Sin

Oh, the fickle power of morality. No matter how dedicated we are to a principal, we can nevertheless at any time decide to ignore it. And there are usually frighteningly few repercussions. When immoral acts are not illegal, it is so easy to get away with them. All you have to do is let yourself off the hook. And then its' even easier the next time.

To describe an action I perform which I know at the time to be immoral, I use the word "sin." It is the only time that I feel it appropriate to use such a damning (literally) term. It needs to be strong to hopefully have an effect and slow the downward spiral.

I rarely, if ever, apply it to others, because I don't know others' mental states. The same action performed by two different people could be a sin for one and not the other. Some actions are objectively morally wrong, but they are only sins if the actor realizes that at the time.

Sin is breaking a promise to yourself. No one truly knows it occurred but you.

Some repercussions:
* Children and the morally undeveloped cannot sin. I am fine with this; They are motivated by force, authority, and impulse. To sin one needs to be motivated by morality.
* I take "original sin" to refer to our natural capacity to commit sin.
* A sin can be a trivial action (e.g. eating a candy bar). If you do something you resolved not to do, I think it's a sin, regardless of its impact. Your motivation may be practical (losing weight), but your duty to keep your promises is moral.
* Most of this is just assertion, not argumentation. I'm describing how I use the word, not how everyone else does.

Sin: A free action which the actor knows to be morally wrong at the time it is performed.

Dancing With The Athletes

Not that I ever closely watched or become emotionally invested in the show, but I think Dancing With The Stars is crap. This is solely based on the fact that they allow professional athletes to compete. (Feel free to point out that technically Shawn is a "amateur" and I'll point out that she probably doesn't just do a little gymnastics in her free time.)

How in the heck are people like Penn Jillette and Cliff Clavin supposed to compete against people who not only have athletic intelligence, but also many of whom are "stars" precisely because they can learn choreography?

Here are the winners by season. I submit that only 1 and 7 should have been allowed in the competition. 5 is borderline, since I'll grant that he doesn't move a lot in his sport. But 2, 6, and 8 are just ridiculous.

1.) Kelly Monaco - actress
2.) Drew Lachey - boy band member (aka singing dancer)
3.) Emmitt Smith - football player
4.) Apolo Anton Ohno - speed skater
5.) Hélio Castroneves - auto racer
6.) Kristi Yamaguchi - figure skater (aka ice dancer)
7.) Brooke Burke - actress
8.) Shawn Johnson - gymnast (aka athletic dancer)

Breaking the Cycle

The message of the book I just read, "The People of Sparks," was that you can stop a cycle of hate and violence through acts of kindness and love. I am continually surprised as how well this works. Responding to hate with love usually a) makes the hater reconsider their attitude and/or b) really really upsets the hater. Either outcome is pretty nice.

The alternative, responding with more violence, solidifies and justifies the hater's attitude, while encouraging the development of more hate within you. As backwards as it sounds, acting with love or hate towards someone tends to promote the corresponding attitude in both of you. We embrace the role we find ourselves playing.

I also see this as one of Jesus' central messages, and one it seems Christians are often prone to forget, especially once they acquire political power. What would have happened if we had used the money spent on the Mid-East wars to instead build hundreds of schools and hospitals around the world? Would we be safer than we are now? I'm not sure, but it's an idea that catches my imagination...

"Who Would Jesus Bomb?"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zU3aQ43YkwU&feature=related

Books v. Movies

Movies that are better than the books on which they are based:

Fight Club
Forest Gump
City of Ember
Watchmen
Shawshank Redemption

More to come...

Skill and Talent

The distinction between skill and talent is very important to me. I like to use "talent" to refer to innate abilities and "skill" to refer to developed abilities. I believe that, given an infinite amount of time, anyone can develop any skill. However, since in life we have time constraints, it's prudent to be aware of our talents and build upon them.

"Soar With Your Strengths" by Donald Clifton and Paul Nelson (which I have yet to read) warns of the tendency to focus too heavily on weaknesses. While it is important to compensate for your weaknesses, in order to be successful you should focus more heavily on maximizing your strengths. I couldn't agree more.

My personal story: I would not list athletics as a talent of mine. I'm not horrible, but I'm just about average at any sport I pick up. I spent an ungodly number of hours practicing basketball in high school. I was better than average, but I was never going to be great. Greatness was not attainable for me in four years given my talents.

Meanwhile, my philosophy for academics was "the minimum necessary to get an A." As I realized later, my biggest talent is academics, especially analysis, and I would have had far more success building on that talent (as I do now). I'm not saying I should have completely avoided sports, just that it wasn't the wisest focus for all my practice time.

This video deals with the distinction. Although he uses "talent" to refer to acquired abilities, which doesn't lend credibility to my definition... I'll keep using the words as I defined them though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtUuJo_DeyI

My favorite part is about taking 10,000 hours to develop a skill. That's 3 hours a day for 10 years. It's ironic that at age 14 I started playing basketball about 3 hours a day. I'm 25 now. Maybe I should have kept it up... I think according to this definition, my only current skills are eating and sleeping. Hopefully by the time I'm 35 I'll have gathered a few more.

Talent: An innate affinity for a certain activity.
Skill: An ability acquired through practice.

Actuary

A friend recently played me a snippet of a podcast called the BS Report with Bill Simmons. Bill had a guest on named Rick Reilly, and Rick was complaining about people disparaging him on their blogs. His grievance was, "I don't really want to read [criticisms by] people who have never met me. Or some guy that's an Actuarial by day, and at night he's trying to do this blog and he's pissed that he never got hired as a sports writer, so he's gonna take it out on me and other people that are hired. I don't really need to hear his gripes."

I wasn't aware that my profession, with one of the most strenuous professional exam processes in the world, was a typical fall-back job for out-of-work sports writers. I also wasn't aware that we're adjectives.

Actuary (n): One who specializes in the quantification of risk.

Actuarial (adj): Of or pertaining to an actuary.

The importance of logic

Shortly after the "stupid people are happier" comment, another conversation took place which included a logical fallacy. Can you spot it?

Person A: "How are you today?"
Person B: "I'm doing fine."
A: "You look quite happy."
B: "Are you trying to say I'm stupid?"

Though this was a joke, this logical fallacy, called "affirming the consequent" is actually very pervasive and often quite hard to detect.

Logically, here's the form:
If P then Q
Q
Therefore P

This works in some situations:
If Bob is a human, then Bob is a Homo sapien
Bob is a Homo sapien
Therefore, Bob is a human

But it does not work in others:
If Jill got hit by a train, then she needs serious medical attention.
Jill needs serious medical attention.
Jill got hit by a train.

Jill is probably glad this is not sound reasoning, or else she'd have a hard time with doctors ("Jill, it appears that your appendix is about to burst. I must again advise you to stay away from railroad tracks."). 

The reason why the first argument works is that the first statement is actually an "if and only if" statement (which in formal logic is usually indicated by an "iff", which I always dug). P implies Q, but Q also implies P, so the statement is valid by standard if-then reasoning, technically called "modus ponens."

It seems like these would be very easy to recognize, but they can be very subtle. TV News personalities love them. Although ad hominem and slippery slope probably could be the most popular, from my limited exposure. Counting fallacies is pretty much the only way I can stand to watch Fox News.

Fallacies can also be very funny, however. Some friends and I recently laid the groundwork for our Fallacious Fitness Program. We noted that, if you get done with your workout and you aren't tired, then you didn't exercise hard enough. So the purpose of a workout program is to make you tired. Thus you can be more fit if you incorporate as many tiring activities as possible into your daily life. Some suggestions would be: using the stairs, parking far away, eating deep-fried foods, riding your bike to work, driving long distances, reading very challenging books, watching basketball for 6+ hours, and staying up really late. As long as you're tired, you must have worked out.

This can be combined with the fallacy of constitution to provide an eating regime. The rule: As long as the food item contains something healthy, it itself is healthy. Some examples might include: fruit roll-ups, chocolate-covered cherries, fried potatoes, deep-fried mushrooms, broccoli-cheddar soup, corn flakes, and so on.

So I hope this has helped drive home the importance of being aware of logical fallacies. The greatest minds throughout history have all been very aware of fallacies, so if you develop you awareness of them, you could be an amazingly intelligent person as well.