Category Archives: nature

Matt Yglesias’ Run-of-The Mill Specieism

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Matt Yglesias scoffed at a commenter who pointed out that requiring companies to provide maternity leave constitutes a subsidy for having children, excess children is bad for the planet and therefore we should remove such subsidies:

The beginning of wisdom here is to note that pollution isn’t “bad for the planet.” The planet is a gigantic roughly spherical chunk of rocks that can easily survive whatever level of greenhouse gas emissions or whatever else we care to pump into the atmosphere. The big picture ecological threat is a threat to human beings [...] Radical population reduction would sharply reduce the quantity of anthropogenic ecological impacts, but to what end? The goal needs to be to reconfigure human activity in order to make it sustainable over a longer time horizon.

I won’t get into how I feel about the conservative notion that it’s the government’s job to encourage people to live the standard American lifestyle – suburbs, cars and kids – or, indeed, any lifestyle* beyond to say that I’m not exactly a fan and that he neglects that lower population is a saner alternative to lifestyle adjustments alone for ecological issues. I’ll just address the specieism his post espouses and the oversimplification of what exactly our planet is and does.

If you take a raccoon from the woods, take it into your home and then drown it, you will rightly face animal cruelty charges (among others)**. If you purchase property that is habitat to a hundred raccoons and flood it to provide a reservoir, somehow the mass cruelty flies under the radar. This of course makes no sense. If cruelty to one animal is indefensible, then cruelty to many is more so.

Biodiversity itself may only be of instrumental value. Just like there isn’t much of a difference morally between a mass murder of 1000 individuals and genocide consisting of 1000 individuals, there isn’t that much of a reason to get worked up about minor biodiversity loss itself so long as it is eventually recovered and there remains enough in the present time. However, habitat destruction and the reduction of numbers means that individual sentient organisms are starving to death or otherwise dying in a bad way or living a more impoverished existence. For this reason, any environmentalism that doesn’t make the welfare/rights of all beings, not just humans, central isn’t worth discussing. Matt Yglesias seems to be suggesting we all need to do our part to use less resources to make room for more people. This fails because as we can see it disregards the welfare of wildlife and it also fails because it takes a total view of happiness. Two people living okay existences aren’t really better than one person living a fabulous existence. In a true eco-utopia, everyone will have plenty of unharmed wilderness to explore and achieve oneness.

Another minor point is his assertion that the planet is just “a spherical chunk of rocks.” Clearly, when people say planet, they are not referring to its geology, though the bulk of the mass is, indeed, lifeless silica and minerals. They are referring, of course, to the ecosphere, which supports us and all the other life on the planet. It is perhaps of only instrumental value but very great value indeed. If we fix up Señor Yglesias’ comments accordingly, we still don’t see a powerful argument to reduce humanity to the stone age nor to view children as little packets of evil (however annoying they may be), but you also certainly don’t come to the conclusion that child rearing, something people gladly voluntarily do anyway, needs to be subsidized so as to encourage it anymore than our biology and existing social pressures already do.

* I don’t want zen fascists telling me to live in an apartment, ride the bus and not have kids either.
** Actually, this depends on the jurisdiction. If you at least feed the raccoon first, it will then be your [illegal] pet that you are being cruel to. If you at least agree that someone ought to get in trouble for kidnapping, then drowning a raccoon, then you should agree with my logic, even if the law isn’t quite like I make it sound.

What Good is “No Gas Day” Supposed to do?

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It would be so entertaining to see well-meaning people engage in some sort of symbolic act that does nothing material other than “sending a message” were the joke not so tired. Seriously. What the hell good is going to the gas station on Wednesday or Friday instead going to do? (incidentally, I won’t run out of gas until this weekend and even that’s only because I’m going way out to the desert) It is exactly like meatless Mondays. How about meatless every day of the week except for Mondays? How about no gas week instead of no gas day? If there is any value to be had in these symbolic demonstrations (and that’s a pretty big if), it is this – it could be a chance to genuinely try out a habit or lifestyle or to think about something one generally avoids thinking about. Maybe.

What most bothers me about the whole concept isn’t the empty symbolism; I’m used to that and expect such from facebookistan. It is that it is yet another example of this cognitive dissonance I too often see in our movement – conflating the very different concerns of the health of the planet on one hand with very separate egalitarian goals, however laudable, on the other. The protest is about gas prices. If the prices are high, great. Maybe alternatives will finally be viable in the market. Don’t get me wrong; there is reason for environmentalists to protest gas prices – for being too low. It’s time to end the gas subsidies, end our oil diplomacy (and “diplomacy”) and end the socialization of costs where otherwise Americans’ stinginess (a force that knows no parallel) might otherwise prevent unwise use of scarce resources.

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=158856697501684

Soil Pill

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My wife tells me I’m 天の邪鬼, meaning I go out of my way to be strange or not conform. Perhaps from a Japanese perspective I am. Maybe she’s right. All I know is I’ve resisted every temptation to blog about the spill. What can be said about it that hasn’t been said? Well, I have come to realize that it’s time to conform and give my two cents, though it may take wading through everyone and their dog’s opinion to find the gem that is mine. The real injustice I’m seeing, the reason I must write, is that, by the very nature of environmental catastrophes and our system, it’s impossible for all those affected to be duly compromised for damages done to them as well as for damages done to non-humans (turtles, manatees) to be duly punished, but I’ll defer the issue about critters for now.

Am I on crazy pills? Everyone I know misses that he's obviously a sea sponge made out to look like a household sponge. It's called artistic license!

Many people say that the best salve for environmental issues is strict enforcement of property rights with activists legally assisting those affected by pollution, etc. It’s worth a try as state environmentalism causes people who otherwise would want to do their part to protect the planet to instead resent the whole movement and feel as if it were forced upon them*. If our system was just, it should be possible for everyone along the gulf coast (and not just in America, but even in other islands sufficiently close to be affected) to do a class-action lawsuit against BP and actually get compensated for the damages. If BP truly believed this was possible, they would have made sure no one cut any corners in meeting safety regulations or, in the absence of safety regulations, would probably have paid to develop their own. Experience tells us that instead of this happening, the rabid pragmatists in our legal system won’t allow for a company that’s an important part of the economy to be utterly destroyed by mere tort. Exxon managed to delay and delay having to pay and managed to get only a slap on the wrist in the end, despite decimating an entire community and doing untold damages to wildlife. Even the ship is alive and well, living on as the the Dong Fang Ocean. This, however isn’t the bigger problem since it’s “simply” a matter of not having a state that claims to act in the interests of the people, but instead acts in the interests of the bureaucrats’ friends. No, the bigger problem is that cases like this amount to such a tiny fraction of the depreciation of natural resources. Wetlands, for example, that make up the invisible bedrock to our economy by performing services we’d pay as much as necessary to get if it wasn’t free, are being nickel and dimed to oblivion by numerous polluters and it’s affects are divided equally by everyone in the vicinity.

You may own a piece of property and essentially do with it as you wish, but on what grounds can you be said to own the air above it or the water below it? These things are passing through and as you use and abuse these things, you automatically damage everyone else’s property. Everyone’s part of the burden is sufficiently small that it’s not worth it for them to seek damages. If that alone were the problem, I think we would have a problem that everyone can live with. Of course the market is going to have negative externalities and if it’s sufficiently minor, there’s no need to bother addressing it. However, not just what I do on my property to the air, but what every single manufacturer contributes to the air adds up to something that harms peoples’ health and destroys the beauty of un”improved” land. Though I said I’ll defer the issue, let’s not forget what we do to creatures who no doubt can suffer, but lack the ability to legally defend themselves. To such situations, I propose an alternative.

Earlier, I blogged about my idea of EcoTax, which turns out to be very similar to Henry George’s idea, though with important differences. I’ll post later with an updated version of my idea, but to summarize, I propose as a practical alternative to numerous mini-torts the government** having an alternate plan for companies (or individuals – a company is just a bunch of individuals) that must pollute as part of their operations. For such companies, they can opt to, instead of being subject to numerous torts, which they will then be forced to actually pay up on, they can simply pay in proportion to how much they pollute, and the funds shared with everyone. This will make it cost to pollute and it will make products that carry a heavier eco-burden to reflect more accurately their ecological costs. The market, which is to say, the creativity of everyone working together, will then work towards solving ecological problems in a bottom-up way, instead of us hoping that the commands from a distant bureaucracy, funded and controlled by elites is the right one, as it would be the one we’ll all be stuck with. Furthermore, it will let people have their freedom to live as they choose rather than a specific brand of green living forced on them.

* There are other problems with state environmentalism too, like the fact that the government bureaucrats and their private supporters don’t have the spotted owl’s best interests at heart.

** The government or whatever legal order(s) there may be. My basic idea is perfectly compatible with a libertarian society. It doesn’t need an army to prop it up!

Livable Hamlets

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Lately, I’m scouring statistics to find places to move to and really just feed my curiosity. Going through city-data’s top 101 lists and was curious which places have the most people walking to work (once I saw the list existed). Naturally, a great many of them are military bases, but I also see that most of them tend to be small towns, not the dense metropolises that make up the wet dreams of the new urbanists.

http://www.city-data.com/top2/h39.html

Newscientist: Horizontal and vertical: The evolution of evolution

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http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527441.500-horizontal-and-vertical-the-evolution-of-evolution.html?full=true&print=true

Lately, I’m increasingly thinking, especially after reading this article, that evolutionary computing would benefit greatly from using a more bacterial type of evolution, where genes are shared between often unrelated organisms, rather than brute inheritance. Another way of looking at it, is it might be good to deal with the complexities of subroutine sharing (which functional programming would make easier) than the complexities of sexual reproduction which make my eyes glaze over to read the solutions offered for. Maybe I’m just not clever enough (my earlier post on genetic programming had a little ruby script and it only uses asexual reproduction).

I am skeptical of the article’s claim that the shared genetic code of all organisms must mean that genes were shared between organisms like bacterium do today. Firstly, bacterium don’t all share some common genes due to the passing of genes between species as it is. Secondly, clade evolution – where clades that are just better at evolving edge out others over time could be sufficient explanation. Surely DNA-based life had immense advantages over life with less fault-tolerant code. Just the same, the article makes a good point that biologists are, being human macro-centric – they focus on multi-cellular organisms even though most of the biomass, even more of the variety, along with the vast, vast majority of the history of life on this planet, is prokaryotic.

Thoughts on “Avatar”

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Today, I had to see what all the buzz was about. Me and my wife saw Avatar in 3D before she had to go to work. The  3D was a nice effect, but after over two hours of that, I had pretty bad motion sickness getting out of the theater. I think I’d enjoy the movie more minus the nausea.

spoiler alert ** do not continue if you don’t want the plot revealed (this is really intended reading for people who watched the movie anyway, not a proper review; I don’t do movie reviews)

Continue reading →

My Proposal – EcoTax

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There is a deep, serious flaw in our tax system – it is too damn complicated. Which is to say, administrative costs dig in to what revenue it brings in and it is spurious (which means it is unfair). Whatever incentives and breaks might be won for the sake of the lower classes, there is an inherent bias in favor of those who can afford good accountants. Also, the process of having a governmental cash-ectomy would at least be less painful if it was quick.

There are a number of tax reforms, mostly proposed by the Right, to make things “fair” (same law applies to everyone) and simple. Some of them are quite ingenious and appealing, but I’ll explain why they all suck and mine is better (even though I’m not an economist… I hope a real economist gets a hold of the idea and fills in the cracks). I for one am not a right-winger (quite the opposite) but rather I think like a programmer. Where I see spaghetti code, I want to untie it and I see more spaghetti in our legal system than in an Italian restaurant (zing!)

FairTax

This taxes products at the end of the value chain – when purchased by the end-user. This replaces all the complicated mess of even paying taxes with a tax on final goods sold. The beautiful part is ordinary people don’t have to fill out paperwork. If you own a business, you simply have to pay the sales tax on what you sell. Genius. One problem with this is that, naturally, as you get richer, the proportion of your money you use to buy things decreases (the likes of MC Hammer and Steve Martin’s character in The Jerk notwithstanding). In this way, it disproportionately taxes the poor. FairTax partially gets around this through (p)rebates to families based on income.

On the Wikipedia article, you’ll see this picture. Yeah, that’s what I mean by untying spaghetti code. All those books are our current tax code, and that man is holding FairTax. Awesome.

Negative Income Tax

I believe this was Milton Friedman’s brainchild or at least he’s commonly associated with it. I think it sort of fell out of fashion among Libertarians in to FairTax, but it is also a good system. You pay the government a fixed percentage of your income, minus a fixed amount, the percentage and amount being the same for _everyone_. If it happens to be a negative amount (which happens if your income divided by the percentage is less than the fixed amount), the government pays you. Your tax is a linear equation. If you took math in middle school you are halfway to being a CPA. Awesome.

The system is, however, likely to be a lightning rod for fraud. Tax evasion now is simply a loss of income for the government (and therefor taxpayers), but if you could convince the government you make nothing, you automatically receive welfare. This also still has the disadvantage of making every citizen go through the trouble of filling their taxes. Okay, next.

EcoTax

Now to my proposal, EcoTax. Turn FairTax on its head. Instead of only taxing things at the end-product level, we only tax raw materials as they are taken out of the Earth. We’re not talking about any tariffs right now, since that’s complicated and really another subject. As far as product created within America is concerned, the tax is at the beginning and it’s up to these primary producers (homotrophes, to use an analogy to ecology) to increase their prices to offset their costs. In this way, the costs of things to a greater degree reflect their true ecological costs. This would naturally mean no subsidies for farmers (rather, they would be taxed for the water and soil they use).

The way EcoTax would work is this: the EPA would be given a new job assess the degrees to which various natural resources are renewable, the degree to which various activities are harmful to human health, etc. They will make no fiscal decision, but rather calculate a schedule of ratios. The income needed by the government to meet its operations and economic predictions will be factored in to create a multiplier. The taxes for the different activities will simply be the ratio in question times the grand multiplier. It’s so simple. The only thing an accountant needs is the latest copy of this (which the government should supply as a free PDF, too). Perhaps the government could supply free software with source code for this purpose to make it even simpler. The important thing is for the ratios to not be politically determined or for other concerns to be taken into account (that’s the job of politicians setting fiscal policy on how to use revenue and what to set the multiplier to).

Note this is related to the idea of Ecotax (or Pigovian taxes in general), but it’s different (you can tell because I capitalize the T). The best way to summarize the difference is this: I propose the only tax being Ecotaxes and the rationale is slightly different. The capital in the free market is derived from two main sources – labor and natural resources. I say you own that which your labor created, but that which is derived from our common natural heritage or which clearly has a negative externality you don’t truly own. Certainly, no one owns the atmosphere, though a section of it will be on your land at any given time and a part of the water table, which you also don’t own, may happen to be under your property. I don’t want to get into the specifics of well rights, etc, but just to point out the obvious fact that, as aging hippie douche would say “you can’t own the ocean, man!”

EcoTax isn’t meant to be the panacea of environmental protection. Rather, we’re removing the artificial economic incentive to destroy that which you do not own. Protecting our species’ viability, wild places, natural habitats and so on cannot rely entirely on the government. Indeed, to the degree people value these things (which they should), they shall donate to private charities that buy up land, such as the Nature Conservancy. The government must not force people to be eco-conscious (it’s not the government’s job to make people do the right thing all the time), but to protect that which is everyone’s property from the few.

The biggest drawback I can see with this is there may be a drop in revenue unless the multiplier is set high enough to put some good companies out of business. There should be a transition period where the old scheme is slowly replaced with the new to give people a chance to switch to other industries. There could temporarily be harsher tariffs against countries that use too much farming subsidies to give our companies enough time to compensate, then the tariffs must be dropped again. This may also make things hard on small farmers, but that could be remedied by in the short term paying for Dutch farmers to teach Americans better efficient farming techniques. A purist Libertarian may scoff at the idea that government intervention is needed to counter the ill effects of government intervention, but it is a fact. “Government intervention” refers to too broad a category for that scoff to be taken at face value.

Evolution… Politically Correct?

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I was in the book store last weekend (one of my favorite places, of course!) and looking through the biology section to see if there’s something else I should read for the fun of it. As usual, the Biology section contains things that should be filed under “politics” or “fiction” – the likes of Dembsky and Behe – that have to be sifted through to find actual science books (I’m tempted by Gould’s outrageously thick “The Structure of Evolutionary Theory”… maybe after I finish another bio class or so…) One of these mis-filed political tomes was The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism... Now, I’ve seen that cover a million times and never thought much of it, other than what any rational thinking person would think, “yeah, withhold the politically,” but there’s another outrageous claim embedded in the title that occurred to me – the notion that natural selection is politically correct or in any way liberal.

Creationists and their ilk make this claim that Darwinism is a liberal conspiracy almost in the same breath as saying that it justified social Darwinism, a nebulous term except in that it refers exclusively to Right-wing ideologies. I have to ask – which is it? Liberals are all kinds of things but we’re certainly not social Darwinists. The answer is it is not a liberal conspiracy, but there were individuals who committed the naturalistic fallacy (deriving an ought from an is) and advocated modeling society after evolution – a mindless process that produces mostly extinctions and a lot of misery and pain. Take a breath. A bunch of animals throughout the world just met their bloody end to the claw. The theory of natural selection tells us how things got the way they are, but it’s certainly no model on how things ought to be – it’s the reason why Darwin’s rottweiler, Dawkins, says, “I am a passionate Darwinian when it comes to the science of how life has actually evolved, but a passionate ANTI-Darwinian when it comes to the politics of how humans ought to behave.” Indeed. Remember – a fact can never be good or evil, but almost always useful. At worst, a fact is of little use. That is the underlying philosophy behind science. It would only ever break down if we were living in a Lovecraftian universe where the truth drives men mad.

“Fair enough,” you might say, “well-meaning liberals are planting the seeds of social Darwinism because they’re a bunch of Godless atheists and their atheism is the reason they want to teach Darwinism.” Yes, the headwaters of this notion that there is something liberal about Darwinism must be the association with atheism. I don’t know if anyone told these guys, but most liberals (in America, anyway) are not atheists. In being an atheist, I am unusual among liberals (though that’s the least of my divergence with mainstream liberals). Don’t confuse “secular” with “atheist”. Secular is a rather broad term that includes non-religious people as well as religious people who don’t believe society should be centered around religion. Liberals don’t want to hurt people’s feelings; this is the essence of what “politically correct” means. They don’t want to tell people that their own culture’s beliefs are wrong. This leads me to my last point here – the biggest threat to students getting a good education in “sensitive” subjects, beyond the barriers that might otherwise exist for any subject, isn’t creationists, but overly careful, well-meaning, politically-correct liberal teachers.

僕の生物工学を学ぶ理由

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僕がもうビジネスの学士学位を持ってて、もうコンピュータープログラマーです。もう生物学を勉強しています。学位が要らなそうで、夜の授業には忙しそうから友達がよく「なんで生物工学を学んでる？」と聞きます。このポーストで答えます。理由は以下です。

僕は大きい子供です。趣味が物を作ることです。プログラミングを習う理由はテレビゲームを作りたかったからです。仕事がプログラマーなのにまだプログラムを作るのが楽しいです。だから、発明家になりたいです。色んな能力を集めたら、いい有名な発明家になれると思います。実はプログラミング力と生物工学が合うと思います。特にメディカルデバイスには特に便利です。虫よりもちっちゃいロボットを人間の体に通って何か直すロボットなどを作りたいです。

暗い未来を防ぎたい理由もあります。だんだん地球の人口が増えています。それで、餓死が増えています。森とかが経ています。それが悪いことは悪いけど、科学技術の新法によって防げます。料理オタクだから、よく貧乏のアフリカの村を何か発明した生物工学で救済するイメージを見ます。人間が必要なビタミン１００％のトウモロコシを作りたいです。などなどなど。

最後に生物が確かに好きです。僕には水草が気持ち悪くないです。１週間に３回ぐらい、朝に森の中にジョッギングします。太っているアメリカ人にならないためだけじゃなくて、自然に親しむためです。僕は宗教的じゃないです。逆に無神論だけど、自然の経験がよく僕には宗教的です。教会より大きい杉、天使より多い鳥、神様よりずっと理解すれば理解するほど理解できない宇宙。

Is O.J. Simpson the Victim of Brain Damage?

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Study Indicates Higher Rate of Dementia in Former N.F.L. Players – NYTimes.com

One of the first things I thought upon seeing this is, oh shit, OJ probably went crazy from too many concussions. People often forget the obvious fact that murder isn’t something done by mentally healthy people. Sure, if you go to jail, you are legally sane, which is to say sane enough to know what you did is wrong, but almost always there is a pathology at the headwaters of the deed. I can’t help but wonder if a tackle too many knocked something loose upstairs.

Thoughts on Forest Fires

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Look at all the fancy folk of La Cañada Flintridge worrying about their expensive homes in the foothills. Yes, the cost of proximity to the forest is the very wildness that draws them – nature, in her sheer spontaneity may bring bright flames just as well as she might bring songbirds, but I cannot say that they are taking the good with the bad. The good and the bad are the same substance. To love nature is to love her for all her “faults”, for you couldn’t love only the parts of her that aren’t so destructive anymore than you could only love certain parts of your friend or lover. If you only love parts, you have no relationship to the whole. I like Lewis Black’s comedy, but that doesn’t mean I like him as a person, for I do not know the person except through the comedy itself.

Okay, great, so the wealthy fools really just love greenery and hummingbirds sipping at their invasive backyard plants. They also like coyotes and cougars (when they keep their distance) and rivers and steep terrain. How could they like so many things that spring from nature and not nature herself? No, they must have an admiration for nature (the biophilia we all have in us), for I even see them admiring the same fire that even still threatens their homes. Part of them may see the fires as a mistake – a threat to the stasis that doesn’t exist they erroneously equate with the “balance of nature” and a threat to their investments – but at the same times I see them walking along foothill with cameras. The spectacle of the fire is beautiful in itself, even as it destroys so much beauty. Even as it may hurt people and destroy houses. Even as it surely is bringing countless forest creatures to a twisting, agonizing end, their only crime being being at the wrong place, time.

My ambivalence towards forest fires is a reflection of the paradox (not struggle nor contradiction) of when we materialists try to be spiritual. There is a sense of awe one can get from the natural world, but at the same time, there is also surely a sense that the world is deficient (surely it isn’t made with us in mind). Both sides of this coin are very eloquently and hilariously, respectively, pronounced by negro Carl Sagan, a.k.a. Niel DeGrasse Tyson:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJOpDLjpSYI

a final “sermon” on cosmic perspectives

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_nqySMvkcw

stupid design

I heard that 3 homes burnt down that were “deep in the … forest.” I wonder what it’s like to have such a home. I would love to have a cabin in the woods. The cost of such would be the possibility of having to build it again if a fire goes through. I surely wouldn’t be foolish enough to put more possessions I care about in it than I could fit in my Corolla. Actually, being required to keep it simple sounds fun. Hmmm…

Oh, lastly, here’s a crappy view of the fire that’s currently blazing near my place. Psh.

Naturalistic Animism, Part II

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Here is a simpler argument for a notion I have I call “Naturalistic Animism,” which is a nod to Spinoza‘s “Naturalistic Pantheism.” My earlier post was here. It’s also referred to in Bron Taylor’s writings on “Dark Green Religion,” meaning the idea itself isn’t my invention, though at one point I thought it might be.

There is no supernatural spark, no dual nature to make a thing have life rather than not. There also isn’t a specific definition of life that is universally accepted in the scientific community, though there are characteristics we can observe – many orders of magnitude more complex and organized than non-life, being able to maintain homeostasis and being able to reproduce and evolve. There are other, more specific chemical characteristics, but they may not be universal to all life, though they may be for all terrestrial life. In any event, what we have isn’t a strict definition, but some general characteristics that some non-life could be said to have, but just to a lesser degree. We know of entities such as prions and viruses, though their origins are with what we generally recognize to be life (bacterium or rogue DNA sequences that become parasitic). However, if we go back to the beginning of life (where things get more speculative, of course), there would have been non-life becoming more and more like life and then life becoming less and less like non-life.

Life and non-life, then, are of the same substance and type, differing only in degree. This is an important realization as it may turn out, for example, that universes are subject to a crude form of evolution, with more stable universes such as ours becoming more common in time (this notion is known as the hard anthropic principle). Certainly, entities that are inherently more stable persist and those that don’t, don’t. Who knows what whacky particles were there at the big bang for just a few gazillionths of a second? This is so obvious, it’s hardly worth mentioning except for the fact that this basic property of matter is the first step it always must take towards becoming life. The universe weeds out the unstable. Evolvability evolves and when it reaches a certain threshold, what we all agree to be life then begins. This is when an entity can create copies of itself with unprecedented accuracy, though it only gets better at doing this as time goes on.

Now, we like to think there is something special about life and that, all other considerations being equal, it should deserve consideration. It seems we live in a world like what Zoroaster described, except we know that in the end it is instead the wicked Ahriman who prevails – our universe is doomed to a thermodynamic death where no life is possible. The fact that I just depressed you with that analogy means that you, too, see value in life! Even if we humans become extinct, we hope that life on our planet or somewhere else can at least give birth to some other beings that can contemplate the universe and be depressed by it.

The problem we run into is that the laws of physics tell us that life isn’t anything special (well, it kind of is, but only in the sense that humans are special – we’re simply more intelligent, more social – the “spark” is a difference in degree!). This basic notion is what is called hylozoism (everything is alive or life and non-life are indistinguishable – this term is a doozy and it’s really only defined in a few writings, most of which seem to be attacking the notion). Reality is however the fuck it wants to be, but how we describe reality is up to us, so long as we’re not misleading or lying to ourselves (like religion tends to, almost without exception). Whether we say that life is nothing or whether we elevate the non-life to the status of living – animism – is a spiritual, not scientific question and I make the claim that it is not deception to say that the universe is alive or that it is at least filled with proto-life and pseudo-life everywhere. I would almost go as far to say that it is an enlightening idea that will let us see intuitively what will one day be known concretely about the universe.

Spirituality through nature. It’s not just for dirty hippies, weirdoes and head hunters.

Strange! Humans Glow in Visible Light – Yahoo! News

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Strange! Humans Glow in Visible Light – Yahoo! News

Looking at the last few paragraphs – isn’t it so Japanese to look for problems by looking at the light coming from bodies? We Westerners, informed by perverted notions such as Luther’s that the soul and the body are seperate entities, the latter just happening to contain the former, always want to look at the individual parts.

I Created Life!

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Here is a ruby script I quickly whipped up to teach myself genetic programming/evolutionary programming, and also to demonstrate basic principles of biology (please see below to see how it works.. if you’re on my front page, click to read more first). I think I’m going to write something more sophisticated in erlang (I don’t know erlang, but I’m intrigued) after I get further down the road in gp, but here’s what I quickly whipped up. Since writing it, I have started reading A Field Guide to Genetic Programming and already notice some things I should have done a little different. But in some respects, having a simple string of characters change their role in different modes is elegant and I think I prefer that way of doing things, despite shortfalls in statistical bias. Here are some observations I have at this point:

I know the people researching gp are really smart, so there’s probably something I’m missing, but I don’t see how genetic programming is supposed to quickly find solutions. Evolution is as slow as molasses. You need to dig through millions of years of dirt to see actual changes. I can only see gp quickly finding solutions if the process is being run continually, with multiple challenges or “resources”. I was glad to see, after having this thought, mention of multi-objective (5.1.3) and coevolution (5.4) in the book. It makes me think I’m on the right track. I also remember a while back reading in the article Discover had about Avida that when there was only one resource, one species would quickly capitalize on that and then the evolution would stagnate, but having multiple resources would create diversity and even better solutions at attacking that one resource. The ability of organisms to repurpose adaptations is important in evolution and without it, most complexity would not have been possible.

This leads me to another point. It seems gp works best when it works the most like evolution in the real world works. The rate of mutation is low and, despite my initial intuitions that a high mutation rate would lead to a good solution more quickly, I found that it was actually harmful to do so. Even though, in this script, there is a bias towards shorter programs (the longer the chromosomes, the more calories it takes to create just one offspring), when I had a higher mutation rate, like, say, 1 out of 5 copies, the length of the genes would get really, really long as a defense against mutations. This could happen because if the last parenthesis of the mini-lisp program is closed prematurely, the rest of the genes are ignored. Junk dna. In my program, at least, junk dna was a defense against mutation since I would get really short programs that have long tails of junk after them, but decreasing the mutation rate shrunk those tails down to almost insignificant. Weird. Please try downloading this and edit it to see for yourself.

While mutations should be rare, it helps to have variety. I did just substitutions at first and it worked, but it took a while. I also added stutters, insertions and deletions. Once I added stutters, it helped a lot! Even before adding stutters, I found that, when the “challenge” was 6 * x, I would get x + x + x + x + x and something like 7 * x competing with each other for a long time (5x or 7x often becomes the leading candidate after a few generations and it takes forever for any 6x to show up). Adding the stutters seemed to get multiplication through addition happening faster, though.

Download yeasties or copy/paste from below (requires ruby and clisp):

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