Fiat pax in virtute tua

I had no idea that a natural language could have an actual assignment operator (that is, something like e.g. "LET x = 10" or "x <- 10" in programming languages), until I've discovered than Latin does. It's done through the word fiat. So, for example, "Thy will be done" is fiat voluntas tua, and "let there be light" is fiat lux. I like that a lot.

(You might object that this isn't really assignment since it seems to be just saying "LET x" as opposed to "LET x = y". But it is; it's just that, as is usually the case with natural languages, a lot is left implicit. For example, what fiat lux is really saying is something like "LET new state of the world = old state of the world + light".)

You can't ever defend yourself with rhetoric or logic. Which means sometimes you just can't really defend yourself at all.

Edward Feser writes:

Prominent conservative politicians and churchmen have all essentially caved in on the substance of the dispute over "same-sex marriage."  None of them will publicly express the slightest moral disapproval of homosexual behavior, and few even bother anymore with social scientific arguments supporting the benefits of children being raised by both a mother and a father. (...) All they ask is that religious believers who on moral grounds disapprove of "same-sex marriage" not be forced to cooperate formally or materially with it.  The circumstances where this might occur are, of course, very rare.  No one is proposing that business owners might refuse to serve a customer simply because he or she happens to be homosexual.  What is in view are merely cases where a business owner who objects to "same-sex marriage" would be forced to participate in it, say by providing a wedding cake or wedding invitations.  Nor would his refusal to participate inconvenience anyone, since there are plenty of business owners who have no qualms about "same-sex marriage." 

In short, what conservatives are proposing is not only extremely modest, but is being defended in the name of their opponents’ own principles, the most liberal of principles, viz. the Jeffersonian principle that it is tyrannical to force someone to act against his conscience.

This is a hard lesson to learn: Sometimes appealing to your opponent's good faith will not only not work but actually bring about more abuse. The reason is simple. By showing someone that in their treatment of you they are violating their own stated principles, you basically prove to them that they are a hypocrite. No one likes to think that about themselves, and everyone is going to get angry when confronted with an argument to that effect. And the degree of anger is going to be directly proportional to how hard the argument is to refute.

Everyone is a hypocrite, however, and everyone is prone to get pissed when presented with evidence thereof; so why even write about something so generally true as to be completely boring?

Because some people have power and others don't. That's why the cultural left's reaction to the Indiana religious freedom law is so utterly, irredeemably, insanely unhinged. You see, if you prove to someone that they're a hypocrite, they'll get angry with you; but if they also happen to think they are more powerful than you are, they'll do everything they can to make you pay. This is what the current spectacle is really about. The left has enjoyed cultural power for quite some time now, which is why they feel that at this point they can fight not just those they disagree with, but also those who happen to correctly call them out on their bullshit, regardless of how well meaning and non-threatening they may be.

Link to a great post: Report to Emperor Tiberius, First Draft

Report to Emperor Tiberius...

The only hope when all hope is lost

Even if you are on the brink of damnation, even if you have one foot in hell, even if you have sold your soul to the devil as sorcerers do who practice black magic, and even if you are a heretic as obstinate as a devil, sooner or later you will be converted and will amend your life and save your soul, if - and mark well what I say - if you say the Rosary devoutly every day until death for the purpose of knowing the truth and obtaining contrition and pardon for your sins.

--St. Louis Marie de Montfort 

Frege's notation is great

It gets a bad rep, and I have no idea why. Propositions are really trees, that's their essence, muddled by the fact that, due to accidents of history we never see the essence, just the suppressed form of a line. Or perhaps, in everyday speech, we are too used to compound propositions being just long sequences of conjunctions, where the potential tree-ness isn't actualized. But statements are trees, and they will resists any attempts to force them to mimic something which they are not, i.e. linear sequences, by becoming obstinately hard to understand. If you don't believe me, try using nothing but the Reverse Polish Notation for any amount of time, and let me know how long it takes for it to drive you bonkers. 

Freedom of speech

Is a collective illusion shared by people who never said anything unpopular.

Charts that end in tears

Felix Salmon has a great piece about bitcoins. In it, he presents the following chart:

It inspires him to write,

There are a couple of reasons why the [bitcoin] bubble is sure to burst. The first is just that it’s a bubble, and any chart which looks like the one at the top of this post is bound to end in tears at some point.

Now where was it that I last saw a chart which looked similar to the one Salmon thinks is the sign of the Apocalypse? Oh wait...

What coding teaches you about life

Anyone who's ever been writing computer programs, no matter whether professionally or as a hobby, has surely had the following experience numerous times. You just wrote a script. It's not trivially simple but not very complicated either. While the task it's supposed to do or a problem it's supposed to solve is in a literal sense new, you actually have dealt with somewhat similar problems many times before so the task feels quite routine. You have a clear idea what you need to do. You write your code, careful not to make any stupid mistakes, and when it's obvious to you that it will do what it's supposed to do, you run it.

And it doesn't work.

Of course, since the task is conceptually straightforward to you, this must mean there's a very trivial error somewhere, an unmatched bracket or whatever. So you check the thing very carefully, line by line, for any sign of any stupid mistakes. And you find that there aren't any. Frustrated, you run it again. Of course this time, it doesn't work either.

You concede there must be a conceptual error somewhere, so you look up all the scripts you wrote in the past that dealt with similar things, to see where you've gone wrong this time around. And you just can't see it. It looks to you like this time you've done everything just the way you have all those times in the past; the only difference seems to be that in the past it was working and now it's not.

In situations like this, every programmer works from the assumption that the reason the code doesn't work is because they did something wrong, even though they have no idea exactly what they'd screwed up. They realize that you can be wrong even though you cannot possibly think of a reason why you'd be wrong. That the fact you have no specific idea about where you could be making a mistake isn't evidence that you aren't making one.

In short, this kind of experience teaches you that you don't know what you don't know.

This may all seem trivial, but I don't think it is. In life, real life, I see people who are unaware of this, all the time. People who think something to the effect of "I can't see any plausible way in which I could be wrong about this; therefore, I must be right". You can't do that when you code though. You can't just will your code to work because you see no reason why it shouldn't.

From the 'I wish I wrote that' file

Robert P. Murphy writes:

There’s nothing in the gospel accounts that literally violates the laws of physics as we currently understand them. (...) Mark never writes, “And behold, the Lord violated the conservation of energy.” John never claims, “Then He taught them, saying, ‘The kingdom of God is like a man who measured the position and momentum of an electron perfectly.’”

I'm not talking about substance, though I happen to agree with it, just about form. Funniest thing I've read in a while.

Facts shmacts

This is just one small example of a pretty staggering trend in Polish journalism: a healthy dose of contempt for facts. Here's a link to an online account of a public meeting that three Polish journalists had recently had, in which they talked about all matters EU and Cyprus. One of those journalists, some guy named Marek Magierowski, had apparently talked about how the whole Cyprus commotion is good for Germany because it exerts downwards pressure on the Euro, and is also quoted as having said:

There was a moment during which the yield on German 10-year bonds fell below zero. German government is able to essentially borrow money at no cost.

OK, now go and google "germany 10-year bond yield". Your first hit will be this chart. Now what does it tell you about Mr. Magierowski or those who listen to him and the likes of him without investing two seconds on Google?