Dear Weather:

You're really starting to piss me off. Seriously stop.

For those non-f-bookers out there

Band of Horses + Kid Cudi

KiD CuDi - The Prayer on hypem http://awe.sm/55RE7

Thank you Brian Eno for articulating everything that I believe about politics/society

Amen. This is long, but really good.

There is now an almost total disconnection between the validity of a story and its media success. If it's a good enough - or convenient enough - story, it will echo eternally around the media universe. We lack any publicly accepted way of saying "This is demonstrably wrong," and as a result there is almost no disincentive to unconstrained spinning, trafficking in poor information, and downright lying. The result is a diminishing accountability at almost every level of public discourse and a burgeoning industry of professional Swiftboaters.

There used to be a regular program on BBC radio during the 1980s. It was only five minutes long, but in that five minutes the makers sought to examine a modern myth to see whether it held up to scrutiny. During those Regan/Thatcher years, a popular way of attacking the conspicuously successful (and inconveniently socialistic) Swedish social system was to knowingly point out that they had the world's highest suicide rate - as though the prices of all that official altruism was widespread cultural despondency. Actually it turned out that Sweden didn't have an especially high suicide rate- the country was ranked somewhere in the thirties, below France, Spain, Japan, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, and Germany, and just one place above the United States - but it was too good a story to drop, and to this day you'll still hear it.

I suppose it doesn't really matter if people continue to think the Swedes are killing themselves at record-breaking rates, or if people believe that The Da Vinci Code is a true story (as I was confidently assured by a New York policeman), or if they think that Eskimos have four hundred words for snow, but it really does matter if they believe that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11, or that global warming is an anticapitalist plot, or that Senator Kerry was a coward during his Vietnam service. These things matter because they have direct real-world consequences, and in a media-soaked universe they point out the Achilles' heel of democracy. Democracy was intended to flourish by engaging the intelligence of the wider population - on the assumption that people might, on average, be able to assess what is in their best interests. But if the information upon which they make their assessments is of poor quality, how can that work?

This question is more urgent as we blunder from one global crisis to another on the basis of bad or spun information. We need to be confident of the data we're using and to know when we lack trustworthy data. And we need to act upon reliable data rather than sidelining it if it doesn't sit comfortably with the agenda to which we've already committed. We need, in short, a way of arriving at positions based more on knowledge and reason than on ideology, political convenience, or the needs of business. And we need, in particular, to move on from unproductive positions - to know and admit when we're wrong.

We have one great example of a sort of cultural conversation where this is the case, and that is science. Whatever it's shortcomings and perversions, science is nonetheless committed to an explicit system of validation. Scientific statements are made in accessible (though not always easy) language and propose hypotheses that must be testable -that is, subject to a comparison with current evidence and logic. Among other things, this means that people will sometimes have to admit that an idea they have cherished and nurtured in, in fact, wrong. This act of pragmatic humility is the very underpinning of science and one of the prime reasons for its successes. It allows us to move from ideas that are clearly untrue toward ones that are, at least for now, serviceable. At a certain point, we all had to agree that the world could usefully be regarded as round.

Science is an extraordinary intellectual invention, a construction designed to neutralize the universal human tendency to see what we expected to see and overlook what we didn't expect. It is designed in many ways to subtract data - to create experiments sufficiently insulted from externalities that we can trace a clear connection from a cause to an effect. It seeks out to cancel prejudices, environmental contingencies, group think, tradition, pride, hierarchy, dogma - to subtract them all and to see what this or that corner of the world looks like without their effects.

But then there is the brain itself - a brilliant machine but with a few occasionally troublesome work-arounds. These work-arounds enable us to form complex ideas from insubstantial data - to "jump to conclusions" or "make intuitive leaps." They allow us to recognize familiar pattens when we see only parts of them. They allow us to make deductions about meaning from context. All these valuable talents carry with them a downside: A familiar but wrong conclusion is more likely to be reached than an unfamiliar one.

Most of us, in our daily lives, arrive at our feelings about things through a vast and usually unexamined hotchpotch of received opinion, prejudice, cultural consensus, personal experience, reason and observation. We would generally be hard pressed to trace the source of those feelings in any rigorous way: Why, for instance, would I call myself a liberal pragmatist rather than, say, a neoconservative or a Trotskyite? I'd like to think it's because I carefully evaluated the various philosophical choices. But I know that I'm not free of prejudice (those neocons dress so badly!) and that I probably arrived at my current position as much through my particular unexamined hotchpotch as through reason. If we don't know the sources of the attitudes we hold, we can avoid taking responsibility for them and leave ourselves plenty of ways of saying we weren't really wrong - or that the thing that has turned out to be wrong wasn't what we meant anyway.

The conceit of science is that we should be satisfied when our ideas are shown to be wrong, for we've moved on from a delusion and our picture of the world is therefore less wrong. Of course, it doesn't feel like this at the time; far from knowing more, we feel like we suddenly know a lot less. A bit of the world we thought we'd secured is wild and mysterious again. This is a difficult feeling to live with; it's much more comforting to cling to a familiar idea even when it runs against the tide of evidence than to have no idea at all.

If you've spent a long time thinking yourself into a certain intellectual position, you are naturally resistant to letting it go. A lot of work went into it. If it "felt right" to you for whatever complex mesh of personal reasons makes an idea "feel right," then to abandon it isn't just a question of rationality but also a question of self-esteem. For if that feeling was wrong, how many others might be? How much of the rest of your intellectual world are you going to have to pick apart? And if everyone has watched you thinking your way there and seen you building your city around it, there might also be the simple issue of losing face.

For this reason, these essays exhibit a kind of intellectual honesty often lacking in much of human discourse. They give me real hope for the human race. The humility it takes to admit that you're wrong and the fortitude it takes to endure the chilly interval of uncertainty until the next step - finding a better idea - are manifest again and again. And there's courage, too, when evidence leads you away from the comfortable consensus into thoughts that might be highly incendiary and politically sensitive - thoughts you might not even like very much yourself.

If we are ever going to achieve a rational approach to organizing our affairs, we have to dignify the process of admitting to being wrong. It doesn't help matters at all if the media, or your friends, accuse you of "flip-flopping" when you change your mind. Changing our minds is our hope for the future.

Brockman, John. What Have You Changed Your Mind about?. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 2009. 

Young Dallin

This is me on my birthday. Summer time. Ninja turtles. Play-Doh. Head bonk.

Yoshi.

Birds

I wanted to post just a clip of this but couldn't find it by itself. Watch from 1:24 to 2:08. Or watch the whole thing. But my favorite part is that part.

I don't care what anyone says

I like Late Night w/ Jimmy Fallon.

Finally

Done with all of my finals.

I had to take a trip to Smiths at 3 am to get white out, but that UML diagram is good as new.

Summer

My window is open and the fan is blowing. It smells like summer in my room. Me gusta.

Laser Cat

http://awkwardfamilyphotos.com/2010/03/03/laser-cat/

Grammar

I used to be a pro at English grammar. The last post suggests that I no longer am.

Actually, I think it's just laziness. I just post rough drafts and don't even look over them twice. This thing underneath me needs some serious editing.

ocasión que se pasó, pájaro que voló

Often times I think I live under a false delusion that everything that happens will happen and it's what is supposed to happen. Not that I'm denying that sometimes strange coincidences happen which seem too much to be coincidences, because I've seen a lot of stuff like that, but, too many times I become too passive thinking that life will just hand whatever to me. While I don't believe in flipping out over circumstances that aren't under our control or flipping out when things don't go as planned, I believe that many times I underestimate how much is in my power to make my "dreams" come true and how easily those "dreams" could be realized if I was willing to exert more effort into making them happen.

Oftentimes I don't try because I don't think I can at the present moment. Although I usually do have an attitude, sometimes possibly too much, that I could do anything if I really wanted to, I often find myself wanting to, but never doing it--mostly because I never try. "I could do that if I wanted to. Maybe someday I'll try." Then I never try. Then I find myself living under some sort of false comfort that important opportunities will never be missed.

Today the realization started to hit me that some opportunities are gone forever if you don't take advantage of them. It's easy to look back and see how events or decisions, seemed crucial in getting you to where you are and you think, "Wow, I never would have gotten to where I'm at if I hadn't taken those decisions." Which seems magical and profound, but isn't. Of course it's easy to see how certain actions led you to where you are. You're there aren't you? But do we ever stop to ask ourselves that out of the millions of possible options we had to take that we couldn't have ended up someplace a lot better than where we are? If I make a decision at X point in time and end up at Y I often look back and think, "Look how choosing such and such option at X point in time led me to point Y. I sure am grateful for that." But how do I know that taking the other option at X wouldn't have led me to a Z that is actually much better than Y? I don't. Especially if the decision I made at X was to do nothing instead of do something. Can I really be grateful and content with where I'm at if I don't know where I could possibly be? Not realizing this is usually the key to my unhealthy contentment with not acting or pursuing something I want to pursue. Things will always work out, but that doesn't mean I can't make an attempt at making them better if it's something in my power.

Of course, once the past is gone it is healthy to just accept that the past is the past/a lo hecho, pecho/no use crying over spilled milk. And I don't write this to be pessimistic or ungrateful for everything that I have but to realize that I need to act now, today, all days. It is better to try and fail, then to not try at all. Trying and failing will bring experience and expand you as a person more than staying in the comfort zone will. One option will expand you and the other will just leave you the exact same as yesterday.

Dear Body

Now that it's 2 am after a rigorous day of push-ups, philosophy reviews, skateboarding, and donut frosting are you proud of what you did? We are both pretty exhausted so let's not sleep for 30 minutes, wake up, then refuse to fall asleep until 6 am again, OK? You think you can just frolic around all night acting like you don't need sleep then give up at 10:30 p.m. the next day? Sorry pal but we've got responsibilities and you can't just uproot the whole system as a little practical joke and then give up before work. And second of all, drop the tough guy act. You're not fooling anybody--we all know you're pretty pathetic and incompetent without sleep. Next time remember how difficult it was at work when you tried to check out an hour and a half before it even started. It's not that funny anymore is it?

Don't try anything funny. I'll be watching you.

Sincerely,
The Psyche

The Equality State

I just spent the last hour and a half looking at people from High School on Facebook. Whenever I do this I am filled with the weirdest emotion I can't describe. Maybe not the weirdest emotion, but the weirdest combination of emotions. I want to describe it, but like I said, I can't.

I want to make a joke here but I can't think of one.

This Post is a Dance Party

For all those interested, the mash-ups from the dance party can be found here. http://www.thehoodinternet.com/

Every muscle in me is sore. Well maybe not every one, but my lower back, abs, and legs are beat.

It's not that easy

It is interesting to me when people ask questions such as "Who is right, Democrats or Republicans?" or "Is R&B music offensive to God and Jesus?" on ChaCha. Do they really think those questions have a definitive answer? And that you can find that answer by asking a random person on the internet? Do they not realize that if that kind of definitive knowledge existed about those issues then society would be shaped different than it is? I always have a hard time responding to those questions in 140 characters. I also hope that the people that ask those questions are only 10 years old.