A World Without Pain Or Pleasure

So... what is David Benatar's argument that being born is a bad thing? I'm relying on a short article he wrote, defending his book from a negative review.

He proceeds from utilitarian premises, which require you to evaluate ethical decisions in terms of pleasure and pain. I'm going to lay this out into separate numbered clauses so you can see it.

1a ...the presence of pain is bad
1b and the absence of pain is good,

2a but whereas the presence of pleasure is good,
2b the absence of pleasure is bad only if somebody is deprived of that pleasure.

Notice that he only adds an "only if" condition to 2b, not to 1b. He calls this an asymmetry.

Really, it seems like all evaluations of pleasure and pain and their absence are true only if someone is there to experience it. The "only if" actually applies to all 4 of these statements.

But, I'm not actually a utilitarian, and I think life is the fundamental good, so I can't go along on this ride anyway. But if you do go along on the ride, he then argues:

3a If nobody is deprived of an absent pleasure –
3b because the person who would have experienced the pleasure never existed –
3c then the absence of that pleasure is not bad.

In other words, a world of pain and pleasure is a mixed sum of good and bad, but a world with neither is an absolute good.

How cruel is evolution, which created this unpleasant
sensation to warn us when hazard is present.

Peaceful Garden

I was reading some of Keats' sadder poems today.

And then I was pondering a complaint I'd received for my humorous dismissal of the book, Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence.

Anyway, this little poem came to me. It was inspired by a story someone told me:

Peaceful garden at midday
with people sitting on benches...
but perhaps one of them is in the trenches
of his mind, struggling how to say,
how to describe, the torment inside
as he watches the birds glide
branch to branch.

And for all that, maybe the birds, too, hide
secret distress, perhaps all their twittering
expresses their embittering experience
with the grim task of building nests!

It's not that life is ever, truly, a breeze,
he thinks, and finally sees
that even his is one of relative ease.

In this strange way the garden brought him peace.

Stuck

I don't get this wacky story about the woman who got stuck to the toilet seat - after sitting on it for way too long.

One account said she had a phobia about leaving the bathroom. But that doesn't explain it. It's not just that she didn't leave the bathroom. The issue is that after a while she didn't even leave the seat.

Finally, what is up with the boyfriend?

Kory McFarren pleaded no contest last month to a misdemeanor count of mistreatment of a dependent adult. The woman wrote a letter to the judge asking for leniency for McFarren.

He's been sentenced to 6 months probation for this vague misdemeanor. How did he mistreat her? By bringing her food?

But what makes her "a dependent adult?" Is she "developmentally challenged" or something? Note that:

She is now under the protection of a guardian who was appointed through the legal department at the hospital where she received treatment.

I really get the sense this is one of those stories that would make a little more sense if they stopped protecting someone's privacy.

Of course I
would rather not pry...
but I'd like to know what's behind
these stories that blow my mind.

Oh Baby

Just yesterday I was challenging a certain tabloid to reveal a certain baby's gender. I really thought I had it over them.

But sure enough, today they claimed
to know just what the baby was named
and the gender, too.

I think they're reading my blog, don't you?

As for the love child's sex,
the chromosomes are XX.

Love Child

If the Enquirer knows so much about this bundle of joy,
why haven't they said whether it's a girl or a boy?

The New Engagement Ring

NPR had a piece entitled "Sex Without Condoms Is The New Engagement Ring".

I guess that depends.
Can she show it to her friends?

Hold On Tight

Yesterday, Obama was up some percentage points.

Today, McCain.

That's the way the poller-coaster rolls.
It's sort of bipolar - who's got the controls?

Scanning Grief

Newsweek has an interesting article on grief and brain research, where they stuck grieving people into functional MRI machines.

So they found that when grieving people think about the dead, they experience both pleasure and pain. That's actually a familiar paradox, rather than much of a discovery.

Somebody sensationalized it like this: They're addicted to the pleasure of remembering the dead!

Eventually, everything enjoyable turns out to be an addiction. I, for example, am addicted to breathing.

The psychiatrists seem to be working on a DSM entry for cases where grief is an enduring problem. They want to call their new diagnosis "complicated grief." With a diagnosis like that, it'll be easier to get the insurance companies to pay for treatment.

But I do wonder what's left in "simple grief".

Grief without complication,
with speedy recuperation,
without need for fond recall,
is barely grief at all.

Flip Flops - Not Just For Democrats

Poor John McCain. He was in favor of immigration before he was against it.

While McCain’s support of the immigration bill — which was eventually voted down — appealed to many Hispanics, it infuriated some conservatives. McCain, his campaign then floundering, promised primary voters that he had “got the message,” vowed to prioritize enforcement and even claimed he wouldn’t have voted for his own bill it if was to have come up again.

He succumbed to conservative panic
about a flood of Hispanics.

Now he contemplates voters of Latin descent
and wonders where their support for him went.

Market Opportunity

As a "weird traffic fact", the Sun-Times reports:

Car drivers drive closer to helmeted cyclists (and further from cyclists who appear to be women).

I detect a market opportunity.

I'm going to make money, and make it real big.
I'll make special helmets that look like blonde wigs
with long curly tresses and maybe a bow.

He who cross-dresses is safer, you know.

Zooming up on Ruminants

I was bicycling today, on forest preserve trails.

It appears there's a bumper crop of deer
who calmly stare and show no fear
when cyclists pedal near.

Audacity of Hopelessness

"We rejected the audacity of hopelessness, and we were right." That was McCain today, talking about the surge. I think that's a pretty good line.

Part of the trouble in running against Obama is that a lot of his proposals are on the vague side, and he doesn't have much legislative record to pick apart. But he came out strongly against the surge, and has recently declared that even in hindsight he would oppose it. That's doubling down!

So it's a good point to criticize Obama on, since most people now see the surge as a stunning success.

Obama might be better off admitting he was wrong.
For now he keeps on trying to move the discussion along
to topics that diverge
from the issue of the surge.

Reading Up On New Formalism

I was reading at the library about New Formalism today. It's a contemporary movement in American poetry. They're in favor of Formal Verse Being Okay.

Why is it an American movement? Because Formal Verse always remained Okay in the UK. Probably it was Okay in the whole Commonwealth, for all I know. But in the US there was a stretch of time where it was Free Verse Or Nothing!

(Yes, there were some dinosaur-like exceptions, but they were frowned upon.)

So, why were the English different than us? I don't know.

For some reason they thought of Formal
as still being perfectly normal,
rather than treason to the cause
of flouting outmoded laws.

Geiger Counters for Kitchen Counters

Granite countertops in the kitchen may be radioactive and hence a threat to your health.

Government buildings in Washington are often built of granite and may be a threat to your wealth.

Hunchback Set To Music

With a bunch of friends, we saw a fabulous musical version of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.

The music, book, and lyrics are all by Dennis DeYoung, formerly of Styx. He wrote the pop hits, "Lady" and "Come Sail Away".

Hunchback has been a hit here in Chicago. Its original booking has been extended, which required replacing some cast members. Tonight was the first night on stage with the new cast members. They sang great, projecting full quantities of excitement, love, and sorrow.

The show had a production back in the late 90's, in Nashville. I suspect, from reading an old review, that the show has been re-tooled to maintain emotional flow and tension, which it does very well.

Quasimodo looks scary,
but offers true sanctuary.

Have Gun, Will Travel

Stephen Scherer grew up in an anti-gun household. His mother banned even toy guns in the house, at first. But after a while she broke down and bought him and his sister some cute elephant-shaped squirt guns.

But Stephen wanted more. He made complicated pistols with Legos. He played endlessly with a BB gun inherited from a friend. Talking about his early interest in shooting, Stephen now says, "It's sort of like, if it's wrong, you want to do it more."

Now he's going to Beijing, to compete for the U.S. in shooting sports. He's 19. He wasn't favored to win in the Olympic trials.

"I probably surprised myself more than anybody else there," says Scherer. "Shooting is a very mental sport. A lot of times, it doesn't sink in that you've won until after, because you're so concentrated on the shooting."

Kid, I bet you'll do great.

Just wait,
concentrate,
and shoot straight.

Pragmatism 101

For today's assignment:
write upon the board:
Flip-flops are refinement
and ought to be ignored.

Following the Money

Investor's Business Daily reports that media folks give lots more money to one party than the other.

Who could that be?
The Democrats? Yes!
Funny that didn't
get more press.

But their standards are the highest
so they try to mask their bias
by writing extra sly
to help their guy.

Live from Wherever

It's being reported, in the mainstream press, that Obama is getting more press coverage than that other guy.

But does this give him an advantage? Or is there a risk here?

You don't want folks to get tired of your face
till after you've won the race.

We Don't Need No Stinkin' Algorithms

An industrial mathematician is upset about the way math is being taught:

The claim that schools that have done away with traditional mathematics instruction have done so because they want "to prepare kids for a new world" is ridiculous for many reasons. The most important is that the job of math educators is to get students to understand math, and the best way to understand math is to master the traditional algorithms.

There are a lot of ways to teach algorithms... but... not to teach them at all?

There are no rules
in schools for fools.