Uncommon Sense

January 5, 2026

The Thinking Lag

Filed under: Philosophy,Reality,Reason,Science — Steve Ruis @ 10:26 am
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There seems to be a vast gap between humanities best thinkers and humanities ordinary thinkers. This is understandable because thinking rarely pays the bills and so a great deal of time, often soul sucking time, is spent working jobs. That time doesn’t lend itself to thinking.

I ran across this question (Another damned trigger!) recently:

What can quantum mechanics tell us about the nature of reality?

I hope you are aware that quantum mechanics is famously successful in that its calculations are incredibly accurate. Unfortunately, it also makes no sense and explains almost nothing.

“If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don’t understand quantum mechanics.” (Widely attributed to Nobel laureate Richard Feynman)

This still seems to be the case, that is, understanding quantum mechanics is still a goal unrealized. So, if we do not understand it, how can we use it to understand “the nature of reality?”

Actually, I want to focus on “reality.” It exists in people’s minds as a rock bottom foundation to all that we observe going on around us.  Most people consider this to exist. It does not.

Reality is like so many other philosophical extremes, that also don’t exist. For example there is “empty space.” Never been found, doesn’t seem to exist. “Perfectly solid objects.” Never been found, don’t seem to exist. All objects, at least that we can interact with, are composed of atoms. Those atoms are composed of smaller parts. Those smaller parts, often enough, consist of even smaller parts. (Oh, the misery; is there no end to it?)

Aristotle stated “Nature abhors a vacuum,” and little did he know, he was right. A better statement would have been “nature abhors absolutes” a vacuum being a space completely empty. Consider “absolute zero,” a temperature you can’t get to from here. It exists as a concept but not in “reality.”

I think the concept of “reality” should be abandoned as it is more of a religious concept than a scientific one. Yes, yes, I know it is also a philosophical concept, but that doesn’t put it into a category labeled “useful.”

Human beings have a craving for certainty, certainty doesn’t exist either. Rather we should be striving for a minimum of uncertainty, or at least as much as can be, and a knowledge of how much actually exists.

July 16, 2024

Trump Needs to Produce the Medical Report

Filed under: Politics,Reason — Steve Ruis @ 9:13 am
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Donald Trump’s first splash on the political front was demanding a copy of President Obama’s birth certificate, to prove he was qualified to run.

With regard to Mr. Trump’s encounter with a shooter, he claims “the bullet hit his ear.” Another claims that the injury was caused by flying glass from a shattered teleprompter. There is a big difference between being shot and being shot at.

Mr. Trump showed up at the GOP Convention with a playing card sized, flat white something or other afixed to his ear, so big so that it was clearly visible from afar and in photos. But the “bandage” was flat and square, which is hardly how a bullet riddled ear would be bandaged.

Trump needs to show the doctor’s report and not just brag about how “he was shot,” because there is no evidence that shows he was actually shot.

June 30, 2023

Of Course, They Did . . . Follow-up

Filed under: Culture,Education,History,Politics,Reason — Steve Ruis @ 12:21 pm
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In the wake of the SCOTUS eviscerating affirmative action laws, I read this on The Guardian:

“In 1996, Californians voted to ban race-conscious affirmative action policies in the state’s public universities. Since then, eight other states – Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Washington – have also barred race-based considerations, often through ballot initiatives approved by the states’ voters. Some universities in these states report that the bans have made it significantly harder to achieve racial diversity on their campuses.”

Full Disclosure—I was born and raised in California and served in its higher education establishments.

Now, I repeat here the statistics for the 2020 undergraduate classes at U.C. Berkeley: “UC Berkeley’s undergraduate population is made up of 42.2% Asian, 19.7% White, 4.4% Black, and 21% Hispanic students.”

Okay, now look at those statistics and explain to me how “racial diversity” does not exist there?

People often equate “proper” diversity when the percentage of students in the college/university parallels the percentages of students in the general population. In California, the only to do that is to admit via a lottery and nobody wants that. If you want to have “admission standards” you are creating a system where some win and some lose. If the standards are valid and properly executed, those who win are the students most likely to benefit from attendance and succeed in those colleges and universities.

If U.C. Berkeley’s admission standards are so executed, they have identified the students who most want to go there, by exhibiting the traits and accomplishments established in the standards.

Apparently “white” students don’t want to attend there as much. Which makes the systems of “legacy students” at places like Harvard even more egregious.

Postscript It also seems that if UCB’s experience were to play out at Harvard University, it would be the farthest thing from “to return higher education to white, elite control.”

And, I focus on California’s systems because those are the ones I have the most experience with.

September 11, 2020

Doing the Time Warp

Filed under: Culture,Reason,Religion — Steve Ruis @ 11:07 am
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Consequences, there are consequences . . . to being a know it all.

Apparently the Christian god knows everything that has happened and will happen. This means this god already knows what you will be praying for next week, next year, and in ten years. Already knows.

Musical Interlude
Let’s do the Time Warp again
It’s so dreamy
Oh, fantasy free me
So you can’t see me
No, not at all . . .

So, if this god already has heard your prayers, why would it wait until you actually said them to respond? If your prayer sounds like a good idea, it should be implemented immediately, no? So, if the prayer was, say, to save a believer’s daughter from a deadly disease, the god could step in, prevent the child from getting the disease in the first place and thus avoid all of the pain, suffering, and anguish on the part of the child and parents . . . no?

Of course, if this god were interested in the credit for the saved little life, then waiting would make such a “miracle cure” more dramatic, no? But to whose benefit is that?

Plus, it is claimed that this god has a plan for each and every one of us. If it already knows what will come about, wouldn’t that have been worked into his plan already? This would mean that prayers would be totally useless/ineffective, which studies prove them to be, so maybe this is why. This god has already taken your prayers into account and the plan was formulated with those being known, so whatever you pray for will come up empty. What will happen has already been decided.

If, as part of your plan, you are to get deathly sick, go in hospital, almost die, but survive and recover your health. All of your Christian friends, however, will have been beavering away praying that you recover, see that you have recovered and shouts of “Praise God!” will rise up in church on Sunday. Of course, had you died, they would have said that their god had other plans for you. Either way god wins and this is less work for him and so is more likely than a working model of intercessionary prayer.

Why such a being would give a rat’s fart for what you think is also a mystery, along with why he would want you to love him. “God needs your love” says many things about that god and none of them are flattering.

But then, I guess being all-knowing is its own reward . . . and punishment. It sounds like a curse to me.

PS Bonus points for who recognizes the song the lyric was snatched from.

 

April 6, 2013

We Are All Atheists

Filed under: Philosophy,Politics,Religion — Steve Ruis @ 8:55 am
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You are probably expecting the argument that because each of us does not believe in some of the gods (Odin, Mithras, Ka, etc.) then we are all atheists to some degree. Nope, not this time. That argument is clever . . . and specious, so let’s not go there.

The God Log
Where I want to go is to challenge one and all to do what dieters do to see what their actual food intake is; they keep a food log. Every morsel of food they eat is logged/written down to show them exactly what their reality is. Almost everyone doing this exercise is shocked by the difference between what they actually eat and what they think they do.

So, I would like to challenge theists of all stripes to run a God Log for a week or more. In this log, when you are moved to do something motivated by your religion’s morality or dogma, you write an entry in your log.

Now, some of you will think “On Sunday mornings I go to church, I can log that.” No, you cannot . . . unless you are motivated by some aspect of your religious morality or dogma. If you go to church services out of habit/inertia, that doesn’t count. If you go because it is a social event you enjoy, then you cannot count that. If your minister or priest inspires you to actions appropriate to your religion, then that should be logged.

Get the idea?

I may be surprised at your outcome, but I think not. I think we all lead vastly secular lives. We get out of bed in the morning and then we do things associated with staying alive: we eat breakfast, we drive to work, we do our jobs, we drive home, we eat dinner, we watch TV, we go to bed. Or we get up, fast and meditate on our religions values, we go out into the community to positively affect the lives of strangers, we donate time at the homeless shelter, etc., etc. I imagine most of us fall in between those two patterns, but closer to the first than the second.

If you do your God Log and find out that 99% of your life is lived in a secular fashion, then there are some questions one may legitimately ask, such as how much impact does your religion have on your life, your decisions, etc.

One might argue that the decisions that draw upon one’s religious values do not come that often. One might, but then one has to ask how relevant those mores are. If you walk past a panhandler without giving alms to the poor, do you log that or do you even notice? If you receive a request for charity via mail or email, how do you respond? (Delete, delete, delete?)

Too many religious discussions are based on something other than our own reality. In the Middle East, people are acting on their religion on a daily basis. Why right now I see where Saudi men are buying young Syrian women in record numbers. The Syrian young women and girls are sacrificing for their families, who get the money, and the Saudi men get a young woman to cuddle with. That could be logged.

Such a log could tell you, really tell you, what role your religion plays in your life.

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