A reply to myself

This was going to be about a paradox of Calvinism and Newcomb's Problem. I might even write that post tomorrow. But, I was looking through old posts (searching for the one wherein I mentioned Necomblike problems first) and found this. And I think I was wrong, in more than one way.

First in order of increasing importance, I don't quite like the way it's written. Yes, yes, mostly irrelevant, but as long as I'm listing what's wrong with it...

Second, and more embarrassingly, the first example was badly designed. The actual logical chain as originally written had the consequences of the dilemma backwards. I can usually spot that sort of thing, so yeah, shame on me.

But that's details. The real reason for this post is that I think my entire point was wrong.

Now, I'm sure there are contrived scenarios where letting the two wrongs cancel out is the right thing to do. Much in the same way as there are contrived scenarios in which it's the right thing to do to kill a million people (if it's gonna save two million, say). But that's not a way of thinking that's useful for solving actual moral dilemmas you are likely to encounter. Similarly, the analysis I made of those two problems was bad as a general policy. And probably mistaken in the particular cases, as well.

"But wait," myself from 6 months ago says, "let's look at case 1. From the specification of the problem, the consequences of the action volunteer-the-evidence are a punishment you are opposed to. It follows inescapably that your ethics have to consider the action wrong, unless you went deontological sometime in the last half year"

I didn't, but thanks for your concern. The problem is that the consequences go further than that. When you decide that your personal ethics override the general societal system in place, you are in essence undermining it. A cooperation-based system that everyone ignores whenever it conflicts with their own personal feelings, collapses.

"But, of course my own personal ethics override the system! That's exactly what makes them my ethics, they are the standard to which I measure whether something is right or wrong. If I'm going to ignore them in favour of the system in place just because it's the system in place, then they are meaningless. My actual ethics would just be 'follow the crowd'."

Ignoring your ethics makes them pointless, yes, but that's not what I'm saying you should do. Rather, your ethics are acting on two levels. When you evaluate the system, you find that you want it to improve by not using the death penalty. But the advantage of having the system in place is also important, by your ethics, so the final calculation has to be influenced by what happens if the system collapses.

"The system won't collapse because I didn't help put someone to death-"

Massive Multiplayer Prisoner's Dilemma. If everyone defects from the common system, then the situation is the global worst. I suppose you didn't  understand Timeless Decision Theory back then  (not that I'm an expert on any kind of decision theory now), but think about it. Does the idea that when every individual does the right thing society collapses not sound off?

"I see what you mean, though that an idea sounds off is not really a counter-argument."

And yet you would call it the right thing to do to cooperate in the prisoner's dilemma, would you not?

"In the original scenario, perhaps, but it doesn't generalise to all PD-like situations. The reason I would call it right is that right involves an element of caring about people other than myself instead of just self-benefiting. In the case under consideration, I am caring for other people, namely the guy who'll be killed depending on my actions, when I defect"

Fair enough, but to the extent you have a sense of what 'right' means, doesn't it need to be good that most people do the right thing?

"Provisionally accepted, but I don't have a strict definition of right to compare it to"

You need to stop thinking so much in terms of strict definitions, especially when you don't have them. But back on topic, there's the honesty angle to consider. Not just honesty as a terminal value, but from the instrumental point of view. If you implement the general policy of acting within the common system, then people know they can trust you to be a cooperative agent. The price you pay when you defect is that other people, who work within the common system, must regard you as not-trustworthy. You become the act-equivalent of the little boy that cried wolf.

"Wait, what? The boy crying wolf is not doing the right thing by his ethics, he's just bored. He's in the wrong because he values his own time more than that of the other people, and that's not what I'm doing"

The point I'm making is that, aside of being a jerk, he's being stupid by sacrificing his trustworthiness. In the same way, it's unwise to take the risk of saying "Hey, I don't play by those rules" by cancelling wrongs with other wrongs.

"But that's not something you signal in either case, the scenarios are such that only you know what you chose, or even that you had a choice."

Which is unrealistic and part of what it makes the exercise one of low applicability. You might as well say you're saving a million people from the death penalty, it doesn't generalise.

"It's a thought experiment, the terms of it are the terms of it"

Let's not go there. Instead, I have one more angle you haven't considered: the possibility that you might be wrong.

"Of course I might be wrong, but that's true of any argument, that doesn't invalidate them"

I mean within the experiment. Perhaps, in fact, the death penalty is the right thing to do, if you automatically override society with your personal ethics you lose the chance to update on that information.

"Truth is not a democracy, lots of people being in favour of something doesn't make it right. And, again, you want me to sacrifice my personal beliefs for the sake of fitting those of other humans. Humans which, you know as well I do, commit a thousand and one errors in thinking."

Indeed we do, "we" being key. If your opinion disagrees with the majority, well, that doesn't mean you're wrong, but it does mean that you should give the other side's view serious consideration. If you dismiss every popular idea that seems wrong on the basis of human stupidity alone, then you forget that you are human too, and your cognitive machinery is prone to failure.

The right to remain stupid

On occasion, I encounter those who say "There is no knowledge, only opinion". Or "It doesn't matter whether your belief is true, if it gives you comfort". Or "I can believe whatever I want". And such things, all along the same theme of downplaying the importance of reality.

And it is infuriating. I care about reality, and that shouldn't be something you need to say, but it is. Giving a shit about reality is not a favourite flavour of ice-cream. It's so deeply entrenched within the way I deal with the world, it feels off that other humans could believe, or even believe they believe,that knowledge is a matter of preference.

And that's something wrong with me, in part. There's few if any propositions are so ridiculous that a human is unable to profess them (or perhaps, this is just an illusion brought about by the fact that the almost all the beliefs you hear about are those professed by a human, so the sample is self selecting). Either way, it's a fact about reality that some people declare themselves apathetic towards reality, so it shouldn't feel off to me. (There is a curious recursion in that). The principle is, you should be more confused by falsehoods than by truth.

But it is also, in another way, wrong with them. Intolerant it might sound, but this is not a matter of simple preference. You can try to ignore reality, but it will not ignore you, and you will have to deal with it in her own terms. You can draw comfort from your beliefs, but if they are false they will sometimes cause you great harm, and you cannot say that the trade-off is worthy without knowing the true state of things.

So the phrase occurs to me, and it fits. It's arrogant as hell, but it amuses, and it fits. All I have to do, is look at the argument-against-truth and mentally replace it for the indignant protest: "I have the right to remain stupid!"

Two thoughts on Murphy's Law

1. "Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong" is trivially true (for specific meanings of can). In a deterministic universe, what happens is strictly a consequence of the initial conditions, given the initial conditions the result is set in stone and unchangeable. For a specific meaning of can, anything that is allowed by those initials conditions can happen and anything that isn't, cannot. Since the result is set, anything that could happen given the initial conditions has to be part of that result, otherwise it wouldn't be part of what can happen. What can happen and what does happen are actually the exact same thing, looked at from different points in time. As a corollary, the inverse of Murphy's Law stating that whatever can go right will go right is also trivially true under the same specifications.

Of course, someone might say "But I don't believe in determinism!". I have two answers to that, the first is "You're wrong by virtue of the fact that you disagree with me" and the second is "Pretend I appended  'if you are a determinist' to that first sentence." Choose the one you like the most.

2.If you look at it the wrong way, Murphy's law is actually very optimistic. Proof:

A. Often people believe bad things will happen and they don't.

B. Of two people, one who believes something bad can happen and one who does not, the latter is the most optimistic.

C. Murphy's law states that if something bad can happen, it does happen.

D. p -> q is equivalent to ¬q -> ¬p, thus from C we can see that according to a Murphyist if something bad does not happen, then it could not happen.

E. From A and D we can show that often people believe that bad things would happen in cases where a Murphyist would believe they couldn't happen.

F. Thus from E and B we can show that often, of two people, the Murphyist is the most optimistic of the two.

Q.E.D.

It gets better

The It Gets Better campaign is an admirable effort to raise awareness about  homophobic bullying. The idea is to let LGBTQ teens know that not all life is like school, that when you're an adult you can choose who to be around and give a big, hearty fuck you to everyone who made you miserable.


And a small part of me wonders if the fundie community has thought of making an It Gets Worse campaign, telling those damn sodomites that they'll spend their life tortured by AIDS and gay demons and then they'll go to Hell and fondly remember the suicide-inducing homophobia of their youth. Or something. The idea is simultaneously enraging and hilarious, though the latter aspect would be somewhat diminished if it was an actual campaign and not just idle hypothesising.


It could be worse. It could be Monty Python references.

Conceptual Poetry

Ah, the scourge of misleading titles. I thought of this phrase to describe something in Golden Sky (yes, I'm still writing that, no, I don't have any excuses for the skipped evaluations). It seemed a decent fit, it still does, but I'm fairly sure the naked phrase will evoke ideas far different from those intended (the context should make it clear, but I wouldn't trust my judgement on the matter).

As I supposed after a few minutes of reflection, and a quick Google confirmed, the phrase is already in use to describe a kind of poetry that is in some way related to concepts. Shocker, innit.  I would attempt a more exact definition, but it seems a riddle the poets in question don't seem too given to answer. Never trust an artist to give you anything concrete on their art (said a crappy writer, bitter voice filled with contempt). But in any case, I do know it is not what I meant by it.

What myself and Jack who is the one to use the phrase wish to express by it, is an actual concept, or relationship between concepts, that appeals to an aesthetic sense. If an idea by itself is conceptual prose, then conceptual poetry is finding a way to look at an idea through which you notice something curious, paradoxical, or self-referencing within it (that's what hits my concept-aesthetic buttons, at least). I find it, well, a fun exercise, though not generally  a source of enlightening. At this point, I should be giving you examples, probably. But, as it turns out, the only examples that come to mind are those within the story, and I don't wish to share them yet. Not even because they're spoilers, I just want to leave 'em there. If I find any better, I'll try to keep track of them.


I wonder if I'll get any mistaken googlers from this.

2011/03/15, mistaken googler count +1

Death is problematic

Do you want to live forever?

What? what d'you mean, no? Surely you can't want to die, right?

And I'm sure at this point you're thinking of all the typical objections like seeing loved ones die and bogged down memory and boredom and whatnot. But what If I said this immortality extended to your family and friends, hell, the entire human species and any other sentient beings we might find in the process. And we'll improve everyone's bodies and brains, so memory won't be a problem, either.

And what about overpopulation? Well, that would take billions of years or longer, but I suppose eventually the universe might fill up. And what about the heat death of the universe? No physical system would be able to work, and you probably know I'm a naturalist, so any immortality would have to be physical. But let's say we find a way around those with new discoveries allowing us to create new universes or whatnot.

But maybe there are other problems left. Or maybe just that doesn't work. So now what?

Well, it's a simple principle that I've been thinking about lately. Certainly there are many problems that we avoid due to our limited lifespans. You've heard people say, often enough, that they don't care about global climate change since they'll be dead, that the sun becoming a red giant in a few billion years doesn't concern us because we won't live long enough, hell, people saying they'd rather die young than get old and sick. This simple principle says: When you avoid a problem because you won't live long enough to face it, you don't have a solution, you have another problem.

I know not everyone is as passionate as me about living as long as possible. I was recently surprised at how many people told me they wouldn't want to be brought back to life were such a thing possible (the science of internet polls). But this idea goes beyond that. I admit eternal life has issues, but those are the issues of life itself, we just don't have enough time to face them now. Like a baby hoping she'll die at age five and never have to face school.

When someone wants to kill themselves, we usually think something must be wrong, and we would want to fix that if possible. Those of us who believe in the right to euthanasia still think it'd be a better outcome if we could cure the disease that's causing the suffering. So why don't we extend that thinking pattern indefinitely? Why do people talk about some "natural extent" of human life, after which it'd be silly to still want to live? Why not focus on the problem of life not being worth living at a certain point?

My argument is: If you don't exist, you can't achieve goals, you can't be happy, you can't experience pleasure, you can't rack up utility points. Of every way humans use to evaluate outcomes that I know of, in none does death ever become the most desirable outcome conceivable. I accept the existence of fates worse than death, but not their theoretical inevitability. That is, there's always a conceivable something better than death. If life is looking worse than death, then either your perceptions are wrong or life is not living to its theoretical potential. In both cases, we have a problem.

The problem might not be solvable. Maybe immortality does bore you eventually, regardless of what you do. But it's still there. It's still preferable that it wasn't there than to die. Therefore, you have a problem to solve, if you want to achieve the best possible outcome, whatever that is for you  If you're going to die, you have two problems to solve, one is your death, the other whatever sucks in life. If there's something else down the line, then you have three problems. Or four, or five, or six. And every new possible way to die adds another problem. In a way, you have infinite problems, sorry to break it to you. But I'm telling you because I think it's better if you know.

If you truly, really, honestly think that the best possible thing that could happen to you is for you to day after a certain point, then there's nothing I can say. But I don't believe any human has an utility function that prefers death to all possible states of not-death. Or however it is you think preferred outcomes are determined if you don't like utilitarianism. So, next time you think of the future, think if you want to be there. If not, find out why. Knowing what the problems are is a good way to start solving them.



As an aside:  I don't believe eternal life is possible. Like I said above, I' think naturalism is correct, life cannot exist other than as a physical system. And even if the heat death of the universe can be bypassed, somehow, you'd have an eternity of time for that life to end. If there's any possible way for death to happen, it will happen, probability 1, given an infinite amount of time. I might be wrong. I want to be wrong about this, provided we can solve the other problems. But it doesn't seem likely. That doesn't negate any of the points I raised before, a problem you cannot solve is still a problem.

Good and evil agents

Did you know that the word Sigmalephian has no Google hits as of this writing? You might wonder why I would bring that up (or just assume I'm crazy and/or and idiot, hypotheses I cannot discard). Well, one of my usual Internet aliases is Sigmaleph, which I'm quite fond of. And "Sigmalephian" seems to be a good word to describe something relating to my person, much better than say "Currentian" or "Mirrassian". Or, gods forbid, my true name, which I must keep hidden lest I grant you mystical powers over my person. In an act of convenient labelling and tautology, I have decided to declare I belong to the Sigmalephian school of philosophy. That is, that whichever my thoughts on any subject, it just so happens that they match the thoughts of this Sigmaleph character, which, as luck would have it, is myself. Does that make sense? It shouldn't.

All of the above is just actually irrelevant to the matters originally prompting me to write this post, I just felt I needed to get that out there (here) at some time and this felt like a good opportunity. The following is indeed Sigmalephian philosophy, but then that's true quite a lot on this blog, and remarking upon that fact has never been necessary or useful for the reading of my mental excretions.

You're still here? Huh. 20 SigPoints for persistence. Since SigPoints cannot be exchanged for anything as of now and for the foreseeable future, your true reward is my rambling. Aren't you excited? Well, so it goes.

One thought that has repeatedly happened upon me is that the basic benefit of good is cooperation and the basic benefit of evil is resourcefulness. Which is to say. On the purely pragmatic aspects and ignoring for now self-image and warm fuzzy feelings, "good" agents have as an advantage the fact we live in a world with other good agents and they are more willing to cooperate with others like themselves. The basic weakness of the murderer is that zie doesn't go against the detective, zie goes against the detective backed by the police department supported by a large part of society. And, the advantage "evil" agents have is that they are have more methods available to them. If there are two different ways to solve a problem and one involves kicking puppies, the evil agent will be able to choose based on their relative usefulness, whereas the good agent has the disadvantage of having to also factor in the ethics of puppy-kicking. This doesn't cut both ways, since the evil agent has no particular reason to prefer evil methods to non-evil ones that work better. A decision algorithm that only maximises strategic merits will on average outperform the one that has to balance strategy and ethics.

Where am I going with this? Well, you might notice that the "evil" advantage is intrinsic to evil agents, whereas the good advantage is beneficial only when there's a perception of goodness. That is, any agent who cares less about ethics than the adversary has the advantage of more options, but good agents that don't reap the benefits of the goodness advantage can exist. What you need is other good agents to think you're good and help you, which can happen independently of goodness. Which brings us to the problem. An evil agent can reap both benefits if it is evil but perceived as good. The reverse does not happen, indeed it kinda sucks to be good and perceived as evil, because you get none of the benefits.

As a brief parenthesis. Yes, this is a simplified model, and I'm not addressing what "good" and "evil" are, which is a pretty deep problem. For the purposes of this model, "good" and "evil" are what the society in context thinks they are. This is not synonymous with actual good and evil (as I understand them), but it's usually close enough in most cases. The whole "murder is usually considered bad among humans" thing. Other simplifications are that it ignores the self-image, conscience and intimidation factors, and possibly others, which are not minor, but don't tip the scale far enough, usually. Bottom line, I think the model works for most cases. I welcome any improvements that keep it simple. But first, read the rest, because there's one major flaw I correct later on.

Onwards. So, imagine an evil agent who thinks zirself very smart. So smart, zie considers zirself able to trick most good agents into cooperation, while still using evil tactics. And thus, the incentive for goodness is gone. Problematic if you want people to not be evil, which you do being a good agent (and if you weren't, you wouldn't tell me, now would you?). Note that even if the evil agent considers zirself to be good, zie can  believe most people are mistaken, and thus still want to trick people, because the advantage is in being perceived to match society's idea of good. It's close enough to true that nobody sees themselves as evil, but people can certainly see themselves not matching the general idea of good, or think that everyone is making such a fuss about that minor thing of killing [insert group here] who aren't really people. Or whatever. Addendum noted (no, this is not the major flaw I hinted at), moving on.


Well, at this point I started to consider solutions to the problem. One noticeable thing is that it shows the appeal of an impossible to trick good agent handing out significant punishments and rewards . Impossible to trick so there cannot be a false perception of good, good to make sure it only cooperates with good agents, and the rewards and punishments have to be huge to outweigh any possible advantage of evil. The idea of the omniscient, omnipotent, benevolent god, in other words. Not a stunning discovery, of course, but it put the ball in a more familiar court. Since I'm fairly used to considering why gods are not good answers to questions, that part of my brain engaged quickly, and I noticed my big oversight.

A general principle to consider: In most cases, if believing X is beneficial and X is false, there should exist a true belief Y that delivers the same benefits. Y also should explain why X is beneficial, but that's tangential to the point. In the universe we live in, the power of knowledge is in the ability to make better decisions. When you're deciding based on incomplete knowledge (i.e. the situation every human being is whenever making a choice), the decision based on knowledge closer to the truth should, on average, outperform the others. There are beliefs that have effects not related to knowledge, like say placebo effect and such, but they are not the predominant case. Which adds up to, you should want to be right. When you find yourself in a situation when you want people to be consistently wrong to make better decisions, there's probably something wrong with your "right".

What I was wrong about, rather obvious in retrospect, is that good agents cooperating better is not purely a matter of being more willing to do so given the perception of goodness. Good agents cooperate better, in part, because of the characteristics of "goodness". That's how goodness came to be in the first place, if there was no advantage to it then it wouldn't have been selected for, the primitive good agents would've lost the evolutionary game to those without goodness. And, separate but more important, it's the deeper why behind  good agents wanting good agents. The more good agents a society has, the better it will do, outweighing the advantages of increased resourcefulness due to evilness. Otherwise, it'd be irrational to want a good society, and I'm trying to show the opposite.

In the end, it all adds up to that, while it might seem that a pragmatist might simply try to fake goodness and reap the benefits of both evil and good, in the long term that's a poor group strategy. People should want to cooperate, not because of fear of a false punishment, not just because that's who they are (though that plays a significant part in what good is) but because it works at group-level.

Which brings us to the second part of the problem, the individual perspective. You might notice that while it's better for the society for all its agents to be good, for each individual agent it still seems preferable to be evil and perceived as good, getting the benefits without the drawbacks. Of course, this individual perspective results in society collapsing. It's the Prisoner's Dilemma, all watch out only for themselves so it adds up to the worst global situation. Which, once again, rings that little bell in my head that says that if your "smart" strategy has consistently worse results than the "stupid" strategy, then it can't be that terribly smart.

One answer is that a truly smart society should be hard to trick. Not omniscience, that's beyond human means, but it seems a necessary application of intelligence is detecting concealed evil and thus acting as deterrent. That's, like I said, one answer, but I don't think the best. Creating agents that want to be good is more efficient if it works, but also more difficult. I'd be wary of genetically modifying humans, for example, while theoretically it could be very useful there's many ways it could go wrong.  But, while it still seems that better answers should exist, the thing I'm happy about is that at least I managed to get to a answer that shows a smarter society works better, not worse.

Personalismo

Una de las personas citadas antes en referencia a una de sus cartas de lectores, resulta que tiene un blog, parece que dedicado a una filosofía que llama personalismo. Me llamó la atención, fui a ver que onda, y...

Mi impresión es que es una de esas filosofías superficialmente interesantes, cuando las mirás más de cerca te das cuenta que muchas de sus ideas no son lo que yo diría de las mejores. Hay una lista al respecto de ciertas ideas comunes entre los personalistas, copiada la Asociación Española de Personalismo. Ya saben lo que me gusta hacer con las listas...

1. Insalvable distinción entre cosas y personas que implica que las personas deben ser analizadas con categorías filosóficas específicas y no con categorías elaboradas para las cosas.

Una simplificación generalmente útil pero equivocada. Mi respuesta automática sería decir que las personas son cosas con ciertas propiedades particulares. En principio, ambas formulaciones son equivalentes, con la diferencia en definir "cosa" como una categoría que junta cosas-personas y cosas-no-personas. Pero la distinción va más allá. Aceptar que las personas y las cosas-no-personas son en principio cosas permite entender que no hay una separación marcada sino un espectro gradual de personalidad. Creo que ese es mi primer gran problema con el personalismo, que no acepten la existencia de cosas que no son personas pero se acercan. Considerando qué desacuerdo empezó todo esto (el aborto), parece bastante significativo. Pero sigamos.

2. La afectividad se considera una dimensión central, autónoma y originaria que incluye un centro espiritual que se identifica con el corazón.

Esto me confunde, más que nada. Asumo que "corazón" está siendo usado de modo simbólico y no refiriéndose al órgano que bombea sangre. Y quizás "espiritual" puede interpretarse de manera funcional y no fundamental. Pero sigo sin entender qué significa.

3. Importancia decisiva de la relación interpersonal y familiar en la configuración de la identidad personal.

OK, parece válido.

4. La cualidad más excelsa de la persona no es la inteligencia sino la voluntad y el corazón, lo que implica una primacía de la acción y permite dar una relevancia filosófica al amor.

No veo cómo podemos separar "la voluntad y el corazón" de la inteligencia. Es como decir que el álgebra es más importante que la matemática.

5. Recuperación de la corporeidad como dimensión esencial de la persona que, más allá del aspecto somático, posee también rasgos subjetivos y personales.

...¿Qué? O sea... No sé, no veo cual es la idea. Veo algo, pero no parece una declaración filosófica sino una observación obvia.

6. Existen dos modos de ser persona: hombre y mujer. La persona es una realidad dual y el carácter sexuado afecta al nivel corporal, afectivo y espiritual.

Y ya se fueron al carajo, por decirlo con delicadeza. Creo que ya dejé muy clara mi posición sobre la heteronormatividad implícita en este punto.

7. La persona es un sujeto social y comunitario, y su primacía ontológica está contrapesada por su deber de solidaridad.

Volviendo a lo relativamente inocuo. No dice mucho.

8. Los filósofos personalistas no conciben su filosofía como un mero ejercicio académico sino que buscan la transformación de la sociedad.

Ésa es la parte que me preocupa... pero no es particularmente original como idea. Supongo que la mayoría de las filosofías consideran que su utilidad es más que simplemente masturbación mental. (Sí, hay términos más agradables, pero no encuentro uno más acertado)

9. El personalismo postula una visión trascendente de la vida que se inspira culturalmente en la tradición judeocristiana pero siempre dentro del marco filosófico

Ugh. No hace falta que aclare lo que opino de la tradición judeocristiana. A este punto ya no creo que haya alguna idea rescatable que no sea trivial, aunque admito que por ahí eso es un prejuicio mío.

10. El personalismo entiende que la filosofía moderna ha conducido a errores relevantes como el idealismo pero también ha aportado novedades antropológicas irrenunciables como la subjetividad, la conciencia el yo o la reivindicación de la libertad.

No me dice mucho. O sea, sin saber las ideas detrás de la aceptación o rechazo de cada ejemplo no puedo formar una opinión sustancial al respecto.

Y eso es todo por ahora. Mi idea es hacer un par de comentarios en el sitio y ver qué pasa, visto y considerando que no termino de entender algunas ideas. Por ahí aprendo algo. O consigo material para bloggear. O al menos tengo una discusión interesante. Quién sabe.

On double wrongs

Suppose there's a certain system in place that for whatever reasons results in something you're against. Suppose, as well, that there is a loophole in this system that allows avoiding this undesirable outcome.

Too insubstantial? I'll try a more concrete example. Suppose that you oppose a specific punishment for moral reasons(My personal choice would be the death penalty, you can fill in the blanks with whatever you like). Bob McCriminal is going to get this punishment, but at the last minute, a key piece of evidence is misplaced and now this particular punishment is out of bounds. For some reason or another, you know about this and possess a copy of the relevant records, so you consider volunteering it (no, I don't know if any real justice system would work like this, it's just a thought experiment). You know Bob is guilty and in the spirit of the system, he should be punished. But, again, you think the punishment is immoral. So, do you volunteer the evidence, thus following the spirit of the system, or keep it to yourself, thus following your own personal ethics?

Another example. You're taking a class on [whatever subject]. You don't really give a shit about [whatever subject], and will forget everything ten minutes after the final, but you need it to take another class on a subject you do care about. Because you are so terribly clever, you find out that phrasing your answers in certain ways makes the professor more likely to think that you are right. In fact, you can improve your grade by 50% by carefully choosing your words (assume [whatever subject] is the kind of subject where the correctness of each answer is somewhat fuzzy). There's no specific rule against this, but I think we can all agree it falls under the general category of "cheating". Do you phrase your answers to get an easy passing grade, knowing that you'll remember exactly the same after the end of this class whether you pass legitimately or not? Or do you not?

I specifically tailored the examples so that in one you need to act to follow the spirit of the system, and in the other you have to refuse to act. People intuitively regard the morality of "action" and "inaction" differently even when they have the exact same result. But another major reason why answers may differ between scenarios is because of the amount of respect towards the established system and the rules behind it. That is, you'll be more likely to follow the spirit of the system if you believe that system is there for a good reason. So do try to think alternative scenarios, imaginary readers.

The point of this exercise, as the title gives away, is a reflection on the phrase "Two wrongs don't make a right". I disagree. I think two wrongs, under the right circumstances, can make a right. (I have a similar relationship with the whole "the end doesn't justify the means" business). For example, the first wrong, a system that allows the death penalty is countered, in my view, by the second wrong, a system that allows guilty people to skip punishment.

That is to say, my response to the first scenario is fuck the system, Bob doesn't get killed (or tortured or castrated or whatever you chose). It may feel like a criminal is "winning", and that mingles oddly with certain parts of me, but in the end I don't want people to die. Similar answer to the second one, while I may "feel" the wrongness intuitively, intellectually I cannot find any reason not cheating is preferable. My approach is teleological, someone with deontological views is likely to disagree.

But that's me, what about you? Assuming the "you" I'm addressing exists, which sounds rather unlikely.

Angry Mob Equations

A problem was recently put to me. Namely, a formula for determining the productivity of angry mobs given certain parameters. Never being one to shy away from offering useless but entertaining (to me) answers to complex questions, I set to work and came up with the following:

Given a mob of N number of people, we assume their productivity P depends on the ease of identifying their objectives (O), the tools to carry them out (T), and their motivation (M) given by P=O*T*M.

Now, O depends on visual skill (V), amount of visibility given by daylight (L), and the intellectual ability to identify their targets (I). Assume V is measured as visual acuity where 20/20 vision is 1. Daylight is measured in function of ideal light conditions, given as 1. And I is given as the skill to identify the target given information about it, where 1 is 100% odds of identifying targets given V*L=1. Since V*L*I varies for every member of the mob, and we only need one member to identify the targets, O(mob) is defined as V*L*I for the member of the mob with the greatest individual score.

T depends on F (fear inspired by the mob) and S (strategic skill of the mob). F depends on the sum of all W (weapon) and C (craziness) values of each individual mobber, but because F is a matter of human perception, Weber-Fechner law applies. Therefore we define F as ln (Σ(W+C)). S is the mob's skill, which depends on the leader of the mob (defined as the mobber with the greatest Charisma (Ch) score), and is diminished by the effect of groupthink (mob mentality), which in turn is diminished by the leader's ability to manipulate the mob and increased by the mob's dumbness (D). So S=S(leader)*N^(Ch-D). Thus we define T as F*S.

Finally, M is the mob's willingness to continue pursuit, which is given by the appropriateness of the background music (B) and the clash (K) between mob ideals and that which the targets represent. B is defined such that ideal background music is 1. K depends on how much the targets deviates from accepted cultural norms, calculated as the target's value vs the mob's value and assuming a vector space of X cultural norms. Thus Tv-Mv for every value, and K=sqrt((Tv1-Mv1)^2+(Tv2-Mv2)^2...(TvX-MvX)^2). M also depends on the previously defined values of N and D, thus M=B*K*N*D.

There you have it. P=O*T*M.

This is the original wording, as posted here. A number of minor corrections for style and clarity come to mind, but I think the original text deserves to be here in its pure, unadulterated glory.

Credit for the inspiration goes to Luna May. Blame goes strictly to me.

Untheism revisited

Some time ago, I had a burst of inspiration. "What if," I thought to myself, "there was a god that not only did not exist, just like the rest of 'em, but also found that not existing was not the crippling disability all the others think it is?"

It was a pretty simple concept. Ungod is the god of things that don't exist, so not existing doesn't bother zir at all. In fact, considering how many things don't exist, that makes zir a rather powerful deity.

And thus I developed the idea and a religion called Untheism was born. Eager to share this brain excretion* with the world, I decided to create a blog. This blog, as a matter of fact. Of course, nowadays it's more about my attempts to suck less as a writer than about theism of any kind, but it's the same basic process of "get weird idea -> develop -> write about it-> share with the universe -> reflect on how stupid the ideas are -> try to improve them"

*I prefer to call them psychflares nowadays, but still, it was excreted from my brain.

On that last point. This was rather obvious to me from the start, but it became more and more annoying with time; the basic fallacy of Untheism is that it treats non-existence as simply an alternative characteristic to existence. This leads to logical contradictions, because I'm basically saying that that which cannot exist logically is on an equivalent state with that which can but does not. I handwaved that by saying untheist logic is different from regular logic, which is simply bullshit. Not an explanation, just a vague reference to an explanation that might exist but is not described at all.

So, lately, I figured it was time to take a serious look at the joke/thought experiment that gave birth to this blog, and see if it can be improved. The amount of flaws that jump out given a critical eye is astounding. Considering how readily I find flaw in other religions, it's nothing but a show of obvious bias that I didn't see them in one I created.

So to hell with it, let's start anew. In my official capacity as High Priest(ess) of Ungod, I declare that:

1. The previous interpretation of the Revelation of Ungod, as shown in May 2008, is not an accurate representation of the realities of Ungod, and the Church of Ungod, acknowledging this, hereby finds those teachings void as untheist doctrine.
2. In our quest to find the truth or closest equivalent, we have agreed upon a new interpretation of the Revelation of Ungod, which is to be detailed below.
3. The new interpretation is hereafter to be considered the doctrine of the Church of Ungod, until such time that it is declared void and replaced by another interpretation.
4. Whoever disagrees with any point expressed here is free to come up with their own ideas about the subject, it's not like we're gonna enforce orthodoxy.
5. The use of first-person plural pronouns in point 2 above is not to be taken to mean that the Church of Ungod has more than one member. It's just that zie likes to argue with zirself.
   

And now behold, for I am to share with you the Revelation of Ungod, in its new and hopefully less mistaken interpretation:

The Revelation of Ungod

As understood by the Church of Ungod at this point in time

As we all know, there are things that exist. As most of us also know, there also things that cannot exist. But as most of you don't know, some things that don't exist still have a measure of reality greater than others. And the key to this lies in the mind.

The worlds of non-existence (from this point on "the wones") don't exist, as their name implies. But their non-existence is such that, from a certain perspective, they can be considered to exist. This perspective being of those within each wone, who might not exist but still have a right to an opinion, I figure.

Where does the mind come in? Well, as it turns out, the wones are shaped and inhabited by minds. When a mind thinks it often comes up with ideas, some of which are things. And when that happens, those thought-things begin to not-exist in a wone (as opposed to not-existing nowhere)

Each wone consists of ideas given reality (from this point on "nemis") that can cohabit with each other. By which I mean that, well, some nemis cannot by definition be in the same world. Say one nemi is a singing bull and another a natural law that states that bovines cannot sing, both nemis are incompatible and thus will never be found in the same wone. In addition to nemis, wones have minds, which are sometimes nemis, but sometimes aren't. That is because every mind that came to be in the existing world, like say you or me, will eventually end up in a wone. That happens when the mind ceases to exist, usually death.

A nemi is only as real and complete as the mind that created it can make it. That means, you can think of "a sheet of paper with a demonstration of Pythagoras' theorem", but that won't fully manifest in a wone as described unless you actually know a demonstration of Pythagoras' theorem. "Someone who knows everything" will be similarly incomplete unless the creator mind actually does know everything. The resulting nemi might act as if it did know everything, but it most definitely will not. Etcetera. This also prevents that which cannot exist from becoming a nemi. Thinking of square circles is fun and all, but since you can't actually describe how something is both a square and a circle, it doesn't appear.

Some nemis are not the direct result of a mind, but rather a side-effect of other nemis. If I imagine an animal that can reproduce, for example, the young will also be nemis, but I didn't actually think of them, only the circumstances that gave them origin. Likewise, if I imagine a time machine, I am also creating a rule that allows time travel in that particular wone, as a side effect of my time machine. If that wone already has a rule against time travel, then it will have to appear in another one. A new wone might appear for that very purpose.

All these rules about wones and nemis are embodied and in a sense enforced by an entity known as Ungod. Ungod is the only mind that was born neither existing nor nemi, as simply a fact of reality. Ungod has power over nemis and wones, to create them but also to uncreate them, to move them around as zie wishes, and to know as much about them as possible. Possibly others, but those are the ones that zie told us about. It is possible that it was Ungod who created existence as a special kind of wone, but zie has not confirmed nor denied that.

The core of Untheism is Ungod. That is, the belief in a god you know doesn't exist, but doesn't find non-existence a problem. Everything else is a matter of each untheist's interpretation of what existence means and how it works. The Church of Ungod offer their views in the matter, and some advice on what to do based on this knowledge, but it is our responsibility to inform you we are most likely wrong in at least some aspects of it.

There are no untheist sins, no point in praying to Ungod, and no known way to find out if we're right or not other than dying, which we do not recommend. You'll die eventually, no sense in rushing things. We do recommend thinking about it, and other things. If you're gonna spend an arbitrarily long period of time after death as just your mind, then practice in using it will come in handy.

Furthermore, it has been said that Ungod likes interesting ideas, and as far as we know that's true. And being in the good graces of the one entity that can permanently uncreate you is, we think, a wise course of action. You, however, might decide that you don't care what Ungod wants or not. Fair enough, I suppose, ultimately the decision is yours to make.

There is one more reason to encourage development of your mind. Actually, there's plenty of them, most of them mundane and not linked to Untheism. In any case, this one I'm not sure it's a good idea to talk about just yet. There's still some thinking that needs to be done on the subject. Don't concern yourself with it.

That was the latest version of the Church of Ungod's interpretation of the Revelation of Ungod. It's bound to undergo correction at some unknown point in time, and it is certainly not complete. Some is unknown, some is left unsaid, and some I forgot. So do keep that in mind.

Prophecy!

See, imaginary readers? Sometimes I do post when I say I will. That'll learn you to assume my partial inability to keep to my own schedules is a complete inability to keep my own schedules.

Anyway, prophecy and why I hate it, both in fiction and in the real world. But mostly in fiction

First thing is, the paradoxes involved in knowing the future. Often, the assumption is that the future is set, what will happen will happen, period, and what you're getting is a snapshot of that. (I will address conditional futures later). What's the problem? That it makes no fucking sense. If you're getting a snapshot of the future, and we assume that the past holds some manner of influence over the future, then we have to assume that knowledge of the future being in the past somehow worked everything out so that the future would turn out exactly as it did. Which really only happens because of authorial intervention. There's no intradiegetic reason why visions of a set future work out (Yes, I do like that word a whole fucking lot, why do you ask?).

Conditional futures have similar problems because they are often set as in very stark choices, it's either the end of the world or the beginning of Utopia, etc. Never as a gradient of slightly different possibilities, which is what you'd expect if it actually was about the natural consequences of actions and not hamfisted fitting into prefabricated patterns.

Second, the whole vague symbolism. Real prophecies (That is, alleged prophecies that take place in the real world and not in fiction) are almost always filled with obscure symbolism. See Nostradamus or the book of Revelation. This is because of a very good reason, namely, that they are bullshit. Prophecies that have specific interpretations have the annoying tendency of being disproved.

However, this makes no sense in fiction. In a universe where prophecy is true, there's no reason for this multiple interpretations babble. Sure, it might have been a nice literary twist the first five hundred times or so, but by now it's been done to death. Not to mention, all these prophecies with vague wordings that have some sort of obscure meaning need some sort of intelligent source. There's no reason given why information spontaneously travels back in time, assembles itself into an arguably technically true statement in a language understood by the prophet. And if there is an intelligent source creating these messages, why? If it wants to help the characters, then why be an asshole about the meaning? And if it doesn't, why create the prophecies at all?

So yeah. I dislike prophecy as a narrative element, at least the usual versions of it. Which is why Ananke's power works the way it does.

Hello, interwebs

For once, the month-long lapse between posts was not my fault. Phone company basically fucked us over and for the last 4 weeks, roughly, I've been without internet at home. Which, as you might have cleverly deduced, prevents me from blogginating, amongst a fuckton of other things.
It did give me time to do a lot of other stuff, though. Like playing through Golden Sun 1 & 2 and Phantasy Star 4, rereading most of the Fullmetal Alchemist manga, watching Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog a stupidly high number of times, and finally rewatching all of Firefly, plus Serenity. It's better the second time. Also, read too much Cthulhu mythos stuff and found my new god in Yog-Sothoth.

In other, more-like-the-usual-subjects-of-my-blog news, Kent Hovind recently published an interview with Ardipithecus. Yes. It's just as stupid as it sounds. Assuming you know who and what Kent Hovind and Ardipithecus are, cause if you don't it's going to sound more baffling than anything else. Anyway.

One of the best parts: someone who purports himself to be an an expert on evolutionary biology, indeed, more so than any actual evolutionary biologist, ridicules paleontology in general and considers it to be useless. Almost tops the fact that Kent motherfucking Hovind feels he can take the moral high ground. A lecture on how we're trying to use our beliefs as free moral licence is kinda empty when the lecturer is a convicted criminal due to the fact he thought his beliefs gave him permission to commit tax fraud.

Sorry about the rambling nature of this, I just needed to post something, get my thoughts in something vaguely resembling order and assorted etceteras.

Chau, Facebook

Mi facebook is dead ahora. O "desactivado", que no tengo muy en claro que implica pero según entiendo significa que puede ser reactivado en el futuro. No es importante.

El motivo es bien simple, no lo usaba para una mierda. Creo que llevaba más de seis meses sin revisarlo. Parece que no soy el target ideal de las redes sociales, o cualquier otra cosa que tenga "social" en el nombre sin el prefijo anti-. Así que me dije, tengo esta cosa inútil que le muestra mi foto a cualquier bolas con google. Compliquémosela un poco a los hipotéticos cyberstalkers*.

Por cierto, facebook es muy mala onda con los que se van. Primero que nada, te pone arriba fotos de algunos de tus "amigos" (¿cómo carajo conseguí tener 35 amigos?) diciendo "Fulano te va a extrañar". Para cada uno de los fulanos en cuestión. Ya entendí a la primera, cortala con el guilt tripping. Además, te dice que si te vas, vas a perder todo contacto con todos tus 'bookamigos. No seré el epítome de mantener el contacto con la gente, pero no conozco a ninguna persona con la cual tenga una relación exclusivamente a través de facebook. Y si fuera así, ya habríamos perdido toda semejanza de una relación (ver comentario re: la frecuencia con la cual entro a facebook).

Después, uno de los campos a llenar para la desactivación es el motivo. Que no está mal, de por sí, pero me cayó mal que le pusieran el cartelito de (required) abajo. Me estoy yendo, carajo, no podés exigirme condiciones para hacerlo. Además, previsiblemente, en cuanto seleccionás una opción te explica por qué eso no es un motivo válido, que si te preocupa X podés hacer Y, que si no le encontrás un uso a J también están I, H y K, etcétera.

Una vez que termino con eso, clickeo el botón pertinente. Me pide mi contraseña, razonable para que cada tarado que se encuentra un feisbuk abierto no le borre la cuenta al otro tarado que no cerró sesión. Después me salta un captcha (esas imágenes de letras borrosas que tenés que usar para comprobar que sos un ser humano). ¿Ahora hay bots que van por la vida robando passwords y borrando cuentas? Un poco mucho.

Y después, por alguna razón u otra, me empezaron as saltar errores tras errores, que después de todo eso y de que me aparecieran por cuarta vez ya me estaba oliendo a conspiración. Tantos fueron que tuve que hacer tiempo escribiendo todo este poste (menos esta oración) antes de que funcione.


*Por dar un ejemplo, hace poco alguien googleó un nombre y por ciertas razones, este blog fue uno de los primeros resultados. Cuando me entero de esto gracias a mis superpoderes hackers (sí, saber quién vista tu blog requiere poderes de hacker), hago la misma búsqueda y me encuentro con su facebook. Y ahora, además de su nombre, vi una foto suya, sé a donde fue al secundario, y conozco el nombre y la cara de su actual pareja. Sin mucho esfuerzo, sólo haciendo un par de clicks. Si fuera más stalker, probablemente sacaría mucho más.

Euphrates

[Versión en castellano]

So the Euphrates, river from the cradle of civilization, etc, etc, is drying up. And of course, this means the world is ending.

No, seriously. Turns out the book of Revelation (AKA "John's biblically proportioned trip") predicts the great river is going to dry, and obviously all the nutjobs came out saying this is proof we are in the End Times and Judgement Day is approaching and all the other shit commonly associated with the aforementioned claims.

Of course, if you take five minutes to think about it you realise that it's not particularly surprising he predicted the river would dry. Rivers dry, it has already happened once or twice in history, and I think John was aware of that. Euphrates = important river, important river drying up = catastrophe like the other ten thousand John predicted, and really, saying that a river will dry up at some indeterminate point in the future does not provoke a reaction of "HOW DID HE KNOW???!!!ASDFKHG" on me. Yes, asdfkhg included.

Not to mention, anyone who bothered to check the relevant chapter would realise there's a few things that have to happen before the river dries up. One would think we would've noticed if all the seas and rivers had turned into blood and all aquatic life had ended.

I wonder what they'd say if the Euphrates permanently dried up now. It would kind of screw with their prophecy, wouldn't it?

Dear Nicky

Dear Nicky,

Now, being born with physically unambiguous sex, I'm not going to pretend I know what you went through. Your experiences, I wouldn't wish on anyone, and I'm very sorry you had to suffer them. I'm sure you are smart enough to realize, however, that intersex and transsexuals have quite a lot in common. Specifically, the societal attitudes towards gender that caused you so much grief screw transsexuals much in the same way. You have a common enemy, so to speak.
So why all the transphobia, dear? What is wrong with transsexuals that you feel so offended at being associated with them? And what the fuck made you think that calling a transman a she is a good idea? Really, dude. No, just no. One would think being on the receiving end of societal prejudice regarding sex and gender would make you a bit more enlightened about the subject, but as I believe I've mentioned before, minorities can be very bigoted.
Regarding your comment here, no, Thomas is not a woman. Because, and get this through your head, gender is not determined by your reproductive organs. I'm not even going to mention the studies showing that gender identity seems to be hardwired in the brain. Wait, I just did. Oh well. I sure hope showing that their body has organs belonging to different sexes won't offend your delicate sensibilities about grouping them with the intersex.
To sum it up, you are an asshole, an idiot and a bigot. Being intersex does not excuse you from that.

Dreams

There's quite a few things about my dreams that are weird. For one, I don't get nightmares. Not since I was very young, like 6 or so. I've had frustrating dreams, I've had dreams where I'm in danger of death and can't do anything about it, but I'm never scared, only annoyed. And I'm talking stuff like being completely surrounded by people with guns and praying for death as a quick way out. For some reason, I don't feel fear in my dreams.

Then there's lucid dreaming. Lucid dreaming is when you are in a dream and you realize you are asleep, so you can control the dream. Well, I've only experienced one proper lucid dream, and I woke up immediately after, but I've had several interesting variations. For example, dreams that play out as a one of my stories, where I am both character and narrator and I know I can manipulate the dream to my will, but don't (too much). Has something to do with narrator's guilt, which is what I call the feeling I get when I manipulate a story excessively in the favour of a self-insert. Another pseudo-lucid I had once was where I dreamt I was having a lucid dream. That is to say, I was having a dream (being chased by a dinosaur), became aware it wasn't real, then I thought I woke up, but did not. So I dreamt I was lying on my bed, slipping in and out of a dream I could control somewhat. There was a dog in the 'waking' part of it at some point, but that's not relevant.

That one was also the first false awakening dream I had. False awakenings, or dreaming you wake up, are exceptionally mindscrewy, but for some reason I like that in my dreams. For example, another false awakening: I ask this girl out for a date, they tell me we meet at the house of guy X, and gives me the address. I 'wake up', realize she doesn't know guy X, and couldn't have given me the address (which I don't know myself), but I ask my sister about it and she tells me it was the one I had heard in my dream. Whilst I ponder this, I wake up for real and realize the address wasn't even any pair of streets I had ever heard of. Or, another mindscrew, once I dreamt I was lying in bed listening to music from my MP3 player. I realized that was awkward, because I never do that, but the music felt incredibly realistic. Then I felt like going to the bathroom. I woke up, went to pee, and was halfway through walking back to bed when I realized that not only I wasn't listening to music, my MP3 was broken and I had never heard that song before. And that I had woken up without ever realizing I had slipped out of a dream.

On occasion, though, my mind switches games with me and just gives me what I want. I'm dreaming, and my life has some problem solved, desire fulfilled, etc., which might make it a bit disappointing to wake up (doesn't work, though, I love those dreams). Like last night, when I dreamt that, while remaining physically male, I had achieved an androgynous look and passed for female easily. So easily, a guy asked me to pretend to be his girlfriend to spite his ex.

Yeah, I'm totally fucked in the head. But I'm happy ^_^

Identity, 2

I promised I'd write this and I will, ungoddammit.

So, let's recap: Two people. Same (shapeshifting) bodies. Identical memory. Different history. Do they have a different identity, or not?

The first question I ask myself is: What are the differences, and are they relevant? Difference #1, as mentioned before, is history, as before the merging moment they were separate people. History is relevant to identity, because it's what makes me the same person as the baby born some 19 years ago. We have nothing in common, except DNA and that he gradually became me. Since we don't consider identical twins to be the same person, it's not DNA, so it must be that series of small changes that added up to result in the idiot writing this blog. However, (there's always a however), something that happened in the past can only be relevant to the present up to the extent that it has consequences in it. And in this case, the consequences of each one's history are the same for both. That is to say, something that happened to Shippy affects zir and Saffy in the same way, so history cannot differentiate them. The only case in which history would be relevant would be if there was a third party/recording device/etc. observing the merging and keeping track of who was each. Assuming that didn't take place, or that they managed to pull off a manoeuvre that made them lose track, history is not a relevant difference.

Is there any other difference? I already stated that mind and body are the same, but somebody might suggest the soul. Now, normally I'd say that there's no good reason to think souls exist, but this is a fictional setting so lets allow for them. Which opens a whole new batch of questions: How do souls affect us? Are they set from birth, or do they change? Do they start out the same? What can change them?

The first one is the most important: if my soul does not affect me in any way, then the discussion is pointless. If the consequences of its existence do not apply until after I die, (in the classic afterlife "your soul lives on" scenario) then they are also irrelevant. If they determine or influence personality, preferences, etc. while alive, however, they might become relevant. Onto further questions, there's the issue of souls changing. If souls change, then what can change them becomes the most important question. If souls influence personality, and personality is determined by our experiences, it would be reasonable to assume it's our minds that determine how souls change, and therefore they would've been matched in the merging. So, down that avenue, again, no difference.

Let's say souls are set at birth, in which case the question is, how do they start out? We'll assume the start out different, because otherwise, again, no difference. Next part, how much of our personality is determined from birth? Not all of it, of course, because people change. Does the soul set some personality range, within which you can move as determined by personal experience? In that case, it's all a matter of luck, really, there's only a difference if the personality ranges don't overlap. If the soul acts like some sort of filter which interprets experiences and determines how they change us, then different filters mean a different identity, regardless of having the same memory.

So, there's the only possibility I've found for Saffy and Shippy to be different. A very specific form of an unproven and untestable entity. Since this all depends on how I build my fictional universe, and I know myself well enough to know it'd never be like that, screw it, they have no separate identity. I hate using the God clause to win, but I was arguing against myself, so...

A comment I've been meaning to make: Were I to follow my usual methods, I'd have approached this by looking at what defines the identity of each and seeing if it's the same thing. However, identity doesn't work too well definitions. I touched upon this in the previous post, but it's impossible to find something that is the definition of a person. Look at any person, and tell me if you can find something about them that is both unique to them and remains constant throughout their lives. There's no such thing. DNA doesn't work, because as I said before we don't consider identical twins to be the same person. Souls haven't been proven to exist, so don't bring that up either. Identity is, to quote myself by proxy through Shippy, a long chain of related links in which the first one may have nothing to do with the last one.

Identity

So I was playing around with a character lately with a superpower that's described as "absorbing information from people around yourself and using it to adapt mind and body to the form best suited to the task at hand". Essentially, shape-shifting combined with a weird form of psychic powers that instantly learns skills from surrounding bystanders. Also, ridiculously overpowered, ultra Mary Sue/Gary Stu that comes from being skilled at quite literally everything, plus being able to use any other superpower. Terrible character to write a story for, clearly, but since nobody is going to read it, who cares?

Anyway, character (who shall henceforth be referred to as Shippy) lives in a world with multiple superpowered beings, and a sliding scale of heroism vs. villainy. Shippy spends most of the time fighting (perceived) villains under a multitude of different identities, and is in general one of the good guys. But, one of the few things all supers have in common is an intense aversion to "power collectors", or people with the ability to learn new powers, for the obvious reason that, left to their own devices, they become extremely dangerous demigods. Shippy takes the utmost care to hide zir ability from the rest of the world, which of course being able to change form and personality at will makes quite easier. Problem is, zie becomes completely unable to keep any sort of memento of who zie was before. Not recognisable appearance, scar, necklace, ring, anything, because any of those would allow tracking. Result: A person whose only claim to having been someone else before is memory, and since memory can easily be altered in this world, that's not much.

In a needlessly long internal monologue, Shippy analyses what it means to have an identity, concluding than in zir case the only constant is the ability to have no constant. And even that cannot be Shippy's defining feature, since other power collectors exist. Essentially, zie is not a single thing. Only a chain of vaguely connected someones, with no real defining feature to join them all. In the end, just to drive the point to the ground, zie finds another power collector, Saffy, and through the use of a variety of abilities make sure they both have the combined memories and abilities of each other.

Now I've already spoiled the ending, so I'm not going to write it. Wasn't planning on it, really. But, given all this, I ask myself and the hypothetical you who might be reading: There's two separate identities, with a distinct past in which one was Saffy and the other was Shippy*. At present point, that being story ending, does it makes sense to say they have a different identity?
I have some thoughts on that, but they'll have to wait until later.

A few notes:
Thanks to Shivahn for reminding me of this and for inspiring the follow-up, if I remember to write it.
Names were created solely for the purpose of this article, which is why they suck. I didn't exactly put a lot of thought into them.
And if you have to wonder why I keep using zie/zir, it's because that is the only set of epicene pronouns I can more or less stand to use. I should really start getting used to them, they fulfil a very obviously useful role, but they feel too alien to me.

Hetero-normatividad

[English version]

Paradigma hetero-normativo. Para una frase que suena tan bien, el concepto que representa me da ganas de vomitar.

La hetero-normatividad es la creencia de que hay una cierta norma para la sexualidad e identidad de género, específicamente, que las personas con penes se identifican como hombres y les atraen las personas con vaginas, que se identifican como mujeres y les atraen los antes mencionadas portadores de pene. Todo lo que se desvía de esa norma es tratado como una abominación, inexistente o una decisión consciente e inmoral de destruir la sociedad. Exagero, pero no por mucho.

Por supuesto, negarse a creer en la existencia de gente que se desvía del paradigma es una posición completamente divorciada de la realidad, que sólo puede ser sostenida por aquellos cuya edad se expresa en un solo dígito. (aunque, los creacionistas, geocentristas y tierraplanistas todavía existen, así que debería saber que a la realidad no siempre se la tiene en tan alta estima como se merece). La homosexualidad, la bisexualidad, la transexualidad, el bigenerismo, el androginismo, y la intersexualidad destruyen completamente esta posición. Algunos de éstos son más aceptados que otros (sobre lo que me quejaré en otro momento), pero la mayoría de los seres humanos admiten la existencia de por lo menos uno. El problema yace más comúnmente en las otras dos reacciones a los que rompemos la norma.

Tratarnos como si elegimos tener un cuerpo, sexualidad o identidad inusuales también va en contra de la lógica y la evidencia, pero en cierta manera es menos conspicuo. Está demostrado, por ejemplo, que la homosexualidad es causada por factores genéticos y hormonales, pero ese es el tipo de información que los homófobos (y la mayoría del resto del mundo) no tienen o ignoran cuando se les presenta. Por qué alguien elegiría ser parte de una de las minorías más odiadas del planeta me escapa, pero en la mente de algunas personas, tenemos control absoluto de nuestra sexualidad y la gente se levanta un día y dice "che, que ganas tengo de cojerme a alguien con mis mismos genitales hoy" (parece que todo el mundo es bisexual en su mundo de fantasía. Ojalá...). Y por supuesto, los trans solo se hacen pasar por el otro sexo porque son una manga de pervertidos.

Y después están los que nos consideran una aberración, una perversión del orden natural del universo. Son los que nos dicen "Sí, naciste así, pero sigue estando mal. Es una enfermedad que tenés que curar o estar eternamente avergonzado, no otro estilo de vida". Son los que mandan a su hijos gay a programas de "reforma de homosexuales". Son los que dicen que los transexuales son despreciables por tratar de vivir como lo que sus mentes les dicen que son, en vez de lo que tienen (o no) en su pecho y entrepierna. Al carajo con lo que realmente sos, viví como los demás o volvete un paria.

Hay mucha superposición entre las tres posturas que describí arriba, obviamente. No es inusual que alguien niega la existencia del bigenerismo, mientras que dicen que las lesbianas eligen ser como son y que los intersexuales nacieron deformes y tienen que esconderlo para siempre. Cualquiera sea la especie de retrasado a la que pertenecen, tiene una cosa importante en común:

Nunca terminan diciéndote la razón por la que lo que somos está mal. O por lo menos una buena razón. Ya escuché apelaciones al orden natural de las cosas, pero ¿en qué basás esta idea de un orden natural? ¿lo que sentís que 'es así'? ¿Cualquier absurda deidad en la que creés? (por cierto, si sos cristiano, te recomendaría leer Gálatas 3:28) Eso es una pelotudez, pura y simplemente. Es mi vida personal. Cómo la vivo me afecta a mí, y a aquellos que deciden ser parte de ella. A nadie más. Si no te gusta el matrimonio entre personas del mismo sexo, no tengas uno. A la mierda, si querés, corta todo vínculo con las personas que tengan uno, lo más probable es que no te extrañen. Pero no obligues a los demás a vivir como vos querés. No crees leyes discriminatorias que les prohíben casarse con la person que aman. Si no estás cómodo con la transexualidad, ¿sabes qué? Nadie te está pidiendo que te cortes la pija. Nadie te pidió que empieces a usar pollera. Lo que te piden es que les dejes vivir su vida como les parezca.

Yo tengo suficiente suerte que mi disrupción particular de este orden aparente es algo que puedo esconder fácilmente. Sé perfectamente bien que cuando les diga, la gente va a pensar que estoy confundido o que quiero ser especial o alguna otra idiotez, y aunque no me gusta, puedo vivir con eso. Preferiría poder vivir mi vida completamente como quiero que ocultar parte de mi personalidad, pero sobreviviré. Otros no tienen tanta suerte. Otros no son un punto medio como yo, sino que están por completo del otro lado. Y cuando viven como ellos mismos, son atacados, insultados, por algo que no le hace mal a nadie.

Esto es un desafío abierto. Cualquiera que pueda mostrarme por qué la hetero-normatividad es mejor que reconocer que el sexo físico, la sexualidad, y la identidad de género son un continuo y que cada punto es igualmente válido, que hable. Decime por qué los trans tienen que vivir según su género de nacimiento, por qué el matrimonio entre personas del mismo sexo debería ser ilegal, por qué deberíamos cortar los genitales de los intersexuales para hacerlos 'normales'. Si no podés, amablemente te pido que te vayas a la mierda y dejes que la gente viva su vida.