Do we Know Anything?

“I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.” -Bertrand Russell

I found this quote to be deeply insightful and thought provoking for reasons that may not seem obvious. For one, this quote makes apparent the irony proliferated by theists in their argument for God. As a typical theist would cry, “…but you can’t prove or disprove anything 100% and therefore it is wrong to say that God does not exist!” Considering that theists are willing to die in the name of God, they must believe in his existence to be true and therefore fall into their own trap.

But what struck me by surprise was the fact that Russell has no beliefs in which he finds certainly true. How can the guy who helped lay the groundwork of math be uncertain of every belief he has acquired? Is there really nothing we can be certain about? Instead of giving a cop-out answer like “I think, therefore I am” I sought after a more sufficient answer. From my findings, math and philosophy are inadequate in finding absolute truth and/or falsity.

Aristotle established classical logic in his attempt to use reason in finding true arguments. This logic allowed him to make propositional expressions true for all input values. All you would need to know is whether the value of your proposition is true or false and using a predefined function variable, you would arrive at a valid prepositional expression. These variables would be defined by truth tables like this conjunction for the p and q:

p	q	p ^q
T	T	T
T	F	F
F	T	F
F	F	F

According to this truth table, if your P is true and your Q is true then the expression ‘P and Q’ is true. Here we seem to have arrived at a way to know something for certain. Using ‘and’ as our truth function, shouldn’t we know for certain that (true P) ^ (true Q) must be a true expression? Shouldn’t this statement be has valid as saying 2 + 2 = 4? Sure, but don’t try extracting any real meaning from these equations and expect a true statement.

It turns out that this sort of syntactic manipulation is the closest thing to the truth you will get. Don’t get me wrong, it is quite useful to logically derive true statements via truth functions, but remember that, at most, you’re just throwing around symbols.

Whenever we input a value for P or Q, regardless of what logical variable (‘and’, ‘or’, ‘then’, etc) we choose, we are bound to reach a meaningless conclusion. For example, take P to be “I love cake,” which is true, and Q to be “I live in the US,” which is also true. Therefore the sentence “I love cake and I live in the US,” must be true. All right, am I ready to die for my love of cake yet? Nope

For a logical argument to be true, the premises must also be true. If I have one premise that happens to be meaningless and the other true, my functional argument will also be meaningless. Take my love for cake for example. If the cake has fruits on it I will no longer love the cake. Ah, I see my problem is in my weak definition of the word ‘cake’; I’ll just update my definition and be one my way to the truth. “I love cake that doesn’t have any fruits.” Here too I have encountered vagueness in my word choice. If I cut the fruit in half, is it still a fruit? Maybe, but if I cut it down to one atom, is it still a fruit?

Maybe I just need to find better word choice to escape vagueness. How about, “If I can lift 200 lbs, then I am strong” This sounds like a true statement, but it doesn’t reveal any truth of what it means to be strong. What if you give me 200 – .001 lbs, would I still be strong? How many times can I remove .001 lbs before I am no longer strong? No matter what proposition I fill in for P and Q, there will always be an undefined answer.

Even the mapping of mathematical equations to the natural world proves inadequate in revealing truths. We find the equation 2+2=4 as quite useful, but what does that reveal about truth or certainty in the real world? If I have two pairs of shoes, I'll get four shoes total. But what is a shoe? And what does combining this vague definition of a shoe with our equation even mean? The only thing we can know for certain is the syntactical manipulation in accordance with our predefined connectives.

But lets not forget:

“When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also admit that some things are much more nearly certain than others.” - Bertrand Russell

Celebrity Status

As I write this sentence, Bill Clinton is inside my university’s basketball stadium giving a free speech to the public (for once he is the one giving). As you can tell, I decided to stay home and save myself the opportunity of hearing another politician blabber about nothing for an hour. To be fair, I do respect the guy, but he’s just on a campaign trail for his ‘wife,’ Hillary. In my opinion, Bill could have had butt sex with the goatse guy and Hillary would still stay with Bill if she ever wanted a shot at the presidency - but this is aside from my point. What I really think is interesting about this momentous occasion is the anticipation.

The day of Bill’s arrival, everyone in school transformed into pre-teen Hanna Montana fans. Every crowd you passed by had the same topic of discussion, Bill Bill Bill. It’s not as if Bill was about to recite his equivalent of the Gettysburg Address. His speech would be no more profound then one he would give at a banquet fundraiser for blind people. The whole student body was too star-struck to care, but why?

This whole Clinton ordeal has led to an interesting social experiment. This coincidental experiment proves that people just wanted to be in Bill’s physical presence. Unlike most celebrity appearances, something of greater value is given to the audience. By ‘greater value’ I mean greater than the satisfaction of seeing the celebrity. When Hanna Montana fans go to Hanna’s concert they are presented with noise that they consider music. Bill’s event is more analogous to Paris Hilton reciting the alphabets in front of city hall. My fellow schoolmates weren’t looking forward to a speech with substance they are looking for Bill.

Why do we mindlessly flock after celebrities? A sociology major could give a good B+ answer to this question. More importantly, how can we use this human tendency to our own advantage? We learned from Bill’s appearance that people would flock towards a celebrity regardless of whether that celebrity has anything to offer other than his or her human flesh. Using this knowledge, you can easily get a girl at virtually any party.

First, have ten or so of your friends show up at the party before you do. As you enter, fashionably late, have all your friends parade around you as if you’re their best friend they haven’t seen since high school. After about ten minutes of this exercise you’ll turn into a mini celebrity. Girls will be naturally drawn to you for the rest of the night… and after that you’re on your own buddy.

America's Paranoia Strikes Again

Family Watchdog: a solution that barks at the problem without actually helping.

Take a look at this sinful city

Source

If you decide to live here you better make sure your kids are implanted with a state-of-the-art GPS because this town is smothered with perverts. If you haven’t noticed, this city is at the heart of Silicon Valley, a home for plenty of upper and middle class folk. Knowledge of where their local children humpers live has no affect on their lives aside for giving them another reason to be scared to leave the house.

If you had the choice between living next door to a child molester or a computer programmer, whom would you choose? Unless you have an irrational fear of computer programmers, like most girls, you would probably choose to live next to them. Now consider the same question with this added stipulation: the child molester molested his last child at the age of 21 and now he is 30. He has no criminal record aside from the time he played ‘Guess the Animal’ with a blindfolded 9-year-old girl. 9 years after the little girl correctly guessed ‘human,’ the molester has been a law-abiding citizen with his only vice of being too nice.

For the majority of Americans, this stipulation has no affect on their initial answer yet they still live amongst hundreds of sex offenders. Americans voted for the sex offender registry to be open to the public. The problem with sex offenders is that their motives aren’t resultant of their respective economic status. The upper and middle class believe they can avoid robberies and gang violence by moving to a ‘nicer’ neighborhood. These ‘nice’ neighborhoods didn’t get nice on their own. These neighborhoods must be expensive enough in order to reach the golden price that is just high enough to segregate all those who are ‘not nice’. Americans obsessed with safety are willing to dish out a large sum for their bubble not to burst.

Sex offenders, unlike gang members, return to their ‘nice’ suburban homes following their time in prison. People with money and political power suddenly have another incentive for being paranoid about their family’s security. Like most of the governments’ attempts to make us safer, they end up offering an illusion of safety in exchange for our personal freedoms. A national sex offender registry is no different.

Given this futile attempt to actually make our neighborhoods safer, we are left with a bunch of sex offenders suffering severe embarrassment and isolation for a crime they have already paid for. Why don’t the Americans vote for a public registry of all felons? Why do ex sex offenders pose such a bigger threat? Americans love to watch these people be nationally embarrassed as they reinforce their children’s force field. But they don’t realize this punishment is not worth a crime that is already paid for.

The Significance of Dreams

“I have a dream that one day I will stand bare-naked in front of a laughing crowd not able to escape because my legs wouldn’t let me run.” – MLKjr.

Presenting this version of an ‘I have a dream’ speech wouldn’t be nearly as effective in starting a civil rights movement as the original. On the other hand, it's much more likely that MLK literally had this dream. Nakedness in a public place and immobility are two examples of the most common dreams we have. Other common dreams include: the sensation of falling, failing a test in school, being late for something, losing teeth, inability to speak, and flying.

We often think that our dreams are wacky thoughts so obscure they must exist uniquely in our minds. As special as we may think our dreams are, many people experience the same exact dreams. Because these recurring dreams have an intercultural presence, it wouldn’t be far-fetched to assume that evolution is partially responsible.

Most of us forget our dreams or don’t let it affect our waking life. Natural selection has favored some recurring dreams over others so maybe dreams have more significance in our lives than we think. What could be the evolutionary explanation for these dreams? Maybe those hippie dream interpreters are on to something... or maybe not.

In my opinion, the different interpretations of these dreams are useless. Our ancient ancestors didn’t rely on dream interpreters to aid their survival. The only significance that can be extracted from a dream is dependent on the dreamer’s own experience and interpretation of the dream. Different people extract different meanings for the same dream, but in each one of these universal dreams the dreamer is having a similar negative experience.

The Hypotheses:

1) Dreaming up one of these universal dreams can expose you to the emotional consequences of experiencing these things in reality. It is easy to see how an increased fear of falling or losing teeth would increase your survival.

2) Following a frightening dream you may wake up in a panicked/alert state. Back in the hunter-gatherer days, these dreams could serve as the pre-historic coffee in the morning. When danger is more eminent, a natural ‘pick-me-up’ could mean the difference between life and death.

Don’t Pick your Girl like you Pick your Phone!

Ever purchase something you’ve really wanted only to get bored of it in a month or two? For example, you just bought a new iPhone and all its must-have accessories. During first week following your purchase, your iPhone is never idle as you adoringly fidget with its user-addicting interface. A month later all the glamour of having an iPhone deteriorates and all you do is complain about how it’s an inadequate phone. By month two you already have your eye on a newer sexier phone.

Finding out why some of us experience such turmoil can teach us a thing or two about how to choose our future mates. The anecdote above may have a striking resemblance to your last relationship with a person. You just hooked up with a girl or guy and after two months of being together you’re bored and want a new partner. Lets further examine how purchasing an iPhone is analogous to hooking up with a girl.

Lets begin by investigating how the consumer values the iPhone prior to purchasing it. There are two interesting components in the consumer’s valuing function 1) practical value 2) emotional value. The practical value equals the amount of money the consumer is willing to pay for the iPhone’s usefulness. A good way to measure this is by looking at the iPhone’s closest and cheapest substitute.

The emotional value is the difference between the price paid for the iPhone and the practical value i.e. it’s the added value that is not related to the phone’s usefulness. There are several factors that create this value, some of which include: the showing off factor, being the first to have a new technology factor, cool factor, status symbol, and other emotionally induced factors. The problem is that time is an enemy of emotional value. Upon purchasing an iPhone you might be paying $200 beyond the practical value. A month later that $200 could potentially depreciate to $10.

If you prefer not to see you assets or relationships devalue within a month, then you need to look beyond the glamour. Become self-aware of the emotional value you have built yourself and decide if it’s still worth it. Before investing a lot of time and effort on a girl or guy, ask yourself if the initial investment is worth it in the long-run haul. When the excitement wears off, will he or she ‘depreciate’ in value within a month?

The lesson:

If your iPhone will only be worth $200 in the end of the month, don’t pay $400 for it.

If your mate will turn out to be a dud in the end of the month, don’t invest your time and effort in them in the first place.