Fight Club #27: Better Angels

Pinker wrote one of my favorite books we have ever read at Fight Club.  It was massively researched and clearly written.  There are three stances on human progress that I can think of:

1. Stasis: there is nothing new under the sun, the human condition remains constant generation after generation.  Any artifacts that are new (such as technology or culture) are really just ephemera and don't do more than distract us from the fundamentals: you're born, you strive for resources while fortune distributes as she sees fit, you make friends/enemies/lovers/family, suffering happens, you expire.
2. Adaptation: the world changes every year due to Nature and mankind's effects, and as populations and societies grow larger and more sophisticated, the human condition adapts to the new environment every year, but there is no absolute progress in humankind over the centuries, because you can't compare the conditions across time.
3. Progress: there is real, measurable, absolute progress in the human condition.

Pinker's book gives evidence for Progress.  Human life has become less violent overall over time.

Fight Club #17: Being Wrong

After a dry conversation about epistemology and the inevitability of being wrong, a question put before the group was: "do you believe in something so strongly that you would die for it?"

Michael tried to make the distinction between a "belief" and a "value." He described a belief as a statement in your mind that you hold with some degree of certainty (e.g., socialism is less productive than capitalism) versus a value which is a statement of how things ought to be (e.g., society should defend pluralism). He confused these things as separate sets, when in fact values are just a subset of beliefs; values are normative beliefs.

Why bother pointing this out? Because "values" should be treated no differently than "beliefs." All beliefs are subject to revision in the face of new data or deeper reasoning. Values should be treated exactly the same way. For instance, the value of miscegenation (i.e., keeping races separated is better for society) has been revised in the last century. The danger of making values any different than standard beliefs is that people will go to greater lengths to uphold it despite evidence of harm or inconsistency (e.g., apartheid). Ideally people could change their values as prudently and dispassionately as they would any other belief; for instance deciding that a market for donated organs is not repugnant, just as the same way as you come to decide that Google is overvalued.

David tried to swerve us away from the dusty philosophic chatter, when he talked about the experience of being wrong, and the importance of forgiving yourself. This brings an interesting classification of being wrong: errors of reasoning vs "human weakness." It strikes me that reasoning errors don't create the type of internal guilt that would require forgiveness. For example, if I conclude that political donations aren't a good business investment after ten years of donating, I might wish I had the money back, but you live and learn. On the other hand, if I gambled away the kids' education fund on a trip to Vegas, despite knowing the odds but hoping for a short-cut gain and a thrill along the way, then I should be guilty.

This brings me back to planning. The most interesting moral problems to are defined by choosing a smaller, more-certain, short-term gain without regard to longer-term repercussions. In fact, I think the essence of morality is defined by an acceptable duration to an event horizon. This duration could be a week, a year, or three generations. Depending on this duration, some actions could be judged both moral and immoral.

Think of every plan or action as having a short and long-term expected impact. For example consider two projects.

1. Gamble-education-fund-project

Short-term impact:

• Thrill: likelihood 99%
• Profit likelihood: 5%
• Breakeven likelihood: 20%
• Some loss likelihood: 50%
• Wipeout likelihood: 25%

Long-term impact:

• If profit, use profits to take a vacation in next year
• If some loss, work harder to make up the difference for next five years
• If wipeout, fail to provide kids education in 15 years

2. Pursue-masters-in-computer-science-project

Short-term impact:

• Loss of income for two years
• Loss of capital for tuition

Long-term impact:

• Better earnings potential, expected breakeven in five years
• More fulfilling career, greater prestige, greater flexiblity in ten years

Now consider two event horizons: three months vs thirty years. Clearly if you take the thirty-year's view, the gambling project is immoral. If you take the three-months view (e.g., terminal disease, last chance for fun), the gambling project doesn't sound so bad.

Extending this idea one step further, as human societies mature, the event horizon is pushed out further and further. In cave men times, morality might have been defined by an event horizon of a week. In medieval times, society thought in terms of years. In modern times, we think in terms of a generation. Perhaps the evolution of morality is the gradual increase in the duration to the event horizon.

...

Philosophy is like weight training; it's necessary to master for any sport, but is not itself an Olympic sport. The Olympic sports are science, ethics, political economy, business admin and management, and engineering.

Fight Club #15: Fischl

Eric Fischl joined us tonight, after taking pictures of Susan for a portrait. He's not a photographer, despite being a famous and well-paid painter and sculptor, but he works from photographs.

Ambition. He clearly said that he had the ambition to be a great artist, to have a seat at the table in art history.

Drawing vs Painting: Interesting discussion with the lack of education and whether he would have ended up in the same place if he had a more formal art education. But art saved his life.

Photographs vs Life: The awkward moments captured. 1/32 of a second, instead of the movements summed up in observations from life. And then comes Photoshop!

Role of Education: The art education you get Cooper Union (we know from my dad, and David Rosenfeld's too) is serious and classic. The art education you get at the California Institute for the Arts (we know from Fischl) was lax and permissive. It didn't provide him with rigid skills or direction. As a result he graduated incomplete as an artist and had to fill in the blanks as he went along. Good question from the audience: "do you think you would have been as significant an artist, if you had a more serious art education?" He couldn't say either way.

Other Topics: Growing up in Port Washington: Alcoholism, inside/outside, voyeurism.

Patron: that worked out.

Dealer: that worked out even better.

He Paints Suburbia. In the ancient days, the center of action was the nobility or he military. Then came the theologians and academics. Then the industrial titans, and then the city sophisticates. All worthy subjects of art. But sometime in the 50's was born the suburbs, and a worthy subject of art it was not.

That is until Eric Fischl started to paint it in the 80's, showing it's depth and meaning. Masturbating boys, naked people on lawn chairs, lovers, actors.

Sure there's plenty of growing old, slowly, week by week. But in my suburban crowd at least, there's circulation of people and ideas to compete with any other place. A wasteland of compromises and desiccated dreams? That's the hollywood version. Instead it's the clay of reality--moldable, warm, smells like the earth in late April.

Here's something to help remember it: pictures.

My Vote for Health Care Dictator: David Goldhill

Best article I've read on diagnosing the problem with health care and insurance.

His insight: until we make the individual patient the consumer as opposed to the insurance company standing in for the consumer, no meaningful progress will be made on reducing the cost of healthcare in the US.

The solution: make individuals responsible for their own tax-free health care accounts where they educate themselves and prudently shop for value when selecting doctors, hospitals and procedures. Relegate health insurance to catastrophic problems, not body maintenance. Make the costs of everything transparent, in just the same way as shopping for a hotel room or buying a computer

It's only by putting the consumer in control that we can hope to eliminate the vortices of self-interest that make up the current system.

I believe the Obama administration will fail to make a meaningful change in our healthcare program. For all the brains in this administration, there is no thought leadership on how to change the system, only a wish list of end goals, such as "reduce long term health care costs..."

Hopefully in the next ten years we'll get a chief executive that exploits the power of the office (in the same way that G. W. Bush did for his Iraq project), to base reform on a fundamental hypothesis on what is wrong, like the ones Goldhill articulates. Until then I'm tuning out this thread, as I believe most Americans will lose interest, because the Obama administration is not using a powerful lever to move this obstacle.

Fight Club #5: Is Life too Short for Physics?

Reading Gleick's Genius: the Life and Science of Richard Feynman was particularly successful for FC because it produced some of the best fights so far. The arguments weren't about politics, or economic theories, but instead got to the heart of why we do Fight Club to begin with.

At the center of the controversy is the fact that most readers found the physics in the book to be impossible to follow, and they faulted the author for either 1) including so much physics to begin with, or 2) not making it more understandable to the lay person. In other words, folks found the "Science of RF" to be confusing and frustrating.

On the other hand the book had plenty of rich narratives about the "Life of RF." His first marriage showed him as the romantic ideal worthy of Chretien de Troyes. His first wife is already wasting away to TB at the time he marries her, and he never leaves her side. Later he completely transforms into roue, fooling around with his grad students wives. In short, everyone found the "Life of RF" an engaging story of a complex man.

So was it worth having to slog through the physics? Could that have been edited out? Do we really want to read books for Fight Club that are so difficult? What kind of books do we want to for Fight Club anyway? Why are we here to begin with?

In defense of the book: the reader is made to feel the sense of fumbling around in the dark that the scientist feels when confronting the mysteries and puzzles of nature. Moreover, the curiosity and desire to learn and independently solve the puzzles were clear and aspiration themes of Feynman's life to the end. Our arguments about the book quickly became self-reflective.

Over dinner, to a man, most expressed the feeling that now was a time in their lives where they felt the greatest desire to learn. Remarkable mostly because around the table sits a group a particularly successful men, already midway through life.

For me, Dick Feynman has a permanent room in my head; I want to be like Feynman.

Godel says Relax

About the first time I learned about computability and Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, I had been playing around with forms of the Liar's Paradox. Specifically I used to make an argument for spiritual faith by appealing to the idea that there are some things that are true but not provable.

The argument would go something like this: "You say you are a non-believer, or that you cannot understand how an intellectual could have a spiritual life. But not only are there things that the most hardcore atheist must take on faith every day, but it is provable that there is are some things that are true but not provable, no matter how hard you try. So you might as well relax your objective of pure reason behind all your beliefs."

And then I would bring up the Incompleteness Theorem. But if you weren't a well-read philosopher, mathematician, or computer scientist, you probably wouldn't get it. So I tried finding a short form. I would use: "This sentence is true but not provable."

The form of the conversational proof was to assume the opposite is true, and find the contradiction. There is a question of whether this is a proof or merely a paradox, and the whole question probably would fall under the kind of word problem that justifiably bugged Wittgenstein, but it does give a sense of the Incompleteness Theorem without going into the diagonalization proof.

The real question is is there anything interesting that is true but not provable? That's a lot harder to show. Nevertheless, there was a time where I used Godel to give some pedigree to my principled, anti-intellectual position, or in other words, the smart Viennese guy says it's ok to believe. I have outgrown this argument; it wasn't convincing, but it was fun enough.

Fight Club #4: Is Zen Buddhism Moral?

This session we discussed "The Snow Leopard" by Peter Mathiassen. The original inspiration for this choice came from Fr Bob, who has known Peter since the 70's when they were associated with the same Roshi in New York.

The book was published in 1978, and won a National Book Award. While it got mixed reviews from the group, it didn't fail to stimulate three or four meaningful discussions. this had more to do with the group than the book.

I'm glad we did this book in particular because it finally got us onto Fr Bob's turf. He's a Jesuit, he's multi-lingual, he's an author, he's a professor of Theology and Japanese language, he's a Zen meditation Roshi, and he pronounces 'euphoria' as a Greek word (you-four-EE-ah), and takes it ever so mildly when the rest of us ignoramuses correct his pronunciation (no Bob, it's you-FOUR-ee-ah), though we haven't taken a single course of Greek.

The rest of us are business guys, and he's not. So when we inevitably get to talking about buying and selling things and economics, he's not in his comfort zone. This Fight Club, however, we were able to stay away from business more, and we kept to the deeper side of the pool.

Was Mathiassen acting morally when he went on this trip?

After getting through the gripes about the long nature descriptions, the overly-detailed accounts of cultural details that seem to contrast sharply with the ideals of Zen outlook, we came to the discussion of was it right for Mathiassen to go on this nature trip, right after his wife had died, leaving behind his young son for three months (and breaking his promise to get back for Thanksgiving).

Izzy and Ted were moved by the journey, and felt it was justified. Ted might have gotten the most out of the book, because it was able to take the reader on an arduous trip to a remote world. It was a different world then, the Seventies, it was the me-generation and maybe kids back then didn't have the same expectations about parents being present.

Michaal and I thought Mathiassen's trip was self-indulgent, and while the author did experience occasional insights, he didn't seem significantly changed by the trip.

Bob shared an insight that folks that tend to be monastics many times grew up with distant, or absent mothers.

Is Zen Buddhism at odds with personal responsibility?

This discussion followed on the heels of the last, and was particularly meaningful to me. Since high school, I have been drawn to Zen Buddhism, particularly reading Thomas Merton. Zen offered a way to gain perspective in the middle of the rat race. It also had a esoteric quality that was alluring ("if you have to ask, you're not enlightened"). But how to reconcile this with my Catholic upbringing? I remember my friend John Frazee and I at Chaminade H.S. carrying Lao Tzu around, and Brother Gillen wagging his finger at us passing through the hall, pointing to the book, warning "there's no God in there." Man, we were rebels! (Well, well-groomed rebels with short hair, jacket and tie, religiously observant and obedient rebels...)

Bottom line is that while the detachment of one's identity from desire is a very useful way to keep perspective and maybe even avoid sorrow (which is the big idea with Zen Buddhism), the ideal of detachment is self-centered, despite the Zen ideal of self-annihilation. The priority of "love thy neighbor" doesn't figure in to the radical Zen ideal (though plenty of Zen Buddhists exemplify that principle).

In the end, Fr Bob's concept of Christianity, spiked with Zen, seems like the right answer to me.

The discussions are so lively, that it's easy to forget about the wonderful dinner and environment Michael A sets up for us.