Below are the 18 most recent journal entries recorded in Takari Risu's LiveJournal:

Thursday, March 12th, 2009
11:22 pm	Boltzmann Brains and Descartes The more I think about this the more I think that the anthropic principle is a trick. That it has no explanatory power. It seems at first like it's a useful mental sleight. What do we know about the universe? Well, for one thing, we're in it, thinking about it, making theories about it. Why not start there? Why not recognize that we must live in a universe such that we are observing it? "I think, therefore I am," Descartes declared. Only---he isn't, is he? I mean, not just that he's dead. But if you were to pick a Descartes, wouldn't the odds be that you'd pick a fictional one? Aren't there many many more wrong ideas about Descartes than real ones? That isn't legitimate. I don't think that the Boltzmann brain thing is legitimate, and neither is the anthropic principle. The first equivocates a bit too much on possible universes. The second privileges one kind of observation---the reflective observation-of-observing---too much. We happen to live in a universe where my L key fell off and I type directly on the nub. We happen to live in a universe such that physicists can observe it. Data. Saying that the second kind of data is special and justifies in some fashion how weird it is, while the former is accidental and not justified, doesn't work. I think that there is a cloud of Descartes around the actual noumenon, if such a noumenon there be; I think that which specific universe we're living in is only defined to the detail of our observations. I think the universe is analog and the division into "things" (including past and future and outside-experience things) is an artificial process. But this could all be screwed up so it's not what this post is about. This post is about my coming to realize that the anthropic principle is just a handwave to explain away the very peculiar, even crazy, fact that we exist in a world that physics tells us is crazily unlikely. Put another way, since physics is just a way of modeling our experience as embodied minds in a world, somehow the way we're modeling life is telling us "life has no place in this model." Ceci n'est-ce pas une pipe. If I step way back, I can say, "The method of physics is homomorphic to the Copernican principle. And it's practiced by the ego. So it's not surprising that there's a tension there." But that just switches the problem: analyzing empiricism as a philosophy rather than the firmament reopens the question of why it works. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, September 9th, 2007
2:11 am	Zoe Zoe was a rescue bird. Her former owners weren't intentionally mean, but they didn't give her a good home. She never learned to talk. She liked to watch everything going on in the kitchen. If we ate at the dinner table, as we were wont to do, she would desperately want to share in the food. She would squawk at various pitches trying to get this all-important message across. If she got too angry and we covered her cage, she would do a followup chirp, with the connotation of "Aw, maaan!" She liked being sung to. If you sung to her, or even just talked to her long enough using her name, she'd puff up and do a little silly dance, including turning around in a circle. She really really really liked noodles. She also liked popcorn and peanut butter. She was fond of crackers and rice crackers and fresh bread to varying extents. She flew sometimes. It was amazing. She didn't really know what to do about it, so she usually went to her cage. Once she went to my shoulder. She could *fly*. She liked drama. Many were the fierce battles she waged against the stuffed parrot I got to harrass her with, and even more numerous her battles against paper towels. I made a filk on General Taylor for her, General Zoe. It wasn't a very good filk. But she recognized it. She was really funny when wrapped in a towel for birdie burrito. I was scared of her beak for a long time but eventually got used to feeding her when I was the only one in the house. Later she got to like me enough that she'd step up on my finger and let me pet her head. It's pretty shocking to me how much I loved her. She died at the vet. I wish I'd trusted my intuition that she wasn't going to make it. I could have given her a happier death than that. I wish I could have fixed her. I don't know how death works. I hope she finds happiness wherever she is. She was really cool. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 28th, 2007
2:20 pm	Possible Letter to the Editor You have to invent witches, I think, sometimes, To explain all the ideas I hear about the power women have. If female soldiers fight next to the men, for instance---something magical will happen to the men. Witchcraft will take them, and they will become strangely chivalrous, and they won't make clear decisions any more. If female soldiers are around, near the men, then something magical happens to the men. Some force drives them---some enchantment, some wicked glamour, some evil spell---to hurt those female soldiers. The men involved are not really making decisions. Rather the decisions come from the witchcraft of the women, or perhaps some peculiar insurgent sorcery. In Iraq as in other wars, this problem harries us. But I think that I know a solution. Witchcraft only works if you believe in it. So I think that it's important that we as Americans, and the soldiers of our army, stop believing in this mysterious power. If men stop blaming their desires and their social conditioning on women, and learn to make adult decisions---as most of our soldiers have, and the rest must---then this mysterious power will fade away. The power of femaleness is not something that women create. It is a construct in the minds of men. Men sometimes say that women manipulate it; but ah! How easy humans find it to use such imaginary powers to excuse the lapses in their own good judgment! If we abandon our belief in wicked magic, and look simply at the obvious, we see that this alleged power causes women only harm. It robs women of opportunity, influence, and wealth. In short, it is no power at all; it is only an excuse. Female soldiers do not cause male soldiers to misbehave. Female soldiers do not and will not cause male soldiers to lose discipline. The problems come from elsewhere.: from, I suspect, the brass and the press and the public---that is to say, from us. If we stop infantilizing the men of the military and demand justice and equality for female soldiers, the problems will disappear. Six months later, we will all wonder how we lost our senses---how we ever believed in that strange occultism, that perverse magical thinking, that made female soldiers problematic at all. We will blink about as if waking from a strange dream, and say, "How marvelous! How dreadful! How unlike us, as Americans! To think we had imagined such a thing." ** I'm thinking of submitting this to the local paper, maybe some others. Is it too long? Any errors? (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, January 26th, 2007
5:20 pm	Good bye Polly. If cats read livejournal from wherever you go, I loved you. May you have a thousand blessings and catnip. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, August 12th, 2006
12:41 pm	Intentions and Outcomes Intentions exist before an action. Outcomes exist afterwards. Thus intentions are in the domain of ethics, and outcomes really aren't. And thus outcomes are in the domain of justice and judgment, and intentions really aren't. All we can do inside ourselves is to regulate our intentions. All anyone can reward or punish us for is our outcomes. That's not unfair. It's not *not* unfair. It just is. What can we do about this, as people? I think that all we can really do is cultivate an intention to validate. Specifically, you have to try to observe the relationship between your intentions and their outcome. Ethically you can't do more than try: successful observation is an outcome. Any beneficial effects are outcomes. In terms of judgment or justice, all we can do is not make assumptions that we can't test. I've been thinking of late that evil is the urge in us not to validate, to deny its necessity. There's some of that in everyone, but the more you've got it the more wrong you're doomed to go. Good, I think, is just being a person. I think there's a striving upwards embodied in the idea of changing ourselves in response to feedback but . . . that's too exclusive to be my definition of good. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, April 30th, 2006
6:02 am	An Analogy Something funny happened to me over the past few days. The first thing that struck me was how on-spot it is as an analogy for mental illness. It's also a pretty good analogy for oppression. I play Dance Dance Revolution. It's a combination game/dance/exercise thing. You dance on a mat on the floor that doubles as the game controller. It's been a lot harder of late. I noticed that most of the steps I was missing were down steps. My housemate noticed that it was only when I used my left foot. I experimented, and sure enough, if I stepped on the down step with my right foot, I'd get it every time (or, on the fast songs, as much as usual.) On the slow songs I can totally just use my right foot, though that's dumb because it kills the fun, the dancing, and the exercise. But it *worked*. On the fast songs, I can usually do a bit better by concentrating really hard on placement and pressure with my left foot, but it's not reliable, and frankly, I might just be fooling myself. I was in fact kind of wondering what the heck I'd started doing with my left foot that was so screwy. Anyway, we have two pads in the house. I switched to using the other one and suddenly my left foot is doing fine. (Comment on this)
Sunday, March 5th, 2006
1:17 pm	Response to a Troll   If you assume that every issue is about exactly what you think it is about Then it will not be surprising That you always find yourself correct. The issue is not that some people Dispute Those things you see as transparent And obvious So much as that tree That you want to bark up— That’s a tree That you planted Or that someone planted in your name. Copyright (C) 2006 (Comment on this)
Sunday, January 15th, 2006
7:08 pm	The Third Secret of the Fatima (Because January 15 is Writing Real Life Person Slash about the Pope Day.) ( This is the third secret of the Fatima. ) (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, January 14th, 2006
4:03 am	Sacred Forgiveness January 15 is Writing Real Life Person Slash about the Pope Day. Why? Go back earlier in the month and read my post. It's not silly or mean or profane; it's sacred. So I'm thinking about what I'm going to write, since I shouldn't start writing today. I think it's going to be a story called Forgiveness, and the premise is going to be that Pope Benedict has always felt guilty about being a member of the Nazi Youth. And it's going to get in his way. So God is going to send the divine spirit of one of the homosexuals killed in the concentration camps to him, someone he knew, and the guy is going to forgive him and lift the burden of that guilt from the Pope's shoulders. Also, they will have sex. Maybe I'll put on a shiny happy ending where the Pope behaves better afterwards. Maybe he'll still be all twisted up. I don't know. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, January 6th, 2006
5:53 pm	Writing Real Life Person Slash About the Pope Day (final draft) It is January 15. I do not write real life person slash about the Pope. Every year when January 15th comes around I think about it. I laugh, because it is such a silly thing. I think about it. But I do not do it. I would be ashamed. Fernando told me the story of "write real life person slash about the Pope day" once, on a summer weekend, when we were sitting outside and admiring the bouganvillea that grew in his white lattice. "It is because the Pope is afraid that people will look at him sexually," Fernando said. "That is why he is so angry at gay men." "Is that why?" I asked. "Why else?" said Fernando, with a little shrug. "So there is January 15th. The day that is every year when people write real life person slash about the Pope. So that he understands that he does not control how people look at him, but only how he shows himself. Then he will be less angry at gay men and more angry at the Internet." Fernando was a very chaste man. He did not like gutter jokes. He did not like to talk about sex. But every year on January 15th he would write real life person slash about Pope Benedict XVI. One year, he wrote slash between the Pope and Captain Kirk. I asked him, "But where is Spock?" He laughed. "Spock does not interfere between a Captain and his Pope," Fernando said. Another year it was the Pope and Harry Potter. Harry was the "seme", the strong one, and Pope Benedict XVI was the "uke." In this story, the Pope told Mr. Potter that the Vatican did not think him Satanist. "It is only the fringe groups that say that," said the Pope. "I understand," said Mr. Potter. It was simple. It was clean. Those were the kinds of stories that Fernando would write. "You do not have to read them," he would say. But I did. This year, I have promised myself that I will write real life person slash about the Pope. I will not write much. It will be simple. The Pope becomes a catgirl. Or the Pope is visited by the ghost of Pope Formosus and they have sex. But I find it very difficult. Each time I sit down to write real life person slash about the Pope I discover that I have no words. They drain out of me like there are holes in my feet. I sit there empty. I cry, sometimes. I sleep, in short bursts. It is the morning of January 16 before I give up. I go outside. I sit with a cup of hot tea and I look out at the lawn. There are birds at the bird feeder. There are rhododendrons near the wall. The sun is rising. "I am sorry, Fernando." And I can feel the touch on my hair and my shoulder. It is the wind but it is like he is near me. And there is one of those moments, because he is with me. One of those moments that I find now and again, but too rarely, when suddenly everything in the world is beautiful. I can see that the birds are writing real life person slash about the Pope with the beating of their wings. And the rhododendrons are writing real life person slash about the Pope as they sip gently of the morning light. And the sun; and the world; and everything that is everywhere touched by the things that are numinous--- It is all writing real life person slash about the Pope. And although it is too late, although it is the 16th and everyone will mock me and call me not a celebrant but a sick puppy who likes Pope sex, I go to my keyboard. I type, "My friend Fernando was a good man. He was a loving man, a good man, a strong man. He was not disordered even though he was gay. "Pope Benedict XVI could see this. "Even across the crowded room full of pilgrims he could see this. "And suddenly there was a strange warmth that spread through Pope Benedict XVI, a warmth that was like the touch of God." It is the beginning of my real life person slash about the Pope. Also posted to http://rebecca.hitherby.com/archives/000829.php (Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 3rd, 2006
5:59 pm	On Humor I think humor comes principally from the tension between the various ways we think about things. Here's an example. Suppose that you think that sparagi are a kind of Greek myth monster---some kind of scaled hopping thing with one eye that strangles heroes. Then you're eating fish and asparagus, and you suddenly look down at your plate and shout, "Oh my God! A sparagus!" If you're a physical humorist, you then reel backwards, clutching your throat. It seems funny at the time, right? Only, later, when you're talking the whole thing out with the nice men in white coats, it turns out that sparagi aren't actually a Greek myth monster at all---you're thinking of Spartacus, and he was a gladiator, and he didn't hop or strangle people. Oops. I think it's silly when pundits excuse their remarks with "It's just a joke." If you think monstrous things, or just plain icky things, or even the draining tedious bad things that people are used to---well, that shows in your jokes, and only people who agree with those thoughts* will laugh. * or at least people who share the mindset to some extent, reluctantly or otherwise; or, in the absolute cleanest case, people who think it's funny that people have icky thoughts. This isn't to say that the stuffy and overly prudent are always correct; people often overreact to things! But calling something humor doesn't make others' reactions into overreactions, any more than calling it weighty doctrine does. Rebecca (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, December 1st, 2005
1:54 am	On Love Listen. In each of us there is the capacity to live beyond ourselves. In each of us there is a capacity to look outside the selfish borders of the "I" and think instead of the pains and the greatness of the world. Of the little things, the insects and the leaves and the gusts of wind. Of the big things, of the mountains and the galaxies and the seas. And of the Other. There is a deep and abiding hatred in people for the Other---for the person who is outside ourselves, who is not like ourselves, who is strange and in those circumstances where we are most tested, is not tested; who in those circumstances where we are most sure, is not sure; who takes our dearest beliefs and for no good reason does not hold them. This is a hatred that we see again and again, surging up, crying out for acceptance by reason, society, and the heart; a hatred that speaks itself into the world as the most simplest and most obvious of truths; a fear that commands respect like an emperor among its subjects; a disdain and detestation that slithers through society like a snake. And in each of us there is the capacity to say, "No." To look out on the world and say, instead, "I will prize you." To the little things. To the insects, the leaves, the gusts of wind. To the big things, the mountains, the galaxies, the seas. And to people. Not just your people. Not just our people. The weird ones. The ones who are different. The others. That is where our worth as people begins: not with the work we do inside ourselves, as important as that is, but with the terrible nakedness of prizing the other. With the joy we take, with the wonder we find, with the laughing brilliant marvel of looking into other souls. Not into "I" but into "you." This is not love. It is not love because my words are not enough. Love is larger than I am, love is larger than words, and these are simply some of the words by which I walk towards love. This is not love because I have in this post given credit somewhat to hate; and I think that if I understood the world better, I would not do even that. What I have written here is less than love. But it is a beginning. And I will tell you now that I have thought in my life that, however wrong it goes in practice, the Church was an ally to this in practice. That however distant I am from it on matters of doctrine and belief, that at least Christ spoke of love and the Church remembered. But it has forgotten. I do not admire that the Pope would count the penises in a priest's fantasies to decide whether that man is called to serve his God. I do not admire that the Pope considers the counting of penises in sex a meaningful factor at all. But I am ashamed of him, when he has chosen to condemn homosexual sex, that he has broadened that to hatred of the homosexual; that he scorns and scoffs at love, when it is between two homosexuals; that the disease in his mind that he imagines to be homosexuality is so strong to him that he pretends it can overwhelm the force of love. I am not a Catholic. I think that I am not a Christian. But I respected the Church for knowing love. And I am scarcely anybody, just some random girl in Seattle, and it is a terror to me that the Pope should be so much further from the force of love than I. (Comment on this)
Sunday, October 9th, 2005
6:53 pm	The Cost of Equal Opportunity Here is a post by J. Brad Hicks. Mr. Hicks, as an autistic person, notes that there is a price tag on giving autistics equal opportunity. To open the labor market to the autistic, society must pay a price to force the neurotypical to deal with them. Then it must pay a second price because the neurotypical labor pool---for various essentially irrational reasons---won't work quite as effectively when some coworkers are autistic. Here is what this highlights for me and the reason I keep thinking about this post. Equal opportunity is not free. It isn't even cheap. There is a huge social cost that must be paid if we are to have it. We must pay a price in capital and labor to . . . . . . overcome the basic xenophobic impulse in the human brain. . . . overcome the petty prejudices of bigots. . . . recover resources from those who claim them in an act of false entitlement. . . . verify and validate that in almost every case equal opportunity does exist. . . . fix the cases where it doesn't. Someone has to pay this cost, or equal opportunity doesn't exist---it's just a word game to disguise moral bankruptcy. If you believe we have equal opportunity, whom do you think is paying that cost? If you believe we should, but don't, whom do you think should? (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 17th, 2005
4:28 pm	What Bigotry Is Bigotry is when you say, "To have X, I must deny a portion of humanity to some group of people." For any X. Let me be clear. It matters which way you decide. It is much more moral to say, then, ". . . so I won't." But this is not enough. The truth is that all people are people. Denying that is embracing a falsehood. Embracing a falsehood does not serve you. Keeping the option open but boldly refraining from acting on it is still an act of entitlement and privilege like unto that of God; it is imagining that if you simply chose otherwise, you'd have the option to take that humanity away. Let me also be clear on this. It matters what X is. To sacrifice others' humanity for a good cause---well, that's better than sacrificing it for money. But it's still not enough. All people are people. You are not the creator and the disposer of this world. You cannot take their personhood away. It is not yours to sacrifice for any cause, be it virtue and justice or the reveling in pain. (Comment on this)
Thursday, July 21st, 2005
3:46 am	http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-sharia20jul20,1,3447235.story?coll=la-headlines-world&ctrack=1&cset=true Let me express my reaction like so. There is a natural desire on the part of moralists to place preeminence on their own ideology. I am no exception. Yet it is not within the provenance of government to take away that fundamental quality of personhood that chance, or God, or providence, or other power or powers unknown has chosen to bestow upon us. Then let it be understood that the equal rights of women are not within the jurisdiction of religion to deny; not in Iraq and not in the States; for to do so is to lie about our fundamental personhood, to declare us less, and to do so not based on faith, love, or compassion, but based on arrogance. And lest the criers of religion rise and complain, "But, then, we shall have no voice," then I shall grant you a voice; For it is within that right of women to consent and concede to the laws of any religion, and to consent and concede to Islamic law, to Christian law, to the laws of the pagans in their revels or of the agnostics in their doubts. And insofar as that right to consent remains, while the pillars of that consent that are knowledge, freedom, and power remain, then I am in all manner and every wise supportive of those who wish to maintain the ways of their prophets and their God; But to deny the choice of it or the substance of these pillars: that is inhuman, without compassion, without truth, the action not of the shepherds but of the devils and the monsters and the lurking things that hide beneath the sewer regions of the human mind; And so I say that "equal rights, save where it conflicts with religious principle" is on its face a proposition evil, cruel, and false; And so I say that it is not procedural but criminal if women are denied their place in the councils of the land; not a petty matter of numbers but the rearing head of the beast that devours, that grinds, that lives beneath the surface of society and cuts at the souls of men and women with its thousand tiny teeth; That if women should hold no power it is because, as greater women than I have noted, it has been stolen, seized, taken, transferred without recourse from one body to another; That if the female sex is not represented in the government, in the industry, in every level of society, it is because their power to do so has been taken; And not by individual men but by the beast of hollow souls to which these few politicians have so willingly given their service; As they preach in their smugness, as they prance and flutter in their entitlement, as they choose to surrender themselves, rather than fight, to the monster that devours the women of their world; And, I fear, if trends continue, if we support this, if America does not take its stand, the women of this land's tomorrow. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, June 13th, 2005
4:58 pm	Cadbury Egg Drop Soup Recipe (Serves 4) Put 3 cups chocolate milk in saucepan. Cook over medium-high heat until hot. Dribble contents of 2 Cadbury eggs slowly into hot chocolate while stirring constantly. Slice one orange into strips. Add orange and Cadbury shells. Heat thoroughly. Serve hot. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, May 23rd, 2005
4:05 pm	On this Day On this day let us remember these principles and stand by them. We will remember that all people are good. We will choose to believe that all people are good. It has been tempting as this country faces crisis to dismiss the Dominionists and Mammonites in government as evil men, motivated by a lust for power, money, and control. It has been tempting to declare them a monstrous concern. In this I have failed, many times, because they are not; they are good, and if they have failed to show it it is because they are lost. We will have an end to the politics and ideals of the abuser. We will stand against these things: against the notion that to suffer means sin, that poverty means sin, that being victimized is a sin, that it is virtue to beg at the hand of a harsh master and repay their handouts with devotion. We will have an end to the assumption that those with whom we disagree are evil, that the system is weighted in favor of those whom we can see are suffering, that social virtue is no longer necessary, that the gifts we have given others are no longer worthwhile because it is no longer the times for gifts, because they are "no longer worthy" of gifts, because generosity is meant to bite and greed is to be lauded; of these things let us have an end. We will have an end to the politics of tantrums and fear, to the politics of entitlement, to the idea that the world is about getting what we want. I have failed in this many times, I have resented it when things have not gone my way, but this is bad and let us have an end. If anger is not from principle or love it is not worthy; and if it is from principle or from love, make no claims that it is selfish. Let us stand for this: that every person is good, that every voice needs hearing, that every choice that people make is made from weaknesses and strengths just like our own. Let us abandon the politics of control, the ideals of control, and instead celebrate each soul. Let us speak with humility. Let us speak with humility, and let the only voice we will not hear be pride: let the only voice we deem unworthy be that which denies all other voices; let the only voice we discard be the voice of hubris pounding down from the heights of privilege and arrogance and telling us that we are not worthy; for we are worthy. For you are, and I am, and we shall always be. Let these then be our principles, on this day. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, April 14th, 2005
12:49 pm	Day of Truth This is really the only truth I have. People are good. I don't mean "if you ask someone to choose between doing the right thing and a million dollars, all of them will do it." That's transparently false. I'm not even sure you'll get a right thing ratio of 15%. But everyone has a core that is good, and a path they can walk that will lead them to express it. There's no one born bad. There's no one hopeless. Everyone is good and can---if they stumble onto the path---express that in the world. The enemy of that path is dishonesty. It is people who are not honest with themselves. It is people who do not face themselves. "I think" or "I believe"---these are often lying words. "I feel" or "I am"---these are sometimes lying words, but often truth words. This is the day of truth. If someone has the courage to face who they are, love them for it. Accept it. Don't take the time to explain why you disapprove of what they are. Just admire the nakedness of their truth. Face your own flaws, too. And your virtues, if you're bad at that. Whichever ones you don't face every other day of the year. You can disapprove of people on other days. (4 Comments |Comment on this)