Clash of Vocations

Clash of Vocations

 

Robert West and I were classmates in college. He mentioned that his debate club team will compete soon. I asked him what his team will debate. He answered that they will argue for a certain proposition, and the next day, for the opposite proposition.

I was baffled. But, but, they can’t both be true! He patiently explained that such reversals are in the debate club’s rules. My perplexity turned to alarm. You mean... you’re expected to argue for something that you don’t believe?!

I was shocked. I was scandalized. I felt like a nun who’d witnessed an indecent deed. Robert West was visibly disgusted by my naiveté. He tried to tell me that the whole point of the debate club is to develop rhetorical skill; but I remained obdurate in my puritanism.

Looking back, I now see that our clash of values was due to different vocations. I was training to become a mathematician. My ideal was to Discover the Truth. He was training to become a lawyer. His objective was to Win the Argument. Ultimately my job was to ensure that the bridges don’t fall down; his job was to ensure that, when the bridges do fall down, his clients don’t go to prison.

Decades have passed since then, and they taught me the pragmatic necessity for both vocations; but just then I didn’t understand.

We graduated and went our separate ways. Later we re-encountered, online, in a discussion group with a small group of friends. He and I often disagreed; for instance, on the reality of fictitious social constructs. I was moved to write:

‘Nonexistence has consequences.’

He was moved to reply:

‘ “Nonexistence has consequences”. True, but - ’

- and right there I stopped reading! Triggered, I stood up. I fled from the computer. To calm myself down, I did some household chores. When I regained my composure, I returned to the computer. I sat down. I braced myself, and I read on. He went on to say that social constructs have reality due to community force. I begged to differ.

In a related development, he and I later differed on the relative merits of motivational self-deception vs therapeutic self-honesty.

But one day we did agree on something; namely, that the correct name for our species is not “Homo Sapiens”, meaning “Man the Wise”; for that name is aspirational, not descriptive. We concurred that a scientifically accurate name for our kind is “Homo Semisapiens”, meaning “Man the Half-Wise”. I was pleased that we agreed.

But then I stopped hearing from him. Soon my other online friends told me that he had died.

I was horrified. Did agreeing with me kill him? Or did the approach of death weaken his rhetorical resolve? Perhaps Robert West could have argued for either proposition with equal plausibility. I, myself, will never know.

 

         Appendix:

Recently I’ve learned another name for our species:

          Homo Mendax.

Meaning “Man the Liar”.

          Only Homo Mendax or Homo Semisapiens would look at our history and call us Homo “Sapiens”. Which we are – liar or halfwit – is what I call the “crook-or-fool dilemma”. The solution is that everyone lies to a crook, so they become fools; and fools lie to themselves, so they become crooks. Therefore Mendax and Semisapiens meet in the middle.

          “Discover the Truth” is a Semisapiens ideal; “Win the Argument” is a Mendax objective. So I played Semisapiens when I said “nonexistence has consequences”; and West played Mendax when he said “True, but”; yet nonetheless we are one.

          Plato wrote that the wise must become virtuous, to remain wise. To this I add its reverse: the virtuous must wise up, to remain virtuous.

 

5 poems to your health

5 poems to your health

Here are five  poems I wrote in honor of modern medicine:


A day that fever lays you ill;
a plague of pests too small to see;
a mold compressed into a pill;
'tis death for them but not for thee.


From searing slash of surgery
from dental pang of drilling teeth
from woman's birthing agony
the Numbing Needle grants relief.


May plague and sickness pass you by;
be free of fever and infection;
be long to live and late to die;
for the Bovine Needle provides protection.


The Bovine Needle prevents disease;
expires a fire more dire than war;
your body's on guard, your mind's at ease;
yet the Porcelain Throne saves even more.


The Porcelain Throne! O hole-some seat!
O honest chair approached in haste!
For public health, relief, retreat;
all other thrones, compared, are waste!

Something about Something

           Something about Something

 

          Many years ago, I was chatting with a young nephew, one of twins. I told him a cool fact about pterodactyls, and he gushed, “Oh Uncle Nat, you know everything!”

          “Not really,” I admitted. “But I do know something.”

          The lad demanded, “About what?”

          “I know something about something,” I said. Disgusted, he turned to leave the room; I said as he left, “That’s the most honest answer you’ll ever get, kid!”

 

          Addendum: I know that we were discussing pterodactyls, but I forget the cool pterodactyl fact. And I know that I told it to a nephew, but I entirely forget which nephew, Sam or Andrew. That’s how my so-called mind works; which proves my point.

 

My Resolution Score

My Resolution Score

 

 

On December 31, 2022, I made three New Year’s resolutions:

1. Not to make any New Year’s resolutions;

2. To get to bed before midnight;

3. To break all of my New Year’s resolutions.

I broke resolution #1 when I made it; I broke resolution #2 at midnight; and I broke resolution #3 as much as I did not.

I figure that I kept 1/2 out of 3, which equals 1 out of 6. That’s a relatively good ratio.

 

LGTBT on S.F. Sour

        LGTBT on S.F. Sour

 

 

          I have aesthetic objections to the acronym LGBT for lesbian-gay-bi-trans. Very ugly and impersonal. I recommend, in its place, “gender minorities”.

I decided to satirize that bureaucratic acronym; so my daughter and I went grocery shopping for these items:

 

Lettuce

Garlic

Turkey Bacon

Tomatoes

S.F. sourdough bread.

 

Once home we made sandwiches from these ingredients. Thus we had some LGTBTs on S.F. Sourdough.

It was turkey bacon because my religion tells me not to eat pig, and my wife tells me not to eat mammal; and I would argue with Yahweh, or Sherri, each one alone, but please, not both together.

A pork-eater may have an LGBT, which is just an LBT with a clove of garlic chopped in.

          Well, it was delicious. The garlic clove gave it tang. (Our grey cat Katniss approached me while I ate, fascinated; I blew at her and she ran away.) Very filling; I had to nap afterwards.

          A success. Some turkey bacon remains, so we’ll make some more LGTBTs later. If by then we have quinoia and avocado, we could make some LGTBTQAs. (one T = Transvestite, Q = Queer, A = Asexual; and these too are ‘gender minorities’.)

          You are what you eat; and even though I am not a lettuce, nor a garlic, nor turkey bacon, nor a tomato, nor quinoia, nor am I avocado, still I am a sour San Franciscan, so it’s fitting for me to eat it.

 

 

Boy Topologist’s Fuzzy Boundary

Boy Topologist’s Fuzzy Boundary

 

A long time ago, when I was a young lad, I had a strange encounter with topology. I was three whole blocks away from home, at the corner of Center and Walnut streets. There was a signpost at the corner; the sign read: “WABAN  - A Village Of Newton”. I hadn’t been anywhere in Waban yet, so I was curious. A village? Were there thatched huts? I saw none. Maybe if I crossed the border and looked a little closer, I could see them. I approached the sign… and hesitated.

I stood at the border between Newton and Waban. Was it any different in Waban? If so, what happens if you have one foot in Newton and one in Waban? Would you feel the boundary? Would it hurt?

I hesitated… then boldly planted one foot in Waban and one in Newton. The boundary went straight through my body. I closed my eyes and concentrated…

          … and didn’t feel a thing. I was just standing there, splayfooted. Spacetime in Waban was no different from spacetime in Newton.

          So I opened my eyes, and have been skeptical about political boundaries ever since.

          (And no, there are no thatched huts in Waban!)

 

 

Boy Scientist’s Dud Logic Bomb

             Boy Scientist’s Dud Logic Bomb

 

         A long time ago, when I was a young lad, I had a strange encounter with logic. I got a Fisher-Price Science kit for my tenth birthday; it had batteries and wires and lights and toggles and keys and magnetic relays. The instructions showed how to make AND gates, and OR gates, and NOT gates; I made them all. With the AND gate the light went on only if both keys were pressed; with the OR gate the light went on when either key was pressed; and if you wire the magnetic relay in reverse, the light goes on only if you don’t press the key.

          Seventeen days before my tenth birthday, I had seen a Star Trek show. In it, Captain Kirk defeated an evil robot by feeding it a logic paradox. Kirk called Harvey Mudd a liar, and Harvey Mudd agreed. Harvey Mudd told the robot, “I am lying”. The robot fell into a yes-but-no wobble, then shorted out in a cloud of smoke.

I remembered that show and thought, “Cool! Can I do the same thing?” It seemed easy enough; wire a magnetic relay to turn on when it’s off, and off when it’s on. A loop of wire, with a twist; what could be easier? I wired in a battery, and a light, and – just to be safe – a key, so the whole circuit was activated only when the key’s pressed down.

          For that burnt-out robot worried me. How would the relay react to being forced to be in two places at once? Would it break? Would it short out in a cloud of smoke? Would it explode?

          I vowed to leap away if something went wrong; but there were worse possibilities. Maybe the confused relay would tear a hole in the space-time continuum, one that monsters could get through. Maybe a single paradox would destroy the Universe… for I had read those science-fiction stories, too!

I hesitated over my doomsday device… then I figured that other kids must have tried the same experiment before; so it must be safe.

I pressed the key… and the relay buzzed!

I let go of the key; the buzzing stopped. I leaned in close and pressed the key. The relay buzzed; the armature was a blur; a blue-white spark strobed at the contact; the light was half-lit.

Ah, Science! All these effects were new to me, unexpected, yet obvious in retrospect. I have based much of my paradox-logic research upon this experimental observation. The buzz, the blur, the strobing, the half-lighting… and above all the fact that it didn’t explode.

For as you can see, I took a big risk for Science! And I did so without consulting anyone! I didn’t know that a paradox-circuit wouldn’t destroy the Universe; I just figured that it probably wouldn’t. So I went ahead anyhow; but it all turned out OK, because here we are.

          How reckless of me! In my defense I plead the folly of youth. So there you have it: as a boy I thought I invented a Doomsday Device, but instead it was just a Buzzer!