Sunday School

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

What Trump’s new religion memo for federal workers means.

Religious misogynists claim that women should not have the right to vote.

The IRS says churches can now endorse candidates. That could give Texas pastors more power than ever.

So far, only 21 people have fallen ill after consuming raw milk.

World of Woo: Fibremaxxing.

Environment: MAGA attempts to wipe credible climate research off the record.

A new understanding of 30% of Americans who are non-religious.

I always knew Christianity was a lie, but not that big.

Physicists divided on what Quantum Mechanics says about reality.

Ancient viral DNA may play a key role in early human development.

Two charts that lay bare the threat posed by radical right parties to western democracies.

Long Reads:

How the “woke right” mirrors the tactics and mindset of the postmodern left with its disregard for objective truth. Both sides prioritize narrative and performative transgression over honest persuasion or reasoned debate.

Many hope that AI will discover ethical truths. But as Gödel shows, deciding what is right will always be our burden.

All minds, as well as mind-like AIs, use tricks and shortcuts that make them brittle.

Idaho has become the wild frontier of vaccination policy and public health.

Any attempt to understand China, and the challenge it poses to Western values, must start with an honest enumeration of its strengths.

Who was Victoria Roshchyna? Her funeral was last week.

Sunday Book Club: The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life.

Some photographs taken last week.

While you are waiting for the kettle to boil……

Coffee Break Videos:  Is traditional religion doomed? Charlie Chaplin – Final speech from The Great Dictator. 7 good reasons why we shouldn’t free Palestine.

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

Have a great week Everyone!

“Morality needs neither heaven nor hell to function—just a working conscience and the ability to think beyond yourself.”

– Me.

[Strega]

Thanks Reg!

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

Some more info on witchcraft in India as mentioned in last weeks’ post.

[Simon Paynton]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

Many hope that AI will discover ethical truths. But as Gödel shows, deciding what is right will always be our burden.

I think it’s impossible to get “moral truths” (such as “murder is wrong”) with the same truth-status as “2 + 2 = 4”.  I think this is because the two kinds of “truth” are about different things – mathematics has its roots in the world of objective reality, while morality is a property of human beings only, who have goals of individual well being.  So, the logic of morality is the logic of the human pressure to achieve goals, while the logic of mathematics is the logic of properties of everyday objects, and abstract objects as well.

According to the goal of individual well being, then, murder is wrong.  Something is right or wrong with respect to how well it achieves a particular goal.

[Simon Paynton]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

Many hope that AI will discover ethical truths.

In principle, we can make a complete description of the way morality works.  But this still would give a multiplicity of correct answers, according to multiple moral principles or domains; it couldn’t resolve dilemmas such as the abortion issue.

[Strega]

@simonpaynton

“Murder is wrong”.  You are presenting this as a choice. We choose not to murder because it’s wrong.

But that’s not what stops us from randomly killing annoying people.  We don’t think “I want to throttle you but I’d better not because it’s wrong”.

I mock myself for my revulsion of killing. I ridicule my efforts to get a fly out of the kitchen alive. In my farmhouse, I support a mouse. He comes in through the back of a kitchen cabinet and rummages in the middle shelf. I leave packages and packets of things I’ve bought that I don’t really want to finish on that shelf, along with cans and glass jars.  We co-exist happily.

I doubt I could kill any creature without reluctance (except mosquitoes: they must all die) and I’m almost certain I could not kill a mammal, including a human.

This is not moral. It’s instinctive. In some cases it’s hysterically ridiculous (my successful eviction of a bat from a cathedral-ceilinged house is legendary in the wild flailing category).

Now you can reason all you like about tribes and co-operation and in-groups to explain this aversion, but you’d be trying to use logic to present ‘instinctive’ as a choice.

• This reply was modified 8 months, 2 weeks ago by Strega.

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

I ridicule my efforts to get a fly out of the kitchen alive. 

I opened the back door fully, you stoopid fly…and the front window too!  Can you not see the gaps with the most light? The one you just entered through? The stray cats stare at me. Earn your keep you lazy band of…..ah, ok he’s gone. Buzz……Arrgh! your brother stayed behind!! The stray cats look at each other. But I know they are laughing at me……

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

Potential Darwin Award winner?

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

[Strega]

That last one?  Made me laugh out loud.

[TheEncogitationer]

Reg,

Charlie Chaplin forgot that Hitler and his minions thought “The Kingdom of Heaven” was with them too. And democracies can choose tyranny too.

[TheEncogitationer]

Strega,

Don’t feel bad for the fly or the mouse. They would kill you first with the diseases they carry.

As for the bat, build him a house separate from human abodes. He’ll eat the flys and other bugs too.

[TheEncogitationer]

Reg,

That useless and possibly dangerous “Therapist” obviously has to be from Great Britain or some other Romper Room where they don’t trust plain folks carrying pocket knives or other edged thingies to cut ropes or any piece of hardware that could block railroad tracks.

[jakelafort]

Strega,

When i read your reply to Simon my kneejerk was you’re right.

Now i am not sure. In general there is something to it. Evolution would bake in to homos that only the atypical psycopath or deviant just goes around murdering. What evolution also bakes in is neuroflexibility or neuroplasticity. In fact it is if not opposite of instinct nearly so. And that is why norms can be so devastatingly despicable. From the Palestinian suicide bomber to the German Nazi to the Spanish conquistador in the new world to the Torquemadas. On and on it goes. In fact sometimes the cruelty is so ritualistic and quotidian that it is ho-hom. A famous painting comes to mind of a scene at an auto da fe. Behavior and beliefs of contemporaries makes the unspeakable prosaic.

We have to keep in mind how that neuro flexibility makes it ok for Palestinian moms to be proud and happy about their son the 12 year old suicide bomber about to blow himself and 11 Israelis to kingdom come. Or the Palestinian parents rejoicing because their son has just tortured, mutilated and murdered a gaggle of Jews. Let that bake in. And if it does the issue of the external influences being the major drivers of human behavior, beliefs and norms becomes more obvious. And the urgency to counter the bullshit from all quarters and to instill critical thinking as a standard for all humans.

[Author]

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