Boycott Bailoutees

For my part, I refuse to do business with any company that asks the taxpayer to bail their sorry behinds out. In our family we have canceled our Citibank credit cards and I will not buy a vehicle from Chrysler or GM. If they go begging to the hardworking productive people of this country, rather than using chapter 11 to force the unions to be responsible, then the people should respond by wiping them out. Chapter 11 is a perfectly fine bailout, use it or die. Clearly, Congress will not do the right thing.

Chicken Little's Tough Sell

Roy Spencer posts updates of global satellite based temperatures. Due to the fact that these records began in 1979, which followed forty years of cooling from the 30s to the 70s, the baseline or zero point is lower than if the record extended back to the 30s. Even so, it is difficult to find cause for alarm here. The new bubble to burst, following the dot.com, the subprime, and the looming dollar bust, may be the alternative energy bust, as investors see CO2 as a fading threat and reverse their investment in green energy, and their support for taxpayer subsidies of green energy.

Socializing Home Ownership

The current stock market crash is yet another demonstration that socialism doesn't work. It is rooted in the long building and recently accelerated attempts by Democrats in Congress to socialize home ownership. They did this by forcing banks to provide subprime mortgages (ACORN, community reinvestment act, anti-redlining), and by transferring the resulting risk onto the taxpayer using Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's implied government backing (Barney Frank, Dodd, Johnson, Raines, Gorelick, Obama). Banks discovered that Fan/Fred would buy subprimes thus burying the risk and "laundering" the securitized mortgages. The govt. licensed credit rating agencies (S&P, Moody's) cooperated with AAA ratings! Wall street was thus protected from the risk and went on a feeding frenzy of MBS, and derivatives trading. As always happens with socialism, somebody eventually has to pay the piper. That somebody is the taxpayer. This is short term compassion causing long term pain, sort of like feeding the seed corn to a hungry child, thus dooming the entire village, or paying tribute to pirates.

Now, of course, the Obama Democrats try to blame Bush despite the fact that he tried for his entire administration to rein in the excesses of Fan/Fred but was blocked by the Obama Democrats.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/09/20080919-15.html
A long list of people saw this coming.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121599777668249845.html?mod=article-outset-box

The quickest way to turn this mess into a severe depression would be to raise taxes, restrict free trade, suppress competition, and socialize home ownership and health care. Obama's policies are exactly the way to cause this perfect storm.

Palin-Jindal, 2009

Let's see. How could this happen?

Refundable Tax Credits

If a person has a $1000 tax liability but qualifies for a $1000 tax credit, we could probably agree that the net tax take by government is zero. But if person A has a $1000 tax liability and person B, who owes no tax, qualifies for a refundable tax credit of $1000, what is the net tax take by government? In other words, can a politician credibly claim that wealth redistribution is possible without taxation? Obama claims that his economic proposals would result in a total net tax take of 18.2% of GDP. This is a very reasonable number and is close to the average since WWII. How does he get this number? He gets it by considering refundable tax credits to be subtractions from the tax! Taking $1000 from person A and giving it to person B as a refundable tax credit results in a net tax of zero! It should be accounted for as $1000 in tax receipts and $1000 in welfare spending. With this brilliant accounting tool at his disposal, Obama wants to fund all sorts of social welfare with the magic of refundable tax credits. College tuition, mortgage assistance, health insurance premiums, saving incentives, child care, earned income, are all on his list for refundable tax credits. When he increases these credits which he subtracts from the net tax take, he declares it a tax cut! He ignores the negative effect that the tax on person A has on the unemployment rate, because, after subtracting the refund, it didn't happen! Are the American voters stupid enough to go to the polls without getting this?

Sustainable Yada

The only thing sustainable is adaptation.
Transparency is the best regulation.
If you overtax the most productive, they will fire the less productive.

Carbon Dioxide & Temperature

Here is a graph covering the last 600 million years that I find interesting. If the climate reacts to CO2 with positive feedback, why didn't it superheat when CO2 was as much as 20 times current levels back in the Cambrian or 6 times current levels during the Jurassic? Current CO2 (350ppm) is lower than for most of earth's history. And we are in a general ice age climate unlike most of earth's history. How can one look at this graph and believe the current global climate computer models? Is this graph wrong, or are the computer simulations wrong? I question the global climate models that can't explain the temperature decline from the 1930s to 1970s.

Ash-throated Flycatchers

Our birdhouses were very successful this year. Western Bluebirds and Ash-throated Flycatchers are currently raising their young in our birdhouses. Here an Ash-throated Flycatcher brings home the bacon.

Bluebirds and Kingsnakes

I like birds so I build houses hoping to attract Western Bluebirds. This year we succeeded in attracting a nesting pair to a birdhouse mounted on a large oak. Hearing distressful chirping, I noticed this California King Snake that had somehow climbed the huge oak. It apparently could smell the eggs or young as it circled and then snaked up the face toward the hole. I went into action, knocked it down, and chased it away, thus interfering with the Darwinian fitness test. Next time I will kill it.

What is Science?

A better definition of science might help clarify the science vs. religion debate. Here goes.

Science is a concise language system for making consistent statements about the universe.

Consistency in formal language theory means that only true statements can be generated and that the language cannot generate a statement that true equals false. Since truth in science is tied to observation and experiment, the axioms of the language must survive empirical scrutiny. The limitations and complexities of observation and experiment add uncertainty to science and give job security to scientists who continually try to make science more consistent. Guidelines like Occam's razor help to ensure a concise language by advising parsimony.

Gödel's proof says that a language cannot prove its own consistency, nor can it make consistent statements about things not in the language. This means that science cannot make consistent statements about a possible meta-universe or God; it can only make statements about things having empirical support. Science is limited to statements that can be generated from its axioms and are thus tied to empirical truth.

If God violates the laws of physics with revelations, prophesies or miracles, science can only observe that there is some evidence of these exceptions. Those who believe the Gospel accounts see them giving at least some empirical evidence for such exceptions, whereas others believe that violations of physical laws have never occurred. The intelligent design motivation is to look for empirical evidence for these exceptions.

Vox Day vs New Atheists

I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Irrational Athiest, Vox Day's excellent refutation of the anti-religious arguments of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, et. al. My favorite section was Chapter XV "Master of Puppets or Game Designer", since that is the subject of my entire book "Darwin's Dove" and I would argue that it need not be a "completely heretical concept of theodicy" as it gives a remarkably good logical explanation for Christianity.

Vox thoroughly destroys the atheist arguments that Christianity is an evil force in the world. In many cases such as Harris' red vs. blue county data on crime, Vox shows that the atheist's own arguments prove exactly the opposite of what they intended. Vox also rigorously documents the many atheist butchers of the 20th century, a record of evil that should give some pause to the angry atheists.

Vox is also good as he points out that science has no explanation for the origin of the physical laws nor for the origin of the replicating mechanisms that started evolution. Dawkins' delusion argument dissolves into wishful thinking about his hope for a "physics crane". Dawkins' lack of logical or scientific support for his use of the word delusion or for his emotional antipathy toward religion is quite surprising given the growing evidence behind the anthropic principle.

I would have liked Vox to discuss how Gödel's proof—that no formal system can make consistent statements about things outside the system—might serve to place a formal limit on the proper domain of science. Science is silent about the metaverse.

Vox is weaker when he argues against evolution's ability to produce behaviors that can be considered moral. It seems to me that evolution produces both the emergent mathematical beauty of cognizance and altruism, as well as suffering and evil behaviors. Vox's valid point is that only a moral foundation from God can disambiguate the good and evil behaviors arising from evolution. It comes down to the definition of morality or piety, a definition that, as Vox points out, Socrates sheds little light on. Without God's definition, Hitler's eugenics can be considered moral and supported by the motivational underpinnings of evolution.

Vox was a bit weak on Occam's razor. Occam's razor is not a law of science but rather a weak heuristic for choosing the simpler of two theories that equally fit the data and have equal explanatory power, mathematical beauty etc. Dawkins has claimed that it is a more complex theory to believe in an intelligent designer than to believe only in the laws of physics. But Occam's razor doesn't apply for those of us who think—unlike Dawkins—that the explanatory power of Theism is superior. Occam's razor does not advise taking the simpler theory if the more complex one has greater explanatory power, for if it did, we might still prefer the simpler Newtonian physics over the more complex relativistic ones.

Gross National Happiness

The Economist (3/29) article about Arthur Brooks book "Gross National Happiness" summarizes the research of Brooks who is an economist at Syracuse University. In America, he finds, conservatives are happier than liberals, religious people are happier than secular ones, and those with children are happier than those without. So religious conservative parents tend to be happy and optimistic. So be kind to liberal, atheist, singles, they are miserable and pessimistic.

The Cost of War

Anyone who quotes the cost of the Iraq war in terms of current dollars since its inception is revealing a lack of respect for objective truth. The same deception applies to the casualties. Whether we oppose or support the Iraq effort we should at least use meaningful measures. The US spending on national defense declined from the late 80s to 2000 as the nation spent the "peace dividend" following the cold war. Defense spending as an annual percent of GDP—which is the only objective way to state it—rose to about 6% of GDP in the 80s and declined to 3% by 2000. The current defense budget, including the supplementals for the Iraq and Afghan war, is about 4.5% of GDP which is similar to the 4.4% of Clinton's first year in office. So the hubris of those who talk about the disaster of the trillion dollar war can be safely ignored.

No one wants to belittle the casualties of our troops but we still need to speak rationally and have some perspective. About the same number of Americans have died by violence in Detroit and Baltimore since 2003 as have died in Iraq and Afghanistan. It seems that those who write the news stories are relatively unconcerned when Blacks and Hispanics are killing each other.

Anthropogenic Global Warming RIP

The soft sciences are prone to fads, due in part to the fact that their particular disciplines deal with complex systems having huge numbers of poorly understood variables, and partly due to the unfortunate genetic tendency of humans to form groups whose members oppose those not in the group and engage in petty status competition within the group. This status competition includes the competition for grant money and self serving political posturing. Anthropogenic global warming was the perfect storm for this group ID psychosis, but now, as Thomas Kuhn would have appreciated, the AGW group is increasingly unable to suppress the march of science. Their arguments are becoming petty even as their political juggernaut drives on. The bubble looks soon to burst.

The science that is defeating AGW involves two issues: feedback and solar activity. The computer models say that the climate's response to increasing CO2 is positive feedback which makes the problem worse. Roy Spencer is one of the leading scientists showing that the feedback is more likely negative, and thus tends to regulate earth's temperature not exacerbate it. Global climate computer models should be seriously questioned. James Hansen had too much faith in his babies.

Solar activity (surprise!) is increasingly looking like the primary driver of earth's temperature changes. David Archibald is one of many solar scientists who is building the case that earth's temperature is highly correlated with the varying lengths of the roughly eleven year solar cycles. With the delayed onset of solar cycle 24 (SC24) it looks like earth may be in for a cold ten years instead of the fever that Al Gore is betting his political career on.

You can keep an eye on the sun here.

More Snow Camping

Another snow camping trip and another igloo. This picture was taken after my wife and I used our snow saws to build this igloo. It snowed during the night while we were sleeping in the igloo, leaving a nice soft smooth covering to hide our construction irregularities. It is so silent and magical inside. This was my wife's first snow camping trip and my eighth. Imagine how many art and craft fairs I will now be expected to stroll through without complaint!

Snow camping

Winter storm warnings forced us to leave our snow camping outing early but it was wonderful while it lasted. I have never seen a thicker snow pack near Truckee than this year. My son and I built this igloo using a snow saw and scoop shovel in about 3 hours and slept in it over night. We were warm and toasty and the inside didn't drip. There is nothing like the magical interior of an igloo after dark with a few candles glowing against the walls. I made a snow saw this year, out of a 24" by 2" by 1/8" piece of aluminum, and it worked like a charm. I cut and smoothed a nice oak handle for it.

Gay Scout Practicalities

With reference to today's WSJ article about Philadelphia's problems with the Boy Scouts, it seems that those who want to force the Scouts to accept openly homosexual scouts and scout leaders have never led a Scout overnight camping trip. Scouts typically sleep two to a tent, but in the case of Venture Patrols which include both teenage boys and girls, opposite sexes are not allowed to share tents, for reasons which most scout leaders and parents consider obvious. If openly gay scouts were to go on overnight outings, there would be several options: 1) have the gay scout share a tent with a straight scout, in which case all the boys would try to avoid sleeping with the gay scout, or 2) have the gay scout tent with a girl, in which case all the boys would claim to be gay, or 3) have the gay scout be alone in a tent, in which case the gay activists would charge discrimination, or 4) have two gay scouts share a tent, which would rarely be possible and would be inconsistent with policy toward heterosexuals. I haven't heard any discussion of these practicalities which leads me to believe that those with the greatest anti-boyscout hysteria on this issue, have the least experience.

Expelled, No intelligence allowed

In January we went to the Rethink Conference at the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, California near Anaheim in the LA area. This church has a beautiful campus with many detailed, life size, bronzes depicting biblical stories. Here are Mary and Joseph with a chrome plated (!) baby Jesus. It was great, despite the chrome (what were they thinking).
We were fortunate to hear Ben Stein speak and to see a pre-release viewing of his upcoming movie Expelled which should be appearing this spring. You must go see this.
If discussing ID is verboten, I'm wondering if TJ's computer simulation TuSIM (Darwin's Dove) would get him expelled; or perhaps he would just disappear. Someone call Dawkins.

The Dogs of Elim

The greatest sporting event of the year is almost upon us. The iditarod starts on March 1 this year. The iditarod website has a great new introductory video this year. The other great race coverage is at the Cabela page. For a California guy who grew up in the frozen north, it is an emotional experience to watch these superb dogs, who love to run, do what they do best. They have been bred to turn up to 10,000 calories of high fat dog food per day into 120 miles at 10 miles per hour over some of the most desolate, dangerous, and beautiful terrain on earth. There is no finer relationship to witness than that which develops, over the 1150 mile race, between a trail hardened team and a musher fighting exhaustion.

Heath Ledger RIP

Very sad. But, look on the bright side; one less potential customer for Al Qaeda's opium.

Mennonite Computer Scientist

The Mennonite branch of the protestant reformation sought a return to the beliefs of the early church as recorded in the New Testament. They taught non-violence, baptism upon belief, and direct access to God or "the priesthood of the believer". I was raised Mennonite and then acquired a Master's degree in Biomedical Engineering and a PhD in Computer Science from Caltech. These two beautiful threads of science and religion have blended in some unusual ways. During 2006 I wrote the novel "Darwin's Dove" to present this fusion. Darwinian evolution turns out to explain Christianity far better than it explains atheism.

Confession of Faith and Reason

Confession of Faith

A Confession of Faith is a simple statement of beliefs. Here is mine. It is based on an attempt to integrate Christian faith and modern science. It is heavily influenced by my background as a computer scientist and an admirer of Darwinian evolution. Having written computer software simulations of physical laws and evolutionary search algorithms, it is easy to believe that the universe is a simulation. The surprise is how elegantly this explains certain Christian principles.

God

Descartes began his philosophical search with the undeniable truth that "I think therefore I am". We start there also. We know we exist, because we sense change. We know there is something, there is not nothing. We exist in time because without time there would be no thoughts. We can have thoughts that generate output actions by stimulating muscles, and we can sense input events that change. Something besides ourselves must also exist, because we can observe that our output thoughts affect our inputs in predictable ways. If we rotate our heads to the left, our visual input tells us that the universe around us rotated to the right. We can easily predict the future by remembering the rules and laws that always work to produce predictable future change. We know what sequence of actions is required to get from the computer to the refrigerator. So there is something, something that we call existence, and it obeys certain rules that make it predictable.
What is this existence? Science works to discover the simplest set of laws that provide the greatest ability to predict and explain the temporal relationship between our outputs and inputs. These laws of physics reveal a surprising reductionism. A remarkably small set of laws predict everything. We can choose to believe, as athiests do, that these laws are all that exist, that they are real, and that they somehow implement themselves, or we can believe that these laws reside in a computational substrate. For many empirical and faithful reasons, I believe that existence is computational and that God is this computational existence. Exodus 3:14 "I am that I am" expresses that God is existence. John 1:1 "...the Logos was God..." implies that God is computational. Even if atheists believe that a computational substrate exists, they would assert that the laws of physics spontaneously arise within this substrate and that it contains no higher cognition.

Creation

If God is a computational existence, then the simplest explanation is that the universe is a simulation. The universe is like a daydream in the mind of God, like a program running in a computer. The universe is not real (whatever real means), but is only data and computation. It is very much like the physical simulations that we program into our current computers, except on a much grander scale. The laws of physics in this simulation, are so elegant that they formed the cosmos, spontaneously gave rise to self-replicating organisms, and thus initiated the evolutionary process that created mankind. There is certain empirical evidence that the universe is a simulation and that the computational power of God is not infinite. The finite speed of light is similar to a technique used in volumetric simulations in 3D computer graphics. At each iteration of the simulation, information is propagated to nearby spatial nodes. An instantaneous communication of information between all components of a simulation might be computationally intractable without this limitation on the speed of propagation of information. The uncertainty principle in particular, and quantum mechanics in general show that the variables in the simulation are quantized, they do not have infinite precision. This, of course, is another way that modern computers limit the computational cost. The fact that the underlying events of physics can only be known to within certain probabilities is another potential computational efficiency. If the randomness of events, like the decay of a radioactive particle, is produced by a metaphysical random number generator, and chaos theory propagates this uncertainty throughout the simulation, then the outcome of the universe simulation would be unknown even to its possible creator, thus allowing a creative and curious motivation.

My belief is that God is a computational existence with creative and curious characteristics and that the universe simulation pleases him, much as a computer scientist is pleased by the mathematical beauty and surprising outcomes of a computer simulation.

Evolution in computer science is a very well understood search algorithm. It randomly samples nearby points in structure and function space, tests the new points for fitness according to some fitness function, and replicates the points (individuals) in proportion to their fitness. If the fitness function is unspecified, the individuals may replicate until they are in competition with other individuals for the resources needed for replication. At this point the fitness function is comprised of all the other competing individuals, as well as the environment of resources. In this case, which is the case in our world, the fitness function is always changing, and the individual organisms are in competition with other organisms for resources. It is interesting that this system provides a definition of good and evil. The elegant search engine of evolution discovers emergent complexity of astonishing beauty, but this good comes at the expense of the competition and suffering of the fitness function. For those samples of structure and function space that do not do well in the fitness function test, life is hell. They suffer. The mathematical beauty emerging from evolution comes with this sad reality: The search algorithm of evolution does not work without suffering, the good does not come without the evil.

Since the fitness function is always changing, behaviors (as well as form and function) that once contributed to fitness, may no longer be advantageous. Behaviors such as murder and rape may have contributed to fitness once, but, given the more recent fitness advantages of highly cooperative social groups, these left over behaviors are now a burden. We consider these behaviors evil. Strong group identification, aggressive status competition, and determination to control others, may have once contributed to fitness, but now may be the source of endless war. Is there a way to shed the evil dregs of the evolutionary search engine? It seems that the only way to defeat evil is to escape somehow from the harsh realities of the Darwinian competition.

My belief is that a creative, curious, computational existence, while delighted by the fascinating emergent mathematical complexity and beauty of evolving life, would be concerned about the by-product of suffering. This is the crux of the Leibniz theodicy. A God of love and mercy might seek a solution that would enable evolving creatures to escape the bondage of the search algorithm. Such a solution might have the characteristics of a "kingdom of heaven".

Bible

There is nothing in the Bible that indicates any knowledge of physics beyond the common beliefs of the era of the authors. Genesis is a problem for those who believe in the literal, infallible, "God breathed", Bible. There is no empirical evidence supporting the creation story of Genesis. The evidence for evolution is far more compelling and also leaves plenty of room for divine manipulation. Apocalyptic predictions based on Biblical prophecy have reliably failed. A reasonable person having respect for the truth would conclude that the Bible was written by man, fallible man. On the other hand, biblical authors were seeking God, they had honor and integrity, and they wrote down what they thought to be the truth.

My belief is that Christianity does not require a Bible that is the infallible Word of God. All of the principle beliefs important to Christianity shine through the fallible authorship of the Bible with brilliant clarity. The older stories likely originated during a long oral tradition and became legends and myths, while the stories recorded by eyewitnesses or contemporary writers have a much greater credibility. The New Testament recorded events by eyewitnesses or those who knew the eyewitnesses and are remarkably consistent given their human origin. The authors recorded what they experienced and were willing to die rather than renounce it. The Bible was written by fallible men who did not always understand the meaning of the events they were recording, but who were dedicated to the truth.

The authors of the New Testament believed that demons caused disease, that Satan was the source of evil, that sin caused misfortune, and that sacrificing animals was an atonement for sin. They had great difficulty understanding why a person like Christ, with obvious supernatural powers, coming to bring them deliverance from their suffering, would disgracefully die on a Roman cross. Their explanation, that Jesus was a sacrificial lamb to atone for their sins, was the best they could come up with, but it made no sense. If a merciful God wanted to forgive them, why would He punish Himself for the privilege? If we owe a debt for our sin, why would God pay the debt to himself rather than just cancel it? There is a much better explanation emerging from modern science, evolution, and computer simulation.

Fall of Man

Evolution, as a search algorithm that God employed to create emergent beauty, provides a far better explanation for the fall of man than eating an apple from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Man is sinful as a direct result of the competition inherent in the evolutionary search algorithm. We have ingrained behaviors that evolved in an era when the fitness function rewarded individuals employing aggressive avarice and self centered violence. We have core behaviors of status competition and group identification that are nearly impossible to control and difficult to even recognize within ourselves. We have a desire to control others in the pursuit of our selfish interests. We call these behaviors evil because they conflict with our vision of a peaceful, happy, loving, cooperative, harmonious society. These behaviors are the evil dregs of the evolutionary search algorithm. How do we overcome them?

Christ

So what is Christ in this scenario, and what was His mission? Mechanically, Christ is like God's avatar. In our computer game simulations, an avatar is our physical presence in the game. This avatar is an individual body, within the simulation, over which we have control. We are like a metaphysical being who uses an avatar as our presence in the simulated subuniverse. If God is a computational existence, one can imagine that it would be easy for Him to project himself into the universe simulation as an avatar. "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, ... full of grace and truth." John 1:14. But for what purpose?

I believe that God had compassion for the suffering that was inherent in his evolutionary search method and initiated a series of revelations intended to help humans escape the bonds of the search algorithm that created them. The centerpiece of this divine intervention was for God to enter the simulation using Jesus as his avatar. First, Christ established his metaphysical authority by fulfilling prophecy and conducting many undeniable miracles. Secondly, Christ prescribed ways to escape the clutches of the evolutionary search engine. Avoid status competition, be humble, love your neighbor as yourself, be unselfish, do not resist evil by force. "The last shall be first, and the first last" refers to group identification and status competition. This strikes at the core of our evil evolved nature. Thirdly, Christ demonstrated, by an ultimate example, a rejection of status competition. Having established His supernatural power, He declined to assert it, even to avoid His own suffering. All of this is counter-intuitive to us while we languish in Darwin's trap. We feel that, if we don't fight violently for the "right", evil will win; if we don't resist evil, evil will triumph. This counter-intuitive, anti-Darwin hint, is God's way of helping us escape the evolutionary trap that we are in. "I am the way and the truth and the life, no man comes to the Father but by me." John 14:6.

Spirit

The Holy Spirit is the activity and power that the mind of God asserts within the universe simulation. It represents the activity of God within the universe that transcends the laws of physics. It is the mechanism of divine intervention, and of all supernatural events beyond the laws of physics. It is easy to see, even as a human programmer might tinker with a computer simulation, how resurrection can be done by metaphysical copying of data, how these "archived human minds" could be inserted into a separate "world" or simulation. It is all just computational. We are only ones and zeros.

By attributing the characteristics of love, creativity, curiosity, and cognition, to the computational existence we call God, we have a model that has more explanatory power. It explains prophecy and miracle, it explains Christ in the context of evolution, it explains the mechanisms of resurrection and hope, and it is compatible with modern science. It also implies that any belief system that leverages evolutionary competition, asserts status supremacy, grows by violence and subjugation, and explicitly dominates by demographic superiority, is the opposite of Christianity.

Church

The church is a body of believers. It is not the popes, bishops, cardinals, and other status seeking people. They have no authority that does not arise from a foundation of humility. There is no gap between believer and God that needs to be filled by a church "authority", beyond human interactions as equals. A clear example of what the church is not, is an organization that can sell indulgences. This practice arises directly from the Darwinian evils of group identification, status competition, and a desire to control others. It is an example of the very thing that Christ came to help us escape.