Jawaad Mahmood in Tokyo

Message boards would seem to be very interesting places to exchange information. My experiences, and those of people I have talked to suggest that, for some purposes, they are. It isn’t hard to find a website where one can find information about the latest toys, or the latest technology, or whatever one’s interests might be. I’ve definitely seen some decent travel logs (even wrote one, although I daren’t call it decent). Commercial information and/or personal experiences are in ready supply throughout the Internet. However, decently interpreted information about common human experiences is nearly impossible to find. Why is that?

First, what is decent information? Please take for granted that, to many people, “decent information” is simply information that has been filtered through a similar thought processes to the listener/reader. For my own purposes, however, “decent information” is information that has been filtered through a thought process with these following characteristics:

1. The writer is capable of not only referencing his own experiences, but also drawing upon the experiences of a larger superset of people. An example of this would be a scientist who has read papers from other scientists, including those that contradict his own experiments.

2. The writer is not possessed with a rigid dogma. Dogmatic writing is the bane of the Internet; my experience with posting for about 10 years is that most people refuse to pay attention to experiences that defy their own. Internet dogma often involves repeating certain stories over and over again if they agree with their opinion; see the “angry Conservative” who constantly mentions a story about the “Woman who sued McDonalds because the coffee was too hot”. On the surface, this is a clear example of an over-active judiciary that is helping people that should have taken care. This interpretation relies on the lack of certain information (McDonalds had been warned repeatedly about their coffee temperatures, the woman suffered extensive burn victims; a clear case of negligence) . A non-dogmatic Conservative would not repeat the story once the actual details about the story were made clear. (A similar case can be made for Liberals as well, this isn’t a one-sided problem)

3. The writer must be possessed with certain principles, and must be capable of defending them – and must be willing to be consistent with them. On the surface, this seems to contradict my second point, but that is an error. First, there are many questions which simply lack a “right answer”, only answers based on what we value more. Life or choice? Freedom or safety? Equality or eliteism? Though these are charged words, only the most dogmatic could not understand how someone could make choices other than our own. As well, simply put, a person who doesn’t have principle is utterly untrustworthy for information. It is inconceivable that a person has no principle, even the simple principle of self-preservation. It is simple to envision many situations in which a person’s principles are so repugnant to society that he may hide them under the veil of not caring, or what-have-you. It is almost utterly impossible to be a functional human being without a capacity to form a moral opinion about something; even those who believe that “everything goes” have moral opinions – they just choose not to share that with other people. To not trust a person who claims not to have principle should be self-evident.

Consistency is a problem, one that can only be resolved through constant self-questioning until a core basis of principles are set. This can be a life long quest and most people have not arrived at a final answer. This alone eliminates almost 99% of the message boards I have visited, as most people (myself included) have many contradictory opinions – for example the paradox of being “pro-life” and being “pro-war”. To claim oneself as being for the preservation of life, while declaring war on other people is worthless is a complete contradiction – unless one’s principles regard that the lives of some are more valuable than others. This inevitable outcome battlefield calculus is not something many people would agree upon, publically. (Incidentally, even if they were capable of doing so, it would have the affect of degrading one’s own life. Even if one were to claim one’s life is of a higher value than someone else’s, it is inconceivable that such a person could disagree with someone adopting the same principle – but in reverse. In short, if you agreed that someone else’s life is worth less than your own, you are also agreeing that another person can hold your life as being of less value based on whatever principle you were to use). This does not simply apply to philosophical discussion – scientists without the courage of their convictions do not make good science. Without a proper critique of new ideas introduced into scentific discussion, incorrect assumptions can ruin future experiments. Without a consistent attachment to old theories (until the truth is vetted), scientists wouldn’t critique a new idea to an appropriate degree.

This is not to say inconsistent authors are to be ignored at all costs. If the writer is willing to change his positions if an actual inconsistency is pointed out with his principles, I would see no issues with discussing issues with him. Perhaps, to dig something out of my the Republic – these people haven’t left the cave, but at least they are on their way out.

One needn’t fit these criteria for everything in the world. A geneticist might be an awful philosopher, but I’d still listen to him when it came to protein expression in genes. However, one must be very careful to properly limit the value of information people convey accordingly. It is all-too-easy to get caught up in a bitter exchange of words on a message board with people who simply possess an overly-rigid dogma, or people who are not willing to be consistent with their own opinions in a certain field.

An intelligent person might come to this blog and say, “So Jawaad, what about you then eh? Where do you fit in to the values you outlined above?’. Fair enough.

It would be hard to claim that I am rigid in my beliefs about Computer Sceince, or Biology. If anything would come into play, it is my religious beliefs. I rarely comment on things from the point of view of Muslims alone – I think I am safe on that count. Consistent with #1, I am not rigid to the point of inflexibility. I have certain beliefs about mathematical conditions which will inevitably damage society, and man’s role in a Godly universe. My religious belief is only derived from my deep conviction that such moral rules (adopted widely, regardless of the name of the faith one attaches to them) would improve living quality among human beings in certain aspects. If it could be determined that I am incorrect in some of them, I do not hesitate to re-examine my core beliefs.

In the end I’m just travelling towards a better understanding of myself. Unfortunately, I can honestly say that most people I have encountered on the Internet have not helped me along that road. The lack of critical self-examination and the inability to place value on information (as opposed to emotional information-empty arguements) is why I feel that most message boards are worthless.

So, my old father was exhausted and has to go on a work trip tomorrow. He asked me if I could do him a favour and deliver a donation of his to a soup kitchen on Rene Lesvesque. Being in an unnatural state of generousity, I agreed to do it. I took my Mustang, and drove through the chilly streets, getting the rice from an ethnic grocery store and then driving to the soup kitchen.

So what happens once I deliver the food?

MY FUCKING CAR’S BATTERY DIES.

My car has had less than 35 k kilometers put on it – and it needs a boost? It isn’t as if I have bene cranking up the speakers and keeping the lights on while it was off!!!

How humiliating was it when my dad had to come and give me a boost