8W: Week 1 / Day 3

Today's workout is as follows:

Do This Three Times:

• A1: 10 pull-ups
• B1: 10 one-arm cable curls (10 each arm)
• A2: 10 barbell curls
• B2: 10 deadlifts
• A3: burpees with a jump
• B3: 10 incline dumbbell curls

Then Do This:

• 20 minutes of cardio training

Note 1: During the strength training section of this workout, do A1/B1 three times, followed by A2/B2 three times, followed by A3/B3 three times.

Some Links

My sister directs my attention to new research that suggests acute cardiovascular exercise can inhibit the growth of prostate cancer cells. What I found most interesting is that the mechanism through which this takes place appears to be the same one I myself identified here.

Mexico is now the world's most obese nation. This should reiterate the fact that there is no such thing as a "western diet."

Joseph Stiglitz makes a series of frankly awesome points about how free trade agreements are really anything but, before ultimately descending into his more typical leftist angling. Joseph Stiglitz: great economist, nutty politician. (Hat tip goes to Jonathan Finegold Catalan.)

Bryan Caplan provides a wonderful analogy for free market economic policies (the real kind of free markets, not the ones Stiglitz criticizes): Engaging in anti-market policy is like scratching a mosquito bite - although we intend it to solve the problem, it actually makes the problem worse.

With his characteristic proclivity toward the truth, Steven Landsburg describes why his blog is better than Paul Krugman's:

I am blessed with a readership that would never let me get away with announcing a conclusion stripped of any reasoning. Krugman, with his considerably larger readership, can afford to ignore anyone who might be interested in learning something and preach instead to the lowest common denominator. If you don’t believe me, check out the quality of his comments section.

(For the record, the topic at hand is making Bangladesh suffer.)

Negotiation

Last year, I wrote about The Lost Art Of Diplomacy. In that post, I hinted at a concept I would like to discuss in greater detail today: society's steady deterioration in its ability to negotiate.

Selling Guitars On Craig's List
From time to time, I sell old personal items on CraigsList.org. I don't do this to make a personal profit so much as I do it to empty the house of things I no longer use. It would be a lot easier and more productive if I were to simply give these items away or even throw them in the trash. One of the reasons I experiment with CraigsList is because it is a fascinating window into psychology.

For example, I currently have a listing for a guitar I would like to sell. I recently received interest in that listing in the form of a one-line email message that simply read "Can you send me pic's" [sic]. No question mark, no introduction, no salutation. Just, "Can you send me pic's" [sic].

So I sent him "pic's." In response, he sent me the following email, which I quote in its entirety:

You now that they sell those guitar's all day.for 150 buck's on ebay and musician's friend. In 3 different colors.so seriously. You want 250. For it [sic]

This struck me as being a tad antagonistic, so I replied as follows:

You're welcome to buy one on EBay. :) Mine doesn't have to ship. I don't mind if you want to make a lower offer, but please do so nicely [sic]

As you can see, my sense of mischief got the better of me, and I started emulating my new pen-pal's unique approach to punctuation. It wasn't a perfect parody, of course. I can't go that far.

At any rate, my point was simply this: (1) If you can find the same guitar for a lower price, by all means purchase it for a lower price; (2) Although the guitar I am selling is listed for a higher asking price, there is no need to pay shipping charges, which makes the bottom line significantly closer to market value; (3) But still, if you, the buyer, would like to make a counter-offer, you certainly may - but do so respectfully.

Think about it, why would I acquiesce to a Craig's List bully? I'm not going to reduce my price for someone who criticizes me via email. Why would I do that?

I am a reasonable guy, however. If my correspondent can make me a compelling counter-offer and actually persuade me that I am better off selling it at that price, I'm happy to do so. I don't make a living by selling my used music equipment on Craig's List, after all. He won't be cutting into my profit margins. It's a guitar I bought, experimented with, and ultimately decided to part ways with. I want to sell it to him.

In response to my last email, my new friend apologized, saying he did not mean to offend me, and then suggested that he would get back to me with a counter-offer when he had settled on a number. I assume he is now doing his due diligence regarding market prices and assessing the best strategic counter-offer to make.

However, at this point I have all the information I need to assess my pen-pal's ability to negotiate, and my analysis is not particularly favorable of him.

Inability To Negotiate Is Now The Norm
Negotiation has always been a talent. Some have it, and some don't. However, it strikes me as being a talent that is now rarer than ever. This is not the first time I've engaged in Craig's List negotiations, and my recent experience is entirely reflective of my past experience. That is: people do not seem to understand what they're doing.

Negotiation is a process through which both sides make small confessions such that the ultimate agreement is more mutually beneficial than it would have been in absence of negotiation. Negotiation allows two or more parties to see whether they can reach a better arrangement than that which would occur without having the ability to negotiation.

Using my guitar example, the status quo might be that at my $250 asking price, I will not sell my guitar, nor will anyone acquire my guitar. Because I want to sell it, and someone else wants to buy it, the ability to negotiate a mutually agreeable price enables me to receive more cash than I would otherwise have, while simultaneously allowing someone else to acquire a guitar that he would not otherwise acquire. Thus, both of us benefit from engaging in a negotiation.

I apologize for that pedantic breakdown of the situation, but I do have a point: There is no reason to negotiate with someone who has no interest in appealing to my interests. Holding out for just one person's interests is not appreciably different from not negotiating at all, since I will not sell at a disadvantageous price, nor will the potential buyer end up with a new guitar. That means that his stubbornness hurts him as much as it hurts me.

Of course, his stubbornness was not his major failure here. I would have had incentive to prompt him for a better counter-offer if he had communicated with me in a pleasant way. (In truth, if he gets back in touch with me and starts communicating more pleasantly, I will still happily sell him my guitar.)

It is wholly disadvantageous for him to begin the negotiation process by antagonizing me. But why doesn't he understand this?

Political Breakdown
The reason he doesn't understand is because he has no concept of what it means to negotiate. Somehow, our digital lives have deteriorated our interpersonal skill-set. It is a lot easier to troll and flame an internet avatar than it is to sit down, look someone directly and respectfully in the eye, and have a real meeting-of-the-minds. You can power-off a computer that insults you; you cannot power-off another human being.

When you're stuck in the same room as someone else, or even when you're talking to that person on the telephone, the digital rules no longer apply. You're forced to appeal to a person's dignity, rather than their shame. You quickly determine that, to achieve a large number of your own goals, you need to help the other person achieve as many of theirs as possible. In short, you're forced to negotiate.

The dearth of diplomacy, however, goes all the way to the top. Consider, for example, this morning's news about the state of US soldiers in Afghanistan, as reported by CBS (emphases mine):

The Obama Administration is considering a complete pullout of U.S. troops in Afghanistan by 2014, a reversal of the current policy of keeping a small number of units there after the scheduled 2014 drawdown and a sign of mounting tension between President Obama and Afghan president Hamid Karzai. 

CBS News Chief White House correspondent Major Garrett reports that top White House aides admit the change reflects Obama's mounting personal frustration with Karzai. U.S.-Afghan tensions boiled over in June, following initial steps toward a launch of coordinated formal peace talks with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar.  

One day after the talks between U.S. and Afghan officials and the Taliban were set to begin, Karzai publicly denounced the effort and suspended all conversations with the U.S. over future military cooperation.

Here we have two grown men - in fact, professional diplomats - whose approach to diplomacy is, apparently, to give up entirely if the other side does not adequately meet their needs.

Some sympathy for Karzai is required in this example. After all, if your country were slowly slipping back into the status of a failed state and the warlords were circling your one, last "green zone," grace under pressure is sure to give way to desperation, especially after some twelve years of begging for more help.

But Barack Obama has no such excuse. He is a laureate of the Nobel Peace Prize and the elected leader of what many call "the most powerful nation in the world." He holds the fate of Afghanistan in his own two hands, and possesses every imaginable advantage over Karzai. Why, then, would he invoke the nuclear option? Is he nuts?

Of course, we have seen this sort of behavior from Obama before, on virtually every issue. The "great orator" is a gifted writer of speeches, but his ability to negotiate productive solutions to complex problems leaves a lot to be desired. He bullies from the pulpit, he wags his finger, he maligns his opponents in the press, he sics his army of bureaucrats and law-enforcers on all those who inconvenience him.

These are the negotiation tactics of the schoolyard. Is it any wonder that ordinary people across the country are so incapable of engaging in productive negotiation when their leaders, the ones who draw six-figure salaries to sit down and negotiation productively, quit and go home whenever the negotiations don't fully bear fruit?

Conclusion
The only way forward here is for all of us, individually, to commit to being better negotiators, better diplomats. We'll never change Barack Obama, and I may never sell my guitar. But our only hope of improving our lot here is in acquiring an important social skill set.

Holding out for everything often means that you walk away with nothing. The goal of diplomacy is to ensure that you do not walk away with nothing. The lost art of negotiation is something we badly need these days.

8W: Week 1 / Day 2

HIIT time! Hop aboard your bicycle, exercise bike, or preferred alternative form of exercise and do the following cardiovascular workout:

• 5 minute warm-up
• 5 minutes at a hard pace (e.g. 70% of maximum effort)
• 2 minutes at an easy pace (e.g. recovery pace)
• 4 minutes hard pace 
• 2 minutes easy pace
• 3 minutes hard pace
• 1 minute easy pace
• 2 minutes hard pace
• 1 minute easy
• 1 minute hard
• 5 minute cool-down

Note 1: Try to choose a "hard pace" that will enable you to finish the entire workout without your having to reduce the hard pace midway through the workout.

Note 2: Allow yourself a slow enough "easy pace" to enable a good recovery between hard sets.

8W: Week 1 / Day 1

Today's workout is as follows:

Do This Three Times:

• 10 push-ups with your feet on a medicine ball
• 10 cable presses
• 10 push-ups with one hand on a medicine ball. Roll the medicine ball to the opposite hand between each push-up.
• 10 cable cross-overs
• 10 one-legged push-ups with your hands on an upside-down Bosu. Jump to switch legs between each push-up.
• 10 incline presses

Then Do This:

• 20 minutes of cardio training

Note 1: Choose a personally appropriate level of weight to begin with; this should be different for everyone. But there is a level of weight at which anyone will find the above strength training difficult, so choose that level of weight. We will be increasing the weight as we progress.

Note 2: I am recommending the elliptical machine for relative beginners. People who have a lot of experience with one particular form of cardio, such as running, swimming, or cycling, may substitute their preferred alternative.

Note 3: If 20 minutes of cardio is too little for your current level of fitness, feel free to do more; but choose a length of time that you plan on building from, going forward.

8W: Introduction

I love sports-specific training, and running in particular. Of course! But sometimes sports-specific training is a bad match for your fitness goals. One reason is obvious: if you don't have a basketball game coming up, then why work out like a basketball player? It's hard to keep yourself motivated for a sport that you're not actively involved in.

But there are plenty of other reasons why you might want to pursue general fitness rather than sports-specific training. If you have a special occasion coming up and want to look your best, overall fitness is the best way to go. If you have little interest in specific sports, but a keen interest in being healthy, then you might train for well-roundedness rather than specific achievement. If you have long and physically demanding travel commitment, such as a month on the road for work, you might prefer to get in excellent all-around shape to improve your endurance to travel.

It was one or several of these reasons that inspired a reader to come to me for advice on creating an eight-week training all-around regimen suitable for someone who is less interested in running than I am, but equally interested in fitness.

This two-month schedule of exercises, which I am unimaginatively calling "8W" for "eight weeks," should be appropriate for anyone who knows their way around a well-equipped gym, which is to say: it's not for beginners. There is a wealth of fitness information out there for beginners, and I encourage beginners to seek out that information and make use of it. At Stationary Waves, though, the question is not where to start but what to tackle next.

Over the next eight weeks, I will be providing a daily, intermediate-level workout. In total, these workouts comprise the eight-week exercise regimen I developed for a reader: now yours for free! The principles applied throughout this regimen reflect a dedication to variety, progression, ambition, and well-roundedness.

The obligatory disclaimer is as follows: I'm no physiologist. I'm a fitness hobbyist. I cannot appeal to a PhD in exercise science, but I can appeal to my 25 years of personal experimentation. The exercises provided in my program are stated in a general way, without specific references to amounts of weight, to accommodate a wide array of fitness levels. Use this program as a guideline or as a source of new ideas. If things start to hurt, take some rest and ask yourself if you might benefit more from a less ambitious set of workouts.

But above all, have fun. Today's workout will follow in a subsequent post.

The Wrong Side Of History

Americans are unanimous in the shame they feel over the great scar on our nation's history: slavery. This is right and natural. Like citizens of every nation, we feel a sense of national pride (well, most of us, anyway). It's hard to square a sense of national pride with awareness of such a terrible national mistake. It creates cognitive dissonance: If America is the "land of the free," how could we have ever tolerated human slavery at a time when most civilized nations had already given it up?

The Abolitionists were on the right side of history. The slave-owners were not. The national sense of shame America feels over slavery and Jim Crow is the shame that goes along with being on the wrong side of history, and that is the topic of this morning's blog post.

Horrifying
Looking back, it's difficult to believe that so many people consented to an American system of slavery. It's also difficult to believe that so many people consented to Japanese internment camps during World War II. Likewise with the so-called "Guatemala syphilis experiments," in which the United States Public Health Service flagrantly infected innocent Guatemalans - including children - with syphilis. On all of these issues, the US government and anyone who defended its actions were on the wrong side of history.

No one can offer any credible defense against actions of this kind. There is no justifiable sense of "the greater good" to which we can appeal that will make these and other atrocities any less horrifying. Anyone who defended them when they were occurring should be ashamed of themselves. On this, we can all agree.

Nor could it ever make sense to state that, had the US government not committed these atrocities, we would otherwise be living in a state of anarchy. True, a world in which there is no human slavery, no internment camps, no genocidal science experiments, is a world in which our government has far less power than it did at the time, and indeed less than it has now. However, the power required to carry out these kinds of atrocities is not one that any government should be entitled to wield.

Upon this, we all agree. We did not tolerate it of Nazi Germany, and we should not tolerate it of contemporary or historical America. Horrors are horrors, even when our own "side" is the one committing them.

But what amazes me is that, at the time, few of those committing such atrocities seemed self-aware enough to understand that they were on the wrong side of history. Did people in 19th Century America really believe that human slavery was an institution that would extend to perpetuity? Did they not realize that its days were numbered? Did employees of the US government fail to understand that their reckoning day would come, and they would be held to answer for why they imprisoned Japanese-Americans in naziesque ghettos and/or injected little children with syphilis?

Did they really think time would not reveal them to be the monsters that they are?

The Wrong Side Of The Present
Sure, it's easy for me to say: I wasn't around in the 19th Century; I wasn't around for Jim Crow; I wasn't around for Japanese internment camps or Guatemalan science experiments. I didn't live back then. I live now.

Today, our governments engage in a wide array of actions and policies that will, I am sure, fail the test of history. The challenge for us as citizens and individuals is to try to identify the right course of action and advocate for it.

The reason I bring history into it at all is that one gains a much different perspective on, for example, daily drone bombings in Pakistan when one views such a policy as a chapter in a history book than when one views it as a column of text on Page 6 of the newspaper. From the Page 6 point of view, drone strikes are what we have to do to fight the terrorists and bring our troops home. From the historical point of view, drone strikes on Pakistani villages stand out as being one of the greater US-waged atrocities of the past fifty years.

Imprisoning hundreds of people at Guantanamo Bay, to cite another example, and denying them the same human rights that our Constitution guarantees ordinary citizens certainly does not sound like the kind of thing we will have been proud of defending over the next half-century. I am fully aware of the political "challenges" associated with bringing this nightmare to an end. But when will we realign our policies with the course of history? Obviously, we cannot commit to a long-standing policy of secret prisons, even if we think we can. Perhaps you can stand for it today, but there will come a day when the vast majority of human beings will not stand for it and will fight against it. It has happened before.

So, I encourage you to ask yourself when you consider such issues: In 50 years, will I be proud that I defended the practice of bombing Pakistani villages? Will I have been on the right side of history.

Immigration
It certainly sounds reasonable at first-blush to say that we should "secure the border." But in another 200 years, what will our descendants have to say about a global system of keeping human beings inside fences unless and until they can prove through the magic of paperwork that they have more economically valuable skills than a large proportion of the country in which they want to attempt to make a living? In truth, the notion that a species of hunter-gatherers who, for tens of thousands of years, have been wondering the globe and forming settlements according to their own whims and capacity to survive, could somehow be contained by imaginary lines is a truly breathtaking level of stupidity.

The Great Wall of China failed to keep the Mongols out. What happened instead was that the Wall's stated intent changed from "protection" to "regulation," and ultimately, to antiquation. The Mongols and the Chinese intermixed and interbred. The result was not a cataclysmic erosion of Chinese culture so much as a gradual evolution from two or more ancient cultures to one, modern Chinese culture. In time, as history progresses, that modern culture will also change as the Chinese further intermix with the nations and communities that exist today. The lesson here is clear: not even the greatest wall ever built by human governments can come between peaceful people who wish to interact with each other.

The fact that the Great Wall of China still stands, and yet some in the United States actually believe that building a fence along the US-Mexico border will fix the immigration "problem" is all the demonstration we need in order to understand that some people simply aren't on the right side of history here.

As with the Guantanamo Bay issue, I am aware of the political "challenges" associated with allowing increased immigration. The reason I am not too concerned with those challenges is because immigration is an inevitability; it is human nature; it is a fact of human history; it cannot be stopped. If it could be stopped, The Great Wall of China certainly would have done it. The Berlin Wall would have done it.

We have tried these fences many times and many different ways. Ultimately, in the scope of history, they fail. Those who continually argue against immigration are on the wrong side of history. What they say today, and even what they might achieve politically over the next few months or years, will ultimately prove futile. Trade, travel, and migration are facts of human existence, demonstrated irrefutably by the course of history.

Conclusion
Some of you might object to my comparing immigration with internment camps, slavery, and genocide. Those who typically raise this kind of objection also tend to be those who suggest that countries like Mexico are culturally inferior to countries like the United States. I am not sure how to assess the merits of a culture, and I am not even sure that "culture" is a thing the merits of which can be assessed. It suffices simply to remark that "cultural inferiority" is one of the justifications that have been used - again, historically - in support of slavery, genocide, apartheid, etc.

The question is simply this: which side of history do you want to be on?

Over

Another lazy Sunday, another music video added to my YouTube channel. If you're not already a subscriber, you're a sucker!

Enjoy a little demo I like to call Over...

Insipid Pop Weekend

Remember when I cooked up the idea of Insipid Pop Weekend? Far be it from me to leave you hanging. Here's the third installment. (Actually, this one is a couple of years old now.)

Enjoy.

If Anti-Immigration Isn't Racism, Then Someone Make An Argument For It That Isn't Racist

Simon Grey provides what I consider to be the classic racist (forgive me, Simon) argument against open borders:

Any honest person, in answering these questions, would have to come to the conclusions that a) there are differences between America and Mexico and b) some of those differences are cultural.  Moreover, the solution(s) to Mexico’s apparent cultural deficiencies are not easily forthcoming (eg. ending government corruption in Mexico in, say, 10 years would be a miracle unto itself).

Everyone in their right mind agrees with Simon's (a) and (b), but Grey has failed to include his point (c), which is both implied and taken for granted. If Grey had stated his point (c), it would read something like this: (c) These cultural deficiencies are the primary reason Mexicans want to immigrate to the United States. I could further elaborate on a few implied points about that, but they are not necessary for me to make my point.

To wit: Let's say there are cultural differences between the two countries, but the major reason why Mexicans want to immigrate to the United States is because a natural disaster has wiped out most of their homeland. (Think of the many Pakistani emigrants, for example, who fled across borders when their homes were flooded in 2010.) In that case, everyone agrees with Grey's (a) and (b), and yet neither of those facts informs the immigration issue whatsoever.

Tellingly, Grey counts "government corruption" as a cultural deficiency, which perhaps it is, but certainly one that the United States shares. (If his claim is that the US government is merely less corrupt than the Mexican government, I would love to see some evidence for this claim.)

Thus, this tendency to believe that the "cultural differences" that exist between nations are predominantly bad among nations experiencing emigration, and predominantly good among nations experiencing immigration is a fundamentally ethnocentric belief. (And most of us agree that ethnocentrism is racism - feel free to disagree in the comments.)

This idea implies that those countries which have the highest rates of immigration must be culturally superior. It also implies that any American who immigrates to, say, Singapore does so because he or she feels that Singapore is culturally superior to the United States. Or how about people who retire in Panama to enjoy the nice weather and attractive scenery. Are they counting Panama as culturally preferable to the United States? Would anyone ever seriously make claims of this kind?

I'm not suggesting that no one ever immigrates for this reason, but to hear Simon Grey tell it (or Sonic Charmer, or any of the people either of them link to on immigration issues), it is the major factor. In truth, this concept is all in their heads. They see the United States as having cultural advantages to Mexico, thus they believe that all or most of the reasons people immigrate from Mexico are rooted in culture.

White Man's Burden, anyone?

Am I suggesting that there are no cultural reasons for disparate national incomes whatsoever? Of course not. There are many diverse reasons why people choose to leave one nation behind in order to build a new life in another country. Most predominantly, those reasons are economic, not cultural, hence we observe that many immigrants come to the United States yet still maintain strong cultural ties to their homeland.

There is another reason why Mexicans come to the United States and not, say, France. (For all I know, Grey may also believe that France is culturally inferior to the United States, but for the moment let's appeal to Grey's foot note, which states "The general point of this point will stand if you substitute any other country name in place of either 'Mexico' or 'America.'" The reason is that immigration restrictions are higher in France. They are also higher in the United Kingdom, in Singapore, in Germany, and in most other wealthy, culturally dominant nations.

See, emigrants follow the money, but only so far as they can actually follow it. US immigration policy - as closed as it is - is relatively open on a national scale, so "Mexicans" immigrate "here," rather than "there." This fact seriously undermines Grey's cultural superiority narrative because it reveals that one of the primary factors determining human migratory patterns have more to do with legal structure than cultural anything. I suspect the reason Simon Grey fails to pick up on this is because has never actually attempted to emigrate anywhere. Others have.

But to the anti-immigration bloggers out there, every difference is a cultural one. There is no other imaginable explanation. Every conceivable reason why Tamerlan Tsarnaev ended up in Boston instead of Berlin relates to the cultural superiority of the United States.

This is a complete and utter cognitive failure.

Grey provides a view even further into the void:

First, some open-borders libertarians are simply reformed progressives; they defend a sort of anarchist definition of freedom, but still hew to an essentially progressive worldview, one that accepts basic progressive tenets.  Thus, they accept cultural relativism, and must therefore deny that culture (and perhaps even race/genetics) has any bearing on any differences whatsoever, and therefore defend open borders since it doesn’t offend their moral sensibilities.  These people are basically SWPLs without the corresponding desire to “help” the less fortunate.

There can't be more to economic disparity than culture, no, it's just that our moral sensibilities are offended. That is a mighty large slack variable.

But forget about the weakness of his theory. To the likes of Simon Grey and Sonic Charmer, those of us who disagree with him also belong to a different culture, an "essentially progressive" one. If you don't automatically think that economic hardship is caused by cultural disparity, then you're one of "them," the ones who "accept cultural relativism" and who "deny that culture... and perhaps even race/genetics" has any bearing on differences whatsoever.

In other words, culture either tells the whole story, or you're one of those dumb people who thinks it makes no difference whatsoever. Incredibly, Grey caps off his dissection of the issue by remarking that for those who disagree with him, "nuance and broadness is not exactly their strong suit." Very rich, Mr. Grey.

I would like to believe that such ideas aren't just tribalism and racism. But if they aren't, then they need to be justified on something other than racist terms. Jumping willy-nilly from "there are cultural differences" to "and that's why Mexicans move to the United States" is at best sloppy and poorly reasoned. But at worst, it's racism.

Happy 4th Of July!

Let freedom ring.

Cognition And Music Appreciation

Part of the reason people have such strong opinions about music is that, when it is heard, it is very difficult to ignore. That might be because it engages multiple regions of the brain, or it might be due to the fact that sound carries special weight in the human brain for evolutionary reasons. Euphony might signal safety while cacophony might signal danger, for example. I have blogged about this before.

We can imagine a continuum along which there are two poles, representing absolute simplicity versus total complexity. If we accept the full audible sonic spectrum, then on one side of the continuum, we have a single sound. On the other side of the continuum, we have every imaginable sound played all at once. Essentially, on one side, we have literal monotony, and on the other side, we have white noise. Between those two extremes, we have every combination of sounds the human ear can conceivably hear.

According to this idea, music is a subset of that continuum. On the simple side of the music continuum, we have a single note, either sustained indefinitely or played repeatedly; on the complex side, we have an elaborate amalgamation of notes and rhythms that is so complex that it is impossible for the mind to unravel.

With that continuum in mind, let's consider a series of assertions.

Assertion #1: Both Poles Of The Music Continuum Are Annoying
The reason those buzzing alarm clocks wake you up is because the sound they make is annoying. That sound is identical to the "simple" extreme on the music continuum. Few of us can be subjected to that noise for an extended period of time without going crazy.

Similarly, very complex examples of 20th Century atonal music, featuring many overlapping and tonally unrelated sounds, might be the closest thing we have to the "complex" extreme. Unsurprisingly, we also find that the vast majority of human beings grow irritable upon hearing that music, at least for an extended period of time. Even the members of the unannoyed minority would find it difficult to listen to, say, five such pieces played simultaneously.

Thus we see that there is a limit to the level of simplicity, and a limit to the level of complexity, human brains are capable of tolerating in music before they grow irritable.

Assertion #2: Music Gets More Pleasing Once We Move Away From The Poles
Even a repetitive piece of music like a cell phone ringtone is sufficiently repetitive to annoy most people. But it is much less annoying than a buzzing alarm clock. Therefore, as we add small increments of complexity, we eventually move along the continuum to a sufficient degree that we arrive at the lower bound of what we might call "tolerable music."

Similarly, as we strip away elements of a complex piece, we begin to arrive at a point where relationships between notes and sounds can be formed in terms of harmony and rhythm. The point at which every sound we hear makes some sort of musical sense is the upper bound of what we are calling "tolerable music."

Thus, the continuum that runs from the lower bound to the upper bound represents the full spectrum of music we are willing to tolerate.

Assertion #3: Different People Have Different Lower and Upper Bounds
Uncontroversially, it can be noted by mere observation that different people have different levels of tolerance when it comes to the upper and lower bounds. For some, 20th Century atonal music is absolutely intolerable, while for others it offers a highly stimulating listening experience. "The Song That Doesn't End" is enough to drive many people crazy; but kids really seem to like it.

Hopefully this suffices to establish that at which points people end up setting their upper and lower bounds for "tolerable music" is dependent on the individual hearing the music. Tastes vary by individual. No two people have exactly the same taste in music.

Assertion #4: The Location Of Lower And Upper Bounds Is A Function Of Cognitive Ability
If you teach a child a simple melody, that child will play that melody over and over again until he or she has driven you nuts. That child has a higher tolerance for simple, repetitive melodies than you have. In terms of our continuum, the child's lower bound is at a point closer to the "simplicity pole" than your lower bound is.

Similarly, a music novice of any age will tend to have a higher tolerance for simplicity than a veteran musician, because the novice cannot yet understand very complex music - due to a combination of lack of exposure and lack of the necessary theoretical fundamentals - while music that is more appropriate for beginners will fail to captivate the veteran, and relatively more complex pieces will give the veteran better audio stimulation and a richer experience.

The range of music compositions we find pleasing enough to listen to without getting annoyed, therefore, is a function of a person's cognitive ability to process those sounds.

Conclusion
Of course, musical cognition is not purely a function of age or intelligence. One cannot know everything about everything, so it is quite common to encounter brilliant physicists who prefer Bruce Springstein to Frank Zappa or Rhodes Scholars who prefer Bob Dylan to Gentle Giant. Even among musicians themselves, some very experienced ones will not put in the work required to gain an appreciation for very complicated music, while others are so accustomed to hearing complicated music that they become intolerant of anything they understand too easily.

I wrote this post this morning to explore what I believe to be one of the most important factors determining how "annoying" a person considers music to be. I am always surprised at the froth and vitriol with which people express distaste for a piece of music, and that vitriol seems to be out-of-proportion to the fact that all that is being reacted to someone else's artistic expression.

My point is that the continuum is established by the individual's actual cognition. We have a tendency to over-emphasize the role "emotion" plays in music appreciation. I don't deny that it does, but I would suggest that cognitive intolerance rules out certain sounds before a person ever has a chance to assess the merits of those sounds on an emotional level.

Once the "annoying music" has been cognitively omitted from consideration, though, each individual has many reasons to appreciate any particular piece of music. Some of those reasons are emotional, some are academic, and some are multi-faceted and difficult to explain.

Happiness As A Set Of Time Constraints

We all want what is best for us, individually.

In the material sense, this means that we all want all of our own material desires to be fully satisfied. There are only two kinds of people who ever succeed in this, however: Bajillionaires and hippies. Bajillionaires are able to accomplish this because they have more productive capability than desires. Hippies are able to accomplish this because they have fewer desires than they have productive capacity. (By analogy, there are two ways to avoid losing a footrace: by running faster than everyone else in the race, or by choosing not to run the race at all.)

In the philosophical or spiritual sense, this means that we all want to achieve a state of perfect knowledge or spiritual fulfillment. There are only two kinds of people who succeed in this: Geniuses and fools. Like bajillionaires, geniuses have more ability than they have want. Like hippies, fools have fewer wants than abilities in the intellectual sphere.

We can continue listing out the various kinds of utility and making the same observation again and again. The only people who will ever be satisfied in love are either those who greatly excel in their ability to love, and those who require very little love to be satisfied. The only people who will ever be satisfied in art are brilliant artists and people who are easily impressed by anything called "art." And so on...

In every aspect of life, "satisfaction" ultimately comes down to either being able to achieve everything you want, or to want far less than you could ever hope to achieve. None of us will never be able to satisfy all of our desires through pure productive capacity, because the time required to satisfy all material desires is so great that we are left with too little time to satisfy all artistic, spiritual, relationship desires, and so forth.

So we humans have developed many silly intellectual frameworks the purpose of which is to justify preferential treatment of one particular aspect of life. The principle of "enlightened self-interest" serves to justify a preference toward material desires and wealth-generation. The purpose of organized religion is to justify a preference toward satisfaction of spiritual desires. The purpose of romanticism is to justify a preference toward love. The purpose of Bohemianism is to justify artistic lifestyles. The list goes on.

Each framework exposes us to a different kind of poverty. Devoting yourself to one framework or another will result in feeling empty in other aspects of your life.

Therefore, the best approaches are those that result in something other than poverty. Even an utter lack of philosophy or intellectual frameworks will produce a better outcome than being overly dedicated to religion, money, or etc. This is why "the masses" are generally much happier than the more thoughtful people who spend a lot of time anguishing over the fact that the world would be a better place if people were more spiritual, or creative, or ambitious, or had a greater capacity for love, and so on.

The real key to happiness is finding an acceptable balance among all your competing desires. If the one and only thing that will ever make you happy is to be, say, a great painter, then you should certainly dedicate your life to being a great painter. But if you can live with being merely a good painter, then that frees up some of your time to earn more money, have more satisfying personal relationships, learn more about science, have a healthier body, or whatever else might make you happy. This, of course, assumes that you can also be satisfied with less than pure bliss in those other areas as well.

Does Reality Exist?

To question reality is to make the most amateurish mistake in all of philosophy. The question itself is meaningless. I will now illustrate why.

1.
First, let's establish that "reality" is, by definition, that which actually exists objectively. You can compare it to "perception," which is that which seems to exist, based on our own ability to experience it via some combination of the five senses and true-and-valid logic.

Thus, the real question is: How do we know that which we perceive truly represents reality?

To answer this question, we merely have to observe that every new piece of knowledge you acquire changes your perception of reality. Whenever you receive any new piece of information, either by perceiving a new experience or engaging in irrefutable logic, your understanding of the world around you becomes more accurate. (Here, I assume that "information" is true. False beliefs will also change your perception for the worse, but that fact is irrelevant to the topic of today's blog post.)

2.
Because every new piece of knowledge improves the accuracy of your perceptions, then it is obvious that one will only ever perceive reality when one possesses all knowledge, i.e. when one is omniscient.

Does an omniscient being know what she will be doing in exactly 677 hours, 23 minutes, and 7 seconds from the present time? If not, then she is not omniscient. If so, then she is thus able to alter that event, which implies that that which she previously knew was not the truth; hence, she is not omniscient.

The truth is, omniscience is impossible. Obviously, everyone knows that they themselves will never be omniscient, but as I have just shown, omniscience itself does not exist. There is no such thing as knowing everything.

3.
If omniscience is impossible, then it is impossible to perceive reality. This does not imply that there is no reality. Nor does it imply that perception is reality. Instead, all we really know is that there is always a gap between our present knowledge and a state of total knowledge. And that is all we will ever know.

If the question is whether there is a difference between perception and reality, then we all know the answer: of course there is.

If the question is whether one, true, objective reality exists, then the question itself is meaningless. The word "reality" is basically defined to be that which really does exist in an objective way. So asking whether that which is defined to be true really is true is essentially questioning the definition of the word reality, or else the meaningfulness of it. Does the set of all knowledge which, by definition, is impossible to acquire actually exist?

4.
What does something that is invisible look like? What does a physical vacuum smell like? What happens at one degree less than 0 Kelvin? If the universe could view itself in a mirror, what would it look like?

All such questions seem interesting upon casual examination, but close examination reveals them all to be paradoxes. That is, they are meaningless by definition. That which is invisible cannot look like anything; if it could, then it would not be invisible. Vacuums smell like nothing, because vacuums are by definition states of nothingness; but more importantly, human olfactory sensation cannot exist in a state of nothingness, because our mere presence would alter the smell of the vacuum and render it no longer a vacuum. 0 Kelvin is defined to be the absence of temperature; there is no such thing as "negative existence;" there cannot be a -1 Kelvin. In order for the universe to see itself in a mirror, it would have to look through space and reflect light; since all space and light is contained within the universe, then it could never be seen in a mirror.

Again, all of these are merely questions in which the definition of something is assumed to be the opposite of its definition. In philosophy, we call these questions paradoxes.

Questioning reality is just another example of a paradox. It is not a clever question, it is a meaningless contradiction.