When you’re making a list of what’s naughty and nice, check it twice.
Yesterday, somebody posted this puff piece on secular ethics to one of the discussion groups that I frequent. It's called "Ten Commandments for a Global Humanism", and it's pretty disappointing for something written by a guy with a Ph.D in Economics who wrote a book on secular ethics. Here's a slightly-revised version of my original reaction:
TEN COMMANDMENTS FOR A GLOBAL HUMANISM
(Dr. Rodrigue TREMBLAY)
http://www.moralitywithoutreligion.com/
and
http://www.amazon.com/Code-Global-Ethics-Humanist-Principles/dp/1616141727
Wow, is this fellow actually serious? This list seems vague, dogmatic, and exclusionary. The author crashes through some very difficult and contentious questions by bluntly asserting arbitrary answers that aren't even consistent with each other.
I can't see this ever serving as a manifesto for any kind of social movement. At best, it raises more questions than it answers:
1- Proclaim the natural dignity and inherent worth of all human beings.
What are "dignity" and "worth"? Are they physical quantities? If so, how can they be measured? If not, how can they be "natural" or "inherent"? Surely, they aren't supernatural if we're going to assume the principles #5 and #6.
2- Respect the life and property of others.
Is it impossible for a humanist to function in a culture that lacks a concept of property? What happens when a person's property includes slaves?
Also, what exactly does it mean to "respect" life? Is killing someone, but giving them a dignified burial, more or less respectful than spitting in their face?
3- Practice tolerance and open-mindedness towards the choices and life styles of others.
Do we need to be "open-minded" towards all choices and lifestyles? What would such open-mindedness entail? What does it mean to 'practice tolerance of the choices and lifestyles' of serial murderers like Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka?
Is drawing conclusions allowed at all, or must we, as the saying goes, "be so open-minded that our brains fall out"? If there is a line to be drawn, how do these principles help us determine where to draw that line?
4- Share with those who are less fortunate and mutually assist those who are in need of help.
I'm not sure what it means to "mutually assist" in this context. Why not just assist those who are in need of help, unequivocally (or at least where it's not too difficult)?
Shouldn't we also share with those who are more fortunate? Why are we talking about Fortune, anyway? I thought spiritual doctrine was out of bounds:
5- Use neither lies, nor spiritual doctrine, nor temporal power to dominate and exploit others.
What is meant by "exploit" here? Under a broad definition of the term, I think it would be impossible for any employer to comply with this. If a narrower definition is implied---meaning to "unfairly exploit"---how do these principles help to us determine what's fair?
Can I use lies, spiritual doctrine, or temporal power for other reasons, for example, if I decide that it's for other people's own good? (You all need to be saved by Jesus, after all.)
6- Rely on reason, logic and science to understand the Universe and to solve life's problems.
Ok.
7- Conserve and improve the Earth's natural environment—land, soil, water, air and space—as humankind's common heritage.
What does it mean to "improve" the Earth's natural environment? Is genetic engineering okay?
8- Resolve differences and conflicts cooperatively without resorting to violence or to wars.
Is humanism necessarily unsustainable? This sure is. Being non-violent only works when nobody uses violence, or when one side will stop using violence before an unacceptable amount of loss is suffered.
Is it impossible to be a humanist and a police officer at the same time? Should police officers and SWAT refuse to resort to any violence?
Would it be unacceptable to use violence to shorten any of the following events?
- 1966 University of Texas massacre
- 1989 École Polytechnique massacre
- 1999 Columbine High School massacre
- 1999 W.R. Myers High School shooting (in Taber, Alberta)
- 2007 Virginia Tech massacre
A useful ethical system should withstand the fact that not everyone is going to adhere to it all the time. How did Dr. Tremblay, who apparently has a Ph.D. in economics, not recognize this as a prisoner's dilemma?
9- Organize public affairs according to individual freedom and responsibility, through political and economic democracy.
Can there be a conflict between individual freedom and individual responsibility? If not, why is this impossible? If so, how do these principles help us to resolve such a conflict?
Does being a humanist necessitate being a proponent of economic democracy? What should happen when people, through political democracy, choose to organize themselves in a fashion not compatible with economic democracy?
What if people, again through political democracy, severely restrict the freedom of a subset of individuals? If twenty wolves and ten sheep use democracy to decide what to have for dinner, is it acceptable for the sheep to resort to violence or to war to assert their independence? (See #8.)
10- Develop one's intelligence and talents through education and effort.
Ok, sure, that's good advice. It's also good to be a non-smoker and to eat a healthy diet. I don't think that defines humanism, though.
The Code for Global Ethics: Ten Humanist Principles
Prometheus Books,
(ISBN: 978-1-61614-172-1), 2010.
The whole idea of having "ten commandments of humanism" is silly and utterly embarrassing. Why should humanists adopt any number of "commandments" dictated by someone? Isn't relying on authority contrary to relying on reason, logic, and science?
Why is it necessary for humanists to be such a homogeneous group, anyway? What happened to open-mindedness and individual freedom?
I think, once we remove all the arbitrary crap, we're left with this:
- Rely on reason, logic and science to understand the Universe and to solve life's problems.
- Don't smoke; it's smelly and it's bad for everyone. Also, lose weight, you fat bastard.
I think that makes for a much better humanist manifesto, don't you? ;-)
Atheist Week on Facebook – from an apartment in Ottawa
Some people on Facebook are running a campaign this week they're calling 'A'theist Week on Facebook. The idea is to raise awareness of atheism by asking atheists to assert themselves by simply changing their profile photos to the Out Campaign's scarlet letter A for the week of March 29 - April 6, 2010. Here's the advertisement I posted on my wall:
An atheist is a person who does not believe the statement, "God exists".
In the 2001 Census, "No religious affiliation" accounted for 16.5% of the population in Canada. That's more than Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, and all other non-Christians combined (6.4%). It's more than seniors (13%), more than teachers (Social science, education, government service and religion: 7.7%), more than aborigional peoples (3.3%), and more than all visible minorities combined (16%). And it's growing: a Harris-Decima poll conducted in 2008 found that fewer than 75% of Canadians believe in a god.
Atheists disagree with each other constantly. We share neither god, nor leader, nor political ideology. We argue over what to call ourselves. We are not left-wing or right-wing. We are not a fringe group. We are not baby-eaters. We are your neighbours, your co-workers, your relatives, and your friends. We are Canadian, we are citizens, and we expect to be taken seriously.
Information overload
My friends look at me like I'm crazy when I tell them that I'm trying to find an RSS/Atom feed aggregator that won't choke when I try to subscribe to over 350 feeds. I wonder what they will think when they find out that I'm also trying to keep track of:
- 466 Twitter feeds,
- 188 Facebook friends,
- 30 podcasts,
- 10 IRC channels,
- 6 Meetup groups,
- 3 instant messaging networks,
- 2 voicemail boxes, and
- 1 email address that sorts 2000 messages per day through 231 procmail rules and a spam filter.
Does that sound like information overload?
Let's put it into perspective: The ATLAS detector (part of the Large Hadron Collider) generates 25 megabytes of output every time a packet of protons crosses it, which happens 40 million times per second. That's a whopping 1,000,000 GB every second!
Today's technology can't store that much data for very long. Even assuming the availability of $100 1TB hard disk drives that could store the information fast enough (they can't) and that were 100% reliable (they aren't), ATLAS would need 1.4 million of these drives (and a budget of $144 million) per day just for this initial data storage.
That is information overload!
The scientists and engineers working on ATLAS are well aware of these physical limitations, and they deal with them by using a clever multi-stage process that ultimately figures out what's important and discards the remaining 99.99997% of the data, resulting in a data rate of 'only' 320 MB per second (see page 5 of the linked PDF).
Think about those numbers. That is the state of the art.
Yet, I struggle with a handful of RSS feeds and a couple of social networking sites! I've thought about just pruning my subscriptions and changing my email address every few years like everyone else does, but I'm too embarrassed to admit to myself that I am so far behind the state of the art.
Darnit, I'm a programmer! If the ATLAS scientists can do what they did, I should easily be able to put together something that can sift through a measly fraction of the data while throwing away much less of it, especially when I can let it work for seconds or even minutes instead of nanoseconds. It's a simple, routine automation task.
Right?
“Feeling blue? Look to hugs before religion” – G&M
A friend and fellow atheist on Facebook posted a link to this article in the "Health & Fitness" section of The Globe and Mail:
Feeling blue? Look to hugs before religion
A new study finds Canadians who get hugs 'all the time' are more likely to report better mental health, while regularly attending church did not lift respondents' spirits.
My first reaction was to think, "Oh cool! They must have taken 300 depressed people, sent 100 to church, 100 for hugs, and left the other 100 alone as a control group, while making objective measurements of the subjects' mental health..."
Except they didn't. At least, that's not what was reported. Instead, they just correlated the answers to some very subjective questions in a Statistics Canada survey.
I've taken what I think are the relevant questions and quoted them below. Try to guess which one is different from the others:
(GEN_Q02A) How satisfied are you with your life in general?
[Very satisfied/Satisfied/Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied/Dissatisfied/Very dissatisfied/Don't know/Refuse to answer](GEN_Q02B) In general, would you say your mental health is:
[excellent/very good/good/fair/poor/don't know/refuse to answer]?(SSA_Q10) How often is each of the following kinds of support available to you if you need it:
… someone who hugs you?
[None of the time/A little of the time/Some of the time/Most of the time/All of the time/Don't know/Refuse to answer](SSA_Q22B) When you needed it, how often did you receive this kind of support (in the past 12
months)?
[Almost always/Frequently/Half the time/Rarely/Never/Don't know/Refuse to answer](SPR_Q6) Not counting events such as weddings or funerals, during the past 12 months, how often did you participate in religious activities or attend religious services or meetings? Do not include special events such as weddings, funerals, baptisms, bar mitzvahs, etc.
[Once a week or more/Once a month/3 or 4 times a year/Once a year/Not at all/Don't know/Refuse to answer]
If you guessed SPR_Q6 (the last one) you're right! It's the only one that wasn't completely subjective. It only contributed to a null result:
it didn't matter whether people went to church every week or not at all – how they described their mental health didn't change.
*Yawn*
It gets better though:
But don't rule out the health benefits of being spiritual, researchers say – especially in times of stress. In the past few years, a growing collection of studies have explored rates of mental illness among the religious, many of them finding that the incidence of depression and anxiety is lower among this segment of the population. A new, two-year Australian study that tracked people hospitalized with depression found that those who expressed core religious beliefs recovered faster – and that faith had a greater influence than either medication or community support.
OK, so we have a reporter citing unnamed researchers and unnamed studies that allegedly point to "health benefits of being spiritual", but of course without a citation, effectively no verifiable evidence is given to support this.
Well then, if they can publish random assertions that conveniently support their preconceptions while providing little to no supporting evidence, so can I:
- Maybe the unnamed study's uncredited authors made methodological errors.
- Maybe the unnamed study was misquoted.
- Maybe the unnamed study was withdrawn.
- Maybe people who express core religious beliefs are so busy reading their holy books (which they've read dozens of times before) that they don't notice all the crap that passes for health science journalism.
- Maybe people who express core religious beliefs have a negative impact on the non-religious people around them, as evidenced by all those angry atheists in the world.
Without any citation, who knows? We just have to trust some reporter who is almost certainly no medical researcher. As one commenter put it:
"The headline's claim is not supported by the reported work."
PyCrypto 2.1.0 released
PyCrypto 2.1.0 has been released. This is the first stable release since I took over as maintainer of PyCrypto. It is compatible with Python 2.1 through 2.6. (Python 3.x is not yet supported.)
See this post for more information.
US Supreme Court hears oral arguments in the Bilski case
I sometimes get excited reading court documents. The latest one to pique my interest is the most recent transcript of oral arguments in Bilski v. Kappos that were heard by the US Supreme Court on Monday.
The Bilski case is important because it could abolish the practice of patenting business methods and—hopefully—software. This is great news for those of us who are trying to do new and exciting things with software, because patents stifle innovation in software instead of encouraging it.
What's really exciting about this case is that the justices are asking some very good questions. They seem to understand that patents can hurt innovation:
JUSTICE BREYER: Okay. Well then, if that were so, we go back to the original purpose of the Constitution. Do you think that the framers would have wanted to require anyone successful in this great, vast, new continent because he thinks of something new to have had to run to Washington and to force any possible competitor to do a search and then stop the wheels of progress unless they get permission?
They see through the wording trick of patenting not software per se, but a computer loaded with certain software:
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Mr. Stewart, I thought I understood your argument up until the very last footnote in your brief. And you say this is not -- simply the method isn't patentable because it doesn't involve a machine. But then you say but it might be if you use a computer to identify the parties that you are setting a price between and if you used a microprocessor to calculate the price. That's like saying if you use a typewriter to type out the -- the process then it is patentable. I -- I -- it -- that takes away everything that you spent 53 pages establishing.
They also suggest that it might be difficult to disallow business method patents while allowing software patents:
JUSTICE BREYER: But then all we do is every example that I just gave, that I thought were examples that certainly would not be patented, you simply patent them. All you do is just have a set of instructions for saying how to set a computer to do it. Anyone can do that. Now, it's a machine.
So all the business patents are all right back in. Now, that -- what I think we were looking for was -- or at least I was -- was why that isn't so, and how you are going to later, down the road, deal with this situation of all you do is you get somebody who knows computers, and you turn every business patent into a setting of switches on the machine because there are no businesses that don't use those machines.
As usual with something like this, Groklaw is covering it.
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