"…why the above is funny."

"The Average Person's Axioms of First Order Predicate Logic:

(A -> B) -> (B -> A)
(There exists) x A(x) -> (For all) x A(x)
(A -> C) AND (B -> C) -> (A -> B)

--Warren Vonroeschlaub

Predicate logic is the study of why the above is funny."
[LINK]

Or, in English:

If a duck is an animal, then an animal is a duck.

There is a toy that is red, therefore all toys are red.

If it rains the ground will be wet, and if the sprinklers turn on the ground will be wet, therefore if it rains the sprinklers will turn on.

Put me through the ringer…

My gf recently grilled me on a grammar point in Chinese which has always given me trouble… and it was a kind of crucifixion.

I'm keeping these notes here for reference… and as proof that I do now understand the grammar point… after years of uncertainty.

God, Lord, Jesus, my Messiah––sometimes I HATE LEARNING CHINESE!

[7 March 2011 ADDENDUM: I was being overly pouty, so, in retrospect, the emphasis should be on "sometimes," not on "hate."]

(She is Y, I am X.)

[2011/3/5 上午 1:37:10] X: ....的→形容詞 ...得→verb.+得=adv.
[2011/3/5 上午 1:37:50] Y: →
[2011/3/5 上午 1:38:02] X: ....地→ adj.→adv.
[2011/3/5 上午 1:38:34] X: 可愛_____
[2011/3/5 上午 1:38:43] X: 走___到
[2011/3/5 上午 1:38:48] X: 上___去
[2011/3/5 上午 1:38:53] X: 漂亮___
[2011/3/5 上午 1:39:00] X: 肥胖____
[2011/3/5 上午 1:39:30] Y: 的， 得，得 ， 的，的
[2011/3/5 上午 1:40:34] Y: 可愛的小孩
[2011/3/5 上午 1:40:52] Y: 雖然走得到，可是路很陡
[2011/3/5 上午 1:40:58] X: 他沒有喝酒，所以看___非常清楚
[2011/3/5 上午 1:41:19] Y: 你腳怎麼痛你還上得去嗎
[2011/3/5 上午 1:41:34] Y: 漂亮的瀑布
[2011/3/5 上午 1:42:13] Y: 肥胖的小豬特別好吃
[2011/3/5 上午 1:42:50] Y: 他沒有喝酒，所以看得非常清楚
[2011/3/5 上午 1:43:32] X: 非常了___
[2011/3/5 上午 1:43:56] Y: 非常了得
[2011/3/5 上午 1:44:06] Y: 了不起
[2011/3/5 上午 1:44:07] Y: ？
[2011/3/5 上午 1:45:06] X: 排了半天的隊=排隊排了半天
[2011/3/5 上午 1:46:02] Y: (we) waited for half a day, if (we) wait (we'll) wait half a day
[2011/3/5 上午 1:47:45] X: 講話講了一整天
[2011/3/5 上午 1:48:38] Y: 講了整天的話
[2011/3/5 上午 1:48:40] Y: 吧
[2011/3/5 上午 1:49:34] Y: 講了一整天的話
[2011/3/5 上午 1:49:53] X: 跳了一整天的舞
[2011/3/5 上午 1:50:14] Y: 跳舞跳了一整天
[2011/3/5 上午 1:50:26] X: 抽了一整包菸
[2011/3/5 上午 1:51:20] Y: 抽菸抽了一整包
[2011/3/5 上午 1:51:20] X: 昨天我走路走了一整天，想要去買一瓶酒，結果問了五十個人，沒有人找___到正確___位置，真___氣死我了！
[2011/3/5 上午 1:56:45] Y: 昨天我走了一整天的路，想要去買一瓶酒，結果問了五十個人，沒有人找得到正確的位置，真的氣死我了！
[2011/3/5 上午 1:58:03] Y: 昨天我走了一整天的路，想要去買一瓶酒，結果問了五十個人，沒有人找到正確的位置了，真的氣死我了！
[2011/3/5 上午 2:00:55] X: 結果問人問了五十個 … 9.5

The music of Bach exists…

…therefore God exists.

p --> q, p &there4 q

This is an argument for God's existence which I have mentioned before, but the following performance adds even more aesthetic depth to the matter!



•
Another of my favorite pieces:

Wer kann solch ein abgekartes Spiel nicht spielen?

(Or, loosely, "two can play at that game.")

I believe the citation is to be found in Robert Kane's introduction to free will, which is not with me at the moment: Nietzsche once called free will the greatest self-deception of all time. Nietzsche, as you may or may not know, wrote a lot about "self-deception" and its role in normal human behavior. By normal, of course, Nietzsche meant only dubious convention, the socially triangulated willfulness of some to control and shame others. Free will is a self-deception partly because it sunders, in Nietzsche's eyes, the eternal unity of each of us with everything else. "Die Lehre von der Freiheit des Willens," Nietzsche asserts, "ist eine Erfindung herrschender Stände" (Werke I - Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, "Der Wanderer" 9, 6. Aufl. Frankfurt/M u. a.: Ullstein, 1969, S. 877 (II, II)). ["The doctrine of the freedom of the will is an invention of the ruling classes."]

Recent experiences had me pondering the dubious motives behind that other great self-deception––if we're going to play the "philosophy by suspicion" game, I mean––, namely, determinism. For, if we can treat all viewpoints as but fragile shells of rhetoric placed over deeper, self-serving motives, how can we not see determinism––the denial that one has freedom to form one's own character in certain instances––as the peak of self-serving rhetoric? How convenient it is to be able to say, "It was not I, but my genes, not I, but my upbringing, not I, but my environment"! I know a retired lawyer who now believes the entire legal-penal system is just a social sham, a power game, and should be radically reformed, if not totally scrapped, in light of the truth that humans lack free will. Awfully convenient: the legal-penal system is a scandal only after one has completed one's very lucrative career in it. Fortunately, of course, not even that bit of self-deception is blameworthy, since our man had no choice but to be a hypocrite.

My critique is not, I believe, a very novel insight, but it is something worth keeping in mind. The usual slant in these debates is that hard determinists are actually more compassionate, more reasonable, more cutting-edge, and the like, since they seek to dissolve musty old conventions like "morality," "guilt," "responsibility," "law," "punishment," etc. with more humane ideas like "reform," "acceptance," "quarantine," and so on. It's always hip to be Buddhist, and, allegedly, the Buddhist thing to do is simply to accept everyone's so-called failings, without adding punishment and social rage to their already pitiful fate (cf. this Wiki link and this essay [PDF!] for some corrective data). The problem, though, is that even this tack resolves back into the schema of praise and blame, since compassionate determinism is proposed as the morally praiseworthy course of action. The self-deception does not stop there, however, for another major benefit of compassionate determinism is that one is granted a pardon for all one's failings. Adultery? No problem! We know you didn't mean it: we know you could not have done otherwise. Fraud? Same pass. Murder? Pass. Holocaust? Er, well, uh….

This ambivalence about "forgiving oneself" and yet making just condemnations of "truly evil people" (like Hitler) ran through Einstein's life. Consider these quotations from Einstein:

"An Freiheit des Menschen im philosophischen Sinne glaube ich keineswegs. Jeder handelt nicht nur unter äußerem Zwang sondern auch gemäß innerer Notwendigkeit. … Schopenhauers Spruch: 'Ein Mensch kann zwar tun, was er will, aber nicht wollen, was er will', hat mich seit meiner Jugend lebendig erfüllt und ist mir beim Anblick und beim Erleiden der Härten des Lebens immer ein Trost gewesen und eine unerschöpfliche Quelle der Toleranz" (Albert Einstein, Mein Weltbild. Zürich: Ullstein, 2005, S. 9).

["By no means do I believe in human freedom in the philosophical sense. Everyone acts not only from external compulsion but also from internal necessity. … Schopenhauer's dictum: 'A man can certainly do what he wants, but cannot will what he wants', has (ful)filled my life since youth and has always been a comfort in the face of suffering the hard things in life, as well as being an inexhaustible source of tolerance."]

Never mind that Einstein also vocally condemned the Nazis during and after the War for their moral wrongdoing. Somehow, "our" lack of free will is a pitiful fact, while "their" misuse of freedom is an onerous truth. Either way the polarity is a useful fiction for those who wish to be among the morally ruling class ("ist eine nützliche Erfindung der, die dem sittlich herrschenden Stände gehören möchten").

+ + +

An addendum to a post I wrote earlier about determinism and astrology:

"Unser Handeln sei getragen von dem stets lebendigen Bewußtsein, daß die Menschen in ihrem Denken, Fühlen und Tun nicht frei sind, sondern ebenso kausal gebunden wie die Gestirne in ihren Bewegungen."

["Our behavior is borne by the always living consciousness that humans are not free in their thinking, feeling and doing, but rather are as causally bound as the stars in their motions."]

–– aus Einstein sagt. Alice Calaprice (Hrsg.), München/Zürich: Piper, 1997, S. 177.

+
An related addendum, c/o a reader:

Quos dii volunt perdere dementant prius…

(Those the gods would damn they first drive mad.)

Foster parent ban: 'no place' in the law for Christianity, high court rules (Tim Ross, The Telegraph, 28 Feb 2011)

Lord Justice Munby and Mr Justice Beatson made the remarks when ruling on the case of a Christian couple who were told that they could not be foster carers because of their view that homosexuality is wrong.

The judges underlined that, in the case of fostering arrangements at least, the right of homosexuals to equality “should take precedence” over the right of Christians to manifest their beliefs and moral values.

In a ruling with potentially wide-ranging implications, the judges said Britain was a “largely secular”, multi-cultural country in which the laws of the realm “do not include Christianity”.

Campaigners for homosexual rights welcomed the judgment for placing “21st-century decency above 19th-century prejudice”. Christian campaigners claimed that it undermined the position of the Church of England.

Freedom…

Freedom perfects nature.

This was an epiphany.

Perhaps the most vivid and obvious example: Saving sex for marriage, as a free sacrifice of one's natural and good urges, perfects the natural enjoyment of sex.

Ein voller Bauch studiert nicht gern –– also an epiphany, but of the more "cynical" flavor.

If human nature (h) is wholly and merely a combination (result) of one's environment (e) and one's genetic inheritance (g), then the determinacy of h is but a function of the determinacy of e and g.

Since e is radically indeterminate with respect to teleological embodiment (i.e. rational control), h is radically contingent. Further, since g is contingent upon e–-e.g. the manifestation of "lung cancer genes" based on the inhalation of urban pollution or many cigarettes––, h is as indeterminate as g.

Imagine e, h, and g as the corners of a triangle, the triangle of real human existence (r). There is an inverse proportion between the indeterminacy of any corner and the other two. (Does Newton's three-body problem further accentuate the indeterminacy of r? I have the impression that the three-body problem is more tractable in quantum mechanics… that that mechanics is itself rife with indeterminacy, by most accounts.)

□e ∧ □g ⊃ □h

(~□e ∧ □g) ∨ (□e ∧ ~□g)

∴ ~(□e ∧ □g)

∴ ~□h

e ∧ g ⊃ h

◊~g ∧ ◊~h ∴ ◊~h

∴ h is not determinate

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