Michael Prescott's Blog

Ignore earlier stupidity

In the post that immediately precedes this one, I found fault with Nagarjuna's four-valued logic, saying that the statement "X does not not exist" is identical to the statement "X does exist," and therefore one of the four poles or axes (technically "lemmas") of his system is duplicative.

I was wrong.

I realized this just a short time ago when I was walking by the beach. I asked myself if it is true that two negatives always make a positive. In math this is true, but in life?

Consider this dialogue:

• Question: Are you happy?
• Answer: I'm not unhappy.

Now, "I'm not unhappy" is a double negative, equivalent to "I'm not not happy." So can we conclude that the person has just said, "I am happy"?

Clearly not.  Most of us would assume that the person is saying his mood is somewhere between happiness and unhappiness. He is not happy, he is not unhappy.

This is more than just a semantic quirk. Imagine that you are looking at the ocean on a partly cloudy day (as I was). Is the ocean blue? Answer: It's not blue ... and it's not not blue.

It's not blue because there are strong overtones of gray, courtesy of the overcast sky. But it's not not blue because there are still hints and highlights of blue.

What do emotional states and colors have in common? Both exist on continuums. There is a spectrum of moods from happiness at one extreme to unhappiness at the other. There is a spectrum of colors from slate gray to blue to green, etc.

Now imagine yourself looking at the shoreline. If you point to a certain spot and ask, "Is that the shoreline?", a companion might say, "It's not the shoreline, and it's not not the shoreline."

This is possible because the shoreline, too, exists on a continuum. I don't just mean that the shoreline is constantly changing with each new incoming wave. Even if you could stop time and freeze the waves, you would still be hard pressed to define the exact location of the shoreline. Is it where the edge of the wave is visible? Or it the puddled water left over from the last receding wave? Or is it water-saturated sand just beyond those puddles? Or is it the damp sand a little farther inland? Or the less damp sand beyond that?

Now you look out to sea and notice the horizon. At last, a clear line of demarkation! There is an unmistakable and obvious dividing line between ocean and sky. Or so it seems.

But it seems this way only because you are looking from a distance. Up close the dividing line is not so clear. Is it the upper surface of the ocean waters, or is it the spray and bubbles rising from the water, or is it the hazy, saturated air above the water?

The water and the air are actually interacting as a complex system. If you could view the ocean and atmosphere from outer space, you would see it as a single interactive network, in which the water is constantly escaping into the air through evaporation, and the air is constantly replenishing the water through condensation. And the air, in the form of wind, is moving the water, sometimes in dramatic ways. The whole system extends for hundreds of miles, and is tied in with other oceans and with land masses and with the movement of tectonic plates and with the outgassing of undersea vents and with all sorts of other things.

The point is that a great many things can be seen as existing on a continuum. Perhaps everything can be seen that way. And so it does make sense to say, "X does not exist and X does not not exist." In fact, this may be the most accurate way of describing most of the phenomena we observe.

I still think the authors of The End of Suffering could have done a better job of explaining this. But the idea is sound. I stand corrected.

Partial book review: The End of Suffering

This is a partial book review because so far I've read only about 50 pages of the book. Still, I have some thoughts on it, so what the hell.

The book is The End of Suffering, by Russell Targ and J.J. Hurtak. It aims to be an exposition of Buddhist philosophy in simple, layman's terms. So far I don't find the exposition simple at all. But we'll get to that in a moment.

The authors begin by talking about the ill effects of a dualistic or black-and-white approach to existence. They seem to have a particular animus against Aristotle, whose "dualistic" logic is blamed for a variety of bad things. But their presentation of Aristotelian logic is oversimplified to the point of caricature. Yes, Aristotle said that a thing cannot be both A and non-A, but he added a crucial qualifier: at the same time and in the same respect. The authors neglect to mention the qualifying phrases.

Many of the alleged problems of Aristotelian logic vanish if this qualification is kept in mind. For instance, the authors predictably cite the apparently dual nature of light, which can sometimes exhibit the properties of a particle and other times exhibit the properties of a wave. Aristotelian logic, they suggest, can't address this conundrum. But in fact it can, because light does not exhibit both particle and wave properties at the same time and in the same respect. It exhibits those properties at different times and under different experimental conditions.

Intent on discrediting Aristotle, the authors claim that his "two-valued logic" gave rise to slavery and the subordination of women. Actually both of these things had been features of Greek civilization (and ancient civilizations in general) for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Aristotle came toward the end of the Golden Age of Greece, and his ideas had little influence in his own day.

Searching for more examples of how two-valued logic splits people into "us" vs. "them," the authors write:

Pope Pius XII successfully saved German cripples from Nazi euthanasia because they were largely Christians. But he expended no such effort to save millions of German Jews and gypsies because they were "the other." [p. 17]

Pius' role in attempting to avert or at least minimize the Holocaust remains controversial, but there is much recent scholarship indicating that he worked diligently behind the scenes to rescue as many Jews as possible. For people who eschew black-and-white thinking, the authors bring remarkably little nuance to this issue.

Then we reach one of the oddest statements I have read in a book - and I've read more than my share of very odd books.

Even in our contemporary Judeo-Christian instititions, two-valued logic is built in. We have a powerful - even omnipotent - deity way out there, and a puny little self (me) down here. This construct of thought has the effect of separating us from our divine nature by projecting our searching elsewhere and is the idolatry we are warned against in the Ten Commandments. Idolatry implies separation, and the idea that there is an omnipotent "god" out there is an idolatrous idea. [p. 18]

Did you get that? When the Ten Commandments inveigh against idolatry, they are telling us that we should not worship the Judeo-Christian God.

Riiiiiight.

Incidentally, the Judeo-Christian tradition does not posit a "deity way out there." It posits a deity who is everywhere.

Then we have this bit of confusion:

It is logically incoherent to speak of anything as a source of darkness. Darkness cannot be the source of anything. [p. 19]

Speaking of logical incoherence, how did we go from talking about "a source of darkness" to talking about darkness as a source of something else? In the first case, we are pondering what gives rise to darkness. In the second case, we are pondering what darkness itself gives rise to. Two different issues.

Again blaming "Aristotelian-based thought," the authors complain, "Our language doesn't allow for shades of gray." (p. 27) Of course it does. Terms like probably, partly, sometimes, to some extent, arguably, conceivably, under some circumstances, etc., all express shades of gray. Nasty old Aristotle himself characteristically used the phrase always or for the most part.

After all this introductory material, the authors begin their principal topic, the four-valued logic of the Buddhist teacher Nagarjuna. Essentially, Nagarjuna posited a "tetralemma," a system in which there are four poles of logical possibility. These are:

1. X exists.
2. X does not exist.
3. X both exists and does not exist.
4. X neither exists nor does not exist.

The first two poles are consistent with Aristotelian logic. The third, we are told, is not. But is this true? Remember, Aristotle said A is not non-A at the same time and in the same respect. But A can be non-A at a different time and/or in a different respect. If we say that something both exists and does not exist, we are almost invariably speaking of it at different times or in different respects. It's not clear to me that Nagarjuna has really gone beyond Aristotle here.

What about the fourth option? Well, it seems to me that the fourth statement reduces very obviously to the third statement. They are just two different ways of saying the same thing.

The third statement is: X does exist and X does not exist.

The fourth statement is: X does not exist and X does not not exist.

"X does not exist" is the same in both statements. And "X does not not exist" is identical to "X does exist." So the two statements are interchangeable. Nagarjuna's four-valued logic reduces to three values. And his third value is already implied by Aristotle's qualifying phrases, so we can, if we wish, reduce the three values to just two. Then we're back to Aristotle - that crusty old codger who is singlehandedly responsible for slavery, domination of women, "dualistic capitalism," pollution, war, and man's inhumanity to man.

Now, maybe I'm missing the point. But if so, it's not for lack of trying to understand. The authors, at least so far, have not given me any reason to think that Nagarjuna was the brilliant intellect and astounding philosophical innovator they make him out to be. Maybe he was all of these things and more, but The End of Suffering has yet to explain why.

Of course, I've still got two-thirds of the book left to go ...

What's wrong with this picture?

At Wednesday's Salt Lake City protest, charmingly titled "Death to Israel," this fellow showed up (click image to enlarge):

Not only does the sign have nothing to do with Israel, but this guy apparently does not know what a uterus is.

Maybe he was one of the homeless people who were paid to take part in the staged event.

Via Moonbattery.

A salutary lesson

From Testimony of Light, by Helen Greaves, a book of purportedly channeled communications from the afterlife, comes this thought-provoking passage (ellipses and emphasis in original):

I am finding peace. I am at peace. I am absorbed into the atmosphere of peace. I have found tranquillity to the measure in which I can accept and appreciate it. I no longer need to strive and struggle, as I did in the earth life. Always there I worked too hard. I strove. I battled forward. I followed every channel, every path which seemed to lead to that 'break-through' of the spirit for which my soul yearned so deeply. I obeyed the precepts, followed the doctrines, studied and examined all theories which could 'explain' the spirit; drove myself with the whip of an iron will, read, marked, digested the sciences (so called) of the human mind and its reactions to stimuli, as well as the human psyche and its reaching forward into revelation. All this with a great purpose, as I supposed, of Illumination. I strove always for the 'break-through' to spirit, union with the soul, contact with the Great Forces, and always, driving my mind and my personal real was the hope, the glory, the bliss of a 'break-through' to spirit. And now as I look back over my earth life, I realise that so much was illusion.

"He came into His own and His own received Him not."

As I rest now in this Reality I see, with sadness, the truth of those words. I knew Him not. I struggled, fasted, sought for what was already present, perfect and everlasting within me. Like most of us in the body life I was in illusion; lost in glamour. I looked for the Spirit to reveal itself to me, when all that was necessary was 'relaxation unto God'. The Spirit was always with me, veiled because physical sight could not view it. The great secret of finding that Spirit was the 'letting go' of self. I, who longed so much for the touch of the divine, who dedicated my life to religious work, who read lives of the saints for their examples, who delved into the sciences of psychology, extrasensory perception and all psychic phenomena, as well as into the occult sciences, who denied myself the usual sensual and reproductive life of a human being; who truly tried to obey the precepts of the Master, as related in the New Testament, I had not accepted the simple Reality of those words: "Behold, I am with you even unto the end". I had not been able to let go, and let the Spirit absorb me. As I now see my thoughts, actions, aspirations from this angle, I am realizing that the very tenseness of my striving was my undoing and it barred the way to that very union for which my soul longed. I battered at the Veil which hid the Face of Divinity trying by my mind and will to tear it away, [but] the more intense my thoughts, the more real did I create the illusion. For the Veil was, as I now realize, the Veil of my own setting.

Light, Divinity, Reality ... all-pervading consciousness ... were there for my acceptance. Much greater progress would have been made by 'letting go' of all these human images and by allowing the spirit to absorb me. Relax and allow the Spirit to stream through you. Swim with the tide of the Spirit. That is the great lesson I am learning here as I review my mistakes. Now I am 'in the Spirit' ... There was no 'break-through' to Spirit, of which I once, so glibly talked. There is only a gradual absorption of that amount, or degree of Spirit which the openness of the soul can accept. This degree, as I appreciate now, must be governed by the Law of Progress, for the Spirit is never limited, [and] only ourselves, as receptacles, govern the degree of its entrance.

This is indeed a salutary lesson. [pp. 102-3]

Just askin'

As James Bond's archnemesis Goldfinger famously put it, "Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action."

Item: On July 5, 2002, a Muslim man opens fire at an El Al ticket counter in Los Angeles International Airport, shooting six people. Authorities say the crime does not constitute terrorism.

Item: In October of 2002, a Muslim man and a Muslim teenage boy engage in a series of sniper attacks in Washington D.C., Maryland, and Virginia, shooting thirteen people. Authorities say the crimes do not constitute terrorism.

Item: On March 3, 2006, a Muslim man in an SUV drives into a crowd of students at the University of North Carolina and intentionally mows down at least six people. Authorities say the crime does not constitute terrorism.

Item: On July 29, 2006, a Muslim man breaks into the offices of the Jewish Federation in Seattle and shoots six people. Authorities say the crime does not constitute terrorism.

Item: On August 29, 2006, a Muslim man in an SUV drives onto the sidewalk and intentionally mows down 14 people in a largely Jewish neighborhood in San Francisco. Authorities say the crime does not constitute terrorism.

Happenstance? Coincidence?

Or enemy action?

Fear itself

FDR may have been right when he admonished us that there was nothing to fear but fear itself. Over my lifetime I have seen countless scares that turned out to be false alarms - bogeymen that vanished with the dawn.

• Fear: Japan would outcompete the US and crush our economy.
• Fact: Japan's boom was a bubble, which burst.

• Fear: Energy shortages would lead us to destruction; we would "freeze to death in the dark."
• Fact: Adjusted for inflation, $3/gallon gasoline is cheaper than gas in the 1970s. Hybrid cars and ethanol are gradually reducing our dependence on fossil fuels.

• Fear: A new Ice Age was at hand.
• Fact: There has been a mild warming trend.

• Fear: The USSR would destroy the world in a nuclear war.
• Fact: The USSR collapsed peacefully and is no longer a superpower.

• Fear: The Western world faced financial ruin because of Third World debt.
• Fact: Debt restructuring and forgiveness of some debt solved the crisis.

• Fear: Hyperinflation would render American dollars worthless.
• Fact: Inflation was swiftly brought under control and remains low.

• Fear: Worldwide food shortages because of overpopulation would mean famine even in developed countries.
• Fact: Obesity is the biggest food-related problem in developed countries. Famines in the Third World are almost always the result of political machinations.

• Fear: Another Great Depression would strike America sometime in the 1980s.
• Fact: The period from the early '80s to the present day has been the most prosperous era in recorded history.

• Fear: AIDS would decimate Africa.
• Fact: Africa has the highest population growth of any continent on earth.

• Fear: AIDS would decimate the global population.
• Fact: AIDS has been largely controlled by safer sex and drug therapy.

• Fear: American cities would become unlivable hellholes of crime and chaos.
• Fact: Crime rates have fallen dramatically in nearly all US cities, and the quality of life has measurably improved.

• Fear: Computers would concentrate power in the hands of a few tyrannical technocrats.
• Fact: The Internet has decentralized information and given more power to ordinary citizens.

• Fear: Urban air would become an unbreathable, noxious mix of chemical pollutants.
• Fact: City skies are cleaner today than at any time since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.

Despite this remarkable track record of empty fears, the opinion shapers and deep thinkers continue trying to frighten us. I predict that the current crop of fears will prove just as illusory as the earlier ones.

• New Fear: Iran will go nuclear.
• Prediction: Aerial bombardment will destroy Iran's nuclear facilities in the near future.

• New Fear: Global warming will turn the earth into a desert.
• Prediction: Eventually we will determine that the planet goes through natural cycles of cooling and warming, with no long-term ill effects.

• New Fear: The West faces an endless, unwinnable war on terror.
• Prediction: The fervor for terrorism will gradually die down as Islamist radicals suffer setback after setback.

• New Fear: The US faces inevitable economic decline because of (pick one) a. high energy prices b. excessive government regulation and taxation c. illegal immigration d. Wal-Mart.
• Prediction: A generation from now, the US and most of the rest of the world will be more prosperous than ever.

• New Fear: Tides of illegal aliens will overwhelm the country.
• Prediction: The influx of illegals will slow because of stricter law enforcement and increasing economic opportunities in their home countries; existing immigrants - or their kids - will be assimilated into mainstream American culture.

• New Fear: Religious fundamentalists will turn the US into a theocracy OR radical secularists will outlaw religion.
• Prediction: Both religious and secular lifestyles will continue to flourish in the US.

• New Fear: A supervirus will wipe out humanity.
• Prediction: Modern medicine, and the self-limiting tendencies of most contagious diseases, will keep the superbugs at bay.

• New Fear: An errant asteroid will destroy the earth.
• Prediction: Bruce Willis will save our bacon - after he gets through shooting Die Hard 4.

The paranoid style in American politics

Want proof that it's not only the far left that can be paranoid and crazy? Read this interview - one of the most bizarre, delusional spiels I've seen.

Lost in translation

Exciting news! The new TV Guide is here! And it features an article on ABC's new dramatic series Brothers & Sisters, widely rumored to be a "troubled" production. One actress has already been replaced, while another - star Calista Flockhart - is said to have less than a full-season contract.

To clear up the confusion, TV Guide sat down for an interview with producer Jon Robin Baitz and incoming creative consultant Greg Berlanti.

Unfortunately, the interview is conducted in Hollywoodspeak, a language in which not everyone is fluent. As a public service for the cynicism-impaired, I will translate the dialogue into standard English.

Q: Why did executive producer Marti Noxon leave the show?

Baitz: We saw the emotional temperature of the show differently.

Translation: I hate Marti and I want her to die.

Baitz: Not better or worse, just very differently ...

Translation: I was right, she was wrong.

Baitz: ... and it just got messy.

Translation: If you consider knife fights messy.

Berlanti: Marriages on television either work or don't. For whatever reason, [this one was] just more reported on.

Translation: I've taken out a restraining order against Noxon. If she comes within fifty yards of me, that bitch is going to jail.

Q: Why haven't we seen the pilot yet?

Baitz: It's not shame and worry.

Translation: It is shame and worry.

Baitz: Recasting [one role] changed the chemistry and the makeup of it. We just finished editing.

Translation: This thing is a train wreck. We've reshot and recut it a hundred times, and it still doesn't work. I'm popping Xanaxes like sugar pills. I'm scared all the time.

Berlanti: It's in incredible, incredible shape.

Translation: If I say "incredible" twice, does it sound more believable? Maybe not. I'd better add something else.

Berlanti: It really is.

Translation: Yeah, that oughtta sell it.

Berlanti: And I think it's going to be really reflected - hopefully, ultimately, in the numbers - but definitely in the product.

Translation: Our ratings are gonna come in behind those cheesy new telenovela series on MyNetwork. My gut churns constantly, and my shrink is charging me for overtime.

Q: Rumor has it that Calista's not actually signed on for the entire season. Care to dispel that?

Baitz: In absolutely no uncertain terms I can dispel it.

Translation: Calista really is signed on for the entire season, but she's floating the rumor that she isn't so she can line up other work.

Q: You've got a lot of strong personalities in the cast. How are they all getting along?

Translation: Your lead actors are a bunch of notorious bitches, drama queens, and divas. Has any of them anyone actually killed someone yet?

Baitz: They're all breathtakingly, clearheadedly sane, rational and shockingly matriarchal.

Translation: They are insane, irrational control freaks. How the hell does Harrison Ford put up with this crap?

Baitz: And they all love each other - and in the smart sense.

Translation: They hate each other and want each other to die.

Baitz: They've been through various hells in life ...

Translation: And this show is just the latest one.

Baitz: ... and know exactly how to make a grown-up thing work.

Translation: They have the emotional IQ of a spoiled toddler.

Baitz: And they respect each other.

Translation: CAT FIGHT!!!

Smorgasbord, part two

More meaningless musings ...

----

Okay, I guess John Karr didn't do it. I'm a little disappointed because a) I wanted the case to be solved, and b) I still think that psychic's sketch from 1998 bears an uncanny resemblance to Karr, and I was hoping it would prove prescient.

Foolishly, I thought the DA must have some really socko evidence against Karr to go to all the trouble of extraditing him from Thailand. Guess not.

And what about those highly specific details of the crime that Karr supposedly knew - things that only the killer himself would be aware of? As Gilda Radner used to say on Saturday Night Live, "Never mind."

----

When I wrote recently that I seem less attached to my opinions than I used to be, some folks responded by saying, in effect, "Cheer up!" But I'm not depressed. It's oddly liberating to see your opinions as just ideas that your mind has constructed in an attempt to make sense of reality. And to realize that reality is too complex to be understood by the limited mind in anything more than the most fragmentary and approximate way. In order to be really sure that my ideas are right, I would have to be omniscient. Since I'm not, I can only make my best guess. And my best guess is frequently wrong. To not be overly attached to my guesses is a pleasant change.

Andrew Lang, a prolific writer who flourished a century ago, once set forth an elaborate anthropological theory over the course of several pages. Having presented it, he stood back and wrote, "I gaze with paternal fondness upon my little guess." And then he proceeded to show all the weaknesses of the theory he had just espoused.

----

I'm reading Testimony of Light, by Helen Greaves, a book of purportedly channeled information from a deceased Anglican nun named Frances Banks. Whether or not the source of the material is really the discarnate Miss Banks, the book is very interesting and enjoyable to read.

At one point, "Frances" predicts that new forms of light will be used in cancer treatment in the relatively near future (the book was published in 1969, and this material is said to have been channeled early in 1966).

Doctor X [another discarnate soul] spoke of the use of a pure Light Ray [emphasis in original], and I understood him to be referring to the Laser. In the future, he asserts, such a Ray will be used more extensively and can project its light on to these rogue cells. Later, he says, [researchers will learn] that, apart from its cutting power, this Ray, or rather a variation of it in modified form, can be used as a sort of catalyst to reform the cellular pattern which has gone awry.

Before this present century is out, Doctor X tells me, this method of employing Light will have become a great medical art and treatment to arrest and alleviate suffering....

Doctor X ended: "... Diagnosis of the early stages of cancer will be made by an adaptation of the  present X-ray method and rogue cells will be isolated. Then these will be treated by Light to nullify their mischievous distraction of the pattern form."

This is vague, of course, though Helen Greaves does include two news items, one from later in 1966 and another from 1968, reporting on the use of lasers to detect cancer cells and the experimental use of neutron beams to kill cancer. I was curious whether the neutron therapy has panned out, so I did a little Googling. I discovered that, yes, neutron therapy is an accepted method of treatment today, although still rare because the equipment is hard to come by. Moreover, proton therapy is also in use and is, by some accounts, even more effective.

There is also a new technique involving the light-sensitive drug Photofrin. The cancer patient swallows this drug, and then a laser is aimed at the body. The laser activates the drug, which kills the cancer.

None of this proves anything about Testimony of Light. I just think it's interesting that there are so many new options in fighting cancer which I'd never even heard of. Meanwhile, I know exactly what John Karr had for dinner on his flight to California ...

Possibly our media's priorities are a bit out of whack.

The love that dare not speak its name

No way to comment on this. Words fail me. You just have to read it for yourselves ...

In a related story, the doll tested positive for steroids.

HT: Ace of Spades.