Disdain for Elections, or Why I'm (probably not actually) Moving to Canada

Recent post to the contrary, this is still a political blog.

We're seven months out, and I'm already getting worried about the 2016 Presidential Primaries. Specifically, the seeming inevitability of both parties nominating a terrible candidate. Right now, it looks like we'll be seeing another Bush or Clinton in office, despite the fact nobody actually wants either of them.

Obviously party nominations are Molochian process riddled by lies, misperceptions, and short-term thinking. But this is a uniquely frustrating problem for me, since I've yet to come up with a solution that's politically viable. Neither party will nominate better candidates, no one will vote for third parties, and no one will support actual voting reform. So what do we do?

I have no idea. Maybe I should just move to Canada. They seem to be stable, above us on both conservative and liberal freedom indices, and a fair bit less partisan. The big problem, of course, is that I hate the cold.

New Zealand is always a substitute.

On a Personal Note

I'm less than six weeks from finishing this semester at community college, and less than two months from returning to a conventional university. Unfortunately, my work and familial obligations are doing their best to keep me from devoting the proper effort to academics. Revealed preferences are fun.

All this has got me thinking  about conscious living, interpersonal relationships, and egoism, but conclusions are a long way off. There's a lot of other things I'd like to write about, but again, there's no time to ruminate on them properly. I'm in the process of setting up a less public blog where I can reflect on various small things without the pressure to state things completely.

For the time being, I'm not going to worry about it. If something comes up that can be written out quickly, it will be; otherwise, this blog will be in effective hiatus until June. Hopefully I can resume regular posting at that time.

Year In Space

This blog is intentionally not focused on current events, but I'm making an exception to remind everyone that the NASA/Roscosmos Year In Space mission launches tomorrow from Baikonur Cosmodrome for the International Space Station.

It's a far cry from the duration called for by most Mars mission architectures, but this is a large step forward. Astronaut Scott Kelly will set a new duration record for American astronauts, while cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko will spend more time in space than any Russian since the deorbiting of Mir. 

The third passenger on their Soyuz flight to the ISS, Gennady Padalka, has been practically forgotten by the media. Padalka will only spent the normal six months on orbit, but upon landing will emerge with the human time-in-space record.

Of course, it's not all butterflies and rainbows. Kelly and Kornienko will occupy slots that could have been assigned to other astronauts and cosmonauts, delaying when they get more flight assignments. Considering how much more science year-long missions will yield, it's entirely possible this is the new normal. However, the astronaut corps has shrunk significantly in the post-shuttle years, so I may be worrying about a non-issue.

Altogether, this is a very exciting time in our push to the planets. Let's hope for a nominal launch.

Smarter Every Day interviews Scott Kelly

Pi versus Tau: a case of nominative determinism?

Tomorrow is Pi Day, which to most people is a day to celebrate mathematics and pretend to like nerds. It seems like good, clean fun, but behind the false front, a battle rages on. Do we keep π, or abandon it in favor of τ?

For those who don't know, τ is a mathematical constant which can be approximated 6.2831853071... or precisely 2π. Many argue that τ is a more elegant and efficient way choice, and a better way to teach mathematics. But that debate is not what this post is about.

No, I want to investigate a different phenomenon: the effect one's name has on their position in the debate.

This first occurred to me when I was watching a Numberphile video on the debate. Brady Haran cleverly replaced letters from the debater's names with their respective constants. It's just two data points, but it got me thinking: do the letters in your name affect how your opinion?

Mere cleverness, or important evidence?

I wondered if this extended beyond Steve and Matt, so I started looking around. My name, in case you forgot, is Nathaniel. It has a T, like Steve, but also has an H right next to it. Where do I stand on the issue? Well, I think τ is more beautiful, but the switching costs are too high to attempt an actual change. I'd rather we just introduce the concept when teaching trigonometry.

My friends are relatively nerdy, but the sample size is too small to drawn any conclusions. I might be seeing a trend, but then again I might be fitting data to the theory. Until I see a rigorous psychology of science study on the subject, I'm putting this one down as "plausible."

No More Politics?

For some time, I've been disinterested in your everyday object-level politics. However, I've taken a sort of hiatus from even metapolitics, and it's quite pleasant. It's quite possible I'm not going to go back.

There's several reasons why this is the case. For one thing, it's draining. You argue and explain and grind away, and it never seems like you're making any progress. In the end, you're faced with a dilemma: explain the 101 material for the umpteenth time, or veer into more advanced territory that's off-putting to newcomers. A Grunted and Hinged post on beginners and burning out described this process in detail. My experiences with libertarianism/Objectivism conform pretty well to the model.

Politics is also mind-killery. I don't think I need to walk anybody through this one. We've all felt it, that frenzy when your beliefs are being attacked. We instantly lose all ability to reason, fixating on discrediting our opponent's position, no matter how eloquently the argue or how much evidence they put forward.

That sensation is a product of our ape brains, still mostly optimized for life on the savanna. To my knowledge, there isn't a direct solution for this, but there are a few hacks to avoid being in that situation to begin with. The most popular tactic is keeping your identity small--or, if you prefer more colloquial terms, "being independent." Of course, Independent and Person-With-A-Small-Identity are still identities, and people will attack you for them.

(If you're thinking "I could be independent without making that part of my identity," I'm afraid it's too late. You also just lost the game.)

Furthermore, there's usually a reason someone starts identifying with a particular ideology or movement. You don't wake up one day saying "I think I'll be a feminist!" Going back to Gruntled and Hinged:

Let’s oversimplify a bit, and presume that the only question that feminism seeks to answer is whether or not women and men are equal.  So you, New Feminist, get involved in feminism (for the purposes of this exercise, and because I’ve already slightly oversimplified, please assume you’re female). You start identifying as a feminist, and as a result start having conversations/arguments/discussions about whether or not men and women are equal.

I emphasize this point, not to comment on feminism, but because your beliefs necessarily contribute to your identity, which then contributes to your behaviors.

Take my own example. I decided I valued natural rights, the Constitution, and limited government, and consequently began thinking of myself as a libertarian. Since I was a libertarian, I began discussing libertarian ideas. Wasted countless hours on the internet arguing about politics, and wasted my vote* on Gary Johnson.

But what did all that accomplish? I stressed over things I couldn't control and didn't shift the political landscape significantly. Meanwhile, my education (both formal and informal) languished. I paid the price for that, too--itself a reason to get out.

So now, I'm realigning my identity away from politics. My beliefs have shifted** and so have my priorities. How I label myself is important, because it's a way of caching the self. What political label you use will impact the direction your beliefs update. As a libertarian, I became more anarchistic and extreme, as a radical centrist the reverse occurred.

You should also try to replace the symbol with the substance. For a long time, I called myself a nerd, because it seemed like an accurate identifier. Even if we ignore the social connotations, though, it wasn't very useful. Nerd implies a lot of things to different people. For me, however, it referred to a relatively succinct set of interests in ideaspace. Now, I'll say "I'm interested in philosophy and spaceflight" instead of introducing myself as nerd. I still am one, but a very particular type of nerd.

The same goes in politics, but that's a lumper's game. Nuance dies upon first contact with the political. If you want to talk about complex ideas intelligently, getting out of politics is the way to go.

*I don't actually consider my vote wasted, since Romney was guaranteed to win Kansas. You could argue that voting at all was a waste of time (especially since I had to do the mail-in forms), but I was 18 and really wanted to.

**More on that later.

Agnostic Lent

“Even now,” declares the Lord,
  “return to me with all your heart,
  with fasting and weeping and mourning.”
Rend your heart
  and not your garments.
--Joel 2:12-13

I am not a very religious person. This probably isn't much of a surprise to those who know me, but in case there was any doubt, there is it. Most of my spiritual life has been spent in the agnostic/deist/rationalist school of thought, thanks in no small part to my secular parents and a wide range of reading materials.

Since my grandmother died, however, Mom and Dad have started attending church again regularly. Naturally I've been towed along to a few services over the months, which for the most part haven't impressed me. Without the promise of eternal life, true altruism breaks down as a moral system.

(I may have to do a post on that sometime.)

So naturally, I wasn't expecting very much when we piled in the car for my first ever Ash Wednesday service. Lent, after all, is traditionally presented as a time of penance and self-denial. We give up something we like to grow closer to God (and each other). Not exactly an egoist nonbeliever's cup of tea.

But that wasn't the path our pastor took. Many people give things up for Lent, she said, things like junk food or alcohol or cigarettes. For the most part, they give up things they should be giving up anyway, because they're self-destroying. She asked us to abstract that into the intellectual sphere. She asked us to try--for 40 days--to give up self-destructive mindsets and behaviors, like blame, procrastination, and greed.

I disagreed on some of her particulars (thought it might've been a case of the definitions), I still think that's a very good message. Lent makes a good Schelling point for changing one's behavior. So does the New Year--yes, making resolutions does have value, if you know what you're doing, and are willing to stick with it.

I'm not giving up anything in particular this Lent, in part because I need to figure out what behaviors to modify. Thanks to our pastor, though, I have a better notion of how to approach this.

Oh, and I got one of those dorky ash crosses:

Updates

I'm way overdue to update this blog but not-finishing-drafts is a bad habit inherited from tumblr. Instead of something meaningful I'm going to do an internal affairs and links post.

Internal affairs first. After many grueling months, I finally finished Leonard Peikoff's Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. I didn't find it terribly rewarding, but at least I can move onto other things. I plan to start writing book reviews, but may keep those off this blog. My reading list here on out goes like this:

1. The Martian, Andy Weir
2. An Astronaut's Guide to Life On Earth, Chris Hadfield
3. Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman
4. The Foundations of Morality, Henry Hazlitt
5. Introduction to Logic and Critical Thinking, Merrilee Salmon

That last is an optional textbook for my Logic and Critical Thinking class (the textbook titles in this subject are really uncreative). It's a rental, so that gives me a time limit, but I'm reading a lot faster now that OPAR is over.

What's concerning is how simple and straightforward the class' material is. This should be cultural common knowledge, but it isn't. I may go ahead and do a series of blog posts on basic logic topics.

However, I'm not very good at planning blog posts. Remember last fall when I was all worked up about post-scarcity, and only wrote about it twice? Possible solution: list out the topics in advance, with deadlines. Might be effective, might just clutter up the blog even more.

On the subject of clutter, I've got too many bookmarks, which perhaps I'll start archiving here. Alright, enough whining. Time for the links!

One of my friends made a post on status systems in social justice, which goes a long way toward dissecting the Oppression Olympics. And it reminded me I never update my blog.

I read a kinda old article last week on the topic of left versus right libertarians. Once again, it seems I don't fall into any particular political category comfortably. Maybe "radical libertarian centrist" would do? But I also read Paul Graham's essay Keep Your Identity Small, so slapping labels on everything doesn't seem like a good idea.

(I found that through LessWrong's Rationality Materials page. Lots of interesting stuff, but overwhelming when you get started. Someone should write it up in book form someday.)

The Allusionist Podcast discusses what it means to go viral, why podcasts don't, and confirms my disgust for Buzzfeed. Related: Wired Magazine interview Roman Mars.

On a more technological note, the Lunar Escape System was a contingency vehicle for the proposed long-duration Apollo missions. In the event the Lunar Ascent Stage failed, astronauts could essentially climb into a rocket-propelled chair and rendezvous with the Command Module. Somehow, I'm glad these never flew.

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Astronomy Department has a number of online astronomy tools, for those who want a better intuition of star and planet motions.

That about does it for now. I'll plan on making a links post on a monthly basis from here on out.

Failure in the New Year

We're a month into the New Year, and I'm already falling down on my resolutions. Not that I had anything formal, but I was hoping to finally meet my one-post-per-week goal and start flossing regularly. I have been successful at brushing my teeth left-handed.

It's interesting: I had a giant post planned about How to Make 2015 better. It won't be published, though its content will probably slip out elsewhere. I missed a major point, though: conceptualization. I'll be doing a proper post on it soon (maybe), but the problem we have is that we don't adequately conceive, plan, and execute our goals.

Resolutions fail because we use them to wrap up self-improvement in glittering generalities. Success requires concrete percepts and a clear vision forward, covering all the necessary points. That's hard, so most people don't bother. Who cares about making progress when you can feel good?

I do.

Stuff for the Mars Colony

It's not difficult to find conventions and cultural artifacts that really aren't very good. For instance, the customary system of measurements, or telling time on a 24 hour clock. It's relatively easy to develop solutions, but getting them implemented is always a struggle.

The problem gets even worse when you spend time talking about big ideas with smart people. Over the last several months, my friends and I have identified quite a few examples. I've been keeping track of them as "Stuff for the Mars Colony." Here's what we have so far

• Time Scales
• Electrons are positive
• Base-12 system
• Better way to measure acidity/baseness
• Logical engineered languages
• Reasonable sleep schedule
• Standardized education terminology

I'll be doing posts about some of these over the next few weeks. The discerning reader will notice almost all of these are examples of coordination problems--a running theme we'll be exploring.

New Year's Resolutions Followup 2014

I didn't do the best job of keeping my New Year's Resolutions. 

I did a fairly good job flossing the first half of the year, and fell apart after that. I didn't come close to posting weekly, though I averaged around one every 10 days. When you consider the gaps, however...

And the periodic calendar--I never used it to any degree worth mentioning. Instead, it offers a clear example of why these Resolutions often fail: no true change in behavior or environment to facilitate them. It wouldn't have been difficult to bookmark an adequately large image or save it to my desktop. Then, I could have consulted it easily. As it was, my poster was hung in a very inaccessible corner of my dorm.

My resolutions for 2015 are yet to be determined, but once I've chosen, these are things to keep in mind.