I suspect most people have a few crazy ideas that continue to hang around even after they have done their best cognitive maintenance and rebooting. Sure, you've banished belief in god or expelled parapsychology, but perhaps there is something lingering around that *seems* like it should have just gone by now. And what's more you only sort of think it's a crazy idea. Actually you think there is some sense to it and it is others who just haven't given it proper consideration.

So it's not so much that you really believe its a crazy idea, its just that others wouldn't easily understand.

So what is my crazy notion that surprises me with its tenacity and that others would think odd? That there is a non-negligible chance we are living in a simulation.

You might be surprised to learn that I didn't (directly) get this from watching "The Matrix". Even if I did consider it at that time it didn't stick with me. I believe the seed got planted by reading (not surprisingly) Are We Living In a Simulation?. This was a serious case made by a serious person. And I found it surprisingly convincing.

So how does this affect me? No much really. But I do take this idea off the shelf of my mind surprisingly often and dust it off and look it over. Sometimes daily (perhaps for just a few seconds). Probably never less than once a week.

Probably the most impact I get from this idea is that I often consider this question: What (if anything) would I do differently this moment if I really *was* living in a simulation? I don't usually have a shocking answer to this question. I mostly feel like I'd pretty much do what I'm doing. Being in a simulation wouldn't (presumably) change what my options are and what makse me happy. In fact in a simulation this real it's not clear what the difference between reality and simulation would be.

So what crazy idea do you have that even your "sane"/"rational" friends would think is weird?

It's hard not to get exposed to Pascal's wager at some point in your life. It's one of those things that's so offensive to clear thinking that it practically has noticeable stench to it. It's pretty much a given that any one in this day and age who presents it as a valid argument for belief is a serious crack pot and/or hasn't really thought about it for more than a few minutes.

But then, how did the great man Pascal come to make such an argument. I mean the guy has a triangle named after him and everything. He's got to have been a sharp cookie. But of course after a while you stop being surprised when otherwise smart people have these huge blind spots with respect to religion. That's just one of those weird failure modes of the mind.

But what if the explanation was simpler? What if Pascal just simply didn't understand probability theory? Surprisingly this actually seems to be the case.

Here is a video of Keith Devlin (who I normally find pretty objectionable as the NPR "Math Guy") giving a talk that among other things goes over the inception of probability theory. And who should be at attendance at the birth of this topic? Our friend Pascal. And who should be showing a complete confusion at the topic? I think you can guess.

Pascal, Fermat and Probability

Listen to the interview here (starts at 1h30m). The book is called: "Why The Universe Is The Way It Is". See how many logical fallacies and out right lies you can count before your head explodes.

It turns out the entire universe really was created just to make this one planet work. You see, there really was no other way to do it. And, um, we had to be in a dark spot so, um, we could see the rest of it easily.

While it lasts: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1839369108234002661

A rationalist prayer of thanks:

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/11/thanksgiving-pr.html

Someone (I forget who) once observed that people had only until a certain age to reject their religious faith. Afterward they would have answers to all the objections, and it would be too late. That is the kind of existence you must surpass. This is a test of your strength as a rationalist, and it is very severe; but if you cannot pass it, you will be weaker than a ten-year-old.

(overcomingbias.com)

I wonder how true this is. And fear that it is more true than not. And further, I fear that you can almost never see this in yourself without exahuastive (and exhausting) ongoing effort.

But you should try.

Fortunately, you don't need faith to be an atheist. In fact, sir, I think it's safe to say you don't really grasp the concept. Part 1 (1h31m), Part 2(1h31m)

This guy really spent some time addressing this book...

I don't know why I love listening to Christian apologetics so much. I guess it's sort of like watching a car wreck. Except it's a human brain spinning wildly out of control.

REFERENCE: (godless code 0.3)

The first entry of the godless code is always your disbelief path, the rest of the items are optional and may appear in any order. ":" is used as a delimiter between terms.

Belief path: each step of your disbelief journey, separated by "->". You may prefix a node with a number in parentheses to indicate at which age a transition occurred.

Protestant
------------
P++ : The bible is 100% true and I spend much of my life studying/evangelizing
P+ : I really believe, but I could be more involved
P : I call myself a Christian but I'm not on fire for it.
P- : I attend church but some of the ideas don't really hang together

Catholic
-----------
C
[use +/- as above]

Atheist
-----------
A++ : I'm very convinced, very vocal. I am defined by disbelief
A+ : I'm convinced and and active but it's not everything to me.
A : I don't believe, but I don't really think about it too much.
A- : I don't believe but I'm still pretty uncomfortable with disbelief

agnostic
--------------
a+ : I really don't think you can know either way. Also, there might be a tea pot out there. Who can know for sure?
a : The word atheist make people uncomfortable and we don't want anyone to be uncomfortable.

and so on:

B : Buddhist
H : Hindu
I : Islam
M : Mormon
7 : SeventhDay
W : Jehovah's Witness
J : Jew

The above single character codes may be used or if you are feeling fancy go ahead and use the following 3 digit codes:

ADV Adventist
ALL Alliance Church
AMI Amish
ANI Animist
ASA Ásatrú
AOG Assembly Of God
BAH Baha'i
BAP Baptist
BUD Buddhist
CAT Catholic
CHR Christian
CMA Christian Mission Alliance
COC Church Of Christ
COG Church Of God
CON Congregational
CSC Christian Science
DCD Christian Disciples Of Christ
DST Diest
EPI Episcopalian
FRE Free Church/Independent
GRE Greek Orthodox
HIN Hindu
ISL Islam
JAN Jainism
JEH Jehovah's Witness
JEW Jewish
LUT Lutheran
MEN Mennonite
MET Methodist
MOM Mormon (Latter-Day Saint)
NAR Native American Religion
NON Non Denominational
PEN Pentecostal
PRE Presbyterian
PRO Protestant
QUA Quaker
SAT Satanist
SCI Scientology
SHA Shamanism
SHI Shinto
SIK Sikhism
SPI Spiritualist
TAO Taoism
UCC United Church Of Christ
UNI Unitarian
WIC Wicca/Druidry

You can further modify the above with an abbreviated sub-type in []. For instance if you want to specifify Theravadan Buddhism you could write it as: B[Thera]

Religions I find tolerable:

TR(x,y,...)

A tuple of religion codes from the religion path section. The tuple
may be the empty set, e.g. TR().


Holy Books read:

r({B|K|BoM}%XX[, ...]) # one or more holy books you've read and how much

B : Bible
K : Koran
BoM : Book of Mormon
D: Dhammapadda (Buddhism)
TR: Tripitaka (Buddhism)
V: Veda (Hinduism)
BG: Bhagavad Gita (Hinduism)
T: Talmud (Judaism)
TTC: Tao-te-ching (Taoism)
ZA: Zend Avesta (Zoroastrianism)
K: Kojiki (Shintoism)
N: Nihongi (Shintoism)
JS: Jaina Sutras (Jainism)
SGGS: Shri Guru Granth Sahib (Sikhism)

eg. r(B%20,K%10)


Religious instruction: How much religious instruction have you received
in your life?

RI(pX,sY,uZ, ...)

hW : years of home schooling
pX : years of primary school
sY : years of secondary school
uZ : years of university
mQ : years of seminary


Exposure: How many people know you are a non-believer?

ex(XYZ(x)[, ...]) or ex(ALL)

Fam - Family
Wk - Co-workers
Fr - Friends

values can range from 0.0 (no one knows) to 1.0 (everyone knows)

e.g. ex(Fam(.54),Wk(.5),Fr(1.0))

ex(ALL) indicates you're godlessness is known 100% to the world.

Religious affiliation of significant other(s):

SO([X, ...])

Where X is one of the religion codes from above. Empty set means no SO. :(


Fanboy (or girl): What non-believers inspire you? And how much?

FB(X[,...])

Currently available non-believer codes:

RD : Richard Dawkins
SH : Sam Harris
DD : Daniel Dennett
SB : Susan Blackmore
BF : Brian Flemming
RC : Richard Carrier
MS : Michael Shermer
JS : Julia Sweeney
CS : Carl Sagan
JR : James Randi
RI : Robert Green Ingersoll
PJ : Penn Jillette
PZ : PZ Myers
CH : Christopher Hitchens
SJG : Stephen Jay Gould

You may include as many as you want to. You may also add a "+" (e.g. DD+) to show special approval of or "-" if you don't really like them (opposite of fanboy appreciation)

Getting the message out:

What do you do to share the news and/or stir up conversation?

M(X[,...])

Blg : blogging
Auth : writing books
D2D : door to door evangelization

What godless memberships do you have?

MS(o,l,n,i,...)

o Online atheist related groups.
l A member of a local atheist group
n A member of a national atheist group
i A member of an international atheist group
csi A member of CSI (formerly CSICOP)
bha A member of The British Humanist Association
iheu A member of Internation Humanist and Ethical Union
nss A member of the National Secular Society

a plus can be used for additional groups up to 2...a single * can be used to denote that the person is active in the leadership of the group(board member, webmaster, etc.)

An example...

MS (o++,l+*,i*)

For member of at least 3 online groups, at 2 local groups and is in the leadership of at least one of them, and is a leadership member of an international organization.


Development of the godless code:

GCD : godless code deity - they who develop the code and/or have
suggestions incorporated

optional "+" if it was your idea in the first place. :)


Version: As the code evolves need to know what version to use for decoding.

[gc-0.1] = Use version 0.1 for decoding this


This coding system is new so if you have suggestions for additions,
clarifications, etc please let me know and I'll try to address for
gc-0.4

I was reading this article on the unholy union of Garfield and Markov models and it reminded me that I'd never gotten around to trying out markov modelling first hand.

Over my lunch hour I cranked out the code at the bottom of this entry. And yes I write code over my lunch hour as a form of relaxation. What do you do?

In any case, the previous blog entry was the result of running this script on the book of Mark. Mark, Markov, get it?

Any way if you've ever wanted to generate your own biblical sounding text, here's your chance. Just download some scripture and crank up your python interpreter and away you go!

BTW, I'm really curious if Mark(ov) Chapter 1 get's any hits from people seeking Biblical inspiration. I know it inspired me.

import sys
import random
import itertools

#http://www.o-bible.org/download/kjv.txt

def make_frequencies(words):
    result = {}

    for i in range(2, len(words)):
        w1, w2, w3 = words[i-2:i+1]
        if (w1,w2) not in result:
            result[(w1,w2)] = {}
        if w3 not in result[(w1,w2)]:
            result[(w1,w2)][w3] = 0
        result[(w1,w2)][w3] += 1

    return result
    
def find_first_random(freqs):
    return get_random_ith_item(list(set([x[0] for x in freqs])))

def find_second_random(first, freqs):
    pair = get_random_ith_item(list(set(x for x in freqs if x[0] == first)))
    if not pair:
        return find_first_random(freqs)
    return pair[1]

def find_markov_random(first, second, freqs):
    markov_words = freqs.get((first,second), {})
    word = get_random_ith_item(itertools.chain(*[[x]*count for (x,count) in markov_words.items()]))
    if not word:
        return find_second_random(second, freqs)

    return word

def get_random_ith_item(stream):
    item = None
    for i,x in enumerate(stream):
        if random.randint(0,i) == 0:
            item = x

    return item
   
def markovize(freqs, output_length):
    result = [find_first_random(freqs)]
    result.append(find_second_random(result[0], freqs))
    output_length -= 2

    while output_length > 0:
        w1, w2 = result[-2:] 
        result.append(find_markov_random(w1,w2,freqs))
        output_length -= 1

    return result

def main():
    output_length = 500

    words = ' '.join(sys.stdin.readlines())

    word_frequencies = make_frequencies(words.split())
    print ' '.join(markovize(word_frequencies, output_length))

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()