No Show

Well, Friday has come and gone and still no soft launch. The website exists...there's a logo there to prove it, but the schmucks at godaddy or wherever have not yet loaded our content. Bitches, them all. Did I mention that this week I seriously improved my mad html skillz? Now I can do crazy things like G_μν=8πT_μν without buttons. Yup, that was done by hand. Strange that the underline doesn't align, though. Anyway...

I've realized that by working I'm now just generally thinking less deeply than I once was. Science is great, but so little of it is philosophy. I mean, there's plenty of philosophy of science—no denying that—but your day to day discoveries? Just hypothesize and grind. And even when something is conceptually and not just pragmatically interesting—like this article I'm writing for Tuesday on how strange quarks dipping in and out of existence may account for 5% of a proton's magnetism—does that really, really provide much food for thought? Some, sure, but it doesn't BEG for you to ponder it. Furthermore, I'm not getting paid to think about this stuff. (I mean, I'm not really getting paid at all, but my travel stipend isn't for this stuff.) My job is just to research, understand, and present.

Is there any place I can find a job to actually ponder? I mean, I could get my Ph.D. in philosophy, I suppose, but you have to be GREAT to make a dent there, and I'd have to study a lot of philosophy I'm either totally frustrated by (helloooo, ethics) or don't really care about (helloooo, politics). I know going to law school seems like a strange idea after I just said that political philosophy is the last thing in the world (of philosophy) I want to study. Still, there might be a lot to think about there. Perhaps there's an advantage to studying something that's totally man-made and is admittedly man-made. Perhaps attempting to be, in some way, a purest in that environment could be really productive. More likely, it will just lead to tons of contradictions, as it does in every other field.

I find myself in an ethics bind (not an ethical bind, a bind about the study of ethics). I think that ethics are man-made. I don't think there's any objective code of ethics sitting out there beyond us. Ethics is fully human, invented by people, for people. I know we have a natural instinct to be ethical, but I don't think that points to any greater ethic outside of us. So I think that ethics is fundamentally descriptive of this feeling; not prescriptive from above/within/whatever. Point one. Point two: I have a personal feeling of what's right and wrong. We'll let it be, for now, that this may or may not be a consistent system, and if it is consistent, it may not be based on a coherent set of first principles. We'll just say that I think I generally know what people should do and why they should do it. Under what right do I have to impose this on other people? I know I spent a post blabbering about this before. But still. I care. My theories are generally based on utilitarian principles...perhaps not completely, but I generally think increasing others' well-being is a good thing and decreasing it is a bad thing.

Is point two even consistent with point one? Can I admit that I think ethics is descriptive and still believe that it has something to it? I don't think this human impulse reveals some greater truth. I just want people to be happy. Does this desire carry any weight if I believe it's internal?

Side/end note: Some people think that nobody's really good because when people do things for others, they're doing it for selfish reasons. I call someone who gains self-satisfaction by doing good things for other people "a good person." People who don't get off doing good for others are less good people. People who get off doing things that hurt other people are sadists. I think sadists who engage in healthy sadistic sex are kinda weird. (No, no, more than that.) This "health" implies they have a masochist with them who enjoys the pain. If I were a sadist (deidle deedle deidle...), I think I'd only want to watch people who didn't like to be in pain. I mean, are the screams enough if the other person is on the verge of orgasm? I'd be like, "No, don't cum! Writhe in agony! You hate this!" Kudos to the imagination of the folks who engage in consensual sadism...but aren't they always left unsatisfied?

Oh, the associations never cease...