and…”–everyone has standards that they’d like to be met.  And while most of us base these standards on what we find physically attractive or mentally appealing, other concerns could affect our perceptions of each other; for example, would you feel comfortable having a child with someone who has a high chance of passing on a serious hereditary disease?  It’s certainly something to think about.

If we’re on the same page in agreeing that eugenics, in the context I use it in, is acceptable social behavior (and if you don’t agree, then suspend your disapproval for now), then I can take the next step and draw a line between the selective breeding of humans and the selective breeding of dogs.  Now obviously there are significant differences; in selective breeding in dogs to create purebreds, for example, many times it is acceptable to inbreed the animals. For humans, needless to say, this is strictly prohibited.  Yet to consider the underlying reasoning, the purpose of this breeding is to bring out certain desirable traits–in animals, the physical traits in particular.

So why is there no human Best in Show? The ethical dilemma that segregates humans and animals plays its part here, too.  One common example is the Kantian “means to an end” argument, in which human life should never be treated as a means, only as an ends in and of itself.  However, we humans have that all-important capacity for sentience; so if we were to willingly breed–or with the onset of genetic manipulation, engineer–ourselves into paragons, would this be dehumanizing?  It seems that this could only occur as a result of the ‘humanity’ of consciousness; thus, instead of dehumanization, it really should be the opposite.  There is, of course, a second roadblock: those who believe we shouldn’t “create life” artificially.   For this I will simply refer back to how we breed animals; if the sanctity of life itself is such an a priori issue, it seems impossible that purebreds or Thoroughbreds could exist.  Of course it’s entirely possible that we have a huge double standard; hypocrisy is the standard of humanity, isn’t it? For the sake of argumentation, however, illogicality will be ignored, and we can thus conclude that genetic engineering and/or selective breeding of humans should be a perfectly ethical and acceptable practice.

…Yet I still feel squeamish about plastic surgery. Go figure.

Technology and the Other

To begin with, a short, generic description of the Other: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other . That which is singled out as different, whether as an individual, group, or something else. Otherization has been a long-standing subject of philosophical investigation; prominent thinkers across the years have used the term to describe many things. Here I use the term generally and allusively.

There is an issue with the public discourse on the subject of technology: the public, as a cumulative entity, is rather moronic. Not generally (well, perhaps generally), but in regards to technology. Whether the discussion is on biotechnology, nanotechnology, or some other -technology, there is a clear dichotomy in the masses: those who know, and those who don’t. As David Berube put it (www.ifs.tu-darmstadt.de/fileadmin/phil/nano/berube.pdf), “Contemporary technological discourse is shameful. Leaders who wish to recommend
options and sometimes policy call upon experts. Heavily biased by personal and professional
interests, experts craft their messages so they are resistant to most counterclaims. For
example, by using excessively technical vocabulary, their arguments become arguments
from authority. When asked “why is that true?” their response generally is “Don’t you understand?
I do. I have an advanced degree!” As a result, citizen-consumers are frozen out of
depthful discussions on issues involving science and technology”. Though the reasons for this development in technological rhetoric can be blamed on many causes, the bottom line is that the general public is systematically removed from the technological sphere.

This in some ways seems justified; shouldn’t the highest tier of scientific discussion take place among the highest echelon of qualified scientists? While this may have its merits, one must consider the purpose of science itself. Especially in areas such as this week’s focus of biotech, science is explored for the purpose of potential utility. Science is an industry; innovation is a commodity; and each new technology is a marketable product. In a world dominated by the supply-demand dynamic, it certainly seems odd that the “citizen-consumer”, to quote Berube again, has no say in the pre-implementation policy decisions concerning the future course of scientific advancements. Internationally we already face a digital divide, where developed and undeveloped countries are increasingly separated in terms of technological wealth. Now we face an internal “digital divide” of knowledge and discourse, where the common crowd is fed sensationalist, exaggerated, and oversimplified journalism from the profit-seeking media, while the scientists and researchers hole up in an Ivory Tower built to repel all opponents, political, intellectual, or, inadvertently, those who are neither–us.

This returns us to the Other. First, identification; who is the Other? From the viewpoint from one such as me, I am part of “us”; thus, the guardians of Science must be the Other. Yet in terms of scientific discussion, it is equally clear that the scientists are the dominant group, which would in turn otherize the non-scientific community. A mutual otherization is most certainly not a scenario normally seen. Ordinarily, one group holds power, while the Other is subjugated. The question of who’s who therefore relies on finding out which community truly holds the reins. Settling this power struggle will be a defining moment for scientific progress; in effect, it will determine the exclusion or nonexclusion of ‘the masses’ in the world of Science. Thus we become concerned with the actions of each group.

Reintroducing economic theory, we assume that both groups act rationally, in their own best interest. Also assuming that power is a valued commodity, we can utilize a basic form of game theory. To begin with, we establish the rudimentary risks and rewards for each. The common crowd is at risk of having little to no say in the advancement of technology; and thus the fruits of human achievement will be arbitrarily plucked. Their reward is the ability to direct science and bend its course to their own benefit. For the scientists, the risk is submitting their work to the power of those less-qualified, and being placed under restrictive policies; the reward is freedom.

Game theory would then tell us thusly: although if both groups chose the submissive option (that is, the scientists included non-scientists in policy decision, but non-scientists gave them freedom), both sides could gain rewards, if only one side chose the dominant path, then the other group would be denied this reward. Therefore, the safest option for either would be the dominant strategy. Which, in accordance with the pessimism inherent in economics, leaves all of us worse off.

How depressing.