my life is boring...

It's lunch time again, and I don't have anything to do except for update my blog. This is kind of a conundrum, because I have pretty much nothing to update about. Oh, I finished Goedel Escher Bach, but who's interested in hyperintellectual musings about number theory? Just me? OK, moving on (my dad actually called me a beatnik for being interested in this kind of stuff).

In the absence of anything substantive to update about, I have a few philosophical and political musings to fill the time and space. The first philosophical point is on the point of consciousness. A large part of Goedel Escher Bach is devoted to discussing how we might describe our own consciousness, and whether we might be able to replicate this phenomenon in machines. The problem is that by our current science, it is impossible to describe consciousness in terms of the laws of physics and the relations between neurons in our brains. So what the hell is it? It's some kind of epi or meta phenomena that springs forth from the interactions of many smaller groupings and subgroupings of these groupings. The problem is that no matter how much we know about ourselves, it is impossible to describe consciousness itself without the faculties of consciousness. Shit. Infinite regress. But everything is infinitely regressive, like our trust in the scientific method. Once you question stuff like consciousness, then you get tangled up, because there's no way we can discover the meta-rules which govern the rules that govern us. And if we were to do so, there would always be rules above these. So we have to accept consciousness, and try to discover what it is.

One of the interesting questions Hofstadter raises is what happens to consciousness after you die? There's a group of people who want to say that we have some sort of sould which dies or leaves the body. But this is difficult to substantiate. So what really happens? How do concepts (and consciousness) just disappear? What we have here might be the makings of an existential crisis. Of course, to be conscious is in its essence to be confused, so I'm pretty damn conscious.

Political musings... I figure that since I read three to five political blogs and the opinion pages of four newspapers every day, I am well qualified to leave my two cents. I thought the Democrats were looking pretty good this term... the filibuster compromise frustrated the religious right and seemed to kill Frist. The problem is that Janice Rogers Brown is a real wacko (who believes in a law higher than the constitution). And the Senate approved her, so the filibuster compromise doesn't look nearly as good. It's a pretty big deal, but what matters is whether or not the Dems can get the filibuster to hold up on the second Supreme Court nomination. The first one is likely to be Michael McConnell to replace Rehnquist. McConnell is a pretty well respected legal scholar, and he's just replacing Rehnquist, who's really conservative anyhow, so that's a wash.

The other big deal this term has been Social Security. This issue should have major legs for the Dems, since the Repubs' plan is pretty much fiscally moronic. Why do you swallow the medicine now, when you have a huge deficit? It would cause trillions in government borrowing, and might cause interest rates to spike out of hand. The Democrats did a good job killing it, but they haven't been public enough about the fact that they won. They should rub it in... this can really help them out in important states like Florida and Arizona.

Bush's other issue this term seems to be CAFTA. Here's an issue where I actually agree with him. Robert Zoellick had an editorial in the Washington Post basically saying that the benefits are 20 fold greater that the losses. That means with a mere 5% of the gains, we could pay the people whose jobs are outsourced to do absolutely nothing. Three cheers for trade liberalization. And get rid of farm subsidies too.