Links
Archives
I'm storing some of my more 'abstract' thoughts out here. Stuff I'm not finished with, et al.
Monday, June 20, 2005
Monday, October 27, 2003
So lets kick around this idea of the Ghost in the Next Room.
The Soul then exists in heaven. It is given a body. The soul-mind/body connection is maintained. The creation was frustrated, and instead of perfect vessels we are imperfect.
The animal sins, the animal rejects God, the soul goes to hell. What is bound on Earth is bound in Heaven. Accepting Christ, you accept your own true self as you would listen to its advice and yearnings.
The soul then is connected to the animal in someway, and both are one. The animal can change, it can loose its mind, it can have its control structure frustrated. The sprit is still bound, now
through a less perfect tool. Communication is inhibited. Perhaps the wrong gene sequence is fired, and the communication is now with dangerously mentally ill person.
What of Hitler ? Say he was genetically ill. or Jeffery Dahmer. If evil is a curable genetic condition then no one goes to hell, which many thinkers have already found preferable, since Origen onward. We simply need to dispense with any construct that is clearly invalidated by science, e.g. Young Earth Creationism. But I suspect much of human isn't fully determinstic, at least not to the level of preventing a Hitler.The soul makes the decisions, the soul has control, and clearly environment influences. Had Hitler been a successful artist, or born in the US or France, a different outcome for sure. Perhaps not for Dahmer, who I see as even more sick than Hitler, but with far less power. Perhaps there is a difference between volitional evil and simply psychotic behavior, as our court system supports. Our whole justtic system hinges on the idea of free will really.
But as such we are still mostly in the dark about the nature of the mind. Its is clear that Homosexuality is not a freely chosen behavior. I think the issue is settled and conservatives need to get the memo and drop it. As Conservative churches, same thing. Theology must stay flexible to adapt to the convergence of these sciences in the next decade or so. It is clear that the older churches are going to struggle with this, but in the end only those who accept some genetic determinism are going to survive and thrive. Sure there are probably environmental influences on homosexuality, but according to Empty Slate, 90% of the time you can predict who is going to be gay per their genes. So Tabula Rasa, has been totally discredited. The other end, Determinism, is being explored by me now, but the trend is that there are genetic flags that increase a probablity of X happening. This does not violate free will. As the human decays,or he sins and falls away, I submit that there is no decay at the soul level. Our soul is a collector of that which what we do right...the soul sees and learns via the animal, but after conversion is not bound by him. The exact nature of this communication is unknown, and to affect change on the human's decision, there is going to have to be some sort of physical -- spiritual interaction. That nature of which cannot be discovered, but think of this -- If a human via science can predict behavior based on genes and environment, cannot our spritual conterparts do better ?
So there it is, I think the Ghost Next Door is a new piece of my theology. The Soul isn't in your body. The animal self conflicts with the spritual, and in the end the spritual has gathered what is best on earth. Experience of The Believer is now added to Security of the Believer. This belief brings with it pre-existence..
What does it do to the abortion debate ? A little. Now we are not stuck trying to guess when God puts the soul in -- the moment of conception isn't necessarily when God is bound to put human existence on earth. However, I still remain anti-abortiion. Abortion takes a human life. That is without doubt. It robs us of the life that God WAS going to use. Imagine now the Soul in the Room having essentially the connection severd to earth. How sad that creature must be, the child's soul, who never got to come down here and enjoy a childhood and the experience of human life. Since I believe God limits his knowledge, I woudl say that the soul is surprised and saddened when its proxy is destroyed here on earth.
But God is wise, and I say that those souls that were disallowed are given another chance to make the jump. I wonder if God sends his mightest souls here, for it is a great test, a crushihng experience sometimes.
Ghost in the Next Room (GNR) has implications to AI and the souls of animals. Essentially, we don't know. I would say a soul would be given the chance to come here as any creature it wanted to. Perhaps we create a machine of significant complexity I don't see why a soul would necessarily reject it. I would imagine that the ability of designers to impmenet free will would be a prerequisite, since choice is central to a sentient beings experience. However, beyond humans every thying is conjecture neither experience or the bible will clarify thie issue.
You know sometimes I think people would prefer Christianity if we just framed everything in alien terms. " We were create by aliens for aliens enjoyment " is more acceptable than "We were created by God for God's enjoyment."
The Soul then exists in heaven. It is given a body. The soul-mind/body connection is maintained. The creation was frustrated, and instead of perfect vessels we are imperfect.
The animal sins, the animal rejects God, the soul goes to hell. What is bound on Earth is bound in Heaven. Accepting Christ, you accept your own true self as you would listen to its advice and yearnings.
The soul then is connected to the animal in someway, and both are one. The animal can change, it can loose its mind, it can have its control structure frustrated. The sprit is still bound, now
through a less perfect tool. Communication is inhibited. Perhaps the wrong gene sequence is fired, and the communication is now with dangerously mentally ill person.
What of Hitler ? Say he was genetically ill. or Jeffery Dahmer. If evil is a curable genetic condition then no one goes to hell, which many thinkers have already found preferable, since Origen onward. We simply need to dispense with any construct that is clearly invalidated by science, e.g. Young Earth Creationism. But I suspect much of human isn't fully determinstic, at least not to the level of preventing a Hitler.The soul makes the decisions, the soul has control, and clearly environment influences. Had Hitler been a successful artist, or born in the US or France, a different outcome for sure. Perhaps not for Dahmer, who I see as even more sick than Hitler, but with far less power. Perhaps there is a difference between volitional evil and simply psychotic behavior, as our court system supports. Our whole justtic system hinges on the idea of free will really.
But as such we are still mostly in the dark about the nature of the mind. Its is clear that Homosexuality is not a freely chosen behavior. I think the issue is settled and conservatives need to get the memo and drop it. As Conservative churches, same thing. Theology must stay flexible to adapt to the convergence of these sciences in the next decade or so. It is clear that the older churches are going to struggle with this, but in the end only those who accept some genetic determinism are going to survive and thrive. Sure there are probably environmental influences on homosexuality, but according to Empty Slate, 90% of the time you can predict who is going to be gay per their genes. So Tabula Rasa, has been totally discredited. The other end, Determinism, is being explored by me now, but the trend is that there are genetic flags that increase a probablity of X happening. This does not violate free will. As the human decays,or he sins and falls away, I submit that there is no decay at the soul level. Our soul is a collector of that which what we do right...the soul sees and learns via the animal, but after conversion is not bound by him. The exact nature of this communication is unknown, and to affect change on the human's decision, there is going to have to be some sort of physical -- spiritual interaction. That nature of which cannot be discovered, but think of this -- If a human via science can predict behavior based on genes and environment, cannot our spritual conterparts do better ?
So there it is, I think the Ghost Next Door is a new piece of my theology. The Soul isn't in your body. The animal self conflicts with the spritual, and in the end the spritual has gathered what is best on earth. Experience of The Believer is now added to Security of the Believer. This belief brings with it pre-existence..
What does it do to the abortion debate ? A little. Now we are not stuck trying to guess when God puts the soul in -- the moment of conception isn't necessarily when God is bound to put human existence on earth. However, I still remain anti-abortiion. Abortion takes a human life. That is without doubt. It robs us of the life that God WAS going to use. Imagine now the Soul in the Room having essentially the connection severd to earth. How sad that creature must be, the child's soul, who never got to come down here and enjoy a childhood and the experience of human life. Since I believe God limits his knowledge, I woudl say that the soul is surprised and saddened when its proxy is destroyed here on earth.
But God is wise, and I say that those souls that were disallowed are given another chance to make the jump. I wonder if God sends his mightest souls here, for it is a great test, a crushihng experience sometimes.
Ghost in the Next Room (GNR) has implications to AI and the souls of animals. Essentially, we don't know. I would say a soul would be given the chance to come here as any creature it wanted to. Perhaps we create a machine of significant complexity I don't see why a soul would necessarily reject it. I would imagine that the ability of designers to impmenet free will would be a prerequisite, since choice is central to a sentient beings experience. However, beyond humans every thying is conjecture neither experience or the bible will clarify thie issue.
You know sometimes I think people would prefer Christianity if we just framed everything in alien terms. " We were create by aliens for aliens enjoyment " is more acceptable than "We were created by God for God's enjoyment."
Sunday, October 26, 2003
Got some thoughts about the book Empty Slate by Steve Pinker, an evolutionary psychologist from Havard. Basically what we have is here a man who is out to dispel three socio-political constructs: The Ghost in the machine, Tabula Rasa, and the Noble Savage. I am only uncomforatble with the first.
Here is the problem : If a man can be changed by the scalpal, if his very 'soul' can be altered....what does that say about his eternal soul. The point Pinker makes is that there essentially is no soul, that indeed there isn't really an indiviual. We are simply kidding ourselves -- we are a mass of conflicting urges and chemicals, built on an impressive computational machinework that determines a great percentage of what kind of person we'll be. How can a man be held responsible for sin if he is determined by chemicals to do it. How can we yell at gays, murderers, mean people, if its all in the DNA? No mistake about it -- Determinism is making a comeback, bigtime. Flipping the issue to the positive, now we can make better humans with genetic engineering. Are we interfering with God's work ? As I am a christian humanist, and I tire of religion slowing down science, I say we can and should do gene engineering. We have to move the ball foward. Murder and sin entered life through evil and it is our purpose as humans to rid ourselves of evil in any way we can. How do we know that God didn't set us up to do that very thing.
So where is our Soul ?
Many of the theologians, back to Origen, say that what is here on earth is wholly irrelavant, and that our eternal being is a replacment and a vast improvement over our current bodies. Plato thought that the spirit would come back as a perfect sphere, a shape that Plato thought to be ideal. Origen, 2 millenia ago, address this as well, saying that that which was animal is destroyed. We are then no better than the beasts, and whatever is here on earth is some sort of projection of what lies in heaven. The Ghost isn't even in the room. He's dialed in via a T3 connection. My soul, my free will, lies in heaven and controls the machine, but the connection is not guaranteed. Cut our Corpus callosum , the part of the brain that connects the two halves, and sure we'll exhibit strangness. Alzheimers, etc also destroy the mind. Madness is not new. But the mind cannot affect the soul. The connection to my ethereal self is easily frustrated, but this brutality isn't affecting my ethernal soul.
This attack on the Ghost in the Machine disturbed me. I suppose I had thought that in the mystery of the mind, in the quantum mess that is our brain, there we were. God of the Gaps, in a way. The physicist Roger Penrose suggested that the brain is a quantum machine, and there is cultural teachings that reinforce the idea of the soul physically in my body. Indeed all the video games you play, when a charcter dies you see his spirit rise up in a beam of light, only to be resurrected in some structure. But more than that it feels like the soul is in charge, and here I oppose Pinker. There is individuals, and we are not part of some internal chaos of the mind, hidden to ourselves by ourselves. There is a point where recursion is silly.
Ghost in the Next Room opens some interesting ideas of what we are going to be like after death. Since that which is immortal is timeless we will also be timeless. Now think again about the idea of the Ghost. When is our spriit done ? Are there portioins in your life where you were better than your current condition ? Of course. As a matter of fact I'd say few of us are at our best form at the end of our life. Life is hard, making us bitter, poverty, death, sickness. However, the Ghost then, even still getting experience from our life, does not change for the worst. That would be a polution of the perfect, and thus a contradiction. Continin -- the soul, timeless, can retain the positive traits from our entire life whilst picking up none of the negative that our animal bodies will learn. This fits very nicely into the Security of Believe doctrine....indeed I could doub this Security of the Positive Experience.
What follows is something of a surprise then. In heaven I anticipate that we will see our souls as an amalgam of all our ages. Our souls will be the the collection of the best of us through time including our childhood, since many of us think, rightly so, that the most optimistc and positive and happy we've been is during our earliest years. Certainly our faith is the most pure, from the tender ages of 3 to 5 up to early 20s.
So in part, what is the best of us through our childhood would be retained. The innocence even ? Then I I look into my beautiful kids eyes I miss their every year, but at the same time I'm excited to see them grow. The typical parents dillema. Could a portion of the joy of the eternal sould be that I can visit my children again at any age ! Or simply what was best of them. See into their eyes as they are now. Now, I may not want to live forever with the actual baby....there is so much for them to learn and they're selfish and self-centered. But the idea that the sou will be the repository of what makes them so delightful, their very essence, brings great joy to me. Perhaps this all sounds pathetic, a parent wishing his kids not to grow, praying for time to stand still. Yet, it is completely consistent with what timeless beings would experience, and the concept of Eternal Improvement of the Soul gives us.
If that idea took you to the edge of the table, I risk now taking you off the edge and onto the floor. Consider the idea of time travel. There is no real reason to think that we will not be able to travel in time as beings of energy of some sort. If so, we will be able to actually visit our as today, and tomorow and yesterday. Then no memory is lost. This of course assumes we are going to be out of time, or at least capable of moving around in time, something partical physics has alluded to. If we are to believe the words of Paul, that the pain here is not comparable to the glory of Heaven, then I say none of this is idle fantasy. Imagining the glory of heaven is a useful exercise to help us through the darkness of this planet. All it requires is a little imagination, and a dedication to consistency.
Heaven then becomes a filtered reality, distilled and concentrated Goodness.
Its tough. As i approach 40 and I see my life zipping by at ever the quicker pace, I am not happy with mortality. I am very comfortable with humanistic christianity. Move the ball forward , help each other, and Believe in the Hope of Mankind, which is the salvation of Man through Jesus.
Here is the problem : If a man can be changed by the scalpal, if his very 'soul' can be altered....what does that say about his eternal soul. The point Pinker makes is that there essentially is no soul, that indeed there isn't really an indiviual. We are simply kidding ourselves -- we are a mass of conflicting urges and chemicals, built on an impressive computational machinework that determines a great percentage of what kind of person we'll be. How can a man be held responsible for sin if he is determined by chemicals to do it. How can we yell at gays, murderers, mean people, if its all in the DNA? No mistake about it -- Determinism is making a comeback, bigtime. Flipping the issue to the positive, now we can make better humans with genetic engineering. Are we interfering with God's work ? As I am a christian humanist, and I tire of religion slowing down science, I say we can and should do gene engineering. We have to move the ball foward. Murder and sin entered life through evil and it is our purpose as humans to rid ourselves of evil in any way we can. How do we know that God didn't set us up to do that very thing.
So where is our Soul ?
Many of the theologians, back to Origen, say that what is here on earth is wholly irrelavant, and that our eternal being is a replacment and a vast improvement over our current bodies. Plato thought that the spirit would come back as a perfect sphere, a shape that Plato thought to be ideal. Origen, 2 millenia ago, address this as well, saying that that which was animal is destroyed. We are then no better than the beasts, and whatever is here on earth is some sort of projection of what lies in heaven. The Ghost isn't even in the room. He's dialed in via a T3 connection. My soul, my free will, lies in heaven and controls the machine, but the connection is not guaranteed. Cut our Corpus callosum , the part of the brain that connects the two halves, and sure we'll exhibit strangness. Alzheimers, etc also destroy the mind. Madness is not new. But the mind cannot affect the soul. The connection to my ethereal self is easily frustrated, but this brutality isn't affecting my ethernal soul.
This attack on the Ghost in the Machine disturbed me. I suppose I had thought that in the mystery of the mind, in the quantum mess that is our brain, there we were. God of the Gaps, in a way. The physicist Roger Penrose suggested that the brain is a quantum machine, and there is cultural teachings that reinforce the idea of the soul physically in my body. Indeed all the video games you play, when a charcter dies you see his spirit rise up in a beam of light, only to be resurrected in some structure. But more than that it feels like the soul is in charge, and here I oppose Pinker. There is individuals, and we are not part of some internal chaos of the mind, hidden to ourselves by ourselves. There is a point where recursion is silly.
Ghost in the Next Room opens some interesting ideas of what we are going to be like after death. Since that which is immortal is timeless we will also be timeless. Now think again about the idea of the Ghost. When is our spriit done ? Are there portioins in your life where you were better than your current condition ? Of course. As a matter of fact I'd say few of us are at our best form at the end of our life. Life is hard, making us bitter, poverty, death, sickness. However, the Ghost then, even still getting experience from our life, does not change for the worst. That would be a polution of the perfect, and thus a contradiction. Continin -- the soul, timeless, can retain the positive traits from our entire life whilst picking up none of the negative that our animal bodies will learn. This fits very nicely into the Security of Believe doctrine....indeed I could doub this Security of the Positive Experience.
What follows is something of a surprise then. In heaven I anticipate that we will see our souls as an amalgam of all our ages. Our souls will be the the collection of the best of us through time including our childhood, since many of us think, rightly so, that the most optimistc and positive and happy we've been is during our earliest years. Certainly our faith is the most pure, from the tender ages of 3 to 5 up to early 20s.
So in part, what is the best of us through our childhood would be retained. The innocence even ? Then I I look into my beautiful kids eyes I miss their every year, but at the same time I'm excited to see them grow. The typical parents dillema. Could a portion of the joy of the eternal sould be that I can visit my children again at any age ! Or simply what was best of them. See into their eyes as they are now. Now, I may not want to live forever with the actual baby....there is so much for them to learn and they're selfish and self-centered. But the idea that the sou will be the repository of what makes them so delightful, their very essence, brings great joy to me. Perhaps this all sounds pathetic, a parent wishing his kids not to grow, praying for time to stand still. Yet, it is completely consistent with what timeless beings would experience, and the concept of Eternal Improvement of the Soul gives us.
If that idea took you to the edge of the table, I risk now taking you off the edge and onto the floor. Consider the idea of time travel. There is no real reason to think that we will not be able to travel in time as beings of energy of some sort. If so, we will be able to actually visit our as today, and tomorow and yesterday. Then no memory is lost. This of course assumes we are going to be out of time, or at least capable of moving around in time, something partical physics has alluded to. If we are to believe the words of Paul, that the pain here is not comparable to the glory of Heaven, then I say none of this is idle fantasy. Imagining the glory of heaven is a useful exercise to help us through the darkness of this planet. All it requires is a little imagination, and a dedication to consistency.
Heaven then becomes a filtered reality, distilled and concentrated Goodness.
Its tough. As i approach 40 and I see my life zipping by at ever the quicker pace, I am not happy with mortality. I am very comfortable with humanistic christianity. Move the ball forward , help each other, and Believe in the Hope of Mankind, which is the salvation of Man through Jesus.
Friday, October 24, 2003
Thursday, October 23, 2003
http://seniorsafety.com/who.html
Monday, July 21, 2003
Note: I am consolidating blogs. Here is a hysterical post from me two years ago when I beat a good friend of mine at a video game. I titled the blog " Its always easy to doubt yourself. " I like that title and it seems apropos today.
Sat Apr 07, 2001 02:05:17 ]
As a 35 year old, I've learned that two things are necessary. In your 20's you have to search for wisdom and knowledge. Assuming that you know everything, or have a consistent philosphy, is mistaken if done too early. Then, into your 30s, I feel is when the concepts that have been experience-tested must rise to the top .Typically they are cliched truths. Nevertheless, its still easy to give up, to decide you're not smart enough, not pretty enough, whatever.
Sola Scriptura -- the scripture is enough. God deals with each individual on their own. Church is for community, but not for taking all of our time and money.
God spend a ton of time on our brains ....use them.
With effort, you may not beat everyone, but you can beat most of the people most of the time, you're doing great.
I play Ages of Emipres with a friend that is an ex navy nuke, knows 4 languages and is orgainized to the extreme.. Mensa member....and all that. 160+ iq.
Well, I beat him tonight. It took me 3 months of friday night game nights with him, and then practicing and reading during the week. He doesn't practice it anymore.
I beat him twice. Worse the second time. For RTS fans, I rushed his butt FAST. This is a guy if you let him get to the imperial age, he kills you with deadly efficiency.
But I knew his weaknesses, and I learned the short cuts, and passed him in knowledge of the game.
I was determined to beat him before the Empire Earth game came out.
And I did it.
I am a programmer. There are constant challenges of my mind there...I work harder than the others, read more, and stay ahead.
I want to be an entreprenuer. that will get me ahead of the worker bees.
I want to have a relationship with God without interference from others.
I want to be with my beautiful kids all the time.
I have a nearly consistent philosophy...based mostly in ayn rand.
and CS Lewis.
I have to sleep.
Thanks GOD !
Sat Apr 07, 2001 02:05:17 ]
As a 35 year old, I've learned that two things are necessary. In your 20's you have to search for wisdom and knowledge. Assuming that you know everything, or have a consistent philosphy, is mistaken if done too early. Then, into your 30s, I feel is when the concepts that have been experience-tested must rise to the top .Typically they are cliched truths. Nevertheless, its still easy to give up, to decide you're not smart enough, not pretty enough, whatever.
Sola Scriptura -- the scripture is enough. God deals with each individual on their own. Church is for community, but not for taking all of our time and money.
God spend a ton of time on our brains ....use them.
With effort, you may not beat everyone, but you can beat most of the people most of the time, you're doing great.
I play Ages of Emipres with a friend that is an ex navy nuke, knows 4 languages and is orgainized to the extreme.. Mensa member....and all that. 160+ iq.
Well, I beat him tonight. It took me 3 months of friday night game nights with him, and then practicing and reading during the week. He doesn't practice it anymore.
I beat him twice. Worse the second time. For RTS fans, I rushed his butt FAST. This is a guy if you let him get to the imperial age, he kills you with deadly efficiency.
But I knew his weaknesses, and I learned the short cuts, and passed him in knowledge of the game.
I was determined to beat him before the Empire Earth game came out.
And I did it.
I am a programmer. There are constant challenges of my mind there...I work harder than the others, read more, and stay ahead.
I want to be an entreprenuer. that will get me ahead of the worker bees.
I want to have a relationship with God without interference from others.
I want to be with my beautiful kids all the time.
I have a nearly consistent philosophy...based mostly in ayn rand.
and CS Lewis.
I have to sleep.
Thanks GOD !
Trying to settle my blogging. Gotta look at RSS too.
Anwyay, recently went through my first layoff since I graduated high school nearly 20 years ago. Its rather shocking, and though I did see it coming I'm still a little pissed off about it. If your interested, the company is WRQ, a midsized company here in Seattle. Its a great company to work for....that is, it used to be. Now, the struggles of the age are making them like rabid dogs, laying off people left and right, flaling about like a fish on the deck of a boat, futily gasping for air.
My critisim for them is not uniqe to them. I think, as a Personalist, that captialism must be heged by basic christian ethics. I do not believe that what happens in these layoffis is Chrstian in the least. Why ?
The whole predicate is to make me work effecitively whilst I'm there. Work the workers like slaves, even though they are going to be gone on the next round. They knew I was gone.... I was on the list since Christmas. The layoff pirannas are eating the way up the chain, and pretty much the only ones left are the most senior people and management.
Now this is an expected thing for a dying company -- CYA and that sort of thing. I can see the logic in trading up, getting some experienced people in there, tossing away the people who are too junior, don't have the years in,etc. It is much more difficult to see the humanity in it, but I'll touch on that later. What I can't excuse is the lack of honesty. They lie every day to everyone who they let go in this way. They specifically lied to me and others about our security at the company to my face when he very well knew that I was on this list.
It is hurtful when they replace you with senior people because it cuts off the experience you were getting. Lets face it, the only way to get the experience is to do it. If they hack everyone under 5 years, its bad mojo for the future. The hurtful part of is it is that you feel that all your hard work and good motivation and real caring for this entity called WRQ has been wasted. Pissed away. The perception is, even though I mad e it through 4 of these things prior to the one that got me, that I can't do the job, that the guy left there can.
Its akin to breaking up with a signficiant other I think. Your no longer pretty enough, no longer interesting.
The lie is what makes it worse.
In business, they were telling me and the others the exact opposite. They were telling me that everything was fine, WRQ has lots of money still, and your not in danger because your junior to this other fella. "no joe, he was not sent here to replace you, and there are no plans to clear out house at all to go to .Net."
That is EXACLTY what happend. And these guys were and still are friends of mine, so I'm a bit confused about the whole thing.
I'm sure they were put into this position, and this is the way alot of companies behave. However, that does not make it right.
An ethical company would do something like....
1) reduce the lie. Tell the truth, and say "Yes, junior people will go first here"
2) tell people that as of now, everyone is under a 6 month review process. You may or may not be extended after your review.
3) Goodness, if people are on a list for God's sake tell them ! Its only fair !
Look, towards the end I was killing myself, because I knew I was under the gun. I had hoped to 1) get some good experience before the hammer fell, and 2) perhaps impress so as not to be let go.
Thats reasonably cruel to watch someone do 70 hour weeks for 6 months and then hack him.
I am a VERY big Ayn Rand fan, and I am still a captialist. However, its never been more clear to me the need for controls on captialism than it is now. I'm not talking about government really, but a call to ethical/religious judgement on them. When you behave in this adulterous manner, you shoul get the big A put on around your neck. Its poor behavior, it gives business a bad name when they do this. Sure they help you get a job, they pass around your resume....all to alieviate their own guilt !
One of personalisms tenents is to use variable salaries to avoid layoffs. This is far more ethical since it shows a true -business wide- distribution of the suffering. Agilent did this, and others.
All I know is that this round of layoffs got all the little people, the worker ants, and it felt very opressive. Its a sour taste that I shall not forget soon. Hopefully I will get a chance some day to run my own thing. I can do better.
Fortunately , I interview well so I got a position even before my unemployment started. Its contract....so we'll see. At least a contract is honest.
Joe
[ Mon Aug 06, 06:52:39 PM - paste from other blog]
Think of what the death of Death will do to our theology.
Think of the economy and the society.
Will our immortality make us more reckless?
Why not drive 110 MPH ? Why not...die? Why not experience the End?
I've always held that our reality IS eternity. That there is no difference and that time is a solid chunk. When one person dies, I've always held, time stops for him....eventually everyone will die and we will know God.
So there is a reflection of us beyond the one way mirror of our universe, and ethereal Joe Fecarotta looking down, or across, at our reality.
There has been thought that reality divides every time that we make a decision, and the other decision tree is played out in another dimension.
The only think preventing the copy & paste of 1000 joe fecarotta's walking around is the economics of the situation. The storage and backing up is one thing, but the robotic form to move around in is another, and will be very expensive.
I imagine that the experience of dying and then waking up in another body, having your mind only remember to the point of your being synched with your computer, is going to be very unpleasant. The early machines that we'll have are not going to be good simulations of the human experience.
I bet we'll have cancer patients volunteer first... They sign 100 papers and boom.... They kill the body and physically and (later electronically) transfer the brain contents over to the robotic body. It is from these men and women we will get to improve our new bodies.
Above all, you really have to admit that this kind of potential really changes and challenges your concepts of self, of God, and what it means to be a human
[ Thu Jul 05, 11:35:02 PM from other blog -- ]
There is an article about IBM developing a cube of 3 dimensional memory that will hold terabytes of information. With the enormity of storage doubling even faster than processor speeds are, it is simple to say that storage or processor speed will not be an issue come future computers. We will be able to record our whole life on to a disk, indexed and searchable. More than likely, as our understanding of Neurology advances, our future computers will be able to download our entire mind into a datacube. We can save our minds, a backup of us. But I get ahead of myself.
Today we are deluged with nearly daily torrent of news about scientists’ cloning this animal and that, we may be tempted to become complacent or bored with the news of milestones being reached. The potential cannot, however, be overstated. With the advent of genetic engineering we have the possibility of controlling the previously random processes that creates human life. There is nothing that will stopping humanity from manipulating life itself.
Replacing the random processes can eliminate disease of the most awful sort.... leukemia, obesity, retardation, Alzheimer’s. We can create smart, beautiful wonderfully healthy people consistently. That, with nutrition, and anti-aging drugs, we could see life’s extend well beyond 100 years in the bodies of what would be a 25 year old. Controversial as genetic engineering and the biology of life is, the physics of life give ethicists and theologians even more to worry about.
There is nothing preventing us from regenerating life itself as a physical process. What is the spark of life ? What is resurrection? Assume a man dies of a heart attack. If we repair the hole in his heart, what prevents us from restoring the mind? It is merely a computer, a device that calculates and perceives and remembers. There is control of it, we call it free will. The ability to direct our consciousness and our decisions is wielding of the force of energy of life and there is no violation of the 2nd law in the restoration of life. I am actually surprised we haven't restored life to simpler creatures. Theologians have posited that the soul may reside in the mind but i do not feel that God was limited to using discoverable processes to encrypt his own presence. the nature of light is an indicator of what nature can do if it wants to hide itself.
Now combine the concepts of genetic engineering, life extension and restoration, and computer aided human biology, cybernetics.
A world of perfect, but infinitely varied people: their teeth are perfect due to enzymes that were engineered into our saliva ducts, their body fat is perfectly regulated by preventing our over indulgence, a gentic stomach staple. We are all geniuses, but since the minds are so varied, you have to choose which genius you want (artistic, mathematical, etc) . Our bodies are either micheal jordans, or ken griffeys, or tiger woods. For the females.....Charile Theron, Marylin Monroe, or Christy Brinkley. More than likely all randomness will not be able to be removed from the processes that create humans....probably just the things that are either dangerous or cosmetic. Even the natural counter that makes us die, the release of oxidants into our bodies, may be removed. We could live to 1000 years old.
And, if we die by getting disintegrated by some lazer beam, one of the family members goes back to the home Pentium X computer, gets a datacube and sends it into Clonz-R-Us. The insurance pays for 50% of the new body if it was an accident. Dad is loaded into either a robotic body, or a human clone 'blank', though the later has so much ethical baggage I simply cannot see it happening. So, dad is now a robot, but he's still with us, and death is defeated once again.
You see ,in the future, Death's days are numbered.
In the 30's the New York times reported that God is Dead.
in the 21st Century I am sure they will run the headline Death is dead !
With eternal humans, space travel will once again be though of as a human endeavor, not a robotic one. And we'll need to explore. Indeed, I suggest that the only way dad gets a new body is if he aggrees to become a space settler. We cannot have a bunch of 500 year olds running around our planet. With the death of death, we need an alternative way to get humans out of the planet and have a fresh rotation in the job market, etc.
If we can keep our hands off of the button, and stop socializing everything, I think we can get to this very desirable place.
One thing this is going to require is certainly a giant thriving world economy.
Recently time magazine reported that the universe is going to die a dismal death. I think its a bit quick to say such things since we really don't know about how the unusual state of the beginning of the universe. The first moments of the universe are extremely rare, a giant singularity, with the laws of physics we love no where in site. Imagine instead a universe full of humans, for billions of years.
Then, at the twilight of our universe's existence, when the fundamental forces that hold our atoms and our reality together giveaway to entropy, God comes out of another reality, says, 'Good Show!' and welcomes us to the new plane of existence, which before we couldn’t' possibly comprehend.
Anwyay, recently went through my first layoff since I graduated high school nearly 20 years ago. Its rather shocking, and though I did see it coming I'm still a little pissed off about it. If your interested, the company is WRQ, a midsized company here in Seattle. Its a great company to work for....that is, it used to be. Now, the struggles of the age are making them like rabid dogs, laying off people left and right, flaling about like a fish on the deck of a boat, futily gasping for air.
My critisim for them is not uniqe to them. I think, as a Personalist, that captialism must be heged by basic christian ethics. I do not believe that what happens in these layoffis is Chrstian in the least. Why ?
The whole predicate is to make me work effecitively whilst I'm there. Work the workers like slaves, even though they are going to be gone on the next round. They knew I was gone.... I was on the list since Christmas. The layoff pirannas are eating the way up the chain, and pretty much the only ones left are the most senior people and management.
Now this is an expected thing for a dying company -- CYA and that sort of thing. I can see the logic in trading up, getting some experienced people in there, tossing away the people who are too junior, don't have the years in,etc. It is much more difficult to see the humanity in it, but I'll touch on that later. What I can't excuse is the lack of honesty. They lie every day to everyone who they let go in this way. They specifically lied to me and others about our security at the company to my face when he very well knew that I was on this list.
It is hurtful when they replace you with senior people because it cuts off the experience you were getting. Lets face it, the only way to get the experience is to do it. If they hack everyone under 5 years, its bad mojo for the future. The hurtful part of is it is that you feel that all your hard work and good motivation and real caring for this entity called WRQ has been wasted. Pissed away. The perception is, even though I mad e it through 4 of these things prior to the one that got me, that I can't do the job, that the guy left there can.
Its akin to breaking up with a signficiant other I think. Your no longer pretty enough, no longer interesting.
The lie is what makes it worse.
In business, they were telling me and the others the exact opposite. They were telling me that everything was fine, WRQ has lots of money still, and your not in danger because your junior to this other fella. "no joe, he was not sent here to replace you, and there are no plans to clear out house at all to go to .Net."
That is EXACLTY what happend. And these guys were and still are friends of mine, so I'm a bit confused about the whole thing.
I'm sure they were put into this position, and this is the way alot of companies behave. However, that does not make it right.
An ethical company would do something like....
1) reduce the lie. Tell the truth, and say "Yes, junior people will go first here"
2) tell people that as of now, everyone is under a 6 month review process. You may or may not be extended after your review.
3) Goodness, if people are on a list for God's sake tell them ! Its only fair !
Look, towards the end I was killing myself, because I knew I was under the gun. I had hoped to 1) get some good experience before the hammer fell, and 2) perhaps impress so as not to be let go.
Thats reasonably cruel to watch someone do 70 hour weeks for 6 months and then hack him.
I am a VERY big Ayn Rand fan, and I am still a captialist. However, its never been more clear to me the need for controls on captialism than it is now. I'm not talking about government really, but a call to ethical/religious judgement on them. When you behave in this adulterous manner, you shoul get the big A put on around your neck. Its poor behavior, it gives business a bad name when they do this. Sure they help you get a job, they pass around your resume....all to alieviate their own guilt !
One of personalisms tenents is to use variable salaries to avoid layoffs. This is far more ethical since it shows a true -business wide- distribution of the suffering. Agilent did this, and others.
All I know is that this round of layoffs got all the little people, the worker ants, and it felt very opressive. Its a sour taste that I shall not forget soon. Hopefully I will get a chance some day to run my own thing. I can do better.
Fortunately , I interview well so I got a position even before my unemployment started. Its contract....so we'll see. At least a contract is honest.
Joe
[ Mon Aug 06, 06:52:39 PM - paste from other blog]
Think of what the death of Death will do to our theology.
Think of the economy and the society.
Will our immortality make us more reckless?
Why not drive 110 MPH ? Why not...die? Why not experience the End?
I've always held that our reality IS eternity. That there is no difference and that time is a solid chunk. When one person dies, I've always held, time stops for him....eventually everyone will die and we will know God.
So there is a reflection of us beyond the one way mirror of our universe, and ethereal Joe Fecarotta looking down, or across, at our reality.
There has been thought that reality divides every time that we make a decision, and the other decision tree is played out in another dimension.
The only think preventing the copy & paste of 1000 joe fecarotta's walking around is the economics of the situation. The storage and backing up is one thing, but the robotic form to move around in is another, and will be very expensive.
I imagine that the experience of dying and then waking up in another body, having your mind only remember to the point of your being synched with your computer, is going to be very unpleasant. The early machines that we'll have are not going to be good simulations of the human experience.
I bet we'll have cancer patients volunteer first... They sign 100 papers and boom.... They kill the body and physically and (later electronically) transfer the brain contents over to the robotic body. It is from these men and women we will get to improve our new bodies.
Above all, you really have to admit that this kind of potential really changes and challenges your concepts of self, of God, and what it means to be a human
[ Thu Jul 05, 11:35:02 PM from other blog -- ]
There is an article about IBM developing a cube of 3 dimensional memory that will hold terabytes of information. With the enormity of storage doubling even faster than processor speeds are, it is simple to say that storage or processor speed will not be an issue come future computers. We will be able to record our whole life on to a disk, indexed and searchable. More than likely, as our understanding of Neurology advances, our future computers will be able to download our entire mind into a datacube. We can save our minds, a backup of us. But I get ahead of myself.
Today we are deluged with nearly daily torrent of news about scientists’ cloning this animal and that, we may be tempted to become complacent or bored with the news of milestones being reached. The potential cannot, however, be overstated. With the advent of genetic engineering we have the possibility of controlling the previously random processes that creates human life. There is nothing that will stopping humanity from manipulating life itself.
Replacing the random processes can eliminate disease of the most awful sort.... leukemia, obesity, retardation, Alzheimer’s. We can create smart, beautiful wonderfully healthy people consistently. That, with nutrition, and anti-aging drugs, we could see life’s extend well beyond 100 years in the bodies of what would be a 25 year old. Controversial as genetic engineering and the biology of life is, the physics of life give ethicists and theologians even more to worry about.
There is nothing preventing us from regenerating life itself as a physical process. What is the spark of life ? What is resurrection? Assume a man dies of a heart attack. If we repair the hole in his heart, what prevents us from restoring the mind? It is merely a computer, a device that calculates and perceives and remembers. There is control of it, we call it free will. The ability to direct our consciousness and our decisions is wielding of the force of energy of life and there is no violation of the 2nd law in the restoration of life. I am actually surprised we haven't restored life to simpler creatures. Theologians have posited that the soul may reside in the mind but i do not feel that God was limited to using discoverable processes to encrypt his own presence. the nature of light is an indicator of what nature can do if it wants to hide itself.
Now combine the concepts of genetic engineering, life extension and restoration, and computer aided human biology, cybernetics.
A world of perfect, but infinitely varied people: their teeth are perfect due to enzymes that were engineered into our saliva ducts, their body fat is perfectly regulated by preventing our over indulgence, a gentic stomach staple. We are all geniuses, but since the minds are so varied, you have to choose which genius you want (artistic, mathematical, etc) . Our bodies are either micheal jordans, or ken griffeys, or tiger woods. For the females.....Charile Theron, Marylin Monroe, or Christy Brinkley. More than likely all randomness will not be able to be removed from the processes that create humans....probably just the things that are either dangerous or cosmetic. Even the natural counter that makes us die, the release of oxidants into our bodies, may be removed. We could live to 1000 years old.
And, if we die by getting disintegrated by some lazer beam, one of the family members goes back to the home Pentium X computer, gets a datacube and sends it into Clonz-R-Us. The insurance pays for 50% of the new body if it was an accident. Dad is loaded into either a robotic body, or a human clone 'blank', though the later has so much ethical baggage I simply cannot see it happening. So, dad is now a robot, but he's still with us, and death is defeated once again.
You see ,in the future, Death's days are numbered.
In the 30's the New York times reported that God is Dead.
in the 21st Century I am sure they will run the headline Death is dead !
With eternal humans, space travel will once again be though of as a human endeavor, not a robotic one. And we'll need to explore. Indeed, I suggest that the only way dad gets a new body is if he aggrees to become a space settler. We cannot have a bunch of 500 year olds running around our planet. With the death of death, we need an alternative way to get humans out of the planet and have a fresh rotation in the job market, etc.
If we can keep our hands off of the button, and stop socializing everything, I think we can get to this very desirable place.
One thing this is going to require is certainly a giant thriving world economy.
Recently time magazine reported that the universe is going to die a dismal death. I think its a bit quick to say such things since we really don't know about how the unusual state of the beginning of the universe. The first moments of the universe are extremely rare, a giant singularity, with the laws of physics we love no where in site. Imagine instead a universe full of humans, for billions of years.
Then, at the twilight of our universe's existence, when the fundamental forces that hold our atoms and our reality together giveaway to entropy, God comes out of another reality, says, 'Good Show!' and welcomes us to the new plane of existence, which before we couldn’t' possibly comprehend.
Tuesday, November 07, 2000
The 4 Laws of Human Life -- draft #2
1. To attain the highest quality of life, man must put his own interests and passions and values first in accordance with man qua man based on his value system (sans physical force).
2. To attain the highest quality of life, man must pursue, support and influnce his intimate relationships as long as they do not conflict with rule1.
3. To attain the highest quality of life, man must pursue and accept metaphysical Truth, as long as this pursuit does not do not conflict with rules 1 and 2.
4. To attain the highest quality of life, man must pursue, support and influence his government as long as they do not conflict with rules 1 and 2 and 3.
Preeminence of Individual Thought.
Do not have life, but have Life abundantly. Have as much as you can...attain heights beyond your grandparents. Break new ground, or hold the ground you've got. If your profession is non-edifying, seek another, or, find those things that will make you a richer and more dynamic person. Prepare yourself for when you are 50, and try to ensure you've left nothing out. The world does not owe you retirement -- prepare for it.
Marry and have children -- the former supports the later. Children give us so much love its difficult to see how rule 1 could be attained without them. Make peace with God, for death is the end of everyone's story...and the beginning. As well, how does God communicate with humanity today ? Through mass media announcements ? Through visits on Mt. Sini ? No, through the individual. So, if the individual follows his own thoughts, is he not acting for God with himself as a proxy ? However, God is not in the habit of taking over minds, so I imagine that God would need our permission for this communication to be performed. This 'permission' would be called accepting the Lord's role and salvation, and by current christian jargon as 'accepting Christ' into our hearts. I would say replace hearts, with minds, for Christians have the awful habit of devaluing the mind.
mostly deals with family and friends...those people we are somewhat determined to be with from the outset of our life. It is a value to have children, since they pass on your ethics and values, and they give you love, which is very much in the realm of rule 1. I would say that children are every bit as important as any capitalist or govermental work, and had rand had children, her next heroine would have been a mother.
Our bonds to siblings and parents are volitional upon adulthood, and one must not accept the argument, "he's your brother" as have any leverage over them. Blood is not a chain around our will. However, I feel that a tight family/friend network is essential to the continuing success of any one individual. humans need other humans, and the more quality connections you keep, both your professional and personal life will be richer.
True happiness will not be attained by those who feel there is no afterlife, no justice, no meaning outside of our own mortality. For what is real is real forever, and independent of mankind. eg. Does the value of human life dissapear after human life leaves the stage ? If we are to mean Objective, it means to be outside of our perceptions. If concepts are objective, if they are real, they must exist in another consiousness, somehow woven into the fabric of the universe. If we think that
this 80 year life is all there is panic and depression may undermine and influence our later years in illogical and immoral directions. For example, if I am a 72 year old married man and a beautiful 20 year-old woman wants to have an affair with me, what do I have to lose ? What is stopping this man from experiencing this ? If our ethics and morality end when we end, there is simply no point to them.
Dying in a war for your country is a tough one. You see, dying violates rule 1. However, without government that allows freedom, rule 1 is in jepoardy anyway, as is our families and future.
---
One of the problems with Atheistic Objectivisim is justice. Clearly there is no justice on earth. Oliver David Cruz, 33, sentenced to death for the 1988 abduction, rape and fatal stabbing of a 24-year-old woman, Kelly Donovan, who was a Kelly Air Base linguist in San Antonio. Cruz was executed on 8/9/2000. It is interesting how the liberal media puts EVERY execution, especially those out of Texas ( George W. Bush's state ) on the wire and creates some false expectation/hope of a stay of execution. This 'poor' man who since he was slightly retarded was totally capable of the acts he did was clearly a broken unit. There was no stay for Miss Donovan and I bet her murder didn't even make the UPI.
However, even though he was indeed put out of our misery via lethal injection, there really was no justice. We lost alot more when Kelly Donovan was killed, and there is no return on Cruz's death. What is lost is still lost.
I feel that those who die brutally at the hands of evil will recieve special dispensation from God. If we are to believe that our God is a Just God, that God cried as much as the Donovan family did when this beast did what he id, then we have to accept that the scales will be rebalanced. was at least slightly retarded.
Without Religious Metaphysics there is no justice. Without God there is no justice.
Since I have the impression of justice, then it must exist. Existence applies to concepts as well as matter. Since Justice is real and a pursuable concept, it must exist outside of man. If it cannot possibley be attained on earth, then it must be attain outside of our current reality, the meta-reality, the true reality.
For what we see here, per plato's cave, are just shadows on the wall -- not the things, but perceptions of things, a blurry image of Reality's true nature.
Life is the same. We are merely shadows of the glory that is to come.
Or is that so ? The real things we see, and believe, are real everywhere and outside of our perception. Is it necessary to invoke plato ?
Bertrand Russel argued against the necessity for justice with this analogy....If we open a crate of oranges and see that the top level of oranges are rotten, then are we to say that the rest of the oranges must be good becuase that would be justice ? Or fair ?
There is a subtle slight of hand here. What Bertrand uses for analogy is testable experience such as decaying fruit. But what I speak of is the concept of Justice is innate in mankind. Concepts are testable only by intelligent beings, and in their domain.
Though cultures may have different ways to mete out justice, Justice is a universal concept nevertheless. With that we have to cover the nature of universal concepts of humanity. What are they ? We have many...collaboration, the need for other people ( lonliness ), to have children, to have fun, to laugh, saddness at death, etc. These are things that I will say are conceptual objects.
These concepts are as hard and real as the desk I lean on or the keyboard upon which i type. They exist outside and independant of human interpretation.
Concepts are real, but if you erase humanity, do concepts then vanish ? If they are real and nonsubjective, then they must reside inside of some meta-intelligence. These conceptual objects reside in God's mind, and indeed expose God's nature and thus the nature of our reality.
So was the fruit shown an injustice by the microorganisms feeding off of it ? Of course not, its a scientific reality that bugs like fruit, and if you wait too long they'll have it. This leads us to an interesting conclusion -- there is no justice in the animal kingdom. Indeed, this should not surprise us. Humans are a new type of animal. We survive by our Reason, not our strength, speed, teeth, camaflouge.
In summary, the concept of justice has allowed man to survive and flourish, and the concept is universal. These two facts make it a Objective Concept. Since it is readily apparent that justice is often missed by humans, even with the best intentions and information available, we must say that the remainder, balancing of the scales, righting the wrongs, is done in the after life, by a loving and just God.
-----
The Three Laws of Robotics are:
1. A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
From Handbook of Robotics, 56th Edition, 2058 A.D., as quoted in I, Robot. by Isaac Asimov
In Robots and Empire (ch. 63), the "Zeroth Law" is extrapolated, and the other Three Laws modified accordingly: 0. A robot may not injure humanity or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm. Unlike the Three Laws, however, the Zeroth Law is not a fundamental part of positronic robotic engineering, is not part of all positronic robots, and, in fact, requires a very sophisticated robot to even accept it.
1. To attain the highest quality of life, man must put his own interests and passions and values first in accordance with man qua man based on his value system (sans physical force).
2. To attain the highest quality of life, man must pursue, support and influnce his intimate relationships as long as they do not conflict with rule1.
3. To attain the highest quality of life, man must pursue and accept metaphysical Truth, as long as this pursuit does not do not conflict with rules 1 and 2.
4. To attain the highest quality of life, man must pursue, support and influence his government as long as they do not conflict with rules 1 and 2 and 3.
Rule 1 -- the Goal:
Preeminence of Individual Thought.
Do not have life, but have Life abundantly. Have as much as you can...attain heights beyond your grandparents. Break new ground, or hold the ground you've got. If your profession is non-edifying, seek another, or, find those things that will make you a richer and more dynamic person. Prepare yourself for when you are 50, and try to ensure you've left nothing out. The world does not owe you retirement -- prepare for it.
Marry and have children -- the former supports the later. Children give us so much love its difficult to see how rule 1 could be attained without them. Make peace with God, for death is the end of everyone's story...and the beginning. As well, how does God communicate with humanity today ? Through mass media announcements ? Through visits on Mt. Sini ? No, through the individual. So, if the individual follows his own thoughts, is he not acting for God with himself as a proxy ? However, God is not in the habit of taking over minds, so I imagine that God would need our permission for this communication to be performed. This 'permission' would be called accepting the Lord's role and salvation, and by current christian jargon as 'accepting Christ' into our hearts. I would say replace hearts, with minds, for Christians have the awful habit of devaluing the mind.
Rule 2 -- the Family:
mostly deals with family and friends...those people we are somewhat determined to be with from the outset of our life. It is a value to have children, since they pass on your ethics and values, and they give you love, which is very much in the realm of rule 1. I would say that children are every bit as important as any capitalist or govermental work, and had rand had children, her next heroine would have been a mother.
Our bonds to siblings and parents are volitional upon adulthood, and one must not accept the argument, "he's your brother" as have any leverage over them. Blood is not a chain around our will. However, I feel that a tight family/friend network is essential to the continuing success of any one individual. humans need other humans, and the more quality connections you keep, both your professional and personal life will be richer.
Rule 3 -- Metaphysics & Afterlife:
True happiness will not be attained by those who feel there is no afterlife, no justice, no meaning outside of our own mortality. For what is real is real forever, and independent of mankind. eg. Does the value of human life dissapear after human life leaves the stage ? If we are to mean Objective, it means to be outside of our perceptions. If concepts are objective, if they are real, they must exist in another consiousness, somehow woven into the fabric of the universe. If we think that
this 80 year life is all there is panic and depression may undermine and influence our later years in illogical and immoral directions. For example, if I am a 72 year old married man and a beautiful 20 year-old woman wants to have an affair with me, what do I have to lose ? What is stopping this man from experiencing this ? If our ethics and morality end when we end, there is simply no point to them.
Rule 4 -- The Country:
Dying in a war for your country is a tough one. You see, dying violates rule 1. However, without government that allows freedom, rule 1 is in jepoardy anyway, as is our families and future.
---
One of the problems with Atheistic Objectivisim is justice. Clearly there is no justice on earth. Oliver David Cruz, 33, sentenced to death for the 1988 abduction, rape and fatal stabbing of a 24-year-old woman, Kelly Donovan, who was a Kelly Air Base linguist in San Antonio. Cruz was executed on 8/9/2000. It is interesting how the liberal media puts EVERY execution, especially those out of Texas ( George W. Bush's state ) on the wire and creates some false expectation/hope of a stay of execution. This 'poor' man who since he was slightly retarded was totally capable of the acts he did was clearly a broken unit. There was no stay for Miss Donovan and I bet her murder didn't even make the UPI.
However, even though he was indeed put out of our misery via lethal injection, there really was no justice. We lost alot more when Kelly Donovan was killed, and there is no return on Cruz's death. What is lost is still lost.
I feel that those who die brutally at the hands of evil will recieve special dispensation from God. If we are to believe that our God is a Just God, that God cried as much as the Donovan family did when this beast did what he id, then we have to accept that the scales will be rebalanced. was at least slightly retarded.
Without Religious Metaphysics there is no justice. Without God there is no justice.
Since I have the impression of justice, then it must exist. Existence applies to concepts as well as matter. Since Justice is real and a pursuable concept, it must exist outside of man. If it cannot possibley be attained on earth, then it must be attain outside of our current reality, the meta-reality, the true reality.
For what we see here, per plato's cave, are just shadows on the wall -- not the things, but perceptions of things, a blurry image of Reality's true nature.
Life is the same. We are merely shadows of the glory that is to come.
Or is that so ? The real things we see, and believe, are real everywhere and outside of our perception. Is it necessary to invoke plato ?
Bertrand Russel argued against the necessity for justice with this analogy....If we open a crate of oranges and see that the top level of oranges are rotten, then are we to say that the rest of the oranges must be good becuase that would be justice ? Or fair ?
There is a subtle slight of hand here. What Bertrand uses for analogy is testable experience such as decaying fruit. But what I speak of is the concept of Justice is innate in mankind. Concepts are testable only by intelligent beings, and in their domain.
Though cultures may have different ways to mete out justice, Justice is a universal concept nevertheless. With that we have to cover the nature of universal concepts of humanity. What are they ? We have many...collaboration, the need for other people ( lonliness ), to have children, to have fun, to laugh, saddness at death, etc. These are things that I will say are conceptual objects.
These concepts are as hard and real as the desk I lean on or the keyboard upon which i type. They exist outside and independant of human interpretation.
Concepts are real, but if you erase humanity, do concepts then vanish ? If they are real and nonsubjective, then they must reside inside of some meta-intelligence. These conceptual objects reside in God's mind, and indeed expose God's nature and thus the nature of our reality.
So was the fruit shown an injustice by the microorganisms feeding off of it ? Of course not, its a scientific reality that bugs like fruit, and if you wait too long they'll have it. This leads us to an interesting conclusion -- there is no justice in the animal kingdom. Indeed, this should not surprise us. Humans are a new type of animal. We survive by our Reason, not our strength, speed, teeth, camaflouge.
In summary, the concept of justice has allowed man to survive and flourish, and the concept is universal. These two facts make it a Objective Concept. Since it is readily apparent that justice is often missed by humans, even with the best intentions and information available, we must say that the remainder, balancing of the scales, righting the wrongs, is done in the after life, by a loving and just God.
-----
The Three Laws of Robotics are:
1. A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
From Handbook of Robotics, 56th Edition, 2058 A.D., as quoted in I, Robot. by Isaac Asimov
In Robots and Empire (ch. 63), the "Zeroth Law" is extrapolated, and the other Three Laws modified accordingly: 0. A robot may not injure humanity or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm. Unlike the Three Laws, however, the Zeroth Law is not a fundamental part of positronic robotic engineering, is not part of all positronic robots, and, in fact, requires a very sophisticated robot to even accept it.
