Someone brought up an interesting point during an argument yesterday. They accused me of disrespecting my belongings by leaving them lying around in disarray. I said this was ridiculous, that things don't mean anything, I'm not ethically bound to respect them. My accuser said, if they don't mean anything then why do I have them? Am I being inconsistent?

Like a good annoying philosopher should say, it all depends on definitions. There's nothing in my definition of 'to mean nothing' that indicates one shouldn't have such things, but then again I'm not sure what my definition really is. Perhaps I should have used different wording and just wanted to sound Eastern; all I really meant was, apart from the financial concern if they get damaged and have to be replaced, I see no reason to "respect" my things. Yeah.

With the new Mel Gibson "Passion" movie, there's been all this furor (or must it be furore) over antisemitism and "Jewish guilt over the crucifixion." I'm reluctant to comment on something so topical and controversial, but after presenting my case to a few acquaintances I feel safe that it is at least not totally asinine.

What I can't understand is why anyone would actually feel guity for the crucifixion, or why a Christian would be angry at anyone for it. If you were there for it, I could understand feeling guilty afterward, but now, the crucifixion has become practically the basis for the whole religion! Can you imagine what Christianity would be if it hadn't happened? A friend suggested sermons like "Jesus would have died for your sins, if given the opportunity" or perhaps "Jesus died of natural causes at a ripe old age...for your sins!" Certainly that one event not taking place wouldn't change (in the Christians' idea of God's eyes) the fundamental sinfulness of humans, so I don't think a Christian would believe that we'd all be living in the garden of Eden. Would Jesus have had the chance to convince the whole world of who he was while alive? Beyond here it gets difficult to contemplate, especially with my paucity of Biblical knowledge, and the ridiculousness of it all. But if anyone has ideas of how it might have turned out, or explanations of the anger and guilt that still supposedly exist, I welcome them. The idea of the crucifixion never happening might also make a good humorous story, perhaps a Dan Bern song.

Of course for the purposes of this entry I am ignoring the meaninglessness of Jesus, or anyone else who happens to be both God and God's son, "dying."

Several days ago I got into a debate with JV over the validity of the Myers-Briggs personality type indicator. In fact our debate was more over the countless web manifestations of it, most or all of which are of questionable quality and relation to the original test. JV had presented me with one of these and his own opinion of which type I was. The home of this version, which claims to be well-researched and not just another novelty, is here:

Myers-Briggs according to Craig

My problem with all the web personality tests, and I don't think this can be seriously disputed, is that they are for novelty purposes and unscientific. They seek a reaction of serendipity when, after answering some seemingly innocuous questions, you receive a block of text that describes you with incredible accuracy. It's as if the test understands you! The effect is produced by two methods. One is that of course the questions partly feed into the answers, but they are disguised well enough that you don't notice. The other is that the type description that you see at the end is written in a certain style, the same style used by astrologers and psychics and such. This style has been well-documented by skeptics. It's done primarily by telling people what they would like to believe about themselves. The rest is taken care of by our inherent suggestibility and resulting willingness to fill in the blanks, and remember the accurate parts while forgetting the less accurate parts.

A related aspect of the descriptions of the different types at the above site that bothers me is the feel-good nature of them. The one JV pointed me to for myself (Ok, it was INTP) was quite long and went on and on about what my type would do in different situations and how they would handle different parts of life. I had to admit to JV that plenty of things in the description seemed accurate to me. But it was also all very positive--telling me how smart I am, what a good memory I have, and so on. How can I disagree? About the worst thing in there is that I might "become [an] intellectual diletante as a result of [my] need to amass ideas, principles, or understanding behavior." Yes, you see, I'm just too dedicated, it's a terrible strain, really. The more I thought about it, the more equivocations I found in the description. Take this nugget for example: "They are very adaptable until one of their principles is violated. Then INTPs are not adaptable at all!" Yep, that's me...and most other people (or at least we'd like to think so).

I started reading some of the other type descriptions to get a feeling for how much more accurate my text was than theirs. But there was so much of it, and it was so exhausting to read, that it was hard to get a sense of the big picture. I did however find some more rather flexible sentences, such as these: "ENTPs have little patience with those they consider wrongheaded or unintelligent, and show little restraint in demonstrating this. However, they do tend to be extremely genial, and quite charming, when not being harassed by life in general." Does that describe you? Personally I'm the opposite! I love those wrongheaded people, but when life stops harassing me, watch out.

Then there's the obligatory list of famous people of this type, all of them great guys like Socrates, U.S. Presidents, and uh...the Olsen twins. Now it's one thing not to say that any of the types are the "jerk" type or the "homicidal maniac" type, that's defensible. But surely the more infamous historical figures do have types like the rest of us. I don't see the harm in including them. (I'll leave aside the question of how exactly it was determined that Socrates was an INTP.)

Now, all of this is indeed a separate issue from the validity of Myers-Briggs itself. As it happens, a New Yorker article by Malcolm Gladwell that I saw shortly after this argument addressed just that subject. He brings up this tasty statistic: "according to some studies, more than half of those who take the test a second time end up with a different score than when they took it the first time." The reason is twofold: first, our personality characteristics fall on a continuum rather than neatly in one category or another, so someone on the borderline gets simplified down and the result may not be reliable. Second, "personality is contingent, not stable, how we answer is affected by which circumstances are foremost in our minds when we take the test."

The other problem he brings up is that no one can determine objectively that the four axes used in the test are the four ways to talk about someone's personality. Anyone can come up with their own set of types, and there's no proof that one set is better than another, except that people's types come out the way you generally expect them to, which kind of tells you that you didn't need a fancy test in the first place.

To clear up one common misconception that I was glad to find out about from the New Yorker piece, the official test was not developed by doctors or professional psychologists. It was invented by a housewife (not that there's anything wrong with that) named Katharine Briggs who sought to understand the strange personality of her daughter's boyfriend, Clarence Myers. She started reading psychology books and came upon the theories of Carl Jung, which she then adapted into the test and the types. Jung never endorsed the idea that each individual was one type or another for life, and called the test a childish parlor game.

I went to the test's official site to try to determine how embellished or altered the type descriptions from that other site were. The only descriptions I found here were very short ones that basically regurgitated the names of the types.

The heart of JV's side in our debate was that he simply found the theory to be useful. Is it? I don't think it should be used as some shortcut to understanding others, as seems to be one major selling point. The fact that lots of big companies pay to have their employees take it doesn't convince me at all; big companies will do anything to feel like their decisions are somehow validated by an authority, preferably the same one all the other companies are using. It seems doubtful to me that it could be terribly reliable in determining who will do better in different business positions, as that's a whole other logical leap beyond what's in the types themselves. But, as with most all other pseudoscience, it's very difficult to convince people who believe that, despite what I might say, it is benefiting them in their lives. And sometimes (but not always) I think it's better not to try.

I remain convinced that Jung and the countless novelty websites have seen the test for its true (if not most profitable) nature: a parlor game.

Yesterday I saw the bright side of the apocalypse. I'm always sad when I think, yeah, the times I'm living in are alright, but I'll bet the future is going to be cooler, even if flying cars continue to be a mirage for a while. And yeah, current technology is pretty cool, but then pretty soon it'll be old hat, and within my lifetime it'll already be quaint and antique. I find myself increasingly feeling like a technology defeatist: whenever a particular good or service is expensive or difficult, rather than considering it precious or a cutting-edge challenge, I just think it would be nice to fast-forward to the time when this costs a negligible amount or takes 2 minutes.

But if the end is near, then not only do you have the honor of seeing it, but that means things won't actually get any cooler after you die, you get to see the zenith. To me that's pretty nice. Of course you also have the privilege of knowing that no one else got to see more than you did, that no one can dishonor you after you go, and other related narcissistic advantages. So maybe this is why people continue to engage in the seemingly high-risk, no-reward game of eschatology. They're just hoping for the best.

* * *

When I was young my dad would always try to get me to go outside and play by saying "there aren't going to be too many more days like this you know!", meaning such nice days this season. I always found this strange since, barring early death, to me there was a practically infinite number of these days remaining. Who cares if I experience them this season or next? My feelings on this have since changed, but only because I dislike winter so much that every time it's unseasonably warm, I feel like I've gained a point in an ongoing war. And I do relish engaging in some activities (mostly walking around) while it's warm that would become miserable trudges in the cold.

* * *

My company is about to move uptown a bit, and our new neighborhood of Riverdale/Kingsbridge (depending on how honest you want to be or how fancy you want to make it seem) is full of interesting characters. The other day four of us were on our way to lunch and a man walking the other way suddenly stopped in front of us and exclaimed "You guys are in step! That's good! I like that!" before continuing on.

But by far the most reliable source of amusement is the clientele of the OTB right next door. Tonight while we all inspected the results of our own paint job (of the floor), an overweight man with a cigarette hanging from his mouth opened our door and stuck his head in with a grin. He then pretended to be a robot by sticking his arms out and trying to walk into the door, while saying "BEEP BEEP BEEP." Coworker Steve interpreted the act as an impression of a character from Battlestar Galactica.

I've always been an appreciator of the Wiki concept, but I've never had the urge to actually contribute to them. Not until now. An entry at Wikipedia called List of self-referential songs misquotes one of the most important songs in my life, "El Scorcho": in place of

How stupid is it/I can't talk about it/I gotta sing about it/and make a record of/(my heart)

they have:

How stupid is it/I can't talk about it/I gotta sing about it/and make a record up

One might argue that the bigger issue is that these lyrics do not make the song self-referential, because they only refer to some record made by the author which may or may not be El Scorcho or Pinkerton. But personally the mistranscription bothers me a lot more. And yet, will I correct it? More likely I will weigh the options awhile before forgetting about it completely, and someone else will do it (at least that's what I'll tell myself while weighing).

The rest of the list is interesting, but it's also enormous because they chose to include every instance of "this song"* or variants of "so I wrote a song about it, called [title of this song]." This is good for a reference work, but not for an article which has any aim other than convincing you that this idea has been driven into the ground 12 times over.

Although many find it "cheap" or otherwise undesirable, I think self-reference is probably the key to intelligence and perhaps to the whole universe in some way. If this site were really about anything, self-reference is surely one of the things it would be about. And I do try to incorporate it into my songs. But I promise not to do so in any ways such as the aforementioned, that have been done sooo many times before.

*Not including, of course, instances in which "this" refers to a different, more local antecedent, such as "There's a song called [other title]/and this song is um...good." I think that list would be a lot shorter and equally interesting to me; if anyone can find any examples that belong on it, please let me know.

I've probably previously documented my endless battle with alarm clocks and other devices for waking up. I've scattered them around the room, made a trail of them leading to the shower, had a friend throw cold water on my face, made my computer play incredibly unpleasant sounds, made it play songs. In truth the battle isn't against the alarm clock but against myself, against the alarm clock. My alert self wants a solution that will always get me up in the morning. My just-awakened self is always cleverer and more able in shutting down that solution without waking me up enough for my alert self to take over (sometimes without my ever becoming conscious of what I've done). I think the just-awakened self is actually a part of my brain that is more active during sleep. I know that's not such a new or strange idea. The stranger part is the apparently distinct motivation and reasoning that goes on there.

So far the only progress I make in this battle is when I change up my method and temporarily disorient just-awakened self. This effect tends to last a few days or so. Some recent developments suggest promise toward a more permanent solution. There's MIT's Clocky, which runs away and hides when you hit the snooze. But I can already imagine the devious ways just-awakened self would trap and kill Clocky. Its designer seems to understand pretty well "the foggy logic of our drowsiness." The SleepSmart, which "measures your sleep cycle and waits for you to be in your lightest phase of sleep before rousing you," is a quite different and inspiring angle. Time will tell if this technique can sufficiently weaken just-awakened self's influence on my psyche.

One idea I've had is an extension of the principle of the alarm clock's very nature requiring one to be fully awake to disable it. Working on the assumption that just-awakened self's reasoning powers are weak, one way to accomplish this is to require you to solve a puzzle of some kind. Of course the puzzles have to change every day, preferably not just in detail but in type, so that just-awakened self does not have a chance to get too good at them. A small crossword puzzle one day, a maze the next, a logic puzzle, math problems. This is probably easiest as a software solution. It would need a daily puzzle feed from a web site that offers lots of different types, and a hook up for the air horn to stop when the puzzle has been solved. Then again, it's very tough to make a piece of software that can't be shut down in some way other than intended--I don't think just-awakened self would be above a hard shutdown of the whole computer to achieve its malevolent ends. Turning off the computer speakers would probably do just fine too. So the noisemaker would have to be a separate piece of hardware that can operate independently, and can only be turned off by the proper signal from the computer. In practice this means powered by batteries, no easy access to the battery compartment, and built pretty solidly.

The more elegant hardware solution would be some kind of endlessly configurable puzzle box. But even a Rubik's cube that must be put into different configurations each day would probably only last so long, until I internalize the algorithm enough that just-awakened self can perform it. I don't think I could design anything with enough flexibility, but perhaps someone can. There's also the problem that if I have to configure it myself each night, that might give just-awakened self too much of a head start in the morning in how to solve it.

I know what people will say to this: how about going to bed earlier and getting enough sleep? I don't have a great explanation, but I have tried to do this, and it just doesn't work for me, at least it doesn't last much longer than a typical crazy alarm clock solution. Either I find myself physically unable to go to sleep at the hours necessary, or I can't stand to stop what I'm doing and spend so much time sleeping. So the struggle continues.

A while ago I noticed a common feature of living with a roommate that reminded me of game theory, and determined to subject it to a poorly-informed analysis. Eight months or so later, here it is for your enjoyment. No, it's not brinksmanship, like when you put off cleaning the kitchen for so long that the roommate wants it done so badly he just does it himself--though I have plenty of experience with that game.

It happens all the time that roommates differ about a certain habit that affects the apartment. For example, we have a Brita filter/water jug. My roommate likes to keep it outside of the refrigerator so the water is at room temperature. I prefer it refrigerated. For a while I thought he was just leaving it out by accident, and every time I found it out, I would put it back in the fridge. Then the next time I went to get water, it would be out again. Eventually I realized that, give or take a few, every time I wanted water it was out, where I didn't want it, and every time my roommate wanted water, it was in the fridge where he didn't want it. So we were both losing out by trying to get what we wanted. I stopped putting the jug in the fridge and started keeping a good supply of ice cubes. Nothing was ever said about it.

In the Prisoner's Dilemma, if the prisoners try to rat each other out to get a more lenient sentence for themselves, they end up with the worst outcome because they're both caught lying. They're best off if they both cooperate and keep quiet because then the authorities get no proof. In the same way, assuming we take turns drinking water (which isn't perfectly true but tends to happen more often than not), we would actually be best off if I took the water out of the fridge, and my roommate put it in, doing the opposite of what we each want to do. I think this would require some discussion to get going, and might not be possible.

The main difference seems to be that while the Prisoner's Dilemma has both one-time and iterated forms (in the latter the prisoners play again and again and try to end up with the best overall score, having a chance to react to the other's actions), the roommate's dilemma seems to evolve from an iterative structure. And that's about as far as I can take it.

I observed recently that when someone I frequently communicate with asks me, "Did you get my message?" it's often impossible for me to know whether they're referring to the last message I did get from them, or another later one that I didn't get. I have to ask, "do you mean the message about X, or something else?" "The one about X." "Um, the message about X from two days ago? From the morning or the evening?" and so on. It's not unlike the computer science networking problem of how to make sure all packets are received. What I haven't figured out is a way to express this difficulty to people asking if I got their message without making it seem as if I'm just being irritable.