I think we can re-phrase the sentence as so:

If that's true, do you know that that's true?

Now let us use the material definition of "if". We can answer in the following 4 ways:

Yes. It is true and I know it's true.
Yes. It is false and I know it is true.
Yes. It is false and I do not know that it is true.
No. It is true and I do not know that it's true.

Two of these answers entail Moore's paradox. The only consistent answers are:

Yes. It is true and I know it's true.
Yes. It is false and I do not know that it is true.

Only the first of these sounds like a reasonable answer to the question. If somebody asked us a question like "Do you know if that's true?" and we answered "Yes", it would be very queer if what we really meant was "It is false and I do not know that it is true." It's also impossible to answer the question except in the affirmative, which would suggest that the speaker asked a pointless question such that the most simple correct answer (Yes/No) could not inform them either way. But it isn't a pointless question and it can be answered in the negative quite sensibly.

So what are they really asking? Here are some interpretations:

1. Is that true?
2. Do you know that that is true?
3. Do you know the truth-value of that? And if so, what is its truth-value?

It's a tough one. If you answered "No", they might reasonably ask you "Is it false, or do you just not know?" If they asked this they would have to admit to having asked an ambiguous question in the first place, one that could be interpreted as either 1 or 2. "Yes" doesn't have the same problem because your assertion that it is true entails that you would assert your knowledge of its truth and your assertion that you know its truth entails that you would assert it is true. 3 is more often than not what they really intend, but we can't give them the benefit of having expressed 3 because they clearly haven't put enough work in to get 3. It's two questions and they only asked one and so should receive only one answer. Grice might argue that we really should interpret them as meaning 3, if that is most likely, but I'm not convinced that somebody wouldn't ask the question meaning only either 1 or 2.

As the only possible answer is "Yes", they should expect us to give that answer beforehand, thus rendering the question pointless. They could ask "Do you know if that's true? Is it true or do you not know?" but then they could have just asked the second of these questions on its own.

This question also reminds me of a few other kinds which can be interpreted differently so regularly that the asker of the question can't really ascertain the real answer from the one give, although they are not quite as sever as the one above. They are of the form:

Do you mind if X?
Are you sure you don't want to X?

For the first of these if you answer "Yes" to a question about whether you mind then you are giving your disapproval for the proposed event or fact. And if you answer "No" then you give your assent to it. But we equate "Yes" with assent and "No" with disapproval so readily that we (the questioner) might hesitate about the answer given wondering if our partner has understood us properly. If the conversation ended with their answer then I suspect both participants would leave unsure of what the other believed. The second example is similar. Because of the way the question is constructed, "Yes" indicates disapproval and "No" indicates assent (although it could mean indecision too). Given that none of us work on the assumption that anybody else is rational, and that they could interpret these questions several ways, we ought to just stop asking them.

Comments

1. X is above the age of majority.
2. X is competent. (X needs to sign two declarations of competence, one in the presence of a solicitor.)
3. X has a terminal illness. {Two doctors must both assess that X has less than six months to live).

Now it might be that some people opposed the Bill, while simultaneously finding the applciation of the bill to be positive, ceteris paribus. However, they might also believe in a slippery slope conditional of the form "If this Bill is passed, it will lead to the passing of a more extreme and less desirable bill". Perhaps they only have a low credence in this conditional, but they evaluate the expected utility of the bill being passed and find that the stark probabilities for deeply undesirable outcomes out-weigh the benefits of the bill in the probably case where the slope isn't really as slippery as previously thought. Therefore, even though the bill, in a perfect world, should be implemented, because the world is not perfect its passing will have ill secondary causes or negative externalities.

A slippery slope argument of this sort might contain the following premise:

If the proponents pass their bill they will continue to want more extreme bills passed. Specifically, they don't really believe in this bill but they know it's more likely that they can get their more dangerous bill passed if they pass this first.

So the slippery slope argument seems to me to be more political than ethical. In the case of the assisted suicide bill, the opponents might argue that if it's passed it won't be long before any one of the conditions becomes unnecessary for assisted suicide, or perhaps unassisted suicide will be legalised. So these slippery slopers should take their argument up against the political system. "No more slippery slopes!" Perhaps they think that the general voting population is very naive and can be unconsciously corralled into adopting an extreme view, or perhaps they think it is the MPs who are this naive.

Sometimes we need slippery slopes to get quickly to the correct positions which are so far from the current law. For example, somebody may have argued that men should be allowed to wilfully engage in sex with each other, but only if they're over 25 and have the consent of their neighbours. A hundred years ago this would have been a progressive opinion and would probably have contributed to the situation we have today, which has only very recently given reasonably equal constraints on homosexual sex as to heterosexual sex. Had the person described above been able to view the future and seen what the first bill on extended rights for homosexuals would lead to, they might argue against the passing of that bill. We might still have those laws if everybody took the slippery slope argument too strongly.

Comments

Napoleon has always struck me as somebody who chided excellence, because nobody was as excellent as him. Furthermore he conversed with private soldiers and other non-entities and showed interest in their dreams and accomplishments because they were so far beneath him that they couldn't possibly compete with him. In his time Napoleon brought the greatest generals and monarchs to their knees. In 1807 he humiliated Tsar Alexander and Emperor Frederick William III and forced them to sign his treaty of Tilsit commanding them to abide by his Continental System.

His own marshals, who were the cream of an army comprised of a million soldiers, he rarely had complimentary words for. He knew that most of what they did he could have done better if only he could replicate himself. On Marshal Murat, the swash-buckling cavalry general he said, "In battle he was perhaps the bravest man in the world; left to himself, he was an imbecile without judgment." To Marshal Soult and his other generals before the battle of Waterloo he ironically uttered, "Just because you have all been beaten by Wellington, you think he's a good general. I tell you Wellington is a bad general, the English are bad troops, and this affair is nothing more than eating breakfast." When Marshal Massena refused to join him in the one hundred days, when next Napoleon saw him he challenged him on whether Massena would have dared obey the king and gone to war against Napoleon. Even Marshal Ney, veteran of 30 years of war, was destroyed by Napoleon's ire and was never the same again. He famously promised to bring Napoleon to Paris "in an iron cage", and when approaching Napoleon's army declared of his men "They shall fight; I will begin the action myself, and run my sword to the hilt in the breast of the first who hesitates to follow my example." The closer he came to his former commander, the more hesitant he himself became. He finally agreed to side with the Emperor, on the condition that Napoleon no longer seek war. But he had already betrayed too much weakness and Napoleon sent him away and assumed command of Ney's army. I believe this to be the moment that Ney was finally mentally defeated, and paved the way for his erratic performance at Waterloo, his careless attempts to escape capture afterwards and his imminent execution.

There are many other quotes of Napoleon that suggest him to be extremely intolerant of incompetence, which he thought to affect the whole world, and suggest him to have been especially arrogant and horribly aggressive in everything he did:

“An order that can be misunderstood, will be misunderstood.”

“He who fears being conquered is sure of defeat.”

“I have never found the limit of my capacity for work.”

“We walk faster when we walk alone.”

“If you want a thing done well, do it yourself.”

“Impossible is a word to be found only in the dictionary of fools.”

“Friendship is only a word, I care for nobody.”

“Circumstances? I make circumstances!”

“Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.”

After the Battle of Waterloo he appears to have undergone a remarkable change. he marched with his generals and a few loyal soldiers through France, not knowing what to do next. His army was completely routed and the Prussians had captured many and were marching on Paris. His advisors begged him to try to escape at the port of Rochefort but he insisted he should wait a little longer. The Bellerophon, and two British sloops were guarding the harbour, but it is thought he could have easily evaded them. Then his brother, Joseph Bonaparte, and probably the next most wanted in the family, visited him at Rochefort and tried to persuade Napoleon to go with him to America. Napoleon refused, Joseph escaped and lived without incident in New York for the next 20 years. Napoleon decided to surrender to the British, and naively expected to be given political exile in Britain like his brother Lucien had been given years before. His interactions with the officers and crew of the Bellerophon, who were in awe of the most famous and previously most powerful person in the world, are quite comical. He watched them perform a play and was amused at the larger men wearing women's clothing. He must have wondered how these cross-dressing buffoons could comprise the best sailors in the world.

Furthermore, there is a definite change in Napoleon's comments about Britain. Previously he had been known to call them "Perfidious Albion" and had mocked his generals in the Peninsular War for being so horrendous as to lose to the British. Now he said to the ship's crew, "You have the honour of belonging to the bravest and most fortunate nation in the world", and referring to Britain as "the most generous of my enemies." Possibly these compliments were merely designed to incite mercy in the British who he saw as his only hope for a peaceful retirement. Certainly this theory is consistent with his previous quote, “I would kiss a man's arse if I needed him.” When the Bellerophon docked at Torbay Napoleon would come out of his quarters every day and wave at the crowd who had encircled the ship in little boats just to see the former Emperor. He would look at the crowd through his telescope and proclaimed how beautiful the English women were. He didn't seem to view his defeat as a humiliation, but rather the beginning of a new stage in his life. A truly remorseful and bitter person would have shut themselves away from the baying crowds and simply refused to converse with those who had been his enemies. At the news that he was to be exiled on St. Helena he said:

"I am come here voluntarily to throw myself on the hospitality of your nation, and to claim the rights of hospitality. I am not a prisoner of war. If I were a prisoner of war, you would be obliged to treat me according to the law of nations. But I am come to this country a passenger on board one of your ships of war, after a previous negotiation with the commander"

"What danger could result from my living as a private person in the heart of England under surveillance, and restricted in any way the Government might imagine necessary?"

I'm trying to make allowances for hindsight, but it just seems plain foolish that he would be allowed the same treatment as his harmless brother. Some of the British estimated that Napoleon had caused the death of a person for every minute he had reigned in France, which considering that he reigned for about 15 years is a lot of bloodshed he was responsible for. For a man who had proclaimed that "Death is nothing. But to live defeated and without glory, is to die every day", the prospect of living in a cottage on an intolerably hot island with nothing to do and nobody to see and little news of the outside world was his idea of Hell. Even if he could never be allowed any of his previous power he wanted to at least be some way involved in the world.

When he arrived at St. Helena he commented that “It is not an attractive place. I should have done better to remain in Egypt. By now, I should be Emperor of all the East.” It seems that he was resigned to his fate, and intended to adapt to his new life. On his first day on the island he was introduced to the Balcombe family who he was to live with until his cottage had finished being constructed. He and Betsy, who was 13 when he first met her, began an unlikely friendship, playing childish games and pranks on each other. Before they met, Betsy had proclaimed that she deeply feared Napoleon, for all British children had been taught that Napoleon was a horrible monster who would rather eat them than greet them. On first meeting her he quizzed her on European capitals. When she answered "Petersberg, formerly Moscow" as the capital of Russia, Napoleon asked her, "Who burned Moscow?" It's generally accepted that Moscow was burned by Russians while Napoleon occupied it, in order to diminish any resources he might procure there, but when Betsy proffered the Russians as the arsonists, Napoleon replied, "You know very well that it was I who burnt it." Later she tells us that one day a much younger girl, Miss Legg, was visiting the Balcombe household and was sitting in the garden. Betsy came outside and told her that Napoleon was about to come down the garden path. Miss Legg began trembling and crying at the prospect of meeting the monster, and Betsy went inside to tell Napoleon of her fears. Napoleon then decided to come running out howling at her and making scary faces, which made the girl hysterical and left Napoleon in fits of laughter.

Napoleon used to joke to her that she should marry the son of one of his generals, Les Cases, which infuriated her. One day she decided to get revenge on him, when she, her sister, young Les Cases, old Les Cases and Napoleon were walking in single file along a steep narrow path. She pushed her sister hard until Les Cases ingloriously pushed into Napoleon causing him to slip. At the disgust of such a dishonourable attack on the Emperor, Les Cases pushed Betsy against the wall hurting her.

"`Oh sir! He has hurt me!' `Never mind', replied the Emperor, 'do not cry - I will hold him while you punish him.' And a good punishing he got; I boxed the little man's ears until he begged for mercy; but I would show him none; and at length Napoleon let him go, telling him to run, and that if he could not run faster than I, he deserved to be beaten again. He immediately started off as fast as he could, and I after him, Napoleon clapping his hands and laughing immoderately at our race round the lawn. Les Cases never liked me after this adventure, and used to call me a rude hoyden."

Another time they were playing whist, and Betsy's younger brother took a card representing a Mogul emperor and said "This is you, Bony". Napoleon couldn't understand what was meant by "Bony", and one of his followers translated it as meaning "thin", to which Napoleon laughed and said "I am not at all bony".

These anecdotes are all quite entertaining, but we mustn't distinguish the playful and friendly conversationalist with the violent oppressor of nations. They are the same person. Betsy once asked him about a famous story involving him. In Jaffa he was alleged to have killed hundreds of wounded French soldiers who were too ill to march. Napoleon replied that he had wanted to kill them with opiates, because they would not have lived a day and the Turks would have tortured them when they found them. His Surgeon-general refused to kill them so Napoleon ended up ordering a rearguard to defend them until they had died. But Napoleon clearly didn't feel like telling her about the surrendered inhabitants of Jaffa he had executed. Betsy says of this, and other cruel acts attributed to Napoleon:

"It is true that this dreadful deed will always remain a deep stain upon Napoleon's character, but it would be uncharitable to view it as the indulgence of an innate love of cruelty, for nothing in Bonaparte's history shows the existence of such a vice. It was one of the numerous and sad results of boundless ambition, united to unlimited power. In aiming at gigantic undertakings, he forgot to calculate the waste of human life which the execution of his projects necessarily involved."

This, I think, is a good assessment of Napoleon. In his own words, “War must be made as intense and awful as possible in order to make it short, and thus to diminish its horrors.”

It's also worth mentioning that various authors have written about suspected plots to rescue Napoleon from St. Helena and place him on a South American throne. Some people even thought that he might establish a great South American empire, and Lord Cochrane thought the same, seeing as he attempted to spring the former Emperor from St. Helena but was too late as Napoleon was already dead. Reading these recent works I'm inclined to think that Napoleon never considered his escape possible, or even wanted to set up a new empire. He wanted a peaceful retirement and enjoyed small pleasures. He also suffered small annoyances very severely. The governor of the island infuriated him by having him escorted around the island by armed guards, and even refused permission to the only local piano-tuner to come and fix Napoleon's piano.

In the end it is middle age that resulted in Napoleon's downfall. After the battle of Austerlitz in 1805 he proclaimed “We are granted only a limited time for making war; I give myself another six years, after which even I ought to come to a stop.” Had he heeded his own advice his name might very well still be associated with a modern French Empire, as his troubles really began in 1812 with his disastrous invasion of Russia. On St. Helena he used to re-enact his past battles with chess pieces to determine how they would have developed had he tried something else. I wouldn't say he was consumed with regret, but to some extent he knew that he could have shaped the world much differently.

“What I did is immense. What I had decided to do, and what I had projected were still more so.”

Comments

"I don't regret anything, but if I could go back in time and do it again I would do it differently."

Isn't the second part of that sentence actually the very definition of "regret"? When people say this I wonder if there are any thoughts in their head which they are expressing. It's not just the case of reporting a false belief, but of reporting nothing. There is just no content of that sentence at all, at least not in any possible world.

Comments

Now let us bring in some Shakespeare. In Troilus and Cressida, Shakespeare tells us that Cressida, the daughter of Calchas who defected from the Trojans to the Greeks, betrayed Troilus with Diomedes. I think a good story (and one I would use with Helen as well) is that she loved both Troilus and Diomedes (for Helen I would say she loved both Menelaus and Paris), and just hoped that one would not know about the other (although in Shakespeare Troilus does fight Diomedes about the issue). We are told in one of the original texts (Sophocles) that Achilles ambushes Troilus and his sister Polyxena, kills Troilus and mutilates his corpse, an act which is punished by his imminent death where Paris shoots him in his vulnerable heel. I think a viable storyline could be one where Diomedes and Cressida, jointly seeking revenge on Achilles, organise an ambush against him when he goes to meet Polyxena. It is said that Paris and his brother Deiphobus were both involved, but it would be interesting to imply the existence of a mystery "third gunman".

Plus this story would help reinforce the innocence of Polyxena. Perhaps her love for Achilles was genuine and she kept their relationship a secret. Somehow Cressida comes to learn of it and informs Diomedes, who organises the ambush with his former enemies. This would constitute a major twist on the original story because Diomedes is often portrayed as the most honourable and brave of the Greeks, but at the same time there is clearly a one-sided rivalry with Achilles. He could have felt resentment that Achilles was considered the better fighter and more crucial to the war effort than himself, who contributed considerably more leadership to the invasion than Achilles, who was a bit-part player who fought when he liked.

Furthermore the Little Iliad states that Odysseus attempted to kill Diomedes on the night that they stole the Palladium from Troy. This is one of the more unbelievable stories about Odysseus that doesn't necessarily fit with what we know about the rest of his character. (Although you can certainly make it. Odysseus has been depicted by some as a man of no morals who would do anything to further his own cause. It's quite relevant to this position that of all the Ithicans who left for Troy, he was the only one that returned.) In my story it might be that Odysseus teased a confession out of Diomedes for his part in the death of Achilles, and a fight ensued. Perhaps Diomedes defeats him and makes him swear not to reveal it to anybody else. This could also be one of the causes of Odysseus' later guilt about his responsibility for Achilles, and why he decided to embark on a quest for penance after his return to Ithaca.

Comments

They can be taken to ridiculous extremes as well. Somebody on the 2+2 forum suggested an adaptation of a Swoopo auction. Suppose an item starts at $50, and everytime somebody bids (costing 60c), 10c is actually taken off the price. If the price reaches 0 then it just keeps going, so that the eventual winner could win the item and the cash. The longer these auctions go on the higher the prize actually is. It could theoretically get to the point where the entire world has invested all the world's money and the last person with any money left wins the whole lot. Very curious, and very dangerous.

Comments

Dear BDT,
We are surveying Scientologists to find out how bright they are. Make out the following.

Thank you.

Kate Clarke

Consultant

Dianetics and Scientology Information Center

Clearwater, Florida

(727) 214-5743

QUESTIONNAIRE

Fill this out and send it in.

1. What is the most certain thing you can get about yourself?

2. What is the most certain thing you can get about your ability to communicate?

3. What is the most certain thing you can get about your ability to work?

4. What is the most certain thing you can get about your ability to help others?

5. What is the most certain thing you can get about children?

6. What is the greatest certainty that you can get about groups in general?

7. What is the greatest certainty that you have about mankind in general?

8. What is the most certain thing that you can get about animals?

9. What is your highest certainty about the physical universe?

10. What is your greatest certainty on the subject of spirits?

11. What is the greatest certainty that you can get about God?

12. What is your greatest certainty about life?

13. What is the greatest certainty that you have about Scientology?

14. What is the greatest certainty that you have about L. Ron Hubbard?

15. What is the most certain thing you can be certain of in present time?

16. What is the greatest certainty that you have about the future?

-------------------------------------------------------------

I'm not entirely sure what these questions are actually asking. Some of them are so badly worded and the whole e-mail is terribly presented. Part of me wants to know what the Church Of Scientology think the correct answers to these questions are. I suspect if I answered them honestly they would regard me as not very bright. If there was a promise of feedback from this then I would fill it in but as there isn't it isn't worth responding. These people are notorious for hounding you until the end of the Earth, so it's not worth provoking them.

Comments

Here's the question. If the first player didn't end the game immediately, the second player would have good evidence that the first player plans to co-operate for some time to come. If the first player made the co-operative decision on the first turn, then they will on most of the rest since they are identical scenarios. Therefore the second player ought also to co-operate. Even if the other player decides to end the game prematurely in the future for no discernible reason, you still make more than you would by playing an ultra-defensive strategy. However there still is some kind of paradox looming, as the end-game will still be in the minds of the players. I haven't worked this one out yet.

Centipede could be one of those rare games that turns up in game theory where it pains the player to be rational, just as Lewis thought the Newcomb's game paid off those less rational 1-boxers. One problem with this game is about knowledge. In the centipede game, your opponent knows that you are "rational", therefore you cannot choose to play irrationally because it is a given fact already how you will play. Hence decision theory of this sort becomes ironically indecisive and determined. We need to use the concept of common belief rather than common knowledge. In Centipede, if you play the co-operative move you also falsify the other player's belief, which will cause them to play differently. Not irrationally. It just happens that their behaviour is identical to the behaviour of an irrational agent, but not their thought process. This is a phenomenon that is observed very frequently in the world of professional poker.

Suppose CBR, common belief in rationality, and suppose that Backwards Induction is essential for rationality. My earliest instinct then is that, given both players have CBR, if the first chooses to play co-operatively, the second player no longer has CBR, i.e. he comes to believe that the first player cannot be using backwards-induction and is therefore irrational. However, this cannot be the case. There are players who do use backwards induction but who still co-operate because they expect or suspect their opponent of being able to sympathise with them. So when the first player co-operates, essentially the other player still cannot tell whether the first is using BI or not. Like in poker, when an opponent makes a play you can only tell that they are not an intermediate, they could still either be an expert or a beginner.

Comments

The problem is this. You are in the cinema and want some popcorn. What you prefer most is for you to go to the lobby, there to be popcorn, you buy some, return to your seat and enjoy it, even though you will miss some of the film. The next best option is if you decide not to get popcorn and there really wasn't any there, so at least you didn't miss the film. The next best alternative is if you go down to the lobby and there is no popcorn so you miss some of the film. The worst option is to miss out on popcorn by deciding not to leave the cinema, and find on the way out that there was popcorn there all along.

At the same time, you are fairly sure that there is no popcorn out there, because there very rarely is. Also, you're certain that if there was popcorn out there, the owners of the cinema would project onto the screen a subliminal message, reading "POPCORN!!!" every few seconds. You consider yourself to be suggestible, so if this were occurring you would definitely choose to go and look in the lobby for popcorn.

Sobel argues that of all the alternatives, the probability that popcorn being in the lobby given that you look for it, and the probability that there will be no popcorn given that you don't look for it, are both close to 1. As the first of these alternatives has the highest expected utility, using Jeffrey's conditional decision theory we ought to go and look for the popcorn, which would otherwise seem irrational given that we already think the probability of popcorn being there is suitably low.

This is similar to the Newcomb's problem because in both cases we suppose that our future actions could causally determine a past action to come to pass or be reversed. We know that the popcorn is either already out there or not. Our deciding to go and look for it should not affect it's being there. This is my conclusion and that of the 2-boxers, a group I am proud to share with the great David Lewis. I reject Sobel's argument for the following reason:

We are told simply that if they had popcorn then they would be displaying the subliminal message, and we would decide to look for popcorn. But presumably we could decide to look for popcorn independently of the subliminal message, which it seems is a lot like what's happening now to the 1-boxers. Can we be sure that we are in an identical mental state now to how we would have been had the subliminal message been aired, i.e. that it would cause us to invoke decision theory and make the reasoning we are currently using? Let's just say yes for the purpose of the problem. Now, if it were also established that these thoughts of decision theory would not have entered my head unless the subliminal message was displayed, then I would be certain (or at least highly suspect) that there is popcorn outside and go looking for it. If it isn't impossible, i.e. if I could independently think of that reasoning without the message, then I would need to know the frequency with which my thought is caused by the message and the frequency with which my thought is caused by my own curiosity or urge for popcorn. If I don't know the frequencies then I probably end up making a principle of indifference between them, assigning them equally 1/2. I therefore only go outside to get the popcorn if my utility for "leave and get popcorn" is more than double my utility for "stay and miss out on popcorn".

That is my current conclusion. I'll red what Sobel has to say about it and possibly edit this post later to account for belief revision.

Comments

But these stories were one of the best parts of my childhood, the story of how Odysseus was called away from Ithica to fight in a war he didn't want to fight in, and the events of that war and his unbelievable journey to get home after the war. Tony Robinson managed to express comedy and tragedy perfectly, expressing deep sorrow for the deaths of Odysseus' comrades, the predicament of Penelope and the suitors, and Odysseus' unceasing fury when he returns.

Since then I've read or watched at least three other depictions of the Trojan war. Firstly, there is the Iliad, wrriten by Homer, which the others are mostly based on. It's a tough read, mostly about constant warfare, talking about one hero killing another and very hard to follow given the number of names involved. There's one section close to the start that simply lists all the names of the Greek heroes and contingents sailing for Troy which lasts several pages. Secondly, there's Shakespeare's play "Troilus and Cressida", which puts forward some strange differences to the original. For example, Pandarus is not an archer but a merchant, and Troilus is considered to be a good fighter who at one point fights off both Diomedes and Menelaus (I think).

Thirdly, there is the quite new film called Troy, starring Brad Pitt and Eric Bana. I've actually seen several film and TV adaptations of the Trojan war, but that one is by far the best. I now cannot even imagine the character of Achilles without thinking of Brad Pitt. Achilles was thought of as being the most beautiful man alive, and so is Brad Pitt. What I particularly like about the film is how you are never sure which side you prefer to win. The Iliad is extremely pro-Greek (and "Hellenocentric"?). You only ever see Hector dressed for full battle. Quite often you only hear about him on some other side of the battlefield cutting swathes through the Greeks. But the worse thing about the Iliad depiction, I believe, is that when Achilles challenges Hector to fight, Hector runs away from him leading to a humiliating chase around the walls of the city before he finally gets caught. And then he's killed with one stroke of Achilles' sword. I much prefer the depiction of the fight from the film Troy, where Hector is shown to know that he will die fighting Achilles but goes anyway as a matter of duty. Troy is one of the few Hollywood films with a fight where the audience honestly does not know who to root for. As far as the audience is concerned both Hector and Achilles are virtuous and good. That's extremely rare for Hollywood as it's almost always "Goodie vs. Baddie". In Troy there is a baddie, the despotic king, Agamemmnon, but the general attitude is that both the Greeks and Trojans are good (or they're all equally bad?), and that this war is an inevitable and tragic result of politics.

The film does have some ridiculous alterations to the plot which ruins it though, for example Agammemmnon being killed by Briseis, and also Hector killing Menelaus during his duel with Paris. There's also a suggestion that Hector kills Ajax, and there's a complete lack of the other important characters like Diomedes, Antilochus, Idomeneus, Aeneas, Sarpedon, "little Ajax", Cassandra and a few others.

When I read the Iliad a few years ago, I was quite disappointed about the ending, Hector's burial. I quickly began reading the Odyssey and was saddened to see a huge gap in the events that I had learned about growing up. Where was Achilles' death? Where was Ajax's suicide? Where was Paris' death, killed by an arrow shot by the bow of Hercules? (tipped presumably with the blood of the hydra) And of course, the famous wooden horse, the murders of Priam and Little Ajax's rape of Cassandra? (I think he's referred to as Oilean Ajax but I prefer "little Ajax"). In the film, Troy, I believe they had Briseis kill Agammemmnon to introduce some feminine influence, but they could have included the Amazonian Queen Penthesilea, who Achilles killed. They could have had the Ethiopian king, Memnon, who killed Antilochus and was in turn slain by Achilles. So much happens between the Iliad and the Odyssey which Homer only vaguely refers to during the Odyssey. Where did all this stuff even come from? Who wrote about those other stories?

What I'd quite like to do is collect all the sources, all of the stories, and collect them into one good novel, probably about as long as The Lord Of The Rings. Absolutely every part of the story could be included, even Shakespeare's version, everything that doesn't contradict with some other bit anyway. Plus, like the film, Troy, the metaphysic of the novel would be atheistic, it would even resemble our best current scientifically influenced metaphysical theories as best as possible. For instance, Achilles would not be immortal, but purely an excellent fighter. Many others might believe him to be immortal, although he probably doesn't believe it himself. The novel could be written based on the notion that the Iliad represents an exaggerated and mystical history of the original event. Everybody believed Achilles was immortal, then he was shot in the heel with a poison-tipped arrow, and suddenly the story would become "He was dipped in the River Styx as a child and was immortal everywhere except his heel." There would be no gods fighting on the battlefield, guiding arrows to their targets, or arguing on Mount Olympus between scenes, although the characters might reasonably believe it.

The toughest part of writing such a novel would be how to treat the Odyssey. How do you explain a cyclops or Scylla, a journey through Hell or sirens with a naturalistic explanation? It's possible that there would actually be a good opportunity for creativity to re-write the Iliad, explaining that most of the widely-known story is simply story, and that what really happened was actually completely different but somehow still related closely enough to make the plot intriguing. There's even the possibility you could develop the character of Odysseus to make him more sinister and cowardly than he was thought to be. If you think about it, if all that's left of an army is its general, who's washed up on the Ithican beach, you'd think there's more likely than not some foul play going on there. We already know that he was very quick-thinking and a good problem-solver, so the story could include his fabricating the whole story of the Odyssey. There is definitely a great potential for a brilliant story here. Possibly the story could be developed to include the stories of Aeneas, Diomedes, Menelaus and Agamemmnon after the Trojan War to make it a true epic tale that ties up every loose end.

Comments

Global Scepticism (GS): The proposition that knowledge about any proposition is impossible.
Global Anti-Realism (GAR): The proposition that there is no objective reality, and therefore no true or false propositions.

The van Inwagens of this world use the following sort of argument:

GS is self-contradictory because if you believe that there is no knowledge, then how can you know that? It's simply self-contradictory to assert that all propositions are unknown because to assert that statement is to assert that that statement is known, and that statement is a member of the set of all propositions. Therefore even asserting Global Scepticism is as meaningless to your audience as asserting "This statement is false".

Likewise with GAR. If you argue that no propositions have the property of being true, you automatically assert that that statement is true.

Now in the cases of both GS and GAR there is one consistent position that van Inwagen may allow. Call these WGS and WGAR respectively ("W" for "Weak"). WGS states that "The only known proposition is that no other propositions are known." This is a lot like the famous saying of Socrates which went something like, "The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing", but don't confuse the two as the latter is a kind of aphorism, whereas the former is truly believed by an advocate of WGS. It could be argued that WGS is also contradictory because once you know that you can't know anything, you may also know a few more things, like "Either nothing is known, or nothing is known." But I disagree. The whole point of Global Scepticism is to deny knowledge of everything, including that there are axioms of logic which entail that "A or A" follows from "A". I think WGS and WGAR are consistent positions, but they are a little arbitrary.

van Inwagen argues that a GARist is forced to express something like "It seems to me that there is no objective truth", which is not incompatible with "It seems to you that there is an objective truth.", and that therefore the GARists are forced to just shut up and let the realists carry on with their lives.

I believe that both GS and GAR are consistent propositions, and this is why. They should not be expressed as I have expressed them in my original definitions, which are quite similar to how most people define them. Instead they should be defined like this:

Global Scepticism: If knowledge is defined as XYZ, then it is not the case that knowledge exists. (Or there exists no proposition which has the property of being known).

Global Anti-Realism: If objective truth is defined as ABC, then there is no proposition with the property of truth.

These sentences are not self-contradictory, because they do not self-refer. These positions actually assert that the opposing views (let's call them Realism and Epistemic Realism) are false, at least given the definitions of truth and knowledge available and agreed upon. Global Sceptics are not asserting that they know that nothing is knowable. Instead they are asserting that if we adopt a certain definition of knowledge, then nothing in the world corresponds to that definition.

This position is sometimes referred to as Pyrrhonism, and distinguished from regular Scepticism. Why it is distinguished I have no idea, as it's immediately obvious that Scepticism, understood as how I defined Global Scepticism at the beginning of this post, is self-contradictory, whereas Pyrrhonism is quite sensible. I know of no similar distinction with regard to Anti-Realism though. All the GARist is really pointing out is that you cannot reasonably accept some definitions of "truth" and also believe that anything is true, because actually nothing has the property that you define as truth. That is all that is going on. I think that most Anti-Realists are merely saying that truth is an impossible thing, and what is important is some other thing that they may try to analyse. Likewise most Sceptics argue that knowledge, defined as justified true belief, does not exist, but that there is some other epistemic notion which is important and worth looking for and worth having.

Comments

I have a solution! In every town and city we should have a public building devoted to solitary reflection. When you sign a petition endorsing some action occur you must also agree to attend one of these centres for one hour and sit there on your own and reflect for an hour upon the cause that you think is so important. Well, of course you wouldn't be forced to think about that, but you are essentially giving up one hour of your time to show some tiny degree of dedication to the cause. You can't read, do crosswords, or even talk to other people, but just sit, in relative comfort, and think about something. You're entitled to meditate but you cannot sleep, otherwise it would be too easy to appear more concerned about a cause than you really are, by just sleeping through the hour. Only when you have attended one of these events is your vote on the petition made official. If I were the prime minister and was told that 10 million people had individually given an hour of their time as an expression that they believed in some cause, that a total of 10 million hours had been sacrificed, then I would take immediate notice of the cause, and do something to satisfy the people. Until this state of affairs has become actual, petitions will continue to be meaningless.

Comments

I think my central reasoning is that what I'm doing is stocking up on resources that will last me throughout my life, and the opportunity to get it so easily may not always be available.

I've also begun to realise that the only reason I think I'm better than other people is to do with my musical taste. It isn't because I'm more intelligent or know more than them (which is usually true too), but because I have better musical taste. I'm tempted to think that musical taste is entirely subjective, that of course everybody thinks that they have good musical taste like they think they have a good sense of humour, and that therefore the evidence that you believe either of these ought to make you doubt them. Most people believe them and are wrong, so therefore my belief in the same is probably wrong too. But at the same time, I've never come across somebody who has the same attitude to me. I don't think that's because I'm particularly arrogant. I think it's more likely that most people don't claim to be better in virtue of their musical taste because they would admit that they had not really been very moved by music anyway. They're modest and they've got a lot to be modest about. If I came across somebody who shared my attitude then I would want to know what they'd been listening to in order to have such an attitude, and as a result I'd possibly discover new good music and have more justification for my own attitude.

One genre of music that I'm currently not very interested in is classical music. I suppose some sophisticats would instantly make disparaging remarks about my musical taste were they to learn that. I know a few classical pieces, a few names of pieces and a few names of composers but I think the only case where they all overlap is Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. I don't think I can identify the tune, composer and name of any other piece. I believe it's simply a mistake that classical music is superior to modern music, or even foundational to it. I'm mostly only interested in music that contains the two greatest instruments. Firstly, the guitar. It's just so much more versatile than a piano. You can get it to do far more. A piano is just a glorified drumkit. Secondly, there is no instrument that can express as much emotion as the human voice. and because it's so natural, there's nobody who can play any musical instrument as well as most people can sing. I think that people who prefer classical music to modern pop are probably quite emotionally stunted, to the point of solipsism.

Comments

"Death is nothing. But to live defeated and without glory, is to die every day."

I think he was probably influenced to say such a thing by reading the Shakespeare play, Julius Caesar, where the title character says:

Cowards die many times before their deaths,
The valiant never taste of death but once.
--Caesar [Julius Caesar 2.2.32-33]

A similar sentiment is expressed in this quote reported on the internet to belong to Marcus Aurelius:

"It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live."

However I am 90% certain that Aurelius never said this and that the above quote is a bastardised version of his opening paragraph of Book XII of the Meditations, which reads quite differently:

"If then, whatever the time may be when thou shalt be near to thy departure, neglecting everything else thou shalt respect only thy ruling faculty and the divinity within thee, and if thou shalt be afraid not because thou must some time cease to live, but if thou shalt fear never to have begun to live according to nature - then thou wilt be a man worthy of the universe which has produced thee, and thou wilt cease to be a stranger in thy native land, and to wonder at things which happen daily as if they were something unexpected, and to be dependent on this or that."

Whether he said the first quote or not, I like it and prefer it to what he actually said. But are any of these quotes right? Let's just make a brief analysis of them. They seem to be saying that bravery, valiance, risk-seeking, glory-seeking behaviour is a necessary virtue for a good life. The quotes are metaphorical, saying that to live without such a virtue is not to live at all; which we should understand as not living well. They remind me a little of Bertrand Russell's quote:

"Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so."

I'd like to think all the quotes are metaphorical, otherwise they are relatively de-humanising. It's quite a common sentiment in the world that such-and-such a person, lacking such-and-such virtue or property, isn't really living at all. Sometimes these statements are deliberately hyperbolic, for example if I were to say, "You haven't lived until you've tasted this chocolate cake!" I should interpret them as saying:

"Without glory, life is unfulfilling."

The majority of people lead inglorious lives, but seem reasonably satisfied with them, finding value in other virtues. Or perhaps they equate less significant victories in their lives with glorious victories. Where Napoleon fixates on events like Marengo and Austerlitz, maybe for your typical peasant such events as a marriage, child or even a successful party or work bonus counts as a glorious victory. Does Napoleon reserve the glory for himself and his subordinate generals, or for every soldier in his army, and by extension the citizens of France who share in their glory? I don't think he believes in any such thing as shared glory. While Napoleon may revel in his role at Marengo (which he probably and rightfully believes to be the most important role), other soldiers can revel in their own roles at Marengo. Certainly he would say that the private who fights heroically without credit has more glory than the general who commands badly but contingently ends up on the winning side, and is acknowledged as such in dispatches.

Glory cannot be bought or sold and only in a perfect world is it conjoined with credit. Some people would say that there's little to distinguish bravery from stupidity. As they say in the movies when the hero makes a rash and dangerous decision, "He's either very, very brave, or very, very stupid." And glory or death, the foci of our enquiry, are the most likely results of bravery. So if the equivalence of bravery and stupidity holds credence then we could define glory as either stupidity plus fortune or merit plus opportunity. As Napoleon also said, “Ability is of little account without opportunity.” Even the best need a little bit of luck, or they need to at least not be cursed. If we are elite then we are given two choices. We can play it safe, take few risks and expect to reside in upper mediocrity, or we can take the endless risks and have a chance to be the greatest. I don't think that any of the sources of the quotes ignore the non-elite. I believe they would argue that the non-elite can and should make the same risk to be greater than their talents deserve: to beat themselves. But I think the sources are specifically implying that if you are elite and choose to remain in mediocrity then you're the least virtuous. To pass up on a chance at greatness, no matter how small the chance, is despicable, since for most people there is no amount of opportunity that in conjunction with their ability will result in true glory.

Such a theory is hinted at in the episode of Red Dwarf, "The Inquisitor", that I've always found intriguing. In it, the Inquisitor is said to be an agent who lived until the end of the universe and somehow invented a time machine. He then decided that only he could give life a purpose by acting upon his theory of the virtuous life. So he goes back in time to every person who has ever lived and if their lives are deemed worthy they are allowed to remain actual. If not then he deletes them from actuality and they are replaced by one of their inactual counterparts. The intriguing part is that for every person he generates a psychological clone and has the clone judge the original. Each person judges themselves as to whether they succeeded enough in life given the ability and opportunity they were given. Both of those facts we regard as being pre-determined though, or at least they are out of our own control. So it seems unfair to judge somebody on two facts that were out of their control. There must be a third factor then, akin to effort. The question then becomes, given the abilities you were born with, and the opportunity (luck) that befell you, have you tried hard enough? What you have achieved ought to be a direct function of these three factors. Those who I think the sources condemn are those whose ability was abundant and who didn't take the necessary risks, didn't try hard enough to fulfill what they could have fulfilled. Even those who were technically rational, those who settled for upper mediocrity rather than take the gamble between greatness and absolute failure (death), are to be condemned. In fact those who died trying to achieve more than their ability, desire and luck could produce are often celebrated: people like Ned Kelly, Guy Fawkes, Donald Campbell, William Wallace, Harold Godwinsson, Hector and Achilles of the Iliad, the Red Baron and Wat Tyler. I'm tempted to include Admiral Nelson but it's possible that he achieved exactly what he wanted, including his death. Sometimes these people are more celebrated than those whose successes were absolute and still lived to tell the tale, like Churchill, Wellington, Odysseus, Thomas Cochrane and Marshal Bernadotte. Maybe it is because these people never experienced the sensation of ultimate sacrifice, even if they were more than prepared for it. Or maybe it is because we can't be sure that the successful ones really tried as hard as their limits allowed. They probably did but we can't be sure. Maybe Calzaghe and Mayweather each could have been regarded as the greatest boxer ever had they continued to fight. Ricky Hatton, who has been defeated once, might be thought to be probably more glorious by Napoleon because he fought a boxer beyond his ability, effort and luck, his ability was finally quantified and he would be judged to have put in more than an acceptable amount of effort to be the greatest.

It's also worth keeping in mind that three of the people these quotes are attributed to were emperors. That they were willing to risk everything to get to the top ought to tell you that they would have these sorts of opinions, and it suggests if anything that these opinions are the result of imbalanced mental states. Quite a lot of their possible counterparts that failed at an early stage we would probably mock as being rather silly people. These people would prefer to probably look rather silly than actually be unfulfilled and timid.

I haven't really got any further to working out whether these quotes are true. Such is the problem of ethics. There just aren't enough justified premises to make arguments with. Moore's Open Question Argument pretty much puts an end to any objective account of morality. All of these quotes appear to be merely expressions of the preferences of risk-seeking people. We're subjected to more aphorisms that express that attitude because history is filled with successful people who are far more likely to be naturally risk-seeking than not and who got the opportunity to say what they believe publicly, and even though the majority of common people do not share the attitude, they do share a respect for it, and a respect for the people who have it. So we enjoy the content of quotes like:

"It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees",

much more than we enjoy the content of quotes like:

"Better safe than sorry",

even if we really agree more with quotes like the latter. I suppose like most moral issues, any truth of the matter about whether these quotes are correct is down to personal preference, or they aren't even truth-apt. But they sound cool.

Comments

The most common term is "Life Tilt", a poker term expressing a mental state marked for its self-destructive nature, belief that the world is constantly conspiring against you, leading you to the delusional belief that you just don't care any more. Just fuck it. Fuck it all to hell. But of course you do care and hate yourself all the more for it. I don't know what would make somebody google "Life Tilt" . It could be to make themselves feel better about their current tilt by reading about somebody else's even worse life tilt. Unless you're Archie Karas there'll be somebody out there with a worse bad beat story than yours. By the way I have a tip for live tournament players who experience tilt. When you're knocked out, whether on a bad beat or not, you're perfectly entitled to walk away from the table in a bad mood. Shake your opponent's hand if they offer it, but you don't need to offer your own. Just get up and walk away and cool off for a bit: anywhere between 10 minutes and an hour. Then come back to the table and wish the person who knocked you out good luck (if they are still there), and your tilt should soon dissipate. In the heat of a knockout it's easy to hate your opponents with the deepest hate, but after a cooling off period you should be able to come back and wish them luck as a casual, neutral observer. You might even find yourself thinking, "Thank God I'm no longer involved in this complete madness."

The second most searched-for term is "naomi campbell evolutionary psychologists". This is followed by terms like "Keira Knightley" and "do men find keira knightley attractive?" and "the media's false beauty". Whoever came to my blog searching for those terms would have seen my entry entitled, The Popular But False Conception of Beauty. The main thing I regret about that entry was that I didn't make it clear enough that there are two conceptions of beauty. Ultimately, beauty is subjective. If you think it's beautiful then it is beautiful, I suppose. But I was mainly referring to human beauty from evolutionary game-theoretic perspective, i.e. not too dissimilar to Darwinian fitness. My point was that a lot of people, actually men and women, moreorless anybody who subscribes to some popular view about fashion, are deluded about what beauty is. They let small groups of people dictate to them what will make them more attractive to the opposite sex, and unfortunately these claims are mostly false.

I have a few searches about Rime Of The Ancient Mariner and The Odyssey which must link to my piece on The Odyssey and Rime Of The Ancient Mariner, probably one of the better or more accessible entries in this blog. Somebody asked, "are the sirens in the rime of the ancient mariner", so maybe it is quite common to compare the two, although I had never heard of such a thing prior to my study of Ancient Mariner.

The next most searched-for term is on Marshal Bernadotte, a subject I seemed to have quite little to say about. I'm still of the opinion nowadays that Bernadotte has done more than most to protect his bloodline, and that he is perhaps a greater paragon of meritocracy than Napoleon himself. Of all the marshals and their Emperor though I probably idolise Marshal Ney more than any of the others. One of my greatest fascinations in life is with the concept of chance, and more specifically: luck. Ney simply has to be one of the luckiest people to ever live. I have always had this strange (admittedly irrational) idea that being lucky is better than being good. I sometimes fear that I might die in some bizarre, slightly hilarious way that no person could ever reasonably hope to avoid, like being struck by falling masonry or randomly killed in an armed robbery. When I read articles about people who die through no fault of their own I cannot help but think that they just fail at life. I have a guilty chuckle that everything they ever did was a waste. Their diet was a waste because they were going to die a week later anyway. Their studies were a waste. They could have enjoyed themselves but instead they invested foolishly in their own non-futures. I feel like a dick for thinking this way, but I can't really help it, and I fear the same thing happening to me.

Of course Ney was both good and lucky, probably the best and the luckiest. He fought in over one hundred battles, usually leading from the front. He was wounded in quite a lot of the battles he fought in, but somehow the enemy never managed to keep him down. He commanded the rearguard action of the Grand Army on its retreat from Moscow. When he left Moscow he had something like 20,000 soldiers in his corps but by the time he reached Kovno it was less than 200. Some people even say that it was just him. There's a story, probably false, about how he entered an inn and told General Dumas that he was all that was left of the rearguard. Several times his band of survivors were totally surrounded by the enemy, he was ambushed at virtually every location he possibly could be, and they still never got him.

But that's not even the most astounding story of his survival. At Waterloo, it is reported, he personally led the French cavalry charge that resulted in Napoleon's defeat. He is said to have charged the British squares between ten and twenty times, unsuccessfully. He is also said to have had about 5 horses shot from underneath him during the battle. British marksmen were trained to shoot specifically at officers, and he was the most conspicuous person on the battlefield, so I don;t understand how he survived that. What I understand even less is that he was apparently at the head of the Old Guard when they advanced on the last military orders Napoleon would ever give. From what I know, Ney was at the front of the column, and it's also widely believed that the column was ripped to shreds by infantry fire, particularly at the front. How did he survive that? When the Old Guard retreated Ney was left in one of the three remaining squares that refused to surrender. The British were swarming all over them and somehow he escaped. One story states that one of the squares was surrounded by British who ordered the French to surrender and give up their arms, to which their general replied "The Guard dies, it does not surrender!" Ney, suicidally distraught at this point, with a blackened face and uniform destroyed by bulletholes, managed to stumble back to his own lines evading capture. One quote of Napoleon that I've been thinking about recently is the line, "Death is nothing. But to live defeated and without glory, is to die every day." I wonder sometimes whether I agree with this. If I do then it's not something I agree with enough to live by.

The fourth most searched for term is "nietzsche fail". That's quite a comical thought and I don't know why anybody would search for it. "Fail" is a concept, as I understand it, that is quite new and mainly exists only on the internet. It can be summed up by funny pictures like this, always with the appropriate "fail"-related caption.

I find the concept of "Nietzsche fail" quite funny, although not necessarily appropriate in most contexts.

But the weirdest keyword anybody has used to find my blog has been "Horse Ejaculates". They must have got to my entry on RPT. I also have a strange number of keywords based around Steeleye Span tabs. I don't know why because I don't think there are any on the blog. This anti-climactic technique of finishing an entry without a conclusion is probably the fourth reason as to why this blog isn't a very good blog.

Comments

----------------------------------

Earlier in the year [2008] I made a post about my favourite songs of the year so far. Most of those songs were not actually released in 2008. It’s just that I first heard them in 2008. Therefore that post and also this post are fairly meaningless to anybody except me.

Overall I think that 2008 has been a record-breaking year for me discovering new music. It seems that I have nearly doubled the size of my library this year, although there are quite a few dud songs that I have collected, and many I have not yet listened to. In real terms I think that I have added about 25% to my library. I’ll have a look through my media player and see what new music I discovered each month of the year.

January

This seems so long ago now. I got Sonic Boom 6, Karine Polwart and Serj Tankian for Christmas last year. Sonic Boom 6 was considerably the best of those albums and showed a great degree of progression from their first and second albums. Arcade Perfect seems to have a classic song from every single genre of music on it. It’s deeply surprising that they are capable of making such good music at such young ages. They still have probably the best lyrical content I have heard from any band or musician as well. I believe that they are probably the most promising band of the future, anywhere in the world. I missed their last tour but they tour often, and I’m confident that they will make it in the world and achieve the success that so many of my favourite little bands have not managed.

Serj Tankian’s album took a while to grow on me, and is definitely inferior to any System Of A Down album. There really is a lack of Daron on it, and it seems that when Serj is on his own he resorts to some pretty absurd lyrics. I don’t usually care much for lyrics, but this is one of those albums where I think the artist thinks lyrics can make up for imperfect music.

I remember that in the run-up to Christmas I visited a record shop for the first time in quite a while. It was there that I bought compilation albums of Steeleye Span, Fairport Convention and the Dubliners. The former two bands I already knew a fair amount about as I had listened to them throughout my life, although I had not heard most of their songs. These two CDs gave me the opportunity to re-discover some of their best material and hear some of the music they made from other periods in their careers. My parents only really listened to these bands between 1970 and 1980 so there is a large amount of later material I also needed to listen to. The Dubliners were almost new to me, having not heard any of their recordings for many years. A few of their songs came immediately back to me, like Rocky Road to Dublin and Seven Drunken Nights. Who could forget those? They are now one of my favourite bands, and this purchase inspired me to get back into Irish music. At the record store I saw other compilation albums by Dolly Parton and Joan Baez, both singers who I previously had heard very little of but who would be important members of my new-for-2008 library in later months.

Also during January I discovered the website http://www.pondlifestudios.com/ and downloaded all of the free mp3s I could find there. (You can also get all of Martha Tilston's RopeSwing album there for free. I strongly recommend you go there and get it as it is a lovely piece of work.) They have a wide range of small folk bands (although some don’t resemble folk that much) and I found some really good songs on there which could provide me with opportunities at a later date to find excellent music. Some of my favourite bands and music from the site were Hearth, Emily Barker, Sarah Curtis, PinknRuby and Mouse (Martha Tilston’s old band. She is how I found the website in the first place).

February and March

February and March were most notable for Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell, two fairly different American folk singers. The only songs I had ever heard either of them sing were Big Yellow Taxi and Free Man in Paris. I think that Baez has a better voice than Mitchell, and she is still going strong too. I’ve heard Mitchell sing quite recently and she seems to have lost her fine voice, whereas Baez is almost identical to how she sang in her twenties. However, I feel that Mitchell often sings more beautifully and with greater feeling and emotion. I think that her album, Blue, is one of the best albums I have ever heard, just jam-packed with classics. My particular favourites are A Case Of You and California. My favourite Joan Baez song is by far Diamonds and Rust, which I have learned to play on guitar and might be my highest-played song of the year. I also realise that I prefer every single one of Bob Dylan’s songs when they are sung by Joan Baez, particularly Boots of Spanish Leather, which is a brilliant song when she sings it, and a boring monotonic sermon when Dylan sings it.

I also first heard of Kristin Hersh during February, an American new folk singer. I can’t say that she is that great, and I find a lot of her songs depressing and her voice sometimes gets a bit grating. Still, she is a worthy addition to my library. I also heard Foo Fighters latest album. It’s not quite as good as their previous albums, but they are certainly one of the best bands in the world nowadays, and I think they probably beat Nirvana on every criterion of quality now. Even Nirvana’s absolutely classic tracks like Lithium, Smells Like Teen Spirit and Rape Me are matched and bettered by songs like Everlong, My Hero and Best of You. Alanis Morissette’s live album, MTV Unplugged, was worth getting just for live versions of the songs from Jagged Little Pill, one of the greatest albums of all time. I think that Alanis is a brilliant songwriter and singer and continues to write good music, but could never hope to match Jagged Little Pill again. I think it is probably my second favourite ever album by a female vocalist, after Liege & Leif.

I should also mention again The Dubliners here. What’s strange about The Dubliners is that nowadays you can only really get their music by getting compilations, but at the same time they have many compilations which don’t usually overlap with any songs. I have no idea where these songs originally came out, or when. It’s impossible really for me to compare Dubliners songs with songs of most of my favourite musicians, simply because they are so different. These are the sorts of songs that you find it difficult not to sing along to, and they improve significantly when performed live, with the whole crowd singing and clapping along. Luke Kelly and Ronnie Drew might be the best performers of Irish music of all time. When Ronnie died this year a whole era came to an end. I never really expected to attend one of his gigs anyway as he was already quite old, but I have enjoyed over the year watching videos of the Dubliners throughout their careers performing songs like Black Velvet Band, Whiskey In The Jar and Seven Drunken Nights. I think his death was the most significant to me of 2008.

April and May

I’m not sure how I first heard about Dropkick Murphys. They were definitely a band that I was faintly aware of, without hearing any of their songs. A few months before I had seen the film, The Departed, which featured the song, Shipping Up To Boston. I listened to all of the Dropkick Murphys albums simultaneously, but especially that one song, which is one of my favourites of the year. Dropkick Murphys represent a link between folk bands like the Dubliners, and the rock music I am more used to. Their versions of songs like Rocky Road to Dublin, Finnegans Wake and Lannigan’s Ball are exemplary, and Dropkicks are probably the most important modern band I have discovered this year. Hopefully I shall see them perform live one day.

Other notable new bands I heard in April and May include Rodrigo y Gabriela, Eva Cassidy and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Rodrigo y Gabriela are a two-piece band that don’t sing. I actually prefer them not to sing because their acoustic playing is so beautiful that it would be spoilt if anything were added to it. Their version of Stairway to Heaven is in the same league as the original. (I was tempted to say it was better!) I also heard Eva Cassidy during this month, who has one of the best voices I’ve ever heard. I’ve realized recently that some singers have good, aesthetically pleasing voices and some singers have the ability to express intense meaning and beauty, but very few have both. Eva Cassidy is one of the few that has both in spades. I’m not sure if she is technically better than Sandy Denny, but I think she is a close second to her overall. Fields of Gold and Over The Rainbow are her best songs I think. If she could write as well as Sandy Denny then she would be a serious contender for my favourite musician of all time. I had already heard the Yeah Yeah Yeahs before several years ago, but didn’t bother to investigate them any further until now. I had previously considered their most famous song, Date With The Night, to be quite annoying when it first came out. Now it has grown on me quite severely, and their two albums are definitely highlights of my year. They have a youthful and exciting personality, and I always like a fast song, which most of theirs are. Prior to May I had only considered Maps, their slowest song, to be good, but now I rate songs like Phenomena and Pin higher. They’re definitely a band I look forward to hearing more from in the future.

June

This might have been my most active month, musically. I set myself the challenge of collecting all of the albums of Steeleye Span and Fairport Convention. I’m not sure if I managed that because I was overwhelemed with albums as they probably have about thirty in total. I haven’t listened to them all yet, and I suspect that each band has a few “dud” albums, but I was definitely surprised to find that they have good albums from both ends of their careers. I re-discovered many more Steeleye Span songs that I hadn’t heard in many years, like Rosebud in June, Saucy Sailor, Weary Cutters, Elfin, Demon Lover, Searching for Lambs and Betsy Bell and Mary Gray. To re-discover a song that you last heard when you were four or five years old is a truly brilliantly nostalgic experience. It’s like re-opening a door in your mind that has been shut for years and years that you didn’t ever notice has been shut at all. I told my father that I only recognized about half of the songs on one album, Tempted and Tried, that it appeared to have one half consisting of forgotten gems, and a second half that seemed plainly new to me. He replied that the effect was probably due to the fact that when he first got that album, he only liked the first half and I ended up only hearing the first half on it that he copied onto cassette tapes to play in the car on holidays. I was also delighted to hear more early songs that feature Sandy Denny, on albums like Unhalfbricking and What We Did On Our Holidays. Although neither is as good as Liege and Leif, one can still recognize that the combination of Nicol, Thompson and Denny makes an extremely talented band. Some say that Liege and Leif is so inexplicably good because of the very short-lived line-up that featured on the album, but the other alums that feature Thompson, Denny and Nicol are also very worth listening to. It turns out that Fairport Convention and then Steeleye Span are the two bands I have listened to the most this year, followed by Joan Baez, so these two months were surely the most influential of the year for me.

Two other musicians I listened to in June were Dolly Parton and Bob Marley. I don’t think I listened to a single song written in the last decade in June. Like Steeleye Span I had heard Bob Marley during my youth as we would sometimes listen to him in the car too, usually whenever my mother was not present. Dolly Parton however, besides the classic song, 9 to 5, was very new to me. A couple of years ago I heard Jolene on a jukebox in the pub and asked somebody who it was. Since then I’d had her in the back of my mind and finally decided to get more of her material. Jolene is still my favourite song of hers, but it’s closely followed by I Will Always Love You and Why’d You Come In Here Looking Like That? Dolly Parton’s is not like any music I’ve ever listened to before, more resembling pop music than folk music. She does have an astounding, unique voice and enthusiasm, which are always a great combination. I much prefer her version of I Will Always Love You to Whitney Houston’s version. Houston might have a technically better voice, but there is no feeling behind it like there is with Dolly.

July

During this month I discovered two new ways of getting music. Firstly I found some software that lets you download music off Youtube, with the disadvantage that the recording is in mono. Secondly, a friend taught me how to use Google to find websites where people have uploaded mp3s. Suddenly a huge archive of potential music opened up, much quicker to download than using torrent software. I don’t even know if it’s illegal or not. (PM me if you want to know the method, or the website with 2000 classic tracks on it) Using this method I found a lot of recent pop songs and classic rock songs like The Beatles and Rolling Stones. Typically it’s much easier to find music from more famous bands as it’s more likely that somebody has uploaded them but you do occasionally find rarities as well. Using this method I searched for a few bands that I was moderately acquainted with in order to once again expand my musical horizons. I listened to albums by Kate Rusby, All About Eve, cKy and Pendulum. Of these I think that cKy have the best potential, and probably win the award for the band I discovered this year with the best average quality of track, as they have some real classics spread over several albums.

Two other significant events from this month included my first gig in a while, seeing Cerys Matthews at the Glee Club in Birmingham and my discovery of a talented singer-songwriter on YouTube. It had been nearly ten years since I had first and last seen Cerys, when she was singing with Catatonia. Since their break-up I had listened to her first album, Cock-A-Hoop, but not really liked it and considered the matter closed, especially as her voice had deteriated probably due to her drug and alcohol binges that saw her quit Catatonia. I also didn’t much like the country and western sound of her album. After seeing her in Birmingham I was glad to discover that she had gone down the path of more traditional British folk music, and was also playing some old Catatonia songs with a good band. Her voice was also better even than I remember it from the early days of Catatonia, so she has definitely re-emerged for me as a future talent. Secondly, while on YouTube I discovered an American girl singing covers of some songs and performing her own songs under the name, Ignore The Sun. I thought they were good enough to justify buying her album for $5 or so, which she was kind enough to post for free!

This was also the month that I returned home so I got the opportunity to listen to more of my parents’ music that I previously had not bothered with, like Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, David Gray, Leonard Cohen and Donovan’s Sunshine Superman album. It was here that I realized that I much prefer Joan Baez to Bob Dylan. I also managed to convert the multi-album, The Clash on Broadway, which a friend had given me in a strange format, so I got to listen to it. It’s still one of those albums that I need to listen to again when I have the opportunity, but sounds promising.

August and September

This period was probably the slowest for me musically this year, as I spent most of my time writing my dissertation and exercising for a bet. In August, Brody Dalle’s new band, Spinnerette, finally released their first track and gave a preview on their website of their upcoming album, which sounds pretty good and I will look forward to in 2009.

For the second year in a row I went to the Moseley Folk Music Festival which is held over three days very near to me. Like last year I only went to one day, and this time it rained all day which was fairly unpleasant. Last year I saw Fairport Convention here which turned out to be my most-listened band of 2008, and I also first heard Martha Tilston, one of my favourite current singers. This year I saw John Tams playing and first heard Ruth Notman. I don’t think she’s quite as promising as Martha Tilston but she definitely has potential.

October

This was another reasonably slow month for me as I was out looking for a job for most of it. I decided to investigate the world of girl power and listened to the Spice Girls and Girls Aloud. I had been watching X Factor so was probably a bit more open to pop music than I usually am. I only listened to their best-of albums, and the Spice Girls one was reasonably enjoyable as they were the group that was most well-known about a year or two before I began to develop my own musical taste. I found a lot of Girls Aloud songs annoying. It seems to me that none of them have good singing voices but when they sing together they sound alright.

I happened to be watching late night TV this month and saw Jeff Beck playing with a band live at Ronnie Scott’s jazz club. I had previously heard Jeff Beck on Jools Holland but only now did I begin to “get it”. He played alongside Eric Clapton for one song and I realized that I don’t much care for Clapton whereas I do for Beck. I suspect that Clapton is slightly technically better but his playing doesn’t sound as good. Jeff Beck seems to play exactly what you want him to play as you’re listening to the song, as if he’s reading your mind and translating your vague mental notes into real musical notes.

My third discovery this month was the Irish folk singer Noel Murphy. I had bought my father a best-of album of his for his birthday and listened to it myself and found it to be high quality stuff. He manages to combine comedy with sincere feeling on many of his songs, but unfortunately for me he has now stopped performing live.

November

This was the one month that I added more to my library than probably most of the rest of the year put together. I remember vividly that one day I had heard Smokey Robinson’s song, Tears of A Clown on the radio during the day. Thankfully we now have a digital radio as I wouldn’t have known who it was otherwise. I went online and used my Google-searching method to look for the mp3 of the song and to my delight found a website that purported to contain the 2000 best tracks prior to the year 2000. Apparently a Dutch radio station had played all of these songs in the run-up to the end of the millennium and somebody had uploaded every single one onto a website, which I had now found. A few of the tracks were rubbish Dutch and European ones, but at least 1500 of them make up the bulk of Western rock and pop music since the 1950’s. A lot of the songs were incorrectly labeled, which will take me a few hours of work at some point in 2009, as well as a lot of listening hours. There’s so many of them that I can imagine not having listened to them all into 2010.

Throughout the rest of November I listened to three of the most different female singers imaginable. I had heard Katy Perry’s song, I Kissed A girl, on the radio and quite liked it, so got her album, One Of The Boys. As far as I can tell it’s the best album of the year (i.e. one that was actually released this year), and really the only good new music I heard in 2008. Her voice isn’t fantastic, but she has a personality that only a very attractive girl could have (much like Sarah Silverman), that makes the album fun to listen to, with lots of killer riffs that sets Pop-Rock apart from Pop and rock.

I was reading the BBC news website one day and came across an article saying that a female Columbian singer had died recently, Yma Sumac. I am of the disposition that if I hear about a semi-famous female singer who I have never previously heard about, I usually research them to find out if they are any good. I got hold of her best-of album and listened to it and was taken aback. She has one of the strangest operatic voices I have ever heard, and is capable of singing very deeply and very highly. Sometimes she sings so high that she sounds like she’s whistling, like on the song Virgenes del Sol. It’s hard to describe her style but I could correctly call it “old-fashioned”, sounding like it came from the 1920’s but that is typical of underdeveloped countries like Columbia.

Thirdly I decided it was time to invest in some more albums by Eva Cassidy, Live at Blues Alley and Imagine, the former of which contains her cover of Sandy Denny’s most famous song, Who Knows Where The Time Goes? I definitely prefer Sandy’s version.

Also during November I saw Leonard Cohen at the Birmingham N.E.C, one of the best gigs I’ve ever witnessed, which is strange as his music really is not the sort of thing I usually listen to.

December

At some point at the start of this month I looked at my profile on http://www.Last.fm : a website that tracks what music you listen to on your computer, and checked out some of the recommendations of bands based on the bands I listen to. This is definitely a resource I plan on using more often as I can look at it and tell quite early on that some of the bands I would like. Two bands on my front page that I had never even heard of before were 7 Year Bitch and The Gits. Apparently they were both loosely connected to the Riot Girl movement in the early 90s in America. First I listened to an album by 7 Year Bitch and quite liked it. They reminded me a lot of Bitch Alert and Hole. One song stands out, M.I.A, about the singer of The Gits, Mia Zapata, who at the time of the recording had been recently murdered and nobody had been prosecuted and the case was thought to be closed. Later on somebody was caught and later given a life sentence. With this knowledge I began listening to The Gits and soon enough genuinely regretted the death of Mia, who is clearly a talented singer and songwriter. Three times this year I have discovered brilliant singers as a result of hearing about their deaths: Eva Cassidy, Yma Sumac and Mia Zapata. I suppose that’s part of life and I shouldn’t read much into it, but there’s definitely a different experience involved in listening to a singer who you know to be dead: that’s certainly the case with Eva Cassidy who became world-famous after her death was reported, and it’s eery listening to The Gits knowing that their effervescent, strong-voiced and feminist singer, Mia, was later raped and murdered in a random attack in the middle of the street.

Another discovery I made before Christmas was Sandy Denny’s album, Borrowed Thyme, a group of home recordings and demos that were never released on any album. In many cases the quality is quite bad on them, but they are so worth listening to because they are from the early portion of her career when her voice was at its peak. Sandy’s voice, at its peak, is the best voice that has ever been sung, as far as I know. Even if the songs are hard to hear, or inferior to songs that later were recorded, the passion with which they are sung is phenomenal and they are worth listening to just for that reason. I have lately come to realise that Sandy Denny is my favourite artist in any sense of the word. She has both the vision and ability to express any emotion. She is the David Lewis of art. This also brings me onto Fotheringay 2. I already made a post about a month ago about this album so I went say much about it here except that it was the musical highlight of the year. Just to hear newly-released material from Fotheringay is a bloody miracle. I wonder if they actually hold the record for longest length of time between album releases with 34 years.

The final CD I listened to before the end of the year was Martha Tilston’s latest album, Of Milkmaids and Architects. it had actually been out for about a year before I got hold of it, but last year was a busy musical year for me and I only just managed to get hold of it. She is probably the best folk musician I know of who is currently writing music, followed by Karine Polwart. There’s something about her that is very spiritual (I never use that word). She has music in her blood, as her father is quite a famous folk singer too. You get the impression from listening to her that she would be writing and singing professionally even if she was deeply unpopular. The thing is I actually don’t rate her voice that highly. In terms of pure vocal ability she pails in comparison to the Dennys, Corrs and Baezes of this world. Her voice breaks on nearly every line. In that sense she’s very much like Janis Joplin. She’s not just using her voice to express deep beauty but breaking through her parameters and explicitly demonstrating what she wishes to convey. She isn’t at all limited by her voice which makes her one of my favourite modern singers.

I think if I were to rate my favourite albums of this year (i.e. non-compilations) they would be:

1. Sonic Boom 6- Arcade Perfect
2. Joni Mitchell- Blue
3. Eva Cassidy- Songbird
4. Fotheringay 2
5. Martha Tilston- Of Milkmaids and Architects
6. cKy- Infiltrate Destroy Rebuild
7. Yeah Yeah Yeahs- Fever To Tell
8. Dropkick Murphys- The Meanest Of Times
9. Katy Perry- One Of The Boys.
10. 7 Year Bitch- Viva Zapata!

Apparently the bands and musicians I have listened to most in 2008 are the following:

1. Fairport Convention
2. Steeleye Span
3. Joan Baez
4. R.E.M.
5. Dropkick Murphys
6. Sandy Denny
7. The Dubliners
8. Green Day
9. Donovan
10. Karine Polwart
11. Joni Mitchell
12. System of A Down
13. The Gits
14. Manic Street Preachers
15. Hundred Reasons
16. Catatonia
17. Foo Fighters
18. Bitch Alert
19. Kristin Hersh
20. Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Before I conclude this piece I have to say a farewell to several people and bands in 2008. Firstly, Hell Is For Heroes split up. I saw their last British gig in December. I have to say it wasn’t that good. The fans didn’t really get into it until the last song when they realised that if there was a time to mosh it was now. HIFH should be noted for their truly incredible first album, The Neon Handshake, and their absolutely electrifying live shows when they were touring it. So their latest album and their final tour was definitely a massive upset. I will miss them, but I think they may have always been destined to bring out one breath-taking album and fade away thereafter.

In other news, I think that Bitch Alert broke up. I can’t say for sure but they haven’t toured, even in Finland, for about 18 months now and their website has become idle. They might be back but I doubt it, because they have always been a small band and they just can’t survive out there. They are probably the most consistent band I have ever known; the only band with three albums in my all time top 20.

2008 saw the deaths of Ronnie Drew and Yma Sumac. The second one is a bit bittersweet for me because had I not heard of her death I wouldn’t have heard of her anyway. Ronnie Drew lived a long life, entertained many, many people and will be remembered as a folk hero.

So what does 2009 have in store? Well I currently have a re-mix album of SB6’s Arcade Perfect which I haven’t listened to yet. Some people would be cynical of a band that releases its album twice with the songs re-mixed, but I know for a fact that they wouldn’t have released it unless it was brilliant, and I’m saving it for some point in 2009. They’re also the sort of band that could have a new album before the end of 2009.

At some point this year I’m expecting Courtney Love’s new album to come out. I quite liked her first and all of her Hole material, but I don’t know what to expect from this one. As far as I know she’s gone quite acoustic so it might have potential. Some of her other acoustic songs are brilliant but I think she does work better thrashing around and screaming, so we’ll have to see.

I’m also expecting Melissa Auf der Maur’s new album this year which has been about 6 years since the last one. I have no idea what to expect from it. Spinnerette, Brody Dalle’s new band, are also releasing an album this year. I heard a short clip of all the tracks on the album and it sounds good, although it’s hard to tell when you hear about ten songs in one minute.

There’s a possibility that My Vitriol will release their second album this year. It’s been nearly ten years since their first album so we’ve been waiting a long, long time for it. Their first album is one of my favourites of all time so I just don’t expect them to match it at all. I could be pleasantly surprised though.

I’m not sure who else will have records out this year. Hundred Reasons? No Doubt? Green Day, possibly? Karine Polwart might. If 2009 is anything like 2008 then in a year’s time I’ll be writing a review of the music of 2009 without any of these names in it but with a lot of names of people I currently have never even heard of. That’s why life is worth living.

Comments

P(If A then C) = P(C|A)

That is, the probability of "If A then C" is equal to the probability of C given A. Here is my trivial counter-example:

If I bet you that Manchester United will win given that they score first it's a lot different to betting you that if Manchester United score first then they will win. If I make the first bet, and either nobody scores or Man U's opponents score first, then the bet is surely void isn't it? Nobody should pay anybody unless Manchester United score first. In fact you could say that the bet isn't even placed unless they score first. But if you bet that "If Manchester United score first then they will win" then you could claim to have won even if they don't score first, because "If A then C" is always true except for when A is true and C is false.

To be honest this example doesn't sound very convincing any more. Both examples seem to suggest that the logical connective "If...Then" is not correctly analysed by the horseshoe conditional.

Here is some further workings.

I was trying to make a Dutch Book argument for van Fraassen’s Special Reflection Principle and I stumbled upon a problem. It's standard practice to assume Stalnaker's Hypothesis when doing probability theory. SH is the following:

P(C | A) = P(If A then C) where P(A)>0

But this definition is both intuitive and completely inconsistent with the horseshoe analysis of conditionals, which is also intuitive. The horseshoe analysis says that:

"If A then C" = "Not-(A and not-C)". See how easily the two analysis come apart by supposing that the following are the case:

P(A & C) = 0.4
P(A & ¬C) = 0.3
P(¬A & C) = 0.2
P(¬A & ¬C) = 0.1

These possibilities are exhaustive so add to 1.

P(C | A) = P(C & A) / P(A)

P(C | A) = 0.4 / (0.4 +0.3)

P(C | A) = 4 / 7

But P(If A then C) = 1 - P(A & ¬C)

=0.7

And 0.7 does not equal 4/7 (as if you needed to be told).

Now I am stuck in the predicament whereby I have no idea how to interpret a conditional probability or the probability of a conditional.

Comments

I just googled terms like "Borodino 2012" and can't find any indication that anybody else might be planning to do the same thing. maybe I should be the one who begins to organise it. I probably wouldn't want to do it on my own anyway as it would be tough and dangerous. and would pass through countries like Poland, Kalingrad Oblast (apparently the most densely militarised country in Europe), Lithuania, Belarus, and Russia proper. I don't even know if it would be possible to walk along the same lines as the French. A lot of the roads they travelled on were dirt tracks, many of them going through dense forest which probably isn't even there now. I think the route looks something like this. The red route is from Metz to Moscow, with the dotted red line the optional section between Metz and Thorn, and the blue line is the route from Moscow to Konigsberg.

In terms of time, the march is a lot faster on the way back than on the way there. (Well you'd go faster if you had thousands of Cossacks snapping at your heels too.) Vilnius to Vitebsk takes about one month, then there's about ten days encampment at Vitebsk. Then Vitebsk to Krasnoi to Smolensk in another ten days. Then immediately onto Borodino and Moscow in three weeks. Five whole weeks were spent in Moscow parading the soldiers on Red Square and unsuccessfully attempting contact with the Russians. Moscow to Viasma in one week, and stay there for four days. Viasma to Smolensk in one week and then two days there, before a mad dash to Orsza in three days, and then three weeks to get across the Berezina and to Konigsberg without any breaks.

I don't know how likely it is that I go through with this plan, especially as I would need 7 months off work in order to do it, but it seems like it'd be well worth doing, and the bicentennial is too good an opportunity to pass over in my opinion. I expect that on the day of the 7th September there will be a fair number of people at the battlefield of Borodino, but not many will have walked 800 miles to get there along the original route. I think it'd be quite awesome (not a word I use regularly) to follow the identical path as Ney over all seven months, if anything as some kind of indicator as to the difficulty of the French advance and retreat. If I recall correctly, the heat was so hot in July that the veterans complained that it was hotter than Egypt had been, and in November the temperature came down as low as -30 degrees celsius. It was so cold that the Russians often discovered groups of French soldiers, who had already marched a thousand miles to avoid death, huddled around unsuccessful campfires either already dead or so cold that they could not move. Supposedly the majority of the French in III Corps died because they couldn't keep up with the fast walking pace of Marshal Ney.

It would also be a good opportunity to completely miss the London Olympics. I suppose that if I did feel inclined to attend it then I could always start the walk at Smolensk.

Comments

I actually really like the album. It's probably better than the first album which is one of my favourites. Every song on it sounds better than the version that was recorded later by Denny and her session musicians.John the Gun is outstanding and has some very eery vocals from Denny, and two good sections with a saxophone. What categorises the whole album is the way that the band managed to mesh every single instrument to optimum effect. They really were an exceptionally talented group of musicians, and their arrangements are therefore better than later arrangements of the same songs.

I think my favourite song on the album is Eppie Moray, a song I've never heard before at all, and which contains lead vocals from both Denny and Lucas. It reminds me a lot of early Steeleye Span and their fast bass lines and strong vocal performances in songs like King Henry, Female Drummer and Came Ye O'er Fae France. It occurs to me that Trevor Lucas is often very undeservedly thought of as a weak link in the band. Before this album was released I heard many people ask how many songs on it were focused on Denny and how many on Lucas, as if only the former were worth listening to. However, I have come to love Lucas' vocals as well, and The Way I Feel is one of my favourite tracks from the first album. The best tracks are those that contain both Denny and Lucas because you get a real feel for the whole band on those.

This album is so good that it's a little sad that they broke up at all. They seemed to have improved so much from their first album that they could have probably achieved a great deal of success had they remained together. Maybe Denny would still be with us as well, as from what I know it seems that her solo career was highly responsible for her downfall to alcohol and drugs addiction which led indirectly to her death. I think Denny is very probably the best singer and songwriter I have ever heard or ever will hear.

Comments

More extreme examples have been given. Most Germans of today seem sincere when they look back at the atrocities and practices of the Nazis and wonder how the people of the country could have supported such policies. More than likely 90% of them firstly believed that their policies were horrific, but that nobody else appeared to share the belief persuaded them that their initial reaction must be wrong and that somehow the policies were permissible. More studies on the power of authority figures and in-groups to persuade an agent to act contrary to their own reason are abundant. Lepper and Iyengar have a good archive of examples for the latter, while the former were made famous by Milgram.

I wonder if this behaviour could be explained by game theory and particularly, doxastic logic. Imagine a room full of sceptics about hypnotism, all gathered to witness a performance. Also suppose that none of them knows that all the others are sceptics, and in fact they probably infer that the average sympathy for the truth of hypnotism in the room is relatively high, even though that may be an awful inference to make. Some of them are invited on stage to be hypnotised and they accept. Probably the "hypnotism" has already begun. It's actually quite hard at this very early point in the night to refuse to get out of your seat. It's just socially unacceptable to refuse to get up when the authority figure and the audience is willing for you to get up. One of Milgram's other experiments involved his graduate students being asked to go into the city and ask people on public transport to give up their seats for them, not giving any reason for it. The majority of the students reported back that they had failed to carry out the experiment because they had felt so uncomfortable at the thought of asking such a socially unacceptable question to others. Those who did ask were always given their seat unconditionally without being asked why, but thereafter they experienced a sense of dread at committing the faux pas. I imagine that a person in the crowd would feel quite similar at the prospect of ignoring the will of the authority figure and crowd.

So a group of people is now already on stage. The hypnotist "hypnotises" them, and gets them to do something probably quite plain and simple, like jumping up and down, or lying on the stage. Each individual member of the group believes that they have undergone no change since the supposed hypnotism. The authority figure asks them to do a simple task, as easy as the task they performed when they got out of their seats and onto the stage. What is the expected value of doing it and the expected value of not doing it?

Now game theory does not always represent real life very accurately because it is split into discrete temporal units. Often in a game theory scenario, two opponents will be asked to act at the same time so that neither of them has anymore information than the other. In real life we tend to be constantly receiving new information up to the point of the act itself. A boxer might decide at t1 to go for a right punch to the head of his opponent, yet he isn't committed to it. The other boxer at the same time decided to go for a quick body shot and the first boxer manages to change his actions and block the shot. He isn't committed to the act he made before he received the evidence of the imminent body shot. In the case of hypnotism however, I believe that the game theory model will often be quite accurate. The hypnotist won't just say "Jump up and down!" and wait for the subjects to look around at each other to see if the others are doing it first. Instead he'll make a big fuss, like saying "When I count down from 3 and click my fingers, you all jump instantly." If the participants are going to obey the command then they have to do it at the first instant. If they don't, and all the others do, then they will be the odd one out and they perceive this as having a negative utility. So all of these sceptics will jump up and down, because it's more rational to do it than not to do it.

Then the hypnotist will slowly escalate the degree of extremity of the acts that he requests they perform. Again he is taking advantage of each sceptic's failure to reasonably reflect on their prior beliefs. Each of these sceptics would previously have said that they wouldn't perform any actions. Now they are jumping up and down. But even now, if you asked them, "Given that you are jumping up and down now, will you strip off your clothes upon request later?" They will all say that they definitely would not. They will say that at this present moment, it is easier to jump than do nothing, because the cost of jumping is very little anyway. The cost of stripping off is far greater. They would prefer to go against the wishes of the authority figure and the crowd than to appear naked in front of them all. However, their beliefs will change. As they are asked to do more and more extreme things, each time the difference in extremity between the last act and the next act is small, so none of them appear to be a clear case of going too far, and crossing the line of expected value. Furthermore, there is another bigger cost to disobeying a command now. If you do three actions for the hypnotist, suppose, in order, jumping up and down, dancing to imaginary disco music, and then going into the crowd to kiss a stranger, and then you refuse to do the fourth act, or reveal to the crowd that you're not really hypnotised, then you end up looking quite bad in the eyes of everybody present. If you weren't really hypnotised then why did you do the original actions? Are you a charlatan, or are you stupid enough to just do whatever somebody tells you without being hypnotised. The audience would not be at all sympathetic to you, because they have inherited the role of being a happy audience member and can't understand the pressures of being on the stage. These sceptics, who all believed that they would definitely not strip naked, while they were jumping up and down, will now find that they have no alternative but to do so. The cost of revealing your non-hypnotism is perhaps enough to make stripping naked the rational action.

A further point: I have never attended a hypnotist's show, but I suspect that they only get one group of audience members on the stage and then they use them for the rest of the night. They won't go into the crowd to find more "volunteers", because there's a very real chance that those people, now very much acquainted with the sorts of things they might end up doing, will simply refuse. If they see the original volunteers have been coerced into stripping, then they ought to conclude that their willing participation will lead to similar degrees of humiliation, and would be rational to simply point-blank refuse.

There are a few more effects of group-hypnotism that I believe require explanation. I don't understand yet how the hypnotist gets the subjects to "fall asleep" at the click of his fingers. Some hypnotists use their hand to physically tilt back the subject's head while saying "Sleep!" This is actually a very similar act to that used by pastors in group-exorcisms. You may have seen this on TV. People go to their local Church with some kind of ailment, and the theory is that they have a demon possessing them. The priest then uses the Bible to supposedly drive the demon out, and quite often the subject is screaming and rolling around on the floor. Sometimes they swear, contort their faces and act as if they are the demon being infuriated by the priest. It would not surprise me at all to learn that that particular phenomenon has only been a part of "real" exorcisms since the production of Hollywood films like The Exorcist showed such scenes. I suspect that the people that attend these exorcisms are far more suggestible than a crowd attending a hypnotism performance, and that all or most of them truly believe in the demons anyway. If I were present at such an event, as a massive sceptic and opponent of the practice, I would find it difficult to refuse to "have a demon" simply because I would not want to produce the sort of anger that might develop as a result of provoking a group's most strongly held belief. These people could be capable of literally ripping a person apart who ridiculed their beliefs. There have been cases where people have died at exorcisms.

Anyway, back to the point. I wonder how hypnotists get away with the "sleeping" ritual. I suppose it is easier to get the people on stage to do things when they pretend as if they are really asleep. Most of us have an idea of what it is like to sleep-walk or talk in our sleep. In fact those who are "hypnotised" quite often behave more lackadaisical while on stage, even childish, perhaps because they believe that it is the way somebody would behave who was shutting out access to all external stimuli. I imagine also that if the participants have their eyes closed, they can perform the acts more freely. They don't have to see the audience laughing at them. Perhaps the hypnotist also ought to make more than one person do something at the same time, otherwise the singly participant will know that all attention is on them. Or maybe that would make them more inclined to cooperate?

The idea we all have of hypnotism is that it is somehow magical. If a hypnotist can make you go to sleep just be clicking his fingers, or saying "sleep!", or touching your head, why can't I just go to the bus stop and do this to someone and have it work? I am certain that in almost all cases it would not work although in a very few it might. The participant has to be ready to receive the signal to sleep. Some hypnotists are very good at making it seem as if the participant was not ready. For example, Derren Brown will be in the middle of a conversation with a subject and then very quickly make them go to sleep. That is an advanced skill I believe. The thing with Derren Brown and other good hypnotists is that they have to appear very confident. Their confiedence that hypnotism is real has to appear to be so strong as to partially convince the participant that it is real. "Wow if this guy's wrong he has got a lot to lose!" No rational person would practise hypnotism in front of a crowd of paying customers unless they were sure it would work. Therefore it probably does work, would be their line of inductive reasoning. However I believe that the "sleep!" gesture is a real risk for a hypnotist, and they should perhaps work up to it in their preparations. Maybe it works better if the hypnotist stands behind the person and as they touch their head from behind and say "sleep", they also use their fingers to gently close the person's eyes. Now that their eyes are already closed, the same sort of game theory as we saw earlier might come into play. The person has very little reason to re-open their eyes, so they keep them shut and maintain the stance of the hypnotised. Then by the time they are told to do something they realise it is already too late to refuse, because they have already taken on the stance of the hypnotised, even if they were moreorless manhandled into it.

Now, I'm not suggesting that all hypnotism is fake, or caused by the game theoretic forces I have mentioned, but I do believe that that is probably the case. I realise it would be a lot more difficult to hypnotise somebody in a one-on-one session than in a group. I believe that a hypnotherapist probably derives his power to hypnotise others more by his surroundings than by the force of conformity on the subject. If the subject believes that the person is a professional, even a medical professional, and sees an office full of books and certificates, and an obvious evidence of the hypnotherapist's previous success, then that could be convincing enough. I have a hypothesis:

Hypothesis: The best and most successful hypnotherapists could not hypnotise the majority of people in a public place by surprise.

That is, a hypnotherapist could not go to a bus stop and declare himself a very successful hypnotherapist by occupation (talking truthfully), and get his hypnotism to work, either with a group of spectators present or not. The reason is simply that he could not possibly be convincing enough. In his office he is convincing because the evidence is everwhere. At the bus stop, even while looking confident and like a successful hypnotherapist, he just cannot be convincing enough. I believe that I would have about as much success at the bus stop as the experienced hypnotherapist, and that is a falsifiable hypothesis that should be tested. (On a side-note, I expect that I would become very nervous about trying this experiment, like Milgram's students. Trying to hypnotise somebody in public, AND failing, is very socially unacceptable.

Comments

One thing I don't get about politics is this: Why is it that we elect members of parliament based on their political beliefs, oratory skill, competence and general likeability, and then these people are entrusted with jobs that they haven't received any training in or shown any skills in at all? For example, an MP is appointed Defence Secretary by the Prime Minister, but usually that person will have never displayed any aptitude for such a job. That they will be good at it is simply a guess. Meanwhile, our chief admirals, generals and air chief marshals have to report and receive instruction from somebody who has been elected by a single constituency of citizens for their political beliefs, oratory skill, competence and general likeability. But surely none of these traits are very highly correlated with being a good Defence Secretary? It seems to me that there must be at least 200,000 people in the UK (of 61 million) who are better candidates for this role than the current incumbent. They are simply in virtue of having some experience and training in that field.

I still think there is a place for MPs, but their place should be as the jury of the country. Experts should propose what they think is the best solution to some problem, and advise the MPs on what to do, but ultimately the MPs should choose. They are the expert decision-makers, because we have elected them to do the best for our country. They haven't been elected as the foremost expert on transport or immigration or military tactics, but on decision-making for the country, and also working for the interests of their constituency.

What I would propose is this sort of system. We keep the House of Commons, but we also have another larger system working in the background, a house of experts. None of the MPs enjoy any special priviledges, except the Prime Minister whose power is greatly reduced and who basically just represents the MPs. For every member of the cabinet we currently have, we ought to have a resident expert. One for defence, foreign affairs, justice, health, business, children and family, transport, energy etc. These positions would be held by people that the UK has collectively chosen as the best expert in the kingdom. How do we do that though? Well, for each department we could have a large section of society who elect a group of people who will then elect the expert. Consider our expert on justice for example. We ought to have 100,000 people who qualify as Level 1 Justice electors. Who are these people? Well they should be common people who have some understanding of the law. Everybody who has a law degree automatically gains membership of the group for 5 years. Many other professions will also allow membership into the group, but perhaps not as quickly as a law degree. After 5 years there will be sufficient reason to see whether a law graduate qualifies as having a good reason to still be an elector. If they have moved out of law and not done anything in the legal profession then they will no longer have a place. Public officials, experienced police officers and chiefs will also have routes into Level 1 membership. Being a member at level 1 is not really anything to brag about, and there are so many departments that a lot of people will be a member of some level 1 group. Some people will be in two or more Level 1 groups but they will be rare. Every 4 years or so, the Level 1s all vote on the individuals they believe to know the most about the law. Everybody in the country can be voted for, they can even vote for themselves, but for most of them, if they do vote for themselves, they are will be the only one who does. They could vote perhaps for the professors who taught them law, and their law firm bosses, because these are the people they personally know who are the best and most experienced. Perhaps they each get 20 votes, that's 2 million votes cast in total. Once the votes are counted, the 1000 people with the most votes gain Level 2 membership. These people could all probably be called real experts on the law. Level 2 membership is a small brag. It comes with no income, but would probably look good on a CV. The 1000 members of Level 2 then get to vote on a top 10, who gain level 3 membership, and the highest-placed individual becomes the official British expert. Moreover it should be a duty for these 10 individuals to fulfil their new roles, and they ought to be compensated accordingly. The reason for this level 1/2/3 business is that I don't personally know who is the foremost expert on law. I suspect even most lawyers don't, although they have a better idea than me. It's probably one of the law lords, but I don't know any of them. However, I suspect that lawyers and law graduates do know people who really could elect the best expert in the law.

Then what happens is that these 10 experts debate what the best action is for the country in their discipline. The representative expert then reports the advice to the House of Commons. If any of the other experts are divided on what should be done, then they will be called to the House to debate their point. In the end the MPs judge the arguments of the experts and vote on what to do. Some of the MPs might have already decided which way to go, possibly because their constituency feels very strongly about a certain issue, and they have already decided that they will have to side with their constituents rather than with the experts, but on the whole, the guidance of the experts will persuade and inform the MPs. Furthermore, the debates and arguments of the level 3 experts will be a matter of public record, as will the votes of each individual MP. So the people of the country will know whether their MP has listened to the advice of the experts or not, and this could influence their collective decisions to re-elect the MPs.

But how should we choose what motions to address? Surely MPs should be allowed to come to government with a campaign given to them by their constituents, and if they were simply required to vote on other people's motions then their voice would never be heard if their particular campaign didn't come up. Well, when a new Level 3 committee is elected, their first concern ought to be in coming up with some motions and their priorities: the changes that they think are most important to the country. They should come up with about a year's worth of motions themselves, and address these to the MPs when it is the time of their particular department. (remember the MPs have to hear from all the departments whenever they want to argue and pass a motion). At the same time the MPs should argue amongst themselves any motions they want passed. Collectively they will come up with a few, and pass these onto the committee of experts. The experts will then pass their judgment on it. How important is this debate? Does anything need changing? If they decide that there is an important issue there then they will pass it as a motion to be discussed by themselves, then debate it, and them present their findings back to the House of Commons who then vote on it. The experts should be able to reject some motions from even being discussed by them. Possibly they already realise, as experts, that the discussion is pointless, or that the best system is already in place to deal with it: any changes would only alter it for the worse. Now if they continually reject the motions discussed by the MPs in favour of their own motions then there will be repurcussions for them, since they are themselves elected by 100,000 people, a very large chunk of the population.

One other thing: I would like to see in this country more opportunities for the people to vote on an actual issue. In the USA quite often you see advertisements on TV and in public saying things like "YES ON PROP 25" or "NO ON PROP 133". I don't know how their system works but somehow there are some issues where the laypeople are allowed to directly vote for or against a law being made. We should have the same here. I don't know what sorts of laws should be voted for by the public and which by the MPs, but it should definitely be a practice of a good democracy to do that sometimes.

Comments

Nowadays when you watch it, there'll be a large group of crew members and a few front-of-camera people like Yvette, the presenter, and a medium whose pointing out nasty old men and creepy girl ghosts that only he can see and hear. And all the time they are hearing bangs and shouts and moans and whistles, and there are pebbles and cutlery and furniture being thrown across rooms, just out of sight of the camera. Even though there's a large crew of people, all doing some physical activity like carrying around cameras and sound equipment through delapidated and dark rooms, whenever there's the sound of a footstep or a knock or murmur, Yvette becomes hysterical and starts saying "We know you're here! Give us a sign you are here!" If the sound they heard was a whistle then she will start whistling to encourage the ghost to whistle back.

As I was watching it tonight I stumbled upon the funniest idea. I would love it so much -SO MUCH - to sabotage one of their events. Just to be in the background somewhere, hidden, and moaning and throwing things at them. I remember once at university one of my housemates fell asleep in the freezing cold (and quite eery) living room, so another housemate and I turned the lights out, jammed the doors shut, and I went outside and banged on the window and moaned in a ghostly voice, "Help me! I'm dead!" Or something like that. It was a good impression of a ghost in my opinion. We really wanted to freak him out by setting up our speakers to play the sound of a baby crying, unscrewing the lightbulb and locking him in the room, but our speaker cables weren't long enough. That would have been awesome though.

But there would be so much potential to sabotaging Most Haunted. It might be feasible if one hid tape players around the places they're supposed to be going, and set them off via remote when they were recording there. Or even a microphone and speakers system, whereby you could actually speak to them as if you were a ghost, and answer their questions. There's a scene in Father Ted, one of the funniest moments from their entire history, where Father Ted has said something to offend some general laypeople, and they're all mumbling to themselves and complaining incoherently, and just as it dies down, just at the perfect opportunity you hear somebody say quite clearly "Wanker." Man I would so love to have a conversation with Yvette as a ghost using a microphone and speakers in one section of the room, and then just at the most intense moment, when everybody in the room and watching at home were on the edges of their seats, a speaker from another part of the room just nonchalantly says "Wanker". There's just so much potential for comedy. You could talk in funny regional accents to them. Or you could talk in the creepiest, most dead voice imaginable, and say "Who's there?...Who has disturbed the quarters of Lord John Sheepcoate?! Speak!" Just as everybody there is shitting themselves, you could sing,

"Never gone give you up!
Never gonna let you down!
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you."

In another room I imagine myself hiding in a dark corner, somewhere where I cannot be found, maybe even outside a window where I can escape quickly. In the haunted room there is an intense atmosphere. Yvette is asking the spirit to give them a sign. She's challenging it and calling it a coward, because earlier in the show the psychic revealed that the spirit who haunts the place used to abuse little girls and Yvette is coming across strong and threatening. The audience expects a confrontation between Good and Evil. When suddenly, a banana comes flying across the room and bounces off her head. A banana! Nothing is funnier than a banana. Except maybe a dildo.

Man, this conquest is in this moment of time my life's ambition. Right now I would break laws to commit these offenses upon a stupid audience. Maybe I should seek out a dream team of spying and pranking amateurs to pull this off. The comedy possibilities are endless.

Comments

"I abhor the man's vulgarity when he says 'What is right for one man is right for another'; 'Do not to others that which you would not that they should do unto you.' Such principles would fain establish the whole of human traffic upon mutual services, so that every action would appear to be a cash payment for something done to us. The hypothesis here is ignoble to the last degree: it is taken for granted that there is some sort of equivalence in value between my actions and thine."

Mill was Russell's godfather but it is clear that Nietzsche and Russell disagree on a lot, and that the basis for their disagreement is not simply Nietzsche's slights on Mill.

Russell describes Nietzsche as a man of empty words with no real substance. He talks of great men, "ubermenschen", yet he was pathetic and weak. "Goest thou to woman? Forget not they whip." He tells us. Russell adding that, "nine women out of ten would get the whip away from him, and he knew it, so he kept away from women, and soothed his wounded vanity with unkind remarks." Then warriors that he talks about are nothing more than daydreams about how he wishes he really had been. (It occurs to me that there is a lot of Nietzsche in the character of Arnold J. Rimmer)

Russell argues that Nietzsche fails to understand the concept of Christian love, and instead thinks that it is a cause of fear. Russell thinks that Nietzsche fails to understand how a man can feel universal love because Nietzsche was filled with universal hate for everybody. My favourite jibe of Russell's is the following:

'King Lear, on the verge of madness, says:

"I will do such things -
What they are yet I know not - but they shall be
The terror of the earth."

This is Nietzsche's philosophy in a nutshell.'

Russell contends that Nietzsche's own Supermen are motivated by fear themselves, for who would try to hurt and suppress his neighbour who was not already afraid of his neighbour?

"I will not deny that, partly as a result of his teaching, the real world has become very like his nightmare, but that does not make it any the less horrible."

Nietzsche sympathisers recently have argued that Hitler took a lot of his works out of context, giving him a bad name in the 20th century. But there really are a lot of similarities between the two. The idea of a "master race" must fall straight from the text of Nietzsche (Hegel is also responsible), and I don't think Nietzsche would have resented the Holocaust by any means, thinking that the suffering of many inferiors is worth the pleasure of a few superiors. Nietzsche thought that the superior few were probably just those who enjoyed the most success in battle and hence subjugated their enemies and bred new generations of suppressors. He idolised Napoleon for this reason, but perhaps the British would have been better candidates for their consistency. There is really no chance at all that the Germans could be candidates for a master-race because they had not enjoyed success in battle since bringing darkness to Europe by bringing down the already-imploding Rome.

Russell imagines a debate between Buddha and Nietzsche in the presence of God as to how he should construct the world and what ends it should be designed to satisfy.

Nietzsche: No, if the Lord should decide for your world, I fear we should all die of boredom.
Buddha: You might, because you love pain, and your love of life is a sham. But those who really love life would be happy as no one can be happy in the world as it is.

Russell doesn't have any arguments against Nietzsche's position (although he does point out some inconsistencies of the finer points). In the end he retreats to emotion. Nietzsche desires suffering on a global level, and it is the duty of the Good to reject such a position as being Pure Evil, a position that Nietzsche happily adopts. There's an analogy between how Russell deals with Nietzsche's negative world-view, and how he deals with Solipsism in Epistemology. He just dismisses it out-of-hand as being unconstructive and undesirable: a paradigm he does not wish to discuss or consider. Russell began lecturing on the History of Western Philosophy in 1941 and it was published in 1945. Unlike Solipsism, he had a good idea where the philosophy of Nietzsche had led in the course of history. The best strategy against the solipsist is to ignore him, but the best strategy against the Nietzschean is to destroy him. Even Russell, a life-long pacifist, finally agreed that the only option for the West was to destroy those who practice Nietzsche's theories. Writing in 1945 he says:

"His followers have had their innings, but we may hope that it is coming rapidly to an end."

Comments

A maintenance man is cleaning a laboratory when he stumbles across some brains in vats connected to computers all running a programme called "MAN DUSTS BRAINS IN VATS".

Given that the maintenance man is justified in believing that within the vats lie brains that are in the same epistemic state as he is, ought he to conclude that he is one of the brains in the vats? Field and Elga both think so, but this just doesn't make sense to me.

If he is a brain in a vat, then all of the things he is experiencing are false, or simply ideas fed into a mind by a computer programme.

If a brain and a vat are themselves just inside a computer programme then they aren't "real" brains or vats. There is nothing which is experiencing what it is like to be that brain.

He is experiencing brains in vats.

Therefore the brains in vats are false.

Therefore there is nothing that is experiencing what it is like to be one of those brains.

Therefore if he is a brain in a vat, he is not one of those brains.

Therefore this whole experience (of witnessing the brains in vats) does not increase his subjective probability that he is a brain in a vat.

I can think of two counter-examples to the above argument (or premises within it).
Firstly, it might be the case that Artificial Intelligence could be developed to the point whereby we can design computer programmes, for example simulations of the real world, that have intelligent agents within them believing it to be the real world. So often when we think of Artificial Intelligence we think of robots that have some real physical and human-like characteristics. But perhaps it would be possible to create real agents whose physical basis is a tiny proportion of a computer chip. If that were the case then the maintenance man could be a brain in a vat himself and be witnessing other brains in vats in front of him, who are experiencing life in an artificial reality within the man's artificial reality. However, if this counter-example alone were true, then his witnessing the vats would still not increase his subjective probability that he is a brain in a vat, because he still could not be those brains in vats.

Secondly, is it not possible to be a brain in a vat and still experience the real world without the need for any kind of programmable software? Suppose we take Bob's brain and stick it in a vat. The vat is attached to a computer and the computer is attached to a robotic device a few thousand miles away which has facilities for input, a camera, microphone, even cells which measure touch and pressure and heat, and the signals travel by satellite to Bob's brain where they are hooked up with his central nervous system so that he feels being pinched whenever the robot is pinched in exactly the area the robot is being pinched.

In this sort of scenario, Bob could easily be walking around the world in his robot-form and come across the laboratory with his brain in it, just like the maintenance man. If the previous paragraph is correct, that such a technology is possible, then that would refute one of our premises: the one that said that if he is a brain in a vat then what he is experiencing is not "real".

There are some people who believe that at night when they sleep, they "astrally project". What they think happens is that their consciousness leaves their body and takes on an astral body. They can then float around in the astral world. In the astral world they can see all the physical objects in the physical world, but they cannot touch them. They effectively become ghosts. They report seeing their own sleeping body, and presumably if they looked closer at their own brain, they would see the object that was experiencing everything that are currently experiencing. Now, science would say that astral projection is not a real phenomenon, that these people really only fly around a dreamworld inside their heads, not causally or physically connected to the real world at all. They wouldn't be seeing their real sleeping bodies but what they believe their real sleeping body to look like.

But I don't see how such a phenomenon could not be done with advanced technology. I've read about such an invention as a "sex suit", two people buy a sex suit and a special mannequin and put on the suit. They then have sex with the mannequin and the other person, who could be on the other side of the world, feels the impulses that the first person is giving to the mannequin, in a 2-way process. Perhaps an advanced technology would make the other person's mannequin move exactly how I am moving, so that I could effectively punch you in the face from across the world or even murder you. Some other hilarious things could occur. I could get my mannequin and throw it onto the bed, expecting to make love to my partner across the world. But unbeknownst to me, where my partner is, there is no bed there: instead there is a window. So my mannequin over there would be throwing them out of a window. Perhaps I would be a bit puzzled why my mannequin, now on my bed, is flapping its arms and perhaps even screaming, and then suddenly goes rigid and stops communicating with me.

In those circumstances, neither of our brains would be in vats. Rather, our bodies would be in a sort of vat. I have one other question to ask too. Suppose Bob was walking around New Mexico. Would it feel to him that he was really in New Mexico? My concern here is that I have a sense of self-location. I think there is a place where I really am: not my torso or my arms or legs, but in my heads, just behind my face. Now, do I have this feeling because that's where my brain is, or because that's where my eyes are? I'm not sure if Bob would feel like he's really running around New Mexico, or if he's really sitting in a vat somewhere experiencing an extremely realistic simulation of what it would be like to be running around New Mexico. I really don't know the answer to this.

Comments

I've owned this book for four years (a signed copy no less), and yet I've only just got round to reading it. I suppose this will be my first book review for around 10 years. I've never read this book before because I'd always been under the impression that it wasn't very important to my studies or relevant to my interests, and besides Socrates, I'd never felt much inclination to read the philosophers contained within it.

The premise of the book is that philosophy can be used to aid us in our regular, every-day, lived lives. It could equally be called "Problems of Life...and Philosophical Solutions", after which we ought to read "Problems of Philosophy" by Russell and this should be the way that we get into philosophy in the first place. `Tis strange that I read this quite accessible gateway book five years after beginning to read philosophy. It's a step backward with the promise of two steps forward.

I can't say I'm a massive fan of de Botton's style. Quite often this book resembles a diary or blog. It's a book review itself really, just an introductory commentary on the contributions of philosophers to normal life. I don't think the chapters are very well-titled either. It occurred to me that Socrates never really said anything about unpopularity and by calling the Socrates chapter "Consolation for Unpopularity" he implies that Socrates killed himself because he was unpopular.

I enjoyed learning about Socrates' trial. I didn't realise before that he had been sentenced to death by the narrow margin of 280 to 220, and that he was sentenced purely by majority vote, by the prejudices of idiots who had turned up on the day to see what was going on, and who had merely heard things about him. It is ironic that inferences which led to the majority verdict were the very sort of fallacies that Socrates had questioned and spent his later life pointing out to people.

I liked the chapter on Epicurus, and I may get hold of some of his works for closer reading. A good life (goodness in general, in fact), says Epicurus, can only be conceived with reference to the satisfaction of desires, comfort, taste and sexual desire. Philosophy is just the tool by which we come to learn what makes our life worth living (to which the answer could be "cake" or "heroin"). I've always construed philosophy as being synonymous with "truth" or "the practice of the study of truth", and gone as far as to distinguish the former "meaning of life" construal as "Not Philosophy". I think I would ordinarily proclaim an atheism towards there being a meaning of life. The early philosophers wouldn't have known it, but nowadays I think we can accurately determine what drives humans by studying evolutionary psychology. This doesn't go quite far enough though. All it tells us is what makes humans happy, what they strive to achieve, and it does not include the Epicurean principle that the point of life itself is to produce and experience happiness. That Epicurus is right is something that has been programmed into us by evolution. That is the only authority it has as truth, as the correct answer to "What is the meaning of Life?" It's not very much authority but then I can't really imagine how there could be a right answer to that question. This universe is primarily physical, secondarily psychological or phenomenal. We're observing the world through a lens, a lens that didn't have to exist. I don't think there would be "truths" about the meaning of life if there was no life, but there would be truths about the density of gold even if there were no gold. That is why we, as philosophers, are often stuck with intuition as an authority figure. If your intuition is that the meaning of life is XYZ, then I don't see why it isn't XYZ. Questions like that have true answers that correspond only to intuitions. It is what you make of it.

There are really two very, very different definitions of philosophy or applications of philosophical method. Many people know the word because of statements like "My philosophy on life is to live every day like it's your last." Typically I would class this usage as "Not Philosophy", but I suppose it does have a place and can be interesting. Many European departments have a distinction between Practical Philosophy (How to live, meaning of life etc) and Theoretical Philosophy (What there is, how we know it). Until now my philosophical study as focussed only on Theoretical philosophy. I've never even touched Practical Philosophy for a second. Although I've been interested in definitions of Right and Wrong, only so much as knowing "What there is".

Anyway back to Epicurus. He seems to think that one should go to a philosopher to ask "How can I become happy?" in the same way one would go to a doctor to ask "How can I become healthy?" I've never really understood why anybody would ask the first question. Isn't it obvious what will make you happy? I believe all of us could easily predict what would make us happy to a degree of 90%, and perhaps the last 10% could be provided by a psychologist. There are a few "tricks" one could use to become artificially happier by playing on the workings of the brain. Prospect Theory is the sort of subject that could surprise us about what would make us happy, as well as Evolutionary Psychology of course. But on the whole I refuse to believe that a person could really not know what makes them happy. People only do the things that make them happy so you might as well ask "What am I doing?" as "What would make me happy?"

Now i don't mean to say that Practical philosophy is pointless, but I really don't expect there to be many experts on it, least of all philosophers. Epicurus has some ideas about what pastimes are sufficient for happiness, and I am happy to read them and take his advice not because he is a renowned philosopher but because he is a person, older than myself, and a good candidate for somebody who knows what might make me happy. I could get advice almost as good as Epicurus' down the pub probably, but of course not worded nearly so well as him. The philosopher's real skill, one that cannot be easily taught, is not their wisdom or access to truth, but ability to accurately transcribe and describe what we all hold to be true already. To quote Orwell, "The best books, he realised, were the ones that told you what you already knew." It is a little sad that philosophy has advanced so much since Russell as to be quite often completely inaccessible to the lay person, but then there are also trickle-down benefits as well.

So what does Epicurus have to say? There are four things that contribute to a good, happy life, he says.

1. Friendship. "Of all the things that wisdom provides to help one live one's entire life in happiness, the greatest by far is the possession of friendship."

Another thing he says is the following: "Before you eat or drink anything, consider carefully who you eat or drink with rather than hat you eat or drink: for feeding without a friend is the life of a lion or wolf."

I'm not sure how much I agree with this statement. I do like it though, and could even see it being used as an effective chat-up line.

I read elsewhere that humans, who according to evolutionary psychologists have the brains of Stone Age humans and have failed to evolve since then (or haven't had the time to do so), when they watch sitcoms or dramas or soaps on television, their brain thinks that they have actually been in the company of real people. This is also the reason why we become sexually aroused when we see pornography, our brains think we are seeing real people and have the opportunity to mate. The former truth explains the popularity of shows like Friends. People who watch friends typically don't have social lives like those of the characters, such an arrangement is probably quite rare in the West. But the show's makers somehow tuned into a frequency that we were all on, the desire to be surrounded by supporting friends our entire lives.

Epicurus' second factor is freedom. Now I'm not sure exactly what he means by this, and will research further in order to understand it. I don;t think he means freedom in the philosophical sense, but some form of self-sufficiency and independence, and lack of responsibility all seem to form his notion of freedom. Freedom from the rat race, from the bullshit (See Curb Your Enthusiasm for a parody of the bullshit I refer to: social customs and etiquette.). This seems to be the sort of life that many of us aspire to, even while hypocritically longing after more and more money. I remember watching an episode of High Stakes Poker. One of the players, a very successful online cash player said that they hadn't had a day off playing poker in 3 years. I suspect in that time he had probably made around $5 million or so. But what is the point of making that money, of working all day long in the prime of your life, to not spend the money you've earned? Similarly you get people who work 12-15 hours a day as stockbrokers or surgeons who appear to have got into a pointless existence of constant work. Maybe this sort of thing isn't as obvious to people as I thought it was?

His third factor of happiness is an interesting one: Thought. This is really a hard one to judge whether you have it as well. How much Thought does he think we need? How much do regular people think? I admit that I have been guilty of believing that many people fail to think. I'm reminded by Bertrand Russell's quote, "Many would sooner die than think. In fact they often do so." How fair is this assessment though? This is one of the questions I have always wondered about, and I do believe it can be answered. We can never really know whether other people think at all, or just give the impression of thinking occasionally. Sometimes I might read an author like Russell, or Descartes, and think that they must be so wise that I am one of the people that they would consider is incapable of thought. They might agree that I can reasonably look down upon underclass-types as being intellectually inferior, but they can look down upon me with the same perspective. I regularly look down upon as being intellectually inferior some people who look down upon me as being intellectually inferior (for example, Nietzsche: we'll come to him later). I'm not sure if I do this because it's the correct thing to do, or just because I know that nothing would annoy them more than knowing that I am doing it.

Epicurus' fourth factor appears to be standard desire satisfaction, some wealth and sustenance, and general lack of pain, food, shelter and clothing etcetera. He also believes that once you have the other three factors accounted for, being grossly rich or even moderately wealthy does not raise your happiness level whatsoever. I don't know whether this is really true or not. it probably is, but people fail to believe it. Collectively they might be said to be wiser than Epicurus. As Napoleon said, "The only person wiser than anyone is everyone."

Next we have Seneca's consolation for Frustration. The chapters on Seneca and Epicurus struck the chords most resembling B7 to me than any other. Seneca's "philosophy" seems to be "Stop complaining!" Learn to adapt to situations and don't be angry at what fate throws at you because there is no reasonable point to it. I think maybe evolutionary psychologists could find a reason for it, although I'm not sure what. Seneca thinks that anger follows from misguided beliefs we have about how the world should be, how it would better fit around our temperaments.

Seneca talks about a lot of issues that are close to my own heart, particularly with reference to Fortune, or The Lord Chance in another form. "There is nothing which Fortune does not dare." He stressed that we ought to once in a while appreciate what we have, because it is very easily taken away. "No promise has been given for you this night - no, I have suggested too long a respite - no promise has been given even for this hour."

"We live in the middle of things which have all been destined to die.Mortal have you been born, to mortals have you given birth. Reckon on everything, expect everything.

That reminds me of Napoleon's quote, "I start out by believing the worst." Strangely enough, neither Napoleon nor Seneca come across as being pessimistic to me, but realistic. Seneca says, "If you wish to put of all worry, assume that what you fear may happen is certainly going to happen." He is pointing out that worrying and anxiety are really pointless ventures. I feel that he would agree with Epicurus that life is for living, not worrying. Epicurus famously reasoned that there was nothing to fear from death because when one is dead one cannot experience anything negative. Neither of them have defeatist attitudes, but simply acknowledged that luck is a massive element in life, and that there cannot be joy without hardship too. He uses the analogy of a dog tied to a cart. It can either choose to walk with the cart or be dragged by it. Those who worry and complain are letting the cart drag them. At the cost of discomfort they are going the same way as they would have gone anyway.

Onto Montaigne, the chapter on "Consolation for Inadequacy". It's not really de Botton's fault but I found at this point the opinions of the philosophers he chose to write about began to diminish. Strange really, because I usually consider the more modern writers to be better than the Ancients. I don't think Montaigne really counts as a philosopher in any sense. He seems to just be pointing out that people aren't as great as they think they are. He talks about his erectile disfunction and regular bowel movements as if these make him and others inferior.

He does say some interesting things about cultural norms, how Frenchmen who traveled through Germany could not see the merit of a stove over a fireplace, and vice versa, that a lot of regular human action is made without reasoned thought going into it, but based on convention. He doesn't seem to be saying that more than Socrates if I'm honest, and a lot of his work is pure aphorism. He can be funny, but I wouldn't call Gervais a philosopher (maybe some Continentals would though). Montaigne questioned the truth of questions like "Is the fireplace really a superior form of heating?" and "Is it really barbaric for a person to eat spiders and insects?" Only a few years later Descartes was questioning the truth of everything. To question the former things is just commonsense really. Perhaps I am being a little too harsh on him, but I don;t think he really contributed anything that Socrates would not have said had he been present.

Next we come to Schopenhauer, quite a pathetic character. If you read a little about his life you can see where some of the negative connotations of what a philosopher is in the modern world have come from. He was arrogant and unpopular, and critical of everything. I don;t know why he didn't just kill himself: perhaps he thought it too important a responsibility to deliver to mankind his genius? Schopenhauer famously resented Hegel, who also taught at Berlin, because he was far more popular. Because nobody likes him or his philosophy, he comes to believe that the majority of the public are stupid. Even when he does begin to achieve notoriety he refuses to abandon his previously-justified belief.

Perhaps we shouldn't linger on his personality but consider more of what he actually said. I was intrigued a little about his theory concerning the "Will-to-Life", the force that commands humans and animals to try to reproduce in an endless cycle. He held the theory that any typical human will look for a partner that has the opposite traits to themselves for the reason that when they mate, the child they will produce will be closer to normal as possible. For example, if one has a big nose they ought to find partners with small noses attractive so that their offspring will have average-sized noses. He says that inevitably the Will-to-Life contradicts with the basic desires of the person, which is to settle down with somebody they actually like.

"A man in love may even clearly recognise and bitterly feel in his bride the intolerable faults of temperament and character which promise him a life of misery, and yet not be frightened away... for ultimately he seeks not his interest, but that of a third person who has yet to come into existence, although he is involved in the delusion that what he seeks is his own interest."

I found this interesting, but ultimately, it's false isn't it? It's demonstrably, empirically false, and I can't stand so-called philosophy that is so easily falsifiable. Science nowadays tells us that members of both sexes usually look for potential partners with traits that their own parents have, possibly because those traits have connotations for them with good parenting. Schopenhauer is just wrong, and I feel that there is little point reading much more of him. He portrays the human as being an animal constantly being acted upon by desires and impulses which aren't in their real interest, as if they don't really know what it is they do want. I think the comedian, Dylan Moran, gives us a better example of such an eternal impulse with "The Beast". The Beast is the entity to whom all humans report to when asking how best to spend their resources of time and effort. The Beast says to them "I want the things that are behind that locked door. But not just any locked door, guarded nonchalantly by security guards talking about last night's football. I want the stuff behind that door over there, guarded by men in black with Uzis. Get me that stuff. I'll have what they're having." The stuff behind the well-guarded door includes luxurious food, alcohol, constant sex with beautiful people, cushions and fine clothes and drugs, now and forever. We are a slave to the whims of The Beast, when we learn of some new extravagance, he pesters us forever until we get it.

Schopenhauer does follow some thoughts along these lines, viewing humans as stupid animals, trapped in meaningless cyclical institutions.

"There is only one inborn error, and that is the notion that we exist in order to be happy... So long as we persist in this inborn error...the world seems to us full of contradictions. For at every step, in great things and small, we are bound to experience that the world and life are certainly not arranged for the purpose of maintaining a happy existence... hence the countenances of almost all elderly persons wear the expression of what is called disappointment ."

I wonder if the differences between these practical philosophers, for example, Schopenhauer and Epicurus, is just a matter of a chemical imbalance in the brain that directly affects degree of optimism. Why is the notion that we exist to be happy an error? As I mentioned already, I believe the intuitions concerning the meaning of life are quite subjective, and Schopenhauer is free to posit any answer he likes. Both Epicurus and Schopenhauer correctly point out that our lives are governed by attaining certain comforts, but for one of them this is a good fact, and for the other it is a bad fact. Personally, it is a good fact. Schopenhauer doesn't mention much about the desire for knowledge, which clearly is one that he holds strongly. Perhaps he mentions elsewhere the pointlessness of intellectual pursuits owing to their inevitable tendencies to cause madness. Perhaps he did not see this, but instead actually did become mad, which brings us on to the final chapter on Nietzsche.

It might be a weakness of myself that I cannot agree with people that I do not like, even on matters that are not related to their likeability, as philosophy should not be. I have often noted that I do not like the music of people who I find to be unlikeable people, for example: Oasis, White Stripes, The Darkness, most bands that begin with "The" to be fair, and to some extent Bob Dylan. The reason I don't like them is that they are exceptionally arrogant, and I just don't think exceptionally arrogant people can make good music. Some of them can certainly play instruments well but that is not the same. Likewise, I don't think exceptionally arrogant philosophers have the ability to write good philosophy. The two really are related. Perhaps humility is a necessary condition for wisdom. Socrates was certainly humble. So I immediately find it doubtful that Nietzsche has anything interesting to say about anything when he pipes up that, "It is my fate to have to be the first decent human being.", and "I have a terrible fear that I shall be one day pronounced holy.", and that his work was "The greatest gift that has ever been given." False sir. Unsurprisingly it turns out that Nietzsche read and agreed with Schopenhauer. I wonder if there is much evidence nowadays that arrogance and depression go hand in hand. Both Schopenhauer and Nietzsche were rejected by women numerous times throughout their life, and both initially met with unpopularity from the general public. Perhaps their instinctive reaction was to think that they were too good for the world.

What do I agree with Nietzsche on? I agree with him that the best pleasures in life are not possible without periods of intense sadness. We are also agreed upon the evils of alcohol. I once met somebody who, when told that I was both a philosophy student and did not drink alcohol, immediately presumed that I was a student of Nietzsche, one of those pathetic students who wish they were Nietzsche themselves, borne out of complexes of inadequacy, beliefs about a world that does not conform to them, and the belief that they were born to be great. Thankfully no, although it appears that we do have similar reasons for not drinking alcohol. (I didn't have to get blind drunk first though) I do also agree with him on religion, and believe that he said some important things about it, particularly how Christianity glorifies failure, for example, praising obedience, faith, poverty, ignorance and loneliness. He could have even have got a few laughs of agreement on a present-day stage by telling the audience that forgiveness was really just an action that entailed being unable to get revenge on your opponents. But isn't he saying pretty much the same thing as Marx here? I think Marx is more famous for his criticisms of Christianity as an institution than Nietzsche, although I might be wrong, and I'm not sure on how much they cross over on.

In conclusion, I enjoyed the book. I don't know if I would recommend it to anybody, interested in philosophy or otherwise. I would probably only recommend it to people in the same position as myself, a decent education in theoretical philosophy but an ignorance of practical philosophy. I don't think this book would help anybody improve their lives, but then I fail to understand why anybody would need any advice. My "philosophy" has always been to introspect and discover what it is one wants to do or be, and then do it. It doesn't matter too much to me that those desires I discover might be the result of evolution or the commands of The Beast or the Will-to-Life. If none of those things existed then there wouldn't be any underlying truth about the meaning of life, so we may as well derive some pleasure from satisfying The Beast. I think the one philosopher I have learned from most from this book (other than Socrates on theoretical philosophy) has been Epicurus. I'm interested in reading more about the Epicurean Beast, for the simple reason that advice from people who have been in similar situations to oneself in the past are far more effective gurus than one's own projections. Daniel Gilbert says in Stumbling Upon Happiness that people who listened to advice of people who had already been in the same position (for anything...cold feet for a marriage, become pregnant, considering moving home etc) ended up happier than those who simply tried to work out what would make them happiest in the end. Commonsense really I suppose.

I doubt that I will really study much in the way of Practical Philosophy in the future. I just find it a little silly that anybody could be considered an expert in that area. I would prefer to get my observations on the human condition from literature like Shakespeare and Coleridge, and even more so from the lyrics to music. Even now I am listening to a Sandy Denny piece, and finding that the lyrics strike me as far more meaningful and truthful than the philosophy of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer.

Comments

1994 Miss America Contest--question posed to Miss Alabama:

Question: If you could live forever, would you and why?

Answer: I would not live forever, because we should not live forever, because if we were supposed to live forever, then we would live forever, but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever.

It sounds pretty stupid, and the impression you'd get from it would be that her brain couldn't keep up with her mouth. But it is a surprisingly logical statement. We can interpret it as so:

P1) If we should not live forever, then I would not (choose to) live forever.
P2) If we should live forever, then we would live forever.
P3) We do not live forever.
Therefore 4) We should not live forever.
Therefore 5) I would not (choose to) live forever.

The argument-form makes use of both modus ponens and modus tollens, and she isn't guilty of affirming the consequent or denying the antecedent which a lot of supposedly more intelligent people get incorrect a lot.

I looked around the internet to find some sort of reference or confirmation that this ever actually happened, but didn't look long enough to find it. Instead I found a lot of comments about it, including:

"Sounds pretty dumb to me! I showed this to my English teacher before break. After she stopped laughing, she said if this were her student, they'd get a big fat F."

I only have a slight problem with P2 myself. But she is hardly alone by believing P2. Leibniz, who is believed to be one of the most intelligent people to ever live, notably argued for P2. it could even be argued that Descartes would also assert the truth of P2.

Comments

Comments

I suspect (although I'm hardly an expert in these things), that the world record for the 24-hour event would be something like 150 miles, and the record for the week-long event would be about 500 miles. I remember reading that prior to the battle of Austerlitz Marshal Davout managed to move his corps 88 miles in 48 hours. Considering that they were carrying about half their own body weight again and wearing constricting uniforms and carrying heavy artillery etc, that is pretty impressive.

Comments

What it means to lead a good life. In the episode with the Inquisitor, we are told that the Inquisitor travels through time judging everybody who ever lived and if finding them worthy of Life allows them to remain, and if finding them unworthy they are replaced by somebody who never got the chance to live. Furthermore, the Inquisitor allows each defendant to judge themselves by their own standards of whether they have deserved to live.

Personal Identity. The metaphysic of Red Dwarf seems to support the existence of souls. Rimmer, the Cat and Lister are said to swap bodies a few times with no brain transplant. Somehow their personality, memories and stream of consciousness is exchanged between the bodies. We are told that in Better Than Life, Rimmer is stripped of his body and becomes essentially a sound wave that appears to carry his soul. (Although even in Red Dwarf, better Than Life is a fiction so this doesn't tell us much). Rimmer himself is a psychologically identical reconstruction of a now-dead person, but he is always referred to, and refers to himself, as the original Rimmer. There are countless times in the series where the characters are somehow resurrected because of time travel. In the Inquisitor episode (I saw that last night, hence the recollection), Kryten and Lister are judged unworthy of life and deleted from history, replaced with alternates. Before they are deleted physically they manage to escape. The Inquisitor then chases them and kills the original Rimmer, Cat and both alternates. Lister then manages to erase the Inquisitor from history, bringing back the original Cat, Kryten and Rimmer. Lister is the only one who remains temporally continuous. Are the others now clones of themselves or psychologically continuous? In another episode the Red Dwarf crew are attacked by their future selves, who irresponsibly have used time travel to lead luxurious lives throughout history, and now they need some kind of Warp Drive from the original Red Dwarfers. They kill everybody but Rimmer, who ends the series by shooting their own Warp Drive. We learn in the next series that somehow the destruction of the Warp Drive prevented the crew from ever becoming the future selves they encountered and hence none of them were killed. But how did they still have the memories of their now-never-to-exist future selves? Lister dies on another occasion, and to resurrect him they take him to a backwards universe where he is re-born with a heart attack and leads a whole backwards life until he is collected by the crew and brought back to his original universe, with memories intact of his former forwards life, and backwards life.

Artificial Intelligence. Is Kryten a person? We are told that Lister helped Kryten to break his programming, making him somewhat autonomous and sporting several negative emotions like anger, jealousy and ambivalence. We are still told that Kryten is programmed not to kill, and has no desire to prolong his life.

Determinism. Is the sort of time travel in Red Dwarf consistent with Determinism? We are told that to ensure his necessity, Lister has a child with Kochanski and they go back in time to leave the child where Lister himself was found as a baby. Hence Lister is his own father and son, and Kochanski is his mother and mate. Quite often characters do things because they believe they have to in virtue of what has already happened. When they are in the backwards world they do things like regurgitate food. They put a lot of effort into detaching heavy engines from the ship and carrying them into the woods and burying them, because they work out that actually the engines fell off the ship and they had to go and dig them up and re-attach them, which is what they were doing by detaching them. When they regurgitate rabbit, Kryten makes sure to re-attach the meat to the bones and bring it back to life, and then he goes out and un-makes the trap that he found it in. What would have happened if he didn't bother doing that? Did they have any Free Will while in Backwards World?

Ignorance and Happiness. Is virtual reality any less insignificant than actual reality? Is living in Better Than Life a worthy and fulfilling life? In one episode (although it is a dream), we are told that the characters are actually just "losers" in a totalitarian society who decided to play a virtual reality game called Red Dwarf for several years while on life support machines. When they come out of it they are told that they performed badly on the game, hardly scratching the surface of what was possible. Does our own future hold this sort of life for our own children? Is it a worthwhile use of life?

Comments

Perhaps we have now discovered the truth in the otherwise stupid idiom that "you can't have your cake and eat it". The cake is logically edible, but it's not very easily physically edible.

Comments