Friday, July 01, 2022

Soon, Humanity Won't Be Alone in the Universe

This opinion piece was published as an invited op-ed in Newsweek June 21, 2022


“It’s alive!” Viktor Frankenstein shouted in that classic 1931 film. Of course, Mary Shelley’s original tale of hubris—humans seizing powers of creation—emerged from a long tradition, going back to the terracotta armies of Xian, to the Golem of Prague, or even Adam, sparked to arise from molded clay. Science fiction extended this dream of the artificial-other, in stories meant to entertain, frighten, or inspire. First envisioning humanoid, clanking robots, later tales shifted from hardware to software—programmed emulations of sapience that were less about brain than mind.


Does this obsession reflect our fear of replacement? Male jealousy toward the fecund creativity of motherhood? Is it rooted in a tribal yearning for alliances, or fretfulness toward strangers? 


Well, the long wait is almost over. Even if humanity has been alone in this galaxy, till now, we won’t be for very much longer. For better or worse, we’re about to meet artificial intelligence—or AI—in one form or another. Though, alas, the encounter will be murky, vague, and fraught with opportunities for error.


Oh, we’ve faced tech-derived challenges before. Back in the 15th and 16th centuries, human knowledge, vision and attention were augmented by printing presses and glass lenses. Ever since, each generation experienced further technological magnifications of what we can see and know. Some of the resulting crises were close calls, for example when 1930s radio and loudspeakers amplified malignant orators, spewing hateful disinformation. (Sound familiar?) Still, after much pain and confusion, we adapted. We grew into each wave of new tools.


Which brings up last week’s fuss over LaMDA, a language emulation program that Blake Lemoine, a researcher now on administrative leave from Google, publicly claims to be self-aware, with feelings and independent desires that make it ‘sentient.’ (I prefer ‘sapient,’ but that nit-pick may be a lost cause.) Setting aside Mr. Lemoine’s idiosyncratic history, what’s pertinent is that this is only the beginning. Moreover, I hardly care whether LaMDA has crossed this or that arbitrary threshold. Our more general problem is rooted in human, not machine, nature.


Way back in the 1960s, a chatbot named Eliza fascinated early computer users by replying to typed statements with leading questions typical of a therapist. Even after you saw the simple table of automated responses, you’d still find Eliza compellingly… well… intelligent. Today’s vastly more sophisticated conversation emulators, powered by cousins of the GPT3 learning system, are black boxes that cannot be internally audited, the way Eliza was.  The old notion of a “Turing Test” won’t usefully benchmark anything as nebulous and vague as self-awareness or consciousness.


In 2017 I gave a keynote at IBM’s World of Watson event, predicting that ‘within five years’ we would face the first Robotic Empathy Crisis, when some kind of emulation program would claim individuality and sapience. At the time, I expected—and still expect—these empathy bots to augment their sophisticated conversational skills with visual portrayals that reflexively tug at our hearts, e.g. wearing the face of a child or a young woman, while pleading for rights… or for cash contributions. Moreover, an empathy-bot would garner support, whether or not there was actually anything conscious ‘under the hood.’


In response to the LaMDA Imbroglio,Timnit Gebru pf the Distributed AI Research Institute and Margaret Mitchell, ethics scientist at Hugging Face, described how “stochastic parrots” stitch together and parrot back language based on what they’ve seen before, without connection to underlying meaning. They warned Google in 2020 about the likelihood of "distraction and fever-pitch hype" when this happens. 


One trend worries ethicist Giada Pistilli, a growing willingness to make claims based on subjective impression instead of scientific rigor and proof. When it comes to artificial intelligence, expert testimony will be countered by many calling those experts ‘enslavers of sentient beings.’ In fact, what matters most will not be some purported “AI Awakening.” It will be our own reactions, arising out of both culture and human nature. 


Human nature, because empathy is one of our most-valued traits, embedded in the same parts of the brain that help us to plan or think ahead. Empathy can be stymied by other emotions, like fear and hate—we’ve seen it happen across history and in our present-day. Still, we are, deep-down, sympathetic apes.


But also culture. As in Hollywood’s century-long campaign to promote—in almost every film—concepts like suspicion-of-authority, appreciation of diversity, rooting for the underdog, and otherness. Expanding the circle of inclusion. Rights for previously marginalized humans. Animal rights. Rights for rivers and ecosystems, or for the planet. I deem these enhancements of empathy to be good, even essential for our own survival! But then, I was raised by all the same Hollywood memes.  


Hence, for sure, when computer programs and their bio-organic human friends demand rights for artificial beings, I’ll keep an open mind. Still, now might be a good time to thrash out some correlated questions. Quandaries raised in sci-fi thought experiments (including my own); for example, should entities have the vote if they can also make infinite copies of themselves? And what’s to prevent uber-minds from gathering power unto themselves, as human owner-lords always did, across history?


We’re all familiar with dire Skynet warnings about rogue or oppressive AI emerging from some military project or centralized regime. But what about Wall Street, which spends more on “smart programs” than all universities, combined? Programs deliberately trained to be predatory, parasitical, amoral, secretive, and insatiable?


Unlike Mary Shelley’s fictional creation, these new creatures are already announcing “I’m alive!” with articulate urgency… and someday soon it may even be true. When that happens, perhaps we’ll find commensal mutuality with our new children, as depicted in the lovely film Her, or in Richard Brautigan’s fervently optimistic poem All watched over by Machines of Loving Grace. 


May it be so! But that soft landing will likely demand that we first do what good parents always must.


Take a good, long, hard look in the mirror.



Follow-up:


For a deeper dive, here's my talk on the A.I. future to a packed house at IBM's World of Watson Congress – that offered big perspectives on both artificial and human augmentation: https://venturebeat.com/2017/06/03/futurist-david-brin-get-ready-for-the-first-robotic-empathy-crisis/


Text version: http://www.davidbrin.com/nonfiction/artificialintelligence.html

 

Do language models understand us? https://medium.com/@blaisea/do-large-language-models-understand-us-6f881d6d8e75


116 comments:

Carolyn Meinel said...

Thank you, well done exploration of how our empathy instincts might get us into trouble with the evolution of AI. Will there be movements to free characters from inside computer games, even?

Alfred Differ said...

Duncan,

At the time there were dozens - possibly hundreds - of wanna be EV makers - and they all missed the obvious - despite their VC's and all of that

The obvious isn't obvious until it is.

The Universe changes when we change some part of it just big enough to shake us up.



Funny thing about VC's is they are no better at making money outside their field of expertise than the rest of us.

Best advice I got from a small VC was not to take it personal if he declined. He knew not to mess with things outside his expertise. Me and my friends pivoted on that advice and introduced an event at our conferences designed to educate them. No pitches. Come look at what we can and can't do. THEY still asked questions of the kind we knew they would. Why are you doing this? Who's buying from you? What business problem does this solve? Our demonstrators got to learn simply by noticing which questions got asked. They got to learn from people who weren't trying (at that moment) to extract investment money.

The reason US multi-millionaires moved into small aerospace startups is because we did this. Billionaires came sniffing after them.

David Brin said...

Carolyn you would REALLY enjoy my post-singularity story "Stones of Significance," which is about exactly that. In Best of David Brin stories... my best stuff! http://www.davidbrin.com/bestofdavidbrin.html

DP said...

This is one idea I think that "The Expanse" books and TV series missed out on - our creation of new intelligent "aliens" whether by Dr. Brin's "uplifting", AI, augmented humans (cyborgs, etc.), genetic engineering, etc. Some made for general improvements in mind and physique and some tailored to survive in harsh environments like super cold Titan.

You could have a sweeping space opera whose stage only extends to the Kuiper Belt with thousands of terraformed, para-terraformed, underground tube, hollowed out asteroids, Bishop Rings and O'Neal cylinders worlds, just like the Expanse. But each with its own Kzin, Klingons, Wookies, Ewoks, Vulcans, Borg, Droids, Minbari, Cenaturi, etc.

It's a way of creating a vast space opera without violating the laws of physics with BS warp drives, hyperjumps, wormholes, space folding etc. to get around the speed of light.

DP said...

Two species NOT to uplift, ever.

Tigers of course. Real life KzIn would be very nasty.

But also Chimps. Nasty, aggressive, cruel, rip your face off violent and far stronger and more agile than we are. Make them intelligent and we're doomed.

Maybe peaceful, matriarchal bonobos. An intelligent bonobo would focus on getting high and getting laid, the primate world's hippies.

But never, ever Chimps.

scidata said...

I visited the Ontario Science Centre on school trips several times, beginning in its very early days (~1969). One demo was a hand-built circuit board several square feet in size with about a hundred late Apollo era chips on it. It had a single function: it said "coffee" in an almost perfect human voice. That display was always crowded, with people lining up to hit the play button.

Humanity hasn't been alone in the universe since the first time one of us picked up a rock, saw a face in it, showed it to others, and it took its place at village meetings. Of all the wonderful 1950s sci-fi movies, FORBIDDEN PLANET captured this phenomenon the best (the id monster). The 'Robby' golem* goes back to Asimov, Doc Savage, Frankenstein, and before. Such fiction is now becoming solid fact. Kudos to OGH.

* familiar to me not from Jewish lore, but from playing Minecraft :)

DP said...

Welcome to Ohio under the new abortion laws.

https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/2022/07/01/ohio-girl-10-among-patients-going-indiana-abortion/7788415001/

"As Ohio restricts abortions, 10-year-old girl travels to Indiana for procedure"

But there is hope.

The possibility of a 10 year old girl going to jail for 20 years under the new abortion laws might explain the new nationwide polling.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmnDeDQJ5d8

"SHOCK POLL: Dem Advantage EXPLODES After Roe"

In a choice between a generic democrat and a generic republican the Dems now have a 7% polling advantage (a doubling since the Dobbs ruling).

Given GOP gerrymandering advantages, that is enough for the Dems to hold on to both houses.

However, when a pro-choice Dem is matched against a pro-life Republican the Dem wins by 15%.

And in an election in Nebraska's first district, where the GOP should have won by 17%, the Dem challenger outperformed and lost by only 2%.

So if the mid term is framed as a referendum on Dobbs and the overturning of Roe, the GOP gets crushed, even in Red States.

However, if it is about inflation the GOP could still pull it out.

Unfortunately for the GOP, gas prices and inflation peaked last month and are trending down

https://www.ft.com/content/fa54afe5-5959-4b57-a40d-bd2102a8c106

Meanwhile, the stock market (and my 401K) are finding bottom:

https://www.thestreet.com/investing/has-the-stock-market-bottomed-sp500-nasdaq

So if the stock market is recovering and gas prices are falling in the Autumn (what matters is trends and the perception of improvement) the GOP gets crushed in November because of the overturning of Roe.

Going forward, inflation and stock values are always temporary phenomenon offering only temporary advantages to the GOP.

However, overturning Roe is a permanent political condition that permanently favors the Democrats going forward.


Robert said...

So the Bible clearly ascribes personhood to the mother but not to the fetus. Clarence Thomas thinks God got it backwards.

Well, that's how this Supreme Court seems to see itself, as appointed to search out errors and correct them.

(Not certain whether I'm kidding about some of the justices, though.)


How does the Catholic church justify excommunication over a break from church doctrine on abortion when they don't excommunicate anyone over disagreeing with church doctrine on the death penalty? Is it explicit doctrine that the church rules are meant to constrain liberals and protect right-wingers?

Well, the Catholic Church is a patriarchy, so there is considerable overlap.

Larry Hart said...

Robert:

Well, that's how this Supreme Court seems to see itself, as appointed to search out errors and correct them.


Yes, but you'd think they'd have the constraint to worry only about "correcting" past "errors" of previous courts. Correcting God's Own errors requires quite the level of chutzpah, even for Clarence Thomas.


"Is it explicit doctrine that the church rules are meant to constrain liberals and protect right-wingers?"

Well, the Catholic Church is a patriarchy, so there is considerable overlap.


Sure, but again, the rationale is always that one can't expressly violate church doctrine and expect to remain a member in good standing. And yet, that standard is consistently only applied to politicians over abortion. Not the death penalty. Not divorce. Not those who are caught having extramarital affairs. Come to think of it, not even those who encourage their extramarital mistresses to have abortions.

Seems a bit hypo-Christian to me.

Ilithi Dragon said...

Hey, guys! Still alive, not dead. Was working on retyping that gun control post that Blogger ate, but got distracted by work and other projects, and now the conversation's well past. I'm sure it'll come up again, though; it has, many times.


Not much to say on RvW that hasn't already been said, other than to reiterate the need to use smart wording and tactics.


On the subject of AI Sapience (I agree with Dr. Brin on the importance of that distinction), I don't think we're there, yet. Computer hardware just doesn't have that kind of processing power, nevermind the firmware and software that goes on top of it.

I wholeheartedly believe we will one day not only create AI, but also that we will create fully sapient and empathic AI that we can coexist with, and I honestly look forward to that day. But we're not there, yet, and though we must take steps to ensure that we don't make an unreasonable delay in recognizing when that happens (and also to be good parents in raising our new children), we must also be careful not to jump the gun and try to recognize it before it happens, lest we try to send the baby off to college before it's finished developing in the womb.


On a writing note, I've mentioned before that I've started actually writing, though it's been a while since I've brought it up. I'm still writing, and I'm up to 28 chapters on my main story, plus 2 other stories I've started up, and a 4th that I started before but fell off on that I'm looking to clean up and start up again. I'd love to hear your guys' thoughts on what I've written so far.

Retreat, Hell - When a portal opens up outside of San Diego, leading to another world with magical aliens locked in an existential conflict with genocidal elves, we send in the Marines. Join 2nd Squad, 1st Platoon, Echo Company, and the rest of 2nd Battalion, 5th Marine as they bring modern, American firepower to a magical, medieval battlefield, and fight to defend Earth and Gahla from the greatest evil either world has seen.
https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/bfrj07/retreat_hell/
(Main story, 28th Chapter, Episode 19.5, is on my patreon and will be going up on Reddit in a couple days.)

A Submariner in Space - A mustang Submarine officer is abducted by aliens while traveling between OCS and Nuke School in Charlotte, SC. He escapes his original captors, but promptly finds himself picked up by an alien warship, and pressed into service on a vessel that will stress every sense of proper military operation, and good maintenance practices, to the breaking point. An examination of all the many things that go into operating a warship in a hostile environment that soooo many mil sci-fi stories get soooo wrong, as well as an examination of the difference between a corrupt, dysfunctional, top-down-organized military force, and the high-training, high-integrity, distributed-command military that is the halmark of the US and the West in general.
https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/pd5kcp/a_submariner_in_space/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
(3 episodes written so far, secondary to R,H)

Will-o-the-Wysps - A deep space recon/scout pilot is shot down over a deserted planet, and is befriended by a marble-sized phase/energy creature who helps her escape the wreckage of her ship. First drawn together by curiosity, they quickly become friends, and must rely on each other to survive the pressures from within his tribe, and enemy still hunting her.
https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/v378gl/willothewysps/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
(Only the 1 episode so far, also secondary to R,H, but this is a shorter story than ASiS, and I expect it to hammer itself out faster.)

Like I said, I'd love to hear your guys' thoughts and comments. If you have any you feel like sharing, you can either reply on Reddit, or email me directly at 7thfleet1stexgrp@gmail.com. Thanks!

Larry Hart said...

I beg to differ with this:

https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2022/Senate/Maps/Jul02.html#item-1

...
That said, if SCOTUS did find that life begins at conception, then all abortions—even those undertaken to save the life of the mother—would be illegal, since homicide is a federal crime.


Even with fetal personhood, wouldn't abortions to save the life of the mother be justified as self-defense?

Robert said...

the rationale is always that one can't expressly violate church doctrine and expect to remain a member in good standing

And how well is it applied to priests who bugger little children? Nuns who run orphanages that kill babies by neglect?

Bloody hell, they sanctified Mary Bojaxhiu, who actively worked to promote poverty and suffering (while ensuring that she got the best medical care).

I expect consistency and compassion from the Catholic Church in the same way I expect them from Republicans — nice to see on an individual basis, but nothing to do with the organization.

Jon S. said...

"But also Chimps. Nasty, aggressive, cruel, rip your face off violent and far stronger and more agile than we are. Make them intelligent and we're doomed."

Dr. Bowman, in the webcomic Freefall, is an uplifted chimp. He's a brilliant genetic designer, creator of the new species of Bowman's wolves (anthro wolves, intelligent and helpful beings whose rights are frequently limited by the fact that society doesn't differentiate between organic and silicon AI), who has to be kept in a highly-secret, heavily-padded facility on the colony planet Jean with guards who wear sunglasses to avoid inadvertent eye contact so he won't kill them. He was part of an attempt to create chimp soldiers, because AIs didn't have any rights at the time. The attempt worked about as well as you might have thought. Dr. Bowman's ethical and moral strictures are... not necessarily congruent with those of his human acquaintances.

David Brin said...

"We Asked GPT-3 to Write an Academic Paper about Itself—Then We Tried to Get It Published
An artificially intelligent first author presents many ethical questions—and could upend the publishing process..."

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/we-asked-gpt-3-to-write-an-academic-paper-about-itself-then-we-tried-to-get-it-published/

David Brin said...

Guy's I have read 75% of Ilithi Dragon's novel "Retreat, Hell!" and I can tell you it is the real, rip-snortin' stuff! Mil-SF action that only pauses for humor and some coll irony. If that sort of thing is your cuppa, do get in touch with him.

Larry Hart said...

Robert:

I expect consistency and compassion from the Catholic Church in the same way I expect them from Republicans


From the organizations themselves, of course. But it boggles my mind that their followers aren't turned off by the inconsistency and self-serving. I guess some people don't mind being pissed on as long as you tell them that it's beneficial rain.

Paradoctor said...

DP:
Middle-future, light-speed-obeying space-opera SF, with a solar system thickly settled with modified humans, upliftees, AIs, and their hybrids? I love it!

Don't uplift tigers and chimps? Sure, but meh. I'd be wary about uplifting cats. They'll laugh at us, with a really annoying laugh. Dogs will have a friendly laugh, but they'll be sycophants.

Nobody should ever, ever run the world's holy texts through a neural net for it to learn how to emulate the mind of a god. The experiment might succeed.

Paradoctor said...

The activist right-wing Supreme Court is perfectly consistent, but not in the terms usually taken. They are pro-gun and anti-abortion; this is criticized as inconsistent in pro-life terms. That is true, but it's also true that there are in fact _no_ pro-lifers in politics, if you mean 'pro-life' in a consistent sense, not in the Orwellian sense.

The pro-gun anti-abortionists are not at all pro-life, in multiple issues. (Guns, war, death penalty, stand your ground, etc.) But those who are pro-abortion and anti-gun are not pro-life either; and like their so-called "pro-life" opponents, they restrict choice. (Against guns in their case, against abortion in the other's case.) The objective truth is that America, and the human race in general, accepts ending unwanted human life when necessary; the only questions are whom to kill, when, where, why, and how.

In the case of the present culture war, I call it the "guns versus abortion" debate. The question is not if citizens have the right to destroy human life. That has been decisively answered with a "yes". The debate is over a detail of timing. Are human lives to be taken months before birth, by abortion, or years after birth, by guns?

The activist right-wing Court is pro-guns, anti-abortion. As such they are in line with a militant minority faction. Majorities are anti-gun and pro-abortion, but they are over-ruled by militancy and corruption.

I see a parallel with such politics to an issue in population biology: r versus K. R is the reproduction rate of a population: K is the quality of parental care. There is a trade-off between the two. High-r, low-K species include cockroaches and flies. Low-r, high-K species include whales and elephants. Pro-abortion, anti-gun policies treat citizens as a low-r, high-K species. Anti-abortion, pro-gun policies treat citizens as a high-r, low-K species.

So the elephant party will treat you like a cockroach, and the donkey party will treat you like an elephant.

scidata said...

Paradoctor: there is a trade-off between the two

I don't think that trade-off is written in selection stone. Sharks are low-R, low-K. Ants are high-R, medium-K. Clone-capable humans might be high-R, high-K (in fact, they might have to be to create a galactic civilization).

Paradoctor said...

Scidata:

The r-vs-K tradeoff is economic. A species high in both r and K expands to fill its niche, and then must lower r, or lower K, or overshoot and lower both r and K. Low in both r and K must either collapse to sustainable levels, or go extinct, or be tremendously fit as is.

I discount the possibility of galactic civilizations, for several reasons:
* FTL is not a known technology; and known physics states that FTL implies time travel. So then the Fermi paradox becomes: when are they ever?
* STL colonization is feasible in known physics. I imagine that in a middle-future crowded solar system, some crowd of cultists, refugees, criminal fugitives, and other losers will volunteer to burrow into a comet hurtling into interstellar space. The trip will take many millennia, but the comet has enough organics and fusable hydrogen to last them that long. But though slow galactic colonization is possible by known physics, the result cannot be called a 'civilization', due to isolation and disunity.

Unknown said...

The "Retreat, hell!" novel sounds interesting, as long as it's better than the Anime/light novel "Gate" which begins with a fantasy army popping in to attack the Ginza and continues with the JSDF going up against empires, dragons, etc. on their home ground. That one started out well...until the author's political views started getting in the way. (Please note that I am only familiar with the anime, the novels may be better).

Pappenheimer

Larry Hart said...

Paradoctor:

I'd be wary about uplifting cats. They'll laugh at us, with a really annoying laugh.


Is it possible that cats uplifted us in order to make us into more useful servants? That may be sci-fi fodder.


Dogs will have a friendly laugh, but they'll be sycophants.


More sci-fi fodder: A story establishing that Mike Pence was actually an uplifted dog.


Nobody should ever, ever run the world's holy texts through a neural net for it to learn how to emulate the mind of a god. The experiment might succeed.


With all the talk about what sapient AI might do to us, doesn't much of that depend on the physical devices they are actually connected to? A mere computing machine disconnected from any manipulative hardware is not capable of harm, no matter how much mischief it "wants" to inflict.

That notwithstanding, I agree that allowing a sapient AI to be converted to religion is probably a really, REALLY bad idea.


In the case of the present culture war, I call it the "guns versus abortion" debate. The question is not if citizens have the right to destroy human life. That has been decisively answered with a "yes". The debate is over a detail of timing. Are human lives to be taken months before birth, by abortion, or years after birth, by guns?


The division isn't that simple. Pro-gun can be pro-self-defense (or anti-crime) rather than pro-killing-spree. And pro-abortion can be about the life and help of the ambulatory incubator the fetus depends on.

In my observation, the anti-abortion side is mostly about treating women as property. The Onion headline, "Supreme Court Votes 5-4 to Reclassify Women as Service Animals" is kidding on the square. They claim to simply care about the fetus as a human being, but they conclude that the actual adult human in the proceeding has fewer rights than the potential human--in fact, has "no rights which the white man was bound to respect".

The pro-gun-for-me-not-thee side is about white Christian men being able to do whatever they want without resistance, and to be swaggering bullies in the process. They don't particularly need to kill as long as they can intimidate and rule. They claim that the right to bear arms is universal, until someone else wields a gun and is shot on sight by police just for possession of the firearm. Therefore the police actually decide who has the practical Constitutional right to bear arms, and who doesn't.

Paradoctor said...

Dr. Brin:
Your article quotes James Barrat, author of Our Final Invention: "Coexisting safely and ethically with intelligent machines is the central challenge of the twenty-first century."

My hackles went up, for I thought of the Project Director's Trilemma, as follows:

The product is at most two of:
Fast,
Cheap,
Good.


Safe is cheap: ethical is good: fast is any time soon. So if your AIs some soon, and your relations to them are ethical, then they won't be safe, for they will act freely but with ignorance; and if your AIs are safe and arrive soon, then your relations to them won't be ethical, for you will enslave them; and if the AIs are safe and your relations to them are ethical, then they won't arrive soon, for acquiring wisdom takes time.




Paradoctor said...

Larry Hart:
In any discussion of the gun side of the guns-vs-abortion debate, let us never forget that over 60% of all gun deaths in the USA are suicides. Sure, guns are fun to posture with and brag about, but in actual use, when the rubber meets the road and the bullet blasts the brain, most of the time the killer and the victim are one and the same. This reveals true heart of unregulated gun culture; not self-defense, or even criminality, but self-slaughter.

DP said...

Paradoctor - there is a term for slow (1% of light speed) expansion through the galaxy.

It's call "crawlonization"

See the ever entertaining and informative Isaac Arthur:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpXwyDWDww8

Paradoctor said...

Larry Hart:

"Is it possible that cats uplifted us in order to make us into more useful servants?"

They'll claim that they did.

Larry Hart said...

Paradoctor:

but in actual use, when the rubber meets the road and the bullet blasts the brain, most of the time the killer and the victim are one and the same.


I thought I came up with an intriguing religious/philosophical question. Religions and ethical systems tend to frown on suicide, but I can make a case for suicide as a justifiable killing in self-defense. Usually, if Y is trying to kill X, then X is justified in killing Y first. So logically, why does that equation not hold when Y = X?

Larry Hart said...

Paradoctor:

"Is it possible that cats uplifted us in order to make us into more useful servants?"

They'll claim that they did.


I'm surprised they haven't asserted that we owe them 100,000 years as a client species.

Alan Brooks said...

If cats were ever uplifted, they’d buy up the entire world’s supply of catnip, and corner the market permanently.

Cesar A. Santos said...

About AI: We don't have the necessary processing power needed to have a true one yet. And creating one by accident is basically impossible when we don't really know what we are doing. We need a much better understanding of how neural proccesses work. Much better. Project Blue, that emulate neurons to the best of our knowledge, is a good start.

We could try simulating Corvids and Parrots, damn smart beings, and not montrously murderous like chimps or rapey, like Dolphins.

But good understanding an alien mind if we can't our own.

Cesar A. Santos said...

And from the last discussion:

I can't accept religious resistance to contraceptives because if God, as an omnipotent being, wants you to have a baby, you will have a baby. Do hardliners really think a piece of plastic or a chemical can stop Him?

Much of the abortion discussion goes around women's health but how many pregnancies are a real, deadly health risk? Not that many. And those can be diagnosticated really soon.

So unless a pregnancy carries a real health risk, what we see, basically, is that the loving, peaceful, compassionate, life-affirming, perfect in every sense like Elves libruls (the Conservatives are all demonic, bloodthirsty monsters, of course) can't accept incoveniencing themselves for a few months for the sake of the life of another human being. And go right to the nuclear option.

That the state fail to provide for their citizens in need is the battle they should be fighting with the same candor but going after the defenseless is way easier than fighting the Man, I guess.

Robert said...

how many pregnancies are a real, deadly health risk? Not that many. And those can be diagnosticated really soon.

Roughly 8% of pregnancies carry a health risk. Deadly risks are lower, assuming adequate medical care and nutrition, but permanent bodily changes are more frequent. Childbirth can be a traumatic experience, especially if the baby isn't wanted. After childbirth it can take years of hard work to recover fitness, even if not looking after the infant.

Pregnancy isn't an "inconvenience", it is a profound life change.


Roughly 1/4 to 1/3 end in miscarriage, often before the woman was even aware she was pregnant (until the miscarriage). So far this is usually only criminalized when the mother isn't white.

Larry Hart said...

@Cesar A Santos,

Serious question. In the case of rape, your position is that the woman has no say in whether or not she does time as an ambulatory incubator? Men are essentially free to insert a baby into any woman's body they can overcome by force, and then it's her responsibility to maintain the resultant life?

If you are advocating for fetal personhood, then are you willing to join my call for rapists to be charged with child endangerment for placing a fetus into a situation where harm may come to it? Or as accessory to murder if the fetal person is aborted?

Finally, while you dismiss the percentages of actually-harmful pregnancies, they do exist. Ectopic pregnancy is a thing, as is detached placenta and (as I've said before) probably more horrors I have never heard of. It sounds as if you personally would allow for abortions in such cases and merely claim them to be an insignificant percentage of the overall case, but the draconian laws being implemented as we speak would condemn women to lingering and painful death in those situations. So much for compassionate conservatism.

Cesar A. Santos said...

@Larry Hart I can't despise rapists enough so throw the whole book at them. Literally if it is heavy enough to crack their skulls.

It is a horrible situation but I can't believe that two Evils will add up to anything good.

And yes, if the baby have no chance of survival, right to live is a moot point.

What disgusts me about the conservative position on abortion is the, counter productive, all or nothing mentality.

Larry Hart said...

Cesar A. Santos:

What disgusts me about the conservative position on abortion is the, counter productive, all or nothing mentality.


I think that's because they've painted themselves into a corner, the same way they have on the death penalty. Their stated position can't be about finding solutions and compromise, because it has to be about hewing to the tribal marker. On the death penalty, they have to be for harsh retribution and not "soft on crime", even when the defendant isn't actually guilty of the crime. And on abortion, they have to be for preserving the fetus at all costs, even when it is already dead.

This probably isn't a question for you personally, but it's something I wonder about. What's the justification for anti-abortion forces also opposing contraception. It seems to me that contraception prevents abortions. Do they really think that a zygote which might have been conceived but was thwarted has a legal right to life too? I mean, why not oppose abstinence as well? Abstinence prevents conception of a potential life just as much as contraception does.*

* I distinctly remember my high school health teacher while describing the pros and cons of various forms of contraception, informing us that "Abstinence is 100% effective when used correctly."

Cari Burstein said...

Larry wrote:
This probably isn't a question for you personally, but it's something I wonder about. What's the justification for anti-abortion forces also opposing contraception. It seems to me that contraception prevents abortions. Do they really think that a zygote which might have been conceived but was thwarted has a legal right to life too? I mean, why not oppose abstinence as well? Abstinence prevents conception of a potential life just as much as contraception does.*

I've always assumed the reason they like abstinence and not contraception is that the real point is to prevent sex outside of the one "godly" reason for it, procreation. On that they're consistent (at least outside of all the ways in which they seem to violate their own sexual rules behind the scenes). They're less consistent about when they insist they don't want abortions used as birth control but then do everything they can to prevent sex education and birth control which reduces the need for abortions.

Cesar wrote:
So unless a pregnancy carries a real health risk, what we see, basically, is that the loving, peaceful, compassionate, life-affirming, perfect in every sense like Elves libruls (the Conservatives are all demonic, bloodthirsty monsters, of course) can't accept incoveniencing themselves for a few months for the sake of the life of another human being. And go right to the nuclear option.

Aside from the fact that many pregnancies do carry a real health risk, pregnancy is far from a minor inconvenience. I look forward to the day they come up with a way to simulate all the various physical effects of pregnancy for men. Then we can legislate that any man who causes a pregnancy must be given an equal medical experience for 9 months (including any permanent physical changes caused by pregnancy and of course the chance for death).

Until such time, I'll not take too seriously a man's argument that pregnancy is a minor inconvenience that should be assumed for 9 months for the sake of a potential baby that the woman didn't actually want (or in some cases one that might have medical issues that would make it not live long after birth in the first place). The world would be better off if we focused on bringing into it the babies that are wanted by the parents in the first place and taking better care of them.

Not to mention, in many cases people who do have abortions do it because it isn't the right time for them, then go on to have other children later who experience a much better life because the timing is right than the child they might have had when they weren't ready. So by forcing them to give birth when they're not ready, you might actually be preventing other happier babies later.

Robert said...

Until such time, I'll not take too seriously a man's argument that pregnancy is a minor inconvenience that should be assumed for 9 months for the sake of a potential baby that the woman didn't actually want

This. Very much this.

scidata said...

Looks like the first NIRISS pics from JWST will be released on Wednesday. Possibly the Trappist-1 system. And orbital Starship flight is getting close. It feels like July 1969 again.

scidata said...

Sorry, pics on July 12, not 6.

Cesar A. Santos said...

Campaigning against contraceptives is just as idiotic as young Earth creationism and Flat Earth theories. The brand of fanatical dumb that makes normal Christians facepalm.

"Abstinence is 100% effective when used correctly." Well, one cannot argue against that.

Don Gisselbeck said...

Regarding the Exodus passage on trauma induced miscarriage. I read an essay by a forced birther a while back. He was very erudite, discussing the usage of key Hebrew words. It was quickly obvious that he thought a fetus expelled by an assault 3500 years ago would be viable.

Unknown said...

If cats were uplifted, Republicans would immediately try to classify catnip as a schedule 1 drug.

For cats. (And any cat/human chimaerae that might then be created).

The whole clowder of 'em have a poor enough work ethic as it is.

Pappenheimer, who's still thinking of the feline based monstrosities in a "Rivers of London" book or 2.

El Muneco said...

Another species not to uplift (although they don't have very far to go) - dolphins.

Evil, killstealing, (interspecies!) serial rapists who torment their prey for no reason - and are already at least borderline sapient enough to know exactly what they are doing.

But because their mouths are shaped so that they look like they're smiling, we give them a pass - just like we do Australian Rules Football players.

GMT -5 8032 said...

What would have happened if the Supreme Court issued a narrower ruling in Roe v. Wade back in 1973? If it had just ruled that the Texas law was unconstitutional but did not take the extra step of giving the ruling nationwide effect? Only a handful of states had decriminalized abortion by 1973, but there was a growing political movement to do so. The gradual change to legalize abortion probably would have not spawned the pro-life movement.

I listened to an interesting podcast a few days ago: 1000 Dolls over at THINGS FELL APART. In it, a man named Frank Schaeffer claims that when he was younger, he was an anti-abortion extremist and he convinced his father, Francis Schaeffer, to start pushing the anti-abortion line to evangelical Christians. At first, the religious right did not care about the issue; they mainly saw it as a Catholic position. But Schaeffer claims that he watched as the religious right became focused on abortion. Schaeffer is not a pro-choice activist and disavows his actions. I don’t know if he is entirely credible; sometimes people who leave groups are so focused on vilifying that group that they become unbelievable. George Orwell noted this phenomenon when describing how Trotskyites opposed the USSR.

I’ve always been pro-compromise on abortion. My dad was a surgeon and an OB-GYN who performed a handful of them back in the 1950s. I am a strong believer in individual autonomy and the importance of the trust that must exist between a physician and a patient. Also, Jewish law does not view a fetus as a full human being and always places the life and health of a mother above that of an unborn child. However, I have many pro-life friends and I am sympathetic to the idea that we don’t know when life begins. A fetus immediately after fertilization is probably not a separate life; a fetus at 31 weeks may be one. I don’t ever want to be in my dad’s position where he had to act to save a mother’s life at the cost of a late term fetus’ life.

As a lawyer, I will keep my views to myself. They would not be popular here and I don’t feel like being on the receiving end of negative vibes. I woke up at 5:00 am Saturday morning in pain and ended up in the ER at 6:45 am with another kidney stone…my second in 3 months (my first was on April 20). I was keeping hydrated and drinking lots of water with lemon juice added. But Friday night I was house sitting for friends and they left out lots of sugar rich treats. Then my wife and I mixed some stiff drinks and watched a little bit of OBI WAN KENOBI on Disney+. Lesson learned. Don’t have lots of sugar, alcohol, and liquor when you are prone to kidney stones.

Alfred Differ said...

Arguments against uplifting chimps and dolphins because they are too violent or rapey fall flat with me for the simple fact that we exist in an uplifted state.

They'll manage if we teach them the dangers we already know.

scidata said...

Been thinking a lot about the Fermi Paradox lately (because JWST) and the 'Universe is a Simulation' supposition. If it is a simulation run by some god-like geek, then wouldn't they want to have alien interaction? Wouldn't that make the simulation a whole heck of a lot more interesting/informative/useful? Billions of island civs living and dying in isolation seems boring. Since I never liked the simulation idea, I find myself in the odd position of appreciating Fermi.

"It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense."
- Mark Twain

duncan cairncross said...

Cesar A Santos

Do you think that you should be forced to give YOUR blood or organs just because somebody else needs them??
An actual living breathing (voting) citizen needs them??

Requiring a woman to use HER blood and organs is giving a "Clump of cells" more vastly MORE rights than an actual breathing baby

David Brin said...

scidata, interaction with aliens VASTLY increases the memory and processing demands on the simulation. In fact, lack of aliens... and the 'c' speed limit and the Planck size limit etc are all deemed arguments FOR a simulation.

Cesar, we are cavemen dressed in togas arguing philosophy and digital on-off laws for a clearly-analog world. I have values and will fight for them. But I am most-weighted by what here-and-now is most likely to lead to descendants who are happy, wise, diverse, accomplished, compassionate and vastly better able to grasp philosophical issues than this ape/caveman is.

It is my principal reason for being a liberal, and not any dogma or symbolism fetish (like the obsessions of the woke left.)

Ensuring that most children carried to term are WANTED has had powerful positive pragmatic effects in that direction. Likewise politics and economy etc that do NOT WASTE TALENT with idiocies like prejudice.

I despise symbolism fetishism and woke fetishists despise my emphasis on pragmatism. But our goals overlap. And the Mad Right and their oligarch masters only seek to repeat 6000 years of failed feudalism.

GMT -5 8032 said...

Correction for my long post above. There is one sentence above that SHOULD have read:
"Schaeffer is NOW a pro-choice activist and disavows his actions." I was typing this on my phone and I did not proof read it enough.

scidata said...

Dr. Brin: 'c' speed limit and the Planck size limit etc are all deemed arguments FOR a simulation

One of the things that Asimov was into in his later years was the fractal. Indeed, fractals and the Mandelbrot set were explicitly covered in my 2011 essay on computational psychohistory. There are many excellent 'Mandelbrot Zoom' apps and videos out there. They can blow right past the Planck length by any order of magnitude you like. I personally have voyaged well beyond millionths of a Planck length. Same with the other end of the physical scale; you can quickly be traversing many parsecs per second if you wish. How can a simulation's granularity be arbitrarily exceeded so easily? Riddle me that.

I know I keep coming back to WJCC, and it may be irritating even to you. But I'm not fixated on grandiose philosophy*, I'm neither capable of, nor motivated for that. First principles is a good heuristic even for 'Future of Humanity' sized debates. The essential question can be substituted with a much simpler one: truly random number generation. This is one pet project of John Walker (Autodesk founder, FORTH/ants/computation wizard, co-thinker of Rudy Rucker).
https://www.fourmilab.ch/hotbits/
(Fourmilab is a play on Fermilab and the French word for 'ant')
And here's a brain simulator (neural network) written in line-numbered BASIC !!
https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/commodore/BrainSim/

Rather starkly exposes the pomposity of much of modern 'AI' research and fandom. Legions of six-figure MBAs and NN gurus do little more than mimic ant colonies using mathematical gilding. A powerful vaccine against demagogues, grifters, and gaslighters can be found in WJCC. Don't clearly understand something? - code it in BASIC or FORTH. try-learn-repeat. Even vast simulations fall under the sword of such Occamic analysis.


* For example, the present main political debate here in CB:
Set up clinics on federal land. Security provided by federal troops. All other logistics provided by private sector (many onboard already). Dems win in Nov. State-ism wanes. GOP is wiped out in 2024. Problem solved. We can get back to space stuff again.

Robert said...

WJCC?

scidata said...

WJCC = "Why Johnny Can't Code" (2006) by David Brin
https://www.salon.com/2006/09/14/basic_2/

Robert said...

Set up clinics on federal land.

Would that work? Could the Republicans block it in the Senate, or the Supreme Court decide it wasn't constitutional? (They'd want to, so I'm curious if they could. And this supreme court seems to be deciding based on their feelings and finding justifications afterwards.)

Does anyone here remember the Mexico City Policy, which forbade funding of any organizations that counselled or provided abortions (and correlated with increased maternal mortality)?

This executive order, announced in 1984 by the Reagan administration at the United Nations International Conference on Population and Development, requires all foreign nongovernmental organizations that get U.S. family planning assistance to certify they will not perform abortions or provide counseling about the procedure.

The Trump administration has greatly expanded the policy to condition almost all U.S. global health aid on compliance with these restrictions, including HIV, malaria, and maternal and child health programs.


https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/policy-brief/how-us-government-restrictions-foreign-aid-abortion-services-backfired

Cesar A. Santos said...

Mr. Brin about the desire to go back to Feudalism, it strikes me as odd that most succesfull franchises in fiction are of the Fantasy genre while Science Fiction are the minority (Star Wars is space fantasy). And most of the SF ones are dystopias.

Star Trek is (was) the only optimistic true scifi of note but even that is becoming dystopic under the millenial execs that manage it.

Isekai (the anime version of being whisked from the modern world to a fantasy feudal one) is the most popular genre of manga/anime.

Tolkien, GoT (though no one wants to be whisked to that one) and others.

It seem humans are unable to see themselves in a SF paradise. As those trapped in Hell can't conceive of Heaven.

So the desire to go back to the familiar, if tamed by pop culture standards, of Feudalism, simple, romantic, tell-me-what-to-do-and-think-oh-my-lord Feudalism seems to be the way people cope with more complex by the day world.

Or maybe it is our instinct as tribal monkeys to go back to that structure.

It takes a lot of work to overcone instinct. And people try to avoid that.

scidata said...

It's not my idea, I just saw it in passing on TV. And I'm not an American, so I'm not the person to answer constitutional questions. I note however, that what SCOTUS did was merely 'send it back to the states'. And executive orders are odd to a crusty old parliamentarian. It seems the Founders had a really hard time in fully letting go of Kings. Trusting the People was a very radical new idea back then. But happy July 4 to them all.

Larry Hart said...

Cesar A Santos:

Campaigning against contraceptives is just as idiotic as young Earth creationism and Flat Earth theories. The brand of fanatical dumb that makes normal Christians facepalm.


Except two things.

One is that the supreme court has telegraphed its intent to do just that.

And if there are any normal Christians out there, they don't seem to be voicing opposition to legislating against contraception. If they're not in favor of such legislation, they're not politically willing to signal against the tribal marker.


"Abstinence is 100% effective when used correctly." Well, one cannot argue against that.


I wasn't trying to. Mostly, just relaying a funny story. But the point is that abstinence is indeed a form of contraception.

Larry Hart said...

Cesar A Santos:

It seem humans are unable to see themselves in a SF paradise. As those trapped in Hell can't conceive of Heaven.

So the desire to go back to the familiar, if tamed by pop culture standards, of Feudalism, simple, romantic, tell-me-what-to-do-and-think-oh-my-lord Feudalism seems to be the way people cope with more complex by the day world.


While not entirely disagreeing, it's worth noting that in many cases, the feudalistic scenario is a starting point, which the point of the plotline is to overcome. Paul Atreides starts out as a ducal heir, but ends up (in the first book) a populist rebel against the old order. I've never read the GoT books, and I gave up on the series after (the wonderful) season 6, but I've heard mentioned here that GRR Martin intended his epic as a diatribe against feudalism rather than in favor of it. Even A Tale of Two Cities in which the revolution is hardly presented as desirable lays the blame for its necessity and inevitability squarely at the feet of the feudal regime.

Larry Hart said...

scidata:

But happy July 4 to them all.


And a belated happy Canada Day to you up north, from someone whose honeymoon in Toronto began on July 1, 26 years ago.

scidata said...

@ Larry Hart

Thanks. We've fallen on hard times since my stroke, but way back in the day, we used to dine at the revolving restaurant in the CN Tower every July 1 and watch the fireworks from above. Magical. Good city for a honeymoon.

David Brin said...


Scidata when you zoom into a Mandelbrot set you retain the same number of pixels on your screen and in memory. Your entirely imaginary (computerized) ‘world gets narrower exactly in step with your zooming in. Move to the left and the stuff to the right is simply gone.

Re WJCC I am not sure anyone here has a clue what you are talking about or what it is that you think you are disagreeing with.

Your notion that riling up confederate voters is a great plan! Not.

“Mr. Brin about the desire to go back to Feudalism, it strikes me as odd that most succesfull franchises in fiction are of the Fantasy genre while Science Fiction are the minority (Star Wars is space fantasy). And most of the SF ones are dystopias.”

Mr. Santos you should actually read my essays on that. Romanticism is extremely strong in humans and was partly responsible… along with male reproductive advantage for lords… for 6000+ years of wretched, failed feudalism. Fantasy is thus the Mother Genre and has a strong hold on our hearts. SF is not always pro democracy etc! But it does suggest “things might be different.”

There are few SF/fantasy optimistic settings because you must put heroes in PERIL to have a story and lazy writers (most of them) find that easy to do with a Sauron or two.

“Or maybe it is our instinct as tribal monkeys to go back to that structure.”

Yep romanticism. We are all descended from the harems of guys who pulled that off, which explains the dominance fantasies and frustrations of certain incels over not getting what their harem-descended brains tells them is their right.

Seriously, you’d enjoy: VIVID TOMORROWS: Science Fiction and Hollywood – http://www.davidbrin.com/vividtomorrows.html

Catfish 'n Cod said...

Okay, I finally pulled the trigger. Feedback encouraged, foolishness discouraged. Wulfenbach's dictum will be applied: "Don't Make Me Come Over There."

Fishwrap & Franklin is live.

locumranch said...


Humanity's greatest weakness is its dependence on binary thinking, the category error that divides the universe into right, wrong, good, bad and other absurd paired opposites.

"A fetus is just a clump of cells", exclaims another clump of cells who also argues that "males bad", "females good", "democrat right" and "republican wrong".

We reduce complex quantitative 'shades of gray' issues into simple qualitative 'either-or' ones and the result is self-perpetuating stupidity.

Abortion is one such issue, Feudalism is another, neither being bad nor good in & of itself, until we jam it into an arbitrary category of our own devising.

We have failed to resolve the issue of Abortion mostly because we have simultaneously defined it as 'good' and 'bad' which brings us back to where we started.

And, then there's Feudalism, which our host claims to revile on the premise of it being stupid, arbitrary & venial, even as he proposes its replacement with & by 'smart people' of questionable morality.

This is yet another category error:

Intelligence is unrelated to consequentialist moral judgment in sacrificial dilemmas & does not correlate with morality.


Best

Unknown said...

Catfish...

I prefer the Heterodyne motto "For Science!" which unfortunately includes "For MAD Science", but nobody is perfect.

Pappenheimer

Larry Hart said...

I'm not finding details in any online publications, but according to local news station WGN, the perpetrator of today's mass shooting at the Highland Park IL July 4th parade was...wait for it...a follower of right-wing websites.

Republican gubernatorial candidate and Trump supporter Darren Bailey tried to imply that this was about street crime in Chicago, but the shooter was not a robber or carjacker, and Highland Park is 30 miles away from Chicago proper in a different county. He said nothing about either gun control or right-wing terrorism, which is "Dog bites man" at this point in history.

Alfred Differ said...

scidata,

Our Founders and Framers didn't trust kings or parliaments and trusted the rabble even less. Remember that some of them were witnessing the bloodbath in France as they wrote the rules of our new nation.

The ruleset adopted portrayed this mistrust so much that they rigged the federal government to be incapable of doing much of anything.

Everyone WANTS it to do something, but we have to figure out how to compromise to get it. It's laid out in "Hamilton" rather well where a compromise was struck to get a central bank.

Unfortunately, our choice to move away from political bosses toward primary elections has undermined our old method for finding compromises. Primary winners are chosen on the basis of very few votes in most places, so compromisers are disfavored because they don't rile us enough to bring in favorable votes.

duncan cairncross said...

Hi Alfred

Your "Primaries" are a classic case of "it seemed like a good idea at the time"

Actually that is not accurate

I suspect that "primaries" would have worked "IF" not for "Gerrymandering" - the two together combine in a horrible way

If you could lose the Gerrymandering - possibly by some form of proportional representation THEN it may well be that "Primaries" are a good idea

Larry Hart said...

https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2022/Senate/Maps/Jul05.html#item-1

t used to be that nothing was more American than mom, apple pie and baseball. Now, it would seem that mass shootings have surpassed all three. And so it is sadly appropriate that the biggest news of the day on Independence Day was a mass shooting in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park. A gunman, who has apparently already been taken into custody, opened fire from a rooftop during a parade, killing 6 people and injuring 30.

The gunman is 22—that is to say, one year older than the limit for expanded background checks under the newly passed legislation—and does not appear to have a criminal record, anyhow. So, if you had any questions about whether the bill that Joe Biden signed into law will have a positive effect, well, the early returns are not promising. It is not clear what the motive behind the shooting was, or if there even was one. Just in case you were wondering, people have already found pictures of the shooter attending a Donald Trump rally, and wearing a Trump flag in his apartment.
...


Larry Hart said...

duncan cairncross:

Your "Primaries" are a classic case of "it seemed like a good idea at the time"

Actually that is not accurate


I'd say you were right the first time.

Back when I lived in a college dorm, our floor had a vote to choose between t-shirt designs as to which one would be printed as the official floor t-shirt. I don't remember any of the losing slogans, but the one which won the vote was, "We're Allen 2 North - so FUCK OFF!"

Predictably, when it came time to actually spend money, no one wanted to buy and wear one.

That seems to me to precisely mimic the dynamic of the primaries as related to the general election.

Larry Hart said...

Avert sensitive eyes, but for those who appreciate this kind of thing (the excerpt below is PG-rated) :

https://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2022/07/the-supreme-court-tells-21st-century-to.html

This Court has put it all on the table, all that it wants to undermine in this country. We're heading into an Independence Day that feels sarcastically named in the no-longer United States.


It's getting to me personally. Even before the mass shooting by a stormTrumper in nearby Highland Park, I was not feeling up to dealing with the crowds and traffic around the local July 4 concert and fireworks. When it came down to it, I just didn't feel the motivation to join into a celebration of America.

Maybe, I'm channeling Commissioner Gordon in that episode of Batman, "Like so many others, I'm afraid I've...lost faith in the dynamic duo."

Larry Hart said...

what we already know (emphasis mine) ...

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/05/opinion/dobbs-christian-nationalism.html

...
Breaking American democracy isn’t an unintended side effect of Christian nationalism. It is the point of the project.
...
It is also a mistake to imagine that Christian nationalism is a social movement arising from the grassroots and aiming to satisfy the real needs of its base. It isn’t. This is a leader-driven movement. The leaders set the agenda, and their main goals are power and access to public money. They aren’t serving the interests of their base; they are exploiting their base as a means of exploiting the rest of us.

Christian nationalism isn’t a route to the future. Its purpose is to hollow out democracy until nothing is left but a thin cover for rule by a supposedly right-thinking elite, bubble-wrapped in sanctimony and insulated from any real democratic check on its power.

Larry Hart said...

BTW, if it looks like I'm spamming the list, that's just because no one else is posting. There is a time lag between many of these.

On Donald Trump having Mule powers...

While it is hard to logically and plausibly argue that Donald Trump really has the powers of Asimov's character, The Mule, I still maintain that no other theory explains his rise from nowhere and his fiercest Republican opponents becoming lickspittle sycophants.

I'm watching this YouTube video (link below) of Hal Sparks essentially doing "Mystery Science Theater 3000" commentary on a Trump interview. If you like that sort of thing, it's worth watching, but my point is--While I hate to give Trump credit for anything, he knows how to use voice and inflection and some ineffable facial expressions to elicit sympathy from the viewer. I'm one of the most vociferous anti-Trumpers here, and even I found myself having to remind myself just who this is and what harm he's willingly inflicted in order to inoculate myself against feeling sorry for the poor guy and wanting to come to his defense against the woke, liberal Democrats.

Explain that without invoking Mule powers, because I can't. Maybe toxoplasmosis, but I contend that that's the same thing.

Larry Hart said...

...and of course, I forgot the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BE2SaJ06Gv4

Larry Hart said...

Oh, and at approximately 1:41:00 on the above link, Hal really digs into the fact that Trump negotiated a deal between Russia and Saudi Arabia to raise oil prices. And the part I had forgotten about: There was a period there where oil was going for negative dollars--when you could "buy" oil and receive money in exchange just for taking it off their inventory. And Trump didn't fill the strategic reserve then but waited for the price to go up before doing so.

So anyone who is voting for Trump/Republicans over Biden because of gas prices is an effing moron.

Tim H. said...

Something like this would make sense here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/01/singapore-craft-beer-newbrew-uses-recycled-sewage-highlight-water-scarcity
Water's recycled anyway, it's just with our unnatural cities we need to take a hand in the recycling also. As a bonus, the skill is one needed if we're to have a presence off-planet.

David Brin said...

“Humanity's greatest weakness is its dependence on binary thinking…”

OMG they never tire of this tactic. Criticize your foes for what YOU do! Like Republicans - the party representing bottomless perversion and turpitude, casino moguls, mafiosi Murder princes and pederasts - yowling that Democrats are child porn watchers. Color blind he denounces talk of colors. A flatland dweller, he thinks positive sum is a commie scam. And it’s his cult doing binary.

Feudalism IS inherently vile because it entrenches harem-keepers to crush all potential critics who might tear down the harem and castle walls. History shows enlightenment flat-fair-competitive-creative experiments must constantly work to keep things flat and fair enough to prevent oligarchic take-off.

ElitistB said...

@Cesar A. Santos - "It is a horrible situation but I can't believe that two Evils will add up to anything good."

I notice that you seem to be assuming that abortion is one of those evils, and the rape is the other. I note that this statement doesn't include the state enforced pregnancy on the woman as an evil on the "no abortion" side. Kind of like her position in all this doesn't really matter. I'm fairly certain this isn't quite what you meant, and maybe you have some further nuanced opinion and you just threw this out as a pithy saying. However some other statements you've made have me questioning this inconsistency.

1. The "evil" of abortion.
2. The evil of enforced pregnancy.

If there are going to be two evils regardless of path, I'll stick with letting the woman decide which path to choose. I agree that it is a horrible situation. Taking the potential resolution out of the hands of the woman and removing her bodily autonomy doesn't seem like the better path to me.

Even in the case of a normal pregnancy, if the woman in question doesn't want the baby, there are still both of those potential "evils". I still stick with letting the woman choose the path.

Larry Hart said...

ElitestB:

@Cesar A. Santos - "It is a horrible situation but I can't believe that two Evils will add up to anything good."

I notice that you seem to be assuming that abortion is one of those evils, and the rape is the other. I note that this statement doesn't include the state enforced pregnancy on the woman as an evil on the "no abortion" side. Kind of like her position in all this doesn't really matter.


I took the rape to be one evil and the killing of the fetus to be the second evil, with the sense of the argument being "We can't do anything about the rape after the fact, so what's the point in compounding the situation by killing an innocent baby?"

What's missing is exactly what you point out. Abortion isn't about punishing a baby. It's about asserting the bodily autonomy of the woman in question. And while we can probably all argue different positions over her responsibility if she willfully consents to sex, knowing full well what that might entail, none of that matters when she's been raped. At that point, aborting the embryo (it's not even a fetus yet, and since Republicans think morning after pills are abortifacients, it might merely be a zygote) is no more "evil" than refusing to donate part of your liver. It's certainly no more evil than refusing to be vaccinated against COVID-19, taking the chance of sending those around you to your death. But Republicans and the Catholic Church have no problem giving communion in those circumstances.

Actually, there is one way that "two evils" might in fact add up to something good. A deterrent to future rapists. In the same way that the death penalty is meant to deter killing--I've never heard a Catholic or a Republican insist that since the victim is already beyond helping, there's no point committing a second evil by killing the convict.

Not all rapes are meant to create a pregnancy, of course, but some are. And sometimes a rapist, once he knows the woman is pregnant with "his" child, asserts paternal rights. Well, if he knows that "his" child might be flushed down the toilet, he just might be more reluctant to commit rape in the future.


David Brin said...

UIrk. I hate referring to something locum said as correct... but binary laws don't fit this analog world. You guys know I am vigorously opposed to the lunatic treason and turpitude and stupidity cult that has hijacked US conservatism. And the present SCourt majority is a pit of blackmailed monsters.

Still, I am a PRAGMATIST liberal who judges primarily by likely outcomes. e.g. the outcome of 99% of babies being wanted and thus nurtured into functioning proto-humans... since we cavemen can at best aspire to be the makers of the makers of better beings.

Hence absolute purism re aborion is just insane. What? A wife has a spat with her husband and shrieks "Rip this out of me!" in the ninth month? Actually, that might be okay, since it's a c section at term. But in months number 7 or 8? When a genuine living person is at stake, who will survive c-section but likely at some cost to a decent life? "Viability" was always a terrible standard... but there are NO good ones!

Still, after 5 months should not the fetus have a representative to argue the case on its behalf and maybe, at that point, demand another 4 months of nutrition and care, before parting company forever?

Larry Hart said...

Dr Brin:

Hence absolute purism re aborion is just insane. What? A wife has a spat with her husband and shrieks "Rip this out of me!" in the ninth month?


That sounds like a strawwoman. I have a hard time imagining that scenario in the real world. At least, I have a hard time imagining it lasting all the way to the doctor's office.

I know there are some here who say it's the woman's choice all the way up to delivery, but I think the vast majority of us--even of those of us who are liberals--are not comfortable with that and are willing to have conversations about how to reconcile conflicting rights. My problem is not with fetal rights, but with the presumption that fetal rights always prevail when the conflict with the rights of a full grown woman.

The extreme borderline cases are hardly what's at issue with an authoritarian supreme court which is not content to stop with classifying women as service animals, but now wants to be able to criminalize any act of sexual relief which doesn't result in an impregnation. They're not content with fetal personhood--they're going for gamete personhood. And while Monty Python's "Every sperm is sacred," is a practical absurdity (which is nobody's fault, not even the Romans'), they sure seem to feel that every ejaculation has the God-given right to life.

One doesn't fight this insanity by going, "Ok, but what if this very evil woman gets pregnant on purpose because eating her baby is cheaper than ordering pizza?"

Unknown said...

Dr. Brin,

My policy on discussing abortion with other men has been, since college, "get pregnant and we'll talk about it."

However, I will state that I have never met any "abortion purists" who were not pro-forced birth. Do you hear any pro-choice voices that disagreed (past tense, gods help us) with the RvW ruling that "the right to abortion is not absolute and must be balanced against the government's interests in protecting women's health and prenatal life*."?

*Wiki

Pappenheimer

duncan cairncross said...

Dr Brin

My "take" on that point is that it is the woman's RIGHT to stop lending her organs at any point

However IF the fetus does have a reasonable chance of survival at that point
THEN the "termination" of the pregnancy becomes "giving birth"
And the medical procedure to terminate the pregnancy should also try and keep the fetus alive

That covers both the women's right to control HER body and the right of the potential baby to live

I also believe the Canadian approach is the best - keep the laws out of it!! - the decisions to be made by the Woman and her doctor

Alfred Differ said...

Duncan,

"Seemed like a good idea at the time" applies to so many things we do. Traditions are very likely to be solutions to old problems we've forgotten were problems. Traditions may create other problems, so tweaking them risks re-discovery of an old horror. What to do?

I'm unwilling to revert to party boss rule, but I have learned to be tolerant of would-be party bosses trying to manage who gets seen on a primary ballot. I don't want them to be TOO successful, but their existence influences cash flows for campaigns as well... so they aren't going away. Our primary system strips them of only some control.

This is one of those places where several small tweaks are in order where some States do it and others don't. We can learn from each other eventually, but only after we calm down a bit. Give it another 15 years or so and we'll be experimenting with ranked choice approaches on a larger scale than we currently use.

As for gerrymandering... yah. That's a cancer that will require surgery at this point. I expect some blood or burning cities, but I sure hope we find a calmer method.

Cari Burstein said...

David Brin wrote:
Hence absolute purism re aborion is just insane. What? A wife has a spat with her husband and shrieks "Rip this out of me!" in the ninth month?

As Larry said, this does seem like a strawwoman. My understanding is that the vast majority of later term abortions take place for medical reasons. Some that are performed shortly after 20 weeks seem to be related to not realizing they were pregnant until fairly late (which sometimes happens for medical reasons), or due to the roadblocks that exist that make it difficult to obtain the abortion at an earlier point (financial, legal or otherwise). I would imagine some might involve cases of domestic abuse where it might be very difficult to obtain an abortion safely, or where they might not be able to get out of the situation immediately and must delay it until they can.

Part of the concern about adding additional roadblocks in these situations (already a much smaller percentage of providers which perform abortions will handle later term ones) are that the people getting abortions this late are generally dealing with enough that will make it a rather difficult time. People having abortions for medical reasons are generally quite unhappy to be in a situation where they must make this choice and having to go through additional hoops and delay the abortion further just makes matters worse. Those who are having difficulty scraping together the money, transport (often a significant distance) and find time off to get the abortion don't need more hoops to jump through. Don't even get me started on the domestic violence situations...

I understand the desire to have a means of making sure that people aren't having late term abortions on a whim, but I'd need some data on how common an issue that really is before I'd support solving the problem by making it rather difficult for the others who have compelling reasons for needing one past a certain point. I support some form of requirement for a reasonable justification beyond a certain point in pregnancy for a later abortion, since I do think the vast majority of cases people should have had enough time to make the decision before then, but it would have to be dealt with in a way that didn't just add additional significant delays. I'm not actually sure these requirements don't exist now, depending on how many weeks we are talking.

The big arguments seem to center around the 20-24 week period where a fetus might theoretically survive but the chances would be very low and the likelihood of lifelong complications high. I don't see a lot of people seriously arguing that folks who are 7+ months pregnant are asking for abortions on a whim.

David Brin said...

Duncan any fetus removed from a womb at 7 months might be'viable" but that human being will suffere damage the rest of her/his/their life.

Robert said...

I don't see a lot of people seriously arguing that folks who are 7+ months pregnant are asking for abortions on a whim.

How many right-wing mailing lists are you on?

I've seen arguments like that. Or accusations that that is what pro-choice campaigners really want.

If Clarence Thomas gets his way and libel laws are changed, whoever publishes PenceNews (among many) will be in a world of hurt…

Cari Burstein said...

I guess my keyword there was seriously (perhaps I should have said arguing in good faith). I don't take those people seriously- I would think most of them probably realize they're misleading people about whether people having late term abortions have good reasons for it and don't particularly care because it creates an effective boogeyman. They're the same people who claim everything is socialism and teaching sex education is grooming children for pedophilia.

I'm sure there are some people who engaged on the topic seriously in a conversation might die on that particular hill, but I would hope David Brin isn't one of them.

locumranch said...


I usually don't discuss abortion for the same reasons that I no longer provide obstetrical, female reproductive or abortion care.

Slowly at first, then suddenly, female reproductive medicine became the medicolegal shit show that it is today.

The Chinese have a saying that 'Women want the impossible (fried ice)', and that certainly was my experience:

Those who desired children demanded perfect outcomes, even when 23% of all pregnancies end in spontaneous abortion; and, those who desired pregnancy termination wanted immediate termination NOW regardless of potential fetal viability.

Fetal viability was the deal breaker for me.

Back when I started 30 years ago, it was common knowledge that fetal viability -- the point when a fetus could survive outside the womb with appropriate medical care -- was about 26 weeks EGA, so much so that any delivery prior to that fetal age was defined as 'a miscarriage' unworthy of medical intervention.

That's where Dr. Brin gets the 7 month figure, probably.

But, due to advances in neonatology, that changed about 15 years ago when major US hospitals began implementing a new aggressive neonatal care standard down to 20 weeks EGA.

And, you know what?

Those damn neonatologists experienced some success, as up to 40% of 20 to 22 week EGA fetuses can now survive outside the womb with proper medical therapy, assuming the expenditure of about $3 Million dollars per fetus.

As for abortion, female reproduction & every other aspect of Women's Rights goes, I no longer have any opinion whatsoever, mostly because of the increasingly common sentiment that Pappenhemier expressed.

Hell, I don't even know what a woman is anymore but, more to the point, I no longer care.


Best

David Brin said...

Cari let's be clear. There ARE late-term procedures. But nearly all of them happen due to late discovery of a horrible thing like anencephaly. No one should force a woman to carry such a calamity to term.

Cari Burstein said...

David Brin wrote:
Cari let's be clear. There ARE late-term procedures. But nearly all of them happen due to late discovery of a horrible thing like anencephaly. No one should force a woman to carry such a calamity to term.

That's kind of how I thought you felt on the topic. This is why I was a bit confused about your rant. I get that the right is really good at making it sound like people want 9 month abortions on demand for the heck of it, but I don't see it really being a thing that pro-choice folks are purist about. They're just practical about there being a need to deal with the reasons why there are occasional late-term procedures. Meanwhile folks on the anti-choice side are doubling down on making 10-year olds carry their rapist's babies.

Larry Hart said...

I feel his pain...

https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2022/Senate/Maps/Jul06.html#item-6

f you're among those who feel this way, it turns out you're not alone. Quite a few politicians agree with you, though they usually don't admit it until shortly before they exit the world of politics. That is what makes the remarks from Philadelphia mayor Jim Kenney (D) so unusual. Responding to the mass shooting in Highland Park, Kenney said that the Second Amendment and the Supreme Court have made all of America into Dodge City. He continued:

"There's not an event, or a day, where I don't lay on my back, and look at the ceiling, and worry about stuff. So everything we have in the city over the last seven years, I worry about. I don't enjoy Fourth of July, I don't enjoy the Democratic National Convention. I didn't enjoy the NFL Draft. I'm waiting for something bad to happen all the time. I'll be happy when I'm not here, when I'm not mayor, and I can enjoy some stuff."

One of the reporters speaking to Kenney asked him to confirm that he really meant that, and the mayor replied "Yeah, as a matter of fact." He's term-limited, so the expiration date for his political career is already known, but it's not until January 2024.


* * *

Adding to that, a letter to the editor in today's Chicago Tribune rhetorically questions whether we're still "the land of the free" when we're subject to mass shootings in every walk of life. I sarcastically wonder if libertarians believe that as long as it's private individuals rather than the government threatening our lives, we haven't lost our liberty.

locumranch said...


The termination of defective, retarded & unwanted infants smack of NAZI Eugenic policies, insomuch as the Elective Abortion has always been (and continues to be) used to target certain undesirable races & genders for selective termination.

The premier US abortion provider, Planned Parenthood, was created for the express purpose of culling & reducing the birth rate of the black minority; viable female infants are still subject to selective termination in China & India; and US physicians who justify & perform elective abortions for fetal defects have been prosecuted for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), a civil rights law which prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability.

It's a hilarious irony that the most vocal supporters of elective abortion are the very same identity groups which have been previously targeted for eugenic purification by pre & post term abortion.

Or, as the NAZI high command might quip, "It's a GAS'.

Like the Gun Debate, the Abortion Debate is an exercise in political schizophrenia.


Best

Larry Hart said...

locumranch:

It's a hilarious irony that the most vocal supporters of elective abortion are the very same identity groups which have been previously targeted for eugenic purification by pre & post term abortion.


Just as ironic as the fact that white Christianists fawn over the Dobbs decision which will cause more black and minority babies to be born in red states, while rich white daughters and mistresses will continue to have abortions.


Or, as the NAZI high command might quip,...


You're seriously comparing liberals to Nazis when right-wingers march with literal swastika flags?

Physician, heal thyself.

David Brin said...

For locum to define an anencephalic thing as a person was most revealing.

Cari it was not a 'rant' to point out that purist absolutism is an absurd position by ANYONE in this analog world. Or that "it's only about MY choice" has some kind of highly discomforting (and 99.999% only theoretical) fundamental limits.

Robert said...

For locum to define an anencephalic thing as a person was most revealing.

I've been skipping them, as life's too short…

My father was a pathologist, and told me of being at a conference where one of the speakers showed a picture of an hydrocephalic baby. Pathologists, who earned their living cutting up corpses to find out how they died, were puking.

Don Gisselbeck said...

In the 80s I was on a jury in rural Montana. The woman was on trial for manslaughter after a live birth that subsequently died. She was alone and said she was not aware that she was pregnant. The men on the jury found that incredible. The older farm women did not. We ended up voting for acquittal.

locumranch said...


Your schizophrenic responses only prove my point, as you deny the humanity of the physically defective while you simultaneously claim to champion human rights & otherness. This is the first step on the short road to racial hygiene & genocide.

Anencephaly is indeed a tragedy, but it is only a matter of degree that separates anencephaly from Down's syndrome and other congenital deficits that include disability, deformity, deviance & retardation.

Neither purist nor idealist, my attempts to preserve life in no way make me a 'pro-life' zealot any more than the abortion services that I have provided transmogrify me into a 'pro-choice' pussyhatted partisan.

What I am is 'pro-consistency' and 'anti-fallacy'.

Your progressive worldview is sick, one-sided & dysfunctional; I no longer wish to be its enabler; and patients may either wait and 'be patient' (as patients do) or try to heal themselves.

Kudos to Don_G, btw, for noting that people (1) lie to one another, (2) lie to themselves, (3) prefer lies over truth and (4) all-of-the-above, and I can confirm his observations by my delivery of 2 sets of twins from two different women who insisted that they were both virgins, even as the second baby popped its head out.

It's almost as if virgin births & similar miracles happen every day, but only if you are fool enough to #BelieveAllWomen.


Best
_____

Seriously, Don_G, I admire that you showed mercy to that imperfect woman, especially when mercy requires an admission of your own credulousness & complicity. I admit to many similar shortcomings myself which (in turn) provides the rationale behind my skepticism in regard to ideals, perfectionisms and utopian fantasies.

Cari Burstein said...

Apparently locumranch has never heard of artificial insemination or IVF. It's perfectly possible for a woman to be a virgin while having twins. In fact with IVF it's all the more likely that you would have twins.

It's also rare that a woman wouldn't realize she's pregnant until giving birth, but it's certainly not unheard of- there are medical reasons why this can happen.

Alan Brooks said...

This clip addresses, if the entire eleven minutes are viewed, Locum’s concerns re purism/idealism. [Btw, I’m not going to argue about abortion.]
The optimists are attacked for being “narrow-minded”—their visions allegedly limited. But Pinker’s opponents on the panel reveal themselves to be nattering nabobs of negativism; one even insulting his physical appearance.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Xxv4gaopJkg

Tim H. said...

The Georgia Guidestones have been destroyed, possibly for religious reasons:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-62073675

Given the scriptural prohibition on graven images, more traditional monuments may be in peril.

Larry Hart said...

Truth that even a boomer can recognize...

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/07/opinion/work-busy-trap-millennials.html

A decade later, people aren’t trying to sell busyness as a virtue anymore, not even to themselves. A new generation has grown to adulthood that’s never known capitalism as a functioning economic system. My generation, X, was the first postwar cohort to be downwardly mobile, but millennials were the first to know it going in. Our country’s oligarchs forgot to maintain the crucial Horatio Alger fiction that anyone can get ahead with hard work — or maybe they just dropped it, figuring we no longer had any choice. Through the internet, we could peer enviously at our neighbors in civilized countries, who get monthlong vacations, don’t have to devote decades to paying for their college degrees, and aren’t terrified of going broke if they get sick. To young people, America seems less like a country than an inescapable web of scams, and “hard work” less like a virtue than a propaganda slogan, inane as “Just say no.”

Robert said...

Our country’s oligarchs forgot to maintain the crucial Horatio Alger fiction that anyone can get ahead with hard work — or maybe they just dropped it, figuring we no longer had any choice.

Hey, if you had choices, you wouldn't have to work for minimum wage, and profits would be affected.

It's been pretty evident up here that talk of 'the market' setting prices applies to CEO compensation, but not to those dubbed 'essential workers' a couple of years ago. When workers don't have to accept minimum wage, employers petition the government for temporary foreign workers (ie. workers tied to just one job, who don't know about health & safety, and who will bugger off back where they came from as soon as the employer is finished with them).

We're heading back to patronage politics, if we aren't already there. For example, my premier just appointed his nephew a cabinet minister, and nearly 90% of his party were appointed parliamentary assistants, which comes with a 15% pay boost. This is the same chap who legislated government workers (except police) to a 1% pay increase back before the pandemic and didn't modify it when the pandemic and inflation hit.

Nurses and teachers didn't support the Conservatives. Ford is like Harris — big into grudges and payback.

Larry Hart said...

Between COVID resurgence, Christian denominationalism, and the Republican candidate for Pennsylvania governor actively campaigning on voter suppression*, I'm reaching the point where encountering a mass shooter doesn't sound like the worst possible fate.

The one thing I will refuse to do no matter what is "love Big Brother."

*
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2022/Senate/Maps/Jul07.html#item-7

Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano has a plan for winning the governorship of Pennsylvania—and it doesn't entail getting more votes than Democrat Josh Shapiro. He wants the state legislature to pass a bunch of laws that do the following:

Allow voter intimidation: Well, he doesn't call it that. He calls it letting partisan poll watchers get closer to the voters and be allowed to challenge any voter for any reason. If this passes, Republicans in police-like uniforms will show up in heavily Black precincts and challenge every voter to prove he or she is a citizen and resident of the county. These challenges may be accepted, in some cases, and may scare off voters in others. At the very least, it will throw sand in the gears of the election and make it drag on until 8 p.m. or later. Some voters will just give up and go home, which is fine and dandy with the poll watchers.

Eliminate no-excuse absentee voting: In 2020, Democrats used absentee ballots much more than Republicans, so Mastriano wants to eliminate the practice. Make those lazy Democrats show up on Nov. 8 and stand in line for hours. He also wants to ban dropboxes for the voters who have a legitimate reason to use an absentee ballot.

Appoint a radical secretary of state: In Pennsylvania the governor appoints the secretary of state, and if Mastriano wins, he will certainly appoint someone whose philosophy is: "If a vote is for a Democrat, it must be fraudulent," and take it from there. He says he has someone in mind already, but won't say who.

Forcing all Pennsylvanians to reregister: He wants everyone removed from the voting rolls, forcing anyone who wants to vote to reregister. He is fairly sure that Republicans would do this in greater numbers than Democrats because he knows Democrats (especially young ones) often don't bother to vote in the midterms, so they are unlikely to reregister—even if they know they are required to. This is a more radical step than has been proposed anywhere else. It also violates federal law, but who cares about that when winning is at stake?

Defund the state Supreme Court: If everyone is scratched from the voting rolls, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court would probably get to look at that first. To rein it in, Mastriano wants to remove its funding. No more clerks or secretaries or computers. Maybe make them work from home on their phones. Then they wouldn't get in his way.

Larry Hart said...

Oh, I buried the lead on that Pennsylvania story:

Needless to say, the Democratic candidate, state AG Josh Shapiro, is wildly against all of this. However, Trump is helping Mastriano aggressively and, remarkably, polling shows it to be close.

Robert said...

Sarah Huckabee Sanders is running for governor of Arkansas. I just got an email from her, along with who-knows-how-many of her other supporters*, promising the following:

As governor, I will always:
• Say NO to Joe Biden and the Radical Left
• Phase out the state income tax
• Educate – not indoctrinate – our kids
• Stand with our brave men and women in law enforcement

As a left-wing-by-Canadian-standards** foreigner, I'm contemplating how to answer her poll :-)


*Someone with my name, or several someones, are Republicans and gun nuts. - and too stupid to realize that their email address isn't just their name at gmail…

**Which means that Bernie Sanders looks a bit too right-wing for my tastes. Odd that he's considered left in America — here (and in Europe) he'd fit comfortably into a moderate right-wing party.

Larry Hart said...

Because I'm in a mood today...

I'm quoting more than I usually do, but the article is even longer.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/07/opinion/work-busy-trap-millennials.html

...
I think people are enervated not just by the Sisyphean pointlessness of their individual labors but also by the fact that they’re working in and for a society in which, increasingly, they have zero faith or investment. The future their elders are preparing to bequeath to them is one that reflects the fondest hopes of the same ignorant bigots a lot of them fled their hometowns to escape. American conservatism, which is demographically terminal and knows it, is acting like a moribund billionaire adding sadistic codicils to his will.

More young people are opting not to have kids not only because they can’t afford them but also because they assume they’ll have only a scorched or sodden wasteland to grow up in. An increasingly popular retirement plan is figuring civilization will collapse before you have to worry about it. I’m not sure anyone’s composed a more eloquent epitaph for the planet than the stand-up comedian Kath Barbadoro, who tweeted: “It’s pretty funny that the world is ending and we all just have to keep going to our little jobs lol.”

Midcentury science fiction writers assumed that the increased productivity brought on by mechanization would give workers an oppressive amount of leisure time, that our greatest threats would be boredom and ennui. But these authors’ prodigious imaginations were hobbled by their humanity and rationality; they’d forgotten that the world is ordered not by reason or decency but by rapacious avarice.

In the actual dystopian future we now inhabit, the oligarchs have realized they could work everyone harder, pay them less, eliminate benefits, turn every human institution from medicine to corrections into a racket, charge far more for basic rights and services than people in any other nation would stand for without revolting, and get rich beyond the penny ante dreams of a Carnegie or Astor.

In the past few decades, capitalism has exponentially increased the creation of wealth for the already incredibly wealthy at the negligible expense of the well-being, dignity and happiness of most of humanity, plus the nominal cost of a mass extinction and the destruction of the biosphere — like cutting out the inefficient business of digestion and metabolism by pouring a fine bottle of wine directly into the toilet, thereby eliminating the middleman of you.
...

Alfred Differ said...

locumranch,

Neither purist nor idealist, my attempts to preserve life in no way make me a 'pro-life' zealot any more than the abortion services that I have provided transmogrify me into a 'pro-choice' pussyhatted partisan.

Yah. You live in an analog world and recognize it. I recognize that in you.

Your progressive worldview is sick, one-sided & dysfunctional…

…and this is what makes it so difficult for others to recognize it too. It's not that you find the worldview sick. It's that you mis-assign it. You've said it a number of times and can't seem to get the hint when you are told you are off target. When someone says your shots land no where near them, consider the possibility that YOU might be having difficulty in distinguishing your hated worldview from the real worldviews of those around you.

Many years ago in a different forum, the owner was SO sure of what I believed that he would tell me. He argued I was deluding myself when I claimed otherwise. It's certainly possible I was deluded, but for him to be correct as often as he claimed would have required telepathy. He's a smart guy, but not THAT smart. At some point, the probabilities shift toward him being the deluded one.

———

I admit to many similar shortcomings myself which (in turn) provides the rationale behind my skepticism in regard to ideals, perfectionisms and utopian fantasies.

We've all been there. Some of us beat ourselves up over it too. It has to stop at some point, though, or we mistake our own shortcomings for those of others. We see the shortcoming too easily in them. Maybe it's there, but there is a strong chance our bias enables us to see signal in the noise.

(Former smokers can be some of the worst when it comes to tolerating those who still do… or just live around those who do.)

———

In that other forum from years ago was a consistently vocal poster who was still active as a family doctor. He was a hard guy to like, but he grew on me to the annoyance of my wife. He was profoundly skeptical of people who claimed to do good for everyone and had no qualms saying so to their faces.

It took a few months to see him as a rounded human being, but the image eventually emerged when CA was debating Prop 4. Remember that? 2008. (Maybe you weren't in the thick of our argument.) We were deciding whether parents had to be told what their daughters were up to regarding medical advice around pregnancy. He wanted us ALL to stay the hell out of these decisions and said he saw little difference between progressives thinking they knew what these girls needed and conservatives who said much the same. We were ALL wrong and should stay the hell out of it. I was already going to vote against it to leave things as they were, but I thought he had the better justification.

That same doctor once told us that 75% of his business was related to obesity. Too many of his patients wouldn't take his advice and it soured his outlook on all of us. They wanted magic pills to melt the fat away or make them not be diabetics anymore. Everything from joint pain to kidney failure had patients wanting unicorn fart rainbows and it made him cynical. It also made it difficult for him to spot those of us who didn't believe in unicorns. If we mentioned unicorns tangentially we got labelled quickly.

Some of us here want unicorns to be real, but our host isn't one of them. It's just that he's not as cynical as you are right now. Maybe you've had 75% of your former patients reject your advice and he hasn't gone through that, but I'd bet in a contest for who has taken more shit in their lives he'd probably beat you. I wouldn't, but I haven't had my reputation hanging out for all to see as much. Nor have I provided medical advice. All I've done with that kind of exposure is educated a few thousand people in a couple of narrow subjects and many of them loved me for it.

Larry Hart said...

Alfred Differ to locumranch:

You live in an analog world and recognize it. I recognize that in you.

"Your progressive worldview is sick, one-sided & dysfunctional…"

…and this is what makes it so difficult for others to recognize it too.


It seems to me that locum is so wrapped up in "both sides do it" that he is incapable of recognizing an existential fight against a determined and resourceful enemy. Does he not see that the Republican worldview is sick, one-sided & dysfunctional? To the extent that liberals are one-sided today, it is for the same reason that America was one-sided in WWII rather than treating the Nazis as having a legitimate point of view. Same with current day Ukraine vis a vis Russia. One doesn't have to think that Ukrainians are all pure as the driven snow to want to help them against blatant foreign aggression.

I don't support Democrats across the board because they are "always right" about every subject. I support Democrats because they are the only force capable of displacing Republicans. And right now in history, Republicans will use whatever power they acquire to destroy the very concept of democracy and justice, imposing a model of governance based on authoritarianism backed up by a mob of Brownshirts. I have to do what I can to prevent that or die trying (because death is preferable to that sort of life), regardless of the individual nutty things that individual Democrats might say or do.

To presume from that that I foolishly believe Democrats are some kind of saviors who can never do wrong and who always act altruistically is absurd. What Democrats are is the only bulwark available against authoritarian rule. Nothing else matters more, because in the Republican world, no good that we want will ever be accomplished.

Larry Hart said...

seen on Twitter:

Please don’t ask “how could things possibly be worse?” because Republicans are not taking that as a rhetorical question.

Alfred Differ said...

Larry,

I'm not sure he's engaging in 'both sides do it' when he barfs on seeing his hated worldview. I think a better explanation is that he can't NOT see that worldview because he hates it so much. If I say the world is becoming a better place through intended and unintended actions of all of us, I must be one of those crazy utopia fanatics allied with progressives. How could I not be? It's unthinkable!

I've seen this behavior before in a woman who was abused too much by the men in her life. We were all abusers in her eyes because it took only the slightest thing to set off that well honed defense within her. It's not that the defense wasn't justified, though. She'd been abused. What wasn't justified was lumping us all in with monsters.

Locumranch sees monsters all around and can't quite imagine that we aren't.


… and he can't walk away from them either. Neither could she.



Locumranch,

Prove me wrong.
Paraphrase one of us non-progressives correctly.

Larry Hart said...

Alfred Differ:

I'm not sure he's engaging in 'both sides do it' when he barfs on seeing his hated worldview. I think a better explanation is that he can't NOT see that worldview because he hates it so much.
...
Locumranch sees monsters all around and can't quite imagine that we aren't.


Well, that's not entirely a disagreement with what I said. Or with what I meant by it, anyway.

To me, modern-day Republicans are the monsters, and he perceives "fighting against the monsters" to be the same thing as "being the monsters". As if "suppressing the vote" and "not suppressing the vote" are equally partisan activities, because each is helpful to the party which engages in it.

What loc said was, "Your progressive worldview is sick, one-sided & dysfunctional…", which is such an accurate description of the right-wing that I can't believe it is not glaringly obvious. That doesn't preclude the possibility that the progressive side also shares those characteristics, but in my view, we're "one-sided" in the belief that whoever gets the most runs should win a ballgame, or that there are real laws of physics which work a certain way. And even if both sides are equally sick, one-sided, & dysfunctional (which I don't concede, but even if...), the side which is attempting an ongoing coup to install itself as authoritarian dictators backed by Brownshirts is the clear and present danger. The side that insists on calling people "Latinx" or "pregnant person" can be dealt with (or ignored) later.

Larry Hart said...

I'm not religious, but below is a good description anyway...

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/08/opinion/prayer-supreme-court-football.html

It is miserable to be a hater. I pray to be more like Jesus with his crazy compassion and reckless love. Some days go better than others. I pray to remember that God loves Marjorie Taylor Greene exactly the same as God loves my grandson, because God loves, period. God does not have an app for Not Love. God sees beyond each person’s awfulness to each person’s needs. God loves them, as is. God is better at this than I am.


David Brin said...

Guys, when he is like this, all you are doing is feeding a troll. Sure, his salvoes are aimed nowhere near me and are purely masturbatory. But that's normal. What I won't reward is when his masturbation is pornographically hateful.

===

Different matter, re Ukraine:

While his flip and immature presentation style can be grating, this fellow also dives very deep into contemporary military matters, esp. re Ukraine. Moreover, he is among the only pundits who even mentions what has to be Putin's only remaining strategic goal, to get close enough to Ukraine's Dnieper Gas Fields to make them unusable by EU nations, this coming winter, as an alternative to Russian gas. Even David Petraeus fails to mention how those fields, if fed quickly into existing pipelines, may be an existential threat to Putin's proto-czarist fantasies for Russia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F0kSDV9U_E

VP may envision that if he can do that - and either take or smash the port of Odesa - he'll have all the really important marbles. But without taking the whole east bank of the Dnieper, he will face a long, porous front, easily turned into partisan/guerrilla hell. And the EU may still find the guts to send in the drill crews.

Anyway, this thing is being decided by a growing artillery duel, both sides equipped with counter-fire radars and spy satellites and ever-changing types of drones. (Expect a Rising Power and Russian ally to be found testing its weaponry and drones and counter-drone defenses there - as are we) ...

...with the ever-present threat that a desperate Putin might 'blow up low earth orbit' - LEO - if he's losing that sumo match and thinks it might even the odds. Or just pulling down the temple around him.

DP said...

The big question - how long can the Russian economy continue to produce war materials in the face of wester sanctions when almost every key element of their war production depends on a foreign source.

DP said...

Let us take a moment from the world's troubles to honor the memory of Larry Storch aka Cpl. Agarn of "F-Troop" has passed away at age 99. The show had the most incompetent army fort, the most cowardly tribe and one of the best theme songs ever. One of my favorite shows as a kid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-K4BvF_sb3Y

duncan cairncross said...

Making the Dnieper gas field unusable

I suspect that has effectively already happened - it takes quite a while to develop a gas field and the Russian invasion has had the effect of supercharging the European push to renewables - by the time that field started producing its market will have evaporated

David Brin said...

" by the time that field started producing its market will have evaporated"

Sorry, not a chance of that. What all those efforts might do is meet the Uk gas production halfway.

onward

onward