Thoughts on man and his universe
General
Loving strange food or: how I learned to stop being picky and love food
1
Like most Americans, I used to hold some self-evident beliefs about food:
The three dogmas of the food phobiac:
- There are foods I “like” and foods I “dislike” and I ought to stick to the things that I like.
- The better something tastes, the more unhealthy it must be and vice versa. You must choose between a long life of disgusting food or indulge yourself and die early.
- There is a value hierarchy for all the edible parts of any animal. For example, top sirloin is the ideal for beef. There’s a similar value hierarchy for animals themselves. Decisions about which animal and which part of the animal to eat are therefore a simple cost/benefit equation.
Two things completely changed by attitude on food: getting married, and moving to China.
The psychology of taste
Our perception of taste is closely associated with our memories of things such as the taste of past meals, our emotional states, and sensory associations with similar foods. We come to associate foods with sensory reactions based on many factors such as familiarity, the quality of most meals, the people we were with, etc. By dissociating taste as such from negative experiences we can learn to appreciate food for its inherent taste, without emotional baggage. We can learn to prefer the taste of healthy foods by the same process.
Sensory integration therapy for food phobiacs
The first step to fixing food phobias is to recognize the problem: it’s not OK to exclude foods because of food sensitivities. All the “most hated” American foods are delicious when prepared properly. Having recognized the problem, here is the program that worked for me:
The strategy is to gradually introduce foods in different settings, gradually building exposure and positive associations with certain foods. For example, when my wife learned that I hated zucchini, she gradually introduced it into my diet starting with small amounts balanced by other flavors, and growing to having zucchini be the dominate ingredient. Here is what she cooked:
- Stuffed peppers with zucchini and sausage
- Potato and zucchini frittata
- Roasted vegetable meatloaf with zucchini
- Grated zucchini topped with marinara
- Lasagna with zucchini noodles
- Zucchini gratin
- Zucchini latkes
- Zucchini fried in butter with onions
- Parmesan crusted fried zucchini
The same program was used for eggplant, brussel sprouts, avocados, cabbage, and okra. Once I learned to appreciate food for its taste and texture of foods rather than negative associations and new textures, it was no longer necessary to disguise the ingredients. When I have a negative reaction to something, I isolate the components of the food (source, flavor, smell, texture) and think about which aspect I reacted to. Oftentimes I react to negative memories and associations and not the food itself. Consciously understanding that a negative reaction has no rational basis is often enough to overcome it.
The importance of ceremony
The ceremonial aspect of dining is very important when learning to appreciate food. If you merely try to inhale as many calories as quickly as possible, any unusual tastes will be an unpleasant distraction. A proper sit-down meal is required to take the time to really analyze the taste of foods and form new positive sensory-conceptual associations to replace the old negative ones.
A cosmopolitan attitude to dining
One of the main differences between the Chinese diet and the Western diet is that the entire animal is considered edible. Whereas Americans stuff everything other than “choice” cuts into burgers, sausages, and McNuggets, the Chinese proudly consume the head, claws, organs, and other miscellaneous parts of animals as delicacies. This is not because they’re poorer – the head and feet are the most expensive parts of the animal. Neither do they restrict themselves to a few “blessed” animals – the entire animal kingdom is on the menu.
The difference is that of the food elitist versus that of the food connoisseur. The elitist believes that only a narrow socially accepted list of foods is good enough for him. The connoisseur is an explorer, who uses his palate as the universe-expanding sensory organ it was meant to be. The elitist lives within the small dietary-social circle he was born into. The connoisseur traverses the biological and cultural realms.
The approach I now take to eating new things now is exploratory one. Instead of responding with “like” or “dislike” I try to understand the flavor components and texture of food. I appreciate meals from many perspectives – sensory, anatomical, social, and historical, to fully integrate it with my worldview.
Note: I have found that adopting a Paleo diet enhances flavor discrimination. For example, a carrot is actually quite sweet and delicious to eat raw, but a typical carb-addict wouldn’t know it.
None of this is to claim attitude alone will make everything taste good. Meals must be prepared skillfully to taste good. The notion I want to dispel is that taste is either genetic or set by undecipherable psychological factors we cannot affect. Human culture has a rich history of many culinary traditions and we ought to learn to appreciate them without emotional baggage or provincial bias.
How would you spend $1,000,000 to spread Objectivism?
04 weeks ago
in General
There’s a new post on ObjectivismOnline:
If you had a $1,000,000 budget to spend within a year, how would you use it to help people discover Objectivism on the web?
There is no commitment or promise entailed in this post, but if have a good suggestion, don’t be surprised if your idea is implemented, or someone contacts you for more details.
The Bill of Rights versus the “War on Terror”
2The purpose of the Bill of Rights is to make a fundamental and clear statement about the rights of man. They are fundamental because all Congressional acts are subservient to them and clear because, unlike the complex legal code, the basic rights were intended to be known by all.
Having lived through war, the Founders recognized that during war, it is necessary to suspend the normal function of law, as “law” is a concept that is only possible in civil society. But they also recognized the danger of allowing any exception that would lead to the violation of rights. So, they provided strict limits: the President is the Commander in Chief, but he may only act with the consent of Congress, and that consent expires after two years. Furthermore, Congress has the power to issue letters of Marque and Reprisal, which authorizes specific individuals to attack specific groups and bring them to admiralty courts. In both cases, enemies were to be explicitly identified by Congress and enjoyed the protection of the rules of war.
We may argue about how practical these principles are and how earnestly they were followed from the start, but it is worth considering how they are routinely violated in the so-called “war on terror” going on today:
There is no war: “Terror” is an emotion, not a group of people. Therefore, no actual “war” and no actual “victory” (which requires clearly identified parties) is possible. This makes a congressional declaration of war impossible. While Congress makes occasional statements in support of the executive office, they are Constitutionally meaningless.
There is no enemy: The Constitution provides for Letters of Marque and Reprisal in cases where a war is not possible or desirable. But there is no enemy in the “war on terror.” “Al Qaeda” is a quasi-mythical entity which has more existence as an entity in the minds of those who hate/fear and/or admire it than as a physical organization of material command and support. Most of its “followers” are non-violent. Many more advocate violence (not admirable but not an act of war) than practice it. Many of those killed as “terrorists” have only some vague emotional bond with its ideology, others none at all. Certainly there is no physical network in which all such persons can be proven to be involved.
Killings are extra-judicial:
On government-funded science
01 month ago
in General
When tax dollars rather than private investment directs research, political ideology by scientific amateurs (politicians) determines which direction the research heads. The inevitable result is that political connections determines who gets research funds, while the unpopular and risky yet more ultimately world-changing prospects are ignored.
For example, AIDS kills very few Americans versus heart disease or cancer, yet gets significantly higher research funds than the two major killers. The majority of government research funds is directed toward better ways to kill (via the Defense Dept) and heal (via the NIH) people. Yet the government-funded research is good at neither, since breakthroughs consistently come from private search, which composes over 60% of science funding in the developed world.
What standard are politicians supposed to use to decide which scientific and medical projects show the most promise? Popularity is not a suitable standard, since popular scientists are the champions of the big discoveries of the past, not the future. Unfortunately, when your one’s own investment money is not at stake, the only remaining standard to guide research dollars is political pull, which is exactly what happens with government-funded science.
More:
- Wikipedia: Science policy of the United States
- Yaron Brook: Government vs. Science
- Malini Kochhar: Government Funding vs. the Progress of Science
- Liberty Institute, India: Should Government Fund Science?
- The One Minute Case For Science
On “Special Interests”
0It is truism today that “special interests” are to blame for economic problems and corruption. But “special interests” are only a symptom, not the cause of the disease.
In a populist democracy with a mixed economy, every group that participates in the political system is a “special interest”, with the incentive and the power to use the political system to extract benefits for its members at the at the expense of everyone else. Corporations, unions, disease-awareness organizations, “minority” groups, and anyone who organizes around a common cause has the power believes that their fate or cause is more legitimate, important, and “special” than that of everyone else.
The welfare and regulatory systems are the primary means to coercively redistribute property and confer monopoly benefits to various groups. In a mixed economy, everyone is constantly on the defensive against organized groups extracting benefits from him, and on the offensive attempting to use the coercive power of the state to extract benefits from others. Interventionism creates a vicious cycle hardly unique to corporations: first a lobby tries to extract special privileges from some politically neutral group, the group hires lobbyists to defend itself, and ends up using the influence it has gained to extract privileges at the expense of another neutral group, which must defend itself in turn.
The existence of “special interests” is just a symptom of the disease: the growth of government power to a degree that allows those in power to violate our rights and steal our property for the benefits of their constituents. Populist “maverick” politicians who claim that they will “fight special interests” and “change the culture in Washington” are just attempting to subvert the power of the state to favor their particular constituency. Campaign finance regulations are just monopoly privileges created by the political élite to hide corruption from the public and make it more difficult for those without political connections and money to get elected and in order to defend themselves or join in the looting.
The only solution to the problems caused by interventionism is to end interventionism – to separate government and economy. Take away the power of the government, and you will remove both the incentive and the power of the “special interests.” As long as governments try to control people and businesses with laws that go beyond the protection of property rights, the “special interests” will have the incentive to control governments.
More:
On Usury
01 month ago
in General
Charging interest is essential to guiding the investment process, which cannot be sustained by charity even it were forthcoming due to the economic calculation problem. (In other words, interest rates are required to direct investments to their most productive use.) Interest-driven investment is essential to economic growth, and therefore to the very existence of industrial civilization. If charging interest were outlawed, industrial societies would quickly collapse due to the inability to efficiently allocate savings.
Loan-sharking (charging high interest rates backed up by the threat of violence) reflects the fact that the loans are being given to creditors with a high risk of default. The need for violence is due to the failure of governments to see this fact, or to adequately enforce the loan contracts (such as with overly lax bankruptcy laws), rather than any immorality inherent in moneylenders. There is no such thing as a single “just” interest rate because interest rates in a free market move towards an equilibrium determined by the time-preferences of individual debtors and lenders.
See Also
On Environmental Pollution
01 month ago
in General
Pollution is a byproduct of production, which is a byproduct of civilization. Life without civilization would to the death of the vast majority people on earth, and life without production means certain death for all men. The proper balance between death from lack of production and death from excess pollution should be determined by an objective judicial process which conclusively proves cause and effect.
If a court can make a definitive causal connection between an injured party and a party responsible for a pollutant, it should demand compensation of harms. If it cannot find a responsible party guilty, but punishes an innocent party, it punishes man for his nature as a productive, industrial being and thus makes human life impossible.
More:
Socialists, Capitalists and Moderates on the Facts
01 month ago
in General
(Reposted from my Facebook.)
Fact: There are poor people.
Socialist: Give me all your money, I will take care of them. Or else.
Capitalist: I can make lots of money from them because they’ll work for less.
Moderate: Give me half your money, so I can pay them not to work, then hire anyone who doesn’t want your money for free. If you make a profit, I’ll take it to pay more poor people to not work.
Fact: People lie.
Socialist: The government ought to teach people how to think and decide who is allowed to say what because people can’t tell lies from truth.
Capitalist: Honesty is just good business. Suing frauds for everything they’ve got is also good business.
Moderate: Say whatever you want, as long as no one is offended. But just in case, a “truth board” will censor anything anyone might find objectionable.
Fact: Some people are more successful than others.
Socialist: Since men are all equal, differences must be due to education and inheritance. We must seize inheritance and other gifts, and replace education with standard government schools. If anyone is still more successful than anyone else in school or in their career, they must have cheated, so we must punish them until they are equal.
Capitalist: Let’s find out what makes people successful so we can make a fortune doing or selling it.
Moderate: It’s OK to be successful as long as you don’t make anyone jealous. You must make those who envy you feel better about their failures by sharing your success with them. Or else.
Fact: Some people don’t like each other.
Socialist: Since men are equal, they must all love each other equally. We must take away anything that make them different or special away from them so that they cannot tell any group apart.
Capitalist: More customers is always good for business. If someone doesn’t want to work with someone for irrational reasons, I will happily take their customers and employees.
Moderate: People ought to learn to get along. Therefore, I will force people who hate each other to live and work together so they can learn to appreciate their differences.
Why is there no mass transit in socialist states?
04 months ago
in General
Today Sarah asked me why China is only now building subway systems in all its major cities. I pointed out that non-local mass transit is a capitalist phenomena: totally aside from the fact that you need the wealth generated by capitalism to pay for such systems, there is no need to travel in a socialist economy.
Under socialism, the work unit is the basic unit of social structure. The vast majority of people are born, educated, work, live, and die under a single work unit (a city block, village, or factory). One cannot buy or rent a dwelling (that requires property rights) so one cannot move away from work: the State assigns nearby housing. One cannot change chose or change jobs, so one cannot move work away from home. Housing assignments are hereditary and based on local connections, so it is impossible to move away from relatives: thus no need to travel to see family.
Furthermore, there is no need to travel in order to shop: since all goods are identical commodities sold by identical state-owned stores. There is little demand to travel for tourism either, since all monuments are variations on the same state-promulgated patriotic themes. There is no incentive for entrepreneurs to promote any non-approved attractions – in fact, such activities can be quite dangerous.
Neither is it practical to marry someone across town: the work unit either regulates marriage directly (the work unit leader must approve the marriage) or indirectly: since permission is required to live together and often to have children as well.
Thus, even in places where the State created subway systems prior to the introduction of capitalist elements, they were/are vastly under utilized. In fact, their primary purpose was military defense, not transportation.
Re-evaluating the value of religion
01 year ago
This essay was written on August 13th, 2003 and edited slightly for this post:
Is religion a value to mankind? Some alleged benefits which have been attributed to religion include: scientific and philosophical principles, technologies such as the printing press, the colonization of the new world, great works of art such as Michelangelo’s David and the Sistine Chapel, monasteries that preserved and carried on knowledge during the Middle Ages, social institutions such as charities, schools, and universities. It’s undeniable that all these things have benefited mankind and that religion played a part in them.
On a personal note, I have benefited greatly from the Judaism. A Jewish organization helped my parents come to America, placed me in private school so I could learn English and Hebrew, sent me to summer camp, paid for my trip to Israel, and even helped fund my college tuition. In addition to these material benefits, I learned a lot about history, philosophy, ethics, Hebrew, and social interaction while attending Sunday school and then helping to teach it for three years. Many of my religious teachers were intelligent and inspirational people who taught me many things in the classroom and by example.
So, it is indisputable that religion has done many good things for man. Is this sufficient evidence to conclude that religion is a value to man? The fact that an institution does good is not sufficient evidence that it is good overall. Consider a profession which is not considered desirable despite doing some good for people: medical quackery. A quack who sells a fake remedy for all ailments provides some benefit to people: the placebo effect often makes people feel better, and the alcohol, cocaine, and other drugs contained in remedies were often effective and making their users feel better. However, despite the benefit he provides, the quack also defrauds people, does not fix underlying health problems, and often addicts his patients to his “medicine.” Even though the quack provides a benefit, a real doctor could provide a greater benefit to people without the accompanying harm. Thus, when evaluating religion, we must consider the total effect, not just isolated benefits, and evaluate whether the benefits religion provides are essential to its nature.
Faith is emotionalism, Part 2: Perception versus Emotion
0(This is the second part of selections from a Facebook debate. Part 1 is here.)
Introduction:
The key to my disagreement with the theist hinges on the question of “Can we know God?” or “Can have knowledge of the supernatural?” The theist says yes, we use both experience and the “sensus divinitatus” to acquire knowledge of God. I disagree – I believe that knowledge of reality can only be obtained through reason, and the supernatural is by its very definition opposed to reason. Furthermore, the “divine sense” the theist refers to is just emotionalism. In this post, I will focus on the essence of our disagreement by examining in detail the nature of this supposed divine sense and reveal it to be pure emotionalism.
To recap three key points from my last note:
- I reviewed valid and invalid means of acquiring knowledge and concluded that truth can only be reached by perceiving it and integrating sensory data – e.g. reason.
- Emotions are a kind of thinking that tells us about our mental state.
- We can learn from others, but ultimately new knowledge is formed by integrating new evidence into our own experience of reality.
Introduction: Faith is emotionalism
My key criticism of the theistic argument for faith is: it is emotionalism. But emotions are not evidence of reality, only of one’s mental state. Neither revelation nor any other evidence for the supernatural is possible. I believe this argument is sufficient to disprove all religious convictions, as all other (i.e. “historical”) arguments for the supernatural are revealed to be absurd once a proper epistemology (e.g. reliance on the senses) is assumed.
The Nature of the Senses
Let’s begin with the senses we agree on: sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste. This much has been known since Aristotle. What is the exact nature and method of these senses?
“Free-speech” is for collectivists
01 year ago
in General
- Image via Wikipedia
It is a serious mistake to use the term “free speech” as a noun – as if it were an entity distinct from “non-free” speech.
This error comes from the premise that certain (politically-correct) ideological speech should not be regulated, but other kinds of speech may. The origin of idea is the collectivist premise that the sole freedom guaranteed to all individuals is to participate in the democratic process. No other rights exist, as the actions allowable to individuals (including non-political speech) are to be decided by the democratic process.
According to this ideology, everyone should have the freedom to “have a say” in which politician should be elected, but no one is to be granted any other rights, including the freedom to engage in commercial speech and non-mainstream ideological speech. Furthermore, this philosophy of “letting everyone have a say” leads to the violation of legitimate rights, via such things as campaign-finance laws and the use of government funds for political campaigns.
This political philosophy is a reversal of reality, as there is no inherent right to participate in the political process. The existence of a free society depends on the existence of limitations that ensure that only qualified citizens decide on the future of their civilization. For example, this is why (as a minimum) people convicted of serious crimes should not be able to vote.
In conclusion, the right to communicate with others is derived from the individual’s right to life, and the need to cooperate with others to successfully co-exist in society, not the need to participate in a democratic dictatorship.
There is no such thing as “free speech.” All forms of communication should be free of coercion. If you want to refer to the right to communicate, say “freedom of speech.”
Why you can’t pick and choose from your holy books
81 year ago
in General
A 12 year old girl in Saudi Arabia is seeking a divorce from her 80 year old husband. (Girls as young as 8 are regularly sold to and raped all over the Middle East and North Africa- 77 percent in Niger.)
Saudi clerics and judges are defending the marriage on the basis that the Prophet Muhammad married (and had sex with) a nine year old girl.
Apologists in the Islamic and Western world will inevitably argue that selling young girls into sexual bondage may be something that was acceptable 1,400 years ago, but not today.
That this response is offered as a defense of the Quran/Bible/Torah reveals the fatal flaw in their logic:
By what standard is something not morally acceptable today that was acceptable earlier? If a superior standard of morality exists by which we can judge human action, what is the point of “holy books?” If the holy books sanction slavery, rape, murder, genocide (as they all do), then why would anyone claim that they are a source of moral authority?
Even if you disagree with a single instruction of the Bible (such as the command to kill any bride who is not a virgin, or any child who disrespects his parents) then you acknowledge that there exists a superior standard by which to judge moral action, and there is no need to rely on a bunch of primitive, ancient, barbaric fairy tales.
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What is a corporation?
12 years ago
in General
Following this week’s Supreme Court ruling, there is much confusion about what legal rights a corporation has and how it is different from other groups:
In a free society, any person has the right to associate with any other person by mutual consent. As long as both parties consent to their transaction, no third party (be it a government or anyone else) has the moral right to prevent or punish their interaction. This is as true for friendships, romantic relationships, and political advocacy as financial transactions. The only difference is that financial transactions exchange material values whereas social interactions exchange non material values.
A business – be it a sole proprietorship or a multinational corporation is just a group of people who share a common purpose. Their motive may be profit, but it may be something entirely different (such as changing the world with a new product, or just getting paid to do something cool, such as fly planes or invent new things).
The primary difference between a corporation and any other type of business is limited liability. Anyone who does business with a corporation (be it another business or a consumer) agrees that any liability incurred by the corporation covers the assets of the corporation, but not the individual assets of its employees. For example, just because you own Wal-Mart stock, Wal-Mart’s debtors cannot demand all your personal assets as collateral.
It’s important to understand that limited liability does not apply to criminal law. That is, if an employee of a corporation commits a crime, he is still personally liable for his actions. In no way does acting on behalf a corporation shield people from breaking the law. (Of course that is not universally true, but that is a corruption of the law, not an aspect of limited liability.)
Furthermore, individuals acting on behalf of a corporation have the same rights as individuals acting on behalf of any other group because people do not lose their rights by the nature of the voluntary associations they enter into. It should make no difference whether you act on behalf of yourself, a political pressure group, a union, a sole proprietorship, or a corporation – you do not lose your rights as a human being because you represent a particular association of other human beings acting toward a common purpose. Silencing the speech of an individual because he represents a particular group is censorship – no matter what the purpose of that group is.
If you really want to get business out of politics, get the government out of business. As long as governments try to control corporations with regulations that go beyond the protection of people’s property rights, corporations will have an incentive to control governments. Interventionism creates a vicious downward cycle hardly unique to corporations – first a lobby tries to extract special privileges from some politically neutral group, the group hires lobbyists to defend itself, and ends up using the influence it has gained to extract privileges at the expense of another neutral group, which must defend itself in turn. Campaign finance regulations just hide that process from the public and make it more difficult for non-elites to get elected or have a say in government. The only real solution to the problems caused by interventionism is to end interventionism – to separate government and economy.
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