jonathan butz

Science!

• Science is how we know. All of our technology is a product of Science. Our understanding of ourselves, our world and our universe alike is the result of countless lifetimes spent in the pursuit of answers to difficult questions, many of which have incomplete answers. It takes a great deal of courage to embrace the unknown and continue asking.

• “There are many hypotheses in science that are wrong. …[T]hey’re the aperture to finding out what’s right. Science is a self-correcting process. To be accepted, new ideas must survive the most rigorous standards of evidence and scrutiny. … The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge, and there is no place for it in the endeavor of science. … Fundamental insights can arise from the most unexpected sources.” -Carl Sagan

• Through experiments and observation, we come ever closer to the answers we seek, discovering more of our misconceptions, permitting the next generation to build frameworks for knowledge and understanding that surpass our own.

• Beyond our knowledge of the cosmos that withstands scientific scrutiny, everything is speculation. It is essential to understand where knowledge ends and speculation begins; it is an important part of science, allowing future generations to draw upon the musings of the past armed with technology of the future, but speculation must always be couched as such and await evidence.

• We must have the courage to embrace only the truths derived from data, analysis and discussion, no matter how strong our attachment to existing convictions. All theories have merit until disproved, but once disproved, we must have the courage to view them in their proper historical context.

• We must have the courage to accept that we may simply be machines in motion—fantastic, beautiful machines—the essence of which is lost when the machine stops and that it is only through our children, community and works that the best of us may continue.

Money

• It is often misquoted as the root of all evil — the actual quote is, “The love of money is the root of all evil,” and it still isn’t true.
• It is necessary to understand money, how it is created, earned and preserved.
• Too little often yields stress, too much often yields indulgence.
• Love, friendship and happiness are all more important.

Power

• Too hard to obtain, too easy to abuse.
• If it isn’t hard to obtain, it’s more likely to be abused.
• Those who wield it most successfully were trained to do so or did not pursue it.
• “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” -Abraham Lincoln
• Love, friendship, happiness and even money are all more important.

Politics

• Left-Right is a single dimension and cannot adequately represent the diversity and grandeur of any nation’s people. The dominant political parties of our nation are anaesthetizing the range of political expression by forcing polar division on issues that are neither truly polar in nature nor necessarily relevant to the time.
• If we are to be free, we must have maximum choice and maximum responsibility for the outcomes, tempered by intentions.
• We must be free to try, to succeed, to fail. The freedom to try must extend beyond even what others deem our own best interest, to the point it affects another. “The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.” -Oliver Wendell Holmes

• The rule of law must be paramount.
• The law must serve the interests of the people at large before the interests of any specific group.
• Church and State must remain separate in power.
• Church must operate within the bounds of law.
• Morality must not be legislated except as it protects the freedoms of others.

• Education: The public school curriculum has not been substantially updated in thirty years, yet the global economy undergoes constant change. Successful developing nations recognize these changes and adapt their curricula to produce timely skills, and many are the targets of massive investment and job migration. Meanwhile, in the face of mass offshoring, we have an increasingly undereducated population whose skills are steadily declining in value.

• Tobacco: Of all the vices legal and il-, tobacco is by far the most accessible and the most damaging. Despite its being responsible for more than 15% of deaths annually in the US, it remains a subsidized agricultural product.

• Food: Poor diet causes more than 15% of deaths in the US. Our FDA promotes a diet that causes obesity while allowing things that aren’t food to be used as ingredients and food labels to include ‘and/or’ statements that misrepresent contents while produce and meat suppliers are not required to disclose the details of food origin, preventing much needed competition in healthy foods production. In lieu of correct education on diet and exercise, fads abound and confuse an unhealthy, overweight population in great need of guidance.

• Healthcare: A nation can only be as strong as the health of its people. For-profit healthcare systems make money by providing services rather than creating healthy people; a prescription pill or mechanical procedure is infinitely more profitable than a healthy individual. Insurance companies in the same for-profit system make money by providing less service, yet they provide no incentives to healthy people. In a publicly sponsored healthcare system, the only way to reduce the cost is through healthy people, by using public education to teach people how to live well through diet and exercise, by using federal policy to ensure the quality of food and by taxing unhealthy lifestyles. Only through national healthcare paid for by everyone can we hope to overcome health problems associated with lifestyle and food supply.

• Energy: The US is the largest producer of nuclear power in the world, but it is also the largest consumer of fossil fuels. With time-tested alternatives to burning fossil fuels, there is no need to burn them for electricity; they are better suited to industrial applications and as portable fuel for vehicles. Nuclear power provides the best solution for the stationary generation of power; there is no more practical and environmentally sound method.

• Marijuana: There are dangerous drugs that create powerful addictions and can lead to overdoses. Marijuana has no known associated fatalities, and there are no data to link it to automobile accidents or ‘harder’ drugs. Data in fact suggest that marijuana is less dangerous than alcohol, yet penalties for possession of a single rolled joint can be quite severe, involving discretionary jail terms (up to five years in Iowa), fines (up to $150,000 in Arizona) and/or driver’s license suspension (up to 5 years on Ohio).

Polar Issues

• Abortion must be legal for a sensible period. Making it illegal only affects lower income individuals who need the option most (those of means can always obtain services abroad or in a clandestine manner), leading to dangerous underground procedures that put the mother’s life at unnecessary risk and socioeconomic conditions that foster criminal activity and ultimately lead to crime rate increases two decades later. In the early stages of development, vertebrate embryos are indistinguishable. The point of compromise, where abortion ceases to be the choice of the mother and becomes the termination of a person, must be the point where the embryo becomes distinctly human, between weeks nine and twelve. This compromise would settle the needs of pro-life and pro-choice champions if only they would employ science in their argument.

• Drugs have spawned a misallocation of social resources. Criminalization and enforcement disproportionately targets lower income individuals and squanders valuable resources that would be better spent on education and treatment. Learning from prohibition, current activity and countries with more tolerant drug policies, the violence that results from drug laws and their enforcement far outweighs the consequences of the drugs themselves, extending the risk to bystanders and channeling social funds to a growing penal system. Vices are essential facets of our human condition; underground vices carry greater risks and thus obtain greater value, requiring cash and guns; the best solutions leverage control, supervision, taxation and assistance.

• Sex Education is a necessary part of public schooling. Advocates of abstinence-only programs argue that sex education encourages experimentation, but young people are going to experiment, with or without information. We must provide them with the knowledge to do so as safely as possible.

• Guns apart from hunting weapons are a net liability. Offensive weapons designed exclusively for use against people merely facilitate suicide, crime, passion and accident.

• Unions are an essential option, but unless properly guided they homogenize workforces, eliminating the very incentives that have fueled the greatest contributions to modern society. In a free market, each is worthy of his hire and cannot command compensation greater than his contribution; neither shall he be paid less than the value of his contribution, and if such is the case, it must be his right to unite those similarly mistreated and demand their collective dues. But when these same methods are employed to secure wages exceeding the value of contribution, employers are forced obtain labor elsewhere, contributing to unemployment and the decline of entire regions.

• Mandatory Sentences eliminate Judges’ discretion. There are no two cases identical, no two wrongdoings that can be summarily assigned precisely the same retribution. Proscribing sentences mechanizes a necessarily human system.

• Euthanasia and Physician Assisted Suicide must be available. The medical community must be legally able to aid people in pain. Only Oregon has successfully allowed PAS with the passing of the Death with Dignity Act in 1998, and fewer than 275 people had made use of the legislation by 2006. Despite the tiny group it affects, the legality of the statute was challenged by John Ashcroft while US Attorney General; the law was upheld by the Supreme Court who ruled that the Controlled Substances Act as worded did not apply to PAS. An amended CSA could invalidate the law.

Religion

• We are all stuck on this rock, with only each other, and we are all going to die. This life may be all we get, so we had best make the most of it, as did those before us.

• The good people of the world have always been the same: they love their parents; they fall in love; and they love their children. Family, community and country are not values of faith; they are values of people. Despite the core of humanity that binds us all together, conflicts of faith have consistently driven people apart and to war.

• The dominant religions are in great positions to add value as community centers, but their reliance on mythology, dogma and fundamentalism prevent them from best helping those who turn to them.

• Morality and ethics must supersede religious doctrine, uniting peoples of all creeds, ending aged conflicts that impede global cultural development.

• Over 800 million people, 16% of the global population, are nonreligious, the fourth-largest and fastest-growing group. Of the nations with the highest GDP and GDP per Capita, the US has the lowest percentage of nonbelievers.

Dangers

• Superlatives and absolutes; few things are truly so.
• FUD: Fear, uncertainty and doubt.
• Those who define good and evil.
• Those who embrace moral certainties in lieu of reason and discussion.
• Those who incite action with emotions such as fear, hatred, righteousness and even pride.
• Those who align themselves with a higher authority and purpose to justify their actions and/or egos.
• Those who cry ‘censorship’ when their ideas lack sufficient merit to stand on their own.
• Those whose lifestyles are inconsistent with their professed values.
• Opinions not based on information.
• Scientology.

Nonsense

• Astrology – When it was believed that the Earth was the center of the universe, it was also believed that celestial objects determined the destiny of individuals and that a horoscope drawn knowing the details of someone’s birth could be used to determine personality and foretell events in a person’s life. The only celestial objects that exert a significant influence on us are the Earth, Sun and Moon. They do not, however, drive our personalities or destiny.

• Circumcision improves health – There are no data to support that circumcision is necessary or even advisable with proper hygiene; the AMA concurs. The US, the Philippines and South Korea are the only countries that still practice circumcision on the majority of males for nonreligious reasons. No other part of body is surgically altered in any way as standard practice across global cultures. Compare US neonatal circumcisions at 55.1% in 2001 to Canada’s 11.5% in 2003. Rates peaked in the 1980s and have been falling slowly since.

• Crop circles – There is nothing unexplained about the elaborate formations of flattened cereal grains across the globe: they are art. They are now made using long tape measures, but early designs were made using only lengths of rope to define the edges. Flattening the grain within is achieved any number of ways, none of which involves divine energies or alien craft.

• Eugenics – It is tempting to meddle with the process of evolution. The active weeding-out of ‘defects’ should surely bring about a superior humankind. Between 1907 and 1963 more than 64,000 people were forcibly sterilized under eugenic legislation in the United States, and similar policies were in place in Canada, Australia, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Estonia, Switzerland, Iceland and Germany during the first half of the twentieth century. Because there is no science in determining what constitutes a ‘defect’, eugenics became a tool of social prejudice and arrogance, unable to achieve its objective. It is perhaps ironic that our nation, which once embraced concepts of evolution in criminal legislation continues to wrestle with the concept.

• Golden Ratios are found in nature – The chambered nautilus is the most popular example of the Golden Ratio appearing in nature, but upon mathematical inspection, it is only an approximation. This idea is a product of early explorers of mathematics, many with strong religious ties, looking for evidence of a designer, trying to understand their God’s formulae. As yet, none has been found apart from the laws of physics.

• Intelligent Design – The Cosmos is vast and beautiful, overwhelming in scale, and the Earth is rippling with an immense diversity of life. It has ever been the inclination of people to posit that the intricacy and apparent order implies a designer. Intelligent Design focuses on what is not understood or explained by observable natural forces and claims that the gap can only be explained by an unseen, intelligent influence. The specifics of the origin of the universe and of life are unknown and may always be so, but in science that which cannot be fully explained implies only incomplete understanding, prompting additional observation, hypotheses and experiments. A consciousness of some kind may or may not have set the universe as we know it in motion, but Intelligent Design is merely Creationism with a different name, not a theory.

• Marijuana is a gateway drug – There are no data to suggest marijuana users are more likely to use other drugs than users of alcohol or tobacco. Data suggest instead that certain people are simply more likely to experiment than others.

• Metabolism determines weight – While metabolism varies among people, allowing some to eat slightly more than others given the same level of exercise while maintaining the same weight, the prevailing opinion that some people are inherently skinny and others fat is contradicted by dietary science. Weight is driven chiefly by diet, reasonably by exercise and only marginally by metabolism. Everyone can chose a diet that yields a desired weight regardless of activity level (excluding comparatively rare cases of gland malfunction and/or significant chemical imbalance). There exists an amount of food that will maintain any person’s weight; more will be stored as fat; less will force the body to consume its own stores.

• Numerology – Prior to the development of mathematics, numbers were believed to have significance and/or power apart from the quantities they represented. Despite human proclivity to attribute significance where none lies, numbers are simply measures of quantity.

• Palmistry – The three dominant lines on the hand were said to represent a person’s love, mind and vitality respectively. In truth the hand is no more indicative of character or destiny than the stars.

• Phrenology – The shape of the head was believed to provide insight into the structure, capability and nature of the brain within, a very popular idea in the nineteenth century. Even study of the brain itself cannot determine its contents or caliber.

• Physiognomy – Like palmistry and phrenology, it was believed that the study of the body provided insight into the mind. While the body and mind are entwined in very intricate and subtle ways, almost nothing can be ascertained about one by observing the other.

• Reality TV – When people know that they are being observed, they no longer act as they really would. The only true means of filming reality is against the law for obvious reasons.

• UFOs may be aliens – Every time something slightly unusual happens in the sky, people report UFOs. Unidentified Flying Objects are simply that. They are usually aircraft, sometimes meteors, occasionally hoaxes and rarely bizarre atmospheric conditions. There is no evidence that any has, to date, been off-world intelligence.