Labels: Bug or Feature?

Labels: bug or feature?

#LGB is trending on Twitter and other places.

And no, it's not about trains, so let's not derail this topic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGB_Alliance

Talks about a group that has made advanced to take the "T" out of the LGBT

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/why-it-s-time-to-take-the-t-out-of-lgbt-10493352.html

Says that the "T" needs to break off from the LGB

https://www.advocate.com/transgender/2015/11/06/lgbt-groups-respond-petition-asking-drop-t

Talks about how the "T" should not be removed at all.

Let's not even go down the rabbit hole that is "TERFs" - oh boy!  Trans-Exclusive Radical Feminists! Sounds like fun! I'm sure nothing could go wrong...

This https://www.transhub.org.au/101/trans-lgbt gives one people's view of why the T is in the LGBT.

However, my focus is not on the politics, sexuality, gender, or whatever that the LGBT stands for, but rather the label itself.

Labels are a bug in our software.

Our software, in this analogy that I'm using to make this whole presentation, is reality itself. Whoever or whatever made it left in plenty of bugs and no patch for us, so we are on our own.

Labels are - useful features - I'm a skeptic. Atheist. Agnostic, Igtheist, utilitarian, Logician, male, heterosexual, middle age, white, American, human, omnivore, VET, single. Ex-christian, infidel. Bipedal, insomniac! Also, a few other labels that I'd rather not disclose and a few that I reject, and others that I pretend not to have.

So it's a feature - you know something about me you did not know.

Yet, you can not know all there is to know about me with just those labels.

But, I am not just any of those. Basing my identity, my "self" on any of that would not be useful to me, as I'm more than any of that.

So it's a bug then - because it's not as functional as we would like, also it's bad because anyone can claim to have any label and there is no way to stop them from doing so! 

Yet, we have this separation of a label into smaller labels - because the LGBT is not "just" a label, it's also a movement, it's also a political ideology of sorts, its... what is it really? Who says what it is? Can anyone claim ownership of it?

Well, no. But people can and will claim it regardless, and other people will want their own label. They will move away from the current label to a new or old label, because people want to self identify.

That's fine, but it's making the system go buggy now. The feature that was useful in one place is now running rampant all over the place! Why?

Because.... humans are complex. We are social creatures; we yearn for a group, but we also like to be alone and our own self. We put on a group identity yet might lose the self identity. Such is the danger of the label.

So, how can we best use this feature, or how do we patch this bug?

That... is my question.

I do not know how to solve it! You do it! GO GO GO! ... and let me know when you have it figured out! :)

Celestal judgement?

I said in a post that Christianity has no true celestial judgment, and was asked how I would think actual judgment should be done in the afterlife. This was my response:

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If there is a celestial judgment at the end of it all, then I would expect that one would have to experience all the emotions they caused to other people (and perhaps other creatures as well). 

Perhaps you could pick to do (X) number of bad ones then (X) number of good, or maybe you would do one good, one bad and so on. After you were done experiencing all that you caused others to feel, then you have been both punished, and rewarded in full, you get to know what it was that you did, and you then get to rest awhile.

Perhaps then you can either keep existing or hit a button to end existing, I'm not sure what an existence would matter if you couldn't learn, grow, change, if you had nothing to challenge you, but maybe there would be stuff to do, who knows, regardless the justice part would be settled.

This is closer to how Zoroastrianism views it, but for them its more that if you are "better" then "bad" that you would get to get the good place, but if you were worse then good, you go to the bad place. 

That isn't quite as fair as the system that I thought of here. And that's also part of the problem, I can think of a better system. I - a mere mortal can come up with several better systems in fact. 

The reason I can - (and you could as well) come up with better systems is because humans in the past made up the ideas. Why? It's a perfect way to lure people into thinking that (X) is true. If you question (X) you go to the BAD PLACE ooo scary! The appeal to fear (a logical fallacy) could very well compel people to keep believing OR become believers (or both). If that doesn't work you also have the carrot, (appeal to bribe) believe it and get (z) reward. 

It's a way to keep people believing and scare them from giving up on the belief system. 

Of course, to enforce that more, you have the scare of that you might still not make it even if you do believe, making you work that much harder to really, really believe it. 

The good behavior is then simply tacked onto and on top of that, as clearly we humans can be good without DCT (see my video called that) - we can be good to each other and the world without the bible, in fact, its pretty hard to follow all 613 commandments these days - we have laws against stoning people to death - so you can't drag someone to the edge of town and kill them (by stoning!) when they have mixed fabrics or talk back to the elder or blasphemy. 

These ideas of the afterlife, plenty of religions and cults have them. Heaven's gate promised its followers that if they died they would go to the "good place" behind the comet.

There is no evidence for such a place though, yet people died to go there. They really, really beleved in it. 

Belief can be good, or bad, and it can make you do or not do good or bad things. But, if we can not or will not question it, well - that brings the problems. 

I wonder what the Gate person would have said about the afterlife - celestial judgment - what did they think happened to people who were not part of the group? Sadly, we can not know because they are gone. 

With them, the beliefs they held also die out. As do religions given enough time and/or pressure. 

As we humans keep moving forward, the bible will stay static. It's unable to answer plenty of questions about today's world, we can clearly see the morals and ethics of it are highly questionable if not outright offensive. Its only a matter of time before we as a species move on. Turn the page of the history books, your religion is just a chapter in the grand story of humanity.

I might have gone on a bit of a tangent there, but I do that sometimes.

As a skeptic, I can see the flaws in the belief system, but as a former believer I know just how powerful the hold of faith can be.

Maybe if its so full of problems, and you can not fix them, that it's time to find a new belief system, one where, perhaps you do not have as many issues.

I do hope that if you do that - that it will not be hard or painful as it was for me. Everyone has a different experience though when reconverting when they do so of course.

And... okay I'm super mega tangent now.

Learn logic, be skeptical. 🦞