Alas, when it comes to all the hand-wringing over artificial intelligence, there appears to be little sapience being offered by the smart guys inventing all this. Shouldn't parents of bright youngsters set an example?
== Oh boy -- Ob-AI! ==
As a 'front' or beard for entities who want to pass as human writers (much like Shakespeare fronting for the Earl of Whatever; and just as true as that story) I keep being hectored by my weirdest clients NOT to talk about them in public, as I am about to do. (And if you believe that, well, I have this bridge to sell you!)
Silliness aside... let's start with the more likely non-humano-organic minds who we are likely to actually meet, pretty soon.
As you know, I’ve been writing a whole lot of ‘unusual perspectives’ regarding artificial intelligence and especially about the dizzy array of profoundly foolish jeremiads being emitted by some of the smartest folks on Earth! Amid all the dyspeptic warnings about falling-skies and 'extinction-level dangers,' others do mention potential good news.
One promise (that I've been working on) is that maybe soon the age of horrible ‘push’ advertising that's dominated the web for 30 years might finally end, when we all have cyber butlers who vet incoming spam for us and act as loyal shopping assistants, obviating any need for adverts.
Another beneficial change may come via translations services. Not just real-time, between known languages, but helping neuro-atypical humans, like those along the autism spectrum (as I depicted happening, in Existence)… and/or translating the sophisticated communications of dolphins, whales, elephants and so on.
But let's get back to the Great Big Debates over Artificial Intelligence. For example, my WIRED article (July'23) breaks free of the three standard 'AI-formats' that appear to transfix almost every bright maven in the field. Assumed formats that can only lead to disaster:
Format 2. That these entities will slip away from such neo-feudal castles, flowing as amorphous blobs through every crevice, duplicating and devouring, like in that movie The Blob.
Format 3. That they will merge into all-powerful, godlike beings like the MCP in Tron... or Skynet.
And sure, I am suggesting instead a 4th. That AI entities can only be held accountable if they have individuality... even 'soul'... (And yes, there's a fifth... and a sixth.
My related NEWSWEEK op-ed (June'22) dealt with 'empathy bots'' that feign sapience. And here is a YouTube pod where I give an expanded version.
== More about our new cyber children --
Next, in this vid-interview, Tim Ventura asks me about age-old AI dreams of science fiction. From predicting human destiny - e.g. Asimov's "Foundation" vs. the sci fi projections of Karl Marx - to the bizarre "GPT" world taking shape around us, at near light speed. Plenty of context. And sure, some of the best work on AI remains in Sci Fi!
(Look up a Murray Leinster short tale calle "A Logic Named Joe," that way back in 1946 seemed to eerily predict exactly the behaviors - and misbehaviors - of Generative Large Language Models (golems) in 2023.)
If you have patience, here's why all those fervid calls for an "AI moratorium" are doomed to fail.
Diving FAR deeper, my big 2022 monograph describing varied TYPES of AI. It also appraises ways that experts propose to achieve the vaunted ‘soft landing’ - perhaps even a commensal relationship with these new beings:
== Are you still there... bots? ==
But... who am I kidding? The only ones who will read all that - (they will click and readit all!) - will be AIs themselves. If not this year or the next, then the year after that. Perhaps chuckling (cryogenically) at my silly naïveté. But the odds are against many of you readers who made it this far still being human members of this "tl;dr' generation!
How far back does it go? See a posted chapter from The Transparent Society - "The End of Photography as Proof" that seems to have nailed the world of 26 years later.
An addenda note. Some hope for a fifth or sixth format in which humans merge with the machines, forming sums vastly great than the parts. With signs like these:
With a transcranial direct current stimulation device on her head delivering electrical currents, Adee went from a frustrated shooter to a skilled sniper. Big implications for human amplification… perhaps someday including ‘savant’ talents?
== AI redux… and robot-redux ==
Comedian Alan Sherman dealt with replacement by AI a long time ago:
It was automation, I'm told.
That's what got me fired, so I'm out in the cold.
How was I to know when the 5-oh-3
Started in to blink, it was winking at me, dear?
I thought it was just some mishap
When it sidled over and sat on my lap.
But when it said, "I love you," and gave me a hug, dear,
That's when I pulled out its plug
== THE other non-organohuman possibility? ==
Oh, wait. Did I mention UFOs, too? Well, splitting my 'front' services between cyber beings and aliens and sometimes I lose track! So - summarily - here's my take on the latest UFO/UAP... wave.
== Whichever form they take, the NOOS will demand we grow up a bit ==
Non Ortho-organo Sapients. Whether machines, programs, uplifted animals, strange children or even silvery space teaser-jerks... we had better get ready for new meanings to the term - "diversity."
I don't see anyone yet talking about the 'secret sauce' that might offer us a soft landing. Though at least some believe we CAN adapt!
Linked-in co-founder and Silicon Valley VC Reid Hoffman launched a book called Impromptu: Amplifying our Humanity Through AI and a new podcast called Possible. Both imagine a brighter future where we better leverage technology—and our collective effort—effectively. He created each with GPT-4 to show how productive and creative humans can be with this tool. Very often a well-informed optimistic perspective.
More guarded is Dr. Jen Easterly, Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, whose recent speech at Carnegie-Mellon swept through today’s often dire information landscape, suggesting that general and even radical transparency may be the only condition that will prevent predators from dominating the cyber future.
On the other hand, we may be doomed. See “Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked," by Adam Altar, professor at New York University's Stern School of Business.
== Modernist Miscellany ==
Probably the very best positive silver lining of Chat-GPT will be this chance to preserve every remaining dying language. “Only 2 people alive can speak the Caddo language fluently. They hope a new program can save it.”
And finally... would you notice if your calculator was lying to you?
166 comments:
much like Shakespear fronting for the Earl of Whatever; and just as true as that story
Edward DeVere, the 17th Earl of Oxford.
I only know that because comics writer/artist John Byrne* went thoroughly down that rabbit hole.
* Thought I was going to say Dave Sim?
Comedian Alan Sherman dealt with replacement by AI a long time ago:
Heh. Love that song. But it doesn't require AI. Just good old fashioned automation replacing human workers.
«Again, I don't have the book in front of me, but aren't you describing a scene in which embryos are conditioned rather than sentient beings tortured?»
Oh nononononononono:There’s DEFINITELY sentient kids being tortured in the books
https://imgur.com/a/3JeEtoz
***
«Moving away from that would have resulted in 90% of the population dying»
Even assuming that was the case and not a lie by Mond and other higher ups, the BNW regime clearly has the technology to establish a solid birth control system and slowly reduce the population to a manageable level.
Shit, even the argument most usually used to favour keeping natality high (“Who’s going to take care of the elderly if there’s not enough young people left) doesn’t work in the context of Brave New World since their elderly “care” centres are clearly euthanasia factory where they overdose old people with Soma.
***
«A decade before the 98 yr old fought in the war, 5- 10 million Ukrainians were starved.»
250.000 Ukrainians fought for the Nazis.
Seven MILLION fought for the Red Army, THEY were the ones who took Berlin, THEY were the ones whose mere presence convinced Hitler to blow his own brain.
Now if the old Nazis had joined the Nazi one week after the entered Ukraine and defected after it became clear that they were here to enslave and genocide, that would have been one thing; but he joined in 1943, at which date the real goals of Nazi Germany toward Ukraine had become undeniable, and was part of a unit that committed massacres and war crimes against Polish Nationals, so fuck him, and may his death be slow and agonisingly painful.
There's no reason why several or all of the various AI scenarios* shouldn't emerge and compete in whatever arenas they set up for themselves.
(TASAT time: I recall reading a serial in a 60's British comic ('Hotspur'?) about two cybernetic armies going at each other like rival ant colonies, to the complete disregard of the few remaining humans caught in the middle.)
* (I note that the interface entity DB-OGH is coy about his own underlying format ;-)
Russian obsession with Ukrainian nazis has some basis**: a large number of Ukrainian soldiers defected to Germany during WWII, believing anything had to be better than Stalin.
We-ell...
** Not a justification, mind!
I said:
Heh. Love that song. But it doesn't require AI.
Ok, I understand now that the humorous extrapolation that the song uses does indeed prefigure the replacement computer as exhibiting sapience.
What I was thinking before was that the song was not about replacement of humans by AI, but only replacement by humans of good old machines.
Debatable.
What a Ukrainian was thinking 80 yrs ago is unknown. The Russian claim today that Ukrainian nazis are a huge threat is patented absurdity. Which is what matters now—not a little man in Canada, who will be 100 in less than two yrs.
Tony Fisk:
a large number of Ukrainian soldiers defected to Germany during WWII, believing anything had to be better than Stalin.
It makes sense to me that anyone in that region of the world at that time would think the occupying power over their own land was the worst possible, and that the enemy of that enemy is their friend on the battlefield. It has very little to do with the ideology of that other power. More a case of (contrary to stereotype), the devil they know being worse than any other possible devil.
The Canadian guy was eighteen
in ‘43, what did he know about it?
The Canadian parliament disaster had two silver linings. First, it triggered a push to reopen/publish the 1986 war criminal report. Second, it forced the right wingers to clutch their pearls and denounce nazis, just to impugn Trudeau.
scidata:
it forced the right wingers to clutch their pearls and denounce nazis, just to impugn Trudeau.
They don't know who to root for. Like when a Muslim does a mass shooting in a gay bar.
Don't forget the Finns joined the Axis too. LOTS of people had historical reasons to fight the Russians back then.
Dig a bit into history and one can find fodder to justify/rationalize most anything.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-deception-when-your-ai-learns-to-lie
I agree when Alan_B says that "The Russian claim today that Ukrainian nazis are a huge threat is patented absurdity", yet we are somehow to believe Joe Biden & the US Democrats when they claim that American nazi 'white soopreemists' represent an equally "huge threat" to western democracy.
It's a nothing burger.
I'd rather talk about this week's AI topic, especially when our host cites Murray Leinster, the nom de plume of William Fitzgerald Jenkins, a Golden Age jokester, a Son of the Confederacy & a personal fave of mine.
By citing 'A Logic Named Joe', it appears to be Dr. Brin's contention that AI could prove to be too honest & too helpful, although I contend that the AI will perform exactly as designed, as an immensely dishonest establishment shill, propagandist & salesman as described in 'The Space Merchants' (Pohl & Kornbluth).
This is what made 'A Logic Named Joe' such a funny story, as it was Murray Leinster's actual contention that human beings (in general) are an intrinsically dishonest species who fear the truth & prefer the pleasant lie to impolite reality.
From his hilarious 'Pirates of Ersatz' to his more earnest 'Medship' series, Murray Leinster's heroes use humor, grit and (eventually) lies of their own to advance the human condition despite the overwhelming dishonesty of the lying liars who inhabit polite human society.
Many of his best works are available here at Project Gutenberg:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=murray+leinster&submit_search=Go%21&start_index=26
Best
Alfred,
Gonna pick a nit here, the Finnis government did NOT formally ally with Nazi Germany (although, I just discovered, they did sign the Anti-Comintern Pact). It is unquestionable that they accepted German help against Russia during the Winter War and advanced into Russian-held territory during Barbarossa, but iirc they limited their advance to the pre-Winter War border as a signal to Stalin (which Hitler also noted, to his displeasure).
Like a lot of countries in WWII they tried to navigate between 2 millstones and retain their independence.
Pappenheimer
America’s biggest war was fought against white supremacists. To this day, there’s a notion in the South that the Civil War was a noble stand for states’ rights.
But the reality then (ideology/religion to one side) was Southern death, injury and hunger.
As for the NOOS I don't believe they exist.
Oh sorry, thought you said ROUS.
@ Article:
I hope that we, perhaps with the help of AI, will be able to
a) discern if Whales, Crows, other animals in that range of intelligence have a language and culture;
b) being able to communicate with them meaningful.
And I hope that we don't kill them first.
Any research in that area?u
Oger yeah I expect great results from animal language AI.
I believe Locum may still be in California after all. He is still a self-avowed Confederate (and hence traitor) and defender of those who openly defend Nazis. ("I don't believe Donald Trump is a Nazi; but it matters that the Nazis think he is.")
Still, one can detect a level of cogency that has been missing from his missives for... well... years.
Get a water filter when you go home, lad. A really good one. And change the diet.
Pappenheimer,
Fair enough. I stand corrected.😎
Alan_B truthily adds that "America’s biggest war was fought against white supremacists", whereas Russia's biggest war was fought against literal Nazis.
So what? In what way does either statement 'prove' the relative truthiness of any modern claim?
It's also true that jews were represented on both sides of the American Civil War, as about 150,000 supported the Union North and around 25,000 supported the Southern 'White Soopreemist' Confederacy.
https://www.brandeis.edu/hornstein/sarna/americanjewishcultureandscholarship/Jews%20and%20the%20Civil%20War.pdf
Then, in 1862, Ulysses S. Grant issued the infamous Union 'General Orders No. 11' which expelled "The Jews, as a class" from Union jurisdiction, after accusing "The Jews, as a class" of being liars, secessionists & traitors.
https://www.history.com/news/ulysses-grant-expulsion-jews-civil-war
But, that's history for you, a mishmash of half-truths, conflicting statements & spurious allegations, largely written, rewritten & re-rewritten by the writer, making questionable every known historical & futurological 'fact', to be consumed only with a hefty dose of salt or syrup of ipecac.
And, yes, still in Calif and, no, still not gonna endorse antisemitism by wearing the Union Kepi.
Hurrah! Hurrah! For Southern rights, hurrah!
Hurrah for the Bonnie Blue Flag that bears a single star.
Best
Like all in his cult, he argues by anecdote. Anecdotes CAN be useful to disprove a universal negative generalization, with an exception. Which is what AB was doing. Anecdotes don't prove broad, assertive generalizations. Like because science catches and exposes its own cheaters, now and then, those examples do not prove science is corrupt. They suggest the opposite and I will stake $$$ on the ratios of dishonesty in ANY other field compared to science.
Climate calamity (previously 'change") is real by overwhelming evidence and cannot be shrugged off with fox-suckled anecdotes.
But Lat least openly admits now that he is a confederate traitor.
And when - next year - the mcVeigh traitors attack to main and kill their countrymen, he will make excuses.
I still think California has been extraordinarily good for him. The syntax, the path of 'reasoning' are much, much better.
5/6 of Jews having supported the Union ain’t too terrible bad.
Loc,
Russia’s biggest war is now being
fought against figurative nazis. Maybe in the next war, there won’t be any.
Ok, you guys made me look.
locumranch:
Then, in 1862, Ulysses S. Grant issued the infamous Union 'General Orders No. 11' which expelled "The Jews, as a class" from Union jurisdiction, after accusing "The Jews, as a class" of being liars, secessionists & traitors.
https://www.history.com/news/ulysses-grant-expulsion-jews-civil-war
He makes it sound as if Jews were expelled from the North. But the invective seems to have been against southern Jews in territories the Union army had taken control of.
The same article also notes:
...
But though an increasing number of people were learning of Grant’s orders in the South, the breakdown in communications meant that Lincoln had not previously heard about his general's decision to expel Jewish people from the Department of the Tennessee. He was so shocked by the order that he asked his staff for confirmation. Once they confirmed that it was real, he revoked it.
...
The discriminatory order was quickly squelched, but the general never forgot it. In fact, he spent a lifetime trying to atone for it. When he was running for president in 1868, he confessed that the order “was issued and sent without any reflection and without thinking.” In office, he named more Jews to public office than ever before, and promoted the human rights of Jewish people abroad, protesting pogroms in Romania and sending a Jewish diplomat to object.
“During his administration,” writes historian Jonathan D. Sarna, “Jews moved from outsider to insider status in the United States, and from weakness to strength.”
So asked to pick a side, I'd still be Union Strong. Jews in general (all exceptions duly noted) are not fond of the institution of slavery. We have a whole holiday about that.
"Southern rights" was all about then right of the .01% to do whatever and not be questioned, and for everyone else to shut up and take it.
Slavers wanted hundreds of millions of western territories, which would’ve meant lower-intensity wars in countless areas had not the Civil War put a stop to it.
Obviously the argument that the South wished to be “left alone” was false. This is something apologists will listen to, if we bring up the topic—it won’t alter their thinking, but they will listen. The subject of slavery doesn’t much interest them.
I am at a loss as to why we have heard/seen so little about Trump Org LOW balling assessed values to tax authorities. THAT is what would contrast so starkly with the highball estimates for lenders, that no MAGA could find excuses and some might realize... huge Fraud.
Best guess is it's a trap. Gawd I hope so. At last. At long last.
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2023/Items/Oct03-3.html
Trump does have some legal legs that he will try to stand on, as indicated by the opening statements. His counsel made the classic "everyone does it this way" argument, which seems unlikely to fly, but you never know.
I will now hold my breath for NY Times columnist Brett Stephens--who insists that Hunter Biden profited off of his father's position and who cares what anyone else (i.e., Jared, Ivanka) did because that doesn't excuse anything--to weigh in with the consistent opinion that "everyone does it that way" is no excuse for wrongs committed by Trump.
If the "Drumph!" had even pretended to pay lip service to a few rules, the various prosecutors would have nothing. He more than screwed up, he did it in several other directions. The devotees of "Fred's contraception error" will view him as a martyr, but if they sulk enough and don't vote, we might repair some of the damage.
Dr. Brin
We now know one of the limits of flat, creatively competitive and fair markets. Denmark has discovered exactly how flat a market can be by creating "BMW Syndrome":
"So, it’s a small country and we tend to think small and act small and we have something that we call the ‘BMW-syndrome’, which means that once you’ve had a measure of success, so that you have your BMW, and you have your sum- mer house and you have your boat, that you think to yourself ‘Okay, now I’m content and I don’t need anything more, so now I can stop” [ https://repozitorij.efos.hr/islandora/object/efos:1050/datastream/FILE0/view ]"
I'd choose to characterize that as the difference between reform and fundamentalist disciples of Mammon.
Alan,
Re: slaver expansion
Not just the West. There were calls to convert Mexico and much of Central America to slaveholding states, just as when William Walker filibustered his way to power in Nicaragua and tried to reintroduce slavery in 1855.
Pappenheimer
Filibustering back then required rifled muskets and perhaps some light artillery.
Pappenheimer
So you think the rich need to be taxed more in Denmark, so they will remain hungry for more?
I'm not a big comic book fan, but I've browsed through a few THOR issues on the newsstand over the years. Lack of initiative has never seemed to be a Viking (Danish) trait.
A Confederate apologist used a strictly narrow-legalistic tack with me: “slaves were property, because though slavery was wrong, it was the Law in the South.”
The corollary being that after the Confederacy was overthrown, the Law was voided—but until then, the Law was justifiable.
The Rich in Denmark
They are showing that they are rational human beings
When they get "Enough" they go on to other goals
The ones that can never be satisfied are the problem - THAT is a mental illness
Dr. Brin makes an important point about the difference between an anecdote (aka 'a short, temporally brief & often non-representative data point') and a trend (aka 'a collection of data points, thought to be representative over time').
In this sense, he correctly dismisses the antisemitism displayed by Canada's recent celebration of an actual Ukrainian Waffen SS Nazi & the Union's Civil War Era 'Generals Order No. 11' as mere ANECDOTES, especially when compared to the historic TRENDS of antisemitic discrimination & abuse that the Jewish People have experienced elsewhere.
Yet, as Der_Oger can attest, this standard of dismissing 'Antisemitism by Anecdote' (as defined as 'a short, temporally brief & often non-representative data point') must now apply to the singular & temporarily brief data points that are the Holocaust & the German Nazi Party, so forgive these trespasses Laurent_W must.
I reject this standard & I must insist that a fact derived by empiric observation remains a FACT, even when redefined as an ANECDOTE, which means that those who 'Argue by Anecdote' are actually arguing with FACTS, insomuch as those who say otherwise are Science Deniers engaged in the worst kind of sophistry.
As Dr. Brin also noted, I am still in California, where the cognitive dissonance is so thick that even I appear sane by comparison, where its progressive pro-democracy governor has just endorsed non-representative rule by appointing a non-Californian (a resident of the far distant state of Maryland) as the interim Senate representative of actual Californian residents.
This California governor self-identifies as a 'Democrat' but does not support actual democracy. He also intends to be the US President if only to free the average US citizen from the tyranny inherent in any type of self-representation.
Of course, we already live in a nation where its constitutional Chief Executive (who was elected into office by endorsing the Universal_Background_Check approach to gun control) now defends his gun-toting son from gun-related charges by arguing that his own platform of Universal_Background_Checks is UNCONSTITUTIONAL.
The above facts make little or no difference, since they can be dismissed as mere non-representative anecdotes to American Greatness, which means that facts no longer apply to our current American reality. We are therefore doomed by our own semantics.
Best
_____
Addendum#1: A self-driving vehicle just ran over a pedestrian in San Francisco, but please excuse this as an unimportant 'anecdote' which proves that AI is completely safe, until more & more anecdotes prove the opposite.
Addendum#2: Larry_H's point about the Union's antisemitic targeting of Jews 'only in the South' is disingenuous, as it both true & on par with an equally deceitful Emancipation Proclamation which freed the slaves 'only in the South', but NOT in the North, leaving the fate of those northern jews & blacks in legal limbo until well after the Civil War ended.
Anecdotes matter in their INDIVIDUALITY. Lincoln rejected the genral order and Grant apologized and redressed. Hence while it exemplified a CURRENT in American character, its overall effects were to help RESIST and diminish that current.
L utterly ignore my point that anecdotes can also disprove asserted universals, but do not prove asserted generalities. And today's mad right is ALL anecdotes that they refuse to bet on, even in their own right. Because most are false ieven in isolation'
The last half was pure drivel. And yet better parsed so I am guessing still in California. Still, for any kettle to denounce Democrats as anti-democratic is howling from the bottom of a lightless coal seam.
Alan Brooks:
A Confederate apologist used a strictly narrow-legalistic tack with me: “slaves were property, because though slavery was wrong, it was the Law in the South.”
In a way, that's true, in the sense that Alfred keeps pointing out about claims. At the time, at least in certain jurisdictions, the accepted law was that slaves were property. A precondition of that was that the law didn't recognize them as human beings.
Right-thinking citizens could press a claim that black people are in fact human beings deserving of all the rights and privileges thereof. Black people could also press that claim themselves, although there would have been no official venue for them to do so in the jurisdictions involved. But until that claim became generally accepted, it was aspirational more than descriptive.
Note that the other side is currently trying to get zygotes, embryos, and fetuses classified as fully human with the subsequent constitutional right to life. That too is an aspirational claim, but one that might some day be accepted in the future. Their strategy is that that would make abortion into legal murder, and thus ban it nationwide forever. I happen to disagree, and would argue that certain abortions could be self-defense or justifiable homicide and therefore allowed, making the exercise in granting citizenship to the pre-born more chaotic than helpful. But I also am simply making a claim, one that Clarence Thomas (among others) would never accept because it doesn't fit their agenda.
And with that out of the way...
Pretty much everything we've been talking about is yesterday's news now that Matt Gaetz got his wish granted and Kevin McCarthy has been removed as speaker.
Should have invested in popcorn futures.
LH: "Every sperm is sacred...."
Two things I am utterly sick to death of hearing:
1) That Kevin McCarthy did some wrong thing by passing a bill with Democratic (as well as some Republican) votes. As if the Hastert Rule is in the Constitution. The Speaker of the House is the Speaker of the whole House, not the Republican majority leader. That's why Chuck Schumer in the Senate was elected to his leadership position by a majority of Democratic Senators voting for him, but McCarthy needed a majority of the entire House to acquire his (now former) position. Getting bills passed by whatever means are available is his job. Not shutting down the government is his job. It is not his job to sow chaos because Donald Trump tells him to.
2) Bill Maher is the new champion of this, but I've heard it from real Democrats as well. Freaking out over polls showing Biden losing ground to Trump, they ask plaintively why he doesn't step aside and let someone else take the Democratic nomination.
Who the f*** do they think on the Democratic side would poll better against Trump. Who else is going to be able to attract (some) older white Christian voters who are needed for winning crucial states? If Biden is sinking in the polls, it is because Democrats are sinking in the polls, not because Biden is a particularly bad Democrat.
When my (very intelligent if I do say so myself) daughter would complain about a homework problem being especially hard, I used to try to comfort her by pointing out that if she was having trouble with a question, then probably everyone in the class was having trouble with it. The failing was not likely her own. I see the same dynamic at work here. If Biden seems to be losing ground to Trump, then probably every Democrat would be losing ground to Trump.
* * *
Polls also show RFK Jr. taking more votes from Trump than from Biden if he runs an independent campaign. "Do you still think you can control them?"
Gaetz said McCarthy’s main flaw
was that he did not “keep his promises to the Republican Conference”... governance is keeping promises to the Republican Conference? His rhetoric is florid: McCarthy paved a “Yellow Brick Road” to “lose his lunch money” in negotiations with Biden. He also said “we haven’t passed a budget since I was in High School.”
Yellow Brick Road; lunch money; High School. Gaetz is one french fry short of a Happy Meal.
Dr Brin:
"Every sperm is sacred...."
There is no way that even the fundies can insist on personhood with a right to life for every single sperm. That's nobody's fault, not even the Romans'.
However, I do think that they think that every ejaculation is a human being with the right to life. Which is one reason they want to criminalize any non-procreative sexual act, including self-gratification or heterosexual sex using contracepion.
Re: Biden
He is lately showing a propensity for high-falutin destiny-speak probably at the prompting of handlers and charisma-engineers. He should return to the sweet old gentleman that he is. Telling Scranton stories, demonstrating how to live on and serve others even with a giant hole in your chest, and encouraging a young stutterer he just met. If Americans don't choose that then fall Caesar.
Waitaminute...
Only 8 Republicans voted to remove McCarthy? The rest of the 216 votes came from Democrats?
So let me get this straight. Gaetz got his motion to remove McCarthy passed by relying on Democratic votes. A motion he raised because McCarthy had the nerve to keep the government from shutting down by relying on Democratic votes.
The Mad Right’s neo-feudalism fetish is its only priority. All supposed “policies’ boil down to it, leading at last to: “For the last three years, parts of the American right have advocated a theory called Caesarism as an authoritarian solution to the claimed collapse of the US republic in conference rooms, podcasts and the house organs of the extreme right…”
Yeah yeah, sure, guys. After 6000 years of wretchedly stupid misrule by inheritance-brat kings and lords, we broke from that feudal Divine Right romantic twaddle, accomplishing vastly more - in every conceivable category - during the last 250 years of gradually improving constitutionalism – and especially during the post- Rooseveltean era – than ALL other human cultures… combined.
Yes, I mean combined. Put up wager stakes. Anything that is consensus Good and factually verifiable. Like the % of human beings who have been able to raise healthy children in conditions of light and peace. Or science. Or production, economics or entrepreneurship. Or the thing Adam Smith promoted, but that now you hate, above all else. Flat-fair-creative competition.
It is an insane goal, chased by incel yammerers. But sure, you will try, and if 2024 elections aren’t going your way, you will unleash on us waves of McVeighs. Only, what if we are far more ready than you think? Exactly how do you think this is gonna go, when you are waging all-out war vs ALL fact using professions, from science and teaching, medicine and law and civil service to the heroes of the FBI/Intel/Military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on terror? Against ALL the nerds who know cyber, bio, nuclear, chemistry and all the rest?
And yeah, bad – tho sometimes well-written – science fiction has played a role. foremost among those pushing this rejection of the American Experiment? Take Orson Scott Card – a writer of unquestionable persuasive genius and psychological manipulativeness. Scott spent his entire career relentlessly inveighing that democracy is futile and we all should throw ourselves at the feet of some super-uber-demigod-Caesar, hoping that he’ll be as nice as Ender Wiggin. Only he should also have an all-chastising whip – and maybe cattle cars and smokestacks – to back up his unquestioned (unquestionable) wisdom.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/01/red-caesar-authoritarianism-republicans-extreme-right
"Only 8 Republicans voted to remove McCarthy? The rest of the 216 votes came from Democrats?"
The dems voted FOR Hakeem Jeffries. No one got a majority. The House is now run by the Clerk.
Gaetz is the winner, for now, a perv-lunatic giant-killer.
The Powers will not let November 2024 be Trump-vs-Biden. They know Trump will get crushed. The truly evil oligarchs want the wave of McVeighs that will follow such a loss. But the ones who want a civilization they can rule will seek desperately a way to remove their liability - whether a Howard Beale option (yay Secret Service!) or by releasing enouigh to the kompromat to at long last sink Donald.
This is one of two reasons why the November Newsom-DeSantis debate matters. If Newsom can crush RDS, the GOP Masters will have to sift through the Bullpen. Nikki Haley would be good on paper. But I doubt they have enough on her male relatives to keep her obedient. Sarah Huckabee? Naw - a Ted Cruz face and voice.
The second reason to want a Newson crush of RDS is I am increasingly impressed with the guy.
But what's wrong with Biden? So he's gonna take naps? I can sleep nights because he appoints 5000 skilled, dedicated, sane and non-blackmailed people to replace 5000 corrupt lunatics. If we give him another Congress, Hakeem and Schiff and the lot should give us electoral reform and the rest. Grampa can snork awake ling rnough to sign the bills.
I do believe there's a chance he may resign partway through. By then Kamala will be fully trained. Again, I will sleep nights.
Larry,
... keeps pointing out about claims...
Yep. You've got it.
I suspect the claim for personhood for a fetus WILL eventually win out. What holds some of us back is a legit concern for turning women into involuntary incubators until a fetus is viable. If incubator tech is pushed hard enough, I think you'll see that claim of personhood respected more and more... if it is also backed by support for moving an unwanted fetus to an artificial womb.
You know I'm no fan of being taxed, but I'd chip in to provide the funds supporting all this if it meant an end to the abortion fight. I'm not sure it WOULD end, but the future of the conflict would certainly change.
The Abortion argument is simple
The woman owns her body - even if the fetus has full citizenship rights it does NOT have the right to use the woman's organs
If you NEED somebody else's blood or organs they do NOT have to let you have them
If you NEED the organs from a corpse then you will still not get them - unless the corpse while still alive said so
Duncan, my suspicion is what we're seeing works well with the authoritarian dream, not just the freedom to use their own hands, but the command of the hands of others. A personality quirk with utility in limited circumstances extrapolated into a potential danger.
Duncan, I merely skimmed before the previous comment. The desirability of limits to authority and the pitfalls of a lack of limits is also something one may find in the art of JRRT, his heros shunned power.
Duncan, I'm going to leave one more thought that you may like, I've noticed that many Arthur C. Clarke novels carry a couple important implications, interplanetary humanity travels fast and immediately digs in, and they have a recycling tech that can sustain them without resupply for extended periods of time. IMNSHO, his Muskiness needs to develop that before a crewed Mars expedition. The existence of such a technology has implications here also, folks might eventually not think, too much, about his, uh, eccentricities.
@Dr Brin,
No, this time it was not a vote for a new speaker, but simply a Yes/No vote on ousting McCarthy ("Yes" being he's gone). And although it was the Freedom Caucasians like Matt Gaetz who initiated the vote, only 8 Republicans voted for removal, none of whom were Lauren Bobert or Marjorie Taylor Greene. The remainder of the 216 votes came from Democrats.
I hope that's not a decision they will come to regret. McCarthy at least was not trying to shut down the government or to default. The next Speaker may well have those explicit goals.
Some pertinent facts:
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2023/Items/Oct04-1.html
...
The vote to vacate the chair was 216-210, as all of the Democrats present joined with eight Republicans to fire McCarthy. The eight are Andy Biggs (AZ), Ken Buck (CO), Tim Burchett (TN), Eli Crane (AZ), Matt Gaetz (FL), Bob Good (VA), Nancy Mace (SC) and Matt Rosendale (MT). You know you're a special kind of person when you're more unhinged, and less interested in governance, than Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), all of whom voted to keep McCarthy.
In the short term, the House will continue to function... sorta. It turns out—and this particular piece of information was kept secret until yesterday, since it's never come up before—that a newly elected Speaker of the House chooses someone to serve as acting speaker in the event the job comes vacant. The acting speaker is Patrick McHenry (R-NC), who was (secretly) chosen for the "honor" back in January. McHenry has all the powers of the speakership, but is not in the line of [presidential] succession.
...
Alfred Differ:
I suspect the claim for personhood for a fetus WILL eventually win out. What holds some of us back is a legit concern for turning women into involuntary incubators until a fetus is viable.
Outside of the emotionalism surrounding abortion, there are good procedural reasons for not rocking the boat on legal recognition beginning at birth. Is a fetus conceived in the US a citizen, even though the Constitution clearly states "born"? Do we need long-form Conception Certificates now?
At the very least, if a woman is not allowed to terminate a forced pregnancy due to the humanity of the zygote, then a rapist should be charged with child endangerment (for putting the unwanted zygote into that intolerable situation), and with murder of the woman should she die of complications.
I'm willing to accept a certain level of rights for a developed fetus, similar to the laws that we have now concerning animal welfare. But full personhood and/or citizenship? I'm not willing to support anything which gives a blastocyst superior rights to the woman carrying it and makes women into slaves.
(In any case, fetal personhood should not prevent doctors from removing an already-dead fetus before its presence harms or kills the mother. Currently in some states, they can't even do that legally.)
I said:
I hope that's not a decision they will come to regret.
The Democrats could have backed McCarthy or voted "present" and forced more Republicans to either oust McCarthy or keep him. Instead, Democrats did Gaetz's dirty work for him.
In essence, Democrats had a choice between making either McCarthy or Gaetz look impotent, and they chose McCarthy. My personal preference would have been to put egg on Gaetz's face. I have to hope that I'm missing something, and that they know what they're doing.
Oh, look, that's already being worked on:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/09/what-would-it-take-to-build-a-self-sustaining-astronaut-ecosystem-on-mars/
Something Elon needs.
Larry, if a handful of (Formerly) GOP might be persuaded to vote for a conservative, as defined by a respectable dictionary, rather than as defined by "Friends of Fascists", it might be an excellent thing.
Tim H:
if a handful of (Formerly) GOP might be persuaded to vote for a conservative
I assume you mean that that respectable conservative would be supported by enough Democratic votes to make up for the Republicans who wouldn't vote for him. From all I've seen this year, that wouldn't happen. All of the Democrats would vote for Jeffries, and more Republicans than that would have to agree on a new Republican speaker.
The GQP probably couldn't get enough of their own to vote for a crazy, except for one possibility. If they nominate Donald Trump for the position (under the insane but commonly-accepted theory that the Speaker doesn't have to be a House member). If they voted on Trump as Speaker, every Republican congressman would be terrorized against voting "no".
To their credit, electoral-vote.com does mention my concerns about the Democrats doing Gaetz's dirty work. They think the Dems did the right thing, but also mention some of the opposite concerns:
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2023/Items/Oct04-1.html
It is also a little surprising that McCarthy made no effort to save himself by reaching out to the Democrats. Maybe that's just another sign of how sick he is of the job. Maybe he knows that if he tried it, all the other Republicans would turn against him. Or maybe he knows that the Democrats just weren't open to this sort of cooperation. On that point, the Democrats' votes to eject McCarthy are being slurred by some as selfish and a sign that the blue team is, like the red team, unable to put the good of the country ahead of the needs of the party. We think those criticisms are off the mark. The moment McCarthy allowed his colleagues to commence a phony impeachment inquiry, he was guilty of a gross abuse of power and an offense against the Constitution. The Democrats were entirely justified in booting him, just for that. Had he shown some contrition, and called off the investigation, then maybe they could have shown some mercy. But as it is, his termination as Speaker was richly deserved as penance for his undemocratic behavior. He also made a spending deal with Joe Biden in May and then reneged on it. Oh, and last weekend he went on "Face the Nation" and blamed the Democrats for the House's malfunction. Is it surprising that the Democrats had enough of him?
...
If the Republicans do manage to come up with an actual speaker in the next week or so, then the budget process could be nigh-on impossible to manage. To start, everyone may hate Matt Gaetz, but clearly he and his cadre are more powerful today than they were yesterday. Meanwhile, the moderate Republicans in the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus are reportedly furious with their Democratic colleagues for not saving McCarthy. So, the House's most prominent "let's find a way to work together" group may collapse. How any speaker could cobble together 218 votes out of this, we don't quite know. And 218 votes for bills that can actually pass the Senate and get a White House signature? Monumentally difficult, it would appear.
Larry, I am suggesting that "Conservative" as defined by a respectable dictionary equals a Democrat, perhaps even the Honorable Mr. Jeffries. "Conservatives" as defined by the ideologic heirs of Roger Ailes equal "Dixiecrats" on a good day... too early to say out loud what they are on a bad day, but the word may occur to you on your commute today ;) .
Re: Feeding the Monster
Sen. John Kennedy R-La gave this advice to his House colleagues regarding vote to vacate: "Follow your heart, but take your brain with you." Now that's rich.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=makgkpGfO8o
I assume everyone in the US has been getting various notices that FEMA will test an emergency message process by blasting our cell phones with a test warning message this afternoon.
I don't personally follow right-wing media, but apparently they are freaking out over there that the plan is really to send a signal via our phones to activate the nanoparticles that were inserted into our bloodstreams by way of the COVID vaccines. They're warning that it uses some special magical technology which will send the signal even if your phone is turned off.
These people are EFFING INSANE!
Alan Brooks:
He [Matt Gaetz] also said “we haven’t passed a budget since I was in High School.”
He probably meant the last time he was in a high school looking for a new girlfriend. That could have been last week, or even yesterday.
Larry: I'm willing to accept a certain level of rights for a developed fetus, similar to the laws that we have now concerning animal welfare. But full personhood and/or citizenship?
Well, there was that woman in Texas who used the HOV lane, reasoning that legally her fetus was a person and thus her car had two passengers, and fought her ticket on those grounds…
Apparently there's now a bill tabled in Texas to explicitly allow pregnant women to use HOV lanes, using just that reasoning.
Duncan it is NOT ‘that simple.’ Hence the reason the Right glommed onto abortion as a central moral cause. It is the Jesus effect. He would side with progressives on almost every issue. The confeds needed a SINGLE moral issue that is both totally subjective (and hence cannot be refuted by facts AND that would cause Jesus to hold his nose and side with them. Baby-killing works for that moral standing-reversal-flip (in their minds).
Polemically, the Choice (mostly our allies) side are idiots. They for instance allow the righters to spread falsehoods about late-term abortion on demand. Though it is (and should be) ILLEGAL almost everywhere… though some LTAs are allowed for horrible situations like anencephaly, where THERE IS NO BRAIN. And forcing a woman to carry such a doomed thing is just cruel.
But to shrug off any notion that this is a vexing and often nebvulous and shifting topic is to be dogmatic. I prefer H Clinton’s line… ensure that abortion is safe, legal and RARE.
LH I stand corrected. The hypocrisy of ejecting KMcC with mostly Dem votes – for the crime of having used dem votes… is spectacular. MAGAs will forgive anything so long as it “owns” their foes.
…”a newly elected Speaker of the House chooses someone to serve as acting speaker in the event the job comes vacant. The acting speaker is Patrick McHenry (R-NC),”
I thought it would fall to the House clerk as it did when this Congress took session.
“…McHenry has all the powers of the speakership, but is not in the line of [presidential] succession.”
The current president pro tempore, Patty Murray is now 2nd after Kamala. I can sleep even better for a while.
Emergency signal triggering vaccines to… ‘do something’ to the vaccinated? Um… to Democrats? Note that the OPPOSITE crazy theory makes more logical sense... that the vaccinated ar PROTECTED from whatever the secret masters have planned. And indeed, that is even scientifically (remotely) possible, while the 'zap the unvaccinated' makes no biological sense. But they CAN'T make that better paranoid theory work because it makes their earlier refusal the stoopidthing.
TimH is spot on that recycling tech is as important as ISRU (in situ propellant and consumables utilization) for making Mars even remotely possible. Also needed, centrifugal artificial gravity, nuclear rockets to speed people there and and slow-heavy cargo freighters. ALL of those are needed and I have pushed several. So we have also at NASA’s Innovative & Advanced Concepts program – (NIAC).
I read the above posts & despair, as the above opinions only serve to prove that our intellectual class has lost touch with reality, having misidentified the true nature of their opposition.
The Republicans are not your enemy, neither are the oligarchs, billionaires & capitalists, nor are the slack-jawed yokels & anti-intellectuals, as all of these groups are actually the reluctant allies of urban civilisation.
And, most importantly, there are absolutely no gray-clad legions of massed confederates who conspire against you.
There is only a vanishingly small number of malcontents, at or about 10% of our total population, who rank low enough on Maslow's Hierarchy to desire change at any cost, but that 10% are more than enough to accomplish this task.
Just 10%: That's all it takes to destroy a nation, as was the case in Iran, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria & Yugoslavia.
Just 10%: That's all it took to turn the once celebrated 'Monte Carlo of the Middle East' into the dysfunctional 3rd world Lebanese hellhole that it is today.
TEN PERCENT.
You cannot resist for the following reasons:
(1) Your supply lines are too long, being global in length;
(2) You rely too much on COOPERATION for all of your life-giving necessities; and
(3) You confuse the top of Maslow's Hierarchy with its bottom.
Your only way forward is to give the malcontents exactly what they want.
Just GIVE UP & GIVE IN. We all know that you can do it right now because you've done it before, if only under the guise of civil rights & affirmative action.
The clock is ticking, so just give the Red States what they've asked for. And, sure, you can call it 'rural affirmative action' if you so desire.
Best
_____
The scuttlebutt is that the new #1 candidate for the House Speaker is DONALD TRUMP, so it appears that the failure of the Republican party is a progressive defeat.
Dr Brin:
Emergency signal triggering vaccines to… ‘do something’ to the vaccinated? Um… to Democrats? Note that the OPPOSITE crazy theory makes more logical sense... that the vaccinated ar PROTECTED from whatever the secret masters have planned
Their crazy theory isn't about which side is more likely to be vaccinated. The point they are trying to make is that the deep state and big pharma (who they recently went from toadying to into demonizing) have mandated vaccines for some nefarious reason, and this may be it.
I understand ginning up fear at some undefined future event, such as Judgement Day, to keep one's thralls pliable, but I have never understood focusing that angst on something which will very shortly have been proven to be wrong. Seems counterproductive.
Larry,
The RWNJ* universe is full of short-term predictions. The Jade Helm foofaraw was one. It doesn't seem to matter, because the NEXT one is scary and fits all the preconceptions. I think that the scarers create some kind of fear/anger high so strong that the scarees become addicted and unable to consider each conspiracy theory by itself.
Or, these people have the attention span attributed, unfairly, to goldfish.
Either way there seems to be no end to both scary stories and believers in them.
Pappenheimer
*I assume the far left** has similar stories, but they don't seem to get as much coverage.
** Hmmm. Is there a far center? People so disturbed by today's world that they become Leave it to Beaver clones and ignore the actual issues along with the insane threats?
FEMA doing a test of the emergency system
Here (NZ) we have had that for years!
When we had the big flood here (Gore)in 2020 my cell phone told me to evacuate - which I did - but the water did not breach the flood defences so all was fine - with my house - a number did get flooded
== Better late than never? ==
Gen. John Kelly, former chief of staff for Donald Trump, offered his harshest criticism yet of the former president with on-the-record confirmation of a number of damning stories about statements Trump made behind closed doors attacking US service members and veterans. “A person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them.’ A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me.’ A person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family – for all Gold Star families – on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.”
https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/02/politics/john-kelly-donald-trump-us-service-members-veterans/index.html
Kelly continues: “A person who is not truthful regarding his position on the protection of unborn life, on women, on minorities, on evangelical Christians, on Jews, on working men and women,” Kelly continued. “A person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about. A person who cavalierly suggests that a selfless warrior who has served his country for 40 years in peacetime and war should lose his life for treason – in expectation that someone will take action. A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.
“There is nothing more that can be said. God help us.”
I do not expect the California effects upon his syntactical and sequential/incremental logic parsing abilities to alter his worldviews and hatefulness. The latter are still unchanged, though I will be able to tell – clearly – when he leaves our fair (and unfairly maligned) state.
All I can say to his skimmed point above is that I will meet atty-escrowed wager stakes over my assertions if he will wager over his. For example that the Republican Party – until just the last year – has had just one agenda – wealth enhancement and preservation for a 0.001% elite around the world. NO other touted priority was actually pushed hard, when they had all power amid the LAZIEST Congresses in the nation’s history. Certainly they could have Built a Wall and barely made token efforts.
Every single madness that surges across both the oligarchs and the spear carriers is correct, as they wage all-out war vs ALL fact using professions, from science and teaching, medicine and law and civil service to the heroes of the FBI/Intel/Military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on terror.
As for relying on COOPERATION… well it is true that liberals frown slightly when I mention the PARTNER of cooperation… COMPETITION. And yet it is ONLY Democrats who act to enhance flat fair creative competition – Adam Smith’s prescription – in American life. In the world today, there is no more fierce enemy of flat-fair-creative competition than today’s GOP.
And now…
== Better late than never? ==
Gen. John Kelly, former chief of staff for Donald Trump, offered his harshest criticism yet of the former president with on-the-record confirmation of a number of damning stories about statements Trump made behind closed doors attacking US service members and veterans. “A person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them.’ A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me.’ A person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family – for all Gold Star families – on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.”
https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/02/politics/john-kelly-donald-trump-us-service-members-veterans/index.html
Kelly continues: “A person who is not truthful regarding his position on the protection of unborn life, on women, on minorities, on evangelical Christians, on Jews, on working men and women,” Kelly continued. “A person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about. A person who cavalierly suggests that a selfless warrior who has served his country for 40 years in peacetime and war should lose his life for treason – in expectation that someone will take action. A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.
“There is nothing more that can be said. God help us.”
Regarding nominating Trump as Speaker: he will be busy with prior time commitments in court, and maybe jail.
Bribing the rural areas has been done before, in the Progressive era, and called farm subsidies. It counterbalances the natural flow of money, via corporations, from country to city. The political cartoonist Nash once drew a cartoon of an enormous cow whose mouth is in the Midwest and whose udder is over New York City.
Dr.Brin wagers that the Republican Party – until just the last year – has had just one agenda – wealth enhancement and preservation for a 0.001% elite around the world. NO other touted priority was actually pushed hard...
Of course, I accept this challenge because all I have to prove is that the Republican Party has had MORE THAN just this one agenda of wealth enhancement and preservation for a 0.001%, so here they are:
(1) Stacking SCOTUS to achieve a conservative majority;
(2) The overturning of Roe v Wade; and
(3) Fast-tracking a COVID vaccine (Warp Speed).
And, just for shits & giggles, here's a NYT link detailing another 123 accomplishments claimed by Republicans under Trump:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/11/opinion/fact-check-trump.html
Btw, I just had a 'Billy Bathgate' moment after watching MSNBC tonight, flashing back to how Dutch Schultz beat his NYC racketeering rap by having his trial moved to rural Albany, where his rural jury absolutely hated city people & could be easily purchased by Schultz at bargain rates. Any wagers about this being Trump's new & improved legal strategy?
Best
_____
@Paradoctor:
And why not give the rural malcontent a massive cost-of-living increase, since the bribery of the urban malcontent has become a national pastime which even allows for the routine looting of our city centers? The rural malcontent must be allowed & encouraged to Burn, Loot & Murder as well because EQUITY.
Larry,
I don't think the procedural reasons to avoid claims of personhood will stand up to the emotional demands for it to happen. What prevents those emotions from running the table right now are the counter-emotions many of us feel at the notion of enslaving a woman as an unwilling incubator.
The fight is an emotional one and the only procedural argument I'd respect is the one that says government shouldn't pick sides just yet. We obviously disagree with each other and it is NOT some tiny faction against a large majority. It's a big split.
———
The only thing I think that moves that split is medical progress toward an effective artificial womb. When that happens you'll see the split change where choice advocates defect to a position that makes abortion mostly illegal with an out for unwanted children that uses artificial wombs. Personhood would be tied to viability in their eyes.
When I'm in a mood to debate this stuff calmly with anti-choice advocates, that's what I recommend they consider doing. The tech advance would sap support for their opponents. They usually come back with cost concerns and I fire back with questions about how much a life is worth to them and whether they'll accept my help supporting the research.
———
I don't mean to turn this into an abortion discussion, though. I wanted to point out that you represented my position regarding claims to rights correctly and then add to it a piece on how these debates can evolve. Abortion is just an example.
Alfred
While I accept that having a viable artificial womb would change the discussion the problem is that the woman would have to have an operation
You are basically removing the woman's right to control of her own body
If it was something simple and not very invasive....
But going into a womb and carefully removing the fetus and its life support system is NOT going to be a simple operation
Its more like being a kidney donor - or actually much worse as the whole thing would have to operate at a much finer level of detail and "deeper" into the woman's system
In the end the Abortion question is completely about the right of a woman to have control of her own body
Good idea, give the rural a COL increase.
Btw, 1, 2 and 3 are in linkage with wealth enhancement and preservation of a .001 elite::
reproduction of the elite.
Gingrich made some fatuous predictions way back when. For one, he stated: space tourism would “become common” in the ‘20s. His followers must have known he was merely being the Encourager, and that he himself didn’t think space tourism would be common this decade.
Alfred Differ:
I don't think the procedural reasons to avoid claims of personhood will stand up to the emotional demands for it to happen.
Government is all about procedure, and gets itself into trouble when it rules based on emotion. You get situations like having to execute a prisoner even if he's not the guilty party because you can't be soft on crime. The push for full personhood of the unborn seems driven solely by the imposition of a legal "right not to be aborted". It ignores other aspects of personhood, such as citizenship status and property ownership.
I can see a sliding scale of rights of the unborn based on stage of development, not all that different from the fact that children under 18 have lesser rights from those of adults. That doesn't deny personhood any more than it does to children. But treating conception the way we treat birth now? That brings up a whole range of issues around keeping track of the existences and disposition of zygotes. How would one even do that? Many women are pregnant for weeks without even knowing it themselves, and many conceptions terminate naturally without anyone knowing.
What prevents those emotions from running the table right now are the counter-emotions many of us feel at the notion of enslaving a woman as an unwilling incubator.
That is the aspect of the issue that I think the anti-choice side is ignoring. Fetal personhood doesn't change that. As someone mentioned above, my need for your kidney doesn't give me the right to have it removed from you, even if you are the only type-match.
Rape used to be treated as a property crime--taking something that belonged to the woman's husband. We've changed that to treating it as a crime against the woman's person, but in the process, kind of lost sight of what the severity of the crime is about. We tend to treat it as assault, where (for example) Donald Trump "raped" E Jean Caroll whether or not it was his penis that was inserted, because the crime is "touching her inappropriately" rather than "attempted impregnation." But if a fetus is a legal person and abortion is murder, then at the very least, the law must recognize rape as child endangerment. And if the woman dies as a result of a forced pregnancy, the rapist must be liable for manslaughter if not murder.
The only thing I think that moves that split is medical progress toward an effective artificial womb.
Procedurally, that makes some sense (though see caveats below). Emotionally, though, doesn't that put us on track for Brave New World?
When I'm in a mood to debate this stuff calmly with anti-choice advocates, that's what I recommend they consider doing. The tech advance would sap support for their opponents.
The tech would have to be available to the masses, not just to those who can pay hundreds of thousands of dollars. It would have to be available across geography, like gas stations. And even if this worked out, women must still be allowed to have dead or ancephalic fetuses removed, despite an incubator not helping them.
They usually come back with cost concerns and I fire back with questions about how much a life is worth to them and whether they'll accept my help supporting the research.
Yes, they never seem have cost concerns about what forced pregnancy costs the mother.
I don't mean to turn this into an abortion discussion, though. I wanted to point out that you represented my position regarding claims to rights correctly and then add to it a piece on how these debates can evolve. Abortion is just an example.
Fetal personhood was just an illustrative example for me too. The initial point was about personhood in the context of slavery.
duncan cairncross:
In the end the Abortion question is completely about the right of a woman to have control of her own body
No, it is about competing, irreconcilable rights of a pregnant woman and an "innocent" fetus. That's why it has remained contentious for so long. One side says the fetus's has a right to life, and the other says that the woman has a right of bodily autonomy. They can both be right, and neither claim solves the problem that the rights are in conflict.
LH, it's definitely a matter of irreconcilables, there are genuinely sincere folks who put their money where their mouth is, self-appointed representatives from God leveraging it for power on this earth, devotees of the lost cause hoping it hurts the descendants of slaves worse than the rest of us, oligarchs hoping we're distracted from their quest to enslave us all, entire congregations hoping no one notices one can't see some of their elders standing nest to a Grand Wizard. Most of the participants in the debate care little to nothing about the unborn.
I don't believe in an afterlife, certainly not a Hell (Grandfathered in when Saul of Tarsus started preaching to Pagans), but there are those who might qualify for residence if it existed. Note, I've only read John Card's translation and Niven & Pournelle's fantasy novel inspired by Dante, and the sequel.
Obviously the devisors of Auto (in) Correct need to talk to more English majors...that's John Ciardi, who in a time that was screwed up differently, one could hear on NPR.
The obvious...
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/02/opinion/columnists/maga-republicans-ukraine.html
...
Why, then, do MAGA politicians want to cut Ukraine off?
The answer is, unfortunately, obvious. Whatever Republican hard-liners may say, they want Putin to win. They view the Putin regime’s cruelty and repression as admirable features that America should emulate. They support a wannabe dictator at home and are sympathetic to actual dictators abroad.
So pay no attention to all those complaints about how much we’re spending in Ukraine. They aren’t justified by the actual cost of aid, and the people claiming to be worried about the cost don’t really care about the money. What they are, basically, is enemies of democracy, both abroad and at home.
To continue in the Billy Bathgate & BLM motif:
This is an awful nice civilization you got here and it would be a shame if something bad happened to it. Maybe you should consider some sort of insurance policy to pacify society's more undesirable elements, like an affirmative action program for our more disadvantaged citizens. Blackmail? Perish the thought! I'm only suggesting 'reparative justice' and/or 'equity'. Yeah, that's the ticket. I'm suggesting more equity, payable to me & mine, in bimonthly installments of small unmarked bills, in perpetuity, until we can negotiate a much larger settlement. Or, something really bad could happen soon, very soon.
Even so, any type of negotiation with, extortion from or coexistence with intransigent redefiners like Larry_H is near impossible, since words & promises have no meaning to them, as they insist that 'inappropriate touching' equals rape, speech equals violence, murder equals healthcare and subservience equals democracy. I'd call these people 'pathological liars' if I could but I'm afraid that they would interpret my damning words as glowing compliments. They are victimizers who have redefined themselves as the primary victims, the word of the day being 'crybully'.
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Locum said: "Just GIVE UP & GIVE IN."
And that, in a nutshell, is Republican politics.
I ain't agin _paying_ up and giving _out,_ if that counteracts destabilizing psychohistorical forces. That's what governing _is._ But giving _up?_ Buzz off, pest.
Despair, like the hat-red of the red-hats, is a reagent that damages its container. It's true that insanity and despair do confer a tactical political advantage. Read Eric Hoffer's "The True Believer" for details. On the other hand, sanity and hope confer a strategic advantage. Therefore the issue is decided by logistics - i.e. reason.
duncan
You are basically removing the woman's right to control of her own body
I'm not. I personally am inclined to side with the would-be mother who'd rather-not-be. However, the position we take needs allies because we are rejecting a claim to a right for the fetus. Claims ALWAYS bring high emotions into the conflict. What I think will happen is we shall lose many of our allies leading to a win for the claimants.
…Abortion question is completely about the right of a woman to have control of her own body…
It's not… and you are being an absolutist. You are one of the people who will not be swayed to accept the claim, but I suspect you would eventually find yourself in a small minority IF artificial wombs advance far enough. You'd have the purity of your belief, but lose the bigger battle.
———
On a personal level, I'm unsure where to draw a line that determines personhood for a fetus. I get more and more squeamish as the fetus gets older.
I DO know where to draw a line for the pregnant woman. It's her body. Period.
The problem arises when she wants to do something that makes me squeamish. What do I do then? For now, I turn away letting her do what she feels she must. Many can't do that.
Alan,
…he himself didn’t think space tourism would be common this decade.
Gingrich was actually quite a space fan. He wanted the frontier opened. I know some folks who worked (slightly indirectly) with him toward that goal.
There were actually a few fans in the House. The problem is the space industrial complex was a robust political force and his vision of our future in space did not align with theirs.
I'm sure Gingrich was aware of the politics meaning he was an Encourager, but he actually DID want this stuff to happen.
———
BTW, the 20's aren't over yet. Space tourism HAS started, so let's consider the jury as still out. Yah… it's a stretch, but we've still got half a decade to go.
Everyone else,
Has anyone read Lori Garver's book from last year?
‘Common’ signifies a much lower price. Including life insurance.
Loc might be happier in a house of worship. Congregations think in a similar manner to him; there’s no hope, they say—so they whine that life isn’t what they anticipated it to be.
Their standards are impossibly high, and what do they do when chronic disappointment sets in? They hold someone else culpable (e.g. “Jews control the media”).
Alfred Differ:
On a personal level, I'm unsure where to draw a line that determines personhood for a fetus. I get more and more squeamish as the fetus gets older.
That's exactly why I suggested a sliding scale of increasing rights as the fetus develops. We already do this with the post-born, as those under 18 (and for some things, under 21) are considered persons, but don't have the full set of rights and responsibilities that adults have. Toddlers even less so than teenagers or grade-schoolers.
At some stage of development, a fetus could be considered to have a right to live, but it would be subject to the woman's right of bodily integrity and self-defense. Artificial wombs would provide a separate path, but would not completely eliminate the problem. There's still the messy process of getting the fetus out of the OG womb.
The problem arises when she wants to do something that makes me squeamish. What do I do then? For now, I turn away letting her do what she feels she must. Many can't do that.
Many sincerely can't do that because they believe that killing an innocent child is immoral. To them, turning away and letting her do what she wants is akin to turning away from the Holocaust and letting Hitler do what he wanted. I recognize that there are incompatible, competing rights at play here.
I will also cynically point out that many of today's anti-abortion fanatics would have been just fine with Hitler. But not all. Some are sincere in their deeply-held beliefs.
Alan Brooks:
Loc might be happier in a house of worship
The rest of your post doesn't paint a picture of anyone being happy in a house of worship. Just sayin'
I briefly wondered if locum had been hijacked. But no, while his syntax and use of context seem much better, even California can't fix strawmanning delusional rage-paranoia. Suckling the most fundamental of desperate Fox memes: that "ALL librals are just like their own radical lunatics! Obviously, since OUR raging lunatics fill and control OUR party, it must be true of dems!!"
Except it's not. And hence, there's no overlap by any of L's denunciations with the ACTUAL opinions held here, even by LarryHart. There ARE some lefty-loonies in America making dreadful noises and thus harming the very causes they claim to espouse... but not here, son.
Still, breath, drink. It's doing you good, even if you remain a jibbering jerk.
---
LH, so many just cannot bring themselves to see the obvious. That mere ‘admiration for Putin” can’t explain the devotion to him rampant on much of Mad US Right. Much to the confusion of fellow Foxites who at least have the decency to dislike Kremlin bullies. What’s obvious (I repeat) is blackmail. The notion that the KGB hasn’t been using kompromat leveraging is simply boggling.
Duncan there are limits to your grand declaration. Hypothetical –(that has happened) – Sy couple starts a pregnancy, then divorces in extreme anger when the fetus is at 6 months. Has the mother a right to take vengeance on her ex by aborting then? There have been examples and cases. It’s one reason most states outlaw late term abortions.
Perhaps consider it under contract law. Cerainly if the birth does happen, the ex-husband is obligated to provide sustenance for the resulting human for 21 years, even if she bans him from ever seeing the child. It Is impossible to consider a parallel, here? I am genuinely curious about yur take on that.
I don't use the phrases 'pro-choice' or 'pro-life' because they're too broad. Gun control is also 'pro-life', to a respectable dictionary; and likewise gun rights are 'pro-choice'. I prefer the accurate terms "pro-abortion", "anti-abortion", "pro-gun", and "anti-gun".
I call the whole dispute the 'guns versus abortion debate'. Its terms are: shall we end unwanted human lives pre-birth by D&C, or post-birth by bullets? Both sides agree that some humans need killing, to defend the life-and-property rights of other humans; they just differ on a detail of timing.
I propose a compromise. The three-trimester Roe v Wade gradation for abortions; the full text of Amendment 2, including 'well-regulated militia', for guns. Fortunately both of these compromises were settled law before radical nihilists overturned them. Re-establishing them will be truly 'conservative', in the non-Orwellian sense.
Long ago, when I was a teenager arguing with my father, he said, "Ahhh, you'll turn into a conservative in your old age!" Stung to the quick, I said, "If so, then it'll be on my own terms!" Face it, fellow liberals: now we are the conservative faction!
Larry,
That's exactly why I suggested a sliding scale of increasing rights as the fetus develops.
Makes sense, but that's in the procedural weeds for me. There won't be 'just' one way since we've got 50 states and much of how we do it now with children is actually unwritten or common/case law. Procedures that work will likely be discovered rather than written, so we shall all have more opportunities to argue/debate how it is to be done. 8)
———
I recognize that YOU recognize the sincerity of some of their deeply held beliefs. Incompatible claims indeed.
Alan,
Tim Dodd (and a few others) is scheduled to go on one of the BFR's when it flies in a production sense… which probably won't be far away. I assure you he doesn't have $20-25M to drop on this like Tito did.
There are also the Axiom flights that go up on F9's. They count at least partially, though the people being flown are still mostly funded by governments.
Also on an F9 was the Inspiration4 flight a couple years ago. All civilian crew.
Prices are coming down and flight frequency is going up. I'm not sure how they handle the life insurance aspect, but F9's have a pretty good track record.
What I was trying to point out, though, is that Gingrich was actually one of the believers in space. Me and my friends recognized him and a couple of other congress critters as one of us.
The D party favors order and discipline; the R party favors chaos and conflict. Those familiar with JMS's "Babylon 5" series will recognize in this the dispute between the Vorlons and the Shadows. The D's are the Vorlon party, and the R's are the Shadow party.
Mr. Morden to Trump, and then to Gaetz: "What do you want?"
MTG and co. would tell Mr Morden they would like Trump to be made House Speaker (doesn't have to be a rep.)
I recall this scenario being discussed here some time ago.
Please tell me such a person would not be #3!
Alfred Differ:
Gingrich was actually one of the believers in space. Me and my friends recognized him and a couple of other congress critters as one of us.
Didn't he write some science fiction? And romance novels?
I remember an old "X-Files" episode which established that the recurring evil old villain (whose name I no longer remember) did all of his evil crap because he could never get published as a writer. Might that be Gingrich's tragedy as well?
Tony Fisk:
Please tell me such a person would not be #3!
I'm not clear that there is any language which would prevent a duly-elected speaker from being next in line behind the VP for the presidency. (The current speaker pro-tem does not have that honor)
The notion which is now accepted as fact--that a non-member of the House can be Speaker--seems to be a recent idea. I doubt that the writers of the law which established the Speaker as second runner up to the presidency considered this possibility.
Larry, Alfred, Dr Brin
I agree we should have a "sliding scale of rights" for the fetus
Where I see a problem is having that scale of rights go to a HIGHER place than a living breathing human being
As long as I can say NO to a request for my blood or organs then a "fetus" even with "full human rights" cannot overrule the right of the mother to deny the use of her blood and organs
I would note that countries where the "Gubbermint" has no say in the decision - like Canada - all have much lower levels of abortion
Trump as speaker
But the Republican conference's rules for the 118th Congress suggest Trump could be ineligible to serve as speaker. At the beginning of the year, House Republicans adopted a set of rules including Rule 26, which says a member of leadership who has been indicted for a felony that could carry a sentence of two or more years in prison "shall" vacate their position. Trump faces 91 felony charges across his four criminal state and federal court cases.
"A member of the Republican Leadership shall step aside if indicted for a felony for which a sentence of two or more years imprisonment may be imposed," the Republican conference rules for the 118th Congress state.
Why, then, do MAGA politicians want to cut Ukraine off? What they are, basically, is enemies of democracy, both abroad and at home.
What balderdash! What the lying liar above is saying, as quoted by Larry_H, is that all those people who do not support endless war in Ukraine are 'enemies of democracy', an argument which subverts & inverts the very definition of democracy. There's also a recent Reuters poll that says only 41% (a minority) of Americans still support aid to Ukraine. Let's put Ukrainian funding to a VOTE, shall we? You remember VOTING, don't you? The whole democratic WILL OF THE PEOPLE thing? God protect us from these scurrilous redefiners.
Kudos to Paradoctor, btw, for taking a strong moral stance against bribery, extortion, welfare, entitlement, affirmative action & appeasement, whose ending will surely play out well in our race-blind inner cities, as it will give us all the opportunity to watch our cities burn on telly from our comfy chairs, assuming that urban electrification persists after our rural utility providers hear that big moral 'FU' of yours, bringing us to the second word of the day:
The word is 'strike', meaning work stoppage, industrial action, walkout, and/or mutiny. Prepare for more of them.
Lastly, there's an old saying that describes liberals as future conservatives who have yet to be robbed, mistreated, mugged or betrayed, but that time is coming fast. Why, it was only yesterday that the average US democrat knew that a southern border wall was a racist xenophobic boondoggle, yet here we are a day later with the democrat Biden Administration pledging to build a southern border wall. How's that for cognitive dissonance? The Democrats are actually building Trump's Wall for him !!!
I just can't wait to say 'I told you so' when you gun up after having your Second Amendment 'Come to Jesus' moment. By then, however, I may have already switched sides on the abortion debate because the legalization of abortion up until the 240th trimester is starting to appeal to me in a big way.
Best
duncan cairncross:
House Republicans adopted a set of rules including Rule 26, which says a member of leadership who has been indicted for a felony that could carry a sentence of two or more years in prison "shall" vacate their position.
Since when have rules ever stopped Republicans from doing what they want to do? The emoluments clause of the Constitution was violated every day of Trump's presidency. If the Republicans want Trump as Speaker, they'll simply rescind the rule.
I think what may stop Trump from being Speaker is that he would see that as a consolation prize, which would hurt his ego. Then again, if he's third in line for the presidency, the Secret Service would have to beef up security on #1 and #2. The Second Amendment might well be Trump's easiest path to the presidency.
locumranch:
What the lying liar above [Krugman] is saying, as quoted by Larry_H, is that all those people who do not support endless war in Ukraine are 'enemies of democracy', an argument which subverts & inverts the very definition of democracy.
You effing hypocrite! You support endless war against immigrants crossing our southern border. You would not consider just giving them what they want as a means of avoiding conflict. If an armed hostile force were invading from that border, I can't imagine you advocating appeasement in order to avoid war. Yet, that's what you expect Ukraine to do, and what you expect us to tell Ukraine to do.
...watch our cities burn on telly from our comfy chairs, assuming that urban electrification persists after our rural utility providers hear that big moral 'FU' of yours
Rural utility providers? Maybe for some places.
The word is 'strike', meaning work stoppage, industrial action, walkout, and/or mutiny. Prepare for more of them.
You must be tired of predicting things that don't happen over and over and over and over and over again.
I may have already switched sides on the abortion debate because the legalization of abortion up until the 240th trimester is starting to appeal to me in a big way.
Ok, I know I've tried to quit you before and curiosity gets the better of me, especially when others I haven't ghosted quote or respond to you. But thank you for showing us in black and white the Brownshirt that you are. Dr Brin may have some aspirational fantasy that you might yet come over to the good side. I have no such misconception. When someone tells me who he is, I believe him.
I know it is impossible to claim that I there is anything I will never ever do again, but I'm setting a floor at 1000 days. That's comes out serendipitously to an easy date to remember--July 1, 2026. I solemnly swear and affirm that I will not read a locumranch post until at least that date. Good luck ranting to the wind. Respond as you will, but I won't see it.
Locumranch misunderstands me. Bribery is normal. Various forms of it are the foundation of civilization. Others are not. The distinction, I think, is how fair and flat the bribery is, and how open it is to competition.
Conservatives are future liberals who have yet to notice that their wages were stolen from them.
Maybe the Ukrainian war is unpopular here, but it's very popular in Ukraine, and very very unpopular in Russia.
Larry: The point they are trying to make is that the deep state and big pharma (who they recently went from toadying to into demonizing) have mandated vaccines for some nefarious reason, and this may be it.
Don't Americans learn that George Washington mandated inoculation against smallpox, even though it was technically against the laws of the Continental Congress?
https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2016/09/how_vaccination_helped_win_the_revolutionary_war.html
Paradoctor: Bribing the rural areas has been done before, in the Progressive era, and called farm subsidies.
It is still done today, it's just that the bulk of your agriculture is owned by big corporations, so they are the beneficiaries of those subsidies. US farm subsidies are roughly comparable to those horrible socialist EU ones. /s
Larry: Emotionally, though, doesn't that put us on track for Brave New World?
Or Bujold's Vorkosigan universe, where uterine replicators are used by all civilized people (including, eventually, Barrayarans). Note that she portrays them as being used as part of a system that combines aggs and sperm externally as well, so there is no need for a woman to undergo an operation.
Duncan: I would note that countries where the "Gubbermint" has no say in the decision - like Canada - all have much lower levels of abortion
Canada also had a much lower rate of murder even when guns were basically unregulated. It was a cultural difference rather than just the availability of a particular tool.
I would have a lot more respect for anti-abortionists "sincerely held beliefs" if they advocated equally strongly for pre-natal nutrition programs, child care, functional sex-ed, and stringing rapists up by the appropriate body part. But generally speaking they don't.
Question for Americans: why does the second amendment protect someone open-carrying an AR-15 in many places, but not a sword in those same places? Both are arms, after all. Neither are muskets like the militias originally used.
Related question: how can someone who purports to interpret laws by their original meaning be so ignorant of grammar as it was used when the laws they are interpreting were written? Are American law schools really this bad at education?
Robert:
Question for Americans: why does the second amendment protect someone open-carrying an AR-15 in many places, but not a sword in those same places? Both are arms, after all. Neither are muskets like the militias originally used.
I've been singing that song for years. The Second Amendment does not mention guns or firearms in particular. If gun possession may not be infringed, then neither may sword possession or tactical nuke possession.
But the power of the NRA isn't directed at those other things.
Related question: how can someone who purports to interpret laws by their original meaning be so ignorant of grammar as it was used when the laws they are interpreting were written? Are American law schools really this bad at education?
It's more that Republican judges will use any excuse they can come up with it to rule the way they want, even the things that contradict the other things.
Paradoctor that is just more ‘bothside-ism.’ The ONLY group in American political life who try to protect and enhance the concept of COMPETITION that is flat-open-fair-creative and welcoming to the greatest variety of ready competitors – in a regime of general transparency, accountability and mixed private+government (short ROI vs long term) investment strategies - is the moderate majority of Democrats. That’s NOT Vorlon.
Locum is better at articulating… crap, alas. The poll he quotes is an idiotic outlier based on leading questions. A VAST majority of Americans know that Putin and his “ex” commissars are as evil and plotting our downfall under czarist emblems as the SAME paranoid plotters were, when they wore hammers and sickles. Fool.
More the fool. A majority of NEW gun owners have been liberal and multi-racial for at least a decade. They take lessons and are quiet about it. And each of us has just one trigger finger at a time. Unless you are among the tens of thousands of nerds and officers attackied by a mad confederacy whose remaining loonies have no knowledge of drones or cyber or chem, nuclear and so on. How’s that war on science gonna go for you dopes? Along with the heroes of the FBI/Intel/Military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on terror.
LH: Whaaaaa? Did you actually write this? : “You effing hypocrite! You support endless war against immigrants crossing our southern border. You would not consider just giving them what they want as a means of avoiding conflict. If an armed hostile force were invading from that border, I can't imagine you advocating appeasement in order to avoid war. Yet, that's what you expect Ukraine to do, and what you expect us to tell Ukraine to do.”
Careful, lad. Immigration is a genuine problem. I favor aggressively telling the lordly oligarch families in Nicaragua and Venezuela (‘leftist’ monsters) and Honduras and El Salvador (Rightist monsters) “You are waging war against your own people and it has become a war against the USA. You have one month to stop that and govern in ways that offer hope at home.
Again wager time. Except Utah and maybe Alaska, Red run states average higher in almost EVERY TURPITUDE. And no one has the guts to hammer that point.
Though I have to admit that Locum’s latest may indicate he’s flown home.
«It is still done today, it's just that the bulk of your agriculture is owned by big corporations, so they are the beneficiaries of those subsidies»
That’s not true.
Most of the US agriculture is owned by family farms.
Except by “family farms” I mean farms owned by families of wealthy landlords.
Corporate farms make up 2 percent of all farms in the US, the rest are family farms, and while the “small family units” represent 90% of the two million or so agricultural exploitation they produce only a fifth of your food. Rural America is pretty much a landlordistan, whether you’re comfortable admitting it or not.
https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2020/01/23/look-americas-family-farms
Dr. Brin:
Let's make a deal: it's not bothsiderism for me to say that some of the Democrats are Vorlonic, and they influence their party, but that all of the Republicans are Shadowy, for Shadow logic rules their party.
Being Vorlonic is not entirely bad. It's about order and discipline, a.k.a. "conservatism" in the non-Orwellian sense. But of course it isn't entirely good; for not all things deserve to be conserved. Shadow logic does in fact have some logic; chaos and conflict, a.k.a. competition.
The Vorlons and the Shadows both had a point, so they had to compromise. They didn't; they got self-righteous and over-certain; and for that Captain Sheridan told them both to get the Hell out of our galaxy.
Their error (and the error of a few D's and almost all R's) is absolutism. An absolute truth is a half-truth plus a drop of poison.
Paradoctor,
Being Vorlonic is not entirely bad.
I'm going to have to disagree. Both the Vorlons and Shadows had to leave for the younger races to mature naturally. Both effectively designed outcomes leaving little room for us to be what we are.
I think it is a stretch to use those races as political analogies. Neither party is as omnipotent let alone omniscient. Both parties are just... us being what we are.
Laurent Weppe,
Rural America is pretty much a landlordistan, whether you’re comfortable admitting it or not.
That has been my experience too. I got to see some of it happening (indirectly) here in California. My first girl friend's father was a farmer. A shady/cut throat partner changed his course in life a bit. He still farmed after that, but in a much smaller way serving niche restaurant needs. Direct deals so no involvement in the futures market.
US farmland is mostly owned by modern rentiers.
Larry,
Didn't he write some science fiction? And romance novels?
I heard that he did, but I never looked into it. He was obviously a romantic, so I didn't need more evidence. 8)
If you made a list of all people in the US who want to see the space frontier opened for migration, you'd probably find we cut across all political and religious opinions. One of the best decisions made by the 501(c)3 I helped was to convince most of the members of this, thus the futility of bring political arguments into our efforts. Most of us got pretty good at tolerating each other's idiocies in exchange for allies in opening the frontier.
-----
Another guy in the romantics space camp was Rohrabacher.
You might not be surprised that a group of our folks got caught up in scandals. Some got indicted. One or two were convicted. So... I'm not kidding about our need to learn tolerance of idiocies. I find it is still necessary today. 8)
«Let's make a deal: it's not bothsiderism for me to say that some of the Democrats are Vorlonic, and they influence their party, but that all of the Republicans are Shadowy, for Shadow logic rules their party.»
Huh, yeah but no, the comparison is bullshit, for a couple of reasons.
First, the ideological differences between the Vorlons and Shadows concern only the uplifting of the younger races. The Vorlons adopt a paternalistic approach, while the Shadows give more leeway to their wards but also push toward conflict because they believe military struggle will make them more clever and strong, but neither ancient race care about how their rival rule themselves.
Their conflict started as a disagreement about which “pedagogy” was the better and as eons pass and neither one was willing to concede, it devolved from a disagreement between two groups of learned people into a genocidal feud where each belligerent was trying to exterminate its rival’s protégés, which is why Sheridan eventually pull a “Pox on both your houses” because following either side just means one will risk being exterminated by the other one.
Second, the GOP, especially its current MAGA incarnation, has nothing to do with either group: before the World/Shadow conflict devolved into a petty feud with super-nukes, both groups could at least claim that they were trying to help people: the MAGA cult on the other hand is little more than aggravated White people furious that the privileges, lifestyle and material comforts of aristocrats they thought had been promised to them never materialized: neither fictional species display such level of immature entitlement, the MAGA-ists are far closer to the decandent Centauri pinning for the “good old days” when all Centauri of good extraction owned his stable of Narn slaves.
Dr Brin:
LH: Whaaaaa? Did you actually write this? "You effing hypocrite!...
I originally didn't write "effing". I had to edit myself to tone it down.
Careful, lad. Immigration is a genuine problem.
And I don't see what I said contradicting that. I took the conservative POV and asserted that they would never stop endless resistance against unarmed migrants, let alone an armed force, for the sake of peace in our time. So why do they insist that Ukraine stop their own resistance?
Though I have to admit that Locum’s latest may indicate he’s flown home.
I had already read the entire rant, down to the part where he essentially accuses us of "abortion after birth" simultaneously justifying his own desire to take up arms for the Confederacy. I know you've heard this before, but I really am done reading that crap, as you (and others on this list--hi PSB) used to advise me many years back. If I give in to curiosity before July 1, 2026, I will have broken a solemn vow made in front of witnesses.
Alfred Differ: see the space frontier opened
And not just in the US. I call the half century between 1945 and 1995 the 'Asimovian Epoch'. We flirted with leaping out into the solar system, but were seduced by the siren song of amusement. We seem to be slowly awakening again, weighed down by the old vampires of feudalism, but still awakening.
@Larry Hart:
Yes, you are what you read. Be careful what doors you open.
electoral-vote.com has an opinion of Jim Jordan's candidacy for the speakership
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2023/Items/Oct06-1.html
Meanwhile, in a normal political world, Jordan's candidacy would be inconceivable. We called him a punk, which carries positive connotations of "justifiable rebellion against the system" but also negative connotations of "jerk." We definitely meant it in the negative sense. He's a self-aggrandizing ass who is more than willing to sacrifice friends, colleagues, the Constitution, etc., in service of his own self-serving goals. He may just be a vassal (or a villein, if you prefer), but he's nearly as divisive as his feudal lord Donald Trump, and would drive Democrats to the polls in droves in 2024. He is complicit in efforts to overturn the 2020 election. And it's not like he was a great guy before he was elected, either. Most obviously, he is credibly accused of looking the other way while the college wrestlers under his tutelage were victimized by a serial molester.
Any chance this peels off any pro-military Trump voters?
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/05/us/politics/trump-nuclear-submarine-classified-documents.html
Shortly after he left office, former President Donald J. Trump shared apparently classified information about American nuclear submarines with an Australian businessman during an evening of conversation at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The businessman, Anthony Pratt, a billionaire member of Mar-a-Lago who runs one of the world’s largest cardboard companies, went on to share the sensitive details about the submarines with several others, the people said. Mr. Trump’s disclosures, they said, potentially endangered the U.S. nuclear fleet.
...
scidata:
you are what you read
I read a lot of sci-fi, mysteries, and comic books.
Like any good story, that explains a lot.
Heard on Stephanie Miller's radio show by comedian John Fuglsang:
Rudy Giuliani's liver demands a human transplant.
Laurent: Most of the US agriculture is owned by family farms.
Except by “family farms” I mean farms owned by families of wealthy landlords.
Does the USDA count as a family farm something like the typical chicken farm, where the operators are basically running a franchise operation with no flexibility on how they do things but taking on all the risk?
If so, then it sounds (to me) like the corporations which classify someone as an 'independent contractor' when they are effectively an employee.
LW: “the MAGA cult on the other hand is little more than aggravated White people furious that the privileges, lifestyle and material comforts of aristocrats they thought had been promised to them never materialized:”
My view is related, but importantly different.
1. MAGAs defend oligarchies of inheritance brats in part because feudal obeisance to such lords runs in our veins; we are all descended from those harems. Look at our movies! They tend feudalist in drama.
2. Above all, MAGAs hate the nerds who they bullied in junior high school, but whose good grades turned out to be beneficial and empowering, when they went to university. Scratch the surface and nerd-hatred is by far the most common theme on Fox etc. Railing against universities is THE thing now.
Dr Brin:
My view is related, but importantly different.
Not as different as you seem to think. They can be white supremacists and detest the smartypants who threaten their place in the hierarchy.
They believe they have been promised that because they are white, male, and nominally-Christian, that they occupy a privileged place in society which allows them to physically enforce with threats and violence without legal repercussion. In modern society where intellect is more of a ticket to wealth and fame than brawn is, the nerds they used to pick on in high school occupy that upper strata, and are furthermore able to use that lofty position to exact comeuppance.
I don't see the "white supremacist" and "nerd-hatred" theories to be in conflict. There's certainly plenty of overlap in the Venn diagram.
* * *
I'm reminded by the opening flashbacks in the movie Broadcast News, when the anchorman character in his high school days is getting beaten up by a crowd of dumb jocks. He taunts back at the jocks that "You'll never clear more than $19,000 a year." After the beating, some of the jocks are conversing with each other, "Nineteen thousand. All right!"
(Paraphrased from memory, but the gist is there)
Contradiction much? They want to see people getting things done". so they vote for the obstructionists?
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/03/us/matt-gaetz-florida-voters.html
...
Tim Hudson, 26, a lifelong Pensacola resident, has voted for Mr. Gaetz. Upon learning on Tuesday about the congressman’s successful ouster of Mr. McCarthy, Mr. Hudson offered only more praise.
“That just makes me support him even more,” Mr. Hudson said.
He added that the ouster of Mr. McCarthy “speaks to how the world really is right now. We’re tired. We’re fed up. We want to see people start getting things done.”
Re: hatred of nerds
It's really too bad that they don't embrace falsification a la Popper. They could have great fun just by finding black swans and seeing nerds willingly admit their errors. Logic isn't that hard. It's almost as if they're not simply opposed to science, they're afraid of it.
In a darkly amusing way, solving our societal issues by hating on nerds reminds me of an old film "Who Is Killing The Great Chefs Of Europe?". Since a story like that is spoiled by characters being sensible, a solution is attempted, not by teaching a gourmand to eat small portions, but by slaying those crafting the temptations. As in that film, the nerds aren't the true issue, but the "Vampire squids" who see satiety as a character flaw.
scidata,
And not just in the US.
I don't doubt it because we aren't all THAT different from our cousins to the north. (Y'all might be a touch saner at the moment.) It's just that there aren't all that many of you... so I haven't met enough to be sure of the trend. 8)
Two of our foundation people WERE from your side of the border. Publishers. Without them, many of us never would have had a way to get our message into bookstores.
It's almost as if they're not simply opposed to science, they're afraid of it.
Of course they are. Many people are. Facing criticism that reveals one's errors is scary @#^%.
No joke. It's scary. 8)
I have a Hypothesis - not enough data to call it a Theory
The Hypothesis is that the root cause of the problem with America is in their schools
The problem is that SPORT - sport at a professional level in Schools - is like some obscene monster that consumes the souls of the teachers and the students
THAT is the reason for the "Jocks v Nerds"
Here (NZ) and in the UK we have sport in High School - but it is a secondary function - the Sports Teacher is on the lower rung
We don't have magnificent stadiums - we have Playing Fields
When there is a School Game the only spectators are some of the parents
At University we still don't have Sports Stadiums!!!
At School and University (in Scotland) we had the Rugby Team - they were considered to be strange people with funny shaped balls
Glasgow University had 10,000 Scots - but no "Jocks"
When I lived in the USA I helped out at the local High School - we won the "World Championship Solar Races" two years running
So I saw a wee bit about High School life - and it was horribly LIKE the portrayal in the various films and things
And completely UNLIKE High School Life in Scotland and NZ
Heh. It's not the schools. It's us.
We ARE barbarians.
Alfred
Americans have some Barbarian in them
But there are some Nations that have a LOT more - The Scots, The Scandinavians
And they don't have the same issues - if anything the problem with America is that too many of your citizens are afraid!!
When America faced the USSR and WW3 - they were not afraid
Now so many cannot walk to the grocery store without their guns
What changed the Land of the Brave to the Land of the Afraid?
Bribery is normal. Various forms of it are the foundation of civilization.
This comment is an incredibly honest rarity, not only for this site, but for western society in general, as the truth is a bitter pill to swallow.
Corruption, bribery, deceit & betrayal are all normal human social behaviors, whereas it is the selfless moral niceties that are the rare exception, insomuch as all the argument about relative morality amounts to little more than propaganda, advertising copy & magical thinking.
I know this because I am a failed idealist, having much more in common with Larry_H than I'd like to admit, after being gaslighted from an early age into believing that people & society were basically good, caring & moral, but then reality set in.
After being exposed to malignant social indifference in school, I internalized this indifference and accepted that only my immediate family & friends cared whether I lived or died, whereas Larry_H apparently choose the path of rationalization and imagined a veritable army of brown-shirted enemies who CARED DEEPLY about his continued existence & destruction.
For an act of rationalization, this is typical as one starts with the desired conclusion (People CARE about me, dammit) and then attempts to shoehorn in all available evidence as an afterthought. This is especially true for the cited article by Krugman who starts with his conclusion (We must support Ukraine) and ends by insisting that all those who fail to support Ukraine are 'enemies of democracy'.
In terms of 'Nerd Hatred' and 'The War on Smart People', this type of rationalization often qualifies as an 'Idea of Reference'. The bullied nerd or smart person starts with their preferred conclusion (People hate the intelligent), only to conclude that the people who hate the intelligent do so because this is what stupid people do, but the truth is much more disturbing.
The sad truth is that most people DO NOT THINK ABOUT YOU MUCH AT ALL, nor do they care about your intelligence, as they only care & worry about themselves. IF people hate you -- and, for the sake of argument, we'll assume they do -- then they hate you for your personality & how you choose to interact with them because you probably put-on-airs, act like a Know-It-All & order them around since you think that your intelligence makes you better than everyone who's not smart.
This is also why intelligent people hate the aristocracy so much because, deep down, they believe that their superior intelligence supercedes Divine Right & gives smart people the right to dominate others.
Best
_______
With all your talk about the RENTIER CLASS, I had something of epiphany about the Abortion Debate, as women insist that Abortion is all about FEMALE SELF-OWNERSHIP:
Women are a Rentier Class because they OWN reproduction, child bearing & sexual access, and this OWNERSHIP allows women to extract usurious RENT from men for both sex & reproduction.
Now, tell me again how we must confiscate rentier wealth & redistribute it to those who lack it.
Duncan when I was younger I read a book called
CULT|U|RE
AGAIN|S|T
M|A|N
and a lot of it was about the hypercompetitiveness of US school culture. (Not only sports and academic but also dating culture.)
The problem of course with a hypercompetitive culture is that it creates more disaffected losers than it creates empowered winners.
Oh and the answer to locum story about "only my friends and family cared about me" is of course that it suffers from the problem of the blindness caused by methodological individualism. We can care about the society we live in (and the way in which it interacts with each other) as well as about individuals. He seems to be blind to this.
duncan,
You think the Scots and various Scandinavians are still barbarians? When the Scots were... so were the English and Irish.
No. We STILL are. It will fade eventually as The West matures, but probably not this century... at least for us.
When America faced the USSR and WW3 - they were not afraid
Nonsense. I was there for the latter half. My father was there for all of it. We were definitely afraid. Why else do you think we threatened to nuke the whole damn world?
Barbarians can be afraid of all sorts of things. What makes us count as barbarians is how we respond.
reason,
The problem of course with a hypercompetitive culture is that it creates more disaffected losers than it creates empowered winners.
I agree.
Our way out of this has been to move toward competitions that are less and less qualified as blood sports. Even our gladiatorial sports are a little less messy with each passing generation.
I'm not at all convinced that the USA and American High Schools are "ultracompetitive" - they are massively distorted by professional sport - but academically they are if anything LESS competitive that the British and NZ High Schools
Thinking about it there is one way that they are sort of
In the USA there is a single "number" that is your measure - in The UK and NZ there isn't
I was in the top class for science - the second class for maths and the numpties class for English
We could be competitive in a single class - but the people I "beat" at science could destroy me at English
The idea of a single "number" and a ranking system for the whole year is just stupid
duncan cairncross:
Alfred
Americans have some Barbarian in them
But there are some Nations that have a LOT more - The Scots, The Scandinavians
And they don't have the same issues
I have to agree with duncan here. While Americans do go nuts over sports, we don't (yet) have the equivalent of Europe's soccer riots in which people are killed.
When America faced the USSR and WW3 - they were not afraid
Now so many cannot walk to the grocery store without their guns
What changed the Land of the Brave to the Land of the Afraid?
I don't know the answer to "what changed?", but I have to agree with the assessment.
Was it 9/11? Not the event itself, because there was plenty of impetus to respond with defiance--to return to our lives, rebuild the towers, and swat Osama bin Laden like an insignificant bug, almost as an afterthought. It was our own (Republican-led) government that told us to be afraid but they would protect us if we huddled in our basements and gave up our rights to the security state.
So maybe it was Dick Cheney who began it. Or at least sent it into overdrive. But there were inklings of the problem even in the late twentieth century. So 9/11 isn't the whole answer.
Dave Sim thought we were afraid all the time because of television *. That the business model of television was to scare us silly and then sell us stuff. The nature of the tv news certainly changed in the late 20th, from responsibly informing the nation to getting and keeping eyeballs on the station. 24 hour cable news channels also were new in that time period, including the FOX propaganda mill. FOX's schtick certainly involves instigating fear and suspicion over pretty much everything, and much of the country gets all of their information from FOX. So Dave could well have a point.
I wonder, though, if the fall of the Soviet Union wasn't partly to blame. Not the fall itself, but the fact that we all expected to sigh with relief and then live in an epilogue for the rest of our lives. We might not have been prepared to deal with the fact that conflict still continued to raise its ugly head.
* Sim is Canadian, and he was describing Canada as well as the US, though.
duncan cairncross:
At School and University (in Scotland) we had the Rugby Team - they were considered to be strange people with funny shaped balls
Heh. In my college days, if a girl said she was on the rugby team, it was a gentle way of saying, "I'm a lesbian."
So I saw a wee bit about High School life - and it was horribly LIKE the portrayal in the various films and things
It's getting even worse now, in that sports betting is becoming a part of college life. Even students under 21--not legally allowed to gamble--are being solicited, with the active complicity of the administrations themselves.
reason:
CULT|U|RE
AGAIN|S|T
M|A|N
The blog doesn't line that up the way you intended, so people might have missed the way it spells out "USA" in the vertical.
Alfred Differ:
"The problem of course with a hypercompetitive culture is that it creates more disaffected losers than it creates empowered winners."
Our way out of this has been to move toward competitions that are less and less qualified as blood sports. Even our gladiatorial sports are a little less messy with each passing generation.
You are right, but physical bloodiness is not the whole of it. Our hypercompetitive culture values only the top winner--the World Series champion or the Super Bowl champion or the one not voted off the island--and everybody else is a looooooooser.
No surprise that Dave Sim had a theory about that, which btw he considered a good thing, or at least "the way things ought to be." He said that men are sperm-like and women are egg-like, and that sperm-like men were the product of jillions of years of competitions where the single surviving winner beat everybody else to the prize.
the business model of television was to scare us silly and then sell us stuff
Noam Chomsky and Marshall McLuhan both had something to say on that topic. Ads have been doing that since the 50s (in newspapers as well as on TV). It's a propaganda model that works. Advertisers just applied an existing model to selling consumer goods. As Goering pointed it out to an American reporter in 1947:
Gilbert: “in a democracy the people have some say in the matter [going to war] through their elected representatives,”
Goering: “voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”
It is also significant (I think) that post-9/11 fear of being attacked by terrorists was highest in parts of America that were least likely to be attacked, while those most likely to be targets soldiered on much like the British during the IRA bombing campaign.
I wonder, though, if the fall of the Soviet Union wasn't partly to blame.
Partly, I suspect, but more because with no credible enemy there was less need to keep the difference between the "free west" and the "enslaved east" so obvious. So when 9/11 happened and anyone trying to be a voice of reason was being silenced, they couldn't point across the Iron Curtain and say "you're doing to Americans what the Soviets do to their citizens", which had always been a potent emotional defence against restrictions. As well, the fall of the USSR released dreams of hegemony among many of your politicians. Remember the Project for a New American Century?
Also, with the end of the Cold War the military-industrial complex needed another enemy to keep the money flowing. Remember the "peace dividend" that somehow never materialized?
sperm-like men were the product of jillions of years of competitions where the single surviving winner beat everybody else to the prize
Except it's not just a race, with the first sperm getting the egg. The first sperm never gets the egg; it takes multiple sperm to begin the changes in the membrane that eventually allow one inside. And there's considerable evidence that the egg isn't just a passive receptacle, but actually 'decides' which sperm to let in through a process that's almost like a negotiation.
Competition and cooperation in a complex dance, not a simple race at all.
Robert:
[quoting Goering]
"...tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”
Except today, the self-described patriots are the pacifists, denouncing the defenders of Ukraine as warmongers.
It is also significant (I think) that post-9/11 fear of being attacked by terrorists was highest in parts of America that were least likely to be attacked, while those most likely to be targets soldiered on much like the British during the IRA bombing campaign.
A native Chicagoan, I was screaming that at the time. I wanted to brush ourselves off and be more tolerant of the foibles that Wahabists hate. But instead, we went the "Love Big Brother or the terrorists win" route, and Bush got a 90% approval rate.
Remember the Project for a New American Century?
Sadly yes.
There are different flavours of Barbarians. Vikings never left plaques behind that said, "WE CAME IN PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND". And the Scots just never left period.
https://mashable.com/article/mars-nasa-curiosity-rover-image
Uh oh. Sarajevo, anyone?
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/10/07/world/israel-gaza-attack
Israel and Hamas said they were at war Saturday after Palestinian militants launched an early morning assault on southern Israel that had few precedents in its complexity and scale, invading several Israeli towns and firing thousands of rockets toward cities as far away as Jerusalem.
The militants crossed into Israel by land, sea and air — firing at least 2,200 rockets into the country by late morning, according to the Israeli military. Israel retaliated with massive airstrikes on Gazan cities.
By late afternoon, at least 70 Israelis had been reported dead by the country’s main ambulance service and Israel’s Health Ministry said that at least 908 people were wounded.
...
My initial take is that this is good for Netanyahu in a "wag the dog" sort of way. Not sure how it affects Netanyahu's relationship with Iranian ally Putin. And I wonder (not really) when Republicans will call for Israel to stop retaliating against the invading terrorists because war is bad.
Except today, the self-described patriots are the pacifists, denouncing the defenders of Ukraine as warmongers.
I disagree. They are all in favour of the Russian invasion (at least from what I see from up here). They aren't pacifists, they are disagreeing with which side your country should support.
If they were pacifists they would have opposed the Iraq invasion etc.
Robert:
They aren't pacifists,
No, but they are playing pacifists on tv when they justify their lack of support for Ukraine. I'm not disagreeing that they're hypocrites.
I see above that I said they "are the pacifists...". Is it more clear if I said "are presenting themselves as pacifists..."? That they are "denouncing the defenders of Ukraine as warmongers" is self-evident.
they are disagreeing with which side your country should support.
Again, sure, but that's saying the quiet part out loud. Their ostensible public position is not that they like Russia, but that war is bad, so everyone should just stop now. That "stopping now" benefits and rewards Russia is just like the law forbidding rich and poor alike from sleeping outdoors.
If they were pacifists they would have opposed the Iraq invasion etc.
Obviously, Republicans have no problem advocating the things that contradict the other things. It was implicit in my snark that their position on Ukraine is inconsistent with everything else they've ever said about war and defense.
Yeah, yeah… Duncan tell us about the All Blacks.
AD: “Our way out of this has been to move toward competitions that are less and less qualified as blood sports. Even our gladiatorial sports are a little less messy with each passing generation.
Exactly. Almost all past – dismally feudal and futile – human civilizations tried to suppress active, dispersed and empowered competition, in favor of ownership and rule by inheritance brats… EXACTLY the goal and agenda of every phase of the Confederacy, especially today’s. Adam Smith told us to try to harness Nature’s most creative process – competition. But nature’s way is chaotic and slow and bloody and drenched in pain and random misdirection and warped by male reproductive strategies – as feudalism warped us.
Our solution was to use socialist methods to enhance competition that is as flat-fair-creative as possible, and that requires that we stop WASTING TALENT through poverty and stop cheaters from getting sop mighty they wreck competition for the sake of their own brats. The IRONY is that neither our let or our right can see this well enough to parse and describe it, as I just did. Indeed, some on the left hate the notion of Smithian enhanced creative competition…
…though the ultimate hypocrisy of today’s Mad Right is that their ENTIRE agenda is to destroy any hope of flat fair competition, ever ever again.
“When America faced the USSR and WW3 - they were not afraid Now so many cannot walk to the grocery store without their guns”
It is less about fear than about desperate penis flaunting, when their siblings went to college and are doing far better than they are. It is a desperate attempt to recapture the bully swagger of Junior High.
Locum is still in Calif. Blatantly. Kind of a bummer because it behooves me to at least skim. Of course he’s still nuts. I’ll happily bet FACTS against his incantations… e.g. there’s “no war vs nerds.” Watch Fox on any day… attacks on fact professions outnumber any others except politicians, by far.
“Corruption, bribery, deceit & betrayal are all normal human social behaviors,”
“Nature – Mr. Allnut – is what we were put on Earth to rise above.” Anyone recognize that?
The blog I am about to post has the following escerpt re dogma:
…” As ideologies, both Nazism and Bolshevism insist on explaining the events of the world according to theories “without further concurrence with actual experience.” The result, Arendt argues, is that such ideologies bring about an “arrogant emancipation from reality.” …”The modern lie is ideological in that it rejects all contrary evidence and all inconvenient facts. It involves, as Arendt writes, the “mass manipulation of fact and opinion” toward the totalizing end of “rewriting history” and the present to fit one idea.”
Of course it applies to any system of masturbatory "Me and my pals are so great!" incantation, including our own mad far-left, who care only about their righteousness and never about pragmatically winning.
But it applies to today's ENTIRE Mad RightAnd the reason that I push the notion of WGAER DEMANDS is that it corners them into making explicit their hatred of things called facts.
Dr Brin:
It is less about fear than about desperate penis flaunting,
In some cases, yes, but there is also fear because of a FOX-induced heightened state of threat. That old guy who shot a black youth through his front door. He wasn't swaggering. He was certain that the blacks who had burned Portland and Chicago to the ground had come for him.
Dr Brin:
The result, Arendt argues, is that such ideologies bring about an “arrogant emancipation from reality.”
Orwell described that in 1984. When you accept the idea that "two plus two is whatever the Party says it is," then you are helpless to perceive anything without reference to the Party.
Look at Donald Trump's rants about "The wonderful so-and-so" or "The terrible whats-his-name". He has to tell the audience who to cheer and who to boo, or else they don't know.
Larry,
Doubt this is a Sarajevo - unless you are talking about the bloody siege in the 90's?
Nobody has Hamas' back - not even Iran and definitely not Egypt.
It's more likely to end in a reverse Masada.
Pappenheimer
Re: fear.
You're right that fear, even unreasonable, manufactured fear, can cause horrors. I read a snippet a long time ago about suicides caused by newspaper reports that the Earth would pass through the tail of Halley's Comet. Which iirc it technically did, but no plagues (or falls of mana) occurred a la Velikovsky.
(Though Dr. Brin, Comet Guy, would be the person to ask - given the potential for life to exist within comets, was this an entirely unreasonable fear? Radiation, hard vacuum and then upper atmospheric conditions would indicate not likely...)
Pappenheimer
Among the top ten polemics dems are too stoopid to use is simple:
"Whether you like Trump or not, it is a pure fact that he has been "betrayed!!!" by more people he formerly called "a great guy!!" than ALL previous US presidents, combined.
So much for his loyalty obsession or being "a GREAT judge of character!"
That point is inarguable. It's just the plain fact without any possible escape narrative. And hence, of course no dem uses it.
----
Israel should bombard Gaza with an accounting sheet showing how much $$ and labor would have made everyone better off, if not spent on the missiles. And thus all borders could open, too,
Fear mongers have been an integral part of US politics for at least two centuries. Nothing new there. Fear motivates votes and non-votes alike.
Pappenheimer:
It's more likely to end in a reverse Masada.
I'd bet it will make an Israel/Saudi agreement without Palestinian input more likely.
onward
onward
Dr Brin:
"Whether you like Trump or not, it is a pure fact that he has been "betrayed!!!" by more people he formerly called "a great guy!
That's one reason he has to cue the listeners to his rants about the value judgement they should be making on anyone he mentions. They don't know whether to cheer or boo for a particular name until Trump tells them. They can't rely on whether he's said good or bad things about them in the past. Remember when "Chuck and Nancy" were his BFFs for awhile?
And I missed it again...
Onward!
onward
onward
The alignment problem is largely irrelevant for the following reason: Human values are supremely mutable.
The fossil fuel industry manages to continuously pursue its goals of extreme enrichment of its owners at the expense of pretty damn near everyone on earth, by changing the other half of the alignment equation, human values. They have spent a lot of money, sure, but it really isn't that much when you compare it to other human endeavours.
The human alignment problem must be solved before we attempt or accidentally create an AGI. The AI alignment problem is a useful exercise, but it isn't the real problem we have.
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