<body><iframe src="http://www.blogger.com/navbar.g?targetBlogID=12660585&amp;blogName=a+printing+house+in+hell&amp;publishMode=PUBLISH_MODE_BLOGSPOT&amp;navbarType=SILVER&amp;layoutType=CLASSIC&amp;homepageUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fren-ito.blogspot.com%2F&amp;searchRoot=http%3A%2F%2Fren-ito.blogspot.com%2Fsearch" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" height="30px" width="100%" id="navbar-iframe" title="Blogger Navigation and Search"></iframe> <div id="space-for-ie"></div>

a printing house in hell

enough! or too much.

folding, part ii

This is a continuation of the previous post, in which I talked mostly about the mechanics of the Folding@Home project. But my excitement about folding has to do with a lot more than just the technical aspects of the project, or even the feel-good factor of having contributed to some tangible good. There are a lot of important and challenging implications to Folding@Home and the principles behind it that I've been forced to consider seriously in the short while that I've been involved with it.

It's first of all true that the whole notion of doing good through technology is, in fact, counterintuitive for a lot of us. I'm not at this point arguing that Folding@Home accomplishes "good" (although I think it does); but it certainly has the potential or the capacity for good, and this in itself is for some of us a stretch. Think about it: when do we ever really talk positively about technology? At most we describe it in morally neutral language, like when we acknowledge the convenience of a particular thing. Most of the time, though, we're talking about how we really shouldn't be watching TV, or using so much gas, or wasting so much time online.

Granted, these examples are all tied to other issues (e.g. laziness, vs. the desire to be active), but they nonetheless breed a sort of instinctive moral aversion toward technology. Consequently, when our thoughts about technology move beyond indifference, we almost always adopt a language and conscience of guilt. Sometimes this antipathy is warranted, like when technology is used to harm or oppress or kill others. I think, though, that a lot of the time it arises moreso out of the sort of ingrained cultural paranoia that I've (briefly) described, and that it in fact isn't the necessary or even the appropriate response.

Of course, in order to make the claim that this sort of moral aversion is in fact an inappropriate response, we'd have to first establish that technology actually does achieve moral goods. It's not exactly an easy point to make, though: even in the case of a technology like Folding@Home, there are moral "pros" (the advancement of medical knowledge, or even the advancement of knowledge in general) and "cons" (the hardware and equipment used to fold and the energy required to power them, both of which might have adverse ecological effects).

In fact, it's a point I'm not even really going to try to make, since I haven't exactly thought up a rational proof for the moral merit of technology in general, or of Folding@Home in particular (although, on a slight tangent, I've recently become convinced that morality can't be determined by reason alone). I will say, in the particular context of this discussion, that I believe there are some ends that energy or natural resources should be consumed for, in the same way that animals consume resources for their own benefit (and yes, I understand that animals give back in order to integrate seamlessly with their ecosystems -- ideally, we would, too). I'll leave the question of morality open-ended, though, since I'm primarily interested not in its solution, but in how people perceive the question in the first place.

I've also been considering how the issue of technology and morality relates to our appraisals of culture. For a lot of us, the words "human culture" set off any number of alarms and red lights; this is particularly true of Evangelical Christians, who tend to see human culture in direct opposition to God's authority.

Here's a bit of a history lesson: for a while now, and against the centuries-old Christian paradigm of the sinfulness of humanity, people have been talking about the inherent goodness or merit of the human race. This school of thought, aptly called humanism, might be said to generally affirm that "Man is the measure of all things" (Protagoras). In the latter stages of the European Enlightenment, Protestant Christianity started picking up on threads of humanistic thought; the result was the abomination that we usually call liberal Protestantism. Suffice it to say that in the aftermath of the Second World War, a lot of Christians realised that liberal Protestantism, and its tendency to view human culture in a positive light, had contributed a great deal to the rise and subsequent horrors of Nazism. Modern "Evangelical" Protestantism reacted strongly against humanism as a result, and it's in the midst of this reaction that we've come to develop such a pessimistic language about culture and its creations (such as technology).

Of course, the polemic against culture existed in other forms before the rise of liberal Protestantism, but I think this is where the modern push, driven by the likes of Barth, originates (although this origin has since been forgotten). The polemic against technology has also found a lot of different expressions throughout Christian and even pre-Christian history, but generally speaking, when Christians look for a doctrinal basis for these sorts of beliefs, they adopt a view that's parallel with the objections made against liberal Protestantism (human insufficiency vs. God's power or authority), and thus I've decided to find a correlation between the two.

But is human culture actually so evil? I think that in order to answer the question, we'd first have to consider Protagoras' aforementioned maxim. If Man isn't the measure of all things -- if there exist layers of experience that aren't contained within human experience -- then there's the possibility of a higher (e.g. divine) existential mandate. If, on the other hand, Man is the measure of all things, then human existence can only be dictated by human experience.

This brings us back to a discussion (or was it more of a pitched battle?) that took place on this blog a while back, in which questions of subjectivity and objectivity came up. In short: we all think and feel and know and remember through the lens of our perceptive faculties (and these, of course, aren't limited to sensory faculties). Everything we experience and claim to know passes through this lens. In other words, we're subjective beings, and have no actual understanding (beyond a purely conceptual one) of what objectivity even is or means. For this reason it's completely nonsensical for us to claim access to "other" layers of experience, regardless of whether or not they even exist, because even if they do, they couldn't be known directly -- again, they would be coloured by the lens of our own experience.

So if human beings are subjective beings, and if our perceptive faculties are the lens through which all experience is filtered, then Man really is the measure of all things, as far as we can be concerned or ever know. Again, I'm not saying that God doesn't exist, in the same way that I'm not disavowing the existence of trees or birds or water or even other people. I'm simply saying that our knowledge of this and all other existence is contained within experience, whether we admit to it or not.

(Am I going to conclude that human culture should be glorified above God? No, and if this is where you thought I was going, you honestly need to give me a little more credit than that. Then again, what I am going to suggest might be an even more abhorrent train of thought.)

I think the very fact that all experience is subjective (and by extension that all knowledge of existence is contained within experience) precludes any real distinction between human culture and God's authority. If "human culture" loosely describes the expression of human experience, and if our understanding of God's law is contained (as all other knowledge is) in experience, so that the implementation of God's law could be said to ultimately be a form of such expression, then to deny the merit of culture is to deny the merit of the divine law. To deny the merit of human culture, in fact, is then to deny the merit of experience as such. I don't know about you, but I can't really conceive of a merit-less experience of life.

I hope that all made sense, and I hope it isn't perceived as an attack on some fundamental values. I actually think it's entirely in tune with our experience (at least when we're honest with ourselves), and that it doesn't undermine the importance of faith at all; I just happen to be using a lot of words that are taboo or already laden with negative connotations in the Christian context.

I'll just skip ahead to the most foreseeable and obvious objection to what I've said here before I end this post: no, I'm not saying that we should just be wishy-washy liberals who cave to the social/cultural fads of the day (and again, if you were thinking along these lines, you need to give me a little more credit). I've only argued that experience in general has merit, and not that "therefore everything that proceeds from experience has merit." The aim here was to object to the dismissal of all culture (still used here in my definition as the expression of human experience) as fundamentally corrupted, which I don't think it is -- although there are certainly such things as particular cultural forms that are wrong or evil.

I don't think Christianity loses its subversive, counter-cultural element in such an understanding of experience, either. There are quite obviously a lot of things wrong about culture, and Christianity and other creeds are right to oppose them. What I'm saying is that the polemic against culture as such, as if culture by its very nature is evil or in opposition to God, needs to be reconsidered. For the most part, I'm convinced that few Christians actually feel this way anyway, and that this sort of extreme, all-encompassing polemic emerges only when people start to look for a theoretical or doctrinal ground to tie their many counter-cultural convictions together.

In closing, I'll note that the Folding@Home project is again a perfect example of a cultural form -- of an expression of experience -- that doesn't fit into a fundamentally negative view of culture. Its specific merits aside (we left the question of its "net morality" open-ended), it does do some good, which already challenges a view that human culture and all its forms are essentially evil. At least, that's what I think -- I might be wrong, and in light of the possibility (as well as the fact that I just like to talk about these things) I'm more than open to discussion.

folding, part i

In a post I wrote a while ago I mentioned something called "distributed computing" and its application in fields like medical research. The specific initiative that I was referring to was the Folding@Home project run by Stanford University. Now that I've started folding regularly, I figured that I should explain a little more of the concept and what's involved. I'm actually really hoping this post isn't ignored out of boredom or perceived technical complexity, because I think the project is a really amazing and important one, and that awareness about it should be spread.

Distributed computing is actually fairly straightforward. We're all familiar with the concept of the supercomputer, a uniquely powerful and specialised machine that handles complex or involved computational tasks. There are a number of fields (e.g. in scientific research) where enormously powerful computers like these are required. Of course, this kind of equipment can cost a lot to operate and maintain, and even then there are general limitations on how much processing power can be crammed into a single working machine. Basically, distributed computing works around these problems by creating a "virtual" supercomputer, which in actuality is a whole bunch of less powerful computers working together, and by "distributing" the workload across this network in small-enough chunks that even these less-powerful computers can process them.

It seems, then, like distributed computing trades off one expense for another: an institution like Stanford waives the cost of having to maintain supercomputers, and instead that cost -- the initial cost of equipment, and the upkeep cost of electricity -- gets pushed on to the people who participate. But it really isn't that sinister, because the reality is that there's an enormous amount of energy waste on most home computers. That's to say that most computers these days are fairly powerful, and are a lot more powerful than they need to be to do the things we want them to do (word processing, browsing around on the internet, chatting).

To underscore the point: if you're running Windows, you can open up your "Task Manager" (if you don't know what I'm talking about, just ignore this part) and see, under the "Performance" tab, a graph of how hard your CPU (the brain of your computer) is being worked.[1] Chances are that 95% of the time, you aren't using more than 5-10% of your CPU power (I actually rarely ever exceed 1%), and that a huge portion of your computer's computing potential isn't being utilised. Distributed computing taps those spare resources and puts them to good use.[2]

So that's distributed computing, in a nutshell. Folding@Home is a specific project run by Stanford's chemistry department. Its purpose is to run simulations of protein folding, in order to gather data about the folding process and to analyse related phenomena. I can't go into a full explanation (partly because I want to keep this concise, but moreso because I don't fully understand myself -- all I know is what little I've read online and extracted from my dad over the dinner table), but the research is directly linked to studies of diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and even some cancers.

There's so much more to say about it, but I'm probably not the best person to say it. A wealth of information is available on the Folding@Home website, including instructions on downloading and using the Folding client. The instructions might be a bit technically involved, though -- so if any of you are interested but can't quite figure out how to make it work, you can ask me any questions and I'll be happy to try to help.

This post is a preliminary one, in which (I hope) I've clearly outlined the concept and mechanics of distributed computing in general, and Folding@Home in particular. I'll follow up in a few days with another post on some of the broader ideas and issues I've been reflecting on in relation to this project.

Notes:
[1] Ctrl+Alt+Delete -> Task Manager (unless Ctrl+Alt+Delete already gets you to Task Manager), and then click on the tab labelled "Performance".

[2] Now, granted, when your computer isn't working as hard it doesn't use as much electricity; and so when a distributed computing program is running on your computer, the end result is a higher power draw out of the wall socket. Still, and even if power usage and associated costs (financial and otherwise) are higher, there's a huge difference in efficiency -- a distributed computing program will make use of way more of the energy that your computer is eating up than your average, mostly-idle usage will.

im spiegel

If this were my body, and if this calloused flesh
Could twist and tear across these brittle bones,
Would it be broken?
Or would it only be reformed, but not re-Formed,
Being in essence still a cell of the living Body?

And if this were my blood, poured out of every gaping wound
To fill the cup of Thanks-giving for a short and bitter life,
Would it be drunk and spent?
Or would it solve into the stream and disperse,
And dissipate across the channels of experience?

Humanity has one Soul, and one Body;
The Soul and Body are one,
And entirety is contained within.

In cold heaven, the condemned man sits alone;
His sentence: to be cleft from the world of men
And thrust into the chasm of Deity.

questions of no importance

Meet Malachi, the magic 8-ball:

Pictured here engaging a daruma in a staring contest (which he's clearly losing), Malachi is nonetheless all business when it comes to his prophetic office. He was kind enough to answer a few questions for me (although I occasionally had to coax the answers out of him):

Q: Does God exist?
A: ASK AGAIN LATER.

Q: Does God love me?
A: SIGNS POINT TO YES.

Q: Do I love God?
A: WITHOUT A DOUBT.

Q: Is that enough?
A: YES DEFINITELY.

Q: Is there a difference between "enough" and "everything"?
A: IT IS CERTAIN.

Q: Is God love?
A: MY SOURCES SAY NO.

Q: Then is God greater than love?
A: REPLY HAZY, TRY AGAIN.

Q: Then is God greater than love?
A: ASK AGAIN LATER.

Q: Does God permeate all existence, rather than standing outside of it?
A: IT IS CERTAIN.

Q: Then is there a real difference between loving what exists and loving God?
A: CONCENTRATE AND ASK AGAIN.

Q: (with furrowed brow) Then IS there a real difference between loving what exists and loving God?!
A: CANNOT PREDICT NOW.

Q: Can you predict the weather?
A: ASK AGAIN LATER.

Q: Is my body absolutely distinct from my soul?
A: MY ANSWER IS NO.

Q: Is the rest of the physical world absolutely distinct from my body?
A: VERY DOUBTFUL.

S: Sounds like Shankara was right.
A: IT IS CERTAIN.

Q: Is there a wrong way to live?
A: YES.

Q: Is there a right way to live?
A: MY SOURCES SAY NO.

Q: Is there an a priori religious "premise" to humanity?
A: BETTER NOT TELL YOU NOW.

Q: Is it possible for Christianity to be radically without religion?
A: YES DEFINITELY.

Q: Is love the highest law?
A: IT IS DECIDEDLY SO.

Q: Is love the only law?
A: DON'T COUNT ON IT.

Q: Is it actually necessary to have a developed or systematised central belief?
A: VERY DOUBTFUL.

Q: Do belief and knowledge essentially have the same requisite conditions?
A: IT IS CERTAIN.

Q: But is there still a difference between the two in terms of actual qualification?
A: YES.

Q: Then is it right for Christians, whose confessed faith is a belief, to attempt to qualify their faith as knowledge?
A: MY SOURCES SAY NO.

Q: Relatively speaking, am I hard to love?
A: IT IS CERTAIN.

Q: Is it unreasonable of me to demand reciprocity in (most) relationships?
A: MOST LIKELY.

Q: Can love be destructive?
A: YOU MAY RELY ON IT.

Q: When I "trust in God" am I ultimately discerning/deciding, according to my own faculties, what God wants me to do?
A: IT IS DECIDEDLY SO.

Q: So am I not ultimately trusting in myself, and in my own understanding of God?
A: YOU MAY RELY ON IT.

Q: Am I really a liberal Protestant?
A: MOST LIKELY.

Q: Are you John Connor?
A: WITHOUT A DOUBT.

Q: Is the world really divisible into rock stars and groupies?
A: IT IS CERTAIN.

Q: Is it possible to live without passion?
A: YES DEFINITELY.

Q: Is it possible to live a worthwhile life without passion?
A: DON'T COUNT ON IT.

Q: Are people inherently evil?
A: AS I SEE IT YES.

Q: Are people inherently good?
A: YES.

Q: Are good and evil really inherent attributes, or are they just descriptors of human actions (and therefore not inherent)?
A: ASK AGAIN LATER.

Q: Is human culture evil?
A: ASK AGAIN LATER.

Q: Is religion an example of human culture?
A: YES DEFINITELY.

Q: Is it better to love people and ignore God than to love God and ignore people?
A: WITHOUT A DOUBT.

Q: Do you think most people would misunderstand the meaning or intent of these questions?
A: AS I SEE IT YES.

Q: Will the Red Wings win the Stanley Cup?
A: MY SOURCES SAY NO.

S: Your sources are wrong.
A: DON'T COUNT ON IT.

Q: Does God exist?
A: DON'T COUNT ON IT.

the remains of the day

There are times when I'm acutely aware of the immensity of existence. There are also times when a single thought engulfs the whole world, and consumes the entirety of my being in one fleeting moment.

Love isn't bound by the conventions of courtesy or obligation or even attraction. Love abides by its own law, which supersedes all others. Its motivation to act isn't necessity but a creative, positive energy, and its object isn't the loved "other" but is the union of lovers in a greater whole.[1]

I'm excited by the prospect of forming new friendships and reviving old ones. Still, I know I'm far from having figured friendship out.[2] In order to make the most of these opportunities that are now presenting themselves, I need to fundamentally change the way that I relate to people. I need to make myself vulnerable if I want to break down barriers and love more openly.

An insight that a very wise person -- or rather, a very wise friend -- shared with me recently: people are always either growing together or growing apart (and never seem to grow parallel to one another).

To believe in something is to know the truth of that thing.[3] If truth has an intrinsic moral value, then belief, too, has direct moral implications. Thus if two contradictory beliefs come into contact (being, as they are, in service of two contradictory truths), they have a moral obligation to conflict with and oppose each other, cum dilectione hominum et odio vitiorum.[4] To avoid conflict is to betray the truth in which one believes. At the same time, if the outcome of such conflict can be decided in favour of one or the other perspective, to deny this verdict is to betray Truth itself.

What does it really mean to anchor yourself somewhere, in something other than yourself? Can you meaningfully be grounded in something external to your own existence, to your own experience of life? And is that kind of a foundation really true to your experience? to your humanity?

Over the past ten days I've been afforded a lot of time to think, to wonder, to laugh, to create, to learn, to listen, to grow, and to love. I think that I've once again substantially revised my definition of Me, and that in spite of my failures and imperfections I've grown a great deal. Love has really changed things for me this past week, and opened my eyes to new and beautiful realities. In short: the last ten days have been the happiest that I've had in a long time.

Notes:
[1] Thus the greatest love isn't the love that gives or sacrifices, but rather the love that creates something greater than the mere sum of its parts -- a process which involves giving, but doesn't culminate in it.

[2] What does it mean, after all, to be a friend? to have a friend? Is a friend someone who's cared for, or someone who cares, or both? Is love necessary for friendship? Is friendship necessary for love?

[3] I don't think it's really possible to believe in a falsehood; those who try to do so succeed only when they manage to convince themselves that the lie is actually a truth. In a sense this goes without saying: to believe in something is to believe that something is right. Thus the only possible object of belief is truth, even if the truth itself is only subjective.

[4] "With love of mankind and hatred of sins." -- St. Augustine