Blog moving

I've decided to move my blog back to my WordPress blog, which is here. I've had too many problems with the Blogger interface, particularly the comments.

Christmastime

I wonder what to do / where to go at Christmastime? (Now that my family lives in the same city as me.) Anyone have a suggestion?

System Morality

It's frequent to hear that you shouldn't support a large system because it's corrupt or is causing some sort of harm. Probably I've fallen victim to this fallacy myself. Although it's good to try to take down utterly corrupt systems, it's problematic to claim that because a system is causing some sort of harm, we must entirely avoid supporting it.

A simple counterexample, which made me realize the error in my previous thinking, is to consider humanity. Humanity is clearly causing (a lot of) harm, and all life would be better off without the harmful system of humanity. But it doesn't follow that I shouldn't aid the survival of individual humans, or even act in ways which aid the survival and well-being of society as a whole. The reason is that those individual acts can do more good than harm, and as far as it depends on me, they can be beneficial. In other words, morality must consider the pros and cons of the individual acts themselves, in the context of understanding the system, regardless of the effect of the system itself. A "system" is just a human concept for a bunch of stuff, and does not have a morality in and of itself.

By the way, humans frequently make the mistake of mistaking an indirect harm for a harm done by a system. For example, factory farming is an evil system, but buying meat from factory farms doesn't just contribute to an "unstoppable system". It actually causes (indirect) harm to a fraction of a poorly treated animal. So, the fallacy that "it feels hopeless to ever stop this system, so I'm not going to bother trying" doesn't apply here. Buying less meat from factory farms directly causes less harm, regardless of whether the system will ever be stopped, and is therefore a moral imperative.

Or take pollution as another example - regardless of whether the world is going to end soon because of pollution, a person's individual pollution still kills a fraction of a person (yes, people are dying now because of pollution, not at some mysterious point in the future). So avoiding needless pollution still directly avoids the harm to that fraction of a person, regardless of the effect of the entire system of pollution, and is therefore a moral imperative.

In contrast, Facebook is an system that's causing harm, but it does not follow that using Facebook is immoral. The reason is that an individual use of Facebook can have more pros than cons, can do more good than harm. It's a terrible way to communicate, it alienates people from each other, it results in pride and self-centredness and wasted time, but it isn't necessarily immoral. Rather, we should understand the entire system of Facebook (that it's trying to control personal information, that it's ad-supported and therefore using it causes more ads), and take that understanding into consideration when considering a particular use of Facebook.

The same can be applied to any technology or organization or system in general. The moral approach is to understand it, then use that understanding when making individual choices, rather than avoiding a "system" altogether because the "system" is causing some harm.

Solar energy, heat pumps, and other renewable energy sources that can be misleading

For many years, I've assumed I was going to get solar panels when I had a house, because I assumed they not only save the environment but save money in the long run. However, after doing some calculations, it turns out this may not be the case.

First of all, it must be understood that things like solar panels and heat pumps (which are devices that produce more heat per joule of electricity used than normal electric baseboards) are not without environmental harm. It takes energy to build them, and that energy probably comes from fossil fuels. An estimate of how much energy they use is their price. Therefore, in general, an energy efficient technology is only worth buying for environmental reasons if it pays for itself.

Let me show you my calculations for various technologies. First, my situation is that I live by myself in a mini-home. The "energy used" section of my power bill has been about $25 in the summer months, and I expect it to be about $75-$100 per month in the winter (I try to keep the temperature down in the winter). I have regular electric heat and an electric, tank water heater, which are about the most wasteful technologies, but they came with the house so I already have them. Electricity for me costs $0.10 per kWH. I live in a cold, humid climate.

• Solar panels: I just did a quick search, and found a 130W solar panel that costs about $716.10 (energymatters.com). This would save about $40 per year: 0.05KWh/h = 1.2kWH/day = 36KWh/month = $3.60 per month = $43 / year. This isn't counting all the extra apparatus you have to install either, such as an inverter, a battery, or installation. At $43 per year, it would take almost 20 years to pay for itself, by which time it may well be broken, or they may have a much more efficient technology.


• Solar water heater: Two contractors each gave wild guesses that one of these would cost about $3000-$4000 for me. They plug into my main water heater and preheat the water, so the main water heater doesn't need to use as much electricity keep it hot. Since I'm buying only $25 worth of electricity in the summer, this couldn't possibly save me more than $20 per month (and would probably save much less). At $20 per month, it would take 20 years to pay for itself, by which time it would probably be broken.


• Heat pump: One contractor made a wild guess that one of these would cost me about $3600. I'd estimate that it would cut my heat costs in half, and since I would spend about $75 per month on heat for about 4 months, this would save about $150 per year. So again, it might take over 20 years to pay for itself, by which time it would probably be broken. (However, these can also be used for air conditioning, so people who insist on getting an air conditioner could get a heat pump instead. I don't have an air conditioner or see the need for one in my cold climate.)

It appears that most of the time, it's best to continue using technologies that are already built, and only replace them with efficient technologies when they break.

In summary, it's probably worth looking into such technologies for yourself, but don't blindly assume you're doing a good thing by buying them. The most important thing you can do for the environment is to shun luxury and use your own human energy to accomplish things instead of using energy-intensive devices. Once you do that, it's likely you'll find that "renewable" technologies aren't worth it after all. (In fact, with respect to heat, it would be ideal if there were few enough humans that we could just live places where we can tolerate the natural temperature year-round.)

On the other hand, these technologies would probably be great for large buildings used by many people, or for large houses which large families live in, and may pay for themselves pretty quickly in those situations. Likewise, someone building a new house may find it more worthwhile to give it renewable energy technologies in place of traditional ones, since traditional ones also cost a lot.

There's also the possibility of building things yourself from old parts, in particular building your own solar water heater. This may save enough resources to make it worthwhile, though I think you may have to live in a warmer climate to be able to use the particular type of solar water heater that's easy to build.

Pets, and the futility of trying to make a difference

I think the thing that's been making me most sad / angry / frustrated with humans in the long term is the keeping of pets. I consider the captivity of animals to be one of the greatest evils of civilization, and can't understand why the overwhelming majority don't think twice about its morality.

Sure, for those speciesists who think animals have no feelings, why not treat them as property and use them for one's own sick pleasure? But what about the many, many people who believe animals do have feelings, yet have no qualms keeping them as pets? Where do they get these contradictory beliefs?

Would anyone keep a human in a cage, an aquarium, or locked in a house while they're away? Not many would, because humans have a right to freedom. But how can someone believe that animals have feelings like humans without granting them the same right of freedom? How can so many people believe that something with feelings can also be their property?

It would be wrong to put a human in a bubble and attempt to provide for all its needs and keep it safe. You simply would miss out on some of those needs, because you don't have the ability to provide for all of them. How much more wrong, then, is it to try to put an animal in a protective bubble, when you can't even communicate with the animal to find out all of its needs, let alone provide for them?

You'll of course argue that now that animals are domesticated, they can't survive in the wild, so they have to live with us. Then the appropriate response is at the very least to let them roam free in the country - give them to someone who lives there if you can't live there yourself. Furthermore, pets certainly don't need to continue to exist. If they're all neutered, and people actually are willing to give up this slave trade, then they'd be gone in a generation. Another thing that would drastically reduce their numbers is to stop buying things from pet stores. Pet stores have an incentive to keep pets in existence, so as long as they exist, they'll make sure that pets exist. It's just not good enough to get a pet from the SPCA and then buy food for it from a pet store.

What makes me most frustrated is that there isn't really anything I can do to make the world a better place in this respect. People who believe in a cause like stopping human hunger can easily do something about it - volunteer at a soup kitchen or donate money to charity. But people who believe in causes like putting an end to the keeping of pets can do nothing more than not contribute to it. Even acts of civil disobedience, such as trying to set pets free, would do nothing - the people with these immoral beliefs would merely breed more pets and keep those ones instead. There isn't anything we can do to stop it, and this is a very saddening, lonely fact.

The Pros and Cons of Open Source Software

Many people wonder why people like me spend so much time and effort configuring Linux. I used to have a Macbook, which worked pretty well, ran all the programs I needed, and required little maintenance, but I sold it and use Linux almost exclusively again. A naive question would be: aren't the days of my time I spend dealing with problems in Linux worth more than the comparatively small cost of the Macbook? (That was my reasoning at one time.)

I think there are 2 big reasons I use Linux despite the greater time investment.

First is that nobody can get it right. I can recall very few instances of someone selling or producing a piece of technology where they built it properly - it seems to always have some problem. In the case of a technology as complex as a computer system, this problem is compounded to the point where people are not getting nearly as much out of their computers as they could. Many think that Macs are well-designed, and though they aren't too bad, they still have many, many problems. In the face of such poorly designed technology, I'm forced to build things myself.

Indeed, the appropriate response to bad, complex technology is to piece together smaller bits of technology until you have a system that does what you want. This is what I can do with Linux that I can't do with any commercial operating system. The small, simple programs you can get for Linux are among its greatest strengths. The cost is that you have to figure out how to put the small pieces together yourself.

For example, I hate the integrated nature of a desktop environment, and all they extra junk they put in your way. A "desktop" is just a view of one folder on your computer that's always open, but I don't need it to be always open. I can just go there when I need it. I don't like screensavers, or a login screen, or a "Start" menu. When you buy a commercial operating system, you have no choice but to have these things. When you put the pieces together yourself, you can avoid them, but it involves figuring stuff out: like what window manager you like and how to configure it and hook it up to the X windows server. I also don't like windows that you drag around and that start with their own sizes, but prefer Tiled Window Managers (I'm currently using XMonad, and I have yet to determine whether it works well). Tiled window managers are pretty much unheard of with commercial operating systems.

The second reason I prefer Linux is that there are inherent problems with a single company writing the software that controls your computer. You have to trust them not to do malicious things with your computer, such as send themselves information on your computer via the Internet. You can't tell whether they're doing so, because they don't release the source code. With Linux, everybody can look at the source code, so people wouldn't be able to get away with such activities, because people would see it. Another problem is that computers don't last forever, so whenever you get a new one, you'll probably be confined to upgrade to the newer version of the commercial operating system you use. But what if you don't like the interface of the new version? Or what if it goes too slow, or does something else you don't like? With Linux, it may have taken me a while to configure it, but I can now copy my configuration to every computer I use in the future, and use the same software, and it will behave the same. I'm not constrained to the whim of any company.

I'd especially recommend Linux to anyone who just uses a computer to browse the Internet - it's great for that. It's also great for programmers. For more complex non-programming tasks, it may be questionable whether it's the best option. (Although these days, I'd ask people to consider whether it's really worth their while to own a personal computer at all - for just using the Internet, a small handheld device combined with public computers probably make a lot more sense for many people.)

Surpassing Quicksilver

A few weeks ago, I was looking at the list of programs running on my computer, and contemplating the memory they were using (when I had no apps open) and the percentage of them whose purpose I actually understood. I then decided I'd had enough. So I ditched Ubuntu, installed Gentoo, and set it up to run plain X windows with just a window manager. (I'm overjoyed with the results.)

One program I used to use was Gnome-Do, a somewhat weak clone of the excellent Quicksilver program for the Mac. The thing I really liked about it was I could push Windows+Space and start typing the name of a file on my computer, and it would suggest matches as I type so I could open the file. This is much faster than browsing through your filesystem, if you can remember any part of the filename. But I was ticked off that it used 40MB of memory when I wasn't using it. So I wrote a trio of scripts to do essentially that same thing, which you can get here.

The crux of my script is a really, really great program called dmenu. dmenu is a menu that lets you choose one of many (often thousands) of options by typing parts of the options, and it narrows down your choices as you type. It's way better than even Quicksilver. All it does is take the list of options in standard input, lets the user choose one, then prints the option chosen to standard output. So it can be used to do all kinds of Quicksilver-like things (I happen to mostly only care about being able to open files easily).

Vim as IDE

I've discovered that it seems quite feasible to set up the VIM text editor as an Integrated Development Environment for C++ programming. This is exciting because it's a lot smaller and faster than most full-featured (i.e. bloated) IDEs, is the best programmer's editor (in my opinion), and allows me to do programming in Linux without using Eclipse (which takes an enormous amount of resources). The software you need to put this together is as follows:

gvim, of course.

gcc, of course, to compile C++ code.

make, for writing a "project" that lets you add your source files and get compiled into your program with one command.

ctags, so that you can jump from a variable's use to its declaration with Ctrl+] (and then jump back with Ctrl+t), and as a prerequisite for code completion (see below).

yavdb and gdb. yavdb lets you do debugging in vim by attaching gdb to an existing vim window. Then you can use the function keys in your code to set breakpoints and step to lines of interest, and press F10 to see the value of the variable under the cursor. When you want to examine more complicated information, go to the terminal you started yavdb from and use gdb commands. Simple and quite effective.

omnicppcomplete, which does code completion in vim by using your tags file generated by ctags. There are some slightly involved (but straightforward) instructions involved in setting it up, but I had no trouble getting it to work. Once it's set up, you get a list of member choices whenever you press ., ->, or ::.

Finally, you'll probably want to set / remap some shortcut keys so the function keys do what you want. For example, to set keys for building the project, and going to the next / previous compilation error, add lines like these to your ~/.vimrc file:

map <F4> :make<Return>
map <F6> :cnext<Return>
map <S-F6> :cprevious<Return>

which sets F4 to build your project, and F6/Shift F6 to go to the next / previous compile error.

Why I'm not a Vegan

Since I believe so strongly in animal rights and environmentalism, and especially since being accosted by a few vegans over the past few years, I've thought a lot about the topic of the morality of food and have seriously considered veganism. I've rejected veganism and vegetarianism, but I also believe in a rich moral tapestry surrounding food. I thought it might be useful for me to share my ideas and arguments, since they differ so drastically from that of most meat eaters (e.g. eating meat out of habit, or because of the idea that humans are more important than other animals).

There are 3 main arguments for strict veganism - the death of animals, the suffering of animals, and the environmental impact of farming. Let me address each of them in turn.

Sentience and the welfare of plants and animals

I do believe that animals are sentient (have experiences) and can suffer, and therefore we ought to care for their well-being. I also reject the widespread belief that humans are elevated above the other animals. Even if we were created in the image of God, it doesn't make us more important, especially since we've fallen.

Many vegans claim that we shouldn't eat things that are sentient. I disagree, because I see no reason for them to stop at animals. I believe all life is sacred, and, as far as we know, could be sentient. Yes, I believe plants may well have experiences, and therefore we should care about their well-being as well. You'll undoubtedly respond that it's absurd to think that plants are sentient because they don't have a brain. But there is actually no reason to associate sentience with a brain. Sentience is a subjective quality, and therefore there cannot be a scientific experiment done to confirm or refute it in plants (or animals, or other humans). So, given this lack of knowledge, to say that specific groups of living things are or aren't sentient based on physical qualities like brains, language, or reasoning ability, is discrimination. It's no different than the belief many held hundreds of years ago that certain races, which were used as slaves, were not human.

As mentioned, I believe it's OK to eat (things that are sentient) respectfully. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to survive, since I practically have to eat animals or plants. Eating respectfully means not wasting. I don't believe it's OK to murder things that are sentient. This is a difficult concept for some people to understand, because they think eating is a type of murder. These same people probably also think it's always wrong to do an action that results in harm to someone. But that can't be, because you cannot make everyone happy at once. An action that averts one person's harm may bring harm to someone else. Rather, it's wrong to cause unjust or unneeded harm. So, yes, eating causes harm, but it is not unjust. If everyone (all sentient beings) stopped eating, everyone would die.

So the argument to not eat animals because they're sentient doesn't work, because then you'd have to eat more plants in place of the animals, and as far as we know, plants are sentient too.

Animal imprisonment

As someone who is strongly opposed to pets because I believe animals should be free, the argument that farming imprisons animals is a compelling one to me. Let me say first of all that I'm strongly opposed to factory farms, which, as I understand it, is where most of our meat now comes from, and which needlessly imprison and oppress animals. I do advocate boycotting factory farm sources of meat. Further, I definitely don't think farming is ideal; hunting animals would be much better.

But we now live in a situation that is less than ideal. Almost nobody knows how to hunt. There aren't enough wild animals to feed all the humans (which is a big reason I advocate Voluntary Human Extinction). Perhaps worst of all, a single wild animal usually provides way too much meat for a single person to eat, which would mean it would have to be shared by many people; and it would be quite difficult to find enough people to share it with, without any of it being wasted.

Indeed, we've become so entrenched in farming that the animals we farm can be considered unnatural, unable to survive any more in the wild. They've been naturally selected to live on farms - so could it perhaps be that they don't mind living there? It still isn't ideal to assume that of them, of course, but then we can't assume plants are OK in the unnatural environments that we, of necessity, put them in either. The ideal for the long term is for use to stop having children until there are few enough humans that they could all eat the wild species, at which point they would either learn to do that, or become extinct. But in the short term, eating as few domesticated species as we can is acceptable.

(As an aside, the difference with pets is that they're not kept out of necessity, but out of selfishness - the pets are meant to bring emotional happiness to the humans. The proper way to deal with the pets that are now in existence is to neuter them all, then let them live in the country where they can be relatively free (and possibly eat some of the ones that can be eaten). Eventually the unnatural pet species would thereby go extinct.)

It's of the utmost importance that our farms have owners who care about the well-being of the animals, and treat them well. Fortunately, I doubt there's any other reason for people to operate family farms in this day and age - I certainly don't expect it's profitable. So supporting such farms has the benefit of being a thorn in the side of competing factory farms, which is a good thing. Therefore you should buy your meat from farmers instead of grocery stores.

Environmental impact

Farms produce a lot of pollution, I've been told by various sources. For example, raising cows apparently gives off more carbon dioxide than cars, totally in the world. You could reduce the impact of a cow by just growing plants and eating them, instead of growing plants which you feed to a cow which you eat. This factor is significant and I don't think it can be rightly ignored.

However, I think it is merely a good reason to drastically reduce the amount of meat you eat, if you eat like an average North American. Often, people will even eat more meat than they need to be healthy, which means the extra meat they eat that they don't need to be healthy is causing needless pollution. That's wrong, if it's not unintentional.

But shouldn't I reduce my pollution even more by eating no meat at all, and eating meat substitutes instead to give me the nutrients? This is the point that so many environmentalists fail to understand. There are so many complex factors involved that you cannot infer the environmental impact of eating a bit of meat from the environmental impact of farming as a whole. In the case of driving a car somewhere you could walk, or buying a box of chocolate, the environmental impact is direct - you can definitely tell that driving the car is causing harm that walking isn't causing, or that the production of the chocolate caused harm that wouldn't be caused by not buying it. But the impact of eating a bit of tofu compared to a bit of ground beef is not at all direct or obvious. How far did they each have to be shipped to reach you? What farming practices does the farmer use? Were they on sale so that if no one bought them they would otherwise be wasted? Are there any national or international laws that would affect the costs of production? Would economy of scale make one more efficient to produce than the other? Etc, etc.

Finally, the goal of environmentalism is not zero pollution, contrary to the ideas of many environmentalists. The environment can absorb some pollution and heal itself. There's also no reason to treat human activity as "unnatural", since humans are just another species. To a wolf, it may appear that wolves are having an impact on the deer population in the forest they live in - but that impact is just as natural as the overgrowth of deer there may be without the wolves. Likewise, why can't we view human activity as just as natural as any species? The goal is therefore not to reduce unnatural results, but to reduce the harm we cause. As far as I can tell, this can be done at least as well by eating a bit of meat (by which I mean, a lot less meat than the average North American) as it can by strictly avoiding animal products.

Conclusion

In the face of such confusion and uncertainty, our best course of action is to hunt, gather, and, when necessary, grow most or all of our own food ourselves, so we can directly see the impact of our actions. But in the interim while we work towards that goal, there is no imperative to avoid animal products entirely. There is an imperative to consider the effects of eating and try our best, given our very limited knowledge, to minimize harm in each situation we're faced with.