i was told i was silly for believing in a 50 mile long weapons cache in iraq. let's see about that:

120 x 360 = 36000 + 7200 = 43,200 (sq feet of football field)

if iraq has 1mil man army, and 10,000 sq feet of supplies per guy, that's 10,bil sq feet or about 10bil/25mil = in sq miles = 400 sq miles = 20 miles by 20 miles, or 400 miles by 1 mile

10,000 sq feet per person means about 4 ppl to a football field (a fraction of a person more would fit).

ok that sounds like a lot of space per person at first. but it's not. first u have to take into account roads, buildings, and large gaps so if something is blown up u don't lose everything. so the actual amount of space used to store stuff, in weapons caches, is more like 1/2 or 1/3 of the total space. i'll just estimate 40%. 10bil * 40% makes 4bil sq feet of stuff.

so 1/10 of a football field of actual stuff packed reasonably tightly per person. sound too small? maybe it is, but anyway i'll just try to support that much.

source

notice that one factory can handle most of that increase. ie make nearly 1bil rounds/year.

this is the US, and the US army is not all that reliant on small arms. only a very small proportion of our soldiers are in many small arms fights. also notice that it sounds like most of that increase is just from *training*. imagine how much more a huge army in constant small arms fights must use (that also must be trained). now keep in mind iraq needed stockpiles that could last them through many years of sanctions with no resupply. lets say they aimed at a lowly 10 years. so for the US that'd be 12bil rounds. but for iraq multiply by 5 and guess 60bil, which seems way too low to me.

ok so these can be stored in boxes, which can be stacked. lets say boxes hold 1k rounds, are stacked 3 deep, and are 3ft by 2ft = 6sq feet. 3k rnds in 6sq feet or 1k rnds in 2 sq feet. we need 60bil rounds so that's 2sq feet * 60mil = 120mil sq feet. we're trying to fill 4bil sq feet. so that's 30mil out of a bil, or 3%. just for the ammo for small guns. while, i think, intentionally underestimating.

they also need a vehicle for every few ppl, machine guns, mortars, artillery, tanks, planes, helicopters, SPARE PARTS, FUEL, food, tents, landmines, RPGs, TNT (they use TNT), knives, wire, missiles, spare guns, missile shooting systems (these are big), ammo for all these things, and a zillion other things. all in tremendous quantities.

-----------

source

1.5 bil rounds looted. in Albania. albania is puny. iraq is large. and iraq wanted enough supplies to last a long time without getting more. so, i have to think my estimates b4 were low.

--------

source

so they needed supplies for 2mil man army, not 1mil. so if there's only 400 sq miles of weapons caches as i was trying to support, about 6% not 3% has to be just ammo for small guns. which sounds far too high to me, meaning there's are prolly more than 400 sq miles of weapons caches.

-------

source

5 years to blow up just the stuff we already *confiscated*.

and it just goes on and on

so 60bil rounds would only be a bit over 2,000 per gun. including training, that's no where near enough ammo per gun. but apparently there's no shortage:

weeeeee

ok more math. if a ton of stuff takes 500 sq feet (50 feet by 10 feet, not that big)), we have 300mil sq feet of ammo. compared with teh 4bil sq feet target, that's 7.5%, or significantly more than my earlier estimate

-----------

ok going to the CIA World Factbook

albania is 27,748 km sq
iraq is 437,072 km sq

just to help you compare WRT the looted ammo thing

new source

ok, and just in case you thought i was wasting my time ........ yup (nah joking, this was interesting)

source

ok so 50 sq miles, not 50 miles long. oh well, close enough. and my estimates were off by a factor of 8ish i guess. which is small. and this is *known* weapons dumps, so could be less than factor of 8 off.

ok suppose ur one of the guys in charge of buying guns and stuff to supply saddam's army. and lets imagine you don't buy enough guns and after 20 years of wars and sanctions, they run out. then he kills you and your family painfully for failing him.

but suppose you buy 5 times as many guns as needed. then he has plenty of guns, and can boast about how many guns he has, and such. the only risk is your budget (if you use too much money you get to die again). but saddam wouldn't be paying attention to details of costs for everything, so you could probably get a decent budget. so you would end up buying much more stuff than needed, just cause it's safer.

WRT the oil for food program by UN 4 iraq

doesn't anyone have a clue what 'money is fungible' means?

sigh

(even if it was for food, ok so now with their other money, they need to buy less food, and can use it for evil)

What is coercion?

The original: The psychological state of enacting one idea or impulse while a conflicting impulse is still active in one's mind.

An improvement: Coercion is the state of two or more personality strands being expressed in different options of a single choice such that one cannot see a way to choose without forsaking some part of his personality.

If you're wondering what the use of all this is, coercion captures ideas like mental pain and distress precisely. It explains just what they really are.

And now, a whole new way to look at it:

First off, we need to think of a worldview (personality) as having various parts (strands, groups of theories) that are approximately autonomous. The argument that they are goes as follows:

Is Buffy the series or Buffy the movie better? Most Buffy fans would say the series. In this way they are alike. There are various other questions about Buffy we could ask to also get the same answers.

Now, each Buffy fan has a different worldview, and some different ideas. But when asked about Buffy they can generally give the same answer. This shows that the alike, Buffy part of their personalities does not consult with the rest of their personality. If it did, they would answer differently.

Of course this isn't a perfection distinction. If you ask complex enough questions the answers Buffy fans give will vary more. And part of someone's personality can't be entirely autonomous. But it acts approximately autonomous.

Alright, so the point is we have various different separate parts of our personality. Now, suppose we have to make a choice. Most of our personality won't have anything to say about the choice. Say it's what to eat for dinner. The Buffy part will have no view. Nor the math part. Nor the hockey part. Only a few parts of our personality will be relevant for any given choice.

Alright, so there is some choice to be made, and some parts of our personality give input on what we choose. For each relevant part of our personality, there is a set of options for how to choose that are consistent with it (this set exists abstractly -- I'm not saying all these options are in our mind). When asked if Buffy is cool, we could choose to say "yeah", or "yes", or "yup", or "totally", or many other things, without contradicting our views on Buffy. On the other hand, there are some ways to respond that would not work, such as to say "no" when we actually do think Buffy is cool. So, the point is, there's a set of options (ways to choose) that work with any given personality strand, and all options not in that set would constitute acting contrary to our own personality.

Alright, so now we get to the key new idea: the set of non-coercive options is the intersection of the sets of choices for each part of our personality.

(Intersection of sets means only the things in all of them.)

And, also, the only possible way to change the set of possible non-coercive options (for example to make it bigger) is to change our personality. By altering a part so that it is consistent with a different set of options. (Or by removing a part, like a bad hangup.)

At least as far as morality goes, the US (I think the entire world) is full of foundationalists. People want to know what the basis of morality is. (This is a philosophical mistake.) And worse still, people who cannot find a basis are liable to think morality does not exist at all.

Religious people say the basis of morality is God. Now, this is kind of meaningless. It doesn't tell us anything about morality, except so far as we have ideas about the nature of God. But those tend to be pretty vague. God is all-good, all-powerful, all-knowing or whatever. Alright, so b/c of this foundation religious people will probably make the horrible mistake of concluding morality is good and true. Oh wait, it is...

Or another way, morality "based on God" can be any morality at all. Thus, belief in some meaningless God could totally nullify the ill effects of moral foundationalism. (In fact, for this purpose, the more meaningless the God the better.)

Anyway, now lets contrast with atheists. Of the ones who manage to believe in morality, there are two main supposed foundations for morality. There is "self-interest", and there is the libertarian non-aggression principle (thou shalt not initiate force or threat of force). Both of these, if taken seriously as the foundation for morality, unlike some vague God, do tend to lead people to some conclusions about what morality says. They are not consistent with just any morality, but only a few. And these few are wrong.

Thus it is that for a foundationalist, failure to believe in God, so that God can *meaninglessly* (not entirely, but the closer the better) get lip-service as the foundation of morality, directly leads to significant moral errors.

This can also be flipped around. Suppose you're a foundationalist who first and foremost believes in morality, and doesn't want to fuck it up by accepting some crap like that the basis of morality is self-interest. Then you would refuse to stop believing in God. Mysticism be damned. Morality is more important.

the below is a log from a chess server where some liberals could not give reasons for the Iraq war that would be endorsed by conservatives, but I gave reasons against the war that they cheered for. thus demonstrating i understand their position, and have an informed view, while they don't have a clue what my position is, and thus can't compare it with their own position to see which is better. also, i was called a liar, which is amusing as it's a stereotyped liberal way to "argue" and he did it... (he thought i got my speech from an email, but I made it up on the spot)

here is my anti-war speech in italics first, then the full log. so u can skip the log if you want. (keep in mind this took like 5-10min, and of course i could make it nicer if i edited it now)

The problems with a war in Iraq are many-fold. First and foremost, the war is not justified. It will take the lives of many innocent Iraqis, most of whom do not want the US there. They know the US invasion won't help them but only make their lives worse. But aside from this clear moral problem, it gets worse. Bush has not only lied about the reasons for war, but given unacceptable ones.

i suppose i forgot to mention faulty intelligence. that should be in there too.

curi42: Artificer(4): lol curiosity has been gone for a while. probably on google
\ searching for reasons
t 4 am not. i'm looking for an old email ;p
Curiosity(4): am not. i'm looking for an old email ;p
(told 122 players in channel 4 "Chat")
Artificer(4): ...so you're not doing it from memory like me then
curi42: Artificer(4): if your original point curiosity was to prove that i know
\ nothing of your arguments from memory (without consulting a source), then
\ you just failed miserably.
curi42: Curiosity(4): fine you want me to do it from memory?
(told 124 players in channel 4 "Chat")
Artificer(4): i bet curiosity just finished reading the e-mail
t 4 i didn't find it
Curiosity(4): i didn't find it
(told 124 players in channel 4 "Chat")
Artificer(4): what a joke.
Artificer(4): sure i believe you. hahahaha
t 4 if you think i'm lying i can stop talking to you
Curiosity(4): if you think i'm lying i can stop talking to you
curi42: Artificer(4): ignore me if you want curiosity. you've been doing so for the
\ last few sentences anyway.
, huh?
Curiosity(4): huh?
(told 125 players in channel 4 "Chat")
ZZSpence(4): I agree with Rumsfeld, why resign because a few politically
\ motivated fruitcakes want him to resign....perhaps they should start at
\ the UN where billiuons has been pocketed by those who opposed forcing
\ Saddam to cooperate with the UN.....
, i did not find the email. i didn't google anything. if you think i'm lying about this, we probably shouldn't talk about this. otherwise, i'll be happy to continue, from memory.
Curiosity(4): i did not find the email. i didn't google anything. if you
\ think i'm lying about this, we probably shouldn't talk about this.
\ otherwise, i'll be happy to continue, from memory.
(told 127 players in channel 4 "Chat")
ZZSpence(4): When Kofian rersigns and goes to Washington to kiss Bush's
\ behind....then I'll consider Rumsfeld resigning.
apestyles(4): shake it shake it shake sha shake it shake it like a polaroid
\ picture...
Artificer(4): curiosity: think about it if you were in the reverse position.
\ naturally you would not trust me either.
papovik(CA)(4): curio, you deny that what we say is what you think, yet you
\ have to go and read what you think because you can't remember it
t 4 you've had just as much time to google something if you wanted to
Curiosity(4): you've had just as much time to google something if you wanted
\ to
(told 127 players in channel 4 "Chat")
Artificer(4): i responded within seconds.
t 4 and got it wrong :-)
Curiosity(4): and got it wrong :-)

curi42: landocorn(4): why is it difficult for some on the right to call to scumbags
\ who tortured those poor prisoners what they are!
Artificer(4): lol pminear
apestyles(4): viva revolucion
Artificer(4): not really curiosity
pminear(4): wait I'm not sure if I got that entirely correct
pminear(4): but whatever
Game notification: acdc (2123) vs. pminear (2183) rated wild/8 3 0: Game 48
ZZSpence(4): I love it when you can't find a liberal who can support the
\ hypocracy of their beliefs.
Artificer(4): you guys act as if "liberals" are one whole group.
Artificer(4): political ignorance.
ZZSpence(4): game....set ...match
Notification: JATorres has departed.
Artificer(4): exactly
Notification: JATorres has arrived.
apestyles(4): i love it, i cant find a conservative who can argue his point
\ without being obnxiously arrogant about it
tsgarp(*)(4): lol
landocorn(4): that is their substitue for reason
ZZSpence(4): When Kofian resigns we can move to whether or not we hold Donald
\ Rumsfeld responsible for what some dumb soldiers did in an Iraqi prison.
Artificer(4): i know plenty of liberals who don't support abortion; i know
\ plenty of conservatives who refuse to vote bush. why treat it as if there
\ are clear lines?
apestyles(4): but really, im no better when i get into personal attacks either

curi42: Curiosity(4): The problems with a war in Iraq are many-fold. First and
\ foremost, the war is not justified. It will take the lives of many
\ innocent Iraqis, most of whom do not want the US there. They know the US
\ invasion won't help them but only make their lives worse. But aside from
\ this clear moral problem, it gets worse. Bush has not only lied about the
\ reasons for war, but given unacceptable ones.
(told 126 players in channel 4 "Chat")
MprJohn(*)(TM)(4): you cant find a `anybody passionate about politics` who can
\ argue his point without being obnxiously arrogant about it
ZZSpence(4): It is justified
apestyles(4): true enough
Artificer(4): true curiosity, but as i said, it took a bit too long.
landocorn(4): hear, hear, old chap
Artificer(4): he's not supporting us landocorn
ZZSpence(4): Bush didn't lie...the U.N. lied and stole billions
papovik(CA)(4): why don't you explain why you espouse the war curio instead of
\ reasons why you wouldn't
ZZSpence(4): We're suppose to listen to those crooks?

curi42: Curiosity(4): He says the war is over weapons of mass destruction, except
\ Saddam problably doesn't even have any, and both the US and Israel do. He
\ says Saddam supports terrorism, but the link with Al Queada has never
\ materialised. He says Saddam violated UN resolutions, but he doesn't even
\ have the UN on his side.
(told 126 players in channel 4 "Chat")
Artificer(4): interesting... i told you guys taht there are no clear lines.
\ curiosity and ZZspence are btoh conservative, and even they disagree with
\ one another.
ZZSpence(4): Naahhhhhhh
MprJohn(*)(TM)(58): 2-0 pistons :-)
Notification: JATorres has departed.
Notification: JATorres has arrived.
Artificer(4): in fact, i don't know why people came up with the terms
\ "liberal" and "conservative" anyway. it's like as if you believe there is
\ a clear "endgame" or "middlegame" in chess.
Artificer(4): wow, managed to relate politics to chess, i rule. :-I
:Notification: alrightnow(*)(TM), the COO, has arrived.
apestyles(4): well, why dont we just do away with categories in general and
\ live in state of absolute confusion

curi42: Curiosity(4): And his real reasons for war are much worse. He seeks revenge
\ for his father, but that's simply no reason to start a war and kill
\ innocents. He wants oil, and to secure contracts for his friends, but
\ again that's a horrible reason for a war. And he wants to exercise
\ military power in the name of Christian values, but we shouldn't be ruled
\ by magalomaniac religious delusions.
(told 126 players in channel 4 "Chat")
ChugiakCharlie(4): anarchy rules
Artificer(4): that's an interesting irony
ZZSpence(4): Call for Kofian to resign....call for Bush to resign because a
\ White House guard urinated on the White House lawn during Bush's
\ watch....you should listen to the hypocracy of the left wing
\ fruitcakes....they are hypocrites that wouldn't admit the sky was blue if
\ it meant no power.
apestyles(4): i can dig it curisoity
apestyles(4): *curiosity
MprJohn(*)(TM)(4): have the oil in my driveway.. plenty there :-D
landocorn(4): i recently met a couple who ardently believe that some of our
\ senators wish to abolish our constitution so the UN can rule us.
Artificer(4): Curiosity: thanks for demonstrating you can read e-mails. :-)
ZZSpence(4): Rubbish....Curiosity

curi42: apestyles(4): zzspence, please provide a reasonable argument with a point
\ rather than a personal attack with no real point
Curiosity(4): And then there's the political ramifications of war. Very few
\ other countries support the war, except mostly the ones the has leverage
\ over. Why does Bush suddenly think Europe doesn't matter? He shouldn't
\ try to oppose the whole world.
(told 128 players in channel 4 "Chat")
ZZSpence(4): total...drivel
t 4 how's that artificer?
Curiosity(4): how's that artificer?
(told 128 players in channel 4 "Chat")
ZZSpence(4): whin ing
t 4 i suppose i forgot to mention faulty intelligence. that should be in there too.
Curiosity(4): i suppose i forgot to mention faulty intelligence. that should
\ be in there too.

curi42: some junk. then:
curi42: apestyles(4): no, i didnt really agree w/ your argument... thought it was a
\ bit on the hysterical side
curi42: i spent a while trying to explain to zzspence that i didn't believe the argument i'd given. heh
curi42: now artificer is trying to get out of giving pro-war reasons by saying that pro-war people are different.
curi42: Curiosity(4): can any of you liberals give pro-war reasons that an average
\ Christian conservative would endorse?
(told 125 players in channel 4 "Chat")
Artificer(4): curiosity your question is as invalid as asking "why is the sky
\ green?"

atheists oppose religion

Here it is suggested (last question) that religious people figure stuff out and come to their views using, "fantasy, intuition, and tradition". Obviously using fantasy to inform your worldview would be bad, so this is a huge slander. On the other hand, tradition is very useful and important, and so is intuition, so this is revealing of atheists generally having the wrong approach to thought, and having it because they oppose any methods they associate with religion (yes it could go the other way. first they made a mistake about philosophy, then this caused them to oppose religion. that wouldn't make atheists any better though). (They would not put stuff in an introductory FAQ that was controversial. Especially not an FAQ designed to make atheism very inclusive by welcoming agnostics.)

At American Atheists, the frontpage currently has a news release that's pretty rabid about separation of church and state. basically they don't want Bush to be allowed to pray. He could write a book on why Satanism is great, and that would be free speech (to atheists), but if the president seems to support Christianity in public they get mad. If they were really indifferent to religion, they would care just as much as if the president endorsed hockey.

And here's what the American Atheists think is a good essay on morality without God. To start, it suggests life wasn't worse 2000 years ago. Then it calls Christian morality unsophisticated, which is pretty damn persuasive *cough*. And it continues to go downhill:

Hum, my behavior is subject to psychological rules? Sociolological? Well I'll wait until he expands on that to yell and scream, I guess. Saying "religionists" helps expose his anti-religion stance.

And then his argument here, umm, doesn't work. First he calls Christians liars, and then he declares human behavior is *entirely* regulated by certain non-religious things. Which would make religion ENTIRELY IRRELEVANT, which we all agree its not.

Oh dear God! OK I'm done with this essay. And this website. Except to suggest nature is his God.

this guy freely admits he spends time thinking of arguments against Christianity. also against other religious, but mostly christianity, b/c he knows more about christianity, and was raised catholic.

Look at this

mmm hmm. and to a keen observer this atheist is spending quite a lot of time thinking about God. would someone who really didn't give a shit about God relate tapeworms to God?

here an atheist site gives the main reasons ppl become atheists:

1) contact with other religions. this doesn't make sense though. if the other one was persuasive, they'd convert not become an atheist.

2) bad experiences with religion

3) b/c of science, no longer need religion -- except religion's are full of *moral* content, so anyone replacing religion with science is totally fucked.

4) idiotic, entirely misconceived philosophical arguments

and 5) atheism, they claim, is the default position b/c ppl aren't born believing in God. this is no good. by that logic not walking is the default. any sense in which not walking is the "default" is a rather pointless sense though, huh? babies have no position on theism b/c they aren't even aware of it yet. better to look at an adult who has chosen theism or atheism. among adults, who have chosen, neither position can be sensibly called the "default" and given automatic priority, nor can the burden of proof be put on the other side b/c of some default status. sorry, no good, it just begs the question.

-----

Why are you an theist?

someone starts to answer: "What caused me to reject not only religion, but also belief in the existence of any gods?"

down a little more they admit many atheists think atheism=rationality and theism=irationality.

and ok i'm bored with this.

Criticism is scary because:

Even with a very good structure, there are some costs to changing one's theories (effort. but the point is it's not automatic). And with an average structure and a load of hangups, for all sorts of topics, the costs are quite high.

Criticism is scary when you do not have confidence that you will be able to fix your theories (due to being attached to them).

Maybe it's easier to see the other way around: the reason criticism doesn't scare me is if some of my theories are bad, I will simply change them. So the criticism, even if it's true when given, won't be for very long. It's just a tool to become better.

Also, if I don't change my theories because I don't understand the criticism, I won't feel bad. I wouldn't even know if the criticism was true. But people with less confidence, who trust in appeals to authority, might have trouble with that situation.

Also, even if you are told some of your theories are bad, and the criticism makes sense to you, and you find yourself unable to change them (yet -- of course you always might figure it out later). It doesn't rationally follow that you must feel bad about this, or be coerced. But suffice it to say that's quite a common response today.

a friend had a philosophy class 2day (at UC Berkeley). i snuck in out of curiosity. omg!

the teacher talked for like 2 hours about a 10 page section in the book that i skimmed in 20min while listening. and one girl raised her had to ask how you could say that nazi death camps were worse than interning japanese. another guy asked how can their be objective truth if we might all be hallucinating? (ummm, then the objective truth is we are all hallucinating. duh. any question of the form "What's the objective truth of the matter if X?" is easily answered by "X, duh")

and apparently some time after i stopped listening (had manga), the teacher endorsed individual relativism (the topic had been cultural relativism, which she did not endorse. presumably b/c it meant she couldn't criticise israel)

the entire piece on cultural relativism in the book was basically 1) explains what it is 2) explains some reason you might be uncomfortable adopting it. nothing on truth or falsity. also seemed to endorse a quotation saying everyone thinks their own society is the best (which is obviously false. immigrants. and ummm anti-American protestors in america too)

also the teacher said if anything was a moral imperative, it was saving a baby on the street drowning in a puddle. she gave no reason why. just thought it was obvious.

she also asked some questions that revealed her view of taxes was something like: what's the best way to redistribute wealth?

for a decent argument against cultural relativism, try:

People immigrate. And not randomly. There are some countries that many people think are great, and wish to move to. While others have almost no immigrants. How can a cultural relativist explain this? (Answer: His theory can't account for this very well, thus making it a bad explanation of reality.)

A friend suggests cultural relativists might say people go to get jobs.

That one's easy. It implies jobs are better than no jobs. Thus cultures that create enough jobs are better than ones that don't.

My friend says they will say jobs are not better. Umm, yeah. But then why do people want them more than no jobs? I suppose it must be because people like money. But wait, wouldn't that make cultures that create more money better? etc etc cultural relativists are dumb.

anyway, after that i bought a book on munchkin gaming. it's amusing ^^ one good joke is:

player: alright, i wanna cast a fireball on the orcs
DM: you're mixed in with the orcs. it'll hit you too.
player: that's ok, i have an amulet of fire resistance.
DM: it will still kill the other players
player: ohhh ... so do I get experience for them?

there's something else i forgot to mention. it's so normal it just doesn't stand out in memory very well.

20 minutes into class. the teacher has said about 5 sentences of content. she's written each one on the chalkboard. I look around. Everyone was taking notes. Everyone. (2 ppl or so i couldn't tell. has to be over 9/10 though)

the teacher writes worthless crap on the board. they copy it down. copy. maybe a few weren't copying, but the general note taking strategy is to copy everything. not understand it, and jot down a couple memory-triggers. not put the arguments in ur own words (ie, as u understand them). not figure out which parts are important and just write those. but just plain copy down everything.

it's horrid