Informal Logical Fallacies on FBOOK

Oye k pasa 'errrrrrrrrrrmano

Hay muchas vacas en el mundo hoy dia, eh?

¡Que flayte wea!

What has happened to Facebook? I remember back in the early days of the website, it was all about connecting with friends and sending horribly cringe-worthy messages to middle school crushes. Fast-forward ten years, and now Facebook has become the ugly overgrown guilt complex that I don't need. Its constant stream of news blocks me from taking meaningful action on any part, and leaves me constantly forgetting what it was I was thinking about as I peruse funny fat kid dancing videos. Whether it's an article on how my generation sucks, an idiotic Buzzfeed post on 10 things that you will hate to love/love to hate when you are [insert age here], or some overly simplified social movement LITERALLY based on one click of the mouse, Facebook is making me into a papier-mache version of myself. It's an unhealthy addiction, and one that isn't even rewarding in the short-term (scrolling is a perpetual search for something interesting that always ends in disappointment). I admit, I am complicit in it, but it is a little like being complicit in smoking. Who are you going to blame, the smoker or the cigarette? Answer is both. 

I still miss you, old frienemy

And what is even worse than the news feed? Well probably any comment section on the damn site, especially the ones open to the general public. Man, there are some serious head-scratch inducing comments on Facebook. Here is one I found a minute ago:  "Tinder is for mainly Asian males who want to hook up with mainly white women but don't want their Asian wives and families to find out." Comments like these leave you in a state of complex befuddlement over what the hell anyone is talking about. The confusion becomes too real, almost like you are in some wacky Bizarro world, and you are about to get a phone call informing you that you have been the star of your own MTV reality show for the last 23 years, and upon reception of this exciting news, your dog looks at you and lets out a big MEOW, out of its butt.

#GymGoals

So, in order to generate content for a blog post, I have decided to apply logic to the situation and analyze for you the top three most common informal logically fallacies on Facebook. Be warned, I am new to the whole logic scene, so take this with a grain of salt.


3. Argumentum ad Hominem (Argument against the Person)

Ad hominem attacks are called fallacies of relevance. Basically, in any argument you have the premise and the conclusion. The conclusion is what is being claimed and the premise is the evidence that supports that claim. In an arguments such as argumentum ad hominem, the premise has nothing to do with actually proving the conclusion and is logically irrelevant, thus it is called a fallacy of relevance. Specifically, the ad hominem fallacy is usually committed in an argument involving two people. One person will make a claim, and then the other person, instead of addressing the claim, will attack the first person either in a direct or indirect manner. 

Direct is responding to Sally's arguments that Mark stole the cookies from the cookie jar with "Mark could not have stolen the cookies. How can you listen to Sally? Sally like to smoke pot behind the dumpsters." Although I did introduce new evidence into the discussion, my premise has nothing to do with the argument at hand. It might be true that Sally likes smoking weed, and her favorite place to do it might well be behind the Taco Bell dumpster, but what does that have to do with the stolen cookies?

The indirect argument against the person is more insidious. If instead I responded to Sally like so: "Sally would claim that Mark stole the cookies. Sally never liked Mark, and has even called him the scum of the earth on several occasions." Here I am hinting at the fact that Sally is accusing Mark because she doesn't like him. Of course whether or not Sally likes Mark has nothing to do with who ate the cookies, but I am trying to discredit any argument Sally may make by alluding to certain circumstances that may affect her. 

Hello, my name is Mark

I see these types of arguments on Facebook all the time. I found this one below after two minutes of looking. 

Some context: Ben Stein used to have his own game-show called Win Ben Stein's Money, and it was kinda cool. Oh also he was in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, as the teacher who kept saying Bueller (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NP0mQeLWCCo). Then he made some weird religious documentary...

Ok real context: Ben Stein in the last ten years has become a pretty staunch conservative political commentator, and yesterday he asked the rhetorical question "Why is he (President Obama) so angry at America?"

"I don’t think there’s much question that he does not wish America well. He has a real strong hatred of America. Is it because he’s part black? I don’t know. Is it because his father was mistreated by the British in Kenya? I don’t know." - Ben Stein

There is a lot I can say about this head-scratcher, but sticking to argument analysis, here Ben Stein is making a direct ad hominem attack on President Obama. If we were to break down this argument into premise and conclusion, we would see that his conclusion is that Obama hates America and his premises are that 1) Obama is part black and 2) Obama's father was mistreated by the British in Kenya. 

If we examine these premises in relation to the conclusion Obama hates America, it's clear that they have no real connection. For the first premise to have merit, there must be some relation between being black and hating America. So because Obama is racially half black, there is a half of him that hates America? Ya, like I said, it makes no sense.

The second premise is even stranger. So again the conclusion is Obama hates America, and the evidence this premise provides for that statement is that Obama's father was mistreated by the BRITISH in KENYA. WHAT? So somehow this fuels the hatred Obama has for America, because the British are, like, our political mother? Again, what? #lackofsense

This argument is a direct ad hominem attack that attempts to be an indirect one. Stein lacks so much sense, that he thinks he is implying something that would support Obama hates America. Instead he is just introducing premises into the argument that have nothing to do with anything. For non-idiots, there is no connection between the premises he gives and an indirect support for the conclusion. Thus the fallacy is a direct argument against the person and not an indirect one. Ben, please just give us back the game-show.

2. Equivocation

The informal fallacy of equivocation is based on a word being used in two different senses within an argument. It is not a fallacy of relevance like argumentum ad hominem, but instead is a fallacy of ambiguity. Whereas the fallacy of relevance resulted from premise and conclusion not having a logical connection, the fallacy of ambiguity results from multiple meanings existing simultaneously in the premise, conclusion, or both. 

For example, if I say Sally has a duty to do what is right with the cookie situation, and that she has a right to settle the dispute by mortal kombat, I can fallaciously jump to the conclusion that Sally has a duty to settle the cookie situation by mortal kombat. The problem is that there is ambiguity in the term "right." In the first part of my argument, I used right to mean "moral or correct." In the second part, I used right to mean "an entitlement to act in a certain way." These are far from similar. Although the form of my argument may look correct, it actually comes out confusing.

Next time don't steal the f*cking cookies

The fallacy of equivocation is just like the situation above, with the added stipulation that the confusion has to result from the use of a specific word, like "right." There are other fallacies of ambiguity that may result from how you say something, or the structure in which you say it. But we won't go into those, I don't want to bore you too much. Snore. Sleep. Dream of an intelligent Ben Stein. 

Here is another example I took from the Facebook newsfeed. This one has to do with Secretary of State John Kerry claiming that Daesh's (ISIS) actions in Paris had a "rationale."

"Kerry's disgusting comment reflects his twisted radical mind. So if terrorists have a rationale such as "Hebdo blasphemed Mohammed", then terrorists are "justified" in retaliating by committing murder. Kerry understands and sympathizes with terrorists. Kerry should not be Secretary of State." - Diane Kaiser 

Woah nelly, calm thyself. John Kerry uses the word "rationale" to mean something like "explanation." He was saying that Daesh's actions were part of a cycle of cause and effect, that some chain of events caused the terrorist attacks in Paris. I admit, this statement is a little too open ended to really be anything other than empty words. I mean, how far are we to go back in examining what caused the attacks. Was it France's immigrant ghettos? Was it the fact that France help found the European Union (the terrorists had EU passports they used to enter France)? Does it go all the way back to Bush's War on Terror? The answer is probably yes on all accounts. 

But then Diane over here goes head-over-heels for all the wrong reasons. She takes the word "rationale" to mean something like "belief system" or "thinking." Then she foams at the mouth and makes an otherwise valid argument that just because someone believes something doesn't make it justified. The problem is that Kerry was simply saying the motivations the terrorists had, how the whole situation might have occurred, is understandable, not justified. The mix up is that the word "rationale" seems to imply justified. Overall I'm going to say this is more of a Kerry foot-in-mouth situation then a Diane Kaiser freak-out. Just goes to show that two stupids will never cancel each other out. 

1. Ignoratio Elenchi (otherwise known as Missing the Point)

And finally we come to number 1, DUH DUH DUUUUUUUUUUM

Just take a look at this Sovereign Citizen over here:

"My fellow Americans. Arm up and rise up. Tyranny has run undeterred for far too long. Nidal Hasan was a vetted member of the military; until, by his own admission, murdered military members claiming he was defending muslims around the world. It was a terrorist act. Obama called it workplace violence. Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were refugees in America attending college when the committed the Boston Bombings. DID WE FORGET THIS or are we being force fed kool-aid by the administration? ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!" - Joseph John DiAscro

Ignoratio Elenchi is a logical fallacy of relevance, like argumentum ad hominem. The conclusion is unrelated to the premise. Here the conclusion DiAscro makes is that we must rise up and resist/destroy the government. In context, his premises have to do with the current national conversation we are having around admitting Syrian refugees into the country. His premise is that Syrian refugees are dangerous and potential terrorists, and he points out specific examples of other children of immigrants/refugees that have become terrorists. Unfortunately his logic ends there. 

Missing the point occurs when the premises seem to point to one conclusion, but an entirely different conclusion is then drawn. The person arguing is ignorant of what his premises or proof actually implies, thus the name ignoratio elenchi ("ignorance of the proof"). Here the logical conclusions may be that there are pressures in this country conducive to the production of domestic terrorists (none of the names he mentions actually came from abroad to attack the United States), or that Islam may be used by terrorists as a justification for their acts, or even that Syrian refugees should be watched closely by the government for signs of radical rhetoric. 

However in no way, shape, or form does his premise support that conclusion that we must "arm up and rise up." Thus DiAscro misses the point. Must happen to him a lot. I imagine he is also the type of person to argue with border patrol for an hour over whether they have the right to search his car, although he has nothing illegal in his car (it was for the principle). Also probably the type of person with a Sic Semper Tyrannis  and Don't Tread on Me bumper sticker. Just saying.

OMG I actually found a picture with both

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Therefore, having judged that to be happy means to be free, and to be free means to be brave, do not shy away from the risks of war.- Pericles 

Montana & Joshua Tree & Ed Stories & Grad School

Planting Seeds of Destruction in Elysian Fields

Welly, welly, well, to what do I owe the extreme pleasure of your surprising visit. I am going to eschew the regular oh me oh my it has been a while since my last blog shtick in favor of just including a few pics from my recent travels to Kalispell, Montana (the homefront) and Joshua Tree National Park. Both places are painfully beautiful, and I got to climb a mountain in each. Well, Mt. Reynolds in Glacier Park was a lot taller than Key's Point in Joshua Tree, but both were mountains nonetheless...

Mini-Vacation Mini-Pictures

Well I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did. Also check out Hank Williams III, a cool hick my cousin showed me while I was up in Montana. It was overall a very fun trip, nice to see my family again, it had been almost 3 long years. Most surprising part was that Big Fork had sushi in the middle of Montana, and it was actually pretty damn good!

Joshua Tree was also fun. The funnest part being when Josh and I got lost on Ole Dale road in the middle of some mining hill with a shitty "all-wheel drive" Kia with no cell service, no water, and no light. Yep, it took some road-building to put the tires on solid ground and eventually get out of the hills. And right when we made it over, we entered into a flood plain spanning the flat desert floor, and got more lost following the circuitous tracks of other cars. Over those four hours some prays were said, and luckily we made it out alive (I actually kissed the highway). But I can say it might be a second until I volunteer for another desert trip. Be prepared kids!

I told my dad about it and he scoffed it off in his robe with a bowl of ice-cream sitting on his lap, saying he had done that plenty of times, so I guess it wasn't that cool. Speaking of, I've been talking with my father about recording his 1001 stories and aphorisms in some form of writing. Nothing has materialized as of yet, but I thought that I could at least record some glimpses on the blog. So for the sake of propriety, here it is, the famous 5 rules of living from Ed MF Roane, given from Ed to his sons.

1. Do Your Best
2. Be Kind
3. Don't Lie to Yourself
4. If you forget #1-3, remember #5
5. Always wear a condom

Other than that, progress on my future has been sluggish as usual. Took the GRE and did well enough not to have to take it again. Finally narrowed the grad school options to five programs in Bioinformatics. Most are on the East Coast, but I have the option to take one in Seattle and one is in Ohio. I also was thinking of applying to a related program in Minnesota, just for the #MinnesotaLove.

Make sure you check out Jota's Blog and all the other blogs of our generation. Let's keep the non-movement not going! And to everyone who is almost five months out of college across the wires, keep on keeping on because, surprise, no one likes you when you're 23.

Summer Update

Oi, k pasa wey,



I hope everyone has been well. It has officially been three months since graduation and my rose-colored glasses are lying smashed on the ground next to my tear stained pictures of Chile. Real life is hard man. Right now it mainly consists of paying off credit card debt from my post-graduation cavorting, working at a warehouse shipping toys in the strange gentrifying borough of North Hollywood, working out nights at Globo-Gym, tanning on the roof of my parent’s house on the weekends, and Armenian poker nights. That's pretty much been my summer in a bottle.

The music was even worse, jk jk

Come fall I hope to have made serious progress on getting out of Los Angeles and being on my way towards graduate studies, but as always, comfort is my worst enemy. It is easy to embrace the status quo. However, we do so at the expense of our possible futures (if we live to see them). Tick Tick Tick and I ain’t got no DeLorean.



So that’s about it, thought I would just give a quick update for those who care. I got a couple ideas for some science blogs I might do in the future, but other than that, I plan on reporting when there is actual news afoot.



Oh, hopefully starting a book club soon with a friend from college (Anh Doan woop woop), if anyone would like to join, let me know. We are going to read mainly philosophy or psychology books and engage in frivolous discussions about them. Our first book is Arthur Koestler’s The Ghost in the Machine.

Also check out Jota’s blog, it’s always a good time: http://colombianjota.blogspot.com/2015/08/lets-get-physical-week-of-belonging.html



Hopefully Craig will have a blog soon, as well as the rest of my friends who were smart enough to continue traveling after college….



Anyway, hasta luego, zaijan



Love is always patient and kind. Love is never jealous. Love is never boastful or conceited. It is never rude or selfish. It does not take offense and is not resentful. Love takes no pleasure in other people’s sins but delights in the truth. It is always ready to excuse, to hope, to trust, and to endure whatever comes. Love has no end.





LOVE DOES NOT TAKE OFFENSE YOU CECIL THE LION, BRUCE GENDERING, KEYBOARD CRUCIFYING BUTTMUNCHERS

Misc. Book Review: Man and His Symbols/For Whom the Bell Tolls

Hola Amiguitos!

So it wasn't a New Year's Resolution or anything like that, but I did make the commitment to put up a blog a week. Sadly, this commitment has already been broken. But hell if I will let two weeks go by without a blog; I know vast multitudes were greatly saddened and dismayed by the lack of a blog last week, but fear not, for the voice of our generation has arisen to write anew. Huzzah! Crickets...

I thought that this week I might try something different and write a book review. Let me reiterate that I mainly write this blog for me, but like to share (some would call it peddle) it with other people. So keeping that in mind, my book reviews will necessarily be half-baked, biased, and filled with masturbatory pontification. But take it as you may, I like books, some other people on the Internet like books, why not use the online medium to have useless discussions about them. I believe that to be one of the reasons the Internet was invented.

During this recent bout of unemployment between undergrad and graduate school, I have begun to read through some books I have laying around my house. The rule I made for myself is that for every piece of fiction I read, I will read a piece of non-fiction. This week I finished reading two books. One is called Man and His Symbols. The book attempts to explain the philosophy and "science" of Carl Jung, the father of psychoanalysis. The other is a novel by Ernest Hemmingway titled For Whom the Bell Tolls.

I'll start with For Whom the Bell Tolls. First off, part of me hates the way Hemmingway writes. When you read one of his books, you can just imagine this guy sauntering around Cuba, rum in hand, slapping asses of waitresses, fishing with grenades, being a real asshole. But then you come to a section in the book that makes an on-point description, and you have to give the guy credit as an author. Or you come to a part in a chapter where you just have to stand back and appreciate the character that Hemmingway puts so much of himself into. He stands as a symbol for the flawed but idealistic America of his time.

The book centers mainly on a plot to blow up a bridge during the Spanish Civil War. An American named Robert Jordan, who specializes as a dynamiter, joins a guerrilla band of Spanish fighters, falls in love, and, in fact, does succeed in blowing a bridge up (but sadly it doesn't happen until really close to the end of the book). That is all I will say because I don't want to give away the entire plot. The book isn't really driven by plot that much anyhow. It is driven mostly through the dialogue and ruminations of the main character Robert Jordan.

A unique part of this book is the way Hemmingway handles the translation of Spanish to English. A lot of the time he will write the literal translation of a Spanish phrase into English, and this gives the dialogue an interestingly foreign feel. Some of my favorite examples were "you will have to take death as an aspirin" and "he is much horse." He also uses the antiquated "thee, thou, thine..." to represent the proper feel of the Spanish language; a feel that is less democratic then our American y'alls and errbody.

The politics in the book is also a little interesting. Hemmingway writes some passages in which Robert Jordan has to explain American ideologies to the Spanish Republicans, all of which in constant comparison to the Spanish fascists. Jordan himself is part of the International Brigades, a group of international volunteer soldiers that fought for the Second Spanish Republic due to ideological reasons. So the book has some stuff to say for anyone who is interested in political ideologies. Yep, yep, yep.

Here is my succinct impression of the entire work: the book is a written example of what Hemmingway views as the true honorable man, framed within a weak theme of personal moral relativity. The theme bridges the relation to the eponymous John Donne poem.

"Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee"

What the book has to say about my life is limited and thus I am bored by it. Killing other people kills myself, blah blah blah, I am not a good man and my enemy is not a bad one, blah blah blah, politics, politics, blah blah blah.

Overall 5/10

Next on our (who the hell is writing this with me? I meant my) list: Man and his Symbols. If you haven't heard of Carl Jung, that must be because he is pretty old. This book was written around 1960, and that time itself was near the end of Jung's life. Jung's philosophy is based upon the personal interpretations of our dreams, and the potential for our dreams to have a transformative power on our waking lives. He was good friends with Sigmund Freud, but they eventually had a falling out. Even more interesting, it apparently had nothing to do with cocaine (Freud loved the stuff, Jung maybe preferred nature walks, I don't know).

What I do know is that this was an interesting read. The book is comprised of six chapters, only one of which is written by Jung. The rest of the chapters are written by Jung's closest disciples. Though it can get into a bit of pseudoscience at times, I feel like the book has a lot of interesting things to say. Jung views the unconscious as a vast source of much of our identity. Analogously, he sees the conscious to the unconscious as a plant to the entire surrounding ecosystem. Actually one of my favorite metaphors that Jung uses is also plant-based. In describing why dreams would serve to help us, he compares a human being to a pine tree. A pine tree grows up towards the sun wherever it is, be it on fertile soil or on a wind-swept mountain peak. The pine tree always attempts to grow to be all that it can be within its individual environment. Like the pine tree, a human being, as a living entity, also grows to be what it can be within its environment. Dreams in this context serve the same role as sunlight to a pine tree; they are a stimulus to grow in the direction of which growth would be beneficial.

Some other interesting ideas from this book: the fear and anxiety in our society is caused by an increasing mentally dissociative state, consciousness is a recent invention and something that can be grown or diminished, and the symbols that humanity have created may share an actual physical basis in the brain (meaning we are hardwired for certain symbols). Jung was definitely a smart guy. He helped create the idea of the unconscious, the emotional complex (the reason I punch a wall every time my mom asks me a question), and introversion/extroversion. The problem is that sometimes his ideas verge on dialectical mysticism. Mainly he begins to (although he never says it) see the unconscious as God, the conscious as Human, and the meeting between them as a kind of perfected existence. Real poetic.

Now I will freely admit that I don't know shit. But at least I know that I don't know. For those of us that don't know, science is the only true bridge between our perception and reality that exists underneath it. As such I can't get on board with Jungian ideas such as synchronicity, which states that meaning can undermine cause and effect (look it up, this post is already too long).

All I have left to say in regards to this book is that a human being can ask two questions of the stuff that happens to him or her. One is how did this happen. That is a question science may be able to answer. The other is what does this mean? That question is one science can't answer because it is a subjective question. The point at which Jung looks at, the point at which these questions merge together, is a singularity. If our math breaks down at singularities in Black Holes, and the theories of quantum mechanics and general relativity break down at the singularity of the Big Bang, how the hell are we supposed to combine these two questions of cause and meaning. We can't. Not now. Maybe in the future. Maybe not. Who knows. I don't. I'm hungry. Can't eat though. Have to go to the gym. Ya, I lift.

Overall 6/10

What I Liked About College, yo

Just my favoritest gas station in the whole entire world

 

 

 

What did I think of college? Now isn't exactly the moment I want to answer that question. I am broke, unemployed, and 22 years old. My stats fit better with criminality than with self-reflection. But I figure if I don't make this post now, it may never happen. And I owe the internet a debt of my two-cents.  

 

What the hell did I think of college? College was good. I changed a lot. People I have talked to about their college experience say that they changed too, but not to a great extent. The person they were in high school got some upgrades (a cool hat) and some downgrades (a drinking problem), but overall they stayed the same. In my case, college cracked open a shell whose contents had been brewing a strange stew for years. That must be why when I first got to Minnesota, I became involved in a weird mix of things. But #noregrets, cause I ended up having a wide assortment of experiences with a wide assortment of people in a wide assortment of places. I don't know how to make $$$ off of it yet, but maybe something is percolating inside my head.

...

When I look back at my time at Saint John's and Saint Ben's, I can think of four aspects that I appreciate aside from the wonderful, yet irritatingly optimistic, people I met. I appreciate the community, the "liberal arts education," the Benedictine values, and my study abroad excursions. Those four things, aside from the people I met, compose the totality of my college experience. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand on to list format.

1. The community

When I say the community, I don't just mean the monastic community. I also mean my plant and animal friends in the landscape around Saint Johns, and the merry townies in the bars across Saint Joe. When I first arrived in Minnesota I thought: "wow, so this is what nothing feels like." I also thought: "do Minnesotans know Olive Garden isn't good?" But into my second week of freshman year, I started taking bike rides between campuses. That served as a gateway drug into taking longer bike rides, which turned into taking nature hikes, which turned into camping, which turned into canoeing and so on. So I can never be thankful enough for the nature around the colleges, it nourished my soul. Seeing a deer cross the street, or a golden eagle above my dorm in Flyntown were well-received moments. Sometimes when I couldn't sleep I would get up in the middle of the night, occasionally even in the dead of winter, and walk around Saint Johns. It was at these moments that I felt most at home, looking at the clear night sky, sitting across from a quiet lake, as I froze my ass off in the nuclear winter.

The monastic community was also a constant companion. I was mostly good friends with my freshmen year FR Father Bill who would always host pancake nights every couple of months. Yet through my involvement with volunteer service at the school and working for Campus Ministry, I got to meet many others monastics. I have to thank Father Bill particularly though for indirectly causing the mishap that resulted in me receiving my college nickname "bear." Father Bill decided to tell a dirty joke on my floor the first official day of college, with every single resident gathered around. After the crickets had cleared from his joke, he asked for someone else to tell a joke. As no one else would volunteer (cowards!), I told a joke involving a misunderstanding between a hunter and a bear. People loved it so much that they started calling me bear. Or the joke made them so uncomfortable that they started calling me bear. I still can't tell. I translated the joke to Spanish in Chile and thus was called osito (little bear) on that side of the equator. Thanks to the better angels of my nature I kept my stupid mouth shut in China.

Another big aspect of the community, especially after I turned 21, were the locals in town. The owners of a few bars, the hodgepodge of off-kilter folk I met walking the concrete at night, I owe all these people gratitude. I have to give a shout-out specifically to Will, the owner of the Middy, for being a friend across the bar, Mary for making awesome cards I gave my family, and Mike for offering intelligent/delinquent conversation. I definitely already miss these guys. It is a weird thing for some Semitic from LA to somehow settle in so completely to a little cove in central Minnesota, but it happened. There were witnesses, although they weren't always sober.

2. Liberal Arts Education

Ah yes, we come to the liberal arts education. A liberal arts education is the white color term for unskilled laborer. However, that doesn't mean that it is without value. A liberal arts education teaches you how to think well. By that I mean that it teaches you to think with your entire experience. It doesn't rely on rote learning or memorization. It doesn't separate a single discipline from the impact that discipline may have on the world around it. It bases itself in reality. A liberal arts education gets you to ask questions starting with why as well as how, and argues that asking why is just as important.

My first year I had a professor who told us to call her E. She still remains one of the best teachers I have ever had. In her class on Justice, it wasn't the specific philosophies that we discussed, but the way we discussed them that made an impact on me. Every other day we were required to read the newspaper, and the next day we talked about it in class. Sometimes we would spend the entire class period discussing news or the books that we had been assigned to read. Sometimes we would spend it making up impromptu speeches, or reciting memorized poems, or filming a misguided class musical (I was okay with it because it took the place of a large research paper). After freshman year, some of us would go visit E at her cabin where she would cook us dinner while we talked and reminisced. A week ago she read a verse from the Bible at my friend Gregg's wedding. The verse was Paul's 1'st Letter to the Corinthians, his definition of love. Its the verse I sometimes end my blog posts in. The point is that every class had a strong relation to the business of being alive. And E had been doing this, being a part in her students lives, for decades. She lived how she taught, with honor. That is what a liberals arts education should be. Learning for learning sake is not a liberal arts education. Neither is learning for money. A liberal arts education is learning for the sake of life. To say I got that out of all of my classes at college would be a lie. To say that I got that out of half of my classes would be a lie. But it really was those few classes that I did get it out of that I remember the most.

3. Benedictine values

Yep, the Benedictine values. The long and the short of it is that after getting peddled them for years, I finally learned to (love the bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Strangelove) appreciate the Benedictine values and the wisdom contained within them. A moment I clearly remember was listening to a talk from Abbot John Klassen on the Benedictine value of stability and its relation to a community. According to the abbot, stability has two parts to it: accountability and affection. Having just one creates an unbalanced community. Accountability without any affection becomes a prison. In a prison people serve out sentence terms as dictated by the law, a pure form of accountability. The worst prisoners are sentenced to solitary confinement for 23 hours a day. The complete lack of human contact manifests a complete lack of affection in that case. Yet affection without accountability is just as unbalanced. Affection without accountability is any parasitic relationship you may have experienced in the business of navigating your life. A child addicted to drugs with enabling parents is an easy example. The parents show the child affection and clean up his/her messes, but without accountability they only get hurt themselves. Any healthy community, like a healthy family, has both affection and accountability.

Over time, I began to see the Benedictine values like I saw stability. Easy words to define, but difficult words to understand and live out. In practice, I sometimes saw the schools embody their use or become hypocrites in light of them, but ultimately I was content that these values existed as the professed ideals of my school. They set up an example of a life to strive for. If you want to read a really well written essay on them, I would direct you here: http://www.osb.org/acad/benval1.html#intro. Whatever your view on religion (I'm non-religious), I don't think you can deny that the Benedictine values are an example of the solid base that religion can serve in guiding people to be greater than themselves.

4. Study abroad

Twas awesome. Plant metaphor works best with this one. A human being grows on his or her corner of the earth for 20 some years. Then he or she is uprooted and placed in a different environment for a few months to half a year. The plant is able to then define itself, see what it is, where it's outline starts and ends in relation to its environment. Of course if you uproot a plant it will probably die from shock...and I'm still alive. Also plants are not usually sentient. Okay not the best metaphor. Point is 1) during study abroad I went to Cuba, Chile, and China (as well as a handful of domestic trips across the country) and they all had a profound effect upon my identity and 2) this post is already too long so I am going to end it at that. Peace. Damn, never doing list format again.

Truth comes as conqueror only to those who have lost the art of receiving it as friend - Tagore

What if I keep my head under a pile of dirt? Can Truth still kick my ass?



During a Bachelor Party Post

(this was written a week and a half ago, I've been around)

 

So…did you guys check the new wallpaper? Pretty sick right? Colored it myself.

I am not going to lie, this last week has been pretty difficult. Never in my life have I had so much free time and yet been so simultaneously stressed. Is this what they call unemployed? I am staying in Minnesota for an extra three weeks to attend a friend’s wedding before heading back to California. What I didn’t realize was that I would only make it three days before losing my mind. The situation sucks on multiple levels. Level 1, I don’t get to go back to California. Level 2, I have nothing to do but make blog backgrounds. Level 3, I have to say goodbye to good friends slowly and in small amounts, kinda like some form of waterboarding. Level 4, I have no money and have to buy dinner from the Mickey D’s dollar menu. Level 5, I have to be the guy who hangs out in a coffee shop for eight hours to go on the Internet (though this morning I’ve chosen to hang out in the McCafe). If this is what purgatory is like, I’d rather take the express checkout on the up or down escalator. Heaven or hell, I don’t care, anything is better than being in the after-credit scenes of your own damn life. That being said, the kindness of the people I have met up here continues to astonish me. Thanks for continuing to lay out places for me to stay, even if I don’t have an exact answer for “how long are you staying?”

Speaking of, what is more important, a question or an answer? There is a famous part of A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy where a trans-dimensional supercomputer computes the answer to the most important question in the universe to be 42. Unfortunately the actually question whose answer is 42 remains elusive, and so the supercomputer designs an even smarter supercomputer to figure out the question. This supercomputer takes the form of earth, and the curators of the supercomputer disguise themselves in plain sight as little white mice. Unfortunately, minutes before the question is to be known, earth is destroyed by a space-version of an interstate highway. Crestfallen, the mice decide to just settle on the question “How many roads must a man walk down?” from that one Bob Dylan song.

Asking a question is a very human endeavor. A question does more than demand an answer, it frames what is being talked about, and it implies a direction in which we are thinking. 42 doesn’t mean much to most people. What is the meaning of life means a whole lot. Anyone can give answers. The integral part is asking the right questions. If we are going to make artificial intelligence, we will need it to ask important questions. Otherwise we might just end up with Skynet. And, I mean, I’ve been a misanthrope out of the womb, so I’m fine with that. But you might not be.

Getting us to prefer answers to questions is one of the ways that I think our technology is changing us. In the past answers were hard to come by. We had gods who kept secret and esoteric their reasons for why things happened as they did. Our ancestors looked up to the starry night sky and held elaborate ceremonies in front of giant burning pyres just to ask one question to the all-powerful gods. Nowadays we don’t even put question marks at the ends of our Google inquires. I don’t even know if any of you remember Ask Jeeves, but you actually used to type the question mark into the search bar. Now I go to Google and type “movie with fat guy from Superbad” and immediately get what I am looking for. We are becoming the androids while our machines are becoming more sentient. The question we need to be asking is who is really the machine? Whatever doe. The revolution will not be televised… or livestreamed, put on Worldstar, liked on Youtube, etc. The ghosts in the machines will haunt the houses we are building. Let Hercules himself do what he may. The cat will mew, and dog will have his day.

…

Man I wish I was in my own bed again. California, don’t dry up completely with drought or break apart with earthquakes before I get back.

 

 

 

Family likes making fun of me

Oh My Goodness, Guey, It's a Long One

Just got back from the boundary waters a few days ago. It was a pretty sweet adventure, with a lot of canoeing along the lakes of beautiful northern Minnesota and soaking in the pristine wilderness around our camps. But instead of doing another travel blog, I thought this week I could do something a little more thought provoking. Or attempt to do something a little more thought provoking. At least something with a little more value than my usual cynical pretentiousness. I don’t wish to make you feel my self-hatred through the screen, that’s not what the internet should be for. I also freely admit that I am not a member of the patrician class, I merely find it fun to pretend to be. God have mercy on me for my sins.

CAMP SUNSHINE

 

One question that I have been thinking about recently is what is the difference between Monkey and Man? How do we as malformed naked primates differ from our animal cousins? Evolutionarily speaking, we are not that different. We share a common lineage, a similar anatomy, an even more similar cell biology, and the same genetic language. Furthermore, human beings and other primates differ by surprisingly little in terms of genetic makeup (be it granted physical expression of this genetic makeup may differ to a marked amount). It is always difficult to generalize research, but it is looking like the difference between the human genome and the chimpanzee genome may be less than 10%. Humans and chimpanzees only diverged from a common ancestor between 6-8 million years ago (seems like a lot, but life on Earth has been squirming for billions of years). Is that enough time for a large enough gap to emerge to say that there is a fundamental difference between us? If we can’t say that there is a fundamental difference, in what way do we justify our actions towards other species (putting them in little cages, making the movie Kangaroo Jack, etc.)?

In the past, the fundamental difference between human and animal seems to have simply been taken for granted. We are human; it is easy to put ourselves first before other species. Most animals seem to do this. You won’t see a wolf fight to save a baby squirrel from complete and utter destruction in the talons of an eagle. The wolf is more concerned with other wolves, it is more concerned with its own species. Yet only humans construct rhetoric for why we are better than other animals. One way we have constructed rhetoric has been through religion. There have been various narratives throughout recorded human history, but the common Western strain is that God gave us dominion over the animals, that we were the only being created in HIS own image, and thus we were able to subjugate the others. In Genesis, it was Adam who named all the various animals. This ability to give names to others is a metaphor of our power over them.

There is another Biblical story that may illustrate more on the matter. In the Garden of Eden everything is living in harmony. God’s favorite creation, man, is skipping around with God’s other favorite creation, woman, and everyone is having a grand old time (sex might be allowed!). Adam and Eve are depicted naked as well, having no sense of being without clothing, much like the other animals in the garden. And then the mean old serpent convinces Eve to take a bite of a fruit off of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and share the fruit with Adam. Suddenly both of them are aware of their stark nakedness, and they are kicked out of the holy garden to suffer by God. God’s punishment stems from the fact they disobeyed him, but also seems to stem from a fear that Adam and Eve would become too much like himself. There is a line in Genesis that seems to get skipped nowadays by the televangelists who much more interested in the fact that we were punished than the reason for which we were punished.

Genesis 3:22-23 states: And Jehovah God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever. Therefore Jehovah God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.

Thus God is afraid of humankind becoming like (insert gender neutral pronoun)self. The two super-trees in the Garden of Eden would allow this. The tree of knowledge bestows the knowledge of good and evil, and the tree of life bestows immortality. Apparently the knowledge of good and evil + immortality = God.

It is certainly a strange story, and like most sections of the Bible, it doesn’t form any clear cohesive narrative with the rest of the book. There are a myriad of meanings that one can come up with just looking at the Garden of Eden account itself. However, I view this story to be about what exactly separates humankind from the rest of the animal kingdom.

There is a certain grace all life seems to possess. Grace in the sense that there is no second-guessing one’s actions. The simplest lifeforms work on simple signal and response frameworks. E. coli, the most widely used and studied bacterium on earth, undergoes simple changes in what proteins its DNA makes based on certain molecules in the environment. Organisms even simpler than E. coli, such as viruses, attach like matching puzzle pieces to the surface of cells, and unload their diabolical contents into the host cell as a consequence of that attachment. As life becomes more complex, especially with the development of the brain, grace becomes obscured. The bigger the brain, the less grace, because biologically, a constant stream of stimulus needs to be integrated by the brain, and a response generated by it. This is not to say that the integration is some abstract process by which the brain acts (A goes in, mysterious process, B comes out); integration is just like an incredibly complicated watch-mechanism. But this mechanism by which we do basic arithmetic and take selfies results in a lack of an immediate response to a signal, in fact it is based on a sort of evaluation of what response is best enacted. In turn this results in a lack of grace. In humanity particularly, we have to integrate information about our environment, which is socially varied and dauntingly complex. Thus humans are the most awkward animal. Awkward because of the fact that sometimes we have to think about what we should do. If we view animal life and its grace as a sort of continuum of cause and effect, then the close-talking weirdo at the post-office represents a sort of break with that fluidity of existence.

But all this about the brain doesn’t fundamentally differentiate human beings from other primates. We may have the biggest brain, but it isn’t really a different brain. The difference comes in the little extra accoutrements that our brain possess. Specifically the difference is in whatever structures and pathways enable our affinity for language. If we view animal life and the idea of grace from the continuum perspective, language represents the ability to create separation between the continuous; language is the ability to make things discrete. Calling something by its proper name, for instance a ‘cup,’ defines it by what it is not. But ultimately it is an artificial designation. A cup to us is a small vessel with an open top that serves as something to drink from. It is also a collection of silicon, oxygen, sodium, calcium, and carbon atoms. It may also be innumerable bands of energy vibrating in different dimensions (sorry not a physics major). What makes humans fundamentally different from animals isn’t anything physical; it is our ability to be artificial, our ability to lack grace, our language. Other animals who rank high in intelligence may have sounds that have meaning; they may have a similar ability to learn and express themselves in unique ways. But what makes human beings different isn’t innate in our biology, it is the curation of our language.

Back to the story in Genesis, the question that needs to be asked is what does it mean to know good and evil? To me it means being able to separate the two, which is the fundamentally human binary. When Eve took a bite of that fruit, she didn’t have ultimate wisdom and a perfect morality. She simply realized she was naked. She was able to separate herself from her surroundings. To me, the story of the Garden of Eden is about the metaphorical evolution of human language because once Adam and Eve eat the fruit, they are able to define what is and what is not. In a manner of speaking, they become able to draw lines in the sand. They also become the first scientists, able to examine reality because they can separate it into words.

This hardly seems like a God-like power, but think of this. The computer you are using to read this blog is the result of years and years of scientific investigation. That in itself is based on the development of the middle class, the development of agriculture, the identification and designation of what food was good to eat through language. It all adds up to make our interesting little electronic creation. God’s fear in the Garden of Eden is that we would eat of both trees; that we would know good and evil as well as be immortal. In a way, we have found a way around being mortal. Writing down our language, we enable the next generation to stand on our shoulders, reaching ever higher. We become like God, able to create whatever we will.

One more point and I promise this post will be over. It is not arbitrary that the Tree of Knowledge gave us the knowledge of good and evil. I feel that this whole discussion is missing a very important piece. Why did God fear us becoming like (insert gender neutral pronoun)self? What was the danger in it? On what foundation does the tower we are building stand? I don’t think God is a megalomaniac, so what is the reason?

 Love is always patient and kind. It is never jealous. Love is never boastful or conceited. It is never rude or selfish. It does not take offense and is not resentful. Love takes no pleasure in other people's sins but delights in the truth. It is always ready to excuse, to hope, to trust, and to endure whatever comes. Love has no end.

Premise A: Emotions are occur, persist for a period of time, and then dissipate.

Premise B: Love has no end.

Conclusion: Love is not an emotion.

 

In Nueva York

So I just got back from New York. It was a 8/10. That's pretty high on my scale.

My first thought when I got into the city was that it was going to swallow me completely, and that any illusions that I might have had about being able to keep being myself in a city like New York were just that, illusions. This city can consume little personalities and spit out something different, like one of those coin pressing machines that spit out flattened pennies with city-scape designs. But as I walked, and walked, and walked, I eventually found my city legs and stopped freaking out. I will admit, it was a little embarrassing because I believed, being from LA, that I would be able to handle myself. But the truth is that I have more of a suburban soul than an urban one. New York was a trip.

The bus dropped me off in the middle of Manhattan and so I ended up walking all the way across the Brooklyn bridge to my hostel in Brooklyn. It was a long freaking walk. I walked through a Black neighborhood hosting block parties, to a Hasidic neighborhood composed of Jews with large cylinder shaped fur hats, to a Puerto Rican neighborhood playing reggaeton. The real Brookyln experience.  I had walked through much of the lower half of Manhattan, including Wall Street and Ground Zero. They had just opened up the 9-11 museum but it was too crowed to go into. The two waterfalls they built around the site were impressive, but not so solemn as the flood of tourists was never-ending. The night before I got some drinks and a Panini at a local bar in Brooklyn. While I was eating my Panini I saw a cockroach crawl out from under the bar. I wrote it up as a New York thing and kept eating. Seeing as I still had a bit of time, and being a bit buzzed, I went to the local store and bought a pack of Reds (dammit). I can't even rationalize smoking at this point, its as spontaneous as an erection in a middle school classroom. I spent the rest of the evening smoking and walking up and down the neighborhoods. I met some guy from Bangladesh that definitely wanted something from me but didn't have the English language skills to ask for it. He awkwardly hung around me for a while. I got a bit annoyed, forced him to take a cigarette, and walked away. A lady asked me in Spanish where the local church was and if mass was in session. I got back to the hostel and didn't feel tired so I started to reread Heart of Darkness. No relation to my New York trip, it is just what was on my Kindle at the time.

The next day I basically walked back up Manhattan and saw Chinatown, Little Italy, NYU, MOMA, Central Park, and all around that middle area. It was pretty tight. The modern art museum was a little much. There was a cool display about future cities, the famous Warhol Monroes were a hit, but then the museum had to go and ruin that positive impression with a Yoko Ono exhibit. I would give it a 2/10. I had to leave within the hour or I was going to vomit my stomach out at the pretentiousness of the exhibit. When I got back on the subway I found to my chagrin that my track to Brooklyn was closed. So I walked the Williamsburg bridge back to Brooklyn. Along the way I encountered some real-life Jersey shore girls. It was a head scratcher as I wasn't sure that they were real human beings. And so on and so forth. I am tired so I don't feel like going too much more into what I did, but basically more walking, drinking, smoking, and people watching. New York is definitely an unlimited source of interest with some real cool people.


"Love is always patient and kind. It is never jealous. Love is never boastful or conceited. It is never rude or selfish. It does not take offense and is not resentful. Love takes no pleasure in other people's sins, but delights in the truth. It is always ready to excuse, to trust, to hope, and to endure whatever comes. Love has no end."

Remember to delight in the truth, but keep your teeth sharp enough to survive.

 Ground Zero

Brooklyn Bridge

My Neighborhood in Brooklyn

 

Pretty Sweet

State of the Blog

Damn, it has been a while now.

In the year and a quarter that I have been gone from the curious corners of the interweb I spent 3 months in Chongqing, China participating in a laboratory “internship” and finished the year graduating college. My final GPA is .01 away from my final high school GPA (College-3.59, High School 3.6). I don’t know if there is anything more depressing then getting a little worse, but on the bright side I feel like I learned a great deal more. On the dark side again, it seems like I will be properly bald by 24 or 25. Así es la cosa.

Now I have to write an awkward post about what this blog is going to be going into the future. The truth is I never wanted to abandon it in the first place, but did so because I am lazy. As a graduated college alum, I no longer have the option to be lazy. Now the terms of the game seem to be ‘float or sink’ and so I have decided to take up the blog once again to aid in my own survival. I find that if I am able to put my thoughts out there, I gain a greater internal clarity. In my head my thoughts are a muck; I have trouble planning a day let alone the rest of my life. By writing this blog I hope to gain better clarity and develop the language I can use when I talk to people about what I believe or what my plans are. It is analogous to practicing a presentation. With practice you get down the better points of your presentation and perhaps discover some new angles on the topic.

This being the goal of the blog, I intend to write about three main topics. The first will consist on my general pretentious reflections. For this I am sorry. The second will be a sort of travel blog; I’ll write about the places I go (I might do a few retrospective posts on China). Finally, the third will be a more philosophical blog I have been wanted to write for a while about science and the areas of biology that I am interested in.

I’ll keep this one short and sweet because I am currently in DC visiting with my friends John & Jenny (the just got married), but hopefully I will get one out with some substance in the next two weeks. I am taking a bus to New York by myself on Sunday so maybe something will inspire me over there. For now, smell the dandelions, Summer is Coming.