2021-12-04
Readings
- The difference between various kinds of explicit and implicit knowledge is not something we run into very often in daily life; external observers or recording help a lot.
- It’s not entirely proper linguistics, but it’s fascinating watching this guided (amateur) tour through the sounds around the word “stone” from pre-English times to now.
- Interesting simulation work on the shape of the heliosphere; I hope this leads to testable predictions someday. https://phys.org/news/2021-12-solar.html
- The frequency of application is unfortunately high, but it’s good to read about pre-exposure drugs people can take to ward off HIV. Any improved treatment for certain illnesses has a chance of making a big difference in the quality of lives across the world. The challenge here may be that there are other precautions that are less invasive that people are already not doing in cases of spread, and if someone is not infected it’s an uphill struggle to get them to take these additional precautions. https://www.science.org/content/article/long-acting-injectable-drug-prevents-hiv-infections
- Jonathan Haidt’s analysis of the problems with DEI initiatives is something I largely agree with; it’s not a unique position (he’s working from the Liberal-not-Progressive position that I share) but the added analysis is I think worthwhile:
- It’s unfortunate to see New Zealand adopt something that looks a lot like “Vedic Sciences”, out of pity. I think we can appreciate past atrocities towards indigenous people without moving all the way towards adopting the backwards beliefs of some of them; “alternate ways of knowing” are a dead end to shed, not a complement to science. https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/news/2021/07/26/vice-chancellor-comments.html
- Neurotransmitter maintenance is metabolically costly: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-12-scientists-neurons-consume-fuel-rest.html
- Good to see it demonstrated that radio comms on the surface of Mars are doable, although I think it’d be good to rush to build and maintain planetary comms around every planet in our system we might want to visit, and eventually build additional space stations around the same. We can drive the cost of missions down and make general comms in the solar system easier. https://phys.org/news/2021-12-one-way-mars.html
Unprompted Thoughts
- Given a belief (that I have) that democracy at its ideal maximises election competitiveness (among a few other goals, not alone), I wonder if there’s a way to have after every election a redistricting calibrated on the results of each locality’s votes to shift boundaries to reduce the strength of the majority by shifting land between districts, almost like balancing a tree data structure in CS. If this could be formalised, it could solve a lot of problems and end gerrymandering.
- Two terms that see too much use - “voting against one’s interests” and “admit”. The former is overused because the notion of one’s interests is usually ill-defined. Some prefer to use it for maximise-my-physical-welfare versions of people, which doesn’t involve particulars or visions for society. My notion of the kind of society I want to live in is part of how I see my interests, and others use the term that way as well. “Admit” has problems - sentences like “he admitted that he had lied earler” don’t group well with “he admitted that his earlier stance was incorrect”. I see the latter as misuse of the term, but it’s extremely common. With both the “describing facts” and “describing positions” cases, there are usually better terms available.
- What would it look like to rehabilitate someone who acclimated to Blackreef (fictional world stuck in a timeloop in the game Deathloop), or some other reality with few inhibitions and fewer consequences to death (e.g. Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect)? As-is there are many habits of civilization that are needed for the world we live in - inhibitions - to keep sharp consequences down. I don’t think realising that one is no longer in such a realm would be enough to adjust people.
- The difference between the meaning of a smile in humans versus other mammals is a big cultural difference, one whose history I’m curious about, and a difference that has probably been very dangerous for humans at least since the current common human meaning came about. It’s reasonable to imagine that it has gotten many early humans killed. It’s surprising that it happened given these dangers.
- I’ve come to an understanding, I think, for why lawyers generally assert that most people haven’t developed their thinking habits enough to ujnderstand law. There are certain beliefs - that rule of law produces over broad sets of circumstances better results despite some individual situations being failures, and certain habits - dispassionate evaluation of circumstances in criminal trials on the basis of whether laws were broken - that are difficult. I think even the way a lot of people use language, where connotation easily pulls words away from their meanings and our natural foci pull us from even being capable of careful reason. Lawyers learn to build an additional set of contexts to evaluate life, and learn the specialised set of reasonings that work in those contexts. It’s like philosophy. And I appreciate that, even though the contexts that I have in my head are only moderately similar to those that lawyers build when learning their craft.
Current Events
- Abortion and Guns in supreme court - We may see the fruits, whether toxic or not depends on perspective, of new perspectives on the Supreme Court in upcoming reconsideration on Guns and Abortion. Abortion in particular is an interesting case, as Roe v Wade led to a decision, based on the Fourteenth Amendment, that likely felt novel and surprising. This doesn’t mean it is bad law - one role of the Supreme Court is to keep laws and practice consistent with the Constitution (in this case including things incorporated into it), but we can imagine a version of our legal system where the two dissents, perhaps with some of the concurring opinions, won the day and it had gone the other way. Decisions need be made; I don’t think it’s reasonable to resent that one was made here. Might a future court decision lead to different conclusions?
- Ukraine and Taiwan - I’m wondering why it looks like both Ukraine and Taiwan may see invasion over the next decade - why now are we seeing the other great powers sabre-rattling? We’re also seeing upcoming powers embracing populism; were we talking about Europe the refugee crisis would be easy to point at; I wonder if it’s reasonable to imagine that a loss of confidence in the International Order, particularly from Western/Central Europe and the US, infects the rest of the world and makes populist voices stronger. I think it would be great if we could find a way to convince Russia to end its occupation of Crimea and stop funding insurrections in its neighbours, and to convince China to recognise Taiwan as independent and stop interfering with sovereignty of its neighbours, but I don’t know if that’s possible when they’ve gambled putting their face on the line.
- Another week, another school shooting, this time in Michigan. This time the parents made some very bad choices in raising their kids and they may face some charges of their own. I’m not much for increased widespread restrictions on guns, but I suspect people will, as usual, think about all the things that went wrong and look for ways to improve society to make this kind of thing less likely.
- In Germany, Angela Merkel’s Kanzlership is wrapping up, with Olaf Scholtz (Social Democrats) likely to control a weak coalition with the FDP and Greens and take the role later this month. This particular coalition is a common one and is often called a “Traffic light coalition” based on the traditional colours of the parties involved.
- DR Congo has taken the unusual step of inviting military forces of its neighbour, Uganda, to undertake operations against islamic militants on its soil. There’s an uglier past of prior incursions, and the activities are controversial in both countries. DR Congo is a large, essentially failed state; Uganda is a smaller, slightly more functional state (few states in the area have regular peaceful transfers of power; many have had the same leader for decades or have had a recent military coup).
- There was a (perhaps religiously-inspired) lynching of a Tamil factory manager in Pakistan; fortunately PM Khan (whom in the past has supported blasphemy laws) seems at least willing to tackle this as undesirable vigilantism, although he could do a lot more
Reviewlets
- Spicy Moon (Chinese Restaurant) - Excellent, with caveats. For some reason their large drink menu was entirely unavailable, leaving me with mediocre sweet tea. And their General Tso’s Breaded Mushrooms were very weird. But their Mapo Tofu was solid, and their Vegetable Wonton in Chili Oil is something I’m going to be remembering for awhile. Glad I went. Midweek I ordered this to my workplace and it was still excellent when delivered (and even reheated).
- The Memory Police (short novel) - Read through this in one evening. It plays with an unusual premise that (maybe) bits of reality are starting to unravel from society’s memory and perhaps suffering some kind of damage to their platonic form as well, and somehow successfully moves through a story of semi-resistance to that and people resisting shifts in their collective mindsets. Impressive that the author made it work. I enjoyed it.
- Niven/Pournelle - Escape From Hell (novel) - This is the decades-later sequel to their earlier collaboration, Inferno. I don’t remember what I thought about it before, but having just reread Inferno I wanted to read this while that was fresh. It has the problem a lot of sequels do - it feels like “more of the same” and has a story arc that’s not very satisfying. I’m about two thirds of the way through and will probably finish, but I wish it had done more new. I don’t know how I’d advise the authors to fix it (and one of them being dead makes such advice difficult).
- Eurydice (opera) - Set in an indeterminate time (rather than clearly in the era of Greek myth, or in near-modern times like Hadestown), this is a moderately novel take on the Eurydice myth, exploring the emotional angles of the former cultural practice of thinking of marriage as the bride leaving her former family and joining the husband’s, in this case by making estrangement of Eurydice’s relations with her father a major theme. The opera also had modern quirkiness (thankfully not Tim-Burton-level), a bit unusual for non-comedic opera in my experience. Overall a good experience; the only thing I would change would be to remove the (light) mingling of Christian mythology with the more natural Olympian mythology, which is largely in how they portrayed the character of Hades and a small number of lines of dialogue.
Amusements
- This is a time-lapse video where a hornet exterminator set up a “pet colony”. Fascinating to see the process of building a nest, as well as some peeks at how hornets live when not disturbed.
- A few weeks back I was hoping to get my hands on the Arbys Fry Vodkas, largely out of curiosity/amusement. It didn’t work out - they sold out too quickly - but I have been amused to read the strange reviews they got. This is one: https://thetakeout.com/arbys-curly-fry-vodka-review-1848091893/amp
- Some years back I saw Stephen King’s “Maximum Overdrive”, a Z-movie (unclear if intentionally so) story about a lot of technology on Earth gaining sentience and hostility towards humans. This is a fun review of the film:
Recent Music
- George Harrison is in my view the best composer from the Beatles; recently I’ve been listening to the nostalgia-soaked “When we was fab”, although “Dream Away” is another solid post-Beatles song (and less mopey). It has an unusual song structure - a very clipped verse, then a chorus, verse, chorus, long interlude, verse chorus. The verse feels like it could’ve had a lot more complexity originally but it was trimmed out.
- Cab Calloway’s “Nagaski” is a great old big band piece; it’s unfortunate that the people old enough to have enjoyed the big band era of music are now mostly shuffling off; I think that must have been something grand to see. And hear.
- Keeichi Okabe’s “City of Commerce” is from the videogame “Nier”, and has the musical themes common to the series. It’s also good background music for relaxation, something like a mix of clockwork and windchimes.
- Gaelic version of Flower of Scotland (a traditional Scottish song that’s more-or-less an unofficial anthem):