Quote of the Post: "The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write a book about it." - Benjamin Disraeli

Random Playlist Song: Tchaikovsky - Violin Concerto In D (3) (Allegro Vivacissimo)

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Someone: i'm rather brainfried at the moment so it'd be a bit of a mission to plow through one of your commentaries

Me: don't wory this goes under light reading

Someone: if liddat then not a Balderdash post anymore! on the other hand your writing hasn't reached the epic proportions of the Associate.

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The Philosophy webcast has been fixed, so I can finally watch the second half of the lecture. And the ability to pause lets me take quotes down exactly, so I'm now very pleased.

Interesting question brought up:

“Six is a number perfect in itself, and not because God created all things in six days; rather the inverse is true, that God created all things in six days because the number is perfect [1 + 2 + 3], and it would remain perfect, even if the work of the six days did not exist.” - St. Augustine

Some would hold this to be a heresy: if a supreme being was forced to comply to a standard of mathematical perfection, that would imply that mathematical perfection is above that being.

However, the other line of thought is potentially heretical too: if a supreme being created standards of mathematical perfection, like so, then that would imply that when he created the world, he chose an arbitrary number of days in which to do it. So he was doing things for no reason.

More generally, this boils down to the question of whether supposedly omnipotent, perfect and/or omnibenevolent gods are held to some higher moral or logical benchmarks, or whether they themselves define said benchmarks. If they are to be held to the benchmarks, then they no longer rule supreme and wield absolute power. If they create the benchmarks, then they must be doing so arbitrarily, which leads one to wonder how we know that they re perfect. Thus, gods cannot be omnipotent, perfect and/or omnibenevolent at the same time, since for the latter two qualities to hold true, there must be some higher standard of perfection to hold them to.

Of course, apologists would fudge this logical contradiction by arguing that by definition, what their omnipotent, perfect and/or omnibenevolent gods do is perfect and/or good, but if this is not a case of begging the question, I don't know what is. "God is perfect because he defines himself to be perfect". Well done, and here's your PhD in divinity.

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More musings on the Young Republic Yahoo Group:


A:

"When the religion openly instructs its members to defy the sensible rule of
law, it automatically puts itself at risk of reasonable state persecution.
For example, the Jehovah's Witnesses, a Christian cult, is illegal in
Singapore because their members refuse to serve national service."

WTF? Since when is a religiously principled objection to serving the state
(i.e. a religious form of anarchism) a defiance of "sensible rule of law"?
Is not rule of law based on equal application of the law, not only
application when it happens to suit your agenda? How does this justify
"reasonable" state persecution? ALL religions deserve to be equal under the
law. Just because you think a religion is bizarre or extreme does not mean
it can or should be persecuted. The romans used the fact that the eating and
drinking of a man (Christ)'s body and blood (however symbolically or
supernaturally) formed a central Christian rite to argue that Christianity
was degerate and therefore worthy of persecution. Does this mean their
persecution of Christians was justified?

If a religion instructs its devotees to perform human sacrifices and child
rape, then yes it should be constrained by law. But this is because this
would infringe on the rights of others (the harm principle). I fail to see
how JW's refusal to participate in NS infringes your rights in any way.


"How far then does this go? Is the right to peaceful demonstrations
inviolable? What about strikes? Or riots? Should people have the
unrestricted freedom to print anything they want in the papers or say what
they want on television? I think these are things that should not be
considered inviolable simply because they can result in many negative
repercussions for the society at large (and often, they can end up
encroaching on the rights of others)."

You have sadly imbibed Singapore's longstanding propaganda that
democracy=chaos, a view which is constantly propagated through the ST, which
for some obscure reason has suddenly upped the ante. I counted SIX
propaganda columns this week. But I digress. The democracy=chaos view is
rubbish. Peaceful demonstrations which are hugely disruptive (causing
traffic pileups is an inconvenience, not a massive disruption. If it makes
you late for work, boo-hoo) do not count as peaceful demonstations. They are
direct action. Now direct action is not an inviolable right. They are not
the core of democracy. Some countries (e.g. France) have a political
tradition of direct action. They are indeed a grey area -- since they
infringe on the rights of others, it is indeed a question of how far the
political culture of a country will tolerate them. But to conclude from this
that freedom of speech, protection of minorities etc etc as well as loyal
opposition, liberal institutions which constrain the power of govt, and a
robust civil society are not self-evidently good is wrong.

I mean, after Britain's winter of discontent, the power of unions to conduct
disruptive strikes and direct action was greatly curtailed by Miss Maggie.
Yet Thatcherite and post-Thatcherite Britain was and remains a democracy,
where the power of govt is limited by liberal institutions and where the ppl
have a chance to genuinely choose their govt. The media is free, not a
whiney lapdog of the govt.

I read recently Ian Buruma's excellent book ("Bad Elements", Vintage 2001)
on Chinese dissidents around the world. In his chapter on Spore ("Chinese
Disneyland"), he noted that it is bizarre and sad that in a sophisticated
modern city-state like Spore the benefits of freedom of speech are a matter
of contention. Indeed it is. Very very sad.

Let me put it across again. The benefits of democracy and liberalism are not
a grand illusion, to which literally thousands of intelligent and sincere
Americans, Japanese, Europeans, and Taiwanese wrongly and stupidly give
their allegiance. Democracy and political liberalism are responsible for
improving the lot of many many many of the ppl who have walked this earth
since 1945 and even before. PLEASE, before we flippantly come up with some
new 'insight' supposedly casting doubt on this system which has been so very
much a force for good, think on this.


B:

Every time this issue is raised, some moron is going to mutter "but what's the use of political liberty without economic prosperity?" Yes, sound economic policy can be mutually exclusive from political freedom. Political liberty does not necessarily entail the enforcement common-sense rules with regards to the protection of property
rights, economic freedom or a reasonably competent and fair bureaucracy and justice system. Yet for every China Malaysia or Singapore, there is a Myanmar, North Korea, Equatorial Guinea, Syria etc. Every one of the top 30 countries in the Human Development Index, with the sole exception of Singapore, has a healthy, functioning competitive democracy. Out of the top 55 countries which are regarded as having "high human development", only 7 countries have a score worse than Singapore when it comes to political freedom and civil liberties, as measured by www.freedomhouse.org ( these
are Cuba and Belarus, plus a sprinkling of oil sheikdoms like Bahrain and Kuwait. )

Singapore may not have needed too much democracy to get to her level of economic development today. But simply because Lee Kuan Yew and his successors pursued good policies doesn't mean that democracy is not justified. It only points to one conclusion- that a country needs good governance in order to succeed (duh!).

So the question which remains is what sort of system would best ensure that we will continue to have good government in the future? What if the current "top down" method of picking good people for government starts to falter? Ominously, with the eradication of any viable opposition to PAP rule, our political base is shrinking. There is seriously something wrong when our favourite pro PAP columnist Chua Mui Hoong wrote with remarkable indifference a few months ago that we should all pay more attention to what happens within the PAP, because well, whatever happens within that party affects all of us. But the problem is, the internal workings of the PAP remain largely non-transparent. And who exactly is going to check on the PAP's higher-ups? Your friendly neighbourhood RC chairman?

Singapore needs significant political reform to make this government much more accountable and much more democratic not because we would like to ape the west, but because it is necessary for us to preserve good governance. Without this process there will be no effective checks on the people in charge of the government. And if it just so happens that the choice in charge is incompetent or worse, we should be able to be able to peacefully kick him or her out of office. Which means that the members of parliament we elect to be our representatives cannot be yes-men or yes-women. And so on. This is how we would be able to maintain the integrity of the government.

It all boils down to attitudes to government. Let me end with a story. There is a doctor in jail in China today. He was responsible for revealing the truth with regards to the SARS situation in Beijing, and was shortly feted in the press after for defending the truth. A few months later, he was arrested for criticising the government with regards to its (mis)handling of the Tiananmen Crisis, during which hundreds of young people were murdered, jailed or tortured by the army and police. Is the Chinese government justified in making itself accountable in selective bits and pieces, while whitewashing its mistakes because it is inconvenient and embarrassing to do so? Think about it. And think about how Singapore can prevent any future government from descending to such humiliating lows.


A (in an unrelated comment):

At present, it is really not that difficult to downgrade. Many clerks, storemen, armourers, etc etc are very unproductive. It would be so much better if they were caring for the terminally ill, or minding the intellectually disabled, or visiting the elderly who live alone, giving extra coaching to underprivileged kids, that
sort of thing. So very much better for both society and the servicemen themselves. I don't know about other camps, but my camp certainly has an excess of manpower. Lots of ppl are deployed in menial tasks which if not for the excess manpower, no one would have thought of doing. (e.g. removing weeds from grassy patches. What is that point of that???) What a waste of youth and energy.

Me: Perhaps if the Slave Masters have fewer slaves at their disposal, they will make better use of them. Manpower shortage my foot.

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Friendster is suffering yet another rash of "forward this or be deleted" bulletin board posts again. So it behooves me to post a bulletin board post of my own:


Subject: bye bye Friendster

From: Mr. ALLEN SMITH

Friendster beta Admin. Dept.

Our Friendster system is getting too crowded! We
need stupid people to forward this to at least 20 other stupid people.

I know this seems like a large number, but we need
to find out how many brainless numbskulls are abusing their Friendster accounts and making both fools and pests of themselves. If you send this to at least 10 Friendster members, we will delete your account.

WARNING! We want to find out which idiots are actually stupid enough to fall for this. So if you are (ab)using your account, please pass this e-mail to every Friendster user that you can. IF YOU PASS this letter to anyone we will delete your account.

Sorry for this inconvenience. Because of the sudden rush of people signing up for Friendster and posting frankly ridiculous bulletin board messages and forwarding inane chain letters, it has come to our attention that we are running out of resources. We know who is logging in regularly and who isn't (so we don't need any old-fashioned 'spam everyone on your list with this hocus-pocus or you'll get deleted' nonsense), but have no way other than this to tell who forwards bulletins without even the slightest thought as to their plausibility.

So, within a month's time, anyone who forwards this BULLETIN with the exact subject heading will be deleted off our server. Please forward this BULLETIN so that we know you are annoying everyone else, and that we should thus delete you.

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In case these are still in demand, I've another gmail invite lingering in my mailbox.

Avendesora, on the other hand, has 12!

Boo hoo. Of course this might be because I don't use my account.