I somehow manage to get myself into many debates where the other party asks “Whats the harm in holding X belief”. most are about religion or the supernatural, or even things as seemingly unharmful as Feng shui. I usually don’t research the harm ahead of time due to the spur of the moment nature of these conversations. if you’ve been in situations like that or are just interested in what the harm is in holding some absurd beliefs then check out WhatsTheHarm.net. It has definatly earned a Mike’s Seal Of Approval!

The first virtue is curiosity. A burning itch to know is higher than a solemn vow to pursue truth. To feel the burning itch of curiosity requires both that you be ignorant, and that you desire to relinquish your ignorance. If in your heart you believe you already know, or if in your heart you do not wish to know, then your questioning will be purposeless and your skills without direction. Curiosity seeks to annihilate itself; there is no curiosity that does not want an answer. The glory of glorious mystery is to be solved, after which it ceases to be mystery. Be wary of those who speak of being open-minded and modestly confess their ignorance. There is a time to confess your ignorance and a time to relinquish your ignorance.

The second virtue is relinquishment. P. C. Hodgell said: “That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.” Do not flinch from experiences that might destroy your beliefs. The thought you cannot think controls you more than thoughts you speak aloud. Submit yourself to ordeals and test yourself in fire. Relinquish the emotion which rests upon a mistaken belief, and seek to feel fully that emotion which fits the facts. If the iron approaches your face, and you believe it is hot, and it is cool, the Way opposes your fear. If the iron approaches your face, and you believe it is cool, and it is hot, the Way opposes your calm. Evaluate your beliefs first and then arrive at your emotions. Let yourself say: “If the iron is hot, I desire to believe it is hot, and if it is cool, I desire to believe it is cool.” Beware lest you become attached to beliefs you may not want.

The third virtue is lightness. Let the winds of evidence blow you about as though you are a leaf, with no direction of your own. Beware lest you fight a rearguard retreat against the evidence, grudgingly conceding each foot of ground only when forced, feeling cheated. Surrender to the truth as quickly as you can. Do this the instant you realize what you are resisting; the instant you can see from which quarter the winds of evidence are blowing against you. Be faithless to your cause and betray it to a stronger enemy. If you regard evidence as a constraint and seek to free yourself, you sell yourself into the chains of your whims. For you cannot make a true map of a city by sitting in your bedroom with your eyes shut and drawing lines upon paper according to impulse. You must walk through the city and draw lines on paper that correspond to what you see. If, seeing the city unclearly, you think that you can shift a line just a little to the right, just a little to the left, according to your caprice, this is just the same mistake.

The fourth virtue is evenness. One who wishes to believe says, “Does the evidence permit me to believe?” One who wishes to disbelieve asks, “Does the evidence force me to believe?” Beware lest you place huge burdens of proof only on propositions you dislike, and then defend yourself by saying: “But it is good to be skeptical.” If you attend only to favorable evidence, picking and choosing from your gathered data, then the more data you gather, the less you know. If you are selective about which arguments you inspect for flaws, or how hard you inspect for flaws, then every flaw you learn how to detect makes you that much stupider. If you first write at the bottom of a sheet of paper, “And therefore, the sky is green!”, it does not matter what arguments you write above it afterward; the conclusion is already written, and it is already correct or already wrong. To be clever in argument is not rationality but rationalization. Intelligence, to be useful, must be used for something other than defeating itself. Listen to hypotheses as they plead their cases before you, but remember that you are not a hypothesis, you are the judge. Therefore do not seek to argue for one side or another, for if you knew your destination, you would already be there.

The fifth virtue is argument. Those who wish to fail must first prevent their friends from helping them. Those who smile wisely and say: “I will not argue” remove themselves from help, and withdraw from the communal effort. In argument strive for exact honesty, for the sake of others and also yourself: The part of yourself that distorts what you say to others also distorts your own thoughts. Do not believe you do others a favor if you accept their arguments; the favor is to you. Do not think that fairness to all sides means balancing yourself evenly between positions; truth is not handed out in equal portions before the start of a debate. You cannot move forward on factual questions by fighting with fists or insults. Seek a test that lets reality judge between you.

The sixth virtue is empiricism. The roots of knowledge are in observation and its fruit is prediction. What tree grows without roots? What tree nourishes us without fruit? If a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound? One says, “Yes it does, for it makes vibrations in the air.” Another says, “No it does not, for there is no auditory processing in any brain.” Though they argue, one saying “Yes”, and one saying “No”, the two do not anticipate any different experience of the forest. Do not ask which beliefs to profess, but which experiences to anticipate. Always know which difference of experience you argue about. Do not let the argument wander and become about something else, such as someone’s virtue as a rationalist. Jerry Cleaver said: “What does you in is not failure to apply some high-level, intricate, complicated technique. It’s overlooking the basics. Not keeping your eye on the ball.” Do not be blinded by words. When words are subtracted, anticipation remains.

The seventh virtue is simplicity. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said: “Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” Simplicity is virtuous in belief, design, planning, and justification. When you profess a huge belief with many details, each additional detail is another chance for the belief to be wrong. Each specification adds to your burden; if you can lighten your burden you must do so. There is no straw that lacks the power to break your back. Of artifacts it is said: The most reliable gear is the one that is designed out of the machine. Of plans: A tangled web breaks. A chain of a thousand links will arrive at a correct conclusion if every step is correct, but if one step is wrong it may carry you anywhere. In mathematics a mountain of good deeds cannot atone for a single sin. Therefore, be careful on every step.

The eighth virtue is humility. To be humble is to take specific actions in anticipation of your own errors. To confess your fallibility and then do nothing about it is not humble; it is boasting of your modesty. Who are most humble? Those who most skillfully prepare for the deepest and most catastrophic errors in their own beliefs and plans. Because this world contains many whose grasp of rationality is abysmal, beginning students of rationality win arguments and acquire an exaggerated view of their own abilities. But it is useless to be superior: Life is not graded on a curve. The best physicist in ancient Greece could not calculate the path of a falling apple. There is no guarantee that adequacy is possible given your hardest effort; therefore spare no thought for whether others are doing worse. If you compare yourself to others you will not see the biases that all humans share. To be human is to make ten thousand errors. No one in this world achieves perfection.

The ninth virtue is perfectionism. The more errors you correct in yourself, the more you notice. As your mind becomes more silent, you hear more noise. When you notice an error in yourself, this signals your readiness to seek advancement to the next level. If you tolerate the error rather than correcting it, you will not advance to the next level and you will not gain the skill to notice new errors. In every art, if you do not seek perfection you will halt before taking your first steps. If perfection is impossible that is no excuse for not trying. Hold yourself to the highest standard you can imagine, and look for one still higher. Do not be content with the answer that is almost right; seek one that is exactly right.

The tenth virtue is precision. One comes and says: The quantity is between 1 and 100. Another says: the quantity is between 40 and 50. If the quantity is 42 they are both correct, but the second prediction was more useful and exposed itself to a stricter test. What is true of one apple may not be true of another apple; thus more can be said about a single apple than about all the apples in the world. The narrowest statements slice deepest, the cutting edge of the blade. As with the map, so too with the art of mapmaking: The Way is a precise Art. Do not walk to the truth, but dance. On each and every step of that dance your foot comes down in exactly the right spot. Each piece of evidence shifts your beliefs by exactly the right amount, neither more nor less. What is exactly the right amount? To calculate this you must study probability theory. Even if you cannot do the math, knowing that the math exists tells you that the dance step is precise and has no room in it for your whims.

The eleventh virtue is scholarship. Study many sciences and absorb their power as your own. Each field that you consume makes you larger. If you swallow enough sciences the gaps between them will diminish and your knowledge will become a unified whole. If you are gluttonous you will become vaster than mountains. It is especially important to eat math and science which impinges upon rationality: Evolutionary psychology, heuristics and biases, social psychology, probability theory, decision theory. But these cannot be the only fields you study. The Art must have a purpose other than itself, or it collapses into infinite recursion.

Before these eleven virtues is a virtue which is nameless.

Miyamoto Musashi wrote, in The Book of Five Rings:

“The primary thing when you take a sword in your hands is your intention to cut the enemy, whatever the means. Whenever you parry, hit, spring, strike or touch the enemy’s cutting sword, you must cut the enemy in the same movement. It is essential to attain this. If you think only of hitting, springing, striking or touching the enemy, you will not be able actually to cut him. More than anything, you must be thinking of carrying your movement through to cutting him.”

Every step of your reasoning must cut through to the correct answer in the same movement. More than anything, you must think of carrying your map through to reflecting the territory.

If you fail to achieve a correct answer, it is futile to protest that you acted with propriety.

How can you improve your conception of rationality? Not by saying to yourself, “It is my duty to be rational.” By this you only enshrine your mistaken conception. Perhaps your conception of rationality is that it is rational to believe the words of the Great Teacher, and the Great Teacher says, “The sky is green,” and you look up at the sky and see blue. If you think: “It may look like the sky is blue, but rationality is to believe the words of the Great Teacher,” you lose a chance to discover your mistake.

Do not ask whether it is “the Way” to do this or that. Ask whether the sky is blue or green. If you speak overmuch of the Way you will not attain it.

You may try to name the highest principle with names such as “the map that reflects the territory” or “experience of success and failure” or “Bayesian decision theory”. But perhaps you describe incorrectly the nameless virtue. How will you discover your mistake? Not by comparing your description to itself, but by comparing it to that which you did not name.

If for many years you practice the techniques and submit yourself to strict constraints, it may be that you will glimpse the center. Then you will see how all techniques are one technique, and you will move correctly without feeling constrained. Musashi wrote: “When you appreciate the power of nature, knowing the rhythm of any situation, you will be able to hit the enemy naturally and strike naturally. All this is the Way of the Void.”

These then are twelve virtues of rationality:

Curiosity, relinquishment, lightness, evenness, argument, empiricism, simplicity, humility, perfectionism, precision, scholarship, and the void.

via -Eliezer Yudkowsky

There have been alot of really smart and innovative game controllers coming out recently. I’m very pleased with the direction the gaming peripherals market has been heading! I got a chance to play with the Novint Falcon at Quakecon last year and fell in love! its a great device, really brings the player into the FPS experience, prob the best step forward in the peripheral market since the NES Zapper. Force feedback is bitchin, exp when it gives you realistic stopping points as far as motion in game, but I digress.
The reason I bring that up is to discuss the next step forward. Force feedback is awesome, but what a competitive FPS gamer really needs is ease of use, and quicker reaction time. Spiffy trinkets are one thing, but shaving a millisecond off your reaction time and reloading. now that will sell. I’m thinking that’s where the Peregrine is taking us. It seems like a power glove on steroids Its a glove that you wear while gaming and by touching your thumb to various touch points on the fingers you can execute an action. Whether it be a macro or a simple keystroke. ideally the system could be used to replace a keyboard and mouse all together (with some modifications) but as a supplement to a keyboard and mouse, it seems like it cut down my reaction time significantly! not to mention that it looks fucking amazing!

Not to mention the possibilities for using this as a keyboard alternative when typing. I love the idea of wearable computing as you may imagine. and this kind of gaming gear brings us one step closer to my wearable computing dreams.

I’ve been reading alot about new drugs coming out to extend the human lifespan, and I thought I would post about what the intention of these drugs is, and how they intend to have them work. First off whenever I talk about life extension with those who are unfamiliar with the field i inevitably get a response like “Great, ten more years of shitting in diapers and not knowing where you are”. It goes without saying that this is not the goal of life extension. The goal of these drugs and the field of study is to extend the healthy lifespan. The part of your life that doesn’t involve diapers or dementia.

Most of the drug or supplements being developed to slow the aging process work by controlling caloric intake, or process caloric intake. This is to say they either make you not want to eat more, or cause everything that you eat beyond an amount of calories not be used. this would give you all the health and longevity of someone on a caloric restricted diet without having to deal with actually restricting your caloric intake. this approach comes with the benefit of improved memory, lowered cholesterol, lower blood pressure, and alot of other awesome effects. This new drug that everyone is buzzing about goes at the aging process another way.

Sirolimus or Rapamycin is used to suppress the body’s immune system to prevent organ rejection after transplants. However a recent study has shown that under laboratory conditions it has allowed mice to live up to 14% longer. Laboratory conditions being critical to this as the drug all but shuts down the mouse’s immune system, if it were not in a laboratory the subject would have died alot sooner form disease or infection. here’s the cool part though. Rapamycin works by inhibiting the “TOR” kinase. What this gene does is control cell mortality, reproduction, transcription, etc. The suppression of TOR activity appears to extend life though caloric restriction. that is because

“TOR kinases define a primary conduit through which excess nutrient intake limits longevity in yeast.” -[source]

However that quote is from an article pertaining to yeast longevity. I only assume it’s the same principal behind Rapamycins effectiveness as a life extension drug. So that’s the scoop on the new life extension drug. Not really useful to humans yet, what with the immune system suppression issue and all. If we can use what we have learned from this drug and find another way to suppress TOR1, or find a way to resolve the immune system suppression, then we are in business!

Found this video while stumbling around. very well said retort to 90% of what the religious ask the non religious. and the ze frank speech patterns make it all that more fun to listen to. Enjoy!

Ive become horribly addicted to Ayn Rand’s books since i finished atlas shrugged (the second time). I just finished Anthem last night and felt it necessary to share this with my 3-4 readers.

“What is my joy if all hands, even the unclean, can reach into it? What is my wisdom, if even the fools can dictate to me? What is my freedom, if all creatures, even the botched and the impotent, are my masters? What is my life, if I am but to bow, to agree and to obey?
But I am done with this creed of corruption.
I am done with the monster of “We,” the word of serfdom, of plunder, of misery, falsehood and shame.
And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride.
This god, this one word: “I.”

This book and this excerpt appeal to me for many reasons, both because i am an atheist, and this excerpt highlights my feelings of the word god. being the individual, moreover individuality. the second way this book appealed to me is how applicable it is. we live in a nation where the WE rule the I. the fools control the wise by fucking up all attempts at further research, the weak rule the strong with shameless political tactics, and the corrupt command the honest with deception and unearned power. we are urged and even forced to give our earnings and livleyhood to others who cannot or do not earn the same. “Spread the Wealth Around” is the new mantra of seemingly more than half of Americans today. this is the most sickening and disturbing thing that i can imagine. of all places, this country fought these ideas, we despised the politics and the nations that stood for these ideas, we accused others of having these ideas much as Salem inhabitants did during the witch trials. we used to call them “Commies” “Reds” soon we will call them majority, leader, and possibly president… fuck that!
After that tangent, i suggest you read anthem, for that matter atlas shrugged if you have the time. later.

An awesome talk between Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens about religion and personal beliefs. Even if your not an atheist its an interesting conversation.
Hour 1

Hour 2

While reading up on the previous post all i could think of was Ghost in the Shell and how the technology could be used to produce a similar cyborg structure (EG brain casing and all) and i came across an article about Dreamworks buying the rights to produce a live action ghost in the shell movie! first off i cant express how much i love the ghost in the shell series, ive never been geeky enough to read the manga but the movies and all I fucking love. Don’t even get get me started on how much i love the technology, the idea of robotic bodies and everlasting life, cyberpunk = win.
Best part of the news is Stephen Spielberg is fighting to direct the it! ” ‘Ghost in the Shell’ is one of my favorite stories,” Spielberg said. “It’s a genre that has arrived, and we enthusiastically welcome it to DreamWorks.”
What I’m wondering is who on earth could possibly pull off playing ANY of the roles? Any ideas?
[via -variety]

Badass researchers at Osaka University in Japan are looking at controling robotics though thought. but none of that low response headgear stuff. they want to install sensors directly on the greymatter!

The motivation behind these experiments is to allow amputees and whatnot to control robotic prosthetics the same way we control our appendages. if this becomes mainstream don’t be surprised if i get into an accident and loose my arms and legs.

[-asahi]

I have officially lost any shred of respect i had for Ben Stein and this expelled movie. stick to the eye drop commercials and game shows. im not sure where to start with this movie. (throws dart at the “wall of fail” that is this movie) ok, ben stein and his cronies in this film attempt to connect Darwin’s theory of evolution to the holocaust, as if without that theory the holocaust never would have happened. I’m told ben stein was able to fully flex his acting mussels to appear sad as the director juxtaposes quotes from evolutionary biologists with footage from Hitler’s Reich. clearly these people represent the intelligent side of the argument. Ill move form movie content as i have only seen bits of the film. but as to the directors and the motivation behind the movie, i think acceptance was the last thing on their minds. the production and marketing of this movie is the apex of hypocrisy, I’m of course referring to the expulsion of PZ Myers from the screening (note was featured in this “film” and thanked in the credits). the most hilarious part, which highlights their tag line “No Intelligence Allowed” is that they kicked out Myers but let DAWKINS in!!!

Its also important to note that you’ll seldom find a group of evolutionary biologists that agree entirely. Dawins and Stephen J Gould differed from each other and the rest of the community in many ways, so this creationist propaganda that questioning current scientific understanding is forbidden is not only absurd but the antithesis of the scientific process. the only place you can get expelled form for questioning is the church. or a premiere of “expelled”. Also its Extremely hard not to notice that all of the clips from the biologists are ended early. almost all of them were cut off before they could finish a sentence.. thats integrity there. As for scientists being ridiculed for their theories. well their theories have NO facts behind them, NO evidence, and NO intelligent thinking. their arguments rely on the lack of an answer, and are not produced because of an answer. they didn’t receive any new data and change their hypothesis, rather they rejected all data and formed a hypothesis based on what feels good. ridicule is the proper response when confronted with the ridiculous.

After interviewing everyone in evolutionary biology they could find, under false presences I’m told, they stole footage that shows cell division and dubbed it with creationist rhetoric. (lawsuit Letter) If this ever does make it to the mainstream i will write a better account of how wrong they are.

If you want to have a good laugh heres the trailer, all the things i discussed above are painfully evident in these clips.