Entries
Saturday, October 31, 2009
no to ghg cuts
Singapore rejects emission cutsquite disappointing, really.
what is this obsession with growth? why does the economy need to grow, if the population is not growing, less foreign immigration? income is good, of course. business and industry are all good, but why do we have to keep harping on the need to grow and grow and grow. we don't need all that growth, i think, especially if resident population isn't growing. where is all this growth going to? the government? the foreign businesses?
i don't know, probably my economics is faulty. but if the economy is meant to serve the people, a system in which people can act to maximise their welfare, then the point of growing the economy would be to provide more opportunities for people to act to maximise their welfare, wouldn't it? but it seems that singaporeans are now stuck in the middle - the people who can afford to come here to work are either (a) highly successful and occupy the top end of the economic spectrum or (b) extremely poor and occupy the bottom end of the spectrum. given how income is distributed, it would seem that the top end are getting more and more. how many singaporeans does this really benefit?
and eventually, who are we producing for? ourselves? unlikely - the main defence has often been that singapore is producing for other countries, for other markets. no we're not - we're producing for other markets, but we're earning the money. in essense, we are producing for ourselves money, even if we do not consume the products directly. besides, shouldn't we be moving towards more knowledge-based, value-adding work, where we don't actually produce excessive physical goods?
this sort of touches on the value system of the current economic system, marginally. it's this obsession with quantity, more and more and more! we need more of everything, so we can sell them cheap, and we can sell more of them! when do we stop?
i'm not making any statements here
Labels: news
1:08 AM
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
When Harry Met Tommy
Fortunately last night the only expectations I had were those of seeing him in person, and nothing much else.Otherwise I would have been disappointed by how inane and uncreative the questions were: either the people asking haven't really thought about it themselves (the answers for one or two were obvious to me, even though i haven't exactly been following the news) or that the organisers were trying to avoid anything too controversial (or provocative).
-
And the plates at the reception after that were so freaking small. Wth.
Labels: events
6:26 PM
chirpy
why are people following my twitter feed, when i have nothing on it?
5:39 PM
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Vestigial Thoughts
The vestiges of human evolution – non-functional genes and organs – appear to provide very strong evidence that humans weren’t created as we are now*. It is as Darwin states: “Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of lowly origins”, “lowly” here meaning an organism that appears lower down on the tree of life. It certainly should not be taken to connote any social, cultural and very human judgments on the status of such a being, as some are wont to do. Just because it is “lower” does not mean it is inferior; rather it means it existed before us.
Sometimes it feels like those who oppose the idea that humans descended from an earlier life form oppose it because it makes humanity inferior, because it makes us no different from all the other living creatures. But what makes us superior to any other living creature?
What are we better at, and what are we better than? We're not better at swimming, not better at running, hunting, hearing, seeing, jumping, smelling, surviving, reproducing, and certainly not flying.
Is it because we're more complex? We have more genes (no we don't - some amoebas have more than twice as many genes). We have more cells, more bones, more organs, more body parts? No we don't.
We're better at thinking, is that it? We have more sophisticated brains? Is that the basis for discriminating against other animals? We're only better at thinking, and that makes us better than all the other creatures? Then why is it so politically, morally, psychologically and even biologically against ourselves to openly discriminate against other less intelligent human beings?
What is it that makes humans human?
That some people can believe in evolution, EXCEPT in humans?
(I say “appear to” not because I suspect it to be untrue but because in the absence further knowledge I can only accept that it is true as told to me by what little I have read. This is not to discount the fact that should I delve further into the topic I would no doubt be able to find compelling evidence to believe this statement to be scientifically true.)
Labels: evolution, random write
12:31 AM
Saturday, October 17, 2009
This Week
More reading around the web!#
First:
Some religion history experts noted the ironic adaptation of Fundamentalist techniques on the opposite side of the evolution debate. “Recently 'the new atheists' have been characterized, even in some of the mainstream media, as like fundamentalists in their dogmatism,” said George Marsden, a noted professor of American religious history at the University of Notre Dame. “Breaking relations with those who associate with your enemies sounds a lot like classic American fundamentalist 'second-degree separation.'”
Christianity Today, as commented on by ScienceBlogs, in a comment about Fundamental Atheism.
recently read an online article about how Religious leaders show[ed] support. Turns out, independent churches (notably, like Church of Our Savior) didn't turn up - only those "mainstream" anglican and methodist ones were represented by their religious leaders were present. Not sure about those from other religions though - but from what I know (and a check on the web and a muslim friend) there aren't any independent mosques; buddhists are probably the last to start any form of revolution but anyway in the picture you can see lots of monks in buddhist robes so there isn't as much of a basis for worry there. not sure about the other religions but so far they seem pretty chill to me (as in, politically, socially - for example, you don't hear about hindus writing in to the straits times or taking over NGOs, or jews asserting their moral right to speak in public).
and it's not like i'm against christians or anything, and from what i know, most of them are just as apathetic to politics (as is majority of Singapore).
i'm just curious, because followers of the independent churches seemed have made quite a bit of headline in the news in recent years (but easily overshadowed by the thing known as the economy) and it appears strange that they would turn down an opportunity like this to speak directly with the PM and other religious leaders.
expectedly, events such as these promote interfaith compromise, sort-of. so by choosing to shun such an opportunity to be heard and engaged, one can only guess that they are not interested in compromise. and you know what happens when you have to make a decision and one side refuses to compromise...
Not sure if they even received an invitation though - for if they didn't then the problem may lie with the organisers for not inviting them.
#
In other news:
Labels: link, news, science, video
6:27 PM
Friday, October 16, 2009
Ad Men
Poetry is when you make new things familiar and familiar things new.
best bits at 12:00 onwards.
6:02 PM
Thursday, October 08, 2009
see more Funny Graphs
11:54 PM
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Divine Intervention
Today I went to the library to do some reading on the debate on evolution.Standing there, near the entrance, was a young lady giving out flyers inviting me to walk through Jesus who is a door (or who built a door? with his carpentry? anyway it says that he is a door in the brochure. so anyway i'm invited to enter Jesus into the True Life Bible-Presbyterian Church. Ironic, coincidence, or sign of from God? (the next reasonable question would be: a sign of encouragement, or a warning not to go further? heh heh...)
Anyway the flyer is temporarily my bookmark. Forces me to continuously think about what I'm reading, I guess.
Labels: evolution
6:37 PM
Quick survey
to try say that evolution is false on the basis of some form of argument one would assume the non-evolutionist would apply the same set of argument to whatever he/she believed to be true and to do otherwise would seem to border on hypocritical or at least, appear as a form of double standards, that you would require proof for one theory but accept that the alternative is defined as unprovable and un-disprovable.it is one thing to admit that what you believe in is unprovable, but it is another to try to prove something else wrong when you don't actively try to disprove your own first (even if only because your own is un-disprovable).
and then to admit that one's believe is "religious", not "scientific", one would agree that the two are not always compatible, or at least one cannot view the former with the standards of the former, and vice-versa. it is ridiculous to say first that one theory is unprovable and does not need proof, and then go on to say that everything IS proof. one would have to believe otherwise, that proof exists, and if proof exists, there must be the possibility of disproof, except the disproof should not exist if the theory does indeed hold true.
it is just as ridiculous to say that the scientific method rests as much on faith as does religion, because the very crux of the scientific method is that faith is just a placeholder for what we don't yet know. in other words, faith is required if one is to believe in a hypothesis that is not yet proven to be true. one would require even more faith if one's hypothesis is proven to be false. but the belief in a theory does not require faith. it requires logic, and it goes by a strict set of standards with which other scientists apply to the hypothesis. the more scientists there are working on theories, the less funding there is for each person, and so there is always that personal motivation to disprove a theory and in so doing prove that one is unqualified for funding, thus leaving more for oneself.
and yet in a sense, science does require faith: faith that the naturalistic method must work, and must hold true; faith that logic is the path on which all theories must walk, for if they fall off the path then they cannot be scientific, and cannot be theories; faith that evidence is indeed required to prove or disprove something. it requires faith that even if there is not evidence now, it does not mean there is no evidence in future, or forever.
but that is where the faith stops. beyond which science does not allow for faith. it calls for logic, evidence, proof. it calls for the use of mathematics to illustrate the logic of certain positions where possible, for there are few greater illustrations of the logic behind a theory than the ability to construct it in a mathematically sound framework.
even if it is possibly argued that science is but another way of thinking that requires faith, that science is but another religion in disguise, then the argument that science is wrong does not hold. for if it is deemed to be religious, than it holds that it has to be judged in the same way as religion, and it cannot be judged in the same way as science. in which case it cannot be judged at all for there is nothing it can be judged by that can be used to judge another religious belief, that is not biased; or at least, proven to be a standard criteria. the question then, becomes what makes your religion better than my religion (of science)?
but of course, science is based on data, on evidence, on naturalism: that what we can observe is what is. that what we cannot observe, we cannot rule out completely, but is what we cannot prove, and therefore not allowed by the scientific method. it does not mean what we cannot observe does not exist. it only means it cannot be proved. it allows for endless possibilities, indeed, even the possibility of a supreme being, but the onus is on the proposer to prove it, and the non-believer to disprove it, and in the end, only those that can be agreed on by a set of well-defined criteria, will be accepted as scientific truth.
to say that just because something is "theoretical" and has not been proven to happen all the time would only hold water if such rigor for proof were applied to other aspects of life. to say that would also require us to reject all forms of knowledge: that just because gravity has been proven on earth doesn't mean it has been proven on every single spot on earth, and every single living and non-living thing, on every single point in the universe, and so we may as well stop believing in it.
my point is that if something is to be rejected on the basis of science, then the alternative must also be proven on the basis of science, as the most suitable replacement theory. otherwise, as incomplete as a scientific theory might be, if it can explain all that we can observe, and there are no proves against it, then we must accept, as scientists, that such a theory is true. but until something simpler, more elegant comes up, we are forced to accept it.
and so there are very few voices for the theory of evolution, because majority of those who do believe it, don't know enough about it to say for sure that it must be true. but then that is the nature of those who find that science is the direction in which to seek answers to life's questions (and more questions to those answers) to not believe in something until they know for sure it is entire believable.
on a personal note the notion that humans are so special kind of reeks of humanistic narcissism. that indeed it is true that everything is for the taking, to the point that it is to our detriment.
Labels: evolution
1:44 AM
