On AI Slop

People keep calling AI generated output "slop"

Dudes and dudettes, listen closely: AI essays are the average output of all human beings.

These essays are BETTER than what 50% of humanity can produce, probably better than what 70-80% of humanity can produce.

AI = us in an electronic mirror.

So, every time you denigrate AI, you denigrate the majority of people in the world. 

Every person who uses AI is ACTUALLY partnering their own skills with the skills of a team of tens of thousands of absolutely brilliant software engineers. That's what AI produces - it's a team effort with thousands of the brightest people on the planet.

And you say this team effort is:
a) cheating
b) slop.

Huh.

Why Bibi Paid Hamas

Why did Bibi pay Hamas over $1.8 billion using Qatari money? Why did the payments continue even though Israel clearly knew the money was going to Hamas' military arm? 

I can think of at least seven reasons. It allowed Israel to:

1. Genocide Gaza, the only area with higher TFR than Israel
2. Got Bibi out of corruption trials which threatened to bring down his government and put him in jail.
3. Gave Mossad the excuse to blow up Hezbollah pagers before Hezbollah traded the aging equipment out for newer equipment.
4. Permanently makes the Golan Heights part of Israel "for all eternity" after Israeli bombing campaign completely destroyed Syrian military (Operation Arrow of Bashan)
5. Invade Lebanon, razing Christian and Muslim villages on the border, and thus de facto annexing Lebanese territory.
6. Increase illegal settler activity in the West Bank, even though the West Bank had fuck all to do with any of this.
7. Kill Iranian leadership, whose activities Bibi had been actively lying about for 30 years just to get to this day.

Israel has long demonstrated its willingness to murder Jews as long as those Jewish corpses advanced Israeli national interests. This is the driving ideology behind the Hannibal Directive, a policy developed in 1986 and used on October 7. 

When invoking the Hannibal Directive, the Israeli government orders the IDF to kill Jews in order to reduce the problems the Israeli government might otherwise have to face. 

As Golda Meier would have said if she were capable of being honest, "We will not have peace until Jews love their children more than they love their politics."



For Further Reading
2021 Gaza TFR 3.44
2021 Israel TFR 2.98
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/pse/west-bank-and-gaza/fertility-rate

B'Tselem's Gaza Genocide Report
https://www.btselem.org/publications/202507_our_genocide
Physicians for Human Rights Genocide Report
https://www.phr.org.il/en/genocide-in-gaza-eng/

Bibi's official residence becomes a fortress
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/14/world/middleeast/netanyahu-balfour-corruption.html

Naim Qassem says Lebanese terror group ‘didn’t know the supply chain had been exposed,’ suggests operatives’ growing suspicions about the beepers led Israel to detonate them

https://www.timesofisrael.com/hezbollah-chief-admits-to-wildly-underestimating-israeli-capabilities-before-pager-blasts/

December 9, 2024 (Netanyahu press conference): He strongly reaffirmed Israeli sovereignty, stating that “the Golan Heights will be an inseparable part of the State of Israel forever” (also rendered as “for eternity”). https://www.gov.il/en/pages/spoke-press091224 The Jerusalem Post (December 2024): “Israel taking action again [in] Syrian shows lesson learned from Oct. 7.” It argued that Israel would no longer “sit back and allow an enemy bent on destroying it to build up immediately on its border,” https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-833228

Israel plans to double its population in the occupied Golan Heights amid intensive airstrikes in Syria

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-syria-tartus-golan-heights-bombing-rcna184324

Times of Israel (March 23–24, 2026): Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich (March 23, 2026): “The new Israeli border must be the Litani.” He said the campaign against Hezbollah “needs to end with a different reality entirely… with the change of Israel’s borders,” https://www.timesofisrael.com/smotrich-says-litani-river-should-be-israels-new-border-with-lebanon/ 86 new outposts were established in 2025 alone (roughly 1–2 per week), according to EU and Peace Now data. The government approved plans for 54 new official settlements in 2025 (excluding East Jerusalem) — the highest number ever recorded in a single year. * https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-10-23/ty-article-static/.premium/erased-israeli-settlers-brutal-war-on-palestinian-communities-in-the-west-bank/00000199-4787-d6e0-a7fb-cfcfd0400000
* https://www.haaretz.com/west-bank/2026-07-07/ty-article-magazine/.premium/israeli-settler-outposts-now-control-nearly-fifth-of-west-bank-report-says/0000019f-3c51-d07c-af9f-fc5dd64c0000

Israel targets, may have killed dozens of Iranian leaders (February 28, 2026) https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-888302

Christianity and Math as Religions

Mathematics originally started as a religion. Pythagoras founded the Pythagorean Brotherhood, a secretive, cult-like society where mathematics, music, and philosophy were treated as sacred religious doctrines aimed at purifying the soul.

When we remember this, we can also see that mathematics is the only religion that is experimentally demonstrated to be true. But the standard of "experimentalism" is itself a standard that is curiously bifurcated:

1. Math is not an experimental science, it is a formal science.
2. The truth of mathematics is demonstrated via experiment.
3. Christian theology is not an experimental science, it is a formal science.
4. Experimental science was created by Christian theologians, priests and bishops.

So, the (formerly religious) formal science of math, whose precepts are not demonstrated or determined by experiment, are the foundation for all the experimental sciences. The Christian religion, whose precepts are not demonstrated or determined by experiment, laid the foundations for all the experimental sciences. (1, 2, 3)

Huh.

Now, add this in: Medieval Catholic Europe strongly promoted the study of the trivium and the quadrivium. The trivium is grammar, logic and rhetoric, the quadrivium is arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music. Every one of these seven disciplines are just different forms of math.

For grammar and rhetoric, AI chatbots have demonstrated that every human language can be reduced to a mathematical construct or model. All the words and word classifications can be reduced to numbers, the numbers sent through statistical algorithms to produce a different string of numbers, which are then converted back into words.

That's why AI chat bots are so good at writing. They never create ungrammatical sentences, they never misspell, because every language can be reduced to math, each word becomes a number, all the numbers are sequenced according to mathematical rules, one sequence of numbers can be answered by another sequence of numbers which can be turned back into words to form the answer. Every question you give a chat bot, every response it produces, all of it is fundamentally just numbers, algorithms, math.

For all of history, all the English and history teachers thought they were teaching humanities, but they were actually teaching math, formulas dressed up as words, sentences, paragraphs, poems and essays.

Logic, of course, is modal math: modal in subject, mathematical in method.

In the same way, all four elements of the quadrivium are nothing but math. Arithmetic and geometry are obviously so, while astronomy plots heavenly bodies moving through space and music is auditory mathematics.

Thus, medieval Christianity's emphasis on trivium and quadrivium is substantially just the original religion of math dressed up pretty. For a millennia at least, Christianity was really teaching seven versions of applied math, while laying the claim that these seven maths constituted the sum of all human knowledge. Perhaps not coincidentally, Christianity has a better understanding of persons and interpersonal relationships than any other worldview. Theology, like math, does not rely on experiments for proof, instead, like math, it starts with accepted propositions, then uses logic to derive additional truths that are consequent to the original propositions. Math was originally a religion, the core foundation of medieval Catholic instruction was math, and the medieval Catholic Church was the only civilization on earth to build experimental science. No other worldview managed to produce this particular practice.

The religion of math undergirds Catholic teaching, grounding the formal science of theology into the formal science of math, which is, itself, experimentally demonstrated to be the language of the universe. This makes Catholic Christianity more firmly grounded in reality than any other theology, at least in the sense that it is more grounded in mathematics, then any other prior or contemporaneous worldview.

Literacy: The Bible Warns Against It

Literacy is magic - a series of arcane rituals used as necromancy that allows you to listen to dead people.

Literacy is a psychedelic drug - it allows you to stare at a slice of tree covered in ink and hallucinate vividly for minutes or hours.

Literacy puts human souls in storage - normally, when you die, your ideas and memories die with you. But this magic drugged ritual allows other people to access your mind forever.

Literacy is a crude form of soul cloning, mimicking your mind but without the consciousness.

Hunter-gatherers did not use it, but farmers did.

Thus, most modern civilizations are built primarily around farming, not hunt-gathering.

The Economics of Suffering

Christianity, along with all the other ancient religions, see the world as a zero-sum game because none of them understand economics. Thus, the rich man MUST impoverish himself to help the poor man.

Buddhism and Christianity are designed to help people absorb the "necessary suffering" and engage in the exchange anyway. In order to encourage the rich man to embrace this result, suffering has to be a positive good, suffering has to be BETTER than the money he is giving up. That's a hard sell, but that's the pitch made by the cross. In a subsistence-level society, where economics is only crudely understood, the cross makes a lot of sense.

But once a better understanding of economics has turned the culture into a surplus-goods society, once a large number of people understand that there is no necessary suffering in an economic exchange, once a large number of people understand that economic exchange actually makes BOTH parties better off, the entire ancient rationale for how to deal with suffering collapses.

“And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small café in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.” ~ Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“It is so hard for people to get out of the notion that life is a zero-sum game. They think if one man benefits, another must lose. But in a free market, both people can benefit.” ~ Milton Friedman

It's hard, because that notion of gain vs. loss is the basis for every ancient religion. That notion turns out not to be correct in economic terms for economic exchanges between relatively mature adult parties.
However, it is still correct (for the moment) in biological terms. So, a sexual exchange between a man and a woman can result in the woman getting pregnant. While we live in an economics-surplus society, we do NOT live in a biological-surplus society. Suffering in pregnancy and child-rearing is entirely necessary, entirely unavoidable, this biological exchange is both (a) still zero-sum and (b) necessary for the existence of mankind. It is literally subsistence-level living.

Whereas ancient societies were ENTIRELY subsistence level, modern society has split into two: the general economics and the reproductive economics. A confusion between the two results in absurdities.

In Christian conception of the market economy, the rich should give their wealth to the poor, participate in the suffering of the poor, "give until it hurts." But, in the market economy, that is completely wrong. In a well-designed, well-executed market transaction, nobody suffers at all. Everyone wins. That's the definition of a "free market" - no suffering in the exchange of goods. A free market is not about whether the government is involved (the government is really just another corporation) or whether there is a monopoly involved (one sign of a truly free market is the creation of monopolies), rather, a free market is one in which every exchange is a mutual win, everyone is better off afterwards. Christianity doesn't have a language for this. It is a completely foreign concept.

Hook-up culture, contraception and abortion are all attempts to make biological economics mirror general market economics. Remember, in general economics every well-designed interaction between adults is a win-win, nobody has to suffer. But, given the reality of pregnancy and the reality of resource allocation for child-rearing, that result cannot be obtained in biology in any classically economic sense.  Pregnancy is unavoidable suffering. Child-rearing is unavoidable spending of resources to someone who simply will never repay you in like kind. In child-rearing, the fact that some of the parties are NOT adults means the adult parties in the transaction MUST experience some suffering for everyone in the transaction to win.

When Jesus said "the poor will always be with you", he could not have been talking about the adults. In a modern, surplus-good society, the only ones that still fit the description of "poor" are the infants. 

But, precisely because we now understand market economies, society is no longer oriented to accept suffering as a necessary price in every exchange. Precisely because we are now surplus-goods, and suffering is not always necessary (indeed, suffering is a sign of a badly-created market transaction), we no longer maintain a widespread acceptance for how to value suffering. That's why people aren't having children. The surplus-goods societies we created necessarily turned "suffering" from a univocal word with a univocal value into an equivocal word with an uncertain value. The value changes on the context. Given advances in biology, the context is also shifting.

Nobody knows how to properly value suffering. Christianity's definition doesn't seem accurate anymore because it isn't. It doesn't correctly reflect the market. Suffering isn't a necessary component of every exchange. But Hayek's and Milton Friedman's definition is also incorrect, because it only applies to market goods and a market economy, it doesn't apply to the biological exchanges that produce human life and allow human civilization to continue.

Quantum physics and relativity broke the classical physics model into two incommensurable pieces.  General economics and biological economics broke the classical Christian model into two incommensurable pieces. Just as physics now lacks a universal field equation, people now lack a universal theory of suffering. I don't know how to remedy this, but at least figuring out the problem is a beginning step. 

Should Children Be Executed?

One of the classic Catholic justifications for the death penalty is the state's duty to protect its own citizens from harm (CCC 2265, Aquinas,  ST IIa-IIae, q. 64, a. 3). Traditionally, the state is permitted to execute a citizen for the same reason a state is permitted to execute an invader - in both cases, the state is bound to protect its own citizens from danger.

But, traditionally, a person who cannot distinguish right from wrong was spared execution. 

This is objectively absurd. Someone who knows right from wrong but doesn't care is, from the POV of outcomes, no different from someone who cannot distinguish right from wrong. In both cases, the person will do evil. Sure, the first is morally culpable and the second is not, but in both cases, citizens will come to harm precisely because evil will not be distinguished from the good, nor will evil be avoided.

Thus, if the state truly has a duty to protect its own citizens from harm, the state has a duty to execute both the one who chooses evil instead of good AND the one who cannot distinguish evil from good. The child and the child-like must be executed not because they are guilty, but because they are mortally dangerous. 

And, indeed, since the death penalty is about protection, not about revenge, it would seem morally better to execute the child-like if only because it so clearly isn't about revenge for their evil-doing (for we know they are not guilty in any classical sense) but definitely about preventing future evil so as to protect the population from further harm. 

That is, we do not execute children, true, but we do not execute them ONLY because we are assuredly more powerful than children. We can, unquestionably, restrain children from doing ignorant evil. However, if the person in question is very powerful but child-like in his moral reasoning, that is, if he cannot certainly be restrained by more powerful and more morally good men, then the morally good men have a duty to remove the powerful, child-like ignorantly evil man from their midst. 

Thus, the legal defense non compos mentis has no bearing on whether or not the person should be executed. If we are truly executing a person to avoid having evil wreaked upon innocent citizens, then it isn't a question of mind and choice, but rather of power to do evil, and likelihood that evil will be done. 

What Vegetarians Don't Understand

The problem with vegetarians: they have no freaking idea how biology works. For instance, to take but one of innumerable examples, iron absorption.

Human beings need iron for, among other things, oxygen transport in the blood, via the heme molecule. 

If you gnaw on an iron bar, or take iron supplements, that probably isn't going to help much. Eating plants with iron is essentially no different than gnawing on an iron bar. Iron transport and absorption are much easier when the iron is bound inside a heme molecule. Heme iron is absorbed efficiently by the body (about 15% to 35%) compared to non-heme iron (2% to 20%).

But how do we get heme iron, that is, iron bound within a heme molecule, into our bodies? Simple. Eat animal meat.

Plants don't wrap iron in heme.

Animals do.

You already know - and accept - that our gut biota, the organisms in our gut, either produce vitamins we can't (e.g., B vitamins) or help us absorb vitamins we otherwise couldn't. That's what gut bacteria do. That's why we have them. They are symbiotes that we cannot survive without because they digest food for us. 

Animals are simply macro-versions of our gut biota. They are really, really big bacteria with fur, legs and motility that walk around pre-digesting things for us. In the case of iron, animals pre-digest iron, wrap it in a heme molecule for us, and allow us to absorb iron much more easily. Since animals act as pre-processors for our food, a lot of the vitamins and minerals that are not normally available to us through the raw mineral or plant venues become available because the animals have pre-chewed, pre-digested, and pre-packaged the necessary vitamins and minerals for us. 

That's why we eat animals. Animals are food processing factories.

In fact, animal meat is really the original skin-foil bag of ultra-processed nutrients. Animals not only serve as food processing factories for us, they even wrap the resulting food in a sterile skin/fur package, often making the food permanently safe for consumption as long as the waste processing lines (the guts) are first removed (yes, I know, there are parasites which inhabit muscle tissue, but in general, the skin serves as a crude form of sterile plastic wrap). 

Every domesticated animal is an independent, mobile food processing plant, an external gut, a walking massive biota for our small intestines. Eating vegetarian is equivalent to surgically removing several feet of your small intestines or nuking the biota in your gut. Can you survive? Yes. Maybe. But it won't be nearly as easy. You've just voluntarily crippled yourself.

For us, meat animals are external symbiotes. We deliberately cultivate them, by feeding them appropriate pro-biotics, so we can consume what they produce - partially pre-digested, pre-metabolized vitamins, minerals and enzymes we need to live.

Hindus are famously vegetarian, revering cows as signs of divinity. India's bus lines used to carry ads on the sides of each bus that said "Killing germs is not murder! Use Lysol!" That is the logical end of Hindu philosophy, which lies at the root of vegetarianism. Jainism, the idea that we should wear masks so as not to accidentally inhale and kill insects, and sweep the ground before us as we walk, so as not to accidentally step on and crush a worm, is part of the Eastern nonsense that values all life equally.

Christianity recognizes this as absurd. Just as killing germs is not murder, so killing cows is not murder. Use not only Lysol, but your barbecue and stove. Eat beef, chicken, pork and lamb, dog and cat, fish and clam, or any other meat-bearing animal. Let Nature pre-chew your food. That's what Nature is for. 

Education is a Scam

Education is NOT about teaching.

Most colleges employ most professors as adjuncts (i.e., part-time). Up to 40% of profs are adjunct, part-time positions. Up to 70% are non-tenure track or adjunct.

No business in the world makes their core employees part-time. Since profs ARE part-time, teaching cannot possibly be the core business of a college.

Administration has to be the core business, because administrators are NEVER part-time. What do administrators do?

They make sure the college stays in legal compliance to be the recipient of government grants, loans, and other funding. Thus, the core business of a college is to harvest tax dollars and distribute those tax dollars to employees.

There is no other conclusion that can be drawn.

As innumerable financial analysts have pointed out, McDonalds is actually a real-estate business. They just have the renters sell hamburgers to pay the rent on the real estate. Similarly, the entire education industry is actually in the tax-harvesting business. They just have classrooms as the excuse to harvest the tax money. The quality of the hamburger or the education is very much a secondary concern.

Flock Cameras

A lot of people are upset about Flock cameras. I must confess, I don't like them, but I can't see any way to stop them from what they are doing. It is perfectly legal. 

Consider, police can conduct warrantless tails of individuals for days at a time, as long as those tails remain in public areas, public thoroughfares and do not infringe on curtilage, that is, the home and the area immediately surrounding it. 

Flock cameras that are not trained on curtilage are viewing public thoroughfares. It is not a crime to publicly observe individuals who are traversing public areas. That's simple observation, and there is no law against it, nor can there be. If it were a crime, cops could not do warrantless tails, but they can do warrantless tails. 

Heck, game wardens can walk onto private property, install secret cameras and use the evidence derived in court without bothering to get a warrant. It is not considered trespass and the surveillance is completely legal. As long as the cameras are of woods and open fields, not curtilage, there is zero problem. This has been upheld countless times. Flock cameras are just public highway versions of this "Open Fields" doctrine. The Open Fields doctrine is relatively new, having been established during Prohibition, but it has never been overturned. In fact, SCOTUS was the court that created it (Hester v. United States, 1924). It has been reaffirmed, by SCOTUS, as recently as 1984  (Oliver v. United States).  Unfortunately, that's great precedent for Flock.

As I said, I don't like Flock cameras and I have no problem with people who knock them down (which is logically inconsistent of me, I grant), but Flock isn't violating the law.

Democrats: American Taliban

Amnesty International is now up in arms over the Taliban's recent passage of a law allowing child marriage. I have pointed out in previous essays that the Taliban law is not much different from late 19th century US law. In fact, it isn't much different than the current law in several US states. 

But, when you think about it more deeply, the Taliban law is actually not much different from current US federal law. 

All 50 states and Washington, D.C. (51 jurisdictions total) allow minors to consent to STI testing and treatment without parental consent. Meanwhile, 24 states + D.C. explicitly allow all minors to consent to contraceptive services: 

• 16 states allow it under specific circumstances (e.g., married, pregnant, parent, mature minor, or health risk).
• A few states have no explicit policy (providers may rely on general "mature minor" doctrines or other rules).
• 2 states (e.g., Texas in some contexts) have stricter rules, though federal programs can influence this.

Title X Family Planning Program (federal funding for clinics) requires providers to offer confidential services to minors without requiring parental consent or notification. Other federal rules like HIPAA generally treat minors who consent to their own care as having privacy rights over that information.

So, both the Taliban and American federal and state law allow minor children to engage in sex. In America, this is commonly protected activity, something a minor can engage in without parental permission or even parental knowledge. The government will actively work with the minor to make sure the parents never find out. In many cases, any attempt to notify the parents is actually a crime.

Meanwhile, the Taliban require that all sexual activity take place within the social construct of marriage, thereby providing at least a minimal structure of protection and care for the child engaging in sex.

So, explain how America, which allows minors to be used, abused and discarded, is morally superior to the Taliban, which requires minors at least be married and cared for within the confines of marriage.

Apart from the superior care for children expressed in the Taliban law, I honestly don't see that much difference between American practice and Taliban practice.

College as Social Club

All colleges teach the same facts. Course content is the same. There's only so many ways to teach someone how to calculate the area of a circle, then you're done. You can now learn most course content on Youtube. If you are going to college to learn content, you are mostly wasting your time and your money. For some things, like engineering, medicine, the law, you have to have a college degree to practice the profession. But for a lot of subjects, for example, history, English literature, philosophy, etc., college is simply unnecessary. All you need is a library card and interest in the field. 

HOWEVER...

The major advantage of college is the classmates. If you go to an "elite" college, your classmates will be children of Congressmen, your dorm roomate might be the child of a SCOTUS judge or a governor.

If you go to a "good" regional college, your classmates will be running companies or company technical departments, making hiring decisions, etc.

You go to college to make those social connections so your career advances. That's what the tuition pays for. College is a match-maker. It hooks you up with the people who will eventually be moving your industry in your area. 

You just have to realize that going in. When you take a class, you aren't trying to impress the professor. You're trying to impress your classmates, the people who will be important in your profession in ten years. You're making friends now so doors will be open for you later.

THAT is something you can't get through Youtube or Khan Academy. That's why you go to college. It is entirely about socialization now. 

Except as a way to virtue-signal to your colleagues, course content is kind of a side dish, not the centrepiece. College tuition is the annual dues at a country club. You don't go to country clubs for the meals or the golf, you go there to meet the other people in the club.

Teen Years are the Easiest

Everyone says say teen years are hard. That's bullshit. Homeschool and all these problems go away. I never had a dime's worth of trouble with any of my four children. They are all in their 20s now. 

When people complain about teen years, I have no idea what they are talking about. When your children are born, and for the next decade, point out to them continuously that for all of human history, a child was expected to be mature enough to marry and start a family by age 12. Up until the 1917 Code of Canon law, that was the law of the Church.

So, teach your children that they are adults by age 12 and you will treat them that way. You expect them to be ready to be married by age 12. Then, follow through. Treat everyone 12 years old or older as an adult, let them make adult choices, because they ARE adults. That's how civilization treated them for all of human history. It's only the last century that thinks they shouldn't be treated as adults. How's that working out for y'all?

Biological reality trumps modern civilizational bullshit. Once puberty hits, they CAN conceive children. Period. Doesn't matter if they are "ready" or "mature enough" for children (were YOU "ready" for children? The hell you were. So, that's a stupid argument).

They CAN conceive children. God doesn't give you more than you can handle, right? So, if God is willing to ensoul a child in a 12-year old's womb, then the 12-year old can handle it. Deal with the reality you claim to embrace. If you want to argue with this, then you don't actually believe about God what you say you believe. You don't believe what the Church taught for most of Christian history. 

12 year olds are adults. For most of human history, in every recorded culture, in every geographic region of the world, without any exception at all, 12-year olds could legally marry and start families. Get that through your thick head, build that expectation in them and then TREAT them as adults, and you will have zero problems with the teen years. 

Remember:

Amadeus Mozart wrote his first symphony at 8

Malala Yousafzai spoke out publicly for girls' education at 11 and survived an attack at 15.

Warren Buffett bought his first stock at age 11 and filed his first tax return at 13.

Age 12

• David Farragut was in command of a sailing ship by the age of 12.
• Stevie Wonder signed with Motown and began recording/performing professionally as "Little Stevie Wonder" at age 12.
• Mark Zuckerberg created a messaging program (ZuckNet) for his father's dental office at age 12.
• Mark Cuban started a business selling garbage bags and stamps door-to-door at age 12
• Alexander the Great began military training and leadership roles very young; tamed a legendary horse at age 12 and led campaigns as a teen.
• Blessed Virgin Mary gave birth to God at age 12.

Age 13

• Alexander Hamilton was orphaned and working as a clerk in a merchant business, supporting himself and gaining attention for his writing/intellect that led to further opportunities.
• Bobby Fischer won the U.S. Open Chess Championship (after earlier standout games like the “Game of the Century”).
• William Kamkwamba built a windmill from scrap materials in Malawi to power his family’s home, teaching himself engineering.
• Jordan Romero climbed Mount Everest (youngest person at the time to do so).
• Landers Gaydosh won a world championship in ice climbing.
• Anne Frank began her famous diary while in hiding, documenting life under Nazi occupation (her writings became a profound historical document).
• Willie Johnston was the youngest recipient of the Medal of Honor (U.S. Civil War, as a drummer boy around 13).

Age 14

• Thomas Edison started his own newspaper at age 14.
• Nadia Comăneci: Scored the first perfect 10 in Olympic gymnastics at age 14 (1976), winning multiple golds.
• Louis Braille: Invented the Braille reading/writing system at age 15 (tweaked from earlier work around 13–14), revolutionizing access for the blind
• Laura Dekker began her solo voyage around the world on August 21, 2010, at the age of 14, and completed the circumnavigation of the globe on January 21, 2012, at the age of 16, sailing a 40-foot ketch named Guppy.

Do you wonder why so many people find the teen years hard to deal with? That's easy. If you treated any other adult like you treat your children, how well would that go over? Would that adult punch you in the mouth? If so, then why wouldn't your kids fight the same urge? 

Yeah, THAT is why you have trouble in the teen years. Get this into your head. You have ten years from birth to get your child and yourself into the correct mindset. You gotta get your mind right.

If you don't, if you insist on treating a 12-year old like a 4-year old, you created for yourself and your child a runner and a rebel, which does nobody any good. You can try to be the Boss, but you just end up with Cool Hand Luke. Is that really what you want? 

You have to trust yourself and your child. Trust yourself, that you did the best you could. Then trust your child to be an adult. Yes, at age 12. Let them make their own mistakes. There's nothing wrong with mistakes. If you raised them right, they want to be like you. Most kids want to be like their parents. The best thing you can do for your child is let them be the adult they want to be. 

Sometimes that means they will make exactly the same mistakes you made. That is their choice, and you really cannot stop it.You are not in control of their life, THEY are in control of their life. Let them make mistakes, then point out that you did exactly the same dumb thing at roughly the same age, and apologize to them for that legacy. You owe them that much. 

Your mistakes were your responsibility.
Their mistakes are their responsibility.
Don't confuse the two. 
Let them own themselves.

On Lynchings

How common was lynching? In a country of 76 million people in 1900, there were about 4800 lynchings, total, for the whole of US history, and at least a quarter of them were of white folk. 

Total lynchings: Approximately 4,700–4,800 lynchings occurred between 1882 and 1968 (NAACP and Tuskegee Institute records), or about 55 deaths per year. 

• Black victims: ~3,446 (~73%)
• White victims: ~1,297 (~27%)

125 of the lynchings recorded between 1882 and 1903 (the period with the most available data) or roughly or roughly 3% overall, were black crowds lynching black prisoners.

Meanwhile, lightning strikes often caused 100–450+ deaths per year, peaking around 300–400 in some years. So, during peak lynching years, the annual risk of lynching for a black person was in the same ballpark as (or somewhat lower than) the lightning death risk for the general population. 

Lynching wasn't very common. 

Largest Single Lynching East of the Mississippi River: 
The 1891 New Orleans lynching (Louisiana) — 11 Italian immigrants were lynched by a mob after the murder of a police chief. This is frequently cited as one of the largest single mass lynchings in U.S. history, but that isn't accurate. That distinction belongs to LA.

Largest Single Lynching West of the Mississippi River:
The 1871 Los Angeles Chinese Massacre (California) — 18–19 Chinese men were lynched (hanged, shot, and beaten) in one of the deadliest attacks on Chinese immigrants in American history.

Pope Leo: Ignorant of Economics

Pope Leo XIV

@Pontifex

·

Jun 22

It is important to resist the commodification of basic human needs. Food, water and healthcare cannot be subordinated to market considerations or geopolitical interests. Access to adequate food is a fundamental human right grounded in the dignity of every person. Meeting this need not only alleviates suffering but also addresses underlying causes of geopolitical instability. Indeed, food security is an essential component of global and integral security.

Catholic bishops are supposed to care about the poor deeply, but none of them bother to study economics. This is as absurd as saying you care deeply about the sick, but you refuse to study medicine, anatomy, pharmacology.

Condemning commodification is identical to condemning doctors for performing triage. After all,  triage disfavors some of the sick in favor of others who are less sick, and all because doctors recognize they don't have enough supplies to treat everyone!

For shame!

By using triage, doctors commodify medicine!

The condemnation is stupid. It is true that the wealthy have a duty to the poor, but it is also true that no one person nor any group has enough resources to solve everyone's problems.

Thus, some method must be found of apportioning resources to need. The most efficient method we know to correctly apportion resources to needs is precisely commodification.

Just as we need to define terms before we have a conversation, so prices are part of the definition of  how resources should be apportioned to needs. We need definitions of terms, we need defined pricesto commune properly with each other. Price is a form of communication and definition, it is as absolutely critical to resource allocation as correct term definition and grammar is to language.

Literacy is Necromancy

 The Bible warns against necromancy. Necromancy is conjuring spirits of the dead, in order to gain hidden knowledge or foretell the future.

In nearly every book, the dead communicate with us.

When those books, written by the dead, describe mathematical formulas, especially statistical or other advanced maths, those formulas give us hidden knowledge which allow us to foretell the future. 

We predict the future (weather, baseball scores, etc.) by using formulas communicated to us by the dead via books.

Explain how reading books, especially science or math books, is not necromancy. 

Transhumanism is an intellectual and cultural movement that advocates for the use of advanced technologies to fundamentally enhance human physical and cognitive capabilities, eliminate disease, and significantly extend human life spans. Reading and writing are both technologies invented by men, they are advanced technologies compared to anything any other creature uses.

Explain how reading is not transhumanism.

A lot of the things Christians or the Bible says is evil are things the Bible or Christians do every day.

Some Cultures Are Simply Better

 This chart makes it clear that different cultures have fundamentally different ways of resolving problems.

Some cultures are pure shit. White, Asian, European cultures are simply better than tribal cultures. People have to decide how they want to live.

Everybody had the same 500 years. Japan went from society that literally used just swords, bows, and arrows in 1850 to building the finest fighter plane in the Pacific theater and start development on their own nuclear weapon in less than 90 years.

China went from being totally owned and oppressed by European powers during the 1830s Opium Wars to totally owning Europe and Canada today. It took less than two centuries.

Everybody had the same 500 years.

Not everyone made the same choices on how to use the time.

How Far Does Sub-Creation Go?

 Christians used to argue that babies conceived via IVF were not human and did not have souls.

When the Pope said they were wrong, the children WERE fully human, a lot of people felt this was some kind of tech delusion.

Either:

1. the human soul is actually just physics or
2. God creates and infuses a human soul.

If the former, then we can build an AI that has a living soul. Not necessarily a person, but certainly alive. 

If the something is alive because God creates and infuses a soul, then either God creates and infuses living souls into only carbon-based life forms (grass, trees, rabbits, people) or He infuses it into anything He wants.

Notice, human persons are persons because their souls are spirits (immortal). Everything else, according to Christian doctrine, has a living soul, but is not a person because those souls are not spirits.

If God is the one behind all this, then we don't know to what extent men can participate in creation.

We DO know that when you fully simulate a fruit fly's brain, with all neuronal connections in a simulation, the simulated fly ACTS like a fruit fly without any training at all. That is, we CAN create an artificial life at least as complex as a fruit fly. It has already been done. Artificial bacteria with fully artificial DNA have also been created.

So... that's food for thought.

The Magisterium has Jumped the Shark

Magnifica Humanitas demonstrates the terminal incoherence of the Magisterium as expressed by Pope Leo XIV

101. The gains in efficiency and the potential to improve certain services are clear, yet rapidly and uncritically adopting them exposes us to a range of risks, including the tendency to overlook the environmental impact.

It is amazing that this encyclical manages to contradict itself within the space, not of a single article, but of a single SENTENCE. The Pope apparently doesn't understand that EFFICIENCY PRESERVES the environment and reduces environmental impact. That's the whole point of efficiency, son. The more efficient a process is, the less resources it needs to dig out of the environment, the less it needs to manipulate the environment, in order to accomplish the task. He even says this in article 67, but he never connects the dots between the articles. 

67. Furthermore, care for our common home and our responsibility toward the poor and future generations require that the use of the goods of creation and the new possibilities offered by technology be regulated in such a way as to respect the environment, avoid waste and prevent new forms of exploitation.

But then, he makes EXACTLY the same mistake in regards to profits and economics in general. In article 30, he extols Rerum Novarum (a Johnny-Come-Lately encyclical if ever there was one), in part, by saying:

30. Leo XIII’s Encyclical Rerum Novarum constitutes a milestone in the development of the Church’s social teaching. The document places the dignity of work and of workers at the forefront of its reflection; affirms the right to a fair wage for oneself and one’s family; recognizes that persons have a fundamental value that takes precedence over capital and profit;

But he is apparently completely unaware that profit is exactly what happens when a massive number of people express their personal preference for a particular good or service. Profit happens when you allow persons to express their fundamental value by giving them the opportunity to obtain the things they fundamentally value for their own existence. Businesses make profits when their services are valued by massive numbers of people.

72. When it comes to decisions regarding economic flows and digital platforms, as well as the governance of data and algorithms, we cannot allow a handful of actors to dictate these processes on their own; instead, we must build forms of cooperation that respect the various levels of the global community and make them jointly responsible for the common good

Massive profits happen precisely because a massive number of people vote, with their dollars, on which processes they want. By definition, the processes that are controlled only by a handful of actors don't make a profit. The customer has to agree that the process is useful enough to buy, thereby making the entire global community (to whom this process is available) jointly responsible for the common good. 

Dollar spending *IS* communication. People communicate their preferences by voting with their wallet. If you attack profits, you attack one of the major, foundational communication lines people have with each other. 

So, he tells us to treasure communications while he actively attacks the communications (profits) we use, in part, to allocate resources. He tells us to care for the environment and its resources, but for God's sake don't prize efficiency. He reacts towards AI the same way the Holy Office reacted to the printing press. 

This is ironic because AI is simply the electronic version of bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is the lingua franca of the Church. AI is simply a book that can actually reply to live questions. If God is pure logic, and God is love, then love may well be the correct application of pure logic. That would mean AI may be capable of love. Can we make a tool that allows us to speak reality into existence, thereby becoming sub-creators in the image of God? AI promises that. Since God intends us to be sub-creators and participate in our own redemption, man's creation of AI would thus be a participation in the life-giving power of God, just another form of fecundity. Is this ethical? Well, if the Christian conception of man's purpose is correct, yes, it absolutely is. 

It's a fucking stupid encyclical, filled with theological cant, endlessly repeated bromides, in which every article contradicts every other article. 

The Church may one day have something useful to say about AI.
I look forward to that future day. 

Math and Poetry

Every specialty has its own language. There is no question this is true. But math is uniquely able to destroy people's confidence and self-image if it isn't handled well. 

This particular language is spoken by every inanimate object in the universe. The point of magic, of necromancy, of astrology, of all that nonsense, is to speak directly with the universe and/or "the spirits" that are said to dominate it.

Mathematics does what all those others things try to do, but can't. Math allows you to communicate with stones, trees, stars, with EVERYTHING. 

Math is the Ur-language.

When people can't do math, they lose the ability to converse with the universe. And they inchoately know that they have not got the ability. It is humiliating in a way that not knowing other sub-languages can never be.

Now, some people object to learning math via online tools like Khan Academy, but the tool itself is not the problem. The tool has to be used as a teacher, but the student must practice the concepts taught themselves, or all the videos in the world are a waste of time. Math problems must be done on paper with pencil. Writing with pencils and paper is the single most important way of building memories and connections. 

That's why all math needs to be done in a math notebook. The computer screen CAN be instructional, when used correctly, but math is done between the brain, the pencil and the paper. 

Reading physical books is geometric - each physical page maps to a physical memory in a way that screen reading cannot emulate. Our house is filled with books, my adult kids still routinely read 500 to 1000 page books on the regular.

But, if you need to teach a subject you don't know, a screen can have a place. Listening to a Feynman lecture cannot be done without appealing to electronics. That's just how it is. 

As Chesterton said, we have to commune with the great civilization of the dead. The dead can commune with us through books, and now also through screens. Screens have their uses.

Only Elon Musk Believes in Evolution

 Everyone says evolution is real, but no one acts as if it were.

If intelligence is a positive product of evolution, then smarter people would reproduce more. But they don't. Someone who was a) smart, b) REALLY believed in evolution and c) believed themselves to be genetically better than average would d) want to reproduce. Richard Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene" revolves around this idea. The entire premise of evolution is that genes well-adapted to an environment proliferate. But, across the globe, TFR is dropping. It drops fastest in areas with high IQ. Public, vociferous proponents of evolution don't have children themselves. So, proponents of evolution are either a) stupid, b) secretly believe themselves to be dysgenic or c) secretly don't actually believe in evolution. Most people who claim to believe in evolution really don't. That's the charitable explanation. The uncharitable explanation is that people without children are stupid, and we're watching the world descend into a maelstrom of stupidity as TFR drops. That is, in the movie Idiocracy, the stupidest people were the "smart" couple that never had kids. Now, there is a third explanation. The underlying assumption to the previous analysis is, of course, that our thoughts are of any importance. But, if our ability to think does not matter at all (from an evolutionary standpoint), then the lack of reproduction is not based on anyone's beliefs. In fact, what any person believes/thinks is simply a distraction from what is really important to reproduction and evolution. If this is true, then IQ is not currently a positive contribution to gene survival.