Peter Woit: “The LHC has to have a winter shutdown so that the residents of Geneva don’t freeze to death, and that will start in late November.”
Spinoza wouldn’t have minded a lack of electricity. Oh how modern technology makes us weak and spoiled. Genevois, grow some backbone already for the sake of science.
Posted in Uncategorized
It is customary to live-blog the Eurovision song contest on this site. It is what Spinoza would have wanted, great European that he was. It won’t mean anything at all to most of you, especially if you are US-based financial people, but then we only really blog for ourselves, so that’s OK. But it should mean something. Eurovision is a great window onto the current state of Europe, into the state of its development, and the mindsets of countries we know hardly at all.
More than that, for us it has largely replaced war. You Americans should try it. Have a geopolitical song contest with North Korea and Iran.
Annoyingly for you if you are interested, I’ll only be able to blog the first part, coz I have to tootle off to the airport later and pick up a friend, who I will then have to entertain. But I’ll hopefully pick it up later.
First overall impression. Those hoping to sneer at the traditional kitsch of the Eurovision are in for a major disappointment. The songs are really really good! There’s no hopeless Balkan leather clad duffness with whips and over-acting. Even the Albanian entry was good. There hasn’t been a clunker so far, and we’re 12 songs in!! Turkey is on now, and we’re normally treated to something crap, but they are singing a really good rock ballad. I think this is extremely hopeful for our common European future! I feel more likely to support their entry into the EU, this is PROOF they can integrate! Continue reading
Posted in Eurovision
AP reports: Vatican: It’s OK to believe in aliens
The Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, the Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory, says that the vastness of the universe means it is possible there could be other forms of life outside Earth, even intelligent ones.
In an interview published Tuesday by Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, Funes says that such a notion “doesn’t contradict our faith” because aliens would still be God’s creatures.
Imagine the shock Funes will get when said aliens arrive on Earth and they have no idea what this god thing is he keeps on going on about. Or even worse, perhaps the aliens imagine themselves to be gods, and that we are their creatures. Perhaps it might even be true, and they are just checking up on us. Maybe they’ve got Jesus and Mohammed coming along for the ride. I feel a South Park episode coming on.
Seriously though, I think it much more likely that there are aliens around than that transubstantiation works, the dead can be resurrected and miracles happen — mainly because you don’t need to suspend the laws of physics for aliens to exist.
Update: The BBC carries much more from the interview, including the revelation that aliens may be free from original sin. Try telling that to Ripley.
Posted in Stupid Cartesians
Baruch! Albert Einstein, world-famous physicist but little-known fellow Spinozist, is having a letter sold at auction this week whose contents should finally put to rest that silly notion that Einstein was religious.
We know Spinoza left a strong impact on Einstein. I visited Spinoza’s home in Rijnsburg a few years ago and saw with my own eyes Einstein’s signature in the visitor’s book, dated 1920. In 1929 a Rabbi alarmed by the suggestion that Einstein’s theory of relativity might present a slippery slope to atheism asked Einstein for a clarification of his beliefs:
New York’s Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein asked Einstein by telegram: “Do you believe in God? Stop. Answer paid 50 words.” In his response, for which Einstein needed but twenty-five (German) words, he stated his beliefs succinctly: “I believe in Spinoza’s God, Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.”
Spinoza’s God, of course, is exactly analogous to “Nature”. Unlike anyone else before him, Spinoza maintained that “God, or nature” is intrinsic to the universe (as opposed to extrinsic, e.g. a God that can create a universe). Thus, postulating the existence of God is no different than postulating the existence of a universe governed by physical laws. And that is something atheists can live with.
So what does the letter being sold at auction this week reveal about Einstein’s religious views? Einstein was writing in 1954 to the philosopher Eric Gutkind, and here is what he wrote, among other things:
The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.
[...] For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything ‘chosen’ about them.
Those words could have been uttered by Spinoza 300 years earlier, and indeed Spinoza’s writings make those very same arguments. At one point, Spinoza writes that perhaps not everyone has the mental fortitude to abandon conventional religion — that his abstract notion of God = Nature may only really be accessible to a philosophical elite — and that conventional religion would suffice to bring happiness to the rest. In Steven Nadler’s Spinoza: A Life (p.290) we get this response from Spinoza to his landlady when she asked him if she has chosen the right religion:
One day, when Van der Spyck’s wife asked Spinoza whether he thought she could be saved in the religion that she professed, he replied: “Your religion is good, and you need not search for another one in order to be saved, as long as you apply yourself to a peaceful and pious life.”
In other words, belief is merely a means to an end; what is more important is good deeds. Still, you might think Spinoza is being a bit patronizing here to a good but not particularly clever soul.
Myself, I am a little less sanguine about belief — happiness at the expense of a realistic world view seems like too high a price to pay. Perhaps, however, I’ve been lucky, and I can’t fathom the kinds of misery that make the crutch of religion a necessity for many.
Posted in Uncategorized
I’m sorry to say Spinoza has been far from my mind, Bento. While you have been emulating him, coughing nobly on a sickbed, Baruch’s little mind has been awhirr with work and stocks and which ones to buy and avoid. Thus lack of posting.
But lately Baruch has noted that AAPL stock has been on a tear in anticipation of the iPhone v.2 launch this or next month. Then he read this rather good post on business models by Baruch’s fiancée, Equity Private, who opined that with its superduper iPhone, Apple had broken free from the bonds of Porter’s 5 forces and the domination of conventional wisdom, and had redefined the handset industry. I had to disagree with her. I worry her analysis is too US-centric, because from where I sit quite the opposite seems true. I hope she will punish me severely for my insolence, and expect to enjoy it.
Yes, iPhone is the most elegant and sophisticated and user friendly phone on the market, it has set the agenda for the whole industry, and will be viewed for ever after as a watershed in the industry. Blah blah. But really, none of that matters, because iPhone v.1 was really an attempt to remake the business model of the handset industry, to redfine the rules in a way that nullified the advantages of the incumbents like Nokia and Samsung (Motorola is sadly no longer relevant, except as a cautionary tale). In this they have failed. Two bits of news make me think this:
1) is rumour, 2) is fact. But both indicate Apple’s business model for v.1 may be a thing of the past.
I have long argued that the iPhone venture is Apple playing a weak hand as best it can, and that there is a very real chance it will be its undoing. Although it may not feel like it, and there’s likely still good news to come in the short term, overall risks for Apple have increased. They have lost the initiative and are playing by others’ rules. They are now swimming in a pool of sharks. Follow me, gentle reader: Continue reading
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