Self-serving credit and blame

In An American Tragedy, Dreiser writes:

For in some blind, dualistic way both she and Asa insisted, as do all religionists, in disassociating God from harm and error and misery, while granting Him nevertheless supreme control.  They would seek for something else — some malign, treacherous, deceiving power which, in the face of God’s omniscience and omnipotence, still beguiles and betrays — and find it eventually in the error and perverseness of the human heart, which God has made, yet which He does not control, because He does not want to control it.

Religionists tend to credit God with the good things and blame the bad things on external influences (e.g., demons). I suppose this is a type of group-serving bias (where the group is people who believe in God).  Similarly, people tend to give themselves credit for success and blame bad outcomes on external influences (self-serving bias).

I suspect that most of the time we are not even aware we are doing it.  This is probably another example of self-deception having a fitness advantage.  One theory is “humans deceive themselves in order to better deceive others and thus have an advantage over them.”  Here, if we deceive ourselves we gain confidence (either in our belief about God or in our ability).  We also end up signaling our confidence and ability to others, potentially increasing our value to them as someone to associate with.

“Only the unimaginative carpenter fails to blame his tools.”  –Errol Morris

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Chapter titles

Every chapter in Sister Carrie has a title.  All of them are interesting. They give a hint at what’s to come, but in most cases the meaning only becomes clear after you read the chapter.  I actually looked forward to reading the name of the next chapter.

Here are the first 10 chapter titles:

1. THE MAGNET ATTRACTING: A WAIF AMID FORCES
2. WHAT POVERTY THREATENED:  OF GRANITE AND BRASS
3. WE QUESTION OF FORTUNE: FOUR-FIFTY A WEEK
4. THE SPENDING OF FANCY: FACTS ANSWER WITH SNEERS
5. A GLITTERING NIGHT FLOWER: THE USE OF A NAME
6. THE MACHINE AND THE MAIDEN: A KNIGHT OF TO-DAY
7. THE LURE OF THE MATERIAL: BEAUTY SPEAKS FOR ITSELF
8. IMITATIONS BY WINTER: AN AMBASSADOR SUMMONED
9. CONVENTION’S OWN TINDER-BOX: THE EYE THAT IS GREEN
10. THE COUNSEL OF WINTER: FORTUNE’S AMBASSADOR CALLS

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Compatibilism

I don’t see why free will and determinism wouldn’t be compatible.  At the moment I make a choice, I’m picking the option that I prefer.  Does it matter if what led me to that preference was entirely determined by prior occurrences?

Let’s think about what it would mean to not have free will.  Suppose I preferred option A, but just before I make the decision some external force affects my neurons and causes me to prefer option B. Well, at the moment I chose B, that was my preference.  That scenario is not inconsistent with free will or determinism (the external force is just part of the prior chain of events).

I think what people mean by free will is that they could have made a different decision.  Sure, they could have, if things had been different.  That is what they mean.  And that is free will…and determinism.

I pretty much agree with Katja Grace:

…you feel like your actions are neither determined nor random. You choose them.

And that is precisely why they are determined. They are determined by you. And you already exist to the finest detail at the time you are making the decision. If you made choices (or some element of them) not controlled by your personality, experience, thoughts and anything else that comes under the heading of ‘the state of your brain as a result of genetics and your prior environments’, they would be random, which still isn’t free will…

The narrator of Dostoyevsky‘s Notes from Underground was disturbed by determinism:

If, for instance, some day they calculate and prove to me that I made a long nose at someone because I could not help making a long nose at him and that I had to do it in that particular way, what FREEDOM is left me..? Then I should be able to calculate my whole life for thirty years beforehand. In short, if this could be arranged there would be nothing left for us to do;

Just because someone with perfect knowledge could accurately predict what you would do, that doesn’t mean you don’t have freedom. If what you did wasn’t predictable (i.e. included some random elements), how would that give you any more freedom (you have no control over the randomness)?

—

I liked this paragraph on free will from the book Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser:

Our civilization is still in a middle stage, scarcely beast, in that it is no longer wholly guided by instinct; scarcely human, in that it is not yet wholly guided by reason.  On the tiger no responsibility rests.  We see him aligned by nature with the forces of life — he is born into their keeping and without thought he is protected.  We see man far removed from the lairs of the jungles, his innate instincts dulled by too near an approach to free-will, his free-will not sufficiently developed to replace his instincts and afford him perfect guidance.  He is becoming too wise to hearken always to instincts and desires; he is still too weak to always prevail against them.  As a beast, the forces of life aligned him with them; as a man, he has not yet wholly learned to align himself with the forces.  In this intermediate stage he wavers — neither drawn in harmony with nature by his instincts nor yet wisely putting himself into harmony by his own free-will.  He is even as a wisp in the wind, moved by every breath of passion acting now by his will and now by his instincts, erring with one, only to retrieve by the other, falling by one, only to rise by the other — a creature of incalculable variability.

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Flies in a spider web

From Pulp:

The bartender was an old guy, looked to be 80, all white, white hair, white skin, white lips.  Two other old guys sat there, chalk white.  Looked like the blood had stopped running in all of them. They reminded me of flies in a spider web, sucked dry.  No drinks were showing.  Everybody was motionless.

…

“Has anybody here seen Cindy, Celine or the Red Sparrow?” I asked.

They just looked at me.  One of the patrons’ mouths drew together into a little wet hole.  He was trying to speak. He couldn’t do it.  …  The bartender remained motionless.  He looked like a cardboard cutout.  An old one.  Suddenly I felt young.

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The great author

From Fante’s Ask the Dust:

I stood before the mirror once more, shaking my fist defiantly.  Here I am, folks.  Take a look at a great writer!  Notice my eyes, folks. The eyes of a great writer.  Notice my jaw, folks. The jaw of a great writer. Look at my hands, folks.  The hands that created The Little Dog Laughed and The Long Lost Hills.  I pointed my index finger savagely.  And as for you, Camilla Lopez, I want to see you tonight.  I want to talk to you, Camilla Lopez.  And I warn you, Camilla Lopez, remember that you stand before none other than Arturo Bandini, the writer.

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Shiny and new

From John Fante‘s short story First Communion:

I knelt at the altar and said my penance.  I went out into the sunshine of a serene afternoon.  I never felt so clean.  I was a bar of soap.  I was fresh water.  I was bright tinfoil.  I was a new suit of clothes.  I was a haircut.  I was Christmas Eve and a box of candy.

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Marketing

From Factotum:

“We have three types of cartons, each printed differently.  One carton is for our ‘Super Durable Brake Shoe.’  The other is for our ‘Super Brake Shoe.’ And the third is for our ‘Standard Brake Shoe.’ The brake shoes are stacked right here.

“But they all look alike to me.  How can I tell them apart?”

“You don’t. They’re all the same.  Just divide them into thirds.”

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More Bukowski

From his short story Notes on the Pest, included in the book Tales of Ordinary Madness:

…I parked the car and went in.  I ordered a New York cut, french fries, so forth, and sat there over my coffee until the food arrived. the whole diner was empty; it was a marvelous night.  then just with the arrival of my New York cut, the door opened and in came the pest.  of course, you guessed it.  there were 32 stools in the place but he HAD TO take the stool next to mine and begin conversing with the waitress over his doughnut.  he was a real flat fish.  his dialogue knifed into my guts.  dull rotting tripe, the stench of his soul swinging through the air wrecking everything.

“His dialogue knifed into my guts.”  I’ve been there, Buk.

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Blood and guts…

I read Blood and Guts in High School by Kathy Acker.  Definitely provocative, edgy and, uh, even confusing in places.  I liked it quite a bit though.

Here are a few paragraphs that I liked:

Having cancer is like having a baby.  If you’re a woman and you can’t have a baby ’cause you’re starving poor or ’cause no man wants anything to do with you or ’cause you’re lonely and miserable and frightened and totally insane, you might as well get cancer.  You can feel your lump and you nurse, knowing it will always get bigger.  It eats you, and, gradually, you learn, as all good mothers learn, to love yourself.

and

Once upon a time there was a materialistic society one of the results of this materialism was a ‘sexual revolution’.  Since the materialistic society had succeeded in separating sex from every possible feeling, all you girls can now go spread your legs as much as you want ’cause it’s sooo easy to fuck it’s sooo easy to be a robot it’s sooo easy not to feel.  Sex in  America is S & M.

and

Doing what I want to is dangerous ’cause I can get really hurt.  So I lie to people.  I say ‘I love living alone.’ … But I really want what I want. These aren’t passing emotions. These are my characteristics.

By love do I just mean satisfaction of the needs created by my characteristics?

One more:

The woman who lives her life according to nonmaterialistic ideals is the wild antisocial monster; the more openly she does so, the more everyone hates her.

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Consuming good art decreases your overall art consumption

After reading a lot of Charles Bukowski‘s writing, I’ve lost interest in reading some other authors.  They just don’t seem good enough anymore.  This reminds me of something that Seth Roberts wrote about:

Before last night I had heard of Amy Winehouse and I had heard Rehab, but hadn’t put the two together. Her Grammy performance blew me away. I watched a bunch of YouTubes of her. Back at the Grammys, I listened to an orchestra play Rhapsody in Blue. I used to like it; now it sounded awful. I listened to a few more group performances; they too sounded bad. Just as The Joy of Sake had made me no longer enjoy cheap sake, listening to a lot of Amy Winehouse had made me no longer enjoy “average” music — music where several individual performances are combined.

Some of Bukowski’s poems are here.  I like these (link and link), for example.

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