Handicapping: Part 3 – Who We Do It For

crimson

With everything going on in the world of late, it is hard to maintain focus. I want to continue my topic, but I am often compelled to address those other things that are going on. For the moment, I have abated my compulsion and will continue my treatise. We will see if I can keep doing that as time progresses.

In my last post, I spoke of ethics and tried to present what it is in the most basic of senses. The big question I ended with was determining who the others were. That is, who’s interests and desires are so important to me that I am willing to sacrifice my own interests and desires in favor of theirs. Where does the ethical impetus come from?

In some sense, the answer seems simple enough: everyone else. Society. My community. My parents. For some strange reason, I care what everyone else thinks about me, and so I will sacrifice my own crazy desires to appease those around me. I admit that this is something I feel and perhaps you do not. Over the course of my life, I have met some people who certainly do not valuate the world as I do. Perhaps you are such a person?

However, it has also been my experience that those sorts of people are fewer and further between. And unfortunately, those people also tend to be in positions of authority or power. I have often wondered if there is a correlation between these seemingly opposing things. (Spoiler: I do believe this is the case, and this is part of the point of this theory of handicapping).

It has been my experience that people who voluntarily limit themselves, who handicap themselves, are putting themselves at a disadvantage. Perhaps not in every instance, but in the lion’s share of instances limiting one’s self often leads to being in a situation of less. This is why I chose the word “handicap” in the first place. In general, handicapping has a negative connotation, suggesting that handicapping is negative and ought to be avoided at all costs.

In sports, when someone is handicapped it is meant to level the playing field. The one with the clear advantage is given a limitation to offset their advantage. That way, when the game begins, even those who are not as proficient can stand a chance against those with great proficiency. But this is simply another way of saying that the one who clearly ought to win in the match up is being limited so the one who should not win the match up can be placated.

In this case, the handicapping may be viewed as positive for the underdog but negative for the superior athlete. I would imagine the superior athlete would not accept such an arrangement normally, unless there was some reason to allow the limiting action. This, once again, is ethics. The superior athlete sacrificing what they may desire in favor of the desires of others. Perhaps others in this case include the audience, wanting to see a more balanced match up. Perhaps it is the business owners trying to ensure the match up is less predictable; if the same people always won, the sport would become quite boring.

But in this case, the handicapping is once again happening not because of the desires of the individual, but instead the desires of others. Once again this is about doing something others want instead of what I want.

In the case of the athlete, they may be compelled to follow and obey in order to continue in their sport. After all, what would sports be without the support of audiences and others? Some may argue that a sport is strictly for the individual in isolation, but how many athletes can you think of that never perform for some sort of audience? To be fair, those that do would likely not be very well known for precisely the reason I am making.

This all falls into the category of definitions now. That is, an athlete is an athlete in large part because they perform for some sort of audience. Were there no audience to be concerned with, it may affect the impetus of the individual to accept some sort of handicapping.

For me, for my discussion, focusing on the case of athletes is not really where I wish to focus. I am more concerned with a general concept of handicapping, particularly in the average person’s day-to-day life. The individual who is self legislating, deciding for themselves that they ought to behave in ways other than the ways they would like to behave. Like so many other ideas and concepts I prefer to discuss here, this one once again is likely causing some confusion. I can tell by the way my sentence structures are becoming fuzzy and unclear, even to myself who is writing this all down.

I think I will tie this post off here for now, and think about this a bit more. It seems to me it is pretty clear who the others are in this situation: society. However, what may still be less clear is why one would abandon their own desires in favor of the desires of those around them. As I suggested in my previous post, it seems like the why is related to a sort of “keeping the peace.” But that over simplified answer has also not been sitting well with me.

It has taken me a long time to really talk about this topic. It seems I am still struggling to explain it properly.

Handicapping: Part 2 – Why We Do It

crimson

In my last post, I established in the most basic sense what handicapping is (as I see it): it is the act of limiting one’s self when up against others. In particular, for my purposes, of giving up on one’s own projects in order to pursue (or help pursue) the projects of others. To sacrifice one’s freedom (perhaps temporarily) to support the freedom of another. So the next natural question I would expect to ask is why would someone do this?

When pursuing our freedom in our modern world, we often run up against ethics and morality. The idea that what we may want to do is either right or good, or perhaps wrong or evil. Or to perhaps be a bit less dramatic, when I act, I can do what I want to do, or I can do what I think I am expected to do. This is literally ethics.

For those who may not know, ethics is all about oughts. As I go about my life, I am compelled to do what I want to do at any given moment in time, in a sort of selfish manner. That is, I know through my passions and my intellect what sorts of actions I want to take based on what will make me happy or what will give me advantage. If I am hungry for chocolate, I can follow a course of action that will lead to me eating chocolate. Perhaps I will walk down the block to the nearest convenience store and purchase some chocolate and then eat it. The concept I’m suggesting here is not all that complicated. In general, I pursue my interests and desires most of the time. I think most people do.

However, there are certainly times when the thing I want to do is not going to be well received by those around me. Perhaps walking to a convenience store to get chocolate seems quite unproblematic, but what if I do not wish to pay for that chocolate? What if I decided to simply break in and take the chocolate so that I could satisfy my craving? It may seem extreme to think about stealing chocolate, so perhaps I will escalate the idea to help with clarity. What if I decided I wanted money, and I decided the best path to getting that money was to rob the convenience store. This pursuit of mine is clearly becoming quite controversial.

I think most would agree that robbing a convenience store is not the sort of action I ought to do. And there it is, the word ought has already come about. I may want to do this action of stealing, but I know that I am not supposed to pursue this particular action because it is considered prohibited. I ought not rob a convenience store. This is ethics. According to ethics, I ought not rob a convenience store. According to ethics, I ought to sacrifice this particular desire or interest, and instead pursue the desire or interest of another. In this case, the other happens to be my community or society.

In its most basic form, ethics is simply a description of how I decide what I ought to do despite what I want to do. There are many different theories about ethics that try to explain my behavior, such as utilitarianism which suggests I choose my actions based on the consequences of those actions. In utilitarianism, I ought to choose my action based on whichever action will result in the greatest increase in happiness (or sometimes the greatest reduction in suffering). Using my example from above, robbing the convenience store would clearly make the store owner quite unhappy, as well as those who use the convenience store. If I were to chose another manner with which to acquire money, such as working at the convenience store instead, that would seem to generate greater happiness.

There are many other theories of ethics out there, but in cases as straight forward as the one I’ve laid out, they generally will agree that stealing is a prohibited action. All that is really different between theories is how they come to the conclusion. The reason there are so many different theories is that there are cases that are not so easy to define and so each different theory may suggest a different course of action in these harder to define cases.

The purpose of my discussion is not to dwell on different ethical theories, but to instead highlight something the all have in common: they suggest that I give up an action I may want to do and replace it with an action that I ought to do instead. That I should limit myself in some fashion, sacrificing a particular desire or interest I have and instead pursuing or supporting the desires or interests of others around me. Ethics is one reason I might chose to handicap myself.

The next difficult aspect to consider is who those others might be.

Handicapping: Part 1 – Simple Logic

crimson

It is time, not to poke fun at my previous posts. I have avoided this topic for a while now. Technically, I posted about this over two years ago on Reddit. Even then, people seemed not to understand what I was referring to. It isn’t really easy to talk about nor to explain. But it is time I did just that.

Unlike the post on Reddit, I’m going to approach this slowly, bit by bit. A little about what I’m talking about before tying it all together. Hopefully by doing this, there is a greater chance you will understand too.

This is a theory I’ve been working on for a while now. I refer to it as the Theory of Handicapping. I consider it to be a viable explanation as to how humans (and possibly all life) behaves. And I consider it to be an explanation as to why we have not witnessed sentient life from outside our tiny sphere we call Earth. And, unfortunately, I consider it to be an explanation as to why we are all doomed to eventually expire. Probably not this generation, but the clock on humanity is running out slowly. This is what I believe, and perhaps my explanation might resonate with others.

The driving force of this theory is in the name, as often is the case with naming things. The idea of handicapping is the idea of purposely limiting one’s self for some reason or other. In sports such as golf, a handicap may be used to balance the game, making it possible for a less skilled player to compete with a player who is much better. In my theory, this is precisely the idea I have in mind.

In life, I find myself in constant competition with those around me. I am in competition for resources and space and even time. As I try to exercise my freedom, pursuing my interests and desires, I am nearly constantly challenged by others as they pursue their own. This is where the Existentialists, such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, are helpful to talk about. For Sartre, he considered us all to be in this competition at all times, fighting to express our freedom and pursue our projects. For Beauvoir, she considered it instead to be a cooperative venture, where individuals had to make space for each other and acknowledge each others’ freedom. Perhaps it is from reading both of these thinkers that my own theory emerges.

On the Sartrean side, the competition is ruthless and unavoidable. Like the myth of the Alpha, I am forced to bully and fight and sometimes even resort to violence to make my way in the world. No one will give me a moment’s rest and I must defend my claim to space and interests. For Sartre, this is simply how freedom works. Those who fight well and out compete others will get to enjoy their projects, while those who do not will simply be forced to follow the projects of others. I imagine Sartre likely felt women were often on the losing side of this game.

On the Beauvoirian side, the competition is a losing endeavor. Only through recognizing each other’s freedom can any of us succeed in our pursuits. But more than that, she suggested we needed to acknowledge each others freedom, even going so far as to sacrifice our own from time to time in order work with others on their projects. That is, for a while I will help you accomplish your projects, and then later you can help me with mine. We work together, cooperatively, so that we both can pursue our respective goals and interests. The only problem comes when our respective pursuits contradict each other; in this situation, it is less clear what to do. Clearly Sartre’s response would be less problematic.

For me, for my theory, it is this very troubling dichotomy that I am trying to address. For me, I think both are correct in their assessment of the situation. We are stuck in both competition and cooperation with each other in our pursuit of our freedom. Much of the time, we must convince others to assist us in our pursuits, because most of our pursuits are not feasible to pursue alone. I might be able to build a house by myself, but it would certainly take a very long time to do; if I had the assistance of others, the process would be much quicker, and likely a better made house would result as well (considering my own lack of proficiencies).

But then it becomes a question of when to stand one’s ground and when to sacrifice. At what points do I fight for my project, working to ensure that it gets achieved? At what points do I submit to the will of others in their own pursuits, helping them to accomplish theirs? Fairness might suggest that we split the difference and help each other out in equal measure. But if you’ve lived in this world for any amount of time, certainly you will have noticed that this definitely does not happen.

I hate to bring it up, as I’ve been avoiding this topic as well, but the recent election in the United States is a great example of the situation I’m talking about. Donald Trump has recently been elected president again, and he did so on a platform suggesting he would take care of the people. He even went so far as to say “whether the women like it or not, I’m going to protect them.” The crazy part of this is how it so clearly flies in the face of his project, completely undermining the project of his own constituents. That said, he was still voted in, so perhaps there are plenty of women who actually want Trump to protect them.

The problem with all of this is that Trump only said what he said to get elected. He hasn’t even entered office yet, and he has already backpedaled on virtually every promise he made during his campaign. Meaning he only said what he said to convince those around him to help him with his project, never having any intention of cooperating and helping others pursue their own projects. This is the Sartrean competition I am talking about; Trump’s strategy for a successful fight was to use deception and lies to convince those around him to help him with his project. He successfully convinced others to sacrifice their own projects for his.

And so, this is the first part of my theory that I need to establish and make clear. In this world, where we all are trying to pursue our desires and interests, individually we have to somehow convince others to allow us to pursue our projects, either through fighting for them or negotiating for them or some other strategy. And perhaps at times we have to sacrifice our pursuit to assist others in their pursuits. At any time in your life when you have been helping others to do the things they wanted to do, this is precisely what you are doing. You are sacrificing your own desires or interests or goals to assist someone else in accomplishing theirs. And if you look really hard at what you are doing, you may come to realize (as I have) that you are more often submitting to others than doing things for yourself.

This is what I will refer to as Handicapping.

A Fourth Dimension: Part 2

crimson

So much has happened in the past month. Events that have had profound impacts on myself and those around me. And yet, I find myself wanting to simply return to the topic I ended on from my last post. So today I am going to continue trying to answer the question from my last post: Do I have a relatively fixed time?

To attempt to answer this question, I feel I need to make clear what I am in the previous dimensions first. To try and elucidate precisely what it means to have a length or a width or a depth. And perhaps even more than that, to try and imagine what would happen if I were to somehow remove one of these dimensions; how might the others react in such a situation?

Recently, in a class I have been taking in physics, we have been discussing what precisely “mass” is. This first needs to be separated from the distinct idea of what “weight” is. My weight is a measure of how much the Earth’s gravity is pulling upon my body. The equation to describe weight is w = mg, where w represents weight, m represents mass, and g represents the acceleration due to gravity. That is to say, mass has a relationship to weight, but mass is not the same as weight. I feel my weight, as I am constantly being pulled toward the ground below me. In fact, the very idea of “below me” is in large part because I have weight; that weight exists in the direction I feel pulled is what I refer to as “below me.”

What was made clear in my class about mass is that mass is the idea of resisting change. To be more specific, the idea of “inertia” was brought up in order to explain mass. So what is “inertia” exactly?

The word “inertia” starts with the word “inert.” The idea is that objects have a sort of preference to remain as they are, to remain inert. This is in fact Newton’s First Law (translated): “Every object perseveres in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, except insofar as it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed thereon.” Stated simpler, Newton is suggesting that objects will remain at a constant speed at all times, unless something causes them to change their speed. An object could be at rest (not moving at all), or it could be moving at a constant speed in some direction, but unless a force acts upon it, it will continue to do so indefinitely.

This is where the idea of acceleration and impulse becomes important. To change an object, one accelerates the object using a force. Applying a force to an object changes its speed. An impulse is simply applying a force over a (usually) brief period of time. With this concept in our minds, inertia is how the object resists the change to its speed. This is why it is harder to change the motion of certain objects than others. Those objects that require more force to change their speed we refer to them as having greater mass.

To sum up, mass is a measure of how much force it takes to change an objects speed. Mass is a measure of the inertia of the object. In simplified terms, mass is the objects resistance to change. And following from this, weight is a measure of this resistance multiplied by the acceleration due to gravity. In other words, weight is the force applied by the Earth to change the object’s speed and propel it toward the Earth.

Another feature that tends to be thought about with mass is that it must occupy some space. Meaning an object of some mass will have some length, width, and depth. These dimensions help me describe how the object is occupying the space, and suggest to me that there is some relationship between mass and the space it occupies. As reluctant as I was in my previous post, it seems I am compelled to start discussing identity now.

What makes me me is what I would refer to as my identity. More generally, the identity of any object is the thing that makes that object that object and not some other object. Or, similarly, what makes an object that object and not the environment that surrounds that object. I am me, but I am somehow separate from the world around me. But at the same time I am clearly also a part of the world around me. But I do not consider myself to be the world around me. Usually, I separate what is me from the world around me. So there seems to be some sort of barrier that separates what is me and what is the world around me.

The dimensions of length, width, and depth are in some way delineating that barrier that separates me from the world around me. So, as it turns out, my identity is bound up significantly in what space I occupy. Thus, if these three dimensions are helping delineate what makes me me, then if I want to talk about a fourth dimension, time, then I should be talking about how time helps delineate what is me from what is the world around me.

When I walk down the street, I notice how there is a small amount of atmosphere that travels with me. Within a few centimeters of my skin, small insects will sometimes get caught up in that small amount of atmosphere around my body. I walk, and those insects are unable to escape and fly away, trapped in that pocket of air. It is annoying having those insects buzzing around my head as I walk. Do I consider that pocket of air me? Do I consider those insects trapped in the pocket of air me? Obviously not. They are outside what I consider me. For me, I clearly want to suggest that the boundary of my skin is the boundary of what is me. The boundary of my skin can easily be measured using length, width, and depth. But what about time?

I keep orbiting the question, trying to imagine in what possible way I am bounded by time. The answer I often come to is that my birth and my death are the bounds of my identity, but that just doesn’t feel correct. Especially when thinking about things like time travel and how it might operate. It seems like the coming into existence and the leaving existence are too far removed from the bounds I want to talk about.

An alternative is to consider this moment in time. The “now” that I have talked about before. I exist here and now, in this moment. My identity could be bound by “now” in a very literal sense. That which exists in the past is no longer bound to my identity and the future that has not yet come to pass is not bound to my identity either. If I use this model to describe my identity, then perhaps I am simply razor thin, spanning a mere moment in history. This sort of interpretation seems consistent with what most people think about when considering time travel, as my perceptual reference of now is all that seems to matter when moving about a timeline.

Thinking back to the film Slaughterhouse-Five, it seems like that is what people have in mind when suggesting it is a film about time travel. The protagonist’s “now” is literally jumping from moment to moment along his personal history. But then it is only his non-material identity that is jumping around, as his body does not travel with him from moment to moment. It seems like a partial or incomplete time travel if this is the case. Hence why my interpretation in my previous post seems the better interpretation. I think I want to say that for time travel, my entire identity needs to travel from one time to another, meaning both my mind and my literal body as well.

Does this all make sense? I am not entirely sold on this theory myself. But it is a start. To suggest my identity is bound up in these four dimensions, length, width, depth, and time, I have to look at myself in a certain way. And, as with the idea of a mass being a resistance to change, whatever is taken to be me is similarly resistant to change without a significant outside force.

A Fourth Dimension

crimson

As my reader may already be aware, I have an interest in time and time travel. Knowing this, one of my friends suggested to me that I should watch the film Slaughterhouse-Five from 1972. Recently, over five years after the suggestion was made, I finally found the time to watch it.

I did not know what to expect. I had been told it was not your typical time travel story. That it approached the idea of time travel very differently. Now, having seen the film, I will argue that the story contains no time travel whatsoever. I would add a tag here warning of spoilers, but I think I am safe in this particular instance, as I’m simply going to describe how the nature of the story works, not delving into particulars.

My whole perspective on this hinges on the idea of dimensions, and in particular of the fourth dimension. Most will likely be familiar with the common and well known first three dimensions, usually referred to as length, width, and depth. That is, any object in three dimensional space will have as part of its features a length, a width, and a depth. These dimensions are described using simple scalar values or quantities of magnitude. As I have stated in the past, as a three dimensional object myself, I have values of about two meters (length) by about three quarters of a meter (width) by about half a meter (depth). What’s more, these dimensions are irregular, as I only occupy a portion of the volume described by a prism of the dimensions I just stated.

What is important in all of this is not the particular values that I state, only that they exist and they are finite. It is possible using various methods and tools for one to measure and record the values that could be later used to describe my length, width, and depth within these three dimensions. And possibly more importantly, over time, these dimensions remain relatively consistent. That is, I have had a length of about two meters for probably the past thirty or forty years now. And while my length might change a little from day to day, it isn’t so much that I cannot be identified.

Which, as I think about it, raises all sorts of questions about identity and defining the boundaries which delineate what is me and what is not me. It is not my intention in this post to delve into such matters in detail, but I do think it is important to acknowledge that however those boundaries might be determined, they will still consist of simple, measurable scalar magnitudes that can be described within these first three dimensions. Any object that exists within this plane of existence ought to be able to be similarly described.

But then there is this fourth dimension: time. I state it as time specifically, as for some the next dimension might be something else. For example, my partner literally just told me that the fourth dimension is smell, as in if you go to a theater presenting a film in “4D,” they will often be referring to a fourth element that has been added to the experience, and smell is often utilized in this case. In my discussion here, I am specifically interested in talking about time, especially as it relates to the alien race in Slaughterhouse-Five known as the Tralfamadorians.

According to the film, the Tralfamadorians are four dimensional beings, in that they “exist in all times simultaneously, and are thus privy to knowledge of future events.” The issue that occurs to the protagonist of the film is that he is jumping around from time period to time period without any control to stop himself. This is the aspect of the film that I believe people think makes it a film about time travel, as the protagonist is jumping around through time.

However, when the protagonist jumps from time to time, he does not vanish from one period and appear in another. He does not stand in a field in Belgium during World War II and suddenly vanish to appear in a house in the United States in the 1960s. Furthermore, when he goes through his jumps, he is not the same at the end of the jump as he is at the beginning. Specifically, when he is in the field in Belgium, he is a young man, but when he is in the house in the United States, he is an old man. It does not take long, observing these details, to realize that what is happening is not him jumping through time or time travelling, but instead he is perceiving and experiencing different moments or periods of his life.

To be clear, in a chronological sense, his life occurred in a linear fashion as most of us are familiar with. He was born, grew up, went to war, returned home, married, got old, and eventually died. The detail that is confused with travelling through time is that he does not perceive his life in chronological order. Instead, the way the film is presented, the protagonist frame of perception and experience jumps from one part of his life to another, outside of his control.

But even that, I think, is incorrect. As is explained by the Tralfamadorians, they experience all of their lives all at once, instead of a little bit at a time. Instead of experiencing one moment to the next, like travelling on a path or road, the Tralfamadorians experience all moments of their lives simultaneously. And I think, based on their significance to the story, that the protagonist is doing the same. Perhaps due to a traumatic event or due to his encountering the alien species, the protagonist becomes like the Tralfamadorians and has full access to the total sum of all his experiences all at once.

What I think is happening instead is a function of focus. Like the way that I can see quite a bit with my eyes, but that I tend only to focus on a small portion of my field of view in any moment, I think the protagonist is doing the same, though perhaps with less practiced control than I have with my eyes. I have a wide 180 degree sweep to my vision with either of my eyes. That which resides on the periphery of my vision is often referred to as my peripheral vision, and it takes a mere moment’s thought to shift an object in my peripheral vision to the focus of my vision. I can turn my head, or I can simply turn my eyeball itself. And, through practice, I have found I can do neither and still focus on an object in my periphery while still looking straight ahead. It is true that the objects viewed in this last way do not come to me as clearly, but I can still do this, ignoring that which is directly in front of me.

I argue that this is the same thing that the protagonist is doing, though he may not understand it, nor is he practiced in controlling it. The evidence for this, I think, comes from the sorts of events he does experience and when he experiences them. There are a number of scenes where he seems to be straddling two events at the same time. The two events tend to have something strikingly common about them. In one particular case, he is involved in a public speaking event, in both cases struggling to differentiate between himself at a podium as an old man and him supporting his friend speaking to a group of soldiers. He claps in the latter event, which is inappropriate, while many clap in the former event which is appropriate. I think the character is confused, perhaps clapping for the wrong event, but as he is experiencing both events simultaneously, it is hard for him to distinguish.

There are many such scenes in the film, where the protagonist quickly jumps from one part of his life to another in quick succession. Back and forth between the same two events repeatedly for the duration of both events. This seems to me not to be accidental. For him, the emotional relationship between the events draws them together into his focus, like a moving object will draw my eye. In some sense he should be able to control what is happening, and could choose not to focus on a particular event, but if he does not realize that he has such control, of course he will not exercise it.

Finally, the reason I do believe all of this is happening is captured nicely in the brief phrase that is apparently the source of this well known idiom: “so it goes.” Within the context of this film, “so it goes” is not a phrase meant to conjure a dismissive attitude. It is meant as an acknowledgement of how death is simply a part of life. All things are born and live and eventually die, and there is no reason to get too worked up about that. Instead, the Tralfamadorians suggest adopting a more positive outlook, focusing their attention on the more positive moments of their lives. And as they are experiencing all of their lives all at once, this can be taken quite literally.

Just as I can focus the center of my vision on the object that most interests me, adding greater clarify and texture to it while I mostly ignore and dismiss that which happens in the periphery of my vision, the Tralfamadorians can do the same with their perceptual focus, choosing to experience those parts of their lives that are more pleasant and positive, ignoring and dismissing those parts that are boring or negative. It can be debated how healthy it is to ignore the aspects of one’s life that one does not enjoy, but for a species who is experiencing all events all at once, there seems to me to be some logic to this.

Thus, I do not think the film is a film about time travel at all. However, I would agree that it is a film about time and about how time is perceived. For myself, in this existence I presently inhabit, I experience my life as a linear stream of events that follows a chronological sequence. Right now I am typing at my computer this blog, and later I will go to bed to sleep. And then tomorrow I will experience the weekend and do chores. I do not experience all events in my life simultaneously, and I certainly cannot choose to focus on an event from ten years ago, or an event ten years from now either.

It would be interesting if I could do such things. To be able to use information from the future to inform the decisions of the past. To help myself make better choices. To help myself avoid various pitfalls along the way. But that just isn’t how it works for me. At least not so far.

The last thing I want to raise about all of this is something I’ve thought about in the past. I’ve even written about it a little in previous blog posts from years ago. This fourth dimension, time, does not seem like the previous three dimensions. Or perhaps it is, but is not so easily seen. I have a relatively fixed length about me. Do I have a relatively fixed time?

Treat Yourself How You Want To Be Treated

crimson

I think a lot of children are taught early on the idea that we should treat others how we want to be treated. That if we want to be treated kindly or with respect, we ought first to treat others with kindness and respect. And while I do believe this is a good sort of idea to embrace, as it certainly should help foster positive relationships with others, I do not believe this is entirely enough. In particular, I do not think this is the best strategy to enter into healthy intimate relationships.

I was reading a post on social media from a woman who was lonely. She expressed a desire to find a boyfriend, but was tired of people telling her that she needed to be patient. Apparently many were telling her that to be successful, she ought to stop trying to find a relationship, and that a relationship would then miraculously happen for her while she was not looking for it. I’ve heard this sentiment before, and in some fashion I also endorse it. But as with most things, it is never quite this simple.

To clarify my own perspective on this subject, I believe that to successfully find a healthy intimate relationship, the best thing one can do is to focus on and engage in the sorts of activities that they find most interesting and desirable. That is, do what you want to do and do what you like to do. Like others suggest, don’t focus on finding the relationship, distract yourself with other activities. In the course of doing what you enjoy, you will end up surrounded by people who also find that same activity enjoyable. And in spending time with those people, relationships will develop themselves.

While I still feel this is the most appropriate path to success, thinking about this woman’s post on social media makes me feel even stronger about why this is the case and why it works. And it is because of the very issue that causes so many people grief, especially women: objectification. That is, when entering relationships with others, especially intimate relationships, many women end up feeling like merely objects of sexual interest.

I believe this is entirely about respect for autonomy and is related to what I often describe about love. For me, true love is to embrace and support the desires and interests of others. That is, if I am entering into what I will call a healthy and loving relationship, my focus will be on identifying and supporting the desires and interests of the other person. It will be my goal to help them realize their goals and projects. In particular, it will not be of interest to me to suppress or even sacrifice their desires and interests for my own.

But if the other person with whom I am about to embark on such a relationship has been spending their time focused on luring me through presenting themselves inauthentically, then I might not actually share the interests or desires that I think they possess. That is, if the other person I am establishing a relationship with has presented themselves as liking different things or having different interests than they actually have, then I may be pursuing them for the wrong reasons.

Let me be plain. If I like a particular person, and I find out they enjoy Marvel movies, I may take an interest in Marvel movies. I may even do so despite my lack of interest in Marvel movies. In other words, in this situation, I am taking up an interest of theirs when it is not my own. And while this may be consistent with my description of true love, I will probably also be creating a problematic situation as well. Because now the other person may start to think that I like Marvel movies, even though I may not. And if this is how our relationship is being established, then they are entering into the situation on a false premise. They may like me because they think I like Marvel movies. This is a huge problem.

In reality, there are likely to be many, many such subtle pieces of misinformation occurring. As a specific example, I dated a woman once who indicated to me that she liked dance music. She told me this because I mentioned that I liked dance music. I enjoy house and techno and electronica. However, despite her knowing what I meant when I said “dance music,” for her dance music meant something more like classical and ballroom dance music. Clearly, upon clarification, we were talking about very different things. What upset me later was that she admitted to me that she actually understood what I was talking about at the time and went along anyway. In my ignorance, I did not understand until much later. And unfortunately, this detail was only the tip of the iceberg.

The point I wish to make here is that by taking on interests that are not my own, and especially interests that may be directly opposed to my actual interests, I am presenting myself inauthentically and misleading the other person. I may be doing it in order to establish a relationship with that other person, but ultimately I am doing both of us a disservice. Unless I plan to continue the charade indefinitely, there will eventually come a time when the truth will come out. Either that, or I will be doomed to spend the rest of my life sacrificing one (or many) of my interests and desires.

As an even more graphic example of this, and the one I used in responding to the woman on social media, if a woman decides to make herself more stereotypically attractive in order to attract a man, she is doing a similar disservice. If she enhances her appearance, augmenting her chest and wearing revealing clothing, the man whom she attracts will likely believe that this is a part of who she is. In fact, if she takes this too far, presenting herself as a promiscuous sort of woman, the man she attracts is likely to treat her as such, believing that she really is such a woman.

If the truth is that she is not such a woman (as I think most women are not), then the quickly establishing relationship is already doomed. He is going to continue treating her as something she is not, objectifying her to the extreme. And if, once the relationship is established, she tries to now reveal her true self, the man is likely to become rather upset. Either that, or she will need to maintain the ruse for as long as the relationship lasts. And if she ends up marrying that man, then that could also be rather unfortunate.

It is true that men ought not be viewing women in this way. To objectify anyone is highly problematic. But this is the reason active pursuit of relationships, on both sides, is also highly problematic. In the pursuit of a relationship, we all adjust our presentation in order to best lure a potential partner. We express interests in things we are not interested in, and we sacrifice ourselves in the pursuit. In other words, what I am trying to suggest is that it is this pursuit of a relationship that is the fundamental problem.

It is certainly true that one can find a relationship using the various strategies I have been outlining. If the goal for a person is simply not to be alone, then finding someone to be with is actually quite easy. Not being alone is easy to rectify. However, if the actual goal is more than simply alleviating loneliness, then things are obviously more complicated. If the goal is something like finding a relationship with someone who will love me for me, then my strategy most definitely must change.

Which leads me ultimately to what I have said in the title of this post. If I wish to enter into an intimate relationship with someone, a relationship that is healthy and filled with love, then I need to find someone who respects me and treats me with kindness. And to do that, I need to do something that may be quite difficult for me to do: I need to treat myself how I want to be treated. I need to treat myself with respect and with kindness.

The strategy I have endorsed above is just that. By pursuing my interests and desires, I am treating myself with the kindness and respect I wish of others as well. And by not focusing on the “hunt,” I am not placing myself into the role of either the hunter or the hunted. As I believe many people likely feel, I do not wish to be merely an object or trophy to be acquired for someone’s collection. I am not a prize to be won. I am an autonomous, free willed being who wishes respect. I have my own desires and interests that I want to pursue. So anyone who enters into a relationship with me ought to be prepared for that.

And it works in the other direction as well. Anyone I end up with ought to also be happy with my interests and desires. Their interests and desires ought to at least be compatible with my own. So they too ought to do the same as I am doing as well: pursuing their own interests and desires. They too ought to be treating themselves with kindness and respect. After all, they are in a very similar situation as I am in.

And thus, in order for a relationship between us to come about, the only way it seems to me that this will all work is for both of us to not be actively pursuing a relationship and instead be pursuing our own respective interests. If those interests come together, we are likely to come together as well. And then a healthy and positive relationship can establish itself, without the need for either of us to pretend to be something we are not.

ASI Can Never Be

crimson

Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) can never be. There will never be an entity in existence that is “better” than a human in every possible way. I make this claim with complete confidence. This blog today is my evidence to support why I am saying this.

I came to this realization recently as I was considering another problem: how can humans be compared to other humans? That is, in terms that often lead to issues of racism and sexism, how is it reasonable to consider one individual human to be better, in a general or overall sense, than another individual human?

I believe that no individual is better (or worse) than any other individual, in a general sense. That is, I can compare two individuals using a test or examination, and I might be able to suggest that one is superior within the very narrow realm of the test or examination. When I was in school, I would be graded in my classes, and the mark I received in some classes was greater than the mark received by other students, suggesting that perhaps within the realm of that one class, I was superior to those other students. But even then, it gets tricky to affirm such a statement.

Instructors in a class teach certain material based on their own bias (and the bias of the curriculum and school system). This means that the specific material covered by the class is already incomplete. This makes sense as it is not feasible for an instructor to cover absolutely everything there is to cover about a particular topic in the limited amount of time they have. Further to this, toward the end of such a class, the instructor will go through a process by which they will assess the students to determine whether the students had acquired the desired knowledge and skills for that class. The manner of testing and examination is also highly biased and limited in its ability to accurately assess the knowledge of the student. For example, a multiple choice exam question could have been answered correctly by the student because they understood the question, or they could simply have been lucky by utilizing the 25% probability that they could guess the answer.

It is not my intention right now to delve completely into the challenges of educating individuals in various topics. My intent here is simply to show that the process is wrought with difficulties and challenges that make the process of assessment incomplete and potentially inaccurate as well. Even if I receive a higher grade in a class than another person, to suggest that I am somehow better than that other person in that subject is already highly suspect.

The best one can do, on my view, is suggest that I did better on the specific exam or test than the other individual. If on that very specific final exam in that very specific class I happened to get the higher grade, I might say with reasonable accuracy and confidence that I am superior to the other individual at that very specific exam. Outside of that, any claims I make about being better are simply committing the fallacy of a faulty generalization.

Taking all of this to heart, it seems obvious to me that individuals can only be compared in a very, very narrow sense to one another. I can be compared to another in only very, very specific domains. To generalize that I am somehow better than another in an overall or general sense would be infeasible. Not only would I need to go through absolutely every possible specific domain (like somehow performing calculus on people), but I would need to take into account the fact that my proficiencies within all these very specific domains actually changes over time as well. Every moment that passes, I learn something new and improve upon myself. And similiarly, I also forget things and become less proficient over time as well. So all these specific domains of intelligence or skill are constantly in a state of flux.

To sum all this up, unless I was able to take a snapshot of myself in this very specific moment, capturing with complete accuracy every minute detail of myself, and then also doing the same with another individual, and then also performing the step by step comparison of each and every specific domain, performing a sort of calculus in summing the values of all comparisons, might I be able to finally assess my superiority to that other individual (or lack thereof) within that extremely narrow moment in time. This is not at all feasible. This would require a certain level of omniscience, in addtion to incredibly fast computational ability.

It is for these reasons that I also believe stereotyping and predjudice, such as sexism and racism, is entirely unfounded and logically incorrect. Individuals cannot be compared to each other in these general ways, nevermind the clear and obvious issue with suggesting that the possession of a penis somehow imbues the bearer with superior intellectual capacities. (As an aside, as one who possesses such a thing, from my own first hand experiences, I would actually argue the opposite anyway.)

You may have noticed that I tried to focus my discussion thus far not necessarily on the fact that I am comparing humans to other humans, but instead individuals to other individuals. This was quite intentional. I have discussions with others about my pet rabbit and comparing his facilities to my own. As with my preivous post, discussing different ways of experiencing the world, to compare myself to my rabbit has other significant challenges as well.

The most significant challenge is that there will be certain domains that I possess that my rabbit does not, and vice versa. There will be points I may wish to compare that have no analog on the side of the other individual being compared against. My rabbit does not have an opposable thumb; any domain of comparison I wish to examine will automatically fail if it is related to having a thumb. To make matters even more interesting, to suggest that the having a thumb is somehow itself superior (or inferior) is to make a value assessment which itself adds a level of subjectivity that is like throwing a monkey wrench into the works. Who can say, in a purely objective sense, whether having a thumb is better or not? As with everything else I have been talking about, there likely will be certain very specific situations where having a thumb is advantageous, and other very specific situations where having a thumb is disavantageous. And again, we are in this situation of trying to perform crazy calculus and summing up results, just like earlier.

This is where I now bring into this discussion artificial intelligence (AI). I do not even need to raise the issue of a machine consciousness, as it is unnecessary to this discussion. Any AI system we wish to examine will be sufficient to refer to as an individual for the purposes of comparison. And like my pet rabbit, those AIs will have various features that can be compared to my own features, and various features that have no analog to me. (And I have features with no analog to the AI as well.)

This applies across the board! That is, there will never be an AI that possesses every single feature that I have, and specifically nothing more. Because if such a system existed, we would not call it an AI at all; it would simply be another human. To be able to compare to such a degree, it would need to possess the same sorts of features as I do presently, including a carbon-hydrogen based structural matrix, because this is what I possess. If we want to place AI into the category of machines, with silicon based structures, then there is already a first feature that we are unable to compare properly.

The point I want to make is that AI are different to humans. I do not think anyone would even want to dispute this. Like apples and schoolbuses, these are things that are very, very different. To compare an apple to a schoolbus is nonsensical already; what are we trying to compare?

Thus, to suggest we can compare AIs to humans in any logical or reasonable sense is highly problematic to begin with. The terms Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI), Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), and ASI are themselves highly problematic already. At best, I can suggest that an ANI is focused on a singular task, an AGI is focused on all tasks (in some sort of general sense), and an ASI is also focused on all tasks (in some general sense). But even that is problematic. When Google is working on self driving vehicles, the AI system being utilized is referred to as an ANI, and yet driving a vehicle is not really a singular task at all.

To play chess requires a variety of skills. There is no one thing that makes a chess player a chess player, let along a good chess player. And even the best chess AIs do still lose occasionally. They are not perfect, just as humans are not perfect either. Given a particular moment or instance, they may shine, but in another instance they may fail. In a term used in AI programming, these can sometimes be referred to as “hallucinations.”

The term ANI is intended, I think, to refer to a system that focuses in a narrowish domain. Driving a vehicle or playing chess are complex tasks, filled with many subtasks, but are still rather narrow when compared to the seemingly infinite number of other domains that could be considered. But then, if we acknowledge that there are a seemingly infinite number of domains that could be considered, under what conditions could we refer to a human as being a “general intelligence” either? No human engages with or practices absolutely every single domain possible, so why do we think an AI might either? The term AGI is already highly problematic.

An ASI is simply an AGI which it has been decided that after performing the crazy calculus on the entire range of domains results in it being decided that the AI is better than a human in all cases. This makes no sense at all.

The point of my blog today is simply to say that there will never be an ASI, because the very idea of an ASI makes no logical or reasonable sense. The term itself is meaningless. But saying all of this isn’t to suggest that an AI couldn’t possibly take over the world or destroy all of humankind. It does not require a “super intelligence” to come along to absolutely monkey wrench all of human existence. The systems we have in place presently are sufficient to cause us great harm already. In fact, the very simple evidence I can present to you that this is all possible is the mere fact you are reading this blog.

Different Views of the World

crimson

While taking a philosophy class, my instructor and I had an argument regarding whether people experienced the world differently or not. That is, I was arguing that each individual had their own unique experience of the world, unlike all others. That were someone to somehow experience my experiences, my foreign experiences would be undecipherable to the other person because the manner in which I think is so unlike how they think. My instructor suggested it was an unreasonable leap for me to come to that conclusion, considering I have never experienced another’s experiences. He argued the counterpoint, that without good evidence, I am more reasonable to assume that others experience the world much as I do. In this post, I believe I now have sufficient evidence to support my side of the debate. Or at least an amount that is compelling.

The first clues to me that individuals probably experienced their worlds differently began when I was quite young. It may be true that I cannot experience others’ experiences, but what I can do is observe others’ behaviors. I can observe others’ actions as they relate to their desires and interests. I believe the first clue came from realizing others did not like the same foods as I did.

I have always liked broccoli. As an adult, this isn’t that big a deal. But as a child, this is unusual. It seems to me that most children hate eating their vegetables, especially the dark green ones. There exists the suggestion that children’s taste buds are still quite inexperienced, and so flavors are more significant to them. Anything with a strong flavor to an adult is even more flavorful to a child. Assuming this is true, it would certainly explain a child’s dislike for many dark green vegetables, as they frequently have quite a strong flavor to them. Even now, I find spinach challenging to eat without something accompanying it. That said, even as a child, I still ate it and eventually learned to like it.

I did this to myself at my young age due to a desire to eat healthy. I recognized that these less palatable foods tended towards better health and well being. My mother has suggested I must have seen this on television and for some reason adopted the idea. Perhaps that is true. Regardless of how it came to be, I still learned to like these foods early on. I liked broccoli back then, as I do still to this day.

This wasn’t the only thing I discovered that made me different than those around me. Music was another of these things that it seemed had quite diverse preferences among individuals. This came as a shock to me when I was in high school, when I discovered that the feelings invoked in me by music were not shared by others. When certain songs played on the radio, I would be brought to such an elative state. My elation manifested in physical changes, such as increased heart rate and flushing in my skin. The hairs on the back of my neck would literally stand up. But others would suggest to me that they merely found the sounds annoying and even painful. For them, the music induced no such physical reactions, or induced very different reactions.

I tend to enjoy electronica and house music. Synthesized sounds. Perhaps this is because I grew up on a computer, enduring Piezo speakers quite early on. The sounds emitted on a computer so long ago were not nearly as developed as they are today. It is possible that this is why I quickly found solace in these sorts of sounds.

I also have a tendency toward negative sounds, rather than positive sounds. I like depressing music, or music in minor keys much of the time. This again seems to be less popular. My observations lead me to believe that most people prefer positive sounds, or music in major keys. Arguably, the best music finds a balance between both.

But differences in preferences of foods or music can be explained through other means. It does not necessarily suggest that what is going on within the confines of my mind are different than what goes on in your mind. The break through for me came about when my father described to me how he literally saw the world.

My father was colourblind. Specifically, he could not differentiate between red and green. This posed a significant problem when playing poker, when he would frequently be seen stacking his $5 chips (red) with his $25 chips (green). He eventually found his own set of poker chips with the values written on them in order to resolve this issue.

But this is also, in part, how I ended up working on computers early on as well. Within the case of computers there exists many wires and connectors. These wires tend to be colour coded, in order to indicate their purpose. As my father was colourblind, he would often get me to help him, my job being primarily to tell him which wires were which colours. I never really thought much about this exercise at the time, but now thinking back on it, it was a rather significant detail in my own life.

About the time I was in high school, my father and I had a discussion regarding this condition he had. He described to me in great detail how he saw the world. Briefly, he suggested that when he looked at the world, what he first saw were the shapes of things, and then would apply colours to those shapes. This is contrary to how I see the world, as I initially see the colours, and then find shapes through recognition of the patterns within the colours. It may seem like a minor and pedantic difference, but it turns out to have rather insidious ramifications.

My father, when he was young, wanted to become a jet fighter pilot. Unfortunately, due to his colourblindness, they would not allow him to pilot jets. However, because of his condition, the military offered him an alternative job as a spotter. A spotter is someone who is a passenger on a jet and simply watches the ground below, trying to identify tanks and other military vehicles. The reason they offered him this job is because he could quickly and easily identify those objects on the ground, despite their being camouflaged.

To elaborate, a camouflaged tank is a tank that has been painted with various seemingly random patterns of green in order for it to blend in with the surrounding landscape. For someone like myself, who first sees colours and then tries to discern shape patterns from those colours, it becomes challenging for me to see the tanks. But for my father, because he first sees the shapes before he applies the colours, the tanks stand out clearly to him, the camouflage being useless against him. Thus, as a spotter, he would have an easy time spotting those tanks.

My own father literally saw the world differently than I do. It is entirely possible that the differences in how I valuated the world versus how my father valuated the world may have been related to this seemingly innocuous difference. However, it turns out my partner also has a peculiar difference than me as well.

She was hanging out with a friend not that long ago, and they invited me to hang out with them. As we were walking down the street, I brought up visualizing three dimensional objects in my head. I had been told at one point that not everyone can visualize in colour, and that most people only visualized in black-and-white. So I asked her friend about how she visualized. Her response shocked me: she told me she doesn’t visualize at all. And if that was not enough, my partner then asserted that she too did not visualize.

To be clear about this, what I am suggesting is that within my mind’s eye, I am able to see things. I can recall people’s faces and other objects. I can see within my mind presently a nice yellow banana. What is more, I can focus a little and move that banana around. I can rotate it and flip it and do all sorts of things with it, all in my mind. I cannot say where I learned this skill, but I have it. I suspect this has helped me a great deal when I play various video games, and also with the use of Computer Aided Drafting (CAD) applications on computers. Very recently, I designed a little insert to plug up the holes in an Aerogarden for my partner. I was able to produce an appropriate design to fabricate on the second try; she was quite happy with the results from the 3D printer.

So this is what I can do, and I have (as my philosophy instructor suggested I do) assumed that others are able to do this as well. Perhaps not as good as I can, but at least the most basic visualizations, perhaps just in black-and-white. But it turns out I was very much mistaken. My partner and her friend both do not visualize anything at all. We went into quite a deep discussion to establish precisely what was (or rather was not) going on in their minds.

They can understand the concept of a banana, and they can discuss such things without issue. But if I ask them to visualize in their minds a yellow banana, nothing happens in their minds. Honestly, I cannot say I understand what happens within their minds, but what I can say is that it is not the same as what happens in my mind.

A long time ago, when I was still a child, I had a dream once that I played hockey. In my fantasy, I was the best goalie there was. The reason I was, according to my dream, was that when I ate eggs, my mind would accelerate to such a degree that I would experience the world much faster than anyone else. During hockey games, for me, it was like witnessing the action in slow motion the whole time. This provided me a great advantage during the games, as I could more easily follow the movement of the puck, and thus could anticipate with great accuracy where it was going. A goalie like this would be quite effective. Of course, in my dream, in order to balance out everything, after the games were over, I would suffer a terrible trauma as a result of the acceleration: I would suffer a severe deceleration for many hours afterward. During those times, I would experience the world at incredibly high speed, like fast forwarding a video, and would recover quickly (from my perspective). For others witnessing me, I seemed to be very, very sluggish and seemingly unresponsive.

It was just a dream. Just a wacky idea about temporal variation in experiencing my world. And then, recently, I found this Youtube video: How The World SOUNDS To Animals by Benn Jordan. I was blown away watching this video, as here was someone who clearly understood precisely all these things I’ve been talking about. The ideas of not only experiencing the world differently from different perspectives, but also even the idea of temporal changes. He suggests that generally smaller creatures experience their world at a much accelerated rate, and generally larger creatures experience their world at a much decelerated rate. Of course there are exceptions, but the basic idea is there. And toward the end of the video, he even suggests there may be creatures who shift their experience to faster and slower given various conditions, much like I did to myself in my dream.

And so, after all of this evidence, it makes much more sense to me why I would have initially argued with my instructor regarding the different ways individuals experienced their world. With all this evidence that I’ve been accumulating over the many years of my life, it seems to me that we are all very unique and all witness the world in different ways. It is this evidence, that I now present to you, that suggests that perhaps I may be correct in my assessment.

As one final example, I will end this post with this brief cartoon that I have finally drawn out. Then you can see for yourself what you think:

Sloppy Language: Part 2 – Descriptive Versus Prescriptive

crimson

Science, Economics, and many other fields purport to be focused on trying to explain observations about the world. That is, these fields are trying to be descriptive regarding what has been observed. Often times, they will use models and algorithms in an attempt to describe what has been observed. If the model is able to successfully predict what is observed, then it can be considered a good theory about the world.

However, if the field starts to forget that it is trying to describe the observations of the world, and instead starts to believe that the models are not merely trying to explain observations, it may become prescriptive. That is, it may start to believe that the model is not merely a model, and is instead the world itself. This is the concern Jean Baudrillard expresses in his work Simulacra and Simulation. This is what I want to talk about today.

Recently, I took an economics class. I found the class quite challenging. Part of my challenge was the manner in which the instructor decided to teach the class: constantly jumping around from topic to topic and not following any sort of structure. He provided a syllabus to the class, complete with a schedule of when he was planning to teach the various topics. However, he did not follow the syllabus at all.

As chaotic as the class was to follow, there was another significant issue I found infuriating: his sloppy use of language. Early on in the class, he laid out the different ideas as they would pertain to an individual. He introduced the idea of a Demand Curve, and how individuals would choose to purchase a particular product based on their willingness to pay for the product at various points. This related to something called an Indifference Curve, which related two products and how the individual would value them as related to each other. These are all interesting economic terms and ideas, but ultimately the driving force behind all of this is the idea that the value an individual places in something can be, in some way, quantified.

To put this all a little more simply, my instructor was suggesting that all things we valued could be measured based on how much money we were willing to pay for them. The Demand Curve specifically delineates how much we are willing to pay to have that something, and the Indifference Curve relates how the value of one thing relates to the value of another. The idea of utility emerges from all of this.

In economics, utility is considered to be analogous to happiness or satisfaction. That is, one could simply replace all occurrences of the word “utility” with the word “happiness” and the meaning of the statement would remain the same. In my class, the instructor was suggesting that all products could be measured by how much happiness it gave to the individual. But more than merely that, he further suggested that because this amount of happiness could be quantified, one could exchange various products in appropriate quantities in order to maintain or even increase one’s happiness.

It is time for me to provide an example, to help clarify what I am talking about. Consider 2 products: hot dogs and t-shirts. The particular products are unimportant, so I’ve selected a couple that are reasonably disposable, meaning one is likely to purchase many of them over the course of their lifetime. It is suggested that a hot dog will provide an individual with a certain amount of happiness. Similarly a t-shirt will also provide that same individual with a certain amount of happiness as well, though the amount is likely to be a bit different. By using an Indifference Curve, it should be possible to determine how many hot dogs provides the equivalent amount of happiness as a t-shirt. And vice-versa: there should be a certain amount of t-shirts that provides the equivalent amount of happiness as a hot dog.

For my example, let us suggest that the Indifference Curve is linear for the moment (in reality, this curve is never linear). And let us suggest that through experimentation I determine that one t-shirt is equivalent to 3 hot dogs. Then, if I want to maximize my happiness in this world, I should purchase 3 times as many hot dogs as t-shirts. But it doesn’t stop there. Let us suggest that t-shirts and hot dogs have some constant value (which clearly in reality they do not). Let us suggest t-shirts cost $15 and hot dogs cost $2.

This is where it may get a bit weird, but bare with me. Each t-shirt provides me with 3 hot dogs worth of happiness, and I know that each hot dog costs $2, therefore a t-shirt can be said to provide $6 (3 x $2) worth of happiness. Similarly, a hot dog provides 1/3 of a t-shirt of happiness, and as a t-shirt costs $15, therefore a hot dog provides $5 (1/3 x $15) worth of happiness. In other words, the t-shirt gives me 6/5 or 120% of the happiness of a hot dog. Welcome to economics!

At this point, if the linear curves and constant prices were true, it should be obvious that this individual should never bother to purchase any hot dogs, as they will always receive more happiness from the purchase of t-shirts. However, the curves are not linear, and the prices are not constant, and so life is already more interesting. Due to the idea of diminishing marginal utility, which suggests that the more of something you purchase, the less happiness you will derive from it, there will come a point of optimization whereby a certain number of t-shirts and hot dogs will be the ideal, providing the individual with the greatest possible happiness.

Confused yet? If you have kept up with all I’ve stated, then congratulations. This is the simple, basic stuff in economics. From here, it gets way more complicated. About half way through the class, we started aggregating individuals into groups and communities. Into markets, where we start talking about how large groups of people will react to changes in prices and in the supply of goods. It builds from this humble beginning, using linear curves and constant prices.

For me, the problem is left unresolved at the beginning. The issue of quantifying happiness. For if this issue cannot be resolved, building upon the shaky foundation does not offer any confidence in the results that follow. If I cannot resolve the issue of quantifying happiness, then how can I have any faith in the models used to explain how larger groups and communities behave?

In my class, I treated all of this as like a game. As like a puzzle. I separated these ideas from the reality I knew and understood, trying to “win” the game or “solve” the puzzle. In that way, I passed my class without too much trouble. However, there is a world of difference between believing that economics is a strong indicator of how the world works, and simply some pipe dream of a few wealthy individuals. I passed because I knew how to tell the instructor what he wanted to hear, not because I believed what he was telling me was the truth.

The concern I have with economics, at this point, is that those who have spent their time and effort trying to explain the world seem to have shifted from trying to describe how the world is behaving, into trying to prescribe how individuals ought to behave. This is where economics is moving into the realm of ethics.

Unlike a science, like chemistry, where the world will continue to behave as it will regardless of the formulas and algorithms used, economics is providing feedback to individuals and directing decision making. My instructor started the class by suggesting that economics was “the study of decision making.” By making such a claim, he is not suggesting economics is observing the world and trying to explain why people do as they do. He is instead suggesting that economics is concerned with figuring out how decisions ought to be made. In the case of individuals, it is concerned with how to maximize happiness. In the case of companies and businesses, it is concerned with how to maximize profits.

The class spent its time providing the results to various surveys and research, purporting to be trying to explain why people did what they did. But, instead of spending time with that information and analyzing it to understand, it took the information and massaged it into these strange equations and curves, suggesting that “If a consumer always buys goods rationally, then the marginal utilities per dollar spent on all goods will be equal.”

Economics, at least based on what I learned in this class, is prescriptive. It is not concerned with explaining how people behave. It is providing a model for how people ought to behave. It is suggesting that a “rational” person should purchase products and goods in particular ways in order to maximize happiness. And, at its core, suggesting that the happiness I derive from wearing a t-shirt is somehow similar to the happiness I derive from eating a hot dog.

Sloppy Language: Part 1 – Doms Cannot Love Their Subs

crimson

My life is a mess. I think I am busier now than ever before. As opposed to previous times, when I suggested I might have been struggling for topics to discuss, I find myself in the opposite situation now. Having said that, there is a running theme between most of my topics, and so I will try to make this into a bit of a mini series.

The theme, as is revealed in my title, is sloppy language. It was said by one of my professors in philosophy that often times people debate and argue not because they have a difference of opinion, but because they have a problem with communication. Often times, they are saying the same thing, but perhaps the nuances with their understandings of certain words creates the conflict they are experiencing. This is what I’m referring to when I say sloppy language. However, from my own personal experiences, when these miscommunications take place, even once it has been established that the hurdle was conflicting understandings of words, often times the conflict simply changes into an argument regarding who’s interpretation of those words is correct.

Thus, everything I’m about to say is my interpretation, and I want to make that clear at the outset. If you are challenged by what I say, consider the possibility that I am interpreting words differently than you. I will do my best to acknowledge other interpretations and include brief discussion related to that. But ultimately, I understand as I understand, and so this and the subsequent posts are likely to cause some confusion as I go. I am trying my best here.

Quite some time ago, someone told me that “Doms cannot love their subs.” That is, in the case of dominant/submissive relationships, those in the position of dominant could not love their submissive. Unfortunately, as this information came to me third hand, there was no way for me to elaborate on why the person said what they said. No way to delve into the topic more deeply. And, admittedly, I might not have been in the best position at the time to analyze such statements either. I’ve come a long way since then.

To analyze this statement properly, I will first need to talk about one of my favorite topics: love. And while I feel pretty good about most of my previous posts on the topic, it turns out that even I have been sloppy. Because I have come to realize that there is no one kind of love.

To be fair, I did know there was several different interpretations of love before. However, I did not take the time to acknowledge those different interpretations. This makes me at fault for being sloppy in the precise manner I am criticizing right now. I will endeavor not to be so sloppy in the future.

While there are likely many more ways to interpret love than I am about to do, I am going to focus on three sorts of love in this post: true love, objective love, and feeling love. These are my own terms, so looking these up online is likely not going to help you. Where possible, I will try to establish common language where I can.

The first of these, what I call true love, is the sort of love I’ve been going on about in my previous blog posts. The ancient Greek word agape is fairly close to this interpretation. Trying to be brief with my interpretation, I describe this sort of love as being a willingness to sacrifice one’s own projects and to blindly adopt the projects of another. That is, to set aside my own interests and desires in favor of supporting the interests and desires of another, in such a manner that I make no judgments on the other’s interests or desires. It is possible I may not agree with the other’s projects, considering them silly or unreasonable, but I will adopt them into my own projects anyway, because this is what it is to love that other.

The reason agape does tend to fit well here is that agape is concerned with a sort of unconditional love. To love without restriction or judgment. I will love you regardless of what you say or do. And with that, I also wish you a sort of good will. I want what is best for you. I want you to be healthy and happy and safe. This sort of love is consistent with what I am calling true love. Because I imagine most people have among their own projects their own well being and happiness. Thus, if I am adopting your project of your happiness, I am supporting the goal of making you happy.

For a more detailed analysis of what I’m talking about, I would suggest you review my previous posts on love. In them, I go into much more detail. For now, I will move on to the other sorts of love that I have not really discussed before.

The next I refer to as objective love. By objective, I mean that this sort of love is concerned with objects. Where true love would seem to focus on subjects, as it is generally subjects that have projects, objects generally have no projects to speak of. Or, to be even more precise on this matter, whether objects have their own projects or not is not of concern to me. The object might as well have no interests or desires, because I’m going to treat it as such.

Objective love is the sort of love one might expect a person to have toward their car or a television show. When one considers their car to be their most prized possession, they may have objective love for their car. This sort of love manifests in a caring about the well being of the object, with respect to the object fulfilling some sort of benefit to me. This is an instrumental sort of love. If I love my car, it is of interest to me to maintain it so that it will continue to operate for a long, long time.

Thus, if I have objective love for an object, I will spend my time and effort in taking care of the object. I will clean it and repair it and maintain it. I will do everything I can to preserve it. Because the more effort I put into the object, the more function or benefit I can receive from that object. The car may last for decades before needing to be replaced.

With respect to a television show, I might demonstrate my objective love by reviewing it highly among other shows. I will tell other people to watch the television show, or I might rank it highly in surveys. If it is a film in a theater, I may attend the theater multiple times, adding to the profit of the film financially. By doing these sorts of things, I improve the probability that the show will continue or the film will have a sequel. I make it more likely that the show will be syndicated or the film be remastered.

It should hopefully be clear that with objective love I gain in the act. There is something in it for me. In the case of true love, there may be cases where I never receive a benefit, and I may even harm myself in the act. True love will often be viewed as a sort of selfless love. Objective love is the opposite. In objective love, I always receive a benefit. Even if I have to make some sacrifice for the objective love, I will always come out ahead with whatever I receive.

I am not aware of an ancient Greek analog to what I am describing as objective love, but I think eros might be similar. With eros, there is certainly a concern with my pleasure as it relates to the object of my love. The object of concern makes me feel good in some fashion. This can be the luxury of the car; the nice padded interior and the smoothness of the ride. With a television show, it could be the emotional euphoria I experience as the story unfolds. And this can also be related to another person, in how they make me feel pleasure as well. I find them attractive, and that pleases me.

Which leads me nicely into the third sort of love I wanted to discuss: feeling love. Feeling love is not really like these other loves I have been talking about. With true love or objective love, it is something like an active process. I project or send my love outward toward the subject or object of my love. With true love, I am extending my love outward as I acknowledge your autonomy as an independent entity as I try to discern your projects so that I can adopt them as my own. With objective love, I am extending my love outward as I spend my effort in maintaining the object. However, with feeling love, there is no extending outward.

With feeling love, it is internalized only. I feel it, as the term would imply. Meaning this sort of love is only about me. To be clear, I am not talking about self love, which again comes from the ancient Greeks. What I have in mind is more like a passive feeling that comes about within one’s self, similar to anger or sadness or jealousy. It is the feeling that I get that is possibly the most euphoric feeling there is. Like happiness, except better. Feeling love is an emotion. “Feeling love” is, well, “feeling” “love.”

The reason I am being this pedantic about this term is that this is the sort of love that I think most people confuse with true love or objective love. It is this feeling that they feel that suggests to them that they have found the love they seek. However, as it is simply a feeling, the source of that feeling can come from other places. As it is merely a feeling, it is also extremely transitory. It is something that comes and goes. It is often associated with the “honeymoon phase” of most relationships.

The big question that I am hoping my readers have already started to ask themselves at this point is whether these three loves are mutually exclusive. Whether one could feel more than one, or even all three, at the same time. And I want to say the answer is yes. I want to say yes, but I’m not completely confident saying that. I have not had enough time to contemplate this, so I will not mislead by saying that it is the case. I can say that feeling love is compatible with both true love and objective love, but I am not sure if true love is itself compatible with objective love. I think it is, but I will need to spend much more time considering this still.

Now that I’ve established these three sorts of love, I am now ready to tackle dominance and submission. However, I now need to delve into ideas of ethics and especially of Existentialism. It seems to me that what defines a dominant or a submissive is bound up in value theory. That is, to dominate is to assign value to things in the world, and then to expect the submissive to adopt those value assignments. In the case of the submissive, it is not their place to assign value themselves.

The assigning or adopting of values is the realm of ethics. And it is the Existentialists who suggest that nothing inherently has value. Whether value preexists in objects or subjects is less important to my discussion, because dominance is about assigning value regardless.

It seems to me that the dominant is in a position whereby they always assign value themselves. They decide what is important and what is unimportant themselves. I do not think they really adopt the values assigned by others, and instead may observe the values assigned by others and use those observations to help them come up with their own valuations. In other words, the dominant will assign value and never adopt existing assignments. Perhaps to phrase it differently, the dominant never blindly adopts existing value assignments; they may instead assess and judge the assignment of others before possibly adopting those valuations. A dominant is a bit of an egoist.

It seems to me that the submissive is in a position whereby they always adopt the values assigned by others. They avoid determining what is important or unimportant themselves. They seek others to present valuations of the world, and then adopt those valuations into their own schema. To press the point further, a submissive will blindly adopt value assignments, setting aside their own judgments and preconceptions. A submissive might disagree with the valuation that has been assigned, but it is not their place to criticize or contest what has been assigned. A submissive is a bit of a doormat.

I can hear my audience screaming and hollering right now. Many of those who identify themselves as either dominant or submissive are likely outraged by my descriptions, as they are far too restrictive and extreme. My response is simple: you are not completely dominant or submissive in this case. The descriptions I am offering are of the most dominant dominant and the most submissive submissive. And, as with most extremes on any spectrum, it is extremely rare for anyone to exist at the extreme itself. So I suggest that most of those identifying as dominant are not completely dominant, possessing some submissive tendencies under some circumstances. And similarly in the case of the submissive.

To properly address the statement I was told so long ago, the same one in the title of this blog, I need to view those extremes as they are. The pure dominant and the pure submissive. Because it is only in those extremes that the statement could possibly be viewed. Someone who is only partly dominant may still at least partly love, at least with respect to the statement itself.

However, as I have defined my terms, it becomes clear to me that a dominant could love their submissive, though only in particular sorts of love. Considering my definitions, the dominant would not be able to truly love their submissive, as that would require them to abandon their project of assigning values, and begin to adopt them in certain cases. To express true love, the dominant would have to cease their pursuit, ceasing expecting the submissive automatically and blindly adopt the dominant’s valuations. To express true love, the dominant would need to pursue adopting the valuations of the submissive, and this contradicts the definition of a dominant I have made above.

That all said, the dominant could still hold an objective love for the submissive. In fact, I think objective love would likely make a lot of sense for the dominant. In the case of objective love, it is of interest to the dominant to put an effort into maintaining the submissive, so that the submissive will continue to serve their purpose for as long as possible. The dominant is not really concerned about the desires and interest of the submissive, or as I suggested above, the submissive might as well have no interests or desires, because the dominant is going to treat them as such. The dominant is objectifying the submissive.

In the case of the submissive, I find another interesting fact emerges as well. A submissive, by their nature, always truly loves their dominant. The submissive’s acts of adopting the valuations of the dominant blindly is analogous to adopting the dominant’s projects with no judgment. The submissive behaves as a sort of sponge toward the dominant, pulling in all their interests and desires and making the interests and desires their own. The submissive becomes, over time, a sort of mirror of the dominant.

While considering the submissive, I also thought about in what way this sort of behavior differs from being a slave. A slave too adopts the projects of their master blindly, much as the submissive does. However, I think the slave does so unwillingly. That is, the slave would not adopt the master’s projects if they were not being forced to. Given the opportunity, the slave will chose otherwise. The submissive is willing. The submissive wants to obey. In this way, the submissive again is exhibiting true love for their dominant, something that the slave is not really doing.

I could continue on talking of all these things, but I feel I am beginning to ramble. I hope my point has been made clear. In the case of the statement “doms cannot love their subs” it seems clear to me that the statement is false. It may be true that a dominant cannot love their submissive in certain ways, however, they can love their submissive in other ways. A dominant can love their submissive as an object. And considering the nature of our current culture, especially in the part of the world where I live, I would suggest this happens a lot.