TheBigUpshot

Despite the appearances of a slowdown, these pork bandits are still here. They keep trying to produce content for your amusement. But today, I have a topic of some interest. I’m going to ask a question. You all are free to answer.

Let’s take an absurd proposition. Because I like absurdity. I must love absurdity if I hang with this “Upshot” crowd.

Let’s say, for the sake of illustration, that I believe in telepathy. If I express this, and someone disagrees (that is, they erroneously believe telepathy is not real) how should I feel about that?

Of course, my first reaction is to be deeply offended. I mean, how dare that person disagree with me? I know what I’m talking about. I’m not a child. I know stuff. I’ve studied. Some people are ignorant assholes, and they should keep their opinions to themselves, or better yet, they should keep an open mind to the facts of the matter. Which I have.

Now, everyone knows that that my taking deep offense with disagreement implies a strong conviction. Indeed, people are prepared to accept what I have to say, as long as I am really hostile when I say it. People will only think I really believe in telepathy if I find it offensive when they don’t.

My stance on telepathy makes no sense to people who base their beliefs on “evidence.” That fact that I can’t demonstrate telepathy suggests to them that it doesn’t exist. I have to combat that somehow, and extreme aggressiveness is the best way.

You might suggest that this is unreasonable. You know what I have to say to that?

How Dare You?

-The Jester

Tags: Humor by Jester
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There’s a book by Orson Scott Card called “Folk of the Fringe.” It’s one of his lesser known works. I liked the symbolism. In the post-apocalyptic future, a group of people are terraforming the Utah desert into arable land. In the story, there’s a sequence of plants (engineered and natural) that need to grow on the land before it’s ready for crops. This sequence is planted as ever-expanding rings out from Salt Lake City (O.S.C is a Mormon).

Out at the newly planted regions, the fringe, people live far away from mainstream society. They ride in long circles, tending to the ever expanding ring of habitable territory. The symbolism is obvious. People who are on the edges of social acceptability are actually making more conceptual and social “space” available to the rest of us.
There’s a bit of a parallel in the sciences. Truth to tell, most “kooks” don’t have anything fundamentally interesting. But occasionally, a kook will strike gold out in the frontier and inspire a new rush of activity.

I don’t know how kooky the subject is of “Binaural auditory beats.” The fact that I first heard about it through the “alternative” sources suggests that it’s pretty kooky. But that’s irrelevant in the end. This study looks like it’s bringing the subject into the more respectable realm of controlled experiments:

Binaural auditory beats affect vigilance performance and mood.
Lane JD, Kasian SJ, Owens JE, Marsh GR.

Department of Psychiatry, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina, USA

When two tones of slightly different frequency are presented separately to the left and right ears the listener perceives a single tone that varies in amplitude at a frequency equal to the frequency difference between the two tones, a perceptual phenomenon known as the binaural auditory beat. Anecdotal reports suggest that binaural auditory beats within the electroencephalograph frequency range can entrain EEG activity and may affect states of consciousness, although few scientific studies have been published. This study compared the effects of binaural auditory beats in the EEG beta and EEG theta/delta frequency ranges on mood and on performance of a vigilance task to investigate their effects on subjective and objective measures of arousal…

In any case, I’m not surprised that there are external stimuli that can have odd effects on our brain and consciousness. In fact, I would be surprised if there were not. This is the fringe, ladies and gentlemen. This is where fertile ground will be made from desert. Binaural beat stimulation is a crude probe compared to that which we are capable of designing. The last question is: what will we plant in this new ground made whole by our efforts?

Cheers,
Peter

Tags: Philosophy, Science by Peter
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I’m going to promote a product now: the Swisstech Utilikey

I use a Swisstech Utilikey basically every day. I love this little thing. It’s compact and as useful as a normal pocket knife for the same kinds of things, but it is also three screwdrivers and a bottle opener. It clips to a key ring and clips off just as easily. I keep mine clipped to a LED light.

Additionally, they are backed by a really nice warranty. I broke one of the blades on the Phillips screwdriver and Swisstech replaced the Utilikey for free.

They make a good gift, too. I gave one to my Dad, who is a real hard man for whom to shop.

So there you go. Head on over and get one.

-Peter

Tags: Uncategorized by Peter
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Tycho and Gabe over at the Penny Arcade had a guest write their blog posts for a week . The topic was Digital Rights Management in videogames. DRM is the technological scheme by which a company tries to encourage buying instead of “sharing” of games, songs or movies. The fact that these products are now very long strings of Zeros and Ones has a fun consequence that the plebs else can copy it faster and cheaper than the original producer can.

Effectively, the previous bottleneck upon which the toll booth sat, distribution, is no longer optimally positioned. Everyone is still trying to cope. To thwart the “hackerz,” and keep people coming through the booth, companies have DRM.  It takes any of a number of forms. They all keep track of their product to make sure that people who use it are actually paying for it. I talked about this a while back, too.

So, we have two incommensurable agendas: consumers want to pay less; producers want to recoup their costs. Also, they would like to turn a massive, monopolistic profit. Did you know that RIAA settled over a price-fixing lawsuit?. Where should the law come down? Should it support the good of the people (see Canada) or the “greater good” that comes into play in economics? There is a case to be made: if people can’t protect their investment, why invest? Without investment, we presume, creativity and innovation stall. Or so we are led to believe.

There is a parallel case in the sciences. Upstream of patent and IP law, ‘innovation policy’ comes to play. Where and when should the public’s dollar be spent on science and (by extension) other great human pursuits? A recent article went up about this question at nature.com. The question posed therein can be generalized. Science, art, literature all can be equally described by this statement:

“Research [and art, literature] occasionally generates radical changes that are unpredictable and often not associated with those pre-defined social goals. Nations invest in research for social purposes that are often thwarted by the nature of the research process itself.”

A society can invest, but it may not reap what it thinks it is sowing. The law of unintended consequences. DRM is similar: as people are thwarted in their attempts to access their legally purchased product, they turn to illegally acquired product. And so the software (and laws and business practices) designed to keep consumers buying turn them into thieves.

Cheers,

Peter

P.S.: XKCD spells it out for the RIAA:

Tags: Humor, Philosophy by Peter
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As soon as I get to read Steven Pinker’s book, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, I’ll give a more complete review. But I wholeheartedly agree with at least two of his points. First is the basic premise that people are born with a ‘first draft’ of their attitude toward life already built in. Secondly, and related to this, is his assessment of the ‘decline of the arts’. It’s bullshit. The arts are alive and well. What is declining is an interest in pedantic pseudo-intellectualism in the arts. We’re getting back to a more grounded artistic sensibility that actually takes into account what people actually like. That seems unsophisticated. Sophistication for its own sake had its heyday. It’s over.

But sophistication can come back. Sophistication now should be about bridging discipline gaps. Instead of intellectual masturbation, (forming connections to yourself) artists need to go study neuroscience and learn how to make people tick. Or make connections to other sciences or history and try to teach people something beautiful in a way that is beautiful. Forge new connections. We all need to bridge Snow’s Two Cultures. This is meaningful. It will give birth to new ideas. It’s intellectual procreation.

Cheers,
Peter

Tags: Philosophy, Science by Peter
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