I seem to be working hard at digging down my non-fiction reading list lately. My most recent read being Jeff Hawkins' "On Intelligence". For those who don't know, Jeff Hawkins brought us both the Palm Pilot and the Handspring Treo; but it turns out that his first interest has always been thinking and brains.

"On Intelligence" is his treatise on how the human mind works -- how thinking works. He attempts to elucidate what exactly differentiates human thinking from all previous attempts at building truly intelligent non-human computers. I personally think that he succeeds.

You will be pleasantly surprised by the ease with which Hawkins' theories mesh with how you perceive your own thoughts. While he acknowledges that some of his specific functional theories will most likely be disproven, the overall hierarchy for thought that he presents seems hindsight-intuitive and highly probable. Hawkins' is the first theory of thinking that correctly applies evolutionary theory. He looks for how incremental creation of the higher brain functions would incrementally aid survival and therefor select for animals who have the cortex and then incrementally for those that have more and better cortex tissue. As with any evolved feature, intelligence didn't spring fully grown from the sands of time.

There is no magical thinking in chapters 1-6 of "On Intelligence". In the last two chapters, I found that some of Hawkins' arguments and theories got a bit on the magical side, but it's alright, he warns you that they are less founded in reality. Chapter 7 attempts to answer the age-old questions about consciousness and humanness and Chapter 8 attempts to make forward looking statements. Interestingly, I found these later chapters to be harder to read than the highly technical Chapter 6.

I can definitely see why Hawkins attempted the last two chapters of the book. After reading and stewing on the earlier chapters for some time, I too found my views on the uniqueness of human thought and the future of non-human computers being irrevocably altered. On the other hand, I think that they may have detracted from the overall credibility of the book by being so far less grounded.

One interesting thing that I was able to learn from this book and immediately apply to my own life was exactly how to remember to perform simple tasks. In general, I have always tried to remember to perform some desired action on some object by envisioning the object and describing the action. At least for me, this has been largely unsuccessful. The verbalizing of the action does not form a full mental prediction of its occurrence and therefor does not setup brain-wide alarms when it doesn't happen. On the other hand, envisioning the desired action happening causes significant incongruity when the context in which I wished to perform the action occurs and I do not take the action. Concrete example: I see a trash bag by my door. If I say, "I should take the trash out this morning," it is not very likely to happen. If, on the other hand, I envision the trash bag in my hand as I leave for work this morning, I have setup my mind to do that and if I attempt to do the similar action (leaving without the trash bag), alarms will fire reminding me that some part of what I was expecting is missing. Try it, srsly.

Long and short of this rambling post is that it's a damn good book and I highly recommend that you read it.

Interesting idea. I'll bite.

Well, "Don't Start the Revolution Without Me" came out at nearly the same time as "The Revolution: A Manifesto" and I, being the little revolutionary that I am, have now read (or heard) them both.

Where "The Revolution" was full of hard economics, constitutional scholarship and carefully constructed arguments, "Don't Start the Revolution Without Me" was full of down-to-earth realities, anecdotes and accessible language. The two books could hardly come from two different people, one an MD and constitutional scholar, the other a professional wrestler and actor from a blue collar family. Despite these surface differences, the central message is the same; Two paths diverge before the American people: On the one side we have the path of restoring liberty, restoring financial responsibility and accountability, dismantling the military industrial complex and eating crow on the international stage. On the other side we have a path that can only lead to the collapse (peaceful or otherwise) of the United States of America.

While these two possibilities are clearly evident in both books, where Dr. Paul comes down both favoring and believing in the possibility of the former, Jesse "The Mind" Ventura seems to have declared the latter the only path left open to us. Given the contents of both books, I find myself much more in the latter camp. While Dr. Paul's hope is noble and beautiful in its own way, I don't think that it's possible. The entrenched political interests are entrenched.

The story-telling journey style of "Don't Start the Revolution Without Me" is something that I really enjoyed. It reminded me quite a bit of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" (only without the complex and hard to follow philosophical syllogism) and added quite an element of credibility to "The Mind"'s conclusions. He didn't just suddenly become a revolutionary; he saw the "body politic" from within, he did battle with the beast on its turf, he even battled _for_ the beast. This is not some pie-in-the-sky idea; it's the reality that's at our doorstep, whether we want to accept it or not.

Revolution is coming to this country and the more we accept and embrace that, the better the outcome will be.

Damn fine book. Downloaded the audio last night and have spent most of this morning listening to it (just a few tracks remaining; I love audio books). Just to be clear, I ordered my own physical copy from Amazon on its release day, and eagerly await its arrival on Tuesday.

So far, this book has only improved my view of Dr. Paul. I've always questioned his views on abortion and immigration, but listening to this book has proverbially cleared the air between us on these topics.

Dr. Paul has written against immigration repeatedly during his campaign and this has concerned me. Fortunately, it appears from listening to his book that he is only against immigration in so much as we have a welfare state. In the absence of the welfare state, all of the costs of immigration dissolve and we can "welcome immigrants who want to come here, work hard, and build a better life".

Dr. Paul is also personally very anti-abortion, which I consider to be a morally questionable view at best. In his book, he reveals the emotional origin of his position, but also reiterates his stance that the decision about the _legality_ of abortion should be delegated to the states and to the people (as almost all powers should be). I personally would never encourage the abortion of a fetus to whose conception I had been a party (how's that for a description of sex?), but I cannot justify enjoining others against so doing.

The moral argument goes as such: There are two (or three, if you include the father) moral entities involved in any choice regarding abortion. I think that we can easily conclude that in any case where a choice must be made between the life of the actual moral agent (the mother) and the potential moral agent (the fetus), the actual moral agent's rights absolutely win out. I think that even Dr. Paul would agree with this.

The waters (understandably) get muddy when you look at elective abortions. Dr. Paul would suggest that the right to the potential life of a fetus wins out over what amounts to the property rights of the mother (an actual moral agent). I don't think that this is such a clear cut distinction; we consider ourselves morally righteous when we shoot a dog who bites. We generally consider ourselves morally righteous when we eat the flesh of animals to sustain our own lives. Both of these cases are intuitively comparable to abortion to me. The fetus is an active burden on the nutrition and health of the mother, but is a potential life with some level of moral standing. I think that it is morally wrong to take the decision of abortion lightly, just as I think it is morally wrong to hunt for sport alone (with no intent of making the utmost use of the animal's flesh). In a free society, we must accept that we cannot judge the mental state of someone and can only judge their actions, therefor it can certainly not be said that all abortions are always wrong. If you are a poor woman who has found herself pregnant unintentionally and has great difficulty making ends meet as it is, you are morally justified in having an abortion in order to avoid further hardship for the next 9 months _as well_ as the emotional hardship of having to add another infant to an overburdened foster care and orphan care network.

I fear that Dr. Paul's religious beliefs cloud his judgement on this topic. If you believe that there is some "soul" which is unique to humankind and which is instantiated at the instant of conception, without regard to moral agency, then you will have a very difficult time justifying elective abortion. If, however, you see moral agency and membership in society as what is uniquely human then you can see elective abortion for what it is: A reasonable but difficult moral choice.

After that long diversion, I want to reiterate that _despite_ our differing moral positions on abortion, Dr. Paul and my views on the federal government's role in deciding the legality of abortion differ not a bit. As a difficult moral decision, I cannot imagine that any group of people larger than a small town could possibly agree on a proper rule governing abortion. How then can we imagine that a group of two-hundred sixty-five million people could possibly be governed by one single rule?

This is, I think, the reason that so many diverse people have gotten behind the Ron Paul campaign, and why I am now feeling a bit of a pang for having not backed it earlier. Any person who advocates freedom as strongly as Dr. Paul is unlikely to suggest legislation which will go contrary to anyone else who seeks freedom, regardless of their values or moral system. It is also interesting to note that these exact principals are the same ones which our founding fathers envisioned in creating the government of this nation. They knew that the only thing that the colonists had in common was a shared dislike of oppression, so they avoided wherever possible legislating anything beyond protection from oppressions into the constitution.

I, of course, Dr. Paul fails realize (or at least fails to state) the full implications of his moral principals: If it is wrong to tax, then it is wrong to tax. Any government necessarily requires funding and any funding acquired other than through voluntary donations or contracts is a tax and is wrong. It is possible, perhaps, to have a small body of social experts, maintained by consulting fees; a corresponding small body of adjudicators, maintained by mediation fees; and a small security force, maintained by insurance fees, which might resemble a government, but no constitionally declared government with salaries and taxes can ever be morally justified, given the beliefs that Dr. Paul espouses.

I saw an unimpressive package that is supposed to help make websites print friendly this morning. This led me to investigate the print friendliness of my own site. It turned out not to be.

After drawing on some articles, I am now able to say that not only is my site mostly kinda semantic for text-only browsing, but also friendly to people who like to print and read content.

So all of you who have been waiting with baited breath to be able to print my content, go kill some trees!

A Deadly Philosophy
To put it bluntly, your unfamiliar worldview makes me keenly aware of my mortality; it threatens my very existence. So why shouldn’t I wish you dead? Philosophy is personal.

The author seems to imply that _any_ worldview can be threatened by other world views in this way, but I must disagree. Any worldview which already accepts human mortality (ie one that believes in neither an afterlife, nor resurrection, nor any of that), is entirely immune to this sort of feeling. To one who fully accepts the limitations of human life, there is no threat of impending death or never ending torture when confronted with a conflicting worldview.

I would argue that there is a spectrum of belief that runs roughly: atheist, agnostic, metatheist, polytheist, monotheist. Along this spectrum, you would find that people on the left side are fully immune to the urge to kill those who disagree for fear of their own mortality and people on the right side are very susceptible.

Well, it's been a while since I posted anything about what I'm _doing_.

This winter, I learned to snowboard, you'll also find that I had a roommate for the winter, which was quite the experience for us both. Great fun was had snowboarding and I'm still in the process of posting all of the videos that I took with my helmet cam from a 9 day snow and insanity trip to Colorado with my Chicago peeps. Check out the pictures from the trip and the videos that I've posted so far, and some more.

Also, my sisters and niece came to visit me in February, which was great and resulted in many many pictures, partially because I'd just gotten a new DSLR.

I didn't really do much in the way of home improvement while I had the roommate, but soon after I bi-wired + bi-amped my front speakers and rewired all the rest. You'll notice that the wires are now part of my decor. Like it.

What really prompted this entry though is that I wanted to brag about my awesome new workbench that I just finished building. Designed and built from scratch by me, this is the largest carpentry project that I've ever undertaken. I think it's going to work out very well, although I might end up needing to attach some wood blocks to make it a few inches higher (it's only 28.5" surface currently).

There are some other miscellaneous sets of pictures that I haven't mentioned here, but nothing super worth mentioning... other, perhaps than the Rockbox Party Weekend, which included a trip to the Museum of Flight.

One of these days I really need to put an RSS feed on my picture postings so that I don't hafta talk about 'em here.

I don't think that I've written a full entry on this topic before and the previous entry reminded me that I should.

Most liberals view themselves as humble servants; as wanting to help people; or ,perhaps, as compassionate. They are lying to themselves. Liberals are the most arrogant, self aggrandizing people that I have ever interacted with.

I am an arrogant person. In day-to-day life, I'm one of the most arrogant people that I know (case in point there). I'm actually quite good at most things that I do and that drives a certain arrogance; which I tend to embrace and, when necessary, to mock.

These liberals can't even see their own arrogance under the cover of their social goals and compassion, but it's there. Every time a liberal says "we should help X", I want you to think about what they are actually saying. They are simultaneously insulting both X and _every other person_ in their society.

To say "we should help X" means first that X cannot help themselves. It says, "while I am good enough and strong enough to have become successful without handouts, X are not and they need our help". Once in a while, a liberal might actually have been helped by one of the social programs that they push so hard for, but very often that is not even the case. More importantly, that doesn't change the facts of the case, it only paints them in an even worse light. Now they are saying, "while I needed help to even get to this station in life, I'm sure that I know exactly how to help X."

It means also that _nobody_ other than the group of liberals saying "we should help X" will possibly think to help X on their own. Moreover, it means that the group of liberals in question must be the single smartest group of people in the society. This one group _knows_ that everyone else's judgments about when and how to spend their own money are not as good as this group's judgments. This is where the true measure of the arrogance comes through. Every person in this society makes hard choices about how to spend their money every day. The liberal group says that they know better than _all_ of these individuals how best to spend that money. Most people give something to charity every year. The liberal group says that it knows better what charities need help.

Liberals are arrogant, there is absolutely no way to propose a spending of government money without being singularly arrogant and self aggrandizing. What's more appalling is that they do not even know that they are arrogant, and that it's nearly impossible to have them admit it, even when they are shown it in stark relief, with graphs, charts and examples.

It's just occurred to me that you can say the same about conservative moralism, but I'll leave that demonstration as an exercise for my readers.

America has one choice for 2008: Tyranny
The State must be destroyed and begun anew, lest we leave disastrous consequences for our future descendants. America is choosing tyranny again this November, but will it choose freedom again in the future?

I actually really enjoyed this whole article, only disagreeing on this final paragraph. The state must not be begun anew. As the article points out, the classical liberals, in all of their wisdom, were unable to construct a state which would not grow unbounded into a tyranny. If the author truly thinks that there is some possible way to write a constitution that will not be corrupted by the power seekers, or to construct a government which will not bring into its fold the power hungry, he is simply deceiving himself.

The only way to prevent the cycle of tyranny is to learn, as a people, that government is evil in every possible way. We must unlearn the idea that we need government. We must unlearn the (religious) idea that humans are born as sinners, as evildoers. It is this idea that people are inherently bad that drives the modern liberals (those who generally distance themselves from religious affiliation, mind you) to say that we need government programs to ensure that we share and treat our fellow man fairly.

Well, Violent Acres has done it again. Her latest article, "Too Much Choice is Pure Hell," points out one of the most interesting phenomena about human beings. We are bad at making complex choices.

Unlike V, I will take a stab at offering a way of solving this apparently impossible problem. It is a pretty well established fact that the human forebrain, ie that part in which our inner monologue and our 'thoughts' happen, is not really capable of making complex choices between similar alternatives. On the other hand, the rest of our brain, ie most of it, is perfectly capable of doing so.

Our first job as the 'drivers' of the process of making a choice is to provide our brains with as much information about the choice as we possibly can. Our other job is to _listen_ when the smarter parts of our brain come up with the conclusion. Don't second guess it, don't bullshit yourself, just listen. The rest of your brain knows your life and knows your preferences in a way that your forebrain simply cannot process.

There are times when you may need to steer more, specifically in the process of changing a habit, but these are rare occasions. Moreover, if you free up your forebrain from the constant agony of choosing restaurants or breakfast cereal, these other specific choices that need its oversight can have its full attention.

I personally have had quite a lot of success with this technique over recent years. I can now choose restaurants on a moment's notice, and I can also reliably make deliberate changes to my life and habits. My forebrain is dedicated to these deliberate changes, rather than being bogged down in day-to-day crap.