Brooders.net

I didn’t finish this book.

I liked some of the concepts, but the author, Richard Dawkins, struck me as bitter and twisted throughout the first few chapters. And probably continued to complain throughout the rest of the book. Unfortunately, I also watched a documentary of his on TV, which kind of reinforced his belligerent intolerance to religion. That being said, he does have a few good points.

“There is no such thing as a Christian child, there is only a child of Christian parents.”

Insert whatever religion you like in that phrase.

Interesting point because can a child really ponder religion when their main source of “truth” (i.e. Their Parents) is telling them what to think, what to believe and how the world works? Is it Conditioning through reciting prayers and creeds? I guess it provides an easy answer to questions. Why is that mummy? “God works in mysterious ways”, or “God is teaching us a lesson”. It stops deeper questioning which doesn’t help understanding the world or situations. So his point, that children are conditioned by their parents to believe (kinda like santa claus, but with more serious restrictions on lifestyle).

It did make me reflect on my own religious upbringing. I can still recite various creeds and prayers, even though I have not attended church in 15 years. It took a while for me to throw off the concept of god. Or perhaps more accurately, recognise it only as a concept and not an actual “thing”. I am 30 now, but only in the last year or so come around to this “revelation” for want of a better word. I also wonder whether this has to do with physical proximity to my parents, as I moved interstate from them nearly 8 years ago.

So back to the book, here’s what Amazon has to say:

Discover magazine recently called Richard Dawkins “Darwin’s Rottweiler” for his fierce and effective defense of evolution. Prospect magazine voted him among the top three public intellectuals in the world (along with Umberto Eco and Noam Chomsky).

Now Dawkins turns his considerable intellect on religion, denouncing its faulty logic and the suffering it causes. He critiques God in all his forms, from the sex-obsessed tyrant of the Old Testament to the more benign (but still illogical) Celestial Watchmaker favored by some Enlightenment thinkers. He eviscerates the major arguments for religion and demonstrates the supreme improbability of a supreme being.

He shows how religion fuels war, foments bigotry, and abuses children, buttressing his points with historical and contemporary evidence. In so doing, he makes a compelling case that belief in God is not just irrational, but potentially deadly. Dawkins has fashioned an impassioned, rigorous rebuttal to religion, to be embraced by anyone who sputters at the inconsistencies and cruelties that riddle the Bible, bristles at the inanity of “intelligent design,” or agonizes over fundamentalism in the Middle Eastor Middle America.

Here’s a snippet from my childhood .. I am not sure why do small children in primary school (ages 6-12) need to sing songs with lyrics like:
“what did Judas do?,
he hung himself upon an alder”.
Why? I just think it’s weird, perhaps it a story with a righteous ending where the guilty or betrayer gets punished, so it’s all ok .. and there’s a happy ending.

So here’s an interesting concept (in my mind at least), just say we have all these religions who think they are correct. So we have:

• Religion J - We’re Right, the only god, every other is false
• Religion C - We’re Right, the only god, every other is false
• Religion I - We’re Right, the only god, every other is false
• Religion B - We’re Right, enlightenment is the way
• Religion H - We’re Right, the only gods, every other is false

If everyone thinks they’re right, someone must be wrong. In fact if there is only one religion is correct, then 80% of religions are wrong. So more than likely, they are all wrong. At least that’s my current over simplistic proof that they are all wrong.

So, is my rant above equal his? The irony is not lost on me.

It probably made me think about the issue quite seriously, I just didn’t like the messenger.

Rating: Unrated (Need to probably finish it .. maybe when the pile of other books diminishes).

I get a fair few Google referrals searching for “Brooders”.

When I first registered this site, I was thinking about “Brooding” as a mental activity. However a Brooder, according to Wikipedia, is also a term for Incubator or “NeoNatal Intensive Care unit”. This wikipedia article relates to human babies, and is not what you find on Google. Searching for Brooders on Google yields results about Chicken or Bird brooders or incubators.

These sites have lots of talk of Ambient Temperature, Poultry Management and other Fun things.

There are pictures of what looks like boxes or cages with heat lamps.

So there is a little mix up out there in reality, where brooders means something else (i.e. Infant incubation !)

What I was actually thinking of was …

If you are coming in from Google, Sorry about that, Click here to really search for brooders !

Transhumanism is an odd thing I don’t think many of my friends (or my wifes for that matter) would know about.

Everyones first point of reference (Wikipedia) has the following to say about Transhumansim:

Transhumanism is an international intellectual and cultural movement supporting the use of new sciences and technologies to enhance human mental and physical abilities and aptitudes, and ameliorate what it regards as undesirable and unnecessary aspects of the human condition, such as stupidity, suffering, disease, aging and involuntary death.

Dang .. that’s not particularly clear.

This article however, Transhumanism as simplified humanism, I think does a good job of explaining things:

If you believe professional bioethicists (people who get paid to explain ethical judgments) then the rule “Life is good, death is bad; health is good, sickness is bad” holds only until some critical age, and then flips polarity. Why should it flip? Why not just keep on with life-is-good? It would seem that it is good to save a six-year-old girl, but bad to extend the life and health of a 150-year-old. Then at what exact age does the term in the utility function go from positive to negative? Why?

As far as a transhumanist is concerned, if you see someone in danger of dying, you should save them; if you can improve someone’s health, you should. There, you’re done. No special cases. You don’t have to ask anyone’s age.

You also don’t ask whether the remedy will involve only “primitive” technologies (like a stretcher to lift the six-year-old off the railroad tracks); or technologies invented less than a hundred years ago (like penicillin) which nonetheless seem ordinary because they were around when you were a kid; or technologies that seem scary and sexy and futuristic (like gene therapy) because they were invented after you turned 18; or technologies that seem absurd and implausible and sacrilegious (like nanotech) because they haven’t been invented yet. Your ethical dilemma report form doesn’t have a line where you write down the invention year of the technology. Can you save lives? Yes? Okay, go ahead. There, you’re done.

So .. Transhumanism is about saving lives and increasing health and intellect in individuals using technology. That’s much easier than shrouding things in complicated terms. Pacemakers are good, so are joint replacements ( I discussed this kind of tech in Cybernetics - Merging Man and Machine earlier) .. we don’t think about that kind of enhancement now, but stem cells and custom grown organs is still a bit freaky and new for most people. I guess that the current problem with this technology .. it’s still too new.

The above article talks about morality .. if you can save or help someone, then why not do it? Who cares what technology you use to do it.

Live ink .. interesting research and way of looking at written text.

Over at venture beat, they talk about LiveInk offering a better way to read text online. a couple of points they make:

Did you know our primitive brains weren’t wired very well to read this paragraph?
…
When our ancestors first invented written language about 5,000 years ago, they unfortunately didn’t have armies of neuroscientists standing by to tell them block type was the wrong way to format their papyrus rolls. But fret not. Help is on the way.

So .. when writing was invented it was immediately functional, but perhaps not the most efficient?

To explain what this is about take a look at a sample (borrowed from: liveink.com)

Liveink text:

Easier to read
      because
            it’s easier
               to see.

Original text:

Easier to read because it’s easier to see.

The theory goes that we have a very narrow field of view (circular) from which to read. If text is spaced so that we see only the current words without the distraction of the words above and below, it’s easier and faster to read. See Liveink for their explanation and demonstration.

Maybe with the rise of online material we’ve reached a point where typography will evolve. Who knows, at any rate it might start to explain (partially) why blogging is effective. Most blogs have margins and a small narrow area for reading, perhaps this easy to read typography has contributed to its popularity? I don’t know. At any rate visual appeal seems important to information absorption.

What’s interesting to me as a programmer is this way of formatting looks like it could be easily scriptable via Perl, Ruby or Python (pick your language of choice). Although it looks simple, I guess Live Ink has 80 patents for a reason, it’s probably harder than it looks.

( Via Kurzweil )