Failed Synapse

The First Amendment de-regulated Faith. What's not to like?

2008-08-31T08:58:00.000-07:00

In his book The Audacity of Hope, Obama approaches but never fully makes what I think is a fascinating point: while the language of the First Amendment is regarded to separate the Church and State, it effectively de-regulated religion.

In his 1963 Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (and let's not compare this work directly to Obama's: the former is a Pulitzer Prize-winning analysis of society by a celebrated public intellectual; the latter is light bedside reading laying out one man's left-centrist political views) Richard Hofstadter discusses how democratization of religious leadership ultimately led to a strong anti-intellectualist tradition that dominates almost every aspect of American policy today. While American society generally equates academia with elitism, Hofstadter documents an interesting cycle wherein America's brash and populist decisions require society to reach out to the "egg heads" every 50 years or so to dig America back out of its hole. During the period in which America as a nation buckles down and addresses global warming, empirical thinking will be briefly allowed to re-enter American politics until the immediate crisis passes -- at which time a new, fundamentalist leader will emerge to fan the passions and cure the emotional restlessness of the American voting populace.

But my point: Given the current de-regulated state of religion in America, increased governmental protection of Church interests could very possibly handicap the Church's viability. While arguments for increased protection of the Church by the State are common, one has to wonder whether such appeals aren't ultimately against the Church's interests of continuing to save as many souls as they can.

Simulacra, Dennett's parlor trick, and cheating on your wife

2007-10-12T21:03:00.000-07:00

A couple-friend of a couple-friend of ours is breaking up. It seems she caught him engaging in cybersex. I think *he* should leave *her* for apparently diminished mental capacity.

Common ground that everyone must agree on: Cybersex is not physical cheating. Good. If you disagree with that, you're clearly having trouble distinguishing between internal feelings like "it's wrong to cheat" and words with unequivocal meaning, like "physical." If you find yourself in that place, you should immediately locate your voter registration card and destroy it. This is critical; other people's lives may depend on it.

OK, so cybersex is not physical cheating. Is it mental cheating? I'm not sure -- and I'm going to argue that it's irrelevant. Most people -- everyone I've talked to about this, anyway -- feels that cybersex is cheating. What they are doing -- what has happened here -- is that the high emotions involved have caused everyone to ignore their senses and through the constructs of language and fear, create a distorted copy of the concept of fidelity. This simulacrum seems to have become a truth in its own right -- hyperreal. Fidelity is... not seeming unfaithful; not rousing the fear of infidelity; not suggestive of any errant desires. Such a construct is dishonest, destructive, controlling, self-deceptive, and impractical (on occasion my most damning of words.)

Cybersex is also a simulacrum. It is not the same exchange that would occur in RL. Plato would call this "intentionally distorted image-making;" Desmond Morris might argue that cybersex is a virtual extension of super-sex, or the exaggeration of sexual features among humans, communication being one such feature. If people did this with *any* frequency in RL, it wouldn't be called "cybersex."

So with cybersex, we have (generally) two people engaging in online sex-chat. But do we? And here is the point: Who knows? Sex chat is highly, highly predictable and programmatic. In this context, constructing a virtual sex-chat partner that could pass a Turing test will be very easy. It's likely that at least one such program is lurking in chat rooms even now, victimizing would-be faithful partners across the globe; and as a practical matter, *she* can't really say whether *he* is actually chatting with another person at all. And though *he* probably is: the *content* of the conversation isn't sufficient to make such a determination. And doesn't the point regard the content?

Here, let me diverge and introduce another line of thinking.

In his (admittedly, egotistically entitled) book "Consciousness Explained," Daniel Dennett describes a parlor trick. In this parlor trick, the host asks for a volunteer from among a party. He then describes the game: The volunteer will be asked to leave the room, and one member of the remaining party will describe a recent dream in detail. The volunteer will then return to the room, and ask yes-no questions of the group to try to determine the content of the dream.

Once the volunteer is escorted from the room, the host reveals that the game is not, in fact, one of twenty questions. No one will describe a recent dream. Instead, the group is instructed to answer "yes" if the first noun in the volunteer's question ends with the letters A through P, and "no" if it ends with Q through Z.

The volunteer then returns to the room and begins asking questions. The group provides essentially random feedback to the volunteer, and yet the volunteer generates a rich, elaborate fiction based upon his own processing of random external feedback. Dennett describes this game as a very close analogue to actual consciousness.

In engaging in cybersex, the typist has essentially constructed his own elaborate sex-chat fiction based on theme-specific but content-arbitrary responses from a source that may or may not be human. It contains no more meaning than the fiction generated from playing a round of Dennett's parlor trick; and it is simply a simulacrum of our typist's ethereal desires. Thinking frequently of sex is simply part of the human condition. There is nothing real in the act of sex-chat, and the only sin lies in its physical documentation... written in the bit-ether of the Internet, ironically enough.

To those who will argue that cybersex is foreplay, a beginning of something more: You weren't paying attention. Cybersex is purely fictive. There is a significant step between imagining something and planning it; and yet another significant step between planning something and actually doing it. If you find yourself in *this* place -- where you're ignoring the distinction between someone else's fantasy and your actual physical reality -- again, please immediately locate your voter registration card and destroy it: I have chatted online with you here about your destroying your voter registration card; it has brought me great pleasure; and yet you are angry even though you didn't really destroy your voter registration card. Do you see how silly you are? You don't have to like it, but don't construct your own elaborate fiction to self-propage a denial of the truth.

See-saw shitter

2005-10-05T15:33:00.000-07:00

After years of reliable once-per-day bowel movements at about 7:30am, my new early work schedule has necessitated serious and undesired changes in my bathroom behavior.

Three months of daily efforts to move my bathroom schedule up to an earlier time typically bore no fruit, so to speak. Faced with the decision to leave the house even earlier or use the john at work, I chose the latter. My decision was guided in part by Jason's advice that it's actually quite actualizing to use the shitter on your employer's time, with the side benefit of having to pony up for that much less toilet paper. So, for the past couple of months, I've been doing my duty at work. By multi-tasking I've managed a high score of about 270,000 on my cell phone version of Galaga. Galaga rocks.

As you'll recall from a prior post, I work on the 12th floor of one of the highrise buildings in downtown Dallas. The design of the building is such that the restrooms for men and women are adjacent, sharing a wall that contains the plumbing. The toilets are of the design that attach directly to the wall, having no contact with the floor.

When you have a central wall containing the plumbing, and adjacent restrooms containing toilets mounted to said wall, it's therefore apparently possible that you have toilets connected back-to-back through the wall with plumbing that serves as a sort of fulcrum.

I find it difficult to believe the architect didn't think this through.

The first time I experienced this in action, I was initially kind of stunned. Through the wall I could hear the rear of a (what I presume to be) heavyset woman plopping onto a pot directly behind me, invisible of course through the tiled wall. I was instantly propelled upward by about an inch -- not enough to eject me from the seat, but certainly enough to feel disturbed in what had become an unexpectedly -- if anonymously -- shared experience. Thus, the see-saw shitter.
There are multiple experiences to be had here, all of which feel wrong to varying degrees.

The most common is to be already seated then propelled upward, and kept there until the female on the other side vacates her seat. I suppose this experience is at least equally unsettling for her, considering we've just anonymously settled the question of who outweighs whom.

A second common scenario occurs when already seated and a lighter female joins the game. Here I'm still typically displaced upward, but then my heavier weight pulls my side back down again. Of course, these scenarios occur in reverse as well, with the other party already occupying the opposite seat.

Although tempted, I have never actually used my legs to engage in an actual game of see-saw. I suppose I could even turn around backwards and grab the flush handle.

I have pictures, I have proof -- I'm surrounded by the mentally ill

2005-09-30T13:40:00.000-07:00

This is an actual photo taken yesterday, 9/29/2005, in a 14th-floor breakroom of one of the highrise buildings in downtown Dallas. Being a psychologist myself, my intent is not to get a laugh at the expense of others with serious mental health care needs. That said, take a look at the pic.

Now, let's step through the implications of this observation logically:

Assume that 8 tags are gone from the flyer.
Assume individuals taking tags were unique -- nobody took more than one.
Assume 100% of tags were taken by people enduring schizophrenia or bipolar disorder
Assume that about 25% of those suffering from schizophrenia or bipolar disorder would consider participating in the study, seriously enough to take a tag.
Assume that about 10% of the building has been to this one breakroom since the study flyer has been posted, AND read the flyer.

OK, so 8 / .25 = 32.
32 / .10 = 320.

Three-hundred twenty people suffering from schizophrenia or bipolar disorder in this building. OK, seems a bit high. So let's apply more conservative assumptions:

--7 tags taken
--5 were unique
--60% taken by people with schizophrenia/bipolar
--50% of those with schizophrenia/bipolar might participate
--15% of the building has read the flyer

5 * .60 = 3
3 / .50 = 6
6 / .15 = 40.

The prevalence rate of schizophrenia (1.1%) and bipolar disorder (1.2%) are relatively low in the general population. Based on observations of parking garage capacity and activity, I estimate there are about 750 people in the building. Even by our conservative estimate, forty schizophrenic / bipolar patients out of 750 total workers works out to about 5.3%, over twice the prevalence in the general population. I label this as strong support for my hypothesis that corporate America is a terribly confusing and depressing place to work.

Also, though I have secretly suspected it for some time, I now have logical proof that I'm surrounded by the mentally ill at work.

I ran this by Jason, and he expressed comfort in knowing the future of the mental health industry is in the hands of people that use the same marketing approach favored by college students trying to sell their used couch.

Where are the Iraqi rednecks?

2004-11-23T12:05:00.000-08:00

Surely Iraq must possess, at least in some small population, the cultural equivalent of the redneck. Iraq has all the ingredients to spawn this mythic hero: Rural towns. Poor education. Limited availability of birth control. Widespread adherence to improbable religious doctrine. Civil war. And vitally, everybody seems to have a gun. They're missing a few elements like old Chevys, double-wides, and NASCAR, which I however believe are compensated for by the availability of camels, polygamy, and the occasional public execution -- things American rednecks can only dream of.

Based on the very spotty news coverage we get here, it appears that many rural Iraqi towns are beseiged by groups the media refer to as "insurgents" -- composed largely of religious extremists seemingly aware their goals are more plausibly accomplished through guerilla warfare than through participation in a legitimate government. Same problem the Libertarians have here, only the Libertarians are using their living rooms to roll their own instead of to load their own. (Shotgun shells, if you didn't know.)

Just an observation here: There are no redneck Libertarians, but there should be.

So why are so few Iraqi men signing up for the security forces? Why are Iraqi women crouching in their hovels popping Valium to deal with the stress? (I'm not making this up: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=iraqi+women+valium ) Have they all been over-Westernized? Have they been watching too much Susan Lucci and not enough Stone Cold Steve Austin? Or are they, like the Libertarians, too busy toking up to get out there and fight?

The point I want to make may be best illustrated by the following series of hypothetical events and logical deductions. Here's what might transpire if "insurgents" took up residence in a small Oklahoma town:

--A group of 30 to 40 insurgents take up residence in rural Hillville (a fictional place)
--Some of them move in with Joe. Everybody in town knows Joe, but everybody already knows he's a troublemaker.
--The insurgents start ordering everybody around, issuing curfews. They begin recruiting from the town's younger ranks for their cause.
--Young women are increasingly harrassed; soon there are few women out and about town at all, and none go unescorted.
--Rumors soon circulate of young women being attacked by insurgents.
--More insurgents head into town, moving in with Bob and Billy Bob. Soon, they're spread all over town.
--Insurgents grow bolder. Increased petty theft of livestock, gasoline, and food are attributed to these new residents.
--People talk of the National Guard coming to displace the insurgents, but timelines and objectives are unclear.
--Wayne, the teenage son of a local farmer, joins up with the insurgents against his family's wishes.
--Wayne's dad, Harvey, a local farmer, plucks a 30-06 deer rifle from the gun rack gracing his pick-up truck's back window, and smokes one of the insurgents from 50 yards.
--Insurgents retaliate by beheading Harvey in the parking-lot of the John Deere.
--The John Deere lot erupts in gunfire as militant farmers unload on the insurgent leaders.
--Remaining insurgent leaders are tracked down by the angry mob. Retribution takes various forms, including hangings, being dragged by a chain behind a truck, fatal shotgun wounds, more hangings, and at least one grisly instance of being sent feet-first through a hay bailer.

Perhaps it's the beer and monster truck rallies that truly drive us to independence. Maybe re-runs of Survivor have left us as-yet unpacified by the mass of morally softening TV fare. Or maybe it's our unquenchable desire to consume even more Internet porn, that drives us. Whatever it is, I believe substantial armed resistance would occur in rural America if a bunch of dangerous loons suddenly occupied the town.

So where are those Iraqi rednecks when we need 'em?

A Serendipity Theory of Success

2004-11-18T11:45:00.000-08:00

It often occupies my thoughts that those serving as our leaders rarely seem particularly well-suited to the task. How many times have we asked ourselves, "How did this idiot get to be my boss?" or "How did this idiot get to be President?" I posit the following theory by way of explanation: It's mostly luck.

That's right, I'm suggesting that our solid performance as employees and stellar contributions to worthy and organized capitalist objectives, have less to do with our upward mobility than simply random opportunity and unlikely positive returns to generally poor decision-makers.

In subsequent posts perhaps I'll roast a public figure or two. Today, I offer myself up as an example, to stem the inevitable tide of critics shouting "Hypocrite!":

I have a pretty darned sweet job. By that, I mean I have no real complaints about money and I occasionally get to do something interesting. In fact, I'm currently working on stuff nobody's ever done before. I got this gig through the following chain of events:

--With traffic congestion mounting, my wife and I made an inter-suburban move in order to shorten my drive to my employer at the time. Commuting from our then-locationto my now-job would not have been an option.
--I turned down a job offer from a large research firm, which I soon realized was a bad decision. It was horribly stupid. I berate myself for it to this day.
--I happened to see a job posting by my now-employer on Monster.com.
--I applied only because a work colleague at the time had recently applied for a similar job there.
--After asking around, I found a friend of a friend who worked there, and who was gracious enough to arrange an interview.
--The hiring manager highly (and possibly over-) valued education, which gave me an edge
--They were in a hurry to fill the spot.
--The CEO was too busy to meet with me on the day of my interview; I could quite possibly have been screened out at that level.

What I want to point out here is that in this entire chain of events, nothing was really under my control except having relocated 2 years earlier, and that I made a prior bad decision in turning down a different job offer. What about my highly polished interviewing skills, you ask? And I answer: It's been shown time and again that hiring managers are unable to accurately discrimminate between future good and bad employees in an interview. If I were better-looking, then I could reasonably attribute part of my good fortune to comeliness, though, rather than sheer luck.

I'll reserve details on others whose success is attributable largely to fabulous and unbelievable strings of luck (including such greats as Jack Welch, Bill Gates, Marion Berry, Clarence Thomas, and everybody involved with The Blair Witch Project) for a subsequent post. But in conclusion, the Serendipity theory boasts unparallelled parsimony (it's certainly the simplest explanation for how all these idiots rise to power) and, I think, gives us all a healthy dose of... something.

Girl Power

2004-11-16T10:53:00.000-08:00

Corporate email communication tends to have one of two speakers: Dilbert or Ben Stein. An email commentary regarding a corporate communicae, in chronological order: [edited to protect the innocent and myself, roughly in 2 to 98 proportion]

-----Original Message-----
From: NCTP...M
Sent: Tuesday, November 16, 2004 10:09 AM
To: All XYZ
Subject: XYZ Chief Financial Officer

I’m pleased to announce that Bob Smith, now CEO of CDE and XYZ Electronic Retailing, will succeed Bob Jones as CFO when he becomes head of XYZ Travel. Bob has all the right experience for the position - including great service as CFO of JKL when it was a public company, and most recently as head of CDE & XYZ E-Retailing, where he’s done superb work, and where he’ll leave behind him the strongest collection of managers and employees CDE has ever had. With the strong teams in place at CDE, at XYZ Travel, and at Corporate, I expect that these transitions will be as smooth as transitions can possibly be … and allow us to roll up our sleeves, get to work, finish up this year strongly and deliver a great 2005.

It’s particularly gratifying that we’ve been able to fill two critical positions at the company from within. Our peoplepower is one of our core strengths, and XYZ People Exchange is one of our key initiatives … these are great examples of how employees can have extraordinary career paths inside XYZ.

-----Original Message-----
From: NCTP...M
Sent: Tuesday, November 16, 2004 10:12 AM
To: NCTP...M
Subject: FW: XYZ Chief Financial Officer

I like their coining the term “peoplepower.”

-----Original Message-----
From: NCTP...M
Sent: Tuesday, November 16, 2004 11:13 AM
To: NCTP...M
Subject: RE: XYZ Chief Financial Officer

Well, it was originally "girlpower." Political correctness mandates that we use the unisex version "peoplepower," which I feel maintains the youth and energy of the original while making it applicable across sex.

-----Original Message-----
From: NCTP...M
Sent: Tuesday, November 16, 2004 11:19 AM
To: NCTP...M
Subject: RE: XYZ Chief Financial Officer

I think it reads better with the girls reinserted:

With the strong girls in place at CDE, at XYZ Travel, and at Corporate, I expect that these transitions will be as smooth as transitions can possibly be … and allow us to roll up our sleeves, get to work, finish up this year strongly and deliver a great 2005.

It’s particularly gratifying that we’ve been able to fill two critical positions at the company from within. Our girlpower is one of our core strengths, and XYZ Girl Exchange is one of our key initiatives … these are great examples of how girls can have extraordinary career paths inside XYZ.