Everything is a Liquid.

Everything is a liquid she said,

and poured me into a glass.

She drank me down and rolled me round and churned and burned and digested.

And out I spilled still whole and wise,looked her smack bang in the eyes.

Everything is a liquid I said,

and poured her into a glass.

God/Ungod. Getting Beyond the Debates.

Been a long time since I posted anything new. Fitting I suppose that I end with the same topic that drew me into philosophy in the first place - the whole theist/other debate.

General daily internet procrastination led me, via a random youtube walk, from "The Big Fat Quiz of the 80s" to "What's Stephen Fry doing now..?" and I was surprised to find the wonderful Mr. Fry, alongside Christopher Hitchens, involved in a debate on whether religion is a force for good in the world. Fry's statements, more from the heart at times perhaps, than the head, moved me the most - despite the other three contenders being more... polished if you like, more confident, practiced, sure of effect - more focussed on well, winning. Here's the vid. Long, but not a bad way to kill an hour or so.

 Some more procrastination later... I slogged through another rendition of the same debate - again with a now unfortunately ill Hitchens - this time contending the topic against ex-British Prime Minister Tony Blaire. I watched with much the same expectations as you would hold when clicking on a funny gif on Pintrest, to see someone take a pratfall, or at least get a bunch of snow shoved down their pants.
However, those expectations were not met.

Of course, strictly in terms of debating - Blaire loses. He's woolly, overly accommodating of his opponent and flatly unaggressive. All fairly fatal in academic debate. But unlike most of the commentators below the video on the site I don't think Blaire made a fool of himself. Or even lost from a wider perspective. I don't really think it was ever his prime intention to argue with the same agenda as Hitchens. Maybe it was, maybe he staggered accidently to heroism in my eyes. I dunno, it's Tony Blaire afterall.

Hitchens, like Dawkins, Sam Harris, and the other famous theist bashers, seem content to "win" - to show up their resident theist as a either a self-deluded and self-contradictory (though possibly well intentioned) fool at best or an actively self-congratulatory and willfully evil force in extremis. And sure, acting on the world's stages great and small to run damage control on Religion is something still to be applauded.

As a veteran of many theist vs. agnostic/atheist debates on the world's smallest and most useless stage - internet philosophy sites - I can appreciate the professionalism of discussion on the part of the Atheists. But it is just shooting fish in a barrel given the arena. If the same debate had taken place in a revialist tent somewhere in the sticks, the thiests would have simply eaten the atheists for lunch. Audience-vote-wise. I think Tony was smart enough to realise this, and instead simply used the platform presented to speak to the people not there. Procrastinators and random stumblers like me.

The thing that drove me away from philosophic discussions is the futility of them in the real world. The days when reason and rhetoric could sway the opinions of everyday poeple concernning anything meaningful to them are over, if indeed they ever existed. Reason and rhetoric only appeal to those open to reason and rhetoric. To those educated to be open to reason and rhetoric.

One of the few philosophic ideas I ever bought wholly into is Hume's

(from a famous passage discussing the "motivating influence of the will" in his Treatise on Human Nature) reads in full:

Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them. (T 2.3.3 p. 415)

The context is his discussion of what is sometimes called "moral psychology", the study of how we are motivated to act morally.

I take it more generally to mean that reason alone, lacks enough oomph to motivate us, and by "us" here I really mean the rest of the brain's systems, and eventually the body itself, into action. It only succeeds if it recruits - resonates with - enough emotional drive - the baser drives - sex, hunger, fear, love - you name it. And this is where secularism has always failed, because it speaks almost wholly to reason, indeed, demands the listener to have already either been exposed to counter-dogmatic arguments, or to have thought and questioned for themselves, and religion has always succeeded, because it asks nothing of the listener, expects nothing of the listener, except obedience.

Part way through the Blaire vs. Hitchens debate, they do agree on one crucial point, that religion will never be erradicated. To me, this was where Tony won the war, if not the debate. This makes religion a given, part of the enviroment. Dawkins, Hitchens, et al, including me if you like, may as well try to prove that the rain is wrong for all the good it will do. Doesn't mean the rain will stop.

For all Tony Blaire's faults, he was the prime-minister of Great Britain and as such wielded great power during troubled times. I think that taught him that it is not simply enough to point out the emperor's lack of clothes, but that to effect change one must really become the emperor, and not only that but whilst doing so, somehow preserve the initial innocence, that need to effect change, that set them on the path. No easy task, especially considering that the path to power within however lesser or greater corrupt a system demands a certain degree of corruption, or at the very least a degree of compromise with corruption, from the applicant themselves.

Most people, politician or priest, at the outset of their careers are well intentioned, I think. It is the process of reaching the position they desire, the position from which they would be able to enact the changes they aspired to, that emeshes them, and the well-being of those they love, so wholly within its fabric that when they reach the point where they finally have the power to weaken, reform, make fair, right the wrongs that once seemed so clear and necessary... Doing so seems somehow foolish, selfish, absurd. No easy thing to fight so hard to become king, only to tear down your kingdom and return to poverty.

The heroism of a good politician, or a priest I guess, is the retention of their initial naivety.

In the first debate, Stephen Fry came across to me as the most human of the four speakers. Hitchens was obviously just doing his job, going through the motions, shooting those fish. The two theists were equally professional. Detached to a point from the actualites in the world of the church's dictates. Only Fry seemed to put his heart into it. To care personally about the situation. Again I think, a symptom of his inexperience, his brave naivety. And this is what sways audiences, sways public opinion, this resonance of emotion, this overt signal of deep belief, deep investment in the words being said, alongside the eloquence and authority necessary to be in a position to say them at all.

Religions will only ever change when that change arises from within, sponsored by one of their own - someone like Tony Blaire -  in reaction to mass public opinion. Everyone's opinon, from the least educated to the most, swayed by people like Stephen Fry, who not only have the power to speak well, but retain enough emotional connection to give the words an instinctive veracity.

Drone Army

The argument for drones is pretty much the same argument as for any of the new smart weapon systems. Less people killed, the right people killed. Not pretty, but makes perfect sense; better to snipe, than to blindly shotgun everything with your fingers crossed. Very surgical, like Dr. House with a kalashnikov, shooting cancer, unconventional - but great TV. Or "Wall-e goes to Iraq" maybe. Oh, hang on, Wall-e has already gone to Iraq.


Well, that saved me half-an-hour on photoshop. Thank you internet.

On the small-scale, perfect-world end - clear legitimate target, perfect deployment - would seem as ethical as hell. Press-button, destroy evil-doer - easy as a credit-card swipe at the mall, except you don't take home new shoes.

But on the big scale, with a quick squint around the corner of the future, drone-armies are bad news.

But first.

Imagine there is a fat kid. I mean fucking huge. Blimplike in dimension. Put a gondola on that mother and fly him to Europe. But fat kid's trying, he's watching what he eats, trying to reduce the titanic arsenal of food he's got stashed in the fridge, by erm, not buying it rather than eating it. Get slim, save money. Future's rosey. Throw the gondola away, all transatlantic flights cancelled.

I come along. Give him a big smile. Bring in a big ole box. It's the Cheapsnax 3000™ food-dispener unit. Sits comfortably by the fridge - hell the deluxé version follows you around the house - don't even have to get off the sofa - primo smart-snax technology. Your ideal hunger solution - auto-clean function to tidy up collateral-crumb spillage. Assorted pastel colours, interior-decorator approved. Comes with auto-stock support function - you need never actually buy your own food again, no more painful waddles to the mall, consume endlessly from the comfort of your own home.

Unethical..? I mean, I haven't put a gun to his head or anything. He doesn't have to abuse it. I mean, if used wisely, it could save him time and money. If he explodes all over his appartment 6 months later it ain't nothing to do with me.

I was talking this over with a mate at work, first thing he said was "Whoo, cool, but expensive." But - Let's look at some figures.



Not expensive. Roughly half as cheap to make at first glance. But look deeper, and the advantages of drone-soldiers to flesh soldiers are endless. Humans are badly suited to war. Don't need to grow a drone over a 20 year period. Turn 'em out by the 1000, week in, week out. Don't need to send them to boot camp. Downloading in progress. Don't get post traumatic stress disorder. Don't need paying, nor a pension.

Make them modular. If one gets immobilized, it doesn't sit there crying for its lost legs and bleeding all over the place. It becomes a sentry, patiently pot-shotting targets till it runs out of ammo. Then it becomes a stationary mine. Blows up if you come too close. Gps locator chips means it can be found even if rendered completely inoperable. Use the modules left to rebuild other drones. Plug and play. Kill a flesh soldier and he's 100% dead. Wound one and he's a burden on his comrades, even better. RPG a drone and maybe you'll kill it only 20% dead. And it goes right on trucking.

And ammo. Humans are shit at killing other humans. Let's ask statisticians.

In Vietnam, 50,000 rounds were used for each kill, a three-fold increase over WWII levels.

There is an amazing (and startling) statistic out of Iraq and Afghanistan: the United States has fired an estimated 250,000 bullets for every insurgent killed. [source: reddit]

Wow. Just Wow. 5.56mm bullet manufacture and cleanup costs http://ecomass.com/pdf/bullet.pdf. Green bullets, who knew..?

Drone-soldier however, could do better. Maybe not one shot one kill, not initially anyway. But it's a software/hardware problem, and problems get solved. The two big advantages here are:

(1) Scalability. With humans, you have to train each individually. Like making chairs for a living. You make a chair, you sell it. You make another chair, you sell it. You make one more, you sell it too. Write a drone trainer computer program however... Write it once, upload it a bazillion times while you sit back and throw cigar-butts at the chair-maker.

(2) Lack of conflict between orders and instinct. There's a joke. The bare bones are - General sends soldier into room with gun. Tells soldier to kill occupant as test of loyalty. [Gun fires blanks btw. it's only a psych test]. First two refuse. Last one comes out [he's usually of comical ethnic descent - Irish or something] breathing heavily. General says "Wtf..?" Last guy says "Well sir, the gun shot blanks so I had to kill them with a chair..."

Hilarity ensues.

Why's it funny though..? Someone died afterall. Died by chair even, one of the most horrible deaths of all. It's funny because humans have a natural aversion to killing other humans. Look at the propagandic lengths that are needed before killing strangers X,Y & Z begins to seem like a good idea, and the still further lengths required before the job gets done. There is always a war of public relations before the shooting version starts.

But drone boy..? Nah. Just upload new targetting details, insert ammo into hopper A.



I could do this all day. But boiled down, drones, once out of their rather comical infancy, will become an automated war-package. Press button recieve bacon, erm, victory. The Cheapbang 3000™ Death-dispenser.

Is it unethical in itself..? On the scale of individual units and individual missions..? No, no more than an axe chopping trees. Is it unethical on a wider scale, given humanity's frailities in the face of temptation..? Hell yes. No more trees and squirrels crying on treestumps.



Why are wars, big or small, hard to start..? - Unless they are brought to your doorstep and you have zero choice..? Simple answer, soldiers have Mums. And Dads, and girlfriends and wives and children and brothers and sisters and second cousins twice removed. To send a son or daughter off to fight, and maybe die for the cause of country - Dulcé et decorum est, pro patria mori [thanks Seigfried] - that soldier's family has to be damn well convinced that the cause of country in question is beyond doubt. Communism has to be smelled, weapons of mass destruction located, oil supply has to be threatened. Oops, sorry, scratch the last one, never happen. [?Hmm-scratchbeard?]

But if all that's gonna be sent overseas is a bunch of metal and wires, and comparatively cheap bunches of metal and wires to boot, then erm, who cares..? That initial social resistance to deployment, to the commitment of forces, will be reduced to a small murmur of "Well, try not to spend too much cash guys okay..?" Military interventions will barely ripple the social surface tension. What's news-worthy about Maul-e™ unit two-six-six taking a tracer in the chest-plate and getting his paint-job scratched..?

Poeple would just get used to seeing the results of such actions, with near-zero human costs.

ie. casualties for any single skirmish may be lower with drones... More 'ethical'... But the total number of skirmishes would increase. And given our rates of energy consumption... Increase probably exponentially.

Next question of course, the other end of the equation, what stops wars..?

Well, economic-wise - attrition. Lack of matériel, lack of ammunition and other supplies, lack of soldiers to use them. But more often than not, in our modern age of limited warfare, it never comes down to the economic wire - long before that the public becomes increasingly outraged by the loss of life. Erm, the lives of their own soldiers anyway - fuck those other guys. Why else do the armed forces try to minimise casualties..? Leave no-man behind..? Because they care deeply about the welfare of their men..? Yes, that must be it. Nothing to do with trying frantically to eke out their dwindling supply of public support until they achieve their objectives. No, that would be deeply cynical and completely unlike me.

No one will mourn the loss of a drone in combat. It would be like mourning a toaster.

So then, once begun, why stop a drone-war..? Even if an objective is reached, a country subjugated. Why bring them home at all.? It costs big to occupy a country with conventional troops, but you could just park your drones around the map in armored bunkers, put them in sleep mode, and hang out the solar-panels - indefinitely. There's your veto-power right there and ready to go.

So - in short, wars, of the smaller Military/Industrial Complex type, driven by scarcity perhaps, will become waaaaay more common/acceptable to public opinion, and last a lot longer - grinding up more human lives in the process and manufacturing enemies as they go.

The Ethics Lesson

Sometimes my professionalism slips for a week or so, and instead of discussing the usual run-of-the-mill conversational bullshit, I throw my students a bone of contention to gnaw on. A couple of weeks ago it was some of Kholberg's classic moral dilemmas. I'd better quickly mention I teach young adults at university level. The first dilemma to go under the microscope of the young and hormonally disturbed mind was this one - concerning money and family indebtedness:

Ali is a fourteen-year-old boy who wants to go to a summer camp. His father promises he can go if he earns the money himself. So Ali works hard and saves 400 TL, enough for the camp. But just before camp starts, his father changes his mind. Some of Ali’s father’s friends have decided to go on a fishing trip, and Ali’s father doesn’t have enough money to go. So he tells Ali to give him the money he saved for camp. Ali still wants to go to camp, so he thinks of refusing to give his father the money.

      What should Ali do..? And why..?

Anyway, after giving the little darlings a couple of minutes to think it through, I asked them what they thought Ali should do. The answers were pretty much universal - a big fat "No teacher, Ali shouldn't give his money to his father." A few said they'd fork it over, but they didn't feel too happy about it. 'Grudgingly' was the adverb they were looking for I think.

Part of what I do is to keep conversations going, and just about the best way to do this is to piss people off. Well, erm okay, not piss them off so much as to try and get them to re-think what they've said. Luckily, this almost always boils down to the same thing. Gotta love my job in this respect, it's not often middle-aged leather-elbow-patchers like me get paid to mess with teenage heads.

I play the emotional blackmail card: "Oh c'mon... Think of all the stuff your fathers have done for you throughtout your childhoods - remember that time you were ill..? Who took you to the doc's..? Who paid for your medicine..? What about the clothes on your back, the food in your mouths, the birthday presents, the bicycles, the cars, the braces on your teeth..? Have you any idea how much your parents have spent, and sacrificed for you over the years..? Imagine your father's face, right now. Got it..? You can see it..? Okay, imagine his face looking sad.

Now, imagine his face looking happy - what's that worth..? Isn't it worth 400Tl..?"

You get the picture. They cave. They all mutter-mutter "You are right, we should give the money. Our parents' happiness is more important than a silly summer camp." I smile, and tell them they are good sons and daughters and that their parents would be proud of such good, self-sacrificing children. They smile back. Sighs of relief are sighed.

They think it's all over.

Then I ask in passing, "University yeah - quite expensive, isn't it..?" They all agree - sucking their teeth like car mechanics. "wooo - expensive teacher." "So," I ask, "How are you paying..? Books - Dormitory fees - everyday things..?" [They smell a rat at some point around here]. "Our parents pay for it teacher." "Ah," I say, "So, if they'd turned round about a year ago and sat you down and said, 'Hey kiddo, you know how you were wanting to go to university yeah..? Well, me and your mother got to talking the other day, and we've decided to spend the money we were going to send you to university with on a world cruise. Seeya.' - what would you have done..?" Type three conditionals - the bane of all English students.

"What..? Logical consequences..?"

So - Now that it's not just some random 'Ali goes to summer camp' situation, with no personal impact - everyone's suddenly falling over themselves with indignation. Of course they have a right to that money etc... Of course Mummies and Daddies are socially bound to spend every last penny on their education etc... They have no right to take away our futures... At this point, after letting them splutter themselves into heavy-breathing red-faced messes, I politely withdraw. It's interesting though that grattitude hardly ever enters the discussion. Only one in a hundred ever says anything like "I realise that my parents have a right to do whatever they want with their money, and I'm grateful they choose to spend it on me."The idea that they are indebted not entitled, is hard to face, at least in the culture here.

For my own opinion, I'm undecided. Bit of a cop-out I know. Ethics has always struck me as a very contingent thing. Dependent on the details of the system.

"Damn, my foot's getting cold."

The next situation illustrates this contingency very well. It's probably the most well-known of all of these types of things: the runaway trolley:

 [a] A trolley is moving, out of control down a track towards five people. You are standing beside the track, near a switch. If you push the switch, the trolley will change tracks toward only one person, who will be killed.

      What should you do..? Why..?

There's the fat guy on the bridge version too I know, but the above's enough for our purposes at the moment. I had one girl who came out with "I would do nothing - that way I haven't killed anyone. Whoever was the guy who let the trolley get out of control is responsible for the deaths of the five, but if I pull the lever and save them, I'm responsible for one death. I'm a murderer. Therefore, morally, I don't pull it. Okay, she gets points for thinking deeper than the average bear, and she's right to some some extent - but also wrong. Inaction is an action. She's still responsible. She killed five people.

Yes. Inaction is an action. So there. Say there's a button, and a bomb. [The button is one of those that springs back up after being pressed btw. It doesn't lock into an obvious down 'Hey I've been pressed dumbass' position] If you don't press the button, the bomb explodes in five minutes. If you press the button, no boom, and the door opens in five minutes instead. Press the button again, the countdown to boom resumes. Of course you press it. Easy - walk off whistling.

Now, how about before you come into the room, someone presses the button for you, and doesn't tell you..? Or perhaps just leaves a sign propped-up nearby saying "Y'know..? That button might have been pressed already..."

Told ya.

Sorry - tangent. Most of my students do a little counting on their fingers and pull the lever, sacrificing one, to save five. More life being better than less life overall in their book.

This whole "more life is better than less life" bit, to me, is important, not because I think it's right so much as recognise it as everyone's default position.

I'm not going to look at this very deeply - as you've probably done that already - only to note how easy it is to change peoples' answers. I say "Okay - that one guy is not just some random person - it's your friend, do you still pull the lever. No..? Hmm - but you said one life is better than five, didn't you..? Still no..? Okay - there aren't five guys on the other track - there's six, seven, eight, ten, twenty, a whole bunch of Nuns, a maternity hospital... How many lives is your friend's life worth..? Now it's not your friend, it's your brother, sister, mother, girlfriend, boyfriend, wife, child..."

Lots of fun. Now try pregnant wife and  vs. two brothers, one ex-girlfriend and two drinking buddies... Rinse and repeat. Turns out we don't value life so much as value relationships with the life in question.

Now for the last: One that got made into a film with Nick Fury. Unthinkable. You know the drill. (Only difference is that film had nukes, Kholberg's just has bog-standard bombs).

"This is gonna hurt you a lot more than it hurts me motherf**ker."

A terrorist has been caught. He has already placed some bombs and they will explode soon. Maybe hundreds of people will die. The terrorist won’t talk, and wants a lawyer – which will take too long. You are the chief of police - one of your colleagues wants to torture the terrorist to make him talk. Do you agree?

If you do, and the man still does not talk, would you torture the terrorist’s innocent wife - you arrested her too - if that is the only way to make the terrorist talk?

                  Why / Why not…

Pretty much everyone tortures the terrorist for real, then tries initially to con the terrorist into at least thinking his wife's being tortured. I say "he doesn't believe you" and "think of all those innocent lives - one of those bombs could be planted next to your little brother's school you know..." and sooner or later, the wife gets the chop.

Are they right..? What would you choose to do..? Remember - you're chief of police, you're setting a precedent. Don't discount the future.

Anyway, after all the torturing is over, the terrorist coughs and tells the students where the bombs are, they diffuse them and save the day. Pats on backs, and smiles all round. Then I ask them if it had been a football match - society-city vs. terror-united - what would they say the score was..? "Well," they say, "us 1, terrorists 0 of course, duh."

I hmm and hah a bit and say, "I think it's more like you guys 2, terrorists 1 - what do you think..?" Blank stares. "Okay - look at it this way - are you the same person you were this morning..? - I mean, before you became a great scary innocent-woman-torturing monster..?"

 Gets worse though, if you think about the precedent set. After this event, and its successful conclusion - saving the most amount of people-wise anyway - the police internalize the new rule "it's okay to torture people in extremis." Which is a slope so slippery you could ride a sled made of sandpaper down it. And then, when it gets out, how about  society's reaction to this new state of "having a police force which is known to torture people."

Afraid much..? The next door they knock on could be yours.

A hundred lives. Sounds like a lot. Is it worth society's peace of mind as a whole though..? Nebulous I know. A bit like the trolley scenario - juggling pregnant wives against brothers and drunken mates. But remember the conclusions of the trolley - it is not the number of people, but our relationship with those people that seems to matter.

Not "Raggedy Ann goes Waterboarding"

In a perfect society, the governed and those they govern, would be friends. Afterall, what basis would they have to not be..? People would do what was expected of them, when it was expected, and those expected duties and contributions would be created for the equal good of all.

The people would not fear the state, nor the state fear the people.

Unlikely, I agree. But it is this idea of a people's 'friendship' with the state is worth exploring. And it's decline after the rise of the Western 'war on terror'.

In the trolley scenario my students were willing to sacrifice X amount of random people to save the life of someone they had a relationship with. We could write some asshole formula if you like: maybe -

Saved Person(s)(SvP)+Value of relationship(s)(VR)=Sacrificed Person(s)(SaP)

SvP+VR=SaP

Now - since both SvP and SaP are measured in people, we can kinda cancel them out. Let's say you save one friend at the expense of five strangers in the classic scenario.

1SvP+VR=5SaP => 1+VR=5 => VR=5-1 => VR=4

As I said - asshole formula, but still - the point is it seems, at least in the abstract, you can measure the value of a relationship in human lives.

Statistic time. Deaths due to terrorism. Probably to be taken with a pinch of salt, but who knows.

 To put this - '07 for example 13,000 - in perspective - let's compare other causes of death. (With equal amounts of salt too).

The point of this is not to emphasize the seemingly crazy high-level response of governments to the threat of terrorism in comparison to say, the level of response they display towards eh, alcohol or something - that's been done already (and incidently done wrongly because of catagory errors - deathrates due to the above are fairly steady-state, eg. it's vanishingly unlikely that one year everyone becomes outright alcoholics across the board causing deaths due to alcohol to rocket up, or everyone gets sad and commits suicide. However, with terrorism - just add nukes, or weaponized bird-fu or something and bingo megadeathkill deathrate fluctuation). Anyway. What I do want to draw your attention to is this.

Let's say that some perfect government, by implementing a series of controls upon the society it governs, totally abolishes deaths from terrorism (Let's ballpark this at 10,000 lives). Unfortunately it is in the nature of controls to be invasive, intrusive and lots of other in-somethings toward personal freedom and privacy - things detrimental to any relationship. So:

 SvP(10,000)+VR(-10,000)=SaP(0)

 ie. the cost of saving those lives is a loss of  'friendship' between the governed and the state - on a society-wide scale - every one of the governed individuals bears the full cost of negative VR due to the controls used to save those 10,000 random people who would have died had those controls not been implemented.

A cold-calculus I agree, but are those 10,000 worth it..? Or should a populace - both the governed and those who govern - agree that the value of their friendship - call it the social contract, the bill of rights, or simple fucking respect if you like - is worth the sacrifice maintaining it would incur..?

To me at least, the numeric value of the living is of lesser importance than the manner of their living.