Sometimes, a bunch of independent groups, have the same goals in a field. How can this be explained?

Sometimes, each group is Good. People who are Right about a subject, will agree and want the same things to happen in that field. For example, the US, Israel, and Australia all want the same thing to happen in Iraq.

Another way it can happen, is for Logic Of Situation reasons. For example, "anti"-racist groups and secular humanist groups, both find the logic of their situation, as anti-American groups during a discussion of War on Iraq, to imply they should make asses of themselves opposing the war.

Of course, there is the conspiracy explanation, but this is generally a very bad one. This claims that they are secretly not independent groups. A real world example might be various terrorist organisations and various terrorist harbouring states. But you only call them independent, and think their links don't exist, if you are really silly.

There is the luck "explanation" which is true on rare occassions.

I was asked what 'in the limit' means, so probably others wonder as well. 'In the relevant extreme case' is pretty close.

I realised that the "What exists, and in what ways do these things exist?" question is a bad one. We have the word "exists", we don't really know what it means, we want to. I was just writing to an email list about how doing the same thing with "love" is a terrible idea. So here's a solution to the question of existance: regard things to exist, when it is epistemically necessary to explaining reality.

Google "rational chic" and you won't find anything. "Rational chick" has 4 junk hits. How dprzzing is that?

"Rational girls" comes up with 8. Here's one.

It begins: My mother used to tell me that if you sleep with covers on you'd have wild and vivid dreams. So every night I go sleep, I'm covered to my chin with bed sheets and covers, no matter the temperature, no matter the season, hoping the linens will surround my surreal self and keep those wonderful tales in my head. I sleep naked. Started doing it as a teenager, so beneath those warm and heavy sheets is my naked and sweating body. It's not like anyone will ever see my naked body. I sleep with the window open too. As if to tempt fate, hoping some young burglar will come in some night and have his way with me.

Damn lying mother. But anyway, what's up with this hope of a burglar in the night? Why would someone want to be abused? There are some really fucked up memes about sex in our culture.

Googling "rational girl" gets 88 hits. Lots seem to be books/fantasy or lesbians. *sigh*

Things that are "necessary to explaining reality" exist. To explain reality, we don't need to know if we like people. It's simply not necessary. We can do just fine answering questions like "Do I want to talk to her right now?" and "Do I want to learn more about her?" and "Do I want to spend time doing X with her?". So, liking *does not exist*.

However, there is something the notion does come in handy for. What if, instead of trying to explain the world, we want to *predict*. Then, it is useful. That's what "liking" really is -- an expectation to continue wanting [various things]. The various things including wanting to spend time together, wanting to fuck, etc

The more money you have, the more diminishing returns on getting value out of it. Hence, charities, which offer to do Great Things with your money. Most don't. But anyway, what is one to do to get high yield out of lozza money? One thing to do is give lots to one's kids. Friends are also a good target, if they are short on money -- you know your friends and can see if you give them money for a specific thing it really will be a worthy purchase. There's surely other good ideas, low excess creativity now though.

If you're rich and short on solutions, I can help *grin*, you know my email....... *waves*

I Am A Capitalist

(It's a joke, get it?)

[Credit to David SJ]

Idiotiarian Roses are Red poem:

Roses are red,
violets are blue,
when my theories get disproven,
blame a cabal of Jews!

-- Justin, of Tentativity

Such inane arguments as "well if we attack people preemptively, what if other people start attacking us preemptively" are so intellectually bankrupt I find it striking, and thus consider it to call out for explanation. How about this one: the people saying it, deny morality, and hold mechanical pseudo-values. Because the explanation of which preemptions are kosher does not follow a mechanical rule, they find it incomprehensible and so make up a mechanical rule and claim we are using it. Example mechanical rules include: all preemption is cool; no preemption is cool; all preemption that Noam Chomsky says is cool, is cool, and the rest is not; or somesuch.

Bad Joke

It's clear that people on blogs should swear more. How can someone let a whole entry go by and not use any "naughty" words? A blog entry is a great chance to break a taboo. And they aren't censored at all. And some people will probably get a guilty thrill from reading a curse word, so maybe you'll get more hits. So, in conclusion, I want to reiterate that you'd have to be really stupid to write a whole entry without swearing.