An Idea that Struck Me when I Went on a Short Walk Today

I was wondering what would happen if a pastor headed a church where people were not demanded to believe in god. The pastor would avoid sermons but rather read the bible from cover to cover over multiple church services and then people would comment on what they think about it. But each day, right before people exit the church, they'll gather into groups based on whether or not they're believers. Church services could be conducted on themes like: "Assuming god is real, is god just or not and why?". For those children whose parents don't want them to attend such a church of doubt, they could be encouraged to ask "Why not?"

My reasons for establishing such a church are because I don't believe in the bible, see no evidence for the existence of god, and want people to be able to think freely. No doubt that would be pointed against me if somebody went with my idea. But even so, the idea of a church of doubt exists regardless of my personal point of view. It doesn't matter whether it's an atheist suggesting it, an agnostic suggesting it, or a Christian fundamentalist doing it as a joke. The idea exists and it gives those who question their faith an option besides going to a normal church. It works both ways. It could encourage those who are religious to become doubters or those who are doubters and disbelievers to become religious.

So why not try it out? The ultimate question about the church of doubt is whether it exists to remove people's faith in a god that does exist or it allows people the freedom not to believe in a god that doesn't. But of course, this only focuses on one church and in an increasingly multicultural society, it would probably be better to have a Temple of Doubt where people are free to debate among many religions. If this happens, then there might be a cross cultural unity where people can look at many religions and decide what they believe. But most importantly, people won't feel that they have to be religious to be a part of a community and they will be able to examine religions without being socially coerced to join one or be isolated from other people. They won't have to preemptively make up their minds to be believers which is, let's face it, the force keeping the majority of people in mass religion.

Language's Effect on Music Structure

I've been thinking about how the number of syllables in essential words determines the structure of music. Thinking about not whether any particular thought could be expressed but whether there's room for any thought to be expressed in relation to a given number of syllables.

Pronouns tend towards one syllable, as do articles. So do articles. This means if you want to write a song with two syllable words, you can't use pronouns like him, her, or them. And you can't even use the words 'the, an, a,'. As far as prepositions, here's a list so you can see for your self: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_prepositions. It's unfortunate that all the two word and three word prepositions don't work either because they all end with one syllable words.

I wonder what language or languages might have two syllable pronouns and articles to allow for these sorts of combinations. I'll have to look into it.

Language

I've come up with the idea of a language which uses symbols that are interpreted inside a person's head for their full meaning. This way, language could evolve in order to express ideas that couldn't be expressed before. You see, symbols would be designed so that you modified them inside of your head in order to pictorially express a concept. There could be a series of dots inside of a circle and you'd reposition the place of the dots inside of your head. These pictorial symbols would allow for many complex ideas to be expressed in a much shorter amount of time.

I suppose I should start by addressing an issue facing current langauge.

Definitions are tricky because they can only be defined in other words. What if there were a pictorial language or part of a language which allowed for the knower to understand a definition, resorting to an image to express the idea?

We start by taking a symbol. Rather than only communicating an idea, this symbol is used to be directly examined in order to provide the context for many ideas. In order to be useful, this symbol would need to be combined with other symbols. You can't indicate a lack of understanding by the use of such a symbol, which makes it impossible to ask a question. Laying out information is much the same as stating it. Commands could not be given with such symbols either, nor could exclamations. I'm not sure whether I even agree with the concept of the exclamation, maybe in writing, but real speech carries so many emotions that the concept of particularly emphasized speech is a bit absurd.

When I think about it, the whole idea that words themselves convey most of their meaning with minimal punctuation doesn't sit with me. There isn't enough focus on and exploration of sentence purpose. However, perhaps it's simply difficult to distinguish between purpose and speech inflection, inflection and breath.

I've noticed that it's not wholly possible to distinguish speech correcting your quotation of somebody else from the quotation itself. In order to do that, you could have a special form of pronunciation reserved for that purpose alone. Unfortunately though, if somebody quoted you correcting your quotation of somebody else, the pronunciation would still be used like they were the one making the correction. There would have to be a special pronunciation for quoting the special pronunciation and so on ad infinitum.

Stanislaw Lem had an idea in Imaginary Magnitude where you can use language that foreshortens complex thoughts that would otherwise take more than an entire lifetime to say. I recommend that book to anybody who'd like to read it.

This post isn't really finished, but I realized that I can edit posts continually and have the blog be a continuous work in progress. That seems better for my purposes because otherwise I'll just wait forever hoping to come up with better ideas.

Questioning the Bill of Rights

I'm going to challenge in a strictly idealistic sense the US constitutional amendments that I think need to be challenged.

Here is a link to the bill of rights: http://www.ratical.org/co-globalize/BillOfRights.html

1. I challenge the right of any individual to believe something that isn't true or in defiance with all known evidence and be able to act on that regardless of circumstance. I can't push it too far, however, because there's always the possibility of an unpopular view being right. I consider it a moral obligation to eliminate as much as humanly possible all the views which are incorrect and that the knowledge of a well versed minority should, generally, hold stead over that of the less well versed majority.

2. I completely disagree that every person has the right to bear arms. Violence begets violence and I think that the principle is entirely foolish. Furthermore, I question the ethics of those who insist on their right to bear arms without first deliberating over which is most ethical. I respect the right to have dangerous items which in the wrong hands could be considered arms. The issues of violence and mortality are tricky indeed, however, and I don't have all the needed answers.

3. I don't think that there should be in any soldiers. I think that being a soldier is itself unethical and I'm trying to reconcile the duty to end a person's soldierhood with the responsibility to remain nonviolent.

4. I wonder. This one has me divided. On the one hand, I respect a person's privacy and realize that changing this could have severe consequences. On the other, it makes prosecution difficult. If I were to go against this one, I'd say that there would have to be a non disruptive way to access the needed information. That would mean searching but not seizure. There's not much I can change here that wouldn't have dangerous consequences. It may be that in the most extreme of emergencies that this would have to be violated, but that's about it.

5 and 7. I question the good that a jury does, but not anything else. I don't have a very good reason for questioning the good of a jury except the general notion that there's almost always room for improvement. The one thing I do question, thanks to a discussion at IEET.org is whether or not there ought to be professional jurors.

Those are all the amendments which I wish to question.

What do the Rich Provide?

In the midst of all the hoopla about Wall Street, I'm running into the same old issue. When somebody makes an argument on a complex issue, they try to streamline their stance, overlooking the subject's complexities. The problem with the Occupy Wall Street protestors is that their campaign the problem of the distribution of wealth without taking into consideration how unequal wealth may be necessary in our system. The relentless campaigning has made us lose sight of the fact that it takes wealthier people to buy earlier versions of a product so that it can eventually be distributed wider. It's the tone of the campaigning which has become so hysterical that such a fact cannot easily be said. And what about the problems of collective decision making that the rich eliminate by having so much money in the hands of few?

We can all hopefully agree that there ought to be a fairer distribution of wealth in the United States, but I haven't heard it asked just what the distribution should be and why.

How to Beat the Lizard with its Own Tail

Man before human
Race before ethnicity
The language before the thought
The world before the borders of the travel of humankind
Word of the press before the say of the experts
Celebrities before politicians
National before regional location
Fiction before nonfiction
Movies before film
Video games before video simulations
Cartoons before animation
Music before expressive noise

reinterpreting your experiences

One general area that's had me interested for a while is how somebody can understand their surroundings in an unusual way. One example is from the time I punched the numbers on an audio listening device to hear the King Tut sounds while I was standing in line for the exhibit. Listening to the audio beforehand made it sound especially cheesy, but more importantly put it in a different context. Now I'll expand on that idea. What if you looked for video footage on the internet to see how the place you're standing looked years ago? Have you ever wanted to go to a location where a disaster had once occurred and watch a video of the disaster on your laptop computer, making comparisons? I think people ought to start doing this sort of thing more often. You could wait outside a prior class to yours to see what you're going to be told beforehand and then consider it in a different light once you're inside the classroom.

So more specifically, what's the general theme I'm getting at here? Don't focus on things passively by the way they are at present, taking life as it comes through your eyes and ears.

Geologic View, Planetologic, Astronomical Views-How are things at present the extension of matter and materials?

Material Associative View-All things are the sum of their smallest parts and their use is ultimately arbitrary, though certain aspects of their design may get in the way.

Social Associative View-Social institutions are arbitrary and maintained by certain assumed actions on the part of their citizens. What are these actions?

I'll explore one variant of this idea. There are some social institutions that demand a certain quota of participants. Society changes every day, but there are certain roles that have to be filled. Who's going to be the mayor of Spokane, and be on the city council? Starting with positions where the membership size isn't likely to change and working towards others with variable possibilities, there must be something here to figure out.

How do you find out what type of flower or species of bird you're looking at if you're not sure? My guess is that you'd look it up through the internet, but it's incredibly hard to do that. Google Images is based on things you find by looking them up, and TinEye only lets you see where an image you input appears on the web(and there aren't many uploaded so far). So the answer is you have to put the image up somewhere and ask somebody else or look for it your self in some database.

The problem here is mostly a social one, though. You can't think like this on a regular basis because nobody else around you is, and eventually the sheer masses of blind indifference around you overwhelm the whole thing from getting started. Where on Earth are all the people interested in trying new things for no particular reason?

Part Two. How do you remind yourself of your own ignorance? There's plenty of games on the web, largely derided among others as time wasters, but the 'name colors' and 'name countries' games I'd say are very useful. If you'll humor a thought experiment, you might be able to get a seven year old to write down every word they knew if you locked them in a room long enough. For somebody older, it would be a tricker thing to do. Recounting all the sights you've heard and sounds you've seen would be impossible. Maybe somebody will invent a device that allows you to look again at light as it entered your eyes but you didn't notice at the time due to inattentional blindness.

There's always stars, planets, moons, and asteroids. There's a never ending flux of political causes attributed to different days and months. Better to spot solar granules and give them different various causes and let them die out after the granule's gone.

One thing that annoyed me was in hearing about how the speculative nature of science is often swept under the rug in amateur science books when the information given is just estimates, which too often happens in astronomy books. Just how many places does this sort of thing happen? Where are the missing niches on the topographical maps along the edges of the continents? Just how well does the Africa on my nearby globe resemble the real one

Those thoughts will have to be left for now and I'll expand on them later. I've had this post going for nearly a year but had been too distracted to input it and start this blog going. Nevermind the formal introduction, I'll get to that some other time.