From: "Kolya"
To:
Sent: Monday, May 27, 2002 4:21 PM Subject: A brief word on "Morality"

It took me a while to find another post to go over. Many of Kolya's posts, especially earlier ones, were replies to Alice. Sadly, her contributions demonstrate she didn't know what Kolya was talking about; in other words he was talking over her head (or past her, if you prefer). I mean no offense to Alice in particular; I don't think anyone understood Kolya's posts at the time (his on-list supporters most definitely included.) Anyhow, none of those posts seemed appropriate. Then I got distracted reading David Deutsch posts. They all have the enjoyable quality of being true (though, yes, they don't always try to say as much as possible; they are conservative).

BTW the way his posts are conservative but still not listened to and even written off as wild new crazy-talk is a bit crazy-making (same thing happens with many of my posts, though I vary my style more.)

But anyway, this post is both amusing and confusing. It's packed full of references meant to belittle none other than me, Alice, and a few others. So let's get clear on just what it actually says.

Oh, and before I forget, what Kolya means here is that we believe the purpose of morality is that people found immoral can be justifiably coerced. That's sorta what law is for, though. Kolya knows this. So if we go a bit further, he's saying we believe morality doesn't exist, and people talking about it are really just trying to make laws about our personal lives.

I can field that one. Kolya was accused of advocating coercion because he declared various things immoral and failed to say what should be done about it. People filled in the gaps with whatever seemed obvious. For some people that wasn't "nothing" or "we're not talking about that right now, we'll deal with it later". Does their choice of coercion denote a character flaw? Kolya thinks so. Ho hum.

The question about what rational person wouldn't lose interest is sarcasm, which is notable because it's rare coming from Kolya.

Kolya is describing morality as being, in the perspective of ARRers, a trap to force people to self-sacrifice to stay in relationships or immorally leave.

By appreciation he means disdain. By return the favour he means he's resentful that we didn't understand him and agree with him. However, the bit about his world making sense again seems to be a bit of truth thrown in with the sarcasm. While there's an argument with an uncertain outcome going on, or at least one where he can't figure out why his opponent's say what they do, there's a bit of a hole in Kolya's worldview. But now by classifying our mental illness, Kolya can be at ease again, happily ignoring the ARRers who don't matter or count because of their mental illness.

Positivists thought that all statements not describing or predicting observations were meaningless. In simpler but less accurate terms, it's only real if you can touch (measure) it. Quite the insult, especially in context of a bunch of TCSers talking, since TCS is supposed to be from Popperian epistemology, and thus everyone present ought to know better.

The first credo just reinforces the positivism, which was previously just a label. The other makes them highly immoral. Kolya is thinking of libertarians as much as ARRers here (though I suppose all ARRers are libertarians, but not vice versa).

Don't push me is just a new version of the libertarian non-aggression principle which reads "Thou shalt not initiate force or threat of force." Kolya left out the bit about not threatening to push people, but it's not hard to argue that's implied. As you can see, Kolya is rather not a fan of libertarianism. Here he seems to say the point of libertarianism is to do away with morality and replace it with a mechanical rule.

I guess "judge" means morally, like judging someone's character or whether what they did was good or bad. It does not mean deciding whether someone pushed or not, which obviously has to be an acceptable thing for the court to do.

The origins of the name Listing aren't so lost. ARR is an email list. The culture shock thing is Kolya's way of saying our differences are large, possibly incommensurable. (I'm pretty sure I've only heard Kolya use that word, and people replying to Kolya). Commensurable means having something in common. Incommensurable means not having anything in common. But the point of the word is actually to say we'll never come to agree (which actually is an implied if we truly have precisely *nothing* in common). (I don't believe this; I'm implying Kolya might.) My guess Kolya might is emphasised by the way he imagined a bridge. These are different lands with a whole uncrossable river between them. The only possible way to cross in on the rarely-used bridge.

Of course we do have things in common, like being on Earth, and living in the same reality.

Kolya doesn't bother to argue that merging is better than separating (there's no obvious reason either should be generally better). He just throws it into good company (good character is better than valueless character? well duh!). It's hard to explain what Kolya means by wisdom, but just assume it's clearly a better thing than logic (though it's also a different kind of thing, and there is no tradeoff between having one or the other). Trust vs. maintaining one's guard is a bit of a cheap shot like merging vs. separating. We shouldn't trust blindly; we must have a careful balance.

I wonder what Kolya thinks I do all day. *sigh*

This isn't to say he isn't mostly right (though exaggerated) in his judgment of many libertarians. Even if he is, though, that wouldn't mean libertarian theory is bad or useless. It'd just mean it's a bad idea to try to base your life around it with nothing else. Bits, like what it has to say about economics, are very useful.

PS Kolya, if you read this, I feel no malice towards you, I simply tried to write what I thought this stuff meant. Even if I think you're flawed in 500 ways, that doesn't imply I will dismiss your other ideas.

Israel steps up targeted killings

Lovely title, eh? The main theme in this part of current events is that Israel is killing more people now. *cough*

Suspected? Huh? Are these weapons workshops suspected of being owned and used by Hamas? If so, then should the suspicion be wrong, it doesn't matter, Israel was still blowing up weapons workshops. Or, were the buildings blown up only suspected of being weapons workshops? The author seems to be trying to cast doubt. But if it turned out to be a dorito factory this would have been noticed after the bombing, right? And then there is no chance at all they would have failed to state very clearly that Israel blew up the wrong thing. So I have to conclude it *was* a weapons workshop, possibly run by Hamas, and that the author sucks.

So why wasn't the headline: Suicide Murderers Stall Peace Process ?

Oh, I know why: because the Associated Press (this is an AP article) hates Israel, and wants to blame everything on Israel.

So what happened here? Bad terrorist people killed Jews, and Israel is going to kill the bad people in self-defense. Huzzah!

But what's AP say happened? AP says Israel is going to kill *militants*. Israel is killing them *in retaliation*. Israel is out for revenge not self-defense. Israel hasn't been attacked in an important way for 3 years. Israel has nothing to bitch about. Attacks on Palestinian soil by the IDF happen all the time (Palestinians have soil now? heh). Both sides have been trying to kill each other for over three years, proving they are both war-like or someone would have stopped by now. The Palestinians, being poor, have an excuse for being war-like. Also Israel is now planning to assissinate Palestinians leaders.

What does this prove? It proves that more security just won't work alone, and the only possible way to be safe is to kill terrorists.

What does AP think this proves? That security fences don't work, so any fence Israel builds is really to steal land.

One wonders where the poor Palestinians get high-grade plastic explosives. Ho hum.

Haaretz Article

Skim the rest of the article too. Anyway, boy carries bag of explosives through checkpoint. It has wires sticking out of it. He's caught and stopped. Then he's set free!

Why was he set free? Because Israel treats bad people (and especially children) too well. Rather than being the oppressive conquerors the media claims, Israel is too friendly for its own good.

The boy was criminally negligent thrice over. First, he carried a bag through a checkpoint for a stranger without checking what was in it or telling anyone. Second, it had wires sticking out. Sheesh! And third, he got paid lots of money to do it. Why would he get paid all that money? He should have been suspicious about it. (If he took the money then told authorities I'm sure he would have gotten to keep it.)

The boy is a bad person who nearly got some perfectly good people murdered. But what does Israel see? A poor, uneducated boy to pity and not blame for his criminal negligence.

Not only would the world almost definitely be better off without that boy (he is morally bad enough to be dangerous), but some of his friends might be scared out of doing the same thing if Israel punished him (or encouraged if there is no punishment. same idea) (public execution sounds nice to me, but I suppose it'd be a short jail sentence, because Israel is such a cruel country). *sigh*

Oh, and to people who think Israel intentionally targets children. (Jews hate children or something? Makes no sense in the first place.) Fuck you!

Announcer: Hello, and welcome to the Presidential Debates. There's been a slight change this year. Elliot is going to speak because he's so cool. Bush and maybe Kerry can speak if there is extra time.

*bows*

Before I begin with my positions, I want to address two issues. The first is Statism. The other candidates here are Statists, and that's something you have to watch out for. What that means is they attribute mystical, magical powers to States. For example they think States can solve problems that ordinary people can't. But this doesn't make much sense, because who makes up a government? Just people like you and me.

The second is some people might say my ideas are too simplistic to work. But that's a misunderstanding. They only seem simple because our whole society is smart! We understand a lot of things. When candidates want to avoid ideas that seem simple and true in favour of complex ones, that just means they want to use their own pet theory that, when explained, is confusing not persuasive. But good ideas are something everyone can understand!

Now, I've been asked to go over a number of key issues: taxes, schools, welfare and social programs, the military, immigration, gun control, and abortion, so that's what I'll do.

Now, I'm just going to go over the general ideas for each one. We don't need to talk about the exact numbers involved. We have experts to figure those out. What's important in a leader is having a good plan, not figuring out every detail, which should be a team effort.

As for taxes, I'm going to lower them. Why? Because I think you are competent to spend your own money well. I don't want to redistribute it with central planning because I'm not a Statist -- I don't think that the State is better at planning than ordinary people. And not only that, each of you only has a little money (compared to the wealth of the whole country), and will pay a lot of attention to your own money. But if the government tries to distribute wealth, it will have a small number of employees trying to deal with the money from many, many people. So, we would have more bureaucrats (with salaries) doing a worse job than you would do. We don't need that.

As for schools, I support vouchers, and I will cut funding to public schools to pay for it. Why? Because the public school system doesn't work! They keep telling us if we just give them more money, then it will work. But we've tried that. And it failed. So I say, let the market take care of it. If parents have money to spend on a good school, then capitalists will create those good schools. Teaching the next generation is not the place of government.

As for welfare and social programs, I'm against those. I know charity is important, but I just don't think central planning is the way to do it. I know you are all good people, and you'll give any extra money you can to people who need it. I trust you to decide how much money you can spare, not the tax collector.

As for the military, I'm going to increase funding. Why? Because I want to be safe. There is evil in the world. There are bad people who want to kill us. And I won't hide my head in the sand and pretend they aren't out there. Rather, I'm going to face facts, stand tall, and fight them off. And I'm not scared of them either; we can beat them. We just have to put some effort into it.

As for immigration, I say if someone wants to live here, great! People are not locusts. They won't ravage our country and destroy our resources. Most immigrants will just get jobs and help create more wealth for everyone. Now, I understand that if there were a lot of welfare programs, then immigrants would be expensive. But under my leadership, those will be replaced with personal charity. So you don't have to worry about your tax dollars going to immigrants; they will earn their keep.

As for gun control, I like guns. They are a great tool. It used to be a strong man could intimidate a small man. But guns are the great equaliser. When everyone is armed, no one wants to start a fight. I want everyone to be able to defend themselves, so that's why I'm against gun control.

Abortion is a contentious issue. A lot of well-meaning people disagree. On the one hand, some of you think it's murder. On the other hand, some people say it's free choice. Now, I don't see how freedom could excuse murder. So I think the left is wrong about this. But what about an abortion before the fetus has a working brain? How could that be murder? I respect everyone's right to believe in souls, but I don't want to make laws about them.

So in conclusion, if you like personal freedom and a responsible government, not central planning or a nanny state, then vote for me. If you like ideas too confusing for a politician to explain to you, vote for a socialist.

Thank you, God bless you, and good night.

*bows*

link

it's a samizdata piece by Perry. genital piercings got banned in Georgia.

now, if i heard that, i'd think it was an annoying hangup as there's nothing morally wrong with genital piercings.

but that's not how Perry reacts. he is mad that something he sees as a freedom *can* be banned. he thinks that you own your genetalia, therefore all laws about them are invalid. this view is significantly *worse* than the original mistake. the original mistake of thinking genital piercings are bad is just one mistaken judgment. Perry's view is a recipie to get an unlimited number of issues wrong.

in comments, someone whines that the authors of the law consider themselves fiscal conservatives. either he thinks fiscal conservatives must oppose all new laws that would cost money (absurd), or he thinks they must oppose all frivilous laws. but the authors of the law don't consider it frivilous (duh). they probably *are* fiscal conservatives.

also in comments apparently the law was aimed at genital mutilation and nailed piercing too b/c the authors didn't know consentual piercing even existed. so this is even less bad than it originally seemed.

but how does Perry take the news?

so Perry thinks everything consentual should be legal. period. wife burning? spanking? ok in a perfect society (with better notions of what consent is and better mechanisms to prevent systematic coercion) they should be legal. in a bad enough society you couldn't set up institutions that care about consent anyways. but they should not be legal, unconditionally, in all imaginable societies. and more to the point, in the real world, there are lots of examples of illegal consentual things that should be illegal.

for example the story of british ppl going to india and banning wife burning. the natives say "but it's our custom" and the brits say "we have a custom too. when someone burns his wife we hang him". (this story could be a myth, dunno, but it doesn't matter). banning wife burning was important and good in that situation.

banning spanking in the US is arguably a good idea. even if it's not, it probably will be in the nearish future. (doing it would change the situation for many abused children in positive ways) saying there can be no debate b/c of Libertarian Principles would be rather lame. pretending the laws against assault and battery can protect children today would umm ... well it doesn't.

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besides this, what is and isn't consent is non-obvious. can i download music? well in one analysis, this is consentual b/c the only ppl in the equation are me and the person i'm getting it from, and we both consent. in another, the creator of the music has to consent too, and doesn't, so it's not. (who has to consent must always be decided b/c it can't be the whole universe, it has to be the *relevant* people. who's relevant?). thus Perry's analysis (consentual stuff should always be legal) wouldn't even tell us what should be legal. pretending his statement supports one meaning of consent over another (his in particular) would be invalid.

Well, why should you believe in evolution? Because it helps explain reality better.

But what if you didn't understand evolution at all? Then it wouldn't help you explain reality better. This is how most Christians avoid believing in it (of the ones who don't). Their understanding is so poor that it does not seem any better an explanation than God.

They reveal this when they say things that equate evolution with man being created by chance, or when they say atheists think time, in large enough quantities, can do anything. Or when they say that lions and tigers can't make fertile offspring (ie that species exist) and think that proves their point. Or when you point out that two *slightly different* lions can have fertile offspring, and they think that has nothing to do with evolution.

Notice how under this explanation, creationists are not wicked or even horribly flawed, just a bit ignorant. And ignorant of something that won't really help them much in their lives anyway.

Someone once suggested (not sure if s/he wants credit for the idea; will change this if s/he does) that an infinite life-span would not be very useful. Why? Because the way our knowledge is structured would become so out-dated that it would both be much easier to start over (teach a blank mind from scratch) and also too difficult to be worthwhile to fix current, old people. Now, in the future there will be all sorts of great technologies to help fix people with bad ideas, and a whole profession of people very good at helping with this sort of thing, so what was meant was not that it'd just be a bit too expensive, but rather that it would be a virtually impossible or actually impossible task. So difficult that in millions of years of progress it would still seem impossible.

How could this be? Sure, I may have some hangups (I hate eggs and math textbooks, for example), but I'm sure a hundred years with no pressures, lots of friends, and various nice futurey things could cure me. And if it couldn't, the next thousand years might. As it is, I already like math in certain forms, and have come to like some foods I used to hate. So there's nothing remotely impossible here.

OK let's try something else. What if I grew up thinking the world was flat? Would that be a problem? Well, certainly for many people this was a misconception they never really dealt with during their natural life-spans. But some people did solve it. And I don't see why the rest couldn't get over it eventually. They could circle around the world, then go into space and look at it, so they could see for themselves that "scientists" weren't just playing a prank. And they could learn more physics than we know today, and see how well it works.

Now some people might be tempted to, by now, say the idea of infinite life-spans being useless is nuts (if they didn't decide that much earlier). But this would be immoral. For we've still shown absolutely no understanding of what was meant! Now, we could assume nothing remotely sensible was meant. But that's just no way to discuss philosophy. We should either say we don't know and aren't interested, or look to understand the subject.

Thus far we've looked at hangups and misconceptions that can be expressed in English. But only the simplest hangups and misconceptions can be. Anything that we can put into English, our entire society already has some understanding of.

But try to imagine. We are very young, and we begin to encounter various problems. We try to conjecture the answers. But randomly conjecturing answers with no constraints on what we think of is unlikely to solve many problems. It'd be like if the answer was 8 and we rolled a die with an infinite number of sides, trying to find that answer. So what we do is make conjectures about what sort of answers we are looking for. For example in the dice analogy we might conjecture that useful answers are mostly under 1,000,000,000. And now for many sorts of problems (the ones where our conjecture is about right) we will find the answers much more easily.

Next up, we might notice that for certain classes of problems, more specific constraints are useful. Problems about wood are mostly between 1-3 million. Problems about sand 7-10 million. Now we might solve most problems more accurately and faster (as long as our constraints are good). Of course some constraints will turn out wrong, but we can change them. At least at first. But what if we have a system 200 layers deep. Is it about earth? ok < 1,000,000,000,000 Is it about sand? no, ok not btwn 7-10 mil. Is it about water? yes, ok look between 44-999 mil. is the water cold? yes, ok, look at odd numbers only. etc etc

Of course real constraints are much more complex, because answers do not lie on a number-line. Anyhow, imagine our first 10 layers have not changed since we were 5. The next 80 have not changed since we were 20. Now go forward in time thousands of years. Our problem situation is very, very different than it was when we were growing up. And instead of 200 layers, we have 2 million. But, our situation is very, very different now than it was as we grew up. And half our layers are dead wrong, including the 3rd and 9th ones. Is it really feasible to fix this? Without becoming a new person?

And it gets worse. At the thousand year mark, when we moved to a new planet, our system of constraints started to fail a bit. So we added some new modifications to fix things on top of the whole system. These increased our problem solving abilities and kept us functional. And going through just a couple more layers was so negligibly inefficient as not to be a problem. But they were only ad hoc modifications, so after some time started to function poorly. So we added more. And more. And after living a million years, it's quite possible we've been making things progressively worse for most of that time. Sure we've been learning new things the whole time, but to fix the actual heart of our problems, we would have to change some of our most basic ideas that have become more and more distant from our latest modifications.

Now, I'm currently unconvinced this analysis actually implies the conclusions we were looking for (that an infinite life-span would not be valuable). But it's not an unreasonable conjecture either, and certainly not nuts, even though prima facie it does sound a bit nuts. And extensive further argument would be required to reject it.

Oh, just for fun, count how many life extentionists have ever gone through this analysis. I don't think you'll need your toes.

To be very clear, when I say "atheist" I mean US atheist, and when I say "Christianity" I mean the American version. There are a number of significantly different versions of Christianity and atheism in the world, and sometimes they need to be discussed separately. I'll come back to this at the end.

I'll start with a quick outline of my argument, to make it easier to follow:

- Christianity is somewhat mystical.
- Atheists are mystical too. It's an aspect of our society.
- People say that atheists are atheists because God is a mystical idea, but this is rarely the real reason (as most atheists still are mystics anyway).
- Christian values are largely good.
- Atheists are not simply non-religious, they oppose religion. In the US, this mostly means opposing Christianity.
- So (most) atheists are opposing something largely good for little reason.
- Doing so is wrong. We should praise good things, and certainly never oppose them.

Christianity is somewhat mystical

Err, well, they believe in God, some believe in creationism, and there's heaven too. Given my audience, I don't think I need to go into any detail here. So moving on...

Atheists are mystical too. It's an aspect of our society.

So we were driving along in New Mexico, and [an atheist] turns to me and comments, about the landscape, that Mother Nature used a big scalpel. And then goes on to describe various details of the terrain. And I sit quietly and imagine driving with a Christian, who says God used a big scalpel, and I really don't see the difference. They seem equally mystical to me.

You may say talking about mother nature is just an expression. But often so is using God! Often these people probably aren't thinking too much about what they are saying, and don't really mean it literally. This is a good defense, but it applies to atheists and Christians equally.

If you watch much modern-genre anime, you may observe the characters being highly superstitious (by US standards). It's portrayed as generally accepted (often brought up; never really questioned). Fortune tellers are also quite common and are taken seriously. I take from this that US culture is actually not that bad on mysticism. I don't believe I know anyone very superstitious.

The US has some silly things like psychic hotlines (which apparently make money). I don't know any reason to think Christians are more likely to believe in psychics, though. The Bible doesn't say to believe in them, and actually the fairly common excuse that they are communing with spirits is distinctly non-Christian (one God, says Christianity).

People say that atheists are atheists because God is a mystical idea, but this is rarely the real reason (as most atheists still are mystics anyway).

The common claim is that people usually reject Christianity because they reject mysticism. This is not borne out by the many spiritual atheists, agnostics, various oddball religions like Wicca, Satanism, Paganism, eastern religions with reincarnation, karma, or whatever, etc etc etc And especially not borne out by my point above about atheists mostly being just as mystical.

And also, there are plenty of Christians who dislike mysticism, but somehow don't see their religion that way. In other words, most people who reject mysticism manage to reconcile this rejection with their religion.

So, in the vast majority of cases, I believe we must look for some other reasons for the rejection of Christianity.

Christian values are largely good.

Certain Christian hangups get a lot of attention. Such as opposing abortion or homophobia. Some people then conclude that Christianity is a silly, out-dated idea that has begun to cause more harm than good (if they think it was ever good -- some think people just didn't know better before, and ought to now).

But, well, here's a simple argument:

- The USA is very good. It fights for freedom, solves problems well (as evidenced by its great successes at science, at producing stuff to make life better, at living peacefully), and doesn't listen to the specious authority of the majority of countries of the world (you know, the ones always passing UN resolutions about how evil the Jews are Israel is).
- The USA also doesn't go in for appeasement (something most of Europe apparently didn't figure out with Hitler), or pacifism. Self-defense is important.
- So, how do we explain the US being good? Well, it has to be made up of good people. Which means people with highly moral values.
- Atheism is more popular in Europe, thus demonstrating we do not get our good values from atheism. (Not to mention that not believing in God isn't a value system).
- On the other hand, the US is full of, surprise surprise, Christians. The US represents Christian values. Our current President is even open and explicit about this, and willing to mention God in his speeches.
- Therefore, as the US is very good, and as its policies are mostly based on Christian values, we must conclude there is something very good in Christianity.

To try to see the difference, imagine saying each of the following things to a crowd of atheists or a crowd of Christians, and imagine the reactions you would get.

"There is Evil in the world, and we must fight it, not pretend it's only a difference of culture. Some things are always and everywhere Evil, such as to oppress women or murder innocents."

"Certain things, like freedom and democracy, are Good. They are not for some people. They are not a matter of taste. Some people believe that Arabs or Muslims can't handle democracy. I say God made all people, not just white people, to want freedom, and to flourish with it."

"The Jews in Israel are on the side of Right, and we will stand with them, whatever Evil may come. Their enemies, who preach death every Friday, and dance in the street with joy at each terrorist atrocity, are our enemies too."

Atheists are not simply non-religious, they oppose religion. In the US, this mostly means opposing Christianity.

More (proportionally) atheists than Christians becomes environmentalists. More become socialists. More feel solidarity with Palestinian suicide murderers. More are willing to overlook the suffering caused by tyrants in the Islamic world. More are so committed to causes like getting rid of DDT that they will overlook the millions of people their policy kills.

This is not a matter of being factually confused. There is nothing in atheism that causes people to read less, or choose worse sources to read. Rather, this is a moral issue. And specifically, it shows moral inferiority by atheists. They read more (on average, I expect) but still tend to come out with worse views. This means they twist and distort facts to conform to a bad view of the world.

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Christianity is not really about there being one God, but rather about there being one morality. Most atheists throw this out, and become, at least explicitly, amoral or a moral relativist. They can no longer speak in the "simplistic" language of Good and Evil, Right and Wrong, because they see those as religious concepts (and mystical, usually). And so they flounder around with very silly psuedo-values like "hurting nature is wrong" (Why? Unknown. And you thought religions were lite on justifications.) Or mechanical values like to reduce the amount of suffering in the world, with suffering defined as hunger, disease, injuries, and length of work day. But such an analysis will always be blind to, for example, who is right in a conflict. It will just side with whichever side got hurt more (i.e., was less successful). Which is usually the side in the wrong (bad people tend to be less successful).

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In the distant future, the superstitions of today will be gone. There will be no psychic hotlines. A TV show about speaking to the dead would flop, unless shown on the history channel. There will be no religions. No one will believe in God. But so too will there be no atheists. Because once there are no religions to oppose, it will be a meaningless thing to be. Just like today being an a-leprechaunist (someone who believes there are no leprechauns) is absurd.

And furthermore, why be an atheist even today? Why care? Why not just live your life without believing in God? Why does it matter to you if other people are theists? Well, there are lots of reasons, but they all involve things like theism hurting you, not getting along well with Christians, rebelling against Christianity, or a strong desire to convert people to your worldview. (The last is bad because, while it's great to take your own ideas seriously, and wish to help people, we must keep in mind that we may be wrong, and thus not force our ideas on others. Though it's not very bad. At least it indicates a belief in one objective morality.)

So to sum up, people mostly become atheists because they oppose Christianity, mostly identify themselves as atheists because they oppose Christianity, and would identify themselves as non-religious and shrug and not care if this wasn't true.

So (most) atheists are opposing something largely good for little reason.

Not much to say here, expect that opposing good things is terrible, and even if something good has flaws, it still shouldn't be opposed, only criticised in hopes of improving it. And it can still be identified with, for the great good it has.

Doing so is wrong. We should praise good things, and certainly never oppose them.

To conclude, I want to give a short, different version of my argument, that acknowledges Christianity is different in other places.

- The US is good
- Atheists tend to oppose whatever religion they are around, or were former members of.
- So atheists in Pakistan would mostly be pro-American, because their atheism is to oppose the religion there, not here.
- Atheists in the US tend to be less patriotic and, well, less American.
- So opposing American Christianity tends to make people here worse.
- Now, can we conclude that because opposing something makes people worse, the thing is good? Well, logically, we cannot deduce it. There could be some other factor we don't know about. However, American Christianity being good would explain why people opposing it become worse. So, unless someone can think of a persuasive rival explanation, we have a very strong argument.

i did some research on life expectancy and infant mortality for palestine and uganda and somalia. if you think those are unfair indicators, feel free to suggest some other ones.

from the CIA world factbook for Uganda http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/print/ug.html

Infant mortality rate:
total: 87.9 deaths/1,000 live births
female: 80.17 deaths/1,000 live births (2003 est.)
male: 95.41 deaths/1,000 live births

Life expectancy at birth:
total population: 44.88 years
male: 43.42 years
female: 46.38 years (2003 est.)

for somalia http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/print/so.html

Infant mortality rate:
total: 120.34 deaths/1,000 live births
female: 110.56 deaths/1,000 live births (2003 est.)
male: 129.84 deaths/1,000 live births

Life expectancy at birth:
total population: 47.34 years
male: 45.67 years
female: 49.05 years (2003 est.)

now for palestinians, i'll get 3 sources.

http://www.socwatch.org.uy/en/fichasPais/ampliado_173.html

infant mortality 32 in 1990 and 22 in 2000.
life expectancy 72.1 in 2000

http://216.239.57.104/search?q=cache:_3LiZXsR1_gJ:www.worldbank.org/data/countrydata/aag/wbg_aag.pdf+palestine+life+expectancy&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

infant mortality 20 for west bank and gaza. 37 for middle east and north africa.
life expectancy 73 for west bank and gaza. 69 for middle east and north africa

and a 3rd source just to make sure: http://www.undp.org/hdr2003/indicator/cty_f_PSE.html

infant mortality in 1992 says 42, but in 2001 down to 21
life expectancy for 2001 = 72.1

oh also here's some nice comparison charts with loads of countries:

infant mortality: http://www.undp.org/hdr2003/indicator/indic_289.html

life expectancy: http://www.undp.org/hdr2003/indicator/indic_1_1_1.html

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.)