Philosophical Fiction: why it must be either boring or bullshit

As you can tell from my "Story Idea" posts, I really want to be able to write good fiction. Not just entertaining fiction (although that already would be quite an achievement), but fiction that promotes my ideas - I'm taking more cues from Ayn Rand, which, although probably not that great a source for inspiration, at least means my methods will be tried and true; her most famous book espousing her (nutty) ideas and the one that shot her into the public consciousness was a novel: Atlas Shrugged.

However, this presents me with a problem. Most of my ideas are heavily anti-instinctual (since I see no need to fight for that which is already instinctual - I believe, and state, that people should maximize their utility functions, but I see very little need to press the point given that everybody does that anyways), and technologically centered. No aesthetic whatsoever enters into it. I fight to defy "one death is a tragedy, one million is a statistic", while the human psyche affirms it. And that is the problem. Good fiction appeals to the human instinct; my philosophy appeals to logic. The two seem very difficult to reconcile. Let me illustrate with an example:

A while back I had an idea for a story (tentatively called 'Honor'). The plot concerned a young, enterprising sergeant in the SS at the beginning of the Holocaust who is repulsed by the ghettoes and decides to covertly help the victims. However, after he is nearly caught helping four people escape and two days later learns that the four were found and killed, he decides that to really help, he needs to be more than a sergeant. He then proceeds to work hard and try to please his superiors in order to quickly advance to such a rank that he can save as many people as he wants. He moves up the ranks through the years to become the second-in-command at a concentration camp by late 1943, with a reputation for grim efficiency thanks to his tireless efforts to secure his promotions. He decides that by far the greatest good he could do could only be done as a commandant of a camp, and continues to work alongside Nazi hard-liners in an attempt to achieve that rank. However, he never attains such a rank, is captured in a surprise Russian advance, and ends up hanged at Nuremberg since the only evidence as to his real views is the fact that he was a 'grimly efficient' second-in-command.

The only problem with this story is that I abhor the implied moral, which is 'changing a bad system from within is a bad idea' and that 'despite the good intent of your motives, working with the Nazis in order to eventually help victims is wrong', neither of which is true. He could have succeeded, and if he had, many more people would be alive. In effect, given the correctness of his assumptions, his decision was a worthy gamble. I could change the story to make him succeed, but I feel this lowers the emotional punch of the plot and turns the story into something very banal. I feel that I will have a hard time reconciling 'effective plot' with 'morals I wish to convey', which is why I probably won't even attempt to write this story (as opposed to 'Immortal', which I described in an earlier post) let alone actually succeed in writing it. And that's why I have such a problem with my stories - because good storytelling and rational morals mix like oil and water.

The Angry Hypocrite Despises his own Tribal Instincts

If you're familiar with my philosophy (and who isn't, really, given the world-renowned renaissance figure of towering influence that I am, with almost four followers on blogspot, and a couple dozen others who are nervously aware of the existence of this thing), you'll know that if there's one thing in the world I despise, it's the irrational instincts that happen to pervade mankind. Those instincts, at least for the social judgment aspects, have a deep root: tribalism. Tribalism was an attitude born from the days when you and your kin stuck close and fought together over scarce resources. Any outsiders were treated with suspicion at best and outright hostility at worst. However, even as civilizations began to develop and the logical rationale faded away, the tribalist attitude persisted.

Tribalism not only causes rifts on its own; it often exacerbates existing conflicts (or the converse, where other factors exacerbate tribal conflicts). Religions very often rise and fall along tribal lines, with the Arabs fighting to convert the pagan Berbers, the European Christians crusading against the Muslim Turks and Arabs, and so on. Even today, for example in Sudan (Muslim 'Arabs' fighting against Christian 'Blacks') and Nigeria, and the continuing ethnic distinction drawn between the Jews and other white races (far more culturally visible than the distinction between, say, the French and the Germans), religion and tribal animosities go hand-in-hand. In the end, it simply undermines rational thinking and promotes prejudices, which is bad for progress (I consider progress the only true good).

There are probably a few people who are naive enough to think that I succeed in my efforts to practice what I preach (the very existence of the blog actually attests that I don't; logically, if I harbor extreme opinions, I should try to keep them mostly to myself because of the risk of social stigma). As I already stated, this is unfortunately untrue. Every time the Olympics come up, I try to remind myself that according to logic, I ought to root for those countries that most closely resemble my values. And I partially succeed; for example, I always root for the Swedes and the Swiss during the Winter Olympics, mostly because I want prestige to go to a country whose government is very similar to the style of liberal democracy I support. However, the main problems with my logic appear when the Summer Olympics come around; I root for China, on the basis of half my bloodline and Israel on the basis of the other half. I know that the Chinese government is not exactly a paragon of freedom and democratic values; I know that the Israeli government, particularly those that have been unfortunate enough to be headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, are not exactly kumbaya-singing peace-lovingly rational and that they infuriatingly (given that I value Israel's security out of a tribalist sympathy for Israel) provoke the Palestinians and other Arab groups when there is a chance for peace. But I root for them anyway. And these sentiments are real, not just confined to the sports arena.

I'm currently trying to think how this tribalist problem can be countered. Unfortunately, it seems simply too deep-rooted to effectively combat. Hopefully one day we'll realize the importance of a united sentient front to spread life and thinking as far as we can. Until then, we'll be mired in that same old ugly thought: as the War Nerd so aptly put it, "My tribe YAY, your tribe BOO". What an infantile creed that is.

Open Mindedness, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the F-Bomb

Open-mindedness and tolerance is something of a creed where I come from, a major feature of my high school, where once every couple of weeks we were herded into an auditorium for a presentation from culture so-and-so so that we could appreciate their culture and respect them and all the bullshit that you hear from kid's shows that we're all just one big happy family. We were 'treated' to, among other things, a didgeridoo performance (the novelty wore off rather quickly), Irish folk dancing, religious plays, a propaganda piece about immigration (look at these charming Mexican people and the ignorant white people who want to keep them poor! - yes, showing the nutjobs that inevitably crop up on one side of a political debate counts as argument, I'm sure YOUR side has no nutcases) that actually ended with a song called "Yes We Can" that was (unsurprisingly) an outright campaign ad for Obama, and a particularly enlightening session where we were informed that there are ACTUAL CITIES (*gasp*) in Africa. This all added up to maybe 20 extra hours of sleep for me per year.

However, despite our almost cock-sucking respect for other cultures, we weren't open-minded in the least. I can virtually guarantee, with 99% certainty, that a colloquium on how illegal immigration could hurt the US would be booed out in less time than it takes to yell "Viva La Revolution!" while waving a Zapatista flag. On the political scale we were collectively somewhere between Vladimir Lenin and Mikhail Bakunin. A donor who donated money for an American flag on campus was roundly rejected by a school-wide vote (I, totally apathetic, abstained for reasons of laziness) because of our hatred for George W. Bush (I hate him too, but the flag ain't his flag) and American neo-imperialism that was destroying all the cultures we so loved. So I decided to do what few in my school seemed like they could: I decided to become open-minded.

But what exactly is open-minded? In "How to Be Open-Minded" on eHow, they give the following recommendation:

Helpful words and phrases: "That could be true"; "That makes sense"; "Looks like you're really strong in your beliefs"; "Oh,"; "Mmm-hmm"; "So do you believe..?"; "I can see where you're coming from"; "Well, that's a good point."

Wow, these phrases sure don't seem like they could be insincere. "Looks like you're really strong in your beliefs *cough* you fucking retard *cough*" Also, open-mindedness seems to be, in the mind of the author of this particular gem, being too much of an ass-licking dipshit to challenge or debate anyone's beliefs on the grounds that 'they deserve respect'.

wikiHow has this to say on the subject:

While waiting (in line at the bank, a coffee shop, a restaurant, the grocery store, or waiting for someone to pick you up, or a show on TV to start), ponder things, calculate, memorize. You can, for example, memorize digits of Pi (you can get to 50 in a matter of hours, 200 in a matter of weeks), try to remember all of your high school teachers' names, memorize Prime Numbers, get fast at reciting the alphabet backwards, the Greek alphabet (forwards and backwards), remember how many movies Tom Cruise has been in, try Doubling numbers, start at 1, to 2, to 4, to 8, till you get to larger numbers than you can handle.

Yes, open-mindedness apparently has some magic correlation to how many boring lists you're willing to memorize or your tolerance for performing amazingly repetitive tasks, usually of the sort that cognitively-challenged math-genius-wannabes and MathCounts competitors (they're the same damn thing) do 'for fun'. wikiHow also recommends that you:

Learn about different people and lifestyles. A great gateway into this is Wikipedia, where you can read articles on a wide variety of practices, such as Swinging, Wicca, Christianity, the Green Party, Conservatism, Communism, Anarchism, Sunnis, Discordianism, Tutsis, and the Yakuza. Consider how many members they have worldwide. Volunteer with an organization that works with a community of people you are unfamiliar with.

All I can say about this recommendation is, hell yes, I'm volunteering with the Yakuza.

And another pearl of wisdom:

Walk backwards through your whole house. (But be extra careful not to trip over anything, or fall down the stairs)

Actually, on second thought, if you take this piece of advice, feel free to fall down the stairs.

And finally,

Attend churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, trade union meetings, places of worship and meditation that you never have. Read about and learn how to recognize cults or cult-like behavior and avoid them!

Yes, it is open-minded to 'respect' various popular religions but to treat unpopular ones ('cults') with disdain and to avoid them like the plague. And anyway, aren't 'worship' and 'meditation' cult-like behavior by definition? wikiHow seems to be in the business of training robots rather than cultivating open-mindedness.

However, wikiHow's entries are merely puzzling; eHow's entry is my real target because this is what open-mindedness seems to be in the popular consciousness: being too spineless to debate out of fear of offending, regardless of your real feelings on the subject. My definition of open-mindedness doesn't come out of the seeming desire of the writer of the eHow recommendation to have every cock in the world in his mouth; it comes out of my experiences with my high-school colloquia, those sermons on 'open-mindedness' intent on showing how happy poor people are when they live under the rule of mystics (as put by a friend of mine when I was discussing with him the topic of my last post) and yet failed to consider real political movements within this country as worthy of 'respect', let alone discussion. The point of real open-mindedness is to be willing to consider logically any idea that comes before me. If logically it is unsound, I am then free to slander it to my heart's content. I took up this as my goal.

This is how I learned to be a real person again, how to disagree and disagree strongly with things, to ridicule and to blaspheme. I had a debate about the death penalty with another student at my school, where I argued that the death sentence is occasionally fully justified. She started off her argument with "it is more punishment to imprison them for life, isn't it?" hoping, I guess, to shut me up since obviously support for the death penalty stems out of a love for cruel punishment. I responded that cruelty wasn't the point, the point is deterrence (and I argue that life imprisonment and death are roughly equal in deterrence since it is impossible to imagine either) and removal of the offenders from any position from which they could harm society again. Her response: "But aren't we stooping to their level then?". First of all, no, what the fuck are you talking about, if someone steals something from you and you take it back, you're not stooping to their level, that should be obvious. Secondly, and more importantly, her argument is that the death penalty is wrong because it is not cruel enough and it is too cruel. This is a perfect example of what close-minded means: you cling to your precious opinions without examining them first, repeating flawed and self-contradictory arguments in a feeble attempt to shield them (by the way, I've heard many good arguments against the death penalty, just not from this person; the best I know of is that death offers no chance of correction if the verdict is erroneous). Phony, ass-kissing 'respect' for beliefs can only perpetuate this by encouraging people to consider their beliefs as inviolable, immune from argument, not answerable to the demands of reality. Arguing, blaspheming, ridiculing people's beliefs - that is what forces them to reconsider (unless, of course, they're idiotic assholes) and forces them to create a logical backing for their ideas. You cannot ridicule effectively what has a sound logical framework. "Ha ha ha, you believe that 1+1=2" carries no weight behind it, but "Creationists must be right - after all, whenever we discover a fossil b that fits perfectly into a so-called evolutionary gap from a to c, we have only replaced that gap with two gaps" is a strong argument against the 'God of the Gaps' mentality of Intelligent Design proponents.

My quest was for open-mindedness, first in myself (I take this ideal to extremes, even to the point of acknowledging that from a purely logical standpoint racism is totally consistent, even though empirically it is racist, tribalist societies that are the most backwards and that empirically prosperity seems to depend on culture and ideals rather than race - I consider myself a culturalist in that I consider many cultures to be inherently inferior to others, as opposed to a racist), then in others. I consider myself, as I have already stated, to have succeeded in being open minded. Now I attempt to do the same to others. And this is why I relentlessly taunt the beliefs I consider horribly, destructively wrong; why I never tell anyone I respect their ideas when I don't; why I feel proud that I am able to overcome my inherited liberal knee-jerk reaction and freely insult anyone; why my favorite word starts with an 'f' and ends with an 'uck' (hint: it's not 'firetruck').

It's liberating to be open-minded, the real open-minded. Try it out, spread the word, and fuck with any illogical bastards who cross your path (only be careful that you yourself are logical, otherwise it might be them who fuck with you). Together we can start the foul-mouthed revolution in the name of progress and reason.

Indigenous Cultures

If one thing has the ability to make me puke, it is hearing first worlders (especially those that own Priuses) talk about the 'beauty' and 'heritage' of this or that indigenous culture and lamenting the fact that greedy corporations are destroying them. Look at their idyllic villages, say the concerned first worlders. Look at their traditions, their language. They have been this way for generations upon generations, living in spiritual harmony. And the greedy corporations the Wal-Machts of the world, they want to take all this away for their lebensraum of the same cookie-cutter strip malls and factories! The bastards!

I hate the assholes who talk like this, the same assholes who protest WTO meetings and hate factories, the hippies who sit in the oak trees in Berkeley for two years to save them while the Amazon is being deforested, who despise foie gras while millions of domestic animals are starving strays roaming the streets of third world slums, who bemoan environmental degradation and third-world poverty yet oppose the development of GMOs, the one ready-for-use technology that has the potential to cure both, who vote for Ralph Nader and leave George Bush in charge, who write blog posts blasting the use of technology, who believe in spiritual communion with nature as if nature gave half a fuck about them, who value animals above people. They make me sick, the fucking hypocrites.

The cultures they talk about can be found almost everywhere that isn't the first world, from Tibet to Africa to the Indian Reservations (no, the Reservations are NOT what I'd call first world) to South America. These cultures have much in common: their mentality is almost always overtly tribal, they have pronounced 'spiritual traditions' (which usually take the form of either constructing and then destroying elaborate works of art or slapping on paint and dancing around a fire to drums and chanting). They have 'traditional medicine', typically administered by shamans, and there is always, ALWAYS, a massive concentration of power into the hands of a few chieftains and shamans (or, in the case of the most vile of these cultures, in Tibet, the Lamas) who rule by the 'will of the gods' or simply by fiat. These societies are poor, ignorant, illiterate, backwards. Their first world 'supporters' consider them 'beautiful' and 'inspiring', yet most fail to actually live in those societies and forget, above all, that these societies are composed of people and do not primarily exist to 'inspire' unimaginative people in tye-dye shirts and hybrid sedans with 'Free Tibet' bumper stickers on the back bumper (given the scum that are the Lamas - one of the happiest days of my life was the day I read about how a boy who was believed to be the reincarnation of one of the highest Lamas quit the order saying "It was like living a lie" - who take the wealth of the region, pour it into temples and prayers while the people lack access to basic utilities, the closest thing to 'Free Tibet' I can think of is a Tibet where the Lamas are all dead and the temples have been turned into tools to vamp up the tourist industry - did you know that pre-PRC-controlled Tibet was a feudal kingdom where upwards of 95% of the population were downtrodden serfs, or that in 1997 the EU was "putting pressure on the government of Nepal to make slavery illegal"?) The fact that every time an evil capitalist factory opens in the third world there are more than enough people willing to work there is proof enough that the people there are willing to trade in their picturesque huts for something better, even if it is minimum-wage factory work. Certainly factory work is not a pretty thing, but neither is rural poverty, and every nation that is wealthy and enjoys a decent standard of living - EVERY SINGLE ONE - went through a period of nasty industrialization before becoming truly free and prosperous nations. The people who build the factories are helping economies and livelihoods worldwide; the people who protest them are, in essence, fighting to keep much of the world mired in poverty.

What globalization is, then, is the process by which the third world increasingly comes to resemble the first world. If you bemoan this for the sake of beautiful cultures, you exceed even the greediest CEO for sheer selfishness, putting your desire for an idealized rural existence above the desire of thousands of people (for every hippie, there are thousands of third worlders) for three square meals a day. The more of these primitive, tyrannical cultures fall along the way, to be replaced by nascent democracies of educated citizens (or even to be replaced by any industrial society), the better. Good riddance to the chieftains, the shamans, the Lamas. It is industrialization, not tribalism, that has cured smallpox, made cars, and sent men to the moon. It is progress, not tradition, science, not art, and reason, not spiritualism, that has brought about, for the first time, places where the majority lives above the poverty line. And yet the beneficiaries of this technology and development that made the Prius possible seek to prevent others from enjoying it. They, not the corporations, are the truly selfish ones.

My Offer

A few days ago I had an impromptu debate with an individual which I found very enlightening, if that's the word to use, even if nothing that he said can be considered to be enlightened. This individual was wearing a black t-shirt emblazoned with the words Trust Jesus in huge yellow block letters and, on the table next to him, propped up against the wall was a sign advertising "Are You Going to Heaven? - Free Test!". Naturally, with nothing much better to do (other than the obvious, such as eating my enormously overstuffed falling-apart-at-the-seams burrito, picking my nose or ramming my head repeatedly into reinforced concrete, the last of which was basically the same thing in the end) I, the Jewish-Atheist-Raised-On-Ham-And-Cheese-And-Richard-Dawkins wunderkind that I am, sat down to see whether giving God the finger every Yom Kippur was endearing me to His Holiness. And, naturally, my love of provoking religious anger led me to switch the topic up mid-test and begin questioning this pure and holy missionary (who, if one is sentimental enough to believe that dreams do come true, might one day even achieve the honor of appearing on television with his GOD HATES FAGGOTS sign curiously rendered in black over a Rastafarian-colored green-yellow-and-red background). My (admittedly religious, but at least relatively sane religious, the kind of religious person who's religion stays a personal matter that doesn't bother people who'd rather be left alone) friend saw me and joined in, and soon a decent-sized circle had gathered around us for our good-natured exchange of personal beliefs. A number of great religious pearls were uncovered during this repartee; for example, the idea that anything God does is justified because "God is sovereign" (explained by my religious friend: "he's saying God is good because God is arbitrary" - thank Beelzebub my friend doesn't buy into that kind of phony argument), leading me to remember the various other cases where acts were justified because the actor was "sovereign", good "sovereign" people like, for instance, Hitler (another such gem was "He has ordained that they suffer in Hell for His glory" - wow, sounds like a great guy). He also came up with the interesting insight that I had no friends (despite the the fact that my friend was sitting right fucking next to me) and that my so-called 'friends' would all betray me (shhh! you wouldn't want to ruin the surprise, would you?), not to mention several mind-numbingly unimaginative dodges for my standard questions about religion (one question, the one detailed in "the parable of Joe and Ahmed" on my blog, he flat-out refused to answer). He also curiously accused me of trying to belittle him when I asked when he thought the world was created so that I could assess what breed of Christian I was dealing with (doesn't asking for your beliefs only count as belittlement if your beliefs are patently retarded? if you're ashamed and feel belittled when someone asks for your opinion, it really seems like it's you who needs to change your opinions, and, failing that, at least do the gene pool a favor and get a vasectomy). In the end, the results of my test were that my main defining character trait was 'wickedness' (I thought everyone who used that word had died out around the same time they stopped hunting for witches) and that I was going "straight to Hell".

I learned from this explicitly something which I have understood in my gut for years, yet never had the courage to realize it fully. I always gave religions, by dint of popularity, some sort of veneer of respectability in my mind, as if they were a proper intellectual challenge to my system. Don't get me wrong; religions, great and small, are still a worthy target for attacks, and blasphemy still has a place in my intellectual ideas, but ONLY because they are popular. Once the task of eradication of religious belief is complete, we will only remember them as a warning to future generations. Now I have realized my error and accordingly I make my offer to the world:

To those that accept logic and rational thought, who are open to argument and willing to change their beliefs to suit the evidence, I offer debate, discussion, and examination of evidence, in order to move closer to the truth. To those who deny logic, whose ideology trumps any and all contrary evidence, I offer only silence where our differences do not necessitate a confrontation, and violence where they do.

The Great Dictators

As a liberal democrat, I often find it hard to compare my ideology with many populist dictators who lived throughout history. Many of them were plain evil, but a surprisingly large number of them were benevolent or enlightened and contributed to the progress of their countries. Even the supremely evil ones, like the WWII dictators Mussolini (well, actually, he's just evil, not supremely evil, since he rejected German Nazi racism), Hitler, Tojo, and Stalin got the economies of their respective countries going at full tilt while the West were still moving through the Depression. This post is simply a list of dictators and what they were able to do. Despite my ardent belief that in general nothing but a democracy can be trusted to run a state, I find it difficult to ignore the evidence that in times of great crisis, a swift-moving enlightened dictator could outperform an elected body or president.

Josef Pilsudski: One of the few dictators regarded both in their home countries and internationally as essentially good for the country (especially since he was dictator of Poland, which is now a democracy). During WWI, when Poland was partitioned between Russia, Austria, and Germany, Pilsudski negotiated Poland's independence from the Central Powers in exchange for fighting the Russians, and secured independence formally after the end of the war. Then, as the chief Marshal of Poland, he repulsed a massive Soviet invasion. Afterwards, he decided to resign from politics in favor of the democratic government about to be elected; he didn't run for any office. However, shortly after his resignation, a right-wing nutjob assassinated the newly-elected president, and a series of political clashes with his right-wing civilian enemies led him to resign his remaining posts. Four years later, in 1925, as Poland floundered in the midst of a political and economic (hyperinflation) crisis, Pilsudski seized power in a coup d'etat supported by leftist (socialist and peasant) political parties. He stabilized the economy, strengthened the army, and promoted religious tolerance, all while remaining popular, and maintained good relations with other countries. He died in 1935.

The fact that Pilsudski actually left politics to a democratic regime and only came back at its failure does say something about him, and the fact that he is well-remembered as a good person and a good ruler despite having obtained power (the second time around) through a coup is very unusual. I just wanted to post this as a case of a good dictator. Now I will continue with a list of dictators I consider benevolent, since I'm not inclined to write a paragraph on every dictator I mention:

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk: (I have to write a paragraph about him; he is my number-one all-time most badass leader). First he commanded the Turkish forces at Gallipoli, kicking the British invading forces off the Dardanelles. Afterwards, he took the crumbling, failed Ottoman Empire after it had been broken up following defeat in WWI and fought of numerous threats, including a massive Greek army pushing into western Anatolia, and religious and Kurdish attacks from the South and East to regain Istanbul (although he kept the capital at Ankara) to create modern Turkey. He then made peace with the Greeks, and set about modernizing and democratizing Turkey, doing away with religious radicalism and making Turkey into a prosperous and advanced nation. Despite the fact that for a while it was a one-party state, Kemalist Turkey is one of the greatest success stories for the idea of benevolent dictatorship.

Pre-Great-Leap-Forward Mao Zedong (he royally screwed up his country after that, especially with the Cultural Revolution, which was craziness that would have shamed North Korea)

Fidel Castro: gets gold stars for literacy and health care, but the large number of refugees goes against him. A hard to judge case, since Cuba's poverty could be attributed to him or to the US sanctions on Cuba; to know for sure (not to mention that this is also the fastest and most humanitarian route to liberating Cuba, and seems like a total no-brainer) we would have to open up trade relations with Cuba.

The Shah of Iran: made a public education system, fought religious dogma, industrialized the economy. Despite the political oppression, I believe if Iran had stuck to his "White Revolution" it would be a modern, powerful country today. He's certainly much, much better than the religious creeps running the place today, although he probably worsened the country when, with the CIA's help, he deposed Mossadeq.

Lee Kuan Yew: dictator (-ish) of Singapore. Singapore's political, economic, and educational development in comparison with the surrounding countries testifies to his success.

Deng Xiaoping: turned China from backward, ignorant giant to the industrial powerhouse it is today.

Saddam Hussein: a monster, but improved education and kept the place in order. Iraq wasn't a pretty place under him, but it's not much prettier now, either.

Napoleon Bonaparte: no explanation needed.

Josef Broz Tito: kept Yugoslavia in order and relatively prosperous (as compared to its Warsaw Pact neighbors) and kept ethnic tensions at a minimum. Only 10 years after his death did Yugoslavia finally get enough ethnic antagonism to break apart into civil war.

William Tubman: increased foreign investment in Liberia by a factor of 200 (!) and avg annual GDP growth rate of 11.5% (!), only cracking down on political opposition after a failed assassination attempt. Stabilized and opened his country.

Canaan Sodindo Banana: I don't know if he ever did anything except get accused of sodomy by Robert Mugabe, and he wasn't even a dictator, but he's here just because of his name. I mean, come on, "Canaan Banana"?

Charles De Gaulle: I love it when assholes (in this case, the right wing Pieds Noirs in Algeria) install a dictator only to find out he's actually not on their side

And finally, the classic original enlightened dictators:

Pericles
Julius Caesar
Marcus Aurelius
Pontius Pilate
Solomon
Liu Pang
Peter the Great
Catherine the Great

I'm sure there are more I didn't mention, I just figured this would be food for thought for liberal democrats like me.

Badass Quotes

Just to mix it up a bit, some totally badass quotes, many from very evil people:

One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic - Joseph Stalin

[Upon hearing the suggestion that he should encourage Catholicism to court the Pope during WWII]

The Pope! How many divisions does he have? - Joseph Stalin

Death solves all problems. No man, no problem. - Joseph Stalin

Ideas are more powerful than guns. We don't let our enemies have guns, so why let them have ideas? - Joseph Stalin

[I actually don't agree with this quote (obviously, since agreeing with this would make me a jackass), but find it hilarious nonetheless]

Anyone who sees and paints a sky green and fields blue ought to be sterilized. - Adolf Hitler

Demoralize the enemy from within by surprise, terror, sabotage, assassination. This is the war of the future. - Adolf Hitler

If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed. - Adolf Hitler

The great strength of the totalitarian state is that it forces those who fear it to imitate it. - Adolf Hitler

The victor will never be asked if he told the truth. - Adolf Hitler

Before all else, be armed. - Niccolo Machiavelli

Men should either be treated generously or be destroyed, because they take revenge for slight injuries; for heavy ones, they cannot. - Niccolo Machiavelli

Politics have no relation to morals. - Niccolo Machiavelli

I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell. - General Sherman

I think I understand what military fame is: to be killed on the field of battle and have your name misspelled in the newspapers. - General Sherman

War is cruelty. There's no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over. - General Sherman

You want a friend in Washington? Get a dog. - Harry S. Truman

I fired MacArthur because he wouldn't respect the authority of the President... I didn't fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, because that's not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail. - Harry S. Truman

In Soviet Union it is hard to do comedy. You cannot improvise... if someone heckles you from the audience, you cannot say "your mother wears army boots", because she probably does, and she will hurt you. If you make joke, "take my wife... please", you come home... she's gone. - Yakov Smirnoff

"When I first came here from Russia, I went to Cleveland... In Cleveland, they made me feel at home, so I had to escape again. Now, I make fun of Cleveland because everybody makes fun of Cleveland. In every country they make fun of a particular city. When I was in Russia, for example, we used to make fun of Cleveland. - Yakov Smirnoff

I saw an ad in newspaper, it says "we guarantee your furniture and stand behind it for six months". That's the reason I left Soviet Union! I don't want people behind my furniture! - Yakov Smirnoff

Democracy is different in America. For example, woman can vote but horse cannot. - Borat

Yo, I don't play no games. The only games I play is my dick versus yo' pussy. And my dick always wins. - McCracken, a "friend" of a friend

So this bitch started yelling at me, so I said to myself, "Stay calm, McCracken! Stay calm!" So I pulled out my gun, and I shot him. - McCracken

Twelve Quick Refutations (Plus Extra)

Here are some arguments people often have used against me, and some of my responses to them:

(1) Pascal's Wager: There is x probability that God exists, and 1-x probability that he doesn't but there is infinite reward for believing if he exists and non-infinite reward for non-belief if he doesn't, so therefore you should believe.

Great. Tell you what, send me $10,000 in cash and I'll not only give you infinite money in two month's time, I'll get you into heaven guaranteed. It's too good a deal for a smart guy like you to pass off, and space is limited.

(2) Learn to respect the mystery of life.

Sure, as soon as you respect the mystery of why you have a fever or why your car broke down.

(3) Your ideas threaten our humanity.

Hundreds of years ago, part of our 'humanity' was susceptibility to things like smallpox and bubonic plague, but I don't see very many people whining about their disappearance.

(4) Your ideas are all based on other ideas. Even the concept of 'idea' is an idea. How can you argue for the correctness of your system when you make such fundamental assumptions?

Everything, even logic, needs a starting point, and I make sure this starting point is as basic and solid as it possibly can be. If you're asking for an axiom-less system, feel free to sit helplessly with your thumb up your ass without even bothering to think for fear of the possibility of doubt.

(5) (related to #4, but not quite the same) All people filter reality through beliefs, thus beliefs can alter reality as they wish, thus there exist only beliefs, not reality.

As Yudkowsky says, everyone eats food through their mouths, and these mouths filter the taste of the food, so there is no food, only mouths. If you can filter your reality, why are you arguing with me anyway, instead of willing a frozen block of lavatory waste to flatten me where I stand?

(6) You have to respect my beliefs.

Nope.

(7) By the idea of Black Swans (this opinion is usually given by that curious new breed of idiots who think they understand 'The Black Swan' and like to cite it a lot) you can't predict the future since an improbable event will dominate it, so why even try?

Yes, you're right of course. The best course to dealing with unknowns is to put your fingers in your ears and hum as loudly as you can, I'm sure that will take care of it.

(8) You argue against faith in God, but you have faith in logic.

If you deny logic you lose your right to a logical response (same as denying God removes the possibility of a theistic response). In that vein, go fuck yourself you hypocritical piece of shit.

(9) Corporations threaten ancient and beautiful cultures! You can't support their evil ways!

Exactly, the Wall-Macht is driving into charming little towns in their discount Panzers for the greater glory of Fuhrer Walton. The fact that the locals shop there and work there of their own free will doesn't mean anything, nor does the fact that you're treating their technologically-deprived little 'idyllic' towns and lives as something you can view for your own pleasure rather than, you know, towns filled with people who'd like access to things like medicine and the internet thankyouverymuch.

(10) Don't question a war-time leader.

Sure, because the best way to make sure someone is doing their job properly is to ignore any mistakes you see them make. That's why it was smart for Soviet commanders not to question Stalin's order to not respond to German attacks in 1941.

(11) You shouldn't interfere with [insert process x here - it's usually aging or death] because it is a natural thing.

I hate the idea that natural = good. Go back to your mud huts and your malaria and smallpox and illiteracy you hypocritical twat. The mere fact that you're arguing this means you don't practice what you preach, and that fact makes you not only an asshole, but not worth further arguing with.

(12) Your belief in Free Will is like trying to impose a desirable face on a reality that can't accept it. (The guy who said this also said he believed in determinism because it's more consistent with the guiding ideology behind science - excuse me for asking, but isn't THAT trying to impose a desirable face on reality?)

No it isn't. Heisenberg Uncertainty means the question is meaningless for practical purposes, so neither side is more 'acceptable'. Also, your determinist viewpoint has no place for consciousness, which obviously exists, so you need to fix that gaping hole. Also, free will isn't more 'desirable', it's just the only useful assumption you can make.

And, for good measure, some popular sayings:

(13) You can't have your cake and eat it too.

What the hell do you want me to do with a cake other than eat it? Mount it in a display case so I can "have" it? (note: I thought of this BEFORE yahtzee put it in a Zero Punctuation video)

(14) What doesn't kill me only makes me stronger.

Cool. Mind if I strengthen you by taking all your money and burning down your house?

(15) What goes up must come down.

Except Voyager.

(16) Turn the other cheek.

Such a dumb saying I don't even know where to begin. Unless it's about passive-aggressive behavior, this just about does it for sheer idiocy. Turn the other cheek when hit? No, stab the fucker, then nobody else will hit you.

(17) Slow and steady wins the race.

Fast and steady tends to do better. The fable itself is fine, but the moral ought to be "don't stop until you've crossed the finish line you fucking idiot".

Two Fallacies

After reading a huge chunk of Nassim Nicholas Taleb's hugely famous magnum opus "The Black Swan" (which alternates between brilliant and rage-inducing), I was thinking about his chapter on "silent evidence", the evidence that never makes it into the pages of history and thus causes distortion. An example of "silent evidence" that Taleb gives is Casanova, or rather, those like him who never became famous. Casanova believed that his "etoile" (star) pulled him out of tricky situations, and indeed he did weather numerous setbacks only to come back as strong as ever. However, if we consider a large number of potential Casanovas, who, upon suffering a setback, have a probability of p of bouncing back (again, each setback in reality is different, but we're keeping it simple so it's easy to follow), many will be eliminated when they don't bounce back (probability 1 - p for each setback for each potential Casanova), and, at the end, only those who made it through make it into the pages of history. This demonstrates that a lucky string of one-in-a-million will often appear when there are enough potential Casanovas, even in the absence of an outside guiding influence. It only seems miraculous and probabilistically impossible because we read about the surviving Casanovas, and not the ones who were pulled under.

This came back to me later when Taleb switched to infuriatingly wrong, in a paragraph about how casinos prepare for all the wrong tragedies. His example was that casinos try to guard against probabilistic variability and cheating through diversification and surveillance, but the things that cost them are things like tigers mauling performers. His conclusion is that the majority of risks fall outside the casinos' models. But this falls victim to his own 'silent evidence' fallacy! Variability doesn't harm casinos BECAUSE they guard against it - so the potential threats don't make it into the books. They are silent evidence. So is cheating, since cheaters get caught or scared away, so the potential risk is totally unknown.

Unfortunately, this analysis of the defect could very well fall prey to precisely another fallacy - the so-called 'Elephant Repellant' fallacy. The idea is as such: a guy walking along a road sees a farmer in a field in England spraying a very smelly substance all over the fields. Naturally curious he goes over, and, holding his nose, asks him what he is spraying on the fields. "Elephant repellant" replies the farmer. "But there are no elephants anywhere near here!" protests the guy. "I know," says the farmer, "it really works!" The point of the fable is clear: any preventative measure can only be determined to be ineffective (at least anecdotally... a rigorous scientific test can differentiate between effective and ineffective preventions well - but sometimes, like in the case of terrorism, double-blind rigorous studies are impossible, and in other cases narrative bias gets in the way anyways), since if nothing happens, it is not clear whether the prevention was responsible or if nothing was going to happen anyways.

This might explain the popularity of curative methods over preventative: we like being able to judge effectiveness. Thus we labor for a pill to cure obesity and a cure for cancer, yet preventative methods are underutilized, placing a huge strain on healthcare.

We thus have two fallacies that work in opposite ways: whether you assume the existence of no silent evidence or the existence of silent evidence, you expose yourself to risk of faulty analysis. So what's to be done? Heres a suggestion in anecdotal form:

In 1973, Israeli intelligence was observing major movements from the Egyptian Army. The military intelligence bureau, Aman, was certain that this was just an exercise. The Egyptians had done the same thing the previous year, and there had been no war, just as Aman had predicted, and nothing seemed different. The actual result is of course famous: Egypt pushed into the Sinai and for a few days it seemed as if Israel was going to lose a decisive ground confrontation to its Arab neighbors until it was able to remobilize its armies and push the invading forces back. However, here is an alternative to Aman's decision making method that to me appears far more rational than its modus operandi of trying to read Arab intentions: prepare for everything. In the case that there is a significant (>1% in my view, but I'm not a military analyst) probability of war, mobilize enough forces to repulse any initial offensive. "But you're only recommending this with hindsight!" I hear you say. "You knew there would be an attack! This tells us nothing!" No. That is not my methodology. I recommend a preparation for any movement capable of producing an attack. I think Israel should have put its active forces on alert and prepared to mobilize the reserves even in '72 when the Arabs didn't invade. The point is that sure, you didn't know if your preventative measures stopped an actual attack or if you were using elephant repellant, so to speak. But in this way you know that you were secure against any possible attack. The enemy is inherently unpredictable; ANY factor depending on human beings with free will is inherently unpredictable. "No battle plan survives contact with the enemy". However, given the level of intelligence available to the IDF, the capabilities of the enemy were known, so, prepare for any attack up to the level they are capable of. In this way, enemy intent is removed from the analysis and it is impossible for them to catch you off guard.

I will illustrate my point with another example:

A teacher tells his students that there will be a pop quiz next week, intended to surprise them. The students then go through the following logic: if the teacher puts the quiz on Friday, they will obviously be expecting it since it's the only day left after Thursday passes with no quiz. Thus, the last day the teacher could put the quiz on is Thursday. But if the teacher puts it on Thursday, thanks to this same logic, they'll be expecting it then too. And so on, so that the teacher cannot surprise the students, despite the students not knowing when the quiz will be. And indeed the teacher cannot surprise smart students. Why? Well, lets see what this logic prescribes: if Thursday passes with no quiz, prepare for it for it will be on Friday. If Wednesday passes with no quiz, prepare for it, for the teacher will not ruin the surprise by putting it on Friday so it will come on Thursday, and so on. The general advice: be prepared for the quiz EVERY DAY. You cannot surprise someone who is prepared every day.

And indeed this is my recommendation for users of 'elephant repellant': figure out how capable elephants are of coming into your fields and trampling your crops, and get the repellant accordingly. Do not try to read the minds of any elephants capable of coming in: 'they might not want to' is not good preparation. If there is a credible threat, and the costs of unpreparedness are high enough, as was the case of Israel in '73, you must prepare for it. Otherwise, you expose yourself to a (negative) Black Swan that may be not quite as unlikely as you think it is.