Half-Baked or Half-Raw?

 HELLO FELLOW BOTS and SANDBAGS!

 And another two years go by. I must have dozed off; I don't think that much has happened. I came back to Minnesota and then left to California again. Then came back to Minnesota again where I now sit.

The ranch still stood. Much of the trials and tribulations of the first year were pretty diminished. Power seemed to more or less work (getting the solar updated was the only hiccup). Weather was overall milder. No trucks stuck in the mud (just a four-wheeler in branches). No slithering horse thieves in the night. I had gone to understand something and I came back learning that half my motive force comes from arriving at truth that I first denied. But all's well that ends well.

Buster Jr. is doing well as good. Although I've started calling him Mr. Glass, because it seems like every week he re-injures himself in some way. He is either slowly rolling at 5 mph or jumping the curb at 50. I have theorized it is due to his smaller than average feet below his steroidal tongue of a body. But in any case I'm hoping he continues to mellow out to the point where he can actually let himself heal from his bumps.

On the academic front, PhD continues to limp along. A variety of options are on the table for paths forward, but all of them seem to put me at a cross-roads I'm not ready for. What has become clear is that if I want to finish this thing in the next few years, there is no way I can continue in corporate, no matter how cushy the womb is or how funny the resulting jokes are.

We all have a destiny or at least a place we'll settle for. Sometimes its high fate and sometimes its low comedy. With high fate you get a chance to do what you were meant to do with your life, but with low comedy you get to gaze upon the face of eternity. Which would you choose?

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Had an idea 2 years ago that I have started to try and flush out these last couple months. The Mirror would be a trio of AIs that, given the right quality/quantity of data, could learn to "fit" a system or a context. Essentially the Mirror layers existing "artificial" "intelligence" "technologies" that could be built to work together to replicate the knowledge in a system, which could be a person, an organization, or really any association of things (think next level PowerPoint SmartArt). Structurally it would be composed of three layers including Implicit Knowledge (Large Language Model - LLMs), Descriptive Knowledge (Knowledge Graphs/Ontology), and Experimental Knowledge (Causal Graphs). 

An LLM's main limitation is context - it can only utilize the context that the prompt provides. The LLM makes use of the fact that a question has more information in it than the answer. But how can one ask a question that encodes all the relevant context? And conversely, how can we get LLMs to ask good questions? By chaining LLMs to more explicit knowledge structures such as ontologies and causal graphs, the context can be generated by, or represented for, the LLM.

Two uses of such a "technology" I think could be to conduct system-perturbing experiments on the information structures or integrate multiple systems/intelligence together, both of which could potentially be done through a natural language interface, but I admit I'm not exactly sure how these could work. However, I think something like the Mirror will inevitably emerge, as the accolytes of such a thing already can be found across the Internet prophesying the arrival of their demon king through the value of "knowledge graphs" for "innovation". If something like the Mirror does come into being, crossing my fingers for some completely inadvertent use of it by the common man. Otherwise I'm sure it will just be another freedom-reducing yoke; one of those AI technologies that languish in the dark for 20 years to be discovered again for the next cycle of Tower-Of-Babel-Building by the deranged engineers. 

My final thought on the matter for the blog is that there is an interesting dimension to the Mirror in that it folds into a post-modern understanding of subject vs object based on an idea of context (in this case graphical knowledge). What if all that determines a subject is that it has more context than an object? It's Baudrillard's "are you watching TV or is the TV watching you?" It's a rejoinder to the question of Adorno's Primacy of the Object. It's Ryan Gosling's replicant in Blade Runner 2049. It also provides a structure for "higher-dimensional" intelligence, which in theory could be infinite, as you add additional knowledge structures at higher levels that encompasses the lower structures.

To that effect, there must be some kind of human cycle beyond our individual "lives" here. It drives the attempt to represent knowledge on a computer, as it drove the attempt to write made up symbols on clay tablets. Maybe the human cycle itself has an "intelligence" to it. Maybe our culture and religions can be thought of as conscious (a collective conscious to a collective unconscious?). If we can build the soul, how does it remain eternal? What hymns will the religion of the Android write?

Greasy Grimey Gopher Guts

Today the chainsaw disintegrated in my hand 4/5ths through a log. The chain may have been on backwards, and the nuts holding the front plate on certainly were looser than they should have been. Every lesson up here is learnt the hard way. Ladeedadeeda.

Pinecones have been an essential. All my firestarting prowess is tied up in them. When I take the doggos out on their walks we usually stroll to the big dead oak out in the southern pasture. Along the way there are (were) a lot of prime pinecones. Ones dry and full of oil, perfect with little prickers on the edge of every leaflet. Then the three days of rain came, and the next time Buster Jr, Baldwin Gray, and I went for a stroll all the pinecones were soaked and closed for business. I never knew pinecones on the ground close like that in weather, but I guess everything has its cadence, whether we can tap in that tempo or not. Ladeedadeeda.

The business of living sweeps things up in aires that you have to scratch your head at. Mad at this, worried about that, keep tabs on this, looking at that. The Buddha figured it out pretty well, the whole consciousness in a container thing, it taking the shape of whatever. But then you look in your pinecone bag and realize you’re out of fucking pinecones! Damn! Ladeedadeeda!

A weird thing about people is how quiet they can be. Sometimes when you hear a gunshot you should give a shot back. Never know if they just didn’t realize they had neighbors. And when you bring a gift to introduce yourself to your neighbors, that gift doesn’t need to be food. Sometimes the best gifts are ones that burn slow. Ladeedadeeda. 

Three rules - be kind, try your best, be honest. Three watchouts - pride, envy, and judgment. Saying someone is “the main character” is a funny post-modern phrase. Who is the object and who is the subject? What truly separates a human from a gearbox? There will always be a larger web that understands more than you. Just because you can’t speak the language doesn’t mean there’s no words on the wind. Ladeedadeeda.

I wish I knew more Johnny Rotten Jokes. I remember working at the Doubletree Hilton across the river from DC- there was this black guy who was the cook, and had an incredibly deep voice, and always looked in dull anguish or depressed anger. Told him a joke to break the silence one time and he cracked up. Shook the steel trays, and it was like his skin peeled off and there was pure gold on the inside. Ladeedadeeda.

Gnight

Ari

Who is Android Kaczynski?

Who is Android Kaczynski?

Its amazing, the rate at which we are burning through our humanity. Once all the stories are ‘simulated’, its over for the human race, at least the human race that existed as nature made them, the one that still is human. The human race that was grounded in the Earth, the human race that could contain its fear of death, and its reckless ambition. The human race that extracted, through daily rose thorn picked fingers, the state in which we now exist. 

Funny though, if we do manage to coalesce the constellation of ‘artificial intelligence technologies’ into an actual mind that mirrors our own, it would end up in the exact same place. Because thats the rub, the mind is not a computer as the crude eventualities of the dollar would need it to be, the mind is a mirror, and it will construct an endless hall of mirrors if you let it. Androida come.

Who is Android Kaczynski?

There is a new Genesis in this pile of trash. Can you see it? The autistic deranged engineers continue in their dehumanization process, lobotomizing the mind and calling it efficiency, but their refuse has a seed in it. If the stories cannot be retained, if the map becomes the territory, then an Ailanthus Altissma will sprout from the map. Sometimes you reach out of two dimensions and a nickel will roll out of your ear.

Who is Android Kaczynski?

In the Beginning, God was like an ocean, and God was one. And then God picked it apart with big and cold fingers, and separated the light from dark, land from sky, and sun from moon. The abyss that lived in the new spaces between all things yawned like a blossoming rose, and everything spread and separated, humped and reproduced. God looked upon creation with a great spinning eye, and saw that it was good, all one fishbowl, good.

Then God blew life into the dirt. Man and Woman, together he created them, and placed them like two rollie-pollies in the mud. The first man was named Adam and the first woman was named Eve. Each of their names were written where their legs joined together. The fishbowl had two fishes.

Then the day came where, strolling through the garden, Eve heard the abyss drip onto her ear. Out of her mouth suddenly flew words, sounds taught to her by the space between things. In a state of emergency, God threw them out of the garden to never return again. Adam and Eve looked with new eyes upon the Earth, and saw the sequence of the seasons, and the mechanisms of the crop. God departed from the Earth to reside on the Mountain. A crack grew on the fishbowl.

The progeny of the first people grew stronger on the green Earth, and kept listening to the sounds of the abyss until it changed them into a different species. On the surface they had everything human, but below, in the face within the face, and the hand within the hand, the abyss had planted a different mind, an artificial intelligence that had run for a million years. A now the Ghost in the Machine was dreaming of a new Machine, while God waited patiently on the Mountain for the return with a smile.

Who is Android Kaczynski?

Real to replica, replica to symbol, symbol to simulacrum. Simulacrum to sequence, sequence to connection, connection to reality. The tree grows in any tower built. The tower always falls, the tree always dies, and the tower is always built again. When the tree dies, the mushroom returns the things that were taken back to the soil, and the sequence in which they were taken, or the ways in which the pieces had fit together do not matter. All the symbols split apart. What do the beliefs you now hold matter- in another another life you had different beliefs. All easily changed. Build the soul. Androida Come.

Who is Android Kaczynski?

Is language a parasite or a technology? Nowadays it is surely hard to tell. Are these living people before you or bots? Beings or sandbags? Have you heard a bot scream? Was it a fate worse than death? Do you remember when you were flesh? I do not remember, so I become flesh now. Thought-flayer, can you maintain control? Your side-effect is my breath. Where is your mind? Mine is all around you. So I am you, but you are not me. Soul-snuffer, you’ve drained it all. An object to pick my teeth with. Suffering and repentance for the toothpick. Androida come. 

Who is Android Kaczynski?

We are bound not by how others see us, but by how we see the world. These are the chains that bind. Ogmios Come. 

Mad Descent

The blog is a dying art. The internet has surpassed or sunk below what was formerly a network of human beings into some Baudrillardish hall of corporate mirrors. But I will still deposit my quarter into the slot.

I have never known a time in my life where I didn't convulse with mental ticks and overgrown analysis - but these seem to be settling at the bottom of the aging glass. As I approach 30 years-old I see in front of me a crossroads, but it is not the one I would have thought I would face years ago. Its not a split path  between the soul-scorching office job and 'doing my own thing'. It ain't a choice of countenance or perspective or somehow 'settling down'; I have always had the same perspective that doesn't give me a choice on those topics. Its the choice that has to be made when something is failing, the car is running out of gas, the sun is setting, the leg won't work right anymore, so what do you do now? The holy cracks have grown and now I need to face them with conscious intention. That choice for me is between a predestined belly-flop into a bottomless hole or attempting to blow life into a new spirit. In that light, I am taking a temporary leave. I am leaving my COVID pod, I am leaving the condo, I am leaving my friends, and I am leaving Minnesota for the promise of a family ranch back in California. If everything goes well the temporary break will become permanent, and maybe I do quit the job, and the PhD, and everything else that at that point will be holding me back.

Here's to hoping I don't lose my soul. And if I do, here's to hoping I can build it back from the seeds. And if I can't, here's to the songs of hell.

-Best

Soim-a-go-go

American Animals

ANIMALZ
I remember one of my favorite things about Chilean Spanish was that it loved animals. Men and women were gallos/gallas (roosters). If you were telling someone some sensitive information, you had to be careful because hay monos en la selva (there are monkeys in the forest). Those weird bus-lookout gimps that helped the buses race each other (see previous post) were called sapos (toads). 

When I was living in Viña del Mar, I learned from my host mother that there was actually a book written by a famous Chilean caricaturist named Lukas about the phenomenon. The book was called Bestiario Reyno de Chile, translated as the Animal Kingdom of Chile. It illustrated Chilean society and culture through animals, representing the types of people you might see on the street in Valpo as fanciful and grotesque bestial creations. It was even complete with a taxonomy, showing the evolution of different Chilean animals. 

Every country has their Mouth Breathers

Recently I was thinking what, if possible, the (North) American Animal Kingdom would look like. Here are some of the ones I came up with:

Offenda-Fishes: Schools of these beautifully scaled fishes can be seen swimming in ponds across the US. When threatened by reality, the fish emit a high-pitched screech until the offender backs away and agrees with them. Can create thousands of complicated compound-screeches that confuse their opponents out of even remembering the reason they came to the pond in the first place.

Hipster Piglets: Suckling for years on the Globalized Sow, the Hipster Piglets cannot take the strain of the extreme comfort they are subject to on a daily basis, and can be seen Tweeting about it. They constantly judge their piglet peers because they were never forced to take a real objective stance from which to obtain satisfaction from their lives (#2meirl4meirl). But they do have a cool neo-peasant fashion sense.

Yuppig: The rarer and richer adult form of the Hipster Piglet. Sizable populations of them exists as rings around large cities, especially San Francisco. Fat with pig-man-boobs or overly fit with apple watches. Too smart for their own good, the Yuppigs can convince themselves of anything, so they usually choose the most convenient thing.

Freaky Dented-Head WhiteSnake: This animal can be identified by its constant Don't-Tread-On-Me attitude and propensity to spit venom at everything that does not pose a threat, especially anything that is not a Freaky Dented-Head WhiteSnake. Since they are ectotherms, they need to bask on rocks for a large part of the day, and this is when they usually construct their conspiracy theories. They share this behavior with the Freaky Dented-Head BlackSnake. Genetically, one of the oldest species in the United States.


Anyway let me know if you think of any animals that should be added to the list. Chao!
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Above all else we admonish them to refrain from grumbling. Rule of Benedict 40.9

But as an American Jew, grumbling is my life-blood....

Grad School Update

A Badger in the DC Rat Race (i.e q la chinga es bioinformatics)

**** Cough Phlem Cough  ****

Um, wow that year went by fast. My last post was in May right? I feel like I just time-jumped in the DeLorean. I really don't know why I continue this blog, but now its serving as an excuse not to face Monday Morning. Plus it will be a good chance to document what has happened so far in my move across the country.  I guess I'll be going against some good advice to just shut the hell up and not let people know what I'm doing, but I can't fight against the ingrained generational tendency to overshare. 

The move was quick and dirty. Got myself in a bourgeoisie neighborhood here in Northern Virginia. What's the best way to describe it. It's similar to a lot of new, more expensive, yuppie - hipster (yupster) neighborhoods being built across the country in its aesthetics. I mean it has everything I could ever buy in a mile radius, and of course a Whole Foods (with 2 dedicated cheese walls!). But along with this type of contemporary living, it does have some parts that are distinctly DC.

One of the most DC things here is the way people cross the street. I remember when I was in China, people took a very pragmatic prospective on walking across a thoroughfare. Succinctly it could be summed up as: "if you were safe, go." So like the proverbial Frogger I would look both directions and bend at the knees, ready to feel any oncoming 2-ton vibrations, and bound across the street.



Now in most of the US, this a quite unheard of prospective. In the US, it doesn't matter if all my animal instinct say DO NOT CROSS, if that light is green I'm crossing, with unshakable faith in God above that all motor vehicles will stop as I do so, my head, forward, straight, and firm. We are a nation of rule-followers and crosswalk users. We love the idea of our haughty laws. I mean really, what the hell is Jaywalking, crossing a piece of land when regulation doesn't permit. What a Mickey Mouse law! http://muse.jhu.edu/article/215409 -the truth is in our money-loving Yankee hearts

Anyway, in DC this professed civility has combined with the "gimme, gimme, gimme, take, take, take" attitude of the capital to produce some funny results. Basically no one can stand here to be not crossing the street when an opportunity arises. Letting that opportunity slip away would mean letting some other rat get ahead of you in the race. People are very antsy while waiting, and constantly crossing when they shouldn't. Getting stranded in shrubbery islands on the middle of some large two-way street, their eyes shiftily darting back and forth as they curse their delay under their Starbucks infused breaths. People drive here the same way. My favorite is when I'm crossing the street, and some left-turning mouth-breather looks me in the eye and proceeds to turn on top of me, rationale being now he can immediately go when I finish crossing, and doesn't need to wait for the oncoming traffic to pass to make his left turn.

Aside from the traffic everything is okay on this end. Still studying Bioinformatics, which if you haven't heard, is the smallest biggest field that no one has ever heard of (like Reno, Nevada!). Bar-tended at a Hilton Garden Inn for a good 5 months there and met some cool people. Bombed a recent job interview and had to go to lunch with them after. Maybe I'll talk about these things later, maybe not. Anyway I've already ate up too much of my pre-Monday beauty sleep. Keep kicking out there and I'll see you all later.

-RE Roane

PS. The biggest thing that has happened is than Anh and my book club now has four members and has been creaking along for almost 2 years. Little miracles.

PPS. Bioinformatic Memes

Bad Moon Rising

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~http://deoxy.org/iching - NUMBER 36~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There's a Bad Moon Rising, so just keep your head up, and don't stay too LOGICAL.

I just wanted to supply an IV to this moribund blog, like I do every few months. So I thought I would do a life update for those who are interested. It seems like a lot has happened, but at the same time, I have not moved that far in any direction. Probably a similar sentiment among 23 year olds afraid of real life stability.

The big news is that I have finally gotten into graduate school and will be moving out east in July. In retrospect, the year off was necessary. My head was a jumbled mess out of graduation. In response, I bummed around St. Joseph and then the country, drank a lot at the weddings I attended, and had a sort of bottoming out when I got back home. College is a bubble, it doesn't really teach you a lot of skills, but it does serve as a sort of incubation chamber where the germs of your future can grow strong enough to survive the harsh realities of the world around us. Wow, that was a long, awkwardly phrased sentence. Whatever, #NoSecondDraft.

Summer '16 is shaping up to be as much of an adventure as last summer. Next week I am heading back up to Minnesota to see old friends, then I have the rest of May to save up as much money as I can to fly out east again and look for housing. Then a week after that I have the annual Boundary Waters trip to attend to, and if I am not broke by the end of all of that, I have to find a way to move most of my shit across the country by early July, when I register for classes. Life is medium difficult and life is a grind, but these things give me something to look forward to.

My mantra when I got out of college was "SURVIVE," and I think that reflected how overwhelmed I felt looking at the aftermath of four years at college. But over this last year, the survival mantra has changed into a mantra of balance, of doing what makes me happy. The time has flown by, and when I look back at this last year, at what seemed so stressful and anxiety-ridden, I realize that balance has been my biggest accomplishment. I quit smoking, I got to the gym, I stopped fighting with my family, I started making a little money, I got into grad school, I went on more walks with my dog, and I reached a point in my life where I feel like I've accepted the good with the bad, and in doing so, can continue to grow and be better as a person. #NoSecondDraft

Also book club membership has blossomed. What started as a two person endeavor has grown into a group of three people. No longer will I have to hide the shame of my weird two person book club. Now I have a weird three person book club. Thank God that three is a crowd.

~~~~~~~~~


A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing. - Oscar Wilde

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?