The balance between selfishness and unselfishness

Once I had accepted that promoting human well-being should be the basis or morality, I faced a difficult moral dilemma. Any money that I spent on myself that could have benefitted Africans without clean drinking water meant that I did not care about those people or their needs. The requirement for truly loving your neighbor as yourself seemed impossible for Americans. I had a hard time seeing American society as any better than The Capitol in the Hunger Games. We have so much, and use so little of our means to help the people in this world that need help so badly.

While I still feel like American society does not do nearly enough for the needy in the world, I eventually came to a partial resolution to that dilemma. I realized that trying to be so frugal and generous was making me unhappy, and I couldn't promote a moral system that caused its own adherents to be unhappy. For this reason, I now think it's reasonable to buy the things that we really need for ourselves to be happy, and fit into the culture we are apart of, and save for our financial security, before donating to charities to help the less fortunate. I still think that spending money frivolously, on things that don't really add to our happiness or are unnecessarily expensive, is wrong. That money could have been used to help to destitute. I think being ostentatiously rich is wrong too, for the same reason. If you appear rich to those around you, you're spending more than you need to fit into your own culture. I still think we should each make a strong effort to become unselfish: to train ourselves to feel happy when we are helping others, not ourselves. But I do think it's reasonable to put our own happiness and security first, before helping others.

Atheist Morality

After losing my faith in God, I was unsure about what should be my basis of morality. I discovered part of the answer in Sam Harris's TED video on how science can answer moral questions, and his book The Moral Landscape. The basic idea is that morality should be based on promoting human well-being, or in other words, based on empathy, compassion, and loving your neighbor like yourself. So I'm a big fan of Jesus's 2nd greatest commandment (although obviously not so much his greatest).

The traditional basis of morality is tradition, usually religious tradition. Using compassion as the basis of our morality means that it can progress, and there are several reasons that it might:

Tradition may be mistaken

There are a lot of commandments in the Old Testament that seem objectionable to us today. For example, most of us would consider it wrong to kill someone for collecting sticks on the Sabbath, for worshiping a different God than us, or for being the child of someone who worships a different God. I realize Christians don't follow those rules now, but were any of those things ever right? If not, then maybe we should question whether scriptures are a good source of morality.

Our environment may change

For example, as we become more and more exposed to advertising, and that advertising becomes better at causing us to want to buy things, we can re-evaluate its effect on our well-being. We may realize that advertising does not promote our well-being, and we should take steps to reduce our exposure to it. What's right can depend on our personal circumstances.

We may learn more about human nature

After we learn that sexual orientation is largely immutable, and that most gays and lesbians are happier accepting their sexuality than repressing it, we can become more accepting of our gay and lesbian peers, or even encourage them to accept their sexuality rather than repress it.

People are different

What's right for one person may be wrong for another. Maybe pre-marital sex is a terrible idea for some people, but fine for others, depending on their personalities, desires, and situation. Maybe getting married and having a family is a really great idea for some people, but not others. We shouldn't think that what's good for many people necessarily applies to everyone.

For these reasons and others, I think loving your neighbor as yourself is a superior basis for morality than religion or tradition.

Drive Safely

Last month one of Sarah's friends from her ward passed away in a driving accident. She is the third young woman from that ward to die in a driving accident, and Sarah's brother Matt was the one to find her car and call 911, so I thought I'd write a blog post to encourage us all to drive safely.

According to the CDC, the #1 cause of death for ages 1-44 was "unintentional injury", and the #1 cause of injury deaths age 5-24 and #2 for age 25 on up was unintentional motor vehicle traffic. Driving may be the most dangerous thing we do as adults. According to distraction.gov, text messaging creates a crash risk 23 times worse than driving while not distracted. Sending or receiving a text takes a driver's eyes from the road for an average of 4.6 seconds, the equivalent--at 55 mph--of driving the length of an entire football field, blind. Headset cell phone use is not substantially safer than hand-held use.

So here's my advice: don't text and don't use your phone while driving. Don't fiddle with the gps. Pull over or do it before you leave. Don't do makeup. Don't be distracted while driving. Avoid driving when you can. Treat driving like it's a very dangerous activity. People love you, be safe.

Why I Hope Obama Wins

Here are a couple of simple reasons that I strongly support Barack Obama over Mitt Romney for the presidency: he supports a more progressive income tax, and is more fiscally responsible.

President Obama recognizes that some tax increases are going to be necessary to reduce our national debt long-term. I like his Buffett Rule: that people earning over $1 million/year should pay a tax rate of at least 30 percent. I think this is in line with the literature on optimal taxation (like the excellent Peter Diamond and Emmanuel Saez paper), which not only supports the idea of progressive taxation, but always (to my knowledge) concludes that we should have a tax system that is much more progressive than it currently is.

Mitt Romney's tax proposals would significantly raise the national debt, and are fiscally irresponsible. The assumptions made to argue otherwise are questionable at best. Reagan and Bush after him are responsible for running up the national debt unnecessarily during good economic times. The recession that began at the end of Bush's term has caused the national debt to continue to increase under President Obama, but I think the ultimate cause of that was deregulation, and that increase was necessary during an economic catastrophe. Obama supports regulating Wall Street to prevent something similar from happening again. An increase in tax rates on high incomes will reduce the deficit and will not significantly hurt the economy because people with high incomes are more likely to save their money during a recession anyway. Tax cuts on people with low incomes and direct government spending tends to stimulate the economy during a recession, because that money gets spent, and not saved.

Barack Obama is simply more fiscally responsible and has tax proposals that are more in line with the interests of middle-class Americans, rather than the very rich. His proposals make good economic sense.

Principles in Finding Truth

Some of my suggestions for any seekers of truth out there.

1. Read widely

I see a lot of people on Facebook who seem to have simply absorbed the ideas that were around them as they grew up, and now believe those things to be absolute truth, without having been exposed to or seriously considered other beliefs. What they don’t seem to realize is that their real reason for their beliefs is that they were born in an area where those beliefs are common. This obviously isn’t a good way of determining what is true. The best antidote is reading widely. This is a good way of getting exposure to lots of different ideas, preferably by people who actually believe those ideas. If the only things you know about liberal political ideas are the criticisms you’ve heard from conservatives, then you haven’t given them a fair shot. Read a popular book by a liberal, and one by a conservative. Read a book by a theist, and an atheist. Give them both a chance.

2. Trust yourself

On some issues, you’ll be able to identify experts, and it’s okay to trust experts. However, on some basic issues like whether God exists, it’s not really possible to “be humble” or trust someone else on the matter, because you’d be the one choosing who you should trust, so you’re the one choosing what to believe either way. If you’re choosing to trust that person because you know them (even if he or she is also a very good and smart person), you’re falling into the same trap of believing something because it’s the local tradition. If you’re interested in truth, you can’t just rely on someone else. Find out for yourself by hearing out many different ideas.

3. Don’t be afraid of information

Growing up, I was sometimes be made to feel afraid of “anti-Mormon” literature. If you’re a real seeker of truth, you cannot choose your destination. You must follow the evidence, wherever it leads. If there’s information that can convince you of something, then maybe you should be convinced of that thing. Never be afraid of knowledge.

4. Assume as little as possible

If a creationist is determined to interpret all available information inside the framework of creationism, he will never be convinced that creationism is false. He will make up alternative explanations for fossils, DNA, and anatomical evidence. It’s like he’s wearing creationist-tinted glasses that he sees the world through. Similarly, if someone is determined to interpret all evidence according to a Mormon, Catholic, or Muslim framework of thought, no evidence will ever convince him or her that their perspective is false. If you assume that reading the Book of Mormon and praying will tell you whether it is true, you’re still wearing Mormon-tinted glasses. To find the truth, you must be as unbiased and objective as possible, and that means make as few assumptions as possible. It’s okay to assume that logic will lead you right, and that the world basically is as it appears to be. If those assumptions are false, then knowing the truth is impossible anyway. But assume as little else as possible.

5. It’s okay to be unsure

You don’t have to “take a stand” or “choose” your beliefs. If you are an altruistic seeker of truth, you have an obligation to help your fellow seekers by being honest about what you’ve discovered and how confident you are about it. Don’t claim to be more sure about your beliefs than you really are. Let the evidence guide you, and say it exactly as you see it. Be honest.

My Favorite Gadgets

Too many serious posts of late, so I thought I'd write about... MY FAVORITE GADGETS!!! It's no secret I'm a super-nerd gadget lover. I keep up with the latest rumors of new gadgets, and I love the ones I've got already. So here are my favorites:

Kindle DX

I LOVE my Kindle DX. I like to read a lot: books, random articles, academic papers, whatever. I also spend a lot of time staring at LCD screens, so reading from e-ink is a welcome relief. If I find a long article on the internet I want to read, I often copy it into a text file and put it on my Kindle just because it is so much more comfortable to read there. I also read a lot of academic papers and PDFs, so having the large screen is really helpful. It's my favorite gadget.

Nexus 7

I LOVE my Nexus 7. The 7" size is super convenient, Nvidia's Tegra 3 processor and Jelly Bean makes it super smooth, games run great on it, it has great build quality and a great screen. It's by far the best 7" tablet out now, and in my opinion, the best Android tablet as well. Far better than the Kindle Fire or the Nook, and cheaper than anything else, and the best bang for the buck tablet available anywhere. I was surprised at how much better the video call quality was from my HTC One S, and the One S really should be just as good as the Galaxy S III or any other phone out there. The speakers on the Nexus 7 are way better, the microphone is way better, the front-facing camera is way better, and the processor is significantly better. I don't mind not having a rear camera because my phone has a very nice rear camera already. Most of all, I love having the latest and greatest version of Android, and knowing that when the next version of Android comes out, I'll be the first to have it. Google takes care of its Nexus line. It's a tablet that will be awesome for years to come.

HTC One S

I like my HTC One S. It's very slim, nice-looking, pretty fast, and has a great camera. It runs Android 4.0, and HTC is pretty good about updating their phones' software. But it's had some weird problems with wifi calling and skype, and I don't like Sense, HTC's custom skin for Android. It has the best rear-facing camera out on a phone today (other than Nokia's Pureview 808), but it's still nowhere close to the quality of even the cheapest DSLRs (which is true of any phone's camera). It's the perfect phone for someone who loves taking pictures and videos with their phone, and even though I'd rather have vanilla Android or Windows Phone, it's one of my favorite gadgets.

Natural vs. Supernatural

In a discussion about my post on the Atonement, a couple of people didn't see why I don't think the Law of Justice that necessitates the Atonement could be a natural law. This gets right to the heart of the difference between the natural and the supernatural worldviews, so I thought I'd try and answer that more clearly.

The naturalist, or scientific, worldview asserts that things behave the way they do because they are following laws. The laws of quantum physics appear to fully describe the behavior of certain particles, such as protons, neutrons, electrons, photons, and others. Because these laws have been accurate in predicting the behavior of these particles in virtually every case, it seems likely that inside anything composed of these particles, the particles are behaving the same way. The behavior of whatever is composed of these particles is therefore almost certainly the result of all of its particles following the laws that govern each particle's motion.

Everything we've learned seems to confirm this conclusion. The laws of chemistry conform to, and can even be derived from, the laws of quantum mechanics. The behavior of cells can be explained using the laws of chemistry, and so on. Our behavior, and the behavior of everything composed of matter, can ultimately be explained, at least in theory, even if not in precise detail, by the laws of quantum mechanics.

So now back to the Atonement: it's necessitated by a Law of Justice, that apparently governs us, but can't be derived from more basic laws like the laws of quantum mechanics, even in theory. What could you possibly decompose the Law of Justice into that could be derived from more basic laws? That's what I mean when I say that it couldn't be a natural law, and it can only make sense if you accept the supernatural.