TheEncogitationer

[TheEncogitationer]

Reg:

Environment: CNN’s scary plastics report should be tossed into the recycling bin.

This reminds me of the scare talk of last decade when people were alleging that the bread used by Subway Sandwiches™ contained the same plastics used in yoga mats.

I responded by going to my quiet space and saying “OOOhm! Best Yoga mats I’ve ever tasted!”.

Turns out that the worst threat coming from Subway™ was their spokeman Jerod Fogle’s threat to children.

Something MAHA might want to meditate upon regarding the Trump Administration for whom MAHA is serving as a honey pot. A threat to children’s health with Bobby Brainworm’s anti-vax dogma and a threat to their safety with Trump’s withholding of the Epstein files.

Now all that, not microplastics, is a real reason to lose an appetite!

[TheEncogitationer]

Fellow Unbelievers:

Bobby Brainworm and some rotten people in the State of Denmark are repeating a version of the infamous Tuskeegee Syphillis Experiment:
Controversial vaccine trial touted by RFK Jr gets go-ahead in Guinea-Bissau
Recommended dose of hepatitis B vaccine will be withheld from thousands of newborns by Danish researchers
Melody Schreiber
Fri 9 Oct 2026 17.36 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/oct/09/vaccine-trial-guinea-bissau-rfk-jr

No doubt they are taking advantage of the poverty in this African failed State, as well as the general public’s ignorance of all things African and ignorance of geography.

Young skulls full of mush who didn’t know the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea and the land in between sure as Hell don’t know anything about Africa. I knew it was in West Africa but even I had to pin-point it on a Wiki map!

[TheEncogitationer]

Reg, Jake, Simon, and Fellow Unbelievers:

To expect AI to practice Philosophical thought and to act ethically first requires creators and owners who do the same. For once, here’s some wise words from both the “Godfather” of AI and from a AI component manufacturer.

AI godfather Geoffrey Hinton: ‘We’re creating alien beings. I’m willing to be selfish and choose humans’
By Leyland Cecco in Toronto
Tue 13 Oct 2026 05.00 EDT

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/13/geoffrey-hinton-trump-ai-tech

First, the Manufacturer, who is right on the approach and methodology for dealing with AI:

“I love [him]. I hate his predictions … All of his predictions have been wrong. Enough predictions,” Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang, told the podcaster Ezra Klein. Huang, whose company makes the chips that AI firms require, dismissed Hinton’s vocal concerns that the pace and breadth of AI development at the “frontier” could soon outpace the human ability to control it, and particularly his warning that there is a 10-20% chance of AI causing human extinction in the coming decades.

“That [figure] is not grounded on science, is not grounded on research. Just because it comes from a scientist doesn’t make it scientific. Those predictions are hurtful,” Huang said. “Don’t think for a second just because you’re an alarmist that you’re doing a social good. It is not true. So I think that we ought to just all be wiser, more mature, be evidence-based, be scientific.”

So don’t make any claims about AI without evidence, whatever and whoever the source.

Now, the non-predictive words of the “Godfather” whose heeding may make our future better:

Today, his concerns extend to the powerful figures building some of the AI models, and the political beliefs of those men. Hinton said that the AI venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel, and the CEO of the newly rebranded SpaceXSI, Elon Musk, “don’t believe in democracy”. They see themselves as “Übermenschen” who believe they should “control society” and that Trump is a useful instrument in that aim, he said.

The US president, for his part, no doubt noticing how the huge valuations of AI firms have propped up the stock market, has claimed the only thing needed to rein in AI is a “smart president”, rejected any government safeguards in favour of allowing companies to regulate themselves, and wrote on his social media page that anyone who doesn’t use his preferred new term for AI, “super intelligence”, is “THE ENEMY”.

Hinton called Trump “a corrupt, senile felon”…

Trump’s use of “superintelligence” proves he understands “almost nothing” about AI, Hinton added.

“He’s taken a technical term which has a very clear meaning and then reused it,” Hinton said. “Superintelligence means smarter than people, and has been around for at least 20 years. It’s got a very clear meaning. And now he says we’re going to call AI ‘superintelligence’. You can’t make it smarter than people just by calling it smarter than people.”

In other words, AI should not be the handmaiden of Totalitarians who think their words are magic that can change reality. And rules forbidding harm to others that apply to all should equally apply to AI.

Geoffrey Hinton clearly sees the impact of the human mind’s capacity for discovery and creation:

“There’ve been three big revolutions where people ceased to be so important. The first was Copernicus, where we weren’t at the centre of the universe any more. How long did it take people to adapt to that? It took the Catholic church nearly 360 years to apologize to Galileo. And Darwin? Well, there’s people in Kansas that still haven’t adapted to that one,” he said. “Now we’re creating alien beings – meaning we’re not the only intelligent beings around. And the reality is, we only have a couple of years to adapt to that.”

And this is why developing the whole package needs more than developing intelligence:

“The reality is, we’re making beings of a different kind. And the big tech companies keep saying: we want it smarter. This is crazy. We should care as much about all the other aspects of a being as you do about its intelligence.”

Much of that depends on the nature of these models, he said, and their capacity to understand how to develop good behaviour.

Some, however, are turning to faulty sources for conduct:

In recent months, the AI giant Anthropic, maker of the popular chatbot Claude, has held private meetings with religious scholars, theologians and philosophers to look into the possibility of teaching AI to be “good” and to grapple with the possibility that the models have consciousness. Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, said the conversations had drawn on centuries of religious and philosophical thought about virtue, compassion, honesty and moral character, with the aim of making ethical behaviour more reliable.

I hope none of these sources include the doomier anti-Anthropic literature and historic accounts of Abrahamic, Vedic and sundry other cults.

All the more reason to keep admission to the AI club open to better minds than the present club.

[TheEncogitationer]

Reg:

Sorry, I meant Thomas Nagel. But while I’m thinking of it, “What is it like for Earnest Nagel to be Thomas Nagel?”
😁

[TheEncogitationer]

Reg, Simon, and Jake:

“Mister Earnest Nagel, call your office! A bat,a bee, and a flying squirrel are waiting on the Party Line! The flying squirrel says: ‘Again?'”
📞📵📱📠😁

[TheEncogitationer]

Fellow Unbelievers:

This episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 riffs a movie about a group sorely needed nowadays: The Quest of the Delta Knights.

Before the movie, Mike sends Crow out of the Satellite Of Love to clean the gutters and Crow gets caught in a hail storm. GPC (née Gypsy) gives Mike a loaner Crow until Crow gets back. Mad Scientist Pearl switches roles with Mike Nelson and decides to view the movie with the Bots while transporting Mike to her castle to fraternize with Oberver The Brain Guy and Professor Bobo. Pearl, however, does not do this from any kind of empathy, but rather to learn why her tortures are not working on Mike and the Bots.

After a stint in the theater, Pearl then tires of the Bots and switches back places with Mike, who had great fun male bonding, playing cards, drinking, and snacking with Brain Guy and Bobo.

To get to the movie plot, in an ancient land that is apparently Continental Europe in a time between the Midieval Times and the Renaissance, an apparent beggar named Baydool purchases a boy named Trevor or “T” for short in the slave market. Baydool then takes in Trevor, bandages his wounds and feeds him and finds out Trevor’s story. Trevot was self-taught literacy at age 3, was separated from his parents by slavers after the Lord Vultare, the enforcer for the Queen of Castle Mannorjay, and his men raided Trevor’s village in England.

When Trevor discovers Baydool’s basement door. Baydool reveals to Trevor his true identity as a member of The Order of the Delta Knights.

The Order is a secret society devoted to “bringing Mankind out of The Dark Ages and into an age of Enlightenment”, and “who try to achieve wisdom by acquiring knowledge, judgement, compassion.”

Baydool says that Trevor’s arrival was fortold by prophesies of The Order and that Trevor’s destiny was to help find the Storehouse of Archimedes, said to be in the region and to contain proported scientific wisdom of the supposed Lost Continent of Atlantis. Baydool then teaches Trevor the arts of combat, weaponry, and locksmithing while blindfolded.

Baydool is captured by Lord Vultare and his men and Trevor frees him only for Lord Vultare to capture and kill Baydool. Trevor gets the message from Baydool before he dies to go to Nadeen’s Tavern to meet other Members of The Order and Trevor encounters another member of The Order, a young Leonardo Da Vinc and a bawdy house woman named ‘Thena who turns out to be Princess Athena.

In between Trevor’s adventure, Tom Servo and some of his many clones form a choral group called The Thomas Neville Servo Consort of the Middle Ages Just After The Plague Singers. They then sing of the glories of The Delta Kights, eating Wheaties with Archimedes, not forgetting the cheese, and of liking to eat pie, followed by a naughty pub song about using a “pencil to scrawl in the snow.”

Trevor and Leonardo Da Vinci are routed by forest dwellers who turn out to be others in The Order, to loud calls from a little person that they “are comiiiiing!”

In another Host Segment, Mike and the Bots meet the real Leonardo Da Vinci flying in his flying machine. Leonardo denounces the character playing him in the movie as “A mook” and Tom Servo learns quickly to never ask Leonardo what he does for a living!

Trevor and Leonardo depart the forest village and later find the portal for the Storehouse of Archemedes, with Lord Vultare and his minions not far behind. In the Storehouse, they find Archimedes had the supposed map to Atlantis, and had designed an mini prototype of a flying machine which Da Vinci portrayed in his own work and a giantt magnifying weapon which drew energy from the fabric of the Universe and projected it at enemy ships and set them on fire.

Lord Vultare and his minions came in behind Trevor and Leonardo and chased them out and started working with the miraculous new weapon. Trevor meanwhile sets explosives at the portal of the Storehouse, sets them off, and caves in the portal, trapping Vultare and henchmen inside. Trevor and Leonardo debate the wisdom of this move, with Trevor holding that the technology was too dangerous in the hand of people in their present iteration of maturity and forethought.

Leonardo then burns the map to the Storehouse of Archimedes, though obviously retains the memories of what he saw in the Storehouse, and Trevor, Leonardo, and Princess Athena ride into the darkness of a Dark Ages, to bring Enlightenment another day.

During the closing credit, Mad Scientist Pearl and Mr. “Eggs” Eggleston take measures of the theater and measure pain leakages in the theater. When “Eggs” gave the estimate for enhancing the pain-giving qualities of the theater, Pearl balks, but give bargain pain to Mike and the Bots with a sledgehammer.

The Bots experience Stockholm Syndrome from the departure of Pearl and wish to communicate and meet with her again, but she is busy with Professor Bobo eating stacks of pancakes at the Delta Knights annual Pancake Supper, which successfully earn enough for next year’s Pancake Supper, to the delight of all.

Alas, the quest to bring Enlightenment to Humanity is delayed once again by trivia, but in real life. The Lost Continent of Atlantis is apparently non-existent anyway and was a source of great Un-Enlightenment as a agitprop myth for Heinrich Himmler’s work substantiating propaganda for Nazism.

So the struggle for Enlightenment continues…so won’t you?

• This reply was modified 2 days, 16 hours ago by TheEncogitationer. Reason: Spacing

[TheEncogitationer]

Reg and Simon:

Will artificial intelligence change how philosophy is conducted?

While I would never want to farm out philosophy to AI or any other intelligent being, once they have a level of intelligence equal to or exceeding humans, they can all be partners in better understanding concepts in Metaphysics, Epistemology, Ethics, Political Economy, Aestherics, Logic, Philosophy of Science, etc.

But several things have to be done first. Creators and owners of AI who want acceptance of AI need to spell out:

What the specific, quantifiable benefits of AI are;

What the hazards of AI are and how to avoid those hazards are;

Then give evidence for all of it.

Merely saying: “It’s the New New Thing” won’t cut it to get acceptance.

Putting it out there that: “It has the power to destroy the whole world” will definitely not get acceptance.

And not presenting evidence just makes either hope or horror unwarranted and exaggerated, which never leads anywhere to human flourishing.

Which leads us to other things that needs to be done:

Creators and owners of AI need to seize back the language from the Naked Orange Emperor: What we have now is not yet SuperIntelligence and Superior Omniscient Intelligence does not exist, M’Lady.

Renaming things has no magic power to alter reality. Stick to your diaper-changing, Trump, and leave this to the adults in the room.

Creators and owners of AI also need to make it clear to protester of data centers that without data centers, they have no Internet, no E-mail, no YouTube, no Facebook, no Instagram, no Amazon, no DoorDash, no GrubHub, no greatest source of knowledge and commerce in human history. Data centers don’t have to be next door, but they do have to be somewhere. Exactly where take careful thoughtwith a goal to keeping problems minimal.

Creators and owners of AI also need to explain that utility problems with AI can only be addressed with greater supply of energy sources and water filtration and recirculation technology.

Nuclear, Natural Gas and Cleaner Fossil Fuels, Geothermal, Hydroelectricity, Solar Photoelectricity via Satellite, Windmills at Sea all need to be brought into the supply chain.

No problem with AI will be solved by a Moratorium or slowing down the development of AI or gatekeeping the entry into the AI marketplace. AI will just stay stagnant in the U.S. and will be developed by bad actors abroad who mean us all ill.

All rules on AI should be to stop accidental or deliberate harm, not to stop progress to better uses and good actors using AI.

[TheEncogitationer]

Jake:

“I have to praise you like I should” since you pay more attention to writing than Turning Point-ers* pay attention to their own Bibles.

A simple reading of the story of Noah in Genesis would have told them what The Noahchide Covenant was that Ben Shapiro was referencing.

But Turning Point-ers are too busy reading The Daily Mail’s latest “discovery” of Noah’s Ark. Either that or they are too busy listening to Candace Owens latest Ripple Wine Mom hot take on who killed their Cock Robin Charlie Kirk.

Candace Owens only contribution to humanity is to create Wal-Mart Door Greeters like Jeff Dunham’s Walter, since she’s always ranting that she has “receipts,” but never actually shows them. Behold the man-nequin:

(I call them “Turning Point-ers” because like the Pointer breed of dog, they point to and attack whatever their master wants them to, then turn and piss on the fire hydrant of Truth that might save their asses one day.)🐕‍🦺💦🚒

[TheEncogitationer]

Jake:

Enco,

“If TPUSA comes to your town, Please, I abhor you:”

Reimagine that sentence. I implore you.

Great catch! ⚾

A little ‘Inside Baseball” from a fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000:

Whenever Joel and/or the Bots are making an empassioned plea, They’ll always say: “Please, I abhor you…”

One of their many humorous tics of speech.

[TheEncogitationer]

Fellow Unbelievers:

Evidently, the Turning Point-ers like eating parts of living beings like the Zombies of George Romero movies or like The Reavers of the Firefly/Serenity franchise, not to mention a-robbin’and a-stabbin’and a-lootin’ and a-shootin’:

‘Awkward’: TPUSA event with Jewish speaker sparks hateful MAGA rebellion
https://www.rawstory.com/ben-shapiro-2678071453/

Now, Damnit, I’m a proud Omnivore and Sapient-ist, but I would never do something so horrible to Bossy, Babe, Bambi, and Lamb-Chop! I wouldn’t even accuse The Late Charlie Kirk of something so gruesome!

And as you can see, Turning Point-ers like accusing others of things Christians have done ever since they first tasted power at the times of Constantine and Theodocius!

Granted, Ben Shapiro isn’t a bright bulb representative of his Tribe for keeping company with a pack of rabid wolf-sheep who think he’s a Christ-Killer who will burn in eternal Hell. Still, I hope got out safe and that this doesn’t turn into a U.S. pogrom!

If TPUSA comes to your town, Please, I abhor you: Hide your kids! Hide your spouse/spice! Hide your lover(s)! Hide your Parents and Grandparents! Hide your Pets/Livestock! ‘Cause they’re eatin’ e’erybody and e’erything up in hurr, up in hurr!

[TheEncogitationer]

Reg:

World of Woo: How pseudoscience is duping football.

If they want to stop dementia. maybe a good place to start is not sitting in a deep-freeze, but instead not deliberately hitting the soccer ball with their heads. Repeated head blows don’t do boxers any good! So why would they be any good for soccer players?

At least with U.S. Football, players have helmets and any head-to-football contact is purely by mistake. Usually, other injuries knock them out of commission.

Also, maybe if Academia and Society at large valued doing things with the head besides being a target for incoming objects and hits, a whole lot of people would be better off.

[TheEncogitationer]

Reg:

Sorry, but I just had to post this.

I’m not eating anything from that bucket after Jim Bakker ate from the ladle, gagged a little in his mouth, and dipped the ladle back in the bucket, especially since Jim Bakker also hawks some bogus cure for COVID-19!

And Tubby singing a cover of “My Girl” in praise of The End Times is just cringe-y. And bean burgers??? Might as well eat Kolonel Klink Klaus’ Bugs mit Spaetzel “and be happy” as CRINK rains NBC death crud from the skies!

One more thing about the contents of those food buckets: They’ll probably taste just as bad 25 years from now as they do today!

[TheEncogitationer]

Jake:

Rutgers. This is my gun, this if for fun on the brain? Rutgers it is. Can’t refer to the misspelling as a typo since it is a missing character. Failure of compression omission.

As manic as I can be about correcting my spelling, errors can still be fun. The Rugers/Rutgers confusion was too good to resist.

Never formally studied logic. Had Spock though as a pater. Did read Getting to Yes by Fisher and Ury apropos of nada.

You never studied logic as an Attorney? That is surprising.

Well, Copi’s book was not a difficult Cope, and Howard Kahane’s middle name wasn’t Meir, So reading them as part of Introduction to Logic 101 was a delight as was applying Logic to debates on issues and scientific hypotheses.

I was better at Informal Logic but I still remember some Formal Logic.

As a hopeful note for rational culture, since I studied Logic, scholars of Logic have discovered and elucidated other Logical Fallacies including The Divine Fallacy, which attributes extraordinary events to Supernatural Beings, Aliens, or paranormal forces.

Basically it’s a version of The Incredulity Fallacy used frequently by Religionists of every creed and denomination, as well as George Noory, Alex Jones, David Icke, and Tucker Carlson (Taquiyah Qatarlson.)

Logic is a very helpful foundation discipline to learn and use in independent thinking.

Hopefully none of the rapists at Rutgers are Zionists.

Yet another serious apology Ivy League Academia owes to everyday people, both women and men. The Ivory Tower has nothing to say from on high to the rest of us plebes about either Women’s Rights or Male Patriarchy.

[TheEncogitationer]

Jake:

You popped my explanadum/explanans cherry. How did i never encounter this for 63 miserable years? What else is lurking in the shadows?

My explanandum/explanans cherry (metaphorically speaking) was busted 40 years ago on the (metaphorical) shoulders of giants, namely Introduction to Logic byIrving Copi and Logic and Philosophy by Howard Kahane, as well as select articles from others.

I hope is was as good for you as it wá for me!😎

Sudden Sam used the word henotheism to describe the beliefs of the ancient Hebrews. Waht evah. Garbage in. Garbage out. And a whole lot of copy catting among cultures as bad ideas or rather beliefs were bandied about like a Rugers sex doll who never consented. I am guessing the capability of exerting control/power had some involvement in the genesis of monotheism.

If a sex doll had a Ruger, consent would be the only option for initiators of a gangbang. 🔫 Or did you mean Rutgers?

[TheEncogitationer]

Jake:

And here are a few quotes or near quotes that stuck with me.

“Jews are destroying what you value most.”

Some Jews at their best can destroy things that shouldn’t exist, like ignorance, disease, poverty, and tyranny.

Some Jews at their worst destroy things that should prevail like enlightenment, health, prosperity, and freedom.

But either way, Jewishness has nothing to do with it.

“Antisemitism is always seen as a form of social justice.”

Unless the modifier is something like “True” or “Simple”, modifiers connected to “Justice” aren’t Justice.

“A lie about the way the world works…”

Very true. No technical textbook or computer tutorial or product instruction manual I’ve ever read evoked The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

The two of them have a few heated points of disagreement. If ya watch the rest lemme know anything that stands out to you. Maybe i will get her book.

I didn’t detect any heated disagreement, just lots of light from different directions.

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