Politics, Philosophy, or Philolotics?

One of the most common (and most baffling) phenomena of the internet is the constant stream of polls and surveys we are subjected to. The amount of time people spend reading them and filling them out is simply staggering.

So, naturally, I had to get in on the action.

I've written a list of questions which may be slightly different from the usual fare of the internet quiz. Not all of them really have answers, but hopefully most of them make you do a double take, or at least think about the answers for a moment.

So, too, I have tried to steer away from the obvious and well-worn philosophical questions and instead present you with a list which I imagine is much more characteristic of my own branch of philosophical and political thought.

In no particular order:

1. How much would you pay to see a dragon?
2. How much would you pay to eat dragon meat?
3. Would you switch genders for a day?
4. If offered the chance, would you become a vampire?
------- b. How about a werewolf?
------- c. A merfolk?
------- d. A selkie?
------- e. Are there other mythical creatures you would be willing to become?
5. If God offered to trade places with you, would you do it?
6. If you were given the chance to be one of the colonists on humanity's first extraplanetary colony - knowing that it would mean never seeing Earth again - would you accept?
7. If a magical, religious, or technological artifact of immeasurable power was discovered - for example, the Holy Grail, the One Ring, or the Monolith of the Watcher - should we try to harness that power, or is it best to leave such things alone?
8. If the dinosaur-cloning pseudoscience from Jurassic Park would work, should we do it?
9. Do you believe in the existence of sentient alien life forms?
------- b. Is your answer a good thing?
10. If you could have robotic limbs that were indistinguishable from the real thing in all ways - including feeling - except stronger, more resilient, more precise, and faster, would you be signing up for the replacement?
11. If you had to point to a single act or moment of history, and say "This is, absolutely, the worst thing humanity as a species has ever done," what act or moment would you choose?
12. If you had to point to a single act or moment of history, and say "This is, absolutely, the best thing humanity as a species has ever done," what act or moment would you choose?
13. Is there a limit to knowledge? Is there a finite amount of stuff that can be known?
------- b. If so, how long will it take us to get there?
------- c. If not, is acquiring new knowledge a fruitless endeavour?
14. What are you actually doing right now?
15. Did you answer all the questions truthfully?
------- b. Is it possible to answer a question truthfully?

So, I hope those questions were interesting, bizarre, and thought-provoking, and I look forward to seeing what you all have to say by way of answers.

Also, if you haven't already, have a look at the comments on the previous post. I'm not sure how happy I am with the post itself, to be honest, but oh man, am I ever happy with the comments.

The Internet According to Etarran

So, I spend a lot of time on the internet (recently even more than usual) and as such, I consider myself to be something of an expert on it, insofar as such a ridiculous claim can possibly be true.

One of the main problems with the internet is its anonymity: it is far too easy to forget that the people you are interacting with are, in fact, real people, and as such, deserve to be accorded at least a modicum of respect. Exacerbating this is the fact that there can be no real consequences for misbehaviour; no matter how terrible you act, the internet will protect you behind its screen of faceless text.

And so, being the polite and kindly person that I am, I thought I would present my own personal version of internet etiquette. I'm curious, in fact, as to whether you will agree with the rules I have worked out for myself.

So, without further ado, here it is: The Internet According to Etarran.

General Rules

1. Real Names Are For No. The internet is a scary place: it brings you in contact with the best and worst of humanity, and sometimes, that makes it very dangerous. There is a reason the internet-safety courses (stupid as they are) stress keeping your personal information offline: you never know who will end up finding it.

2. Real Life Is For No. This is, if anything, more important than the first. It's not only that someone may find your emotion-wracked diatribe and in some way use it against you, it's that the people it is about will undoubtedly read it. The most insidious quality of text-based communication is that it makes you much, much ruder than you are. Even the most innocent of things can lead to terrible misunderstandings, and so keeping the less-innocent things clear of The Great Big Truck is paramount. (There are cases where this rule is okay to break. Under no circumstances can this one and number one be broken at the same time.)

3. Language Is Your Friend. After all, one of the main dangers of the internet is miscommunication. It takes less than a second to read and edit what you've written before you send or post it. Try it. Spelling, grammar, and punctuation: the better yours is, the more people will listen to you.

4. Do Not Get Involved. Do you want to be this person? The internet is sometimes so shocking, so horrible, that you feel you have to reach out and stop it. Racism, Religious fanatics, Anti-religious fanatics, hatred, ignorance, and everything else you can possibly imagine: all of these are everywhere in the nihilistic soupy froth of human failure and brilliance that we pipe into our eyes (Often all in the same YouTube comment). Sometimes someone is so wrong, you just want to stop them. Resist the temptation! It will only end in tears.

These four rules are pretty much what guides my internet usage, insofar as I am able to conform to them. Am I missing anything? Am I dead wrong? Tell me.

Another thing I find is that people often mistake the level of formality of the internet medium they are using. And so, a handy list:

1. Blog posts. A blog is not a blackboard, where the posts are erased as soon as they're written. These are your thoughts. You should try to do them justice. (Okay, frequently guilty).

2. Email. Email is slightly less formal than a hard copy letter, but it is not a chat message. Remember, the people receiving your email will have it forever. If that doesn't scare you, it should.

3. Forum Posts. Forum posts and email are actually equal in formality. While a forum post doesn't stick around forever, it still exists for about three or four years, and in the time it is online, a lot more people see it than do an email. As such, think about what you write, don't be a jerk, and everything will be fine.

4. Facebook and other single-thread message boards. These aren't quite fora, but they aren't quite not, and so are difficult to classify. Still, the easy rule to apply is "How long will people see it?" Since the answer is "It could easily be a year or so." I would exercise a certain amount of caution. Note that private messages in these media (And on fora), are the same as email.

5. MSN, IRC, and other chat clients. You should still spell properly, but what you say will be gone in five minutes, so it doesn't matter as much how it looks. Just don't be fooled into thinking it's a real conversation.

6. In-game text and voice chat. spd + style -. MEDIC!

So, that ends The Internet According to Etarran. Do you agree? Disagree? Hate me? Sound off!

Life is the Bubbles (Excuses, Excuses)

So, recently I have been accused by several separate people of neglecting this blog, after having promised so faithfully to maintain it (and hug it and love it and call it George). To this spurious accusation I say: "Fools! You know not whereof you speak!"

Because, in fact, far from neglecting my blog, I've been paying it a lot of attention. No, what I've been neglecting is not the blog, but the readers.

"How," you ask, "is it possible to be writing blog entries but not have people reading blog entries?" Well, I'm glad you asked that question, in fact, because it's exactly the one I have set out this post to answer. The reason you've seen nothing here is not that I haven't been writing, but that I haven't been finishing what I write. In fact, this has become such a problem that I now have more than three times as many unfinished drafts of posts as I do actual posts.

So, in lieu of actually getting to work and finishing them, I have chosen here to post a list of the Top Ten Coming Attractions to the world of Fog and Castles. All but two of these posts are more than half finished, and of those two, one is totally made up. Try to guess which.

1. A post entitled "Sicklical," discussing the nature of health care in North America.
2. A post that uses the word "Fish" more times than any other single word.
3. A post explaining the name of the blog, and directing you towards the excellent work of an unknown artist.
4. The Internet According to Etarran.
5. A post explaining who the worst enemy of gaming culture is. (I'll spoil the surprise ending: it turns out to be gamers. [Specifically, Loud.])
6. Webcomics, and why Dinosaur Comics is funnier than yours. (Two words: Dinosaurs and, ummm... the other one's not really important)
7. A post discussing Penguins, and why they are evil.
8. The Internet According to Solipsism. (And vice versa!)
9. A post discussing Penguins, and why they are really, really evil.
10. Politics, Philosophy, Or Philolotics: The Poll. (Warning: May include traces of dinosaur.)

Too Much Metaphysics

A week ago, when I underwent surgery, I was given a choice between a general, full anesthetic and a spinal anesthetic, which would paralyze me and remove all feeling from the waist down. Now, my initial inclination was that the full anesthetic would be greatly preferable: I didn't want to be awake for surgery, which I think is a reasonable thing to want to avoid. However, the anesthetist strongly recommended the spinal, adding that, as I would be on morphine, throughout the operation, I would not remember any of the procedure. In the end, I went with her recommendation: after all, a medical professional I am not.

Now, this story is mostly background for what I want to talk about, but I think it's useful in seeing where these speculations come from.

For two and a half hours, I was awake, aware, and remember nothing. This is a fact with shocking implications: if the memories of my life are not contiguous, can it really be said to be me who underwent those experiences? Certainly my physical body did: I have medical staples and a nicely healing scar to prove it. I'm not sure it can. Who we are is in many ways defined by our memories: they are what gives our personality shape and substance, and any point of interaction with the world must inevitably be a structure of memory, not of awareness. While I am sitting here typing these words in some kind of Now, soon it will be simply yet another piece in an ever-growing Then.

And if I don't remember experiencing those things, if I therefore never experienced those things - at least for a reasonable definition of "I" - who did? Some sort of mystical other-me, who existed for those two hours and then disappeared - or died? Or maybe it is the other way around, since after all, his memories were contiguous: everything from my birth to the end of those two hours he remembered, and it is I who have this strange hole in my past. Maybe waking up in the recovery room was when I was born?

But what really bothers me is the choice I made - to experience something unpleasant, but to have no memory of it. If it was not me who underwent that experience, then did I not force someone else to bear my burden? Do I not have the blood and fear of the other-me on my hands?

This is why I hate metaphysics: something interesting always becomes something just a little too disturbing. Of course, I suppose that is rather the point.