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Fully commited to rebooting early and often, this blog is in continuous do-over mode.
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A city in Columbia makes life better the natural way. For inspiration on how to improve America's public health, RFK should look here.
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The attack on firefighters in Idaho is a horror. How do we stop these acts?
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Trump supporters have made this unnecessary tragedy likely. Compassion has been rejected while greed and arrogance are coveted as if they were precious golden rings.
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I find the denial of free-will deeply nihilistic. Of three common denials, two posit determinism making the totality of space and time a fixed object. The last is
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from a psychological perspective - that our original nature and past nurture dictate our actions. All condemn our experience of choice to be a delusional aspect of
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our self-awareness - we lack genuine agency. Faith that the laws of nature that physicists hope to understand are determinstic, results in a single fixed path for all
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existence. Like a movie, the frames are do not change, whether the reels are played forward, backward or somehow viewed all at once, as an all-knowing God would. A
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film fixed by God's design rather than some deterministic laws of nature still leaves no room for choice. Many hold the view that omniscience doesn't preclude
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free-will, but the arguments would confer free-will to the characters on celluloid as the movie plays, despite the fact that every frame is a fixed object. Nihilism
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voids meaning, turning action into decay. Pascal should place his wager on free-will, even if it seems an impossibility.
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I first saw the idea of an all-knowing God being incompatible with human free-will as an argument against a God that is both all-knowing and all-powerful. An
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all-powerful God can create a being with free-will, which means the future cannot be fixed and no being, including God, can know the entirety of actual space and
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time. Alternatively, an all-powerful God could create an all-powerful being, who's powers necessarily include the ability to change space and time in ways
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intentionally contrary to God's knowledge. Applying reason to concerns about the creator of all just don't go anywhere - after all, reason itself is a part of
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creation.
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I am an agnostic. Organized religion is based on historical documents and traditions handed from one generation to another - or the word of modern prophets. While not
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necessarily so, both sources are easily inventions. I am not a solopsist and we all share the experience of awareness which, even if understood by science as a
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physical phenomenon, is well described as miraculous. It convinces me of our fundamental equality and that drives my notions of right and wrong, of human dignity and
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valid governance. I am politically progressive - supporting and caring for one another as we become able. Economically, I view capitalism as a transitional stage
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where we have rapidly advanced science and technology. Artificial Intelligence, which will eventually eliminate the economic value of all human labor, is forcing us
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to confront the end of the captialist era. We should bring it to a close with compassion and dignity.
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In simple terms, conservative philosophy values achievement in absolute terms while progressive philosophy values the development of each individual's abilities.
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Appreciating Dead Posey today.
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The 14th amendment to the U.S. Constitution enshrines birthright citizenship for all who are โsubject to the jurisdiction thereof.โ Exclusion applies only to those
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who are not subject to our laws and cannot, by definition, apply to those who are in the US illegally. The alternative is to offer the immunity enjoyed by visiting
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diplomats to everyone who enters the US without a valid visa. An amendment is the only way to change this.
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When we consider possible constitutional amendments, we have to also consider what the President's role can be in the process; does the oath of office apply to the
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Constitution as it stands, or the Constitution the President wishes for? It is clear that proposing or expressing support for an amendment is a violation of the
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Presidential oath and should result in a brief impeachment trial and a guilty verdict.
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The rapid acceptance of "chatbots" as persons is terrifying. The use of anthropomorphic language is partly to blame: they do not "hallucinate" they generate text.
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They are less conscious beings thatn the proverbial monkeys at typewriters, just with a bias toward generating believable text based on a statistical model. I admit
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the model is sophisticated, it's not a simple array of probability tables indexed by the last few words and letters, but a complex computer program created through a
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brutally demanding search process - as evidenced by the outrageous amount of power consumed. That doesn't mean they're not useful, but believing they really mean it
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if when they print out "I think therefore I am" is a dangerous and very slippery slope.
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Concerns over rising housing costs are driven by population growth. Growth is driven, at least in part, by the fervent belief that a stagnant - or worse, shrinking -
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economy is a crisis. Economists have failed to discover workable policies and unbounded growth has been accepted as necessity. This failure needs to be understood -
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in part not just by taking capitalism off its pedastool, but by accepting what money really is - an artifice used to decide who gets access to, or control of, what
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resources. Money is a kind of social credit which, in combination with the equally artificial notion of property, (partially) decentralizes decision making over
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distribution of resources. With a commitment to individual freedom, we have come to see money as an intrinsic consequence of the laws of nature, like rocks falling as
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a result of gravity. As a fungible exchanged for the quantity and quality of human labor, challenging the status quo seems unworthy - but the majority of wealth was
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not earned through individual effort, but through the accumulation of property and it is fair to say this grows exponentially. Money, as a tool, may be a part of a
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workable future, but, however we proceed, we should recognize that both money and property are simply that, tools. Unlike life and liberty, control of these tools are
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not inalienable rights.