Time and chance

Venus the goat is pretty random.

In his book Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche argued that a person's view of the world is more a matter of biography than of logic and conscious reasoning. He wrote

It has gradually become clear to me what every great philosophy has hitherto been: a confession on the part of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir...

Today, some people might go even farther in arguing that worldview is shaped by temperament which itself is to a significant degree the result of genes.

Sorting through that question is beyond El Cabrero at the moment, but for whatever reason I've always tended to see the world as a place ruled in large part by chance, luck and randomness. There is a part of me that is kind of surprised that the same math problems yield the same results on different days. As far as the "laws" of nature are concerned, I tend to view these more as habits or recurring patterns.

Of course, this leads to all kinds of disagreements with my deterministically-inclined friends who tend to follow Einstein in saying that God doesn't play dice with the world. For me, cosmic dice playing might be another name for God.

At any rate, I'm with the author of the biblical book of Ecclesiastes, who said

I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

SPEAKING OF A CHANGE OF FORTUNE, the economic crisis has many people rethinking Reaganomics. Here's a similar item from Newsweek as well.

THE MORTGAGE MESS and how to fix it is the subject of this item.

SPEAKING OF MESSES, here's a book review discussing the cost of the Iraq war.

YOU MUST CHECK OUT THIS PICTURE of the world's longest insect. We're talking over one foot.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

GOD'S DICE

Caption: Does this wild turkey move from choice, chance or necessity?

El Cabrero has been thinking about determinism lately. I couldn't help it...

Determinism is the idea that all things follow strict laws of nature and causality. That seems to have been a driving--if contested--force in the development of the natural sciences. After all, the apparent laws of physics seem to hold up pretty well to repeat observation most of the time. The speed of light doesn't vary a whole lot from day to day.

While most people would probably agree to the rule of law and causality in much of the natural world, it gets a little stickier in the case of living things and especially people. If strict determinism was the universal law of nature, it would be pretty odd to exempt ourselves from the rest of the world.

But is it?

The iconic physicist Albert Einstein spent much of his later career fighting a desperate rearguard action against quantum theory, which he ironically helped to launch. Quantum investigations--don't even ask me exactly what that means--seemed to suggest indeterminacy and a universe at least partially based on chance and probability.

In opposing this view, Einstein was probably more driven by temperament and philosophical preference than evidence.

In a long running and friendly debate with quantum theorist Niels Bohr, the deterministic Einstein used to insist that "God does not play dice with the universe."

Bohr countered by saying, "Who are you to tell God what to do?"

While the thoughts of Einstein and Bohr--let alone God--are far beyond this simple goatherd, I can't help believing that God loves dice--and that maybe dice-ness and God-ness are not two entirely separate things.

(Note: the contemporary physicist Stephen Hawking once said that "God not only plays dice, but sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen.")

Next time: Spinoza's stone.

IF CUTTING TAXES WAS ALL THAT MATTERED, consider this.

MORE ON THE UTAH MINE DISASTER can be found here.

RE: DOMESTIC SPYING, this is not a shock.

STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT. On a global scale, the difference in life expectancy between the rich and the poor is now 30 years, which is nothing to sneeze at. Prepositional correction: at which this is nothing to sneeze.

"UNLEASHING" DISASTER CAPITALISM. Here's an item by the UK Guardian about "markets" and violence.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED.

LAST CALL FOR DOSTOEVSKY

Caption: The butler did it. This man is now portraying Smerdyakov, possible illegitimate son and murderer of Fyodor Karamazov. Note the leash with which he will later hang himself.

OK, this is it. I mean it. After today, I vow to go a really long time before reading by or writing anything else about Dostoevsky.

To wrap up, I cobbled together some quotes about him, courtesy of FyodorDostoevsky.com (what would he think of that?).

As you might imagine, he's been called lots of things, ranging from
"Russia's evil genius" to "...the Shakespeare of the lunatic asylum." The Russian novelist Turgenev called him "...the nastiest Christian I've ever met".

I think the Shakespeare one nailed it.

Henry Miller said "Dostoevsky was human in that 'all too human' sense of Nietzsche. He wrings our withers when he unrolls his scroll of life." and "Dostoevsky is chaos and fecundity. Humanity, with him, is but a vortex in the bubbling maelstrom."

Joseph Conrad said The Brothers Karamazov was "... an impossible lump of valuable matter. It's terrifically bad and impressive and exasperating. Moreover, I don't know what Dostoevsky stands for or reveals, but I do know that he is too Russian for me. It sounds like some fierce mouthings of prehistoric ages." Conrad knew a thing or two about impossible lumps...

According to Nietzsche, he was"...the only psychologist from whom I have anything to learn." That explains a lot.

Einstein said "Dostoevsky gives me more than any scientist, more than Gauss." Holy speed of light in a vacuum, Batman!

The Russian theologian and philosopher Nikolay Berdyaev said "So great is the worth of Dostoevsky that to have produced him is by itself sufficient justification for the existence of the Russian people in the world: and he will bear witness for his country-men at the last judgement of the nations."

I think I'm done now.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED