My Music Collection: Devin Townsend

Here's a list of my Devin Townsend album collection:

1997 Ocean Machine
1998 Infinity
2000 Physicist
2001 Terria
2003 Accelerated Evolution
2006 Synchestra
2009 Ki
2009 Addicted
2011 Deconstruction
2011 Ghost
2012 Epicloud
2014 Sky Blue  (disc 1 of Z2)
2016 Transcendence (Deluxe Edition)

All are available as digital downloads at Amazon.

Complexities of Poverty

This is in response to a pattern which I see where people are singular in their perception of the cause and solution for poverty. There are certainly more elements to poverty than I discuss here. It's an article about some of the factors involved in poverty.

There's a lot of bandwagoning about poverty. Some people blame the wealthy, others blame the poor while the government is sometimes the scapegoat, as well as some types of charities. But putting the blame on just particular groups misses the complexity of economic status.

Even the definitions of poverty are problematic. Although there are rural poor, not all people with low incomes in rural areas live in poverty conditions. The numbers are different in places where a 2 bedroom house can rent for $300 a month. So too much focus on the numbers can misdefine and even degrade people's lives. I'm not saying that dollar values are not important. I'm just saying that wage as a measurement of poverty needs to be compared to other factors rather than the sole measure as some people use it.

There are different levels of poverty, some more damaging than others. Here's a definition which I think is useful. "Condition where people's basic needs for food, clothing, shelter, health and intellectual fulfillment are not being met. Poverty is generally of two types: (1) Absolute poverty is synonymous with destitution and occurs when people cannot obtain adequate resources to support a minimum level of physical and mental health. (2) Relative poverty occurs when people do not enjoy a certain minimum level of living standards as determined by a government (and enjoyed by the bulk of the population) that vary from country to country, sometimes within the same country."

However poverty is defined, the fact of the matter is that there are a substantial number of people who cannot afford the things necessary for heath and well being. For the purposes of this article, this will be the focus. So, what affects people's ability to have what is necessary for their health and well being? It varies widely and that is why the bandwagoning is so dangerous. Some cases of poverty have multiple issues.

I was once in a sever state of poverty. As a general description, let's say that I was homeless and destitute. It's not in the purview of this article to tell the whole story. But my situation was affected by multiple factors. Let's look at some of them.

People in better positions sometimes negatively impact people in lesser positions. This correlates to blaming the wealthy. In my case, it was upper management in a company using employee wage and hour manipulation to increase profit rather than develop a strategy which was good for both the company and employees. The company found itself in a bit of a financial slump largely caused by bad management decisions. Part of its strategy to show profit growth was to drastically drop long term employee hours and hire new people at a revised lower wage. In my department, there were 3 of us who had been with the company for several years and worked full time for most of those years. Our pay was a combination of hourly wage and commission. However, sales were completely dependent upon what we sold to walk-in traffic. All three of us had our hours cut from full time down to as little as 12 hours a week.  Since we were dependent upon walk-in traffic, it was difficult to increase sales per hour to compensate. In the end, we found ourselves at poverty level wages where we once made a comfortable income. The company's strategy was to replace lost hours by hiring students who were not solely dependent on their personal income.

Childhood environment can impact adult decision making. I was raised with a mentally handicapped mother and brother. This created an environment which impacted my development. I've known others with variations of intellectually challenged environments. Violence and the physical environment are also potential impediments to good childhood development. As an adult, I was accountable for my bad decisions but the causes of them included various conditioning factors relating to being influenced by the intellectually challenged family.

Existing environment can perpetuate either good or bad conditions. Between the lack of perceived resources and the influences of some others in the same conditions, I was in a self-perpetuating state of poverty for a while. I got better by changing my environment and the people who were influences. Unfortunately, a lot of people have bigger difficulties changing their environment.

Cognition is sometimes a factor in poverty. In my case, there were multiple cognitive factors. The childhood influences were a factor. When focused, I was quite smart and readily excelled at my endeavors. But some of my lack of focus and my reactionary tendencies were results of conditioning which I had to overcome. I also found that I fell in with other people who had rather chaotic states of mind. I managed to alter the conditions but I knew others who fell into even worse mental states. Much of what I describe here are "soft" cognitive issues which can be positively altered. But I think that it is also worth noting that there are various "hard" cognitive issues. My brother is an overt example. He is capable of living on his own but his 8 year old psychological state prevents him from progressing much beyond a minimal existence.  His is a more extreme case but neurological conditions, both diagnosed and undiagnosed, can be factors in poverty.

Government doesn't adequately look at the complexity. It's politically expedient to focus on singular causes or solutions while neglecting others. Deal with the issues most popular with the voters being pursued but don't tread too much into areas which need elevation of the public's perceptions. It's easier for some politicians to blame the top 10% and company CEO's while minimizing the problems with the rest of company culture. It's politically useful for others to blame the poor in a general sense without getting into the environmental, cultural and cognitive factors involved. It's easier to blame the poor when an inadequately designed program fails than admit the failings of the program. One experience which I had with the government was when a work program was created for people in need. I applied and was accepted. I was given a set amount of money in advance and paid it back by working for the city.  An additional requirement was that I had to show that I had applied for a set number of jobs each week. But the work assignments made that difficult. The work schedule was something like 8 - 5. I was assigned to outdoor work crews. After a full day of sweat and dirt, I was still expected to apply for a set number of jobs. But it was too difficult to apply for a lot of work which I could qualify for because I needed to clean up first.  This was an example of a good idea with rigid rules applied to an overly simplified plan.

But I think that people involved in the government and even charity groups would deal with more of the complexity if the voting public also did so. Politicians get on bandwagons because it is easy to get segments of the voting public onto bandwagons. This goes far beyond just the subject of poverty. In a sense, some of the cognitive factors which influence some people in poverty also affect the voting public. Too much of the voting public lack willingness or ability to focus on details. And they tend to be easily riled up to feverishly support reactionary policies rather than detailed multi-pronged strategies. This all allows some politicians and politically motivated media to mislead and misdirect.

More reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty
http://dana.org/News/Poverty_and_Cognition__How_the_Poor_Get_Poorer
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/poverty-strains-cognitive-abilities-opening-door-for-bad-decision-making-new-study-finds/2013/08/29/89990288-102b-11e3-8cdd-bcdc09410972_story.html?utm_term=.12ab9659f3ed
http://thepsychreport.com/research-application/featured-research/the-cognitive-burden-of-poverty/

The Progressive / Regressive War

This is the greatest conflict of all time. It has lasted for centuries and is global. At the same time that humanity's cognitive capacities progress, there have been groups who are set on regressing our intellectual and social capacities. Progressives eventually won in a number of places. But the regressives use subtle underground tactics when their usual brash and aggressive tactics are less effective. They slipped themselves back into politics at both national and local levels. They get into local governing positions in different areas and then network the areas turned regressive. They infiltrate schools. When that isn't successful, they attempt to damage public schools by diverting public funds to private schools via so-called choice or by opening schools controlled by religious groups. They force their extreme ideas into charitable projects. They force the needy to go through religious propaganda and rituals in order to receive assistance. They sometimes pretend to be the very progressives which they fight. They alter history to fit their beliefs. They also gather strength by consolidating their groups and forced gatherings. They indoctrinate their children and sometimes reject those who don't get trapped in the indoctrination. They use fear tactics. Regressives are more prone to violence either when they lose ground or when they feel the need to violently push their beliefs. The violence is partly due to the lack of a factual foundation.

The progressives sometimes unintentionally further the goals of the regressives. They are sometimes less cautious than warranted when they include regressive ideas into their suite of progressive movements. This sometimes has the effect of weekening the overall movement. It also gives ammunition to the regressives. Too many progressives don't take regressive political platforms into account when they vote for individuals who are tied to those platforms. Then the supposedly less regressive politician falls in line with the party's platform in order to further his or her position within the regressive party.

I personally believe that the regressives cannot win in the long term. But they can continue to cause damage as they gain and lose ground. The regressives have some avenues of influence which they control absolutely. Progressive infiltration into some of these avenues are very difficult whereas regressive corruption of progressive groups occur in part because of progressive openness. Although openness is integral to much of progressiveness, the regressives infiltrate traditionally progressive groups and corrupt them. In a way, I think of regressiveness as a disease. We've had it for most of humanity. It may not be completely curable but there are immunization options.

The war is complex. This is partially because there are opposing regressive factions with the progressives caught in the middle. It is further complicated by many of us who have a mix of progressive and regressive tendencies. In some cases, the dominance of one or the other shifts back and forth within people. Unfortunately, regressives have taken advantage of this fluctuation within people.

This is intended as an introduction to a series of blog and vlog entries which will discuss details of this war. I would like this to be a collaborative project. Leave comments if you have suggestions or want to contribute. I am not claiming that I have all the information. One difference which I see between progress and regress is being willing to say "I do not know" rather than acting on a false sense of knowledge. Acting on a false sense of knowledge seems to me to be one of the core elements of a lot of regressives. I will try to explore this in my next post.

I speak as someone who spent a large part of my life transitioning from being in one of the more regressive camps to being a progressively minded person. I was raised in a heavily religionist situation with environmentally and socially backward perspectives. But I saw some of the things which I was taught which was wrong. That eventually led me to question more and to question myself. After a rough transition period, I became better.

Hell Is Not For Children

This post is inspired by "Why I, an atheist, am afraid of hell" by CosmicSkeptic. I am also an atheist who had the fear of hell affect me periodically for years after I discontinued the beliefs. The conditioned emotional response was quite strong and depressing for the first few years. Although it has substantially mellowed in recent years, I still notice it from time to time.  I agree with Alex that it is child abuse regardless of the intentions. Fear is a primary emotion which can all too often occur even when it is completely contrary to the rest of a person's mental states. Conditioning which affects fear has been shown to sometimes last a lifetime. Fortunately, our other mental capabilities can compensate. But the dichotomy between the emotion and intellect can be disconcerting, even dangerously so. I think that it is valid to say that instilling unnecessary childhood fears which can negatively impact people into adulthood is abusive and unethical. This is especially the case since Hell is a fiction.

If it did exist, it is immoral. Hell would be immoral and an indication of God's immorality. The belief is that we will be punished for eternity if we don't make all the correct decisions in our short physical life. Believers in this expect more morality out of humans than they expect from their god. Only the worst tyrants and religionists have resorted to long term torture. And the scale adds to the evil. I have seen estimates that there have been more than 110 billion people on earth, which includes the current 6 billion. A bit over 50% of the current population are either Christian, Jewish or Muslim. Odds are that the majority of the others will not convert before they die. Go back a few thousand years and few people heard of the Abrahamic god. Now, it's a bit ambiguous regarding what happens to nonbelievers who have never heard of the biblical God or Jesus Christ. But we are still talking billions of people in Hell.  What is the justification? Any explanations are very shallow and only convincing for the conditioned believers. So how many billions of people will be eternally punished before the god is satisfied?

I believe that Hell is probably the worst idea out of many bad ideas in religions.

Adjective Abuse

Donald Trump is not the only person in government to abuse the use of adjectives.  It's all too common in politics, especially among Republicans (use of disastrous, failing, fake, etc). To be clear, I define adjective abuse as being the use of adjectives to misrepresent reality. Trump's transgender tweets illustrate the con which adjectives can be. He tweeted about "tremendous" cost of transgenders in the military. But transgender medical costs are estimated on the high end to be .13 of 1% of the military budget and only 16% of Trump's golf trips so far this year. If transgender costs are defined as tremendous cost, what adjectives should be used for cost of Trump's pleasures on the American people?

A personal immigration experience

I traveled for a time after my last military job. I supplemented my finances by periodically doing temp and seasonal jobs. I worked with a wide range of people, including a lot of immigrants (documented and undocumented). There were a number of times when the crews were mixed. It was telling to see how many of the white guys would drop off while more of the immigrants stayed the length of the jobs. I also found that immigrants were more consistent to work with because they had fewer personal problems. A substantial number of the white guys who would hire onto these jobs had alcohol and personality issues whereas most of the immigrants who I worked with were sober and well balanced people.

See an interesting TYT article about this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLf-gd8Rk2w&t=488s

Movie Review - Passengers (2016)

My sci-fi preference is for hard science fiction.  I like as much science accuracy as possible.  In that vein, I also prefer psychological realism.  I can't relate if the portrayal of what people do and say are too far out of sink with how they would really act.  I have gotten more selective with what I watch because of these things.  I dislike being disappointed after I watch a movie or read a book.  For instance, I disliked Star Wars Force Awakens.  I'm even a bit forgiving toward the prequels.  But I think that Force Awakens stretched coherence too far.  But that deserves its own post.

I just watched Passengers (2016).  I had reservations because multiple reviews illustrated how much of the science was wrong and about the abusive action of Pratt's character.  But I liked the idea that it didn't have any intentional antagonists.  So I rented it.  Yes, it did get rather loose with the science.  But I thought that it had a compelling story and interesting character portrayals.  I thought that the positives outweighed the negatives.  You see, another thing with which I've gotten bored is the antagonist / protagonist method of story telling.  Some people claim that Pratt's character is the antagonist. But I think of the character as being someone who intends to be a good guy but makes a horrible mistake. 

The end result is that I felt that Passengers had enough for me to consider it to be enjoyable science fiction.  It had a good concept, generally good story progression, likable characters and no enemies.  That being said, it really could have done better by the science without being detrimental to the story.  But I will watch it again.

The Kids Are Alright

I also created a YouTube video for this topic.

I recently heard someone not much older than me talking about how he thought that the current generation is fucked up.  This was a fairly well-to-do guy who seemed fairly smart.  But I think that his perspective on the “new generation” was dumb.  It was superficial.  For one thing, he’s judging a large group of people based on limited information.  Additionally, parts of both the good and bad of each generation are outgrowths of past generations.

Generational divides always seemed artificial to me.  I was born in a year which falls in both the “baby boomer generation” and the “generation x”.  People have argued which I should be grouped in.  But I argued against both terms.  I don’t give a fuck what age group people are in.  That only partially defines them.  Definitions of “generations” of people never seem to cover enough of the people.  It seems to me that the terms are more defining the period of time rather that the people.  And conditions of periods of time are not affected by a single age group.  I understand that various age groups have challenges and accomplishments unique to their age groups.  But the variations are so broad that it seems to me that defining them within a generation is a bit of an overgeneralization.

Every period of time has good and bad folks, people with different and conflicting intelligences.  From those different people, each period of time has progress and degeneration.  Those states of progress and degenerations are expanded by the “next generation”.  What makes things better or worse is partly dependent on whether the progress or degeneration has more momentum.  For a long time, we’ve generally seen more progress than degeneration.

To take a few steps back, I see many people’s nostalgia as limited in focus.  An example is this guy who was interviewed in Louisiana for a documentary about new waves of segregation via some attempts at public funding of some local charter schools.  He was talking about how life was better when he was a kid in the 1950’s.  Now, we are talking about Louisiana in the 1950’s.  This was part of the heavily segregated south where public resources were routed more for the betterment of white communities.  But he didn’t see how he was reminiscing about his limited experiences in his white culture and that other people of his age in the same area did not have the benefits that he did.  If he stepped out of his own memories and looked at the broader range of experiences during the time of his childhood, he may have had different opinions of his past and the current age.

Moving forward, I believe that the overall momentum is toward positive progress.  Yes, there are still areas where things have degraded.  But we need to be careful about placing blame on “the new generation”.  Some things are picked up from past ages, then made better or worse.  Let’s take litter as an example.  An older person might look at a littering young person and simply blame that person or that generation or culture.  But the littering person may very well have picked up the habit from an older person.  I have seen parents discarding trash on the street in the presence of their kids.  Kids often pick up behaviors from parents.  So those kids may become litterers because of the example set by the parents.  What I am trying to say is that a lot of behaviors are cross-generational.

That’s not to say that people of any age shouldn’t be held accountable for their actions.  But the blame can be spread a lot further than just one generation.  Overall, we are all in this thing called life together.  We collectively make things better or worse.  Yes, we have to hold people accountable for their behaviors and affects on others.  But I am tired of the oversimplified blame game that too many people do.  We do need to place blame where needed.  But we need to look at the details and not just our limited experiences when blaming large groups of people or even individuals.  As far as age groups go, I see a lot more fault in past generations both in what was done and what has been passed on.  There are currently a lot of issues but they are continuations of issues which have existed for a long time.  That being said, there is a lot of misinformation about the current state of things.  I recommend Steven Pinker’s book “The Better Angels of Our Nature” for some incites into how humanity is better today than in the past.  But even casual investigations show how each new generation in recent times have brought humanity overall into a better state.

I’m not a complete optimist.  There are environmental problems and areas of violence.  But these things, even the actions which people take, are mistakes compounded on mistakes.  There are a lot of difficulties ahead.  But it’s the kids of today who have the potential to continue the progress and lessen the degeneration, just as each generation has often, somehow managed to make some corrections of problems passed onto them from the past generation.  The degeneration which exists has its roots in the past.  So I say to those who want to blame the younger people for supposedly making things worse, look at your own age group for contributing factors.  Also, look a little broader and you will see more good than bad in many areas.

The fall of the roman empire and the decline of the middle eastern areas did not come about due to a single generation.  Many of the mistakes and extremism of the generations which caused the degenerations came from the conditions created by the previous generations.

As some older people can become too set in their ways, some young people can be a bit too reactionary.  Erroneous judgments about the motivations of older people can occur.  I remember an event in my 20’s.  I was at a party, which was getting rather loud.  It was in an apartment complex.  An older neighbor called to ask that we tone things done, which we did.  There were people who talked about the “old farts”.  A couple of us went over to talk with the couple.  While there, we could hear how our music was louder in their apartment than their own music.  So we understood that it wasn’t about the oldness but rather it was about our own empathy and courtesy.  They could have turned their speakers up to compensate for our loudness.  But that would have then affected the neighbors on the other side.  

And that brings me to an important thing.  When possible, It’s better to learn a bit more about others before making judgements.  Conversation is best.  Empathy is key.  See what it’s like on the other side.  There are times when quick judgements are needed but we are often too quick too often.  Related to quick justments are what I call stagnate cognitive filters.  People in all ages and most cultures have cognitive filters which don’t get updated or get clogged with inaccurate information.  And I think that updating and cleaning those filters will open us up to new and better possibilities.

Physical Morals

Physical Morals

This topic is also covered in some videos on my YouTube channel.)

Preface

I would like to first state that this work is based on my personal understanding.  This is not intended as an authoritative piece of work.  It is more of a general outline which I hope will be useful to others.

Some people will question why a topic about physically defined morals is needed.  I see multiple reasons.  One reason is because too many people’s ethics are tied to supernatural beliefs.  Some even go as far as to say that morality requires religion.  But this is false.   There are lots of people who have a sense of ethics without religion.  Also, there are common morals across some quite different religions, which removes exclusivity from any 1 religion.  Another reason is that morals tied closely to supernatural beliefs are inconsistent and unstable.  A reason why some religions have a spectrum of people from fanatical killers to peaceful non-violent folks is because many religions’ scriptures support both.  For Christianity, some people claim that the old testament laws are superseded by Christ’s sacrifice while others point to his statements about all the old laws being valid.

A confusing factor is about post-religionist morals.  People who go through an “immoral” period after they leave a religion are used as evidence for the religious beliefs.  But I believe that this shows the opposite.  Using religion to teach morals is tenuous at best.  Not only are the old morals difficult to modernize with new knowledge (Religionists’ perspective on gays as example) but people sometimes have to regain ethical footing after leaving a belief system.  Ethics are more consistent over time and more easily maintained by people as their beliefs change if the ethics are grounded in the physical.  This is because the ethics are independent of the changing beliefs. Unethical behaviors not based in religion have little to hide from when the supernatural or god cards are not played.

I believe that humanity needs to wholly embrace ethics with physical origins. All religions have changed over time while most have internal conflicts.  Even the gods change over time, including the judeo christian ones (plural intended).  Additionally, the morals written down are those held by the authors at the time of the writings.  Regardless of what religionists claim, the morals in the texts of religions are based on people’s perceptions and information, often full of bias and inaccuracies.  As new information needs new ethics and understanding of behaviors becomes better, the ancient morals can’t keep up.  But physically based ethics can grow with modern understanding of things.  Physical ethics can use new knowledge to remove the harmful ethics and add new ones as needed.

So, how am I doing with regards to ethics.  In a way, I can be compared to how our societies are transitioning from supernatural authority to physical reality for ethics.  I was once a devout Christian.  I read the Bible from beginning to end 3 times by the time I was 17 years old.  But experiences in my late teens challenged my beliefs.  I struggled with attempts to believe in a god, the soul and so on for some time.  But I eventually realized that the only constant is the physical.  So I reoriented my perspective to a purely physical one.  Since my morality was so closely associated with the religion of my youth, I made some ethical mistakes.  The process is not complete.  But I strive to be a fully ethical person based on the physical model.  My biggest shortfall is in the personal category.  The personal ethics include balanced exercise and a healthy diet.  I’m still working on those things.

-----------------------------------------------

Although I will be discussing ethical categories, ethics in 1 category affect other categories.  For instance, how we treat ourselves can affect chemical states in the brain.  This, in turn, can affect our emotions which can then affect our social ethics.  Personal knowledge can also affect social ethics.  A lack of understanding as to why we react in certain ways can lead to behavioral patterns which negatively impact our social ethics.

PERSONAL ETHICS

How we treat ourselves

Three key ethics in this category are fitness, diet and self awareness.  Of these 3, I want to primarily discuss personal awareness.  Self awareness affects the fitness, diet and other personal ethics.  For example, I didn’t notice how much I was getting out of shape.  But self awareness affects the other ethical categories.  I can contrast 2 people who illustrate this.  One guy was quick to anger.  When people would point out that his anger seemed out of proportion, he would get angrier.  While I knew him, he never realized how his anger issues were due to something in him.  He believed that it was always the stupidity of others which sparked his anger.  Another guy had similar anger issues.  He said that he once tended to be angry all the time.  But he realized that his anger was not proportional to the stuff which angered him.  He sought psychological and medical help.  It was eventually found that there was a neurological cause to his rages which could be addressed with medication.  These are examples of how self awareness affects social ethics.  But self awareness is also socially useful for general purposes.  Being aware of the nature of our reactions helps us understand that our reactions may not match the stuff being reacted to.  For instance, some people tend to have more negative reactions to things which are different.  But an adequately self aware person will look at the differences independent of his or her reactions.  Good fitness and diet can have effects beyond the personal as well.  Fitness and diet can affect mood,  which then affects how others are treated.

SOCIAL ETHICS
How we treat others and their stuff

A physical starting point supports a more socially progressive approach to ethics.  We can examine differences based on their real effects on people.  Certain standards remain, such as avoidance of theft and violence.  But we can appreciate diversity more from a physical perspective.  We can distinguish between real harm from imaginary harm.  Our social ethics evolve as our understanding does.  And we do endeavor to understand.  We don’t assume that ancient restrictions  are valid just because they are still taught.  We don’t assume that our initial reactions are necessarily correct.  We emphasize empathy.  We look at our impact on others.  As a community of people, we sometimes have to alter what we want if it negatively impacts others.  But we don’t restrict other people’s wants if they have no negative impact.  

ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS

What we put into the air and water has consequences.  Those consequences require new ethics which we have been ill prepared to deal with.  It’s rather enlightening to read about environmental history.  Human difficulties with modifying behavior to ensure a healthy environment have existed since before written history.  But the environmental degradation was more localized than current times.  Since earth is a mostly closed system, the impacts are accumulating.  We’ve made corrections but we continue to make excuses for not being cleaner.  It doesn’t seem to matter that people’s health and lives are impacted.  Environmental ethics take a back seat to economics and convenience.  My physical perspective shows me that I need to do better at a personal level.  But the responsibility for keeping Earth a healthy place requires changes by all peoples, companies and countries.  We can rebuild a healthy environment.  We have the technology and knowledge. We have the capability to create environments which are better for the current and future generations.  But it requires more use of our cognitive abilities and more intellectual honesty.

COGNITIVE ETHICS

I believe that there are also cognitive ethics which affect all the rest.  This may seem obvious to some people.  But I believe that how we process information and understand things are factors which are hugely neglected.  I am an example.  I was raised in an environment which was rather intellectually stunted.  Religion was a factor in this.  But it went beyond that.  There were a lot of topics which I was misinformed about.  The adults did not intentionally deceive me.  They believed the things which they passed on.  And I was taught to take too much stuff at face value.  But there was also the “gut” mentality.  You’ve probably heard it.  “Go with your gut feelings”.  “First impressions are often right”.  And so on.  But I came to realize that misinformation breeds misinformation.  And there is no such thing as first impressions.  How we judge things are often based on a combination of past experiences, what we are taught and neurological factors.  I had kind of a personal cognitive revolution.  I learned to look a bit more thoroughly at things.  My opinions changed as I learned, as did my behaviors.  I am still working on these things.  But that is part of the point.  I acknowledge that my information is imperfect and my judgements may be flawed.  I, for one, am still endeavoring to do better, to be better, to ask questions and learn… to evolve.

I read some interesting points regarding intellectual honesty which fit my discoveries.

• One’s sense of conviction should be in proportion to the level of clear evidence assembled
• Be willing to acknowledge and question one’s own assumptions and biases
• Be willing to acknowledge where your information is weak
• Be willing to acknowledge when you are wrong
• Be willing to realize when your opinions are colored by emotion
• Issues go beyond the individuals who are discussing them
• Be careful how you fill in the gaps
• Commit to critical thinking
• Be willing to look at ideas contrary to your own but be fact based

Pseudohistory

I am currently reading about world history.  I am currently reading A History of the World by Andrew Marr.  The previous read was What Happened in Prehistory by Peter Neal Peregrine.  My next book will be History of the World from 20th to 21st Century by J. A. S. Grenville.

I came across a topic which I wanted to see about what Youtube had for documentaries about it.  During the search, I located a video Things archaeologists won't touch.  The video was of a "lecture" by a guy who was positing that we had far more advanced beings on earth than archaeologists are willing to admit.  The presenter showed a number of things with alternative explanations which I already knew were debunked.  But one thing which I saw was reminiscent of The Indiana Jones' Crystal Skull movie.  The presenter showed a photograph of a collection of elongated skulls.  That sparked my interest.  I did not think much of it when the Indiana Jones movie portrayed it since all of the Indiana Jones movies take huge liberties with the portrayal of archaeology.  But I wanted to find out what the supposedly real elongated skulls were about.

So I googled elongated skulls.  In addition to Snopes' page about it, a Wikipedia article and other more scholarly resources came up for "artificial cranial deformation".  It turns out that the skulls in the Youtube presentation showed examples of something still being done in modern times.  The elongated skulls occur when infants' heads are wrapped tightly or otherwise bound.  There are even living examples of this.

So here is another person who is promoting pseudohistory where more accurate history is readily available.  I would think that the readily available access to scholarly information would lessen the amount of bogus portrayals of history.  But pseudoscience is clearly still a thing.  This guy was even going so far as to condemn archaeologists for their more careful approaches to interpreting evidence.

The topic about elongated sculls is a case where there is a crossfire of misinformation.  We have a mainstream and other movies which portray the elongated skulls as aliens.  A casual Youtube search for some people might then land them on the "Things archaeologists won't touch" video.  Then some of these people will quote the guy in the video as if he is supplying factual information.

This reinforces my negative view of the "creative licence" often taken regarding historical accuracy in movies and TV.  The Crystal Skull movie basically took an existing fake history and expanded it into a full movie.  This, in turn, can influence some people to do a casual search which lands them on the pseudohistorical articles.  Then the fakery is perpetuated.

Speaking of historical fakery, Some of the replies to the debunking comments to the aforementioned "lecture" referenced the Starchild skull.  Some people have latched onto that as further proof of aliens.  But it doesn't take much research to location tests done on the skull and a well documented medical condition which even has modern photographs of children with skulls like the Starchild skull.

Alternate Facts

A member of Trump's staff went on a national news program and discussed what she claimed were alternate facts.  To the host's credit, he challenged her definition of alternate facts.  Trump and others are increasingly mixing things up regarding the definition of a fact or truth.  In this case, it was about the size of the Inauguration  crowd.  Here's my take.  The facts of an event are what really happened.  The event's impact on people may be relative and sometimes even peoples' impact on an event.  And peoples' perception of the events may vary.  But what really happened doesn't have alternatives.  The alternatives are people's interpretations and perceptions of the facts.  A goal is to get the interpretations and perceptions in line with actual facts.  But that doesn't appear to be Trump's goal.

In Trump's case, he wants the facts of things to match his perception of reality. Period.  It doesn't matter what really happened.  His version is the only acceptable version of facts which others can accept.

Star Wars Inspired Rebellion Against Bad Fiction

The Star Wars to which my title refers is The Force Awakens.  Although the original 3 movies have their physics and character flaws, I liked the stories well enough to let them go.  I can even watch the prequels without too many cringes, although they compound physics issues with very flawed personality portrayals.

But The Force Awakens went too far.  It had more physics issues, more personality issues, rehashed plot points of the previous movies.  The powers that be decided to oversimplify the future of the series by doing a violent reset. One of the key figures in the new movies did a similar thing with Star Trek.  I am hard pressed to decide which is the worse reset.  I do not want to go into details regarding the issues with the new directions of these 2 series.  There is plenty said on IMDB and YouTube.  I am actually endeavoring to minimize my memory of those resets.  In Star Trek's case, I rewatched and reread my Star Trek collection.  I wasn't as big of a Star Wars fan so I only had the 6 movies and a couple of books.  So I was willing to watch The Force Awakens even after it was disclosed that it would go into an entirely different direction than the Expanded Universe of the books.  But my opinion of SW: TFA was low enough where I decided to get a bunch of the old stories to overwrite what I watched.

Before anyone gets the wrong impression, I am not fanatical about maintaining continuity with what has been previously written or filmed. One of the things which religion taught me is to not take fiction too seriously.

In some ways, the bad fiction of the new Star Trek and Star Wars has similarities with how filmmakers treat source material in general.  I am OK with films which stray from the story in the source material if the fictional story is better or the historical events more accurate. But too many movies with differing story lines have also been inferior.  To me, this actually becomes an ethical issue when portraying historical events.  Too many people accept the fictional portrayals of history, sometimes even about important events.  Even politicians are using this tendency.  Some politicians get elected because of their fictions.

But there are problems with even some original stories.  Yet even people who agree with me on some of these criticisms will still watch shoddy stories because of attractive visuals or exciting action sequences.  But I've had enough of crappy stories or bad historical portrayals.  My feelings have been further reinforced by the election of Donald Trump for U.S. President.  He made almost an art form out of false statements and excessive use of adjectives and adverbs over substance.  Yet enough people bought what he was saying for him to win the electoral vote.  Fuck, even some liberals voted for him.

Too many people believe things based on the tone of someone's voice or other superficial elements.  Too many people believe what's written because it feels a certain way.  Too many people accept bad fiction masquerading as history.  And there are simply too many bad stories in general.

But there is also a lot of good stuff.  And there can be more if we force the powers that be to do better.  I call for a rebellion against the dark forces used by bad storytellers and pseudohistory.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2017/01/02/yes-donald-trump-lies-a-lot-and-news-organizations-should-say-so/?utm_term=.398a9ddc6d44