The French Presidential Elections May 2012

OK then, I don’t normally comment on current events. I tend to find them a bit uninteresting, and besides that, they’re really messy and open to a lot of interpretation. That being said, I feel that I must now give the whole of Europe the following warning: You are completely screwed. For anyone who isn’t following European politics, France is going to have an election on Sunday. Y’know, one of those things I hate so much. Now, as of today, when the far right decided that none of the candidates were quite xenophobic enough, Sarkozy is expected to lose the election, and the head of state in France will be the left wing Hollande.

Now let’s be clear here. I don’t like Sarkozy. I, honestly don’t follow French politics that closely, but what I’ve seen of him hasn’t been great. But I’m not going into that any further. Because this isn’t about politics, or about my personal opinion*, and it’s not about France. It’s about Europe.

OK then, economics time!** Whilst Sarkozy wants to cut spending, and make all the French people poor as dirt, on the basis that people are much more likely to spend money and get the economy moving again if they don’t have any money. Hollande, meanwhile, wants to deal with the problems of ordinary people, spending the state’s money in order to allow people to get out of poverty, and to gain confidence that they won’t suddenly be starving tomorrow, and so start spending again, since it’s probably lack of confidence that’s the main problem***.

As you can probably guess, I think I have to agree with Sarkozy here. Let’s be clear, there’s a lot to be said for the ‘spend’ policy. I normally don’t really like Keynsian economics or deficit funding, or anything in that vein. I won’t really go into why, except that habitually spending more than you earn is really only a good idea if you can reasonably expect to die before it catches up with you****. But during a recession it can be a good idea to, just temporarily, allow oneself to go a bit over budget, in order to get stuff done. You can pay it back once you have money again, and you can get the economy moving again a lot faster, with a lot less pain. There are even examples of it seeming to work – Roosevelt’s New Deal is one you’ve probably heard of, and if I remember rightly (my internet is rather spotty at the moment – it took me about as long to post this as it did to write five hundred words – so I can’t look it up), the Japanese spent their way out of the Great Depression too*****.  But I’m not aware of a single case where the zero welfare free market approach has really worked. I’d rather like to believe that it does, and, it’s true, the free market does tend to stop sulking eventually, and to go back into boom mode, but it’s a rather painful process, which gets a lot worse if the government’s been trying to hold back the recession for some time. I mean, let’s look at some examples. There’s Ireland recently. Or Hoover†. Yeah. There are problems with spending one’s way out too, but it’s a decent option.

Unfortunately, it’s a decent option when you aren’t in debt already.  When FDR started the New Deal, a national debt in the billions††† would probably have led to a lot more than just getting thrown out of office. Things get a whole lot harder to work when you’re already heavily borrowing, and you start wanting to borrow more.

But that’s overshadowed by a bigger problem, which I think France is about to run into††††. The market doesn’t just lend you money. The market is a group of investors who’re mainly looking out for themselves. If they don’t like what you’re doing, and they don’t think it’s going to work, they’re not going to want to lend you anything. Which is fair enough – if I was going to lend large amounts of money to someone, I’d want to think I was going to actually get it back†††††. And the market is currently holding firm to the belief that the best way to do things is via austerity, rather than growth. Which makes it a self-fulfilling prophecy, especially since growing one’s way out of recession requires rather a lot of money, which you have to get from the market. If France tries to grow its way out of recession, no matter how good a strategy that should be, I’m pretty sure they’re going to run into problems (I actually felt the need to specify that they were the French presidential elections of May 2012). And France is a rather big part of the Eurozone. France goes down, the results for the rest of Europe would not be entirely positive ones.

Oh, and I changed the layout of the site, if you didn’t notice. Not really intending to stick with this layout at the moment , but we’ll see.

*At least as far as possible.

**Amazing. It really is true that nothing can make economics sound exciting.

***Recessions are just about the only things in existence where ‘just ignore it and hope it goes away’ would actually be a valid strategy.

****For the interested, a basic description of why I don’t like the country being in debt: Firstly, interest. Do you have any idea how much interest countries have to pay on their debt? It’s really not very nice to think about. We don’t have enough money anyway (clearly – we’re deficit spending), and all the money you have to pay in interest has to be taken out of something that’s actually useful. Secondly, if you’re in debt, you’re going to basically be at the mercy of the markets, which, as I’m going to show, is going to be a rather bad thing once you are in recession. Which will, sooner or later, happen, at least if you’re capitalist. And thirdly, it shows rather a lack of foresight. Once you’re in recession, you’re going to want to spend more money, and you’re going to have less to draw on from the normal, non-lendy sources. The more you’ve borrowed, the harder borrowing tends to get, so deficit spending makes it a lot harder to cope once you actually are in recession, especially if you add in the last two.

*****OK, more technical stuff. The New Deal helped, but it’s debatable how much it did to actually end the depression, given that as soon as spending was reduced, the American economy went right down again. The only thing that really got the American economy truly started again was a good war, so they had a nice market to sit back and produce stuff for, whilst their competition was rather effectively removed. The Japanese, meanwhile, didn’t have quite as successful a recovery as America, possibly due to the fact that, when the war started, instead of getting themselves a new market, they got repeatedly bombed. So you can do rather a lot of debating as to whether spending one’s way out actually works.

†FDR’s predecessor, not the secret service psychopath††

††Alliteration always amuses Acanthus’ author.

†††Still using British billions. I’m bloody minded like that. And to be clear, this still holds even if you’re working with the actual value of the debt, so in FDR’s time, because of inflation, the actual debt number I’m talking about would have looked a lot lower.

††††Yes, more than a thousand words later, I reach my actual point.

†††††If we simplify massively, it’s not doing that that got us into this mess to start with. And that’s as far as I’m going to get into that particular debate.

Horror games and other randomness (OA)

This is one of the most... random... posts I've ever done. I'd say I was just finding my style, but I'd kinda like to do more like this. Ummm... Not much to say, it really is pretty random. And I've corrected a few random typos again. There are two unmarked ones this time.

First of all, why are you not reading Hitherby Dragons¹? Seriously - go now. It's far more interesting than what I'm going to write about here, in a way that alternates between awesome, hilarious and occasionally terrifying beyond belief.

Secondly, faeries. Twilight would make much more sense if you replaced all of the vampires with faeries (fairies would also do at a pinch, but are less good), for several reasons:
1. Sparkling in sunlight makes a lot more sense for a race one of whose defining traits is glamour/illusion/enchanting mortals than for a race one of whose defining traits it having less tolerance for sunlight than ice cream.
2. Faeries being creatures who, as mentioned, traditionally rely a lot on mind manipulation, would probably be very interested in someone with a natural mind-shield (as Bella canonically has). Thus, you could get rid of large amounts of Bella's Mary-Sueishness without too much of an effect on the plot.
3. Vampires are rather easy to kill. You can stake them, wave garlic at them, leave them chained up in the middle of the Sahara at noon, cut off their heads, or simply blow them to smithereens (granted, all of these also work on normal people, although one has to be creative to kill someone with garlic). Faeries, on the other hand, are vulnerable only to iron – and sometimes only to cold iron. Even then, the vulnerability to iron varies from 'the mere touch of iron can incinerate them' to 'they aren't actually vulnerable to iron at all - they'll just come back from the dead if you kill them any other way'. Thus, Meyer doesn't have to screw with mythology to prevent her precious Edward from being repeatedly and emphatically dead².
4. Faeries have glamour. Therefore, it isn't really that incredible that they should all be incredibly attractive. Neither is it incredible that someone mortal becoming fey should increase in attractiveness. There isn't really such a commonsense explanation for a mortal becoming a walking corpse and suddenly being more attractive.
5. Faeries tend to be infertile. That's why they steal children. But the key word here is 'tend'. Faeries having children is not entirely unheard of, especially faeries having children with mortals. Thus, the plot could proceed as planned, it could be a complete surprise to everyone (in novel) that Bella was pregnant, without it having to contradict the novel's established system of vampire biology.
6. Faeries are approximately four thousand six hundred and twenty-four percent more awesome than vampires. You may think that that's just my opinion, but it’s not. It's scientifically proven - you can tell by the way I used percentages. This is mainly due to overexposure - vampires are clichéd, and angsty 'vegetarian' vampires are somewhere between 'the cake is a lie' and 'why did the chicken cross the road?' in terms of originality. Like Monty Python, except that Monty Python is intentionally funny³.

It wouldn't solve all the problems of Twilight (chief among them that it is written by Stephenie Meyer, although the plot, characters, and the fact that it's more than three pages long also all deserve a mention), but it would make it make somewhat more sense without actually having to change very much of any real significance. Just something I thought of. And now that I've revealed a more knowledge of Twilight than anyone male should really have⁴, and got to the end of several hundred words about faeries without having to decide whether the singular is 'faerie' or 'faery', onto the actual topic of this post. I promised something random, so here it is: video games.

Specifically, how horrible and deranged they are. I'm not talking about games like Silent Hill, or Call of Duty. Those just try too hard. These are five games that seem innocent enough, but which are really quite horrible if you actually think about them. And so, in order of subtlety:

5: Pokémon
Do I actually have to explain this one? You capture creatures with human/superhuman intelligence (e.g. Alakazam), some of which even used to be human (Yamask), and force them to battle each other for your amusement and profit. If that's not enough, remember that in wars, Pokémon fight with their trainers. Now imagine all the ways a Pokémon could kill you. Or imagine being a civilian in a world where ten year old children are allowed to walk around carrying what are effectively weapons of mass destruction.
4: Robot unicorn attack
You might seem like you're playing as an adorable and colourful unicorn setting out to fulfil your dreams. But as time passes, it gets harder and harder to stay alive. No matter how many people (well... fairies) you murder for your own gain, you might gain friends (dolphins) for a while, but in the end, you have no chance of actually fulfilling your dreams, and a meaningless death is all that awaits you. And through all this, the world and music remain bright and cheery. The heavy metal version is just trying too hard though⁵.
3: Super Mario
It’s a game where you fight enemies by crushing them to death. Or throwing fireballs at them. When you eat strange mushrooms everyone around you becomes tiny and pathetic. Flowers can cause you to gain special powers. So... Horrible murder and strange distortions of reality caused by ingesting unidentified plant matter⁶. Need I go on?
2: Pac Man
You're in an inescapable maze, trapped forever, forced to endlessly repeat the task of picking up objects and chased by murderous ghosts. If you somehow succeed in your task, everything you've done will be undone, and you'll just have to do it again, unless you can do it enough times (two hundred and fifty five times actually), in which case your selfish quest for self preservation will end with the world itself breaking. Try and leave by one of the two apparent exits, and you'll just end up back at the other one. By taking strange unidentified yellow pills, you might be able to fend off the ghosts for a brief while, but they'll always come back. You'll never actually be able to give them more than a temporary defeat. And the longer your struggle to survive goes on, the less capable you are of doing even that.
1: Eversion
OK, here I have nothing. Even I can't come up with a way to make this game sound evil. It's a sort of Mario clone, so I could of steal from there, but I'm above that. You can download it here, or on Steam, and if you can find anything at all dark in it, please tell me. You play as an adorable little asterisk in a bright, shiny little world. What could possibly go wrong⁷?

Right then. That was my list. It should probably worry me that the actual intended topic of the post turned out to be less than half of the actual text. I might do some more in this vein someday, but next up: Rape. Because the words 'consistent mood' mean nothing to me⁸.


¹ I will periodically recommend this blog. Seriously, read it. Now. It is. Really. Good. If you have some spare money, you could do a lot worse than to spend it on some of the other stuff the author's written. She is genuinely brilliant. Incidentally, I was to some extent trying to emulate her style in The Epic of Veris. I failed rather utterly, but to be fair she is really good, and that style is really hard to do right.
² This is edited from OA, since in OA I had a sudden attack of wishful thinking, and talked about how Meyer could make Edward die. If only.
³ I'm pretty sure I'm referring to the endless ad nauseum repetition of Python, not the original work of the Pythons, which is really original.
⁴ Wow. My gender politics were a lot more traditional when I wrote this. For the record, I'm also wrong - Twilight would be a gender thing rather than a sex thing, so it should be 'any man'. Funnily enough, I didn't really conform to gender stereotypes even then, so I'm not sure why I wrote that. It's probably a combination of not really thinking about gender stereotypes (I didn't conform to them, but I didn't really question or challenge them either), and the fact that in those days I was mostly writing for people I kne
⁵ Of all the games on this list, RUA is the only one that might possibly be intentional. Given some of the startup messages, it's at least acknowledging that viewpoint. Honestly, I'm not really sure what to think about it.
⁶ Everyone might know what I'm talking about, so I'm not going to correct it, but the grammar here makes me wince. For the record, the unidentified plant matter doesn't actually cause the horrible murder. As if you didn't already know that. Also, I'm talking about the original Super Mario Bros.
⁷ Yes, it's an obvious joke. Yes, a load of people probably saw it coming. I still had to do it, though. Eversion is actually a really good game. You could do a lot worse than playing it (and I just realised how much advertising I'm doing in this post). If possible, try not to learn anything about it before hand, since it plays better that way, but please do pay attention to the content notice. It's... not a joke.
⁸ Yes, I actually used to plan my next post in advance. And to try and pattern - I'd try to alternate silly/serious, and I wouldn't do two of a series in a row. Ah, when I was organised.

My incredibly long, rambling explanation of my asexuality (OA)

And the first post I ever did on being asexual. Since this blog was originally meant to be a backup blog, there might actually be quite a bit of stuff in here that I didn't mention in my 'asexuality week' posts. It's also something of a failure, as I realised as I wrote it, but it's the best I could do. Oh, and I corrected exactly one spelling mistake without marking it. Just to torture anyone who cares.

This post is a little different to the last one, since it’s about me, rather than being evidence that I should never be given any power whatsoever over the political system. For those of you who don't know, I'm asexual. Also: Hi, I'm guessing we haven't met (and you haven't bothered to look up the Hamlet reference in the domain name).

If you don't know, 'asexual' means I have no sexual feelings towards anything - not men, women, children, animals, trees, inanimate objects or whatever else you can come up with. I can find someone beautiful, but only in the way a flower is beautiful, and cute, but only in the way a kitten is cute (and generally not to nearly the same extent as those examples). A lot of people ask me what it's like to be ace*, and I generally explain quite badly, then refer them to the AVEN wiki.

Why? Because I don't actually know what it’s like to be ace. No, not because I'm a lying toad² (I am, but in this particular instance, I happen to be telling the truth), but for the same reason someone who was born blind doesn't really know what it’s like to be blind, or to put it in a way that doesn't make it sound like I think I'm disabled in some way, in the same way neither of us really have much idea what it would be like to have been born in 16th century China. I don't really know what it is I don't feel - I can only make an educated guess from conversations with sexuals.

Which aren't helped by the fact that none of you seem to know what it is I don't feel either. I've asked a few sexuals what it feels like to be sexually attracted to someone, or what it’s like to be a sexual. I have yet to get a decent answer³ (if you have a decent idea, please feel free to tell me about it). So now I'm going to try and play the role of the flatland native, trying to explain exactly what it’s like not to be able to explain what it’s like not to be able to see the third dimension.

Actually, I'm going to do it twice in different ways. I'm pretty sure at least some other aces would understand. The first way is the one I've been hinting at all along, which is that there's a way of looking at things which I just don't see. There's a sexual element to the world which everyone seems rather preoccupied with, but which I don't even notice unless it’s pointed out - like someone who can't see colour wondering what exactly is so interesting about a lime-green dress with purple stockings and yellow trimmings. And in the same way that the person who couldn't see colour might still have a preference as to between a ball gown and a cocktail dress** (I'm getting rather a lot of mileage out of this metaphor, aren't I), I at least (although not all aces) do also have a romantic orientation***. It's not that my heart is an entirely shrived lump of coal, no matter what people may tell you⁵. It’s just that I don't associate that with anything sexual.

I can imagine loving someone (although from some conversations, my definition of 'love' is somewhat different from that of some sexuals), but I don't know why that would lead me to want to start spitting in their mouths. I don't think about people I meet in a sexual way - I don't even really think about people as male or female⁶ unless I have some specific reason to notice (like 'hey, I appear to be the only male in the room' - which happens distressingly often), or if there's some reason it actually matters (which I can't think of an example I'm willing to tell you about for, but it's happened at least once⁷).

I can't really distinguish between 'flirty' and 'friendly'⁸ (except in one instance where I figured it out afterwards from the reaction I got when I mentioned I was still in school - I have a habit of being indistinguishable from someone in his twenties)****. In short, there is a sexual dimension to human interactions which, not only do I not notice, but which I also am supremely uninterested in - and find faintly disgusting.

The other way of looking at it is one which isn't really as close to the way I think about being asexual (although other aces might look at it this way), but might be a lot easier to understand. It is this - ignore everything I've said up to now. I'm a perfectly normal sexual. Except that the kind of thing I'm attracted to not only doesn't exist (or at least I've never seen it), but is also something utterly inconceivable (or at least which I can't imagine, or have not yet imagined). Being asexual can be seen as being like being sexual in every way, except with a sex drive which isn't actually directed towards anything.

The second approach has the advantage that it distinguishes me from people with, for example hypoactive sexual desire disorder (and no, I'm not going to get any further than that into the debate on the difference between the two), or another kind of sexual dysfunction. Relatedly, it makes asexuality seem less like some kind of impairment. On the other hand, of course, it rather fails to explain the whole 'heteroromantic' thing, and tends to lead people to talk about how I just haven't found 'The One' yet (seriously - don't do that: after a while, the joke about 'I've seen the Matrix, thanks' gets old, and there is a terrible temptation to hit someone repeatedly with a rake). So in short, you could just think of me as not being asexual but 'cthulhusexual'. I don't like that way of looking at it much, but I don't like the other way very much more, and you might find this one more understandable⁹.

So there it is. Two different perspectives on being ace. Hopefully, it'll give you a better perspective than either one alone. You might think that I just wrote two things that are utterly mutually contradictory. It's very possible I did. I'm aiming blindfolded at a target I've never seen. You can't really expect perfection. But at least you've got a perspective on how an asexual thinks about being asexual. This was actually surprisingly hard to write, so my next post will probably be rather random. Like...butterflies. Or a post on Shakespeare in iambic pentameter¹⁰. I don't know.
Incidentally, if the timestamp on this is weird, it's because Google has decided I live in Sidney¹¹. It would actually be quite hard for it to be more wrong, but I’m not going to correct it because it amuses me.

*For the record, ace is short for asexual¹.
**I know I shouldn't really know the difference between those two. It's a leftover from some research I did for a story I wrote a few months back⁴.
***As a point of interest, an ace who does is sometimes referred to as an ace of hearts, and an ace who doesn't is sometimes referred to as an ace of spades.
****EDIT: It now occurs to me that I should distinguish this from the male stereotype of being unable to detect flirting unless hit repeatedly with a stick that has 'I am flirting with you' carved into it. It's the difference between speaking to someone who speaks only Cherokee, and speaking to someone from an amozonian tribe which actually communicates with hand gestures, and uses sound for effect (the same way we use hand gestures). There might not be much practical difference, but I think you'll agree that there's a qualitative one. To continue the metaphor, I have no idea whether I'm flirting with people - like if you were trying to talk to the person I mentioned earlier, and had a habit of moving your hands while you talked. It would probably be nonsense, but there's always a chance you just said 'Marry me'. I'm pretty sure I don't generally flirt*****, but if I ever did, it would probably be by accident.
*****And only partly because the fact that I'm blessed with the social skills of a retarded stick-insect means that getting far enough in a conversation that it might be a problem is pretty rare.

¹ I've actually been told that using the word 'ace' to refer to asexuals is as offensive as using the word tranny to refer to transsexual (and I feel dirty for just typing that word). That's something that's never been said to me by an actual asexual, or by an actual transexual, probably because it's the kind of 'stupid and wrong' that comes from ignorance. If you do feel like disagreeing with me, I'm not going to go into detailed argument here, but please bear in mind that a) you're wrong and b) regardless of anything else, shouldn't it really be up to the group to decide how to refer to themselves

² I don't think I'd ever use that phrase today. Then again, it's a lot more likely than ;) or OTOH
³ Still waiting on this one.

⁴ This is not to say, incidentally, that I have no interest in fashion. Or that I have no interest in women's fashion (which, frankly, tends to be more interesting). I had less when I wrote this, but even then, it was more 'I have no real interest in knowing what this piece of clothing is called, simply how it looks'. Actually, I think there's an argument to be made that knowing the names of clothing might be an active disadvantage when it comes to decent aesthetics in fashion, although I must admit that that has to be balanced against actually finding stuff.
⁵ Thinking on this further, there exists a slight possibility that it was, in fact, a total lie.
⁶ Incidentally, when I do think that kind of thing, I really do think 'male or female', not 'man or woman'.  When speaking, I'll try to be accurate on the sex/gender distinction, but I still almost always end up using 'male' or 'female'.
⁷ Actually, I'd love to know what the hell I was thinking of here, since I've totally forgotten what I was referring to. Possibly the rather annoying fact that I am consistently asked to lead in partner dances, but I can't think why I wouldn't have written that.
⁸ Now that I think of it, I'll probably do an article on that. And you can all laugh at how clueless I am (actually I pretty much presume that that's why you read this blog anyway, but this time it'll be at least semi-intentional).  

⁹ OK, I've said that I don't really think these explanations are entirely accurate before, and I'll do it again. I'm very rarely able to communicate my exact thoughts in writing, but this is worse than usual. One particular problem with this explanation is that it implies a bit more of a sex drive than I currently have. Partially that's sorta expected - I don't really know how much of a sex drive a heterosexual man would have if he'd never seen a woman - but a lot of aces have more of a sex drive than me. Also, 'ace porn' is something I should probably write about some day.
¹⁰ I never actually did either of these. Hmmm...
¹¹ For those eager for news on what is clearly the most important part of this update, they have since been disabused of this notion.

On Democracy I (OA)

Another thing from Old Acanthus - the post that made me decide to get a blog to start with, even predates the introduction.

NOTE: This was originally posted on my Facebook page, which is why I mention at the end that I should get a blog (why yes, I could remove that bit, since it is indeed entirely pointless¹). Since I have a blog now, I'll definitely do another one of these.

Since I’m trying to convince people that I don’t think I’m better than everyone else (I lie sometimes – I totally am ;)² ), it seems like a good chance to explain my views on democracy, since it occurs to me that joking about how I think I should be dictator of the world might give the wrong impression (and because I enjoy writing about my views; I’m human like that).

So, just to clarify, I don’t think I should be dictator of the world, for reasons I’ll go into. The rest of this is just going to be me going on about my political philosophy. Just to clarify, no matter what I might say when I’m rushed to explain things, my view is not ‘people who are unintelligent shouldn’t get the vote’. Nor is it ‘one person should rule the country as dictator’. I might be being cynical, but I don’t think anyone is qualified for that, and even if they were, what about the next person? Checks and balances are always good. I simply think that noone, regardless of intelligence or education, whose knowledge of economics is limited to ‘taxes are bad’ should be given a say in the country’s economic policy. And yes, I’m aware that a decent economist supporting someone might cause people to support that candidate, but when they disagree (i.e. always) the result is based on people skills, not economics, since explaining advanced economic theory is rather difficult.

The same applies to almost everything else from the environment (people still don’t believe in human-caused global warming, so either their knowledge of climate science is woefully inadequate, or mine is) to science (should we give this grant money to the friendly and charming man who works with animals who works with animals and is rather a joke around other biologists, or the autistic savant neo-Nazi who pulls the wings off flies* and who other biologists think has about a ninety percent chance of curing cancer?).

So my first proposal is simple. Hardly ground-breaking at all. Before you’re allowed to vote on things, you have to show that you have at least a basic understanding of the things involved. And I really do mean basic, if only because as soon as it goes beyond the most basic understanding possible, the risk of institutional bias is far too great.

Yes, there are practical problems with this. That’s why I say that I have theoretical objections to democracy. You’d need to do at least some work on the practicalities, although you’d probably be able to get a group of experts which would be accepted as neutral (think Select Committees and juries).
I might do something else on this subject, going into a bit more detail on my politics, at some point. Or I might do one on world government. OTOH⁴, this is getting a bit… bloggy⁵.

EDIT: BTW, anyone who wants to criticise or in any other way make fun of this, feel free. I'm fairly confident in my opposition to democracy, but I'm not quite arrogant enough to think that I can just come up with something better at sixteen that noone's thought of yet. There are probably a few problems with my ideas (actually, there definitely is at least one, which I'll deal with if I do another one of these)⁶.

*Note: I’m not implying that any of these things are linked. Especially not the autism³.


¹ Yes, that makes this the third time that this has been published. 
² Oh my god a smiley. That's something I never do these days. Actually, I think my style's changed a fair bit since I wrote this, but it might just be that I notice the changes more. 
³ OK, if there's one thing in my style that really has changed, it's the steady increase in the numbers of footnotes. I mean seriously, one? It's almost like this was written by a completely different person who was five foot six and who had red hair and blue eyes, from whom I stole it before burying the real author under my shed.*

⁴ And an abbreviation - another thing that I don't do any more.
⁵  Actually, I think one of the things that has changed is that I've got more bloggy and less personal. There's less of an assumption that you know me. This might be bloggy for a Facebook post, but it's a little Facebooky for a blog post.

⁶ This, by the way, applies to pretty much everything I write, except for my level of confidence in my viewpoint - democracy is one of the higher ones (also, I'm not sixteen anymore. Actually, I'm not even sure I was sixteen when I wrote this. There exists a non-zero possiblilty that I might possibly have got my own age wrong.


*OK, I'd normally be a bit iffy bout commenting on my own commentary, but that joke really doesn't work. I am sorry.

Reasons to be glad we're ruled by a bunch of hypcritical morons.

Let me show you this completely incomprehensible table, which effectively shows an example of what game theory would call ‘the prisoner’s dilemma’.

	B
A	-1, -1	-1,000,000,000,001, 0
	0, -1,000,000,000,001	-1,000,000,000,000, -1,000,000,000,000

If you already know game theory, you might want to skip this paragraph. That’s called a payoff matrix. A can choose the top row or the bottom row, whilst B can choose the left column or the right column. These choices are combined to pick a cell (A chooses top, B chooses right, the top right cell is selected, for example), and the payoffs in the selected cells are given – A gets the 1^st number as a payoff, and B the second. Therefore, B wants to make the 2^nd number as high as possible (regardless of what A ends up with), and A wants to make the 1^st number as high as possible (with likewise disregard for what happens to B). So, it should be pretty obvious which is the best cell, which cell A wants to end up in, and which cell B wants to end up in. Here’s the unfortunate thing – no matter what B does, A gets a better result by choosing the bottom row. Only slightly better, true, but better nonetheless. Likewise, no matter what A does, B gets a better result by choosing the right column. Thus, despite how bad of a result it is, if both A and B are at least somewhat logical, they’re going to end up in the ‘we are both incredibly screwed’ cell in the bottom right.

Sorry for a bit of a boring explanation. Let’s talk about something that couldn’t possibly be seen as being boring. Nuclear war!* Let’s assume that we’re back in the Cold War. There are only two sides**, and both of them have enough nuclear weaponry to utterly destroy the other one. Furthermore, let us assume that the decision about whether or not to nuke the other side is going to be made by two people who are entirely logical, but who don’t know about the existence of the other one***. Let’s take a look at their thought processes:

If the other side launches nukes at us, that’s really, really bad. So let’s assign it a value like negative one billion****, to symbolise the fact that we’ll all be dead – probably something we want to avoid. We can’t give it –infinity, though, since if we’re going to be nuked anyway, we’re still going to want to do everything else that’s in our best interests, and a negative infinity would eliminate all the differences between courses of action†. Furthermore, I want to act entirely in our best interests. Having the other side around is bad for us. They’re all annoying and wrong and trying to impose their values on us. Plus, they’re using up resources which, frankly, we could use. All in all, it would be better for us if they just went away. So let’s assign a negative value to their continued existence. Just a negative one, since it’s infinitely less important that they die than that we survive, but a negative value nonetheless.

Now look at the table above. Yeah. A logical person with the ability to end the Cold War in nuclear apocalypse would probably have done so. The only possible reason why they might not have done so is if they thought that their enemies in the Cold War existing was actually better than if they didn’t exist. Now, that’s a possibility. That must be considered. But in that case there is no situation where nukes would be launched. This leads to several conclusions. Firstly, scrap the nuclear deterrent, secretly replace it with gigantic novelty piñatas. Second, why exactly bare we fighting the Cold War in the first place? There is one decent reason to value the other side in the middle of the Cold War is that you value the people on the other side – after all, the people can’t really be blamed for the actions of their rulers, and killing them all might be seen as the greater of two evils. But that throws question on what, exactly, the purpose of the Cold War even is. The Cold war was fought by economics and by proxy, and when banks fail, it is seldom the bankers who starve. You’re doing the same thing on a smaller scale. Obviously, there’s still a case to be made for fighting defensively, but not for any kind of attack.

And even if you can justify that to yourself, if you’re one the Capitalist side††, you’re being a complete hypocrite. Democracy is government by, with, and for the people. The main thing here is that it’s government ‘for’ the people – you should be following entirely the interests of your people. That’s how democratic theory works. And as for by/with the people, I’m guessing that, sadly, if you’d asked every American whether they wanted all the Communists to just die, they’re is probably at least one point in the War where they would’ve said ‘yes’. Plus, ‘for’ does seem to trump ‘by’ and ‘with’, since ‘by’ and ‘with’ are pretty much covered by ‘being elected’, and judging by the tendency of governments to ignore what the people want’ in favour of ‘what’s actually good for them’†††.

What’s my point, you may ask? I have no particular point (except that, whilst you could use game theory to program a computer to run the country, you probably shouldn’t). A national government acting only in its country’s interests relies on its own stupidity for the survival of the planet, and if they’re all acting in the global interest, it’s probably going to be better to be entirely replace them with a global government (though the ‘global governance’ thing is something that deserves rather more direct examination – this is part of it, but it’s a bit tangential). It’s just something that’s fun to think about.

I have a strange mind.


*At least one person has probably already worked out where this is going.
**Because no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get Word to draw an seven***-dimensional table, and because this starts to get a lot more complicated if we have more sides.
***Of course Israel doesn’t have nukes, silly. What on earth are you talking about? And North Korea’s nuclear weapons are too pathetic to count.
****Because if they did know anything about each other, everything gets a lot more complicated, and because it is (fortunately) the middle of the Cold War, and information about the other side’s methods of deciding whether or not to fire nukes probably isn’t going to be made public.
*****I am British. I use British billions. I believe that’s the equivalent of a trillion in America.
†This would still work, incidentally, even if you replaced the negative one billion with a negative infinity.
††Socialism, incidentally, has a significant advantage here, in that it can fight the Cold War without compromising their principles. It has its principles compromised in other ways, instead.

†††Greece

Introduction (OA)

I've decided to post at least some of the bits of Old Acanthus on here (marked OA), with some footnoted commentary. This is the first thing I ever posted on Acanthus, though not actually the first thing I wrote for it. Since this is something I said I'd update, though, this has changed a bit from the first post of it. What's a change to the text is pretty much arbitary.

Incidentally, I also jsut posted something else, which was actually new, in case you want to check that.


I suppose I should start this with a general explanation of my insanity, and the random stuff on this blog. I'm Ben, although you probably already know this, as I can't imagine that anyone came across this blog without knowing me¹. Still, best to mention it, for anyone who's randomly passing through on the way to something more interesting. So I thought I'd answer some of the questions you probably have:

What the hell is wrong with you?
Please be more specific, imaginary question asking voice. I'm tired of that question.

What does Acanthus mean?
It's a flower - used a picture of it to the right of the old blog²*. According to the Noblis rulebook it represents the fine arts (although the dictionary of flowers I normally use disagrees, not having a definition for acanthus at all). It's also the name of one of the Paths in Mage. As you may have guessed by now, I am a massive nerd (although in my defence I only remembered the Mage thing whilst looking for a picture).

So why did you use it as a blog title?
I'm going to be honest here, and say that it's the voices in my head told me to. But I'll put a winky face here, so you think I'm joking: ;).
Seriously, though, I really have no idea. It was originally going to be called 'Winter and Twilight' (which I also have no idea of the origins of), but someone might have thought it had some connection to Twilight³. I'm rubbish at names, so I generally go with 'random nonsense stuff that has some vague relevance and doesn't sound too terrible'.

What about 'Hamlet 22288 ⁴?
Hamlet act 2, scene 2, line 288. It's at the end of one of his speeches to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

When will you update this?
I have no idea. When I get round to it, and have time. I'm happier to update at random when I have something which at least I'm happy with than have a schedule and try to think of things on that schedule. That said, as it turns out, I do try to do at least one update a month (mainly to prevent annoying month gaps in the display of my archives).

What will this be about?
Whatever I find interesting at the time. There'll be at least a bit of random politics and philosophy, and at least a bit about me. Yeah, as you may have guessed, I'm not really much good at the whole 'planning' thing. Another thing it turns out I talk about a lot is my sexuality (or lack thereof).

Why are you so bad at spelling?
I can't proofread. I'll try to run these things through spellcheck, but some things aren't in spellcheck, so I'll miss some stuff. If I've spelt your name, the name of your home, or anything like that wrong, I apologise in advance, tell me and I'll fix it⁵.

Why are you so wordy?
I have a tendency to go on a bit. That's why I got a blog in the first place. It's probably the first** stage of my slide into super-villainy - first comes uncontrollable monologuing, then comes stroking a white cat and holding the UN hostage with a giant laser. So I'll shut up now. If you have any other questions, ask them in comments, and I'll try to keep this updated.


*A note on that picture: I think that's public domain, but it’s from http://nobilis.mapache.org, also known as the tenth result on Google Images, and if anyone wants me to remove it I will.
**OK, the thirty-seventh, but bear with me.
Commentary
¹ This, apparently isn't true any more. Strangely.
² Actually, one of the reasons I've been reluctant to switch entirely to this blog and delete the old one is (basically) that, aesthetically, I kinda prefer the old layout. On the other hand, this layout is probably more streamlined, easier to read, and let's the reader choose their own formatting. Since you lot won't tell me what you prefer, I'll probably drag someone in for a second opinion at some point.
³ As you probably know by now (or will, if this is the first of my posts that you're reading), I... don't really like the Twilight series (and no, it is not a saga).
⁴ The old blog's adress was hamlet2-2-288, which I think makes the reference clearer. That's another reason I have some lingering affection for it. But I'm probably stuck, since people know this adress, and I don't know how to make one redirect to the other (but if this ever does go down, it might be worth).
⁵ I actually don't think I've made that many spelling mistakes, somewhat to my surprise.

God, science and the epistemic distance.

It’s still March. Technically. I’ve been thinking about how to do this for a while. I’ve read this idea of few times recently, and I wanted to address it a little. There is an idea that you should be able to empirically test the existence of God. It’s a rather attractive idea, which is why I feel the need to actually address it.

Before we start, I feel it’s best to tell you right now that I’m a theist. If you want to ignore anything I’ll say on the basis that I’m clearly biased thanks to my evil religiosity*, that’s fine. There are plenty of people who’d do exactly the same if I’d said I was an atheist.

Are they gone? Yes? Good. I hated those people. They weren’t witty, intelligent and devastatingly handsome like you are. OK then, onto my actual argument. The way I’ve seen people use to try and test the existence of God are varied, but the most common are probably prayer and near death experiences. Let’s be clear here, I won’t necessarily defend either prayer or near death experiences even under theistic worldview. There are some pretty serious problems with the idea of both of those things. I’ll do a dialogue on prayer one of these days, actually. But that’s irrelevant to the point I’m gonna try to make. I don’t want to prove that specific tests of God’s existence don’t work, I want to prove that trying to do the test using the scientific method is inherently unworkable.

Let us examine the nature of God for a moment**. Assume that He exists. In such a case, there exist four possibilities: He wants us to know that He exists, He wants us not to know whether He exists or not, He wants us to think that He doesn’t exist. Let us examine these possibilities in turn. The first is clearly ridiculous – if God wishes to convince people of His existence, he’s probably gonna be able to do it. If nothing else, the actual discovery of Russell’s teapot would probably convince even Dawkins, especially if it had ‘yes, Dawkins, I do exist’ written on the side. The second and third are functionally identical for the argument I’m about to make, and I’ll be arguing that one of them must be true, so I won’t try to refute them here. Which leaves the fourth. I… actually can’t deal with that one using pure definitions. Yeah, it seems somewhat silly that an omniscient, omnibenevolent God should genuinely not care, but He is ineffable, so it would be premature to rule it out. However, it doesn’t’ fit either with my argument, or with any traditional conception of God. It’s just weird. So let’s assume that the omnibenevolent, loving, caring God actually cares. Probably not too much of an assumption

So we’ve concluded that if a God does exist, He must either want us not to know whether or not he exists, or want us to think he doesn’t. Any empirical test, therefore, that He knows you’re running to test whether or not He exists, he’s going to make sure that you don’t get any evidence suggesting that He exists, isn’t He now. And since He’s omniscient, you’re probably not going to get around Him – if He doesn’t want you to know He exists, you’re probably not going to find a way around that one.

So if God exists, He either doesn’t want us to know whether he exists or not, or He actively wants us to think He doesn’t exist. One question remains: Why? Why on earth would an extant God randomly decide to hide His existence? Isn’t it simpler just to assume that He doesn’t exist at all? Well, now seems a good time to introduce you to the concept of epistemic distance, an idea belonging to, in my opinion, one of the greatest philosophers ever, John Hick. Let’s look at the nature of God, shall we? Almost everyone, no matter how sociopathic they might be, follows the law when they know that a policeman is looking directly at them. You can make a pretty good argument that anyone who doesn’t is totally insane, since they’re quite obviously acting against their own self-interest****. Now let’s assume that God exists, and you know it. Obviously, you’re going to do everything humanly possible to please Him – anything else would be seriously against your own self-interest. It’s similar to the ‘religious believers are in some way less good, since they can’t divorce their thinking from the idea that by doing good they’ll be rewarded later on’ argument. If you know God exists, your free will is reduced, and you can’t  really do good, since you can’t really choose to do other than as you do – in the words of Kant, ought implies can.

So if God exists, He has a good reason to keep his existence from becoming a matter of fact, to preserve epistemic distance and thus preserve free will. The Universe is entirely consistent with a God who does this, and any testing is pretty much gonna be pointless for proving either way. I’m not expecting anyone to convert from this argument – I’m not arguing that God exists (I’m a theist for completely different reasons), I’m arguing that He doesn’t necessarily not exist, and that science and religion really shouldn’t interfere with each other.

*Apparently, that actually is a word. Huh.

**I am here assuming the traditional omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God. As you’ll see, my arguments don’t really work for other kinds of God***.

***Which handily deals with the ‘we are both atheists...’ argument. What luck.

****Or they think that they’ll be able to escape, but…