User:Woozle/positions/2013

This is my Position Statement regarding various things. I am willing to defend any of these positions, and change them in the face of sufficient new evidence – though some of them are more firmly held than others.

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• /9-11 - important
• /hate crimes

Homeland Security and Torture

2008-01-31 Maybe I don't speak for the majority here, but I can at least say the following for myself. The war on terror – including the use of torture, illegal detainments by the US government, and even the stupid new airline security rules – are not being done for me. I don't want them. If they're being done for my "safety", then I'd much rather be in "danger". (Besides, these measures make me feel more in danger than the terrorists ever did.)

Just to make this clear: Torture is WRONG. NO NO NO NO, a thousand times NO. Maybe if you knew there was a nuclear bomb* in a densely-populated area and the torturee was the only person who knew where it was, then MAYBE (and I'd want to see the video record of the interrogation, too) -- but we've had nothing anywhere near that scale to justify what the American government has been doing (and certainly no transparency, much less video records), so STOP IT RIGHT NOW.

*at least one interrogation expert says that this type of scenario simply never happens -- but if it did, torture would work against efforts to determine the necessary information. See filed links in torture for more.

2009-12-15 addendum: If terror suspects do somehow manage to go free because they were tortured (not likely given the kangaroo courts they are likely to be performing in), those who supported the use of torture in the first place will have only themselves to blame. I would rather see Osama himself set free after trial (again, not bloody likely since we don't seem to be trying very hard to catch him) than continue to compromise our principles on how we treat people.

The Iraq War (2008-05-18)

The most compelling (and I use the word broadly) arguments I am aware of for the US remaining in Iraq at this point are:

1. We need to be there to stamp out Islamic terrorism (aka Islamofascism).
2. We have established connections with many individuals in Iraq who will be slaughtered if our protecting presence is removed.

For #1, we're doing an absolutely terrible job. Worse than terrible: we are regressing. The Iraq War was never planned to actually accomplish anything, but to be an advertisement for an ongoing threat which was no worse until the Bush plan poured gasoline on it; the world is now more full of terrorism, and more full of people who have good reason to hate Americans. A case might be made for a country with a rational leadership to be fighting terrorism in Iraq, but until Bush and his nest of insects are gone, we are among the furthest from being that country.

For #2, I would need to see evidence. Iraqis, even in the most positive stories I have read about the wonderful work our troops are doing in Iraq (and any progress at all is little short of miraculous, given the total non-plan they've been ordered to execute), come across as luke-warm at best about our continuing presence. If this point is important, why are we not being told stirring (even if fabricated) tales of the heroism of individual Iraqi fighters for truth, justice, and the American Way? This lack highlights the fact that the administration doesn't even buy this line.

We have shown that we can take a silk purse – a country full of oil, its dictator toppled, many of its long-repressed people eager for greater freedom and prosperity, and friendly to American ideas – and turn it into a sow's ear.

We have no right to be in Iraq any more, if we ever did.

2010-07-11 update I don't know what's going on with Obama, but he seems to be in the sway of the same philosophy. We need to be out of Iraq and out of Afghanistan. Sadly, the real reasons we are there are as strong as ever: war profiteers who run Congress through lobbying.

Religion

I think people confuse faith with idealism; organized religion encourages this confusion, because faith is much more easy to manipulate. Many people of good will find religion appealing, and I think it is the idealism of it which they find appealing. Many non-religious people are reluctant to attack religious fallacies because they don't want to destroy someone's faith. It is not necessary to destroy someone's idealism while arguing them out of blatantly fallacious ideas.

It seems to me that the difference between acceptable religion and unacceptable religion hinges on the following points:

• Revision: Is there a central doctrine which must never be revised by anyone? (Or can it be questioned, and revised if found to be in error?)
• Interpretation: Is that central doctrine solely interpretable by those in positions of authority? (Or are followers ultimately free to make their own moral decisions based on their own interpretation of that doctrine and the guidance of their own conscience?)
• Renouncement: Is there any retribution or punishment for renouncing one's membership?
• Universality: Does the core doctrine hold that it applies to everyone, not just those who have agreed to follow it?

The more of these attributes a religion possesses, the worse it is. Islam, for example, includes all four attributes. Even the worst fundamentalist varieties of Christianity generally have no (real) punishment for renouncement (aside from metaphysical threats – burning in hell and so forth – which are only meaningful to a believer), and can be minimally tolerated within a modern society – although not within the sphere of public discourse (e.g. passing a resolution blaming Satan for illegal immigration). Any one of these attributes renders an idea unsuitable as a basis for policy.

A religion which has none of these attributes, on the other hand, is far more likely to be capable of making rational decisions and therefore meaningfully participate in a sane civilization.

The solution is not to wipe out toxic religions, but rather to make them less toxic by encouraging religious individuals and groups to renounce the toxic aspects.

Activist Atheism

Some people accuse activist atheists (e.g. Richard Dawkins) of being "evangelical", and just as bad as the religions they attack. I disagree, though I do think there should be some specific boundaries and objectives:

1. I maintain my right to attack ideas which I think are bad, and not to regard any area of human thought as "sacred" or beyond accountability. Anything written or spoken is fair game (and I don't mean that in the Scientology sense), especially if it is advocating a course of action. There is no such thing as blasphemy, except for someone addicted to a dogma.
2. I maintain the right of those in a religion to renounce their adherence to that religion, and I maintain that this is not the same as renouncing loyalty and friendship with others still in the community of that religion, though it will often be seen that way (and may effectively have the same results). I also maintain that this is not the same as renouncing one's morals, though the most dogmatic adherents will generally see it that way.
3. If someone is a dogmaholic, only they can decide when they are ready to be cured. If their dogmaddiction isn't hurting anyone but themselves, then it only becomes my business if we are friends -- and I risk the friendship if I force the issue. (Transcript of a discussion starting with the question "why did none of my friends ever tell me I was wrong about the whole 'God' thing?" is here. Another answer: light can kill creatures raised in the dark.)
4. If it is hurting someone else, then I don't have any easy guidelines except this: If they're a political figure, their publicly expressed beliefs are fair game.
   • This is also true for the views of any organization, whether those views are expressed publicly or in private writings which are unintentionally exposed.
5. We now have much better tools than religion for making decisions. Wherever possible, religion's sway needs to be lessened and discouraged, and the use of these other tools needs to be promoted and encouraged.
   • This should never go so far as to threaten freedoms of speech, expression, belief, or congregation; but at the very least, we can stop the general policy of encouraging religion by e.g. automatically granting tax-exemption to churches as long as they appear to stay out of politics (and unfortunately even this caveat isn't always being enforced), or by allowing (as is the law here in North Carolina) parents to skip mandatory vaccinations for religious reasons (which they do not have to specify) but not for rational ones (e.g. evidence that the vaccine may be harmful).
   • In other words... wherever a religion or religious justification is given preference, I would see the preference given to rationality or a rational justification instead. Religious justification should lend no more credibility to an argument than saying "because the voices in my head told me to".
   • However: "I have a very strong feeling that X is true, but I don't know how to explain it yet" is a good justification; it's not as good a justification as scientific data, but we must avoid chaining anyone to a line of reasoning which seems wrong; individuals must remain free to act on the decisions of their own consciences. Religion tries to claim that process for its own, and then to control it; this is exactly the opposite of freedom of conscience.
   • Schools should teach how to deal with uncertainty, and how to reconcile a "gut feeling" that disagrees with what hard data -- or other people -- are saying. The lack of any training in this area leaves the door wide open for religion to claim that it has the monopoly on such thinking.

Thanks to "Progressive Conservative" for nudging me to examine this question in this conversation.

Also, I agree with the positions of PZ Myers as expressed in this article, despite the author's attempts to reframe atheism and science as some kind of insidious suppressive propaganda: we need more science, which will naturally lead to less religion, which is fine because we need less religion too.

Christianity

Being Christian is not sufficient reason for being anti-gay. Unless you obey every single rule and restriction in the Bible (and how can you, when nobody can agree on exactly what rules the Bible actually spells out and which are merely given as historical background?), you are choosing which ones to obey and which ones to ignore. This means that you have chosen to decide that "marriage is sacred" or "marriage means one man and one woman".

The Bible is not a source of moral authority. You must make up your own mind, and be prepared to explain how you arrived at your decision.

Patriotism

I believe that loyalty to the ideals of democracy is more important than loyalty to any particular nation, including loyalty to the United States. However, the United States is one of the few countries founded upon those ideals; as such, defending the United States against foreign invaders or against being taken over by forces inimical to democracy (whether those forces originate from within or without the US) is equivalent to, and thus just as important as, loyalty to those ideals.

In other words, defending the core values of the United States, as represented (perhaps imperfectly) by the Constitution, is important because of those core values, not because of loyalty to the United States as a country. (The latter being represented by the "My country, right or wrong" mentality.)

If the US (through some dreadful series of mistakes) became ruled by a dictatorship, and some country elsewhere in the world wanted to "liberate" us and restore democracy, wouldn't that be a good thing (assuming we had any trust at all in the intentions of the potential invaders)? Furthermore, would it not be loyal to the Constitution (which does not in any sense allow for totalitarian rule)?

war & the troops

Although I do not (and never did) support the US-Iraq War and definitely do not support any potential US attack on Iran, I do support the troops. They have been through hell, and are continuing to go through it. I wish there was a way to give them a mission at which they could succeed, but the game has been heavily rigged against them at this point. They performed competently (at worst!) in Afghanistan and during the invasion phase of the Iraq War, and I lay what has happened since then squarely at the feet of our (at best!) incompetent leaders.

Judgement & Religion

I believe that making one's own judgements is an important part of being human (in the best sense of the word). I don't mean that you should never say "well, I'll defer to your judgement on this"; you're still making the final judgement call about whether to trust the other person's opinion, on a case-by-case basis. The problem arises when a person (a "follower") accepts the judgement of another (a "leader") as supreme on all matters, and only allows their own judgement to prevail when the "leader" has no opinion or specifically gives the "follower" permission to decide on his/her own.

Organized religion worries me, in large part because of this very tendency to centralize ultimate moral authority.

Anyone who says that everything good in their life has come from their religion obviously hasn't read enough good science fiction. (Recommendations to follow, when I get around to it.)

(2007-09-25) Christians say that Jesus Christ died for my sins, and that therefore I should do all kinds of things. Stepping into their universe for a moment to address this: It's kind of a done deed now, but if I had the choice, I would tell Jesus: "No, please don't do that. You seem like a decent guy, and I bet we could benefit a lot more from the things you could do in a long life (write down your philosophy so we can really understand it! That would be sheer gold, and might have done a lot of good in the centuries after your death.) than from this "being saved" thing. Have a good life; don't go dying on my account. I'll take the heat. I'd rather not have your death on my conscience; that would be worse than any hellfire or purgatory could possibly be."

Since he's apparently gone and done it, however, without my consent, I have to say "thanks, I do appreciate it -- but I don't think this obligates me to anything, although you might still be able to talk me into it." Many Christians don't seem to understand that you attract more flies with honey than with fire and brimstone; sweet reason is so much easier to swallow than terroristic metaphysical threats. Good theatre, though, and amusing at times (or it would be amusing, that is, if innocent people weren't being hurt and killed by it).

Gender/Sexual Issues

My hypertwin and I are boycotting marriage (our page about it) at least until it is available to everyone, and possibly beyond that until it is re-fashioned into a tool for strengthening families of all types, not just two-person families.

I see absolutely nothing wrong with homosexuality, cross-dressing (transvestitism), transsexuality, or any other form of sexual/gender oddity, as long as nobody is getting hurt.

marriage

Our society's definition of what constitutes a family unit is far too limiting and fails to adequately serve many people, especially in a modern highly-mobile society; see htwiki:Hyperfamily for an alternative concept.

Unfortunately, progress in this department is hindered by religious dogmatists and authoritarians who are working for the return of restrictions which liberals have worked hard for many decades to remove (generally more so that they can use fear of the unknown to scare their followers into line than because they see those restrictions as actually important to society).

Anyone who fights against expanding the legal definition of marriage/family along rational lines is working for a cause that is basically evil; I have not seen any good justifications for preventing gay marriage, and an awful lot of really bad ones brought up over and over again despite having been soundly refuted (denialism). I am boycotting marriage until its legal definition is reworked to allow for the needs of myself, my hypertwin, and many other people we know; as it exists now, it is worse than useless to us.

2008-11-07 update: Whether or not the majority believes that gay marriage is a bad thing, I do not -- and this is a non-negotiable position at this point. The anti-gay camp has had plenty of opportunity to present valid arguments, and they have failed to present a single one that can stand even the least scrutiny. I'm still open to hearing new arguments, but sheer force of numbers isn't an argument. Those of us whose happiness is threatened by these legal restrictions will not concede even in the face of a majority (whose existence has yet to be demonstrated), because the legal restrictions benefit nobody and harm many.

roles

Apparently there is a huge amount of disagreement about whether gender roles are learned or innate. It seems quite plain to me that there is a good deal of variation: some people are wired such that they are perfectly comfortable in their assigned gender roles but would not behave in the prescribed way if society didn't encourage it, while others gravitate naturally towards the behaviors society prefers (or even views as "stereotypical"). Still others are wired to prefer behaviors prescribed to the other gender, which is at least circumstantial evidence that gender can be "hard-wired" and that it varies from person to person.

prostitution

I also don't see what's so terrible about prostitution; it doesn't seem to me any worse than any other situation in which one voluntarily dangers one's health for money. It should be legalized and regulated like any other risky profession (as it already is in some countries, most notably The Netherlands).

Life Issues

As far as life being sacred... I think if anything is sacred, it is the spirit, not the "life" of the spirit's container (body). I would propose the following:

• Every spirit deserves a vessel (body) worthy of it. (The spirit (soul/mind) deserves a body which is physically able to support the spirit, without chronic pain or excessive maintenance, and carry out the spirit's wishes within reason)
• A new spirit deserves to be born into a community that wants it and has the ability to care for it adequately until it is able to care for itself
• Every spirit has the right to choose to end itself
• If the spirit is too new to be able to make or express its life decisions, then the parents (or the community) must make those decisions.

For all the moral high ground currently being claimed by the "pro-life" people, they're elevating the body to a position of sacredness and totally ignoring that which ought to be far more important, i.e. the person inside.

Overall, we need to balance our compassionate wish to preserve life against our compassionate wish not to cause suffering. Those twin considerations should override any arbitrary sacredness of human life at any age. Any life decision depends heavily on context, including the wishes of the life in question (at which we can only make an educated guess in some cases), and should not be decided arbitrarily based on any hard-and-fast rule.

(This leaves open a lot of issues which need to be addressed, such as when do parents abandon their right of choice, when is a parental decision out of bounds, etc. but at least gives some principles from which those decisions can be made.)

Illegal Drugs

I worry more about the dangers posed by laws (e.g. RICO) which attempt to prevent usage of certain psychoactive substances than I do about the danger posed by the substances themselves. (I do not, however, personally indulge in any such substances other than caffeine.)

Politics

I was very disheartened by the 2004 election results; it seemed clear that Mr. Bush was bent on advancing an agenda of using foreign aggression as an opportunity to spend huge amounts of government money on "reconstruction" contracts which could then be used to increase his power via favoritism (i.e. giving contracts in exchange for favors and personal support) while doing very little towards increasing "security", despite that being the nominal justification for the majority of his actions.

Since then, I have seen very little to change that opinion, but I continue to be baffled by the fact that most of the country still seems to think he's doing the right thing and doing it well. I started Issuepedia partly as an attempt to untangle the complex web of assumptions and beliefs behind the various opinions (pro and con) on the matter.

Wacky Liberalism

Normally I tend to fall on the so-called liberal side of things, but below I will be collecting examples of instances where liberalism has clearly gone too far:

• The Sex-Offender Lobby

Nuclear Power

I'm not against nuclear power as such, but I dislike the way we are currently handling it as a social/organizational issue. Nuclear power plants are always constructed by huge companies (such as General Electric in the US), with extreme security being used as an excuse to minimize the transparency of the plant's operation. If we had more of a view into each plant's daily operation, we would be able to verify claims of safety. As it is, there is no way to verify and hence no way to trust that operations are being carried out safely.

I do think that we need to look at nuclear power as one option for reducing carbon emissions (and hence global warming), but the first item of business should be to redesign plant operations so they are more transparent. The second item of business is to take a close look at the entire life-cycle of the fuel and the plant itself: what is the total damage done by mining, how long would the fuel supplies last in abundance if the entire world was switched to nuclear, how can the spent fuel be safely disposed of? The current air of secrecy around nuclear power -- in some cases required by law -- currently makes such an examination almost impossible.

2010-07 update: Thorium-based nuclear looks very interesting. Apparently we have enough Thorium already mined to support the entire US for five years (meaning no mining would be necessary in order to get started), and we have enough domestic reserves to last somewhere between 50 and 500 years at present rates -- which should be more than enough time to get replacement alternative energy systems fully on-line.

Tentatively, I would support a program to replace all fossil-fuel energy with Thorium-based, especially if it was taxed and the revenue was poured into a crash program to put up a fleet of solar power satellites.

Punditry and Bias

It's often alleged that commenters on the Left are just as biased as those on the Right, and those who like the Left-biased ones only do so because they happen to agree with our opinions -- not because they're any more accurate than the idiot power-toadies on the right.

As I said here, I enjoy the pundits I enjoy because they do not habitually leave out or misinterpret critical information in their analyses. The pundits who irritate me most (or downright turn my stomach) are the ones who are clearly distorting the issues they analyze by their selective omissions and misinterpretations.

So, no -- I like the pundits on the Left because they are generally more honest and open-minded – qualities which are measurable and verifiable.

Globalism

Once upon a time (1990s), I favored globalism (and opposed the idea of protecting domestic industry with protective tariffs) -- partly because there was a lot of right-wing hype against it (remember the "giant sucking sound" which would be caused by NAFTA? Well, it kind of went the other way...), partly because a lot of foreign products seem far superior to American ones, and also partly because at the time we were prosperous and it seemed reasonable to start sharing that prosperity by helping to raise standards of living elsewhere in the world.

Since then, we've seen two things:

1. the US has destroyed its own domestic manufacturing base by becoming dependent on cheap overseas labor
2. the supply of cheap overseas labor greatly overwhelms our ability to raise living standards

I've just come up with what seems like a good solution.

Instead of having protective tariffs which just go into US federal coffers, require American companies (or companies with offices in America) which employ workers overseas to either (a) pay those workers something comparable to US wages (or some substantial fraction thereof), or (b) put the difference into a fund to be used to improve local infrastructure in the areas where they hire cheap labor -- and either way, require US workplace safety laws to be observed.

To whatever extent American industry can make a profit from cheap overseas labor, then, they have to share the wealth in a substantial way -- rather than just making slightly-better-off serfs who are increasingly dependent on foreign masters (which is what they seem to be trying to do here as well).

--Woozle 01:58, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Bicycling

I maintain that:

• As long as pedestrian traffic is light, bicyclists should be allowed to ride on sidewalks by default (i.e. in most circumstances), especially if there is no clearly-marked, unobstructed, safe bike lane.
• Bicyclists should be allowed to ride against traffic by default, though this should be discouraged as other riders/drivers may find it alarming.
• Bicyclists should be allowed to go through red lights if it appears safe to do so (taking into consideration how this may affect the actions of other drivers/riders).
• Bicyclists should be allowed to cross intersections diagonally if it appears safe to do so (best done only when there is no other traffic near the intersection).

If there's a contest between a bike and a car, the car is going to win -- so bicyclists should be allowed to do whatever they think is safest. Bicyclists should not be beholden to the letter of the "rules of the road" for cars, especially when there is no other traffic which might be confused by a bicyclist doing something unexpected. The main consideration bicyclists should be aware of is that any unexpected actions they take may cause a car driver to misjudge the situation and get into a wreck (I don't know how often this actually happens, however -- is it a regular occurrence, or largely hypothetical?).

If there's a contest between a bike and a pedestrian, the damage is usually minimal -- and avoiding pedestrians on a bike is very, very easy on a sidewalk (sometimes less easy if there are pedestrians and cars both present in a roadway). In cases where a collision does happen and there are damages to award, however, it seems reasonable to put the blame on the bicyclist by default, i.e. barring evidence that the pedestrian was trying to get hit.

--Woozle 18:50, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Intellectual Property / DRM

• I will not spend money on digital content if I cannot freely copy it and use it wherever I copy it to.
• I will not knowingly spend money on technology which supports non-copyable digital content.

This means no Kindle, and no Blu-Ray player until someone makes a copier. I avoided buying DVDs until I found software capable of copying them. I have "ripped" most of my CD library to computer files, which is where I listen to them. (Fortunately, I have never encountered a copy-protected CD, as far as I can tell.)