September 2004 Archives

Congratulations and best wishes to Carl and Susie, who tie the knot today in Birmingham. I'm sorry that I can't be there, but I wish the two of you all the best.

You know when you're on the phone to an annoying company, and you get to the bit where you have to spell out your surname or postcode or something ("N for Nigel, G for... Gamantha...")? Next time amuse yourself by using this intentionally misleading and incomprehensible (but logically correct) phonetic alphabet and trying to confuse the hell out of the operator. You will never receive any post ever again.

Notes:

• 'Djinn' is pronounced 'gin'. 'Veldt' can be, and in this case should be, pronounced 'felt'.
• Slur the pronunciation of 'I for Ivor' so that it sounds like you're saying the same thing twice.
• The 'disambiguators' for F and P sound identical.
• M and N are probably the two most frequently confused letters when speaking over the phone, sounding similar both within words and when called 'em' and 'en'. So for maximum confusion I have a line for M that suggests that you mean N, and a line for N that suggests that you mean M.
• Say 'U for um' like it's a real hesitation -- 'U for... umm...' -- and then move on to the next letter.
• Obviously in this case, you should pronounce Xmas the old-fashioned way -- 'X for Christmas'.
• Nobody on the planet knows how to spell Nietzsche without looking it up first.

This blog needs more Sports Night quotes:

Jeremy: My grandfather invented the clipboard.
Natalie: Did he?
Jeremy: Well, he didn't invent it but he always used to complain that he didn't have a portable writing surface.

Would it be mean-spirited if I wrote a blog entry about how Star Wars fans should secretly be looking forward to George Lucas's death, because it seems that that's the only way we're ever going to get the original, multiple award-winning, critically acclaimed versions of the movies released in a decent format?

Thought so.

1000 and counting.

For those of you who think I've been thinking too much on this blog over the past few days, here's a cute picture of a cat with a bottle of Jack Daniels.

As I wrote and revised my long post yesterday about definitions, I found myself struggling a bit with one aspect of it. I kept wanting to use phrases like 'strong disbelief' and 'weak disbelief'. But because a part of my argument was that disbelief is just absence of belief, how could I talk about levels of disbelief? Isn't that like talking about how much something wasn't a dog? Something can't be very not a dog or slightly not a dog, it's either a dog or it isn't!

I think it's clear that when we talk about varying strengths of disbelief, we're describing something real. Someone can be slightly skeptical about herbal remedies, and very skeptical about alien abductions, and in neither case do they have any amount of belief. Does this mean I have to concede that disbelief is in itself a belief, in order to talk about varying strengths of disbelief? Or is there another way to reconcile the issue?

After thinking about it, I think there is, and if we look back at the difference between an agnostic and an atheist/skeptic, it's a good way to illustrate it.

What I've called 'belief' is, I think, usually paired very tightly with something else, which is how much credibility, or acceptability, or persuasiveness, we see in an idea. Generally the more credibility we find in an idea, the more we believe it. (At least I hope so -- I don't think I can wrap my head around the thought that someone might think that an idea is unacceptable and nevertheless believe it's true.)

The range of belief terminates at zero -- i.e. no belief, disbelief. Negative belief really doesn't make any sense, if we bear in mind that it doesn't automatically become belief of the converse (that's a whole separate axis). Credibility, however, can go into the negative (because something can be judged as having either positive credibility or negative credibility -- an idea can be anywhere on the scale of acceptable to unacceptable). Credibility is subjective, so to put it in personal terms we'll talk about something having credence (since that implies that it's acceptable or unacceptable to somebody, and not just universally acceptable or unacceptable). Note that I'm using the word 'credence' in its plain English rather than its formal mathematical sense.

Now turn to the diagram on page 21 of your textbooks.

Page 21

I think this shows what I'm trying to say a bit better than words. The absence of belief isn't just a single position -- it's an infinite number of them. This is why different levels of disbelief can exist. Strong disbelief is when an individual considers an idea highly unlikely or unacceptable. Mild disbelief occurs when something is only somewhat unacceptable, perhaps when the evidence against it is not conclusive but still quite persuasive. In both cases the individual would have zero belief.

I think this provides a better distinction between the (weak) atheist and agnostic positions. Yesterday I struggled a bit to distinguish these two positions of zero belief, but now I can say that they're at different points on the axis -- it's just that a large section of the axis from its limit to some midpoint is made up of points of zero belief.

I'll finish with this observation: An idea of strong negative credence may be so unacceptable as to create in the individual a belief of the converse. If the idea of psychics is considered sufficiently unacceptable, a person with zero belief in psychics may develop a belief in the nonexistence of psychics. But this isn't a necessary outcome, merely a common one.

Six more Gmail invites to give away to one and all. Like last time, lay claim to one in the comments section. I have no real use for these things. The days when they were useful currency, to be bartered for gold bullion or 7-bedroom houses, are now long gone. But the stories, the legends! It was a golden age where fortunes were made and heroes strode mightily across the internet crunching hotmail accounts beneath their heels, all thanks to the mercy of the benevolent god Google. Now invites are given like copper coins to a beggar. I always miss out on the good stuff.

Er, yeah. So anyway, leave your name and email address if you want me to send you an invite.

Perhaps no term is a source of greater misunderstanding in religious debates than the word 'atheism' itself. When confusion or argument about the meaning of the word crops up, as it frequently does, then even turning to the dictionary is not helpful, since dictionaries -- by nature -- reflect all popular usage of a given word. One person will point to one definition and the other person will point to another, and another round of circular argument will ensue, and before you know it the sun's coming up.

So to avoid talking at cross-purposes when talking about atheism and agnosticism, it's necessary to first establish your definitions. If I've sent you the link to this entry during an online conversation, then that's exactly my reason for doing so, and I ask you to please read it to the end. I hope it will be an interesting standalone entry as well, though.

Agnosticism is the simplest of the terms to define. An agnostic draws no conclusions, and is either undecided, has no opinion, or considers the whole issue unresolvable or unimportant. Agnosticism isn't really a universal code to live by; agnostics are agnostic about a specific issue or issues (often not religious in nature). Hence the computing term 'platform agnostic' to describe some program (or user) that can work on a variety of platforms without preference.

Atheism is the absence of belief in a god or gods. Strictly speaking, it doesn't refer to religion; there are religions without gods. However, it's also come to mean an absence of belief in religions, an understandable mutation in meaning. Unlike the agnostic, the atheist comes down on one side of the fence, specifically not believing rather than lacking an opinion.

That's a subtle distinction and easy to overlook, because we're talking about the difference between two people who lack a belief. Let's try an example. Virtually everyone's seen The Matrix, right?

Consider the proposition that you are in the Matrix right now -- that your whole life is an artificial construct, and that in the real world you're lying inanimate in some pod full of goo, with the quality of life of a Trisha audience member. What's your opinion of this theory?

I'm guessing that -- despite the fact that the theory is impossible to prove or disprove -- you have an opinion on it. You probably react with some disbelief at the suggestion that you've lived your whole life in a machine-generated artificial reality. If you do, congratulations -- you're not a 'Matrix agnostic', you're a 'Matrix skeptic'. An analogous distinction separates religious agnosticism and atheism. A 'Matrix agnostic' would favour neither explanation; he would reserve all judgment, or just not give the issue any consideration. A 'Matrix skeptic' considers it, and chooses -- to some extent at least -- not to believe.

(Why is it intuitive to disbelieve the Matrix theory? Because although there may be nothing that indicates that it's false, there's also nothing that indicates that it's true. As Carl Sagan said, 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence'.)

(Why is it intuitive for adults to disbelieve the stories of Santa Claus? The fact that your parents probably admitted to putting the presents under the tree doesn't mean he isn't out there somewhere, right?)

(Why is it intuitive for atheists and skeptics to disbelieve old stories about divine miracles? Lots of people believe them, so there must be something in it, surely?)

I was being slightly manipulative earlier when I said that the definition of atheism was 'the absence of belief in a god or gods'. Actually, this is only one of the two main dictionary definitions of the word. Why did I do this? Because that first definition of atheism is, in my experience, almost always the one employed by atheists themselves. More than that, it's the original meaning of the word, right back to Greek. The second definition is not commonly intended, but I will cover it because it's not unusual for theists to erroneously assume that this is what is meant when somebody talks about atheism.

So-called Strong Atheism (as opposed to so-called Weak Atheism, which was described earlier) is the position held by somebody who claims to know for sure that there are no gods. Compelling arguments for Strong Atheism are pretty thin on the ground -- such an argument would have to conclusively disprove every possible god, and I doubt that's ever going to happen. There aren't many followers of Strong Atheism (they're out there, certainly, but I don't think I've ever personally encountered a single one).

Note that of all the positions mentioned here so far, Strong Atheism is the only one that is a belief. Each of the others are mere absence of belief. This is a frequent point of misunderstanding, but I hope that I can convince you that 'no belief in X' and 'belief in no X' are inequivalent. The absence of belief is not the belief of absence, nor is it any other kind of belief. Are you a believer in 'no fairies'? Of course not, you probably never even thought about it... you just don't believe in fairies. Not that it matters whether you thought about it before; you're probably not a believer in 'no Matrix' either.

It's interesting to think about the inversion of the Strong Atheist position: someone who believes they know, without any doubt, that their god exists. Logically it's just as extreme, but in some religions the position is so common that it's practically in the mainstream.

Anyway, why the need to set down these torturous definitions in the first place? Some people (including many theists) use the word atheism to mean only Strong Atheism. Possibly in reaction to this, some Weak Atheists describe themselves as agnostics! I think the second group of people are being unhelpful and the first group of people are just plain wrong. The etymology of the word atheism ('without god') forces a definition inclusive of Weak Atheism. As for Strong Atheism, there's a perfectly good alternate word we can use in its place, so we can ditch the Strong and Weak crap altogether.

I think it would be far easier to have these conversations without misunderstanding if we were much clearer in advance about our understanding of the vocabulary. So these are my definitions:

Absence of opinion, reservation of judgment, and/or the idea that something is unknowable, I will call agnosticism.
A lack of belief in all gods (i.e. Weak Atheism) I will call atheism.
The certain belief that there are no gods (i.e. Strong Atheism) I will call antitheism.

By these definitions, I am an atheist.

Of course, there's more to my views than that. But now we have some common semantic ground. Now we can talk.

I don't know why you would be interested in this, but I just spent an hour making a visual inventory of all my Xbox games. Just something to do to pass the time...

Many of these don't get played much any more. I should be a good little capitalist and make some use of eBay.

Which evolutionary developments in living creatures are the results of rare mutations (those which would be unlikely to recur if evolution were 'rerun'), and which were virtually guaranteed from the outset? That's the subject of this extract on the Guardian website from zoologist Richard Dawkins' new book.

Eyes, for example, have evolved independently on 40-60 separate branches of the tree of life, i.e. in 40-60 organisms that share common but sightless ancestors. It hasn't always turned out the same -- there are nine 'kinds' of eye in the animal kingdom -- but sight is a path that evolution has gone down repeatedly.

Other developments are evolutionary one-offs, like the one genus of beetle that, uniquely in the whole animal kingdom, produces chemicals internally which, when mixed, explode! The beetle uses this as a defence mechanism.

From this, biologists can speculate that on an earthlike planet, vision is such a beneficial and realistic target that it is a likely evolutionary step. Assuming distant planets broadly similar to Earth also have their own evolved living creatures, they're very likely to have eyes. Explosive chemical reactions, however, may be a rare property of Earth life. It's conjecture, sure, but we've only seen the result of evolutionary processes (from single cell to complex organism) in a single environment -- our own planet -- and this small, isolated sample is all we have to look at if we want to think about the nature of life in the general case.

I like Dawkins' writing, and this excerpt is really interesting. Wonder if my local library has a copy of the book...

If you needed further evidence (besides this subtly manipulated series of 'found' photos and the P-P-P-Powerbook) that the Something Awful forum is the most consistently inventive and brilliant community on the web, then this is surely the pinnacle of the goons' projects to date, in which a forum member was immersed -- in person, and with little warning -- into an elaborate, bizarre story featuring time-travel, robots, and doppelgangers. The perpetrators subsequently disappeared leaving no indication of who they really were. Awesome planning and execution.

I think I need a new header graphic. Bored of this one, and change is good.

Also it wouldn't be a bad thing to get a fresh start with a new domain name. I could probably think of something more appropriate.

Actually I wouldn't mind just being a completely different person altogether. This life is getting repetitive.