Response to Ep 50

Introduction

After editing and producing Ep 50 of Jimbo Radio. I wanted to make a couple responses that I would have like to said during the episode. Listen here. 

Making Shit Up

I should rephrase. The people who created religions and progressed the ideas were not just "making shit up." They were mostly genuine. People follow their intuitions and resources they have available. People for most of human history had excellent reasons to believe, think, and create what they did. We still do. 

But with all the information I have available to me. There are way better explanations than what the greatest thinkers of antiquity came up with.

When I read Genesis (I'm rereading it now), it's stories. Similar to reading Homer. There are combinations of literary, mythical, allegorical, and, in general, creative techniques at hand. The words and ideas were most likely crafted over time. Changing a word here or rephrasing there to make it more poetic, easier to remember, etc. Like with Genesis, There is a Priestly creation account that is allegedly a later addition than the garden narrative. The Priestly account is like a prologue someone added later for a reason. Either way, two separate stories are combined into one work. And it's not hard to imagine why or how scribes could revise here and there to create a more unified piece. There is a lot more to this story too. See a review of Who Wrote the Bible by Richard Elliott Friedman for a fuller analysis.

Fine Tuning

It would be a way greater sign of God if we lived in a universe that wasn't suitable for life!

There are good and bad arguments on both sides. This is another example of people can find reasons and logic to support whatever they want to believe (not whatever, but many views can find something to support what they want). Here is a one stop shop for more philosophical engagement on the topic.

Child Birth: Eve vs Evolution

Why do women suffer during childbirth? 

I'm going to give two explanations. One from religion and one from evolution. This question must have bothered people for thousands of years. Having sex is pleasurable under most conditions. And then childbirth for most of human history is an event where women can die and suffer greatly (modern healthcare has changed the game). Stories help people understand why women suffer so much to keep our species propagating.

1) Women suffer during child because God is punishing all women for Eve's disobedience.

To the woman he [God] said, “I will make your pangs in childbirth exceedingly great; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.” - Genesis 3:16

2) Because humans have big brains and stand upright, women have a bio-mechanical challenge. How does one get a baby out of the birth canal? One solution is small helpless babies that takes a year to walk. But that isn't enough. Childbirth still creates strong contractions that compress blood vessels and create strong and intense pain signals. Women pay the price for big brains and bipedalism, both great tradeoffs for humans as a species. 

One of these stories is just obviously way better at explain why women suffer during childbirth. 

Pain Is Good

More on pain, pain is a helpful signal. There is a condition called congenital insensitivity to pain (CIP). If you're unfamiliar with the condition, the wiki link has a short video that captures the tragedy of painlessness. Once again, evolution and biology provide excellent explanations and stories. 

Objective Morals (aka Moral Realism)

Background

A friend and I were discussing objective morals. I thought all his claims and ideas were wrong. Of course, I liked my ideas. That lead me to look into the topic more. I looked up the leading logical arguments for moral realism, and I didn't find them very compelling compared to the arguments against moral realism.

Introduction

This is going to be a brainstorming post. I want to explain my ideas, thinking, and ask questions to guide the next phase of my inquiry.

My Biases

I don't believe in any creator, god, or religion. So the arguments built on a creator or attributes of a god are rejected because I reject the existence of those ideas. With that said, moral realism is not contingent on deism.

Evolution is one of the strongest theories in biology, if not all of science.

I believe in objective reality. Physical structures are undeniable. Ideologies and other abstract ideas are very much open for debate.

Epistemology wise, I'm a skeptic who leans heavily on 1) empiricism for knowledge that can be measured and 2) rationalism for knowledge that cannot be measured.

Logic is the best system of thinking.

The scientific method is the best system for understanding observable phenomena.

Questions (and how do we know?)

Are all, most, some, or few behaviors moral truths?

How many people have to agree for something to be a moral truth?

If people cannot agree, how do people decide what the moral truths are?

If there are moral truths, how can people know what they are? 

How do non human animals fit into the discussion?

How do psychopaths and or other sociopaths fit into the discussion?

How does the history of slavery and the abolishment of slavery prove/disprove moral realism?

How do laws prove/disprove moral realism?

If something like, do not murder, is a moral truth, how do we explain why people murder?

Even if everyone agrees murder is morally wrong, how do we know that's an objective truth and not culture?

For deist, what does it mean when a religion's god commands someone to break a moral truth?

If x is claimed to be a moral truth, does one situation where x is moral disprove x as a moral truth? 

My Priors

People do not agree.

The disagreement seems undeniable. I know that disagreement doesn't necessarily rule out moral realism, but it makes it obvious to me that people aren't going to agree. If we cannot agree, then how can we know which, if any, moral truths are true?

Let's look at killing.

A jainist might say killing a tree or plant is morally wrong. The US legal system might say killing is allowed in self defense. An army might say killing is allowed to protect and or conquer an area. Most people eat meat, so they think it is moral to kill animals for food. Hunters might hunt for sport. Many vegans stop eating meat because they decide it's morally wrong that animals have to suffer in factory farming conditions. And the list goes on. People have varying morals about killing. Maybe a moral realist would agree that killing isn't one of the moral truths.

It feels like I only need to find one black swan. Maybe this is a logical fallacy. But if a moral realist says x is a moral truth, I should only have to find one situation where x is moral.

What's Next?

Here are my next two stops. I'll add further resources as I find them. 

Moral Anti-Realism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Moral Realism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) 

“The Legendary Muhammad Ali”

She watched her eldest son, Muhammad Ali, sharpen his knife. The woman knew Ali would avenge his father’s murder. Ali and his brother received news of their rival’s location. Ali sheathed his knife in the sash of his robe.

As her sons were leaving their home, the woman said, “Keep an eye out and a knife sharp.”

“Of course, yamma,” Ali said.

The woman tore papyrus leaves, like limbs from a body, from the old books next to her oven.

The day before, Ali had found the books in a six-foot jar while digging for fertilizer. Ali hesitated to break the jar because he feared an evil spirit might be inside. When he considered there could be gold inside, he smashed the jar to pieces with his mallet. Instead, the jar contained 13 papyrus-bound books. He took them home and placed them next to his mother’s oven.

The woman continued to tear, crinkle, and burn the leaves as kindling. The leaves smoldered. The edges curled inward as they turned from brown to gray to white. She added more leaves until a flame ignited. The words, written in Coptic, an ancient Egyptian language using the Greek alphabet, became smoke, disappearing for the final time. Neither the woman nor her sons knew the monetary, historical, or spiritual value of the words being burned.

The sons returned. Their robes and beards were stained. Ali was excited to tell his mother the good news. “Yamma,” Ali said, “I chopped his limbs off and dug out his heart. We all ate it.”

She was proud of her sons. She said, “My sons, have some bread while it is fresh. I will heat water for you to wash.”

The woman tore more leaves to start another fire.

Ali said, “We have to get rid of these old books. The authorities will search the house.”

The next day, the books were taken to a local Coptic priest. Ali was arrested. The priest's brother, a schoolteacher, saw one of the books and recognized its value. The teacher took the book to Cairo and showed it to a physician interested in Coptic. The doctor alerted the Department of Antiquities (DoA). The DoA seized the book from the teacher.

The rest of the books were taken to Cairo and sold to antiquity dealers. The sales and rumors of the books increased investigations from authorities. The DoA bought one of the books and confiscated another ten. The DoA gave the books they obtained to the Coptic Museum in Cairo. The thirteenth book escaped Egypt through a Belgian antiques dealer. The Belgian tried to sell the remaining book in New York, eventually selling the remaining book to the Jung Institute of Zurich. Today, all the surviving books and fragments are at the Coptic Museum in Cairo.

What were these ancient Coptic books discovered by the heart-eating murdering Muhammad Ali? They were mostly Gnostic texts with a few other philosophical works, including an excerpt from Plato’s Republic. The majority of the texts had been lost for close to 1,500 years. Today, anyone can read all of these texts online for the price of their internet connection.

5k Warmup

I've been very focuses on my running the last several weeks. For the first time in over 15 years that I have created and followed a training plan. I have not missed a workout or run in the last six weeks. Now, that I finished my last quality workout yesterday, I have transitioned to my tapering. And I'm focusing on other aspects of the race. I made this warmup routine specific to me.  My usual warmup for workouts includes more lunges and a few other mobility/yoga poses. But I cut everything that isn't directly preparing me for running a 5k. Here is my sheet if anyone wants to copy and paste it. 

 

Notes from Episode 41: Knowing about Knowing

In my recent episode, Ep 41 Knowing about Knowing, with Brendan Howard, we continued our discussion about knowing. Our conversation was based on a survey about epistemology I created with the assistance of GPT. We also listened and discussed an episode of Theories of Everything with Professor Jennifer Nagel.

Human Memory

In the episode, I slightly misremembered a study on memory related to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Below are the main ideas related to my episode reference brought to you by GPT:

1. Memory decay slows after one year: Flashbulb memories (the personal context: where you were, who told you, etc.) and event memories (facts about the attack itself) both show a forgetting curve that flattens significantly after the first year.

2. Emotional details fade more than factual ones: Emotional responses associated with flashbulb memories (e.g., how shocked or upset you felt) are remembered less accurately over time than non-emotional details like location or the person who told you.

3. Subjective confidence remains high despite inaccuracies: By multiple follow‑up points (1 week, 11 months, 35 months), many participants recalled different details from their original reports—and yet they continued to express high confidence in their recollections. 

After the initial decay, both flashbulb and event memories tend to become more stable—though not necessarily more accurate—over time.

Cumulative Selection

Cumulative selection can explain how a small advantage can build over time through natural selection. Ronald Fisher, a relatively unknown genius and polymath, developed mathematics that explain how small mutations that increase fitness, even with a very small advantage, can survive over time.

Using population genetics, a gene with a 0.1% selective advantage can dominate a population of 10,000 within 20,000 generation. That would be about 500,000 years for humans. 

In the podcast episode, I generally explained why babies should look like their fathers. In theory, if babies, who looked like their fathers, had even a very small advantage, like 0.1%, that advantage would dominate human populations after 20,000 generation, or 500,000 years. If the advantage was larger, it would dominate faster. 

Links 

• https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mrMGHtNcRD3LMFhVeiMdlrqoEv-XXe-2XHwu4VIVVwA/edit?usp=sharing

• https://open.substack.com/pub/curtjaimungal/p/why-universal-skepticism-is-philosophys?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

• https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2925254/

Top 500 Companies with Time

Background

I referenced the top corporations longevity, or lack there of, in a recent podcast episode, click for the episode link.

I wanted to express how the top companies change and die off over time. Here are some links, quotes, and visuals. Here is my GPT searching for the topic.

Introduction

The Fortune 500, not the S&P 500, is a list of the top 500 US companies by revenue. The magazine Fortune has been publishing a list since 1955. 

As of 2024's list, 49 companies have been on the list every year since 1995.

The S&P 500 is an index fund of top US companies. The S&P 500 was created in 1957. Today, 53 of those original companies are still in the S&P 500.

Main Idea

Companies come and go. Less than 10% of the top 500 companies in 1955 were top 500 companies in 2024. A little over 10% of S&P 500 companies in 1957 are still top 500 companies.

There are lots of factors and disruptions, but over time, it is hard for companies, even if they buy out smaller companies and merge with other large companies to stay on top.  

The image below shows the changes in S&P 500 companies over time. At times companies stay for a long time, and then at other times they quickly disappear. If we averaged and leveled off the trend, we'd see a steady and slight decrease with time.  

For More

https://www.axios.com/2019/07/22/fortune-500-corporations-extinction

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/how-the-top-sp-500-companies-have-changed-over-time/ 

Rereading Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

Rereading Favorite Books

I've been slowly rereading my favorite books. My friend AJ has joined me for most of them.

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison is one of favorite rereads so far. Here is a lightly revised review from when I first read the book in 2020.

This book had me hooked. I read Beloved and liked it, but it was a tough read. This book is easier to read and follow, but one can also dive deeper and be jealous and amazed at how skilled Toni Morrison was. I'm going to binge her work for a while (and I did).

The dialogue is excellent. I don't always pay close attention to dialogue. It's easy to notice when it's bad. But I can't recall a book or movie with better dialogue. The characters' voices are unique and funny, and their conversations are fresh.

The plot and drama builds and reveals. I was content the whole read. And then every other chapter or so there were surprises I never expected. Everything connects and comes back. The craft is perfect.

Rereading Song of Solomon 

As much as I liked it last time, it was even better this time. Knowing the story and characters had me especially attentive to all the details Morrison puts into her craft, seeing more clearly how characters are formed and evolved throughout the story.

The plot is full of action and suspense.

It's a male centered point of view, but the female characters stand tall. The main character Milkman is finding his way through two opposing extremes of his day. Milkman is born into a rich northern black family. He journeys to the rural south for something and if you want to find out if he finds it, you'll have to read the novel.

Here is a taste of the dialogue:

“Like a riverboat pilot?” Macon asks.
“No not like no riverboat pilot. Like a Christ-killer Pilate. You can’t get much worse than that for a name. And a baby girl at that.”
“That’s where my finger went down at.”
“Well your brain ain’t got to follow it. You don’t want to give this motherless child the name of the man that killed Jesus, do you?”
“I asked Jesus to save me my wife.”
“Careful, Macon.”
“I asked him all night long.”
“He give you your baby.”
“Yes. He did. Baby name Pilate.”
“Jesus, have mercy.”
“Where you going with that piece of paper?”
“It’s going back where it came from. Right in the Devil’s flames.”
“Give it here. It comes from the Bible. It stays in the Bible.”
And it did stay there, until the baby girl turned twelve years old and took it out, folded it up into a tiny knot and put in a little brass box, and strung the entire contraption through her left earlobe (19).

Here are a couple other quotes that stood out to AJ and I:

A glimpse at the theme of love:

“Gimme hate, Lord,” he whimpered. “I’ll take hate any day. But don’t give me love. I can’t take no more love, Lord. I can’t carry it...It’s too heavy. Jesus, you know, you know all about it. Ain’t it heavy? Jesus? Ain’t love heavy?" 

Milkman's feelings toward Hagar:

She was the third beer. Not the first one, which the throat receives with almost tearful gratitude; nor the second, that confirms and extends the pleasure of the first. But the third, the one you drink because it's there, because it can't hurt, and because what difference does it make?

Guitar trying to comfort Hagar:

“You can't own a human being. You can't lose what you don't own. Suppose you did own him. Could you really love somebody who was absolutely nobody without you? You really want somebody like that? Somebody who falls apart when you walk out the door? You don't, do you? And neither does he. You're turning over your whole life to him. Your whole life, girl. And if it means so little to you that you can just give it away, hand it to him, then why should it mean any more to him? He can't value you more than you value yourself.” 

The opening of the book:

The North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance agent promised to fly from Mercy to the other side of Lake Superior at three o'clock. Two days before the event was to take place he tacked a note on the door of his little yellow house:

At 3:00 p.m. on Wednesday the 18th of February, 1931, I will take off from Mercy and fly away on my own wings. Please forgive me. I loved you all.
 

(signed) Robert Smith,
Ins. agent

 

More on flying:

“How come it [peacocks] can't fly no better than a chicken?"
"Too much tail. All that jewelry weighs it down. Like vanity. Wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.” 

 

The last sentence of the book:

If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.

 
I could keep going. The book is full of great writing. 

Teaching Tools

If I ever find myself teaching again and I'm lucky enough to teach this book, I want to save these resources. I briefly skimmed them and might read some later. 

https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/ebos-landing/

https://commons.hostos.cuny.edu/columbiacommoncoreathostos/song-of-solomon/

https://scalar.lehigh.edu/toni-morrison/song-of-solomon-1977-overview-and-links

https://corebooks.commons.gc.cuny.edu/song-solomon-2/