Riddles in the dark

I stated earlier a position that mathematical concepts are just our way of making sense of our internal logical reality, not so much making sense of reality "out there". I repeated this view in a later post, stating:

Mathematical truths are merely descriptions of the internal laws governing our processing of the world outside. Specific laws and notations of mathematics are our ways of making sense of the external world. To say that there are 10 bottles in a pack merely means to say that we have grouped the matter in the pack into 10 objects (per our definition of "ten" and "objects") in our heads. There is nothing more to it. 

The reason why Math is useful is because our brain can model the reality pretty well (at least to a certain extent), having been created/evolved for that purpose, and the brains of people are quite similar in this capacity, such that these models can be shared and mutually recognized as either true or false (or, rather, good predictors of reality or bad ones). 

 As a matter of support for this view, consider that mathematicians and physicists choose different kinds of Mathematics to describe the world. Eucledean mathematics can allow you to build a pyramid, but not circumnavigate the world. And Newton had to invent of a whole new set of mathematical concepts in order to prove his theory of gravitation. Same for Einstein: he had to adopt a radically new set of mathematical models to describe his view of the physical reality. 

 So, while the physical reality is "external" and objective, our ways of understanding and modelling it are internal and subjective, pure products of our minds.

Let me illustrate this point of view with a few examples:

* * *

What is 400+200? Most of you will say: 600.

But imagine we are on a sphere that is 1000 miles in circumference. Each of us can be at most 500 miles away from each other (half the circumference). Imagine we are standing on the equator of the sphere, and you start walking away from me along the equator. You are 200 miles away. Then you walk 200 more miles. How far are you? 400 miles.

Now, pay attention: you walk 200 miles more. How far are you? You may be tempted to say: 600 miles, but remember that the sphere allows us to be at most 500 miles apart from each other, along the surface of the sphere. What happened is that you reached the opposite end of the sphere and then started circumnavigating it back towards me, along the other side. So, you're still 400 miles away.

On such a sphere, 400 mi +200 mi = 400 mi, when measuring distance between two objects.

The same is actually true for Einstein's Theory of Relativity. Once you start moving really fast, the speeds don't add up as they do in our everyday reality and they can never add up above the speed of light, c. So, what is 0.6 c + 0.5 c? It's some number smaller than c.

And according to Einstein's General Relativity, sometimes 3-dimensional space curves.

* * *

Another example would be of a wall clock. According to wall-clock arithmetic, 11 o'clock + 3 hours = 2 o'clock. 11 + 3 = 2. One way to state this is that the number line of the clock is curved onto itself, such that 12 = 0.

* * *

Imagine a string of numbers:

N = 1 – 1 + 1 – 1 + 1 – 1 + 1 – 1 + ... to infinity.

Can we figure out what N is equal to?

Well, we can write N as:

N = (1 – 1) + (1 – 1) + (1 – 1) + (1 – 1) + ... = 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + ... = 0

But, another, equally valid way of writing this is:

N = 1 + (−1 + 1) + (−1 + 1) + (−1 + 1) + … = 1 + 0 + 0 + 0 + … = 1

So, N is equal to both 0 and 1.

But, we could also say that:

N = 1 − 1 + 1 − 1 + …, so:
1 − N = 1 − (1 − 1 + 1 − 1 + …) = 1 − 1 + 1 − 1 + … = N,
1 − N = N; thus N = 0.5

So, we can get three different answers for N just based on the simple concepts of addition of integers and infinity.

* * *

Then there are statements like: "This statement is not true". Is the statement in quotation marks true?

There is the well-known case of Xeno's paradoxes which was solved through invention of Calculus.

And so on...

* * *

All these examples show that specific systems of notation and logic get us only so far. A specific method of "keeping track" of our internal world's perceptions of the outside works for only certain kinds of perception; other methods may be devised for different kinds, and even within the methods we already know well, there may be limits of their applicability.

I think it may be true that the reality "outside" has certain logic to it, and we are mapping out different aspects of this "grand-logic" in our head using many different kinds of "mini-logic". This doesn't just apply to Math, but to any kind of logic, symbolic and formal or not.

The point is that we must be prepared for the idea that there are "creases" in the outside's grand-logic where our internal mini-logics flow into each other (or transition sharply). There may also be areas of the grand-logic where "here be dragons".

Begging consent

(sculpture depicting the famous duel between samurai Miyamoto Musashi and Sasaki Kojirō)

"My sword is longer than yours; hence, you have to obey my will"

— what most arguments in favor of the government's legitimacy amount to

Oftentimes, one hears the "consent" argument as a justification for the necessity and moral imperative of keeping the government's laws.

For instance: "You live in America (Canada, New York, Hicksville, etc.); therefore, you have to obey the laws. If you don't like the laws here, go live somewhere else." (A tangential note: the "laws" in this case means "whatever the government said", not "what people's custom is". The distinction is important, as will be seen below.)

Or: "People must obey the ruler's laws, because by living on his land, they showed that they accepted his authority over them." (This argument is used by some halachic authorities regarding dina d'malchusa dina.)

It seems to me that this argument has a gaping hole in its logic. The argument assumes (and in no way attempts to prove) that the government a priori has legitimacy — hence, one must either obey its laws or go live somewhere else, since the government has authority either to enforce the laws or expel the law-breakers. But this argument cannot be used to prove that the government's laws are legitimate, since that would be a classical case of begging the question!

Why do people fall for this argument? Because they mistake positive law for natural law. They assume that "whatever the government said" is equivalent to "how most people behave". In many cases, as I previously explained at length, it is true: the positive law (although illegitimate to begin with) eventually creates patterns of behavior. For instance, if someone wants to drive on the left side of the street, he should go live somewhere else, since most people drive on the right side of the street in this country. Out of respect for the majority of the people (whose custom "was there first"), one must obey the local natural laws (whether or not they arose spontaneously or resulted from oppressive positive law).

But this in no way means that, for instance, tinting your car windows more than 35% (which is illegal in some states) is being disrespectful to local people, just because some local bureaucrat decided to forbid it.

Hence, if I claim that some bully (whether he is an elected politician or a local mafia boss) is illegitimate and, therefore, his laws are illegitimate, telling me that "I live on his turf, therefore, I have to listen to him" is illogical. I live on what he claims to be his turf (with support of some people), but that in no way makes his claim legitimate, unless the "turf" actually is his property which he can prove to have homesteaded.

Which brings me back to dina d'malchusa dina: the above analysis shows that the "tacit consent" argument and "king the landowner" argument are in fact one and the same. Without the second, the first one falls through. But, it seems to me, that if the consent argument is presented as some sort of chiddush, or at least as a shitta standing aside from the "king the landowner" argument, then the consent argument is simply fallacious.

No emotions now

(Rav Moshe Tendler on Har HaBayis)

I have recently read the following article: "Temple Institute Disagrees with Chief Rabbis over Temple Mount".

Briefly, a few rabbis have declared it ossur to ascend on Har HaBayis. And the rabbis of Temple Institute disagreed with them.

Now, I am all in favor of dissenting opinions, especially those disagreeing with Israeli rabbis. But I like dissenting opinions expressed intelligently. Not this way:

Throughout the ages many prominent halakhic authorities personally ascended to the Temple Mount, including the celebrated Rambam (Maimonides), who ascended to the Mount at the risk of his life in Crusader-dominated Jerusalem. Indeed, as the Rambam himself testifies in his letters, he was so moved that he merited to ascend the Temple Mount to pray there, that he instructed his descendants to mark the day of his aliya (6 Cheshvan 1166) as a day of personal yom tov (rejoicing) for all generations.

Issues of Jewish law are not to be determined by personal feelings, opinions, or emotions. In the formulative process of halakhah, sources must be cited, verified and compared. Today, many prominent, respected Torah scholars, including yeshiva heads, visit the Temple Mount on a monthly basis together with hundreds of their students. To minimize or denigrate these scholars and to imply that they are acting outside of Torah law is misleading, damaging and wrong.

Do these people realize that the two cited paragraphs contradict the two sentences in bold? Yes, emotions or personal opinion have no place in halachic process. Yes, sources must be cited, verified, and compared. What do they offer? A story (uncited) about Rambam ascending Har HaBayis and how emotional he got — and no other opinions or arguments. Oh, right, a bunch of "yeshiva heads" have been known to make the journey, and to say that doing so is ossur would be to hurt their feeling. I see...

I am wondering whether these people are aware of the fact that once upon a time the wives of great "yeshiva heads" and leaders of the generation had cooked chicken with milk. And yet, at one point, it has become not kosher to do so due to a gezeira of the Chazal.

Simply put, times change. And each rabbi has halachic authority to pasken for his community (the "formulative process of halacha" is, after all, nothing but a lot of personal opinions of some people whom certain communities hold in respect). As the authors of the ban eloquently answered to the question regarding Rambam, "The poskim in the times of Rambam allowed it. We don't." Yes, what was good for Rambam is bad for modern Israeli and American tourists. And what was fine in the times of the First Beis HaMikdosh stopped being so in the times of the Second.

Not that I have any sympathy for the modern chumra fetish or Israeli rabbis. But badly constructed arguments repulse me even more.

A priori penguins

Oftentimes when explaining how Math is very interesting in that we don’t derive the truths of Math from experience (you don’t need to “go out there” and see in the world that 2 + 2 = 4; you know this logically), I explain the difference between a priori and a posteriori statements and give the example of the sun rising from a certain direction. But yesterday I had a revelation that my example had been wrong. So, I will share my revelation with you. If you think what I am saying is banally simple, I don’t apologize.

So, is it an empirical question: does the sun always rise from the east on every planet? In order to answer this question, do you need to go out there and explore other planets, or can you answer it a priori — without any experience of the world?

Well, how do we know which side is east and which side is west on our planet? Or which side is north and south? Sure, for most civilized people, “north” is associated with “up there”, because most of us live in the northern hemisphere. But even though Australia is called “the land down under”, people living in Australia, surprisingly enough, don’t experience the world upside down. They can just as well think of the North Pole being “down there”.

If you think about it, it seems obvious that east and west (and, as a result, north and south) are just definitions — not definitions based on the particular physical parts of our planet, but definitions based on direction of the sun’s movement in the sky. Once we know what north and south are, based on that definition, we can figure out what is in our north and south: in the north, there is Greenland and Iceland and volcanoes and a bunch of socialist countries, and in the south there are penguins and a bunch of white racist landowners (I am talking about South Africa, not South Carolina).

Imagine that a couple of astronauts are sent by the Federal Government to another planet to figure out where the sun rises on that planet (it has to be Federal Government, since it would be the only one stupid enough to spend money on such a project). They arrive on the dark side of the planet and are waiting for the sunrise. Finally, they see the sun rising, and the following conversation happens:

— Nu?
— Nu what?
— Which side is the sun rising from?
— I dunno. Which side is that?
— Well, is that east or west?
— How can you tell?
— Well, ok, which way are the penguins?
— Actually, on this planet there are no penguins.
— No penguins? What a dump. What about socialists?
— Actually, this planet is inhabited by a much more advanced civilization than ours, and most people here are libertarians.
— OK, that’s it. I am getting out of here.
— What are we going to write in the report?
— “The study did not produce statistically significant results.”

Do you see the problem? With the planet being curved, there is no way to tell which way is objectively “up”. In fact, for ancient Jews, “up” was east. And “right” was south. That is why, the youngest son of Yakov Avinu, who was born in the South was called Binyomin — “son of the right hand”.

So, the sun always rises from the east — by definition. You don’t need to go “out there” and do any observations. You just know it. The same way that you know that all bachelors have no parents-in-law.

On the other hand, with the moon, it’s not so obvious. If you say “every planet which has life has a moon”, it’s an empirical statement. Even if you find one hundred planets that have life and a moon, you can’t be sure that one-hundred-first will definitely have a moon.

But with 2+2=4, you know it a priori. You don’t need to keep adding objects together to convince yourself of this. Any two objects and any two objects will add up to four objects — whatever the objects, the climate, or the political party in power.

Now, the question is: should economics be studied a priori, like Math, or a posteriori, like Natural Sciences? Is “all things being equal, instituting minimum-wage laws increases unemployment” an empirical statement that needs to be proven by observation, or is it a logical statement?

(To see why our moon is necessary for there to be life on our planet, read this post.)

False analogies

Pray for the welfare of the government, for without the government, people would eat each other alive.

— Pirkei Avos

My rabbi once told me that the worst thing is false analogies.

In the comment thread on the post on Liberia, one of the comments says:

Over Shabbos I was contemplating the two countries, and I came to the following conclusion: when Pirkei Avos said what it did about Government, it was talking about this situation. North Korea, for all its many evils, is at least a (semi) functioning country. It may be starving its citizens, but at least people there live slightly normal lives. Contrast this to Liberia, where without a government, people literally eat each other. It's crazy. They may be much more western in their outlook, but without government? It's horrific.

Well, admitedly, I don’t know what’s worse: to live in North Korea or in Liberia. I would say — North Korea, because in Liberia, you still have a chance to get out of poverty, even though it’s very difficult. And even though there was a good chance you could be killed and eaten during the civil war, if North Korea starts a war, there is a good chance one can get vaporized by a nuclear attack.

Also, as I said to someone else, however many people General Butt Naked killed and ate, Hitler, Stalin or Mao each killed many more.

But even if what the comment says is true, therefore what? It seems that the thesis is: without the government, in Liberia people literally eat each other; therefore, we need the government to provide law and order. (Again, in Liberia there is government, but never mind that.)

Well, if you watch the third video (graphic alert) in the post, you will see right at the beginning that Liberians living in Westpoint, the largest slum of their capital Monrovia, go to bathroom right on the beach in front of their houses since the sanitation system is broken. Actually, one of the Liberian journalists blames the government. In fact, the video begins with the journalists going to see “what the government and UN are doing to rebuild Liberia”. And “the government does nothing about the lack of sanitation. In fact, the Commissioner himself sometimes goes on the beach, squats and [...] together with the people.”

Now, following the logic of the comment, living in North Korea is better than in Liberia — at least you have toilets there (actually, I am not completely sure what they have in Korean villages). Yes, the government may be a necessary evil, but at least it’s necessary to provide us with the toilets. I mean, no way would the market be able to provide us with the sanitation system if not for the government.

Right?

Also, for instance, when the people of medieval Iceland decided to be independent from Norwegian king and formed a nearly-anarchic society (mind you, not completely anarchic), everybody just spontaneously started going to the bathroom to Greenland Sea or Atlantic Ocean, since the king wasn’t there to provide them with chamberpots (or law and order), right? (That is, when they weren’t busy eating each other.)

As I said, in my opinion, it has nothing to do with either anarchy or government. It has to do with the culture. For instance, when the hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, a lot of local residents were sitting on the roofs screaming, while one Russian journalist living in the area somehow managed to blog about what was going on around him, and when the water hit the attic of his house, he built a boat and just left (literally).

(There was another story of a couple with kids running out of gas in some forest in Oregon after taking a wrong turn. After about a week of waiting for the help to come, the father decided to go look for it by himself. He got lost and froze to death. All the time being a few miles away from civilization. The family was rescued. When my mother heard the story, she didn’t believe it. She couldn’t believe people could have so few survival skills. I mean, everybody knows, in such a situation, you just go up the hill to see better what’s around you.)

The fourth approach (or, Tradition, tradition! (Part 6)

I am often accused of stereotyping, labeling, and general bigotry. Well, alright, not so often, from time to time, but in any event, I try to attend to the rebuke (why, incidentally, does the End button never work on Macs?) and correct myself.
     How much more depressing, therefore, when the members of the groups that I practice my bigotry against act to strengthen the basis for it! (My complaint is not dissimilar to that of Douglas Adams recalling the cases when one meets a German lacking sense of humor. Here you were, working on this stereotype that you had held the whole life, and then, when you feel you almost succeeded overcoming it, comes a German with a sense of humor similar to that of a cork. Anyway, this is actually a very serious post, so enough about humor.)
      In any event, over this Shabbos I started reading Maimonides: Torah and Philosophical Quest by David Hartman. The author starts discussing "what options are available to someone who, while living within [religious] tradition, is exposed to different world views" from the society (especially, its intellectual elements) around him. He provides four options:

1. The way of insulation: ignoring that the secular views exist and thus not allowing them to contradict the tradition by submitting one's intellect to the tradition and community. "My thoughts are not your thoughts"; therefore, no contradiction can happen. "Thus has G-d spoken" and no other view can exist.
2. The way of dualism: being a Jew on the street and an intellectual in private; i.e., behaving according to the tradition, but knowing, in the privacy of one's mind, that rationality disagrees with Torah. This, according to the author, is a way of elitism, of aristocracy. Those holding to it sacrifice their intellect to their body, and their body to the community.
3. The way of rejection: unable to sacrifice one's mind, one rejects the community and the tradition (r"l).
4. The way of integration: an attempt to integrate rationality and tradition into one whole.

     It is this last approach that I wish to quote verbatim from the book. Although I may be accused of stereotyping again, I should like to say that this approach -- and the agenda born of it -- is rather stereotypical of the approach I have seen from most members (that I have encountered) of the school of thought within Orthodox Judaism to which the author belongs. For myself, I shall not say that I believe this approach is treif gomur, but I do believe that it is treif v'toiv loi (I wonder how many people will get the pun). I quote, again, verbatim, only omitting certain passages and hyphenating G-d. At first it's all theory, but then the author gets to practice (if you wish to skip the theory -- although I advice against it -- see the label "practice").

Evidence of the negative

 

Reading a thread of comments in the post on Frum Satire's blog (the post on which I commented before and even wrote a post in response to; I must warn that I was a bit more harsh in those times of heated youth than I am now), in which TRS recently responded to a critique of his approach, I saw the following comment:

Both Orthodox Jews and Christian Fundamentalists firmly believe that God gave the Torah to his Chosen People, Israel, during the miraculous revelation at Mount Sinai. For Orthodox Jews this is the pivotal event in the history of the Jewish people. But modern archeology has dug up a great deal of compelling evidence to suggest that much of this history never happened—and certainly not as recounted in the Bible.

Sometimes one really does marvel at the progress of modernity. Not only did the modern archeology dig up evidence of something not happening, but it dug out evidence that something never happened as recounted in the Bible. One can only marvel at the advances in this field of science, pushing at the boundaries of not only human knowledge, but also human logic.

I mean, what's next? Modern astronomy finding evidence of stars and planets that do not exist (certainly not as recounted in the Bible)? Chemistry finding reactions that do not happen? (Although one must not go far for such discoveries; just look through an examination paper of your average organic chemistry student.) Perhaps, Psychology describing models of the human mind that are not true? (Wait, that's already happening.)

You are wrong!

[I am re-posting this.]


(I was thinking of finding a picture appropriate to the topic of machloikes, but then thought that nothing would fit better than this video, which I like very much.)

I’d like to thank Dixie Yid for a link to “the comment thread at A Simple Jew’s Post, The Essence of Emunah [of] an interesting back-and-forth discussion between R’ Micha Berger & R’ Micha Golshevsky regarding the inner unity behind the major machlokes’n in history”.

As I was reading the discussion, I thought this (not necessarily regarding any side of the discussion):

It seems to me that sometimes our American sensitivity and tendency to make peace and accommodate everyone’s opinion (commendable though this tendency may be) gets in a way of understanding the machloikes. Back in the day, people didn’t have a problem saying “I disagree.” Not “I am right on some level, you are right on another level”, but “I am right, and you are wrong.” Doesn’t mean they didn’t respect the other side’s opinion (depending on the nature of machloikes, of course), but they still thought it to be wrong.

* * *

[Beginning of a long digression — feel free to skip to the next asterisks]

There is a second level of justification — from spiritual perspective. Obviously, in Judaism we have the statement that “eilu v’eilu dvorim Elokim chayim” (“these and these are words of the living G-d” — regarding the dispute between Shammai and Hillel, but more abstractly regarding most other disputes). What is sometimes overlooked, as I mentioned before, that Shammai and Hillel themselves still believed the other party to be wrong. More importantly (for us), we follow only one of their specific opinions for Halacha purposes. And in many cases when we say that a certain halachic opinion is for this community, while other opinion is for another, it’s only due to the circumstances of us being in golus, as Rambam explains in the introduction to Mishnei Torah.

On the other hand, in many cases, of course, this is not true. We accommodate for multiple opinion in our psak din, and indeed, this is the beauty of Torah both from spiritual/metaphysical and sociological point of view (I can hear teeth grinding). From the latter perspective, says Reb Shlomo Yaffe, accommodation of multiple opinions in the final ruling (since all of them are right, despite sometimes obvious disagreement and even mutual exclusivity), the “bottom line” of Jewish law tends towards the middle. On the other hand, in case of, lehavdil, X-ity and Islam, with passage of time these religions acted like a centrifuge, pushing their choice of the ultimate interpretation of their texts towards the outside, the extreme.

Of course, we, as religious Jews, don’t care so much about sociology (this was just an interesting point explaining the difference between Abrahamic religions — the principle of “eilu v’eilu” vs. “my way or the highway”). From philosophical point of view, the principle of “eilu v’eilu” becomes interesting, because it reveals fully the unlimited and undefined nature of G-dliness, from which Torah stems.

I had a conversation once with an apikoires, who asked me if G-d can create a square circle (a more intelligent way to put the question with the stone). I told him that according to the school of chakirah, He cannot — but it’s a limitation not on G-d, but on our reality, or, as Rabbi Gottlieb put it, one our language (i.e., our logic). “When you say square circle, I hear words, but no meaning enters my mind. So, you’re asking me, can G-d create _____, and there is nothing in the blank. You did not ask any question.” Or, to put it differently, G-d could create a square circle, but it would be incompatible with our reality (it’s a slightly different statement from Rabbi Gottlieb’s, but I’ll just lump them in one category for now).

On the other hand, I said, the school of mysticism teaches that G-d indeed can create a square circle and even make it compatible with our reality. In fact, in our history, such things have happened (if you are lazy to read the whole post, in the case of Menoira oil both burning and not burning at the same time, or in the case of Aron Koidesh not taking any space). Now, how the square circle would look to us is a different story. Perhaps it would look like a hologram or, more simply, like a Necker cube, only not on the level of illusion or perceptual ambiguity, but in reality.

“This is interesting,” the apikoires said. “But this means that G-d could tell you to do X and not to do X at the same time. What would you do then?” He thought he had me, but he made a trap for himself. In fact, I explained, every law that G-d gave us is like this. Torah derives from G-dliness, which is multidimensional (infinitely-dimensional, even, one might say). It is the job of our authorities, then, to bring down a specific dimension of each law to this world — and this is where the disagreement stems from, when one authority’s spiritual level is different from that of the other, and as a result, they disagree on the practical “interpretation” of the law, since the particular dimension of the law that one brings down is different from that of another authority.

In practice, sometimes we rule in favor of one opinion, and sometimes in the other (because only one opinion may be appropriate for this world, for this particular place and this particular time), but sometimes we accommodate for multiple opinions. An example I give sometimes is that of dipping chalah in soup on Shabbos. On Shabbos, a Jew is not allowed to cook. Skipping many details, this means he is not allowed to put something defined legally as uncooked into a hot soup still in the first or second vessel of cooking. What about challah? Is baking the same as cooking? If it is, then he is allowed to dip challah in that soup (since something already cooked cannot be further cooked). If it’s not, then he is not allowed to dip challah in the soup (since that would be tantamount to cooking the challah). There is a disagreement in opinions.

We rule that lehatchilo one should not dip challah in the soup, but bediyeved, if someone already dipped the challah (e.g., having not paid attention), one is allowed to eat it. Thus, in our ruling we accommodate for both opinions, despite the fact that they are opposite and mutually exclusive.

Furthermore, from mystical perspective, we learn that even those opinions that were presented in Gemara and were clearly rejected as unsupported by our tradition, are still true on some spiritual level. In fact, they are even higher (from the point of view of gilui) than the opinions that were accepted — and this is why they were rejected, being incompatible with this lowly world (of course, b’etzem, the accepted opinions are higher, since they allow for dira b’tachtoinim). See this beautiful chapter (“Co-existence of Contradictory Truths”) from the Gutnick edition of Rambam’s 9th and 10th principles (with commentaries ranging from classical to those of the Lubavitcher Rebbe) for further discussion on the topic of the spiritual origin of different opinions and the reasons for their inclusion in Gemara (even those that were rejected).

[End of the long digression]

* * *

I think despite all of the above, however, we still overlook the other, non-accomodating side of the machloikes. Yes, sometimes we rule in favor of both parties. And sometimes we say that this is right for us, and this is right for them. But sometimes we rule in favor of only one opinion! Sometimes we say that only one opinion is more appropriate for everyone.

Or, more specifically, sometimes we follow a particular shitta, and even though we recognize the other shitta as beautiful, and part of Torah, and “words of the living G-d”, and shining brightly on some high spiritual level — but here, in this world, where we are trying to bring Mashiach, this shitta is less appropriate than the one we accept. Of course, people who hold according to that shitta may think the same about ours. And we think they are wrong in practice (or at least less right than we are), and they think we are wrong. And guess what? There is nothing wrong with thinking someone is wrong. There is not always a need to sweeten the pill.

Chess

(how computer sees a chess game)

I hope y’all are having a nice Yud Shvat.

Very nice (visually) computer chess player. (As far as skill, it’s not too great — I won without too much effort, and I am nowhere near a decent player; plus, I haven’t played chess for a long time, having switched from it to the greatest board game ever invented.)

This web-site illustrates very nicely the idea of framework of nodes and choices (all roads lead to Rome; all choices lead to Mashiach) and also why Go is so much cooler than chess.

Rabbi Shlomo Yaffe uses the moshol of chess to explain the hashgacha protis – bechira dichotomy.

Not evidence

News from our Pakistani friends (I didn’t know, by the way, that “Paki” is a racial slur — but then again, my grandmother is not the Queen of England, thank G-d):

Pakistan’s prime minister has dismissed the significance of a dossier handed over by India about the Mumbai attacks, saying it was just information and “not evidence”.

This reminds me of talking to some of my liberal friends about proof of Judaism. After I finish explaining Kuzari Principle (which proves that the story about Sinai revelation could not be invented and sold) to them, some of my friends do not argue against the Principle itself. What they say is: “Witnesses are not evidence”. Even 3 million witnesses. At the same time. At the same place. Of some events that happened every day (except Shabbos) for forty years. Simply not evidence. Perhaps just information — but not evidence.

If presented in court, yes, my friends agree, such witnesses would be considered as evidence. Even if it would mean making a life-or-death decision. But when it comes to G-d and Judaism — simply not evidence.

I wonder how some people’s brains work. I mean, I was an atheist myself for quite some time. I wasn’t stupid and irrational though. These people say religious people are irrational (and I don’t disagree regarding quite a few “believers”). At the same time these epitomes of rationalism rely on hergesh for morality (and take immoral stance in conflicts involving self-defense against murderers), rejecting evidence, supporting government’s economic policies and electing a President.

Also they shave and don’t wear hats.

I just don’t get it.