YES I WILL! (OH, NO YOU WON'T!)

Agency
 

I have been reading a lot about “Agency”, also called Free Will or Free Agency, that last one not to be confused with the special case of “free agency” for overpaid professional sports figures. As I understand Agency, it means that you can always decide what you will do, and the future is indeterminate, depending on both the actions of humans and the forces of nature.

Religious folks believe Agency is bestowed by God, in hopes that His people will opt for good, but eternally damning them if they do not choose wisely. Christians are even given a mulligan, through the intercession of Christ's Atonement. The forces of nature are directed by God, destructive instances of which are characterized as “Acts of God” or “God's Will”. They can thus be rationalized (especially the really bad stuff) by the fact that God's actions are beyond the understanding of humankind. Man may propose, but as humanity's inscrutable task master, God has no in-basket, and disposes directly into file 13.

Meanwhile, the secular folks, including agnostics (not sure), atheists (sure not) and others across the wide spectrum of doubt, question, take issue with, or outright reject the role of God in these matters. They wonder about and even repudiate the very existence of God. However, they are left with two big questions. If not created by God, whence the Universe? And is there a purpose to it all? More particularly, how did life arise from non-life? And why?

Predestination

I find it interesting that there are those, both religious and secular, who reject Agency altogether, and believe in some form of “Predestination”. All past, present, and future events were, are, and will be eternally extant (established by God or Nature), and humans have no power (agency) to change this foreordained cosmic pattern. We're just going through the motions.

Calvinists, and probably others of whom I am not aware, believe the future is written indelibly in the account of all things by the ineffably fickle finger of God. This includes the individual salvation or damnation of each person, quick, dead, or yet to be born.

[Saint] Paul clearly declares that it is only when the salvation of a remnant [arbitrary group of persons?] is ascribed to gratuitous election, we arrive at the knowledge that God saves whom he wills of his mere good pleasure, and does not pay a debt, a debt which never can be due. [i.e. in return for a righteous life of good works] – John Calvin (1509-1564), Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1536.

Pretty bold of Calvin to describe God's good pleasure as “mere”. I have to say, I would be deeply devastated to lead my whole life, striving for righteousness, extending compassion to my fellow man, only to find at my day of reckoning, that all along I had been inexorably doomed. What would have been the point? However, if I knew my predetermined status from the outset, at least I could have had the freedom to sin profligately and indiscriminately. Oh, wait. I couldn't really “choose” to do that, could I? What a crock!

Seek not to know what must not be revealed,
For joy only flows where fate is most concealed.
A busy person would find their sorrows much more;
If future fortunes were known before!
– John Dryden (1631-1700), English Poet et al.

Here is an apropos observation, that captures the widely held distinction between the religious and secular flavors of Predestination, albeit dismissive of the skeptics and nonbelievers.

A God without dominion, providence, and final causes,
is nothing else but fate and nature.
– Alexander Pope (1688-1744), English Poet

Fate

Some secular souls (wow, both alliteration and irony) believe in, or at least pay lip service to, mysterious, dispassionate, inescapable “Fate”. For them, life is as fully predetermined as for the sullen Calvinists, one exception being that an afterlife of either salvation or damnation isn't necessarily part of this predestination package.

A number of ancient mythologies include The Three Fates. The Greek incarnations thereof are Clotho (the spinner) who spins the thread of life, Lachesis (the drawer of lots) who measures the thread, and Atropos (the inevitable) who cuts the thread, determining the time and manner of a person's demise. I first heard the names of these Fates via Emerson, Lake & Palmer's debut album (1970), which includes an extended piece titled The Three Fates, three movements, each devoted to one of the Fates. My brother Chris owned the album. He was into the nihilism of rock music, while I was deeply immersed in the idealism of folk music. “If I had a hammer...”

In general usage, Fate can be a slippery term. It is not always clear whether a person's fate is considered preordained or not. More often,
I think, throughout history, people have believed Fate to be inevitable.

Fate is the endless chain of causation, whereby things are;
the reason or formula by which the world goes on.
– Citium Zeno (c. 334 BC – c. 262 BC)
Greek Philosopher, Founder of Stoicism

Fate leads him who follows it, and drags him who resist.
– Plutarch (c. 46 – 120 AD), Greek Historian & Essayist

Fate gives you the finger and you accept.
– William Shatner (b. 1931), Canadian Actor et al.
Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise (Star Trek)

Love cannot save you from your own fate.
– Jim Morrison (1943-1971), Lead Singer of "The Doors"

Some invocations of Fate are spoken in the wake of inexplicable tragedies, in order to lamely rationalize, and thus perhaps absolve, the “ill-fated” victims and survivors alike, from the pall of blame and guilt. Shit happens, even to the God-fearing.

People without firmness of character love to make up a fate for themselves; that relieves them of the necessity of having their own will and of taking responsibility for themselves.
– Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883), Russian Writer

Fortuitous circumstances constitute the moulds that shape the majority of human lives, and the hasty impress of an accident is too often regarded as the relentless decree of all ordaining Fate.
– Olympia Brown (1835-1926), American Suffragist
First female Ordained Minister in the US

When good befalls a man he calls it Providence, when evil Fate.
– Knut Hamsun (1859-1952), Norwegian Author, Nobel Laureate

Fate & Destiny

The terms Fate and Destiny are often bandied about ambiguously, even synonymously, but in fact, they are the starkly opposed extrema of the scale upon which is weighed the value, the meaningfulness, of our lives. Fate bears the stigma of failure and despair, while Destiny embodies the very essence of fulfillment and joy.

Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice;
it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.
– William Jennings Bryan, 1899

I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act;
but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.
– Buddha

If you do not create your destiny,
you will have your fate inflicted upon you.
– William Irwin Thompson (b. 1938)
American Social Philosopher & Cultural Critic

Destiny is optional, and Fate is the default. A person must put forth the effort to fulfill his destiny, or at least avoid his fate. The ominous phrase “sealed his fate” suggests that your individual fate might initially be indeterminate, but some crucial, pivotal, decisive event, perhaps a “twist of fate”, renders the denouement of your life irrevocably fixed. Destiny lies along one of the infinite number of potential paths, which like Schrödinger's probability wave, all collapse at the end of your life into the single path actually taken. However, that path may not fulfill your destiny, rather, it may consign you to your fate.

The path to destiny fulfillment usually involves a quest of some sort, a long and arduous journey with many detours, requiring fortitude, determination, and perseverance. In some cases, people just don't have the right stuff. We hear or read all the time about individuals who don't quite manage to pull it off. Hence the hollow fate-as-excuse phrase “it wasn't meant to be”.

Is there a kind of limbo between Destiny and Fate? I suspect most would say no, it is a binary choice – succeed or fail. Unfulfilled Destiny is Fate. Nonetheless, there seem to be varying degrees of cruelty on the Fate side of the equation. In some cases, simple non-achievement is a sufficiently crushing defeat. Other fates are even more severe in terms of pain and suffering, both physical and psychological, up to and including a “fate worse than death”.

It is to be remarked that a good many people are born
curiously unfitted for the fate waiting them on this earth.– Joseph Conrad (1857-1924), Polish Author & Seaman

Collective Fate & Destiny

Is there a social obligation to assume individual responsibility for the fate/destiny of mankind? Furthermore, is our personal “life outcome” inextricably linked to the collective outcome for all humanity? I would answer yes to both questions, but a wider discussion will have to wait for another essay.

We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody.
– R. Buckminster Fuller, American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor, and futurist

Where Do I Stand?

I'm glad you asked, I think. It makes me pin myself down, although that is not necessarily a comfortable position in which to be. I am a deeply despairing doubter. I doubt God's existence, but of course, I don't know for sure. I am strongly disinclined toward the many God-centric religions, especially the dogmatic fundamentalists and the aggressive evangelists. However, I do find the Unitarian Universalists and some of the “eastern” religions distinctly less unappealing. I no longer congregate, preferring to practice my agnosticism alone.

As far as Fate and Destiny, I believe the universe is non-deterministic. We all have agency, not subject to any form of predestination, neither sacred or secular. However, I think we all have potential, which can be realized or not. If you consider the former as an optional destiny, or the latter as a default fate, I will not argue too strenuously. I believe there is “meaning” to every life, but what that meaning might actually mean, depends on who (relatively) or what (absolutely) applies the semantics. This is another subject to be explored in a future essay.

What about an afterlife? I'd like to think I would exist forever in some form, but it would certainly be more attractive if I could still have an occasional cheeseburger, fries, and a shake. I'm not at all excited about walking around in a white robe with a halo, and sitting at the right hand of God. That would seem like grade school, where the teacher forces the problem students to sit in the front row, subject to closer scrutiny – no fun at all, and what would eternity be without some fun?

Slaughter of the Innocents & Minority Report

Mind reading is possible!
Kathleen Taylor, 15 Dec 2012
Salon
Advances in neuroimaging suggest telepathy could be on the horizon. It's time to consider how we'd use it.

As the details have unfolded in the Sandy Hook (Newtown CT) massacre, it is impossible not to be deeply affected by the horror, seemingly unimaginable but nonetheless all too real. Public reaction has run the gamut of disbelief, sorrow, empathy, and rage. Whenever such an unspeakable crime occurs, there is contentious discussion of how the act could have been prevented. While it is an important aspect to be considered, I will not deal with the gun control issue here.

Rather, I will reach into the future, and think about identifying such mass murderers, before they have ever committed any crime. In the film Minority Report (incidentally based on a story by Philip K Dick), the “precogs” can see into the future (precognition), anticipating crimes, so that the police can arrest the offenders before they actually commit the crime. (Great movie!)

I prefer to imagine that “telepaths” will eventually be able to identify patterns of thought tending toward violence. Such potentially violent individuals could possibly be detained for interrogation. There is great potential for abuse of this talent. Governments, through their police agencies, might compile watch lists. Worse yet, the allegedly prospective offenders might be forced to submit to mandatory “treatment” of various types. It might even involve screening of the entire population. Invasion of privacy? Arguably so. At what price do we prevent mass murder, or murder of any kind? Why not other crimes, such as rape and assault? Or any crime? Who among you has not committed some sort of “thought crime”? Hm. I feel a chill down my spine.

Telepathy might not be technology per se, but I suspect it will come as a result of technological advancement. The downside of possible telepathy abuse is the same as any technology. I do not have any suggestions to prevent such abuse, but I feel relatively certain the capability will eventually be developed, and inevitably abused. Perhaps some uses of telepathy will be considered unethical by the international community, as human cloning is now. But once we have it, how do we control its use? I'm not sure whether I would want this ability or not. Hm. Of course I would. After all, I use my powers only for good.

There is No Such Thing as Coincidence

Ah, the mantra of TV homicide detectives & conspiracy theorists.

The Internet Blowhard’s Favorite Phrase
Daniel Engber, 02 Oct 2012
Slate
Why do people love to say that correlation does not imply causation? “The correlation phrase has become so common and so irritating that a minor backlash has now ensued against the rhetoric if not the concept. No, correlation does not imply causation, but it sure as hell provides a hint.” [italics mine]

The public is quick to blame commercial products and services, when harm is done that seems to “correlate” with use of these products and services. Likewise, the companies involved are quick to invoke the phrase “Correlation does not imply causation!” as loudly and widely as possible. Much to the dismay of the injured, there is a wide spectrum of fault, finely distinguished degrees of responsibility. It requires a preponderance of evidence to establish culpability, i.e. a high degree of correlation between the harm and the product or service. Even then, companies will continue to disavow liability, and aggressively defend themselves against any legal action. Hence, personal injury lawyers.

Many people still deny the existence of global warming, in spite of mounting evidence to the contrary. “Correlation does not imply causation!” One wonders what they will think when baked by the sun, or washed away by the rising tide.

From my science background, I know that finding correlation is an important tool in e.g. theory confirmation. However, the article is arguably correct, that we now have too many correlations from which to choose. Invocation of the phrase can be considered "a tiny fist raised in protest against Big Data”.

 

Death, Near Death, and OBE

When you're dead, you're dead. That's it. – Marlene Dietrich

Is Death Bad for You?
Shelly Kagan, 13 May 2012
The Chronicle of Higher Education: The Chronicle Review
“We all believe that death is bad. But why is death bad?”
[NB: Philosophical discussion -- God, religion, and afterlife are not considered.]

I don't particularly want to die, because I have deep fear that there isn't any form of existence beyond physical death. No more agony, no more ecstasy, no more cheeseburgers. Immortality seems so much more desirable. I'm old enough to feel the looming specter of death, but as soon as I say that, I will probably live another five decades, or more – I hope so! My attitude may come as a disappointment, if not a shock, to some of you. However, I am nonetheless very tolerant and sympathetic towards those who believe in an afterlife. Feel free to pray for me. (No evangelizing!)  You may well be right. If so, I hope there are cheeseburgers in heaven. This article is a philosophical discussion, which assumes up front that there is nothing beyond death. I found the ideas quite insightful.

I was traveling down a corridor, toward a bright light...

Here is a provocative “explanation” that OBEs and NDEs are not actually divine glimpses of heaven and the hereafter. However, the author does allow that hallucinations can be influential in the spiritual lives of people.

Seeing God in the Third Millennium
Oliver Sacks, MD, professor of neurology at NYU School of Medicine.
The Atlantic, 12 Dec 2012
"Hallucinations, whether revelatory or banal, are not of supernatural origin; they are part of the normal range of human consciousness and experience. This is not to say that they cannot play a part in the spiritual life, or have great meaning for an individual. Yet while it is understandable that one might attribute value, ground beliefs, or construct narratives from them, hallucinations cannot provide evidence for the existence of any metaphysical beings or places. They provide evidence only of the brain's power to create them."

Wow, that's two articles arguably anti-religious. God will surely get me for that.

Salvation via Interstellar Diaspora

I have thought a great deal about the future of humanity, and I believe it is critically necessary to establish self-sustaining populations on other planets, first within our solar system, and ultimately throughout the galaxy and universe. We have to get some people off planet Earth, so it's less likely all of us will be lost to a catastrophic extinction. Considering the deplorably ambivalent prevailing public attitude about financially supporting space exploration, I hope there are some visionaries that will persist in this far-reaching effort. The following article deals directly with this theme.

The Kline Directive
Benjamin T. Solomon, 09 Oct 2012 (blog post plus 6 subsequent posts)
lifeboat foundation: safeguarding humanity

Benjamin T Solomon is the author and principal investigator of the 12-year study into the theoretical & technological feasibility of gravitation modification to achieve interstellar travel in our lifetimes. The Lifeboat Foundation is a nonprofit nongovernmental organization dedicated to encouraging scientific advancements while helping humanity survive...

The Kline Directive
If we are to achieve interstellar travel, we have to be bold.
We have to explore what others have not.
We have to seek what others will not.
We have to change what others dare not.

Very poetic and inspiring, but also deadly serious, if you are thinking long term, very long term. This series of blog posts goes into much detail about each aspect related to interplanetary and eventually interstellar travel, including property rights for things like asteroids. The first post gives the overview, and only the hard-core among you will want to suffer the subsequent minutiae. In the past, I have often dreamed of such travel, and felt excitement at the thought of meeting other sapient species, other space-faring extraterrestrial civilizations. Nowadays, I would fear and perhaps ultimately decline such an opportunity, which would probably not occur in my lifetime anyway. Nonetheless, as a human being, I can still hope for the eventual galactic diaspora of mankind.

Crazy Far
To the stars, that is. Will we ever get crazy enough to go?
Tim Folger, Jan 2013
National Geographic – Special Issue:The New Age of Exploration

Once upon a time [1969], NASA proposed to send a dozen astronauts to Mars in two spaceships.  [Wernher von Braun suggested] a departure date of November 12, 1981. [But it never happened...] Why did [a Mars mission] seem more reasonable half a century ago? “Of course we were crazy in a way,” says physicist Freeman Dyson of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. “It would have been enormously risky...We were prepared for that..." These days it’s easier to outline why we’ll never go. Stars are too far away; we don’t have the money. The reasons why we might go anyway are less obvious—but they’re getting stronger...In the conversation of certain dreamer-nerds, especially outside NASA, you can now hear echoes of the old aspiration and adventurousness—of the old craziness for space.

I am without question one of those crazy dreamer-nerds.
Despite my fears, I might even go.

My Youthful Sense of Wonder

Asimov's Foundation novels grounded my economics 
Introduction to new edition of Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy
Paul Krugman [Nobel Prize winning economist], www.guardian.co.uk, 04 Dec 2012

I don't expect many of you will read this article, and that's perfectly OK. For those so inclined, I must warn you, the content is a major plot spoiler. I suspect the author too does not expect all that many people will read it, the interested audience being mostly limited to those who have already read Asimov's trilogy. To quote Krugman, the trilogy “offers a still-inspiring dream of a social science that could save civilisation.”

Incidentally, I detest the spoiler aspect of book introductions, because I almost always try to read them. As soon as I sense that my reading experience is being spoiled, I immediately stop, and proceed directly to the story. I don't know why those introducing books do this, but I can imagine there is not a lot to say without actually discussing the content – a catch 22. Why intros? Publishers love to have a well known, prestigious luminary write an intro, so his name can be included on the cover beside the author's. Thus people who have never heard of the author, but are familiar with the intro writer's name, will be motivated to read (buy!) the book.

The Foundation Trilogy is one of the few science fiction works that, at least for me, tower above the rest. I read it as an early teen, and it  influenced me a great deal. Other novels that have so affected me include Frank Herbert's Dune, William Gibson's Neuromancer, David Gerrold's The Man Who Folded Himself, Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, and Nevil Shute's On the Beach. As I finished each of these books, I exclaimed “Wow!”

One of my correspondents mentioned to me Theodore Sturgeon's provocative novel Venus Plus X. I don't believe I have read it, but that is a rather glaring omission on my part. The Sturgeon short story I would include in my Wow list is -- "If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister?"

Finally, adding to the list after the fact, I would also include Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man, as well as Cordwainer Smith's "Instrumentality of Mankind" stories, particularly "Drunkboat" and "Scanners Live in Vain".  I might be able to think of more, because I have read so much science fiction, but let's just leave it at that.

Red Alert! Shields up!

Here is a fascinating article on how we actually do, as well as how we alternately could and perhaps should, perceive our movement through time.

Welcome to the Future Nauseous
Venkatesh Rao (Venkat), 09 May 2012
ribbonfarm: experiments in refactored perception (blog)

[Teaser] “Both science fiction and futurism seem to miss an important piece of how the future actually turns into the present. They fail to capture the way we don’t seem to notice when the future actually arrives…There is an unexplained cognitive dissonance between changing-reality-as-experienced and change as imagined...There are mechanisms that...prevent us from realizing that the future is actually happening as we speak...The two beaten-to-death ways of understanding this phenomenon are due to McLuhan (“We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.”) and William Gibson (“The future is already here; it is just unevenly distributed.”)...What is missing in both needs a name, so I’ll call the “familiar sense of a static, continuous present” a Manufactured Normalcy Field.”

I am highly resistant to change (nearly infinite ohmage), so I have constructed my normalcy field with a surface tension so taut, it requires a very powerful thrust to penetrate. A “future entity” will slowly but inexorably distend my bubble inward, until I suddenly take notice of the intrusion. At that point, the entity pops through the membrane, into my statically contrived present, and thus into my immediate consciousness. More often than not, I don't initially recognize this entity, which is usually discomfiting, and sometimes terrifying. My pattern-matching subroutines quickly engage the full capacity of my coprocessor, heating it up to the point at which one can smell wood burning.

Just because I may ultimately identify this entity, does not mean I will have adjusted to it.  I sit in my easy chair for a time, furtively glancing at the unwelcome presence, profoundly uncomfortable with the perturbation it has rudely visited upon my fragile emotional equilibrium. You might even say my anxiety produces the nausea mention in the title. Entropy eventually damps the disruption back into a newly balanced state. I can then stop looking at the thing, and get on with my life.

In the article, Venkat deals with the incorporation of such entities into one's normalcy field. However, just because I have been forced to embrace the change, I don't have to like it. Pardon me while I go barf.

 

Many shall Read, but Few shall Understand

If you don't like (or don't understand) erudition (real or feigned), alliteration (consonant or assonant), paronomasia (homonymic or polysemic), or onomatopoeic interjections (germane or gratuitous), then this probably ain't the blog fer you -- I'm just sayin'.

There.  Now that all those dense dullards have departed my domicile dirigible, we can speak seriously, without rude interruptions.

This is an experiment for me, at once bold and intimidating.  In general, I don't particularly like blogs, and I am wary of bloggers, present company excepted.  I don't like to write things that just anybody can read and misinterpret, like the guys who just left the room.  I don't want people to get angry at me for the things I write, because you just never know what an angry person (homicidal or suicidal) will do these days, especially considering the legality of assault weapons and high-capacity clips.

However, for many years, I have been indiscriminately "broadcasting" long letters to my select group of discerning correspondents, letters that would probably be more appropriate as blog entries.  By way of apology, I admit that I am all too well described by the following.

"One of the problems with clever people is that they transport their cleverness around like confetti, to chuck at people whether it's wanted or not." -- Will Davies

I need to extend my conversational colleagues the courtesy of choice in reading my missives, rather than thrusting them unbidden into their in-boxes.  Thus I will announce the existence of this blog, and allow readers to follow it, or not, as they will.

I haven't quite decided yet, whether to open my blog to web indexing and search.  Casting my nets far and wide, into the vast blogosphere, feels a bit like like scooping krill into my gaping baleen maw. Then again, I have not disclosed my true identity herein -- a small but not insignificant level of security.

Despite the fact that I can be gregarious in a milieu of the proper genius loci, when suddenly confronted with a roiling miasma of the ignorant and irate, my comfort level plummets precipitously.  I prefer to converse with calm and collected correspondents -- open-minded, logical, inquisitive, articulate, cosmopolitan, tolerant -- people like you.

Of course, I will preview and screen all comments.  There is a lot to be said for the effective filtration of one's prospective detractors.

If you have read this far, welcome.  I honestly appreciate your interest, and humbly beg your indulgence of my cogitations, compositions, and quixotic conceits.  No further disclaimers or apologies will be forthcoming.