Questions about my philosophy / ideology / religion

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What is your religious belief or inclination?

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First of all, I should note that one’s general classification of a religious inclination (e.g: Jewish, Atheist, Agnostic, Deist, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, etc.) is not always indicative of their idea system or philosophy. Also note that, despite the fact that I am Jewish by ethnicity and heritage, and studied (or was forced to study, although I often enjoyed it) some of the Jewish writings, and incorporated influences from Judaism in my writing, I am not a religious or observant Jew.

All that put aside, I consider myself a self-sufficient, optimistic, idealistic and anti-cynical, pluralistic, anti-Fatalist, agnostic. Now let me explain what all those mean:

  • I’m agnostic because I’m not sure whether God — however he/she/they/it are manifested — exists or not. I suspect they do, but don’t take chances and don’t wish to risk dying - now or ever.

  • I’m self-sufficient because I believe that “The gods help those that help themselves”, that “reality to be commanded must be obeyed” and all that Jazz.

  • I am optimistic, idealistic and anti-cynical, because I believe that people are inherently good, can be trusted and that humanity is going forward instead of backward. I feel like my life is gradually improving and that almost every day is the best day of my life so far, and that 2014 (when these lines were written) is the best year I can remember (and I’m 1977-born).

  • I am pluralistic, because I constantly have derived and will derive inspiration from many sources and also try to not dismiss an insight based on its source - see Ad-hominem, and Reductio ad Hitlerum for more information about why this is fallacious.

    Also see:

    1. this quote by Larry Wall about All Truth is God's Truth.

    2. Open-mindedness.

  • I am anti-Fatalistic because I believe that humans’ survival mechanism - reason - operates by choice, and not automatically, and that we have free will. This is as opposed to the new age crop of neo-Deterministic materialistic atheists who believe that the laws of physics dictate exactly what a person will think and do.

    Note: I was told that Fatalism vs. free will is a much older debate than Ayn Rand (reason operates by choice) vs. Sam Harris (who reportedly used to advocate Fatalism).

  • Also see Universalism (thanks to Emma Watson's Wikipedia page for the insight).

What is your ethnicity? What is your lineage?

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I am a Jew by birth and almost all of my known ancestors were or are Jewish.

That put aside, my mother was born in Baghdad, Iraq and lived there for some years as a child before her parents and she made aliyah (or immigrated) to Israel. My father, on the other hand, was born in Israel to a mother from Vilnius (a.k.a “The Jerusalem of Lithuania”) who immigrated to the British mandate of Palestine, along with most of her family, during the 1930s, and to a father who was born and raised in Warsaw, Poland, and who escaped from the Nazis during World War II through the USSR, and Persia/Iran.

As such, I look (see photo) like a kind of a Iraqi/Persian version of my father, who looks East European.

A conversation in which I took part during the evening during a hiking trip, went something like that:

  • Girl to Shlomif: "Which Jewry do you belong to?"

  • Shlomif: "I am half-Polish / half-Iraqi."

  • Girl to her male friend with me (= "Shlomif") overhearing it: "You know what is the only thing that is worse than a Polish Jew? A half-Polish / half-Iraqi!"

I found it amusing, and kind-of have taken it to my advantage.

How come you say you are a secular Jew? Isn't Judaism a religion?

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Judaism is much more than just a religion, and it is also an ethnicity (or "peopleship" as I used to call it), a culture, a heritage, and possibly many other things. There are many secular Jews, who do not completely adhere to the Jewish religion, and are instead deist, agnostic or even atheist. This is the case for me, but note that I am still aware of Jewish holidays, and join the family feast or reflect upon them in a way. (I also commemorate April Fools' Day, International Talk Like a Pirate Day and some other secular holidays.)

Despite all that, my studies of the Jewish religious scripture, have a large influence on my personal philosophy, “Rindolfism”, and my works of fiction. However, they have many other influences. As much as I like parts of the Hebrew Bible, I do not hold it as gospel, or as “The Word of God”, and I think Sturgeon's law (= 90% of everything is crap) might apply to it as well.

I think secular jews are not real jews

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Person A: “No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge.”

Person B: “But my uncle Angus is a Scotsman and he puts sugar on his porridge.”

Person A: “But no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge.”

( No true Scotsman )

Also note that I do not care so much about whether or not I am a 100%-authentic-Jew or not. I define myself as “Shlomi Fish”.

How do you define yourself? Are you a Jew, an Israeli, an agnostic, an Objectivist, a brony, a furry, a muppets' aficciando, a Perler, a Linuxer, a FOSS enthusiast, an optimist, a Pythoneer, …?

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I am currently many of these and more. As I noted in an essay, I define myself as "Shlomi Fish". I have my own hybrid philosophy titled "Rindolfism" and it changes almost every day.

Does the fact that you are/were an Objectivist (= an advocate of Ayn Rand’s philosophy) make you selfish?

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This quote from the Neo-Tech literature summarises the issues that led to this confusion:

Although the contents of her book, The Virtue of Selfishness, are precisely accurate and widely integrated, Ayn Rand committed an error by distorting the word “selfishness” in fashioning a dramatic statement. The word “selfishness” does have valuable, precise denotations of "an irrational, harmful disregard for others". Rand could have strengthened her work by selecting accurate wording such as rational self-growth. Instead, she unnecessarily bent and undermined the precise, valuable meaning of selfishness. …As with selflessness, selfishness is a form of immature, destructive, irrational behavior -- a form of stupid behavior.

( There are similar sentiments by other commentators referenced on the book's Wikipedia page. )

While I’m no longer a Neo-Tech purist, I still agree with them that both selfish and selfless (= having an irrational disregard for one’s self) behaviours should be avoided as much as possible, and that one should strive for “Rational Self-Growth” and that often “selfish vs. selfless” is presented as a false dichotomy.

Does the fact that you were influenced by Objectivism (= Ayn Rand’s philosophy) make you a “Randroid”?

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The way I see it, a “Randroid”, which is a portmanteau of "Rand" and "Android", is an overzealous believer in Randianism, who mindlessly parrots Rand's works. On the other hand, my philosophy, “Rindolfism”, is a crossover one with many influences, and dynamic. Moreover, I don't take Randianism as gospel, often deviate from it, and am critical of it. For example, I wrote a parody and modernisation of The Fountainhead, and also wrote Summerschool at the NSA, which I feel is, partly, a modernisation of Atlas Shrugged.

If you still want to label me as a “Randroid”, go ahead - I won't care that much. Just note that it is you who are being stupid, prejudiced and labelling.

What makes you “The Messiah”? Why do you think everyone should be one?

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See:

  1. “Make everyone messiahs”

  2. “The Eternal Jew”’s reception

  3. Rindolfism Page

  4. Summerschool at the NSA: “who is the messiah?”

What I meant is that every adult or child, male or female, should believe they are the most powerful individual on Earth (and that the only ones who are not as powerful as them, are those who think someone else is). Furthermore, I recommend thinking that you can “save the world” or at least change or improve it. Moreover, you can enjoy the world, and improve yourself and everyone else - all at the same time.

Note that there are still real command structures: your family, your superiors or bosses, your military commanders, your government, your customers and/or users (or your service providers), your friends, etc. If what they request you to do seems reasonable and beneficial, you should dedicate time to perform it in the best, “Rosh Gadol”-manner.

That put aside, blindly following superior orders is wrong, and you may wish to refuse an order, if it seems immoral or unethical. Moreover, like the film The Quick and the Dead notes, one should not be “afraid to live”: voice your opinion, whether approving or disapproving, offline or online. HR (= “Human resource management”) drones who try to find faults in your online presence are going to be unhappy anyway, and from my impression, they are usually wilfully stupid and thus quite evil and misguided.

Are you aware that most of the stories in the Jewish Bible are believed to be fictional, and there is no historical record that attests to them ever taking place?

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Yes, I'm fully aware of that, and I think it does not matter too much. Quoting from an essay I wrote:

A great hacker is an action hero that is aware enough of the essence of hacking to become a greater and greater hacker, despite whatever limitations he or she may have, and despite whatever setbacks they may run into.

Note that some great hackers were clearly fictional (e.g: Yoda, Darth Vader, Milady de-Winter, Miss Piggy, or even Fluttershy ), some were female (e.g: Sarah Bernhardt, Ayn Rand, and Taylor Swift) and some were underage (most notably Samantha Smith, Shirley Temple, and Macaulay Culkin ).

So don't let anything stop you.

Just because a story or a saga are fictional, it does not invalidate the fact that we can enjoy them, learn from them, use them for inspiration, and analyse them.

I don't take the Bible as gospel and still enjoy it. On the other hand, some religious "atheists" take it as "counter-gospel" which I find is as philosophically immature as taking it as gospel.

Why do you say that Atheism can be a religion? Atheism is the lack of religion!

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First of all, note that in this tweet, I commented that:

Following on a reply I wrote to a mailing list post, I decided that I'll try avoiding the "X is a religion" argument. Many useful or insightful products/trends/movements have some zealots, including atheism, but they are still useful.

For the scope of this section, I shall restrict the discussion of Atheists to those who believe or have a strong suspicion that God/the gods, however he/she/they/it are manifested do not exist. There may be other kinds of belief categories that fall under the umbrella of atheism or irreligion, but this subset of atheists does exist.

Anyway, from my experience, some Atheists can be overzealous and even very pushy about it, fanatical, or even have a cult of followers and sycophants. The original Nazis and Communists were ostensibly atheists but were destructive, and had their share of dogma, which other people and I find irrational. Note however that by the time of Samantha Smith many communist regimes were far more relaxed and rational in practice, and I suspect that following the popularity of The Colbert Report, most of the best "AltRight" neo-Nazi bloggers are parody ones.

I do not wish to imply all fanatics, whether atheists or otherwise, were as destructive as them, just to note that believing or suspecting God does not exist, does not automatically make you free of faith or pseudo-faith.

Note that currently I am an agnostic, and try not to be overzealous and pushy about it, but I do not rule out that there were or are or can be religious agnostics. Furthermore, I do not rule out that I may have my share of irrationalities, fanaticism, or stubbornness, in other realms of my life.

Just for the record, I recall reading on an Internet site, an excerpt from an interview with one of the creators of South Park (which I admit I have not watched substantially) which was known for ridiculing various religions. That excerpt noted that they thought that despite all that, they found atheism to be the funniest religion, because the contemporary astronomical/astrophysical model expects time to run out and end. This proved as one of the catalysts from my transition from a dogmatic atheist, to an open-minded and pluralistic agnostic.

Why won't you watch this (long) “must see” video?

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Like Paul Graham, I judge books by their covers. Also note that from my experience, most resources that are described as “must watch/read/listen” are not really.

What do you think about Perfectionism?

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I agree with Vanini that perfection is in imperfection. I try to bring the works I care about to usable states, while possibly revisiting or amending them later. The Internet, the web, and modern version control systems (e.g: git-scm), are great for that.

I am offended by what you said

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From my experience, that probably means that I have uncovered a previously-blasphemous truth, which you refuse to acknowledge. See “Encourage criticism and try to get offended and try to grow a thicker skin”.

Which superstitions do you have?

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  1. I try to avoid opening my mouth to the devil ("jinxing"): saying I or others will surely succeed in a task.

  2. I have a taboo against trying to separate couples. As a result, I do not hit on women in relationships.

    Do note that I still flirt with such women (and men) on online forums, and in real life - often without at-first noticing that I do.

  3. Furthermore, like Ayn Rand in The Fountainhead I believe in karma, and that being nasty, dishonest, unkind, and not generous, to people can bite you further down the road. This is while being kind, honest, respectful, and generous, returns seven folds. buu almost got himself killed due to frequent online chat hostility and use of IRC force (kicks, devoices, or bans). In addition, a former boss of mine who used to walk in the middle of the roads (hubris) in Gush Dan, got badly injured in a car accident.

    (Note that I generally don't need the fear of retaliation to try to be honest and noble to my fellow men. This is because I enjoy being noble. )

  4. I would prefer to avoid eating "חמץ" (= "chametz") during Passover. However, it wasn't doable for many years, due to poor physical health.

  5. I try to avoid saying I am 100% certain of a claim.

So you support and advocate distributing copyrighted works, and commercial fan-fiction / fan-art? That is theft! How would you feel if your own intellectual property were stolen?

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First of all note that IANAL/etc. Anyway:

Also see:

Do you believe in God?

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“God” (with no "a/an/some" grammatical articulation, preferably with an uppercase "G", and commonly called "Elohim" in idiomatic modern Hebrew) often means different things in different contexts, and to different people. See my latest thoughts about it.

Do you know everything? Is there anything you don't know?

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There are many details, facts, numbers, etc. that I don't keep inside my resident memory, and have to look up. Moreover, there are many skills that I cannot perform well — at least not yet. There is also a lot of enlightening wisdom and insights, that I am still oblivious to. I also often learned new (at least for me) tools, technologies, and paradigms that became part of my toolset, and which I depended on or often still do, and even often advocate and recommend. . They included ones related to software development, blogging, and writing, which are my current professional fortés.

For the record, as of 2024, there are several open problems in mathematics, including Goldbach’s conjecture ( = "Every 2*n for n ≥ 2 can be written as p + q where p and q are primes" ), the Collatz conjecture, and the notorious whether "P = NP"?.

Moreover, there is Descartes' Evil demon thought experiment and "I think therefore I am", and my For all you know, you may not exist and Chuck Norris convinced you that you do parody of it ( Link ).

As humans, we rely on such mental mechanisms as:

  1. Reason (= which Julian Jaynes defined as "the mind's automatic inference mechanism" in his book).

  2. Aristotlean/Principa-Mathematica/etc. logic (which Jaynes defined as a formalisation of reason).

  3. The Peano axioms of arithmetics. (Which a Technion lecturer of mine noted “summarise everything an elementary school pupil knows, and everything the world's greatest Number theory expert knows.”)

  4. Our senses.

  5. Our memory banks

Even on our imagination, centres-of-consciousness ("I-ness"es, "soul"s), time dedicated for education and/or entertainment (= "love and knowledge"), and more.


Somewhat less mock-paranoidly, here are some facts and skills I don't currently care-enough to remember or acquire, and not ashamed to admit:

  1. I don't know how to cook well. I either depend on my family (actually my team of watchers), eat something I find in the house as a snack or a meal, or can afford to buy or order food from outside restaurants, kiosks or supermarkets.

  2. I don't have a driver's licence, despite having taken many driving lessons (and not passing the tests). I think I won't be a good driver, and can get rides from co-workers/family/friends , buses, or "special" taxicabs as a last resort. I also suspect Star Gate-like cross-distance portals/vortexes are real.

  3. While I remember the names of my cousins (all on my mother's side), and of some of their wives or husbands, I only registered the names and general personalities of their two oldest children.

  4. I'm a versed reader/writer only of Hebrew (both modern, Israeli, Hebrew, and, to an extent, some stages of Biblical Hebrew), and modern English. I studied French for 3 years and Literary Arabic for 6 years during my 7th-to-12th grades, but has since lost most of my vocabularies of them.

    I am a passive learner/recipient of Ancient Greek, Ancient Latin, Castilian Spanish, modern French, German, Yiddish, Aramaic, and other languages given their past or present cultural influence and importance. However, I dislike formally studying new human languages because I feel memorising their vocabulary clutters my memory. Some people may have better affinity for that than I do.

  5. I forgot many names, especially family names of my old classmates, co workers, etc.

  6. I didn't yet read, much less memorise, the whole Hebrew/Jewish Bible (“Tanakh”). I read many parts either due to my (often fun) secular Jewish Israeli mandatory education lessons, or voluntarily. I have no short-term plans of reading the terresterial Complete Shakespeare, Plato’s Republic, the complete Mishnah and Talmud, the Quran, etc.

    Note that I enjoyed reading some relatively long novels. Those included Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy in its original English version, which has over 1,000 pages.

You gave a link to an old resource (such as a web-page). How is it still relevant?

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I think most of the messages conveyed by the resources in my links, are still applicable to the present (during which I gave the link). I usually try to skim the contents in the linked pages to check that. Also see “two kinds of fools”.