A Jordan Peterson insight
Good point, affirmed by psychology, that if we confront what terrifies us, if we confront that voluntarily, engage it, just do it, then we become stronger. Part of that is realizing that the thing we fear has been exaggerated in our minds and is not the monster that we thought or imagined it was. This process of facing and conquering our fears is a gradual and ongoing process throughout life.
Kristian Niemietz- Emotional satisfaction, not rational thinking, and despite contrary evidence, dominates our choice in beliefs. The question of why people continue to hold to the fallacies of socialism and climate alarmism? Wendell Krossa
Why does fact/evidence change so few minds, as we observe in regard to the apocalyptic climate alarm? Because we live by emotional attachment to our beliefs, beliefs that just feel right. They seem true (a ring of truthiness) because they have been beaten into human consciousness across multiple millennia through endless iterations of the same old primitive mythical themes that have become deeply embedded in the human subconscious as archetypes.
The complex of themes that have shaped human narratives from the beginning and still dominate today:
“Original paradise. Corrupt humans ruined paradise. Life then began declining toward something worse, toward apocalyptic ending. Now humanity faces the demand for atonement, for sacrifice/payment/suffering as punishment and redemption. There is also the demand to engage a righteous battle against some evil that threatens life (the hero’s quest to conquer a monster or evil enemy), followed by the promise of restored paradise or new utopia.”
So, for example, many people hear a contemporary version of an apocalyptic narrative like climate alarmism, and it just feels right and true to them. It resonates. No need to rationally analyze it any further.
A majority of the world population have inherited narratives, both religious and secular/ideological, that affirm the above mythical themes to them: That things were better in the past. There was a past paradise on Earth when there were fewer humans and Earth was mostly wilderness. But then humans started to engage, use, and change the natural world. In the eyes of many, humanity thereby began “ruining” nature. Hence, the conclusion of our ancestors- We are bad, we are destroyers. Moderns continue this anti-humanism with claims that humanity is “a virus, a cancer” on Earth. And consequent to humans using Earth’s resources, life is now declining toward a worsening state.
The result of our strong emotional attachment to such beliefs is that we then engage confirmation bias that focuses on anecdotal situations of destruction, and short reversals or downturns in long-term trends, all to support narratives of decline toward apocalypse. With this cherry-picking approach to evidence, its fairly easy to affirm the narrative of humans as destroyers who mess up the world. Add to this demonization and hatred of humanity the associated belief that because of our fallen state and corruption we deserve punishment and we need salvation, redemption. So embrace the irrational myth-based salvation schemes of apocalyptic prophets that have repeatedly ruined societies- destroying life “to save world”. And then we are re-assured with the hope for a restored paradise or new utopia.
We give primacy to our emotional attachment to beliefs because we all live primarily by story, not facts, no matter how vociferously we identify as secular, ideological, and even scientific. Our stories are shaped dominantly by mythical themes. Look at the current dominance of apocalyptic in the “profoundly religious” climate alarmism crusade and its salvation scheme of decarbonization. There is nothing new under the sun.
Niemietz tackles this same impulse to live by emotional resonation or satisfaction in “Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies”. He offers an excellent history of the 24 failed Socialist experiments of the past century or so. A never-ending line of collectivist projects that endlessly fail. Nonetheless, true believers refuse to let the myth die. They want to try and try again, as per the definition of insanity. He concludes with a chapter that probes why so many people continue to believe Socialism is a good idea despite the history of repeated inevitable failures and ruin of societies.
Quotes and comments on his Chapter 10: “Why Socialist Ideas Persist: Haidt’s social intuitionist model and Caplan’s theory of ‘rational irrationality’”.
Niemietz begins the chapter: “When reading the accounts of socialist pilgrims, one cannot help wondering how so many highly educated, highly intelligent, well-informed and well-meaning people can be so colossally and persistently wrong”.
He notes that Jonathan Haidt shows that a lot of our moral and political reasoning is “post-hoc” rationalization and the purpose is not to arrive at a conclusion but to justify a conclusion after it has been reached. Intuitions come first, followed by reason and, hence, we cannot change people’s minds by refuting their arguments.
He continues, noting that “the emotional part of our mind supports a particular policy because it feels good and is based on good intentions”. So the emotional part of our minds settles on a position and then our reasoning comes up with arguments to support the emotional-based conclusion.
Confirmation bias is the result. We hold to the evidence that affirms our beliefs and ignore or dismiss contrary evidence.
Then the tribal impulse kicks in as we associate with people who hold similar views, while punishing dissenters. Opponents become enemies whose views are not just wrong but viewed as maliciously dangerous.
He adds the result that economic policies and ideas that are wrong and rejected by economists of all political stripes nonetheless remain widely popular. But whether wrong or not, beliefs are emotionally satisfying in some manner to true believers.
(Insert on a prominent phenomenon today: Add here the good research on the “psychopathology of left-wing compassion”, the claim of left-wing types to hold compassion for oppressed people, a claim that offers them the opportunity to engage in virtue signaling of their righteousness and at the same time deny that the policies they support actually harm the very people they claim to hold compassion for.)
I have said elsewhere that collectivists are irrationally and dogmatically convinced that their approach is “morally superior” because they frame it as “working for common or greater good”, hence the nationalizing of sectors of the economy (i.e. collectivist elites taking control of “the means of production”) and the claim to be operating the nationalized economy for “the people”. This is framed in terms of fighting for the freedom of the oppressed who suffer under capitalist owners (private property owners) framed as oppressors.
And, to the contrary, collectivists frame the approach that is oriented to free individuals and private property as being dominantly about individual greed and selfishness, hence obviously evil.
Collectivists do not understand basic human motivation and cannot fathom that the impulse to improve one’s life and the state of one’s family is the most basic obligation of love- i.e. to properly care for the members of your family. After fulfilling this basic obligation of love, we then with free personal choice (without elite or state coercion) extend our concerns out to our community and to the larger society.
With such distortions to frame socialism and individualism, and despite the repeated failures and destruction from centralizing power and control in collectivist elites and their bureaucracies, the true believers in collectivism cannot give up what they view as a righteous battle of good against evil.
Further, collectivists ignore the fact that the individual approach has actually achieved “greater or common good” far better over the past two centuries in freeing billions from poverty to achieve middle class status and levels of well-being. Whereas the socialist approach has repeatedly immiserated populations of billions, as well as enslaving commoners to collectivist elites, while also destroying the environment through bureaucratic control and redistribution of resources.
Add here the religious element that buttresses the sense of moral superiority. Communalists/collectivists may appeal to the Acts chapter 2 statement that early Christians loved one another and as proof of their love “they redistributed and held all goods in common” (also restated in chapter 4). That early communalism/collectivism approach was obviously, to a communalist, an exhibition of true love versus the greed of selfish individuals also noted in that Acts context (chapter 5: Ananias and Sapphira ‘murdered’ for still harboring some individualism). It’s hard to argue with such divine approval and retribution against individualism in holy scripture, eh. God, according to author Luke, sides with collectivists.
We can see the emotional appeal in such beliefs, distorting as they are of the true state of things and as harmfully wrong as they have repeatedly been in their outcomes in societies. Hence Caplan’s “rational irrationality” that holds firmly to and defends such beliefs and approaches.
Niemietz adds a point re Haidt’s comment on “moral tribalism” that further intensifies the urge to go with our gut feelings and use reason for defensive affirmation of our beliefs. So even when the socialist “utopias” are evidently totalitarian, the socialist defenders will claim that contrary to appearances, “the people are in charge”. The dictator or ruling party is just expressing the collective will of the people. This fantasy cannot be refuted. So repressive measures to maintain the ruling party’s power are excused or defended as legitimate because they purportedly express “the will of the people”.
Add further here such beliefs as the primitive tribal myth of “limited good” (noted in anthropological research). Hence, any individual getting ahead in some way must be taking some limited good that belongs to all. If one gets more, then logically others must be losing out (zero sum thinking). The myth of limited resources is the central belief of such fallacies as the “Ecological Footprint” model. It is false because the human mind possesses unlimited potential for ingenuity and consequently creative new ideas are infinitely unlimited. We do not just find ever more resources, as our history affirms, but we find alternative resources, or even create alternatives (e.g. ceramic) by creatively re-arranging atoms and molecules.
Continuing, Niemietz notes that after every failed attempt to implement a socialist approach to ordering a society that is followed by the inevitable failure, the true believers, when asked what they would have done differently, have no answer. “They escape into the abstract, talking about lofty aspirations… that are…. usually the same old aspirations that have always been the aspirations of socialism. They define “real socialism” in terms of outcomes they would like to see, rather than some institutional setup which is supposed to produce those outcomes”.
This concluding point:
“Socialism in the sense which self-identified democratic socialists define it… a democratized economic planned collectively by ‘the people’, has never been achieved anywhere and could not be achieved. Economic planning can only ever be done in a technocratic, elitist fashion, and it requires an extreme concentration of power in the hands of the state. It cannot ‘empower’ ordinary workers. It can only ever empower bureaucratic elites.”
So as Niemietz has traced earlier in his excellent research, all socialist experiments go through the same stages- (1) The honeymoon phase showered with enthusiastic praise from Western intellectuals like Naom Chomsky. Then, (2) when the cracks and failures start to emerge, the Western intellectuals blame the critics of the system for the failure, or blame some capitalist infection in the socialist experiment. Then finally, (3) they blame the failure on the latest experiment as not being “true socialism”, thereby preserving the pristine reputation of socialism. The idea survives once again.
Socialist true believers persistently claim that the next time will be different. After 24 failures over the past century or so, that argument is no longer credible. But emotional satisfaction with a mythical, abstract idea matters more than actual reality with its repeated horrific outcomes in billions of immiserated and destroyed lives. Take a close look at Venezuela, as Niemietz details that recent failure of socialism that proclaimed it would be new and different from past failed experiments. And remember the Hollywood elites that rushed to celebrate Chavismo (i.e. Oliver Stone, Sean Penn, Harry Belafonte, etc.).
This is a good analysis from Niemietz who probes and explains why and how “Emotional satisfaction, not rational thinking, and despite contrary evidence, dominates our choice in beliefs”.
Further good sources to understand collectivism and its inevitable outcomes– Joshua Muravchik’s “Heaven On Earth”, Arthur Herman’s “The Cave and The Light”, Frederik Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom”, etc. Wendell Krossa
Added notes: Main features of collectivist approaches to organizing societies-
(1) The centralization of power in “enlightened elites/vanguards” who claim to know what is best for all others and use state coercion to force populations to become “communal/communist persons”. The centralization of power inevitably unleashes the corrupting totalitarian impulse in powerholders. There are no benevolent rulers as per Plato’s vision of “good philosopher Rulers”. Hayek was right that dispersing power among competing individuals and institutions best protects against totalitarianism and maintains freedom. We do this today in our societies by reducing taxation and regulations. Decreasing the size and power of government elites and bureaucrats.
(2) The self-delusion of elites (i.e. psychopathology of left-wing compassion) who claim virtue in publicly signaling their compassion for oppressed people but then enact social programs/projects that harm immensely the very commoners they claim compassion for (i.e. nationalize sectors of the economy under state or elite bureaucratic control thereby denying private citizens the free democratic control over their own property).
(3) The subjection of individuals to collectives (to the “common or greater good”)- demanding the elimination of Marx’s number one “evil of private property” and thereby again denying citizens their individual freedoms and rights. Not understanding the fundamental human motivation to improve one’s life and family and the critical need of people to be free of state powerholders controlling their lives, to have individual self-determination as fundamental for human well-being.
This interesting YouTube clip from a Lex Fridman interview of Elon Musk, with Fridman relating his ayahuasca trip and the significant positive benefits that provided him. A fascinating account from Fridman.
These drugs (also DMT, mushrooms, etc.) must be decriminalized and researched more for the obvious psychological benefits that they provide to so many people.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wvyBN-fEsE
Smart or dumb? Wendell Krossa
It was surprising again to hear an otherwise apparently smart person (majored in philosophy) say that after her atheism was challenged by her Near-Death Experience of a loving being, that she then faced the regretful choice of having to accept that religion was true, and she did not want to join a church and become religious. Huh?
Well, the discovery of a loving Ultimate Reality or deity of some sort does not then automatically lead to the simple-minded dualism of “you have to choose between dogmatic materialist atheism or dogmatic religion”. No. I mean “What the fuck, eh?”, or more politely Canadian- “A thousand times no”.
For Christ sakes open your head up (let the light and breeze in) and realize that you can create your own alternative options to those two witless positions. Think your way into freedom and create your own choices and alternatives, for God’s sake. Let 8 billion flowers bloom (a take on the Chinese Communist meme- “Let a thousand flowers bloom”).
Too many famous materialists have posited the same simple-minded dualism. I have to fight for my materialist atheism because if I lose then I have to go over to embrace a fundamentalist religion like Christianity. Where did their intelligence evaporate to in positing such a harebrained conclusion?
There are unlimited options to explain reality, and more alternatives to live by than either the absurdity of dogmatic materialism (i.e. atheism as the only logical conclusion of materialist science), or the equal absurdity of dogmatic religion (the only choice for “spiritually-minded” or “spiritually-oriented” people). There is, for example, the growing “unaffiliated” category of “spiritual but not religious”, meaning individual freedom of choice in beliefs.
Over the past we have seen the simple-mindedness in the materialist scientists who reacted to any evidence of purpose in the cosmos or life. They assumed that any recognition of purpose would force the conclusion of a greater Intelligence behind the cosmos and life, and according to them, that could only be a religious reality. How absurd. Why do we automatically fall into such extreme opposite dualisms? Is it some leftover from Zoroastrian dualism?
Any greater Mind or Consciousness will not be religious. As Historical Jesus stated, God is entirely non-religious because God is unconditional love. That is the only feature defining deity that deserves dogmatism.
Now to preface my quibble with Rogan, whom I admire and affirm wholeheartedly for his good podcasts…
Sources on world ocean fisheries:
https://sustainablefisheries-uw.org/ray-hilborn-funding/
https://academic.oup.com/icesjms/article/71/5/1040/648075
https://ourworldindata.org/fish-and-overfishing
A quibble with Joe Rogan’s doomster narrative on ocean fisheries, Wendell Krossa
I have a quibble with Joe Rogan’s doomster position over ocean fisheries- a persistent one that he brings up repeatedly about ocean fisheries dying over this century, becoming exhausted and ruined. As politely Canadian and nice as possible- He is so wrong. (See episode 2182 of “Joe Rogan Experience” on Spotify or YouTube, starting around the 6 minute mark to about the 7 minute and 30 second mark.)
Rogan needs to check in with the research of Ray Hilborn, a University of Washington prof and considered a leading expert on ocean fisheries. Hilborn concludes, with a group of other scientists, that some 65% of ocean fish species are doing well and the other 35% are stressed by overfishing. However, when you back off and manage the stressed fisheries properly, they recover. So the great alarm that the oceans would be dead by 2048 has been proven wrong (see links above).
Another leading world fisheries expert, Boris Worm, had previously taken the alarmist position that ocean fisheries were being exhausted and would all soon collapse. But he eventually came to agree with Hilborn that the evidence revealed the true state of fisheries was not so bad. “All the fishies in the sea would not be gone by 2043” (OK, alright- 2048- but that spoils my rhyme).
According to the usual patterns of Chicken Little crusades, alarms are thrown into the public realm and achieve great publicity from apocalyptic prophets parading as scientists with the loudspeaker assistance of the panic-mongering media. The alarmists appeal to the usual sources of cherry-picked data, anecdotal situations that do not represent wholes, and minor setbacks in longer term trends (usually 3-5 years of downturn or setback in some longer trend- see the Prof. Pimental example in Lomborg’s “Skeptical Environmentalist”). All to distort the true state of something and to affirm an apocalyptic narrative. Hence, we get daily from media the mantra- “Worst on record”.
Add here the “Presentism” point of James Payne (History of Force) that many people instinctually believe things are “the worst ever” because they are experiencing them firsthand.
“The fallacy of presentism: the tendency to assume that events of the present are larger, more important, or more shocking than events of the past”, James Payne.
When good scientists do follow-up to some alarm (fact-checking, replication, falsification) and show that the actual state of the thing under discussion is not as bad as alarmists exaggerated it to be, the alarms fade away and the public hysteria dies down. But no one is paying attention to the rebuttals and follow-up good science, usually noted and hidden on some back page of news media. The alarmists then spin on their heels to move on to next big public scare, with no one taking responsibility and admitting to the past false alarms.
So also with forests: Even when you present the good news that world forests have stabilized around 4 billion-plus hectares, the alarmists react with the “whataboutism” of- “Oh, but two centuries and more ago there was much more forest cover”. Yes, and only about a billion people.
https://courier.unesco.org/en/articles/winds-change
https://ourworldindata.org/world-lost-one-third-forests
There are 8 billion on Earth today who all have the right to be here and to use natural resources, to change nature for human well-being and progress. We are not a “virus, cancer, destroyer of nature, an unwelcome intruder on the planet”, a sinful and corrupt species in war against the holy goddess of nature, a war of “evil humanity” against pristine and noble nature.
The good news regarding the human project on Earth is that we learn from our past mistakes. We learn to better engage and care for nature because we use Earth’s natural resources to create the wealth that enables us to properly care for the world. Evidence affirms that the wealthiest regions do better in protecting and preserving nature. And with our natural compassion and intelligence we recognize the value in preserving natural areas for multiple uses. See, for example, our expanding park systems and reserved areas. Consequent to our developing carefulness, world forests are stabilized and even growing in area.
Add here that creative advances in human agricultural production have resulted in returning vast acreages of agricultural land back to nature (see Greg Easterbrook’s data- A Moment On The Earth- that over 100 million acres of US agricultural land were returned to nature in the last century). Some suggest that we have already passed “peak agriculture” in the world and this trend is notable across the world.
Environmental expert Bjorn Lomborg notes that we only need about 15% of the world forests for our wood needs. And much of that area is forest farming. So we are doing good and, as Julian Simon says, we ought to hold a party to celebrate how well we have done.
The fallacy here is to compare our current situation with the imagined original paradise world of long ago- a world without humans, untouched by human engagement. It’s a false comparison. But this false dualism and opposition of “the good of past wilderness without humans” versus “present human use of nature as evil” is used to affirm the narrative of humanity as the destroyer of paradise and consequent to our use of natural resources, life is falsely imagined to be on decline toward apocalypse.
Of course, there will be change to the natural world as we are legitimately allowed to use nature’s resources because we are part of nature, we belong here. It’s our world and, yes, we are obligated to care for it too and we have been doing well because resource use has stabilized in many areas. Note here the trend toward “dematerialization” as in a declining use of material resources per capita due to creative human technological developments (i.e. all the former larger and more material-dense technologies now condensed into our small cell phones- see Humanprogress.org reports on this- https://humanprogress.org/markets-and-dematerialization/ )
Back to the fishies…
Wild fisheries catches have stabilized over the past decades and the increased consumption of fish by a growing world population is now being met with aquaculture or farm fishing. Note, for example, these FAO reports, and aside from the “climate alarm” nonsense included, they state that aquaculture will meet most of humanity’s needs for fish…
https://www.fao.org/family-farming/detail/en/c/1441442/
The anti-humanism of the alarmist narratives berates humanity as a curse, a virus/cancer on pristine Earth, a “destroyer of worlds”. False. Julian Simon was right, after carefully researching the evidence on the human record in engaging the natural world, he concluded that “we are more creators than destroyers”. The anti-humanism of the environmental alarmist movement is just wrong. Greg Easterbrook (A Moment On The Earth) is also right that we, humanity with mind, are the best thing that has happened to nature.
The ongoing accumulation of good evidence repeatedly affirms humanity’s basic goodness and compassion and our creativity in problem solving as we continue to push the trajectory of life to improve toward something better. This evidence overturns entirely the nihilist anti-humanism narratives of evil humanity destroying the world. That dark mental framing is based on the primitive fallacy of apocalypse that fraudulently claims that “sinful humanity ruined an original paradise and life is now declining toward disaster and even ending entirely in collapse and chaos. Apocalyptic has been the single greatest lie about the state of life.
Where does this psychopathology come from? It has been beaten into human consciousness from the very beginning and we see it in the earliest human writing/mythologies and then on down through the narratives of the great religions that dominated human thought over millennia, and into the “secular ideologies” and even science of the modern world.
The complex of mythical fallacies:
First in line: The never-ending insistence that humans were the evil destroyers of an original paradise world, that life has subsequently been declining toward something worse as punishment for human sin. This declinism fallacy was followed with the threat of looming apocalyptic destruction and ending as the ultimate and final punishment for human sin. Then followed the divine demand for atonement in the form of some sacrifice/payment accompanied with “suffering as redemptive” (the “moral superiority” of retreating to primitivism). Then humanity, if sufficiently repentant for enjoying the good life, was offered the hope of salvation in a restored paradise, a world purged of evil humans. The restored paradise or tribal utopia would consist of just true believers living as new communalist people, sharing all things in common. See the Christian version of this in Acts 2. Communalists claim that such collectivism is true compassion/love.
It is enlightening to recognize the never-ending dominance of this great myth of declining life and eventual apocalypse and then probe where this comes from and why it persists as prominent in human narratives, whether religious or secular/ideological/scientific. Our probing of origins will arrive at Paul’s apocalyptic Christ myth as mainly responsible for affirming this myth in Western consciousness, narratives, and civilization.
The Christ of Paul was created to embody the earlier themes of the above complex and took those primitive themes to new reaches/heights of supremacy in human consciousness. Paul gave cosmic significance to them as ultimate universal realities. His Christ was the savior of the entire world, the sole savior of all humanity. With such claims the primitive themes of apocalyptic millennialism were taken to the furthest extremes as dominating ultimate realities. Christ was to be universal Lord of all, the great apocalyptic Destroyer who would bring the world to its final end.
(An aside: Paul never imagined possible civilizations on other worlds and how they would find “salvation” by believing in his Christ. I would suggest that as intelligent beings they would also discover the insight of Historical Jesus that no conditions love is the defining and most advanced ideal of any intelligent species.)
Continuing…
So I would agree with the military guy, regarding his point about going after the bad ideas that incite and validate religious violence (i.e. ISIS), and paraphrase his point to similarly go after the bad ideas that incite and validate environmental alarmism- i.e. that you can respond with scientific evidence to climate alarmism, just as we respond with military force to religious violence. But the madness of such crusades will just keep re-erupting to cause horrific destruction until you go to the very root of the problem, the foundational contributing factors- i.e. the false ideas of angry gods (Gaia, Planet, etc.) threatening to punish bad people with natural disasters and apocalypse for ruining paradise. These reality-distorting, panic-engendering, and enslaving ideas that have repeatedly alarmed people to the point of embracing irrational salvation schemes with horrifically destructive outcomes, salvation that destroys societies to “save the world”.
One ancient sage- Historical Jesus- offered a spectacular new insight to overturn the entire mess of bad ideas that had long darkened and enslaved the minds of people, the complex of “lost paradise, decline toward apocalypse, demand for salvation/atonement, false promise of utopia”. He went directly to the root of the psychopathology- i.e. the central idea of angry deity threatening punishment and demanding conditions for salvation. He overturned that core theme with his stunning new theology that gutted entirely the old system of bad ideas, the old narratives. He replaced the primitive threat theologies of past history with his new view of God as a no conditions deity, no threat of divine retaliation, no demand for atonement.
But his stunning mental revolution was short-circuited two decades later (circa 50 C.E.) by Paul’s rejection of his main insight and message, and Paul’s retreat to the old theologies of angry deity threatening punishment and destruction and demanding salvation schemes (see Thessalonian and Romans letters).
This from Sterling Burnett’s “Climate Change Weekly #514: Evidence Mounts that Green Tech Is Wiping Out Species”, Aug. 2, 2024
“Temperature Changes Drive CO2, Not the Other Way Around”
“New research from Demetris Koutsoyiannis, Ph.D., professor emeritus for Hydrology and Analysis of Hydrosystems in the National Technical University of Athens, published in the journal Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering, suggests that CO2 rather than driving climate change, is a lagging indicator, with changes in CO2 levels being a consequence of or a response to a changing climate….
“The extensive analyses made converge to the single inference that change in temperature leads, and that in carbon dioxide concentration lags. This conclusion is valid for both proxy and instrumental data in all time scales and time spans. … The time lags found depend on the time span and time scale and are of the same order of magnitude as the latter. These results contradict the conventional wisdom, according to which the temperature rise is caused by [CO2] increase.”
Some interesting comment from Jordan Peterson (latest Monday newsletter “Mondays of Meaning”- July 29, 2024) on the primary human impulse to meaning (Victor Frankl).
“Determine The Course Of Your Life With Freedom
“In Exodus, God tells Moses that the Israelites need to be free. There must be an association between Israel, the people who wrestle with God, and the idea of being called out of slavery. Interestingly enough, “Israel” does not mean those who “believe in God”; it means those who “wrestle with God.” That is what we do. We all wrestle with meaning, purpose, and significance. We wonder about the reality of ethical endeavor, and we are tormented by our consciences for not living up to our moral obligations. We shirk our responsibility — or do not. We wrestle with good and evil.
“We tend to identify the impulse toward freedom and responsibility as positive and good, so to give it a high ethical standing is quite reasonable. How do you determine the course of your life under conditions of duress? You think about your course. You think painfully about it. You search your conscience and try to reconfigure your life. You think about the problems that beset you in every way you possibly can. Maybe you talk your problems over with people who you love, you try to generate a solution in your discussion, and you do that all honestly. That is all wrestling — and you cannot do that without freedom.
“If your highest moral calling, in some sense, is to wrestle with God, then freedom is a precondition. If you are only doing what someone is telling you, which is what you would be doing if you were enslaved, you are not wrestling with God; you are just doing what the tyrant tells you. So maybe it is necessary for this wrestling to take place so that we can continually orient and reorient toward what is good.”
Programming AI and protecting humanity– Wendell Krossa
Again- After listening to discussions on AI and related problems with what is available now- i.e. ChatGPT or Grok, I suggest again, why not program AI with basic Classic Liberal principles as per, for example, Daniel Hannan’s “Inventing Freedom”, or with basic Libertarian principles as in the same protected rights and freedoms of all individuals, as full equals. Or the principles of the Universal Human Rights Declaration, or the US constitution principles, and so on.
Classic Liberal principles? That all are to be treated equally under common law systems (“Magna Carta” on down through subsequent history)- i.e. protected from unreasonable criminal charges, protected from being subjected to unjustifiable search and seizure or imprisonment, and given full due process with the choice of a jury of peers, or judge. And only incarcerate the repeatedly violent, and then treat all criminal offenders with restorative justice.
These features are critical in our era of out-of-control partisan calls for censorship of opponent’s views and speech, where AI and social media algorithms have been revealed to favor one side of the political spectrum and they deplatform contrary views, demonetize opponents, along with the general trend to engage “concept creep” and criminalize dissenting opinions as “Hate speech”, etc.
Add that all citizens must be protected from excessive state taxation and regulation. All should be given fuller self-determination and strong private property rights protected under law. State coercion- i.e. to take citizen’s property by taxation with threats of criminalization and imprisonment for resistance- must be opposed by populations.
Further, add the protection of freedom of religion and freedom of voluntary assembly and protected private contracts and full free speech rights, protecting even “offensive, repugnant” speech.
Re-enforce that the only prohibited speech (hate speech) should be “incitement to immediate violence”. Protect against the “concept creep” that extends hate speech laws into the realm of abuse by partisans seeking to prohibit and criminalize the speech of political opponents (Twitter Files revelations).