Saturday, March 31, 2018

Rebuilding a Hierarchy of Values

Having abandoned any reliance on a god concept, all we have is logic and reason to define a moral code of behavior. We do not wish to cause stress to people who utilize god concepts for comfort, but we will not be musseled either. All harm is unintended, but that is one of the issues weaknesses of being faith based. 

We all have some form of a hierarchy of values concept, just like we all have a philosophy of life. It may be essentially hereditary, as absorbed from your family traditions, unconscious or it may be a conscious developed concept. It is likely not logical unless it has been developed as such, later in life. So what does this hierarchy look like?

First, the foundation principal is likely that our like, human life is the most valuable thing we have, and that good things increase this value while bad things risk, devalue or detract from that value. We are individuals, yet cooperation is required for society. Equality is therefore implied into the decisions, yet we are individuals. At this value level, our ability to judge and prudence, to do the right thing must occur in a virtue table. Which virtue is most important must also be defined.  At this same level, there must also be an understanding of what is our responsibly, and what is others. Some things are up to us and some are not. We have the fundamental ability to assent to a concept or not. This is the limit of our free will, our control for we have only influence over our own body, not control. Knowledge of what is good and what is bad, that is increased or decreases the value of human life must follow shortly.

So there are quite a few concepts at this fundamental level, all packed closely. The value of the individual human life must be the primary value, else nothing else matters. The state, family, nor anyone has no claim over the individual. Do not make a slave of anyone, nor allow anyone to make a slave of us, equality, may be the second principal, but judgement is required to make that statement. This suggests to me that there a lump of equal second step hierarchy, or a splitting between values, virtues, behaviors, concepts, principals, abilities, skills, and similar concepts. It is like the force splitting phase change as space heats above absolute zero.

(aside) At absolute zero all movement stops, all forces must be zero, they are one. as heating occurs, all the forces split, movement starts, and particles come into existence. Before there was only cold empty space, nothing, no boundary's, nothing. It is an unstable space.

We measure time in term of revolutions of a planet around a nothing special star, our sun. If time is true and orthogonal to the other dimensions, we can only approximate it, and we are likely to be off, all depending on how we measure time. If we assume time is as we measure it, then we can conceive of time variation, as a fast clock vs slow clock, but that is only the measurement error. Oh well, in the end we all just die anyway.

So what is on the third step of the hierarchy.  Truth, knowledge, wisdom, evidence, from first principals. The term first principals was used in engineering, and had a definition of known simple processes, fundamental logic, and the like. Perpendicular planes remain plane was one of the fundamental concepts of bending formula, and that is true within the functional range of structural bending, and I do not remember enough about plastic hinges moments, and they do apply to limit state designs. Anyway, after the phase change like split into values, principals, behaviors, everything becomes messy and requires more work.


Friday, March 23, 2018

New Car Dealers

In Alberta, the new car dealers were so unethical that the Alberta Government required an organization to clean up the industry.

The Alberta Motor Vehicles Industry Council was started. So do AMVIC dealers follow the rules. No.

The AMVIC state that the dealer may charge the advertised price plus GST, that is all. But the dealers try to sucker the customers into paying a bunch of other fees as well, which is illegal. That does not stop them of trying. What does that say about their ethics?

Well ethical car dealers are hard to find. Do they exist? Well, I have not yet found one. Oh well. It is better to know that the dealer is unethical when you are in need of a car, rather to go in thinking they are ethical.

So what about a hierarchical priority of our values? So the unethical car dealer places dollars above there ethical reputation. Where do I place dollars and ethics in my values hierarchy?  Well, I considered my P.Eng ethics to be greater than any single job. I was pushed to "approve" bullshit a number of times, and rejected it, and then never got paid by one client. We lost another client for not approving fill that was dumped on snow and ice. We are a society awash in the unethical, on top of the 20% psychopaths, and 20% altruistic. It is a society problem, and will result in the failure of modern civilization. Oh well, in the end we all just die anyway.

Those who do not see or will not act on the looming Co2 contamination crises, the political corruption, the economic over-reach, the carbon free energy need of this country, and the similar issues; which one will be the end of our society?

But before the end is the good life, where we can all enjoy ourselves as we destroy our environment, society, the like.   

Monday, March 19, 2018

In Memory of the Past

We are thrust into life, not by choice but by random chance. We are dropped on this earth at a location picked by chance events of others lives. We are given genetic characteristics, and develop in a environment that happens to exist where and when we are dropped. Early on, some are expected to have gratitude for these chance events, even when much of our life has been spent in pain, even thinking the pains are normal. Later we make our own choices, based on feelings, aberrations of the future, opportunities that we perceive, often finding that when we arrive, the future we were promised does not exist, and we are left scrambling.

We are individuals, going through life mostly alone, or with someone else, but separate. By the time some of us have figured it out, it is gone, or changed so much. We now live in a overpopulated world of people who are too psychopathic on average. Not a pleasant place, but if we dart from one safe environment to the next, it is ok, and in the end we all just die anyway.

We are dropped on this world without influence, and some rise to a position of influence, but looking around, I do not see many nice people in these positions of influence. I do see a lot of not so nice people doing what ever they do, usually in search of money, and doing what they can to get by. There are some nice people mixed in. There are some nice in all the un-nice, few are all one way or the other, but I think, the number of ugly personalities is growing, fast.

We make the decisions we make for the reasons we make them, right or wrong. We did the best we could at the time. We can have no regret nor guilt. We can paint on our attitude of gratitude, peace, contentment, joy, wonder, understanding, whatever, and get on with living. Most lives are just common, unlike the fictional super humans of TV, just common. Some are money grubbers, forsaking ethics for money. It is likely the most common unsavory characteristic of these times.

Time is linear, one way, relatively consistent, and not something anyone can control. It has no beginning nor end, and is not circular. It is an unknown to mathematics shape, stretching back to negative infinity, and forward to positive infinity, which is a contradiction in terms, as that is two infinity, which cannot exist, by definition of infinity, so perhaps it is only say half infinity each way. But this does not matter to my lifetime.

As young adults we make decision, that set the course of our lives, for better or worse. We cannot hold any reservation nor regret. We must give life our full effort in one direction, choices are required. That is life.

  

Monday, March 12, 2018

Open Letter to Mr. Justin Trudeau, P.M.

Dear Sir:

As you are undoubtedly aware, the Sears bankruptcy, if you can call it that, has left a lot of seniors in finical straights. It was not a bankruptcy in the normal sense, but a planned asset stripping and looting of the company, including pension plan assets.

If the Government of Canada does not act to prevent such future occurrences, all pension plans will be considered to bait and switch sort of employment incentives, with no future value. That may make it more difficult to save for retirement, and dry up the retirement plans as a source of funds.

The question becomes what kind of country is Canada? One that allows the abuse of seniors, by allowing their small funds to be stolen by asset strippers? What kind of safeguards are not in place to prevent this abuse? How safe is any pension plan? Should I be keeping my funds under the mattress, or buying gold or Scotch?

I will not starve, there is always the public dole, but many have gone from comfortable to just getting by, as a result of the lack of oversight/regulation. Perhaps asset strippers should be in the same group as drug lords.

Thank you for your time. I will be voting in the next election if I survive until then.

Fred Tully

Thursday, March 8, 2018

Knowledge

For knowledge, the standard test has 3 points: it must be true, we need to believe it to be true, and the tough one, there must be some evidence. At once we see that religions fall short on the evidence part.

The Big Bang suggests that the Higgs field is as close to the creator as it gets. Within the Higgs field, things pop in and out of existence, randomly, but in pairs, one mater, one antimatter, and then collapse back and annihilate each other, but like the flying birds in a cage, have mass, and produce a force that generates more Higgs field. Dark matter, dark energy, well in one theory anyway, but what do I know.

Evidence, first hand knowledge is a bit rare on the internet, so perhaps all should be held in absence, unless we see the evidence. If it take years to know if it works, well that is not evidence enough. Statins are equivalent to placebos, but with three times the suicides. Oh well. Vaccinations work, or some do at least, except where we get clusters of problems, like Andrew Wakefield found from early vaccinations and autism and gut problems. So the vaccination industry went after Wakefield, just like the South African dieticians are after Tim Noakes https://www.outsideonline.com/2140271/silencing-low-carb-rebel    

So does this suggest that there is a problem with vaccinating early and autism? The Alberta guidelines states not before 3 years.  And what about red die number 2? And then there is garlic and vivid dreaming.


Friday, March 2, 2018

Revised ethics and upselling

When we apply the nine point scale to ethics, we see that upselling is less than neutral. At neutrality, fairness both ways is the hallmark. Upselling makes the consumer a mark, the dispenser a abuser. It makes a slave of the consumer, and the dispenser get more than he should, becoming the abuse. Both the employee and the company become unethical.This can be considered a 3 or 4 on the ethical scale, with 5 being neutral, a 1 being evil, and 9 the sage. Honest and fair dealings should be the law of the land, the ethical standard.

So the telecommunication giants, like Bell have a problem, once we apply a definition of ethical to their actions. Equality, justice, is the foundation of ethics. An impartial judge is necessary, but a definition to test against is also essential. Religions fail to provide a clear definition. Christianity provides a do unto others as you would they do unto you, but no test for fairness. Upselling depends on the unawareness of sucker, the greed of the individual, and the company doing the upselling. It is still usury, and that is lower than neutral ethics, but not illegal... yet.

Upselling is just down the road from selling products that do not work, or concepts that do not work. Catholics sold the belief that for a bit of money, you could buy your way into heaven. Most of the time it was give, give more, but is this event ethical. With the fairness test, and the lack of evidence that there is an afterlife, even the churches, all religions are likely unethical. We cannot prove it so, I cannot say unethical, but I feel that they are unethical by modern standards. It all comes down to what is the test of ethical neutral?

If I consider the test to be political equality, and sit back to consider the hypothetical situation, as the statin medical question, where the doctors are assumed to have more knowledge, and therefore their opinion is worth more, but do they. When we realize that seniors have a suicide rate approaching 1 percent, off statins and near 3 percent on statins. These numbers are from a Cochrane meta study review. The drug companies subtract the suicide deaths off before the analysis, because suicides have nothing to do with the study. Bull shit!! They are the only subjective number there is for quality of life. That says the quality of life goes down on statins. After that, there is only a slight advantage to be on statins, about three days longer life, if you tolerate them. One third to one half drop out of the study, which also says something. Oh well, in the end we all just die anyway. Well, what does this have to do with ethics?

The medical community is fanning great knowledge, to sell statins, but the benefit is not great until they slope the study. This is using hidden knowledge, which may not actually exist, to slope the playing field toward their side, which if we use the test of political equality, is less than neutral ethically. Once again we have the Andrew Wakefield situation. He found the problem, and pushed until the drug companies reacted, and they slaughtered him, not that he was wrong, but he did do some foolish things. Oh well, in the end we just die anyway. 

      

Thursday, March 1, 2018

ethics and a nine point scale

If one was to apply a nine point scale to ethics, what would the result be? There is space for foolish behavior, which is not wrong, but when someone else does something not quite right either, much shit happens. So what would a nine point ethics scale look like?

As far as behaviors go, perhaps :    evil, bad, foolish, goofy, neutral, better, best, good, sage ... or something like that.  So what would be the advantage, it is a variable grey scale, which allows that foolish behavior is not bad, just foolish. When the foolish get harvested by the predators, oh well.

So what drives some of us to what is right, and what drives others to do as they do? Greed in some cases, or realizing it is easier to take than to produce. Oh well. Or sexual urge, in the case of some. The Me too movement is out of hand. If they have committed a criminal acts, get charges laid. If not go away, not destroy the productive lives, even if they are assholes. Well perhaps the laws and or enforcement need to be changed. Perhaps companies will need to have video of all offices, just to protect the male employees. They may need evidence to protect the company. Now how does one avoid not looking at half nude ladies? well, with so few close on. It is just wrong to advertise that which is not for sale.