Monsters don’t exist

Growing up, I remember hearing lots of stories about monsters. From monsters that live in the mirror and are summoned by chants to monsters who stray outside kids’ windows to that punk who lives way up north who will give you coal for Christmas if you’re bad.

With monsters, there’s always some contract that you’re under, and if you break it, you get punished. Sometimes monsters reward you for not breaking the contract (Santa brings you gifts if you’re good!), but most of the time they’re more rooted in fear than reward.

Some time in our maturation there’s an awakening, where we realize that there are no monsters. We realize that saying “bloody mary” in the mirror 3, 5, or 127 times yields the same result – wasted time in front of the mirror. We learn that the dark isn’t something to be afraid of, and that it only means there isn’t as much light to reveal the furniture about to bruise your knee. And we learn that our parents, not Santa, are responsible for the shower of gifts we (hopefully) receive during Christmas, despite our terrible behavior.

Some people don’t get rid of monsters entirely. In an anecdote sure to get me in trouble, my wife is still terrified of a certain movie about a guy who comes out of mirrors, and she’s terrified of the dark. I have friends who think there’s a devil who’s trying to make them do bad things. I’ve even got family members who think that alternative medicine is the true way to health, and that “the big pharma” are trying to hide promising health care options.

Monsters aren’t entirely obvious, and human thinking lends itself to believing in them. From Big Foot to Santa to the Lochness Monster to Intelligent Design, people want to believe things there’s no evidence for. It’s not easy to give those things up. It requires a different kind of thinking.

It’s called skepticism. It means that you question statements put in front of you, not to be rude or an ass, but to be sure that the truth is what permeates your conversations and the decisions you make. It’s accomplished by asking questions, requiring evidence before believing, and basing your arguments in sound logic.

Skepticism needs to be taught. Ideally, it’s learned in science classes, but I know that I didn’t really realize what it meant to question things until after high school. Lots of people older than me still don’t know what it means.

The opposite of skepticism is faith. Faith requires that you accept something without thinking through the contradictions and questions. Faith leads you to fear mirrors, think there’s a guy up sitting on the clouds listening to your thoughts, and can be used to justify killing innocents. Monsters live in faith.

The brilliance behind skepticism and asking questions is that monsters die out really quickly. They’re not made to withstand questioning. Acupuncture, Big Foot, Colt McCoy’s talent, mirror monsters, intelligent design, whatever god you choose, they don’t last. There’s a great reason that they’re found to be inconsistent when evaluated by reason: they’re not real, so they’re naturally paradoxical.

Try it out. Think about the assumptions you make and base your life on. Then ask, “why should I believe this? Where’s the evidence?” See if it changes your daily approach.

Quick Test

This is really just for a product I work on. This post doesn’t really need to be seen, and it’ll get deleted soon after trying something in production mode.

How Texas chooses its running backs…

In the back of the UT locker room, 4 guys sit at a table with Cheetohs and most are drinking water. One is drinking Sunny D.

Vondrell McGee: “Ok, one more game, then I really want to go lift.”

Colt McCoy: “Wussy. You’re just mad because I have a better understanding of the game than you.”

Foswhitt Whittaker: “Dude, we’re playing –”

McCoy: “I’m the STARTING QUARTERBACK of TEXAS. I’m practically Heisman gold, so don’t feel bad. There’s a lot of work that goes into all of this.”

Chris Ogbonnaya: “We know, Colt. We know.”

McCoy: “Look, you guys shouldn’t even pretend that you’re letting me win. It’s clear that I know everything about this. Remember that time I read zone coverage on the corner blitz against Ohio State?”

Whittaker: “Didn’t you throw a pick that play?”

McCoy: “NOT IMPORTANT. What’s important is I read the play, just like I’m reading how to beat you guys right now. And this time I get to be red.”

Ogbonnaya: “You’re always red. You’re red right now.”

McCoy: “NOT IMPORTANT. I GET TO BE RED. I’M THE STARTING QUARTERBACK FOR THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS.”

[After a McCoy blowout, where he slams both hands against the tail of the hippo while everybody else sees how rhythmically they can tap it with their pinkie and dream about playing next to a legitimate quarterback.]

McCoy: “Hah you wussies. I told you I’m the best.”

Ogbonnaya: “Alright, that’s it. Now let’s go do something productive.”

McCoy: “SHUTUP OGBIE. This is productive, it’s letting me determine who will stand by me the best.”

Whittaker: “This is bullshi-”

McCoy: “FUDGE YOU WHITTAKER. I’m the STARTING QUARTERBACK OF THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS. I could get any girl I wanted, and some guys too, as soon as I sexually mature. See this facial hair? THIS SCREAMS HEISMAN.”

McGee, remaining quiet during this episode, has been selected as the starter.

Lol, Texas.

New Color, New Craziness

Note that craziness doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll be permanently changing the way titles are capitalized. I just thought it was appropriate in this case to capitalize every word.

So with that said, I think I’m going to be focusing more on troll-ish (though not hateful) posts. Satire, humor, etc a little more, and a little less ranting. Mostly because it’s a lot more fun to write, and I need practice because I’m not funny*.

So good luck with that. We’ll see what comes out of here. I’d also like to introduce at least once a week a tech post, because, you know, that’s kind of what I do. A lot. Daily, even. Sometimes more.**

Also, I’ve gone from categories just to tags. My ghetto WordPress install doesn’t recommend tags based on what I type, so I have no idea what my tag cloud (the new guy, on the right) is going to look like. Right now it looks like I talk about religion a bit. I probably won’t stop that, though who knows, maybe I’ll get a guest blogger who’s a pastor***.

*Yes I am.

**Varied sentence structure not guaranteed

***Me, impersonating a pastor.

9 Truths

So a few folks I follow got an urge to write 100-random-things blog posts. More specifically, @stinkle and @vanweezy. While entertaining, thinking about 100 things to write about me would be painful. Instead, I’m offering lucky readers 9 absolute truths.

Questioning these is along the same lines of questioning the sum of 2 and 2, in base 10 (technically the base shouldn’t make a difference, but just to make sure everybody’s talking about the same thing, I thought I’d throw that in.) Without further adieu, here are 9 absolute truths that you can bet your car or kid or 6 houses on. I went with 9 because top 10 lists are everywhere and top 100 lists are (as my wife can testify to) hard.

1. Golf is not a sport; it’s self gratifying stupidity set to the tune of hot-as-hell and 15 year old cart girls offering luke warm beer every 3 holes, or 2 hours, whichever comes first. Don’t get in to golf, it makes no sense. You’d be better off (and would have more bragging rights) getting into the whole Fight Club acid on the hand deal. Chicks dig scars, right?
2. Twitter is the best communication protocol. Ever. It’s succinct, encourages collaboration, and is available through several mediums. There’s no censorship, and there’s built in whitelisting. Also, the downtime boosts productivity by giving everyone “me-time.” My bitching skills have gone up 30 points from the day I found Twitter, btw.
3. Sleeping in the shower improves eyesight, stamina, focus, fertility, and reverses baldness. That’s why I do it at least every other day.
4. I grill better than you.
5. Apple computers last longer, are prettier, are faster, and have better built in vim support than piece of crap Windows machines. Linux doesn’t count as an operating system or a computer type. I can get away with this because (1) Windows users probably had IE crash on them while trying to respond to this post, and (2) Linux users are too impatient to get over their ghetto browser and use something that can skirt CAPTCHAs (I know, I don’t have CAPTCHAs, but it’s hyperbole).
6. HDDVD has significantly better quality than old school DVDs, and I’m glad I have a collection.
7. To make everyone leave your house with minimal effort, put ramen noodles in a bowl sans water and microwave for 3 minutes.
8. Buffalo wings improve eyesight, stamina, focus, fertility, and reverse baldness. I used to eat them every Tuesday, but soon I’m going to eat them every night when Buffalo Wild Wings opens up in Cedar Park. Also, BONUS SUB-TRUTH: BWW is better than Plucker’s.
9. Boston sports fans are good people except during baseball, football, and basketball seasons; during those times they turn into self-righteous indignant douches who need persistent and outright head slapping by SEC badasses named Manning.

New Look

I decided to re-style the blog real quick, because the dark background had been causing lots of problems. It was also fixed-width, which was annoying when pasting big chunks of code.

Anyways, it’s prettier now. Even though Sara says “it looks like a 5th grader did it.”

Week 1 good game prospects

So, while every week I want to see Crabtree and company pwn their opponents, there’s usually some other games that I’m excited about watching. To be honest, I’m just stoked that football is going to be back on TV and I don’t have to settle for basketball (ugh) or stories about Farve.

That said, here’s the games I’m excited about in week 1:

• USC @ UVA – This one will be good for a few reasons. We’ll get to see if UVA can get anywhere near its last season form (where it choked against Tech in the Gator Bowl) without Chris Long. It’ll also be interesting to see how USC’s offense is going to run. They have lots of good running backs, but they haven’t had a bona fide stud since 2005. On top of that, their starting quarterback is not likely to play, meaning probably Mitch Mustain (transfer from Arkansas) is going to play.
• Utah @ Michigan – I’m excited about this only because Utah is usually a strong mid-major team and Michigan lost their season opener last year to Appalachian State. Utah is way better than App St. Lol, Michigan.
• Illinois @ Mizzou – It’s the only matchup I saw of two top 25 teams, and I hate Mizzou. Ron Zook has done a lot of good things for the Illini, and I’m hoping he adds a dead Chase Daniel to his belt. Zook ‘Em!
• Tennessee @ UCLA – This is only exciting because it happens on a Monday night. If MNF is on (I haven’t look at a schedule, I’m not that into the NFL), I’ll watch that over this matchup. Pac-10 teams not named USC don’t compete well against the SEC.

College Pick ‘Em

I generally set one of these up every year.

I used to run my own pickem site, but it turns out choosing the games and making sure everything is screen scraped off Yahoo got a little tedious, so now I just use Yahoo’s.

If you’re interested, shoot me an email or leave a comment and I’ll see that you’re invited.

Wreck ‘em Tech!

Euww a robot… Kill it!

The line of reasoning and questioning goes something like this:

• Moore’s law doesn’t show any sign of failing, causing computer power to double every 18 months.
• This is exponential growth.
• With that in mind, it’s entirely feasible that within the next few decades we have machines that think.
• Thinking could lead to emotions.
• If a robot thinks and has emotions, what happens when you pull the plug?

It’s a question that people can dismiss pretty easily right now, but what separates us from machines right now? The will to live? An ability to reproduce? Thinking? Emotions?

What if we made a robot that could do all of those things? Would it running out of batteries constitute dying? Would it just stop thinking when it was turned off, or would it go into some robot afterlife?

While it’s unquestionably a long time before those questions will require answers, it’s closer than you think.

I’ve read that this line of questioning alone has caused people to rethink their place in the scheme of things, and whether or not there’s an afterlife. I think that as soon as you can accept that we’re not on a throne, but rather a product of a several hundred million year arms race, it seems both amazing that we can even conceive the idea of a robot that acts like a person, and that there’s no need for an afterlife.

Isolationism makes you stupid

There’s examples all over the place of isolationism running rampant. From Lou Dobbs whining about illegal immigrants taking jobs to fellow parents talking about homeschooling their kids to religious people getting visibly annoyed when they’re questioned. While the actors in those examples are different, the central tenet is the same: new ideas are scary.

This is a terrible approach, and in my experience leads to slower development. America seemed to develop quickly (relatively) among other countries in the world. This can be attributed to a few things, each of which helps ideas mature and develop faster, like the first amendment and welcoming immigration policies. We welcomed people escaping religious persecution and promised poor people a new life upon arrival. This led to a healthy growth in our population and introduced lots of great ideas to our culture.

Lou Dobbs bitching about immigration drives me crazy largely because he’s crying about competition. Competition makes life harder, sure, but it also leads to improvements in the quality of products and jobs. Two hundred years ago, we were farming wheat fields by hand. Then came scythes, and eventually came machines. Now a single farmer can harvest huge fields each season, and the world’s the better for it.

Homeschooling is another example of isolationism. I don’t have any real data, largely because I’m lazy and it wasn’t in the top 5 google responses, but the people I’ve known who were homeschooled were fairly religious. And by “fairly” I mean “they thought Jesus talked to them.” Which is a lot. Anyways, the impetus behind the religious homeschooling their kids is to avoid those nasty detractors and mean kids at public school – somehow ignorant that they’re going to show up as soon as the kid goes out in public. Sure, kids can be meaner than others, but really, the overall impact is usually a lot smaller for what kids do to each other. Little Johnny might call you a douche, but Big Johnny will get you fired.

I’ve brought up religious paradoxes to people I know, usually not provoked (except to my wife, sorry about that), and it’s pretty clear it bothers them. The whole notion that someone could question their ideas seems wrong, and they act in ways to avoid it or confront it so forcefully that it doesn’t happen again.

Clearly, in all of these cases, taking a different stance has the potential to significantly improve our culture/country/life/etc. If more people thoroughly questioned their religious beliefs, they’d be less likely to say things like “you took a cracker from our church, and threatened to desecrate it. Therefore, I should bomb your house.”

If parents decided that, though it’s painful, subjecting their kids to foreign ideas at a younger age than, say, 20, is a good idea, we’d have more developed kids. This wouldn’t prevent atrocities like the Columbine or Virginia Tech shootings, but it would provide a better foundation for kids to be more accepting of other cultures and social norms.

If Lou Dobbs wasn’t ugly, CNN wouldn’t suck so much. But also, if workers started to embrace competition and instead of turning to the government to protect their jobs, asked for the government to create new jobs, or worked to get better at their existing jobs or introduce new technologies, we’d have a more exciting and creative economy going.

Societies that have flourished and conquered, either through might or money, have encouraged a marketplace of ideas. Rome was the first, and the US is the most recent. Blind, uncompromising nationalism and religion run counter to an open dialogue in a society, and accordingly their actors should be rebuked when discouraging discourse.