Pearls ...

This set of web pages is filled with food for thought. I highly recommend it.

Voluntary Human Extinction Movement

Their fundamental premise is that the human species, as it is and will be, is detrimental to life on earth. Homogenization is death and lowering the population is the only way to free up resources for other species. And, since all species, including humans, are built to breed, extinction is the only way to maintain a low population of humans.

I (usually) disagree with this premise. I believe that life on earth (including humans) is approaching another inflection point (not a "singularity" -- all transitions are conservative trade-offs) and, though humans may die off during the transition, life will take on a whole new aspect on the other side of the inflection point. This may sound eschatological; but it's not. I'm not talking about the "end times". I'm talking simply about evolution and emergence, the progressive (though perhaps non-monotonic) increase in life's complexity over time. (At least until the sun goes red. ;-) )

Although I disagree with their fundamental premise, the VHEMT site is great reading and thoughtfully laid out. Again, I highly recommend it along with the GPSO and other such groups that target over-population.

Having seen the bizarre abuse of Christianity by right-wingers in the US and the equally bizarre abuse of Islam by right-wingers in the stans, I've been occupied by atheism, theism, and placing my own belief structures in the space of possible belief structures.

My first tangible result is a larval set of 3 hypotheses that I believe are falsifiable by the following test.

First the "theoretical" setup. And please bear with my pretentious misuse of prior works. My goal is to formulate the hypotheses and test so that they are informative regardless of the weakness of my "theory", but still with enough hooks to flesh out an actual theory.

• Shannon's Theorem 10 goes something like this:
  
  Given a system, S, and a "good" controller, C, for S, the variability of C (V_c) must be greater than or equal to the variability of S. I.e.
  
  

   V_c >= V_s.  

  
  
  This is common sense, actually. E.g. the competent manager of a complex enterprise must be flexible enough to handle all the wacko things that a complex enterprise might do. Or, a competent parent must be flexible enough to counter all the wacko things their teenager might do. (Of course, the theorem doesn't, at all apply to managing businesses or raising teenagers... but as I said, bear with me.)



• If a controller is part of the system it's trying to control, then the variability of the part is likely to be less than the variability of the whole. I.e.
  
  

  V_c < V_s.

  
  
  My point being that any human (theist or not) is a part of the world; so the human (the controller, "good" or not) is part of the system she's trying to control.



• Defn: Let's say we have two distinct (but perhaps not disjoint) controllers in the system: A, T in S. Define M(A,T) as "A is a better controller than T of system S".



• Premise:
  
  

   V_a > V_t => M(A,T).  

  
  
  OK. Now all we have to do is devise a measure for V_c, i.e. the variability of any given human. My first idea for this abuses the research that provides evidence that liberals are more "open to new experiences". I'm not claiming that conclusion is true (in fact, I think true conservatives -- the people who focus on conserving resources -- are much more capable of handling variability in the environment than liberals -- the people who generously lather resources where they are needed). But the sense of the rhetoric is what I'm after.



• Defn: My proposal is that the variability of a human is correlated with the intensity of the emotions they exhibit when placed in unfamiliar and high variance contexts. For example, we pluck your average Iowan and toss her into the audience of a cage fight in Thailand and measure her physiological response. If that response is generally positive, then that person has a high variability ... a high capability for handling unfamiliar and exciting situations. That (admittedly vague setup) constitutes my measure for V_c.
  
  Now we also need a measure for "theism" and "atheism". I don't like the idea of relying on self-reporting, because nobody I talk to has a clear description of what it means to be an "atheist". So, I suspect people are just "group identifying". They choose to call themselves "atheist" if and only if they identify with the people they've seen calling themselves "atheist". And most "theists" I talk to don't even know what the word "theist" means. 8^O



• Defn: So my proposal for measuring whether someone is an "atheist" or a "theist" would consist of a dialectic survey designed to tease out a person's spiritual views while trying to factor away group identification. I don't know how to do this. I'm just a damned programmer, after all. ;-)

Hypotheses:

1. V_a ~= V_t

   -- I.e. there is no statistically significant difference between the reactions of atheists and theists to unfamiliar and exciting contexts.




2. V_a >= V_t

   -- I.e. Atheists show more postive or neutral reactions than theists.




3. V_t >= V_a

   -- I.e. Theists show more positive or neutral reactions than atheists.

The interpretation of the results would be relatively open, I think. But my "theoretical" setup above would probably lead me to believe that whoever showed the greater variability has the more accurate and/or more useful world-view.

And just to get it out of the way, my bias is toward theists. I tend to believe that theism inherently handles ignorance. I.e. theists tend to accept that they are very flawed and ignorant. At least that's part of the metaphysics ... that "God works in mysterious ways". As such, they are trained to navigate despite such flaws and aren't particularly upset when wacky things happen (e.g. miracles).

Atheists, in contrast, often admit that some things are unknown; but they rarely seem to admit that some things are unknowable. The "atheists" who admit that some (or most) things are unknowable tend to call themselves "agnostic". This inference of mine makes me think that atheists are less tolerant of ambiguity, mystery, ignorance, etc. Hence, wacky, anomalous events don't necessarily evoke competent navigation in the midst of uncertainty. In fact, if we read too much into the idea that many scientists are atheists, we could jump to the conclusion that wacky events ("miracles") cause atheists to become extremely curious and obsessive ... burrowing away in dead-end rat holes for decades, wasting their lives trying to know the unknowable. (Thank God for these ahteists because without them, we'd still be hacking each other to bits so we can own the Oh Great and Powerful Tim's carcass or plant our flag on some sacred rock in the middle of a desert.)

So, my bet is that the theists would show greater variability than the atheists. But I've been wrong before. ;-)