Month: January 2019

The young
think they seek it
but just for their own,
like the drunk and the lamp-post.
The key lies elsewhere.

If you and yours
are fed and sheltered,
safe and hale,
the meaning of life
— yes, life, yes, meaning —
is helping those who are not.I

Nor are the “those”
just kin and kind.
All living creatures who feel
can be hurt.
And most are;
and mostly by our kin and kind.

Nor is “do no harm”
enough,
for not-doing
is doing too.

There is not a monstrosity
we inflict on other kinds
that we do not inflict on our own.

But on our own,
we condemn it,
we’ve outlawed it,
and most of us
would never commit it.

Yet on the other kinds
we don’t just permit it
but most of us support it,
collaborate in it,
profit from it.

If the Golden Rule
that

It is as if OJ Simpson’s Dream Team were now ruling an entire nation. Quis custodiet? Not the populace. Not the EU. Hungary is not a rudderless ship: It is the unchallenged fiefdom of a sociopathic gangster. The democratic world needs to figure out — and put into practise — all means of constraining and combatting this potentially fatal exploitation of the vulnerabilities of democracy itself by rogue regimes. For the Orban phenotype is anything but rare among would-be power brokers. (There’s a homologue in the White House.) Once they discover that the democratic world lacks — or lacks the will to use — the means to protect itself, the Orbans and Trumps will sprout like toadstools all over the planet; the defeat of the CEU, and of the heroic efforts of its founder to make and keep society open, democratic, and free will be the historic harbinger of the triumph of the toadstools — if anyone is still doing history in the new Dark Ages…

About my interruptive/interactive quote/comment compulsion: Yes, it is treating a written text as a real-time conversation (in which you don’t normally hear the end till you reach the end).

Some (many) mea-culpas: Even in real oral conversations, I tend to interrupt before the person gets to finish, sometimes because I have already anticipated the finish or think I have (I’m of course sometimes/often wrong) and sometimes because I’m just impatient to reply (often because I’m afraid I’ll forget otherwise).

In my defence, on my own end, I don’t much speechify; I say my bit with minimal words, so as not to subject the other party to the kind of frustration I feel when someone is being long-winded. (I stop reading novels as well as monographs, too, when it’s obvious (or so I think) where they’re going, and it’s just words).

I think my interruptingness is also related in some way to my indiscretion, my saying things I shouldn’t say, divulging secrets, partly even a Trumpian hyperbole, stating things that I conjecture or wish were so as if they were fact. There is a definite impulsive/compulsive component to these ejaculations.

And of course the failure of open access and skywriting, which was specifically motivated by my belief that everyone was inclined and inspired to real-time interactivity, as I was — but instead turned out to be an olympic event at which I perhaps excelled but for which no one but me had any interest or appetite!

I tell it (or perhaps rationalize it) all here:

Harnad, S. (2003/2004) Back to the Oral Tradition Through Skywriting at the Speed of Thought. Interdisciplines.

(It’s against my nature, having said all this, to refer anyone to chapter-and-verse instead of just restating it simply and compactly on the spot, so I’ll say it: I thought the human brain (and thinking itself) evolved language for real-time, “online” exchanges at the speed of thought, not for the long, offline monologues that later supplemented it across time, space, and generations, in the form of writing and print.)

But it was just a fantasy, based on a compulsive quirk of mine.

‘Nuff said. Since then I have learned what I knew (as we all know) already, but had ducked for 50 years: It’s not about me (unlike this bit of self-indulgent self-flagellation).

Amia Srinavasan‘s critique of “Doing Good Better: Effective Altruism and a Radical New Way to Make a Difference” by William MacAskill
is excellent, pointing out how much Effective Altruism (EA) simply takes for granted (e.g., capitalism itself, and the status quo).

But the worst is that EA is psychopathic — as psychopathic as Darwinian evolution itself: Evolution’s sole criterion is maximizing (“satisficing,” really) net survival and reproduction, and EA utilitarianism’s sole criterion is maximizing net utility. Both turn a blind, “rational” eye on collateral damage, including proximal collateral damage.

That’s not morality, it’s mathematics. And treating emotion as if it were just a vice or a distraction is not a virtue. In fact, it was (ironically) Darwinian evolution itself (the origin of sentience, hence suffering, hence all moral problems) that implanted empathy and compassion in mammals and birds (at least), probably in the adaptive service of reproductive success (in altricial K-selected species, at least, of which we are one). Without those traits we’d all be psychopaths (as r-selected, precocial species may be).

In the trolley problem, any mother who would not flip the switch to save her own child rather than another’s would be a psychopath. If it was for the sake of saving two children of another instead of her own child that she failed to flip the switch then she’d be an EA utilitarian — and a psychopath.

Altruism needs to be compassionate, not just “effective.” And charity begins at home (or it never begins at all). Nor would an uncharitable world be a hospitable one to live in: It would be rather like a zombie world. Surely an (emotionally!) weighted combination of EA and proximal compassion would be better than EA alone.

The other-minds problem

is the other mind’s problem

if you decide it doesn’t have a mind

and it does.

And it’s YOUR problem

if you are the other mind…

Other species

Like our feces

Montréalais et Montréalaises:
voulez-vous un RODÉO à MONTRÉAL
ANNÉE après ANNÉE?

Montrealers
Do you want a RODEO in MONTREAL
YEAR after YEAR?

Alors que plusieurs villes et États dans le monde bannissent le rodéo en raison de la souffrance animale qui en résulte, se tiendra à Montréal, dans deux semaines, la « première édition » du nouveau rodéo urbain destinée à souligner le 375ème anniversaire de la ville…

§§§ While several cities and states worldwide are outlawing rodeos because of the suffering they cause, in Montreal, in two weeks, there will be the “first edition” of a new “urban rodeo” to celebrate the city’s 375th anniversary…

La réputation globale de Montréal en matière de bien-être animal s’en trouvera assurément entachée.

Montreal’s global reputation in matters of animal well-being will certainly find itself stained…

Visiblement, le maire de Montréal ne s’en formalise pas :

Obviously the mayor of Montreal has no problem with this (video is in French):

Et qu’un cheval meurt lors d’une épreuve de monte extrême du même fournisseur de rodéos (St-Tite) trois mois avant son « rodéo urbain » ne le perturbe aucunement…

And the fact that a horse dies in a bronco-riding trial from the same rodeo producer (St-Tite) three months before his “urbain rodeo” does not trouble him either…

Grady, 6 ans, s’est fracturé la colonne vertébrale en raison d’une « zone de faiblesse » qui n’a pas été détectée au préalable, malgré les précautions que disent prendre les vétérinaires mandatés par le Rodéo de St-Tite. Si Grady n’avait pas été soumis au rodéo, il serait encore en vie aujourd’hui.

Grady, age six, broke his back because of a “weak area of his spine” which was not detected in advance, despite all the precautions that the St-Tite Rodeo’s veterinarians boast of taking: If he had not been forced to perform in rodeos, Grady would still be alive today.

NOUS AVONS BESOIN DE VOUS pour ramener le maire Coderre à la raison — en démontrant que le rodéo est insoutenable et illégal !
Merci de soutenir notre campagne de financement (voir ci-dessous)

WE NEED YOU to bring mayor Coderre back to reason — by proving the rodeo is untenable and illegal !
Thank you for supporting our funding campaign (see below)

Dear Sue & Will,

It was good to see you again at Fauna yesterday.

I just wanted to summarize the observations I made during the question session.

(1) I think you’re absolutely right that although consciousness seems to be increasing, the absolute number of animals beings needlessly hurt and killed is growing even faster (as is the human population).

(2) You are also right that the average half-life of vegan diets is about 3 months. Nevertheless, across the years, and even if we count only those who have been vegans for over a year, or even over 5 years, both their relative and their absolute numbers are growing. This does not negate (1), above, but I think it is some (slim) evidence that the animal rights movement is not a complete failure.

(3) But it is (1) that matters, and you are right that more strategies are needed so the problem stops growing and instead begins actually shrinking.

(4) On the citizenship strategy, which I certainly hope works, I have four thoughts:

(4a) I cannot see how the “sovereign nations” metaphor for wildlife living on their (shrinking) ancestral territory is likely to be more effective than the (unsuccessful) appeals against encroachment and on behalf of the protection of wildlife, either natural or endangered.

(4b) I also cannot see how the “denizen” metaphor for urban wildlife is likely to be more effective than the (unsuccessful) appeals for citizens to be kind to urban wildlife.

(4c) That leaves the “co-citizen” model for animals selectively bred and used by humans for meat, dairy, eggs, fish, fur, wool, service, pets and entertainment. Your proposal is to integrate them into human society as citizens with complementary rights and responsibilities. But the only species for which that model seems to have some potential is dogs, who have been selectively bred for a social dependency on humans. For all other domesticated species, the humane solution is surely to stop breeding them. And in view of the enormous risk of “collateral damage” to subsequent generations, I think that’s the humane solution for dogs too. Local humane solutions don’t scale, any more than humane dairy or oviulture scales. And I think the natural breeding “rights” of human-bred species pale beside the risks and suffering that indulging them would entail.

You suggested that the minimal success of the animal-rights strategy was because of its focus on diminishing and abolishing animal suffering, rather than a more positive incentive. But diminishing and abolishing animal suffering is not just a strategy: it is the goal. I son’t think we have gone anywhere near as far as it would be possible to go to sensitize the human population to animal suffering That appeal to human empathy is still, I think, by far the most promising path toward putting an end to the unspeakable horrors, about most of which most people are still not even faintly aware.

If Peter Singer did not succeed in solving the problem, he certainly helped increase awareness of it. I think you, Sue and Will, are also doing so; history will remember you for it, and the escape of future victims from the monstrous annual fate of today’s trillions of sentient creatures, once it comes, will also be due in part to your influential efforts.

Best wishes,

Stevan

Relatively speaking, decency is increasing (or deplorability is decreasing) (as Steve Pinker has noted) in the human population.

But alas the human population itself is increasing still faster, and with it the absolute amount of agony we are wreaking.

Otherwise put, we are (so far) becoming bigger faster than we are becoming better.

No solace for those being crushed under our collateral-damage footprint; not even when the only victims left on the planet will be the ones we purpose-breed, all the rest spared their fate only because we have exterminated them.

But the Trumps of this world — rich and poor — sleep soundly, whilst their own tomorrow is still well within sight…

As to climate-change-complacency:

A Chernobylesque comeback
millennia after the Fall
is hardly a consummation
devoutly to be desired
(other than by the daftly devout).

[Exchange excerpted from Professor Éva Balogh’s Hungarian Spectrum]

Stevan Harnad [To Istvan, a retired US army officer residing in Chicago area]: “Istvan, Do you think there is the sense and the resolve to defy the “commander-in-chief” if he decides to fritter us away with the codes?”

Istvan: “Boy that is a complex question Stevan. This will not be short: Every US officer swears alligence to the Constitution of the United States, not to the president. We are commissioned by Congress and formally our names are read into the Congressional record. However, if Trump ordered an attack on North Korea, arguing that it was preemptive to a launch by the North Koreans, our military would obey that directive, in my opinion.

“I think every officer is aware of what is called the National Command Authority (NCA) that allows Trump to direct the use of nuclear weapons by U.S. armed forces, including the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP). But the Secretary of Defense is required to confirm that a nuclear strike is warranted. I believe that if President Trump used a false claim of an imminent attack by North Korea, General Mattis, the Secretary of Defense, would not confirm. Trump would then have to fire Mattis and ask the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Global Strategic Affairs to confirm the order and my guess is that the Assistant Secretary would also refuse to order a launch against N Korea in the situation of a false claim by Trump of an impending attack.

“A constitutional crisis would ensue in that situation, and many bad things would happen, I would suspect. If Trump in that scenario tried to impose martial law and take direct control of the military, I do not believe the officer corps would obey him. National martial law was found to be unconstitutional in 1863 and it can only be imposed in specific geographical areas. Therefore as officers sworn to alligence to the Constitution they should not obey any such proclamation by a President. By law, there is a small check on the power of a mad President to launch a nuclear attack. Honestly I don’t think Trump is crazy enough to try to start a nuclear war based on a lie, but he has exhibited that he is mentally unstable and I am sure General Mattis has noticed that too.”