Category: Uncategorised

Stillbirth

verba volant, scripta manent… sanguis fluit

I am not
a failed novelist

I am
a failed poet

When I try
to tell a tale

I fail
to sing a song

It’s not my consolation prize
but a precious realization

The EU has no way to rid itself of a malign, corrupt, incompetent madman, sustained by an evil entourage, who has managed to get himself elected by a minority of deplorables in a gerrymandered electoral system.

The US has no way to rid itself of a malign, corrupt, incompetent moron, sustained by an evil entourage, who has managed to get himself elected by a minority of deplorables in a gerrymandered electoral system.

Autopilot of my soul

One of the most (morbidly) interesting things
about cognitive aging
is that it is not the things you do deliberately
that start,
one by one,
to betray and abandon you:
It’s the things your brain has always done for you automatically,
your autopilot functions
(and there have been so many, you come to discover)
that begin to jump ship,
leaving you more and more on your own,
realizing (too late)
that it’s never been you
doing all these things all along:
they’ve always been done for you.
And now — now — you’re the one
who has to take over.

No, the fear and ambivalence of Hungarian Jewry was not because of 50 years of communism.

My parents left in 1948, when I was three.
I had been baptized in Budapest,
and I didn’t learn that I was jewish till I was nine,
in Montreal.
Other jews of Hungarian origin in Canada did not learn till they were adults
— and some are still in denial to this day.

Nor did it start with the Shoah.

Bigotry, oppression and  pogroms had been ongoing for centuries.

My father converted when he was 19, in 1919,
because of numerus clausus,
changed his name from Hesslein to “Harnad,”
then my mother‘s from (Jüdin) Süss to “Simoni”.
(Nor did it save them from having to go underground with a false identity in 1944.
And forty members of my family on both sides were exterminated.)

No, the fear and ambivalence of Hungarian Jewry was not because of 50 years of communism.

One lifetime in Hungary will do that for you,
or even just its aftermath.

---

Postscript:

Many years ago, in the 1970s, when I lived in Princeton and my brother was visiting, we went to a Hungarian bookstore in nearby New Bunswick (NJ) where there has been a Hungarian emigré community since the early 1900s). We shook hands with the owner, a Mr. Somodi, who immediately began to address us “per du” (tegezés), delighted to hear that Hungarians who had emigrated at a young age so long ago (1949) still spoke Hungarian.

(I remember that in browsing the books that was the first time I came across a book about the Scythian origins of Hungarian…)

Well, we got around to inquiring about Hungarian restaurants in New Brunswick “because there are quite a few Hungarians living in Princeton.”

He asked: “Really? Who are these Hungarians?”

I cited, as an example, Eugene Wigner (Wigner Jenő, a Nobel laureate).

I can still remember Somodi’s words, from 40 years ago (no need to translate them into English):

“Wigner? Hát az nem Magyar, az Zsidó!”

(Enlightened, by inference, about our likely ethnicity, I think he suspended the “per du,” and we suspended our browsing…)

Some interesting features of the “post-truth” time-warp that we’re all finding ourselves in:

1. The web empowers anyone to start rumors.

2. Negative rumors can be started and spread quickly, and can do irreversible damage before they are detected or debunked.

3. Negative rumors (esp. conspiracy theories) are based on simply sowing doubts (like the OJ Simpson dream team’s defence).

4. As nothing is certain other than the provable truths of mathematics and Descartes’ Cogito, everything else is susceptible to negative rumors.

5. Positive evidence takes much more work to adduce.

6. And the general populace is much more susceptible to negative rumors.

It’s a kind of a perverse side-effect of what Karl Popper pointed out about scientific theories: Unlike mathematical theorems, you can never prove they’re true, only that they’re false (with one piece of negative evidence). And evidence is subject to interpretation.

It reminds one also of the malleability and mutability of laws and constitutions: They too depend on interpretation. And interpretation depends on authoritative opinion. And authority is conferred on the basis of… take your pick: popular opinion or authoritarian diktat.

Online-era populism may be the soft underbelly of democracy.

Let’s hope the US labyrinth of checks and balances can weather the post-truth storm. Hungary’s is already a shipwreck.

Reflections (without having read it) on:
Singer, Peter (2017) (ed.) Does Anything Really Matter? Essays on Parfit on Objectivity Oxford.

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“Mattering” is neither a logical nor a scientific matter. In a “zombie” universe — one that is like ours, but in which living organisms do not feel — nothing would matter. What happens to zombies does not matter. (Why would it matter? to whom? to what?)

So it is because organisms feel that things matter in the universe. Let’s simplify what they feel: pleasure and pain.

Suppose there could be a one-sided “pleasure universe”: Organisms do feel, but they only feel pleasure, nothing negative. There can be more pleasure and less pleasure, but feeling less pleasure would not feel “worse.”

In a pleasure-only universe, nothing would matter either. Less versus more pleasure would not matter. It would just be a fact, the way everything in the zombie universe is just a fact, and the way everything that has no effect (now or in future) on feeling organisms in our actual universe is just a fact.

It follows that it is only pain that matters, and the only ethical principle is to minimize pain.

But a complication of “negative utilitarianism” is conflict of interest —in things that matter, hence pain: A benign despot could do the utilitarian calculus and decide mechanically what must live and die in order to minimize overall pain. But individual (sentient) organisms in our world (and perhaps any viable world) — and especially social, altricial mammals — are designed so that their own needs, and the needs of those close to them, usually matter more to them than the overall utilitarian calculus. (There are exceptions.)

Ethics is about that conflict of interest in matters that matter to feeling organisms. A world with only one feeling organism would be a simpler matter.

Harnad, Stevan (2016) My orgasms cannot be traded off against others’ agony. Animal Sentience 7(18)

The parrot rhythm videos all over youtube are funny, sort of, and interesting.

Probably our common origins in big-beat rhythm entrainment (though no idea why: possibly courtship display? some sort of social contagion? doesn’t look like aggressivity).

Interesting that it’s shown by the only other species that can imitate speech. Would they do it with a rhythmic visual stimulus alone?

Reminds me vaguely of the (vaguely repulsive) baby rhythm videos (which put me off partly because of the vulgar adult movements in the toddlers and partly because of the vulgar music)

I wonder if parrots also imitate movement?

(Maybe it’s just me, but something feels non-innocent in videos like these, something reminiscent of circus-display on-cue: the kind of music, the kind of movement, the kind of people. Maybe I’m just post-april-fools-day-pausal today… but I much prefer to see tenderness, empathy, tentativeness, and, yes, respect, toward animals, and especially captive ones. Ditto for babies.)

As a scientist and fellow-vegan, I agree that doctors as individuals should be allowed to opt out of administering euthanasia if it goes against their conscience and that patients should be allowed to choose their doctor. Doctors are not obliged to perform abortions, and patients can choose a doctor who does (or doesn’t). But as surely as doctors should be free to decline to end sentient life if they wish, patients should be free to end their suffering if they wish. Vegans are against causing suffering and against ending life, but life is such that sometimes the two are in opposition. And personal belief in an afterlife is no excuse for imposing one’s hypothesis on others.

Q1
M. Coderre, vous avez répondu à plusieurs reprises qu’il y des différences d’opinion concernant le rodéo.

Et bien oui, il y a l’opinion des experts, des spectateurs et des victimes.

LES EXPERTS

Nous savons tous qu’on peut toujours trouver des « experts » qui témoigneront pour ou contre quoi que ce soit: comme les médecins engagés par l’industrie du tabac qui plaideront que les cigarettes ne posent aucun risque aux poumons. Vous dites qu’il y a des différences d’opinion experte concernant les risques du rodéo: Mais l’Association canadienne des médecins vétérinaires s’oppose officiellement aux rodéos.

LES VICTIMES

Contrairement aux fumeurs qui décident de faire face aux risques du tabagisme, ou aux cowboys qui décident de faire face aux risques du « concours » au rodéo — les animaux n’ont aucun choixIls n’ont pas voulu le « concours ». Ils ne comprennent pas, Ils sont dans un état de terreur le long du « divertissement ».

LES SPECTATEURS

Pour les humains, le rodéo n’est qu’un divertissement. Pour les victimes,
c’est de la souffrance, gratuite, qui leur est infligée pour plaire aux goûts des spectateurs, des cowboys
et de l’industrie du rodéo. C’est un « sport » sanguinaire, comme jadis les combats entre gladiateurs.
Vous dites que les spectateurs qui n’ont pas le goût pour les dégâts peuvent rester chez eux. Est-ce que les victimes involontaires, elles, peuvent aussi rester chez elles?

M. le maire, est-ce que vous croyez vraiment
que tout ça n’est rien qu’une question d’opinion?

Q2

Et si c’est une question d’opinion, qu’en est-il de l’opinion des citoyens de Montréal? Ne faudrait-il pas permettre aux citoyens de signaller dans un référendum s’ils trouvent ça décent et digne d’importer un sport sanguinaire pour fêter le 375-ieme anniversaire de la ville de Montréal plutôt que de la ville de Calgary, avec sa tradition honteuse de sports sanguinaires?

Le point pertinent est que le fait de nuire aux animaux pour le divertissement est contraire à la loi au Québec. Un rodéo est un divertissement, pas même une foire agroalimentaire: *Le rodéo de Montréal doit être contesté en cour, rapidement.* Coderre le fait pour le tourisme. Il cite des opinions biaisées (la société des rodéos ainsi que leurs vétérinaires embauchés); il ignore l’opinion vétérinaire non biaisée, il répète sans cesse qu’il a été “assuré” que les animaux n’ont aucun risque de mal, et que tout est fait avec «respect». Le reste, dit-il, n’est que des différences d’opinion et de goût. Ceux qui ne l’aiment pas ont le choix de ne pas y assister. Cette politiquen est extrêmement biaisée, inclément et même cynique. LES VICTIMES ANIMAUX N’ONT PAS DE CHOIX. ET IL CE N’EST PAS UNE QUESTION DE “OPINION ET GOUT” DE DEMANDER SI ON DOIT POUVOIR LES ENDOMMAGER POUR LE DIVERTISSEMENT. Il doit y avoir (1) une contestation judiciaire (la loi provinciale et fédérale l’emporte sur les décisions municipales) (2) un référendum public, et (3) une pression publique impérieuse et la pression de la presse. La réponse de Coderre/Samson est, à maintes reprises, mécaniquement “Our mind’s mind up; don’t try to confuse us with facts.” Ils peuvent ne pas nous écouter, mais ils vont écouter le public, la presse et les tribunaux.

The relevant point is that harming animals for entertainment is against the law in Quebec. A rodeo is entertainment, not even an Agribusiness Fair: *The Montreal rodeo needs to be challenged in court, quickly.* Coderre is doing it for tourism. He cites biassed opinions (rodeo business and their hired veterinarians), ignores unbiassed veterinary opinion, keeps repeating that he has been “assured” that the animals are at no risk of harm, and that it is all done with “respect.” The rest, he says, is just differences in opinion and taste. Those who don’t like it have the choice not to attend. The position is extremely biassed, heartless and even cynical. THE ANIMAL VICTIMS HAVE NO CHOICE. AND IT IS NOT A QUESTION OF “OPINION AND TASTE” WHETHER IT IS RIGHT TO HARM THEM FOR ENTERTAINMENT. There must be (1) a legal challenge (provincial and federal law supersedes municipal policy decisions) (2) a public referendum, and (3) relentless public and press pressure. Coderre/Samson’s response is, repeatedly, mechanically “Our mind’s mind up; don’t try to confuse us with facts.” They may not heed us, but they will heed the public, the press, and the courts.

(Hommage to Archibald McLeish and Walt Whitman)

Verba Volant

A verse need not mean
But be,

Its song climbing skyward
On sound —

Its symbols allusive,
Not true.

*

Yet its words,
The reverse,

They cannot, too,
Hang there sky-borne
Suspended in time —

No, to mean
Words still need

To touch down
Palpably

On the ground.

Poets may gainsay themselves;
Words may not.