Time for a second bite

My religious studies initiated in my former post led me to the discovery (via a hint from the Almighty herself) of a God-talkie, a device that allows two way communication with the Creator. The device is widely available, although currently the demand exceeds supply. It is an iPhone 5, and  its precursor iPhone 4S - and the communication with Almighty is channeled by Siri. I received my own long awaited copy of the iPhone 5 yesterday and immediately started on several simple tests.

The un-earthly provenience  of some  components of the iPhone is quite clear. In spite of having four cores, twice as many as its predecessor, the device does not seem any faster. The simplest explanation for this fact is that only two of the cores are available to the user, while the remaining two have a special purpose. One is controlled by the National Security Agency under the provisions of Patriot Act, and the other is the long awaited God-communicator.

I will report on the early results of my testing momentarily, but let me start with a brief history of the God-talkie, an odyssey that is not widely known.

Legacy of Steve Jobs

A lot has been written about Steve Jobs, but the big picture is still largely hidden from the public. It is time to reveal some of these details as they will eventually become a part of his sainthood application.

In the mid 70's Steve Jobs on a trip to the Mountain States encountered religious people who claimed constant, two-way communication with God. Skeptical of the messengers, but curious about the message, Steve took this  as a sign that required proper interpretation and a corresponding action. Indeed, a simple letter permutation led him to what he described himself as  "a positive life-changing experience" - an ingestion of a large quantity of LSD. It was not an ordinary acid trip, but rather a destiny seeking exploit. The details are sketchy, but at some point there was a moment when  enveloped  in a purple haze and surrounded by ordinarily inanimate objects talking to one another, he was charged with the development of a God-talkie, a task that took over a quarter of century and was completed with the announcement of iPhone 4S on October 4, 2011.  What most of us would have chalked up as a bad trip, Steve has taken with utmost seriousness. For the next 35 years, he built one of the most profitable companies on the planet, created exotic needs that he subsequently fulfilled, and experimented with the designs of a God-talkie. He had to wait for the technology to develop that would allow his device  to be small, portable and endowed with  a jewel-like body. In fact, the only hint of a higher purpose of his devices is that he would not compromise on the aesthetics and refuse fugly designs that dominate modern electronics industry. The history is well known, early version of Mac computers, NeXT machine known as "God's Macintosh", long forgotten Newton - this  is just a long list of baby-steps toward a single most important technological discovery in the history of humanity, and a fulfillment of a dream of every prophet. And when the mission was finally accomplished, Steve  was recalled  from Earth on the next  day, leaving the final steps  in hands of millions of underpaid Chinese workers and the UPS.

Of course, Steve was sworn to secrecy and his plans were not to be revealed to anybody. Yet, as a mere mortal he was allowed to create a symbol, a road sign, a powerful message to himself that would keep his energy in total focus for what he knew will be the rest of his life. The symbol is of course the logo of the Apple Company, perhaps the most recognizable industry logo on the planet,  yet also the one whose meaning is the least understood. Apple's logo is of course an apple, duh,  and this triviality hides the truth in plain sight. What Steve Jobs had in mind is of course Adam's apple, the  fruit from the  Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and what is crucially important, the one with its missing bite. This bite was the first step that humanity took on a path to self-awareness. It made us see our nakedness, which led toward wearing climate appropriate clothing, building fashion industry, and rubbing off a lot of unnecessary body hair, all of great importance for individuals valuing personal hygiene and aesthetic appearance. But I am straying…
Popular mythology portrays Adam's Apple as originating from Satan and  facilitated by reptiles and women.  It is a painful stereotype that needs to be addressed by emphasizing that the effect of consuming fruits from  the  Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil could be two-fold. So Steve, not a biblical scholar, understood the duality and the first commercial God-talkie was available in black and  white versions. The technological issues in manufacturing a white version, endless delays and odd sounding problems,  are all well publicized and indicate greater forces at work.

Building a God-talkie is an engineering tour-de-force, but genius of Steve Jobs saw several steps ahead, and an apple is a great metaphor. Because apple is a  food of a childhood, symbol of nourishment and good oral hygiene, and when fermented, a great source of enjoyment. Steve's message as we are approaching the end of the  sixth millennium is that we desperately need a second bite from that apple. There is just so much stuff that we need to be aware of, and God-talkie is a device that may help us to sort it all out. This is what sustained his endless hours spent on peddling overpriced hardware to unsuspecting audience, his relentless drive to perfection, and fearlessness when confronted with customers who were forced to pay way  more for gadgets with fewer features, clearly a requirement of God-specs that at that point nobody knew about.

Last but not least, pairing a God-talkie with an ordinary phone is another stroke of genius. While having long conversations with the Creator may not really be meant  for everybody, the device combined with Skype allows a conversation, with minimal expense,  between just about any two human beings on the planet. So even if the chatting with the Creator will not amount to much, we can and should use the device to talk to one another! It is  the last hope for a planet that is quickly rolling off the cliff.

God-talkie - first impressions

With the device in hand and fully configured I started with the essentials - downloading my music and movies, all 30 gigabytes of it.  I respect my music, and my choices should give the Creator  a good sense of my human attributes and set the tone for the future exchanges. Talking to God is not easy, and frankly the selection of questions is not obvious. At first I wanted to know the important stuff - is the planet safe for the next fifty years? no major earthquakes, comets, gamma-ray bursts in the vicinity? is somebody going to drop a nuke on us? does Higgs boson exist?  But seriously, what would I do with the answers?  It is someone else's work to ask these questions.  So I started like a mathematician, let's be more basic and easily verifiable. Nervously, and with somewhat shaky voice I asked:" Siri, where am I?" In few seconds Apple maps interface showed up and a blinking blue dot indicated my location. I was stunned, the map showed the location of my soul instead of my body! My street and my house were completely gone and a large green area surrounding the blue dot resembled the Garden of Eden.  I was elated by this confirmation of the devices' ability, and made a quick mental note to never use it for earthly navigation.


For the next question I decided to be more probing and to venture a bit into unknown. With a bit more confidence I asked "Siri, who am I?" This time the result was also surprising, but I was not sure whether Siri was channeling for the Creator or the National Security Agency. After a minute or so, the device started showing my Social Security number, credit card history and a list of recently visited web sites that I distinctly remembered as looking at in the "Private browsing" mode.  Obviously, it is the details that define us, but I was taken aback but somewhat one-dimensional picture that was revealed. Yet, among the flurry of my financial records and job related correspondence (which most definitely is confidential), I glimpsed an image of a small yellow plastic  bear. I purloined it from the doctor's office when I was six years old and I still am a bit uneasy about it. Apparently the Creator thinks that  it is an issue as well.

In the end I was getting a bit depressed with the paucity of really good questions, for which the answers could have a significant behavior altering effect. Can the Creator tell me something that will really  make a difference even for a moment?

In desperation I asked "Siri, will I wake up tomorrow?" In a flash, words "probably" blinked  on the screen, the alarm clock interface popped and  Siri gently inquired  about the wake-up call. Finally, a morsel that I was hoping for! I decided to leave dirty dishes in the sink, had a sip of nice bourbon, and went to bed without brushing my teeth.

Ministry of Everything - more troubles ahead

During a recent trip my wife found more pieces of my uncle's diary, which I dutifully translated. This is a continuation of this, this and that.

Deregulation

Capitalist pigs like to talk about market forces and such nonsense, as if having a plan is not necessary. For the benefit of our new colleagues, we made an experiment to debunk these silly ideas. The Botany Unit has a small purchasing collective of five well-seasoned comrades. To illustrate the futility of capitalist thinking, we deregulated our purchasing group. Every task was divided into five smaller subtasks and members of the purchasing unit were asked to communicate between themselves by leaving notes in a glass jar placed in the storage room. They were also allowed to free-roam and look for bargains and opportunities. For a week or two things were as usual, but soon after, capitalist ideas started taking hold. Just last week, every member of the Botany Unit received a half metric ton of paper clips. They were a bargain, because 10% of them were guaranteed to be rust-free. The purchasing unit simply could not pass on such a deal and it took paperclips off their mind for next three hundred years. Soon afterwards we received many gallons of green camouflage paint. The experiment was terminated when we got the news that the purchasing unit was bidding for a mid-size steam locomotive. Other than being stuck with paperclips and paint, it was a good lesson. All new comrades saw that central planning guided by the invisible hand of the Party is the right way to go! 

In the end, winter purchases of coal and potatoes for the Botany Unit were not made but we are enjoying warm autumn days and do not worry just yet.

Stargazers

Ministry of Everything has a Stargazing Unit which is in fact  closely associated with the Botany Unit. Comerades stargazers are good companions and we like to work with them. They have the best toys in our ministry: telescopes, binoculars, sextants and so on. For the long time they were forging ahead without much supervision. This is because their work is not really connected to the revolutionary struggle and many of our senior Party officials are, what can I say, senior - they have poor eyesight and they go to bed early. Consequently, nocturnal life of stargazers was not subjected to much scrutiny. Unfortunately, all good things come to an end and lately stargazers have fallen on bad times. Party committee reviewed their activities, past and planned, and issued stern recommendations. Their equipment was taken away, privileges cancelled, and several members of the unit were accused of being cosmopolitan. They claim that this is all because they requested even bigger and fancier toys that the Party found just too extravagant. But as always the truth is more complicated.

One reason for their downfall are their discoveries. Over the years, stargazers made a number of them - they found galaxies, nebulae, blinking stars,  bright stars and dark stars, big and small, exploding and contracting, planets and much more, and they made no secret of these findings. In summary, they have shown that the Universe is a busy place.  Now, the Party line is that we are the best nation on earth leading the humanity to a glorious future. The discovery of a Busy Universe is not helpful because somehow it makes us look less busy. In  particular, our economy, the best in the world,  seems to be a tad less lively lately. Finally, the stargazers' work was connected to the realities of daily life, and this is all tangential to even more basic question of who is making this commotion in the Universe!

The other problem is even worse. Out nation is the most advanced, yet some old customs are difficult to eradicate. In particular, astrology has a strong foothold in our society. So when the stargazers proposed adjustments to the Zodiac signs (related to the axial precession) by changing the dates associated with the Zodiac signs and introducing a new one (Ophiuchus), the Party just lost patience with them. Lenin and Marx were  born under  Taurus and now they are moved to Aries, and our  victorious great marshal Zhukov shows up as being  born under the dreaded Ophiuchus. These things are too important to fiddle with - obviously stargazers spent too much time in the dark!

 Austerity measures

The Party congress is fast approaching and we are in a fair amount of turmoil. The central committee seems to be considering two ideas. One is that we all get a bit more to eat, and the other that half of us get a great deal more to eat in order to motivate the other half who will have to become more entrepreneurial. Since the Ministry of Everything is a government unit, we are considered well-off. Consequently, our food rations were cut by 30% immediately. Most comrades are worried, we would have weathered 15%, it is just one day a week of fasting, but 30% requires serious thinking. Some comrades want to cut horizontally, no breakfast and smaller lunch, others vertically - two food-free days per week. Yet others think of eliminating some major food groups like meat or alcohol. In fact, discussions of whether alcohol is food occupy a lot of our time these days.

The interesting fact about these austerity measures is the preoccupation of the Party with food. There are no restrictions on trading food for other items like clothing or office equipment, and occasionally one can see a splash of color on some of my (now) skinnier colleagues. As if this reduction was not enough, the Botany Unit will be operating for the foreseeable future under 80% seed allocation. Again, everybody expected it to be 90%, but the management tucked in an extra 10%. It is quite a big difference, although I would not expect the comrades who make these decisions to have a full grasp of the implications.  Our reliance on virtual farming will greatly increase, but actual farming will be put on hold. I wish for the return of the revolutionary zeal that we so recently had in abundance. Otherwise we may eventually became as useless as our enemies claim we already are!   

Fearless leaders

I have to admit that our leaders share the struggle through this difficult period with us. Leadership is harder to quantify and so it is difficult to pinpoint what exactly they are doing when we are working. We are the Ministry of Everything, but our leaders managed to stretch the concept of Everything to include Something. The distinction is subtle, but Something is already taken by other government entities, so in the end we keep searching for Something Else.  In particular, to follow the new trends our Botany Unit has added a new program -  Machine farming and Seed counting. It reaches beyond classical Botany into the domains covered by other government units, but it gives some of our farmers additional sources of support (and they like it a lot). We also  partnered with others and created several opportunities for agriculture challenged individuals, a majority of population. The program is called Excursions in Agriculture and it has several components such as Meet Your Vegetable, Celebrate a Meatless Day, and our favorite - One Potato, Two Potato. None of this is expected to have much impact on botany or farming, but rather the goal is to make plant eating cool and fashionable, and to call attention to the fact that someone has to grow the damn things!

In addition to the creation of many new programs throughout the Ministry of Everything, we have proceeded with more traditional initiatives. Portraits of our Minister have appeared all over the building, and his pictures adorn many official documents, thus boosting morale tremendously.  

I mentioned the Command Center in my previous postings, and I am happy to report big changes there. Some members of the Command Center retired, some disappeared and some moved out. In the end I have only good news - the Command Center has acquired good chemistry, and this will allow it to pull in one direction.  There is some concern that  chemistry alone may not be enough to make this  direction a good one, and so we keep our fingers crossed that the Botany Unit will not fall by the wayside.

Continued here.

Homework

My school days are ancient history, but recently I was given a lengthy homework assignment. My (agnostic) daughter, irritated by the solid foundation of ignorance upon which my atheism is built, loaded my kindle with books on matters of religion. She threw in a few paper copies for a good measure. Little did I know what a wild trip it would be...

As a large portion my day job is to digest the creative efforts of others and evaluate them in half-page blurbs of a somewhat formulaic nature, I took this assignment in stride. In line with my workplace procedures, I ranked three of several assigned books using the standard criteria. However, uncomfortable to do this evaluation alone, which would definitely be inappropriate, I have asked the Almighty to provide some input as well. I did not expect a response and so I was quite surprised when I found a tiny gold tablet in the small container where I put my false tooth for the night. It turned out to be a SIM card with four messages. Three of them were comments on my book assignment and the fourth one recorded The Creator's annoyance with the fact that I still do not have an iPhone 5. Apparently Siri is her preferred mode of communication with humans and I am behind the schedule in the technology department. All the messages were translated from Aramaic by Googlefish, and unfortunately this software has its limitations.

Christopher Hitchens, God is not great, Kindle edition

Intellectual merit:
Hitchens is a good writer and this is religion bashing at its best. There is no item of faith that is left untouched, and even pretty innocent religions get harsh treatment. Hitchens focuses on religious texts (Old and New Testament, Koran, etc) and shows their human origins and tantalizing lack of originality. He presents religions as layers upon layers of nonsense that leads to evil deeds and mayhem. After about 50 pages it becomes a bit tiring, and soon afterwards I started developing doubts concerning the claims of the superiority of an atheist mind over the religious one.
I suspect that the human mindspace is fragmented into separate logical domains. In principle, science and religion are two such domains, where within each one a person can behave completely rationally in a manner easily communicated to others, but when taken together they lead to inconsistencies. While these are good examples, I feel that there are many more cases like this, and the mind of any  person has many pairs of points that cannot be connected by rational thought (more on this later...). 

In summary, Hitchens reviews religions as if they were movies, and gives all of them poor marks. Somehow his stance is no different than that of a five year old kid who does not like vegetables. As a parent you put up with it because you know the kid will grow out of it eventually. The fact that Hitchens never did is an exeption that only confirms the rule.

Broader Impact:
I am somewhat dubious whether any religious person would develop doubts about their faith upon reading this book, and for the non-religious this is a path well travelled. Consequently, the book is not particularly useful for any audience. However, "Hitch," as he used to be known, was a colorful character and very passionate about his views. He reveled in pissing people off and many of his youtube videos are quite funny.

The Almighty's comments: The Creator appears to be fond of Hitchens and she indicated that on numerous occasions she provided excerpts of his books to various prophets as a warning about how their message might be interpreted later in the future. Unfortunately, the heavy intoxication accompanying the creation of the sacred texts has shortened their attention span and Hitchens' complaints had little traction.

Recommendation: Somewhere in the lower part of the middle but clearly in the top 40% of writings on the subject that are not yet not in the top 10%. Got it?

 

Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, paper copy (not on my daughter's list)

Intellectual merit:
Dawkins introduces seven levels of religiousness with one as being certain of god's existence, seven being certain of god's non-existence and the rest being shades of gray in between. Anybody writing such book should be a solid seven, but I am not certain that Dawkins really is. He states that the "existence of God is extremely unlikely", which is just lame. Furthermore, his writing is confused and defensive even if it is quite funny. He seems to be unable to detach his thinking from his emotions. All of this lowers the Intellectual Merit factor significantly.

I find one major omission, which Almighty commented on indirectly as well. If one devotes a chapter to discuss flaws in the proofs of god's existence, why not have a chapter on proofs that there is no god? These are much more compelling and easier to come by. Just to illustrate, let me give an example of what he is missing out on.
Most of the characteristics commonly attributed to god invariably lead to contradictions. Things involving infinity are the most suspicious, and quite frankly, investing science dollars in the study of infinity would clarify a number of issues. It is pathetic that the government thinks that Big Data or Trustworthy Computing is more important when one looks deep into the future! Anyway, this is obviously my personal pet peeve, so let's stay focused.
Consider the human life span, which according to many religions is determined by god and presumably related to one's deeds, potential for redemption and what not. In other words, there is a hidden parameter that determines how long we live. However, this seems to be inconsistent with the statistical data provided by mortality tables. In particular, among 1000 newborn babies in Afghanistan, about 121 will die in the first year, while in the Japan it will be less than three. This seems inconsistent with the invisible hand guiding the matters of human life and death; after all, what is so special about being born in Japan, huh?

Historically, the most important proof of god's existence comes from Newton's theory of motion, which posits that the universe is completely deterministic. Personally I was somewhat worried when I first heard about it. Luckily, the discovery of quantum mechanics brought back randomness, and attempts to remove it by introducing hidden variables is known to lead to inconsistencies (e.g. Bell's theorem, Kochen-Specker theorem and most recently the Free Will Theorem of Conway and Kochen). All these indicate that the universe is endowed with true randomness. This is at odds with god's ability to see the future, isn't it? 

I find these arguments quite convincing, and frankly it is startling that none of it seem to create much worry for the Creator, or at least merit a hint of concern on her part. Perhaps Aramaic has too limited a vocabulary as she seems to cling to this ridiculous language. I can't wait for my iPhone 5 to open a regular line of communication and settle these pesky questions once and for all!

Anyway, a chapter along these lines would have been a better use of readers'
time than finding questionable passages in the scripture or poking fun at clergy.

The second omission really points to a serious knowledge gap. After 200 pages Dawkins finally arrives where he should have started - the Darwinian theory of religion. It is clear that religiousness is a stable feature of humanity, and there must be an evolutionary explanation for it. Dawkins brings in concepts from his other book (Extended phenotype) and also his theory of memes but in the end I do not think that he has a compelling
theory.

In fact I am dubious that he has got it right at all. It seems to me that the emergence of religion is linked to the fragmentation of our thinking into the domains of rationality that I mentioned earlier, and religion just happens to be the most visible of those. These domains of rationality, or the fact that we can hold conflicting ideas in our mind, is a result of the complexity of our thinking, namely the ability to do recursion, i.e. being able to think about our thinking and generally to model the thought process. This is perhaps the level on which one can see the emergence of religion from the evolutionary perspective, even if only as a side-effect. 

Broader Impact: I like Dawkins' books, but unfortunately this one is not that  great. Dawkins despises all religions and he is willing to take a stand against them. The book is full of sarcastic remarks on various aspects of religion. In fact, he planned to do a citizen's arrest of the Pope on his recent visit to England (I was looking forward to it). Much like Hitchens, he goes over the religious texts, proofs of the existence of god, and proceeds with intellectual mayhem. Dawkins is a popular writer, visible in the community. The Selfish Gene and Extended Phenotype are really great books, where solid science is interspersed with a great ability to explain and visualize things. In their own time many people, including myself, found them very influential. However, in this case the author labors under the delusion that he is slaying the dragon.

The Creator's comments: This is one of these cases when the reviewer does not seem to notice what the question was and comments on everything else...
She goes misty over evolution theory and sexual reproduction and mentions that she came up with the idea for DNA by playing with strands of her long white beard. What? White beard? A curious comment perhaps due to Google translation, but she seems to be genuinely pleased with her work on Earth. No wonder, the rest of the universe seems screwy and miserable place littered the with IEDs which when they go, they obliterate every life-form in a 10 light-year radius (perhaps to erase some of her less successful work.)
In reference to my own comments, which, like everything else, she is well familiar with, she points out that in the last decade government spending on the study of infinity, a subject that has great potential to bring humanity closer to her, has not gone up one bit. Suddenly I feel  that I have a powerful ally on my side, at least in the fight for the government dollars.

As I said, there is not one reference to Dawkins in the whole message. Given  the prominence of the reviewer, it is a mark down, isn't it?

Recommendation: A notch below Hitchens.

Alain de Botton, Religion for atheists: A nonbeliever guide to the uses of
religion, Kindle edition

Intellectual Merit:
First of all, de Botton is perhaps the best non-fiction writer I know. The writing is unbelievably smooth. There are no awkward sentences or convoluted reasoning, and the flow of arguments is so fluid that your mind offers no resistance to them at all. The premise of the book is very simple - you are an atheist and religious beliefs do not make much sense to you. Yet religious people, the majority of any population, under the umbrella of this or that religion, have accumulated a great deal of knowledge about human nature. One does not have to share their beliefs to tap into this resource, and frankly, how smart is it not to? The book provides hundreds of examples of how religion strives to make us better human beings while understanding all of our shortcomings. Nearly all that really matters to us has to do with other people, and religions step up to provide a framework for human interactions and ways to recover from mistakes. de Botton goes over a long list of religious rituals aiming at asking forgiveness, meeting other people, dealing with family issues, grieving, raising children, etc., and points out how religion offers guidance and comfort instead of the endless choices and indifference of the secular world. In the end, it reads as a powerful condemnation of secular society, which is unable to deal with our emotional side. I just loved this book, and it influenced me a great deal. It is a step forward in the discussion about religion and it possibly provides a way forward for a secular society to absorb some of the best practices of a religious one.

Broader Impact: The book is great and it could be an eye opener for many people. Whether various ideas coming from religion can be hijacked for secular society I am not so sure. de Botton's examples are very concrete, but the path from appreciation to implementation is not easy.

The Almighty's comments: She is very fond of the guy and blabbers that
his future books are even better. A solid plus for the Broader Impact!