I don’t always agree with Bill Maher on things (like his absurd position towards medicine and vaccinations). However, this is fantastic:

“Our culture isn’t just different than one that makes death threats to cartoonists–it’s better.”

Watch the whole thing.

Via Dave Gorski, I’ve learned that it’s Homeopathic Awareness Week. Homeopathy, in case you’re not aware, is the belief that incredibly dilute solutions of non-pharmacologically active herbs can somehow cure disease. Basically, it’s making magic potions, minus the magic part. Also, minus the curing disease part. To celebrate, here’s a great sketch on the subject from the BBC show That Mitchell and Webb Look (also a hat tip to Gorski).

This ‘bearer of glad tidings’ died as he lived and taught—not to ’save mankind,’ but to show mankind how to live. It was a way of life that he bequeathed to man: his demeanour before the judges, before the officers, before his accusers—his demeanour on the cross. He does not resist; he does not defend his rights; he makes no effort to ward off the most extreme penalty—more, he invites it…. And he prays, suffers and loves with those, in those, who do him evil…. Not to defend one’s self, not to show anger, not to lay blames…. On the contrary, to submit even to the Evil One—to love him….”
– Friedrich Nietzsche

it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them

Barack Obama, April 6, 2008.

Tyler Cowen has put up his list of influential books and has invited others to do the same. Here’s the list of ten that I came up with. A list I wrote next week might be different, but this is what comes to mind right now.

“O Rotten Gotham–Sliding Down the Behavioral Sink” by Tom Wolfe

Okay, so this isn’t a book. But I first read this when I was about 10 or 11 while poking through one of my parents’ college essay books. And I was utterly floored by it. I love the heavily imagistic, new journalist style the Wolfe affected in this essay. I have read it several times–but oddly, nothing else by Tom Wolfe. What really influenced me about this, apart from the incredible style, was that it was the first work I read that truly emphasized the point that humans are animals. They behave like animals because they are. And while humans are unique among animals, that doesn’t mean they’re not prone to instincts and drives like any other. The behavioral nonsense of Wolfe I’ve left behind. The emotional conviction that I am an animal has not.

A Brief History of Time by Steven Hawking

I think I was 13 when I first read A Brief History of Time. I’ve read it and many, many, many, many books on science since. I have always loved science and I started reading about science as early as I can remember. But this is the first scientific work that stuck with me and that I still read with pleasure and to refresh myself on some cosmological concepts.

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

I never really considered myself to be an Objectivist. My love of empiricism and research never let me take the leap to fully embrace Rand, because it was clear from her writing that, brilliant as she was, she was woefully uneducated in science and history, and her unwillingness to truly grapple with the great thinkers bothers me to this day. That said, Atlas Shrugged and the rest of the Rand bibliography (I have read them all), influenced me from adolescence to this day. I’ve since parted ways with her brand of individualism. History, anthropology and primatology clearly point out that her ethics are a one way ticket to misery. But I did get several key ideas from Rand, first and foremost among them being the idea that, in the long run, the moral course of action is also the practical course of action. Ethics should be centered on this earth and this reality. The virtues of entrepreneurialism are worth celebrating. That’s worth a lot to me.

Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen

Truth be told, it was Loewen’s Modern History lecture series based on this book that I discovered first, but I find myself constantly going back to Loewen as my guide through American history. That we Americans, as a people, are unwilling to grasp with the horrors our forebears unleashed is shameful. That we allowed the slavery apologists to slur the good names of U.S. Grant and John Brown is a disgrace as well. That we, in our lust to worship the capitalist ideal, forget all about horrid factory conditions, company towns and banana republics is why our history keeps repeating itself. It might seem sometimes that Loewen focuses on the bad parts of American history, but it’s necessary to look at the bad parts. It’s also necessary to understand that one of the unique ways that Americans solve their problems of justice is by constant reference to America’s founding ideals. That’s a huge thing.

Life, Inc. by Doug Rushkoff

By far, this is the book that influences my current political thinking the most. The key concept I’ve taken away from Rushkoff is that there are no “laws of economics.” There are rules, some of which work better than others. Most importantly, what I’ve taken away from this book is that our current corporate state is, by design, a threat to the individual entrepreneur.

Twilight of the Idols/The Anti-Christ by Friedrich Nietzsche

Technically, this is two books, but my Penguin edition binds them together so I’m putting them together. Most folks in the blogosphere are bigger fans of The Genealogy of Morals, but I much prefer this paired set. From Twilight of the Idols I’ve learned, of course, to philosophize with a hammer. This concept has been invaluable to me as my personal philosophy has been radically evolving over the past two decades. Smash your idols when they don’t make sense! And of course, The Anti-Christ is simultaneously a rebuke of Christianity and a tribute to Christ. The layers of thinking, symbolism and contradiction are delicious.

Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil by Hannah Arendt

This is the book that hammered home to me, more than any other, the dangers of letting other people doing your thinking for you. It’s also what helped me the most to see that even monsters can be heroes in their own eyes. Reading this book, one can’t help but try to understand what made Eichmann tick. I’m still not sure, but I’m better for the attempt at understanding what evil is.

Adam, Eve, and the Serpent by Elaine Pagels

This is the first book I ever read about the history of the early Christian Church, and it made a magnificent impression on me. The dueling theologies, the politics, the personalities, the sex–the whole story helped me to understand some key facets of Christian–and by extension, Western–thinking. I have since read many, many, many books and articles about the early history of Christianity. But this one’s still great.

The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt

If you only read one book on business management, this should be it. The best, clearest understanding of business systems in one volume there is.

The Walking Drum by Louis L’Amour

This is probably my favorite novel of all time. It’s a classic adventure story, but set in a perfect time of transition. The pinnacle of the Muslim caliphate, on the verge of the Renaissance in Europe, and near the fall of the Byzantine Empire. This trek through the 1200s is what sparked my interest in the incredible Muslim Civilization of the Middle Ages, which gave mankind chemistry, medicine, the scientific method, translations of Greek classics, and a host of other gifts. L’Amour’s hero in this novel, Mathurin Kerbouchard, is a lover of knowledge and action, a romantic and ruthless pragmatist. I read this for the first time at age 17 and have read it many times since.

So what books have influenced you?

“I think we have to declare Scott Brown’s presidency a failure.”
– Jim Henley

The House of Representatives today voted to approve the Senate Health Care Bill and the Reconciliation Bill.

Summoned to success by President Barack Obama, the Democratic-controlled Congress approved historic legislation Sunday night extending health care to tens of millions of uninsured Americans and cracking down on insurance company abuses, a climactic chapter in the century-long quest for near universal coverage.
“This is what change looks like,” Obama said a few moments later in televised remarks that stirred memories of his 2008 campaign promise of “change we can believe in.”

Widely viewed as dead two months ago, the Senate-passed bill cleared the House on a 219-212 vote. Republicans were unanimous in opposition, joined by 34 dissident Democrats.

A second, smaller measure — making changes in the first — cleared the House shortly before midnight and was sent to the Senate, where Democratic leaders said they had the votes necessary to pass it quickly. The vote was 220-211.

This vote is a tribute to Obama’s overarching political strategy: do the math and grind it out. During the Democratic primaries, his team did the math, ignored the ups and downs of the campaign, and focused on get out the vote efforts, and upset Hilary Clinton.

He followed the same strategy during the general election. Focusing on long term efforts and ignoring the ups and downs. And now here with Health Care Reform, he knew he had a Congressional majority, he knew it would be tough. He did the math, focused on a bill that would get a majority, and ground it out. And now he’s won.

And it’s clear that he is now the leader of the Democratic Party, a Party that has been without one for quite some time. This speech before Congress on Saturday is emblematic of that:

I’d say it’s impossible for the Republicans to claim that Obama is ineffectual now. I think he’s going to start to scare them the way Clinton scared them–but Obama doesn’t have the same ethical lapses that Clinton did.

I fully expect the Democrats to maintain control of Congress in the fall, and I honestly believe that this bill will HELP the Democrats in the Fall. I don’t think that Republicans are going to be too thrilled with ads lambasting them for wanting small businesses to pay higher taxes, insurance companies to drop coverage on sick people, and people to not be able to buy affordable, individual insurance.

“A new poll shows that Minnesotans disapprove of Governor Tim Pawlenty (who scores a 42/52 job approval rating) and disapprove of their legislature by an even wider margin (25/66.) Must be because they’re rejecting Pawlenty’s big government health care plan.”
– Jonathan Chait

Sue Lowden, a Nevada Republican running against Harry Reid for his Senate seat, runs a new ad in which she blasts “government run health care”.

Harry Reid thinks Washington knows best, but I think we the people know best. Harry Reid’s big government health care plan will raise taxes, put a bureaucrat between you and your doctor, weaken Medicare, kill jobs, push us further into debt. I’m Sue Lowden and I approve this message because government run health care is wrong.

I don’t understand how anybody can, with a straight face, put themselves in the completely ridiculous rhetorical position of arguing that government run healthcare is wrong because it would weaken Medicare!

Do Republicans really think that people are that stupid?

(link via Matthew Yglesias)

Andrew Sullivan points to this post by Jonathan Rowe, in which he quotes someone who claims to have a phD in astronomy on a listserv discussing reincarnation and immortality from an atheistic perspective. Here’s the argument, in toto:

If time is infinite on both ends, then we have infinite rolls of the dice of probability. That means, however infinitesimally small the probabilities that brought “you” into existence, with enough rolls of dice, “you” will come into existence again, and again and again forever. And if time is infinite in reverse, “now” isn’t the only time “you” existed.

Accordingly, “you” have always existed and always will.

This falls under a category of philosophic argument that only sounds clever if you don’t think about it for more than thirty seconds. Let’s examine the premises of the argument, one by one:

1. Time is infinite on both ends.

Well, no, it isn’t. According to our current understanding, the universe, as I would expect someone with a phD in astronomy, is not infinite at both ends. It started with the Big Bang, and will end in one of two ways, depending on how much matter there is in the universe: (1) it will collapse in on itself or (2) it will expand forever, but with all energy converted into heat due to entropy.

[Quick digression: But what about the multiverse? We could have a long discussion about this, but let me give you my quick perspective: there ain't no such thing. The math of quantum mechanics perfectly lends itself to there being one universe, and until you can actually empirically demonstrate the existence of another universe, it makes no sense to think they exist. End digression.]

2. Therefore, there are infinite rolls of the dice.

Even if we assume that premise (1) is true, the problem is that the universe does not run on “rolls of the dice,” or chance. It runs on certain physical laws, some of which have a probabilistic aspect, and some that don’t. The laws of thermodynamics, for example, are the latter. No matter how many times you “roll the dice,” you’ll never wind up with a perpetual motion machine, just like you’ll never roll a 20 with a 6-sided die. The physical laws of the universe all interact with each other, creating some things that are more likely to occur than others–that’s the probability aspect. But they can’t make anything happen.

However infinitesimally small the probabilities that brought “you” into existence, with enough rolls of dice, “you” will come into existence again.

Here we can see the two problems with the premises above having a severe impact on the conclusion. Not every physical law is subject to chance, and time is not infinite. Accordingly, the idea that it was merely “infinitesimally small probabilities” bring a certain person into existence ignores the operation of time and the interaction of physical laws. Consider what has to happen in order for a certain human being to come into existence: 1. The solar system has to be created. 2. Earth has to be in it. 3. Earth (probably) has to get hit by a large body in order to create the moon. 4. Life has to evolve on earth on the same time scale. 5. An asteroid has to hit the earth and wipe out the dinosaurs. 6. Humans have to evolve in a particular climatological and geographical context. 7. People with identical genetics and personalities to your parents have to be born in a way that they’re able to meet, fall in love, and have sex. 8. They have to do it at JUST the right time so that one particular sperm hits one particular ova. 9. The genes from that sperm and ova have to rearrange their chromosomes in exactly the right way. Etc. etc. etc.

And you see, the above is just the big picture stuff. Some of which is determined by probability (genetic recombination, for example). Others are determined purely by physical laws and chance simply doesn’t have an opportunity to play a role–gravitation in the formation of the Earth and particular asteroid strikes, the chemistry involved in abiogenesis, etc.

More to the point, who “you” are isn’t dependent on mere genetic recombination. It’s from the interaction of genes with the environment, combined with free choices that you make. The very existence of differences in personality among identical twins shreds this hypothesis to ribbons. And that’s just personality. There’s also the concept of epigenetics. Epigenetics is, basically, the study of how particular genes express themselves under different circumstances. And which of your genes express when can be determined by one’s own choices. For example, if you have two twins, one of whom becomes a professional bodybuilder and the other an office-working couch potato, they’re going to have different genes express differently. They’ll look different, they’ll have made different choices, and their underlying biochemistry will also have changed. There’s no chance involved here, either–it was the free choices of the two twins that resulted in markedly different phenotypic expression of the same genes (in other words, they were, in many ways, different people.)

To sum up, this idea that someone how you are going to be eternally recurring in the universe because of the operation of chance in an infinite universe simply doesn’t have a leg to stand on. You’re the only you there is, was, or will be.

So make the most of it.

Updated: In the comments, Jonathan Rowe clarifies that he was originating the idea, based on an astronmer’s conjecture that there is an infinite expansion/collapse cycle in the universe. But this doesn’t get around some of the major problems. For one, it assumes that there is such a cycle, when at the present time it’s unclear whether there is enough mass to create the gravitation necessary for a universal collapse. Additionally, we are left with the same problem as the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics — there’s no empirical evidence for the existence of past and future universes, and the math works out just as well when we go along with the evidence and assume there’s only one universe. Additionally, this interpretation still does not grapple with the idea that probability is constrained by physical law or the role of choice and environment in controlling epigenetics and personal identity. So again, I say that this argument of “immortality” is simply, fundamentally flawed.

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