A friend surprised my with the assertion... Iran hates us and wants us dead. It is a leaning source of trouble in the world. That means they declared war on us many years ago. Someday they will have a nuclear bomb. That means we have to eventually take them out. Today, Ukraine has made Russia too weak to intervene. That means we have a historic opportunity that we have to seize. He's doing a…
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In conversation at: https://github.com/lexicon-community/lexicon/pull/16 > > Speaking of prior art. W3C is working on a standard that probably should be considered in this design. > > ... > > @tqwhite Yeah, I think they do different things, however. > > The intention here is to allow DIDs (users and organizations) a way to provide small proofs to other records. Those proofs can be part of a larger…
I took the CONVERSATION version and went back once more to to GPT. With a prompt that asked it to evaluate for errors and omissions and inappropriate conclusions. I asked it so suggest expansions and additional context. It gave me this intersecting summary. Modern philosophy after World War II took many turns , with significant shifts and expansions on classical ideas, largely influenced by…
Starting with "I have been interested in classic philosophy from Pythagoras to Aquinas to Descartes to Russel. I do not know anything about formal philosophy after World War 2. Tell me about it", I worked back and forth with ChatGPT and Claude to make this summary. Post-World War II Philosophy: A Comprehensive Overview Historical Setting The post-WWII era saw unprecedented changes: the Cold War,…
I hear Kamala was wearing a short skirt and was pretty drunk. Probably she deserved what she got. STOP THE VICTIM BLAMING!!! Kamala did a fine job. Perfect, no. Fine, yes. She lost because the American electorate is mostly vile. Focus on, internalize that fact. She didn't lose because she was flawed. She lost because America does not want decency. She lost because America hates people who are…
I cannot afford to leave the country and don’t really want to do that much work anyway. Fortunately I am a white man and my wife is beyond reproduction. Until they screw up Social Security (which I actually consider a low likelihood), it is unlikely that anything will practical will happen to us. Until this year, I have worked in just about every election in my adult life. I have protested,…
My friend said, "The dems don’t know how to fight. Always bringing a knife to a drone war." I thought you might find my reply interesting... Sort of. But that's like saying a chef is no good at auto repair. If you are a D, you are a person who is focused on evidence and policy, ideas for improving society and collaborating to support the public good. For us, the political wrangling, antagonism and…
Me: Fetuses are neither babies or any other sort of human. Consequently, it is perfectly fine to abort them. Butthead: But God says… Me: Not my god. You’re owned. Next: It is perfectly fine to kill any person whenever it helps out society. Butthead: WHAT WHAT WHAT. Is not!! Me: Death penalty. Self-defense. War. Stand your ground. Butthead: But those people deserve it? Me: I’m pretty sure they…
In today's version of the 'TQ is obsessed with AI' show, I have been worried about hallucinations and accuracy in my peregrinations through the intellectual landscape with AI as my guide. To that end, I have spent some time engineering a quality assurance prompt. Then I went back to some of my favorite conversations and applied it with terrific results, results that confirmed that careful…
Randomness is the only true reality, from which physical laws, the universe, and everything within it emerge, is a radical yet compelling framework for understanding existence. The essence of reality is not order or deterministic rules, but a seething sea of chaotic possibilities, bubbling up from the quantum foam. It is from this primordial randomness that the intricate tapestry of the universe,…
Dear Everybody, The Olivia Nuzzi RFK sex cult is only a big deal in the smallest sense of the word. Her continuing to report on RFK while banging him is BAD, full stop. Also, who cares? She came clean and has been removed from her post. Add an asterisk to her previous reportage and call the job done. That leaves two other questions. First, should she get the death penalty? The answer is, Jesus…
My brother spent a happy hour with GPT and the debate transcript trying to find out what they actually said. He concludes, "I felt like trump fell back to “millions of criminals” ten times. In my mind trump mad five erroneous points with heavy weighting on insanity, and Harris made 8-10 points, most of which were reasonable." (One point below is edited because it was opposite of what was said.)…
Using GPT and IRS data from 2021, I evaluated the accuracy of a meme panel. The bottom line is that the meme panel captures the spirit of income inequality but substantially exaggerates the numbers. Here is the real data: Here is the meme panel. Notice that it deducts counts of individuals, not percentages as above. This makes the meme panel less correct. And, here is the entire calculation: Here…
With help from my favorite AI, I extracted specifics from this article by David French. If the people of America could somehow understand what this monster has planned, he would be run out of town on a rail. You Want Policies? Trump’s Got Policies. "Donald Trump’s policy initiatives for a potential second term are rife with unintended adverse consequences — which, in less charitable terms, could…
Someone replied to my appreciation of Kamala with disparaging comments about "millions of illegal aliens". Even at first blush, this is this simply silly. There are only around 500k net illegal immigrants, coming and going, each year. But more importantly, we *want* lots and lots more immigrants and, in my view, the illegal ones are the best kind. This analysis by the Wharton School (link below)…
Reason Magazine is usually wrong and it is in this case, too. People do not want "fewer rights". I don't even think they want to censor views they do not like. Much like they do not actually want to take your gun away, people see that the first and second amendment are dangerous because they enable terrible new capabilities based on modern technology.. Polls consistently say that guns with high…
In the suit, TRUMP v. UNITED STATES, the Supreme Court decided against the United States. The decision ( HERE ) is a calamity. Though it does not actually say the president cannot be charged with a crime, it sets a ridiculously high bar for doing so: "The President must therefore be immune from prosecution for an official act unless the Government can show that applying a criminal prohibition to…
I found this excellent analysis of The Dangers of Surveillance. The following AI written list of harms that could result from universal camera surveillance matches my understanding from reading the article: Severe chilling effect on behavior and intellectual freedom: People would likely alter their public behavior and activities, knowing they are constantly being watched. This could stifle…
You know how I could get in trouble if I were to go up to a woman at work and start talking about how lovely her tits are? That's not because her tits aren't lovely or that I mean anything nasty. It's just that so many men have complimented women on their bodies in ways that are demeaning or threatening that most women are immediately repelled if you say something nice about their tits. Also, you…
It is the nature of gods and belief in them, to assert their 'rightness'. You think your 'god' is *the* god. All the good religions assert that their god is the only one and that failing to adhere to dogma is blasphemy. Christians and Moslems think that having beliefs in a different god is a crime, based on the idea that expressing said different beliefs is heresy. This is premised on the idea…
And so, Taylor gets the treatment again. Two years after her previous one, she releases a new album, Tortured Poets Department, and, again, the poopy meta analysis begins. Too this. Too little that. So much. So soon. So so so. Couldn't she just be less? Here's what I think: Her fans love it. That's all that matters and, if you're not a fan just shut the hell up. The NY Times puts this on the front…
James, So, I dug into Joanna Newsom and am thrilled. It reminds me of when I discovered Katherine Ryan and was astonished to find this brilliant person who is a big deal just a little bit out of my sight. That I have never, ever heard of Newsom before shows how difficult it is to know what's going on even in a fully connected world. I listened to a bunch of her music and then some interviews and…
I consider my main goal to be lowering the bar to match my capability. I try to be satisfied by the things in my life that are good. I am old enough so that getting sick as a prelude to dying is part of the planning process. I intend to have perfected my ability to look on the bright side by being able to take full satisfaction about any tiny thing that is good. To the extent possible, I hope to…
I am an old, male boomer. I want to shout: I think the anti-millennial crap spewed by older people is utter bullshit. It's unfair. It's wrong. It's so horrible I categorize it as on par with full-on racism. Millenial people (they are not 'millenials', some mythic creature in your imagination) did, in actual fact, grow up and come of age in a remarkably shitty time. Worse than other bad times,…
I ran into this article on my daily tour of Wonkette, one of my favorite link aggregating blogs. It was, as is its wont, characterized cynically. The main character, who is arguably the first woman to have a social media presence as an anachronistic, stay at home mother, ie, trad wife, was said to have "the sads" about the cultural consequences of the people who followed her lead. Alena Kate…
Bertrand Russell says, “The Christian religion, as it was handed over by the late Roman Empire to the barbarians, consisted of three elements: first, certain philosophical beliefs, derived mainly from Plato and the Neoplatonists, but also in part from the Stoics; second, a conception of morals and history derived from the Jews; and third, certain theories, more especially as to salvation, which…
“Take, for instance, numbers: when you count, you count “things,” but “things” have been invented by human beings for their own convenience. This is not obvious on the earth's surface because, owing to the low temperature, there is a certain degree of apparent stability. But it would be obvious if one could live on the sun where there is nothing but perpetually changing whirlwinds of gas. If you…
Long ago, the failed presidential candidate, Ross Perot, said that he could not understand how anyone felt they could trust someone who didn't believe in God (his, of course) because, without a divine imperative, why would they adhere to any moral code. That pissed me off and I've been thinking about it ever since. The essay above is the basic idea of my answer to the question, Where does morality…
Kierkegaard's exploration of existential challenges rooted in a supernatural God and Sartre's emphasis on radical freedom, while insightful, each possess inherent limitations. Kierkegaard's reliance on supernaturalism may pose difficulties for those without religious faith, while Sartre's oversight of human biology neglects the profound influence of our neurobiology on existential experiences. In…