Lies, Damned Lies, and Supreme Court Decisions

The Supreme Court recently did something right for a change, and negated the fines levied against CBS for the brief airing of Janet Jackson’s nipple, ruling that the FCC had arbitrarily and unexpectedly wielded its authority to regulate and punish ‘indecency’.

The real problem, of course, is that the FCC is considered to possess authority over a thing no one is willing to properly define. As the SC claimed in its 1978 decision regarding the airing of George Carlin’s infamous monologue, “indecency is largely a function of context – it cannot be adequately judged in the abstract”.

So we can’t define indecency, but we know it when we see it? Riiiight.

The truth of the matter is that the function that determines indecency in the Supreme Court’s eyes, the one they use to evaluate the properties of the message and its context, can be abstractly defined and abstractly implemented. If it exists, it is necessarily the case that it can be so defined.

The truth is that people don’t like to bring implicit reasoning into rational awareness even in the best of times, and especially not when they know their reasoning won’t survive the analysis.

As best as I can determine, the standard being applied is that: something is ‘indecent’ if it violates certain societal taboos in a way that weakens those strictures in the public mind. If an expletive slips out in what appears to be an accidental self-censorship failure, and the speaker is aghast, it will be considered offensive but not indecent. If it appears to be done intentionally, or without concern at violating the asserted norm, it’s indecent. If it’s repeated enough for people to become accustomed to it, to lose its ’shock value’ and thus weaken the response to the taboo violation, it’s indecent. The key matter is the respect for the authority of society’s norms (or the lack thereof).

That isn’t a suitable matter for governmental regulation, especially not in a country in which freedom of expression is a guaranteed right. Which is probably why no one wants to acknowledge what the standard is.

By Any Other Name

One of the most important features of language is that there is always more than one way to talk about something.  Two very different descriptions can refer to precisely the same thing.

The way we determine whether two statements have the same subject is not to examine any property they have themselves, but by checking their implications.  If every implication of one is also implied by the other, and vice versa, we say they express the same thing.  If not, they are different.

Names, labels, descriptions – they are all the same in that what is important about them is what they refer to, not what they are.  This is key:  if we cannot say what implications a word or a phrase has, it has no meaning, and we cannot use it in a meaningful way.

As elementary as these points are, they are not widely appreciated, and rarely acknowledged.

Volunteer Tomato?

I grew two Matt’s Wild Cherry tomato plants in plastic milk jugs last year, and the results were interesting.  I think one came from a seed that was the product of an unplanned cross between the wild currant it was supposed to be and a more regular variety of tomato, because it produced fruits somewhere between a quarter and a golf ball in size.  Currant tomatoes are usually closer to a nickel.

Anyway, I saved some seeds from the fruits, although I didn’t bother putting them through the proper fermentation procedure, as I wasn’t sure I wanted to replant them and figured I could always acquire more from a reputable source – hopefully, not one that would permit unplanned crosses in the named varieties for sale.

I recently noticed what is definitely a tomato plant growing under a spruce several yards down the road.  From the looks of it, it wasn’t planted, which implies it was dropped off by a bird.  I’ve heard of currant tomatoes sometimes reseeding themselves even through hard winters, but it’s unusual for them to spread, especially given that their home climate is so warm.

The plant is blooming now.  I may try to acquire a few fruits once it’s finished setting – any tomato that can survive and spread itself through the winters we have here is well worth checking out.

Working on Style

My writing style, particularly when I’m trying to convey an important idea, is unnecessarily complex and overwrought.

I’m working on it, though.

If you have any suggestions, please feel free to leave them in the comments.

Unconditional Love

‘Unconditional love’ is a phrase rather than a single word, but as it’s a unified concept I think it’s fair game.

The idea is perennially lauded as a high virtue, particularly among those singing the praises of pets, parents, and deities. (Finding the hidden associations between those concepts is left as an exercise for the student.) Any difficulty or uncertainty is bandaged over with the assertion that the entity in question gives/receives unconditional love, and so all problems are obviated.

I don’t think many people actually consider the implications of releasing any state from conditionality, much less love itself. If it is unconditional, it can have no necessary requirements. No change in the subject of the state can affect the state – so it wouldn’t matter what the subject does or becomes, it would be loved just as unconditionally. People find that comforting, not considering that the subject could be unrecognizably altered, or even replaced, and be just as loved as before. They want to be able to make mistakes or act against the love, and receive it regardless, but they also want to be loved for who and what they are – and those desirable qualities are mutually incompatible. If you’re loved without conditions, you aren’t what’s loved. The subject is arbitrary, the emotional response indiscriminate; your absence is appreciated just as deeply as your presence, the passion directed blindly at whatever happens to be available.

Responses are valuable because they are specific. People care about their pets’ love precisely because their loyalty and affection are NOT unconditional; the same is true of friends, parents, and lovers. Their object cannot be arbitrarily changed or replaced and receive the same response. Our behavior towards them must fit within certain parameters to maintain the state. We don’t value what is free, what we can acquire without effort or cost. We want to be considered special and unique, not interchangeable, and that requires that we be valued for specific properties we possess.

To unconditionally love is to be indifferent towards what is loved. When people love without conditions, they do it out of a desire for the changes that loving brings about in them, not out of concern or compassion for what is loved. It is no more a virtue for them to do this than any other form of self-stimulation. Unconditional love is fine, but it shouldn’t be done in public.

Be suspicious of the people who present this concept as meritorious! You should no more take their kindly intentions for granted than you should a drug dealer offering a free sample of his wares.

Pedagogy

Pedagogy

Pedagogy refers to the theory and practice of teaching; specifically, the teaching of children.

It comes from the Greek word paidagogos, the slave whose task it was to ensure that slave children were instructed in the trades and skills their masters required.

If you’ve spent any time in the American educational system, you’ll recognize how little things have changed.

Questionable Precedent

I’ve never understood the intended purpose of basing legal decisions on past precedent. If a ruling can be based in solid reasoning, precedent isn’t needed to support it. If the ruling cannot be based in solid reasoning, it is undesirable for it to be supported. I’ve sometimes been told that the goal is to maintain fairness by ensuring consistency – but repeating unjust actions for consistency’s sake is madness. How is making a mistake twice better than making it once?

Garlic

There are a number of plant crops that have lost some or all of their capacity to genetically recombine, either because of major genomic changes that prevent sexual reproduction but permit vegetative cloning, or long cultivation and resulting selection pressures. Bananas, peppermint, and orange daylilies are examples of the first group; true pepper, some varieties of potatoes, and garlic are among the latter.

Garlic, Allium sativum, is especially interesting. Many alliums produce by both seeds and bulb structures, and some also form aerial bulblets along with the flowers called ‘bulbils’. Garlic was no exception. But the process of growing flowers and producing seeds requires a lot of energy from a plant’s metabolism, and if bulb formation takes place at the same time as flowering, the plant tends to take resources away from the bulb and devote them to the flowers. Ancient peoples were aware of the general principle, and would often remove the flowering stalk to make the bulbs grow larger, as well as selecting the biggest bulbs to plant.

Over thousands of years, this resulted in varieties of garlic that were completely unable to reproduce sexually. ‘Softneck’ garlics don’t form flower stalks at all, and ‘hardneck’ garlics produce a flower stalk that is dominated almost completely by bulbils. Many plants are male-sterile, too, so even the few flower sections that develop normally are unlikely to produce viable seeds. There are hundreds of different varieties of garlic, but the plant has an unusual ability to adapt to local conditions after several seasons of growing in one place, and many of the characteristics that distinguish one variety from others are acquired responses to environmental factors. Genetic analysis suggests that there are only about ten distinct strains of garlic remaining, and the wild plant that crop populations were derived from no longer exists – probably driven into extinction through overharvesting.

This results in certain problems: without sexual recombination, the garlic plants have a harder time purging themselves of harmful mutations, and the limited population diversity means the species is vulnerable to new threats. Without the new combinations produced by sex, neither natural nor artificial selection pressures result in much adaptation. Garlic contains potent antibacterial and antifungal compounds, but they’re released only when the plant cells are crushed, and the species has known vulnerabilities to a variety of fungal diseases. Once enough spores build up in a plot of land, any garlic grown there will be withered and stunted – and because all of the plants are clones of their ancestors, resistance to the diseases doesn’t evolve.

In the sections of Asia where garlic originated, there are still closely-related wild populations, and some of the varieties grown there have many ‘primitive’ traits probably shared with the original progenitors of the species. Some researchers have managed to induce the production of fertile seed in plants of those varieties! Managing the task is tricky and tedious, though. See US patent 5746024. Once a few fertile seeds are produced, it becomes simpler and simpler to produce more with each generation, as the recombination makes it possible to select for fertility… assuming the population doesn’t carry sterility genes. And getting the first few seeds is quite difficult.

I’ve been attempting to reproduce the results with a strain of hardneck garlic I found growing wild in a nearby nature preserve. I don’t expect much for the first few years, but with a little luck, I might be able to produce new true varieties.

Morality

Since it seems the Overcoming Bias posters are either unwilling or unable to examine the concept of morality more closely, I’ll link to Wikipedia’s discussion of the concept.

The first sense is useless as a tool for understanding.  The set of all possible codes of conduct is complete and inconsistent, and being in possession of any particular code chosen at random is arbitrary.

The second sense, however, is somewhat more useful.  It’s not clear such a universal morality exists at all – but if it does, it must possess certain properties, given that rational entities are supposed to agree as to its nature.  It follows that the code itself would need to be derivable from basic principles, principles that are in common to all things within the universe.  Y’know, mathematics, that conceptual branch of physics.

What a shame that humanity has never developed a field of inquiry dedicated to the objective evaluation of different courses of action.  It sure would come in useful when trying to understand what behavioral guidelines founded upon universal principles would be like.

Love is not special

Of all the stupid things that have come up on Overcoming Bias, this is probably the stupidiest.

Love is not a miracle.  It is not a mystery.  It is not an unimaginable enigma beyond human ken.  It is not the light pouring through the windows of the universe.

It’s a behavior, an input-output pattern more complex than, but ultimately belonging to the same class as, the avoid-approach responses of paramecia.  Some conditions trigger receptors that alter the activity of cilia, and the movement of the whole changes.  That’s all.

This talk of ‘moral miracles’ isn’t reasoned argument.  It’s not even appeal to emotion.  It is conceptual heroin, mainlined directly into the mind’s eye.  Yudkowski has been pushing his tainted wares for years, and at this point he’s surrounded by people who tried his free first sample and came craving back for more.  There are only a few who question him, much less challenge him, and fewer who oppose him.

This sort of thought-abolishing, oblivion-seeking excess needs to be called out and acknowledged for what it is, in order to ameliorate the damage it does.  And it’s produced faster than it can be recognized and named.

There aren’t enough of us, out there.  There are far too many of them.