Cafe Philo in New York City meets next week on Thursday, 4/8: Does Philosophy Bake Bread?

Cafe Philo in New York City will meet next week on Thursday, April 8, 2010 with a discussion on the topic of "Does Philosophy Bake Bread?"

I was not in attendance at the last Cafe Philo NYC session which discussed "Does our Perception of the World Correspond with our Knowledge of the World?" before choosing the latest topic, but the chosen topic is a variant of the old adage "Philosophy bakes no bread", implying that philosophy has no practical value.

I wrote up my own thoughts on the topic in a blog post entitled "Does philosophy bake bread?"

I have been acting as guest moderator lately. Bernard Roy has been attending recently as a participant.

Catch up with preparatory online discussions in the Yahoo! group for Cafe Philo NYC.

As usual, the meeting will be held from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. in the back room at Bamiyan Restaurant (Afghan food) at the northwest corner of Third Avenue and 26th Street in New York City. In exchange for free meeting space, it is expected that each attendee will purchase a minimum of $5 of food or drink. A glass of red wine can be had for $6 (plus tax and tip.)

After winding down our discussion, we entertain and vote on proposals for the topic question for the next meeting.

There is also usually some number of attendees who go across the street to McCormack's Bar for drinks and food and extended discussion after Cafe Philo, but not limited to the scheduled discussion topic.

There are a number of small groups in the U.S. and Europe who meet regularly to discuss topics related to philosophy. Some of these groups go by the name "Cafe Philo." There is one here in New York City that meets every two weeks, every other Thursday. It is organized and moderated by Bernard Roy, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Ramapo College of New Jersey. Each meeting focuses on a specific topic which was suggested and voted on by the participants at the last meeting.

Also, there is an online discussion forum for the NYC Cafe Philo at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nycafephilo/

There is also a new web site for NYC Cafe Philo:  www.nycafephilo.org.

I have been attending the NYC Cafe Philo off and on since 2004. Previously I had attended the Cafe Philo in Washington, D.C. starting in 2001.

-- Jack Krupansky

Does philosophy bake bread?

There is an old saying that "Philosophy bakes no bread", implying that philosophy has no significant practical value, but I disagree, at least somewhat. I do agree that a large portion of what is called "philosophy", especially as practiced in modern times, is rather disjoint from progress in the real world, but a significant portion of philosophy, especially in a historical context is and has been extremely valuable, and eminently practical.

Early philosophy was really the precursor of a lot of modern science and logic. Basically, early philosophy studied and promoted the kind of disciplined and structured thought that is needed for virtually all modern disciplines, from mathematics, science, and engineering to law and our social and political systems.

Another way of saying this is that over time, every modern discipline and social system borrowed concepts, methods, and techniques from early philosophy. That is an understatement; every modern discipline and social system is based on the products of philosophy. Without the early works of Aristotle, Socrates, and Plato, and the enlightened efforts of Hume, Locke, and Rousseau, among countless other brilliant philosophers over the centuries, we would not have much of what we call modern in the modern world.

The simple fact is that all modern disciplines absorbed concepts from philosophy over the centuries so effectively that the concepts are considered part of those disciplines rather than being owned by the "discipline" called philosophy.

Critical thinking is, well, critical to analyzing the facts in any discipline. The world can be a complex and confusing place. Winnowing truth from fiction and relevance from irrelevance can be a very difficult proposition even on a good day. Technology can certainly help as a tool, but all tools must be used properly to be effective. Critical thinking is essential to guiding us to making practical and workable decisions from mushy and vague raw data.

A very pragmatic issue is that a lot of difficult questions are so poorly or vaguely phrased or framed so that it simply is not practical to even begin to answer the questions in a practical and workable manner until a deep and broad philosophical analysis can tell us what the questions are really all about. Answering inappropriate interpretations of questions can certainly lead to answers or solutions that do not meet the original needs that the questions may have been intended to address.

Another simple fact is that the adoption of the concepts of philosophy has been so thorough over the centuries that we have reached the stage where the rate of adoption of the remaining un-adopted concepts of philosophy is very slow or so slow that the average person simply cannot see it, even if they look very hard. But, as they say, appearances can be deceiving.

It is also true that a lot of "modern" philosophy has gotten so esoteric and so apparently disjoint from apparent reality that most people see philosophy as being completely disconnected from reality, even if that is not completely the case.

The truth is a bit more complex. Granted a lot of philosophy does appear disconnected from reality and maybe a lot of the time that is the case, but just as often it is simply that philosophy can run well ahead of the times. Politicians may not be ready to pass reasonable and workable laws permitting doctors to "pull the plug on granny" or define precisely how privacy and trust should function in online computer networks, but philosophers and leading edge experts in all disciplines can and do spend serious time discussing these kinds of issues seriously. They are, to put it simply, being philosophical. That is philosophy in action. That is philosophy baking bread. It may not be bread that the average person can eat today, but it is bread that the average person will be taking for granted somewhere down the road in coming years, decades, and centuries.

At the extreme, even the nature of existence itself is still an unsolved problem, with quantum mechanics, string theory, and "god particles" a matter of the kind of speculation and debate normally reserved exclusively by the kind of philosophers who supposedly do not bake bread.

In computer science there is an old saying that AI (Artificial intelligence) is just all of the things that we do not know how to do yet.

I would suggest a similar statement, that philosophy is where we hold preliminary discussions about the toughest unsolved problems of humanity or new ways of thinking that can be applied to those problems.

Philosophy is less concerned with what to do in life, but more about how to think about values and the processes of thought and action so that we can divine better systems of values and better techniques for thought and action that can then be applied in new and novel ways to solve problems in more innovative ways than were readily available to us in the past.

Put in more pragmatic terms, to be sure, philosophers do not directly bake break or tell people how to bake bread, but rather offer people new and novel approaches to how to think about new approaches to baking bread and how to leap ahead and think about meeting biological and social needs that bread was intended to address in the first place. Philosophy can guide us in forward thinking about ethical and social concerns related to global poverty and global health.

In short, there is still plenty of mileage to be gotten from philosophy, especially in leading edge research efforts of virtually all disciplines, especially in situations where significant uncertainty, lack of determinism, and ethical, social, and political concerns outstrip classical mechanistic approaches to problem solving.

So, yes, philosophers can certainly seem to be lost in the clouds, but a large part of that is because that is where some of the hardest problems facing humanity lie. So many of us remain so lost in the mundane concerns of daily life and the rote details of our disciplines that we continue to stumble through life precisely because we do not have the vantage point from the clouds that would enable us to distinguish the forest from the trees.

-- Jack Krupansky

$185,000 for health insurance?!?! (well, for 10 years)

I currently do not have any health insurance. That actually works out fairly well since I happen to be healthy. But just out of curiosity, I decided to check to see how much health insurance costs. After all, if so-called "health insurance reform" passes, people such as me will supposedly be "required" to purchase health insurance (or pay a "fine.")

So, I go to Google, enter in the keywords "health insurance", and the first result is for eHealthInsurance.com. I click to that site, enter a little info and it shows me some results, ranging from $176 (junk insurance?) to $1,228 (Cadillac plan?).

Actually that $176 is for a hospital-only plan that does not include doctor visits or treatments or prescriptions outside of the hospital. Interesting. That is actually a very interesting data point about where health care costs go or don't go.

Both plans are from Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield. The hospital-only plan is called "Tradition Plus Hospital Program." The expensive plan is called "Empire Direct Pay HMO." Hmmm... "HMO"... that's considered evil, right? ("Empire... evil", "Evil... Empire", oh, I get it!).

I had to enter some personal contact info somewhere along the line here and a rep called me to ask if I had any questions. I just said I was doing research for health reform and she left me alone. But she also emailed me some info and links. One link takes me to a table showing three plans, those two, and a third plan, even more expensive, called "Direct Pay HMO/POS" for $1,549 per month that has lower copays, limited out-of-network coverage, and some other extras.

Now, in truth, I have no clue as to how to evaluate and compare all of these plans. My goal here was to focus on the price of the Cadillac plan. After all, if I were to get health insurance, I would want it to cover, well, everything.

So, $1,549.30 per month works out to $18,591.60 per year. Gulp. Ummmm... last year I earned only $19,000 from work. Hmmm... the math doesn't seem to "work" for me.

And, $18,591.60 per year works out to $185,916 over ten years. YIKES!! And that is assuming premiums don't go up -- right!

I am sorry guys, but there is no way that I am going to pay $185,000 over the next ten years, for services that I probably won't need.

Actually, I probably only need nine years of insurance since I'll turn 65 in just over nine years and get admitted to the promised land of Medicare, but that does not change the overall picture here.

$185,000

That is a very big number, to me.

I do not even have that much money put aside for retirement.

Granted, insurance may be lower under health reform, but even half or a third or even a quarter of this amount is still way too much.

So, how much will the "fine" be if I don't buy health insurance under "health insurance reform." Actually, that is still up in the air, and depends on how the House and Senate Bills are "reconciled." Given the president's latest proposal, if my income was low, it would be a fixed dollar amount (increasing each year), in the range of $325 to $695, but for a reasonable income level it would be a percentage, currently 1% in 2014, 2% in 2015, and 2.5% in 2016 and after. So, if I had $100,000 of income in 2014 and beyond, I would pay an "assessment" (technically, not a "fine") of $1,000 in 2014, $2,000 in 2015, and $2,500 in 2016 and beyond. And, key point, I would pay this money to the U.S. government for whatever purpose it deems fit, not to some insurance company.

At least to me, right now, paying $2,500 to Uncle Sam is infinitely preferable to paying even $0.01 to any insurance company. The insurance companies of America need to radically rethink their approach to customers before they can get my attention, even under health insurance reform with "mandatory" insurance.

-- Jack Krupansky

Trying CheckingFinder.com for 3.51% APY high-interest checking

I posted on Monday about CheckingFinder.com for finding community banks offering FDIC-insured high-interest checking (2-4%) and just this morning I took the plunge and opened a new bank checking account through their web site for a community bank in Texas. I still need in get the bank's welcome kit in the mail and send back the signature card and other documents, but within a few weeks I should be on my way to earning 3.51% APY on a bank checking account. What could be more exciting (in banking)?

I did see a bank offering 4.09% on Monday, but they were no longer listed this morning. 3.51% APY was the highest listed rate for my zip code this morning. Still, this is a fantastic rate compared to just about anything else available.

First I had to call the CheckingFinder.com customer service number to clarify exactly what qualified as an "automatic payment". I make several payments each month by ACH debit from the web sites of my electric company, telephone/Internet provider, and credit card, but they are all "manual", so I wasn't sure if they qualified. Customer service picked up quite promptly and indicated that each bank had its own quirky rules, so it would be best to speak directly to the individual bank. I had already selected my preferred bank from their list and customer service gave me that bank's direct number. The bank picked up promptly, redirected my call and quickly answered my question, stating clearly that to get the special rate I needed "one ACH debit or credit" each month. Many consumers see ACH debits as part of "automatic bill payment" and only overly-cautious people such as me want to manually check my bill before it gets paid.

That so-called "automatic payment" was the worrisome "qualification" for me, but now I know that it is a no-brainer. There were three other specific qualifications for this particular bank (which many of the listed banks also had) in order to get the juicy 3.51% APY rate:

• Minimum of 12 debit-card purchases each month (does not include ATM withdrawals). No minimum, so breakfast, lunch, snacks, fast food, etc. easily satisfy this requirement without impinging on my desire to use my 2% cashback credit card for larger purchases.
• Must agree to receive e-statements rather than paper statements. No problem.
• Must sign on to the online banking web site at least once a month. No problem since I believe in checking my credit card and other financial accounts at least one if not twice a week.
• And that requirement for at least one ACH debit or credit each month.

Note: Some of the CheckingFinder.com banks also have a bill-pay requirement, but this bank did not.

The sign-up process requested my current bank checking routing and account number so that the initial funding can be done via an ACH debit. This funding will not actually occur until after the bank receives the signed signature card and other sign-up documents needed to satisfy government regulations. My chosen bank bad a $100 minimum initial deposit. I chose $250 for the sign-up deposit. I intend to put a moderate pile of cash in the account to earn that 3.51% APY ASAP, but I want to see that the account gets all set up and working as advertised before committing more cash.

The sign-up process also asks a serious questions about your financial history similar to those you see when requesting your credit history to verify your identity. Usually not a problem, but having a copy of your credit history handy couldn't hurt. Some people claim to have had difficulty signing up due to questions about things they had forgotten or gotten confused about.

The bank is HCSB in Plainview, Texas. They have been around since 1934, formerly operating as "Hill Country State Bank."

Some other info on the account:

• 3.51% APY applies to the first $25,000.
• Rate is 1.51% APY on balance above $25,000. Still quite decent compared to... most other banks.
• Rate is 0.05% APY if qualifications are not met in a given month. Still better than Fidelity. Some listed banks have base rates of 0.1% or even 0.2%, but I have no intentions of ever being in a position to get that rate.
• No minumum balance.
• No monthly fees.
• Unlimited checks. [Note: I forgot to ask whether the check order is free or not.]
• Refund of ATM feeds up to $20 per month.

So, now, I am just impatiently waiting for the paperwork to arrive via pony express.

In practice, the way I will use this account is in tandem with my local TD Bank account. I will deposit checks in TD Bank and then ACH transfer the bulk of the cash to HCSB. I'll write checks against HCSB. I'll keep a modest balance in TD Bank for "just in case" contingencies. I think I'll use HCSB for ATM withdrawals, but I could use TD as well.

-- Jack Krupansky

Made another payment on the public debt of the U.S. government

I just made my third monthly payment to pay down the public debt of the U.S. government. Not much, just another $25, but it is a matter of principle. It may take me another 502 billion years to pay it all down all by myself at this rate, but, as I said, it is matter of principle.

According to the U.S. Treasury web site, the total public debt outstanding was $12,544,703,929,352.50, as of March 5, 2010.

Coincidentally, the Bureau of the Public Debt sent me another "thank you" form letter for my "contribution" (last month) that happened to arrive today as well. They wrote that "Your contribution will help ensure that we do not burden future generations with a huge debt."

What I wrote back in January when I made my first donation/gift/payment:

Everybody is whining and complaining about the ballooning debt of the U.S. government, but who is actually doing anything about it? Well, for starters, ME! Yes, that's right, I, Jack Krupansky, just did something to reduce the U.S. government debt. Really. No kidding. I actually paid down a small slice of this debt. Granted, it was a rather small slice, but a slice nonetheless. Okay, sure, it was only $20, but the point is that at least I am one of the very few people willing to stand up and DO something about the problem, rather than be one of the whiners and complainers who refuse to acknowledge that it is their debt and their problem, not just the fault of mindless politicians in Washington, D.C. After all, every politician ultimately answers to voters and most of the so-called wasteful spending of the U.S. government is simply politicians responding to the demands of their consistituents (voters.) Maybe my one small contribution to paying down the debt won't really make any difference to any of those whiners and complainers, but for me it is a matter of principle. I consciously choose action rather than the inaction of the whiners and complainers.

If you have any sense of principle, you too can pay down a slice of the U.S. government debt yourself at Pay.gov. You can pay via credit card or debit transfer from a bank account.

So do the right thing and show all those whiners and complainers (including so-called "tax protesters") how mindless and spineless they really are. PAY DOWN THE DEBT! And that has to start at the grass roots with us individuals before politicians will ever pick up the lead.

-- Jack Krupansky

Cafe Philo in New York City meets this week on Thursday, 3/11: Who are we, where are we going?

Cafe Philo in New York City will meet this week on Thursday, March 11, 2010 with a discussion on the topic of "Who are we, where are we going?" (Same topic as two weeks ago which was postponed due to the inclement weather.)

This is a wide open question. Maybe it seems too broad, but it does capture the current feeling of many people being concerned that "we" are "off track." So, who is "we", and what "track" do we think "we" is supposed to be on, anyway?

 

Incidentally, "Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?" is the name of a famous painting by Paul Gauguin. In French, it was "D'où venons-nous? / Que sommes-nous? / Où allons-nous?" Apparently, that title may have derived from his earlier catechism questions of  "Where does humanity come from?", "Where is it going to?", and "How does humanity proceed?"

 

In any case, we will take our own Cafe Philo approach to considering the pair of questions.

 

I also had a recent blog post entitled "Notes on who we are, where we are going, progress, etc."

I have been acting as moderator lately. Bernard Roy has been attending recently as a participant.

Catch up with preparatory online discussions in the Yahoo! group for Cafe Philo NYC.

As usual, the meeting will be held from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. in the back room at Bamiyan Restaurant (Afghan food) at the northwest corner of Third Avenue and 26th Street in New York City. In exchange for free meeting space, it is expected that each attendee will purchase a minimum of $5 of food or drink. A glass of red wine can be had for $6 (plus tax and tip.)

After winding down our discussion, we entertain and vote on proposals for the topic question for the next meeting.

There is also usually some number of attendees who go across the street to McCormack's Bar for drinks and food and extended discussion after Cafe Philo, but not limited to the scheduled discussion topic.

There are a number of small groups in the U.S. and Europe who meet regularly to discuss topics related to philosophy. Some of these groups go by the name "Cafe Philo." There is one here in New York City that meets every two weeks, every other Thursday. It is organized and moderated by Bernard Roy, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Ramapo College of New Jersey. Each meeting focuses on a specific topic which was suggested and voted on by the participants at the last meeting.

Also, there is an online discussion forum for the NYC Cafe Philo at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nycafephilo/

There is also a new web site for NYC Cafe Philo:  www.nycafephilo.org.

I have been attending the NYC Cafe Philo off and on since 2004. Previously I had attended the Cafe Philo in Washington, D.C. starting in 2001.

-- Jack Krupansky

How to cope with runaway end-of-life health care costs

There was an interesting article this week on Bloomberg by Amanda Bennett entitled "End-of-Life Warning at $618,616 Makes Me Wonder Was It Worth It" which chronicled her personal saga with dealing with end-of-life health care for her husband. The article also appears as the cover story of Business Week entitled "Lessons of a $618,616 Death - Two years after her husband's death, Amanda Bennett's cover story examines the costs of keeping one man alive".

Ultimately she seems to conclude that spending all of that money was worth it since she believes that it bought her husband another 14 months of life beyond the three that his doctors expected:

... those 17 months included an afternoon looking down at the Mediterranean with Georgia from a sunny balcony in Southern Spain. Moving Terry into his college dorm. Celebrating our 20th anniversary with a carriage ride through Philadelphia's cobbled streets. A final Thanksgiving game of charades with cousins Margo and Glenn.

She also tells us how it was a very personal struggle for both her and her husband. In other words, different people might have dealt with the same situation in a different manner.

Was it really worth it? She tells us:

Would I do it all again? Absolutely. I couldn't not do it again. But I think had he known the costs, Terence would have fought the insurers spending enough, at roughly $200,000, to vaccinate almost a quarter-million children in developing countries. That's how he would have thought about it.

Lucky for her, she had good insurance:

Terence and I didn't have to think about money, allocation of medical resources, the struggles of more than 46 million uninsured Americans, or the impact on corporate bottom lines. Backed by medical insurance provided by my employers, we were able to fight his cancer with a series of expensive last chances like the one I asked for that night.

How expensive? The bills totaled $618,616, almost two- thirds of it for the final 24 months, much of it for treatments that no one can say for sure helped extend his life.

In just the last four days of trying to keep him alive -- two in intensive care, two in a cancer ward -- our insurance was charged $43,711 for doctors, medicines, monitors, X-rays and scans. Two years later, the only thing I know for certain that money bought was confirmation that he was dying.

Some of the drugs probably did Terence no good at all. At least one helped fewer than 10 percent of all those who took it. Pharmaceutical companies and insurers will have to sort out the economics of treatments that end up working for only a small subset. Should everyone have the right to try them? Terence and I answered yes. Each drug potentially added life. Yet that too led me to a question I can't answer. When is it time to quit?

This is a difficult issue. On the one hand we don't want the insurance companies (or the government) deciding when to "pull the plug on granny", but if it is really true that a significant number of Americans will incur upwards of $500K to $750K for end-of-life care, how is that expenditure to be financed? And people wonder why health insurance companies would dare to raise rates by 40%.

So, who is to pay for all of this? Ultimately, all of us do, one way or another.

In my view, sooner or later we as a society are going to have to draw a line and give a hard answer to that question of "When is it time to quit?" In Ms. Bennett's case, they quit only when no other options were available, at any price. I do not see that as a sustainable approach. As a society we need to come up with a robust model for when and how to "pull the plug" in terms of when to simply let nature take its course and fall back on simple palliative care. To my mind, the focus should be more on moderation and moderate measures and less on extreme and extreme measures. In my view, desperation should not have any role in any stage of health care.

Nonetheless, Ms. Bennett's article does put both a personal and human as well as financial face on the issue of end-of-life care.

-- Jack Krupansky