The following is a review of Stefan Molyneux’s Universally Preferable Behavior – A Rational Proof of Secular Ethics:

The first time I read this book (UPB), I didn’t really “get” it. I mean, I saw the logic and the proof and thought, “Hey, that’s kind of neat.” I was not able to access the implications that the proof of this theory would have in my life and in the greater world.

I have since re-read UPB. While I still struggle with the full range of the implications for my life, I think I get it (certainly more now than I have before).

The null zone concept is brilliant as well as fascinating! I now have the image in my mind of a “null zone” being forcibly inserted between the “little truths” and the “Great Truths”, which disconnect abstraction from practice in the minds of individuals.

This alone ought to be enough to demonstrate to anybody why this is a multi-generational project. Once you’ve had abstractions forcibly disconnected from practice within your mind, it is a trek through the fires of ten thousand hells to reconnect them.

Also of incredible resonance to me is when Molyneux discusses the emergent properties of morality within society as opposed to the imposition of whim-based morality from a centralized authority. This is the fundamental “reversal” of intuition that either Dawkins or Dennett (I can’t remember quite where I read it) has described when it comes to the science of evolution; that life, the universe, and everything do not proceed from the top-down, but from the bottom-up. Complexity and order are emergent properties of matter over time, hence it makes sense that morality and social order are emergent properties of human society over time.

Eradicating that “null zone” within my own mind and becoming ever more aware of my top-down moral standards is the horrible, horrible consequence of UPB. The upside, however, is that if, one day, I have children… I will not inflict a “null zone” upon them and will equip them to be resistant to it!

I haven’t found any flaws. I think that Stefan Molyneux has done it.

At the end of the senior high school year, I came upon what seemed to me to be a really nifty idea! I would collect the names and addresses of my classmates and put them up on a website with security levels and such. If somebody didn’t want the world to know their contact info, no problem, I can restrict that to being only viewable by classmates or even just by admin (myself). Oh, and when I got the domain (97cc.com), I was thinking, “everybody gets their own semi-permanent email address, blah blah blah…”

Well… more than ten years have passed since the inception of that idea, and I think it’s totally fair and entirely reasonable to say that it just ain’t gonna happen.

I had a few good starts at it… I’ve tried a few different ideas, but the biggest problem I have is that when I sit myself down to do it… I find that I simply don’t want to.

At first, sure, I was busy. I was in college, I was working (sort of), I had things going on. Not much time to program a website. Besides, people in college have their own things going on and nobody seemed to be too interested in keeping in touch (with one or two exceptions).

As time progressed, I struggled more and more with depression, sapping my motivation for far more than the website itself, so that (among other things) simply did not get done.

After college, I stopped believing in Christianity, so… maintaining a website for a Christian high school kind of seemed… silly to me? I’m not sure…

But then there were also all of the other websites that catered to high school classes and such on a much more general scale. Sites like Alumni.NET and Classmates.com seemed to be ripe for the picking. At first I thought I might be able to compete since the site would be designed specifically for our class, and that perhaps I could expand it to include other classes… but the whole depression thing sort of wasn’t playing along very nicely.

So when I look back at all of this, I just think, “Man… it’s pretty obvious that I changed my mind somewhere between high school when I thought of this and now. I really don’t want to do this anymore.”

I’ve since put up a notice on the website indicating that any interested classmates should contact me so that they can get their hands on the domain and the information on my server. I’m simply no longer interested in maintaining or hosting the site. The domain is registered until 2010, so if anybody wants it, they’ve got plenty of time before it gets snapped up by domain squatters.

There’s also the possibility that I’ll think of something really nifty for the domain name that has absolutely nothing to do with my high school class. In that case, screw it, I’ll keep the domain and go with that idea. “97cc” sounds vaguely related to internal combustion engines… but even if that made any sense, I’m not really into that at all.

I’ve also disabled a major source of spam from that site: my japyrich@97cc.com email address somehow got snagged years ago… I don’t use it and I don’t think anybody else knows about it anyway, so that’s gone.