Russian National Assembly on Freedom

The Russian opposition has put together a cooperative effort to fight for political rights and freedoms in the Russian Federation. They put together a Declaration and a Charter, drawing on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Constitution of the Russian Federation (“Man, his rights and freedoms are the supreme value. The recognition, observance and protection of the rights and freedoms of man and citizen shall be the obligation of the State”), and the people of Russia for support. It lists offenses and violations that the ruling regime of Russia has done:

Destroying democratic institutions, inducing “lawlessness,” weakening the nation’s military, making higher-ups rich while depriving the poor of fundamental services, discriminating and segregating, aggravating conflicts among peoples, and,

“The ruling regime suppresses attempts by citizens to defend their rights and freedoms with the help of propaganda, bribery, arm-twisting, threats, crude police and judicial arbitrariness, violence, terror, [as well as] taking away freedom, property, health and life itself from Russian citizens.”

The Charter says that Russian citizens have had their power taken away, and asks for them to try and take it back. It presents some simple foundations that they would like to have Russia adhere to. Paraphrased, these are:

1. No interference in personal lives as well as freedom of speech, assembly, mobility, residence, thought, and language.
2. Religious freedom.
3. No non-peaceful political tactics.
4. Eliminating corruption, coercion, and character assassination in the political discourse.
5. Democracy and representation of the people.
6. Keeping the rights of dissenters, allowing them to express and defend their views.

Google’s Appeasement of China is Smart, not Evil

One major part of having a freer world is having freedom of speech and free access to it. Sadly, that isn’t coming any time soon, but we’re still facing enormous decisions in progressing in the fight against censorship. One of those decisions was made in colossal proportions by everybody’s familiar friend, Google. (China is one fifth of the world, which makes this a pretty big issue.) Knowing Google’s exemplified values and mission aligned with furthering human rights, it appears confusing or downright selfish of Google to stay in China’s market by self-censoring. In fact, Google’s motto from the very beginning was “Don’t be evil”. Contradiction, wouldn’t you think?

Despite appearances, this is not an uncontemplated act. In fact, it is the smart choice to appease China’s request for censorship. Let’s be blunt. If Google partially self-censors, China will have much freer access compared to if the “People’s Republic” there does the censoring for them. And allowing Google in China without censorship is out of the question, knowing China. So if you think we’re doing the world any good by not giving China a censored version, you’re wrong.

Google gives us some insight into the company’s logic:

We ultimately reached our decision by asking ourselves which course would most effectively further Google’s mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally useful and accessible. Or, put simply: how can we provide the greatest access to information to the greatest number of people?

……

Filtering our search results clearly compromises our mission. … By launching Google.cn and making a major ongoing investment in people and infrastructure within China, we intend to change that.

……

Our continued engagement with China is the best (perhaps only) way for Google to help bring the tremendous benefits of universal information access to all our users there.

We’re in this for the long haul. In the years to come, we’ll be making significant and growing investments in China. Our launch of google.cn, though filtered, is a necessary first step toward achieving a productive presence in a rapidly changing country that will be one of the world’s most important and dynamic for decades to come. To some people, a hard compromise may not feel as satisfying as a withdrawal on principle, but we believe it’s the best way to work toward the results we all desire.

Not too shabby, huh? And to be honest, it’s a bit ambiguous, perhaps even untruthful, to say that Google is filtering its content. The unfiltered Chinese-language version of Google still exists, and is open to China if they are willing, but Google made the .cn version to supplement that for the benefit of users. Furthermore, whenever something is censored, the users in China are told that information was taken out by their government. And finally, proving that Google really does care, Google will not host anything with private information on Chinese users (like Gmail or Blogger) because it would pose huge dangers to dissenters there. Beyond this, Google is looking for more steps towards bettering the world, like the internet industry’s support and involvement of the United States government.

(Google has their own testimony on the issue, of which I am in effect summarizing.)

Google has the right idea, and is making the best decision in regard to China’s current state. If Google keeps this up, it will have a great impact on the entire world.

If You are Gay then You Cannot Help Us

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is a dangerous element of military policy. Specifically, the last three findings (13, 14, 15) and the subsection on policy are highlights of the wrongdoing in our law. They “found out” that prohibiting homosexual behavior is necessary (this is the military, which is special and has “unique” privileges) because homosexuals tend to make morale and unity go bad. The policy says that they will “separate” you from the pack if you (1) do / try to do / ask others to do anything homosexual; (2) say out loud that you are homosexual or bisexual; or (3) marry / attempt to marry the same sex. In other words, if you don’t pretend to be heterosexual, you’re out of the picture.

Really, what’s the point of this? It’s just blatant discrimination. Conservatives in the military just don’t seem to like gays. Even if a homosexual creates an atmosphere that is less tolerant of unity in the forces, shouldn’t it be the role of the leaders and all members to be allowing group cohesion? It’s not homosexuals that are problematic, it’s the negative images of them others carry. The Crittenden, PERSEREC, and RAND Reports show that homosexuals are no security risk for their being homosexual, and it’s common knowledge that public acceptance of homosexuals isn’t major, so where else do you think the problem of disunity stems from? If there’s something about you that other soldiers don’t like, the blame can’t be put on you. I’m pretty sure that back in the World Wars it would have been detrimental to the unity between the soldiers to introduce black people, yet we still did come to allow them in.

Also, how does stating that you are gay mean “homosexual conduct”? That’s honestly the legal definition put forth! If I tell someone I’m heterosexual, can someone rationally understand me as having performed sexual conduct? I think not. This fuzzy legal definition is just a means to take undesirables out of the equation.

By saying homosexuals reduce our military’s quality, the military shows its true prejudicial colors. (And in these times I don’t mean “White”.) Still, there is hope for public opinion and military policy to stop the “longstanding” tradition of discrimination. Since 1994, support for homosexuals in the military has gone up 10% and opposition down 13%. Slowly but surely, nonacceptance and intolerance against homosexuals are becoming obsolete and outdated. And with a new democrat as president, he/she would very likely lift the ban on homosexuals. In this election, both Obama and Clinton have expressed their desire to change the policy, while McCain says we shouldn’t tamper with it or even reopen the issue.

Consciousness a Problem

The inner universe of our minds is ironically one of the hardest of phenomena to study. We all should know the basics. Senses, emotions, memories, ideas – all are the raw materials of consciousness. But where does the brain come in? How are your subjective experiences explainable by neurons and synapses? (Or are they explainable?) Generally, in neuroscience and psychology, these questions are phrased as two different problems of consciousness.

The first part is the “easy problem.” It is basically a question of cognition, or how we process information. Our attention span, language skills, learning abilities, memory capacity, perception qualities, and problem solving abilities have been well-documented and explain a great deal of mental activity. After that there is the second part, or the “hard problem,” and it is in a totally different league. Why is there any experience at all if we are only physical machines and bodies of cells? More generally, what kind of automaton (e.g. the brain, a computer, a cell, and so forth) could generate consciousness? This is a harder scientific question than the easy problem for one simple reason: it could even be metaphysical.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy puts the questions of consciousness into three categories: descriptive, explanatory, and functional. Essentially this asks What? How? and Why? Describing consciousness is the easy problem, explaining it is the hard problem, and the question of its function is something not normally addressed with the first two. The question of its function comes down to how it is an adaptation in our evolutionary past. There are some ideas that say it is for free will, motivation, better flexibility (like learning), social coordination, and better cognition (like accessing cumulative information we gather). I’ll say a little more about the first two in the rest of this article.

There are some simple features of consciousness that everyone is familiar with. I would mark qualia, phenomenology, subjectivity, and flow as the major ones that are most self-evident. Qualia are the raw feelings of sensory perception that you have. How the world sounds, looks, feels, tastes, and smells to us. Isaac Newton wrote “to determine by what modes or actions light produceth in our minds the phantasm of colour is not so easie.” Behind the experience of qualia is phenomenology. Phenomenology refers to the organization that is intrinsic in consciousness. The “phenomena” are our thoughts and ideas we use to model the world. (SEP says “… the phenomenal structure of experience is richly intentional and involves not only sensory ideas and qualities but complex representations of time, space, cause, body, self, world and the organized structure of lived reality …”) Subjectivity is something of a casual term that we all know of. Subjective experience is dependent on point of view, and perhaps to some degree, it is uncommunicable to other people. For example, what is it like to be a cat? How would you know for sure? Finally, the dynamic flow of mental life is the storyline played out in your head. William James called it the “stream of consciousness.”

There is an explanatory gap present in trying to account for how consciousness exists. In a physical, material universe, it is hard to make sense of how consciousness arises and emerges from it. In spite of this there are numerous attempts to respond to this problem. Some are pretty common such as dualism (from Rene Descartes), where the soul is independent of the physical universe, or a closely related concept, idealism (from George Berkeley), where some contents of consciousness are uninvolved with matter. Other explanations seem odd or just plain absurd, like direct realism (from Thomas Reid), which says that the contents of consciousness are the world itself, or panpsychism (from Gottfried Leibniz), the notion that all matter is conscious. Emergence theory and epiphenomenalism posit that consciousness is the result of the brain’s immense complexity, and is therefore a physical construct. (For example, Hofstadter wrote a book I am a Strange Loop, saying consciousness is analogous to a sort of feed-back loop due to its self-reference, the “I.”) A strange combo of this idea and quantum physics is supported by Roger Penrose and some other scientists, called OOR. Their theory says a special quantum computation goes on in the mind allowing it to supersede some of the capabilities of rigid programming that regular computers have. (He argues his case in his book Emperor’s New Mind.)

Another very impressive question is whether or not consciousness is actually something that makes choices. It is conceivable that our consciousness is merely a byproduct of our deterministic brain so that it is only an endpoint and does not have any control over the brain’s processing. Perhaps you’re just along for the ride!

Some people (like Colin McGinn) say the hard problem is insoluble. Others (like Daniel Dennett) say it is an illusion; there is no hard problem. Still more (like David Chalmers) disagree with that, saying purely physical explanations are lacking. Take a look at the philosophical zombie, the Chinese room, the color expert Mary, and the Turing test for an idea of controversial issues with physicalism. A philosophical zombie is a theoretical human being that functions just as we do, exhibiting all of the ordinary behavior, but is not conscious. This begs the question, “What distinguishes conscious from non-conscious beings?” The Turing test is a situation played out between computers and humans where both a program and a real subject communicate with real interviewers, and if the interviewers cannot agree if the program is human, it is declared sentient. This raises the issue of whether or not it is even feasible to discern between conscious and non-conscious beings. (In AI research, this Turing test has been carried out in real life and is a part of an annual competition to see who can code the “most” human program. Also, for fun: An xkcd-twisted version of the Turing test.) The Chinese room is where a man sitting in a closed room, using instruction books, “translates” Chinese to English (or back), but does not truly “understand” Chinese. What makes up true comprehension? Lastly, the color expert Mary is a hypothetical scientist who learns all of the academic information about the color red possible, but then experiences seeing it for the first time afterwards. (Many people debate what her experience would be like.) What is the difference between qualia and information about qualia? These thought experiments flesh out some of the ambiguities we have in understanding consciousness, which prove problematic in reliably answering the hard problem.

And so the debate on the hard problem still persists, and one still wonders how and even if the problem can be solved. Can it even be properly understood? Is it in the realm of metaphysics or naturalistic science? How can we tell? Is there anything obvious being overlooked? Surely, the hard problem of consciousness ranks right up there with solving the millennium problems and understanding quantum theory. It is easily one of the hardest problems of the universe, yet it is what you live with every day.

Welcome to KD

“Kainos” means “new” in Greek, so that the title of this site is symbolic for a modern-day place for intelligent thought and discussion analogous to the ancient Greek city of Delphi. We started off as Hidden Variable a little while ago, but with a few problems we moved over here. Brad and Mike are the starting authors here, yet we are willing to incorporate any thoughtful blog posts emailed to us in this blog, or even add new authors eventually. (To be optimistic.)

So with the introduction out of the way,

we’d like to warmly welcome you to KAINOS DELPHI.

Modern Creationism is Hurting America

There is an ill polarity in the acceptance of evolutionary theory in the United States. The scientific community overwhelmingly supports evolution, while something like half of the general public believes creationism over evolution. The reason: religious fundamentalism and scriptural literalism. Religious leaders continually indoctrinate children about the literal truth of Genesis or phony flaws in the scientific theory of evolution. (I cringed watching this Nightline clip.) Ignorance breeds ignorance. It’s always been fundamentalists that have gawked at evolution. That isn’t to say religious people are all against evolution, it is in fact split in that sphere as well. Fortunately, the Catholic Church has seen its scientific validity. (Although it has still tainted evolution with a “divine intervention” addendum to explain the existence of souls.)

But the dead horse seems to be on some ungodly life support thanks to quite a bit of misunderstanding of evolution in popular culture, and that has been an active barrier to evolution’s acceptance. Issues such as Lamarckian evolution and “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” have been settled well over a century ago, and yet they are still painted upon the face of evolution by creationists. Shall we carry on the traditional discourse of gill slits and circular reasoning in the fossil record, or has everyone moved on yet? If not, then I highly recommend the TalkOrigins Archive.

This problem has been pummeled in the kingdom of science, but creationists have groped and gasped for air and then creeped over to the place where it has a chance to thrive – the political realm. (Take a look at the Wedge strategy.) Now we are sporting such ideas as “teach the controversy” and “academic freedom,” all of which fly in the face of true science. Shall we start teaching the “Stork Theory” alternative to our modern theory of sexual reproduction? (Dawkins uses this analogy to satirize Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.) Of course not, and so why should we teach something outside of scientific theory in our science classrooms? Creationism needs to gain legitimacy before it starts being taught in public schools. Creationism has the freedom to gain this legitimacy, and we should not confuse this with its lack of ability to do so.

Hence the birth of Intelligent Design theory. ID has no evidence; it has only proposed gaps in evolution. (Famously Behe’s “irreducible complexity.”) It purports to be entirely scientific, but it is not. ID has brought to light a more general social problem here: the God versus no God debate in culture. “One nation under God”; “in God we trust.” School prayer is out of the question; is God? Indeed, many take evolution to be a denial of God’s existence, and many see its teaching in schools as just another way the secular left is getting God out of the school system. Both atheists and religious have argued either side of the evolution + God question.

(Personally, I don’t think evolution rules out a god altogether. Obviously, it raises serious questions about things like the emergence of consciousness, the existence of souls, or our divine place in the cosmos. I can’t say there isn’t a logically possible god who would choose to have the universe give birth to life in order to evolve us. But one would expect any theory speaking to the human’s rank among the life on Earth as well as the origin of all known life in the observable universe would have some kind of tribute to its planner, and I don’t see any indication of that at all. Alas, we move on.)

The distorted views on evolution can range from the depressing to the hopefully ignorant, but I think there is almost always a measure of intellectual dishonesty involved in the hardcore activist. Is it really all that hard to go looking for the other side of a “controversy”? How difficult can it really be to conceptualize the processes of natural selection, adaptation, and divergence? It seems like creationists like to sit around their campfires telling their own yarns and guffawing at how we came here by “chance”, while genuine progress is being made in today’s biologically-related sciences as if it were a totally disconnected domain of intellectual thought.

This needs to stop. Science education has to be representative of the actual scientific train of thought; if anybody wishes to dissent, that would be fine, but don’t teach the views of the fringe. (Obviously this works in more than just science classes…) If evolution were taught correctly, if our biology teachers all knew what they were talking about, then creationist ignorance of evolution wouldn’t get very far in the our education system at all. So what we need are more teachers who are knowledgeable about evolution to educate our public, and more importantly, our children.

This is important because it is one of many ways to protect our free society from building theocratic underpinnings. It would be a slippery slope to making our nation (nearly-) officially sponsor uniquely religious viewpoints (which is definitely “respecting an establishment of religion” in my book). Beyond this, it proves internationally that America can walk the walk, not just talk the talk. America has a real potential to be a huge beacon of science, but the fact that America has the highest number of evolution “skeptics” makes us laughable. It’s just one more part of America that the rest of the civilized world makes fun of.