Last Post: Free Will

So it's kind of sad that this is the last blog post, so I'll make it a good one (although all the other ones have hopefully been good too). Its also the last post so it will likely be long. I want to talk about the Tralframadoirans idea of free will. While some may easily dismiss the idea of fate, there have been numerous "forward thinkers" who think free will is not real. I'll say straight up, I believe in free will. The Tralframadorians' concept of time (hereafter TCT) is worth exploring a little, because many people with big degrees agree with it, just not necessairily who Kurt says came up with it.

The idea that all events are "frozen in amber" that people can just look at certain events and ignore others seems silly. The very nature of the story seems to defeat it. How can one at one time be looking at time, and yet be in time? How can they be testing and examining Billy, and be looking through another window of time? Why not just look through time to see how the examination would have come out? But I don't think this particular notion needs much discussion because i don't think most of us agree with it.

So here's the big picture: Free Will vs. Fate.

First, I'll take on the idea of fate. Fate is often percieved as all of our actions are predefined for us, and we just go with the flow. Ironically, such thinking would seem to suggest a higher power of some sort setting the path we follow, but many fatalists don't believe in one. But that's another story. There are two large problems with such thinking. First, if that were true, why do we bother to act? Why not just sit their like vegetables? The fatalist would say "well, if you're fated to do that then that's what you'll do." Fatalsim is a neat argument in that any logical thinking response can be ignored and just said to be fate. Even the very act of me writing this could be dismissed as "fate." So I'd like to ask one look at my arguments in a dispassionate state, ignore your personal feelings and don't just dismiss what I'm saying as "fate." The second large problem with the idea of "fate" is that no one knows what their fate is. I might be "fated" to eat chicken tomorrow, but that could just be because I ran out of beef. That type of argument is at least funcitonal on a fatalist level. But let's take a different example. Say I have both beef and chicken. I eat chicken. I choose to eat chicken, it has nothing to do with a predefined order of events.

Now let me deal with a likely objection. The fatalist says "But Ed, you believe in a God, right? One who knows everything right? So fate must be true, correct?" No. It doesn't. Here's two explanations. The first: I don't know what my choice is going to be until I make it. I have the coice to act as I see fit. But maybe that's not convincing enough. Try the second: God just knows what my choice will be. He allows me to make my choice on my own, but just knows how I'll choose. In effect, he doesn't make my choice for me, he just knows what I'm going to choose.

Now let me sum up with arguments for free will. Almost everything you do in a day can be done a different way. You can walk with larger steps, you can open the right door or the left door, you can hold the door for someone or not, the list goes on. It seems silly to say that I'm fated to have my steps 17.813 inches apart each step. It seems more likely that that is just a comfortable stride. holding the door for someone: I choose to be nice, or I choose to not be. Life is all about choices. You chose to read this post, and hopefully you'll choose to comment on it. How do you guys think?

The media: has it changed

So the question is has the media coverage of events changed much from the civil war as cited by the presentation (yet again, I don't remember whose)? I think the answer is yes and no. I'll break that down.

The media from the civil war was clearly bias. The south said they won gettysburgh despite heavy losses, and the north said they won gettysburgh too. It was also evident based on the passages the presenters cited that the newspapers were bias for their side.

Now let's look at modern media. I think first, modern media is different from civil war media in a very substantial way. Now media tells the truth. You wouldn't have two media outlets saying opposite things. For example, CNN might say the south lost but came really close to winning and will bounce back, and FOX would say that the south lost and got crushed and will never recover. Now the news is true, but with a slant on it. So yes, I think it's still bias, but at least truthful.

I think the real bias comes from what stories are told from the respective sides. FOX is less likely to cover stories that make conservatives look like idiots, and CNN isn't as likely to cover stories that make democrats look like idiots. You won't see much Bush bashing on FOX, nor will you see Nancy Pelosi exposed as an idiot on CNN. In short, the coverage is bias, instead of the stories themselves.

So that's as good an answer as I can give. Yes, media is still bias, no it's not bias in the same way. What are everyone else's reactions?

Lee a tragic hero?

So we talked about in class today that Lee is a tragic hero, his success with military command and Napoleonic tactics made him the famous general he was, and it was those same napoleonic tactics that caused his downfall. Here's where the deviation from your "Hamlet-esk" character comes in. Lee wasn't killed by his error, his men were, and they loved him for it. My answer in class was that yes he is a tragic hero, but now that I think about it I'm not so sure he really is. He seems similar to a tragic hero, but the number one difference seems to be while your normal tragic hero, hamlet, othello, etc. end up killing themselves, Lee ends up killing his men. Obviously I could be nitpicking, but I want to know what you guys think. Is Lee a tragic hero? Does that technicallity disqualify him, is it something else that makes him not a tragic hero or is he, in fact, a tragic hero? What do you all think?

War: Is it human nature?

I defended the yes side in class, but honestly I favor the no side, so that's what I'll defend here. Unlike in class, I'm defining key terms to make this debate understandable so one side doesn't say war is killing and the other says war is barroom brawling.
War is defined as "a conflict carried on by force of arms, as between nations or between parties within a nation" by dictionary.com.
Human nature is defined as "the psychological and social qualities that characterize humankind" by dictionary.com

First, let me point out that it is not enough to say that some humans want to war as proof that war is human nature. This is because of the definition of human nature that says it characterizes humankind, not a single human. Second, war is not brawling or fighting. War is a "conflict" through "force or arms". Basically an armed conflict. So here what the topic looks like now: "Is armed conflict a quality that characterizes humankind?"

I would argue that it is not. The answer seems much clearer now that terms have been defined, true, the terms can be counter-defined, but my definitions are the number 1 definitions in order, so they're likely the best ones, if not at least the most common ones. Most people would say they feel no need to involve themselves in armed conflict sometime during their life. It isn't like breathing (which is a necessity) nor is it like sex (as Sam suggested) in that most men (I can't speak for women) desire to have sex at some point in their life. Desire for pleasure may be human nature, as Sam suggests, but armed conflict isn't.

So as to not make this post incredibly long and people afraid to comment on it, I only have one other point. Just because war is so prevalent in human history it does not prove that war is human nature. Your freak human desires war: Hitler, Napoleon, etc. In order to stop said freak, other humans fight him whether they wanted a war or peace. What do you guys think?