Summer goals

Here's a tentative list of things I want to get done this summer... As with every break, I hardly expect to get all of it done:

• Understand Grothendieck's Axiom, and why it is (or isn't) important.
  
• Write a decent Binomial Heap in Haskell.
  
• Read Type Theory and Functional Programming or Proofs and Types.
  
• Read these lecture notes on Categorical Logic.
  
• Read all the minor prophetic books (and Daniel).
  Read all of the Epistles.
  
• Get comfortable with functors, monads and arrows in Haskell.
  
• Study for GRE. Especially, read Apostal's calculus.
  
• Make headway into the graph problem Dr. Pelsmajer gave me.
  
• Work with Beckman on something interesting...
  
• Pray more!
  
• Read The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus and Das Faustbuch.
  

There's more, I'm sure... There's always more.
Edit: Oh, dear! I got none of those done... sigh.

From qntm.org

You will not be able to stay home, blogger.

You will not be able to dial up, log in and cop out.

You will not be able to watch the revolution unfold on your RSS feed because the revolution will not be tweeted.

The revolution will not be tweeted; the revolution will not cost ninety-nine cents from iTunes; the revolution will not appear on Fark, Digg, Reddit or Metafilter, nor be brought to you by Randall Munroe, Ben Croshaw, Jack Thompson, Ron Paul or Stephen Colbert. The revolution will not be tagged "nsfw" or locked for editing by newly-registered users due to persistent vandalism.

The revolution will not have rounded corners because the revolution will not be tweeted.

*****
Read the whole thing here. Also read all of Fine Structure.

laughter and cynicism

Apparently I laugh a lot. I've known this for a while, but a conversation I had today reminded me. My whole family laughs a lot... probably much more than we have any real reason or right to. This is a bit odd since I think we all consider ourselves to be rather cynical on the whole. I realized a while ago that this is perfectly natural. This is because there are two types of cynic, one of which is always laughing.

First: what is a cynic? Cynicism can be characterized by the overwhelming desire to mock everything, fueled largely by the realization that the world is absurd and quite frankly isn't worth our time. Another key feature is the inability to take the world seriously.

There are two approaches here (actually there are a lot more, but we can make a lovely false dichotomy): scorn and ridicule.

The scornful cynic sees this ridiculous world and yearns for something that is not absurd-- for something meaningful, something consequential, something more worthy. Such a thing is nowhere to be found, so the scornful cynic mocks and derides everything-- he is, of course, above these trivialities, so why should he do anything besides mock them? The world is seen as a tiring mess of painfully evident errors that the cynic can't help but notice. Such a world cannot be taken seriously, but it demands to be, so the cynic lashes back in frustration.

The ridiculous cynic on the other hand takes all this absurdity as an infinite jest. The world is a joke being told by some grand comedian for the ridiculous cynic's enjoyment. There is a discord between the demands for seriousness and the absurdity of the world making these demands, which only serves to make the world more ridiculous-- like a chimp in a suit. As such, when the world demands to be taken seriously, the ridiculous cynic simply laughs in its face-- does that really expect to be taken seriously?

The scornful cynic, it seems, takes himself too seriously (why else let something so useless get to you?), while the ridiculous cynic does not take himself seriously enough. (Why else let yourself become as absurd as the rest of the world?)

The two types of cynics actually bring out the extreme in each other. The ridiculous cynic sees the epitome of absurdity in the scornful cynic: He demands (by taking himself so seriously) to be taken seriously, while refusing to repay the world in kind. On the other hand, the ridiculous cynic has let himself become truly absurd, and is certainly doing nothing worth anyone's time, which of course is what brings on a cynic's scorn.

On kitsch

Milan Kundera brings up kitsch a lot in The Unbearable Lightness of Being. He defines kitsch (incorrectly):
kitsch is the absolute denial of shit, in both the literal and figurative senses of the word; kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence.

This is not quite correct. Kundera is confusing two types of rejection: denial and exclusion. Denial seeks to forget, while exclusion makes the conscious effort to remember-- with disdain. Rather than deny shit, kitsch excludes shit from the beautiful with such vehemence that if something is not shit, it is regarded as beautiful.

"But!" you may be thinking, "kitsch rejects the truly artistic. This surely is not shit!" And you are correct; but I think Kundera offers a response: since shit is at the opposite end of the spectrum of beauty from art, they are, to use Kundera's words, "vertiginously close." And so, in order to exclude shit, kitsch rejects everything that reminds it of shit, including the artistic. The result is than kitsch accepts only the mediocre.

A pretty bathroom is an excellent example of kitsch. In order to exclude shit fully, all nonshit must be beautiful. The only way a pretty bathroom can be made ugly is for it to be covered in shit, so when there is no shit, beauty is guaranteed.

Half a percent... Just throwing it out there...

Note: The following post is intentionally incendiary. I don't actually believe all of it-- well, I do, but there's a lot more going on that makes my points rather moot-- I just get frustrated when people get hung up over a single issue. I feel the need to ridicule people who have lost the big picture over a minor detail. Carry on.

A BBC quote:
[A]nalysts say the government could reduce the payment - which is $30bn - by $165m, in order to force AIG to account for the bonuses in another way. (source)

Doing a little math, the $165M in bonuses is 0.55% of the next bailout payout to AIG. For those who didn't quite catch that: that is just over one half of one percent or 55 cents every $100.

Not .55% of the total amount AIG is going to be given, .55% of the next payment to AIG. Since they've received over $180B in "support" from the government, that $165M is less than .1%-- For every $10 AIG has gotten (so far) from the government, all these investors are sharing from a 1 penny pool. Proportionally, that's about the same as 6 drops of soda left in 3 liter bottle-- you leave almost that much sitting in the bottom when you throw it away.

You're damn right it's outrageous! AIG is ripping these guys off... No wonder they're leaving.

I hope this puts things in perspective.

Divine Hiddenness?

J.L. Shellenberg came up with an interesting argument for the nonexistence of (a Loving and Omnipotent) God. The Argument from Divine Hiddenness (as he calls it) is compelling as arguments concerning the existence of God go. It can be summarized as: If God loves us, he would do everything He could to increase the "good" in our lives. Clearly, if a god like the Christian God exists, this good would be a relationship with Him. However, there are people who, through no fault of their own have not experienced such a relationship (some of whom even undergo emotional duress at the lack of this relationship), and so a loving God must not exist.

This post is a response that is almost as short and incomplete as the summary I gave above.

My response boils down to answering the following question in a different way than Shellenberg: Is nonresistant disbelief something inherently beyond the control of the (non)believer? If it is, than his argument holds sway... a lot of it.
On the other hand, a loving God would allow the beloved the choice to reject Him (I believe Shellenberg admits this.) If nonresistant disbelief is not beyond the believer's control, then the disbelief is still a willful decision to reject God on the part of the believer, and God's actions at that point* cannot be held against Him. If I am in a relationship with you, and you choose to leave, I have no say. Even were I omnipotent, if I loved you, I would value your freedom, and patiently hope for you to return to me. I would even try to convince you to come back, but force has no place in love.**

So, is nonresistant disbelief beyond the believer's control?
More than once I have been on the verge of apostasy. In each case, it was hardly because I was resistant to God, rather, I was feeling something akin to what Shellenberg describes at the beginning of the linked document. I have been one step a way from that discouraged rejection often.
Shellenberg will likely suggest that this is the situation he describes later, concerning God's temporary withdrawal for some sort of spiritual growth, or other higher temporary purpose. This, it would be claimed, is why I was always "one step" away, but I never took that step.
The problem with that response is looking back on each of these situations, I always wonder what I was thinking as I wandered away from God-- he was consistently providing a way for me to come to Him, for me to accept Him again, and grow closer to Him. So why didn't I take these opportunities? I chose to ignore them. Finally, when there was one step left before I did reject Him, I stopped ignoring Him and accepted His hand.

The point is, it was my choice to begin to wander from Him, and my choice to continue to wander. And finally, it was my choice to "walk away", yet I did not make the choice. Certainly, there were influencing factors beyond my control, hence I would consider my apostasy to be "non-resistant", but I was still resisting God, in that I was choosing to separate myself from Him.

And so it is, my experience suggests, with all "nonresistant" disbelief. This does not make nonresistant disbelief any less sad, nor does it mean that people who have so chosen are weaker, or anything else. I have been fortunate enough to always have enough support from community to keep me alive during these times of duress, not all have such a community... a fact which requires constant prayer and action.

****
*I say "at that point" to avoid arguments concerning God's culpability for previous actions... that is a different debate.

**take this sentence with a grain of salt... Again, a different debate.

Father grant me courage...

"Ah, Sovereign LORD," I said, "I do not know how to speak; I am only a child."

But the LORD said to me, "Do not say, 'I am only a child.' You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you," declares the LORD.