The idea of "number" somehow implies to us that all numbers are created equal, but I don't think they are.

i is interesting because it's clearly a simple numerical concept, but like infinity, it isn't quite like the other numbers.

You could almost say math has a heart.

People who don't understand debate is a game may have a polite conversation, but they probably won't have an excellent debate.

The key to debate is that there IS truth. We don't all get equal wins on participation. Total equality on that front is a fairy tale. Some statements are true. Some are partially true. Some are false. No amount of politeness or feminism will ever reverse that.

You can win or lose in a debate. It isn't all just sharing and respect. That's discussion. Many would call it debate, and that's fine, words are malleable and have multiple definitions anyway, but it is not debate by the definition I'm using here - which equates debate with dialectic.

If you want to dig for the real truth and establish that it's the real truth fair and square, you need dialectic, not just sharing and politeness.

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(That means that when some people say a thing, it will be a win for them, because it actually is true, and when other people say a different thing, it will be a loss for them, because it actually is not true. We can't have a proper debate - a dialectic - without facing this head on.)

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The idea that a debate has no winners and no losers is mythology. There is an outside world. Reluctance to accept this is a problem.

I'm very much a feminist, but I'm not a solipsist. "Your truth" is not necessarily an accurate statement. However you feel objectively IS how you feel, but we knew that already - that's a tautology.

However anyone feels IS how that person feels. Big whoop. Not a very interesting observation, really, in my world. (We can say it once and leave it at that. Important, but not necessary to keep reiterating as if it were brand new.)

I want to know what's actually goddamn true, thank you very much.

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Modern cynicism toward objectivity is frankly backwards.

The moment you decide there is no objectivity anyway, you've fucking given up, and no wonder your views start to disconnect from reality.

Finding and validating the truth can be very, very hard work. People who think there isn't any truth? (Or everyone has their own personal truth, and it's all totally democratically determined like that?) Well why the hell would they bother with all that work?

This is not actually a rhetorical question. It's a gaping hole in public consciousness.

Science draws back the veil, showing us that what we are so sure of is not only more nuanced/complex/uncertain/involved/detailed but also more interesting. Hopefully we feel a bit silly but not too silly.

We love sureness because uncertainty is such a central force in the universe, and it needs a balance. We cannot banish uncertainty. Neither side of this flipping coin is winning any time soon. They are in balance and a kind of highly active harmony.

There are two main types of useful move in debate.

1) Characterizing. This is an attempt to paint a multifaceted, balanced, fair, objective picture all at once in as few words as possible.

2) Responding. This is providing a counter to what has been said and is typically dramatically far from complete. It is (often) intended to be one-sided. It may or may not acknowledge what was said. It replies by extending, adjusting, refuting, or replacing.

1 is very difficult and consequently rare.

2 is often taken for 1, and this leads to endless misunderstandings.

There are moments when everything hinges on a little thing and a principle.

This is why I like interactive fiction so much. To me, that's what it's about.

In many ways it's the idea of IF I like more than most of the available works, though I have a solid sense of fun and adventure and appreciate the efforts that go into all creative work. Adventure games and other games changed my life forever when I was a kid, and in a way I've spent the rest of my life trying to repay and expand on that.

I profoundly dislike those conversations about "are you DEFENDING him/her?????"

If putting in a word toward someone's humanity or subjectivity (because you won't) or possible motives or factors you aren't considering is massively offensive to you - for any person, totalitarian dictators included - then I consider that your problem.

It's a bit of a hard line. I do try not to offend people by "defending" - ie, talking about as if human - people who are being hated on (often with good reason).

But I find this hypersensitivity (or, rather, total numbness accompanied by irritation at the suggestion) toward anything good/smart/decent/acceptable about an objectionable person to be horribly small-minded, and frankly in itself at least as offensive as you think I'm being. Only I'm cooler about finding it offensive. I am one of the most forgiving people - it's something I watch people fail to realize, because it would be dangerous to tell everyone too readily. But I am.

Everyone is human and has some kind of rationale for what they do, and there's always something you don't understand. Socrates knew this 2500 years ago, as have countless wise people since, and probably many before as well. This in no way means all action should be allowed! It means people generally make sense to themselves, and when someone doesn't make sense to you, it's because your brain and their brain are in different states.

If you have trouble with that inevitability, again, that is generally your fault, to my mind, not really mine. I try to be as patient as possible. People do understand eventually.

I'm fundamentally lazy, but then that isn't saying much. Life evolved to conserve energy.

There are plenty of times when I use energy rather than save it. Do you take the elevator? I run up all the flights of stairs. That isn't lazy. But I do it not least because I'm impatient for the elevator and consider running up stairs way more fun, plus beneficial. (Beyond that, I park at the far end of the lot, and prefer to live where I can walk everywhere.)

People have told me that my energy in discussion/debate is more than theirs, and I just seem to keep chugging along. So. My head is often churning with thoughts, and I'm often writing them down, because this is a way most people are lazy compared to me.

Sheer laziness is sometimes delicious. I'd be lying if I said I was only ever totally lazy because I was so miserable I couldn't face activity. No, I sometimes relish being a layabout. There are moments.

Sometimes the world seems so hostile, intolerable really, like so offensively awful that you wouldn't sign up for that or do business with that organization, only the organization is the world and you're stuck in it. Yet at times like this, putting the lie to part of what you've just claimed, it can be so lovely to just lie still under covers with your eyes closed and drift. The contrast between the life you want to veto on principle and how serene you can now feel in a moment of retreat from it...

Most people look at the universe and they posit order.

Look at all these patterns!

Someone must've come up with it all!

There's another tactic:

Posit randomness.

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How does that work, you ask?

Well, randomness explores. What it can find includes patterns.

The universe is not all causal, but some of it is. Full randomness can be causal or not.

We're in a region of causality. Randomly.

Simple patterns you see a lot? You see them a lot because they're simple, not because someone put them there.

Take spirals. Take parabolas. The math is incredibly simple. A random walk through math space would produce these simplicities often by chance.

The universe is gorgeously patterned because simple, striking patterns are easy to produce computationally, and easy to stumble on randomly.

It is not order that someone created these patterns. They are the encrustations of randomness in mathematics, in causality.

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This is not an original idea. It's a theory I read about. I've forgotten the name, but I believe the mathematician Kolmogorov either came up with it or was associated with it. And as always/usual, the above is my impression - maybe the flavor of the idea, or a plausible flavor - rather than the technical idea itself in any detail.

I'm a lover, not a fighter.

I have a 2nd degree black belt in TKD - did that for 10 years, 8 to 18...

which helped me know what it means to fight, yet to be a lover, not a fighter.

I've broken someone's bone. I've won full-contact sparring matches at competitions. I've been intimidating, apparently, because people often grumbled about having to fight me, and sometimes I guess they must have been winded or felt pain. I've led classes, grappled without rules (I'm actually very good at this), been hurt in almost every way, flown on kicks, splintered boards, had my fingers jammed and bruised holding boards for others, taken real whacks in the shins and everywhere else, refereed, yelled, been kicked in the teeth so they chipped and cracked, sank to the floor doing the splits on the regular, pushed through so many kinds of pain, etc.

Something I knew basically those entire 10 years is that I'm just not an aggressive or competitive person. What does it matter who wins? It sort of vaguely matters, maybe, and from some points of view does. But me rather than you, you rather than me - so what? Am I going to hurt you for it? Let you hurt me? So I was an excellent fighter, and scary, but ultimately defensive, not offensive. Everyone told me I was defensive, it was my only weakness, I should be more offensive. Should I?

Should I really? Maybe I was right.

Or anyway, maybe that's who I've always been and I never intended to change it, and won't.

One of the big tensions of writing is removing unnecessary words vs. leaving them because this is how this would leave your mouth.

Then there's the megaworse problem: words, phrases, sentences, parentheses, paragraphs that you add because you are worried you aren't clear, coherent, etc.

Something I try to teach students - who are always afraid they can't reach word count - is that you can expand any writing as long as you want by just asking the question "Why?" over and over.

You can use other questions for the same kind of effect. "So what?" "What happens next?" "Where are we?" "How would my enemy attack this?" etc.

Still, at some point you need pruning shears and a spare afternoon.