Money Paradox

Money is a tool of exchange, which has very high liquidity and should ideally have an objective value.

Fiat money, do not have objective value. I say we should use a set of elements in this universe as money. The least valuable denominations will be the most prevalent elements and the most valuable denominations will be least prevalent elements. Of course things like chemical & nuclear stability of the element must also be considered. For convinience, certificates representing a predetermined quantity of these elements may also be used.

However fiat money does not have any of this, and was designed because real money suffered from a lose of liquidity and the resulting deflation when people hoarded these elements as savings instead of investing them in productive activities. This happens because people do not behave rationally.

This is why liberals endorse fiat money, which is a good reason. So they have made a scheme which will ideally only print fiat money as interest payments to goverment bonds bought by the people who want to hoard the fiat money. This will result in a small but managable inflation.

But unfortunately, fiat money makers of most nations do not follow the above expectated behavior strictly. Politicians love to magic fiat money into existence and simulate a fake economic boom.

So our species, being the only species capable of production now faces this economic paradox: Real money leads to deflation from irrational savings (a.k.a hoarding) and Fiat money leads to inflation from irrational spending (a.k.a magic money).

We can’t go back to barter system because we will have to sacrifice a lot of liquity in using a common medium of exchange.

There is one solution though: We should educate ourselves to be rational, so that we can go back from fiat money to real money and save us from the dangers of fiat money.

Money is a tool of exchange, which ought to have high liquidity and should ideally have an objective value.

Fiat money, do not have objective value. I say we should use a set of elements in this universe as money. The least valuable denominations will be the most prevalent elements and the most valuable denominations will be least prevalent elements. Of course things like chemical & nuclear stability of the element must also be considered. For convinience, certificates (real or digital) representing a predetermined quantity of these elements may also be used.

However fiat money does not have any of this, and was designed because real money suffered from a lose of liquidity and the resulting deflation when people hoarded these elements as savings instead of investing them in productive activities. This happens because people do not behave rationally.

This is why liberals endorse fiat money, which is a good reason. So they have made a scheme which will ideally only print fiat money as interest payments to goverment bonds bought by the people who want to hoard the fiat money. This will result in a small but managable inflation.

But unfortunately, fiat money makers of most nations do not follow the above expectated behavior strictly. Politicians love to magic fiat money into existence and simulate a fake economic boom or pay for a war.

So our species, being the only species capable of production now faces this economic paradox: Real money leads to deflation from irrational savings (a.k.a hoarding) and Fiat money leads to inflation from irrational spending (a.k.a magic money).

We can’t go back to barter system because we will have to sacrifice a lot of liquity in using a common medium of exchange.

There is one solution though: We should educate ourselves to be rational, so that we can go back from fiat money to real money and save us from the dangers of fiat money.

Back from home

Came back from home today. Indian infrastructure sucks big time. Random power outages plague my city (> 2 outages a day) and Internet is bloody costly. Unlimited connections are slower than Singapore ISPs and limited connections are costlier than the Singapore ISPs. Water billing is arbitrary because most water meters don’t work.

The only thing that gets done properly are tiny enclaves of luxury which don’t let in crumbling scenes from the outside sneak in through the windows.

Good alcoholic beverages are super costly or never heard of. Young people brag about their superhuman-like resistance to alcoholic intoxication and deny the role the weight of an individual has to play in the degree of intoxication he/she experiences per unit alcohol consumed.

People also brag about superhuman-like immunity to diseases while simultaneously denying germ-theory of disease (Flu is because of weather they say). But such braggers were all proved wrong when flu season (coincides with the start of monsoons in May) showed up.

Fortunately for me I had got my flu vaccines from Singapore so I showed superhuman-like immunity while facing people who were rendered subhuman by the virus they did not believe in.

I met a sister of a friend crippled by menangities because her parents used homeopathy until things got out of hand. Superstitions and pseudo-scientific magical thinking everywhere..

My cousin thinks atheists worship the satan of christian mythology. My dad thinks skeptics deny the existence of UFOs, crop-circles, bible code.. (when in fact skeptics deny the existence of evidence supporting those). Mom believes satan and virgin mary existed in the begnning along with god. I love her polytheistic hankerings. My mom brought in her cult’s brainwasher in my weakest moments but I successfully sowed seeds of dissonance into his mind.

Meanwhile my exploration into lambda calculus continues. Also reading Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”.

Yet Another Survey Shows Christians Are Morally Perverted

Reposted from http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/04/30/religion.torture/

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists, according to a new survey.

More than half of people who attend services at least once a week — 54 percent — said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is “often” or “sometimes” justified. Only 42 percent of people who “seldom or never” go to services agreed, according to the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified — more than six in 10 supported it. People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it. Only four in 10 of them did.

The analysis is based on a Pew Research Center survey of 742 American adults conducted April 14-21. It did not include analysis of groups other than white evangelicals, white non-Hispanic Catholics, white mainline Protestants and the religiously unaffiliated, because the sample size was too small.
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Click to continue reading  http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/04/30/religion.torture/ 

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I guess this is not surprising given that Christians endorse imaginary mass murderers that drown unborn babies in their mothers wombs.

Pathetic

UPDATE: CLICK HERE

The only thing stoping the christians from attacking & killing us non-believers is their imaginary mass murderer in the sky. They state thats the level of their morality.

They are a sorry lot indeed.

Yet, study after study has shown that societies are more immoral ‘when they have God on their side’.

Here Is Why Pope Is Against Condoms

Unlike protestant faiths which creates new members through active evangelism, all of the 1 billion Catholics creates new members through procreation & child baptism. The number of evangelical movements in the catholic faith is very low compared to protestant faiths.

Since their gods are not omnipotent enough to pay bills, all religions need new members for their monetary needs (i.e. paying clergy, maintaining religious facilities like buildings & churches). So the catholic faith cannot afford to have a lesser birth rate in their religion.

This is why the pope is very scientific when it comes to evolution & big bang, but very unscientific when it comes to proven methods for disease prevention. Therefore he cannot allow condoms in his religion.

It could be possible that soon all protestant faiths might unanimously ban condoms too. That will happen when, their membership count is large enough to be sustained through procreation alone and with very little evangelism.

We atheists must focus on de-converting the evangelists because, nobody is going to stick to the no-contraception rule. So if we persist for, say the next hundred years on the evangelists, we can cure enough people from this virus of the mind, and perhaps even prevent their self-fulfilling eschatology from happening.

(How do I know this: All of my ancestors have been catholic for a thousand years. I was catholic too, until recently.)

UN ends freedom of speech

United Nations has ended freedom of expression today by banning all criticism of religion. It is a binding resolution. So all nations are expected to follow it.

My country – India, did not vote in protest. I admire my people for this..

I don’t know about Singapore though. Looks like they will indeed implement this rule. Because it is very conservative with good number of Muslims and Christians. And they wouldn’t give a second thought to protecting the interests of atheists because we are in minority.

So it looks like, there may come a day when they will ask me to stop writing this blog.

Apparently this planet’s gods aren’t as omnipotent as the UN. This is how religions have always worked.. They come to power by silencing competing ideas.

But not yet, Lord

Economist.com

Religion, medicine and death

But not yet, Lord
Mar 19th 2009 | NEW YORK
From The Economist print edition

Religious people seem curiously reluctant to meet their maker

HOW do a person’s religious beliefs influence his attitude to terminal illness? The answer is surprising. You might expect the religious to accept death as God’s will and, while not hurrying towards it, not to seek to prolong their lives using heroic and often traumatic medical procedures. Atheists, by contrast, have nothing to look forward to after death, so they might be expected to cling to life.

In fact, it is the other way round—at least according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association by Andrea Phelps and her colleagues at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. Religious people seem to use their faith to cope with the pain and degradation that “aggressive” medical treatment entails, even though such treatment rarely makes much odds.

Dr Phelps and her team followed the last months of 345 cancer patients. The participants were not asked directly how religious they were but, rather, about how they used any religious belief they had to cope with difficult situations by, for example, “seeking God’s love and care”. The score from this questionnaire was compared with their requests for such things as the use of mechanical ventilation to keep them alive and resuscitation to bring them back from the dead.

The correlation was strong. More than 11% of those with the highest scores underwent mechanical ventilation; less than 4% of those with the lowest did so. For resuscitation the figures were 7% and 2%.

Explaining the unpleasantness and futility of the procedures does not seem to make much difference, either. Holly Prigerson, one of Dr Phelps’s co-authors, was involved in another study at Dana-Farber which was published earlier this month in the Archives of Internal Medicine. This showed that when doctors had frank conversations about the end of life with terminally ill cancer patients, the patients typically chose not to request very intensive medical interventions.

According to Dr Prigerson, though, such end-of-life chats had little impact on “religious copers”, most of whom still wanted doctors to make every effort to keep them alive. Saint Augustine of Hippo, one of Christianity’s most revered figures, famously asked God to help him achieve “chastity and continence, but not yet”. When it comes to meeting their maker, many religious people seem to have a similar attitude.

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LOL! Believers love to say, there is no such thing as an atheist. Well looks like there is no such thing as a believer… Everybody doubts.

And Doubt is the central virtue of atheism.

Homeopathic Double Standard

How many of you will be brave enough to use a homeopathic contraceptive (if there was one)? Or perhaps an acupuncture/chiropractic contraceptive (if there was one)? None of you won’t do it even if you believe contraception is ethical. Because you are either pregnant or you are not! ROFL! Nobody can be half pregnant! HAHA!

My case rests.

Incompetence is Bad

I have a lot of sympathy for incompetent people. But I have come to realize that true incompetence is bad. However, it should be noted that unrealized potential must not be mistaken for incompetence.

Only people with competence greater than or equal to my competence must be hired. People who take free rides with little technical knowledge must not be hired.

My Pocket Slippery Slope Argument

The powers that be have been very busy lately, falling over each other to position themselves for the game of the century. It is of no doubt that this will be defining period in the history of our species. I can see it brewing.

Religion (Islam) will no doubt play an important role in this. I wouldn’t be surprised if relevant centers of western civilization go under the control of Islam. Call it a remnant of my superstitious past, but I do believe this would happen.

Most of us will pretend everything is just fine, and will slowly boil into oblivion. This slippery slope will turn out to be real.