Full Moons and the Digital Age

I went out to take a look at the full moon while it was still Friday the 13th, which got me thinking about why the full moon is supposed to make people crazy. I can't pass any judgement on triskaidekaphobia, but the full moon is an interesting phenomena.

Luna certainly affects life on Terra. Everything from the tides to wolf hunting behavior to human menstrual cycles are influenced by its orbital period, primarily through gravity and reflected light. It's not hard to think of good reasons why. Considering how light affects human actions, it makes sense that the greater nighttime illumination offered by a full or gibbous moon could change how people act.

I have my own hypothesis for how full moons and strange behavior became associated. In pre-industrial societies, Luna was the only major source of light after sunset (and candles really didn't do much for interior lighting, either). When we think about how much time agriculture and other forms of manual labor take up, those people would be thankful for the extra hours afforded by a full moon.

The thing is, staying up later makes people tired, and tired people do foolish things. Ergo, people are crazy around a full moon--both before and after.

In our modern age, however, we don't spend much time looking at the moon. In fact, most of the light that keeps us awake comes from television, phone, and computer screens. Perhaps the decrease in that superstition can be traced to the advent of television, or all the way back to widely-available lightbulbs.

Either way, I'm turning the laptop off and going to bed. 

The Choice

There comes a point in every person's life where he must choose whether he will be ruled by the pursuit of pleasure or that or joy. To state it differently, the question is whether his body will be a tool of his mind, or the reverse. Many people never fully make that choice, and remain suspended between animal and human being.

It's not an easy decision to make, but I'd rather make it--and retain the possibility of happiness--than not.

Two Years on Facebook and Misanthropy

I remembered last night that I first signed up for Facebook at the end of April; after a bit of clicking and scrolling, I realized that it was today, the 29th day of the fourth month of 2012 that I signed up. In the grand scheme of the universe, this is pretty dratted insignificant, but it does mark an interesting anniversary in my life.

Specifically, it was at that point that I really began to explore the weird world of the internet. Before that point, I'd wandered around YouTube a few times, and wasted a considerably amount of time on the Cheezburger websites, but really hadn't gotten into it. Now, going to college and having a lot more computer access, in the form of this laptop I'm presently using, were probably equally important factors in this. Joining Facebook stands out nonetheless.

The big thing I've taken away from all my experiences in Facebook, YouTube, Cheezburger, xkcd, definitely Tumblr, and more recently, Twitter, is a confirmed sense of overwhelming misanthropy. Every time I start feeling good about humanity, I can just head over to one of those websites and come away with a renewed hatred (or at least apathy) for human beings.

This probably isn't a good thing, but it's an undisputable fact. Now the question is: how do I react to it? Well, I've had some doubts recently about whether I'm an INTJ or INTP recently, but in either case, my first instinct is analysis. (Why do you think I was being introspective about my Myers-Briggs, anyway?)

Let's begin by looking at an example, which was instrumental in realizing whole internet-makes-me-hate-people thing. It's a Tumblr blog, which, if you hang around that corner of the web, you've probably heard of: the-unpopular-opinions. TUO, as I'll hereafter refer to it, started with what I believe was a good premise: challenge the prevailing (and often irrational) trends of tumblr thought by creating a place for people to state their unpopular opinions anonymously.

The problem is: TUO has gone to shit, if you'll pardon my French. A sizable portion of the opinions relate to fandom in-fighting, quite a few are just people whining about the gamut of social justice issues without contributing anything of value, and the vast majority are badly articulated emotional drivel. I could write an entire essay about how emotional arguments are useless, and the best way to really convince someone is to reason with them like you're both psychopaths, but I want to get this up before midnight EDT, so I won't.

I think TUO is indicative of a great trend in human action: so long as people get hold of something, it begins the decay. This may be an example of tragedy of the commons, but I think the problem is larger than that. People, as a generalized group, aren't very good. Any one individual is bad at almost every conceivable thing. For example, we're all very bad at photosynthesizing, which is why mammals are heterotrophs. More concretely, I don't know anything about bricklaying, which is why I wouldn't base my career around it. I would need to learn the skill, and thus overcome that barrier to entry, before I would begin building walls.

On the internet, those barriers to entry don't exist. Without excluding certain individuals from websites, it's nearly impossible to prevent someone from giving their unwarranted input in discussions. Now, injecting new perspectives into dialogue is usually a good thing, but when someone has no stake and no real interest in a particular matter, they feel no desire to do a good job in their discussion. As such, those who do not refrain from commenting pollute the intellectual waters.

If you're trying to burn time, as many people online are, this leads to the awfulness mentioned above. It takes, let's say, ten minutes to make a post on TUO (probably less, in fact). As such, unless you feel strongly about an issue and have thought on it extensively, you're not likely to make it very good. Most of the submissions clearly fall into neither category. Consequently, a method of discussing serious and controversial topics became another pathetic footnote of Internet history.

Far outside the confines of the web, the problem still exists, though in more limited form. People who don't care still interact and make their collective action known, without thinking. What sort of interaction? Almost every sort. They wipe their feet on public doormats unnecessarily. They throw trash in parks. They hit elevator buttons multiple times. In sum, they cause a great deal of pointless (and that would have great emotion in it) destruction and decay.

It seems strange to write this as an Objectivist, but a great element of wisdom is know when not to act, which is nearly always. Action should be intelligent, purposeful, and deliberate. It should maximize positive outcomes and minimize negative outcomes. It should benefit you without harming others, whether that is physically, financially, or psychologically. To really succeed in this enormous game that we call life, it is our duty--to ourselves, to our friends, to our families, and to the other minds that we know only as strangers--to be the most conscious beings we can be.

And realizing the unimportance, and, in fact, stupidity, of so many of our mundane actions is part of that.

Idea for this Summer

I realized that I've got a considerable supply of model rocketry equipment, accumulated over the years, that's been largely unused. I really should have made use of that last summer. Oh well.

Anyway, this summer, I think I'd like to build a stand to fire some of the smaller engines horizontally. Not entirely sure how, but concrete is cheap. Figuring out how much I need would actually be a rare practical application of my high school physics.

I'd need to check the legality of this before beginning, of course.

School Pride as Civic Nationalism

I've never had much use for school pride. Perhaps it's was my non-athletic upbringing, perhaps it was transferring to a different high school for PLTW, or perhaps it was simple disillusionment that prevented me from taking any pride in educational institutions.

An interesting thought that occurred to me in the sleep-deprived hours of the last few days was that school pride is essentially a form of civic nationalism. Schools can't behave in a militarist or imperialist manner, given their nature as public institutions, often with delineated geographic hegemony. Even on a highly competitive market, the vying for students and public-relations machinations would hardly count as real battle--though more on that later.

Yet the attitude promoted by school administrations is decidedly nationalistic. I think this fits the bill of civic nationalism, encouraging students to join together as a community. There's no real way to ensure that they adopt this approach--you cannot force a mind--but most students are perfectly happy to play along.

As an individualist, this attitude bothers me. First of all, it is rarely used to genuinely improve an institution. In education, no changes to the teaching system are ever effected through school pride. All reform is channeled through the conduits laid out by the administration (which, incidentally, never puts the faculty's neck on the line). Moreover, school pride is usually most prevalent in the context of athletic competitions, which in truth have nothing to do with the alleged purpose of imparting knowledge.

This model breeds docility, though, which is what really bothers me. Civic nationalism is easily translated into militarist nationalism--remember those athletic competitions? They desensitize children to physical, even violent, conflicts: the perfect training for imperialist war abroad and the police state at home. As others have commented, it really is amazing that we haven't become a dictatorship by now.

In a more immediate sense, civic nationalism lets us overlook our own problems. It's easy to forget your own failings when harping on the inferiority of others. If we want to see real social progress, we need to stop thinking of ourselves as a society. and embrace the reality that we're individuals, each pursuing perfection in our own way.

Capitalism and Reactionism

I've been planning to do a major post on marketing the free market for awhile now, but there's one point I want to get out right away. Here it is:

Capitalism is, and generally has been, associated with conservatism. In the jargon of the far left, it's a reactionary ideology. I don't agree with this at all, and I think that modern-day libertarians really need to distance themselves from certain aspects of the conservative movement. That most libertarians are former Republicans is no help in this matter. Many of us continue supporting the GOP instinctually (giving the raging statism of the Democratic Party, this isn't necessarily bad). That said, there are still several major areas for improvement.

First off, we need to drive a wedge between traditionalism and cultural conservatism. Promoting the ideals of individualism, reason, and order do not require the European ethnic trappings and Judeo-Christian imagery that is generally associated with the Right. There's nothing inherently wrong about those (waits for the Objectivist handwringing...), but they aren't an essential element of capitalism or libertarianism.

Moreover, we should make clear our dedication to reason and the scientific method, without the statism the left has married to them. It's part of the rationality trap*: those who devote themselves to finding thought-based solutions all too often try to apply that model to fields where it is not applicable (e.g. social organization). If libertarians (including the religious ones) can demonstrate to the public that science can exist without the state, we can deprive the left of a fertile recruiting ground.

The best way to shrug off the 'reactionary' label is to become revolutionary in our ideals. That little word revolutionary should be handled with care. Violent uprising is not warranted and will not be effective--at least not at present. But as we continue to move into the political mainstream we must distance ourselves from that boogeyman of the "Establishment". The corporatist Welfare State is not our friend, and never can be. Throwing in with the cronies on Wall Street and the tenured politicians would be political suicide.

Capitalists must fundamentally reshape the system in our pursuit of a truly free society. We can't quibble over trivialities of the tax code and expect to get anywhere. No, what we need are sweeping reforms in almost all aspects of public life. It will be a costly political battle, but revolutionary capitalism can do what conservative capitalism never dreamed: restructuring society around production and trade.

Will there be room for a government in this free society? Quite possibly. Will it resemble that of today? Not a chance in the world.

_{*An idea I'll explain in a later post. See: The Intellectuals and Socialism by F. A. Hayek}

Improved Vocabulary for Discrimination

Something that's really been bothering me is the lack of descriptive vocabulary for discrimination. Sexism and racism have established good language precedents*, but they've been largely ignored. Instead, we have a jargon juggernaut of homophobia, transphobia, cisphobia, biphobia, and an ever expanding list of other things which aren't actually fears. Interestingly, discrimination based on age and physical ability have followed the precedent, producing the (arguably unnecessary) terms ageism, and ableism.

Above comments aside, I'm not going to argue the accuracy of oppression claims. I'm just going to lay out some new terms that cover the major areas. This list is by no means comprehensive.To help clarify, I'm including some of the terms they replace and/or subsume. Here goes:

• Racism: discrimination based on race and ancestry.
• Sexism: discrimination based on biological sex. Includes: misogyny, misandry
• Sexualism: discrimination based on sexual orientation. Includes: homophobia, homophobia, biphobia.
• Genderism: discrimination based on gender identity. Includes: transphobia, cisphobia.

There, was that really so hard?

Anticipated reaction to this post

*Despite the fact '-ism' is also used for ideologies, which really don't fall under the same categorical umbrella.

Some Thoughts on Higher Education

I'm in an emotional state and will probably disagree with this analysis to some extent at a later, cooler date, but here goes anyway.

College is a waste of time. The majority of my experience thus far has been an abject farce. In a capitalist society, these atavistic juggernauts would have died long ago, but the mixed economy has a special talent for preserving the worthless at the expense of the innovative.

My two freshman semesters were spent in a monstrosity euphemistically named "First Year Engineering." We learned nothing. Project Lead the Way taught the design process much more accurately to students four years younger in an hour. We waddled our way through the usual "diversity" bullshit and all the non-technical garbage of that nature.

First Year Engineering did teach us one thing: MATLAB, the primary calculating tool used here. But I think it's safe to say that only a blubbering moron could have done a worse job. Six weeks of variations on descriptive statistics--really? Then slamming us with graphic user interfaces--which naturally have so much to do with anything we'll be doing.

But what makes me write tonight is the science departments, though FYE fits into the broader theme. The individual engineering departments I've taken course in (to date, Aerospace and Mechanical) have generally been pretty well managed, though of course they had considerable room for improvement. But the pre-requisite classes in the mathematics and sciences divisions are absolutely disastrous. Why is that?

I think it's because students have no where else to go. Engineering students such as myself have to choose what flavor they want to take, and (especially in the first semesters) students will change if they decide that it isn't their cup of tea. The departments are in competition for students, even if they have a large base that will struggle through so long as the money hold out (myself with aerospace, for example).

But the basic math and science courses don't have that problem, do they? Once a course is added to an Engineering Department Plan of Study, they have a steady supply of students. It's very rare for a course to be struck from a P.O.S.

And we see the natural failure of a bureaucracy not subject to competition. Without the need to attract students, the professors have no strong motivation to correct mistakes in their content, improve their teaching methods, and so on. Only when too large a percentage of students start failing--and suddenly their tenure becomes suspect--does anything change.

First Year Engineering fits this mold, interestingly enough. They have a steady supply of students, most of whom will stick it out till they can move on to the greener if more arid pastures of their majors. They have absolutely no incentive to improve, and the bureaucracy there is worst than anywhere else. (From what I've heard described, I couldn't design a less-efficient system if I tried.)

How do we fix this problem? Here are a few suggestions:

• Just abolish set plans of study. Let students pick and choose what courses they want to take.
• Abolish tenure. Professors that can't teach, should either be taken away from teaching or forced onto the labor market.
• Increase the test-out options for students. If you can demonstrate you know the material, you shouldn't have to sit through useless introductory classes, forgetting more than you learn.

What I can say is this: if the problem isn't fixed by the time my children are ready to attend college, I'm not going to send them. Period. If they want to get ripped off, they can do it on their own dime.

In fact, I'd advise everyone to opt-out of college to the maximum extent possible. Our educational system is broken, and no amount of tinkering is going to fix it. We need to throw it out and start over, but that will never happen until we're willing to stop feeding the beast.

The High School Research Paper: A classic exercise in futility

It's one of the classic rites of passage in high school. Choose a topic you know little or nothing about, pull a thesis out of thin air, find a number of sources that somehow seem to support it, and slap the whole thing together into something generously called a paper. Rinse and repeat yearly, without learning anything significant in the process.

It's absolutely worthless, and an incredible waste of time.

Presumably, the high school research paper was invented to prepare students for the papers they would have to write in college. In practice, the value of the research paper, as opposed to other sorts of reports, is nil. Let me explain.

In college, one's studies are very concentrated, and few students write papers outside of their major after the introductory years, if at all. The key difference here: college papers are almost always on a topic the writer knows a great deal about.

High school papers are almost always about a topic the student doesn't know much about, which negates any value that the assignment might have in teaching methods. The high school student doesn't know the relevant academic journals and where to get them, has little or no access to specialized libraries, feels little love for the subject.

The value in high school research papers is to teach the methods, but in nearly every case, the elements are overlooked in the desperate struggle to collect sources and cobble together a reasonable theme. The value in citation, communication, and nuance is lost.

In my personal experience, a variety of smaller assignments were more conducive to teaching the desired skills. Short reports can teach sourcing and research methods without the pressure of collecting a great number. Citation-free themes can teach students to organize their thoughts. More reasonably-sized research papers can teach the integration of these techniques.

As with so many problems in education, it's the one-size-fits-all mentality to blame. All students are going into liberal arts , so naturally they need to know the methods that English majors use to write their analyses of limericks. But many students aren't. Engineers and scientists need to write lab reports. Historians need to instruction in finding materials. Educators need to know lesson planning. No two students have precisely the same needs. But onward we march, Taylorist machines, towards the future the central-planners have designed for us.

Suggestions for creating a libertarian country

If you spend much time around libertarians, you'll inevitably run across the totally genius idea of creating a new, libertarian nation. This has been tried in various ways before, and it usually fails quietly or catastrophically. That said, there's still a lot of unrealized potential for new country projects.

Since first encountering this idea, I've had a few insights about why it usually doesn't work out.

Be realistic

Most new country projects are handicapped by their founders rosy visions of utopia. A perfect anarcho-capitalist Free Territory or minarchist republic isn't going to happen anytime soon, and getting hung up on this accomplishes nothing. Going for a basic liberal capitalist democracy with a good constitution and above-par citizenry is much more practical.

A country is not a business model

Perhaps because new country projects are often cultish in nature, they often appropriate some of the worst ideas of new religious movements. In particular, running the new [thing] as a business.

Neither a nation nor a religion is a business model. A religion is a means for gaining moral guidance; a nation, safety and stability. Nations and religions develop for pragmatic reasons, and are only subverted by others at a later date.

Now, in the case of our libertarian micronation, the pragmatic reason is to develop a state that's capable of defending laissez-faire. Once that system is established, becoming wealthy from it is your own responsibility. Otherwise, the erstwhile libertarian is just another statist moocher.

Political Parties > Constitutions

Practically all of the libertarian new country proposals put their emphasis on the constitutions of these new countries, trying to avoid thinking about political parties. While building the legal framework for maintaining freedom is essential, I think that setting up the philosophical and social institutions necessary for preserving liberalism is an equally important job. A good constitution will not constrain those bent on perverting it (consider our own).

Instead, I think the nation-architects should focus on planning one or more liberty-minded political parties. I say multiple, because a duo or trio of parties might maintain equilibrium better than a single movement. Have these planned and ready to roll out upon independence, and you might be able to sustain freedom for a few generations.

Obviously, none of these solve the basic problem of raising the necessary funds to convince a government to part with some of its territory, or to build some of your own.