Slashdot has a post entitled Stephen Hawking Warns Against Confining Ourselves To Earth.

Stephen Hawking, one of the world’s greatest physicists and cosmologists, is once again warning his fellow humans that our extinction is on the horizon unless we figure out a way to live in space. Not known for conspiracy theories, Hawking’s rationale is that the Earth is far too delicate a planet to continue to withstand the barrage of human battering. ‘We must continue to go into space for humanity,’ Hawking said today, according to the Los Angeles Times. ‘We won’t survive another 1,000 years without escaping our fragile planet.'”

It’s not just the battering from humans. Space is, fortunately, very, very aptly named. But, still, there is a lot of stuff hurtling around out there. One bad collision and we, as a species, could pretty well be done. If we can figure out how to travel to and live on new planets, we can hedge our bets.

There’s a lot of work to be done to get to that level of technology; but at the moment it seems like we’re mostly killing time anyway. Might as well get started.

Talking Points Memo has an interesting article entitled Bitcoin Bursts: Hacker Currency Gets Wild Ride. Bitcoins have been in the news lately and, as an investment vehicle, have undergone a speculative bubble. I’ve been dimly aware of Bitcoin for awhile. I don’t know if its model as a currency is fundamentally sound or not; but it seems plausible.

It’s a decentralized currency, not issued by banks or governments. New coins are created through computing power applied to (I think) an encryption problem. As supply of bitcoins grow, the problem gets more difficult and, therefore, requires more computing power.

As a currency, I don’t know that it’s any more or less arbitrary than using gold or fiat money. A currency will work or not depending on whether people can and do trust that the currency will enable them to store value such that they can later receive value for the currency that is comparable to the value they supplied to obtain it in the first place.

I stumbled across an article from a couple of years ago by Neal Stephenson from a couple of years ago entitled Innovation Starvation. (Seems like I read it a while back as well; I’m not sure if I commented on it.) He generally laments the seeming inability of our present culture to execute on the big things, as opposed to, say, the America of the early and mid 20th century where we created the airplane, the automobile, nuclear energy, and the computer; not to mention getting people to the moon. He quotes one grizzled NASA veteran as saying, ” A grizzled NASA veteran once told me that the Apollo moon landings were communism’s greatest achievement.”

Stephenson sees a role for science fiction in setting a coherent narrative that will inspire inventors and engineers. He sees current sci-fi as more involved in creating dystopian narratives about the downsides of the technology we currently have.

While I agree that new and coherent narratives facilitate invention; on executing the big stuff, I think our bigger obstacle is probably individualism. Individualism is a good and useful concern; but I don’t think it’s an accident that some of the big accomplishments Stephenson cites, e.g. nuclear energy, computers and rockets, came out of World War II. An existential struggle between nations has a way of bulldozing through a lot of individual or factional disagreements about whether and how to get things done. Not that I’m recommending war – you don’t ask for the mushroom cloud just so you can have a silver lining.

A friend on Twitter posted this link: Associate attorney is the unhappiest job in America, survey says. Along with that, legal assistant was #7.

The top five unhappiest jobs are:

1) Associate attorney

2) Customer service associate

3) Clerk

4) Registered nurse

5) Teacher

The top five happiest jobs are:

1) Real estate agent

2) Senior quality assurance engineer

3) Senior sales representative

4) Construction superintendent

5) Senior applications designer

Not sure I buy real estate agent as happiest.

Tipsy has some good stuff on the nature of God and the new atheism entitled God Is Dead. Long Live Our Souls. There is some good imagery in there. It made me reflect on, perhaps oddly, the nature of language. Stories and myths become forms of vocabulary for conveying ideas that are not accurately captured by mere words and phrases. Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra.

Aaron Carroll has a post entitled I guess they did want Obamacare to be more expensive. Looks like Confederate states are hell bent on doing Medicaid expansion under Obamacare in a horribly expensive fashion.

Carroll purports to be surprised because this is coming out of the same political faction who claimed Obamacare should be opposed because it was too expensive. Cost was always primarily a pretext. Note that the same contingent is not concerned about expense when it’s time to talk about war or tax cuts or farm subsidies. Among other things, they probably want to set Medicaid expansion up for failure so they can complain that it’s broken and too expensive down the road after forgetting that they insisted it be broken and expensive.

It’s Easter today. I think Jesus was a human religious leader with valuable moral teachings. But, I don’t believe he was immortal or a deity or resurrected; so, in that sense, Easter isn’t a special day for me. However, I am not made of stone, I am happy when winter passes. The symbolism of spring and rebirth resonates with me; and I can certainly see why so many cultures had celebrations on and around the vernal equinox.

And, you know, my kids like easter bunnies and eggs and the like. I know some Christians find it distasteful when non-believers (or insufficiently devout believers) take the secular aspects of Easter and disregard or minimize the death and rebirth of Christ. And, I get that; but such distaste is only justified if you disregard the history of non-Christian celebrations upon which Easter was built in the first place. For the Germanic peoples, the bunnies and eggs pre-date celebration of Jesus.

The core message of Easter and other spring celebrations is that life beats death. And that’s a powerful, powerful thing regardless of the underlying details about the why and the how of life beating death.

So, I learned a fancy new word recently, “solipsism” and every so often, it grinds against one of my other hobby horses and gives me an interesting notion that may or may not hold up under further scrutiny. Today, it bounced up against libertarianism, Libertarians, and why Libertarians struggle so mightily at the ballot box.

Solipsism has a more formal meaning in philosophy and then a more casual every day usage. In philosophy, it has to do with the idea that knowledge of anything outside of your own mind is uncertain – your experience of the outside world, if it even truly exists, is mediated through your mind. So, you don’t really know how accurately the outputs match the inputs. More casually, it speaks to interacting with the world in a self-centered way.

Libertarianism holds up liberty of the individual above all else. Individualism isn’t bad. Liberty is good. So, what’s the problem? It might be that the solipsism inherent in the ideology short circuits the ability to empathize. And, I’m referring to empathy rather than sympathy where, as I understand it, the distinction is that the former is the ability to comprehend things from the perspective of another; whereas the latter has more to do with feeling bad for the other person because you understand that the position they are in is an unhappy one. I think you can empathize with someone without feeling bad for them, and I think you can sympathize with someone without really knowing how they feel.

So, if I’m correct that solipsism short circuits empathy and libertarianism creates this sort of blind spot in its adherents; then that would help explain electoral difficulties. It’s difficult to sell liberty without really understanding how others experience liberty. And even those who subscribe to the same basic ideology have a tough time really understanding each others vision of that ideology.

On the other hand, maybe electoral difficulties are nothing more complicated than that fiercely individualistic people are inevitably going to have a tough time engaging in what is fundamentally a group effort. (Which I think is a lot more likely than what seems to be the preferred explanation within the group: that non-Libertarians are too stupid and/or lazy to see the Truth.)

Anyway, like I said; just an idea that occurred to me. I’m still chewing on it.

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on issues related to marriage equality yesterday. I have not had time to review any of the reporting in any depth and there are far better blogs than mine for discussion of the particulars. But, I’ve heard some more of the arguments about same sex marriage and what it does or doesn’t or might do to the institution.

Marriage is a fundamental part of our society. We haven’t tried letting gay people get married. Might we be damaging marriage in some unexpected way? That’s how one argument goes. Some are concern trolling when they make it. Others are truly concerned.

The answer, I would suggest, has to do with whether gender difference is fundamental to what we value about marriage or if it’s incidental. (And, to a large extent, this might be circular and of no help answering the question. But, I like to muse.)

So, we have to identify: 1. What does the institution of marriage provide that we value? and 2. For each thing of value, is gender difference fundamental or incidental to that thing. Are we removing the wheels of our car or just changing the paint job?

I come down on the idea that recognizing the right of same sex couples to get married is incidental to the institution of marriage but fundamental to the couples who wish to marry.

SB 213 has passed the second chamber without amendment and is therefore eligible for enrollment and signature by the governor. It basically removes the authority of local government to regulate the employee – employer relationship unless state or federal law specifically grants that authority:

“A unit may not . . . require an employer to provide to an employee . . . (1) a benefit; (2) a term of employment; (3) a working condition; or (4) an attendance or leave policy;
that exceeds the requirements of federal or state law, rules, or regulations.”

Per a story by Mary Beth Schneider, this potentially guts some local human rights ordinances.

That would turn on whether the human rights ordinances were offering a mechanism of enforcing employment rights found in federal or state law or creating new ones. The former would probably remain valid and the latter would be void.

The authors say that it wasn’t their intent to invalidate human rights ordinances. They simply wanted the local authorities to be unable to raises wages or make sure employees receive certain other benefits. (Not sure the stated motivation is a ton better than the unintended consequence; but opinions differ, I suppose.)