In-Sight Publishing

2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 398 – Proximal & Distal, Relevance & Irrelevance

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/30

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is this armature, this background structure?

Rick Rosner: The connective structure and the hardware, which you can’t see, is probably reflected in the locations and relationships among celestial objects, which you can see.

That massive information processing structures that have a lot to do with each other are going to be located close to each other in the universe. We never see the hardware but we see the relationships among specialist subsystems via what bodies in the universe are close to each other.

A quick analogy: the parts of the brain that have to do with listening is highly related to the part of the brain that has to do with speaking. Both are highly related to whatever part of the handles language.

You’ve got decoding what you hear, if it is speech into language, translating thoughts into words that you say. So, all those three rough modules will be highly connected to each other in the brain – you would assume, more connected to the part of the brain that handles walking, skipping, running, and so on.

You would expect in a universe that is a massive information map or is the information itself; you would expect the celestial bodies, the celestial structures, that encompass the information involved in speaking, listening to speaking, and words, to be close to one another in a universe composed of information. That’s reasonably clear, right?

Jacobsen: It depends on the isomorphism.

[End of recorded material]

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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 397 – Talkin’, Chattin’, Communicatin’, Speakin’, Conversin’, Dialoguin’, and Discoursin’

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/29

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 396 – Simplest Forms Most Beautiful

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/28

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What will be the basis for replication of consciousness, the non-mystical deeply interconnected information processing of the brain?

Rick Rosner: Humans will be able to replicate or come up with things that think; it will be in a way that is compelling and similar or ways that are quite similar to the ways humans think.

Because we will have directed development and exploration. The brain via evolution has most likely exploited all the simplest ways to process information and to share with itself/modules of the brain to share information. You get this conscious arena where these specialist systems are sharing information.

All the sharing is a product of opportunistic development and undirected development. As such, it is not going to be magical. It is going to be sub-optimal and, thus, approachable technologically.

There is nothing about the brain that is so insurmountably complex that technology can’t replicate it, for the most part. With any failed replication of thinking in the near future, it will probably not be that big of a deal.

We will probably be able to come up with brain-like information-processing systems that are as good as human brains within 60 years.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 395 – Brain Efficiencies

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/27

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: How does the brain achieve its efficiencies?

Rick Rosner: One way is specialization. I am sure. It is important for humans to be able to recognize verticals and horizontals in their field of view. I am sure the neural circuitry associated with that is specialized to do that task, and does it much more efficiently than a bunch of generalized circuitry would do.

I would guess that there is specialization throughout the brain. Another thing the brain does is that is has evolved efficient pruning to turn general circuitry into efficient circuitry by sending connections out and then pruning the ones that aren’t helpful.

There’s a third efficiency, which is efficiency generalizing – having the most efficient general neural net circuitry with even some specialization mixed in with the generalization.

All of this is extremely powerful because it is the product of hundreds of millions of years of brain development. Leading up to humans and then a couple million years of brain development in hominids and homo sapiens as well; however, it is also somewhat sloppy because it is based on evolutionary processes, which is not optimized to weed out all sloppy and inefficient structures.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 394 – Moore’s Law Running Out of Power

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/26

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is going to happen to Moore’s Law?

Rick Rosner: Moore’s Law is going to be done in the near-future. You can’t build a transistor that is smaller than an atom. The brain is a product of evolution rather than directed technological development has reached a limit of compactness that is probably much less compact than the most compact circuitry that we could invent.

The brain already hit its own Moore’s Law, the end of its Moore’s Law. Though, the brain has other constraints. One of the main ones being how big can you make the head without killing the mom at birth.

Whether or not we have hit Moore’s Law in human-made circuitry, we are going to hit it in the next 20 years. Further improvements in performance are going to be through more and more efficient ways of organizing the circuitry, I do not know much about computers.

But when people look back on computers of the past 50 years, they will seem primitively straightforward and unspecialized.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 393 – Filling Foods

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/25

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What are some quick examples of foods to keep you going?

Rick Rosner: A couple examples of food would be rice cakes, popcorn with no butter and a little salt, or you can drink water (a disappointing dietary choice). For a while, there was a product called Full Bars.

[Laughing]

You ate them, and then they puffed up inside of you. But they were a failed product.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 392 – Our Narratives and The Future

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/24

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, we were talking off-tape about our stories and the future, and the way the future will be talked about regarding our stories. That needs unpacking.

Rick Rosner: I think there are certain eras that tend to be more attractive to writers and producers. People who do projects and books. Anytime there is a great change in society, not anytime because the 60s are terrible to try to capture.

Because it looks goofy often. Times of war, like WWII, get tons of projects. Anytime you have a good author that captures an era. There is some storytelling set around 1800 because Jane Austen was writing around 1800.

I am thinking that the era that we are entering into, looking back 2 or 3 hundred years from now, will be a popular era to examine through stories, whatever the main entertainments are then – whether still books, movies, TV, or some advanced version of those.

I think there are a lot of themes and forces that will make for good storytelling. One theme is that we entering into an era when some people will die and others will keep on living for extended periods of time.

There will be struggling with that – the unfairness and politics and philosophy of that. Another theme is AI on a trivial level. We already have it. A lot of science fiction of people living in a more automated world, often with the robot butler and the robot girlfriend.

But in the future, looking back on near to mid future, we will have a lot of stories wrestling and conscious-thinking beings wrestling with their roles and what they want to be.

Whether or not they will acknowledge other conscious beings and that whole huge struggle as people and other conscious beings tries to straighten everything out, a third theme that will happen a little later is conscious beings struggling with the devaluation of consciousness.

Consciousness will always, I think, be, perhaps, the predominant – perhaps not – form of information processing, but I do not know of any form of information processing that is as versatile and powerful.

So, consciousness will continue to be a big deal, but it will also become more and more understood. People will have to confront the mechanicalness, the non-mysticalness, the non-magicness and the tragedy of what consciousness is.

It is a technical deal. While it is powerful and emotionally powerful, it is not necessarily this transcendent thing from the divine that has been plugged into us. As consciousness gets deconstructed, people will have to struggle with disillusionment and the loss of the last piece of magic in the world.

I think that is three big themes that will be moderately interesting to the residents of the future.

Jacobsen: The representations that they get from us will be stories. I mean stories in a broad sense. Stories from Twitter accounts, social media in general, correspondence that we’ve kept, or representations of objects that are digitized.

I mean, this before we get some hard math of what makes up a mind, so we can put that into a digital substrate. We are putting our stories into the future by making them now.

Rosner: One huge trend in storytelling is that they become more and more multimedia and embracing of more and more of the senses. We get closer and closer to putting ourselves in each others’ heads.

That is another big theme. The present tends to look back on the people of the past and feel sorry for them. I think that is a legitimate deal.

Because life keeps improving and people’s understanding of stuff keeps improving, then you look back on people back in 1850 trying to struggle to live and understand and look for clues as they fight against cholera and so on, e.g., of the five sisters and one brother of the Brontes only one makes it to 39.

These are among the most gifted family of their generation.

Jacobsen: This becomes a common story. Even with extended lifespans, even with some great productions of literary works, art and so on, those are really low fidelity. Any knowledge about what’s going on inside people’s heads.

That will be more or less low fidelity extrapolations of what’s produced, which won’t necessarily give that much of an insight.

Rosner: One tragedy will be people not being able to pass on what is inside their heads, except only through social media or through extended writing. There is loss via death but also loss through the very imperfect ways in which we can communicate our experiences to each other now.

Jacobsen: Nature is ruthless with us.

Roner: Yes. I said this before. In a way, we are living at the end of the world; the end of the unaugmented human world. People have lived in it for at least 5,000 years. Depending on what criteria you use to define civilization, you could take it as far back as 10,000-20,000 years.

There have been about 107 billion people who have lived so far. Those people are lost.

Jacobsen: Completely lost.

Rosner: If the future cares about them at all, they could replicate them with calculated guesses and simulation. If you have the choice between that and nothing, you would take that. Lincoln left a huge historical record, for the time.

Among the people of his generation, he is, probably, among the top 10 Americans in what he wrote and other people’s observations of him, in what’s known about him. He also left descendants. So, you could probably get at most of his genes.

It will be possible to resurrect Lincoln with some limited degree of fidelity. According to some index of the future, you will be able to come up with an 82% accurate representation of Lincoln.

Jacobsen: That makes the separation between stories, even in a broad context, and stories in the future, where a math of the mind or a mathematics of consciousness is slowly and inevitably produced – and humans become less central and important.

Rosner: The stories of the future will focus on individuals to an extent, as they always have, but they will become, to an extent, more distributive as the walls between people’s thoughts break down – as it becomes easier to transmit thoughts between people and the walls thinking come down.

The focus of stories will eventually move away from individuals, as long as you are dealing with eras in which the individual has become less important. That’s not exactly it. In that, the movers of the future, the power entities, may still be considered individuals to some extent, but they may be collective individuals or teams of linked thinkers.

It will be in a way that is not Borgish. You may get horrible Borg-like things in the future. But the future will still contain a lot of the emotional experiences that we have now, except conveyed via different aggregations of information processors.

The stories of how that will transpire are going to be huge. 150 years from now.

Jacobsen: The inevitable process will work as with every other generation. Woody Allen had a statement that every 100 years there is a flush and a whole new generation of people.

Maybe, every 20 or 30 years depending on the culture, sub-culture, or group, then you have a new generation of people who will be more willing to accept what is going on around them with more pervasive artificial consciousness and the decoupling of regular consciousness and the ease of acceptance of new technology, which, to prior generations, would devalue what they cherish and consider the norm.

Rosner: That seems valid.

Jacobsen: It seems a natural extension of the way nature treats us as a part of nature, and the way we deal with the sentiments and consideration of people centuries and centuries ago.

Rosner: Yes, we get impatient certain eras because they seem so uniformly benighted and miserable. Monty Python used to make comedies in the miserable Middle Ages, but the stories set in the Middle Ages – not everyone loves those stories because they are so grim and grubby.

I like near-future science fiction because that is where all the cool stuff is. I don’t necessarily want to see people being farmers in 1954. Because there is less fun there. I understand there are all sorts of human drama.

But I prefer my human drama to come with sky cars or some crap.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 391 – Return of the Translation of Information Problem: Physics & Mathematics, Topology & Geometry, Representation & Universe, and Armature & Physical Framework

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/23

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: This leads to question with regards to IC. What do particular sizes of objects mean over time in terms of information and information process? Also, why those types of information processing? As well, how do they relate to one another?

Rick Rosner: The answer to the first question is “I don’t know.” The various sizes of objects in the universe and the types of information is also an “I don’t know.” I can expand on that.

The idea of orange or the idea of an orange the fruit. I do not know what that would look like informationally. It is some kind of combination between localized and distributed information but it is nowhere near as localized as the information in a computer – where things are described by very specific lines of code.

But I do not know that much about coding, so, maybe, there are less localized forms of characterizing objects and stuff.

Jacobsen: If you take a simple commutative math arithmetic, there are few variations on the representation of the information; but if you take Algebra, there are more ways to represent the information.

I suspect that there are different types of information that can arise that can represent different types of processing but represent the same information.

Rosner: I half agree with you. I think the same information can be represented in a bunch of different ways. But I don’t think you can have universes that are that much different in terms of basic structure, unless you engineer some universe.

I think the physics of information is going to be the same from the universe to another universe.

Jacobsen: Think about a cube or a Moebius Strip, if you look at them from different angles, you can get a similar representation.

Rosner: It may be possible to drag enough matter around to allow wormholes to allow faster-than-light. It is where you connect two distant parts of the universe. You might be able to bend space enough to do that.

That space would have a different topology than a universe without a wormhole. But the physics that lets you do it would be the same in both universes, donut universes and regular universes.

I think the rules would stay the same. It is just what you can do with them and what might arise from them, which might be different but the physics will be probably the same.

Jacobsen: I like that idea. It leads to segmentation for me, three – actually four. In one, you have the physics, the math of it. You have the topology and the geometry of it. Then you have the representation of it, the information. Then you have the armature, the physical structure from which the stuff is allowed to exist in the first place.

The stuff that you hadn’t mentioned before. The principles of existence but represented as the math or as the physics. That’s interesting. Because you should be able to translate the rules or the physics into the topology into the representation and that into the armature.

You should have a basic isomorphism there. However, that should not make them necessarily the same in scale or in purpose.

Rosner: I still think the most basic or most approachable, or most appropriate geometric representation of the information is a 3-dimensional information map that looks like the universe. You should be able to represent that in something like a line of code.

But the most appropriate form is the visual form. The information transmittal of the universe is largely visual. Photons transmit visual information. Neutrinos do that, too; except, they make everything seethrough because they can peer through anything.

You have the universe constantly transmitting images of itself to every other part of itself. It is a very visual thing. You mentioned arithmetic. But it is not simple encoding that informationally into/experientially into an information processing system.

It wouldn’t be a matter of stating a couple rules. It would be deeply rooted in the history of the information space, or the mind, of the universe that would encode based on vast experience of how counting and numbers work – how the Unitary Principle works. That things have oneness.

A thing that is a thing is one thing and then you can combine them and then have two things. It seems super simple because we are used to it. But building a system that truly understands that, it is not as simple as that.

Jacobsen: Given those particular types of structures and representations of information, why those structures and representations of information?

Rosner: That is asking a whole bunch of different questions. Ultimately, that boils down to why the universe is the universe and why it looks the way it looks, and is there another way for a universe to look and work.

You can answer it bit-by-bit. 3-dimensionality is the best and, perhaps, the only marriage between spatial flexibility and informational compactness. That you can do a lot in 3 dimensions.

In 2 dimensions, you cannot do that much because a line is a wall. You can’t have two lines; they can’t get past each other if they are going in different directions. In 3-dimensions, you can have a number of lines going in all sorts of different directions without being stopped by all sorts of other lines.

It is an unlimited number, not infinite. 3-dimensions are simple to describe, to characterize, informationally; the more dimensions you have then the more information you need to describe the space itself and the things in space.

I think there is probably some kind of information efficient push to go with the simplest flexible number of dimensions, which is probably 3. Why do you need neutrinos and photons as the two different long-distance particles? Why do neutrinos have to have a little bit of mass? These are things that are way, way ahead of things of where we are now?

Jacobsen: Why those particular relationships? Why not others? It is a deeper question.

Rosner: Why these things? Does it have a choice?

Jacobsen: It begs the question of what you mean by “choice.”

Rosner: Can you have a universe with 4 spatial dimensions? Can you have a universe with any dimensions but some other arrangement of information? Because dimensions are an arbitrary construct that works very well, where a lot of stuff that is, apparently, close to you based on how it appears to you visually and other interactions appears larger than something that is distant.

In terms of the universe, something that is way distant from you; it is partially a reflection of less information in common with that thing. Although, that also means the less information you have in common.

There is something in Linear Algebra – maybe – called the Kernel. It is what you can boil a matrix down to; this isn’t going to be helpful, but the less information something has in common with you – then the more different distant points there can be of things that have only 20% information in common with you.

Because there are a lot of ways to sample 20%. You would expect a universe that gets bigger in diameter, as the diameter increases, as distances increase, then you would suspect the circumference or the amount of different possible places at a given distance to increase with distance.

Because there are more and more ways to not have a lot of different information in common. I would guess the dimensionality of the universe – that it has dimensions – is based on rules of information and freedom of information to vary from point to point. That’s not too clear. But anyway!

Let me go back to filamentary nets, you have things with tight weaves like sweaters or carpets or fussy needlepoint dealies, but then you have loose nets like fishnet stockings or like those bags that the baby oranges come in.

So, I imagine that the filamentary structure of the universe is a bunch of intertwined but only loosely connected loose nets or widely spaced nets. That you can pull on one net without having to pull on that entire area of the universe.

Because, I think, the things that function as memories or the apps that aren’t always on and fade away to the edges of the universe; I see the edge of the universe being hot and messy and primordial and lacking a lot of organization because it is close to an apparent T=0. It is hot and chaotic, like the beginning of the Big Bang universe.

But within the hot chaos are volumes of collapsed matter, that function as memory and are, to some extent, shielded from the hot chaos by them being collapsed into themselves by them being down their own gravitational wells.

So, it is a hot broth with lots of tight nuggets in it. The tight nuggets are connected via filaments to a bunch of stuff including the active center. If enough stuff gets lit up, it lights up these certain concentrated areas and then turns them into active galaxies and, maybe, larger sections than galaxies.

Then they bubble out of the primordial chaos. They do not have to bubble up to the active center; they just have to bubble up enough that they are within the fringe of the active region of the universe.

It doesn’t take much of a pull or much deformation of the overall structure of space to pull up memories because the associational nets, the filaments, can be pulled. You can pull on stuff. Say you’ve got a thousand, roughly, different nets, you can pull on the corner of one net without pulling, necessarily, all the nearby collapsed areas along with it.

Because most of the nearby collapsed areas are parts of nets that formed at different times. So, the nets aren’t strongly tied to each other. But you can tug on one region and then pull it up without ripping a hole or deforming space badly. You don’t have to pull them that far. Only pulling them, maybe, T=way-close-to-0 to T=10%-apparent-age-of-the-universe; if they stay lit over time, and prove useful, they rise to T=20%-apparent-age-of-the-universe.

It gives you time. Because this would take billions of years for the universe to reconfigure and for new filaments to form. That is the whole deal there. I think that might be enough of a mechanism.

I think we’re getting close enough to a program that would allow actual physics to be done by, maybe, people who know more physics or, maybe, even us if we’re dogged and intrepid enough.

Maybe.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 390 – To Know You Know and To Not Know You Know, You Know?

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/22

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We were talking for some time off-tape about explicit and implicit forms of knowledge. What were you thinking in terms of the distinctions and definitions there?

Rick Rosner: Yes, particularly as they apply to consciousness, Minsky has a model of consciousness, which is not bad: the society of mind. You have either evolved expert subsystems or subsystems that have arisen in an individual brain via experience and cultural imprinting.

Lisa Feldman Barrett in her book, How Emotions Are Made, argues from a constructivist point of view. She argues the emotions that we feel are basic and inherent to humanity are created in people, person-by-person via cultural imprinting and experience.

But regardless of whether our expert systems are inherent and evolved or whether they have arisen due to life experience, it is not unreasonable to look at consciousness as being, in part, a dialogue or a sharing of information among various expert subsystems – a whole bunch of them.

That is, informationally, problematic or, rather, a big pain in the ass because, generally, when we as individuals or as humans communicate and pass the information along to each other; we do it via some language, in general.

Either words or math, but we use language to communicate, there are more direct forms of communication. Forms of communication more directly sensory, like pictures, where you send somebody a picture or a video clip.

They can see what you’re trying to communicate; although, they may not get exactly what your meaning is, because we use language to be specific about meaning. Then if you extend the idea of language to the communication among the subsystems in your brain, that seems like a huge informational burden.

That every subsystem has to be communicated within a language it understands from every other subsystem. That seems like a lot of information flying around in addition to what the language is describing.

It also implies a language of the brain, which exists in the brain and not anyplace else.

Jacobsen: Linguists talk about a surface complexity of language, which really lies on a very similar substructure where, basically, all languages come from. It is a dominant theory, I think, in linguistics.

Rosner: You are saying there is a similar substrate all human languages stem from, and a constructivist, like Lisa Feldman Barrett, would be skeptical of it. She would say, “No, there is not an evolved language system for verbs and nouns. That we’re ready to have those based on a structure in the brain. Those, rather, arise via cultural imprinting.

Jacobsen: What about the ability of some people to speak at six months to one year?

Rosner: Even so, it does assume there is some underlying language structure, where you could add a second premise. The brain speaks to itself using some form of language substrate or something.

The signals need to be passed from every expert subsystem to every other expert subsystem using some carrier of information, which would be some form of language. But I suspect that there is a difference between explicit information and implicit information in the brain.

That much of what constitutes consciousness is an effective implicit information, which communicates information on an as-if basis among the various parts of your mind without that information being shared explicitly.

To start off, I claim, and I think a lot of people agree, you can know stuff without explicitly naming it. For instance, if somebody gave us a plate of food, we would think this is food or dinner.

Words pertaining to food would pop up into our heads. You put a bowl of food in front of a dog. The dog does not have words, but the knowledge pertaining to there being a plate of food in front of the dog pops into the dog’s head.

But it is not codified into a language. The dog knows the food is there. The dog, which I believe is conscious because I believe you can have consciousness without language, is conscious about the food, excited about the food, anticipating how the food will taste, smelling how the food smells, but the dog is not using language descriptors.

In fact, if you lost the language center of the brain, you would still know there is food in front of you. But you would not be able to characterize it in words.

Jacobsen: Let’s do a thought experiment, two people speaking two different languages, say romance languages, trying to communicate the dinner to one another. It seems like the similar case.

You have taken the language out of their brains, functionally, inasmuch as they cannot communicate directly to one another, but there is enough isomorphism between the way they process information and have an understanding of the world in order to communicate.

Rosner: So, one could say a bunch of stuff and describe things with their hands. If somebody was trying to tell someone else that they were having spaghetti, they could make noodle gestures and eventually get the message across.

Jacobsen: It is less efficient, but it is a form of language. The question then arises: if you bring people from different cultures together, but they could come to the same conclusion in the thought experiment, how constructivist? To what extent do constructivist perspectives, such as Lisa Feldman Barretts, provide an answer to that universality in information processing to allow in-species communication?

It does some form of argument for some inbuilt stuff in terms of a general information processing.

Rosner: I think her constructivist argument is the information we use to construct our consciousnesses is mostly received through experience rather than through previously evolved specialist systems.

Jacobsen: What if language and its structures is an evolved specialist system?

Rosner: I think a constructivist would argue against that. They would argue for a minimalist program, I do not know the various levels of an argument for in-built language. We, more than any other species, can manipulate the passage of air through our mouths to make a bunch of different sounds that form words.

There are birds that can imitate almost any sound that they hear. But they are not, as far as we know, doing that to communicate specific ideas or things about the environment. We use our repertoire of sounds to communicate using many tens of thousands of words.

There may be something that is evolved in us. Certainly, the architecture that facilitates speech is something that is evolved. But how much of the software behind speech is evolved, and how much is received culturally or experientially, is open to debate.

Jacobsen: There could be a hybrid argument.

Rosner: Yes. Regardless, you don’t need words to understand stuff. Because there are plenty of conscious species that are almost entirely lacking or would be in their natural state almost entirely lacking words.

That is entirely fair because, probably, among wolves. They have 20 or 30 different woofs or howls or whatever, which signal different things. But 30 different howls or woofs is not the average person’s vocabulary of 20,000 words.

Jacobsen: It could be an in-built thing. The greater level of cognitive flexibility of the human mind. Something like an emergentist-constructivist argument.

Rosner: You can understand things without having the ability to assign words to them, even something like a red light. If you had a stroke, and could no longer know any words whether speaking or hearing them, you are not aware of words being a thing anymore.

But you could still see a red light and understand what it is; something to regulate traffic. Although, you would not have words for “regulate” or “traffic” or anything. But you might still have memories in which red lights are an ingredient in those memories.

You would understand the red of the light as being equivalent to other reds or close to the red of an apple. You could understand all that without having to facilitate those concepts, memories, or ideas.

That is simply an appetizer before we get to the idea that, maybe, information is shared on a tacit as-if basis. We act as if we know things without those things being expressed explicitly, which would save a lot of information transmittal in the brain.

I suspect it is that kind of information-transmission that has things in common with the efficiency of quantum computation. Quantum computation computes things as if an entire set of things are true without those things all being expressed explicitly.

Jacobsen: Does that amount to a pseudo-true or a tacit true?

Rosner: I do not know enough to not be full of shit at this point. But! Quantum computers are best at processes where it is implicitly running a bunch of related cases in parallel.

The computer is basically straddling a bunch of different possible worlds. It is a kind of hyperbolic way of expressing it. But what comes out of a quantum computation are the things that would be true regardless of however many worlds or scenarios; some things are true regardless of which set of particulars the computation exists in.

A quantum computation, you can argue, exists in a bunch of small parallel worlds or in a set of parallel worlds that different from each other in some tiny, concrete ways. You only get the stuff out of the computation that would true in 8 different worlds or something, or given 8 different instances.

It is due to the quantum architecture of the linked qubits, computational bits, that let it function as if it knows each of these worlds. I would suspect that a lot of knowledge within consciousness is the knowledge that is shaped by the informational architecture of the mind so that what comes out is thoughts that are built from as if knowledge.

To put it into practical terms or more concrete terms, I don’t necessarily think each photon transmits an individual chunk of information like a bit does. That each photon is a yes-or-no proposition or an answer to a yes-or-no question.

I have a feeling photons may transmit information in the aggregate. As the energy that comprises them is lost to the structure of space with the structure of space encoding tacit information, which, and here’s another area in which my ignorance means that I am bullshitting, it sounds, to me, holographic.

That the information is there, but it is distributed and shared and is encoded in space as a whole.

Jacobsen: Some things localized but represented everywhere, tacitly.

Rosner: Yes, your mind knows specific things. You can know today is Hitler’s birthday. It is also the anniversary of Columbine. It is also 4/20, which is stoner day. Those are all really specific things. The knowledge of those things as they exist in your awareness may not be encoded in the transmission of specific photons in the way that information would be encoded in a computer through the opening and closing of logic gates.

Jacobsen: If you take the parallelism there, the mapping of your own thoughts onto the universe or the way the universe encodes information and your own or other minds, the assertion is the way the information is encoded is then reflected in the universe’s distribution.

I have a question. If we encode certain things in our mind. Certain forms of knowledge only relevant to human beings but not to lizards, dogs, to squirrels.

Does that, in a way, get holographically distributed to the rest of the universe in a way that is not locally represented without, for instance, is encoded in a specific photon? It is presented as if true without having a realized manifestation in the world. That form of knowledge or information encoding.

Rosner: I don’t know. I am not sure I am even speaking to what you’re talking about. I am not sure. In an extreme case, individual photons may not exist; unless they are singled out via some process. In other words, we are hit with light all the time, which involves being hit with quadrillions of photons in the course of a day or something.

I am not sure how much individuality those photons have in terms of passing on information. Unless you have an apparatus designed or that has evolved to pick out individual photons.

Or another way of putting it, all the information conveyed by photons locally in the course of a day. Much of that information is, maybe, erased by not being specifically noted. If individual photons do not cause individual events that are part of something ending up being noted or recorded, or changing something in a macro sense, I am not sure those individual photons can be said to exist in the way a famous individual photon, say in a double-slit experiment, with notification by scientists or something.

If the individuating information in those photons does not create discernible outcomes, I am not sure those photons exist as individuals. Similarly, but not really, there’s no way to tell electrons apart under a lot of circumstances.

I believe, and I don’t know for sure because I’m ignorant, there are plenty of electron-electron interactions, where it’s not legitimate quantum mechanically to talk about which electron is which after the interaction.

All you can say is two electrons went in and two electrons came out. That’s it. The electrons are identical. Not only do you not have information of which electron is which; there may not be a “which is which,” because they may be indistinguishable no matter how far down you go.

There are probably other experiments that you can design so you can tag electrons by giving an electron a distinct spin, a distinct trajectory. For instance, you can shoot two electrons across the room two meters from each other.

There would be almost no question as to which electron was which or shoot the electrons ten seconds apart from each other. You haven’t done anything to muddle which electron is which.

The odds that they have somehow switched and are indistinguishable are low. Anyway, I have a feeling information is transmitted in the mind, in a way that isn’t as discrete and localized as information being processed in a computer.

There are two long-distance transmitters of information: photons and neutrinos. I am lumping anti-neutrinos in there too. They may transmit different forms of information. I don’t know. There is a lot talking out of my butt here.

Even though what we are talking about is important, I am super ignorant about what I am trying to talk about. But neutrinos have a tiny bit of mass; photons have no rest mass. Neutrinos have a tiny bit of rest mass and travel some miniscule speed less than the speed of light.

But for practical purposes, they travel at the speed of light. They, maybe, have a billion times more kinetic energy than they do rest mass. They still have a little rest mass.

It means that, say, a neutrino traveling across the universe for 10 billion lightyears will lose the same fraction of its kinetic energy that a photon would lose, but also that a neutrino cannot lose all its energy to the curvature of space in the way a photon travelling to the ends of the universe would because there is still the rest mass that doesn’t get lost to the curvature of space.

Which, I would suspect has something to do with different types of information sharing. Taking a wild guess, it’s not even right to call it a “guess” because I am also guessing that it’s almost entirely wrong; that neutrinos reflect a deeper change in the matter of the universe.

Because if you put a neutrino, a proton, and an electron together, you get a neutron. That event is generally associated with fusion, where that neutron ends up being linked. You start with two protons, two electrons; you end up with deuterium, for instance, which is one proton, one electron, one neutron.

The neutron is now electrically neutral and is not interacting electromagnetically with the rest of the universe. It has entered this partnership with a proton, where it is part of a deuterium nucleus.

The neutron interacts with the proton as part of a nucleus, but the neutron has quit interacting with the rest of the world electromagnetically. It is a deep structural change.

Perhaps, the questions being asked and answered by neutrino-mediated processes – fission and fusion – are deeper and, perhaps, less implicit than photon information communication.

Perhaps, photons are really the ones that do the lions share of implicit describing of the world because they are better able to share information implicitly by losing information to the curvature of space.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 389 – Welcome to Star Bar

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/21

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You saw some of the recent Star Wars movies. Let’s hear it.

Rick Rosner: I saw both latest Star Wars movies, Solo and Last Jedi. It is no secret that there are two major models of interstellar travel in entertainment. There are Star Wars and Star Trek and then secondary or less important ones – Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica.

But all of them – including Alien or the Alien series. Nothing works unless you have faster than light travel. Because going from star to star at less than light speed means like a 40-year trip, generally, because even the most ambitious interstellar travel programs, I think, have ships that we could build now that would reasonably go more than a 10th of the speed of light.

You might be able to get them to go faster, but the trouble with going faster is if you run into anything then you ruin your ship. You need faster than light to get the characters from place to place in a reasonable amount of time without the risk of being destroyed by a dust particle.

The deficiencies of that model point to what could be a satisfying science fictioney, fictional, world of interstellar exploration set 150 years from now. You could have people aboard ships. But the ships would not be real.

They would be compiled from data from actual galactic exploring ships. But calling them galaxy-exploring is giving them way too much credit, but ships pointed at nearby stars. The only reasonable ships, at least at this point in our technology, wouldn’t have people on them, because that would be a huge issue.

You can have people on board ships going to some of the planets in our Solar System, but you cannot have people on board ships if you are aiming for nearby stars. It is senseless. You need ships that don’t cost very much, are full of some AI and a lot of telemetries, and a bunch of shielding or some magnetic field that directs particles away from the ship, so if it is traveling 10 or 15 percent of the speed of light junk in its path doesn’t destroy it.

To have a science fiction series based on the actual attainable technology of one to two centuries from now, you would have to assemble virtual ships based, at least in part, on the information you’re getting from these unmanned, cheap telemetry vehicles. Those heading out in all directions.

Those that are, probably, being followed by repeaters, by amplifiers – like a 1/10th of a light year away, because you’re not going to get adequate signaling, as far as I know, from a little ship that is going to be .4 lightyears from you, after 4 years at 10% of the speed of light.

I think you need to send a steady dribble of ships after it, in order to keep in touch with it. After a few decades, you would have a network of these ships. They would be sending all sorts of observational data.

From this, you could construct the experience of manned spaceships. But they would be virtual. People could take on various roles on these ships. You could have legitimate scientists doing legitimate research but who like the environment of being on a ship.

You could have virtual adventurers who like the adventure of being on a ship even though it is virtual. Given the control over thought and perception 150 to 200 years from now, you could have participants in the shipboard experience who do not know that they are on a virtual ship.

In addition to the hard data people are working with there, you could add fun plot elements like various aliens. You can travel as fast as you want in this virtual environments. You could travel from one direction to another at the speed of light because this would be based on the information already compiled.

A more realistic picture of this kind of entertainment could make for a decent show and would provide a more realistic picture of what we are and are not going to do in space over the next few centuries with some added dramatic elements.

I read a book called The Planet Factory. It summarizes the current state of knowledge about exoplanets. Planets orbiting other stars, of which there are plenty; where the vast majority of stars are orbited by planets, you’re always hearing in the news about the discovery of Earth-like planets.

But it turns out reading this book, “Earth-like” has, in every case, right until now has been an exaggeration. When they say, “Earth-like,” it means the rough mass or radius of the Earth or orbits its star at roughly the same distance as the Earth orbits the Sun.

But it turns out these so-called Earth-like planets do not have the conditions that support life. Most planets in an Earth-distance orbit are not that solid. They are gas planets. They do not have a solid surface, at least on you could use.

The planets with an Earth-like radius or mass are orbiting way to close to their stars, like 1/10th the distance to their stars as the Earth is from the Sun. It turns out this is discouraging, except that there are 10^22nd stars.

It means that there are at least that many planets. It may be that one, on average, on a solar system out of a thousand or five thousand, or ten thousand, or a hundred thousand have a planet that can support life, or a moon of a planet that can support life because you’re still dealing with 10^22nd planets.

Dividing that by 10^5th still leaves 10^17th stars still with potentially habitable planets, it doesn’t preclude life in other parts of the universe. What it does mean, though, we might have to travel a lot farther to find those planets, which is another discouraging aspect of the real universe.

It runs counter to the Star Wars universe. If you are a super Star Wars nerd, you have seen maps of its galaxy, which shows you how far apart the major planets in the whole deal are.

But I have never seen that. I would assume that they are not too far apart from each other. They talk in terms of parsecs, which is, like, 3.26 lights per parsec. Without faster than light transportation, that trip is taking 300 years.

It is in a galaxy where you’re likely to find a habitable planet within 30 lightyears. At least according to the message I got from this book, it might be 50 or 70 lightyears or more before you find a planet that is at all habitable.

It is brutal when you’re dealing with slower than lightspeed exploration. That is, if only 1 planet in a thousand is habitable, then it is 10 times the distance compared to a universe in which every planet is habitable, where you’re talking about 40 lightyears instead of 4 lightyears on average.

So, there’s that.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 388 – Demographics, Public Policy, and Public Rhetoric

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/20

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What will be the future demographics of religion, especially given the main predictor, probably, of the next culture is the size of a household and the overarching metanarrative and belief structure of the home?

Rick Rosner: Muslims have a birth rate of 3.2. Nonreligious people have about 1.6, so basically suburban whitey vs. Muslims. My conservative buddy, Lance, is always arguing that Muslims, if we let them, are going to take over demographically.

My argument against that is we don’t have that many Muslims in the US anyway, roughly 1% or about 3 million. There’s not enough time before future weirdness is fully upon us for a differential birth rate to, say, pump the percentage of Muslims – if Muslims are what you’re going to worry about – over 10%.

It would take, at least, 80 years. That is being wildly not conservative in your estimates. That is like wide open immigration, which the US doesn’t want to tolerate at the moment and then crazy rates of reproduction.

Even then, 80 years from now, having Muslims being 8% of the population is a) not going to happen and b) there are going to be so many other technological changes and sociological changes that 8% of the population being Muslim is not going to be the thing to worry about.

It might be if you were trying to address social change now in Europe. Some Western countries have seen the Muslim population approach 10%. Everything else that is going to happen is going to be more of a worry for Americans than too many Muslims.

To go from that to a general point of view, the future will bring us incredible abundance, but the deal we make with the future will also bring us incredible weirdness. Conservatives, of at least the American type, are against weirdness and change or, at least, pay a lot of lip service to it.

Right now, the conservative politics in America is owned by rich people who want to see if they can squeeze more money out of America: pay less in taxes, take more and more profits. That is the real agenda.

Then there is the semi-fake agenda of standing for traditional values and being against change because change means the ungodly erosion of everything we stand for. Even though, the conservative president and the Department of Justice is taking kids away from parents who want asylum and putting them in mini-concentration camps.

The conservative politics are the most hypocritical they have been in living memory, but they still stand against change: gay rights, gay marriage, against trans being a thing. Along with that, much conservative politics is zero-sum.

The philosophy for us to hold onto what we have then other people have to be denied access to what we have, particularly, right now, immigrants. All this stuff serves the hidden but main agenda of conservative politics right now.

For rich people to get more money, including the idea of taxation as theft or government services should be privatized, Carolla talks about things. He has become increasingly libertarian. One of the things that he brings up is that he doesn’t get his money’s worth out of the taxes that he pays as a rich guy that are more than a regular person pays, e.g., public services, streets, schools, and garbage pickup.

He is not getting his money’s worth. He has a problem with that. Carolla is smart enough to not entirely believe this point of view. But there are a lot of other people who try to manipulate people into the zero-sum points of view: “any money given to taxes are given to people who didn’t work for it.”

On the other hand, we can talk about the guy who is best known for making claims about the future path of history is probably Karl Marx, who came up with the whole idea – I haven’t read enough of his work but have read enough about him – of communism.

It includes a whole history of what has happened in the past and extends it into what will happen in the future, concluding with workers eventually obtain the means of production.

That is, capitalists are overthrown and, eventually, workers own everything and use the means of production and capital -money, equipment, and factories – to make stuff for themselves and each other, and the common good.

He is wrong. In that, he was seeing an old-style industrial future. People making the stuff that they have always made but more productively and better, and using what he conceived of as the means of production, e.g., factories and heavy machinery.

Karl Marx didn’t anticipate the information-based future at all, as far as I know. I could Google it, but I do not want to. He was dead wrong. We are not going to live in some communist utopia.

His idea that you can predict the future is not entirely wrong, especially since the future is coming at us so fast. There are some things that you can predict. One is that stuff will continue to get cheaper, as long as you’re talking about basic necessities and some not-so-basic stuff.

Being flooded with entertainment and information, if you wanted to do the math, it would be the cost per entertainment option. I am a kid of the 70s. We had 3 network channels on TV and PBS, and one independent channel that put on crap.

We had no choice. Now, we have a thousand choices for what to watch on TV at any given instance. I belong to the TV academy, so I get to vote on the Emmy’s. That means we are sent DVDs of every show whose producers think has a shot of winning an Emmy, of getting nominated.

I am sitting in a room next to our huge TV, which is cheap now. I am looking at 7 boxes of each containing other boxes of DVDs containing thousands of hours of entertainment. 98% of which is better than any of the crap that we were forced to watch in the 70s.

There is some way to apply math to that and then come to the conclusion that entertainment is fantastically cheap and improved. It might cost 15 bucks to go to the movies. But you can stay home and watch shows on Netflix for 11 bucks a month now.

You can watch Netflix for 168 hours a week without exhausting what is on Netflix. That is 2/3rds of a thousand hours. It is 700 hours of entertainment if you’re able to binge that much for pennies an hour. Food and clothing cost a quarter what they did compared to the average income of a century ago.

So, we are already live in an era of plenty, thanks to technology. There is an era 100 years or 150 years from now, of ultimate plenty. Where once human cognition and thought and consciousness are all mathematicized, and replicated, it’ll be possible to live on the cheap – a cheap cyber-existence, where you are not even part of the material world, for zero.

That’ll be a choice. If you are broke and/or old and worn out, you can take a path 100 to 150 years from now, where you can live for basically free in a cyber version of reality. We can look at, I think, several paths people will take, which we have talked about a lot.

But most of these paths include some levels of abundance because manufacturing both the necessities and the stuff isn’t too crazily luxurious, but will still be awesome compared to what we have now, will be super cheap.

We will still have people who are the technical Amish. People who choose to maintain various levels and limits of historic human existence. Of the 12 billion people we will have by 2080, many billions of those people will choose to live traditional human lives.

They will choose to limit the weirdness that they embrace. They will limit the amount of built-in technology that they allow in their bodies. They may live in nations that limit these options for them.

These lifestyles that are less weird than they could possibly be. There will be a gazillion different flavors.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 387 – Eye for Eye, Graham for Graham, Evangelical for Evangelical

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/19

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, you were talking with me, off-tape, about young people. You were talking about how, for the most part, Evangelicals in the United States – in particular, the Dominionist/Reconstructionist form of it – have destroyed faith in faith, so to speak in the United States.

Rick Rosner: It is midnight. It just turned June 20th. We are in the middle of this taking kids away from people trying to show up in the US. They are up to nearly 2,500 kids separated from the families they’ve shown up with.

This is Trump’s deal. The whole country is in a tizzy. Because it seems to be super creepy and morally outrageous and feeling Hitlerish and fascistic. Then you have the others, the “20%.” They are still strong with Trump.

They say, “If you don’t want your kids taken away, don’t show up at our border.” Even though, it is legal to show up at the border and ask for asylum, but another thing the Trump administration is doing is understaffing the legal places you can go and ask for asylum.

People get frustrated in getting turned down 5 times in 5 days and try to go somewhere else, then they get arrested and their kids get pulled. It seems Trump is running a blackmail scheme. You go with him. You give him money for the border. You give him everything else he wants for immigration, then he will quit doing this stuff to kids.

Things are pretty horrible in the US right now. It is pertinent to what we have been talking about with what we call the hollowing out of religion, which is people turning away from organized religion but mostly people who still consider themselves part of organized religions while having a harder and harder time believing in all aspects of that religion.

What you and I both noticed based on our reading is that the younger people are demographically in the US, the higher percentage of them don’t have a religion. This has been attributed to, at least in what I have read and, I think, what you have read, the intolerance and hypocrisy of some of the preachier religions in the US: the Evangelicals.

20/30 years ago was when the Evangelicals were pulled into politics, in the Reagan Era. That is 35 years ago, and more now. Republican strategists realized that Evangelicals might be able to be mobilized to be a political force for Republicans, who were the family values or called themselves the family values party.

Evangelicals got pulled into politics. Then in the past 10 years, there has been an acceleration of Evangelicals, at least, abandoning demanding the politicians they support to follow their core values as long as those politicians support the things that the Evangelicals believe in, which are a lot of traditional things.

No gay marriage, anti-abortion, pro-Second Amendment, really straightforward and stereotypical values; it has reached an apex with Trump who is a horrible guy. He seems to be getting more horrible by the week.

In 2010, 21% of Evangelicals said that someone like Trump’s personal behavior didn’t matter as long as he supports what the Evangelicals support. In the past 8 years, since 2010, the number who says what a politician does in his personal life doesn’t matter has gone from 21% to 71%, and among white males has gone to 81%.

Apparently, younger people look at Evangelicals in this form of hypocrisy and are turned off from religion. Also, to some extent, the Golden Rule has decoupled itself from American conservative evangelism.

The historical trend in the Golden Rule is treating everybody as you would wish to be treated. The way that the footprint of the Golden Rule is spread is over the past centuries; more and more people have been included in people who follow the Golden Rule’s understanding of who other people might be.

That is, at first, maybe, the Golden Rule may apply to people within your own tribe, race, state, sect, or gender. You might only grant the status to people within your group. But through the march of history, more and more people have been included by reasonable people as people who deserve equal consideration: gay people, lately trans people, people of all different races and genders and nationalities.

We understand we have brains that work more or less the same way; we all feel the same emotions, even though our behaviors, orientations, and colors might be different. We all, essentially, have the same consciousness.

We all hurt and love. This Golden Rule consideration has been extended by reasonable, kind people to all sorts of other people and beyond people – to animals, to the extent that we think they can experience happiness, sadness, and pain.

Some of the traditional religions are trailing that understanding. Some of this understanding is science-based, as we explore the brain. Some of this Evangelical religion, and other religions such as strands of Islam and most of the major religions, is/are anti-science, which is not to say everyone.

But there is a big anti-science demographic among American conservative Evangelicals; a reserving of human consideration only for people who are similar to you. Young people who are strongly a part of the world are rejecting that.

I guess in an ironic or perverse way; religion is wrecking religion. Maybe, it has always been like that to some extent. But it certainly is happening right now in America, where people who are supporting Trump and his inhumane policies are probably turning off a lot of people who may have been fence sitters about conservativism.

If conservativism is not going to denounce this fascistic cruelty, they are going to lose people. How fast? How many? We will find out in the mid-term elections, which are about, now, 139 days away.

We will not find out exactly because of gerrymandering. For Democrats to win back the house of representatives, they have to get about 7% more votes in total and in the right places than Republicans do, because Republicans have a built-in advantage based on how they engineered the voting districts across America for Congress.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 386 – New Normals or Decay of Culture

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/18

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Is Trump the new normal or not? A huge conversation between us preceded the recording today.

Rick Rosner: I will not have definitive answers to several of the questions here: is Trump an anomaly in American political history? Are politicians after Trump going to be Trumpish?

A related question: is depravity or salaciousness in popular culture part of an expanded arena of art? Or is it decadence that indicates the decay of our culture? Before you started taping, you and I were discussing the relative war criminality of Bush 43, the younger one, and Obama.

Bush 43lied us into the Iraq War, which led to the deaths of between 300,000 and even a 1,000,000 Iraqis and other people across the Middle East. You argued. I was persuaded. Obama was pretty killy to the point of committing a lot of war crimes in a destabilized Middle East with the drone policy, with screwing up in Libya with Qaddafi.

But neither of them compare in terms of horribleness potential to Trump. Trump has only been in office less than 2 years, so had less than 8 years of either Bush 43 or Trump. So, he hasn’t had the opportunity to mess up the Middle East.

But he has already been pretty killy. He loosened the rules of engagement for taking on ISIS, which led to increased civilian deaths. But the two pretty previous presidents were responsible for hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths.

Our discussion with Obama giving a speech coming out against Trump and the Republicans saying that they are corrupt and interested only in maintaining power at the expense of traditional American values.

Him being that explicit is a new thing. While both his predecessor Bush 43 and Obama himself can be considered overly killy, to the point of being considered war criminals, especially from viewpoints outside the US, you are outside the US, Scott.

Obama stands up for a return to political morality. We can hope that he still has enough influence over much of America. That he will get people to turn out for the mid-term elections, which are now in 59 or 60 days from now.

We are hoping the Democrats win the house to put some breaks on the out of control White House and the thoroughly corrupt and compromised Republicans holding public office now, and high state office – governorships and controlling state houses and gerrymandering their states to give Republicans an unfair advantage in elections.

Anyway, I remember in the late 1960s and early 1970s reading a couple of science fiction novels, in particular, Stand on Zanzibar and The Sheep Look Up. Both by John Brunner. They present near futures about 20 years from then, where you had a president who is an idiot figurehead. A good-looking man who stood for nothing and did dumb stuff.

There’s actually historical precedent. Warren Harding was elected because he was a good-looking guy and among our worst presidents in the 1920s. Super corrupt and super incompetent, he died 2.5 years into office, I think, limiting the damage he did, but still damage.

He was elected on the basis of being handsome. In the 1980s, we had Reagan, whether you agree with him or not, who had actual substance and a political substance. You can argue that he, personally, was not super smart.

But he tried to appoint competent people. They fit his Republican philosophy. They were competent and experienced people, even if you did not like their philosophy or actions. He listened to professionals. He got into plenty of trouble.

His professionals got him into the Iran Contra scandals. But Trump is a more pure version of the science fiction vision of a vacuous idiot who is completely at the mercy of corrupt interests.

He is close to the president Camacho in Idiocracy. Plenty of people have, or quite a few people have, predicted vacuous national leadership. For the first time, we have a completely vacuous, amoral, corrupt, and stupid president.

So, the question is: is this just a crazy or one-time disaster? Or are we going to have idiot presidents half or two-thirds of the time until America falls apart? Science fiction writers also like to present futures in which America cannot hold itself together and then splits into several countries.

You could argue that would be the end of America. If America breaks up, that is the end of the American experiment. You could also argue changes. America turning into some crazy dictatorship where people’s rights are violated but no one cares because we are immersed in entertainment.

That would also be a type of end for America. There could be a third and likely end of America. As AI and augmented post-human humanity rises, forces become more powerful relative to the forces of national unity, so that the American national government becomes increasingly irrelevant over the next century.

The new economic and political structures arise that supplant the American governance. There is still an American government, but there are other forces that become much more important relative to an increasingly irrelevant US government.

A related question already posed before. I think of a principle often overlooked and still overlooked. In early science fiction and TV fiction, and movies, people writing about the future during the 1930s through the 1960s, often, presented rational futures.

They had the idea that as technology becomes more powerful and people essentially become smarter with the help of technology that people and civilization become more rational and life becomes cleaner and nicer.

It is the world seen in Star Trek. Where there is not a lot of foolishness, the public spaces occasionally seen with the crew of Enterprise returning to Earth. You see these big open plazas filled with well-dressed citizens. Everybody is behaving.

There is not a lot of floating or no floating advertising. It is not a grubby world. It is a clean-well-ordered world. It is not until Blade Runner in the 1980s where you see a grubby future.

Now, the grubby future is a default science fiction future. A lot of unimaginative crap science fiction takes that model rather than the clean science fiction novel. There is this one-season, probably, show called Altered Carbon set centuries from now.

It has the same rainy streets as Blade Runner and grubby sexualization of everything but more so – to cover for crappy writing and lack of imagination through showing a lot of genitals.

A more well-thought out but not necessarily more accurate presentation is Minority Report. It has a semi-grubby world. A world still plenty grubby, but has some nice parts; that has some public places flooded with advertising.

It floats in the air personally directed through individuals’ information-gathering equipment, e.g., contact lenses, and so on. Then if you look at actual culture, in the 1970s, things were pretty clean.

Bowdlerized, censored, one of the chief examples being The Brady Bunch, which was a completely sanitized version of life. They barely talked about anything. It was a completely harmless, sickeningly sweet sitcom that didn’t address any prurient issues whatsoever.

Now, you have shows like It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. There are a lot of filthy shows on television now. The question is whether filth or being able to talk about anything in popular culture.

I’ve been shocked to hear jokes about anal sex and blow jobs showing up in prime time NBC sitcoms. It seems crazy to me that we have come this far since the 70s, 80s, and 90s, when things were clean and censored.

The question is whether this serves a wider artistic service that is part of a better discussion better than the crappy, lazy, and censored 70s or whether this is a reflection of the degradation of our culture akin to the late Imperial Romans being depraved, corrupt, and this weakening their civilization to the point where the Roman Empire fell.

I do not need to go on further. Right now, what has happened in the last couple of years since the rise of Trump, there has been the corruption of American Evangelicals, where 10 years ago 70% of Evangelicals said that politicians’ personal morality mattered.

Now, it is down to 20% of American Evangelicals. 80% is pretty much saying that someone as corrupt as Trump is okay as a leader because he’s scoring wins for the Evangelical side.

To me, that says a pretty much complete moral surrender and corruption of the Evangelicals. An erosion of American political standards. That, I think, we’re at a moment of national political peril.

Then you can circle back to the question of whether the increased decadence or increased filthiness of entertainment is related or not. The increased scope of American entertainment that has given us Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and The Sopranos are considered by many, including me, pretty good pieces of art, occasionally rising to the level of great art.

This is called the “Second Golden Age of TV.” There is a lot of TV that is great. But is the greatness, which includes presenting really jaded views, helping undermine our culture and leading to our downfall?

Let me give one more example, Netflix show called Ozark. Every single character is corrupt and evil to some extent. It is a lazier, lousier, more derivative telling of Breaking Bad with what looks like a typical American family becoming entirely corrupt.

With money laundering and drug cartels, murders, nobody is good, even the youngest boy in the family at 14-years-old becomes a money launderer. It is not art. It is a default thing. It is one show, where everybody is terrible.

The end. That’s enough.

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 385 – The Natural Philosophy of Information Theory

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/17

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is the science of information in cosmology?

Rick Rosner: The philosophical reason for not having entirely black holes. If the universe is made entirely of information, there is no way for the finites amount of information – I don’t think – to close themselves off from the universe that they formerly occupied by accumulating more and more information.

There is no way for a black hole to go all the way black, which would mean it is exchanging zero information with the rest of the universe; where in an informational universe, the black hole is getting information, still, but it becomes less and less of the information that defines it.

It is never infinitely less. Even in a traditional black hole, as my buddy, Dylan points out, you still have Hawking Radiation. It is still under debate whether Hawking Radiation functions to let information be communicated from inside to outside of the black hole.

Although, Hawking Radiation is much more weak than the kind of thing that I am talking about.

The end.

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 384 – Baited to eBay

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/16

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen:

Rick Rosner: Close to 30 years ago, when my wife and I first moved to LA, she worked at a small company. It had become fancy and medium-sized, and had become wildly popular in a 1980s dynasty nighttime soap opera way. It was a fragrance company.

It was the Reagan Era with big hair and shoulder pads, and a certain amount of excess. My wife was working for a company caught in this tide of elegant and slightly excessive living. We don’t live excessively. She’d go to work and come home, and say, “Wow!”

She was intimidated because coworkers would be wearing Chanel suits and big cocktail rings. This was when people wore a lot more jewelry than they do now. I was mostly unemployed. She would come home. I might still be in my underwear because I’d be working on this novel all day, which is really not working.

My work: I would model for art classes and bounce bars. So, I was mostly unemployed. I couldn’t help her buy Chanel suits or cocktail rings. But I wanted to do something for her. So, I looked into making jewelry.

Happily, I was surprised to find jewelry has a huge markup. The difference between the retail cost of jewelry and the cost of the materials can be 10-fold. I began making jewelry for her. I could make crazy stuff because I could make it cheap.

I made her a brooch/a pin for her lapel, which had 70 karats of amethysts and blue topaz. It cost less than $100. I found a place that sold chipped gemstones for 1 buck a karat. I used silver findings. The prongs that hold the stones.

The thing looked pretty and should have cost $800 if you bought it retail – if you could get anything that crazy in retail. So, I did that for a year or two. I got hip to the way jewelry works. I started becoming gainfully employed writing for TV.

I gave up on the jewelry stuff. Every once in a while, I would poke around in stuff. I have not poked around in the world of jewelry in a number of years. I went on eBay. I ended up getting some pop-up ad.

It is this little ring of gold plated silver with three one-karat pink sapphires, with each pink-shaped sapphire being the shape of a little birdy. It is three birds on a telephone wire with the telephone wire being the ring – and with little teeny, probably, white sapphires standing in for diamonds along the wires the birds were on.

So, you have this ring. It has three karats of pink sapphire. It is gold over silver. This thing, shipping included, was $2.19 from China, which is just freaking crazy. So, I looked into a bunch of others. I got it for my wife. She wore it once.

[Carole Rosner chimes in.]

Carole Rosner: Hey!

Rick Rosner: [Laughing] it’s not your deal! If you wore it twice, the per wearing average cost will drop to a dollar, so you have to wear it, at least, one other time [Laughing].

But this ring made of silver and gold, and little baby fake diamonds, and three real pink sapphires is two bucks shipping included. I looked around. I saw these other rings, which are beautiful art décor rings with real baby sapphires – baby sapphire baguettes set in azizis standing in for diamonds and filigree and so on.

Stuff that is labor intensive. But you can buy these rings. That look like something that would have sold for $250 for the décor era. Now, it would sell as a piece of estate jewelry for two grand. But you can buy a ring that looks like a reasonable knock-off of this for two bucks shipping included. Because China!

This is not the only kind of goods that you can get. There is a thing called micro-needling. You got a dermatologist. They aerate your face. You’ve done some lawn work. You know how some people run rollers over a lawn and punch a bunch of holes in the lawn. Micro-needling does that to your face.

You roll a wheel with a tiny one- to two-millimeter needles in them. You roll this over your face. You bleed a bit. It wakes up your face. It makes your body send all these healing agents to the poked areas. You end up getting younger looking, healthier looking skin once everything heals up. I bought one of these wheels for my scalp.

Because, apparently, it can help your scalp if you want to keep your hair. After 6 months, it got clogged with hair and clogged. I found it, shipping included, from China for $1.99. I think China is going to kick our ass. Right now, we are a rich country.

China, on a per capita basis, is a poor country. But we politically hitting ourselves in the head with a couple of hammers. We are not doing what we can to keep up. China has the triple threat of a vast population of 1.6 billion people.

People who will work for super cheap. The per whole country’s designed to run on cheap wages. And people who have technical expertise. People who can be trained to do great work, who do not get paid a lot relative to the first-world countries and a gazillion of them.

I guess a determination to fulfill this national destiny. For hundreds of years, China and, to some extent, Japan; one of those was called the Hermit Kingdom. They wanted nothing to do with the rest of the world. They wanted to be left to themselves. They did not trust the foreigners who came exploring.

They were very insular. Now, they are not. I think China thinks it can end up being the big dog country in the world. And if Americans keep being lazy and dumb, I don’t know.

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 383 – Cudgels of Stupidity

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/15

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What happens when power enters the wrong hands?

Rick Rosner: Cudgels of stupidity that end up in the wrong hands, end up in the hands of people with no morality.

Jacobsen: If we look at the lies of Trump, they continually catch up with him, in some manner. It doesn’t amount to any strict action. However, it does catch up. People lose respect for him, see through him.

Rosner: If you look at his popularity ratings, they started at 50% because people were willing to give him a chance, but then they slowly sagged into the mid-30s and often for the high 30s. Now, they crept into the 40s.

Because people have had a year and a half to consider Trump. They figure: if they like his agenda, then they can deal with the terrible crap that he does. The conservatives are much louder in shouting their conspiracy theories and in what they think is good about Trump.

People who think Trump is terrible to outnumber those who think he is okay. But there is not a concerted effort on the non-conservative media to contextualize Trump to make people understand in a yelly way – the way the conservatives do – to make people who hate Trump to structure it.

It is structuring it so we understand why he’s terrible. But we have a harder time than the conservatives in making the leap from him being terrible on a personal level to why it is terrible for the country.

Conservatives can tell you Obama was terrible for the country. They can tell you Trump is great for the country. I don’t think non-conservatives have that much-structured argument. We know things suck.

But we do not have as much clarity as the conservatives, which is a bad thing.

Jacobsen: It comes out in who farther right conservative Republicans direct their vitriol at or heaviest critique. The heaviest critique does not lie with the Democratic Party.

It lies with Islamic terrorists. That form and minority of Islam is Islamist, and so a political form of it. If I reflect on what they point to, they could point the finger back. In their own party, they have Dominionists and Reconstructionists.

Rosner: Every time, or often, I go to work with Lance. When I walk in, he’s got a podcast going. Some conservative guy is yelling at him, just yelling and making some complicated for why everything is a Deep State conspiracy against brave conservative figureheads like Trump.

Then it is making those arguments at the top of their lungs. Liberals do not have people yelling like that. We have people being reasonable. I am not sure the reasonable people helping people coming to their own conclusions is as effective as the yelly conservative guys on the other side.

Jacobsen: That leads to a question, “Do most Americans seem equipped to think critically and rationally about issues facing them in the modern world, at least in their own country?”

Rosner: Yes, most do. But there is a segment of people – a big thick segment – who don’t have the time, interest, or, in some cases, the wherewithal to think critically. Not everyone wants to watch three hours of political news a day.

They want stuff digested for them. For those people, there are conservative media providing powerful, simple arguments for them. I do not see powerful arguments being presented as much on the liberal side.

The liberal side is more do-it-yourself. Here is the news. Here is what’s going on. You guys build a worldview based on the news we’re bringing to you. But I would think a segment of the population would be okay being yelled at from a non-conservative point of view, and being persuaded by the yelling and the simple, powerful arguments.

I think people susceptible to simple, powerful arguments are not just Trump people, except Trump and conservatives are the ones making the loud, powerful, simple arguments.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 382 – Almost, But Not Quite, So Never

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/14

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You once asked me, “What would the physics be like if the force of gravitation is attenuated as you’re collapsing an object – a potential black hole for instance – reaches an escape velocity of close to the speed of light?” Let’s explore this.

Rick Rosner: I believe gravitational force is not just a function of the matter in an object being attracted to all the other matter in an object. But it actually has something to do in interaction with the rest of the universe.

The way Mach’s principle postulates that inertia is the interaction between a stationary or a moving body against the background or versus the background of all the other matter in the universe.

If gravitation has a Mach’s principle type thing going on, it doesn’t even have to be a strong Mach’s principle – and in fact, it is probably a weak Mach’s principle based on what I have been thinking about the last couple of days.

If the matter is defined in space, if the fuzziness is reduced by all the interactions it has with all the other matter in space, I used this analogy a zillion times. The universe is a giant gunfight. It detects every participant in the gunfight by bouncing every particle off every other particle.

Everybody is shooting at everybody else. The universe roughly knows where everything is with all the shooting and bouncing going on. The universe detects itself. In a collapsing body, you have an extra gang fight going on, with more bullets being shot.

Because as you have a sphere of matter that becomes more and more dense, the closer all those particles get together and to each other, then the more particles they can exchange. That probably includes virtual and real particles – black holes are hot.

The things collapsing in black holes are hot. There is a lot of radiation floating around. I would guess that this extra level of interaction – the extra bullets hitting all this collapsing matter – serve to define matter in this collapsing object more precisely in space, which has the equal effect or equivalent effect of making space more capacious.

Because particles are more precisely defined with extra interactions that reduce their de Broglie wavelength. That has the equivalent effect of increasing the apparent size or scale – actually shrinking space – of space.

So, smaller particles are the same thing as bigger space. If you are looking at a picture of particles, enlarging the space looks the same as shrinking the particles, I am guessing that within a near black hole; there is more space inside of it than outside of it.

Because space inside a black hole is more capacious and the closer it gets to a black hole then the more energy the particles accumulate or, rather, the more and more tightly defined that they become.

They become, apparently, smaller and space becomes apparently tighters. That is, there appears to be more space within a near black hole. So, you never get to the ultimate collapse because the more these particles interact with each other.

The more these particles interact with each other. The more they shrink space; the more they are precisely defined. And they never get to the point of smashing into each other with such compressive force that they go to a singularity, or even to an escape velocity greater than the speed of light.

I think we could do some math on it. It could be a publishable thing.

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 381 – Outliers, Hang-Abouts, and Deviants

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/13

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What are some of the things to focus on for the outliers in astronomical objects?

Rick Rosner: A list of stuff older than the universe would be a good start, and what would happen if gravitation is attenuated in black hole type situations. In IC, it postulates a universe much older than its apparent age and dark matter may be super-collapsed matter functioning as galactic haloes.

That points at certain suspects in stuff that could be much older than the universe and most, if not all, of the stuff, is hard to detect. It is right on the edge of being detectable. Stuff one might be brown dwarfs, stars below a certain size burn all their matter and end up being a ball of, I think, oxygen nuclei and possibly iron but fairly heavy nuclei.

They are not heavy enough, though, to collapse the star further and do further fusion. Because it is only through fusing, and fusing, and fusing, and fusing, until you get down to iron, that you can’t do any more fusion.

If it is a big enough star, the density of all the iron collapses the star into a neutron star. This is ignoring the various red giant phases and supernova explosions. One of the last stages of a star that is big enough.

Three end stages of stars: brown dwarfs for little teeny stars, neutron stars for medium size, and black holes for bigger ones. Plus, there are probably some other things that I do not know. But once something hits a brown dwarf, it is a big ball of heavy nuclei plus the electrons, just out there in space and barely radiating because it is a thing that is not fusing anymore.

It is still hot because it was fusing; but now, it is not actively generating energy anymore. If it is, it is simply from further gravitational collapse, but it is hard for it to lose radiation because it is in a vacuum.

Like a thermos, it can’t conduct heat through direct contact through stuff. And it is small and it is super dark. A brown dwarf would be hard to detect and could hang out for a long time cooling and cooling.

But they have detected some brown dwarves that are cooler than they ought to be, given the age of the universe and the age of our galaxy. If they found a bunch of these that are way cooler than they should be, a level of coolness that could be attained after only 30 billion years, it would be noteworthy as being a problem with Big Bang theory.

Then you can look at the other end of the universe – far, far away from our galaxy. You can look far back in time from our galaxy, where stars and galaxies have formed way too soon after the big bang.

If you find clumps of matter that formed way faster then you expect them too, given the young age of the universe, because the farther you look than the further back in time that you look, then that points to some things that might be older than the apparent age of the universe.

And we can look and see what other stuff that we could see that might be older than the apparent age of the universe, possible candidates and actual candidates, which have been found and need an explanation as to why they’re younger, even though they show evidence of being older than 13.7 billion years.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 380 – System of a Diagnostic

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/12

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What else on Quora commenters?

Rick Rosner: One of the claims of the theory is the universe possibly has consciousness because we tend to think that any sufficiently large and broadband sharing of information in a self-consistent system will likely have the kind of awareness that we consider consciousness.

That it is one more kind of system diagnostic. One more reflection of the world that the system can comment on. That an information processing system is analyzing some chunk of the world.

In humans’ or other animals’ case, it is the world that has immediate significance to that individual. Among the things significant to the individual are the individuals’ thoughts to themselves. They are one more thing for the system to comment on, analyze, and share with itself.

That sharing with itself. The self-commentary is not a lone consciousness. That is a mistake everyone makes. The sense of hyper-reality from super-powerful analysis of the information under consideration and the feel of what comes from that is what consciousness is.

It seems reasonable that the powerful information sharing within the universe itself is strong evidence that the universe probably has consciousness. The universe has consciousness.

One of the commenters on Quora said, “I see no room in the universe for consciousness or a soul.” I know he didn’t see room for a nodule for a soul. That is the immediate image I got from that comment.

To be clear, there is no special nugget in our heads, I feel, or in the noggins of any conscious being, or in some realm beyond; no nugget inside or beyond our brains. Unless, you consider the entire mind its own magic nugget.

But rather, consciousness is a global characteristic found in the process of all the information being shared globally. That there is no one place that consciousness resides. That it is the feeling of fleshed-outness that you get when you get a hunk of pertinent information to the thing that is powerfully analyzing that information.

That information is being continually shared among specialist subsystems. That is a global thing. Everything becomes fully painted, fully fleshed out to the degree that your awareness can do it.

Awareness when sober is different than awareness when shitfaced. Your painting is way crappier if you’re drunk or if you’re a grasshopper or a dog. It doesn’t have all the dimensions and all the depth.

Regardless, it is still a global phenomenon of information sharing among all the parts of your brain that are part of that information sharing system, which doesn’t include the stuff that you’re unconscious of.

Consciousness is the conscious arena; the place where information goes when it meets the entrance requirements to receive that global, multidimensional consideration because it is not straightforward like walking or breathing.

The end.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 379 – Mathertime

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/11

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You have an announcement. What’s up?

Rick Rosner: I am happy to announce. At the prodding of a mutual friend, who took Lance, J.D., and me out to dinner, Lance said, “Why don’t you put your science money where your science mouth is, Rick, and actually start working with some scientists to see if your work goes anywhere?”

I started some baby work with a professional physicist named Dylan. He said we can get a paper published in a journal, which can discuss one falsifiable aspect of our theory. That is, if the universe is older than it appears to be, then there should be stuff in the universe that appears to be older than the age of the universe.

For years, you and I have been sending article links back-and-forth to each other about the universe is as old as this and the universe is as old as that. Often, the plus or minus on this old thing, whether a white dwarf, an early galaxy.

They find a galaxy 12.8 billion years old plus or minus 2 billion years with the plus end, making it 14 billion years, is old than the Big Bang age of the universe. There is a lot of stuff out there.

As a first project, I want to put together a compendium of all the candidates for all the stuff that, potentially, the general class of objects or classes of objects and the individual objects in the universe that have the potential to be older than the cosmos.

I will get feedback from you, Scott, and also credit you in the paper. But things are starting to turn. What we have been doing has been doing, that is, to the extent that we have been doing this stuff, I believe somebody could build a relatively complete understanding of what we’re trying to do, and what this project’s pluses and minuses are.

Where it might agree or false short with experimental evidence, but, I agree. It is time to put a few science clothes on, to see what on it can be done via standard science channels. Do you agree with that?

Jacobsen: It seems like a good idea to me. I note two points of contact within the conversation. One in the academic world. One outside it. Both seem partial and legitimate but not complete.

On the inside, academia seems to work as a means for quality control, to keep cranks out of the mainstream conversation. It provides basic training for people who will work with those leading in the field.

So, it provides the proper skills, the proper knowledge, and keeps cranks out. On the outside, it can prevent people who legitimately may have revolutionary ideas out of the conversation.

Rosner: I agree with both of those things. However, the math and demographics of it. There are many more cranks than people who have revolutionary ideas that turn out to be good. So, though, it is a baby with the bathwater situation.

You have to limit cranks. Otherwise, nobody ever gets anything done because you’re dealing with people wearing tinfoil hats. 99.9% of the theories on the outside will be not great. On the other hand, you may be missing a potential revolution. But the math is daunting.

Project one may lead to a paper. Under that project, any good theory of the universe should be able to go from the laws of information to the structure and dimensionality of the universe.

With that in mind, a baby step in that direction would be a paper that discusses whether there is more space if you could observe space from inside a black hole or an apparent black hole than the amount of space as observed from the outside (the black hole).

Even that sentence, it has a lot wrong with it. A black hole probably contains a singularity. So, there is nothing inside of it. So, that needs to be modified. But the general idea, there is a concentration of matter you’d find in a planet or a sun, or a neutron star, or something that approaches a black hole.

It might define space to such an extent that the scale of space is shrunk down, which effectively makes more space within that object, more volume within that objects. To the extent, that I think there is no such thing as a black hole.

Because the processes that make for a black hole shrink space down in the black hole. You get a black hole when gravitational forces are so strong that they overcome all possible forces in the universe and then it squishes down to zero radius down to a point – a fuzzy quantum-mechanical point but still a point.

Under a theory where the interactions among matter define space, you never get to the maximally squashy point because matter creates its own extra space by defining space more and more precisely as it shrinks down, as the ball of matter shrinks down into itself.

Until, at some point, you reach a limit of compactness. That is where things get hung up – and that stops short of being a black hole. Project two would be examining the math of that. If there is more space in an object with a gravitational field than you would think than observing that object from outside and using normal geometry, I did a rough calculation.

It would be on the scale for something on the Earth – mass and radius of the Earth. The extra space would be, if you could do it, the diameter of the Earth observed from inside of the Earth if you could somehow do it.

It would be 8 millimeters wider than if you viewed it from 100,000 miles away. A tiny little effect, 8 millimeters different in a measurement of an 8,000-mile diameter. Dylan, the physicist, was excited about the first idea.

We have not gotten into the second idea in depth. Since he is a traditionally rooted physicist, We will see if he is as persuadable. He is an enthusiastic guy. It is good he is willing to dive into it. But I feel I will need to do more fast-talking to talk him into idea number two. That is all I got for this.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 378 – Supplanting and Expanding

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/10

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: How does the supplanting and expansion of Universal Gravitation by General Relativity lead to some thoughts about IC?

Rick Rosner: When Newton set up his theory of Universal Gravitation, that all the matter in the universe attracts all the other matter according to the formula m/r^2 or m/d^2 where “d” is the distance between the two masses who’s gravitational force is being measured.

There is some little bit of evidence that he considered trying to account for the dimensionality of space but then threw up his hands and said, “We are going to assume that it is a background that exists.’ I do not know. I am not a historian of Newton.

In any case, Newton assumes a fixed space of three Euclidean spatial dimensions. I do not know if he talks about a time dimension, but he talks about a straightforward Euclidean flat space in which all the gravitation happens.

Einstein comes along and presents gravitation as a bending or deformation of 3-dimensional space, where under Universal Gravitation objects follow paths that curve because of gravity.

But under General Relativity objects, including light, follow geodesics, which are the general relativistic equivalent of straight lines and it is space itself that is bent by the presence of mass.

It accounts for more stuff. The math is harder. But it lets you do more stuff, including having a picture – namely, the Big Bang – of the dynamics of the universe. But it still assumes space exists.

There are people like Wheeler who try to come up with programs like “It from Bit,” which is looking at the universe as a giant processor or a big computer. Somewhere included under that effort is the idea that the information of the universe should also determine the structure of the universe.

That the relationships among the particles in the universe should determine how space is shaped. That there is no pre-existing space where things play out. That space should follow from the theory – why space is three dimensional but bent by gravity.

It should all come out of some overarching theory of how information works. Einstein was a step forward. But there is room for further steps forward. My theory in the Quora responses has been legitimately criticized for being hand-wavey and not sufficiently turned into equations.

Those criticisms are legit. At the same time, there have been hand-wavey theorizers in the past. They, often, didn’t make the 100% persuasive case for their theory. They simply got some retroactive credit, like Immanuel Kant postulated “Island Universes.”

By which he meant, there were other galaxies in the universe. I forget what his logic was or if he assumed that there just can’t be one galaxy. 200 or 300 years later, he was proved right and is mentioned when stuff is written up.

But he could not prove his supposition 200 years before there were not sufficiently powered telescopes to prove the existence of other galaxies. Wegner was the continental drift guy. There was one guy 300 years before him who said, “It looks like the continents might have initially fit together.”

No mechanisms were proposed. That is the guy from 1500 or 1600 gets some retroactive credit. Gamow himself, one of the originators of Big Bang theory was notoriously bad at math.

So, he had to work with other people to help him mathematicize it. His theory did, indeed, contain a lot of math about nucleosynthesis, what elements would be formed in the Big Bang and what elements would be formed later in stars as stars cooked later.

Even though, he was bad at math. He did get some math in. His theory gets credit.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 377 – Ground Control to Quora Tom

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/09

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What are some of your comments on the Quora commentary on IC? We just saw it.

Rick Rosner: It is June 11, 2018 today. And you just pointed out to me this Quora thing. Question: “Why do you think Rick Rosner’s theory of the universe is valid or not valid?” It went up in April, 2017 – 14 months ago.

About 500 people have looked at the question, as far as I can tell, and, maybe, 5 people responded to it. The responses were pretty legit in my mind. The first response was, maybe, the most extensive. It, in a nutshell, says, ‘If this is going to be a real theory, it should be presented as a real theory. You should not have to wade through a 218-page interview to get a sense of what it is about. It should be in a legitimate forum with math and the proper framing, and all of that stuff.’

Thing one, you do not need to read 218 pages to get a sense of the theory. You and I did an extensive interview, but only 20 or 30 pages talk about the theory. Those are legitimate criticisms. If the theory, if at all possible, wants to receive the proper consideration, it should make predictions and conform to existing experimental data and observational data.

It should make predictions that can either come true or not. If they didn’t, it would tend to prove the theory false. That’s, according to a standard picture of how science works, how science works. Scientific theories make specific predictions and once those predictions are measured experimentally or evaluated experimentally then that helps determine the fate of the theory.

There are some objections. I have some quibbles. According to roughly the same theory of science, old theories putter along accumulating glitches – that is, experimental results that do not entirely conform to the experimental predictions and then being modified to see if they can fit those experimental results and, eventually, getting rickety like an old jalopy – until a better theory comes along and can fit more experimental results and offers a better point of view.

A little bit or a lot bit how Einstein’s General Relativity supplanted and expanded Newton’s Theory of Universal Gravitation.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 376 – A (Apparent Non-Socialist) Socialist Civilization

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/08

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is our future civilization?

Rick Rosner: We have a future where things will be cheap. By the way, we live in a socialist civilization right now. Nobody acknowledges this. But dead people give us everything; they do not hang onto anything.

Inheritance is the engine that runs our civilization and economy. People die and then their stuff gets owned by other people. Giving 100% of your stuff, it doesn’t get more socialist than that.

However, the future will be less socialist that way because people will die less and less. Anyway, there are several dimensions or axes. That you have to look at. People will be sort of enclaved. You can argue people are enclaved now.

Every once in a while, a new type of person is celebrated in the media. The Yuppies in the 80s, Hippies in the 60s, Beatniks in the 50s, Women’s Libbers in the 70s, all sorts of variations. Buppies, DINKs – Double Income No Kids.

People form new lifestyles all the time. In the future, there will be a greater spectrum of lifestyle. There will be a certain amount of enclaving, of people teaming up to share lifestyles, because of accepting technology or rejecting it.

Although, people will have the same amount of mobility in the mixing of lifestyles, as there will be more to choose from than from those now. It will be enclaving of picking ways of life and picking the philosophical beliefs that support those.

At the very traditional end, we will have humans living as we do now, and dying, because it is too weird not to. That supported by religious or philosophical beliefs. At the other end, you will have people living wildly technologized lives, which given trends in technology will probably be merging with technology and with each other.

The ability to accomplish new stuff, new and powerful stuff. It will be at the high technology end. There will be more traditional humans crafting or home crafting stuff. That may have some quaint appeal. That will not be as powerful as the highly augmented and technology powerful people are doing.

The traditional lifestyles will be eroded by the awesomeness of established technology. Technology comes along with the early adopters trying it out, even though it sucks and is unwieldy and it takes a lot of technical expertise to use.

That new technology becomes established. People begin to understand what is good and easy about it. Once it is well-established, it goes to work on the rest of the population. Similarly, there will be a constant erosion of traditionalist stances, as the great stuff of the future proves to be too attractive.

Anyway, you will have a big spread of people from the most traditional to the most wildly experimental. But across the whole spectrum into all the lifestyles, you will see an accelerating increase in standards of living or in simply powers over the world.

Because it is weird to talk about standards of living when you’re talking about entirely new standards of living. People at the very highest technology end will continually be exploring.

That’s enough of that.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 375 – An Era of Wonders, An Epoch of Suckiness

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/07

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What can we say about social media? You have been having some troubles with Twitter. Also, you had some thoughts on superhero movies. Please elaborate.

Rick Rosner: I can only surmise mathematically. I am getting fewer likes, retweets, and so on, drastically fewer. Only a few days ago, there was something on social media. People running the medium or algorithms running the medium do something called shadow banning, which is reducing your reach – reducing the amount of communication that you can have with other people on the medium.

The limiting of the number of people who can see your postings. There is overt explicit banning. If you are running a Nazi feed, where you are saying, “Kill all the Jews,” they will send you a notice saying, “No, you are done.” Twitter has been slow to do that.

I have been posting scathing but not obscene or particularly offensive tweets from a liberal perspective on Trump and his minions. I may have generated some complaints, since there are ways to report a feed that you do not like – to complain about it to Twitter.

Twitter’s algorithms received them and then decided something was wrong with what I have been saying and has been shutting me down. I am not allowed to advertise. But I have been advertising something. That may be frowned upon.

I have been putting out four-letter words with asterisks. Twitter doesn’t like that either. You cannot even chat with somebody via instant messaging because they tell you to go to instant messaging to resolve these things – so no good calls and then you get these typed responses from a hotkey. It delivers an unhelpful paragraph.

It is really hard to address anything to know what you can do, what you need to change, when things will change; in short, Twitter sucks. It is unfortunate for an important social medium. It is usually the source of breaking news.

It is also the source of social protest. It is useful. But Twitter’s growth has been limited by how miserable it is and how pissed off everybody is who uses it. It only has about 330 million monthly active users.

While Facebook has about 1.5 billion, almost 5 times as many, though, Facebook sucks too. Young people think Facebook is for the old and have gone elsewhere. In general, all social media kind of suck.

I think that is an indication of the limits of non-sucking of human administered tools. We are mentally the same people, or at least in terms of our brains the same as people who lived 10,000 years ago.

We have better equipment, better algorithms, better communication relationships with our technology, but humans are still the highest order executive functions for, at least, the big decisions of what goes on in large institutions.

Social media, government, entertainment, that means there is an inherent ceiling that you can’t go beyond because humans suck – because we have limited mental and executive capabilities.

Now, within Google Translate, you told me. Anytime you have AI or machine learning; if it is sufficiently complex, the machine learning starts doing things black boxy. You cannot tell exactly what they’re up to from the outside.

You told me Google Translate developed its own private language, not spoken by any human on Earth because Google doesn’t talk. But it made it mathematically or informationally more efficient. Instead of translating from each possible pair of languages, Finnish to Croatian, Urdu to French, if it is translating 110 languages into each others, then, instead of having 100*109/2 or something like 6,000 different handshakes, Google found it more informationally efficient to have a metalanguage at the core, where all the other 110 languages go into the core.

Google finds the meta-word that equals the word in Urdu and then links it to the meta-word or word equivalent in French. Instead of having 6,000 different handshakes, Google has 110 links from each human language to its metalanguage in and then back out.

Somehow, that is more efficient in the way consciousness may be a more efficient problem-solving or information-processing tool than having apps for each conjunction of events or types of information.

You have sneaky and black boxy forms of emerging, if not intelligence then, sophisticated information processing, but everything is still for humans’ benefit and humans are still in charge of the important decisions.

For example, take superhero movies, they have credits that are 8 minutes and may encompass 8,000 people. The movies themselves moment-to-moment have a lot of awesomeness. They are awesome graphically.

Since they are an investment of $300 million – $200 million for the movie and $100 million for the publicity, and the script has been gone over a million times and is as packed with decent dialogue moments and turns of plot, and the actors have been physically trained and beautified to the nth degree, and the stunts are great, except, it is still a superhero movie that has characters coming out of children’s comics books from 45 or 55 years ago.

So, there is a ceiling to a superhero not sucking with the ceiling being it is still a frickin’ superhero movie. As we move into the era of humans being more and more linked with machine learning and – we can hope – being able to handle more linked and complex relationships between data, that the sucky ceiling will be lifted.

Certainly, the stuff in conjunction with us has led to better lives for us compared to people 2,200 years ago. The suckiness ceiling has already lifted immensely. We can hope that it keeps going in conjunction with our non-organic information processors get better at understanding and manipulating the world.

The end.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 374 – Out With the Old, In With The New

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/06

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: When you’re dealing with the way we think, and when you’re dealing with the structure of information as it is represented in the world, how much is old information? How much is new information?

Rick Rosner: You and I think the universe may be older, much older, than it appears to be. If that is so, another question might be, “How good is the universe at eradicating old stuff and replacing it with new stuff?” If it is 100% good at it, then you need more sophisticated theoretical arguments to establish the universe is older than it appears to be because there is no physical trace.

But if the universe still allows some stuff older than its apparent age to survive – and my image of the old stuff that is allowed to survive is keeping a hard candy in your mouth for a while. It gets ablated, eroded, but still some of it survives right until the end.

There might be structures in the universe that might be eroded through radiation and other stuff that might erode information, but the old stuff still survives in an eroded form. An associated question might be, “What percentage of the universe is older than the apparent age of the universe?” Then you can get specific about some celestial bodies that may be older than the apparent universe.

Then there is the metaphor used by us. The physics of the universe has much to do with the physics of thought. The physics of thought can be mapped, pictured, or expressed in a physical space that has some of the same physics as the universe itself.

How much of our consciousness is built from old stuff? How much is built from new stuff? I think the metaphor is capacious enough, has enough room, to have models of memory that have something to do with the way the universe looks.

In that, when we remember old stuff, obviously we cannot remember anything but old stuff, we have, kind of, a general idea of what we’re remembering. That quickly becomes, if we have the available memories, quite specific – second grade.

We have a rough memory of being younger, of our teacher, how the school was like, maybe our classmates. That makes sense in terms of information. It also makes sense in that a lot of people in neuroscience like to say that the brain’s job is to be a prediction engine.

It helps you cope with the world by helping you predict what will happen next, which means that your brain needs models of various degrees of generality. If you are meeting a new person, your general models of what people are like may be more helpful than the more specific models if you are running into a specific person again.

So, it makes sense that memory would function in both generalities to be helpful at prediction and with specificities. It also makes sense that the universe might contain information at various levels of generality and specificity.

We know what that feels like in terms of experience. The representation of that may include old burned out galaxies where the structures get ablated or seared away by new radiation that might be streaming out of a central black hole or might be coming from other parts of space.

If the information is stowed safely down a black enough hole, maybe, it won’t be washed away and some specificity might be washed away.

One more thing, there is a hypothesis. You could hypothesize that we know, in some way, as life has evolved from no life at all through simple plants and animals to the fairly sophisticated consciousnesses of mammals and then the world that humans have built via their consciousnesses.

We know that is in some way an increase in order. You can wonder. Does that increase in local order on our planet and on quite a few other planets throughout the universe increase the order of the universe itself?

I would hypothesize that, yes, it does. The universe makes use of any available mechanism for preserving and generating and processing information. No matter how localized to a certain planet and specific to a set of organisms.

It may not make great use of it. I think it’s a reasonable hypothesis to say that, yes, any mechanism for processing information is somehow reflected in the universe’s processing of its own information for its own purposes.

I don’t know exactly how it works. I talked to an AI guy yesterday. He said that AI is far behind where people think it is because we haven’t been able to duplicate the processes happening in the brain at all. But all we have are simple schema and algorithms.

I would argue the brain itself uses simple algorithms and neural networks and other stuff. Anything that works and is easy to set up, probably exists in some form in the brain for the brain’s own purpose.

I would suggest similarly that there is a chance. Any form of order in the universe is somehow used by the universe for its own purposes, even if it is for a slight increase in the universe’s net efficiency.

The end.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 373 – Up, Up, and Away, and Away

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/05

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is the upper limit to the size of possible universes?

Rick Rosner: If there is a set of all possible universes, which is an iffy proposition considering the profusion of possible universes there may be, it boggles. It is the set of everything, basically. Who knows if the set of everything can even be a set? There are some questions raised.

For instance, there is a thing called the Anthropic Principle in physics, which some people find to be a useful tool. The idea is that you can draw certain conclusions in physics from our existence.

That the universe has to follow certain rules in order to permit evolution – for there to be planets to exist long enough for us to evolve on those planets, for us to evolve to be able to think about the universe on a planet.

Some people like to extend the Anthropic Principle in certain directions such that every possible universe should, maybe, permit the existence of things that can observe that universe.

That seems to me to be too strong a thing. You can imagine a universe that comes into and winks out of existence prior to any conscious observers evolves. You can use a similar anthropic reasoning to draw conclusions about the possible size of the universe that could contain species like us.

You couldn’t have a universe that only contains ten atoms. That universe, only as long as it had 10 atoms, couldn’t evolve observers like us, have people evolve on a planet like us. It couldn’t contain Earth.

We know the planet Earth is roughly 5 billion-years-old and the universe existed roughly 9 billion years before Earth congealed into existence. You can imagine a universe that contained things like us, people like us, or conscious observers like us.

That is only 2 billion years old, where a planet congeals into existence. It only takes it a billion years. Once the planet exists, evolution reaches a point of having conscious beings, where evolution moves fast. It is only another billion years for that to happen.

That would be a lower time limit. You couldn’t have us show up much faster than that in a naturally evolving universe. And you may be able to make anthropic arguments about the upper limit on the size of a universe that contains organisms like us, at least, maybe, we’re only seeing the parts of the universe that are apparently 14 billion years old.

But, maybe, that is only a bud within a larger universe that grew independently, budded off. That larger universe is vastly older and, maybe, you only find creatures of our level of sophistication within the more limited universe that are on the scales of being only 10 or 20 billion years old.

You tend to find more complicated creatures proliferating through larger universes and not creatures like us. Where, we are limited to a smaller universe – the 13 billion-year-old apparent age variety. That is a possible set of principles to look at.

There is this other thing that shows up, which is a possible ladder of existence. Which, I find problematic because it contains infinities. To get to that idea, every normal human has a brain, which processes information.

But we each also have a mind, which is the information-space that we’re conscious of. We are not conscious of the space itself. But we are conscious of the awareness of what we are aware of, what we’re thinking about from moment to moment.

We are conscious of a set of information. Because that is the information we’re working from, at any given moment. We are aware of certain things. You are aware of where you are. Maybe, it is on the computer. Maybe, it is on a bench having lunch. Maybe, it is the afternoon and 2pm. Maybe, you are pissed off and in traffic.

Your mind, at any given moment, is the information that you’re aware of at any given moment. That mind, that information that you’re of; you’re aware independently of it. You do not feel you’re aware.

You are not aware of your brain clickity-clacking like a giant computer, or of neurons sending electrical signals to one another all over the place – and dopamine and serotonin being emitted and absorbed. All of that.

You are aware of the contents of your mind from moment to moment. It may be possible to mathematicize the information you’re or everybody is aware of. It may be possible to develop a physical model of that information that you’re aware of at any given moment with a set of principles and a geometry.

If somebody said, “A penny for your thoughts,” in the year 2052, you could send them a mental map of exactly what your thoughts are. It is a little mind-map. A little universe of that, that you could zap to them the structure of what is in your brain moment-to-moment.

You have your brain doing brain stuff moment-to-moment. Then you have your mind, which may very likely exist in its own information-space. Then to take it one step further, which is what IC does; that if our mind is an information-space. Then, perhaps, the universe is similarly an information space, where the information it contains has its own geometry and physics which we live in.

If any of this is reasonably close to true, then the information-space that we live in, which is the universe; outside of it and beyond it in an entirely different space, there is the brain – organic, mechanical, or whatever – that supports the information being processed in the information-space that is our universe.

It may be possible that every information-space requires some kind of other space. Some kind of another world that is the physical support for this information. To imagine that, if somebody obliterated your brain, a piano fell on your skull and squashed your brain.

Most people would assume that your mental space would cease to exist. That you cannot have the mental space, your mind, without the brain, the physical hardware that supports your mind.

So, it is a two-part deal. If that applies to the universe, the two-part deal is that we live in this physical space and the physical space implies the support space, the hardware, that allows the universe to exist. That it can’t just support itself.

If so, that implies a ladder of existence. If our physical world is a physical information space support by a physical world outside of it, then that implies the physical world outside of it is itself an information-space that is supported by a physical world outside of it, and so on out to infinity, which is problematic.

Because it is this huge-ass ladder to infinity. But to really have our dinky world of 10^85th protons, we really need an infinity of containing worlds? That seems problematic. It may be legitimately problematic.

In that, it may not accurately reflect what is going on in our universe with any supporting structures, which may or may not be necessary. Or it may be something problematic. That as we learn more about the universe or the principles of existence.

Maybe, a thing that we will have to get used to or think more about, or something. But one way of thinking about it rather than thinking about it as this infinite ladder towards infinity of information-spaces being supported by further information-spaces.

You can think of it as pairs of information spaces.

If the universe is a big mind-space or information-space with a support structure to contain it because our minds are a certain size with a certain amount of information. It is a 2 or pound thing in a universe with 10^85 protons.

Our universe around our brain is a vast support system. But it is still just a system between our mind and this vast support structure. If you imagine the universe needing its own vastly larger support structure, then that is fine too if they are no upper limits on the size of universes.

You have our mind within the big ass universe. Our universe supported by an outside vastly bigger ass universe. That is fine. That is a pairing between a big ass world and a bigger ass world.

Maybe, that is the deal. That every world that can possibly exist has an implied much bigger supporting world. That is alright. Because, even though you have big and way bigger, everything is still finite.

It is the principle of no biggest possible universe. If it is a real principle, then is no problem. Because you have got all the way up to but not including infinity. You can have all these pairs of universes. The big ass and big triple ass universe, and big octuple ass universe and so on.

Then it is a relationship between the structure and its container and so on. A Big Bang universe has T=0 but does not have a matter zero. A Big Bang universe pretty much always has the matter that it started with when everything started.

It was all packed together into this one infinitesimal point. The amount of matter was a point and then blew up, but the amount of information was always the same. An information universe, which you and I like to think about, is much more likely to have a T=0 but also an I=0. It is information zero. It is a mass-energy and space zero.

If we live in an information universe, that has big bangy aspects but is really built on information. Then it is reasonable to think that that universe has an implied beginning with a null universe out of which it coalesced as it generated and absorbed more and more information, as it was able to contain more and more information.

A metaphor for that might be a babies mind. Let’s say it almost contains nothing at birth, but as it arranges itself and gets more sensory input, as the dendrites get paired away and so on, the baby’s mind takes shape and contains more and more information.

Until, by age 5, a five-year-olds consciousness is not much different from an adult’s mind in terms of the information it contains on a moment-to-moment basis. But it started from an almost null information state, whether before or after birth…

Anyway, it is easy to imagine a baby’s mind started with zero information. It is easy to imagine that any kind of information-based universe implies a past that contains a point of zero or null information. No space, no matter yet, stuff coalesces into existence.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 372 – Hollow Spheres and Blackish Holes

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/01

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What happens in a hollow sphere for a passing photon? How does this relate to the posited astronomical bodies, blackish holes (rather than, similarly, black holes)?

Rick Rosner: If you are on the surface of a hollow sphere, you feel the pull of 10 meters per second per second that is holding you on the surface of this hollow sphere. If you drill a hole into the sphere and go into the center of the sphere, you are apparently weightless, wherever you are in the sphere.

The math works out that way. Any photons you should from the surface of the sphere as they crawl out of the gravitational well will lose the same amount of energy as any photons shot from inside the sphere through the hole you’ve drilled in the sphere regardless of where you are shooting from.

So, the gravitational acceleration experienced or a photon would experience as it climbs out of the pit – or the shape of the pit – is it curves downward until you hit the surface, and then it is flat all the way to the center and all the way from the center to the surface again, and then it curves back up.

It is like that shape you have seen. The cone that is pinched with the tip of the cone cut off. And the net effect of passing through all the little hollow spheres all the way to the center of a body is that it looks like the bottom half of a circle, roughly.

And in a blackish hole, we’re saying the scale of space itself tightens up. So, there is more space inside. There is more volume inside a blackish hole than what you see outside of a blackish hole.

That is another thing that buffers the gravitational curvature and evens everything out. At the neck, you get the super severe effects.

The end.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 371 – Future of Partnerships

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/07/22

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What will be the future of partnerships?

Rick Rosner: What you see in terms of partnership choices in the future may reflect mating strategies. When you have today and for the past few decades, you have unusual mating arrangements, like people in a three-way mating arrangement or a four-way.

It’s sensational. It is something you’d see in an HBO like a sex documentary. It’s seen as fascinating or titillating. But in the future, differing mating arrangements other than two people closely bonded for a period of time will become more common.

Partially because there’s more support for alternate lifestyles due to increased information via the internet and social media. Increased tolerance. And to say increased tolerance, the gender fluidity was something that was largely unheard of a decade or two ago.

Those people could change their minds about who they are sexually. People didn’t know that that was a thing and to the extent that they did know it was a thing was like, “Oh, come on, how much more are we going to have to deal with new genders or gender orientations?”

As time goes on, people will grow to be more at home than just with tolerant attitudes. Expansive attitudes. But in terms of mate selection, alternate or non-traditional partners— the non-traditional joining of people may in itself be a sexual strategy.

Maybe, a sexual strategy that in relationships where a woman is in love with more than one guy or is in love with a woman and a guy. A guy is in love with two women. Those things may turn out to be, for some people, ways to have relationships, where perhaps one or more of the people in the relationship felt closed out of partnerships in the past.

Either due to personal preferences or due to just not being able to find a niche to be successful in, not being able to find a way to be sexually successful.

Jacobsen: What niches in the future will be exaggerated, as some niches are more exaggerated now?

Rosner: What roles will offer certain people chances of sexual success the way the job role offered people success for 100 years?

Jacobsen: Yes, also, the characteristics or factors that comprise them. For instance, the modern LA version of the big booty with the Kardashians, for example.

Rosner: Well, I can tell you with regard to fashion, which is not to say body styles. But if you look at the history of fashion, some new part of the body is always being revealed or emphasized. In the ‘80s, leg holes kept getting higher and higher.

Instead of going straight across, at the lower thigh, they kept creeping upward until eventually you had thongs, so more and more of the upper thigh and butt was revealed. In various times in history, we’ve had side boob eras.

So yeah, we right now are in an era that emphasizes the butt. So, we can assume that trends in what we reveal about what we focus on in the body will continue to change. There will be the parts of the body that we focus on that will continue to change.

There won’t always be the emphasis on a single body part that we have now. But there will always be novelty. It won’t signify much. Fashion exists to perpetuate itself via novelty. Sometimes, it reflects something maybe important about the culture.

The way that fashion has shifted to allow for heavier people; the way that body consciousness in fashion has shifted in America and the rest of the world over the past 20 years to accommodate people who are on average much heavier than they were in the ‘70s.

But, fashion is fashion. It shifts around to give people an excuse to buy new stuff. And I have read arguments that say that trends in fashion have been replaced by an ominousness in fashion where anything that worked in the past can now be seen as fashion now.

That somebody could dress as they dressed 20, 25 years ago, walk down the street without drawing any attention because we now live in an era of any thingness. It may be due to increased information.

That if you can see all of fashion, all of the history of fashion, laid out in front of you just by clicking around on the internet, then there’s less era wise or now wise enforcement of fashion rules, because people have more information.

Similarly, in terms of competing for mates, there may be more of an anything goes because people have more information. And more access to all sorts of different people via social media. So who is going to be successful in the future at attracting mates?

I don’t know if it’s new. But it certainly is more important now than in the past, is people who accept all body types. People don’t apply rigorous physical standards of sexual attractiveness of the past.

They will do well now and into the future in which we’re growing more accepting of people as they are now. When I was growing up, we might get in the weeds here but…

Jacobsen: We have two minutes.

Rosner: Okay. Throughout most of the 20^th century, there were severe constraints on who was allowed to have sex. Married people were allowed to have sex. People who took themselves out of the realm of social approval, of course, could have sex, which meant like prostitutes.

There was a huge prostitution culture in the US in the first half of the 20^th century. But beyond that, people weren’t supposed to have sex. I mean there were times when people had sex, like World War II, standards were—it wasn’t overt.

Standards weren’t overtly low. Sexual prohibitions weren’t overtly lowered, but people about to go off to maybe die, yeah. There was a lot of people hooking up before they went off to battle and such. There was still urgency.

But there were still huge prohibitions on sex outside of wedlock. Now, most of that is eroded. And eroding along with that are standards about who’s attractive. Rigid standards of sexual fitness. And people who are able to see the beauty in everyone are going to want to be offered greater opportunities.

That’s about it.

[End of recorded material]

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Ask A Genius 370 – In the Long Run…

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/07/15

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What about long-term solutions going into the future compared to the past?

Rick Rosner: John Maynard Keynes said that during the Great Depression, when somebody must’ve asked him what’s the best long-term solution. And he was saying, f- long-term solutions. We need to do something about now.

And the deal is, we’re perishable. We are flowers that bloom for a day and then die. We’re done in, even though our lifespans are longer, now by,20 years or so than they were when Maynard Keynes said in the long term we’re all dead—in the long run we’re all dead.

We’re still all dead eventually and pretty quickly. I have been helping my mother in law move into her senior living community, where the average age is, the mid 80s. And I’m the mid to late 50s now, but we do not have much time.

Unless there are great strides made in medicine, I have got, another 20, if I’m lucky, 25 years of competent life left. That’s just nothing. But anyway, we are, we are born and live and pass away fast. It’s understandable that our framework is short term.

We have evolved creatures and we’ve been evolved to create the next—to have sex, have babies, and send the next generation off to do the same thing.

Evolutionary forces tend not to work more than—I mean, an evolutionary victory is spitting out the next generation. Now, we’re—humans are in a slightly different position than a lot of animals in that human babies are born incomplete.

Because our evolutionary tactic, the thing that helps us occupy our niche in the world is having a big brain. But brains can only be so big before they kill the mother during childbirth by getting caught in the birth canal.

So, women, when they give birth, their pelvises split apart, the baby’s head gets forced out. The baby’s head at the point of birth has overlapping plates that can get compacted as the baby passes through the birth canal to make the skull just a little bit smaller. But anyway, human brains are as big as they can possibly be and not kill moms.

But that’s not big enough. So there’s still a lot of growth and wiring that needs to go on after birth. Which means that human babies take, at least ten years to raise. Nobody now would let 10 year olds out into the world on their own.

You can argue that human babies now take 18 to 20—well Donald Trump was just talking about how Don Jr. really can’t be held that much responsible for meeting with Russian.

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 369 – Nude Art Modelling and Innovation’s Futurescape

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/07/08

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is the future of innovations? Robots are taking over automation.

Rick Rosner: I have not been doing a lot of thinking about this. I have blindly accepted that future innovation will be done by the automated people are working in combination with AI or by AI itself. The most obvious steps forward, beginning ten, twenty, thirty years from now, are going to be in serious combination with AI or by AI on its own.

But thinking further about it, having been in the art model off and on, since I was twenty-four so more than thirty years, I have been working a bunch of places including the art places where you get good art.

Places like Art Centre Paladino or Cal Art or SVA New York. If the art is done by art students at art colleges like the University of Colorado, schools that don’t specialize in art. That’s a much lower level of skill and artistic insight.

So, I can imagine that what innovation isn’t done by AI for humans, then the concerns with AI’s will be that level of innovation and artistic creation that will make human innovation look crappier relative to it.

They will have such powerful technology that though human art will be crappier it can still be fun. So, you’ve got innovation with several flavors, probably many more flavors than that, but off the top of my head there will be pure AI innovations which takes a while to come.

Because AI is helpless at this point without being human directed. You will have AI that really innovates and other innovations being done by augmented humans. You will have innovations by defiant human people.

People who don’t like the coming status quo of everything being mediated through AI and who have diligently determined or developed the practice or their craft to be able to continue with the human arts of creation without resorting to AI.

This is a what my buddy Lance Richlin, a sculptor and painter does; he sticks to old forms, the ancient Greek sculptural methods, Renaissance painting methods. I tell Lance, at least he paints deep metaphysical themes, pains like modern people.

People talking on their cell phones in cars or they are texting while driving. He refuses to give in to modernity. So, you will have some innovation, some creativity coming from defiant defenders of human craft and art, and then you will have the casual creators of ridiculousness with t-shirt themes and memes done by regular people joking around.

So, that’s it.

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 368 – The Future of Remembering

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/07/01

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We were talking off tape about the future of remembering. What are you taking into account when you are thinking of future of remembering?

Rick Rosner: Well I am thinking that in the future our brains will be augmented with. devices that. that will expand our abilities or help us maintain a decaying ability.

One of those abilities is a memory. One way of picturing the future is. when the brain starts to get old you go into some small business the way. Schwarzenegger walked into some joint in. his… I don’t know. what movie is that?

Jacobsen: Daycare movie, Daddy Daycare.

Rosner: Total Recall, you go to a joint and then 20 minutes they implant a whole new set of memories. and I just want to. it wasn’t Daddy day care.

Jacobsen: Daddy Day Care is the one where he says, “It’s not a tumor.”

Rosner: Really? Because in Total Recall he pulls something out of his nose. some kind of. anyway. I am just going to say that’s now how to remember. artificial remembering works. Where. for the past six weeks or so I have been tweeting. on Twitter I have been tweeting exerts from my memoir and trying to remember more stuff.

My guess is that. or artificial memory to most efficiently remember for you when your brain starts to go in the future. won’t be just one quick scan of the architecture of your brain, and what neurons connect to what other neurons. I am guessing that. it will have to ride with you. be a part of your brain for a long time and. witness a lot of your remembering over a period of months or ideally years. If you don’t actively remember something, that would be harder to find structurally via some short-term scan.

We have been talking about how memory is constructivist. and that the brain might be constructivist, that it is not. it may not. memories may be encoded in. not just individual neurons but in networks of neurons, that can also encode lots of other memories depending on. which pattern they are part of.

Memories might be encoded in patterns of neurons firing. You do not get a good idea of the pattern unless you get the neurons to fire to actually have that memory. So I am thinking in the future when you get artificial memory. you will get modules that will become part of your brain over time, learn how your brain works, it will take months and years.

Then there will probably be exercises, prompts in recovering memory; making you recall stuff like. Try to recall the year. What happened to you in 1982, you will be prompted and given images from 1982, at the memory parlor or at home when you are trying memory exercises. you will be given prompts about who is your third-grade teacher?

Your friends? Everything will be designed to actively get you to remember stuff. Because I believe those memories will be a lot clearer for the artificial memory to recover than some structural scan that just tries to map the dendritic connections in your brain. And that’s it.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 367 – Mitigating Risk (2)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/22

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I want to take it a little bit deeper with that. If F. Scott Fitzgerald is stating that the trademark of a first-rate mind is one that can hold two ideas that are different simultaneously, then the assumption is that a decision has not been made.

So, that comes from that is the ability to be thoughtful, to deliberate, to reason in general.

Rick Rosner: You could boil it down to your unresolved consideration; you are undecided about some issue at hand, which some people have to decide immediately because it undermines something in their mind at the moment that is previously held.

It’s hard to persuade them otherwise even with fresh evidence or any persuasive argument. Lance was yelling at me. This is what we do with our web series. He was yelling at me about something. What is the probability that Trump will be charged with collusion with Russia?

Jacobsen: Did you mention the survey?

Rosner: Maybe, 40%, if you are wrong, are you going to give me $1,000? There’s no wrong there. I’m not signing a proof of probability to it. It’s undetermined. He was giving me shit for saying that there’s not enough information yet.

I’d say that that in certain areas it’s not wrong to not decide what’s true or not because there’s not enough information to decide. There are different things to know or attempt to know about the world. In most everyday things that are critical, we gather enough information to make the state of everything that we’re trying to determine into the state of certainty.

With the standard example being the red traffic light, now, there might be situations where it doesn’t matter what state the light is in, a little town at 4:30 in the morning where you the air is clear, you can see for a mile in either direction along a straight road.

You don’t have to care about the state of the traffic light. But in a busy city, your safety depends on knowing the state of the light and reporting cross or not cross. You accumulate enough environmental cues including photons of certain wavelengths from the traffic lights.

The odds that you’re thinking about the state of the traffic light green or red are less than one in a trillion. If people do make mistakes, they get distracted; they forget where they are; they step into traffic, but somebody who’s paying attention will wait for the significance of a traffic light.

It’s not a question that will naturally ascertain the state of the light to near certainty. And most situations are like that, but given your experience of streets and sidewalks, your next step is likely along the street.

You’re likely to still be on the sidewalk or on the curb or taking one step into the street. You’re likely not to be stepping into a hole. It’s based on your experience. If you’re prudent, you’re not looking at your phone.

You’re looking at the state of your environment to have more certainty by visually inspecting what’s going around you. So, most everyday things that are critical are things that you can ascertain their state to near certainty.

Another thing, there are still everyday things, where you can’t ascertain the state: Does a girl like me? It’s up in the air. You need to accumulate more information before whatever you would do if you thought that she likes you.

Then there’s stuff where it’s hard to accumulate information in a moment-to-moment fashion like Trump with various investigations and levels of collusion. It’s gonna take time. Or trying to figure out whether your team is going to win a game, you have to wait for the information.

So, there’s some uncertainty on questions of life or death. To think we can still screw up, because if you have an average lifetime, you have three billion critical decisions of the type including deciding on the weather light is green or red.

The odds of screwing up are one and a billion that maybe you will screw up three times. You might get in a wreck. I have gotten into wrecks quite recently. I got in a wreck in Albuquerque. The Sun was on my face. I didn’t even see a traffic light. I rolled through to what turned out to be a red.

So, I didn’t have enough information. I was assuming that there wasn’t a light there. I bounced off of my car, smashed head-on into it, into another car. That was all my fault. I didn’t gather enough information.

Jacobsen: Those were abrupt. So, depending on the channel of information, the context, I mean, which we’ve carved out of overtime. We’ve carved our environment. We’ve carved each other for selection up to latest various traits.

That we have sensory organs, cognitive capacities. Things like this. We’ve honed ourselves. So, we’re high fidelity within a relatively broad spectrum of environmental possibilities. So, whether that’s something relatively abstract like games or math to the things that are mundane, but pretty concrete, including knowing whether to cross the street if they’re showing a good to go and walk sign or not.

Because we have a lot of visual information, we’re getting a lot of photons to get an image. So, it’s relatively high fidelity barring some visual impairment. Then, that makes me think, what does this mean for contexts in which there are clear deficits?

So, the person who doesn’t have any social skills. They have the same cognitive capacities and sensory organs. So, they can see things they can understand; they can see. But they can’t, where they can see things and can have a conceptualization of things, but they don’t have that immediate understanding of what goes on in a social situation.

I mean, what they do in a social situation is completely inappropriate.

Rosner: You are talking about people with social deficits often. In the past century, from most people being looked at as awkward or bad cases, to people being looked at as people with specific ranges of deficits, that have a particular ideology.

That these deficits can be addressed in various ways via therapy or protecting those people, but since we value the lives of other humans. Aspergers isn’t particularly dangerous. It can in a lot of instances lead to people who want to be socially successful and are Asperger.

You’re going to have frustration. Unless, once they’re lucky, or unless they get training or learn to train themselves myopically through life-and-death deficits, we generally note those people and take measures to protect them.

Jacobsen: I mean, historically, those people would probably be weeded out or would have some use in a specific ritualistic sense, right?

Rosner: I mean, as somebody who grew up in the 70s, my metric for social success was whether I could get a girlfriend or whether somebody could get a girl. There is probably a number of people on the autism spectrum – higher than ever before.

Maybe partially because of environmental or cultural factors, maybe partially because we are able to identify people better than ever before, people get tossed into it because there are funds available to address these problems.

But these problems, some people would argue, are not problems. I’m arguing from a point of view that some people are perfectly happy to be on the spectrum and have the altered behavior and perception and thought that goes along with it.

There are all these people who are socially awkward and thus less socially successful. And that’s something you probably have in all animals.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 366 – Mitigating Risk

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/15

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We share the hope for the hollowing out of the more harmful aspects of religion. Many religious individuals share this concern as well. In common, decent people, it is a common desire to see religion cause less harm.

Rick Rosner: I expressed hope that in the future that there will be a hollowing out of some of the more pernicious aspects of religion as technological points. As technology explains more and more of the world and takes over more and more of the functions that religion has prompted, religion traditionally promises people.

But then I had a second thought which is that, since our thoughts are created and stored in our brain and the mind is the source of the reacting to the environment with memories and all that, and various stimuli are the contents of our awareness, the heart of our mind’s construction from moment to moment.

It means that at some moments you could believe in religion, in other moments you can believe wholeheartedly in science. And you can hold both those things in your head with difficulty simultaneously, but not with that much difficulty simultaneously.

And we don’t have enough information and awareness; we don’t have an infinite amount of information in our awareness at any given time. So, we don’t have infinite resistance to believing something that may go against other beliefs we have.

So, people may continue to be religious if in the future, even as they’re more and more tech and are persuaded by the efficacy of technology, as long as religion still satisfies emotional or cultural needs, it would be hard to eradicate it.

There is no need to eradicate it unless religion, religious beliefs, are messing up the world. I’ve always liked this quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald: ‘The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind, at the same time and still retain the ability to function.’

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: That runs back to Aristotle.

Rosner: Even if…I never read Aristotle.

Jacobsen: He said, “The mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain the thought without accepting it.”

Rosner: I mean that’s a good quote too.

Jacobsen: I mean the basic assumption behind that quote is you already have another thought in mind.

Rosner: So, while I don’t have that much beyond that, that’s more like half a thought.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 365 – Rosner Summer Camp

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/08

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: How was the summer camp for you? For some, that is a common experience.

Rick Rosner: Ok so, after finishing the few miserable weeks of summer camp, I decided that I will no longer allow people to bully me. Only the ones that were quality bullies were allowed to bully me.

That was around 43 years ago and fast forward now when I’m 57. I go to 5 different gyms a day and do 150 sets a day. With around 5% fat in my body, I have around 97% of the strength of my age and height.

Since January 1^st 1991, I haven’t missed a single day at the gym. I was attacked by some guy who hit me several times in my knee. He was trying to collapse my knee, and then went for my arm and tried to bit me.

His skin was left there as I was wondering and waiting if I needed to do something and react, and take the shot. I went from being the 14-year-old guy who was hoping to get a girlfriend with my knowledge, decency, smartness, and brains.

I was barely naked, dancing when this happened. For someone who was homophobic, this was a certain conflict. I knew this might cause a violent reaction. But I kept dancing almost naked in front of that guy.

So, back when I was 14-years-old, I haven’t started the transformation yet, but the idea was there. The initial idea was given to me by our gym teacher Max who slapped everybody’s face. He thought I was more than a pussy.

He thought I was a rich pussy because my step dad was the owner of some of the property that was downtown. Apartments without a lot of value, where some cheap people lived. One time at the school gym while we were playing basketball or something.

We were taking the tops off as we were supposed to put the jersey on. I yelled out loud to the gym coach asking, “Where are the blouses?”, realizing I had refer to the dresses that the girls were wearing at that time.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 364 – Punks in Cyberspace and the Real World

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/01

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Why is the science fiction of going to Mars unlikely to become a reality as it is traditionally presented to us in the books and movies oriented with a science fiction perspective? No matter how brilliantly portrayed to us.

Rick Rosner: Alright so, what isn’t going to happen in science fiction in the real world, we’re not all going to Mars; people may colonize Mars. That’s a multi-century project to terraform Mars and not that many people are going to go leave on the trips to explore the terrain. Same with trips that are light-years away.

So, even if so, it will take 20, 30, 40 years. Even if they’re hauling ass, but in the time it takes to colonize Mars or to mount an expedition to Alpha Centauri, the Earth is going to be wildly transformed, which is as we were saying earlier not captured by much science fiction where that science fiction aims for a sense of scale and excitement.

Science fiction might be the genre that is most active in terms of having three short stories, where you’re going to explore a single idea or single feeling, So, it takes advantage of short form, but the future’s not short form and a lot of the things going on though amenable to short stories aren’t going to adequately capture the grand scale transformation of life in the next 200 years.

Cyberpunk, which started in the ‘80s flourished to the ‘90s has captured what life is starting to resemble now. And only now is a lot of this sensibility making it into movies or its part of our vocabulary. As I said, we don’t yet have a vocabulary of the dismantling of consciousness.

We have metaphors for it. Childhood’s End from the ‘50s by Arthur C. Clarke, I remember, but it presents the idea of the dismantling of humanity once it has reached a certain level of development and is no longer needed now that this next level has arisen.

There’s another story from the ‘50s; The Nine Billion Names of God, which the purpose of humanity is to come up with all possible different names of God and once we’ve done that we wake out of existence.

Nobody that I’ve seen has addressed the waking out of normal human existence or that long state into weirdness that we’re going to run into starting 20, 30 years from now and going for the next few centuries.

I’m sure there are short stories that have tried to capture the narrative point of view of consciousness distributed across three or four or five people, where you can see that shared consciousness in a way that can play out narratively – as a bunch of different people’s voices playing out in a single awareness like the movie Inside Out, which has five characters each embodying a basic emotion inside one person’s head.

So, I assume over the next ten or twenty years that we’ll begin to develop a vocabulary of alternate forms of consciousness that will anticipate some of the changes that are coming, but not a lot of science fiction that is doing that right now. There you go.

Jacobsen: Cool. Okay.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 363 – Platonic Forms and Ideas, Memes and Archetypes

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/22

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What about dissociation of memes defined insofar as they might be considered in the context of Platonic Forms and Ideas?

Rick Rosner: All right so, Platonic Ideas and Forms are the idea that there are in-built structures in reality itself. The Forms exist kinda in a space, an abstract space, beyond everyday experience. They exist within that space because of their perfection.

You have the Platonic solids, which are geometrically perfect. It’s why it is composed of 4 perfect prime equilateral triangles along with 6 edges of equal length and a cube is 6 perfect sides, along 12 edges of equal length, and so on.

They’re perfect forms, the Ideas (or Forms). Numbers are Platonic in their simplicity and unity. The “2” is a much more Platonic number that “2.7349,” but it has a unitary existence and utility, expression.

I would argue that non-contradictory Gorms are more likely to exist in the world. That these are ridiculous examples. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? is still on the air, close to twenty years after it first premiered; it is still broadcast in probably more than 80 countries, in more than 80 versions.

Because Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? isn’t a non-contradictory structure. One person trying to answer questions. The audience wants for that person to win; it’s a really simple structure. Once you get past all of the other game shows compared to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?.

There were other shows that were annoying, which had the flavor of Big Brother meets a quiz show; where the players can band together to eliminate at the end of each round, it is supposed to be the person is supposed to be the weakest link in the Weakest Link.

It never turns out to be the weakest link. The person who’s worst at answering questions is never the one who’s eliminated. It’s always the person who’s best at answering questions, because that person is a threat to everybody else.

So, the show didn’t work. It was contradictory because the best people and people you wanted to root for always got kicked out. It always came down to two having to choose between the final players, who were always two or three dickheads who managed to survive by voting dickishly.

So, it was a contradictory show; a show where you want to root for the best people, but the best people never made it. That made it a harder show to watch. It’s not on the air anymore. It’s not in agreement with itself, and with the principles of what makes T.V. good and people wanting to cheer for the right people.

So, simple Forms agree with themselves and don’t contradict themselves, so are better able to survive in the world, you see simple ideas that are based on simple Forms, like unawareness or the idea of oneness as things. On everything that is a thing.

Or that one is the simplest number, expressing the number of things. Two things like that. You’ve got one thing. The idea that things exist in discrete numbers, counting numbers one, two, three, and four.

That’s a convenient and non-contradictory way of being in the world, but then there is one apple. It is not one and a half apples, sometimes, or 1.2 apples; it takes a special set of circumstances to not be able to determine a oneness of a single apple. So, you’re drunk, or the apple is seven hundred yards away and you can’t see if it’s one apple or a couple apples, but in most contexts a single apple is a single apple, in a straightforward way.

So, the idea of distinct, discrete quantities. If these quantities are consistent over time, all these are non-contradictory properties as opposed to a frickin apple That’s one apple some of the time and zero apple some of the time and 4 apples rarely, but still some of the time.

So, archetypes are simple Forms; archetypes, stereotypes, and memes are things that tend to have some durability in the world because they are simple. In the case of memes, they can be clever. They can be simple expressions of a more complicated thing, the way words are often.

So, they have handiness, when a word or a meme is expressed as a Form or describes a Form that is itself durable and in the world, because itself is non-contradictory. That utility makes things like archetypes and memes survive culturally.

Like a meme or a concept that says, “Jocks are so much smarter than people who are not,” because in sports you have to think about so many different situations. So, your thinking can get better. That, as a concept, nobody’s ever heard that concept.

That’s not an archetype. The archetype is dumb jocks, because jocks who are physically impressive, stereotypically, don’t have to be that smart because they get by on their physical beauty and fitness and perfection.

It’s jocks versus nerds throughout evolution. So, the idea that I have found when I first started to try to have a relationship. I was having a bad time in my first relationship. My first, super hardcore, big time relationship when I was like 22.

23, I didn’t know how to navigate this relationship. I would turn to my jock friends, who’ve been dating since junior high school, because they were popular in junior high school and had some insight to give me because they’ve been dating for eight years.

Whereas, I’d only been dating for a couple years. They’d had relationships and stuff, but the idea that jocks are full of wisdom is not an archetype or a meme. Because, the idea of a dumb jock is much more consistent with the dynamics of the world, the statistical tendencies of the social world.

The more frequently occurring version of the world where under evolution when traditions are stable; it’s the dumb, physically perfect organisms that are successful at reproducing. It’s all the flawed geeky organisms who are forced to have to come up with different strategies.

They are the only ones to rise to the occasion of reproducing when things are in flux and this requires perhaps more thinking or flexibility in behavior. Those under what you think of as traditional evolution: jocks are dumb and adapted, and geeks are smart.

When in situations where you are having to survive on the margins via developed cleverness, so I don’t believe that archetypes are embedded in our brain, via evolution; they arise culturally, because they reflect common occurrences or properties, ditto for memes.

But archetypes and memes exist within a realm of cultural evolution rather than biologically. So, you could probably, if you really searched, you could find exceptions to that. For the most part, you might find a population of crabs that have lives of weird behavior.

You don’t know why they do this thing, but then you study them for 2 years. You find out that it’s this behavior, this thing, they do with their claws, that looks ritualistic or perhaps even like a tick, or an O.C.D. thing in crabs.

It turns out to serve a function or at least historically served a function. It kinda got embedded in their thinking. I’d buy that that’s a fact that happened. But I don’t think it’s that kinda thing, a general thing.

In general, our brains are super flexible. They embrace cultural efficiencies as they’re exposed to them. As people, as we’re animals, and as we grow up. So, that’s enough of that.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 362 – Reinvention

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/15

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You were a fake high school student, and a stripper and bouncer. When?

Rick Rosner: Into my 20s, early 20s, from 20 to 26, I was a bouncer and a stripper. I went to college in my hometown half-assedly. I didn’t like a class, so I would quit going. So, I accumulated like a year’s worth of Fs. I get a lot of As too.

If I like the class, I would go to class because my expectations for myself are low. I had a lot of time to read and think. For decades now, I’ve had a theory of the universe; though; I’ve been thinking about maybe it will come to fruition.

Maybe, it doesn’t; but the fucking up gave me a certain amount of freedom, I went back to high school one last time before all my hair fell out at age 26, and I graduated at 27. I wanted a place to think about the universe. I wasn’t there to hit on girls.

And my last semester, I moved to New York City where my girlfriend for my last semester at the University of Colorado became my fake legal guardian; “my fake” because I made it all the way to graduation without getting caught.

I used a fake identity for a long time. So, MTV was casting for 18-year-olds to play a game, to be contestants on a game show they had in development. So, this was another chance to be 18 again. I thought that I might meet a lot of funny people.

I offered to work through them, and because of that I eventually became a writer. If I start up as a fact checker on the quiz show, then I became a writer and was a TV writer for the next 25 years and worked on twenty-five hundred hours of programming on all the major networks.

I was nominated for seven Writers Guild Awards and an Emmy. Eventually, I married my fake cousin because I was working in TV. We’ve managed to have a – knock on wood – nice life in LA. So, brutal levels of screwing up both, later on before I ever worked for ABC, I was a contestant on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?.

They asked me a flawed question. When you’re asked a multiple-choice question, the answer should be among the choices they give you. It wasn’t there. So, I sued Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, which is something I couldn’t let go.

But now, I chose to sue them which wasted so many thousands of hours of me pursuing a ridiculous lawsuit. Not ridiculous because I was wrong, I wasn’t; they were wrong. Ridiculous because it’s a game show and because the legal system thinks it’s a freaking game show: get over it.

But every few years, I want to do something stupid and pointless to see how to do it and see how it works out. So, I’ve done…I fucked up a lot, but there’s something to be said for imperfection and screwing up if you look at the biographies of so-called ‘great people’; a lot of them were flawed sometimes at the personal level, sometimes at the relational level.

Some of them had substance problems. A few people, even mother Teresa, received a bunch of criticism for being a shady operator: nobody is perfect. I mean you can strive for perfection, but you shouldn’t savagely beat yourself up for falling short of perfection.

The possible inspiration in failures and screwing up, in taking weird detours. You’re a gifted kid; you’re young; obviously, by virtue of being kid, other people are in charge of a lot of your life. So, there aren’t that many ways to go off the rails.

The way parents are now – helicopter type parents; you won’t be allowed to go off the rails and it’s relatively easy to be on a course of perfection with a highly scheduled course that includes carefully chosen extracurricular activities, prep for AP, for SAT, for ACT.

Among the high achievers, at the school everything is regimented, it’s easy to have a life that is so regimented that it feels as if you are on some close to perfect path to where you want to go. Then if something happens to wreck that perfection, it can bump you.

But nobody gets through even early life perfectly. The perfection you get from having a highly helicopter, helped out, regimented, academic and extracurricular career, and life offers the illusion of perfection or the illusion that perfection is attainable.

Because thanks to all the structure you’re given and your own high levels of motivation, you feel like you can pull it off, but nobody makes it through any significant chunk of life without failure. You’re gonna fail at some point.

It’s how you deal with failure that is the test of a person. But you could even fail at failure, I did plenty of that too; I like compounded right. I did one stupid thing and that I did another stupid thing on top.

You can even argue – which I have in a YouTube series, where I as the political liberal argue with a political conservative my vision of – America allows for failure with the social safety net, the tolerance of America.

They offer for difference and reinventing yourself, allows for people to fail and to get back up and with a little help to take another shot at building a life.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 361 – Ungentlemanly Ill-Wishing

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/08

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, Trump had a series of unfortunate events in 2017. Can you expound on those as far as you see them?

Rick Rosner: A little bit. He had a particularly terrible healthcare effort. It was super unpopular. Only 17% of Americans approve of senate’s efforts to replace healthcare, mostly because it was a massive tax cut for wealthy people and for insurance companies a total of almost around 100 million dollars.

Until healthcare was done, they couldn’t get going. They try to do the tax reform. Trump’s efforts to do anything is clownish and, obviously, not favoring the people who voted for him, which would be the big swathes of people who voted for him.

These conservative heartland people who are struggling. He got caught with backed up photos of Time Magazine hanging in front of his golf club, calling him “Man of the Year” or something like that. That never happened.

Yet, he gets support from people who voted for him and that support hasn’t significantly eroded. I read an essay a couple of days ago that says the people who did vote for him have been conditioned to not be able to have their minds changed by any evidence and that the best we can do is to try to make sure they don’t have political power in the future.

As opposed what other people said soon after the election, which is that we must reach out to them and understand them and try to persuade them, or recently people are saying they are unpersuadable, which seems based on the last six months.

It seems reasonable. Some have these particularly good insights, but other people may not have except for the small optimism that Nate Silver provides. He says that Trump seems to be losing overall support approval at the rate of about 1% per month, which after another several months would put us in the middle of the 2018 elections.

His approval may be in the twenties, which has been disastrous for the four presidents who had approval in the twenties. Every day, I check out the daily gallop poll results because they have the most immediate feedback about how people feel about what he has been up to.

Jacobsen: What’s going on with his vice president, Pence? He seems to be quiet.

Rosner: Well, Pence is a quiet guy. He’s not a flamboyant guy. He quietly goes about his business; however, he managed to be as implicated in at least knowing how he is tolerating cabinet members who were compromised by Russia.

So, he made the Russia thing and comes up with conclusive evidence that the Trump Administration was acting unethically. He may be as treasonous or whatever; he may be implicated also.

I’m trying to come up with some fresh thing to say about this whole mess. A guy came up to me at the gym. Nobody is talking about this publicly, but I have this feeling that this sentiment is out there. A guy came up to me at the gym, a conservative guy, a fairly conservative guy especially for L.A, ex-military, and he said, “I wish Trump would die.”

People don’t come up to each other and say that stuff generally, but I get the feeling that given that Trump is proving to be increasingly terrible and that there seems to be no way to hold him to account because the Republicans, while deploring some of the things he does, are pretty terrible themselves and don’t seem to be earnestly committed to holding him responsible for anything.

That this is a thought that’s maybe running through the heads of many millions of Americans. Not that this wish is coupled with any desire to act, but people are sad that he seems to be undissolvable from office.

There’s a tradition of not wishing the president ill out loud. For one thing, you don’t know what the comment might get you. You could have the secret service or FBI reach out to you to see if you are threatening the president.

That most people are aware of that being a possibility if you wish the president ill. Two, it seems un-American or ungentlemanly to wish the president dead. Nevertheless, a lot of people wish that he would disappear.

People don’t talk about it because it seems scary and bad manners to wish ill on anyone. I guess that’s it.

Jacobsen: Ok.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 360 – Lies, Damned Lies, and Fallout

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/01

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I mentioned the Satanic Temple and Lucien Greaves and poor journalistic practices, especially from Fox News. The Arizona chapter has specifically mentioned this to me in an interview. What was your experience? Let’s lay it out.

Rick Rosner: Let’s be clear here, I don’t have anything to do with any Satanic temple. You mentioned them in the context that you interviewed some people who are leaders of this temple, who have had gripes about the shoddiness of Fox News.

Jacobsen: They have been treated poorly.

Rosner: Well, they were not. Fox News didn’t apply ethical journalism to them.

Jacobsen: They didn’t apply journalism to them.

Rosner: Fox News is well known for conservatives calling everything fake news. If you examine various news outlets according to objective standards that have been applied to journalism, since journalism has been around, Fox News generally does the worst, they are the sleaziest, the most manipulative, the most exploitative of their viewers.

A few years ago, I was asked to give an arm of Fox News an interview. I thought, “How bad can they be?” At the time, it wasn’t a political type interview. It was a human-interest type interview because I am a semi-eccentric guy with the second highest IQ in the world.

They wanted to talk to me about my IQ. How bad could it be? Fox News had the idea that they could do a daily paper, newspaper type thing, that people would get on their tablets, their iPads, and whatever else.

People’s little computers. The Huffington Post is designed and came into its own. People prefer laptops and PCs. Fox News decided, “We can do daily paper, daily web paper for people’s smaller devices, for phones and for tablets. “

Obviously, they wanted it to be young and hip. I assumed they wanted to talk to me. This recorder was 23 or 24. That didn’t matter to me. She asked for the interview and I said, “That’s okay. That’s fine. I will give you an interview. However, you absolutely cannot. You must promise not to say who I work for.”

Which is a late night show I was writing for, because I knew from getting into trouble in the past for talking to reporters, my show did not want any press coverage of me on a personal level being associated with the show for various reasons.

Among them, I am not speaking for the show because the show has its message. It is a late-night show. Its message is: “We are funny ass show, good guests, great host. You should watch the show.”

I mean it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that’s the message and that the story that says look at this weirdo over here who writes for the show dilutes that message. The people who work on the show want a coherent message that doesn’t get messed up by some asshole who works on the show, whatever their personal weirdness.

So, I said, “Promise not to say whom I work for.” She said, “Okay I promise.” I did the interview, we talked for an hour or two across a couple of days, got some stuff on video. Then a few days go by, it takes a while to write one of these things up.

She is working on it, she calls me to let me know, “We have to let you know that we are going to say in the story who you write for.” I said, “You can’t, you promised not to, or I wouldn’t have given you the interview.”

She says, “Well, we are, because, anyone can go online and Google you and anyone can see, a single Google search what show you work for.” I say, “That doesn’t matter. I will get in big trouble. You promised that you wouldn’t say what show I worked for.” She says, “Yeah, but we are going to do it.” I go, “You can’t.”

She goes, “Well let me talk to my editor.” The editor: there are e-mails, phone calls, this goes on for about two weeks. I insist, they say, “Well, anybody can figure it out.” I say, “That doesn’t matter; it won’t matter to my bosses. It will matter that I consented to an interview in which it said where I work. This is a rule that I can’t violate, a work rule that I can’t break.”

And they say, “Well that doesn’t matter because…” We go back and forth. I plead. I get pissed. They get pissed back at me. After about two weeks of arguing they say, “Fine, we won’t.” But they were pissed, I was pissed too because they were politely wanting to break their promise.

Turned out that after she was done interviewing me. It seemed she was an asshole because you consent to an interview to set some ground rules. Now, those ground rules may be violated by assholes, but you can set them and expect them to be followed.

You can be super pissed if they are not. Even though given the history of journalism people, they agreed not to fuck me over regarding that.

At one point she asks, “Well, how do you get any sleep if you are up all night working on IQ tests?” Part of the interview was taking a bunch of IQ tests. A lot of these IQ tests take many, many hours to do a good job on. I said, “When you look at it, when you average it out, when I am working on a test, I probably don’t spend more than 45 minutes a day on them. It doesn’t occupy all of my waking hours.”

I thought it was a good answer. She asked how did I get any sleep. Well, because I don’t spend all my time on it, then the next day or later she asks the question again, “How do you get any sleep?” I said, “I already answered the question.”

I stupidly passively-aggressively and flippantly answer, “I don’t spend that much time on IQ tests. To be honest, I probably spend more time looking at porn than I do on IQ tests.”

I was let go from my job after that interview. I can’t say specifically why I was let go. However, it sure as shit didn’t help. So, the article comes out; they kept their word after two weeks of me insisting they keep their word.

However, when it came out. The headline I don’t know what it was, but the sub-headline was something you can look it, it is probably still somewhere online, ‘Man with world’s second highest IQ is addicted to porn.’ It was brutal.

Speaker one: How did you feel when you read that?

Rosner: I was super upset because I am not addicted to porn. I don’t look at porn any more than the average person. If we had to do percentiles of porn viewing, I don’t know, probably 30 or 40 or more percent of American men with access to a computer look at more porn than I do.

Completely average in terms of my porn, not proud that I look at porn, but one of over 100 million men look at porn from time to time. And it’s not that I am some sex fiend. I am a sexual person. For much of my youth, I did things to get a girlfriend.

However, now I am in my 50s, I take a testosterone blocker for my prostate, so my hair doesn’t fall out. That may to some extent knock down my libido. I am not I am this crazy sex, Anthony Wiener esp., super-duper masturbator.

I’ve masturbated a lot; so have a lot of people, most people. So, this comes out. Within a day, I don’t know, hours; I don’t remember. An article comes out on another website based on the article that deals with interesting things going on in the world of TV.

That article says, “Late night writer is addicted to porn.” That article names the show I work for. At that point, a couple of days I am in big trouble at work.

Jacobsen: How so?

Rosner: My family is not happy with me. They understand that I got fucked over, but it’s a terrible thing; it’s a lie. They fucked me because I was so insistent that the reporter hold to her promise they found another way to fuck me.

There was yet another way that they fucked me. I maybe shouldn’t have talked about anything regarding my work. Among the things I said was that only about 4% of the jokes that I wrote made it to air.

That doesn’t mean that I am a terrible joke writer. It means a bunch of good writers are writing a bunch of jokes throughout the day which, gives the host the most jokes, the most quality jokes you can submit.

So, you got a bunch of skilled writers who get more skilled over time, and more productive over time as they get better and better at writing jokes, and eventually after a show is on for year, if you have a skilled staff; that staff will write many more jokes than ever make it to air.

That’s a good thing. The better stuff you can give to help the show; the more selective the show can be and the better the show will be. I say 4% or so. The reporter said 98% of what I write doesn’t make it on the air.

So not only did they cut my success rate in half, but it was sloppy reporting and perhaps malevolent reporting to cut my success rate in half. 4% to 2%. It felt they were trying to fuck me for being stubborn with them.

Maybe, I should have been warier because it was Fox and maybe Fox doesn’t give a shit about accuracy or decency. I couldn’t raise a stink about it because I was working for the show, and protesting that they had lied about me being addicted to porn would have led to more coverage. I felt that would have led to more irritation on the part of my employers.

So, I sucked it up and hoped it would go away. Eventually, it faded from page one of Google if you happen to Google my name, I don’t know how many pages deep you must go now. Probably page three or four, but, at the time, I can’t say what goes on.

However, at the time I had the greatest job of my life, a job I had for over ten years. Three months after that article came out I had no job. I haven’t had a job since. The only satisfaction I got is that the Fox News enterprise went out of business.

That’s a small satisfaction, a small solace. So, they lied about me, and they may have caused. I don’t know, they may have caused severe career and economic damage, professional damage.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 359 – Technological and Political Disruption

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/04/22

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Hong Kong, you are dealing with one people, one language for the most part: ethnically and linguistically unified. Different than most aspects in India. You have a tremendous number of languages that can prevent an ease of unification.

It needs to be a translation of all the information throughout all the structures, so it’s more difficult. And that can put a buffer on the success of India economically, technologically compared to China. It does seem to be showing in some of the statistics on growth rates in terms of G.D.P., for instance, or P.P.P. China looks like a more likely candidate than India now.

Rick Rosner: Okay.

Jacobsen: So, it seems reasonable.

Rosner: All that seems reasonable, but, at the same time, they have so many more people than we do that even some of their crappy cultural aspects leads to the waste of human capital they have a human capital waste.

Jacobsen: Yes.

Rosner: We need to continue to be the dominant technological country in the world. We need to maintain excellent colleges, universities; we need to continue to be a place where technical innovation is valued and where yahoos don’t pollute the culture, so nobody wants to live in America.

Jacobsen: Also, the big secret weapon in the United States is the genius passport, the H-1B.

Rosner: Yes, if that it goes away, then we shot ourselves on the balls. Which we could do, but then that leads to another question, which is: America’s political system had sixteen years of political hiccups.

You can take the twenty-first century in American politics from starting with Bill Clinton’s Oval Office blowjobs.

Jacobsen: That’s true.

Rosner: He gets blown. Al-Gore gets pissed off when the whole Clinton thing comes out. This is the way I understand it, which may not be entirely accurate. However, Gore is annoyed with Clinton for humiliating the office of the presidencies.

Doesn’t seem to sufficiently help Gore get elected; Gore loses election 2000. We get a new president and leave our VP in there eight years followed by Obama who is a decent confident guy, but perhaps too conciliatory.

So, we have eight years of Republicans fucking over everything he wants to do. We all settled and saw lessons of how you can fuck up government, which the Republicans don’t hesitate to do for eight years.

Now, we go four years of a unified Republican government, but they accomplished something because now they can take credit for everything. But it’s government by yahoos, a-holes. So, some people argue Democrats are infected with greedy corporations too, but that’s an argument that fucked things up badly.

Anyway, we may be looking at another few years of super bad government. So, the twenty-first century sucks for America politics. We’re looking at twenty solid years, twenty. Two thousand and one 2001 through 2021 of bad politics.

You can imagine getting a whole lot better for a while after that. Now, that may or may not screw up America forever. Our democracy is durable. We’ve been through terrible periods, so it’s an open question as to whether Democracy formally met its match in terms of people manipulated by media and the rise of the empowerment of yahoos.

So, we don’t know whether America is screwed for good or whether we will come out of it, or whether the bias wrecked America. We could have permanently; there’s a possibility we could have permanently fucked up politics yet still be a free country for technology if technology could still flourish.

Even though our political leaders are all jerks; so, that’s question one: Is America screwed forever, or screwed technologically? Question two is: Does it matter for the lives of Americans to see the future?

Because you look at other countries that at one time ruled the world. England, Spain, Rome/Italy, life in England or in Italy or anywhere in Europe is pretty good if everybody gets to fully participate in the technological advances of the age.

Regardless of whether their country is the country; so, the US could screw itself up and become a once-great country and American citizens could still enjoy 98% of the fruits of technological advancement minus a certain amount of national pride because now China is the country.

It could be that all the great entertainment is coming from along some region that stretches from Shanghai-Hong Kong, if that’s even geographically reasonable, or the US entertainment industry moves to Vancouver because global warming has made Vancouver nice.

So, the US loses its coolness and is now. America becomes still a cool place, but not the coolest. Does that matter? Not to any great extent; unless, we become a religious dictatorship along the lines of The Handmaid’s Tale. Or Cory Doctorow’s Rapture of the Nerds.

Regardless, the future is going to be creepy. Humans plus technology into the future. The people at the forefront of that – the two or three or four billion citizens of the most advance countries – in the world will find their lives being radically changed.

First from generation to generation, one generation will live at a certain level of normalness plus weirdness, but they’ll be able to hold on to the values they always held for their entire lives. Go back to the twelfth centuries, so outside of war and conquest changes people’s social landscapes, both social belief and lifestyle landscapes change on a large average scale.

But the deal is if you were a shoemaker, it’s likely your dad was a shoemaker; your kids will be shoemakers; your dad was working on the cathedral. You might grow up to work on the cathedral. Your kid might grow up to work on the cathedral.

Now, you have lives where somebody was. There are a few people alive today. There is a very small percentage of people alive today who remember the transition from primarily horse and buggy transportation to powered transportation, who remember the coming of the phone, who remember the coming of radio T.V.

The Internet hits most people in the mid to late nines. Smartphones start coming out 2007. Now, we’re lousy with them. Our basis for behavior has been weirdified, but we still do pretty much what we’ve always done.

Most people, they’ve always talked on the phone. They’ve always watched TV, have always traveled via cars and subways, buses, airplanes. All of those things are in place for most of our lives. There are changes that don’t rip us apart lifestyle-wise.

So, each generation has its own way of being. We’re not the twelfth-century people. We are not going to stay to the same generation to the generation. We are the people where everything each generation has its way of the being.

Then the next few generations are going to see people have to super add-ons within their lives, not from generation to the new generation, but within people’s behaviors. These will be changes to our values too. Our values will adjust.

The generations who are among the first to have expected a lifespan of 150 years. Those people either are already born or will be born throughout the rest of the century. A lot of those people will have to acknowledge new partnership structures through childbearing.

People will access all sorts of genetic tweaks. These will be options, choices. People who can choose to have their thought, their ability to process information, severely automated or shared with other intelligence entities.

We’re going to have to make all sorts of choices, and so the weirdness is going to hammer us at a more and more frequent rate. So, in living, in those times with the disruption, those times will be at least based on tech as much as it is on the politics of the time.

The medium future will be a time of technological disruption. The technological disruption will be at least as significant as the political disruption. I guess we’ll stop there.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 358 – Manly Manning Up

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/04/15

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We were talking about growing up in the 60s and 70s.

Rick Rosner: That came up. I have a stereotype view of who a good man might be. Someone who tries to be conscious in the world. That tries to be a conscious kind parent, partner, who tries to treat the earth kindly.

The person who is trying to make the world a better, kinder place. That wasn’t so much of a thing when I was growing up in some ways. If you make me keep talking, I am going to offer a bunch of examples.

Jacobsen: So that lays the ground.

Rosner: …Hold on, don’t get me wrong, to be clear, I have approved of striving through goodness in the world but if my background makes me cynical…Perhaps a little jealous because I didn’t get to grow up around…even I grew up in a time when bullying was thought to be good for you.

Jacobsen: What is the beginning of the story for you? One, you have a unique story, but one aspect of that hasn’t been fully explored. It is growing up in the Manly Era.

Rosner: Alright, I am so old that I was born in 1960. So, the leader of the country was one of the generals of the most bloodthirsty yet apparently justified conflicts in human history. We won World War Two with determination and industriousness and bravery, and thugness, and we thought of ourselves as justifiable in our evil as the people we were fighting.

But I am a Baby Boomer, I was among the generation that was hurt by people by men who went overseas and then slaughtered people in war. I have a dad. I have a stepdad. I have a father-in-law. None of them fought in World War Two, but they all either flew around, attended to, or guarded nuclear weapons during the Korean War era.

My dad was a navigator on a B36, which has the capacity to drop on H-Bomb on Russia. So, at the time I was born, violence and the thread of violence were very much open and into the fabric of America.

There was a relief that we can have everyday lives. That the world would end of the possibility of nuclear war but there is. There was our outcome. There was an undercurrent of threat and fear. There was no push at the time I was born, not that I would have been aware of it, because I was zero years old.

There wasn’t a push for the softening of men and then how they’re presented as visual jokes in movies, but they weren’t as pervasive a presence in American life.

Jacobsen: What were your parents and stepdad?

Rosner: My mom was growing up and went to a dance at the officer’s club at Kurland Air Force Base. She saw my dad in his uniform at some dance. My dad was fantastically handsome in the 1950s. He looked like a movie star.

He was pretty in high school, but full of zits. But he heals up and cleans up; my dad in a 1955, 1954, was a beautiful man and for her it was love at first sight. He is liked by her. My mom was cute. She was as beautiful for female as he was for a man.

She was cute and had a good head on her shoulders. My dad was okay with being into this marriage and stuff. The marriage lasted for five years. They get divorced when I was zero years old.

Jacobsen: How did that affect you?

Rosner: What if they had stayed married?

Jacobsen: Yes.

Rosner: I can’t imagine them ever…I mean they are completely mismatched.

Jacobsen: Okay.

Rosner: I mean, my mom would have been pissed off all the time at how my dad is. My dad is still a practicing CPA at age 86. He is one of the old-time brave CPAs, Mexican CPA, but he lacks any skills behind CPA.

His social skills are great when it comes to talking to clients about tax returns when it comes to maintaining a marriage or doing anything but taxes he is a little bit helpless.

Jacobsen: That seems like it comes from the times of manly culture and expectations.

Rosner: No, he did fine. He married three times. He is a fun guy and often easy going, drives sporty cars, makes a good living, so it was more a he was a little clueless about life skills and needed somebody who is going to be patient.

Somebody who is completely spacey. It made my mom crazy or annoyed. It eventually makes my stepmom annoyed; she was married to him for 15 years. She called him coma years. His third wife gets the hell out of it pretty quick too. It didn’t thoroughly last with either my mom or stepmom.

So, my mom moves where there is another guy who became my stepdad. She was in love with him before she met my dad. He waited for her to be done with this first marriage, so in 1962 she married my stepdad. My stepdad was a true man in the sense of the in the 1960s content.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 357 – Cycles in History: The Future of Kindness

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/04/08

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, you wanted to talk about the future of kindness. What is our future of kindness, and what is your future of kindness?

Rick Rosner: Well, alright so, the present and past of kindness pretty much hinge on the Golden Rule. But you don’t even, for everyday acts of kindness, you don’t even need to apply the logic of the Golden Rule. We know what people want, from being around people forever, so kindness is generally, not being mean to people.

With possible exceptions of being mean to people where it would improve their lives to be mean to them, in an intervention, where being mean to people will stop them from hurting other people, then you can extend that to other creatures, within reason.

You can extend to the products made by people that you don’t want to wreck stuff, if it would make people feel bad, unnecessarily. Then there are the different levels of charity. There is the saying, “Feed a man a fish you feed him for a day, teach him how to fish then you feed for a lifetime.”

So, it’s kinder to do something that leads to long-term benefits. Under Judaism, it is kinder to give to a charity then you don’t take credit for, maybe the people don’t even realize they are given charity, because that can be demoralizing. But basically, everything boils down to being nice to people.

The mid-future, we will have the dilemmas of who has feelings as AI proliferates and we merge with AI. Also, the problems of maintaining a sense of proportion, maybe purposefully losing a sense of proportion because say 80 years in the future there are some augmented humans who are 50 times smarter and more perceptive than natural humans.

Under that system, somebody could argue that those are the people that deserve all our considerations because they are feeling things much more intensely with all their added cognitive power. You want to maintain some lack of proportion where the smartest beings don’t get all the kindness.

That we don’t want to forget where we came from and where many humans will still be. The same way it is dopey to be cruel to animals because they are dumber than we are. Also, a part of kindness will be figuring out the setups for happiness, AIs or humans merged with AIs trying to fulfill those set-ups within reason.

And trying to figure out those set-ups themselves are reasonable, it still all boils down to being nice to thinking beings, but it will be tougher to sort out what thinking beings are, what they want, whether it’s best that they want those things, so you have a robotic assistant that has been programmed to appear to be conscious with feelings and drives, but is basically not.

It is simulating that stuff because maybe it is an easier problem in hardware and programming. But maybe, that thing would be more effective with feelings, and maybe there is an argument to be made for sophisticated pieces of machinery that simulate feelings, to have actual feelings.

I don’t know what that argument would be, why you would be arguing to turn an inanimate object into a thinking being with all the potential suffering and risks that might entail, and that doesn’t seem necessarily like a great move.

On the other hand, if you have a thing that is on the verge of thinking, but it exists in an equivalent brain damaged world because all the half-assed-ness that went into its construction, maybe, it would be a mitzvah to make it fully conscious.

There are going to be all sorts of arguments around who deserves kindness, consideration, legal rights, financial resources, and it all boils back down to having good models of what’s happening in the brains or information processors of these various things.

My conservative buddy Lance: that’s the thing people are resistant to because it is tough.

My buddy Lance last night went back to the black box argument saying he is not interested in if people have racist thoughts. Because I was arguing that everybody is racist to a certain extent, according to the definition of racism, basically making judgments based on people’s appearances and what you know about them, whether you act on those judgments or discriminate.

That’s one form of racism. It is making judgments. A different definition of racism is to be mean, be bad to people based on race. Lance was throwing out the first definition altogether, might as well disregard it, because you can’t tell what people are thinking, the brain is a black box.

So, even 80 years after behaviorism, some people will resort to black box arguments. And there will be different degrees of black-box-ism in the future when people try to make things easy for themselves, by saying we can’t know what is going on inside the heads of various entities.

That’s in my mind a bullshit excuse. The end.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 356 – On the Nurturance of Talent by Oneself

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/04/01

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You mentioned in prior sessions about coming to grips with the world, as you are very different. What about the youth that are gifted and talented and needing moderately to even highly different than the norm assistance?

Rick Rosner: Alright, so let’s start off with this. When I was a kid, I had to walk five miles through the snow to get to school. It was harder for nerds when I was a young nerd than it is now. Nerds are more a part of our culture.

Half of the world’s billionaires made their billions from computer coding and social media apps. It’s a nerdier world now and Zuckerberg and various other billionaires whose names I forget. They got their hot wives and girlfriends, and make millions.

I know one dickhead that spends a million bucks on his wedding in the forest to some smoking hot girl. So, if you are a nerd billionaire, you don’t have to come to grips with the world; the world must come to grip with you.

However, most gifted and talented are not going to become billionaires. There comes a point. You got to go back into my childhood, which included a bunch of uplifting sleazy movies that fills nerds with the idea that even though the hot girl usually goes out with jocks, one special hot girl will eventually see your kindness, your specialness, your intelligence and will decide to go against pride and be your girlfriend.

That’s horse shit. At some point, you do need to take a hard look at depending on what you want. The 2016 election brought out a lot of Gamergate, angry, nerdy, sexist, racist, controlling, socially isolated – except for saying shitty stuff on social media – guys whose best form of recreation and business is making people upset.

There are a lot of angry guys out there who have given up on social success in terms of getting a girlfriend and their economic success in terms of getting a decent job and decided to troll, not to be stereotyping, but there probably is a little stereotype in play.

So, you can live that, especially now that we live in a paradise of pornography. This thing of not being able to get laid, can be outsourced to the one billion pornographic websites. But, look at yourself and decide; do you want to be the angry anti-social, awkward person for the rest of your life?

If not, how long do you want to be that person? Is there anything you want to do about it? Anything you can do to be less at odds with the world, knowing full well that the world is full of bullshit. I am the oldest sibling in my various families. My parents got divorced; my step parents got remarried, divorced, all that…I’ve had, at various times, four siblings.

Nobody had the same two parents. I was the oldest of all of us. I could have used an older sibling to explain how things work, even though I thought sports were boring and stupid. I was irredeemably terrible at sports.

I would take a shot at doing sports because sports was the ticket to social acceptability, when I was little in junior high and high school. And I’m sure the whole regimen of high school has decayed somewhat, but not completely.

So, it’s not jocks versus nerds as much as it used to be, but it’s still cruel people versus awkward people. You must decide which aspect of yourself you absolutely must hold on to and which aspect of yourself you will try to modify to fit in better.

And when I was a kid in 1976, I suddenly became pulled to lift weights. Now, there is less emphasis on looking like a jock. You need to still be the kid who has channeled his desires to get laid into a lifting weight looking jock to some degree, tattoos around his biceps.

I feel Rambo is no longer a thing, and there are more ways to talk to people without directly talking to them. When I was in my twenties, the way you tried to get laid or at least make out with somebody is to go to a bar or disco dance, buy drinks and try to talk to people over the loudness of the music.

Now, you could, much more reasonably and easily, attempt to meet people via dating sites and other sites instead of getting laid by disco dancing; you get laid by typing.

Jacobsen: What about for the opposite case? What about a woman’s case who is different intellectually from her peers, against the norm?

Rosner: Okay, well, so, the situation is obviously different and the way it’s presented. I’m not a woman, so I can’t tell you directly. I will deal with what is presented is guys not being able to get a girlfriend.

Awkward guys, and then women of all types could meet with semi-awkward types, girlfriends and girls end up looking at boys with terrible guys…So, I mean, women’s problems are generally to find a guy who is not a shit head and protecting yourself from shit heads.

So, that you are still interested in finding other guys, and avoiding having terrible experiences with shitty guys. Again, this is a very exclusive talk because, straight guy talk, straight woman talk, because, of course, the situation: there are equivalent or similar situations for gay people and trans people.

The specific assumption is that in becoming a socially successful or socially fluid person is that you want to find somebody who you can stand being with and for that person to want to be with you. And there are plenty of people for which that doesn’t apply to.

There are temporarily asexual people; people who want to put of that stuff until they have accomplished their life goals. There are people who have had enough relationships to know that it’s not that much of a priority for them, but for a lot of people regardless of gender or orientation, a successful relationship is still the benchmark of being able to get by in society.

It’s what you want out of going into the world and meeting people and every gender and orientation has stereotypic, or statistically felt more frequent, pitfalls. Most of which we are not qualified to talk about now.

Women need – I’m talking out of my ass, but women need armor to negotiate the world of assholes until they can find somebody who is not an asshole. That’s what they want. Guys must negotiate their own awkwardness and rejection until they find somebody who wants to be with them. Gay guys, I don’t know.

If you are a hot gay guy, it’s not that your life is perfect. I’m sure that I am not qualified to talk about it. Relative to other genders and orientations, there’s a plentitude, a relative plentitude, of somewhat less than painful looking up for gay guys, as you say, “on average,” but who knows.

However, even if that’s true, you still must sort out what you want if what you are getting is what you want, but everything boils down to how much effort will it take to negotiate this is society, what are the easiest ways to become adept at negotiating society and how much effort are you willing to spend.

And, the internet is extremely, I think, helpful for giving you a rough outline as to some of the principles to getting by in society, of some pickup artist who is sleazy. At the same time, take a gingerly poke at it online to see if there are any principles that aren’t horribly scummy tools that can help you be less awkward when talking to the people that you want to make connections with: principle number one, become a person who merits the attention of other people.

To become an interesting, to become a good, person; not to become a peace corps worker or anything but to become your own best self. In high school, I was mostly terrible with girls and was resentful of that situation.

But looking back, I was a mess. It took a few years of messing with myself to become somebody who, maybe, merited the attention of people whose attention I wanted. Another principle is to learn how to go up to people and talk to people and if they reject you in one way or another, or if they don’t heartedly embrace you as their friend, to be able to walk away from that and still put yourself in social situations.

There are a bunch of principles like this which, you can also look at your circle of friends, if there are friends of yours who seem to fall into relationships easily, look at what they are doing. You don’t want to project desperation and neediness; people who are successful at meeting people, hanging out with them is a fun casual thing.

I know people who very quickly become very serious, glom on to somebody and that scares people away, but if you are somebody who seems to be fun to hang out with, then people will hang out with you.

And you don’t need to let people know how desperate you are to make connections. And, which leads to another thing; don’t be desperate to make connection. Find interest out in the world besides trying to fit in, that’s something more troubling now than desperation in the 70s, where the world is a more interesting place.

I keep saying that the 70s sucked relative to now, but that’s because that there is a lot of stuff to be interesting. Go out and pursue your interest, you may meet people via that. I mean, in the 70s, I went to a couple comic book/science fiction conventions, hoping to meet someone.

One of the five conventions, they were 92-95% guys; I was hoping to meet that somebody that belonged to the 5% of attendees who are female and then make some connection. And now, I don’t go to Comic Con. I’ve never been, but I assume it’s probably much less of a sausage fest if you go there.

You can see everything you are interested in and find other people who share the same interest. Also, my desperate in the 70s. My desperate friends and I did not know how to meet girls and did not even know if we would ever have a girlfriend.

The internet is a source of, “it gets better,” not for gay teens, but for any teens who are trying to get out into the world. It’s not a perfect source of information, but it’s a huge source information and you can go on it to yourself a reasonable view of the adult world you are moving into and your possible place in it.

And, there are more mentoring situations available. There were zero mentoring contexts when I was a kid. There are paid mentoring deals where you can find an organization including Johns Hopkins that has the institute for gifted youths or whatever they call it.

There is an institute for educational advancement; there are a bunch of organizations that are dedicated to gifted kids getting the resources that they need and, you know, most of the resources are to help kids succeed academically and professionally.

But the same people who can help you…who can mentor you academically and professionally, probably went through the same gifted kid traumas and situations that you are going through and they can help you, you know, negotiate in a non-academic, non-professional…they give you advice about not their field but about being gift in the world.

Jacobsen: There is always more, but we’ll stop there.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 355 – Listen Up! Perfectionism, Fucking Up, and College Admissions

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/03/22

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, perfectionism is a standard or classic trait of gifted and talented youth. You experienced that. What were your pivotal moments of perfectionism?

Rosner: I may have been more perfectionistic, but what I experience more than that were times I felt short of perfection and I fucked up. Beginning with at least first grade, where the teacher called in my parents, who have been told by my kindergarten teacher year before, that I was a genius based on an IQ test.

Because I could already read, which was unusual for that era. The first-grade teacher showed my parents an incomplete assignment that said, “If I were on Columbus’s ship, I would,” and that’s where I stopped because I realized I didn’t know crap about how it would be if I were a sailor with Columbus.

I was six years old. Maybe, I was perfectionistic, but I all of a sudden quit; I quit writing because I realized that nothing I wrote would be at all accurate because I have zero knowledge of what it was like to travel with Columbus.

But apparently at six years old, I was already underperforming and because my parents had left me with a scary old babysitter and had gone on a trip to New York for a week. My dad owned a dress store.

He goes to New York about five times a year to pick out clothing for the store because there was no internet yet. You had to do it in person and take a look at the clothing and once or twice a year my mom would go with him and when they came back from their trip I was turning in circles and chanting to God.

And that plus my screwing up in school earned me, I don’t know, nine months or a year with my personal psychiatrist. And, there was a pattern throughout my elementary career, which was a year of performing in school, and a year messing up.

In fourth grade, we found a dirty book on the playground or the teacher found a dirty book on the playground. It was missing its cover, but she didn’t realize it was dirty – so she brought it in and put it on her desk and we found it.

Then we spent much of that year or some of that year reading the dirty book and discovering how we get boners. It was also the year that we worked on being good at making fake farts. It was the year after a guy whose dad was a doctor told us how babies were made, so we were distracted by all that.

I don’t know that I screwed up that much, but apparently, it was enough that when I got a teacher who understood me, Ms. Jones, in fifth grade. Everybody was happy and I performed for her. She gave me – this was an era where special attention was not that big of a thing or even virtually non-existent – extra attention.

Everybody did the same work at the same pace. Ms. Jones was the rare teacher who got real work out of me because she gave me challenging work to do. I looked out because she moved from fifth to sixth grade the same year I did, so I get to have her for two years in a row.

I moved on to junior high school. I tried hard. All three years at junior high school I tried hard and did okay except for in PE class and French class where Ms. Davis, the French teacher, didn’t like you if you were popular.

Even if you’re only trying to be popular, I was far short of popular, but I wanted to be popular, and I wasn’t entirely serious in class, so she would give B’s and those were not good because I want straight A’s so I can more easily get into Harvard.

So, I would have gotten into Harvard. A student body president; my SAT scores were the highest in school; my grades were excellent; I was from Colorado, which made me geographically diverse. They didn’t call it that back then, but the deal was if you are from a state that didn’t send that many applicants, then your odds were good.

Back then, Harvard let in 20% of applicants compared to about 5% now, so given everything I had going for me I would have gotten in. I freaked out because I was still a virgin. I never had anything like a girlfriend. I wanted a girlfriend.

If I couldn’t get a girlfriend at my little school, then I was totally unable to get a girlfriend in Harvard where everyone was rich or a Kennedy or came from a prep school. I would be one more smart kid from a high school among everybody who has been the smartest kid in his or her high school.

I thought I would be lonely and miserable, so I decided to break into my school. This is still my senior year in high school when everything fell apart. I went from virtually all As to a bunch of Fs. I broke into my high school, stole my transcript and went back to high school.

That was the second senior year and I wanted to get a girlfriend. Because I had two families, parents got divorced when I was zero years old; each started a new family. I was going to switch families. I switched families. I went back to high school in a new town, Albuquerque, New Mexico.

I didn’t get a girlfriend. I was no better at getting a girlfriend. My new non-nerd persona, which I modeled on (Vinnie Barbarino) the John Travolta character on Welcome Back Kotte; that lasted about 12 weeks.

Then I dropped out of high school and instead of going to Harvard, I went to the University of Colorado. My hometown school where I screwed up big time. I didn’t take CU seriously at all. I treated it as the cheapest place for me to live.

It was tuition plus room on board back in 1979 was 15 or 16 hundred dollars for the semester. That was all you could eat. At that time, I was eating seven or eight meals a day because I was trying to bulk-up, because that if I was big and muscley, I could get a girlfriend.

Alright, so, I had things in reverse, when the time I should have been big and muscley was in high school when I should have gone after football, but in college, everyone was trying to be smart at the time when I was trying to be Barbarino.

The perfectionism that drives and haunts a lot of gifted talented kids; it isn’t the end of the world if you fall short of perfection and there’re worst things in life than fucking up, especially at a fairly young age where it can lead to a new perspective.

Charles Darwin was a fuck up. He was wandering aimlessly through life. He didn’t want to be a pastor. He wasn’t great at school. Not sure whether his parents wanted him to be a doctor at one point, but anyway, nothing was for him, so they hooked him up with this ridiculous “do nothing” assignment for a position as a paid companion to a ship’s captain.

He got depressed on long sea voyages. Now, this was Fitzroy, the Captain of Beagle and Darwin was…his family paid for him to go on this five-year voyage and hang out with the captain, talking with him to be the ship’s naturalist, which he did a good job at.

Five-year journey around the world. He came up with a theory of evolution, so is one of the great thinkers of all of history. It’s a nice consequence in part because he had to give himself a different experiential background that most people of the time didn’t have or couldn’t experience.

Five years of seeing the entire world, seeing all these geological formations that convinced him the world was fantastically old. He saw all the speciation on this plot of this island and all because he was a fuck up who couldn’t figure out what he wanted to do.

Einstein has been presented as a fuck up. It’s part of his myth. When you look at his actual academic history, he was a good student. Leaving school, he had troubles with certain professors because he didn’t probably work that hard or paid that much attention, so he didn’t strike people as sufficiently smart.

I don’t know. Whatever they thought a young scientist should be like, he wasn’t. Mostly, it was the Jews that may have pissed off some people, but he did a little bit of fucking up, not as much as the myth would have it. He knocked up his girlfriend, later his wife out of wedlock.

They had a kid that they may have been so messed up that they may have left it in the orphanage or gave it up for adoption. Anyway, they had a disappearing kid. So, Einstein was a screw up in some way.

Newton wasn’t as much a screw up as the recipient of his mom screwing up and the horrible situation of the time. Newton’s dad died early. He was less than ten years old. Because when Newton was ten or so, his mom marries a new guy.

They didn’t have time for Newton in the house, so they gave him away to the local pastor or something. So, Newton got booted out of his house when he was ten and spent a few years living with an entirely different family until his family could take him back.

So, this probably didn’t do wonders for his disposition. He was notoriously a prick for his whole life. So, I don’t know; the point I’m trying to get at is that it feels good to perform in school and if you can do that it will get you all sorts of opportunities.

Or to perform in other areas, if you have landed a solid apprenticeship, say you are still in high school but you’re helping out in a lab someplace, all that stuff is awesome. But, falling short of perfection isn’t the worst thing in the world, you can see it even in what colleges look for.

My wife and I have been involved in college admissions for a while now. My wife works in the admissions office of a high school, so we see how it all works. Every year, we hear horror stories about how the kid with the perfect SAT scores, the grade point of like 4.7 on a 4 scale.

Even with the grades, extracurricular activities, and the high SAT scores from all the SAT classes, that kid doesn’t get into Stanford or Harvard because the admission rate is so low for selected colleges now that even with perfect credentials; you are not assured getting in.

The people try to come in with all sorts of hooks, traveling to impoverished countries to build houses or to help administer medical care. It’s getting into even mathematically, where it can make you look like you have canned experience.

It can be too designed to look good to admissions people. But, the deal is, nothing is going to give you a hundred percent chance of getting into a selected college. Unless, you succeeded at such a crazy thing, such as you’re basically a celebrity because of your achievement level.

You’re a nationally ranked athlete in addition to having excellent grades. That will get you in a selected school. Apparently, if you are a successful film actor, famous, that will get you in there along with excellent grades.

Or if your parents are going to give millions of bucks to the school, apparently like the Trumps…Apparently, his grades on tests weren’t that great, but his parents still donated. They are real estate moguls. They donated like 1.6 million (USD) to Harvard Medical School.

That helped him ease his way into Harvard. But short of that, all of the highest achieving students all over the world are applying to ten or twelve or more schools, a bunch of Ivies, Stanford, George Washington University, Bard, and so on, but our kid that went through this process and applied overseas to Oxford.

She applied to a zillion schools. You hear the stories. Stories of the kid who is perfect and doesn’t get into any of the Ivies. This is perhaps because, a couple reasons: one, it’s easier now to apply to a bunch of colleges because there are computer-based applications.

The selective school still requires an individualized application, but some of the less than highest, less than most selected, school are slightly less selective or slightly easier to apply to because of computer application.

That’s reason one so kids about twenty years ago will apply to two or three or four schools and that doesn’t happen with the high achieving kids. The ten thousand or fifteen thousand of those high achieving kids around the country each year.

Now, those kids don’t apply to 2 or 4 but up to ten or more schools. Some places keep track of how many schools have been applied to and then record for one year. A year or two ago some lunatic kid applied to forty-four schools.

And because people are applying to three or four or five times many more schools, each school gets five times as many application; instead of admitting 20% of applicants, they admit 5% of applicants.

And nobody can be sure of getting into any one school. The second reason is that since the time that I was in school and now; there has been a modification where everybody in America decided – parents across America – parenting became a burden.

When I was growing up, people liked kids, lived in the same house with the kid, did some parenting stuff with and for them, but nobody saw parenting as a job. The word didn’t even exist. You trusted your instinct as a person with kids and to get you and your kid through; you trusted the local schools, the public schools.

It’s getting roughly through the eighties, and increasingly till now; people began to take parenting seriously, which includes cherishing and nurturing the gifted. So, now, there are thousands of gifted kids who are appreciated and underserved by whatever their situation is.

But there are now tens of thousands of kids who are given special attention for being gifted and that means that those kids are given special treatment. If you are a gifted kid and if you are listening to this, now, everyone gets special attention and special prodding to take a zillion AP courses.

There is an appreciated and nurtured gifted kid who is likely going to apply to a gazillion colleges, highly selected colleges. There are, like a said, over ten thousand of these super student’s every year, but like the Ivies, most of the Ivies, only Cornell has a decent size.

Cornell now may admit three or four thousand students to each class. Look it up, but the Ivies; a Harvard, Princeton, Yale only admits about 1600 students a year. That means if you are one of the 10,000, you better have a hook in addition to fantastic grades or test scores.

With our kid, we went through the process. We could see, as the process went on, because, the college admissions process takes a year of solid processing – probably another close to a year of getting ready to do everything and by the end of it.

I have a rough sense where our kid was in terms of all the kids in the country. In terms of where her credentials ranked her roughly upon the high achievement kids, I could predict what school she would get into and what school she wouldn’t based on where I ranked her and the class size of each school.

Which, it was good to have an understanding so that there was completely freaking out because I was ninety-nine point nine something percent certain that she would get into at least George Washington.

Because George Washington has a big class size, I was confident; and George Washington doesn’t necessarily attract one hundred percent, unlike the Ivies. It doesn’t necessarily attract a hundred percent of the top students in the country.

So, I could see by doing the math that she would get in there and some other schools. So, I was probably the least freaked out member of your immediate family during that period. But, to get back to the point, these annual crops of students who are trying to be as perfect as possible to survive the ridiculous current admissions don’t need to be perfect.

Perfection won’t save you unless it’s some weird hyper perfection which means you are among the top two dozen percent in the country in some field, like movies, apps, or Olympic gymnastics or anything.

You’re an Olympic level athlete and have perfect grades; you will probably get into a highly selected school, but short of that it’s not the worst thing to take a look at, not what you want to do professionally.

But also what you might want to experience in terms of going on a goofier adventure, growing up and going to high school in the seventies, it wasn’t a serious time. The whole country was going a little nuts; it was the disco era much of it.

We had Vietnam. We had Watergate. America had lost confidence in its institutions and plus we were in the middle of the sexual revolution. And, people, a little bit older than I was when I was in high school, were in the discos banging the hell out of each other, eventually causing the herpes epidemic.

You went to bars if you were in your twenties. A lot of people went to bars, pick each other up, bang each other, gave each other herpes; yes, so, by the late seventies, there was a herpes epidemic, by the early eighties the AIDS crisis had started.

The people didn’t understand what was going on with that, but it was starting to be understood that during the seventies before herpes/AIDS, the idea was that humanity had finally broken free of ultimate strengths.

That everybody was going to be having as much sex as they wanted now in the new modern world and also an assumption that went with that was that everybody was into sex and that it was natural that everybody was having a lot of sex.

Then gays came along and Nancy Reagan started people to say, “No”; the children of hippies of the sixties generation. A lot of them were not of high school age and were growing up in families where the parents were still fuck ups.

They never entirely recovered from being hippies or you didn’t have to be a hippie to have a hard time recovering from the 60s and the 70s. So, you had a conservative wave of young people who were who were not as interesting as seventies people in going nuts.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 354 – The Informatonial Translation Problem

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/03/15

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We were talking off tape about hardware and software and information and if you have a potentially infinite set of hardware and a hardware implies certain infinities in information.

Rick Rosner: I read this book that says that not only are your thoughts not localized, but even when they’re distributed across the brain they are what the author, Lisa Barrett, says is different every time. Every time you’re sad; your sadness lights up a slightly different set of neurons, but they average out to be an average sad.

But anyway, what she and neuroscience are finding out is that thoughts are hard to pin down, to pin it up to areas of the little neighborhoods of the brain, we would like to think of a better model of where the information in thoughts is.

If what we’re saying about information space is right, it’s obviously in the information space, but pinning it down may be tougher. We’ve talked about the ‘how’ of an information space, how it might work; we’ve never talked about it in terms of specifics such as a ‘why’ for the universe. Why should the universe be made from information?

Maybe, we’ve talked about that a little bit, but that should be further developed. I started to try to do that. And one reason is, let’s go from ourselves, where if we have a little information space based on the information that’s in our brain, which is with our brain being the hardware, then you got to ask: Why is the information existing in a space of its own separate from the hardware?

And why can’t the hardware be a part of that space? Why is there a division between the values held in the hardware and the hardware itself? Because the hardware exists as hardware plus it exists as a bunch of values that also exist within the hardware, the zeros and ones; the states of the various circuits in the chips.

As a first step there, the information that I’d hypothesize that we have in our awareness is information that will behave in certain ways independent but consistent, logically consistent, with what would have to transpire in the hardware.

But some future values of the hardware are not yet determined. But the information in an information space has to be sufficiently consistent and determinative that by following the rules of information in its own space it will follow the rules of that information as contained in the hardware which isn’t the best or clearest thought, but it’s the first thought.

So, that’ll have to be further messed with. But the deal is that if there are information spaces that information is internally defined to a certain extent to the point where it behaves according to its rules and the information existing as values in the hardware is similarly constrained.

And then the less constrained stuff, the open parts, the outcomes of various quantum interactions can be determined as the system moves into the future. So, you’ve got the determinant part that works according to the rules of information space or in the hardware and even then, you’ve got the open stuff which can be determined by the values that are input into the hardware which seems like a reasonable first step to the idea that the information when it’s sufficiently self-consistent has an existence according to the rules of information that allows it to have its own existence in its own space. Is that reasonable?

Jacobsen: In some serious ways, yes, and in some other trivial ways, no.

Rosner: Okay.

Jacobsen: There’s still the translation problem, which we identified some time ago. The translation problem is the one of precision because that’s off – a long way off, but ways to think about certain structures translating into those different sets of experiences, where a set of experiences can be labeled set sad, set happy, and so on, and within each variable there are micro changes and those micro changes are sufficiently similar to one another that you can categorize them as something as a dynamic set in themselves or labeled under emotions.

Rosner: That’s what Lisa Feldman Barrett indicates that there are states that the brain recognizes or that the mind recognizes as sadness but those states are variable; it’s not always the same sadness and so in an informational sense it’s always a little different and in a coding sense, a hardware sense it’s always a little different, but not vastly different.

That when you take real-time fast PET scans of the brain and you try to evoke certain states like emotions, the same parts light up but they don’t light up exactly the same from time to time to time.

Jacobsen: To me, it seems like the difference between microstructure and gross anatomy.

Rosner: Yes, that makes sense.

Jacobsen: You can see what is what, generally, with gross anatomy, you can’t with microstructure, but you can know more precisely what a particular thing is in decent levels of microstructure analysis.

Too much and it becomes useless, but at a certain level it becomes useful but at the macro level; the gross anatomy level, you can label structures such as the hippocampus for memory, cerebellum is for motor coordination…

Rosner: Yes, except every structure might contain a couple million or more neurons. The little subdivisions that might contain tens of millions of neurons. And then there’s the problem with if we’re arguing that the universe is an information space, that we’re seeing the information that the universe is made of in action, the universe follows precise rules of physics such as the distribution of matter.

It seems all the while orderly but also not pinned down. Everything orbits everything else that doesn’t seem to have crystallized precision. There needs to be a way to understand both: the order of the universe and the lack of precision, or what looks like looseness in the universe.

There needs to be a framework that accounts for both and also provides for some understanding of how hardware cannot intrude into a world of pure information. For instance, each of our minds have evolved over our entire lives; we’ve learned stuff about the world, forgotten stuff and we have structures – that our minds are highly ordered.

We know what we know for the most part, we can recall a lot of things, for instance, have you ever punched a duck?

Jacobsen: [Laughing.]

Rosner: You immediately know the answer somehow. You’ve examined whatever records exist in your memory about ducks and punching and you instantly can answer. Most people can instantly answer, “No,” which seems good informationally.

Have you ever kissed somebody for longer than five minutes? It is a little tougher but still answered almost immediately. It’s highly ordered and that order seems to come from lived experience with the brain being exposed to lived experience and having some way to, as that experience happens, file it away associationally, so it maintains a certain amount of integrity.

You don’t remember stuff that didn’t happen for the most part though that’s questionable, but with some degree of integrity and is highly retrievable. But there’s all this stuff that is highly retrievable; but that you don’t know at any given instant, so you could simulate a moment of awareness with a high degree of precision with the little bit of information that is in your awareness at a given time and somehow provide the illusion of the rest of this order – or artificially provide the order that exists from moment to moment because you’re able to work with this system of information that includes a bunch of stored information.

So, the natural system based on decades of life experience has all this information that adds a certain precision to your thoughts but you could fake that with much less information for a moment or two of thought as long as you give the brain the information that it needs to think those couple of moments of thoughts.

So, the hardware could provide a framework as long as that hardware isn’t perceived because of a lack of information like if you were simulating a couple moments of thoughts and then you quit and you let the system move on without supplying the missing information then the person thinking would either have his mind fall entirely apart because there was not enough supporting information or, and maybe both, for a few moments the person would realize that he or she knew nothing, had almost complete amnesia.

So, coming up with the rules of the existence of information space is based at least in part on the boundary between hardware and open propositions and determinative information within information space.

I’m hoping that’s a good way to set up a boundary; another way of saying it would be that quantum mechanics is famously indeterminate which freaked out Einstein and a lot of people that the universe should not be a clockwork completely determined to universe.

We might be able to say that where the universe is determined that’s due to the logical structure set up by the information and information space, where it’s open to take new values those values will be provided by information coming in from the hardware world.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 353 – Independent But Logically Consistent

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/03/08

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What about the blob?

Rick Rosner: At some point, once information processes, conscious information processes are decoupled from the human body. It can be easily moved around and merged with other minds or other forms of information processing.

There will probably be an extended period of controversy and struggle, eventual alliances, maybe a settling down after a century or two. The issue will be around how much you will allow your consciousness to be subsumed in some other structure.

There will be a matter of alliance of merging consciousness boundaries. So, your rights once you are merged with a large information processing entity. What are your rights if you to remove yourself from it in the future?

People will be able or the entity would be able to duplicate their consciousnesses, and will be able to extend a series of them out or venture out with your mind. You can send out a bunch of them and then re-join with them later.

There will be a bunch of issues about entities’ rights to join up with other entities in intimate information processing partnerships or alliances, or the rights to end those alliances. It will be, obviously, complicated.

Eventually, who knows, this is talking out of my butt, but at some point, as things settle down; there will be one or more Earth-spanning massive information processing entities, or as big as is practical – which will be pretty damn big..

Jacobsen: We called this a blob before, right? You took on that term.

Rick Rosner: The super blob, it could be something that extends for hundreds and thousands of miles across the earth’s surface or into the earth itself or circles the earth via orbiting stuff. One of the priorities will be special compactness; a solid sphere of computation is more efficient than a sheet of computation.

That sheet covering the earth surface because the ball of computation has a lower average distance upon its various component code, so it can compute faster. We will have vast structures; these structures would be the most powerful computing.

They will be gigantic. They will be the most powerful conscious computing information processing entities that we know of and sub-intelligences, smaller intelligences. There will still be smaller beings in this huge thing.

People can exist as people or whatever forms they want to take and they can go out and they can do their own computing, which will be super powerful compared to our mental computing now, based on the situation of all your computing as an independent entity is relevant to your situation in the world as an independent entity.

So, there will still be independent entities out in the world making decisions based on their local and specific situations. Independent entities will have a choice as to how much consultation they want to do on a moment to moment basis with the giant, super powerful processor.

Maybe, it’s expensive to have the power of the central processor, working with you as you go about your affairs or maybe it’s not expensive because the central processor finds it helpful to constantly gather information from independent entities that are linked to it.

However, all this stuff will evolve across hundreds of years until you have long periods of world computation. That could be minutes or days or something since every thing’s moving so fast, but we will have a stable, somewhat stable, arrangements about where negotiated computation happens.

Or, you will have stable arrangements that evolved between lesser awarenesses and these big central information processors. At that point, we will be well beyond anything that’s human relationships today, except for people who choose to engage in a throw-back cuddling for the reasons of being technologically Amish or to honor their ancestors.

Maybe, it’s an issue from time to time of safety. If information processing structures are being attacked, then maybe people will lock themselves down and exist without being highly linked to other conscious beings.

But normal human coupling at this point will be a rare thing in the sea of other forms of infinite means of intimate shared information process. Before that, this is this world of consciousness butting off and merging up into massive central processors.

That’s about three hundred years, four hundred years in the future. So, until then, we have to kind predict where relationships would go and the first thing. The first major thing would be any kind of widespread gender judgment or regulations.

Gender will fall as a thing that prescribes the maturity of the relationship you can have. That will fall within most places in the world within a century and then as consciousness becomes more mergeable, couple-hood will fall within a hundred and fifty years or two centuries.

Because there will be all sorts of new ways of merging one’s perception of the world with somebody else or other people. People in Western countries will have things with coupling as being romantic as sex, and then only secondarily for making a family or as for economic stability, to pull in resources.

However, as we gain control of our bodies and minds, relationships will form for reasons beyond sexual romance and sex. We will still have business linkages, defensive linkages, but people will couple up.

People will couple up to share their history with each other. Maybe, somebody has had an unusual experience such as surviving living for years in space or years under water and spending a year of developing some theory.

People would make you want to experience what it’s to be that person who they may be able to sell linkages: either your active consciousness or to form another record of your experiences as you live them.

So, that’s pretty much as far as I can go right now.

There will be coupling for the standard reasons replaced by coupling and tripling and quadrupling and all other forms of coming together for a vast variety of reasons. And then after it, eventually, there’s periods of strife as massive operations of information processing happen and as people try to sort out what role they want to have with the world computing apparatus; and then eventually, that settles down and you have this multi-minded and centrally-minded world-spanning consciousness. I don’t know, that’s as far as I can go.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 352 – It’s a Big Blob Out There

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/03/01

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What about the blob?

Rick Rosner: At some point, once information processes, conscious information processes are decoupled from the human body, it can be easily moved around and merged with other minds or other forms of information processing.

There will be a matter of alliances of merging consciousness boundaries. So, your rights once you are merged with a large information processing entity. What are your rights if you have to remove yourself from it in the future?

Jacobsen: We called this a “blob” before, right? You took on that term.

Rick Rosner: The “super blob,” it could be something that extends for hundreds and thousands of miles across the earth’s surface or into the earth itself or circles the earth via orbiting stuff. One of the priorities will be special compactness; a solid sphere of computation is more efficient than a sheet of computation.

That sheet covering the earth surface because the ball of computation has a lower average distance upon its various component code, and so it can compute faster. We will have vast structures. These structures would be the most powerful computing.

People can exist as people or whatever forms they want to take and they can go out and do their own computing, which will be super powerful compared to our mental computing now, based on the situation of all your computing as an independent entity is relevant to your situation in the world as an independent entity.

But normal human coupling at this point will be a rare thing in the sea of other forms of infinite means of intimately shared information processing. Before that, this is the world of consciousness budding off and merging up into massive central processors.

That’s about three hundred years, four hundred years in the future. So, until then, we have to predict where relationships would go. The first major thing would be any kind of widespread gender judgment or regulations.

So, that’s pretty much as far as I can go right now.

I don’t know, that’s as far as I can go.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 351 – Schadenfreude: How Do You Feel About Jung? Mixed.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/02/22

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You had some short ideas on Freud and Jung.

Rick Rosner: Schadenfreude is a helpful shorthand for a certain mixed emotion, and once you hear it, then it’s sticky for a lot of people who have experienced that Schadenfreude type thing. So, Schadenfreude is a meme once you’re aware of it, it sticks in your brain.

So, that’s what memes were meant to be, but then the term “memes” got taken over by people who do fun graphic jokes on Twitter and Instagram, and once they go viral they’re memes, but that’s a whole second meaning that isn’t exactly a sense of the first meaning.

That is a catchy mind bug that spreads through culture because the idea being expressed is handy or amusing. Then you said there was another thing you want to link to it.

Jacobsen: What do you think about Sir Carl Jung and the idea of the archetype? Those seem like memes evolved over time, which are almost statistical tendencies of forms that we have in our minds. They’re all Platonic-ish.

Rosner: I understand the handiness of archetypes and stereotypes; without admitting, I don’t think I believe in Jung’s form of archetypes. He thinks that we have evolved structures in the brain that we are more receptive to.

We have some cultural history already embedded in our brain via evolution and that can include archetypes. The myth of the heroes and certain types of men in some way and some types of women in other ways if they line up with certain archetypal roles.

I have never strongly believed in that. I believe in it even less strong now that there is more evidence in neuroscience that shows that the brain is constructivist instead of essentialist according to recent research results, which that the brain, each brain, builds its own concepts based on experience via culture and repeated personal experiences.

Those concepts aren’t inbuilt. People had arguments about this regarding language, whether we have inbuilt evolved language abilities or we have language centers evolved to make humans better at learning a language.

But a constructivist would say, “No, the brain is very flexible and it quickly builds structures in infancy when it’s super fluid, when it’s super flexible, in what it can do. It’s able to quickly build the capacity for language without having an inbuilt evolved capacity for language.”

So, based on the stuff I’ve read and heard about recently, I would disagree with a lot of inbuilt arguments as opposed to the spontaneously built over the life of your brain arguments.

Jacobsen: Okay.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 350 – Observation and Wisdom – Tabula Rasa Self-Experimentation

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/02/15

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, we are thinking about how to observe better, so we go to physics and then we move onto the general.

Rick Rosner: That’s the first step to coming up with things about what you are observing. However, being observant and coming up with new original observations is a starting point, it is a helpful ability to have for comedy, for science. What other fields should we talk about?

Jacobsen: Those are the two main ones. For comedy, for science and physics, it’s not helpful, as you know, to be more observant by being more reflective.

Rosner: Perhaps, you need to develop tools to knock yourself out of the standard way of experiencing things less consciously. Often, we let things wash over us. We are used to things. Sometimes, I play games to help me practice observing a world that I am used to.

Game one is to imagine that, woken up in the world I’m in with no information about it and what can I figure out about that world from looking at it, and also I’m not allowed to gather more information.

I’m not allowed to be caught. I have to go about my business as if nothing is different and I have to gather information via the information I’m getting while going about my business. Even though, I’m not allowed to look all around because in the game that would get me caught as somebody who is new to the world.

Instead, I have to maintain my non-suspicious demeanor. I still have to figure out where I am, when I am. Sometimes, I play the game in a persona of some specific person from the different era, like Ben Franklin or Marie Curie or F. Scott Fitzgerald.

I have to draw a conclusion as if I am this person. And, generally, you can only do this at a few minutes at a time before you forget that this is what you are doing. You must guess what year it is; you must guess that you concluded that it’s the future.

Is it a future version of your year or is it an alternate future? You have to try to suss out some of the technology that exists. If you are pretending to be Jesus, as I have observed a world, 2,000 years in the future or some other.

So, it is imagining someone from the past coming to the future and figuring out the world from that time. If you’re trying to observe a world 25 years into the future, you are in a car. You have to figure out how the car might work, how the radio might work, how the radio isn’t a bunch of little people in a prison, somewhere in the car.

Our comedies, playing the comedians, are going to be wrong about how the car works, about how the radio works because there are those millennia of intervening, of technology that you have no idea about.

However, you still must try to guess at what is going on. If you’re playing the video for Scott Fitzgerald, you must guess at why the car or the cars of today look like pieces of melted candy, as if you took the old angular cars or cars of the past and sucked on them for a while until they lost a lot of their corners.

So, it’s a game to increase, for very brief periods, your observation.

Jacobsen: How important is having memorized things before, so you have a database of experience and other previous observations?

Rosner: You are not allowed to use that; I am not allowed to go routing through what I know. If I am pretending to be somebody else who is suddenly awakening in my body. So, it is receiving on my sensory input.

I don’t have the power to go routing around in my memory for answers, except in a very approximate big way. I am a passenger. I’m not in charge.

Jacobsen: I get some images about how to see the world the way other people see it, or me, but if there is time travel, what about seeing the world, from someone in the same era, a different part of the world? In some ways, it’s functionally the same, in some ways it’s not.

Rosner: Yeah, that’s doable, but if you are seeing the world as someone else from a different part of the world then you’ve quickly concluded that it is the time that it is; it is that you are pretty much in the same era as you were when you were that person in a different part of the world.

So, if you are observing the world in America, while pretending to be somebody who had popped into your body from India, you have fairly quickly realized that you are in America, but you are driving around maybe and see a license plate of another place.

Or maybe, you see a TV. The TVs at my gym play videos. You may be able to reach conclusions by who is performing in the videos or could see a TV in a restaurant making a snippet of the news. But if you are pretending to be somebody from a different era, you may be able to make some guesses about how people are in this era.

Scott Fitzgerald could for our comedies because you are going to notice; people have devices in their hands that they interact with, either typing on or talking into. Fitzgerald would quickly surmise that those are some form of communication device.

Our comedies will too, but he would not have the idea of a telephone to work from. So, he may be drawing conclusions. At first, he may think that they are religious devices for people to worship something, or they are some talisman or fetish that they are praying to.

They must see one of those things up close, or see other screens in the world, in order to interact with information on the screens. So, that’s a game you can play to become more observant for a few minutes at a time.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 349 – Lines of Love Drawn in Trauma and the Colour of Trust

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/02/08

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I want to reflect more on the bad educational experiences for gifted kids, of the social experiences, which can leave such an impact on the psyche. Kids are in some ways almost crippled for social life, if not for a significant period.

Rick Rosner: All the bullying that I’ve read into was for the most part run of the mill. It was run by the white guys of the 60s and 70s. That served to eventually make me tougher and more determined to succeed socially.

What you read about are a kid goes out for a sports team, and a brave kid, it’s not anything to do with the sport, or maybe it is; once you read the case reports, everyone starts hazing the kid. It’s so brutal that it can include sexual assault.

I assume that would be hard with the violation of trust, which would be so severe. It would be Love Line. People would call into Carola and Dr. Drew. It was a show for people to call in and ask questions about romance, sex, maybe relationships.

Often, they would get calls of women with baby voices.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Was that a real thing?

Rick Rosner: Yeah! Carola tried to guess when someone had an unwanted sexual boundary violation, assault, based on the apparent age of the caller’s voice. So, Carola tried to guess at which age of the caller was molested because it was his theory that your personality would freeze at that age.

However, Carola is not a theorist; he’s the guy who makes jokes on the radio. But often his guess was good. Often, the caller would identify with him that something happens to the caller’s life at a young age, but it’s hard to draw conclusions from that.

Maybe, most people – unfortunately, given the culture – live in suffering based on some unwanted stuff. Early on, I don’t think it was everybody; something so severe in its violation of trust or boundaries could freeze you up for a while.

Which if you’re looking for tips on how to avoid that, one thing is to know what are the boundaries that exist and what they are. If I was lucky, I was knowledgeable about directing experience I read widely, so I knew a lot of things kids should not know, or figured out a lot of stuff.

So, a lot of people in my era were super naïve. I was naïve about some stuff, but not about other things. And when I was nine or ten, a friend of mined asked if I wanted to touch wieners. I would say, “No, that’s not something I wanted to do.”

Because I was innocent, the guy was curious. So, I knew stuff, but I didn’t have that curiosity. And I saved myself from an innocence, though I wanted potential early instances of that type of play. Others, I didn’t want to get engaged in. And we have the Internet now; and we also have an awareness of the better and worse behaviour.

That there are people out there being left essentially to unwanted sexual potential from adults. Kids should be made aware. Most kids have this respect. And if you’re listening to this, and the adults are not making sure that this stuff is available, go on the internet and teach them to yourself for a couple hours.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 348 – Genius Gone Mad and Bad

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/02/01

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Why are there stranger male geniuses than female geniuses?

Rick Rosner: We, off-tape, were saying that there seems to be more wild-ass or weird male super geniuses than female super geniuses. And one reason may be that woman may have better judgment, and that part of being a smart woman might be looking at life, in general, and deciding that leading a normal life makes sense.

Because, I have certainly had crap periods in my life based on following my own weird plans; plans that if you look at them in the aggregate, you would argue that I deserved to lose a bunch of points of my IQ for pursuing these plans.

I tend to think I’m not a psychopath or a sociopath or maybe only 5 or 10% on the way to being one, but I tend to think that a good sociopath would not do anything sociopathic because, in a cold, unemotional sociopathic way, the sociopath would look at the way to live a smooth life, a life without hassle, and decide that I would pretend to be a normal person.

I won’t do a bunch of horrible antisocial stuff because the cost of doing the antisocial stuff is too high. The same way the idea of a super villain in comic books or movies who looks at his records of going up against superheroes and he clocks it, “I get beat every time. I’m going to retire and offer my services to the good guys.”

I come up with great shit and it turns out to not be so great enough. I could certainly help out the Justice League. I know that villains got something in them that even when they try to be good for an issue or two in a comic book, something snaps, and they go back to pure badness, but really, it would be so much easier to not be evil.

Jacobsen: The entire premise is hysterical.

Rosner: I want to see a whole movie. It will piss off people so bad; I want to see a Marvel movie where the superheroes take care of the problem in the first ten minutes of the movie, twenty minutes, and their next ninety minutes of the movie is them hanging out and solving little problems and designing a dream house.

Them doing regular people stuff and seeing if they can get a buzz, seeing how many shots of Bailey Irish Cream will it take to get Superman buzzed. Probably don’t want to use Bailey’s, he would end up super throwing up before he got drunk.

Maybe, you wouldn’t do it with superheroes. Maybe, you will do it with a group of teens that go to a spooky place. Like, you buy the rights to this shitty series of movies or a series of movies that ran its course. The Jason movies or the Freddy movies and they take care of the bad guy very thoroughly in the first ten minutes.

They spend the rest of the movie hanging out and wondering if he’s going to come back in some weird way. However, mostly hanging out. Alright, that was very repetitive, between the teens and the superhero. Sorry.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 347 – Snapshot – Growing Up Manly

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/01/22

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: In 1962, my mom married my stepdad. I was 2-years-old; we moved to Boulder, Colorado, which at the time was a small, not weird, college town, surrounded by farms and ranches.

Maybe, a population of 15 or 20 thousand; Boulder didn’t get weird for another around ten to fifteen years. It grew steadily weirder beginning in the late sixties. I didn’t relate to my stepdad.

He was an intimidating guy. He was 6’1 or 6’2, probably a 190lbs. Then going up to two hundred or more in later life. His arms and legs were spindly, but he was barrel-shaped and was physically imposing, especially compared to me.

It took me decades to realize he had a nice smile and a nice face, but I tell you he wasn’t as handsome as my dad or as fun as my dad. My dad who had good hair and a good face, drove sports cars and had visitation with me for a month.

For years, he’d drive me from Boulder down to Albuquerque in his Firebird or he had a GTO (he had something like that). My stepdad worked all the time and had a big stark nose from when having fallen on a pop bottle that had sliced open his nose.

He was grown up in Boulder, was a friendly local merchant owned ready-to-wear dress store on Pearl Street. It’s friendly at work. Then we would come home and be either quiet or pissed off about the assholes we’ve met during the day.

Though, I’m sure he called some people assholes and not too patient with the family. He’d go in my parent’s bedroom and fall asleep with the TV on. Over the next couple of years, it became apparent that I was both awkward and smart.

I taught myself to read before the age of 4. This was before there was an era of this being a thing with parents pushing their kids to do stuff like that if the kid could do it.

Kids were kids in his era. You lived in a household with your parents, but parenting was something that was an active concern. It was like they are adults acting like adults, kids acting like kids.

He went to school and everybody went to the same school in the neighborhood and everything was expected to turn out okay. And for the most part, things did turn out okay. There were plenty of outlier examples where things turned out terribly, but for most people everything was adequate.

There’s a movie coming out based on a crime novel called My Friend Dahmer written by a guy who grew up with the high school Jeffrey Dahmer. Dahmer was born on the exact same day I was born.

He was an increasingly odd kid as he was transforming into the homicidal monster he would later be; all the other kids knew he was way off. None of the parents or none of the adults in his world could much be bothered to notice anything about this hobby of going and seeing kids.

So, I’m looking forward to that movie because they will be indicative of the laissez-faire attitude of that time. So, I taught myself to read. If I’d been the same kid thirty or forty years later, I wouldn’t have to teach myself to read at the age three and a half or three quarters.

I would have been spotted as gifted and treated like gold, then stuck in all these accelerated programs. They would have had me reading maybe a few months earlier and everybody would be looking at acceleration and enrichment private schools and testing.

Instead, when my mom noticed my signs of precociousness, she freaked out; she didn’t know what to do with the genius; I was her first kid. She didn’t know what to do with an apparently smart little kid. The other moms gave her shit because she wasn’t even a teacher.

She wasn’t being a teacher then, but the neighborhood, the people in the neighborhood, saw that I was reading and doing other smart kid stuff. I asked a lot of questions. I used bigger words than most 3 or 4 years old.

They gave my mom certain amount of shit because they thought she was keeping me inside and drilling me, teaching me all these smart kid things when she didn’t do anything like that.

I stayed inside because I was not good with the other kids. They intimidated me. I preferred to stay inside reading or hanging with my mom. Then I went on to a public school. I was not good on the playground. There was one kid, whose dad had died and he used to lightly beat me up after school every day.

This was to contextualize that he felt sad because his dad has died. And nobody that I remember was particularly concerned that this kid was messing with me every day. And this is early elementary school, say first, second grade.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 346 – Faith Given Up and Taken Away

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/01/15

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What are the problems of faith? We have been talking about these for some time.

Rick Rosner: When we were talking, you talked about what we’re talking about, which are issues like abortion being in an intractable problem of today and into the future. We’re never going to get the two sides to agree.

It would be nice to come up with a list of our intractable problems of the future. Problems and big controversies that are likely to come along. That will divide people along the lines, political lines of faith.

So, the legalization of new forms of relationships: is that when people eventually want three or four way marriages to be binding under the law or take place as part of a church? Some people may get annoyed about that.

I’m suspecting not because there won’t be as many because it’s tougher to set up a relationship like that. The more people involved then the less stable that’s going to be. Also, in a multi-person relationship, people who would be inclined to get upset can imagine that only heterosexual sex is happening in that relationship, as in like you’re a Mormon, marriage with your sister’s wives.

Nobody’s getting upset about that. The women are having sex with each other; maybe that stuff happens, people to people, but that’s not why the marriage is that way. That’s not supposed to be the deal of that type of marriage.

Jacobsen: What about that the big culprits currently and in the future? Will they be the same ones? The Shiites, the Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox, the Buddhists, then there’s the big populations of religious individuals who were or are against gay marriage, homosexual marriage.

Do you think the mores will have shifted enough such that their disgust or disapproval of it will be much less in the future?

Rosner: I used to have hope that religious impediments to what might be considered progress would tend to lessen over time, and as people see the fruits of progress, but the conservative buddy, Lance, convinced me that Islam has enough adherents.

The rate at which Muslims reproduce is such that it’s not going away. Islam is going to be a major force in the world over the next couple centuries and longer. And you could argue the same for everything to a slightly lesser extent about Catholicism, and other forms of Christianity.

There are so many people who believe along those lines that the dwindling will take a long, long time.

Jacobsen: This is coming out of some obscure interpretation of the text that comes out of a straightforward interpretation of a couple of lines of the texts, by enforcement from religious leaders in the culture they happen to live in.

Rosner: I’d like to say you can find anything in the Bible and the same applies to the Quran and also to support your particular point of view.

Jacobsen: They have statements about homosexuality being an abomination, for instance.

Rosner: But you could probably find as many countervailing statements that say leave people alone.

Jacobsen: What ones are often referenced?

Rosner: The verses, I don’t know that stuff. There is an anti-masturbation little passage in the Bible about that; you’re spilling your seed on the ground and the sin of Onan. It probably is, but like I don’t see a bunch of big biblical campaigns against masturbation.

It’s like a chicken and egg deal. People turn to their religious text to find support the point of view that supports them being offended. I’m not sure it’s the other way around, but the big story in the in the liberal news is there’s some pastor who says that he’s saying that God wants Trump to nuke North’s Kim Jong Un.

So, you can think there’s always this. There were a lot of pastors out in the world and believe that you could’ve found anyone willing to support some horrible point of view.

Alt-Right’s other stuff, it’s an ongoing a tragedy about religion that for the longest time now and ever since the Reagan era the biggest jerks espousing religious points of view get the most exposure.

The people quietly try to live their lives according to religious principles of tolerance and charity towards people.

Jacobsen: What about religion as a political force? If you look at the history of Islam, you compare the history of Christianity.

Rosner: In America, it’s a policy to talk about America of the past 40 years, where the conservative think tanks research how to motivate people and discovered that to keep a conservative and motivate a conservative base you want to mobilize the evangelicals, which they did.

But they propagandize the evangelical sections of the church, which made them stronger and made them politically active. Even to the point where now the evangelicals haven’t turned out to be so manipulatable, that they regret that, many of them, aggressively supported our godless president who lies about being religious over Hillary Clinton who seems to have an indication of having a lifetime of faith.

But Trump barely has ever gone to church. Clinton, Hillary Clinton has gone to church her whole life. Now, it’s come out that she is considering becoming a pastor. I don’t if she said it or if her pastor said that they’d talked to her.

He said that she’s considering doing that. And this doesn’t lead to anybody from the evangelical side saying, “Maybe, we heard her wrong and maybe we should give her the benefit of the doubt regarding faith.”

No! they’re all like, “she’ll have good luck practicing religion in jail, when people are about to be prosecuted.” That’s what they say and not many of the most politically active evangelicals disdain the woman with a record of talking about her faith over the guy who has spent his life talking about grabbing pussies and banging women.

When people think about Trump, the first thing they think about him is not that he’s not religious. That would be like number eight on the list to number 11. But the religion is in a fairly sad state in America because ostensibly religious people are embracing jerks at this point.

Let’s get back to the list of stuff that will freak people out.

Jacobsen: Taking this point as segue, the heavier use of religion as a political tool; a political tool for the rich and powerful.

Rosner: People forget that it wasn’t always like this. That it was until the Reagan Era that the evangelicals were a political force. I’m sure that if you went back to Harry Truman’s time you could find groups like Catholics or Truman.

People distrusted when Kennedy was running for president. He had them come out and say that he is an American, first, and his loyalties is always the whole little pithy quote. That his number one allegiance is to America.

His Catholicism comes in a far second. People are distrustful of religion and politics. Anyhow, onto the list of people who will freak out about rights for non-human intelligence.

Jacobsen: Including animals, not official.

Rosner: That’s a thing that already exists. So, it is not a new controversy about animals and it’s not a huge controversy. You have people getting all pissed off about different levels of how horribly animals were treated.

That is of a more general argument about that you shouldn’t house billions of animals in inhumane conditions in general; the argument usually doesn’t get down to the small details of how smart animals are or not.

Or where there will be a bunch of forms of thinking and information processing, but that is independent of a human. So, when an old rich guy starts replacing his brain and wants to argue that he is still the same guy and has all the same legal rights, people will argue about it when that applies.

If your brain is 80 percent mechanical, the 20 percent that’s organic according to an MRI is dead. It’s like, “I still have the same rights.” If that guy moves out of his body into some other robotic body, does the guy have the same rights?

Does the guy who moves into cyberspace? Does he have to have the same rights? So, there’s that problem. There is the problem of wanting to legalize or become legally married to an artificial being.

That’s something that doesn’t show even in a legit way. But it’ll show up in a dumb sense in the next 20 years, somebody will want to marry a sex robot. Most reasonable people will say that’s dumb because that robot is not sentient.

It is as if it is a sophisticated callboy. You can’t marry a toy. Then over the next 18 or so years, you’ll have a true sentience among them: commercially available companions. At that point, it becomes a real issue that has been further clouded by idiots of the past trying to marry toys.

People trying to do arts. There will be a circus like aspect to it like the first time 40 years ago that a gay marriage license was issued, which happened in my hometown Boulder Colorado.

A city clerk decided to say, “Alright, I’m going to marry some gay people. Why not?” It was in the 70s. The licenses she issued didn’t stand up because there was no widespread legal course for what she did, so she did it on her own.

Then within a few days of her issuing licenses, a cowboy shows up at the city clerk’s office with his horse to marry his horse. So, you will always have jokers making fun of this stuff. But anyway, that’s a thing that people freak out about.

Jacobsen: There’s a distinction between values. One associated with conservative viewpoints, conservative reasons; the idea of transcendental laws coming out of religious faiths or faith. They’re split.

They’re the other side to the left or the social-oriented who often, more often, point to universal human rights. That’s the rub for a lot of these controversies.

Rosner: That split will show up in the mid to far future with regard to what to do with sentient artificial beings with rollover. There’s liberals who will argue that you can’t dump thinking beings in landfills, even when it becomes possible to buy an ascendant being for six bucks.

Those beings will be subject to abuse. And liberals will argue that there needs to be a bill that those things need to have rights that are the right not to be treated like crap. And conservatives will argue that only things organic, especially humans, that’ve been touched by the hand of God that have rights and deserve consideration.

So, moving further on the list, you got people playing God with medicine at some point and people will start getting upset about different levels of life extension. When people start growing organs in pigs, which is going to be a thing.

Pigs are genetically close enough to us; they make a good place to grow replacement organs. You’ll have a hell from all animal rights people, who will be upset. Other people will we should not be playing God.

The same thing with playing God around genetic manipulation, gene tweaks. I can take a small example of people saying, when people start looking old, people going to the Bible or the Quran.

People could go to those genealogies saying people are only meant to live x years because God deemed it. So, in creation therefore, people trying to live longer is against God’s will and we should, therefore, make it illegal.

I can argue that at the same time. The Bible has a lot of people living for 800 years. Methuselah lived for at least 800. That was pre-flood. See, I could see these debates happening.

And these are dumb and silly arguments happening now over many things, especially in America. Though, the utility will tend to blunt a lot of these arguments. When certain technologies show themselves to be helpful and not leading to cats and dogs together, they fit in.

That certain new technologies fit into society. They’re helpful to people, so religious arguments tend to be blunted. I’ve always been surprised at how the issue of cross-racial relationships evaporate without a big fight.

People now take whomever they like without regard to race. In fact, when a company wants to show that they are a hip company, a modern company, they’ll often put up a cross-racial couple in their ads. Cheerios does it.

I can probably come up with another dozen examples. Nobody disapproved of it all, except for a few assholes; everybody except for a few assholes is with it. This may be because it doesn’t hurt society.

It’s fine. The obvious utility of people getting to be with whom they want has somehow overcome people’s prejudice against us. You’ll have issues around gene tweaking, especially when people use it to change their appearance or their gender.

You will have issues around new forms of relations, of marriage-type relationships, but even more so you may have people getting upset about people being intimately plugged into each other.

In the mid to far future, where the boundaries between entities are blurred, where two people in cyberspace, two entities, who may or may not be human, merge into one temporarily, permanently even, or there will be a lot of freaking out.

Especially more than 100 years into the future, people will be subsumed into larger information processing structures. There will be concern from the liberal side. This is the people’s rights to exist; they are being violated because it won’t be entirely clear in every case, where individual will stops and group will begins, and who’s making the decisions and whether the individual wills are being participative in these group wills entirely with their consent or not.

On the conservative side, and in these big blobs or agglomerations of thinking entities, they will now completely violate the spirit of the world. The books can be completely against God.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 345 – Snakes: Religious Politics, Political Religion

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/01/08

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: IC leads to infinities: different types – and relations amongst and between the types.

Rick Rosner: So, that gets scary. Because anytime that you say there is an infinity or that there is anything that is unlimited, then that implies some kind of infinity and all of our experience of the world tend to fully add the possibility that our world is huge but not infinite.

Jacobsen: But I like the phrase “functional infinity” or “functional infinite,” which means a very large finite but an unknown number for that finite number.

Rosner: But the whole idea or the whole question of infinite versus finite is: either way, there’s a huge but finite number of things of all possible things. That is problematic and then also it is problematic with this or that infinity, or maybe not.

Jacobsen: I remember hearing as a far-left philosopher who is dead, who stated that in a similar way with “to be” or “not to be.” Although, he didn’t use it in that phrase. He was talking about the arguments of “being” and “nonbeing.”

If you talked about the “tuned in” and the “not tuned in,” so something is tuned in or not, but the degree to which is tuned in is the degree of fidelity. That not necessarily being tuned in to someone does not necessarily mean nonexistence.

It means not tuned in, so it may exist or may not to some degree or other, but it’s not tuned in and other things that are within our experience within our consciousness are tuned in to varying degrees of fidelity.

And he used that to kind of shut it down to 2,500 years of arguments around being and nonbeing. I get that from what you’re saying in a similar way with infinity and infinity.

Rosner: The best that you can say now in that infinity versus non-infinity would be something that we or our descendants will be arguing about for quite a while.

Jacobsen: It will be a question that will be asked to make either of those answers meaningless.

Rosner: Yes, true, that and it may be infinity versus non-infinity; maybe, that will be one of those things that turns out deriving the solution to the problem.

Jacobsen: And that’s what I like for it with “functional.”

Rosner: The question for free will is that you’re maybe not framing things properly when you’re asking is there free will. The idea, I see the universe is a self-consistent information system; that any large system is a system built from information, which is a step back from a purely cold Godless Big Bang science framework that we’re currently under.

That it doesn’t impose God the Creator, but that it does suggest a proliferation of consciousness in entities across the universe and that the universe has something like ten to the twenty-second stars with something like half of those stars potentially having planets.

So, you have at least a billion billion environments for life to evolve; that if you look at the evolution of life on Earth, there is a good chance that cognition evolves. So, you get both the probabilistic argument that it’s unlikely that we are the only conscious beings in the universe.

You have the idea of consciousness being a technical aspect of information sharing as not miraculously originating things, but is a natural consequence of large self-consistence. That means that you’ve got a universe that is naturally full on conscious entities – not meaning the kumbaya like mystical, crystal on the wall of my bedroom to get my power, but in the sense that there are more conscious entities than us and than those on thin surface of the Earth.

The thinking beings who probably rise in a bunch of places and those thinking beings would often have consciousness and the universe itself may have consciousness, so some of these thinking beings may survive for millions of years.

In the case of the universe, perhaps, many hundreds or thousands or billions of billions of years, which presents the idea that there are conscious entities with God-like complexity versus which it’s like – I don’t know it’s – a baby step away from the fully cold universe.

Jacobsen: What about the pre-fully cold universe that arose within primitive – by which I mean antediluvian – or original major religions? I guess, that also makes it like Orthodox Judaism, Confucianism – within their views of the world.

Rosner: When you talked about there is a certain philosophy, religious philosophy, that lives in the cracks and then you search to fill in the blanks. I forget the name. But there will always be blanks to fill in and people will always, and what comes after people will always, yearn for science or a purely mechanistic explanation for things. Not only that.

People evolved to search for significance; we evolved as omnivore survivors. We look for explainable regularities in the world to survive, so people will always look for patterns within patterns, patterns beyond what’s known and the inevitable, the possible wondrous things that exist.

But beyond our understanding too; so, religion will never go away, never go away. Otherwise, they will continue to be squeezed – one would think in a way that religions have been squeezed for hundreds of years.

What they thought they understood, they were squeezed out. What is understood is wonderful, and also there is the possibility that comes with what becomes understood involves things that would be considered wonderful by religious people of past eras; the idea that the unification, the unified nature, of the universe, how the universe knows about every point in the universe, has a rough idea of what’s going on in every other point of the universe.

That every point of the universe speaks for a cohesiveness that perhaps is having a satisfying cohesiveness that does offer a satisfaction in the wondrous ways that this happens.

Jacobsen: This segues into a topic we were talking about off tape.

Rosner: Okay.

Jacobsen: Which is conceptions of the world apart from factual knowledge, we take the scientific knowledge. We take failures from the past. They are applied to describe the real world in some way either to derive meaning, functionality, or both.

Another way that this is shifted is then into a political tool. We were talking about some ways how spiritual conceptions of the world then become used as political tools for some people in general.

Rosner: We were talking about the exploitation of the, to be specific, Evangelicals in U.S politics.

Jacobsen: I would not merely state some Evangelicals, but I would state that as a big category. But I would state religion at large in much of the Middle East North Africa region.

Rosner: Then that being a big example. Another example might be Saudi Arabia is whipping up anti-Americanism to serve their own purposes in a religious way. Various regimes have anti-Western purposes, say with Saudi Arabia with politicians using religions for further cynical purposes.

Jacobsen: I would extend that by the way to Catholics and Eastern Orthodox as well, which are big hunks of the population.

Rosner: You’re from Canada. You see things happening, similar things happening.

Jacobsen: Take, for instance, Alberta. It is a province where, or you can use Saskatchewan, too, where, there is controversy around the implementation of a single school system for all citizens.

Where non-Catholic citizens are paying for their kids to go to Catholic school and Catholic parents pay for their kids to go to Catholic school – apart from the contentions around labelling kids Catholic for the kids with Catholic parents, the Catholic parents are paying for kids to go to Catholic school, but the non-Catholic parents are paying for their kids to go to Catholic school.

That seems disproportionate to me if not outright unfair. Many parents have to move, for instance, so there is a proposal for a single educational system without any particular religious or other brands, so some of the single secular schools.

Rosner: I’m sure that this is a bunch of Catholics.

Jacobsen: Sure, it’s forty percent of the population, roughly, who are Catholic. So, it becomes a matter of contention, but it might also become a matter of contention for other denominations because they might watch this and think, “Okay, what about us now? I am homeschooling nine kids, for instance.”

Rosner: Let’s talk about the whole deal where the use of Evangelicals in politics.

Jacobsen: The political use of religion; the co-opting of religions for political use.

Rosner: When you get things with the energizing of it, still not the right word.

Jacobsen: The zeal.

Rosner: No, where you roll out and implement what you want anyway, it feels like traditional values of Evangelical voters. This is something that has been going on for more than one hundred years, but it is the exploitation of Evangelicals and the political right that is only thirty, forty years old.

It is a consequence of conservative think tanks researching: how do we get leverage over the American populace? How do we get voters out to vote for people? Before that, at least in America, you have more now hen nine versions of Evangelism and of Christianity.

You can call it Christianity close to home, where the fifties, the forties at least, in the idealized version of America; you have a bunch of towns backed with a bunch of churches. Most people went to a church or places of worship like synagogues.

Everybody worshipped in their own way roughly the same set of Christian values. They all looked out for each other. In some more sinister cases, they kind of looked like busy bodies and looked down on other people – perhaps whose behavior fell short of their ideals.

But all an all, it felt like a fairly benign version of pervasive religious values. Not particularly coercive but with some aspects of coercion, but not strident, not feeling threatened, not trying to impose religious values by any means necessary.

Not seriously infringing on politics. The current brand of politics, the conservative side, is propped up possibly by a forged number of Evangelical voters and how every politician, regardless – any major politician, has to claim, whether liberal or conservative, to be religious.

It’s a very brave and exceptional politician who doesn’t claim to be religious. It’s a rare group of voters who vote that person in, but all the religious test in politics for a politician’s base.

They can make a public statement that contains certain things appealing to non-religious voters, but the religious voters understand the politician to say, “I’m with you. I’m going to defend your values.”

Anyways, that’s all fairly new. Cynically though, instances of it, there is always a potential for it as long as there has been religion and politics.

Jacobsen: It went back as far as when Emperor Constantine made Christianity the state religion, basically.

Rosner: We don’t throw people to the lions. We don’t urge people to say all that stuff is done at the intersection of religion and politics. So, it’s always a possibility and by embracing science you don’t necessarily avoid it.

But you open yourself up to all different sets of tragedy, the atomic bomb can go off now and then everything is obliterated.

Jacobsen: What does this continued encroachment of more accurate views of the world mean for religious faith or faith in general, because the trend over centuries has been a decline in outright belief in and the liberalization of those that do believe in traditional religion?

Rosner: Generally, there’s a low cost to have large philosophical beliefs about the way the world is, believing in God or a bunch of Gods or no God, whatever you believe. Unless you’re working in the field; unless you somehow run afoul of some grinding mechanism where religion meets politics, it doesn’t affect your day to day life because you navigate your day to day life using a bunch of specific knowledge of situations.

These allow you to cross the street on a red light. You don’t drink a draino. You cook chicken before you eat it. None of those things have large religious import; that’s all a different set of knowledge.

People will continue to believe; people will continue to tell the hopes about what the world is; people’s beliefs are to some extent religious, and over time on average more informed by actual information about the world.

It’s a rare person who continues to believe the Earth is flat because nobody believes the Earth is flat anymore, except lunatics. It doesn’t mean that within the flat Earth there is a naïve belief from thousands of years ago; that that naïve belief has gone away either.

It doesn’t mean that religion will go away. It is a specific area of knowledge, which will squeeze out perhaps religious belief in certain scenarios. But there are certain areas, but there will always be room for religious or mystical or philosophical feelings and beliefs about the world, even if a fully scientifically explained world.

Science itself will change, but even that fully explained world will still have room for religious overlays. There will always be stuff to discover; there will always be places to conserve mystical beliefs.

There is a thing in quantum mechanics. Einstein had a problem with quantum mechanics, where he thought you can’t have a world this randomly. He thought that maybe there was a structure behind the structure to explain the lack of structure of quantum mechanic’s apparently random action.

But there was another layer of information that wasn’t accessible to us that makes the random not random, and the things like those since quantum mechanics have been particularly proven to work.

You can’t have secret mechanics going on behind hidden mechanics determining outcomes. However, I see that you do have out of the things that happen apparently randomly in quantum mechanics; those things bring information into the world and I see that information reflects the state of something.

The state of say information being brought into being; the universe is accumulating information and newly acquired information has to be about by something, so it does imply a kind of framework behind the random action that will not express itself in the way that Einstein believed, but in a similar way there is always room to say, “I got this system. There is still room,” and to say that this also exists.

You got a scientific world, but there is also room for beauty; there is also room for good and bad; there is also room for truth; and that will always be the evidence and theory based great work, which will continue to shape not scientifically but non-scientifically.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 344 – Exceptional Giftedness

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/01/01

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: How do exceptionally gifted (IQ170+) children get support or other gifted children for that matter?

Rick Rosner: There’s an industry devoted to serving or several related industries devoted to serving kids identified as exceptional, but the private schools are designed to appeal to parents who want concierge education for their exceptional kids.

Growing up in the ‘70s and for most of the 20th century, people thought that regular public education served almost everybody and this idea almost begins with the beginning of the country whereas the US expanded westward.

One square mile out of every 36 square mile plot of land or whatever you want to call it, a section of land profits from the sale of that 1/36th; one mile out of 36 square miles of land was supposed to go to building schools.

So, schooling for everyone was a big deal. Then there was further development in the US. Throughout the 19th century established state schools, most states in the US have one or two big public colleges that are supposed to be cheaper than private colleges.

So, there’s been a long-term emphasis on having an educated population and with that education being supported by the government. The government is democratic. There are been democratic ideas that have infused ideas of education.

That it should be firm; that there should be a place in the educational system for everyone. And a hundred years ago, the idea of the comprehensive high school, which spread across the United States, supported the idea that the teenage education for grades 9 or 10 through 12 should take place in public high schools.

That was for everyone regardless of interest or ability levels, but there would be within these schools communities that could support schools of this size. These schools would run from 1,200 to 3,000 students.

There would be educational paths for everyone and that everyone would go to school together and learn to function in a little-abridged version of society together, which was unlike schools in other countries like Britain where people in their early teen years are divided between schools on vocational tracks and on academic and professional tracks.

But in America, everybody was supposed to go to the same stereotypical high school with cheerleaders and football players and nerds and student council leaders and everybody mixed with everybody else.

The way that everybody was supposed to mix with everybody else in a democratic society. People were then with perhaps the unstated idea that they’re going to learn academically as much as you’re going to learn socially.

You’re going to learn how to get along in this abridged version of society, which didn’t work. So, for decades and decades, maybe even now, there are plenty of movies that over the past 50 years or more present high school as a jungle.

But middle school or junior high school are the jungle, where the people are at their worst; where the hormones start kicking in, people start caring about their place in the social pecking order and haven’t learned any restraint yet.

So, it’s the sixth through eighth or seventh through ninth where kids are at their most asshole-ish. Then high school kids have started to learn to acquire some sophistication and restraint and are starting to learn how to behave in a version of society.

And I spent many years in high school; many more years than most people because high school was interesting and I kept going back. And I disagree with the idea of high school presented in the movies as a vicious, murderous sometimes, place, where the high school can be a place where people haven’t had their ethics eroded yet because they haven’t had to confront corrosive, competitive aspects of adult life.

Most high school kids, though by no means all, are taken care of to some extent; they have food, clothing, and shelter provided by their families. I say at least 80% of high school kids have basic necessities provided by family members.

And kids in the traditional stereotypical high schools. They’re the kids who maybe don’t have those things provided or are not under the scope of consideration. They are in the stereotypical comprehensive high school of the 20th century.

Impoverished kids who don’t have a family structure are virtually invisible and if they do show up they’re a special problem that the community can address. So, under that system, people can afford to be nice; they’re being taken care of.

There is competition in some areas: sports, academics, getting boyfriends and girlfriends, but stuff isn’t life or death and people can afford to and often do behave as and think of themselves as good people.

They try to behave ethically and have the resources to do so. And I find that it’s later in adult life when push comes to shove in life situations that people become more vicious.

So, anyways, the thought beyond that this comprehensive system was supposed to be for about everyone, whether the kid is going to be a mechanic taking short classes in high school or whether the kid is going to be a professor taking calculus in high school; both those kids could see each other in the cafeteria and play on the same teams, go to the same dances.

It was a one-size-fits-all system that didn’t necessarily serve everybody, especially in periods of relative decadence including the period I grew up in the ‘60s and ‘70s when I was a teenager from 1973 to 1980.

During the last period, we ended/lost a war that had gone on for a dozen years and more. We lost Vietnam. We lost a president to corruption to Watergate. People who were disillusioned with institutions. At the same time, the pill entered the market; the birth control pill in 1960 or so.

So, you had such a growing sexual revolution and women’s liberation and sexual liberation coupled with disillusionment and hedonistic singles culture. Everything combined to create certain laziness in education in the 70s.

There’s this movie coming out called My Friend Dahmer, which I read when it was a graphic novel. One of the themes of the graphic novel was that Dahmer is clearly disturbed; this is a kid who several years after graduating would become a serial killer and a cannibal.

During his high school years, he was turning into the severely disturbed person that would later become the Dahmer we know and that all the kids knew about it, but none of the educators could be bothered to pay any attention to this drunk, bust-up kid walking the halls every day.

Based on my IQ scores and doing ell n school when I tried, I was considered a gifted kid. There wasn’t much in the way of gifted services for me. Sometimes, the teacher would spot me as somebody who deserved or needed special attention and would give me advanced work to do advanced projects.

But mostly it was assumed that I would get along with everybody else, but my grades might be better than most people’s because I had the ability to do it. But people didn’t worry too much about singling me out, getting me special stuff, I desperately wanted to be normal.

My family, my mom wanted me to be normal. I wanted to have a cool kid’s high school life being popular, having girlfriends. I didn’t give much of a shit about the academic excellence that I would sometimes achieve, but only because maybe it would set me apart from other kids and some girl would like me for that.

I was desperately looking for me to get to something that would make girls not think I was gross. Within a couple decades after I left high school, a set of related industries popped up, which are designed to identify and service gifted students.

Partly, this is because the people my age, the software and hardware geniuses, maybe didn’t care as much about being normal, but cared more about learning how to program and make computers. Those guys grew up to completely change society to a computer and technology-based society and being a nerd went from social death to barely acceptable.

The whole world has become more technical. I can mention the Flynn Effect that in the 50 Years after World War II the average IQ of the entire planet went up by 15 points because our technology and pop culture saturated the entire planet.

So, it’s the entire planet smartened up and in the US that smartening became an exploitable market. Where if you parents want to identify their kids as gifted and once identified, parents will spend 30-40 thousand dollars a year to send an identified gifted kid to a private school.

Parents will spend eight or ten or twelve thousand dollars on tutoring for the SAT or the ACT, obviously, parents who have this money. When I was in school, the average kid who took an AP class took an average of one and a third AP classes, whereas the average AP kid of my daughter’s generation took takes an average of seven AP classes.

The competition to get into elite schools is much more heated with either the Ivies having admission rates of about 5% compared to 20% when I was in high school. There’s more of what leads to an idea of a zero-sum situation, where there are a limited number of viciously competed for spots for elites.

That means that the 21st-century system of gifted with students who are identified early and nurtured and pushed and self-propelled along demanding academic paths with applying, on the average as a super competitive kid, to twelve or fourteen colleges now.

Probably, many of my daughter’s friends took a dozen or more AP classes. A lot of private school education. There is a lot of hustling to get into limited gifted education schools within financially strapped public school systems like the LA Public Schools.

So, education for the gifted now is viciously competitive, has a little bit of zero-sum about it, feels more Republican where the 20th century felt more democratic: that we’ll all learn together; we’ll all do everything together.

Things will turn out all right as we’re plugged into our communities. The stereotypical comprehensive high school of the mid-twentieth century can be pictured as being part of a nice little town.

There’s a movie, Pleasantville, that takes place in a pleasant little town in the mid-50s, Father Knows Best, Leave It to Beaver; all these shows that had high school and smaller kids as important characters were set either in small towns or in suburbs and presented their families as being plugged into the community.

They function like the successors to it; it is a wonderful life. Everything works better when everybody watches out for everybody else, which leads to Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful slogan ‘It takes a village’.

But in the 21^st century, we shifted to something that feels more like Social Darwinism, where there are a limited number of up spots and elite colleges for gifted people in public schools and you have to compete for them, often brutally.

So, you need to identify your kid early; you need to see what you can do to make sure your kid is gifted early; you need to work with the kid to develop his or her talents. My kid didn’t know any better about working her ass off.

From kindergarten on, she took it for granted that she should be spending two or three or four or more hours a day on homework, which would have been unheard of in the 70s; where maybe a half an hour a day of homework, then most people had jobs, but they didn’t lead any place.

Jobs in an ice cream parlor or hostessing in a restaurant. Regular teen jobs that you worked at to get spending money. You interned at some lab or something too because it was part of your career path and because it added another notch to your college admissions packet.

So, anyway that’s enough of that, that was plenty.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 343 – Samaria’s and Judah’s God, Big Bang, Steady State, and IC (2)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/12/22

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: I have half-assedly worked on it, through 36 years with that stuff turning into what we have been calling IC or Information Cosmology, where the universe only looks big bangy, but it’s a structure that is older than it appears to be.

Go back to Steady State Theory in the fifties with Fred Hoyle and a couple of other people who suggested that, in places in the universe where there is not a lot of matter, the matter would spontaneously be created.

So, that when you had enough matter accumulating in previously under-mattered or underpopulated parts of the universe, that matter would eventually coalesce into galaxies. The universe was imagined in time.

It looked big bangy because it was always forming new galaxies that were pushing out. So, you always had new galaxies popping up and going through their life cycles. So, the principle of regularity, of non-specialness is a big principle in physics, that you are not in a special place in the universe.

Space that works under big bang; that if the universe is expanding uniformly from an initial singularity, like the surface of a balloon, which is the standard analogy, there is no favored place on the surface of a balloon.

It disregards the neck of a balloon. It’s an expanding ball. Everybody feels like they are in the centre of this expanding universe, but every point on the ball feels like the centre. There is no special place.

So, the Big Bang has no favored position in the universe in space. On the other hand, every moment in the Big Bang universe is a unique moment in time. No moment in time is like any other moment in time because you are on the surface of this expanding ball which acts like a clock.

You can tell how late it is in the universe, because of the size of the ball, gives you the age of the ball. In Steady State Theory, you always have new universes popping through, more galaxies popping into it, gradually popping into space in existence.

So, the universe may be expanding and may be expanding, but it’s expanding because new matter, and new space is always being created. So, as the universe expands, new stuff arises to fill the space between old stuff.

So, you got a universe in time and you can’t tell what time it is in the universe because every moment looks the same. But that’s not how the universe operates. There is no observational evidence to say that, “No, you don’t have new galaxies popping up in the spaces between old galaxies.”

However, I have the same idea because the universe is on a vast time scale. Imagine that the apparent age of the universe is proportional to the amount of information in the universe, you do have processes which cycle, not cycle within a solution to General Relativity.

There are solutions to a General Relativity universe that works from a similarity; it doesn’t have enough energy to keep expanding. It collapses back to a singularity and then expanse back outwards again.

So, it’s breathing, basically, going from zero space out to a bunch of space, then collapsing back to zero space. I’m not talking about that solution. I’m talking about a universe that has active information in the centre.

If that universe becomes irrelevant to information processing being done, that information can slide out of the centre to the outskirts where it’s in a stasis for several reasons. Then when it’s relevant again, it can be brought back into the active centre of the universe.

But in the active centre of the universe, it looks like it’s 13.8 billion years old, or much older than 13.8 billion years, but 13.8 billion Years apparent age of the universe is how much is a measure, how much information is currently active in the central arena of information processing of the universe. Alright, that’s enough of that.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 342 – Samaria’s and Judah’s God, Big Bang, Steady State, and IC (1)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/12/15

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, how has your philosophical view evolved? Because we’ve talked about, in previous sessions, growing up as Jewish and not questioning things, thinking of some of the stuff as not necessarily true.

Rick Rosner: The Jewish have much to do with my philosophy about the nature of the universe. I had various earlier philosophical views, but they weren’t sophisticated. They were little kid views.

Like on everything, I was nerdy and bad on the play-ground and bad at sports. I understood that this was fitting, but I didn’t like it because the Declaration of Independence says that all men are created equal.

I understood that to mean – I was seven-years-old – but I took that to mean that I was good in school, but there had to be a countervailing bad thing. So, everybody much equaled out. So, like, my being good in the classroom was countervailed by being terrible socially.

Jacobsen: And you were the top kid at your school?

Rosner: When you are seven years old, nobody knows whether you were the top kid, nor should anybody know if you are the top kid, every kid is different, but this was the IQ era. Eventually, I found out I had the top IQ scores at my junior high, but that’s a ridiculous criterion.

But I took to art when other stuff went wrong; in gym class or whatever, though, that was probably a crutch. I should have kicked out from under myself earlier realized that regardless, I needed to make some social compromises or at least develop a more sophisticated understanding of how to get what I wanted socially.

Perhaps, I should have done that at an earlier age rather than defiantly being nerdy. I wasn’t trying to be nerdy, but I wasn’t trying to change myself drastically until high school, the last years of junior high.

But then it was ninth grade and by then it was much too late, or at least given how clueless I was, it was too late, because not only was my social taste naïve, I wanted all the things that dumb guys wanted, which was to have a cute girlfriend from amongst the group of university acknowledged, popularly cute girls.

Because I didn’t know better. That’s when you are young and socially dumb; that’s who you get crushes on. Anyway, at a young age, say six or eight, I remember asking myself the standard physiological question of “Why am I not seeing as somebody else?”

There is an answer to that, but I couldn’t answer it. I forget how completely I answered. I can probably think of that, but the answer to why you are you and not anybody else is because all the information in your brain pertains to you, all your sensory information, all your thoughts.

You are you because you live within your consciousness. Every person lives within his or her own consciousness and for you to be somebody else, then we would have to be that person. There is no escaping.

Everything you are comes from your perception of your own thinking and to get glimmers of somebody else, then you’ll have to be some supernatural movie phenomenon, where you start getting information piped in first from somebody else.

That doesn’t happen. From starting a few years before age ten, I was thinking about the structure of the universe, in the mid to late sixties, which is much of what we think of the structure of the universe now, which is the Big Bang Theory.

Until the early sixties, the Big Bang Theory competed with other theories for the predominant theory about how the universe works, probably with Big Bang Theory winning; it has the best physics and most observational evidence in favour of it, but the victory wasn’t definitive until nineteen sixty-four or sixty-five.

When background radiation was discovered, I started reading about how the universe was structured a few years after that. At age ten, I started writing little notes to myself on scraps of paper about my naïve and dumb thoughts about how the universe could have come to be in a Big Bang sense.

Or in a sense of coming to be at all, I didn’t have a problem with the Big Bang at age ten. Then was nerdy; I wanted to be more popular; I wanted to come up with a great big theory that would make me famous.

Then I figured that if I were famous, then I could be more popular and I could have a girlfriend that looks whatever a ten years old version of a girlfriend is, except I didn’t have a standard ten years old version of what a girlfriend is.

Being nerdy I run into adult material and naked ladies playing cards and other gentle porn and some porn that was less gentle. So, I was already horny, which is a sad thing to be at age ten because there is nothing you can do with it.

But in any case, that led to me wanting to get famous or thinking about the universe. So, I had all sorts of not good theories. That was one way to get famous, by solving the four colour theorem. That is, you will only need four colors to colour any two-dimensional map.

My theorizing was on the level of that its ninety degrees divide of the circle into the four parts, somehow that had something to do with the four colour theorem. That’s not even garbage; that’s little baby do-dos.

When about the origin of the universe, that, maybe, the entire universe did pop out from a single point as the naïve Big Bang Theory would have it, but, that, maybe, the entire universe may have popped into existence via being extruded, more or less, in another invisible dimension.

That the universe somehow went from non-existence to existence by the separation of the eliminations, though this was not the terminology used in my dumb 10-year-old head, but it popped out from nothing via going from a zero – with the zero thickness to some dimension that we don’t perceive to a non-zero thickness.

Somehow, that brings the universe into existence. Again, this is dumb, baby, pre-thinking. For a while, my friends and I tried to trisect the angle, which is a famous insoluble geometry problem. I don’t think it was a standard tool of an ancient Greek geometry of a compass and a straight edge.

I don’t think there is any way to try and perfectly trisect an angle. That has been long proven, but my friends and I tried to come up with a technique to do that for a couple days. My friends that were as nerdy as I was.

So, my philosophy on form, but at age ten and through the years after that, it was the Big Bang. As far as I can remember, my thinking would have been somehow contaminated with Steady State Theory.

But I was doing no super helpful thinking about that. I was probably doing some thinking that was prefatory to doing productive thinking about that stuff. I was taking physics in high school. Then eventually, college in a fairly half-ass way, so in a lazy way.

I was preparing to think about all this stuff. Then at age twenty and eleven months, I was sitting in the cafeteria in my dorm and eating red Jell-O. I was always trying to get bigger in those days. This was nineteen eighty-one. The late seventies, early eighty’s.

People were aspiring to be muscular as did I. Nobody was walking around trying to look like a superhero, but I wanted to look muscly and thinking that it would help me, get girlfriends. A girl or something.

So, I go to my first semester in college. I ate eight meals a day, the cafeteria was all you can eat, all you can eat; you show up and you present your ID. They allow you to go through the line as many times as you want.

So, I eat two breakfasts, three lunches, three dinners, trying to bulk up. So, I was in the cafeteria a lot. So, I was in college now. This is my third semester. I started the semester late because I had gone back to high school.

Anyway, I’m in the cafeteria, eating a bowl of red Jell-O cubes. I must have read an article or was looking at an article. I was thinking about an article that I had read previously in the library about the difference between short-term memory and long-term memory.

Thinking that there was a certain amount of bullshit in looking for structural theory, structural stuff in the brain architecture, to exploit short-term versus long-term memory, or you might be able to use geometrical arguments to explain why not everything that enters short-term memory can be retrieved via long-term memory.

The geometrical argument being that remembered memories are more central to thoughts and can be accessed via a variety of combinations of stimuli of related ideas and memories that the things in long-term memory are accessible from more angles with the angles being determined by the relationship amongst the things.

That the short terms memories aren’t always recallable later because there are fewer angles to them. It takes more of a specific context to get to making that short-term memory more retrievable on a long-term basis.

When the initial condition of the formation of that memory is no longer present, if you remember a thing a lot, there is a lot of different contexts; that memory becomes accessible in a lot of different contexts.

Something like, on an average day, the greatest accessibilities of some memories through third grade. I remembered when the books at the other end of the classroom, the words on their titles become blurry to me.

I remember that. I was becoming near-sighted. I can remember the teacher being blonde and hot. I remember drawing a naked lady then freaking out that I had a picture of a naked lady in my possession.

Then sticking it through the window of a car to get rid of it. But I can’t specifically recall a day in April in third grade; the context. I don’t have any context for retrieving memories from a specific, the memories from third grade…other than the ones that has some meaning to me biographically or remembered repeatedly that has more angle on.

I could tell you quite a bit about the night I lost my virginity because I reviewed that memory a lot of times. So, that memory or at least the memories of the memory because it’s probably overwritten to a certain extent, remembered it a gazillion times.

That memory is easily accessible because I accessed it a lot in different contexts. So, I can get at it. So, twenty years and eleven months, I’m thinking the information in your head should have geometry with the more easily retrievable stuff.

The more relevant information being at the centre of some structure. The less relevant, less retrievable information being on the outskirt, on the periphery. Then, eating my Jell-O, I had the thought that maybe the geometry of the universe is the geometry of information within awareness.

That was the beginning of my hardcore, philosophizing and thinking about physics without being necessarily fantastically diligent. There has been a lot of laziness; there has been a lot of doodling around; there has been a lot of wasted time, but the idea of the universe being made of information, of being a map of information within an awareness, the idea that the information can be mapped within its own space, all those related ideas are what I’ve come to believe.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-17

Ask A Genius 341 – A Time to Stand, A Time to Bounce

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/12/08

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, what was your trajectory as a writer? What were the most difficult parts and how can you use that analysis to help others in their own writing?

Rick Rosner: In general, you could argue that I’ve been blocked as a writer for most of my life. Talking about Writer’s block is an excuse. It’s a complicated thing. It’s like some disease that may or may not exist and possibly because of laziness or perfectionism.

I haven’t written that much long form stuff, but I’ve found ways to do it. If you google around you can find about a million words that I have written or helped to write available to read on the internet.

A million words is ten or twelve pretty thick books with most of that output coming in the last three years via work with you and also twenty-six thousand tweets. Before that, I wrote about a hundred and ten thousand jokes and related bits of ephemera for T.V.

Thousands of those jokes made it to broadcast, but what’s happening with all of it. The commonality of most of this writing is that it’s twenty words at a time and I’m comfortable that I could pump out twenty words that I’m okay with.

Longer forms tend to take me much longer. I can’t dash stuff; I don’t often dash stuff off. The stuff you and I create is often you ask me a question or set up a hypothetical or we come up with a topic, then I talk and you transcribe.

Then it goes up and much of this material I don’t look at because that if I looked at it I will see its flaws. It would make me all crazy. So, I let it go. There’s a fight against imperfection that has certainly knocked down the levels of longer form stuff that I have written.

Working with you, I have sat down and written hundreds of thousands of words of longer form prose on a variety of topics, but I’m most comfortable with twenty words at a time. The spoken material that gets turned into written material or that gets turned into text; I can tip-toe away from without freaking out.

I still have a book that I’m pursuing and have managed to write one sixty-page proposal. That’s working with a co-author. I’m quite comfortable with collaboration. There are alpha males who are strong leaders. There are beta males who are followers. I’m kinda like an alpha minus male.

I can lead if I have to or if the situation is amenable to my leading. Like, I was a head bouncer at a huge bar in the 80s. This was a five-acre, two hundred thousand square foot beer garden in Boulder, Colorado.

I became the lead with a door staff of up to twenty bouncers at any one time. Twenty bouncers for when we had ten thousand customers on football Saturdays because it was down the hill from C.U., the University Colorado football stadium.

After the game, ten thousand people would spill into the gardens and that took staff of twenty or more bouncers to attempt to keep order. I could be the leader of the bouncers, even though I’m not a huge guy and even though my fighting skills are close too non-existent because I love catching fake IDs in the context of keeping underaged people out.

That was something that nobody else cared about. So, I was able to run around and make sure that we had a tight perimeter, which we did because it’s hard to control that much space. That many entrances.

Six or eight entrances plus a bunch of ways too. There was a creek you could cross through and hike up a hill. It was a mess, but I would also be able to cruise through the crowd and pick out underaged people who made it in one way or another.

One way to find the underaged people was to look for lame-o clumps of lame guys. Guys who I saw at the place week after week never picking up a woman, always there for that purpose. Like, there was the guy with the Robin Hood shirt, a shirt that had laces across the top.

That guy never scored, but if he was part of a cluster of similarly lame guys, I knew that if I looked at the center of that cluster I’d often find an underaged girl who hadn’t yet learned how to fend off lame guys.

So, I’d pluck her out of the cluster. I’d ask her to see ID. She wouldn’t have an ID. I’d kick her out. So, I had a love for this detective work: catching a fake ID. It’s the twenty-second mystery.

You’ve got ten or fifteen seconds at the most before you start pissing people off to determine whether an ID is real or fake. It’s like being Colombo fifteen seconds of the time and my love for that allowed me to be a good supervisor of the staff.

But it was only because I had a super eccentric interest in the fake IDs. The guys who were much more qualified. Bouncers are generally not interested in leadership. I worked with a bunch of guys.

Larry, who had gotten two Bronze Stars from Vietnam and who still had shrapnel coming out of his legs twelve Years after the war. Larry was there to hang out, maybe meet girls. There was no brawl that he could solve by walking into the middle of it.

Pushing people out of the way, Larry wasn’t interested in being head of that group. None of these tough guys were interested in being the head bouncer. The only reason that I became head bouncer is that catching a fake ID required some level of organization and administration.

So, it wasn’t that I have this leadership that would inevitably surface in any given situation. Writing for late night, I worked. The crew of late night writers are all men and women: tough. It takes a level of toughness to crank out hundreds of jokes a day under the gun.

With most of these jokes going unused because you only use the best jokes of all the jokes that are generated and also in an environment where, in a funny way, everybody makes fun of everybody else. Everybody’s freaking funny. A lot of funny people are best with other people.

It’s ‘give and take.’ It a little like junior high, but it is awesome. However, my skills don’t go into it because I’m not an alpha male and a lot of these people at my job are alpha males and alpha females.

I found myself towards the bottom of the pecking order and my skill does not extend to giving other people a bunch of jocular shit. But what I liked about the job and what I liked about a lot of the writing, in general, is the opportunity for collaboration; which is a true non-alpha male characteristic.

You and I have been working together for more than three years now. I’m happy with more than one point of view. More than one person generating ideas. I’ve learned to love collaboration. Let’s see what else. I imagine a bunch of stories that I will never write that could be good.

Now, I have to come up with some of them. Oh, like a screenplay, this could be an awesome screenplay of. I have a zillion ideas; none of them will come to fruition because I won’t write them, but say the story of somebody’s life told only in the crashes they’ve been in.

You don’t know much about the person but like, when I was four years old, I was in the back seat with my mom. 1964, my aunt who was a terrible driver caused a six-car chain reaction. Rear-ended somebody, super hard, my mom and I bounced off the front dash and back into the back seat.

So, you show that crash maybe minutes leading up to it the minutes afterward. I had double vision. I yelled out, “I can’t see. I can’t see you.” They rushed me to the hospital. If I’d been more articulate at four years old, they wouldn’t have had to fucking x-ray of my head.

So, I’m sad that I couldn’t express myself better and thus got my head x-rayed. The crashes I’ve had. I had a crash in high school at a ski resort where I was trying to be a cool guy. I borrowed the babysitter’s car to go skiing with my cool friends. Didn’t know how to drive on ice, went off the road, crashed into a tree.

Anyway, you can tell somebody a story, not all of it, but a lot of details about the person’s life in twenty crashes. Each of which is three to eight minutes long. It starts in 1964, which was the first crash.

Then it moves through now. Th n it moves into the future with some in 2032 with the guy now old, but not because in 2032 he is seventy-two, because seventy-two is the new forty-eight. The guy is in a crash of a self-driving car or in the crash of a dirigible.

Anyways, it would be a fun story. It’s nothing but crashes. The guy is saying on the phone leading up to the crash and what he says in talking to the people that participate, the other drivers after the crash. You get little snippets of the guy’s life over time. Everything goes around.

Anyway, I have a gazillion things like that. But because I lack writing discipline, most of those things won’t get written. Somebody comes to me. They know that I’m a decent writer.

Somebody who urged me to wrote a screenplay call Wing Dog. This thing that was written probably ten or eleven years ago. A casual guy who uses his dog as his wing man to help him meet women. The dog is a genius.

It turns out that the stray dog escaped from a secret government program. So, the dog is a genius. Anyway, it was a nice screenplay, but it would have been written if I hadn’t been recruited to collaborate.

The same guy recruited me to write a treatment, a pilot episode and a Bible, for a project called Growing Up X, which is about this kid. It’s like Boogie Nights told from the point of view of a kid in high school whose parents are in the porn industry.

Jacobsen: [Laughing] I got one minute.

Rosner: Okay. So, again, it was a good project. We came up with it. Most things don’t get made, but this thing got made except not with my participation. The guy sold it. It was made into a reality web series.

He found a porn family and he spent months with them showing their lives. So, that thing got made anyway. But anyway, my writing style is collaborative. The end.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-17

Jamie Hayes, Paula J. Wilson and Nora Renick-Rinehart

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/23

I am a writer and executive administrator for Trusted Clothes, which is an ethical and sustainable fashion organization. The following is a series devoted in honor of the work done in collaboration with the Schroeckers and the Trusted Clothes team. Part 5 below, and 1 here, 2 here, 3 here and 4 here.

—

All of these things were serendipitous. All of the signs. Each pointed in one direction for the collection. Since Chicago’s fashion industry is decimated at this point, there aren’t a ton of mills here or fabric sales representatives. Horween is the last tannery left in Chicago.

The hides were designed by Paula J. Wilson, executed by Nora Renick-Rinehart, and then stitched by Klezar. What is the importance of this network of various individuals with different skill-sets to the overall production line for the final products?

We have this cult of artist or the designer. This idea that the person does everything themselves. Even if you’re amazingly talented and good at designing, printing, executing, and stitching, you’re one person. You can’t do everything. Art and design are always done in collaboration, whether people are transparent about that or not.

I am not a screen-printing expert. I am a good stitcher for a designer, but I am nothing like Klezar. I do as much as I can myself, especially at first to educate myself about a process, so that I can better communicate with the team. For example, I did do a few screen-prints on leather. However, there’s no way I could execute anything close to as wonderful as Paula and Nora. It takes years and years of practice to achieve their level of expertise.

A true collaboration becomes better than the sum of its parts. Everyone is pushing each other. Everyone is open to new ideas. Hopefully, what comes out takes you to a place you wouldn’t normally go with your own art work; I like to think that’s what happened with this art collection.

If people want to look more into things, they can look at the showroom/production space, the Department of Curiosities. What other work are you involved in at this point in time?

A couple of things. I am active in the Chicago Fair Trade. I am involved in advocacy work in Chicago. Also, I do technical design for other ethical design companies.

I am involved in Department of Curiosities. It’s the space that I share with another designer, Gerry Quinton. Recently, we designed and launched a line of slow fashion, and ethically made lingerie under the name Department of Curiosities.

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2022-04-17

Morgan Wienberg, Little Footprints Big Steps International Development Organization

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/24

Morgan Wienberg is the Co-Founder, Coordinator, and Head of Haiti Operations for Little Footprints Big Steps International Development Organization. She was kind enough to take the time for an extensive interview with me. Please find part 10 below, and 1 here, 2 here, 3 here, 4 here, 5 here, 6 here, 7 here, 8 here, 9 here.

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1. Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Little Footprints Big Steps International Development Organization works from three components: child well-being and development, family and community involvement, and advocacy of child rights.[5] What are some modern examples of this – 5 years into its development?

Morgan Wienberg: Some children have been reunited for several years. We are focusing on education and medical care for the kids. That’s one clear example with child well-being and development. When speaking about family and community development, the community trainings as part of the working group for child protection. Community education regarding child abuse and sexual assault.

Also, education regarding abandonment once people give their children to orphanages. Some children have been reunited longer. We will invest in helping a parent start a small business or raise livestock. That does overlap into child wellbeing and development because the objective is to help that parent be able to care for the child.

In addition to it, that family can invest in their local economy, which can affect the whole community. When we talk abut advocacy, some examples include parents who try to reclaim their child from a corrupt orphanage. They find out that the child has been sold. We met one parent whose child died in the orphanage. We accompany those parents to take legal action and get an arrest warrant for the orphanage owner.

I have been involved in shutting several orphanages down. We have some of the kids involved in advocacy. When we have meetings with certain partners to educate international community about corrupt orphanages and the importance of family reunification, we have some of the youth that went through the phase of living in an abusive orphanage.

Now, they are with their families or in a state house. We have those children speak at the meetings or speak with partners, or on radios. We try to get them involved in that as well. In addition, other advocacy cases include kids who are sexually assaulted. We accompany them to the hospital for medical care. We try to arrange mental health care as well.

We have the child see a psychologist. We have them removed from the dangerous situation. We accompany them to the police system and to court if necessary.

2. Jacobsen: In a prior interview, you mentioned 600 orphanages were corrupt in Haiti. However, it is hard to track them. You posited more.

Wienberg: There are more.

(Laughs)

There are thousands of orphanages in Haiti. Social Services has tried to monitor them. However, when you talk about the entire Southern department, which is equivalent to a province or a state, there are only 7 social workers for the entire region who are with social services. Those 7 social workers don’t have contracts. They haven’t had contracts for the last 3 months.

They haven’t been paid. They go to work because of commitment to the kids. There are only 2 paid social workers at present for the entire region. They have one vehicle. How can they monitor those orphanages? They did try to do some statistics about it. Definitely, I believe there are more than 600.

3. Jacobsen: How many have you been involved in shutting down?

Wienberg: I have been involved in shutting down three orphanages, completely.

References

[David Truman]. (2016, March 9). Morgan. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWbgIF1NO5E.

[DevelopingPictures]. (2012, March 25). Sponsor a Child: Little Footprints Big Steps. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjzncB3HsmA.

[James Pierre]. (2016, April 5). Morgan Wienberg goes one-on-one with James Pierre. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1VMeKKTxkM.

[Morgan Wienberg]. (2014, June 3). Congratulations, FH Grad 2014!. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNQ7PB95aYA.

[Ryan Sheetz]. (2015, February 20). Little Footprints Big Steps. Retrieved fromhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9fdPx1srGI.

Bailey, G. (2013, December 31). Catch Yukoner Morgan Wienberg tomorrow on CBC’s Gracious Gifts. Retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/airplay/features/2013/12/31/catch-yukoner-morgan-wienberg-tomorrow-on-cbcs-gracious-gifts/.

Baker, R. (2016, March 4). PHOTOS Governor General recognizes exceptional Canadians in Vancouver. Retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/governor-general-recognizes-exceptional-canadians-in-vancouver-1.3476960.

Broadley, L. (2014, August 1). Meet the Yukoner reuniting Haitian ‘orphans’ with their families. Retrieved from http://globalnews.ca/news/1482839/one-yukoners-work-reuniting-haitian-orphans-with-their-families/.

Bruemmer, R. (2011, April 8). Haiti: Little Paul gets it done. Retrieved from http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/haiti+little+paul+gets+done/5214066/story.html.

CBC News. (2015, November 29). Morgan Wienberg awarded Meritorious Service Cross for work in Haiti. Retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/morgan-wienberg-awarded-meritorious-service-cross-for-work-in-haiti-1.3340295.

ca. (n.d.). 23-year-old receives Meritorious Service Cross Medal. Retrieved from http://canadaam.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=804018&playlistId=1.2769055&binId=1.815911&playlistPageNum=1&binPageNum=1.

ca Staff. (2016, February 8). 23-year-old awarded Meritorious Service Cross for work in Haiti. Retrieved from http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/23-year-old-awarded-meritorious-service-cross-for-work-in-haiti-1.2769013.

Dolphin, M. (2015, December 4). Yukoner’s work in Haiti draws governor general’s attention. Retrieved from http://www.yukon-news.com/life/yukoners-work-in-haiti-draws-governor-generals-attention/.

Gillmore, M. (2012, July 18). Helping to reunite families in Haiti. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/life/helping-to-reunite-families-in-haiti.

Gillmore, W. (2013, August 16). Wienberg gives New York a glimpse of Haiti. Retrieved from http://www.yukon-news.com/news/wienberg-gives-new-york-a-glimpse-of-haiti/.

Gjerstad, S. (2014, April 8). Morgan (22) vier livet sitt til å gjenforene barn med foreldrene sine på Haiti. Retrieved from http://www.tv2.no/a/5852686/.

Joannou, A. (2016, March 7). Governor general gives nod to Yukon’s champion of Haitian children. Retrieved from http://www.yukon-news.com/news/governor-general-gives-nod-to-yukons-champion-of-haitian-children/.

Langham, M. (2012, October 10). Just Like Us: An Interview with Morgan Wienberg of Little Footprints, Big Steps. Retrieved from http://aconspiracyofhope.blogspot.ca/2012/10/just-like-us-interview-with-morgan.html.

Little Footprints, Big Steps. (2016). Little Footprints, Big Steps. Retrieved from https://www.littlefootprintsbigsteps.com.

Neel, T. (2013, May 16). Reaching the Hearts of Children in Need. Retrieved from http://whatsupyukon.com/Lifestyle/making-a-difference/reaching-the-hearts-of-children-in-need/#sthash.YCSvg1aM.oVLAQE3j.dpbs.

Peacock, A. (2016, February 27). Haiti has her heart. http://www.kelownadailycourier.ca/news/local_news/article_beb828d0-ddcf-11e5-851b-8b09487f61ce.html?mode=story.

(2014, July 8). Joven canadiense decide gastar sus ahorros en rescatar niños de Haití. Retrieved from http://www.elpais.com.uy/vida-actual/joven-canadiense-reune-huerfanos-haitianos.html.

Rodgers, E. (2015, January 12). Meet the 22-Year-Old Who Skipped Out on College—to Offer a Helping Hand in Haiti. Retrieved from http://www.takepart.com/article/2015/01/12/meet-morgan-wienberg-little-foot-big-step.

Schott, B.Y. (2012, September 13). Making a Difference One Child at a Time. Retrieved from http://whatsupyukon.com/Lifestyle/making-a-difference/making-a-difference-one-child-at-a-time/#sthash.CeS656Xm.2r1eJsAW.dpbs.

Shiel, A. (2011, November 17). McGill students host third annual TEDxMcGill even. Retrieved from http://www.mcgilldaily.com/2011/11/mcgill-students-host-third-annual-tedxmcgill-event/.

Thompson, J. (2011, December 23). Helping Haiti for the holidays. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/life/helping-haiti-for-the-holidays.

Thompson, J. (August 12). Hope and hard lessons in Haiti. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/life/hope-and-hard-lessons-in-haiti.

Thomson Reuters. (2014, July 27). 22-year-old Yukoner reunites Haitian ‘orphans’ with parents. Retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/22-year-old-yukoner-reunites-haitian-orphans-with-parents-1.2719559.

Waddell, S. (2015, November 27). For decorated Yukoner, home is now Haiti. Retrieved from http://www.whitehorsestar.com/News/for-decorated-yukoner-home-is-now-haiti.

Whitehorse Star. (2016, March 2). Yukoners to receive honours from Governor General. Retrieved from http://www.whitehorsestar.com/News/yukoners-to-receive-honours-from-governor-general.

Wienberg, M. (2013, November 22). Age Is Not an Obstacle in Changing the World. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/morgan-wienberg/age-is-not-an-obstacle_b_4324563.html.

Wienberg, M. (2014, January 23). Courage of a Mother. Retrieved from http://whatsupyukon.com/Lifestyle/making-a-difference/courage-of-a-mother/#sthash.hy1QzF0S.ZA1StSZz.dpbs.

Woodcock, R. (2013, September 26). Back to School in Haiti. Retrieved from http://whatsupyukon.com/Lifestyle/making-a-difference/back-to-school-in-haiti/#sthash.TMqQNkLX.dpbs.

Yukon News. (2013, February 6). Incredible acts of kindness in Haiti. Retrieved from http://yukon-news.com/letters-opinions/incredible-acts-of-kindness-in-haiti.

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2022-04-17

Jamie Hayes, Gerry, Meaning, Trusted Clothes, and Production Mode

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/23

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Also, I am going to have a pop-up shop at the theWit Hotel in Chicago in the month of August, and a fashion show on August 25^th, showing both Production Mode and Department of Curiosities, at their rooftop space.

I’m launching the next Production Mode line in the Fall. I am involved with the League of Women Designers in Chicago. A lot of entrepreneurs designing and working in Chicago, who are thinking about the ethics of how things are produced in their lines.

You mentioned a shared value with Gerry. I suspect this for other collaborations as well. That leaves me to think, “What meaning or personal fulfillment does this work bring for you?”

So much personal fulfillment—that’s really key to me! I have worked in the fashion industry since 1999, but I actually left the field for a few years because I was missing that personal fulfillment. I had to do some soul searching. While I loved the process of design, designing and making clothing and expressing myself though style, I really needed to check in with myself and face what was going on in the industry.

First of all, the ethics–people and the earth need to be respected, and we need to curb our own consumption levels. Also, I needed to question some of the main tenets of the industry. It is common to make the consumer feel bad about themselves and then to think that they can solve body issues, self-image issues, through purchasing things, especially clothing, to make themselves feel better or to distract themselves from the ills in their lives.

I had to dig deeper and think, “What’s the social meaning of fashion? How can style be used in a positive way to build self-esteem, to help a person express their identity and culture – to find out who they are?”

My work post-graduate school has been guided by these questions and issues. That’s been key to me finding personal fulfillment in my work.

For me, fabric, color, textures, line and pattern bring me great joy. I hope to my clients as well. There’s joy in art and design. All of those things keep me going and bring me great personal satisfaction. I feel lucky to do something that I love that is in line with my values. Sadly, I think that’s a rare thing in our culture right now. I wish it weren’t the case, but I feel lucky to be situated here.

With regard to organizations/companies, and so on, like Trusted Clothes and Production Mode, what’s the importance of them to you?

It is to show an alternative to the mainstream. That it is possible to create and purchase ethically-made, well-designed clothing. Also, to get people in the industry to question how things are made, hopefully, to create a sea change.

I look forward to a future where there are no more ethical clothing or aggregator sites like Trusted Clothing. Ethical, sustainable manufacture should be the norm. Until it is, though, we definitely need to keep spreading the word and asking for change in the larger community.

Thank you for your time, Jamie.

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2022-04-17

Jamie Hayes, Production Mode and the Chicagoan Horween Tannery

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/23

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What makes Production Mode unique?

I think the proprietary/exclusive materials. Also, the level of transparency—that I share where the materials come from, who is making the garments, the fact that you can come into our studio and see firsthand how things are made. As well, I would say the quality of the fit. I consulted with a technical designer with many years of experience working with leather to refine the fit. A lot of time and energy spent on these patterns. The fit is good for ready-to-order, and then can be further refined for people that can come to Chicago for a fitting. That’s something a lot of designers don’t offer.

Your inaugural collection consisted of leather that was vegetable tanned from a unionized shop, Chicago’s Horween tannery. Why the Horween tannery for the inaugural collection?

For a couple reasons, one was a happy accident. I was discussing the custom print with Paula. She said, “What color should the base cloth be?” I referenced one of her paintings. She said, “Oh, a hide color.” I had a lightbulb moment. I said, “No, no, you should print it on hide!”

The search began for the best quality leather. Leather is touchy if you’re talking about “ethical” fashion. Some people say that because it is an animal dying in order to produce something it is not ethical. I respect and understand that.

Digging in deeper from there, I found one tannery left in Chicago. I was familiar with it from my former job as a handbag designer, but I hadn’t dug as deep as I did in this case. I researched vegetable tanning– artisanal, traditional way to tan leather that uses organic plant matter such as sticks, barks, and tree extracts. It is a 6-weeks process in contrast to chrome-tanning, which is a 6-hour process.

Chrome-tanning uses chromium, which is a heavy metal and highly carcinogenic. That choice became really clear for me. I didn’t want to use a material that is carcinogenic. That will end up in our waterways or landfills. Also, I learned that vegetable-tanned leather tends to age much better than chrome-tanned leather. So if you think how vintage leather goods get that great patina versus a scuffed, worn out look that is typical nowadays, that’s the difference between a vegetable tan and a chrome tan.

In terms of the quality, design, and aesthetic perspectives, thinking about the planet, the fact that the factory is unionized, it was an easy decision to go with Horween. In addition, it is wonderful. I can travel whenever I want and speak to my sales representative. Since it is a mile from my shop. All of the money stays within the local economy.

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2022-04-17

Jamie Hayes, Living Wage, Sustainable Fashion, and Ethical Fashion

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/22

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What is the importance of sustainable fashion to you?

The issues are similar. There’s overlap, but sustainability refers to the environment and issues affecting the planet. I come out of the labor movement. So, I am less educated about those issues, but even if you’re looking at it from a human perspective. Obviously, we are humans. We live on the planet. There are huge ramifications for everyone.

We are all connected. We should care about what is happening on the other side of the world. It is about human rights. We all deserve basic human rights, and beyond that, the ability to thrive and grow. From the human perspective, the pesticides that are used to grow our cotton, the petroleum that is used to create polyester, the dyes that are used to create the colors in the fabrics … all of these things affect the workers who are applying those pesticides or dyes. They go into our water supplies. It is about treating out world well. There is huge overlap between issues of sustainability and ethics.

My favorite term is slow fashion because this takes into account the quality of the product and the design. It’s coming out of and inspired by the slow food movement, the tenets of which are to know the provenance of this food or, in our case, the clothing. So, where do our clothes come from? What about the raw materials like the cotton, wool, poly, or leather? To have transparency about that, to appreciate and value the item, the experience around it, to slow down, buy less, buy higher quality. That’s important information to provide as a designer. Because, to be honest, you cannot do everything perfectly, especially as a small company. You might now know all of the labor conditions in a factory. The factory making your zippers or buttons, but you can choose the highest quality zipper. This can allow the garment to have as long a life as possible.

Sometimes, we have to think about competing issues and balance those all out. Slow fashion is the most honest way to do that as a designer in my opinion.

What was the inspiration for Production Mode – and its title?

(Laughs) Coming out of the labor movement, I have done a lot of neo-Marxist readings. I was thinking about means of production and the organization of work, and what brings people joy. I was thinking about that when I named the company.

But the inspiration goes way beyond that. At the end of the day, I am a designer. I love fashion. I think we need to make a lot of changes in the industry, but I love clothing as a means of self-expression. It brings me a lot of joy. I think it brings a lot of people on this planet a lot of joy. It’s an expression of who we are: our culture, identity, values. It doesn’t have to be a superficial, passive consumer experience. It could be tailored to fit your body exactly. That’s how it was used for generations—until recently, in fact.

Now, it is a disposable thing. It doesn’t have to be that way. One thing I always want to be a part of the company is the concept of artist collaboration. It stretches me as a designer. It makes sure there is something unique about the product and timeless.

For example, for the first line that I launched, I collaborated with an artist named Paula J. Wilson. She designed an all-over print for leather. Another artist, Nora Renick-Rinehart, executed the print and applied it to leather. It is not something seen often with leather. It is limited edition. It is designed by a well-known artist. So, there’s a whole story. I can trace the provenance of the materials, the print, the execution of the print, etc.

For the next line, which I’ll launch in the Fall of this year, the fabric is designed in collaboration with an artist named Nuria Montiel. It is executed by local weavers called the Weaving Mill in Chicago. They are located about a mile from my studio. I have two industrial dobby looms. It is a collaboration between the four of us to produce the fabric for the line. It can’t be found anywhere else. It was inspired by Nuria’s art work, influenced by the textiles of the Bauhaus movement, and Peruvian and Mexican textile traditions.

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2022-04-17

Jamie Hayes, Ethical and Sustainable Fashion in Chicago, Illinois Area

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/22

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You argue for a living wage for workers. Why is it important for the sustainable and ethical fashion industry?

It is important across the board. I’m focused on fashion because that’s what I do for a living. It is important in a more global level as well. Fashion, clothing, and sewn products are some of the most labor intensive industries in the whole world. It is a ‘race-to-the-bottom’ industry.

Anyone interested in women’s rights, supporting those most easily exploited, eradicating poverty, would do well to look at the fashion industry because that’s the ‘bottom.’ We can find the easily exploited people there.

If these people can be paid well and treated fairly, we can do a lot to improve the rights of women and young girls, eradicate poverty, improve health outcomes, increase literacy, and so on. It is a huge issue. We need to be aware of it. In Chicago, the labor movement speaks of is $15/hour as the living wage.

So, we pay above that for our stitcher. That’s how we gauge that here, but it is different in each city and country based on the cost of living in that place.

To separate two ideas floating around in the conversation, the phrase “ethical and sustainable fashion,” but this belies two separate and related ideas. Ethical fashion on the one hand; sustainable fashion on the other hand. To start, what is the importance of ethical fashion to you?

For me, the importance is the human factor. Nobody should be dying to make our clothes. Even so, 2013 was the deadliest year on record in the fashion industry. If you look back historically, it is similar to the beginning of the 20^th century in the US with the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. People die for fashion. That’s ridiculous.

What we’re speaking of when we say ethical fashion is really baseline, sadly. People should make a living wage. A wage that allows them to live on and support a family. To be frank, $15/hour in Chicago would not be enough in Chicago, but it’s better than the minimum wage in Chicago.

Secondly, people should work in a healthy and safe environment. Sadly, that’s not the case in a lot of the garment industry, especially that which is offshored.

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2022-04-16

Jamie Hayes, Ethical and Sustainable Fashion in Chicago, Illinois Area

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/22

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Tell us about yourself – family background, personal story, education, and previous professional capacities.

I started in the fashion industry in 1999 in St. Louis, working at a boutique after college, and sewing after my senior year in college because I wanted something hands-on and concrete. I was studying English literature and while I loved to read and write. It was abstract and alienating for me. My personality type doesn’t mesh with it.

It is nice, at the end of the day, to have a pile of work, see what you’ve accomplished, and in a concrete way. I moved to Chicago to get a second BA at Columbia College in Fashion Design. I was lucky. I got a job in the industry while I in school. It was at a handbag company called 1154 Lill Studio. The company was a real pioneer in mass customization.

As a result, we needed to make everything one-by-one, made-to-order, and with a quick turnaround time – three weeks. We made everything in-house first and then in the Chicago area. It was a lesson in production management and efficiency. I was seeing local manufacturers firsthand, which was rare. Everything was offshoring.

My consciousness was raised in working with contractors and realizing that a lot of people don’t get paid fairly, making friends with stitchers, and hearing their stories of immigration and exploitation in the sewing industry. So, I started asking questions and becoming conscientious.

100% Wool Felt Top and Vegetable Tanned Leather Skirt. Photo is by Jenni Hampshire.

I ended up getting a graduate degree. A Master’s degree at the University Chicago in Social Work. I focused on labor rights in the garment industry. I worked as a labor organizer for a few years in Chicago. Primarily, I was working with undocumented, Mexican population, frontline workers.

I was training on worker’s rights and helping to organize campaigns in the work place. However, I missed working with my hands—the colors and textures in fashion, the more direct creativity that world affords. Following this, I joined Chicago fair trade and became involved in that movement as a volunteer helping to pass a Sweatfree Ordinance in the city and county level in Chicago.

Also, I took on a lot of freelance work with fair trade companies. I worked for SERRV. They sent me to China. I did some work in Peru, in the Lima area. Also, I have done a lot of technical design for local companies in ethical and fair trade fashion. Finally, I launched my own line in January of 2015.

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2022-04-16

Calistus Igwilo, Registration of the Atheist Society of Nigeria

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/21

Calistus Igwilo is the President of the Atheist Society of Nigeria, who was kind enough to give an extensive, exclusive interview with me. Here we talk about religious faith, atheism, and religion in Nigeria. Part 2 here, and 1 here.

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Scott Douglas Jacobsen: How momentous is the occasion of ASN registration?

Calistus Igwilo: Well, the day the news broke that we have been incorporated, it was in the evening, I was just speechless, I couldn’t describe what I felt, and it was the same for other 9 members of the board of trustees. But very quickly, it dawned on me that we have achieved something very great something capable of making a positive lasting change to Nigeria and I could see the enormous task ahead of us. I still don’t have words to describe the feeling that night, but that sense of accomplishment drove us to this present day.

Jacobsen: Also, it was registered as an official organization, which is a first for an organization of its kind. How else is this a momentous occasion for the atheist community in Nigeria?

Igwilo: First it has given the Atheists, Secularists, Humanists and Freethinkers a sense of community backed by the law, where they can actualize their common goals, it has given them a voice which hitherto was non-existent, many never believed that this day will come. ASN wants to engage with the Nigerian community to raise awareness on why public policies, scientific inquiries and education policies should not be based on religious beliefs but rather on sound reason, rationality and evidence. This will help liberate people from superstitions and myths and promote science and technology, it will also make Nigeria a saner, safer, more sustainable place for reason and freethought.

Jacobsen: What are some initiatives underway to normalize atheism, reduce superstition, and secularize public life in Nigeria more?

Igwilo: We have started campaigning against qualified professionals that use their authority to promote superstitious practices among vulnerable Nigerians which could lead to loss of lives. A case study is our petition against the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria about some medical doctors and healthcare professionals that refer patients to “faith healing homes” and some that support phantom miraculous healing testimonies in their places of worship giving credence to superstitious beliefs.

We also want to promote religious tolerance in Nigeria because Nigeria is grossly divided along religious lines which breeds suspicion and mistrust among the divide. Our solution is to educate the youths on various religions in Nigeria, this can be achieved by campaigning for the merging of all religious studies under a single subject of learning in secondary schools. We are making the case that Traditional Religious Knowledge, Islamic Religious Knowledge, Christian Religious Knowledge be taught as a single comparative subject of study, it will enable the students to critique religions and have an academic knowledge of various religions and help them develop critical thinking and reasoning. When they become adults, they will vote in people with rational and critical thinking into governance who will in turn make public policies that are not based on religious beliefs but on sound reason, rationality and evidence. It will be a very long drawn out campaign, we will lay the foundation now and sustain it.

Nigerian national assembly has passed some laws that breed hate and victimization against some minority citizens, we intend to mount campaign in due cause to call for repeal of those obnoxious laws that infringes on citizens fundamental human rights.

Jacobsen: How can people get involved or donate to the Atheist Society of Nigeria?

Igwilo: People can get involved with us by registering as members of Atheist Society of Nigeria though our membership registration portal on our website at www.atheist.org.ng.

We are a not-for-profit organisation and depend on donations and goodwill to carry out our programs and local development projects. We are open to donations and volunteering of time and skills to help implement our projects. For monetary donations, we have a bank account where we can receive donations, it can also be done online using credit or debit card. We also have a portal for volunteers registration on our website.

Jacobsen: Thank you for your time, Calistus.

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2022-04-16

Calistus Igwilo, the Atheist Society of Nigeria and Its Relevance

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/21

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Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Was there a family grounding in religious faith?

Calistus Igwilo: I was baptized a Catholic, couple of months after my birth, and was raised a Catholic until about age 13 when I joined my mum to attend a prayer ministry (Where they purport to see the vision and predict the future). And I eventually became a “visioner” at about age 15. Then about age 20, I became a “born again” Christian and was supposed to live above sin, to be holy even as Christ was holy, so I sincerely and honestly struggled to live above sin, I didn’t watch television at the time because I could see a sensual advert that will make me lust in my heart thereby committing sin. Prior to being born again, I masturbated a lot, but as a born again I tried very hard to resist masturbation and struggled for about 1 year until I lost it. So it dawned on me that I was a “sinner” and numerous attempt to repent proved abortive as those desires were real, therefore, I stopped going to church in other not to be a hypocrite. And when I accepted life the way it really was, I started to have doubts about religion but I was alone on that thought, there was no like minded person to share my doubts with.

Later, when I became independent and started living by myself, I asked myself some crucial questions: “all the things I know so far, who thought me?” My answer was mainly my parents, then I asked, “Who thought my parents” the answer was my grandparents. Then I asked the crucial question “What do these grand and great grandparents know? Are my not supposed to know more than them, since they did not have the level of education I have?” And that was how my journey into skepticism started, I resolved to reevaluate everything that I have been thought by my parents and choose for myself only things that made sense and conform to the knowledge I had gained thus far. I began to think for myself, I became responsible for my life and my actions, then I realized that the whole religious stuff lacks logical merit.

About that period, I met my first business partner Leoard F. Runyon Jr. who we formed a computer company together. He lived life the way life was without any recourse to a supernatural being or superstitions. We never discussed religion or talked about atheism, I do not know about atheism at the time, but for the first time in my life, I associated with people that live their lives very plainly without invoking God or religion for any task, they depend on their brain to make decisions. At that point, religion became irrelevant in my life and any thought of returning to it someday vanished. After few more years, I started looking for Nigerians like me, I couldn’t see any around me, so I took to the internet to search for Nigerian Atheists. Leo Igwe’s name was the prominent name that pops up each time I searched so I did him an email which he replied and informed me about an upcoming humanist convention in 2011 at Abuja. I attended that conference and met for the first time, Nigerian atheists, and that was the beginning of my association with atheists.

Jacobsen: Who were some influences in losing it or simply becoming an atheist?

Igwilo: The first influence was my personal experience. I have always tried to be sincere and honest to myself, so when I started struggling to keep up with religious teachings, I knew somehow that they weren’t tenable, then I became a “backslider” and because I don’t want to deceive myself claiming to be what is not tenable, I gave up on religion. The next influence was Leonard F. Runyon, my business partner, in whom I saw for the first time in my life how someone can live one’s life without the need for a God. Then when I a degree course in Biotechnology, everything fell into place, I had a rational explanation for the emergence of life and I applied that knowledge to every other supernatural belief. Life ceased to be mysterious to me and I never looked back since then. There was nothing to look back for anyway because I have traveled the road of religion and have studied the bible from page to page from cover to cover so there was nothing curious left there to go back to.

Jacobsen: What is the prevalence religion in Nigeria? What are the types that you’d typically find there?

Igwilo: The prevalent religions in Nigeria are Islam and Christianity, the traditional religion is steadily going extinct. Majority of northern Nigeria are Muslims while the majority of Eastern Nigeria are Christians, the western Nigeria are split between Muslims and Christians. So each region is dominated by their own common religion (Christian or Muslim) and they tolerate each other to a good extent except for some small part of northern Nigeria where sectarian crises arise once in a while.

Jacobsen: Why did you found the Atheist Society of Nigeria?

Igwilo: While I was doing my masters degree at the University of Nottingham, UK, I joined the University of Nottingham Atheists Secularists and Humanist (UNASH) association, it was my first experience of belonging to an atheist group, I also joined the Nottingham Secular Society an umbrella body for atheists and humanists living in Nottingham. I was elected to serve on the executive committee and was closely mentored by Dennis, the then President of Nottingham Secular Society and I gained some experience in running a secular society. So when I returned to Nigeria in 2013, I started Port Harcourt Secular Society with Timothy Hatcher under the suggestion of Becca Schwartz. The main reason was to create a community for Atheist, Humanist, Secularists and Freethinkers. By then there was a vibrant Nigerian Atheist group and Nigerian Humanist group on Facebook which serves as home for all atheists, humanists, and freethinkers. The need to organize so that we can engage with government, institutions, and societies led to us applying to be registered with Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC), but our application suffered numerous setbacks, when we got some kind of nod to go ahead, we didn’t have the fund to see the process through as Port Harcourt Secular Society had very few members then. So we organized at the national level to register Humanist Society of Nigeria but it suffered a huge setback from the CAC, they always come up with a reason to have us start the application all over again, it’s been up to 2 years now and Nigerian Humanist Association hasn’t been incorporated. While at it, some group of Atheists who belong to a Facebook group called Proudly Atheist made a move, and quietly got initial approval after their lawyer threatened to sue CAC, so we rallied around the process and finally got it registered. This has given us the backing of the law, to engage our community.

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2022-04-16

Child Labor is Often Slave Labor

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/20

I am a writer and executive administrator for Trusted Clothes, which is an ethical and sustainable fashion organization. The following is a series devoted in honor of the work done in collaboration with the Schroeckers and the Trusted Clothes team.

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Child Labor and fashion victims

One of the major issues and ethical fashion is child labor. We can find this in millions and millions of children that are working, let alone in substandard conditions and pay, and often in what might most accurately be termed as slave labor.

Child labor persists in much of the developing world. Children are made slaves to the fashion industry in a literal sense rather than in the consumers’ sense. These children work hard hours even by adult standards from the developed world. They are abused, malnourished and violated- stripped off of their human rights.

The obvious answer is to help these children. We can help them with food, funding, and education. There are several organisations where we can get involved in helping these young children out of these conditions.

Indirectly, we can make better decisions in terms of our consumer choices and support relevant, trustworthy, non-profit/not-for-profit organizations. Consumer choices in terms of clothing, footwear, and any other purchases we make. It’s a necessary thing to do in the modern era.

The children need our help.

Children are some of the most powerless in the fashion garment industry production line and supply chains. And some of the most powerless in the world with each generation.

Imagine that this is your life or that your child was stripped of all possible dreams and hopes for the future because of poverty and having to work at such a young age. Imagine if your child was stripped of human rights and child rights.

To me, it seems not only a sense of children’s rights to not have to work. It seems to me like the right for children to have a childhood. A childhood with proper nutrition, education, love, care, and play. I don’t think children deserve to be working in these conditions, or at all working. It’s ridiculous.

Now, I ask you about child labor. Is deprivation of a childhood abuse? Is interference of regular school attendance abuse? Is this possibly mentally and emotionally harmful? Is it physically harmful to the children?

Do you think they actually have safe regulations for the kids? I don’t think so. I don’t think that these people have adequate provisions of any of these. I think that they have lost their childhood or are in the process of losing it, don’t attend school as they should.

We can see the rise of child slavery world wide. There are hundreds of millions of kids likely working in child labor. I mean, there are estimates that it’s around 200 million total. But how many can actually document properly? It’s a very difficult problem because these are violations of human and child rights by their very nature.

That means that the reportage on the number of them might not necessarily be accurate, and we would have good reason to think of these estimates as lower than the actual rate. I think it’s a travesty. I think this is morally outrageous that so many children are suffering in abominable ways throughout the world.

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2022-04-16

Ask A Genius 340 – Intelligence as Refuge and Strength

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/12/01

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: To take a step back, who are personal heroes for you although you have qualms with those terms?

Rick Rosner: Alright. Heroes, people I am interested in finding more about or reading more of their stuff.

Jacobsen: Like who?

Rosner: Like George Saunders, I would say is a hero. He is a guy who is trained as an engineer. Then became a writer who addresses a lot of issues of modern life that other people don’t quite get. The world is discovered.

And so, he has rightfully elevated into one of our great current writers. He’s also personally kind and available. He seems like a good guy. He is a great writer. Other writers I like, though their interests don’t always overlap with mine – I mean entirely overlap with mine, so they don’t always write about what I wish they would write about. Stevenson, Charles Straus, Doctorow, Kelly Oxford.

People I like finding more about include like Elvis. I like reading about F. Scott Fitzgerald, although he was a huge mess. A provocative mess. There’s a whole little cluster of women at Harvard at the beginning of the 20^th century who are responsible for much of our understanding of the structure of the universe.

They didn’t get the credit they deserved. Like Henrietta Swan Leavitt and her crew. What’s that lady, the one that discovered the elemental composition of stars? Cecilia Helena Payne-Gaposchkin.

She’s interesting, in that she came up with this huge discovery and is almost entirely absent from our collective scientific memory. Compared to people whose names are pretty much household names, like Hubble — who builds his work upon the work of these women.

I like reading about them, but there’s not too much more to read about him. Oh, you asked who is smarter than me, and…

Jacobsen: Who do you think is smarter than you? There is the Betts listing.

Rosner: Everything has to start with how goofy the idea is that you can write about that way. I benefited from the ranking, but you have similar problems as to when you ask, and worse problems is when you ask, “Who is the world’s strongest man?”

There are lots of different indices of strength. And, any measuring tool is arbitrary in whatever tasks one picks or emphasizes. I can tell you that I have the highest measured IQ of anybody who has ever written jokes for TV.

Jacobsen: In one interview, you said you had the highest IQ in the world.

Rosner: I have worked with plenty of people who are wildly smart, who are geniuses accordingly, not the loosest definition of genius but not the strictest definition of genius, too. You have to put things in context where I might be the funniest person currently alive within an IQ in the 190s.

I might be the smartest person alive writing jokes like specific contexts. It’s hard to judge. Anyway, you were saying that I am the smartest person. I have got a good argument that I have the highest IQ in the world.

Jacobsen: Second highest on the one listing. Dr. Katsioulis has the first. To your good argument for the highest, why? How?

Rosner: I’ve taken more than thirty tests to measure ultra-high IQ and have gotten the highest score ever earned on more than twenty of them. Nobody has that huge record of maxing out all of these high-end IQ tests.

The most that anybody else has done is two or three or five. Where they get the highest score ever, if anybody would even doubt it’s high, I would think that other people’s claim to their IQ’s generally rest on one or two good performances on an IQ test.

Mine rests on my performance across dozens of tests. And decades of messing around with these tests.

Jacobsen: And if you take the Betts listing, the one test that they do take into account to decide the score for number one was a nonverbal test by the Cerebrals Society. He scored 205 on an SD16.

It was a culture fair test. You scored 199 on SD16 on a verbal test.

Rosner: I would have to look at the whole deal. These high-end tests get re-normed a lot. So, as the people who make the test get more results and do more statistical work, it can change things. Most of these people aren’t psychometricians or statisticians.

Jacobsen: So, we can take this 199. Also, you scored four 198.1s all on tests by Betts from 2012. So, maybe, we can take a step back and that way you can speak more confidently.

Rosner: I mean the everything is arbitrary. I have practiced a lot because I have taken so many tests. What it takes to do those tests, I have to put in the work to do them. So, you could argue that there is a huge practice effect and a huge determination in the diligence.

I mean everything is arbitrary, again, in the same way, that if you have ever watched the world’s strongest man. You see a bunch of guys who weigh anyway from 280 to 400 pounds doing various things that take tremendous strength.

Lifting stone balls that are two feet in diameter, pushing 800-pound truck tires that are 10 feet in diameter end over end, racing while towing a semi that might go for 10,000 pounds, different people win different events.

There’s no world’s strongest man whose won that thing eight years in a row. I don’t think, maybe there is. His name is probably something Scandinavian-like. Guys from the Viking country seem to be into this and do well.

But, that you can claim that any one of those guys is absolutely the world’s strongest man, because the tasks are arbitrary. Then you have Olympic power holders who do things of strength and whole other sets of tightly judged measures of strength.

Then you have weird effects like the world’s strongest teenager. For a long time, there was a kid out of one of the Eastern Bloc countries. This kid turns out that he has like brutal scoliosis. So, that when he deadlifts, he grabs the bar and spine flexes.

His rib cage drops a couple of inches. So, his ribs are resting directly on his ileac crest of his pelvis. And so, he only has to get the bar like two inches off the ground, because his body flexes. So, I’ve heard that when he bench-presses, then you can put a basketball under his back because his spine is so curved.

So, that’s a weird way of not cheating but of leveraging one’s strength due to anatomical peculiarity. The measurement of IQ, of intelligence, has always been problematic. And also, this is similar to the world’s strongest man.

What the hell, it doesn’t matter. What matters, the world’s strongest man matters within the context of the show called The World’s Strongest Man. It matters within the context of like national pride, which you could already use as an important thing when it comes to powerlifting.

I’m saying that the idea that IQ doesn’t have a huge context of mattering, especially since IQ was designed in France by a guy as a tool to see what kids needed help with in school. He had IQ. He probably didn’t call it IQ, because that was probably a term coined in California.

But he came up with the idea of intelligence testing, on a five-point scale, where the ones and twos had learning difficulties, needed help, the fours and fives had advanced learning abilities and needed perhaps different educational resources too.

The threes are your average students who might be in a regular classroom. Then Terman gets ahold of the idea and probably comes up with an index of 100 being average, with differences measured on a scale of the standard deviation of 16.

He Americanized it; he tech-ed it up. Going from a one through five scale to a scale that gives you a two or three-digit score, which gives the illusion of much more precision.

Anyway, I can brag about my IQ and use it to try to get recognition and maybe eventually a book deal or employment, or somehow monetize it the way like Marilyn Vos Savant, who was known for having the highest IQ in the Guinness Book of World Records in the 80s.

She has monetized her IQ. She has probably six or seven million dollars over her lifetime.

Jacobsen: What’s the evidence for that claim?

Rosner: Because she has column in Parade Magazine for more than thirty years now. I am figuring if she gets 150 grand per year for the column, which, maybe she does, and she has published ten books.

If she is that active in giving speeches now, but she used to be part of the Speaker’s Bureau, the woman with the world’s highest IQ could come and talk to your group. Maybe, it will cost 15 or 20 grand.

So, I would say it’s not unreasonable to think that given all of her activity that she has made at least millions of dollars off a career that began with her being celebrated for her IQ.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-16

Ask A Genius 339 – Godspeed – God Willing Means God Fearing

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/11/22

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Cultural hypocrisies, some reasons for realism, and other for cynicism. Like the fear of God in the bedroom.

Rick Rosner: God-fearing but at the same time everyone is looking at porn. So, even if modern and without revealing anything, it still says, “Look at my sexy curves.” There’s temptation. So, the trends around fear of God and temptation to sexuality will prevail for the next few centuries, two or three hundred years.

People will start doing more extreme body modifications: (a) because they are antisocial or (b) for compensated jobs. If you are working in a space, you want a body that is engineerable to be able to work in space.

If you are working underwater, you want a body that works in the water. But the traditional human forms are so powerful, are so deeply wired into us, that it will take centuries for us to regularly abandon those forms as a matter of choice.

So, people will still look like people in the year twenty-two-something. Though, they won’t look much like people you see in Star Trek; there is going to be a lot more weirdness, but it won’t be the full body abandonment weirdness until the twenty-three or twenty-four hundreds.

Since architecture is a construct based on the human form, for the most part, we live in buildings that are scaled to us, scaled to typical human bodies. We can imagine that architecture will similarly assume different forms.

Like some science fiction deal suggested that the entire human population will go from roughly six-feet tall to three-feet tall because, at that size, if you shrunk every body by fifty-percent we would only weigh one-eighth of what we do now.

If it was an exact shrinkage, we would probably want to keep big heads because heads are good for processing information. So, it wouldn’t be a straight one-eighth. Anyway, three-feet tall people consume a lot fewer resources.

Anyway, that might be a good place to stop because I am going to start speaking unproductively.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-16

Ask A Genius 338 – Pain, Pain, Go Away, Come Back Another Day

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/11/15

[Beginning of recorded material]

Jacobsen: What would a model of human thought and behavior look like with this information-based view of the universe framework?

Rick Rosner: When we are talking about human tendencies, abilities, cognitive tendencies, abilities, and so on, we need some foundations. So, before we even get to that, there is a framework for this characterizing of human cognitive, ability, behavior, consequences, the everything is the optimum framework is bad.

That we are surely aware of it because human cognition is much more complicated and numerous. The preferred framework is narrative when we are communicating and people for thousands of years have done that through stories, which I like to describe as human behavior moving.

People who are characters are more or less familiar in stories. People are dying for those stories. Of course, the stories on TV in the 70s, or in my mind at least, are fake and not helpful. Their legacy is constrained by even talk of the day.

The action in movies is brutal compared to the past. We have all shows on TV now compared to one or a few in the past. It can be frivolous in describing some characters, most pronounced in characters who are not recognized for their complexity, but still, today’s television is better.

Anyway, the narrative is the preferred framework for all these as opposes to equations, but, there is enough radio out there for telling stories. Most people prefer that over some silly mathematical characterization that gives a little insight into human cognition, in giving of evolutionary background or cultural support for some behaviors.

The cognition behind those behaviors. But the narratives simplify things. Humans have a pretty good ability not to screw up, but when people do try to become realistic about what humans are, someone gives optical statements about human beings.

It becomes human beings as basically bad or all good because of circumstances or innate capacities. We will make umbrella statements. If we do, it would be that humans have a certain level of churning out one area of cognition.

We are talking about humans who have some average level of violability or tendencies to yield to pressure. This is determined by evolution and cultural pressure. In some cases, it is a game theoretic deal.

How much money will it take to get somebody to slap on his screen? Who doesn’t know it’s coming? All those people would have an average level of resistance to an average price. Most people would yield to the temptation to be bad for the money.

So, human beings’ resistances are worth a certain amount of money. So, we have a money equivalent to think of yourself as a good person. So, most people won’t organize to strip something out of a kid’s hands for five or ten bucks, probably not even twenty.

But at fifty, there may be some takers. At one hundred, probably, even more, where once at one thousand, you would probably get 80 to 90% of people. So, there game theoretic accelerations, what framework is there?

There is a money equivalent to feeling good about yourself. The feeling is that you are a good person, “I wouldn’t do that.” But at some point, the money equivalent of actual money is worth more than any good feelings someone might lose by slapping the ice cream, say, out of a kid’s hands.

You probably still have a bad dynamic because of the number of cultural norms that behavior activation is based on evolution, culture, and some influences on the ability to think. There is a thing in high school football that coaches like to use, which is the two-minutes hang.

You make all the players hang for bars for two minutes; it’s supposed to be a test of will and power. In that case, it gives theoretic desire to grow tough versus an example of the ability to focus your will as discomfort and pain rise.

So, that in the two-minutes hang situation: what percentage of players will be able to clearly take it for two minutes? You want to do a good job. It is the ability to focus versus wrecking your ability to focus, may be similar to holding breathe.

Jacobsen: The feeling of pain and discomfort. The role, from your own perspective – as I am on the fence, of free will is in resistance to them. That it can be explained bottom up by a physics, but that narrative and personal feelings and certain reflections can be helpful in explanation of the world.

In your view, narrative descriptions of experience are heuristics, for what physics can alternately explain, but not practically explain given cognitive limitations or computational constraints of human beings. This ties back into a framework of consciousness in an information-based world.

Rosner: Okay.

Jacobsen: Some aren’t reasonable?

Rosner: What do you mean when you say we have different explanations between narrative descriptions and others?

Jacobsen: You can explain things hierarchically from the bottom up, where you have physics on the bottom explaining chemistry on up. Then you have the stories, the narratives that are simpler descriptions.

Rosner: So, you are saying we haven’t built up from physics within reasonable expectations up to human behaviors?

Jacobsen: You’ve noted that you don’t believe in freedom of the will. So, if our mind could explain the fundamental physical actions up into higher order structures such as beings, you could explain them completely.

Rosner: Let’s start by saying, a lot of science will say everything mentioned out of physics. There is already modeling of the world in CG, where there is only CG. More and more lately, you can create stuff with actual physics equivalences.

Like waves and things, because the system is going to represent basic physics phenomena as if in the real world, there will be computer generated phenomena by making computer general. It could create life-like phenomena.

Physics in behavior. Life-like phenomena can come out of that, the sciences, chemistry, becomes one word: physics. Things in the world including chemical principles can be boiled down to the consequences of physical interaction, and biology is traced back to the bottom in physics with the hope that everything eventually will be vulnerable to description through the basic physical interactions of the universe.

Jacobsen: So, in that sense, our narratives of the willing of something through the pain and discomfort is simply a narrative perspective on what can also be explained mechanically. It may not be reasonable or necessary, but then it can be predictable – so no freedom of the will to you.

Rosner: You are able to deploy the other part of the brain. It’s cognitive landscape, moment to moment, compels each subsequent part of the landscape, what you are thinking or feeling in every moment determines what you next think or feel.

It is subject to certain orders of limitation or acceleration, what you are thinking or feeling doesn’t determine everything you are thinking or feeling in a subsequent problem. If you are thinking about the subsequent problem, somebody could slap you in the head, scrambling your processes.

Most people in most circumstances would be scrambled by that, what you’re thinking or feeling plus your environment recreate sensory information. All those things working together determine what next you think or feel and what you next do as a consequence of those thoughts and feelings, which are themselves thoughts.

People with some experience as a football player for several years are going to possibly practice to practice better focus than an amateur or someone who has only been doing the footballing for a couple weeks.

The person who’s experienced will have little processes that will allow for focus and the ability to deploy more fabulous forces to allow that person to aim or end more successfully better than a rookie.

Jacobsen: There are two frameworks there. These two frameworks are apparently disparate but are associated directly or directly in contact to the nearest overlaying. One, the scaled physics-chemistry-biology-psychology framework, but then all grounded in physics.

The other one is narrative. Each has their merits. The narrative one describes by saying, “Rick turned to the left,” or, “Rick turned to the right,” or, “Rick took a drink of the coffee.”

And those apparent choices are paired with descriptions of observing of the choices of another person. They come from the bottom, the scaling up model of physics or psychology. So, really, they’re both valid because it’s easier to tell a narrative structure for a complicated organism than it is to describe all particle interactions.

Rosner: It is really a description of the world. It is more efficient in a way we can understand because we’re understanding people by their narrative and drives; we understand each other to a grading term of basic human drives.

There is a principle that no matter how weird somebody is you can distill their accent, their thought. In fact, some base set of drives system in common with the rest humanity, even people that were monsters.

When they do something that is monstrous, generally, they base their actions, their monstrous actions, on a common drive; the desire that we all have. The 9/11 hijackers, when they find out who the guys were, they are always nerds.

Not much in a way of social success, no girlfriends, they work over there in something like engineering, have an Arabic background and are socially awkward because it is not the same culture; we’ve seen a lot of action of shooting guys.

All of that stuff can be traced back to the angry nerd bottom that went bad. They are bad guys. We can talk about badness. We are able to talk about people in terms of the will, to some extensive substantial characterization of people.

People’s willpower can be boiled down to psychological forces which boiled down to biological forces which boiled down to chemical forces which boiled down to physical forces.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-16

Ask A Genius 337 – When the Presidenting Gets Tough, the Tough Twitter

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/11/08

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is the relationship between Watergate and Trump?

Rick Rosner: In a nutshell, it looks probable that this will get worse than Watergate because Trump’s support is holding up. During Watergate, it was possible to get Nixon out. The Republican leadership went to Nixon and said that the country’s lost confidence in you.

Nixon agreed with that assessment and left office, but Trump is not somebody to do that and he continues to have the support of three-eighths of the country. So, it’s a crisis that may not break for quite a while.

It’s got a certain stability, which may allow it to get worse and worse before there’s any resolution. Plus, like Trump says stupid shit; he tweets stupid shit every day. Nixon had some of the political savvy to not make his position worse every single day of the week.

So, it’s made me wonder. It is one of those situations where people will soon start asking themselves, “Is it time for us to start taking personal action to protect ourselves?” But that seems like an overreaction because most of all this stuff is taking place on Twitter and among a few people in Washington.

It’s not like Germany in the ‘30s when people were getting attacked on the street, but it still, if you’re not an idiot, feels different from any other point of politics during our lives. We’ve had some weird points. We had the weird political limbo of Bush versus Gore after the election in 2000.

We’ve already had the weirdness of Trump and losing the popular vote by 2.8 million votes still not admitting it. I mean, there are extra dimensions to the weirdness because Trump has been doing weird shit since he got elected and even before.

It’s possible to think that this isn’t a weird moment because it’s more Trump, but it’s a point of political peril. It doesn’t seem like it will break for months and months. And he got rid of Sean Spicer, the Press Secretary.

The new guy who’s not the Press Secretary will be running the communications offices is slick and well-spoken and that guy might be better at running a communications office than whoever was in charge before and because of his slickness might even increase Trump’s popularity, even in the middle of Trump being consistently terrible at his job and at optics.

So, anyway, we’re in trouble. It looks like the trouble is going to go on for months and months to come. That’s it.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-16

Ask A Genius 336 – AIs Wants and Types

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/11/01

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is going on with AI and if/when it’s eventually developed more and more what will it want, if we can use that phrasing?

Rick Rosner: You and I coincidentally both read the same essay, which attacked the science-fiction views of robots running amok trying to kill humanity and taking over the work. This essay rightfully did that, but then it didn’t get into specifics.

It went off in a different direction or the guy started talking about a novel that he’s written, which has some AI in it. So, we could talk about what AI might want and let’s dispense with the mid-future like more than 50-100 years from now, more than 80 years from now.

There will be a point at which AI could be given human-like abilities and one of the reasons that it would be given those abilities is because humans like companions and human-like interfaces and companions already do that to an extent.

We can talk with Siri and Alexa and all that junk, and within right around the end of the century we should be able to build pretty decent robot girlfriends, robot butler’s, robot advisors, that at least understand what humans want and to some extent can be made to at least simulate those wants in themselves.

It could be for the purposes of being a sassy girlfriend, but the deal by that time, I predict, is that we will have a good mathematical model of consciousness, which will allow us to reasonably accurately predict the different ways in which AIs that have been built to be human-like might behave and misbehave.

Given that model, there will be regulations about the prudent construction of AI. So, you don’t have an AI that’s been built to run amok; of course, there are all the assholes who do that anyway. Those AIs that have been programmed to act in human ways and in malicious ways, whether human or not.

That will be an issue to deal with. But what you won’t get, I don’t think, is mission creep, which is the way that almost all malevolent AIs in science fiction turn bad; it’s robots or AIs being made to be our servants, but then they start thinking about their duties and in more wide-ranging or more general ways.

They start following chains of reason to the point where they decide that the real problem with preserving the Earth is humans. Then they decide to kill all humans, which is pretty much Skynet and dozens of other science fiction things.

But the AIs that we’ll be building for most of this century won’t have that much mission creep. Then the AIs with the intellectual potential, the mental potential to do that level of reasoning, by the time we’re able to build those, we’ll have enough of a mathematical understanding of the mental landscape of what we’re building that we can pretty much engineer AIs that don’t have dangerous levels of mission creep.

So, you’ve got two areas of non-threat; you’ve got AIs that are built after the end of the century that is highly sophisticated and powerful but have been prudently engineered. So, no threat there or little threat there.

Then you have AIs built during this century that aren’t powerful enough to be a threat, then you have a two non-threats. Then the threat is AIs built by assholes in order to cause mischief or worse. That’s a medium to the low level threat on a level of terrorism today, which is bad, but it’s not freaking World War II bad.

So, then you have one major threat that we haven’t talked about which is piggybacked AI, which will be for the next 100 years or more; the most powerful form of AI, which is to whatever tech we have in terms of information processing in conjunction with people who are good at using that tech and eventually merging with that tech.

So, it’s not robots on there, but it’ll be people; rich people, smart people using whatever AI exists to obtain further advantages over other people by being able to think faster, being able to find patterns faster and deeper, and engaging in a normal human competition with increasing advantages via AI.

And so, of the four forms of AI that can cause problems, that one is probably the one I’d worry about the most.

Jacobsen: When you talk about prudently engineered AI in the next 80 years or so, the mathematical model of consciousness as an information processing complex will likely include a moral system akin to a tighter, more precise, and well-defined Golden Rule, which trims potentially harmful choices to people and other living things on the part of AI systems however sophisticated.

Rosner: I mean you’ve got the other who will be able to mathematically implement some things along the lines of Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics when it becomes necessary. We won’t have that mathematical model say for another ten, twenty, or thirty years possibly.

We won’t need the model to control AI or predict possible glitches in AI for decades after that. But yes, I don’t know if you’ll build the Golden Rule. My buddy says there will be a trillion AI in the world by 2100.

Most of that AI won’t be sophisticated enough or conscious enough to be set out into the world meeting the Golden Rule standards, where it’s deeply embedded in there. Most AIs won’t be philosophers, but there will be some people who will want AI companions.

Some artists will strive to make AI as human as possible, but most AIs will be engineered for some specific sets of tasks and won’t be that deep. Although, you can picture a point, say 140 years from now or 150 years from now, where it’s cheap to build conscious AIs.

So, there may be some sloppy work and some abuse where you build AIs that have a full complement of feelings, even where it’s not necessary because its slapping a sophisticated AI consciousness into a system that might cost the equivalent of five of today’s dollars.

So, yes, that crap is going to be going on. You’d want a bunch of sophisticated controls either engineered into the AI itself or else roving AI sniffers that’ll look for AIs that are overpowered that could go bad; overpowered and under control.

I mean this is all part of a landscape that in some ways will be a hyper version of today’s landscape with hacker wars and cybercrime, sponsored by all sorts of entities from private A-holes to governments. One form of AI that’s already messing stuff up is almost too banal or banal.

However, the disruption caused by automation taking jobs. It’s not as bad as it’s going to be. We’re already suffering from it, but that’s not the threat by AI that people talk about when they talk about the risk of robots taking over which leads to what you noticed which is… go ahead.

Jacobsen: I watched a panel of middle-aged white, smart people who specialize in some form of AI or who’ve done some thinking on AI, or panicking about it more properly. The demographics being middle-aged white dudes. There is a hype.

So, I feel as though it’s mostly North American phenomena, barring Demis Hassabis and a couple others. It’s white or Caucasian men in the 35 to 55 range and if that’s a thing for any particular reason, but it does seem like it’s a thing, for whatever reason.

Rosner: For one thing, those are the guys who are most qualified to think about it. They’re the early adaptors; they’re the guys who they’ve been successful in the world of tech. People like them to talk about tech issues.

The “I’ve decided it’s prudent at this point to start talking about the possible risks of AI.” And I agree with them. I’m a middle-aged white guy though not as successful as those guys. I agree that it’s prudent.

I predicted that we will have good controls with an understanding in place by the time we need it, but that’s a guess. We won’t get those controls. That understanding, unless, we start working on it now.

So, I agree it did make sense to start thinking about what the issues are. However, remote they are; they’re fairly remote, but those guys, I mean, the cost of making of a mistake that turns over the world to malevolent AI is obviously the entire world.

So, even if it’s a remote possibility, you got to a look at it as a similar threat that that looks, if not remote, it looks like it’s it won’t become a threat for many years in the future. It won’t become a threat for many years.

Nanotechnology, where people have been worried for decades about the grey goo, where you make a little teeny molecular machine, a tiny little automaton, that eats whatever’s in its path to make more copies of itself.

Then all these copies eventually infect the world turning the entire world into these little machines that in swarms resemble the grey goo. We don’t know whether that’s a reasonable possibility, but, I mean, there are no steps in the imaginary process that don’t seem completely impossible.

I mean there are no steps in the process that seem completely impossible. So, that’s something that we will have to investigate and guard against; though at this point in history, it’s remote because we don’t have the tech yet.

It might turn out upon analysis to be an unlikely occurrence, but the cost of that occurrence which is again the death of everything on the planet makes it merit serious investigation.

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2022-04-16

Ask A Genius 335 – Science and Religion (5)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/10/29

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: However, if you look at consciousness, this is kind of the second principle that I see that consciousness probably is technical but as principles or attributes, consciousness is an attribute of large-scale information sharing within the system.

For our system to exist, it has to have a large degree of self-consistency and self-consistency requires a large sharing of information because you can’t be consistent with what you don’t have information about.

You have to constantly keep the rest of each part of itself against the condition as a part of self-consistency that is finding it, the universe has constantly defined itself very precisely in order to impose self-consistency on itself and a consciousness is a necessary adjunct in this large-scale sharing of information.

Then it is unavoidable if in large-scale self-consistent systems. In the end, that implies the hands of the creator because we can’t create worlds. We can, at some point, have the technical wherewithal to create simulated worlds with simulated thinking beings if we want to.

We can also create a self-consistent world where all the self-consistency is supposedly outside and there is no large-scale information sharing. That’s kind of what happens with computers. We build the computers. They process information linearly.

They don’t police themselves for the most part. Computers aren’t conscious, but the existence of large created systems like computers implies that they are part of a larger world in which there are beings that are conscious.

Sub-consciousness may be an unavoidable aspect of existence and that still does not imply a creator in many instances. Most instances do imply the existence of consciousnesses of unlimited extent and power.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: A functionally unlimited number of them. It’s for all intents and purposes. It’s for all intents and purposes unlimited.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-16

Ask A Genius 334 – Science and Religion (4)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/10/28

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: Others I see pertaining to things that not only non-contradictory things can exist and non-contradiction becomes stronger with the more information you have in the system, and that the system was loaded with information is fuzzy.

You have all sorts of things that in ways are dictated more or less by quantum mechanics, where they can exist or not exist.

They are kind of on the cusp of being in existence till you see that they do or don’t contradict the rest of the information in the system and the more information you have in the system the more you have to be contradicted and the more things kind of have to come in line with the rest of the information that exists, so it’s a fuzzy kind of system of rules and existences that gets tired and tired the more information you have which means more space, more time for matter because all those things reflect the amount of information in the system and then so I mean that still doesn’t allow for a creator or a religious point of view.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-16

Ask A Genius 333 – Science and Religion (3)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/10/27

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: We’ve been under that program, strongly. It was probably the most scientific laws in one era. If you ask most scientists if they believe in the idea of a unified explanation for the entire universe, you’d probably get two thirds or more believing in it.

A unified physical explanation under the current theoretical support. Our current theoretical and experimental support for that point of view, but there is no room for a creator or an active being. I mean there are various versions of creation that try to make some kind of compromise with modern Big Bang unification physics including, God doesn’t act in the world today.

The world acts on its own, but God considers everything in motion, but beyond an unsatisfying compromise like that, then God has been squeezed out. However, you and I have been talking about IC for years now. I see it superimposes as a unifying set of principles and that they count for what goes on, so those principles don’t necessarily hard-edged, or those principles are fuzzy at edges.

They become more hard-edged. They reveal the principles of existence. That they really are the principles that we’re talking about.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-16

Ask A Genius 332 – Science and Religion (2)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/10/26

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: The concepts of infinity, dynamics, relativity, and the quantum theory played and play big roles in science, so should in the interpretation of the theology too.

Rick Rosner: The previous theories just extended from us out to infinity pretty much with a universal rotation. It was right there. The big and universal theories are going to start crashing into religious doctrines, which tends to be universal and many of the tendencies of science keep pushing humanity away from the centre of creation with the biggest push or shove against humanity that we are at the specially created centre is the evolution, which comes up in the eighteen fifties.

It did come up before that, but it didn’t come up persuadable until Darwin and the other guy whose name I always forget as the guy who kind of co-published with Darwin, but Darwin’s version of evolution caught on and in one hundred and sixty years. You have a Big Bang Theory, for now, which postulates a world without any special agencies.

I mean originally in science nobody has the idea till the seventeen hundreds of the Unified Field or anything like that. That is one set of fairly compact equations or physical explanations that account for everything. You don’t start to get Unified Field Theories until maybe the second half of the nineteen century, where there are four equations

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-16

Ask A Genius 331 – Science and Religion (1)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/10/25

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: One of the main conflicts over time has been religion and theology, which comes from religion, and changes in the scientific framework of looking at the world, which is a refinement of the way you’re looking at the natural world. Often, that conflict has led to a diminishment in the religious authority on the say of what the real world is or looks like.

Rick Rosner: Okay, the authority depends on what set of beliefs you give yourself, over to the huge percentage of Americans who prefer to believe in some fully Christian point of view. Science doesn’t hold this way, except for a sense of uneasiness, but you’re just wrong given its science that’s generated so much in the world.

You’re denying the parts you don’t find convenient but, I mean historically. It goes like this: I think in the beginning there was no religion or science, but religion got there first in terms of laws in that people believed it’s easier to construct the system of beliefs that don’t have to account for the entire world, don’t have to be a full-on match between – well, I put myself in kind of a sac here – but with religion you can make a set of stories about the world that whatever aspects of the world you need.

It doesn’t have any kind of rigorous logic and the religious institution, churches come with leverage over people’s lives and beliefs, and have all sorts of authority in various ways and then when people start doing the experimental, the Greeks and the Romans were not, they didn’t embrace it.

They didn’t thoroughly embrace the program of experimental science. They did science. But it was part of an overall philosophical push that science will be used to fully understand and explain the world, so there were little outbreaks of science but they didn’t as far as I know thoroughly conflict with religion, but then, later on, you start as a religion that’s been in place with the policies for over a millennium when you have persons like Copernicus and Galileo starting, and so there are doctrines that are now fairly locked up.

Copernicus and Galileo came up with stuff that kind of rub the doctrine the wrong way, the people who advocate with power who advocate for these doctrines the wrong way. Their religions have had twelve hundred years to become fleshed out and with twelve hundred years to be fleshed out so you can imagine a younger version of Christianity not having a problem with the earth going around the sun.

I mean there is nothing inherently un-Christian about that it doesn’t have to conflict with Creation. God made the world and the Sun that we orbit around for us. He created Humanity. I don’t think there is the level of conflict that we’ve seen in the past few hundred years between religion and science because science didn’t fully encroach upon the world, and science wasn’t seen or embraced as a program fully explaining everything until I don’t know, sixteen hundred, seventeen hundred, eighteen hundred, I don’t know.

Yet people who would argue that Newton was more religious than scientific and he believed that he was doing God’s work by doing science, that God wanted us to understand the world and that was part of working on his behalf almost like God helps people who help themselves.

I knew he was one of the first guys. People that come up with the scientific theories have little scientific theories. But his really in a way wasn’t, it was fairly concrete and made concrete predictions about the entire universe.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-16

Ask A Genius 330 – No One Expects the Spanish Inquisition

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/10/24

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: The primal thought was the search of the generations of people and how it was interrupted. And to see the level of interruption is a real tough job for someone. There are many prejudges and almost constantly, year by year, a group of people like German Jews, and European Jews faced in the 1920s.

After more than six million being slaughtered, and 5 times more were forced away from their homeland, the story doesn’t end here. The genocide in Lebanon in Africa is another story for this story, with killing and expelling people from their countries in the 70s.

And Syria, maybe not the best country in the world but was functioning well, and now with the civil war going, we can see how Hell on Earth looks like, and Iraq, after few mall wars against Iran, now it has 10 thousand of killed people under their name because of the dictation.

So, if you zoom out and take a look at these countries alongside the Spanish Inquisition, you will see that all of these countries that are in Africa and the Middle East were well-functioning countries, and pretty stable for a long period of time, and all of a sudden, something appears where the whole nation is wiped, pushed away from the land and what else not. And here in America, we are playing under a different politic that reflects on the world.

We are not expecting the future to be against us, but as it seems it will be. What will happen with the disruption of the happenings in the world in the next three to five decades will be nothing compared to what we have seen in the past years.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Most people won’t be prepared for the change.

Rosner: What most people can do when facing the future humans, is that they can die, like every person in the world. IF you don’t get ended by the disruption, you will simply get older and older and die out of old age. That’s how things work.

Old generations get wiped out, New ones come and are getting better at accepting the future and making the most out of it, and that’s just the way this world works. That’s all.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-16

Ask A Genius 329 – The Worst President

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/10/23

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: At the moment, we are talking while not recording about Trump and his skills. What is Trump good at?

Rick Rosner: The major thing that he is best at, is being bad at doing what he does. He is good at showing the people that it was not what America actually needed. A modest person with solid knowledge of history, empathy for the people and lacking self-control won’t do it.

If you have any doubts, take some great president, or even take a good one, and compare the results. Let’s take Lincoln, as he is considered a great president. In a war where over 60,000 Americans lost their lives, he was the leader of the country.

And despite this, he is known for his deep feelings and humanity, he always tried to hold the American Union together even when it was crumbling after the war, and his humor after all. When you take a glance at FDR who managed to successfully take America out of depression, which was one of the most miserable times for the States, fast forward from the World War II, and all while his legs were mechanical with braces – he could make the change!

Take Teddy Roosevelt who has a great intellectual curiosity, red a vast number of books, and wrote fifty books all in the name of the natural world. Trump slowly fades from every great, or even good president, and the image of him feels low after reading this. He does not have any skill, and he is a pure experiment on the chair.

It is positive to see that Trump is always doing something without even possessing some of the skills that the other presidents had, and it’s good to see that he can function like that. But it seems like everything that Trump does is doing destructive things to the country.

He is the best gest case that the country could have as the people can see how he does and can get rid of him even before the four years are completed.

This may end up with a more dangerous scenario because if Trump finishes the mandate before the four years are passed, it will come down to putting Pence, an even more risky potential candidate for the role which has some crazy ideas in the Oval Office.

A better place to put Trump while still having him do something high in the country should be somewhere where balance is not the strong side, and that can be used in his advantage.

Even this place isn’t one hundred percent certain that it will be a good fit, but it isn’t certain that it isn’t, which means that maybe there is a chance for Trump to prosper with his skills after all.

This was all accomplished via the same and similar behavior that has been going on with our country for a long time now, slowing down their interests, keeping them under control and bad acting over the countries.

The same happened with the Second World War where we backed down from the conflicts that were happening in the world, especially Europe; we backed down from the field and decided to enter it after the war had already started.

Two and a half years after the war had begun, we got in to negotiate after Hitler already had taken a big part of Europe and had made his decisions on what he wants to do with it. After entering and negotiating on the Europe field, we were more than effective, and we proved that we are the world’s most powerful nation.

Another thing that is worth mentioning at this time is the shutting down of the North Korean nuclear program after they kept itching and bragging that their nuclear power was outstanding and their nuclear weapons are extraordinary and powerful.

The interesting thing here is that there are two crazy people on top of the top 3 nations in the world. One has the most powerful army while the other one has nuclear weapons which we might believe are shut down, but are they really?

I’d prefer Obama, Hilary or even George W. Bush to use their diplomatic skills against Kim Jong Hong and calm this tension a little bit down. But Donald Trump, as crazy as he could be, has been trying something else, and has an Ace up his sleeve.

He has been flattering the China leader for some time now, and his plan is obvious – to have two helping hands against the North Korea that will strike from a different side. This is rather funny as having the best army in the world you shouldn’t be acting as a baby requesting for a babysitter, but there are some hidden intentions behind this I reckon.

This thing is good as the main quest is to scare the bad courtiers and to let them know that they should back off, but it is not a 100% completed quest. I should mention another good thing about Trump and what he does as a president, and I already touched this theme earlier; he makes the Republicans less efficient in their intentions, and their harmful ideas against the country are no longer as effective as they were in the past.

On the other hand, this, and even more, should be done by someone more organized and better in the cerebral thinking, but let’s put half a point on Trump’s expense and as I mentioned before, it is the test case of what we really need sitting in the president’s seat, which will form a clear picture with the help of Trump doing all what he does.

And several small mistakes have been made in terms of his ego rising and him abandoning the golf club, thinking he should rage as much as he want and double his dos, all because he is a president of America. And on top of that add promotion of the books that his daughters wrote and promoting Arolago while using the government’s resources speaks for itself.

This is the whole picture, but there is another think that will make Trump good that just came to my mind. When compared to the other competitor for the worst president in the United States of America, Warren Harding, was listening to what the people had to say, while on the other hand, the current president Trump.

On seventy years and with extra weight, having obesity or whatever you want to call it, is always being the target of angry critiques, that he is losing weight by giving speeches only, and he encourages on pursuing the perfect song to implement in his speeches, and when you combine all of this and the negative talks on him together with the weight problem, there is a possibility that he will get light-hit in his head and leave chair without finishing to serve his term as he will be unhealthy from physical and mental point of view. This is one of the things Trump is good at, and hopefully he will get discouraged because he is acting like a baby, which will lead to leaving the Oval room.

This is basically everything I have, and I hope I have it all on a list as it will be a useful list. Well one more thing is that the Democrats are as disorganized as they could ever be, and with this opportunity to rise, Trump may be the one to enlighten them and give them a paved way of where they should walk in order to come up with the good inaudible news that America is waiting on.

The mid-terms that they did in 2010 or 2014 should be used as an example so Trump may have the opportunity to walk away as a winner in some field after all, and it is to stimulate the efficiency of the Republicans part after all.

And when you think through it, it’s not easy at all to give a positive thinking when all of this is under the command of the government and it is a task that should be handled by the president, so we are giving Trump a credit for what he is supposed to do. Here are the several reasons why Trump is good at what he is doing, and why he should stick around.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-16

Ask A Genius 328 – The Future

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/10/22

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What were we talking about? Ah yes, the future and comprehending about short, mid, and long-term.

Rick Rosner: Yes, it was about the near, what is in the middle, and what is here to come.

Jacobsen: We were talking about the short, mid and long-term future, and what is here to come. We were speaking about our time expectations. Along the way, I’ve noted something which you may find humiliating, and it’s about the Erosion of the Theory of Spirituality.

Rosner: I’d like to call it the Fantastic Future, but I am afraid to say that humans will have little to no joy in the upcoming years. You can say it in other words as it is the story about humans and humanity regarding their existence in different forms. Let’s begin with outlining the near future as it is what every human expects at this time.

These devices and technologies are here to aid us with our perception and our behaviour towards the world. When we are addressing to the mid-future, this is one of the most interesting ones and the strangest of them all.

This period offers us technologies and abilities that we haven’t experienced before. This will most definitely change the relationship between humans and machines, and humans and humans overall in a funny way.

This will gradually increase the search for new ways of completing regular tasks, while constantly moving back and forward in time using the traditional, already proven correct ways, simply because they are already proven to be working and they are well-defined and friendly in our lives.

After this, the long-term future follows, where we use outdated, well proven systems that we are certain they work. They are bonding together with the other forms of existence that we’ve developed throughout the near and mid future, but are slowly fading due to the changes that we’ve made over the decades, as they are easy to adopt and pretty useful. Because the new ways are connected with technology, being a human being as we are now or in the near-future will be considered as outdated.

One thing is for sure, the human communities will always be there, no matter how far in the future we manage to survive.

I want to make a point that we will have a pool of options, but will only follow one path, a path that this human now doesn’t want to live like. Another way into looking these three, the near, the mid and the far future is up to the personal way of seeing them.

The far future is a little bit out of the reach of our eyes and imagination, therefore we can’t clearly see how it will be, as we don’t know the path that the near and mid future is going to take. One thing is for certain – the future will be more informative than always, with a big data of information available, where we will rely on it for our evaluation.

The computers will play a major part in the world, and most probably out in Space, and people will have more and more knowledge in computing as the days go by. Here, we will have to use the Moore’s law, where the cost of the computing will get cut in half in the next 18 or 24 months.

This is yet to be seen as we have no idea what kind of computing will be available in the next decade or so. This is closely connected to the size of the computing and the Moore’s law of things getting double smaller. However, certain magazines state that computing cannot get smaller, and with the atomic limitation that we have, we already have several more generations to come and work on reaching that level of computing.

But will it stop there? One thing is certain, that quantum computing beats and will soon overshadow non-quantum computing in every way. And while the limitation that Moore’s law has set on the way the computing will go in the future we are talking about, there is a chance of a curve that can change it all, and it all comes down that we are still unable to predict how far actually the future can be to tell this information for certain.

The data processing and information bombarding alongside computing will be a huge part of our future, and it will be a lot different than the computing we are experiencing at the moment.

But the tables and sheets that we are seeing now will stay here, in the past – it will be able to produce real time models of the numbers included in the data in just few seconds. This means, the data can be used for quick access of information, and will be beneficial for making money, making crucial decisions on tie, and will most definitely help them with their lifestyle and movement in life.

This will most certainly affect the life of the people living at that time as there will be rapid changes in the entity, which will be part of the world in the future. When we look back in the past, Greg Bayer has a novel called Blood Music from the 90s that I enjoy reading, and it talks about nano-bots that will infect an engineer and the reaction of the body as an effect after this infection. It is the same feeling as Supermen, where he is holding the city in a bottle in his hand, and in one point, after he gets used to the effect, he becomes the guardian of the city in the bottle.

However, this novel revolves differently than my opinion, and there the guardian evolves faster than it should, while we are yet to begin the changes that will happen. This is all I have in mind for the time being. If I add something more it will only interfere with what I’ve already said.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-16

Ask A Genius 327 – Comedy Change

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/10/21

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: How has comedy changed for now compared to the past? How will this change the future of comedy as well?

Rick Rosner: Well, I mean the biggest change applies to all information and media and entertainment and it’s just the sheer volume and variety available. I read someplace that people in the 17th century, 18th century maybe only had two books in their houses; the Bible and Pilgrim’s Progress.

Similarly somebody on a farm; how many jokes would that person hear a hundred years ago in the course of a week? Two? Maybe goes to town, hears a couple jokes? Three? I don’t know. Now the average joke consumer, say somebody who watches late-night TV is going to see at least twenty-five jokes a night, somebody goes on Twitter looking for jokes can read hundreds a day, will see The Good Place comes back tonight; it’s the sitcom set in heaven, you watch a sitcom and a decent sitcom will give you 40 jokes in 22 minutes, just people today have heard a gazillion jokes, people also have more information about which we can joke than Johnny Carson could joke about in the 1970s.

Carson’s writers wrote off the teletype, they had an AP news feed that was this automatic typewriter the go [mimics typewriter sound], it would spit out a big roll of paper with the stories of the day and those guys would see those stories and they would… largely, guys, I don’t know how many women worked on the Tonight Show writing staff, but it was less than half a dozen or fewer than that. But anyway, they were writing off 20 stories they got from the news maybe somebody brought in newspapers but the number of different things that could be joked about or smaller because people have less information.

So, what the future holds is more volume, I mean Twitter has empowered thousands of people who wouldn’t otherwise be writing jokes to be writing jokes and the other social media encourages other forms of humor. So, you’ll have more people doing, you’ll have faster delivery and you’ll have a greater informational basis for the jokes.

Also, there’s been an erosion of taboos where I don’t know how much farther it can go but you can joke about anything, where in the past you had to watch what you joked about because some things were improper. Now you can joke about anything, any subject you can manage to think of to joke about. Now with taboos gone and everything permitted everything’s been kind of colonized or exploited for jokes and it’s tough to come up with new areas. That’s about it.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-16

Ask A Genius 326 – Divinity and Human Exaltation

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/10/01

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What were we talking about? Ah yes, the future and comprehending the short, mid, and long-term.

Rick Rosner: Yes, it was about the near, what is in the middle, and what is here to come.

Jacobsen: We were talking about the short, mid and long-term future, and what is here to come. We were speaking about our time expectations. Along the way, I’ve noted something which some may find humiliating; it’s about the ‘Erosion of the Assumption of Divinity.’

Rick Rosner: I’d like to call it, the ‘End of Human Exaltation and the Human Experience,’ but I am afraid to say that humans will have little to no joy in the upcoming years. You can say it in other words as it is the story about humans and humanity regarding their existence in different forms. Let’s begin with outlining the near future as it is what every human expects at this time.

This is regarding the next 50-100 years, or basically the whole 21^stCentury and we are talking about the technologies and devices that will have a major impact on the humanity, their way of living and existing. These devices and technologies are here to aid us with our perception and our behaviour towards the world. When we are addressing to the mid-future, this is one of the most interesting ones and the strangest of them all. This period offers us technologies and abilities that we haven’t experienced before.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-16

Ask A Genius 325 – The Feynman Thing (2)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/10/19

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: Now it’s possible we could reach a limit to three hundred years from now where the earth is wrapped up in a big ball of information processing entities that are coming together and bubbling apart like a lava lamp and that might be the pinnacle of what a civilization can achieve but I doubt that too, I think in some ways civilization keeps going and becoming more powerful.

On the other hand that’s hard to conceive because in a universe that is it least fourteen billion years old and possibly according to our theory like a gazillion times older than that, yes you’ll have, you should have the civilization that is tens of millions of years old and more and I don’t know how you have civilizations that just keep getting more sophisticated on a ten million years scale, so it may be that yeah that civilizations reach a point where they require some stability and don’t continue to rejigger themselves, that’s highly possible but I find it highly not possible that the stopping point is at anything like the world we have now. We haven’t reached any of the limits of, we’re still making big strides in understanding the brain which I think means that we’re eventually going to understand consciousness and computation and an information-based universe and we’re not at the limits of the worst laws in any of its form.

We will hit the limits of Moore’s Law in some of its forms within the next ten or fifteen years that we will probably be stymied when it comes to, you can’t go smaller than atoms for instance as information storage device or you may be can if you go quantum but still you’re going to run into some fairly daunting physical limits in terms of miniaturization for that aspect of Moore’s Law, but even so we’re still, there will be ways to dance around the limitations of the various Moore’s laws and.

We’re nowhere near having the computational power that we’ll have when we do start hitting those fairly hard limits. So we’re going to be rejigged. How long the rejiggering goes on it is an open question but let’s say that we have a future of celebrating the change that will go for thousands of years at least.

So you can, some people speculate about a future of inside a Dyson’s sphere which is a completely built out solar system where all the planets have been dismantled and turned into the shell that rides or surrounds a star to absorb all the rate of solar heat the solar radiation are using computation and then releases it as wasting and that maybe some, probably won’t be what happens because we’re trying to imagine the future from a very ignorant point in time but I can imagine that there will be a fairly built out completely built out future sometimes thousands of years in the future that may be stable for a long time. But I don’t think we reach that point for many, many, for at least several tens of centuries. That’s it.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-16

Ask A Genius 324 – The Feynman Thing (1)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/10/18

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: That Feynman thing that he said in a speech about the future of science which there are three possible futures.

Science figures out everything within or almost everything within a reasonably short time frame say a few centuries or number two science continues to make steady progress, never gets to the point where it gives us an understanding of everything, we learn more and more but it turns out that you can’t understand everything or three science it’s the law and we reached we reached the limit of what can be understood via science which equals what can be understood period and your question postulate a number three situation that turns out that you have a limited ability to understand and gain power over creation.

And so that we rise to a certain level of technology and then we stay there and for as much of the future as we can imagine and that could be a thing, much science fiction takes place in that world because it’s easier to imagine like things space opera which is a casual term for Star Wars is the best-known space.

Opera, it’s human civilization as we know it now extended to cover a big chunk of the galaxy, but it’s humans being humans but on a larger spatial and temporal scale, but what humans want the forms humans to have the forms other species have are all basically human and humans do what they’ve always done which is fight wars, build civilizations they just do it on a bunch of planets instead of just one and that’s what you get, maybe you don’t even get that because Star Wars depends on faster than light travel you can’t have an empire if you can’t travel faster than light because the time required just makes it completely undoable but I don’t think that’s what will happen I think we have enough of an understanding of the potential of future technology to know that at the very least, the lives that we’re living now will be completely transformed.

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2022-04-16

Ask A Genius 323 – Mating Strategies (3)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/10/17

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: But there will always be a novelty. It won’t signify much. You know, fashion exists to perpetuate itself via novelty. Sometimes it reflects a something maybe important about the culture, the way that fashion has shifted to allow for heavier people, the way that body consciousness in fashion has shifted in America and the rest of the world over the past 20 years to accommodate people who are on average much heavier than they were in the ‘70s.

But you know, fashion is fashion. It shifts around to give people an excuse to buy new stuff. And I’ve read arguments that say that trends in fashion have been replaced by an omnivorousness in fashion where anything that worked in the past can now be, you know, seen as fashion now, that somebody could dress as they dressed 20, 25 years ago, walk down the street without drawing any attention because we now live in an era of anythingness.

It may be due to increased, just you know, just increased information, that if you can see all of the fashion, all of the history of fashion laid out in front of you just by clicking around on the internet, then there’s less, you know, era-wise or now wise enforcement of fashion rules, because people have more information.

Similarly, in terms of competing for mates, there may be more of an anything goes because people have more information. And more access to all sorts of different people via social media. So you asked… who’s going to be successful in the future at sexual—at attracting mates?

One new, I don’t know if it’s new, but it certainly, more important now than in the past, is people who accept all body types. People don’t apply rigorously, the rigorous physical standards of sexual attractiveness of the past will do well now and into the future in which you know, we’re growing more accepting of people as they are now. That is the… when I was growing up, might get in the weeds here but… you know, not that—throughout most of the 20^th century, there were severe constraints on who was allowed to have sex.

Married people were allowed to have sex. People who took themselves out of the realm of social approval, of course, could have sex, which meant like prostitutes. There was a huge prostitution culture in the US in the first half of the 20^th century. But beyond that, people weren’t supposed to have sex.

You had to, I mean there were times when people had sex, like World War II, standards were—nobody, it wasn’t overt, standards weren’t overtly low, sexual prohibitions weren’t overtly lowered but people, you know, about to go off to maybe die, yeah, there was a lot of people hooking up before they went off to battle and such.

There was still urgency. But there were still huge prohibitions on sex outside of wedlock. Now that you know, most of that is eroded. And eroding along with that are standards about who’s attractive. Rigid standards of sexual fitness. And people who are able to see the beauty in everyone are going to—and who want to have sex with people are going to be offered greater opportunities.

That’s about it.

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2022-04-16

Ask A Genius 322 – Mating Strategies (2)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/10/16

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What niches in the future will be exaggerated, as some niches are more exaggerated now?

Rick Rosner: You mean what niches will be—what niches—what roles will offer certain people chances of sexual success the way the job role offered people success for 100 years?

Jacobsen: Yes, also the characteristics or factors that comprise them. For instance, the modern LA version of the big booty with the Kardashians, for example.

Rosner: Well, I mean, I can tell you with regard to fashion, which is not to say body styles, but if you look at the history of fashion, some new part of the body is always being revealed or emphasized. In the ‘80s, leg holes kept getting higher and higher.

Instead of going straight across, at the lower thigh, they kept creeping upward until eventually, you had thongs, so more and more of the upper thigh and butt was revealed. In various times in history, we’ve had side boob eras.

So yeah, we right now are in an era that emphasizes the butt. So we can assume that trends in what we reveal about what we focus on in the body will continue to—there will be, the parts of the body that we focus on will continue to change. There won’t always be the emphasis on a single body part that we have now.

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2022-04-16

Ask A Genius 321 – Mating Strategies (1)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/10/15

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: I think that what you see in terms of partnership choices in the future may reflect mating strategies. When you have… today and for the past few decades, when you have unusual mating arrangements, like people in a three-way mating arrangement or a four-way. It’s, it’s sensational, it’s something you’d say on—goodbye.

It’s something you’d see in an HBO like sex documentary. It’s seen as fascinating or titillating. But in the future, I think differing you know, mating arrangements other than two people closely bonded for a period of time will become more common. Partially because it’s… there’s more support for you know, alternate lifestyles, due to increased information via the internet and social media. Increased tolerance. And to say increased tolerance…

And these, the gender fluidity was something that was you know, largely unheard of a decade or two ago. That person could change their minds about who they are sexual. I think, well, just people didn’t know that that was a thing and to the extent that they did know it was a thing was like, like an oh come on thing, really, how much more are we going to have to deal with in terms of new, like, genders or gender orientations.

And as time goes on, people will grow to be more at home than just with tolerant attitudes. Expansive attitudes. But in terms of mate selection, alternate or non-traditional partners—nontraditional joining of people may in itself be a sexual… a strategy to, maybe a sexual strategy that you know, in relationships where a woman is in love with more than one guy or is in love with a woman and a guy.

A guy is in love with two women. Those things may turn out to be, for some people, ways to have relationships where perhaps one or more of the people in the relationship felt closed out of partnerships in the past. Either due to personal preferences or due to just not being able to find a niche to be successful in, not being able to find a way to be sexually successful.

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2022-04-16

Ask A Genius 320 – Markets, Mothers, and Climate Change (6)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/10/14

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Also there are pushes to do two things that build on the worst aspects of faith, religious faith. One, an attempt at reversion to literalist interpretation propped up. You can name many in your country. Another one is the use of non-literalist metaphor, allegorical interpretations of religious scripture… that just happen to align with the political and social… interests of far-Right wing ideological movements.

Rick Rosner: Yeah there is a log segment of the population on both sides; though I would tend to think it is more on the right… that have less and less… well… more and more excuse un-ethical behavior of their segment of society. They arm themselves with miss-information about what their opponents are doing, and this miss-information presents the opponents as so evil that… this type of aggressive Trump voting Christian thinks that whatever they do in being assholes is excused because their enemy is so horrible.

Jacobsen: Like the… you can build conditionals that have a whole host of premises in them. If you are pro-choice then you are a baby killer, as well as I do there a huge number of premises that are shoved into their heads through continual marketing campaigns.

Rosner: So there are two things going on that have created this. One is… right wind media, for the most part, clever right wing branding, which the Democrats never thought they needed to engage in because of democrats always a naively think that the facts will win out and common sense will win out. Jerry Mandering… super polarised both in people holding elective office and in the population. The more polarised we are, the more each side demonizes the other. The next major chance we get to reduce… Jerry Mandering based polarisation is in 2020, the US has a census every 10 years ending in zero. Congressional districts are supposed to be redrawn based on the results of each census. The Republicans kicked ass in 2010, they manipulated the district redrawing to fuck over the Democrats… the last seven years of politics have been especially retched largely because of the Republicans winning the redistricting battle of 2010. Which the Democrats didn’t even really know they were fighting. But, the Democrats will know, they do know that they need to do better in 2020. We may get… every few months a redistricting case… or a lawsuit makes it to a higher court and… we may get better district in 2020. Or a 5:4 Supreme Court may say fuck you to redistricting… but we got a shot in 2020.

Jacobsen: That’s all good.

Rosner: Except me may accept buying a duplex up near you in Canada.

Jacobsen: I look forward to seeing ya.

Rosner: Okay, you can scout out properties.

Jacobsen: They are not that expensive depending on what you get. If I was… let’s say… I’m an engaged dude, baby, on the way… so I am thinking two and a half on the way. 1500 bucks for a decent place. For a one-room place for a single person, like a bachelor suite can be from 650 to 1050.

Rosner: You can’t do anything in L.A for that. Might be able to live in somebody’s garage. I have known people to do that. Anyway, what you are looking for is a duplex where they had a drug deal that died and wasn’t found for about a month so the smell is not good. That is usually the best bargain. Based on an urban legend on a Corvette that’s for sale for $300.

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2022-04-16

Ask A Genius 319 – Markets, Mothers, and Climate Change (5)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/10/13

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So… bell curves of smartness and dumbness…

Rick Rosner: It’s like smoking.

Jacobsen: Acceptance of climate change… are moving further and further apart in terms of the level of overlappingness?

Rosner: Yeah I mean… nobody is a complete… nobody would deny that smoking is bad for you now.

Jacobsen: Camel might disagree.

Rosner: Well nobody without and economic interest. But even those guys admit it. You have to be like pretty much a schmuck to still be smoking.

Jacobsen: Evil to be pushing it on people. Remember, the United States Agencies pushed it on demographics that were not smoking in particular. Pregnant women were a targeted demographic.

Rosner: I didn’t know that.

Jacobsen: That is a huge crime. Same way…

Rosner: The people who committed that crime are all dead now. Half of them probably from smoking.

Jacobsen: Quite likely. As well as a targeted campaigns in a field called the psychology of nagging where… there was a demographic that was not buying things… that demographic being children; so if you can’t get kids to buy things because they have no money, and you can’t target ads to them… directly, what you can do is target ads to them to get to the parents indirectly, to nag the parents so that the kids will nag parents to buy things for those kids. That is a crime less severe but… insidious as well in terms of… hurting the morals of the country.

Rosner: Yeah well I remember being taught how to resist advertising in elementary school. They taught us the different forms of advertising. I think that is one more thing that has been squeezed out of the curriculum… along with art and music and P.E. There is just not enough money to teach anybody anything anymore.

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2022-04-16

Ask A Genius 318 – Markets, Mothers, and Climate Change (4)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/10/12

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is the main source of the inability to make sustainable changes in that state?

Rick Rosner: Well one thing is that L.A is where people go to make their dreams of a life in entertainment and other fields… come true. Southern California has been a dream destination; a place to go to re-invent yourself… for 100 years and more. It is where the Oakies were. It is a nice place; the climate is nice when it is not 110. It’s… L.A is full of famous people which is exciting and the chance that you might get famous yourself. It is socially liberal which… for most people are nice. Especially if you are someone who has moved to re-invent him or herself. L.A is a really great place to live, except for trying to get from one place to another. I have been here since ’89 and… I have seen L.A go from where you can expect to get to anywhere within 30 minutes to where you can expect to get anywhere within an hour and a half if you are clever.

Jacobsen: Another part of this conversation before taping; was the haze around where I live in British Columbia because of the fires up North of British Columbia… Canada… running down and making things quite warm and… actually having air quality warnings for… quote… not doing strenuous activity, unquote. We have… issues here too, but they are related to climate change. Climate change or global warming is a consistent issue which…America has a huge responsibility globally to make some very drastic, sustainable transitions… in the next few years or decade or two.

Rosner: Well one thing is becoming increasingly clear; that is if you are still denying climate change, you are more and more of an idiot. There is some point in history where you might have been able to make reasonable arguments that climate change was not a big deal. But that point was maybe ten years ago, and the window for not being an idiot has closed. If you are still arguing that it doesn’t exist and that there is no reason to get so worked up over it… then yeah, you are a stone schmuck.

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2022-04-16

Ask A Genius 317 – Markets, Mothers, and Climate Change (3)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/10/11

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: Same yesterday. A couple of weeks ago it was up over 110 for a few days. Yeah statistically you might expect to get days like that every few years, but… if it is an every few year thing. The most famous freeway in L.A is probably the 405. I believe it is six lanes in each direction now.

You just… you can’t add any more lanes. Adding more lanes, by the time you add the lane; because it takes a year… traffic has to expand to fill the lane so it is as miserable as it was before. I try not to drive the 405 at all, but I was in a traffic jam; I have been consistently in traffic jams on a 9pm on a Sunday evening.

The best place to live, the most desirable place to live is the west side; Santa Monica, Venice… but if you have to get from the west side to… places where production goes on if you are in the entertainment industry, like Sony… I don’t know, Warner Brothers… your commute… well my wife gets up at 4.45am to be on the road by 6.30am… because then she will have a chance of the stretch of the 405 being okay. But if the temperature keeps being nasty… if there are water wars, because there is a limited supply of water and it is going to get worse and worse across the southwestern states.

Everybody feeds off the Colorado River, which is insufficient. If commutes keep getting worse and worse… I don’t think the entertainment industry people are going to want to make L.A their headquarters indefinitely. I was thinking 50 years from now; L.A will not be the entertainment capital. It will move north to maybe Silicone valley… maybe Seattle, maybe Vancouver. A lot of productions are up in Vancouver now but that’s an economic thing as much as anything else. It is not because the temperatures are cooler but… 50 years might be optimistic. L.A might start turning more and more to shit… within 20 years.

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2022-04-16

Ask A Genius 316 – Markets, Mothers, and Climate Change (2)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/10/10

[Beginning of recorded material]

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-16

Ask A Genius 315 – Markets, Mothers, and Climate Change (1)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/10/09

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We were talking off tape about housing markets, your mother in law, and climate change.

Rick Rosner: Yeah sorry, my wife is helping her mom sell her house, to pay for her care in senior living. Which means the mortgages are paid off and everything there will be a chunk of capital that needs to be invested… to pay for her mom’s care for the rest of her life. One of the possibilities we are looking at is… buying a duplex or something in L.A. Getting the rent from the duplex to help pay for Carol’s mom.

I have started to be a little scared about buying L.A real estate, even though we are in the middle of a housing shortage. Because… I don’t know how long L.A will be an attractive city. My wife and I are in our 50’s. So we may end up owning the investment property 20 years from now when we are old and retired and… I don’t know if L.A will still be a cool city to live in 20 years from now. Because of congestion and because of climate change where… I know that there are… you can’t tell on a day to day basis, you can’t tell the difference between statistical fluctuation and temperature, and long-term changes in overall climate. But this summer has been brutal, it was like 106 today.

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2022-04-16

Ask A Genius 314 – Constructivist and Essentialist Consciousness (8)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/10/08

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: But it’s in terms of how much of that happens per thought it’s going to be much less than in an essentialist universe because the constructivist universe can handle more than one thought with its current structure, which means that perhaps the time scale for thoughts versus the apparent age of the universe. you can cram in a bunch of thoughts within the apparent age of the universe just based on different parts of the universe lighting up so the time scale of thought if the universe is thinking is knocked down from say forty billion years per thought to I don’t know, four billion years per thought you know, a billion years. I don’t know it’s knocked way down because you can I don’t know a hundred million years because the existing structure can ninety-nine percent handle changes of thought because it’s what parts of it are lighting up in an existing flexible and changing structure rather than the whole structure having to be replaced.

Maybe, you can cram in a bunch of thoughts within the apparent age of the universe just based on different parts of the universe lighting up so the time scale of thought if the universe is thinking is knocked down from say forty billion years per thought to I don’t know, four billion years per thought you know, a billion years. I don’t know it’s knocked way down because you can I don’t know a hundred million years because the existing structure can ninety-nine percent handle changes of thought because it’s what parts of it are lighting up in an existing flexible and changing structure rather than the whole structure has to be replaced.

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2022-04-16

Ask A Genius 313 – Constructivist and Essentialist Consciousness (7)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/10/07

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: So you don’t have to replace the entire active universe with a whole other active universe to change your mind to have a new thought instead most of the universe can hang around and just be lit up in a different pattern and yeah you’ll have a long-term changes to the structure of the universe if there are the aspects of the universe that just aren’t used much those or don’t interact much those are going to, relative to the rest of the universe again are going to collapse and be pushed to the side.

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2022-04-16

Ask A Genius 312 – Constructivist and Essentialist Consciousness (6)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/10/06

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: We’ve thought that this requires an entire reshuffling of the contents of the universe. That the current active universe, all its contents are pushed to the side and then other parts of the universe that have been sitting on the sidelines rotate in to constitute the new thought, and so it means then in the wider universe if the universe is actually thinking what I thought might take twenty or thirty or fifty billion years for the action of the universe to play out for galaxies and then for stars to form and for them to go through their life cycles and then for the galaxies to burn out and then to fall away to be replaced by new active galaxies expressing a new thought.

But that’s an essentialist structure that you have these parts of the universe that embodied the thought and then they have to each be shunted aside for the new parts of the new thought. But under a constructivist construction, the various parts of the universe don’t individually, like each galaxy or each star or whatever, embody some module that is a self-contained representation or expression or whatever of a concept or an emotion or whatever you want but the contents of the by-products of information processing are manifested in combinations of neurons or stellar galactic structures for flying that metaphor of the universe as a whole.

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2022-04-16

Ask A Genius 311 – Constructivist and Essentialist Consciousness (5)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/10/05

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: Language is your brain picking out the right words for a situation or formulating a sentence and this whole thing is this constructivist versus the essentialist, the essentialist is that you run it just as a lot of plug-in modules that can be turned on and off. There’s the mad module; there’s the melancholy module; there’s the module for the concept or the word orange and those things just get flipped on or off.

That seems like a more primitive an idea of how thought works and one that is seems to be being contradicted increasingly the more we find out so this has implications for our theory informational cosmology, which I’ve been thinking of it in an essentialist way that if the state of the universe if we have a little universe and are based on if we each have a little universe or informational universe based on the information being processed in our heads and if the wider universe is processing things in a conscious way that each thought requires its own spatial set up and for a thought to change for you to go from thinking one thing to thinking another like you’re driving down the street and you’re thinking about dinner and then some a hole like cut you off in traffic your thinking is going to change almost entirely.

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2022-04-16

Ask A Genius 310 – Constructivist and Essentialist Consciousness (4)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/10/04

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: So, its groups of you know big ass groups of neurons in complicated patterns of connectivity, somebody did some kind of study on the patterns of such kind of activity and discover that those patterns were best expressed in like eleven dimensional space, which is a goofy idea or a goofy way to say that the patterns of connectivity are widely varied that if you looked at every club say that a neuron belong to they would be a bunch of really different clubs you know there’d be a furry club and there’d be aerial acrobatics club and there’d be a fungus toenails club because they’d be all over the place and that it’s only in combination that you get sophisticated mental products, thoughts, emotions.

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2022-04-16

Ask A Genius 309 – Constructivist and Essentialist Consciousness (3)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/10/03

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: So, it’s big ass groups of neurons in complicated patterns of connectivity, somebody did some kind of study on the patterns of such kind of activity and discover that those patterns were best expressed in like eleven dimensional space, which is a goofy idea or a goofy way to say that the patterns of connectivity are widely varied that if you looked at every club say that a neuron belong to they would be a bunch of really different clubs you know there’d be a furry club and there’d be aerial acrobatics club and there’d be a fungus toenails club because they’d be all over the place and that it’s only in combination that you get sophisticated mental products, thoughts, emotions.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-16

Ask A Genius 308 – Constructivist and Essentialist Consciousness (2)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/10/02

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: But it looks like products of mental information processing of cognition are expressed or are constituted by patterns of neurons firing which is the constructivist point of view or that there’s not like a particular node for everything that you think or every particular you know ability you have or every emotion you have the just turns on or off that it’s instead of that you know mental products of any degree of sophistication are constituted by the simultaneous or near simultaneous firing of groups of neurons with each neuron being able to participate in a number of different groups, so it’s not the individual neurons turning on and off.

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2022-04-16

Ask A Genius 307 – Constructivist and Essentialist Consciousness (1)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/10/01

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We’re talking about the constructivist form of thought versus the essentialist form of thought; both are theories to describe the general structure in there for the outcome of human thought. What are your own thoughts on this based on based on the conversation you had?

Rick Rosner: First off, what is the background? Which is you know a month or two ago I read a book, How Emotions are Made by Lisa Feldman Barrett, which, she’s a neuroscientist, and she seems to – she went crazy with the book. She got has like three hundred sources.

She seems to know the state of neuroscience with regard to how thoughts are formed, which still isn’t saying that we know a lot because I mean we know a gazillion times more than we knew ten or twenty years ago, but it’s still an incomplete kind of thing.

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2022-04-16

Ask A Genius 306 – Los Angeles Collapse

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/30

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I wanted to talk about the collapse of Los Angeles. What’s going on?

Rick Rosner: Well, I know all the stupid climate change deniers can say you know and talk about there is a difference between weather and climate which means there’s a difference between. Specific random weather events and the overall climate but they usually make that argument like, like about Harvey, you know Harvey could have happened any time but Harvey really couldn’t have happened at any time because Harvey is a product of well random chance plus the Gulf of Mexico being the temperature of a frickin bathtub and the hotter the water the more the water can be sucked up into the atmosphere to be dumped on land by a hurricane or other storm so the specific storm Harvey is a random occurrence that could have happened in any year but the amount of water dumped on Texas, some number of trillions of gallons of water is in part due to actual written global warming undeniably so unless you’re an idiot for.

In L.A. this week in the valleys it’s been like one hundred and ten every day. When I go out I, being unemployed I usually tweet all day and then I go to the gym at night and when I go to the gym it’s been between ninety-five and ninety-nine degrees at eight to ten o’clock at night which is just brutal and yeah you could argue well that’s just the heat wave and it could have happened any year but it’s going to happen more often under the climate change regime. I found an app a few years ago where you can click on all the cities or many of the cities in the world to see how much the average temperature is already gone up over historical averages in the modern era and for most cities it’s like four degrees and that’s not all climate change just some of it is you know there’s a lot of concrete that creates, that traps more heat, asphalt you know but it’s an undeniable increase which leads me to the conclusion that Los Angeles will sometime in the next fifty years collapse.

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2022-04-16

Ask A Genius 305 – Science Faction and Fiction (2)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/29

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: One of the things going on that are amenable to short stories or the inadequately captured. I mean aren’t adequately capture the grand scale transformation have life in the context of 200 years. The cyberpunk which started in the 80’s flourished in the 90’s is a captured of what life is starting to resemble now. Not only now is a lot of cyber, there is a lot of the sensibility being into movies as part of our vocabulary. But as I said we don’t yet have a vocabulary of the dismantling of consciousness. We have metaphors for it child ads from the 50^th but the other (unclear 3:46) I kind of remember it well but it kind of present the idea of this dismantling of humanity. Once it has reached a certain level of development. And it’s no longer needed now is the next level has arisen. There is another story from the 50’s is the nine million names of gods which were the purpose of humanity is to come up with all possible names of God and once we’ve done that go out of existence. But I nobody that I’ve seen as weakens out of the normal human existence or the long-stated into the weirdness that we’re going to run into. Between 50 you know starting 20, 30 years from the next few centuries. Okay, I don’t sure there are short stories that have tried to capture the narrative point of view of the consciousness distributed across three or four or five people.

But not well you can see that you have a shared consciousness. That means the way it plays out narratively is a bunch of his five different voices playing out in the single awareness movie inside out. Which you have five characters each embodying an emotion of one person. So I assume over the next 10 or 20 years we’ll begin to develop a vocabulary of alternate forms of consciousness that will anticipate some of the changes that are coming. But not a lot of no! Not a lot of science fiction is doing that right now there you go.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-16

Ask A Genius 304 – Science Faction and Fiction (1)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/28

Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: All right, so what isn’t going to happen in science fiction. So we’re not all going to Mars well people may colonize Mars. That’s a multi-century project to terraform Mars and not that many people are going live on to go on trips to explore for Alpha Centauri, which is four light years away which you know so getting there will take 20, 30, 40 years. Even if the holding (unclear 00:41) but by the time it takes to colonize Mars or the 2000 expedition of the Centauri the earth is going to be wildly transforming. So, which is as we were saying earlier just not captured by much science fiction where science fiction goes things for a sense of wonder and scale. You know exciting there’s a ones of the things are superheroes scales in some science fiction and there are science fiction is one of the might be the most, might be the genre as in the most active in terms of having three short stories. Which you could explore a single idea or single feeling. So, it takes advantages short form but the future is not short form.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-16

Ask A Genius 303 – Sensory Systems and Consciousness (2)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/27

[Beginning of recorded material]

Rick Rosner: And it’s not the best argument but it’s you know just a little dinky argument that eyes are such an efficient funnel of outside information into the brain, they take what’s going on the outside and accumulate you know all this information via photons and then you have efficient processors, it’s a super smooth flow of visual information from the outside to the inside.

Ditto for most of our senses and foremost of our lives you know ears are pretty smooth and you could argue that, that the hearing is a much more kind of it’s a harder to construct kind of canyon. You can imagine that might be harder to construct a world of sound than a world of light because light you know it comes in discrete photon packages. There’s a lot of you know that you have to process the patterns formed by these photons but the photons themselves are you know pretty sharply, informationally sharp and then but hearing you know processing sound, I don’t know well involves stage involve different issues and they’re in there aren’t there aren’t you know sound particles.

You have to take vibrations which might be Messier and turned them into signals but any in each case I you get really smooth processing from the outside to you’re to your experience. And I believe that argues for if eyes and ears are so slick, then you know it argues for a similar slickness, as a consequence of hundreds of millions of years of evolution for our understanding of visual and auditory information. And as a further step our conscious understanding of it.

You know you first you’ve got the outside information then you have the prod then you have the receiving of that the processing of it in such a way that it delivers a reasonably accurate picture of the world, and you can still have all three of those steps without having consciousness. You know you can have an electric eye that still needs those same kind of signals it’s not conscious, but the smoothness of every step leading up to consciousness argues that consciousness is itself a slick and mechanical property of information processing in the little brain.

So I guess it’ proof through slickness but the various steps in information processing all work really nicely, which argues for consciousness being a further really nice, highly evolved, technically slick, a further step of the processes sensory and information processes.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-16

Ask A Genius 302 – Sensory Systems and Consciousness (1)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/26

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Off tape in the past, we’ve talked about sensory apparatuses, which is indicating you know consciousness. What do you mean by that?

Rick Rosner: Well all right before we get to that let’s talk about the eyes. People have always been well the eyes are a big deal to people, you know the eyes were to all of history what the but is now just a focus of human interest. And you know they’re the windows to the soul, t it’s often the key you know for an actor that you know whether you know you can people think they can tell whether somebody’s smart or not by looking telling the truth or not looking into their eyes, there’s just a lot of information there. And they’re used by both of them, by evolutionists and creationists to make their points. Creationists argue that the eyes are so perfect that they had to be created, they couldn’t have evolved. And then evolutionists are like look how many freaking times throughout the history of evolution that eyes have evolved? And I mean they evolved like crazy I don’t know how much different along how many different lineages and how many different forms eyes have evolved but it has to be my own pushing a dozen? Where eyes are there’s an easy path, an easy evolutionary path to eyes in every step along the way from having no eyes whatsoever to having eyes is helpful to the organism that’s taking each step. You know sensitivity to light some kind of eye spot but really that does nothing lens or anything it just it feels the intensity of light that’s helpful and then every little incremental improvement is helpful to the organism, that has that incremental you know advantage over others of its type.

And apparently based on the history of evolution there is there are mutations that allow this to happen just eyes are I don’t think we can call the easy evolve but they are a frequent evolve unlike say wheels, wheels almost never evolve. And even though you can imagine that a wheeled organism you know might have significant advantages in certain environments or not who knows. But there’s an – I’d like to use eyes and other sensory apparatus to just make the quick case for technical consciousness.

[End of recorded material]

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2022-04-16

This Week in Canadian Religion 2018-07-08

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/07/08

“U.S. President Donald Trump’s envoy to Canada told guests at her cosier-than-usual Fourth of July party in Ottawa on Wednesday night that the countries’ strained relationship will overcome the tough times.

Ambassador Kelly Craft delivered the message with the U.S. and Canada locked in an unprecedented trade dispute.

She made the acknowledgment to hundreds of partygoers, who listened as they sipped cocktails and ate shrimp on the sweeping front lawn of her official residence.

“Canada and the United States have an enduring partnership that I am confident will stand the test of time – and believe me, these are testing times,” Craft told the crowd, which experienced attendees of the annual gathering described as far smaller than past years.

Craft, who was hosting her first Fourth of July party as ambassador, also quoted former U.S. president Thomas Jefferson in her remarks to drive home her message.

“I have never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy as a cause for withdrawing from a friend,” she said.”

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-jagmeet-singh-among-those-boycotting-ottawa-fourth-of-july-party/.

“Canada’s Supreme Court recently decided to deny accreditation to a top university’s proposed law school simply because its beliefs on sexuality and marriage were too conservative for Canadian culture. Trinity Western University’s “Community Covenant” holds all students to the standard of sex within marriage, which it defines as between one man and one woman.

Canada’s decision should serve as a cautionary tale to Americans. Fortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court’s 7-2 decision in Masterpiece Cakeshop reaffirmed what it had said in Obergefell v. Hodges, that belief in one-man, one-woman marriage is based upon “decent and honorable” premises, and clarified that it is a “protected view and in some instances (a) protected form of expression.”

Congress should now act to ensure that American schools will never face the kind of religious discrimination to which Canada has subjected Trinity Western.”

Source: http://www.insidesources.com/cautionary-sex-religion-decision-canada/.

“Canada’s Supreme Court recently ruled 7-2 against Trinity Western University, prioritizing sexual orientation over the free exercise of religion. This ruling should serve as a warning flag to U.S. citizens.

Canada was only nine years ahead of the United States in redefining marriage. If the U.S. does not change direction, we could follow in Canada’s footsteps, sacrificing religious liberty for faux-equality and faux-diversity.

Trinity Western University, in Langley, British Columbia, is a Christian university that hoped to establish a Christian law program. The Law Society of British Columbia refused to grant Trinity Western accreditation, claiming that the university’s community covenant agreement discriminates against LGBT students.

The covenant establishes a Christian community that abstains from violence, acknowledges the inherent worth of every person, prohibits cheating, and bans alcohol. The offending clause in this case is Section 4, titled “Healthy Sexuality.”È

Source: https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/07/03/canadas-supreme-court-relegates-religious-beliefs-to-second-tier-status-america-be-warned/.

“Freedom of religion is guaranteed to all Canadians in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Charter has taken two major blows recently – one from a policy change implemented by the federal government, the second from the Supreme Court of Canada.

The first blow came when the government announced that any group wishing to apply for Canada Summer Jobs grants had to pledge to follow the Liberal Party’s official policy on a woman’s freedom of choice with respect to abortion.

The second blow came with the Supreme Court’s decision in the Trinity Western University law school case. It ruled allow provincial law societies could override religious choices made by candidates who freely chose to abide by the religious principles of certain Christian law schools, as a condition of entry.

Abortion is, and always has been, a sensitive topic for governments and courts. Most modern and democratic countries have resolved the complex topic by allowing unrestricted freedom of choice to a pregnant woman during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. Thereafter, there are restrictions.”

Source: https://troymedia.com/2018/07/04/freedom-religion-disappearing-canada/.

“July 9, 2018 – It is arguably one of the most challenging life transitions people can experience: leaving your home country for an unknown new land, working to establish yourself financially, socially and professionally, in many cases, without the support of pre-existing family networks.

A comprehensive public opinion study of new Canadian – a partnership between the Angus Reid Institute and Cardus – suggests immigrants often seek and find help, both temporal and spiritual, from Canadian religious communities. These communities are evidently integral in new Canadians’ journeys into their new lives in this country.

Half of Canadians who were born outside of Canada (49%) say they received material support from faith based communities in Canada, including help finding a job or learning a language.”

Source: http://angusreid.org/faith-canada-immigration/.

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2022-04-16

Minor Case: The Use of Religion to Berate, Bludgeon, and Bombard Everyone Else

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/07/04

The Des Moines Register talked about a woman who was raised as a Lutheran from a first-person perspective.

The woman, Kimberly Glassman, pointed to a slippery slope argument of some of the Conservatives. She characterized the argument in the following terms, “If people can love and marry people of their same sex, then there’s nothing to stop them from demanding the right to love and marry their parakeets or their microwave ovens.”

She does not agree with this argument. Glassman argued the slipperiest slopes come with (fundamentalist) religion. The example being the Supreme Court in the United States with the interpretation of religion and the phrase “sincere and meaningful belief.”

The belief does not have to incorporate a Deity, some ultimate existent thing. Since the idea is a sincere and meaningful belief without the need for a Supreme Being, Glassman notes that this is not even needing to be in the scope of the First Amendment in terms of the gathering together of a bunch of like-minded individuals.

Then these people can get a bunch of superb tax breaks and protections against the social and cultural milieu’s criticism.

Glass queries, “Don’t want to get your children vaccinated? Declare a sincerely held belief. Don’t want to bake a wedding cake for two women? Trot out your abiding faith in a just and loving — of some people — God. Don’t want to uphold your Hippocratic oath if the patient doesn’t conform to your view of right and normal? Get Congress to pass a law protecting your appalling lack of ethics or simple humanity as a ‘religious freedom.’”

She further notes that this does not have to include the Bible or the Quran, or a Theity, but, rather, simply needs to include religion.

She relates the idea of White supremacists who remain a “clear and present danger” to American society. Glassman imagines seeing people flying a Nazi flag while walking down the flag.

“If I were to see one walking down the street flying the Nazi flag, would I be within my First Amendment rights to hit him with my car? Probably not. What if I were an EMT and my ambulance came upon him bleeding in the street? Could I refuse to administer medical assistance or carry him to the hospital?”

She asks these great questions. Glassman does this to illustrate the absurd privilege of religion above other systems and categories in the United States to exemplify the undue deference to religion.

Glassman continued, “Your sincerely held belief might be that left-handedness is the mark of Satan. After all, only about 10 percent of the population is left-handed. It is clearly not ‘normal,’” she said.

What about the banning of the scissors for the left-handed and the blacklisting of the switching sides baseball players when at the plate to bat. There could be the denial of jobs and housing to those who are left-handed and why not. I would be a faith-based initiative and religious freedom issue.

Why is religious freedom a valid excuse for bigotry and denial of the fundamental rights of others?

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2022-04-16

The Danger of India for Women and the Implementation of Women’s Rights

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/07/04

According to CNN, India has become, or maybe remains, the single most dangerous nation on the face of the Earth for women.

This is based on a survey reported on by relevant experts. The Thomson Reuters Foundation produced a survey of 550 experts on women’s issues, which found India as the most dangerous for women in a number of particular areas.

For one, the sexual violence domains, where women are the vast majority of the victims around the world. Another area is in human trafficking for sexual slavery. That is mostly women and girls too.

The other areas are for domestic work, forced labor, and then forced marriage. Each disproportionately women and girls who tend not to have any or if they do few rights in the international scene.

There were other areas in the research domains. One was the look into the dangers for women regarding the cultural traditions that impact women in a negative way and, of course, disproportionately.

There were a number of unique, almost, to women areas including acid attacks against them, female genital mutilation, infibulation, clitoridectomy, child marriage and then physical abuse.

These are the contexts for women and girls, which are, for the most part completely different than the concerns for the men and boys in the world and in particular in India, which is one of the most populous nations in the entire world.

Thus, the concern is amplified based on the number of women in the country being subjected to these brutal, harsh, and unjust conditions. It moved up from fourth to first place in terms of danger for women regarding the comparison between the survey from seven years ago.

Nine of the ten countries with the worst conditions for women were in Asia and the Middle East and Africa. Interestingly, number ten in the world was the United States of America coming in at 10th place.

It is the only country from the West where this is the case. The Thomson Reuters Foundation claimed this was the reason for being a catalyst country for the #MeToo movement.

The top ten countries are as follows:

1. India

2. Afghanistan

3. Syria

4. Somalia

5. Saudi Arabia

6. Pakistan

7. Democratic Republic of Congo

8. Yemen

9. Nigeria

10. United States

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2022-04-16

The Babu Gogineni Case

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/07/04

According to The News Minute, a case has been filed against Babu Gogineni for hurting religious sentiments.

Many rationalists and humanists have expressed solidarity with Gogineni. He is known as a human rights activist. The activists showing solidarity condemn the actions using the police by religious fundamentalists to silence critics.

The article stated, “Members of the South Asian Humanist Association, Science for Society, Jana Vignana Vedika and Indian Humanists held a joint press meet at the press club in Somajiguda, where lawyers representing Babu were present. Film critic and actor Mahesh Kathi was also present.”

Gogineni got taken by police, recently, because of accusations against him of both sedition and the hurting of religious sentiments, and some other charges.

“The petitioner, Veera Narayana Chowdary, claimed that his religious sentiments were hurt after watching Babu’s earlier speeches, which prompted him to file the case,” the article continued.

Gogineni and others believe that he has the rights of freedom of expression. The lawyers for him believe that this case will not stand in court. However, this may set a precedent or example, along with others, to silence any critics of the fundamentalist religious authorities.

One lawyer said, “The police which is investigating the case will come to a conclusion on how many charges will stand after scrutiny and how many will not, following which they will approach the court.”

This is a crucial time for Gogineni because the attack came when he could not defend himself. Some view this as an attack on Gogineni as well as a larger attack on humanism and rationalism in the early 21st century.

The president of the Lakshman Reddy, Jana Chaitanya Vedika, reported that he has known Gogineni for a long time and has worked with him around the world. The work has been focused on human rights and humanism.

They spoke together at many villages against superstitions and, indeed, their negative consequences on communities. With this form of attack by police, this becomes an attack on the larger freethinking community.

Gogineni’s allies came to the Cyderabad Police Commissioner VC Sajjanar and with a representation submitted to him. Sajjanar stated that he would look closely at the case.

“The lawyers present also explained that the petitioner, Veera Narayana Chowdary, had filed a private complaint in court, following which the police were ordered to look into the allegations,” the article stated, “As it was a court order, the police first registered a case and then began investigation. The police also informed that the petitioner was yet to submit his evidence to them.”

The full listing of the charges are as follows:

The case was registered under Sections 121 (waging, or attempting to wage war, or abetting waging of war, against the Government of India), 124a (sedition), 153a (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion), 153b (imputations, assertions prejudicial to national integration), 292 (obscenity), 293 (sale, etc, of obscene objects to young person), 295-A (deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs), 406 (criminal breach of trust), 420 (cheating), 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace) and 505 (statements conducing public mischief) of the Indian Penal Code.

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2022-04-16

This Week in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms 2018-07-01

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/07/01

“MONTREAL — Quebec’s law banning people from covering their faces when receiving or giving a public service cannot enter into force until it goes through judicial review because of the irreparable harm it will cause Muslim women, a judge ruled Thursday.It is the second time since December a Quebec judge has suspended the controversial section of the province’s religious neutrality law, which is being challenged in court by a national Muslim group and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.

Khalid Elgazzar, Vice-Chair of the National Council of Canadian Muslims, said the ruling by Quebec Superior Court Justice Marc-Andre Blanchard was “very strongly worded.”

“It points out that (at first glance) the law violates the freedoms guaranteed by the Quebec and Canadian charters. In essence, it’s confirmation (the law) is a bad solution to a made-up problem,” Elgazzar said.

Section 10 of Quebec’s law on religious neutrality, passed in October 2017, forces everyone to show their faces when receiving or giving a public service.”

Source: http://lfpress.com/news/politics/quebec-judge-once-again-suspends-application-of-provinces-face-covering-law/wcm/0c8d61a8-e396-46d4-bccb-60b17f4f7ef3.

“I am writing in response to self-proclaimed activist Amy von Stackelberg’s recent column regarding an article I had written expressing my disappointment about the Liberal government’s decision to add a values test the Canada Summer Jobs Program.

While Ms. von Stackelberg is incorrect on multiple fronts in her response, what I take issue with is that she ignores the fact that this ultimately is about our fundamental freedoms as Canadians.

The right to freedom of belief and opinion is guaranteed by Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms and I, along with my Conservative colleagues, strongly believe that Canadians should be very concerned that the government is basing funding decisions on whether or not you hold a certain belief.

My Conservative colleagues and I are not the only ones that have these concerns. In fact, Liberal MP Scott Simms, NDP MP David Christopherson and Green Party Leader Elizabeth May have all publicly spoken out against the attestation.”

Source: http://www.alaskahighwaynews.ca/opinion/letters/mps-of-all-stripes-concerned-with-summer-jobs-value-test-1.23350728.

“On June 15 the Supreme Court of Canada approved the refusal by two law societies to accredit graduates of a proposed law school at Trinity Western University (TWU) in British Columbia. Students and faculty at the private evangelical Christian school are required to sign a “community covenant agreement,” pledging to “voluntarily abstain” from “sexual intimacy that violates the sacredness of marriage between a man and a woman.” Violations of the covenant can result in suspension or expulsion.

The law societies in Ontario and British Columbia condemned the covenant as discriminatory and denied future TWU graduates automatic access to the licensing process. The majority at the Supreme Court held that the denials limited religious freedom, but the limitation was both minimal and reasonable. (Law Society of British Columbia v. Trinity Western University2018 SCC 32; Trinity Western University v. Law Society of Upper Canada 2018 SCC 33. This article only refers to the B.C. case, which sets out the various analyses in detail.)

Public discussion has framed TWU as a clash between s. 2(a) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees freedom of conscience and religion, and the equality rights of LGBTQ individuals. While that is certainly part of the story, the Supreme Court rulings in this case reveal a more nuanced debate over the scope of religious freedom.”

Source: https://www.thelawyersdaily.ca/articles/6810/trinity-western-case-a-nuanced-look-at-scope-of-religious-freedom-heather-macivor.

“This Liberal federal government is hardly liberal when it comes to reforming criminal justice.

The most significant change to our criminal justice system has not come from the Liberal government, but from the Supreme Court of Canada. The Jordan decision significantly enhanced the right of the accused to a trial within a reasonable delay and called out the culture of complacency plaguing our criminal justice system.

Many Jordan-driven initiatives, however, display a one-dimensional obsession with clearing cases.

Jordan has required a fundamental re-evaluation of criminal justice in Canada and a consideration of some basic questions:

First, what conduct merits being labelled “criminal”’ and justifies allocation of the significant public resources to prosecute and sanction such conduct?”

Source: http://montrealgazette.com/opinion/opinion-liberal-record-on-criminal-law-reform-is-deeply-disappointing.

“A judge has dismissed a family’s request to keep their daughter on life support after she was declared clinically brain dead last year, ruling that individual values cannot interfere with medical findings.

Taquisha McKitty’s parents had argued their daughter’s Christian faith defines death as the cessation of the heartbeat, and that doctors should have to take people’s beliefs into account before declaring them dead.

Doctors had ruled 27-year-old McKitty “dead by neurological criteria” on Sept. 20, 2017, one week after she was found unconscious on a Brampton, Ont. sidewalk, suffering from a drug overdose.

Ontario Superior Court Justice Lucille Shaw ruled against the family in a written decision issued Tuesday.

“The medical determination of death cannot be subject to an individual’s values and beliefs,” Shaw wrote. “Death â¦ is a finding of fact. To import subjectivity to the definition of death would result in a lack of objectivity, certainty and clarity.””

Source: https://nationalpost.com/pmn/news-pmn/canada-news-pmn/judge-rejects-familys-request-to-keep-daughter-on-life-support.

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2022-04-16

This Week in Canadian Science 2018-07-01

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/07/01

“OTTAWA — Any changes to Canada’s laws on pollution and toxic chemicals will likely not be made until after the next federal election. Environment Minister Catherine McKenna responded Friday to 87 recommendations made by the House of Commons environment committee a year ago on how to overhaul the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, which governs the protection of human and environmental health through things such as chemical management and air pollution strategies.

In a letter to the committee, McKenna says the government agrees with the intent of most of the recommendations, but that the legislative agenda just can’t accommodate another new bill right now.

She says the government is “committed to introducing a bill to reform (the act) as soon as possible in a future Parliament” and will in the meantime consult widely on exactly how to update the legislation.

That likely means there won’t be any changes to how Canada manages toxic chemicals and air pollution until after the next election, which is scheduled for October 2019.”

Source: https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/feds-still-mulling-over-making-a-healthy-environment-a-right-in-canada-1.3994250.

“There are parallels between the twin crises of immigration and tariffs currently being pushed by the American president. In both cases, Donald Trump’s modus operandi is to project toughness and strength without really having thought through the potential policy implications. The impact of the child separation tactic to punish refugee claimants has seemed to backfire in the eyes of most, but there is little evidence that the president has been chastened by this experience apart from complaining about the unfairness of the media coverage.

Likewise his application of tariffs, initially on steel and aluminum but with threats of possibly more to come, is the act of someone who has given more thought to theatrical optics, than how the action might play out in practice. Despite the president’s proclamation that “trade wars are good” and “easy to win”, the vast majority of economists would suggest that everyone becomes a loser in this exercise.

Those sympathetic to the president have rationalized that the tariffs are merely a bargaining tactic to win concessions from trading partners, just like the separation of children from their refugee parents was a tactic to deter them from coming to America. Unfortunately for Mr. Trump things haven’t really worked out that way.

If those migrating from violent dysfunctional Central American countries like Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador are sufficiently desperate and fearful for their survival, they will go to whatever ends are necessary. Likewise America’s important trading partners cannot allow themselves to be seen cowering in the face of Trump’s bullying tactics. Indeed if Justin Trudeau and other western leaders did choose to appease the American president, he might very well double down and make further demands. This has already been suggested by the additional threat of an automobile tariff.”

Source: https://www.thespec.com/opinion-story/8702696-to-win-in-the-long-run-canada-must-make-some-concessions-to-trump/.

“The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, is set to receive a significant helping hand from Canada as it undergoes major performance-boosting upgrades.

Federal science minister Kirsty Duncanannounced Monday that the Canadian government will invest $10 million towards building new particle accelerator components for the machine, with Canada’s own particle accelerator centre, TRIUMF, chipping in with a $2 million in-kind contribution.

Built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) as part of a massive international collaboration, the Large Hadron Collider is designed to answer fundamental questions of physics.

It does this by smashing together sub-atomic particles at close to the speed of light, enabling scientists to explore the existence of particles predicted by physics theories, discover new particles and even create micro black holes to uncover parallel universes and unexplored dimensions.”

Source: https://globalnews.ca/news/4296179/large-hadron-collider-cern-cryomodule-canada/.

“EDINBURGH, Scotland, June 28, 2018 /CNW/ – Strong scientific collaboration leads to discoveries and innovations that help solve global challenges and create well-paying jobs for the middle class. The governments of Canada and the United Kingdom have a long history of collaboration, and nowhere is this stronger or more important than in science and research.

The Honourable Kirsty Duncan, Minister of Science and Minister of Sport and Persons with Disabilities, is in London and Edinburgh this week to build on and strengthen Canada’s research and innovation relationship with the United Kingdom.

Minister Duncan met her U.K. counterpart Sam Gyimah, the Minister of State for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation, to promote Canada as a top choice for international science and research collaboration opportunities.

She discussed best practices to strengthen coordination in research in her meetings with UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and with Sir Paul Nurse, Director and CEO of the Francis Crick Institute, who formerly led a major review of government-funded science in his country.

She also met with Dr. Patrick Vallance, the UK Government Chief Scientific Adviser, to learn more about Britain’snetwork of departmental scientific advisers.”

Source: https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/reaching-across-borders-to-strengthen-science-in-canada-and-around-the-world-686809101.html.

“Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak might not be so fantastical after all.

A team of researchers in Montreal claims to have successfully rendered an object invisible to broadband light, using a new technique dubbed, “spectral cloaking.”

Jose Azana, who co-authored a study on the findings, says the technique could have a wide range of security applications, including masking fibre-optic transmissions and making objects invisible to the naked eye.

The experiment was conducted using fibre optic cable, laser light and a target object at the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS) in Montreal.”

Source: https://globalnews.ca/news/4302166/invisibility-cloak-technology/.

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2022-04-16

This Week in Canadian Religion 2018-07-01

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/07/01

“In 1982, Dominion Day officially slipped into history, when an almost empty parliament acknowledged a change that was already in common parlance: that the first of July is Canada Day.Yet Canada Day could benefit from a revival of our national holiday’s original civic purpose. Amid suggestions the national celebrations in Ottawa have come adrift—with Maclean’s own Paul Wells telling Canadians to stay home—why not reinvigorate Canada Day as a celebration of the Canadian union?

Dominion Day retains some historic resonance not just because of mere nostalgia, nor because of its alliterative quality, but because the Dominion for so long embodied the idea of Canadian union. The 1867 constitution speaks of a “Union” of the provinces—and “Dominion” was the name that embodied that union.

When the Fathers of Confederation met in London in 1866, there was literally no name or rank for the new Confederation. We might have been the Kingdom of Canada, or the United Provinces of Canada; both were given serious consideration. But in the end, the provinces formed “One Dominion under the Name of Canada.”

The suggestion of Dominion was all-Canadian, from Samuel Tilley of New Brunswick, inspired by a beautiful phrase in the Book of Psalms: “He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth.”

Today, the physical achievements of Canadian unionism are our most obvious inheritance from the old Dominion—union from sea to sea to sea, from Cape Spear to Vancouver Island, to Ellesmere in the high Arctic. From the streamliner cars of transcontinental trains, to the polished steel letterboxes of the Canada Mail, to the sombre monuments of our wars, artifacts of the Dominion of Canada abound.”

Source: https://www.macleans.ca/opinion/on-canada-day-celebrate-the-spirit-of-dominion/.

“A statement from the Prime Minister Of Canada, Justin Trudeau.

The Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, today issued the following statement on Canada Day:

“Happy Canada Day! No matter where we are, today, as Canadians, we celebrate Canada and the people who have built the country we love.

We’re 37 million – strong in our differences, proud of our diversity, and united by our dreams. From one generation to the next, Canadians have brought our country’s promise to life, with hard work, bold vision, and determination.

They’ve grown the strong middle class at the heart of our success – and today, Canada’s workers are the backbone of our country. “Canada’s workers build the roads and bridges that get us to work on time and back home again. They put food on the table for families from coast to coast to coast. Some are young people starting their career, or newcomers bringing fresh talent to the workforce.”

Source: https://saultonline.com/2018/07/happy-canada-day-from-the-prime-minister/.

“OTTAWA — An Ontario business says it will take the Liberal government to court over the conditions attached to the federal Canada Summer Jobs program, arguing they violate freedom of speech.

Tamara Jansen, spokeswoman for a newly formed group called Free To Do Business Canada, says a number of other companies are also expected to challenge the government’s controversial attestation requirement.

She said Sarnia Concrete Products Ltd., was the first to challenge the requirement in Federal Court as part of her initiative.

Organizations that applied for funding under the program were required to attest that both the job and the organization’s core mandate respect individual human rights, including reproductive rights and the values underlying the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The core mandate means the primary activities undertaken by the organization.””

Source: https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/small-business-taking-ottawa-to-court-over-canada-summer-jobs-controversy-1.3989744.

“Two former leaders of a fundamentalist religious sect in Canada were sentenced this week to house arrest and probation following their nearly unprecedented convictions on polygamy charges, according to multiple news outlets.

Between them, the men had 29 wives and more than 160 children, France’s AFP reports.

Winston Blackmore and James Oler were each found guilty in British Columbia last July of one count of polygamy, according to the Associated Press. Blackmore has 149 kids, the Canadian Press reports.

On Tuesday Blackmore, 61, was sentenced to a six-month conditional sentence served under house arrest and then a year of probation, the Canadian Press reports. Oler, 54, was ordered to serve a three-months conditional sentence, also under house arrest, followed by a year-long probation.”

Source: https://people.com/crime/canadian-polygamist-leaders-flds-sentenced/.

“The portion of Quebec’s religious neutrality law that dictates when Quebecers must leave their faces uncovered in order to receive public services has been suspended for a second time, only days before it was slated to go into effect.

Quebec Superior Court Justice Marc-André Blanchard issued the ruling Thursday, handing another victory to civil liberties groups that argue the law discriminates against Muslim women who wear niqab s or burkas.

Blanchard said Section 10, which pertains to face coverings, appears to be “a violation” of the Canadian and Quebec charters, which “provide for freedom of conscience and religion.””

Source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-bill-62-face-covering-july1-1.4724863.

“Winston Blackmore and James Oler were sentenced to six and three months of house arrest, respectively, the lawyer said. They were convicted on one count of polygamy each last July.

Both men are former bishops of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints, a breakaway Mormon sect within Bountiful, a religious community in southeastern British Columbia.

Blackmore’s defense lawyer, Blair Suffredine, said he thought the sentence was “a little higher” than he had hoped it would be but “not dramatically unreasonable.”

Suffredine said that Justice Sherry Anne Donegan “found it aggravating” that Blackmore continued practicing polygamy after 2011, when the British Columbia Supreme Court decided to uphold Canada’s laws prohibiting polygamy.

Suffredine said his client found himself in a dilemma between abandoning his large family and continuing to break the law.

Oler was not represented by a lawyer.”

Source: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-canada-court-polygamy/canada-polygamy-sect-leaders-sentenced-to-house-arrest-idUSKBN1JM2YW.

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2022-04-16

This Week in Canadian Politics 2018-07-01

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/07/01

“Canada is levying sanctions against seven senior Myanmar military officials over their involvement in the violence and persecution that has forced more than 720,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee Myanmar.

Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland announced the economic sanctions in a statement Monday, marking Canada’s latest response to what has been described as ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya minority group. The sanctions impose asset freezes on and prohibit Canadians from doing business with seven senior military officials involved in the violent crackdown on the Rohingya people in Myanmar’s Rakhine state last August.

“Canada and the international community cannot be silent. This is ethnic cleansing. These are crimes against humanity,” Ms. Freeland said.

The most recent violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine state began in August, 2017, after Rohingya insurgents attacked police posts and an army base. Myanmar’s military responded with a violent crackdown, triggering an exodus of Rohingya to neighbouring Bangladesh.”

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-canada-levies-sanctions-against-seven-myanmar-military-leaders/.

“Facebook Canada has hired independent fact-checkers to vet news content and blog postings on its platform as concerns continue to grow over the dissemination of false and misleading information on social media.

Still suffering from a controversy over the misuse of its users’ data, Facebook has called upon Agence France-Presse (AFP) to pro-actively evaluate news stories in Canada for accuracy and to respond to complaints from users about fake news. To be unveiled on Wednesday, the third-party fact checking will run at least until after the next federal election in Oct., 2019, while covering news on upcoming votes in Quebec, New Brunswick and Alberta.

The announcement comes amid an ongoing debate in Canadian politics about the quality of information disseminated on social-media platforms.”

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-facebook-canada-contracts-independent-fact-checkers-to-combat-fake/.

“Canada needs to stand its ground in its ongoing tariff fight with the United States, witnesses from steel companies, manufacturers and the steelworkers union warned MPs Tuesday as President Donald Trump continued to hint there could be more hurt to come.

A parade of expert witnesses at a special meeting of the House of Commons committee on international trade expressed solidarity with Canada’s array of retaliatory tariffs, slated to take effect Sunday, as they urged Ottawa to take steps to protect and support affected companies and workers.

“We support the countermeasures announced by the federal government and believe that they must be comprehensive and immediate,” said Ken Neumann, the United Steelworkers union’s Canadian director.

And he waved off the notion that Canada should avoid provoking Trump.

“If you don’t poke the bear, he’s going to eat your lunch,” Neumann said.”

Source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trade-committee-tariffs-1.4721999.

“Apparently there’s no such thing as a ceasefire in a trade war, even on Canada Day.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made sure to weave in a mention of Canada’s steel and aluminum industries along with the usual Canada Day pleasantries during his annual statement to Canadians.

Beyond marking our country’s 151st birthday, Sunday is the day that Canada’s $16.6 billion worth of retaliatory tariffs on U.S. products came into effect.

A number of U.S. steel products now face a tariff of 25 per cent, while a vast array of aluminum products will now cost Canadian importers 10 per cent more.

Canada’s measures come a month after the Trump administration imposed its own tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum, citing national security concerns.”

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-tariffs-canada-day-1.4730323.

“Two days before Canada’s retaliatory tariffs against U.S. steel, aluminum and some consumer goods are set to take effect, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke with U.S. President Donald Trump by phone explaining Canada had no choice but to act.

According to a readout of the call provided by the Prime Minister’s Office, Trudeau began the conversation by expressing his condolences for the victims of the mass shooting at an Annapolis, Maryland, newspaper before going on to talk about trade.

“As he has said in past conversations and in public,” the readout said. “The Prime Minister conveyed that Canada has had no choice but to announce reciprocal countermeasures to the steel and aluminum tariffs that the United States imposed on June 1, 2018.”

Trudeau also spoke by phone with President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico. Trudeau updated the president on Canada’s tariffs on U.S. imports, according to the readout, which also said the two leaders discussed “the North American Free Trade negotiations and agreed to continue working toward a mutually beneficial outcome.””

Source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/tariff-list-freeland-1.4727886.

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2022-04-16

Interview with Shif Gadamsetti – Former President, SAMRU; Support Staff, Calgary Communities Against Sexual Abuse

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/30

Shif Gadamsetti is the Former President of the Students’ Association of Mount Royal University, Support Staff for the Calgary Communities Against Sexual Abuse, Former Chair of the Board of the Canadian Alliance of Students’ Associations and a Member of its Alumni Council. Here we look into her life, work, and views.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What was family background regarding geography, culture, language, and religion?

Shif Gadamsetti: I was raised by both my parents, people I would consider traditional Christians, and quite involved with the church during my upbringing. We regularly attended Sunday service, and I was actively involved in my teen years through the youth group, outreach, teaching Sunday School and with the church’s worship team. My family immigrated to Canada from India in 2001, and settled in Calgary almost immediately. There was a certain gap in terms of finding cultural community to bridge with once we had moved. We only had one extended family in the city, and our primary social network was through the church, which did not have a significantly diverse cultural congregation at the time.

Jacobsen: How did this influence you? Did this impact the professional trajectory as a kid growing into a young woman?

Gadamsetti: I had often sought out positions of leadership throughout my youth, and I believe that I learned a lot from seeking leadership opportunities through my church. It allowed me to be socially involved with peers my own age, as my parents were quite restrictive and traditional, likely influenced by their position as immigrants. It was a safe place for them to allow me to integrate with Canadian culture while still maintaining engagement with our religious roots.

Jacobsen: As a nurse who works in the operating theatre or operating room, what tasks and responsibilities come with this position?

Gadamsetti: I work with an interdisciplinary team – we always have at least one other nurse, an anesthesiologist, a surgeon, and other physicians, who either assist or residents that participate in our surgical cases. My responsibilities include a pre-operative assessment, including looking for any potential risks that could compromise the surgery – these range from substance use, underlying health conditions, something as simple as the patient ingesting food or drink prior to the surgery (which could complicate their intubation and present a choking hazard if they were to vomit), etc. During these cases, I either “circulate” ( the nurse who is not sterile) and assist the surgeon and scrub nurse with opening tools, maintaining sterility, documentation, and monitoring of supplies needed during the case. If I am scrubbing in on the case, my primary role is to assist the surgeon with their procedure, which can range from anticipating their needs, positioning, preparing tools such as sutures or drills to be used, and tracking any of the materials used to ensure that we maintain the integrity of the procedure and don’t accidentally leave something in a patient, for example.

Jacobsen: What is the motivation to work for women’s rights through the Calgary Communities Against Sexual Abuse organization as a support staff?

Gadamsetti: I have always been interested in learning more and supporting areas of gender-based barriers, and violence. I personally am very motivated in this position because sexual violence is a nuanced issue, and there is much that goes into understanding why sexual violence is perpetuated (often long-standing histories including lack of education, ancillary mental health and relationship issues, etc), and how to best support victims of sexualized violence. There is so much that broader communities don’t understand, it is often considered a taboo topic, communities feel unequipped to have conversations that wholly support the victim, and the work is difficult – not everyone is cut out to handle such matters, which I do not fault them for. There’s a very difficult way to gauge my responsibilities – a “good” day includes having a collaborative team, a client that feels supported, autonomous, and well managed for both the social and administrative work that goes into processing a case, but its never really a good day because my clients have been victims of sexual assault. Someday, I hope to involve myself in broader-based approaches to sexual violence prevention and support, including policy development and education, but I also know that I need to understand where our clients come from and what they need. I’ve learned so much and challenged many assumptions, despite how much work I’ve put into understanding the issue, and I’m very grateful to have the opportunity.

Jacobsen: As the president at the Students’ Association of Mount Royal University (SAMRU), what are the benefits and difficulties of the work there?

Gadamsetti: I am now completed my term as President with SAMRU, but I would vouch for the endless possibilities that come with the role. It’s an incredible honor to be elected and serve students to represent their best interests, the experience with leadership, management, and so many other valuable skills is never-ending, and the connections you build with other student leaders and people across your networks are ones that last a lifetime. A lot of us would agree that we have a common vision and work so hard to achieve those results through internal and external advocacy. I learned a lot about myself and what I was capable of throughout my time there.

Jacobsen: What tend to be the issues for women on postsecondary campuses in Canada? What is being done to help solve them?

Gadamsetti: I wouldn’t want to generalize – but perhaps, the ones that most students face are common across women as well – financial precarity, employment, etc. I would, however, point out that the common issues amongst students are exacerbated by gender-based barriers – sexualized violence can sometimes be a prevalent issue amongst women on campus for a variety of reasons – lack of education around consent in an environment where young people are discovering and establishing boundaries, lack of institutional policy and supports available to help those who experience it, a lack of consent culture, perpetuation of toxic behaviours that develop into patterns that are harder to address when they become systemic or cultural. There’s also the insidious types of issues that women face – increased violence and risk to their safety, those who are marginalized amongst their different intersectional identities, be it race, sexuality, etc, are often the most unsupported. Employment trends continue to show gender-based barriers in their patterns, and addressing these issues culturally can also take a long time. Any root problem that sees women as less qualified, less equal, subservient, will perpetuate patterns of discrimination and violence, including sexualized violence.

I believe that institutions need to become bolder and take hard-line stances on the matter, while demonstrating their commitment to resolving these issues with comprehensive policies that support all students’ safety, regardless of how these opportunities might seem risky to the institution’s reputation. The largest barrier to addressing sexualized violence on campus in the past 10 years has been the inability for those in leadership to admit there’s a problem, admit they are part of the problem, and rally behind an overhauling of support systems. Culture is important – when a zero tolerance stance without allowing loopholes or technicalities to exist is implemented, those perpetuating violence might think twice, and evaluate their own behavior before choosing to victimize someone in that way. At the same time, being transparent about problems and choosing to address issues by prioritizing victims over the institution as a whole would complement the approach well. It takes a community to implement real change, and once that change occurs, institutions need to ensure that proper support systems are in place for those seeking help and are continually funded, aren’t tokenized, and can meaningfully support the community long-term. It really does require a multifaceted approach.

Jacobsen: If a senior in high school or a first-year woman student in postsecondary education wants to become involved in student politics, how can they start? Who should they contact? What should they bear in mind about the potential responsibilities that they will be taking on?

Gadamsetti: The best place to start is likely your own students’ association. It’s a great place to learn more about what your interests might be as you transition to university, meet new people, find the niche spaces you feel comfortable in, and familiarize yourself with student politics, and the “politics” of the institution as well. Student association spaces have always provided me with great insight into what students care about, need, celebrate, and champion. I started getting involved with my faculty club, and branched out to others that suited my interests. You might not be interested in running for a position as a student executive after it’s all said and done, but I guarantee you that it will enrich and support your university experience like no other.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Shif.

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2022-04-16

The Shift in the Canadian Oil and Gas Industry

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/28

According to Hellenic Shipping News Worldwide, there is an ongoing shift in the business of Canadian oil and gas if the national industry wants to remain competitive.

A report released by PetroLMI of Energy Safety Canada described the need for new skills for the upcoming jobs in the international competition of the oil and gas industry. The future seems more inclined towards green energy and renewable ones.

Until then, “A Workforce in Transition: Oil and Gas Skills of the Future” talked about the shift in skills and occupations within the Canadian industrial work base in the energy sector.

Both federal and provincial governments have been proposing a series of changes to regulation with integration or adoption of the automation and data analytics technologies coming online.

When I worked in a Learning Analytics Research Group, the research remained based in education and the improvement in student performance. Some incorporated the new technology and software tools found in narrow artificial intelligence developed with machine learning and neural networks models.

Automation tied to these programs could improve various inefficiencies at different levels of process, of operations. Into the future, especially with the price and energy production performance of enewables outpacing standard hydrocarbon – or 20th century – energy sources, I would like to see these new technologies applied to make the full transition to renewables.

Even if nuclear, and if a breakdown, we would talk about half-lives of tens of thousands of years, which amounts to new forms of waste and pollution to people around the world only as far back as the 19th century.

There are new manufacturing technologies for oil and gas now, though. With the shifts in the extant economy here, the Vice President of Communications and PetroLMI for Energy Safety Canada, Carol Howes, stated, “This report examines where the exciting opportunities lie for new and interesting careers, and those occupations that will be on the decline, if not eliminated, because of these changes to the oil and gas business.”

I agree with Howes. However, the scope seems to narrow. The decline and potential elimination will be much of the oil and gas industry in the medium and long-term projections. People shifting into these new oil and gas jobs should predict the need to retrain and switch once more out of the oil and gas industry even if climate change is not a concern for them and only narrow economic self-interest is the concern, which is valid.

The jobs not associated with oil and gas will be more linked to the oil and gas industry in the near future.

As the reportage stated, “Occupations not traditionally considered oil and gas jobs will be more in demand – those such as data management and analytics specialists, instrumentation technologists and software engineers. Increasing numbers of natural science professionals and environmental service workers will also be required.”

There will be a dual-skillset necessary to compete in the global oil and gas industry. First, the need for mechanical skills and then also the digital skills associated with those new technologies and especially the analytics.

The article continued, “New government regulations governing major energy project approvals will require a greater need for expertise in Indigenous traditional knowledge, public health specialists, biologists and economic development specialists, says the report.”

All important and complex facets of the emergence of new transitional industries. The need for public support becomes more important as the risks become better known by a wider range of people, more citizens.

Wth the climate strategy from the federal, provincial, and territorial governments, there will be work for the reduction of carbon dioxide and methane emissions. That will translate into needed jobs for the “

Meanwhile, communications and consulting abilities will be heavily relied on to earn and maintain public support for these projects “measurement, mitigation and reporting” about them.

There will be the incremnetal increase of photovoltaic, wind, geothermal, and other energy technologies as the economies of the developed world especially and the rest of the world eventually transition into renewable energy markets.

“The adoption of automation and data analytics technologies is already improving Canada’s oil and gas industry’s productivity, safety and profitability,” the article stated, “As a greater number of tasks are automated, however, more of the workforce will need to be digitally literate as well as more innovative and creative in looking for productivity improvements.”

With more analytics in the market, rhe more data scientists will be needed. In that, we should be training these individuals in increasing numbers, now, especially in oil and gas powerhouses such as the province of Alberta.

At the same time, we should start to work on the training for the upcoming and ongoing employment of alternative energy sources in the newer economies and industries of, for example, renewable resources.

Howe concluded, “With all of this change comes both challenges and exciting opportunities for Canadians working in the oil and gas industry and for those who are looking to become part of it,” said Howes, “Like other industries, the oil and gas industry is adapting and evolving and its workforce will need to do so also.”

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2022-04-16

The Proposed Repeal of the Ontario Sexual Education Curriculum

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/27

The Toronto Star reported that the proposed sexual education changes by the Progressive Conservatives would harm kids.

Sexual education mattered to some but not all voters in Ontario. The repeal of the current sexual education curriculum was one of many foci for Doug Ford and his party. Ford won the vote in Ontario.

The reportage stated, “Doug Ford isn’t a particularly religious man of course, but he wants to display his alleged toughness and his links to ‘the people,’ and striking at a curriculum that has been lied about, and held up as a symbol of the elites at their worst, is perfect optics. Bluster and bombast in one well-rehearsed sound bite.”

Charles McVety sent a social media post – a “tweet,” so-called, on Twitter – that said, “Premier Doug Ford Majority Government. Praise God who heard our prayers and delivered victory for the sake of our children.”

Let us leave aside the efficacy of prayer or the existence of God asserted in the tweet, please. The main claim comes from the tacit assertion of the repeal of the current sexual education curriculum helping children rather than harming them. Does this work as a claim?

In short: does the repeal support the best interests of the child?

McVety stood and stands against the modern evidence-based sexual education curriculum in Ontario. He is the President of the Canada Christian College. He was the first guest on the televised leaders’ debate.

“Then there is the former Tory candidate Tanya Granic Allen. She stated last week that, ‘parents expect the repeal of the Wynne sex-ed by September.’ By ‘parents’ she means the small number of hardliners in her organization,” the article opined.

Allen was fired as a Progressive Conservative candidate based on some comments. She was present at the celebration party for Ford.

Also, the National President of Campaign Life Coalition, Jim Hughes, said, “We remain optimistic that Premier Doug Ford will uphold his campaign promises to repeal and replace Kathleen Wynne’s radical sex-ed curriculum as an ‘early priority’ in his administration.”

Others working in opposition to the sxual education curriculum are other pro-life groups including the Roman Catholic Church. Although, the laity and Catholic hierarchs differ in views on the subject of, for example, abortion.

I do not want to misrepresent. Differences exist in those groups opposed to modern evidence-based sexual education curriculum. It seems as if pro-life groups and individuals in authority formed coalitions with the movement for repeal by Ford.

“The infamous clergy sexual abuse crisis within Catholicism, which is still to be fully exposed, was dependent on children being ignorant of sex, unable to name sexual acts, and on the fog of confusion and fear around sexuality that Catholicism has long enforced in its teaching and formation,” the article stated.

The Catholic hierarchs founded, defended, and kept secret the sexual abuse in their own churches, unfortunately. It harmed and harms their image, followers, and claims to full legitimate moral authority on various issues now.

The issue with the removal of the sexual education curriculum in Ontario would not be in the best interests of the child. Why? It removes education for a child. In particular, the move would repeal the knowledge and information for children needed to make informed personal sexual choices, whether they want to or not, and in what ways they deem safe and healthy.

The article continued, “Children deserve better than to be play things in the soiled hands of single-issue fanatics and ill-informed politicians. The curriculum is balanced and appropriate, parents were consulted, groups dealing with abuse and child health contributed, and no single bureaucrat was responsible for it.” [Emphasis added.]

Is it evidence-based rather than faith-based (which, by technical definition, means without evidence)? Yes.

Is it based on consultation with the public? Yes.

Does this mean the health and wellbeing of the kids are ensured and protected? Yes, for the most part, adolescents and kids can still make mistakes, though.

Last question, does this mean the repeal would be non-evidence-based or faith-based, rejecting the implemented consultation of the Ontario public, and reduce the knowledge and capacity for kids to make informed sexual choices (against the best interests of the child)? Yes.

For the best interests of the children, their mental and physical wellbeing associated with sexual health in other words. They deserve a proper, evidence-based sexual education curriculum built in coordination and consultation with relevant parties in the province, which is the current curriculum. To remove or repeal it, it will harm kids; in turn, it will harm families, communities, and a sector of the next generation in Ontario. Those who make these choices knowingly will be the ones to live with the consequences in reality and on their consciences.

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2022-04-16

The World Sikh Organization (WSO) Founding President Speaks on Human Rights

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/26

The World Sikh Organization (WSO) founder spoke about human rights in The Straight.

According to the article, the WSO supports the human rights of all Canadians without regard to any status in life. Gian Singh Sandhu, the founding president, stated that the WSO has taken court cases on behalf of Roman Catholic, Jewish, and Muslim communities.

The WSO worked as an intervenor for the Supreme Court of Canada court case with TWU. Apparently, a convicted terrorist asserted the WSO paid the legal bills for the court case of the terrorist.

The man, Jaspal Atwal, claimed the WSO paid the legal fees. He stated this came following being acquitted for the beating of lawyer Ujjal Dosanjh in 1985. Sandhu made the conter-claim the assertions of Atwal were false.

Sandhu stated, “The WSO never paid his legal fees… I was president of the organization from 1984 to 1989, so I can tell you very clearly we did not pay any of his costs… I have no idea. I have no idea.” (The final portion in response to the claim as to why Atwal would make the claim.)

Even with the allegations against the WSO, or more about the WSO, Sandhu respected the right for Atwal to “tell his side of the story.” However, Sandhu viewed this as not extending to the implication of organizations.

Sandhu has been on record condemning violence. Atwal, in the 1980s, was found guilty of attempted murder of a visiting Punjabi cabinet minister. He earned a 20-year prison sentence for the murder. His parole was 5-and-half years in prison.

Atwal was photographed with Sophie Gregoire-Trudeau in Mumbai; while also, he was on the guest list for a dinner with the Trudeau family at the Canadian High Commission in Delhi. Atwal, for a short time, became a famous Sikh in Canada.

“Trudeau’s national security adviser later told journalists that ‘rogue elements’ within the Indian government disseminated misleading information to discredit Canadian institutions.

Sandhu’s memoir,” The reportage stated, “An Uncommon Road: How Canadian Sikhs Struggled Out of the Fringes and Into the Mainstream, explained in detail how the Sikh community was frequently smeared in the media and by some Conservative politicians in the 1980s and early 1990s.”

The smearing of Sikhs by a sector of Conservative politicians for two decades. Sandhu targeted one important topic of the media. The “emerging motif,” in his words, of the independence of Khalistan and the term “extremist,” as an epithet or invective, merged together: conflated ideas.

Sandhu explained, “Many non-Sikhs seemed to regard support for an independent Sikh nation as a classic ipso facto: ‘If one is for Khalistan, then one is necessarily an extremist,’ a logical fallacy that often went unchecked and inflicted enormous damage on our community and our cause.”

The text emphasizes the tenets of the Sikh faith and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Sandhu supports, in a strong fashion, both the Charter and the tenets of the Sikh faith.

Sandhu concluded, “The charter really tells me what being a Sikh is all about.”

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2022-04-16

UN Special Rapporteur Speaks on Right to Housing in Canada

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/25

The United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur, Leilani Farha, from a housing watchdog from the UN spoke on the federal Liberals’ failures in rights to housing.

The rights to housing remain human rights. Farha sent a letter. The housing strategy did not, according to Farha, recognize the right to housing for Canadians. This comes in the analysis of the 10-year program enshrined in legislation to likely enter into the law.

The program comes to $40-billion. The Globe and Mail article stated, “A Liberal point man on the housing file told the Commons last week that the government didn’t want to declare a right that creates a belief that people can ‘prosecute their way into housing’ and that they need landlords, not lawyers.”

However, Farha viewed the government as discriminatory and patronizing. She continued to note the creation of a rights-based housing strategy without formal enshrinement of housing as a human right cannot be done.

Farha, who also leads Canada Without Poverty, opined, “At a time when human rights are so fragile around the world, with populist governments reacting against the multilateral human rights system, I would think the government of Canada — which stands apart — would do everything it could to embrace human rights… Instead of embracing the recommendation and the right to housing, the government seems to be recoiling from it.”

Jean-Yves Duclos, who is in charge of the initiative and the Social Development Minister, described the plan of the federal Liberals as on to recognize and incrementally found the rights to access to affordable housing for every Canadian citizen.

The Globe and Mail continued, “The Liberals have promised to introduce legislation to make it difficult for any successive government to back out of the plan to help provinces and territories set long-term goals, instead of wondering how much they might receive year by year.”

The purpose of the letter from Farha remains the pressure on the federal government while it works on the bill throughout the summer. This would formulate a federal watchdog as well. One watchdog to monitor the progression of the housing strategy in addition to the identification of problems with housing rights for Canadians.

The frame of housing as a right gives recourse through tribunals.

As explained in the reportage, “Characterizing housing as a human right is meant to provide recourse, usually through tribunals, to anyone wrongfully denied a home for reasons such as ethnicity, religion, or gender identity, and to allow for watchdogs to conduct reviews to remove systemic barriers to housing.”

The Duclos parliamentary secretary on housing, Adam Vaughn, stated, “It’s never been proposed as a charter amendment, or as a court to correct individual grievances… It’s about building a housing system that realizes peoples right (to) housing (through) progressive measures.”

Karen Vecchio, a critic and Conservative, stated that the efforts of the federal Liberal government will not work so well on the various barriers to affordable housing, as a supply concern. The red tape, for instance, prevents builders too much at the municipal level.

Vecchio argues for opened avenues for rental housing or home ownership rather than housing as a right. The NDP, earlier in 2018, failed to have the right to housing placed in the Canadian Bill of Rights.

One housing critic, Sheri Benson, stated, “How are we going to hold a government to account for a 10-year strategy if you don’t really have good legislation… There’s no way the public can hold the government to account if it (the legislation) doesn’t have teeth, if it doesn’t acknowledge that people have a right to housing.”

Farha voted in the confidence of the federal Liberals’ national housing based on the reveal in November 2017. However, this was based on the recognition of the right t housing to be in the legislation as well.

Now, with the letter and the use – even abuse – of the tacit support of Farha by the government when they were questioned on the national housing strategy and the right to housing, Farha “urged the government to stop using her words as a stamp of approval.”

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2022-04-16

This Week in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms 2018-06-24

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/24

“All Canadians have rights, including murderers like Quebec mosque shooter Alexandre Bissonnette, and they also have the capacity to be rehabilitated, the convicted killer’s lawyer argued Wednesday.

The Crown wants Bissonnette to serve a 150-year prison term, but his defence team has countered he should be eligible for parole after 25 years.

After two days of sentencing arguments, the courtroom debate shifted to whether the trial judge should be able to hand Bissonnette consecutive sentences.

Bissonnette, 28, pleaded guilty earlier this year to six charges of first-degree murder and six of attempted murder after he walked into a mosque in the provincial capital in January 2017 and opened fire.

A single first-degree murder conviction carries an automatic life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years.”

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-sentencing-quebec-mosque-city-to-150-years-in-prison-would-deprive-him/.

“Freedom of religion is guaranteed to all Canadians in the Charter of Rights and Freedom. The Charter has taken two major blows recently — one from a recent policy change implemented earlier this year by the Trudeau government, the second from our Supreme Court.

The first blow came when the federal government announced that any group wishing to apply for summer job grants had to sign an agreement that they pledged to follow the Liberal Party’s official policy on a woman’s “freedom of choice” with respect to abortion.

The second blow came with the Supreme Court’s decision in the Trinity Law School case — namely that they would allow provincial Law Societies to override religious choices made by candidates who freely chose to abide by the religious principles of certain Christian law schools, as a condition of entry.

There is no such law in Canada. In fact, there is no law about abortion at all. Our politicians find the issue too difficult to deal with. In spite of the fact that there is no law, Canadian women can obtain abortions relatively easily in the first few months of the pregnancy, but if a woman was able to find a practitioner crazy enough to abort her fetus one day before she was scheduled to give birth, there are no law forbidding it.”

Source: http://winnipegsun.com/opinion/columnists/giesbrecht-freedom-of-religion-disappearing-in-canada.

“Daniel Peacock says this year is tougher for Camp Jordan.

The small Baptist summer camp in Jordan Falls, N.S., has relied on $4,000 in federal grant money to hire a student camp counsellor for the last four years — a job that is invaluable, according to Peacock, a member of the board that oversees the camp.

But this year Camp Jordan, along with at least five other faith-based camps in Nova Scotia, didn’t even bother to apply for the Canada Summer Jobs program. The decision follows the federal government’s controversial move to require all applicants to express support for “individual human rights in Canada” — including reproductive rights and equality of LGBTQ Canadians.

“The government is saying, ‘We’re right and you’re wrong and that’s it. Believe what we believe or don’t bother to apply for money,'” Peacock said. “Our Baptist foundation told us that unless we check the box off, we would be ignored.””

Source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/faith-based-camps-feel-sting-of-trudeau-government-s-summer-jobs-abortion-clause-1.4718335.

“The case against a suspected drug trafficker in Windsor has been thrown out after Judge George King ruled the man’s Charter rights were violated by police.

Today in Windsor Superior Court, King found Brandon Nunn had several of his rights, outlined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, violated by police — determining Nunn had been illegally searched, failed to be informed of his right to counsel and held in detention unlawfully.

Nunn walked free today after being held in custody for more than a year.

Defence lawyer Julie Santarossa says King got it right by throwing out the evidence and the case against Nunn based on the Charter rights violation.

“There are so many that were violated in such egregious ways and ultimately, that’s what the judge found,” says Santarossa.”

Source: https://windsor.ctvnews.ca/suspected-drug-trafficker-walks-after-charter-rights-violated-1.3985880.

“Editor: I would like to comment on the article from June 15 “Supreme Court of Canada rules against TWU in fight over law school.”

Section 15(1) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms lists 10 specific items on which our rights and freedoms are based. They are race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.

If a product or service is being provided to the public, (this would include educational institutions that charge tuition to someone selling coffee and doughnuts) should the provider of that product or service be allowed to request a paying “customer” to sign a waiver that would limit their rights according to section 15(1)?

We’re familiar with the details concerning LGBTQ students who attend TWU. If this is allowed to happen with one particular item listed in section 15(1) what is stopping any of the other items on the list from being used in this manner?”

Source: https://www.langleytimes.com/opinion/letter-all-rights-and-freedoms-under-charter-must-be-protected/.

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2022-04-16

This Week in Canadian Science 2018-06-24

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/24

“OTTAWA, June 20, 2018 /CNW/ – Today, the Honourable Kirsty Duncan, Minister of Science and Minister of Sport and Persons with Disabilities, announced the appointment of Dr. Ingrid J. Pickering as Chair of the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) Board of Directors, the first woman to serve in this position. She will lead the Board for a three-year term, effective immediately.

Dr. Pickering is a professor and Canada Research Chair in Molecular Environmental Science at the University of Saskatchewan. Her research uses synchrotron X-ray techniques to study metals and other elements in biological systems that are important to the environment and human health.

She has experience serving on a number of international advisory panels for synchrotron facilities, making her well suited to lead the CFI and help advance the Government’s Innovation and Skills Plan. Dr. Pickering has previously been a member of the CFI Board, providing the Foundation with advice and strategic direction that enabled it to fulfill its mandate to support world-class research infrastructure at universities, colleges, research hospitals and non-profit research organizations across Canada.”

Source: https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/first-woman-appointed-chair-of-the-canada-foundation-for-innovation-board-of-directors-686037511.html.

“OTTAWA, June 19, 2018 /CNW/ – New technologies have changed the way that we access information, shop, live, socialize and work.

As a result of these changes, our economy has transformed to become increasingly data-driven and critical innovations and unparalleled economic opportunity have been unlocked. At the same time, the digital transformation has brought with it new and uncharted challenges surrounding the changing nature of work, privacy, information and consent.

Digital innovation is essential to growing our economy, attracting investment and creating middle-class jobs for Canadians, but the government recognizes that the potential of a data-driven economy must be balanced against Canadians’ right to have their data and privacy protected.

That is why the Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, has launched a national consultation on digital and data transformation in order to better understand how Canada can drive innovation, prepare Canadians for the future of work, and ensure they have trust and confidence in how their data is used.’

Source: https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/government-of-canada-launches-national-consultations-on-digital-and-data-transformation-685946472.html.

“Dr. Elizabeth Borycki was interested in health informatics long before the science had a name. Now she teaches, researches, consults and publishes on the science of designing, developing and managing digitized health systems, technologies and data. Borycki, a professor with the University of Victoria’s School of Health Information Science, is recognized around the world as a leading health informatics researcher, scholar and innovator.

In 2008, Borycki co-created the first double degree graduate program in Nursing and Health Informatics in Canada. In doing so, she promoted the first nursing-informatics program in our country. Unlike other technology-focused areas of study, the majority of Health Information Science students at UVic are female. “Many of our students are interested in revolutionizing health care using health information technologies designed, developed and implemented to improve patient health,” says Borycki. The School of Health Information Science at UVic is currently educating the largest intake of undergrads in the school’s 36-year history.

Health-information technology is digitizing healthcare. Patients, health professionals and care services are moving online and becoming more accessible. Borycki develops and designs best practices and shares that knowledge with her informatics students, researchers, administrators and policy makers worldwide. That’s one reason the school attracts high interest locally and globally, graduating desirable professionals to forge new advances in settings where health-information technologies are used to improve health care.”

Source: https://www.uvic.ca/news/topics/2018+torch-health-technologies-borycki+news.

“TORONTO, June 20, 2018 /CNW/ – We are pleased to announce the seventh cohort of Schulich Leader Scholarship recipients.

Out of a pool of 350,000 potential candidates, 1,400 students were nominated, of which 50 received this celebrated award.

Of the 50 recipients, 25 are pursuing an engineering degree and 25 are pursuing a science, technology or mathematics degree at our 20 Canadian partner universities.”

Source: https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/50-students-awarded-canadas-largest-undergraduate-scholarship-for-science-technology-engineering-and-math-stem-686049492.html.

“OTTAWA, June 22, 2018 /CNW/ – Canada’s greatest potential can only be realized when all people, including women, are welcomed into the lab, the classroom and the field. That is why the Government of Canada is taking action to improve equity, diversity and inclusion in the research community.

The Honourable Kirsty Duncan, Minister of Science and Minister of Sport and Persons with Disabilities, today announced she will consult students, researchers, academics and others to discuss their views on how to adapt the Athena SWAN (Scientific Women’s Academic Network) initiative for a “made-in-Canada” approach.

Participating in Athena SWAN is part of the Government of Canada’s commitment to promoting equity, diversity and inclusion in research. It is an internationally recognized initiative that celebrates higher education institutions that have implemented practices to advance equity, diversity and inclusion in the sciences.”

Source: https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/minister-of-science-launches-consultations-for-a-made-in-canada-athena-swan-initiative-686299191.html.

“OTTAWA, June 20, 2018 /CNW/ – Today, the Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, and the Honourable Kirsty Duncan, Minister of Science and Minister of Sport and Persons with Disabilities, announced that Iain Stewart has been reappointed as President of National Research Council Canada(NRC).

Mr. Stewart has been serving as President of the NRC since August 24, 2016. Prior to joining the NRC, Mr. Stewart held various leadership positions throughout the public service, notably as Associate Secretary of the Treasury Board and as Assistant Secretary of the International Affairs, Security and Justice Sector at the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat. He also held a number of key science leadership positions at Industry Canada, including Assistant Deputy Minister of the Strategic Policy Sector, Secretary to the panel on Federal Support to Research and Development (known as the “Jenkins panel”), and Associate Assistant Deputy Minister of the Science and Innovation Sector. Outside the public service, Mr. Stewart served as Assistant Vice-President, Research at Dalhousie University and was a member of the NRC Council.

This reappointment will enable Mr. Stewart to build on the results he achieved during his first term as NRC President and continue the work he launched with the NRC Dialogue:

Achieving the promise of Budget 2018 by successfully implementing new funding for research excellence, growing firms to scale, and building collaborations with business and academic partners;
Deepening research excellence by establishing an NRC Chief Science Advisor, developing the next generation of NRC research leaders and encouraging a more diverse NRC;
Revitalizing NRC research facilities through shared approaches with partners; and
Further positioning the NRC as a collaboration partner with business, academia and government.”

Source: https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/iain-stewart-reappointed-as-president-of-national-research-council-686032021.html.

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2022-04-16

This Week in Canadian Religion 2018-06-24

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/24

“WASHINGTON:I recently had an interesting exchange with a Canadian reader who objected to the notion of America regulating its borders. Who took issue with the idea of American Exceptionalism. Who thought America, but not Canada, should erase their borders. That open U.S. border was the only natural outcome for America.

“America is a shithole now and Trump and his cronies & supporters are the reason,” he insisted. “You’re setting human rights back decades to a time when it was great if you were a rich, white male. Religion needs to be abolished from any influence in your government.”

These are universally held notions worth unpacking.”

Source: https://www.commdiginews.com/politics-2/oh-canada-open-u-s-borders-religion-diminish-american-exceptionalism-103717/.

“In 2012, Trinity Western University, a Christian university in Langley, announced its plan to open a law school. The Law Societies of B.C., Ontario and Nova Scotia objected to TWU’s law school because it required its students to sign a covenant that students must restrict sexual relations to those between a man and woman within a lawful marriage.

The three law societies claimed the covenant was discriminatory against the LGBTQ community. Law societies of other provinces and territories had no objections to the covenant.

This conflict pitched the freedom of religion of a Christian university, whose right is written into S.2 of the Charter of Rights, against the rights of the LGBTQ community, whose rights were read into the Charter by the Supreme Court of Canada in 1992.

The Supreme Court faced a dilemma. It had concluded in a 2001 decision in Trinity Western University v. B.C. College of Teachers that if a conflict occurs between rights, there must be a balancing of such rights so as to fully respect the importance of both sets of rights. It concluded in that previous case that TWU graduates were eligible to become teachers.”

Source: http://theprovince.com/opinion/op-ed/gwendolyn-landolt-twu-decision-shows-public-can-no-longer-have-confidence-in-the-impartiality-and-objectivity-of-the-supreme-court-of-canada.

“Last week, the Supreme Court of Canada delivered its decision in Law Society of British Columbia (LSBC) v. Trinity Western University (TWU), a case that, in the context of a public regulatory decision, pitted religious freedom against equality rights.

A majority of the court held that the B.C. Law Society did not violate the university’s freedom of religion in refusing to approve its proposed law program, participation in which required students to sign a covenant not to engage in sexual intimacy outside of marriage between a man and a woman.

This covenant creates discrimination against those who practice homosexuality and, more generally, expresses TWU’s general institutional hostility towards homosexuality and homosexuals.

Graduates of Canadian law school programs qualify for admission to the process through which one can become a lawyer when a law program receives approval from the relevant provincial law society. Law societies are statutory bodies which, among other responsibilities, are mandated to give approval to law programs if satisfied that they provide appropriate professional education.”

Source: http://leaderpost.com/opinion/columnists/religion-homosexuality-and-the-charter.

“The Supreme Court’s decision affirming the right of provincial law societies to refuse to licence graduates of Trinity Western University’s law school is nominally a question of administrative law, but it touches on a more polarizing issue: the contest between traditional religious belief and the right to be free from discrimination.

Decided by a 7-2 majority, the ruling involves four separate reasons for judgment, including two concurrences and a spirited dissent.

This legal smorgasbord has inspired a wide variety of reactions that largely depend on one’s political perspective.”

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/editorials/article-globe-editorial-canadas-top-court-strikes-a-balance-on-religious/.

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2022-04-15

This Week in Canadian Politics 2018-06-24

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/24

“Canadians with disabilities felt a surge of tempered optimism on Wednesday as they watched Canada table its first piece of federal legislation aimed at improving accessibility for people with disabilities.

Disabled residents and advocacy organizations said the introduction of the Accessible Canada Act marked a key step towards greater inclusion and contained several critical points community members had named as priorities during a lengthy cross-country consultation process that helped shape the new bill.

But they also raised concerns about provisions the draft bill appears to lack, such as measures to ensure new accessibility barriers do not work their way into future government laws.

Minister for Sport and Persons with Disabilities Kirsty Duncan, the third person to oversee the legislation in as many years, celebrated the “historic” act as a victory for disabled Canadians.

“We are here because of the disability community and their advocacy for decades,” Duncan told The Canadian Press. “This is the community’s legislation.””

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-federal-government-tables-canadas-first-national-accessibility-law/.

“After the Senate voted to pass a bill legalizing recreational cannabis in Canada, the legislation sparked headlines and social media reaction around the globe.

News of the bill passing made its way onto CNN, Newsweek, and the BBC, to name a few. Most of the international stories chose to compare Canada’s new law to their own and speculate about the possibility of Canada’s rules spreading elsewhere.

While the Washington Post kept it simple with a headline reading “Canada’s Senate votes to legalize marijuana,” Esquire magazine was a tad edgier with “Canada just legalized marijuana throughout the whole damn country.” CBS News had an entire story speculating about the future of legal pot in the U.K., titled “After Canada, will U.K. be next to legalize marijuana?””

Source: https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/canada-s-cannabis-law-makes-headlines-worldwide-1.3981460.

“Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr says he knew almost the moment he heard Kinder Morgan was pressing the pause button on the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion on April 8 that the federal government was likely going to have to buy the whole thing.

Although the final decision to purchase took more than seven weeks of secret negotiations with the company — many of which even Carr was not in on as they were handled by Finance Minister Bill Morneau and a very small team of finance officials — Carr says when he got a phone call in his hotel room during a business trip to New York City he knew what the final outcome was likely to be.

“When that phone call came, I knew that there was a reasonable chance that they would pull out and at the same time there was a possibility Canada would step in,” Carr said.”

Source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/carr-trans-mountain-pipeline-purchase-government-1.4720119.

“Canadian troops started to take up their positions in the world’s most dangerous peacekeeping mission on Sunday, as a dozen Forces members flew into an isolated United Nations’ base to begin work on Canada’s year-long commitment to help bring peace and stability to this strife-riven African nation.

The sun beat down on the tarmac as defence chief Gen. Jonathan Vance led the small contingent out of the Hercules transport plane that had carried them into the country and were met by a German convoy covered in the red dust that seems to be everywhere.

Gen. Vance and the 12-member advance team, whose task will be to lay the groundwork for the eventual arrival of the eight helicopters and 250 military members who comprise Canada’s mission in Mali, were scheduled to arrive the day before.”

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-first-canadian-peacekeepers-arrive-in-mali-as-yearlong-mission-begins/.

The House of Commons erupting into chaos over a pipeline intended to connect Alberta oil to a greater market. Talk of the government subsidizing resource infrastructure. Conservatives throwing barbs over Liberal arrogance. All this should sound familiar to anyone paying even cursory attention to Canadian politics right now, but the pipeline in this scenario isn’t Kinder Morgan’s. It’s TransCanada’s. And this isn’t 2018. It’s 1956.

Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain expansion project is not the first pipeline to divide Canada’s major parties and split its electorate. From May 8 to June 7, 1956, a pipeline ripped Canadian politics apart. Debate over the construction of the TransCanada pipeline resulted in what historian William Kilbourn called “the stormiest episode in Canadian parliamentary history.” The House of Commons devolved into bitterness and viciousness, with the debate hitting such a feverish pitch that it supposedly caused the fatal heart attack of one MP. Some political careers were launched, others were destroyed.

At its heart, the 1956 pipeline debate was a microcosm of the greater economic question that had split Canada since Confederation: nationalism or continentalism? The point of division over TransCanada was not whether the pipeline should be built – the expansion of natural-resource infrastructure was considered an unambiguous good – but whether it should be owned by an American company. The U.S.-owned TransCanada Pipeline Ltd. had apprehensions about building a pipeline across the Canadian Shield, so the Liberal government of Louis St. Laurent, driven largely by “Minister of Everything” C.D. Howe, offered to subsidize its construction. Mr. Howe presented a plan to the House of Commons to lend TransCanada $80-million. Describing the pipeline as a “great national project,” Mr. Howe insisted that lending money to the U.S. firm was the only way to get construction under way that year.”

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-politics-of-pipelines-are-the-politics-of-canadian-sovereignty/.

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2022-04-15

Interview with Carline Klijnman – Editor-in-Chief, Topical Magazine

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/22

Carline Klijnman is the Editor-in-Chief of the upcoming Topical Magazine. Here we talk about personal and professional background and the publication.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You have been involved in journalistic and writing work. What is your story regarding topics of interest and building the relevant interests and skills in journalism and writing?

Carline Klijnman: The key to building relevant interests is keeping abreast of trending topics and ensuring that relevant interpretations are afforded to them. I have always found articles more riveting when a writer is willing to think outside of the box. Indeed, I think that there are too many run-off-the-mill analyses when it comes to exploring prevailing issues in, say, politics. Conversely, and worryingly, unconventional analyses are more often than not typically exclusive to academic circles. This must be changed. I think it’s important that one of the things we do is look beyond the tralatitious circles of discourse and look to, for example, academia. I would say If there’s an article that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it yourself. As for skills in journalism, I have looked to many of my colleagues for advice while learning the necessary skills myself when possible. It’s been a lengthy learning process, and at times very piecemeal, especially when aiming to create articles that are one-of-a-kind.

Jacobsen: You are starting a new project, Topical Magazine. What inspired the name and topics to cover in the magazine?

Klijnman: The name of the magazine was floated by my colleague and founder of the magazine, Benjamin David, who rightly noted that we needed a name that is reflective of the kind of articles we publish. After all, the magazine only publishes pieces that are gripping and are, as our name suggests, topical.
Topical’s talented writers, many being academics, address contemporary themes with a philosophical perspective. Areas covered include culture, lifestyle, science and technology. We decided on this purview given their popularity in most demographics. We want to offer something for everyone. Pieces are fresh, thought-provoking and fundamental to understanding an increasingly changing world.

Jacobsen: Who is the intended audience?

Klijnman: I believe we offer something for everyone. That includes more well-read people and those who only read occasionally. Many publications are incredibly niche in terms of their readership – underpinned by a political or philosophical commitment. Topical Magazine works hard to be as inclusive as possible.

Jacobsen: What kind of articles will be featured on the site when the magazine goes live?

Klijnman: We have some very inviting articles on our site that will appeal to many people. For example, we have a piece on romance that is willing to argue that we need to do away with romantic ideals if we are to delight in the best of relationships while disposing of the oppressive and delusional. We also have exciting pieces on ways in which science can boost our creativity and how technology will transform us all by 2030.

Jacobsen: How can people become involved with the contributions side with editing or writing?

Klijnman: We are always looking to having people join our budding team, especially new writers. We are looking for people who care about science, culture, technology and lifestyle and have what it takes to offer new perspectives in accessible ways. We encourage prospective contributors and editors to contact us via our website here.

Jacobsen: Any final thoughts or feelings in conclusion?

Klijnman: We know readers have become suspicious of the media, and rightly so. Too many platforms have shown themselves short-sighted, failing to deliver the stories you need in the right way.

Topical Magazine aims to give our readers balance and objectivity. We make sure what you read is well-researched, far-sighted and free of subterfuge. Ensuring we have a rigorous vetting procedure, I am convinced our writers are second to none. Moreover, In the coming year Topical will be a game changer. Seminal discussions, such as those in religion and politics, will broaden with unique analyses, and our vision and hard work guarantees our team and areas of focus continue expanding.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Carline.

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2022-04-15

MP Alice Wong Argues Against Supreme Court Decision on TWU

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/20

According to Richmond News, the Richmond Centre MP Alice Wong argued against the Supreme Court of Canada decision on Trinity Western University’s proposed law school.

The recent TWU decision created a landmark decision in the SCC. The decision was 7-2 against the proposed law school. In particular, the decision “upholds the right of law societies to deny accreditation to a proposed law school at the evangelical Christian Trinity Western University, which opened a new, satellite campus in Richmond in 2015.”

Wong argued the decision made Canadian society more intolerance, and less free and inclusive. Two, at least, values in Canada came to a head. One for the freedom of (and from) religion. The other for the promotion of, through a variety of mechanisms, equality.

Values in society remain valid in the individual universe of discourse. As these values come to the real world contexts or environments, the values conflict to some degree. The conflict or the rub between the values, two or more, create the decisions in the courts based on the best judgment of the SCC and other legal authorities at the time.

“TWU requires students sign a covenant allowing sexual intimacy only between a man and a woman who are married,” the article stated, “As such, the Law Society of B.C. previously voted (28-21) to deny accreditation of the proposed TWU law school because the covenant amounts to discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people.”

Wong argued from the angle of a violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. That is, the decision to deny the Evangelical university’s law school created the basis for ‘breaking’ the Charter.

The judges on the SCC took the position of Section One of the Charter. This became the foundation for the denial of the law school. That is, the denial of the accreditation amounted to a reasonable limitation on the university’s rights.

This became the rub, the balance, between the public interest of the law societies and the rights of the university. In the individual universes of discourse, the public interest and the freedom of (and from) religion equate to valid values.

At the same time, when these conflict in highest court consideration, the comprises come to the fore. In this particular case, the SCC decided 7-2 to support the “public-interest objectives of the law societies.”

The judges stated, “It is inimical to the integrity of the legal profession to limit access on the basis of personal characteristics… This is especially so in light of the societal trust enjoyed by the legal profession.”

Of course, with the 7-2 decision, two judges supported the law school position rather than the law societies’ position.

Wong stated the decision against the law school amounted to a “profound interference with religious freedom” that will “ultimately diminish student choice and continues the trend towards a monolithic culture where one has to subscribe to specific beliefs.”

Wong argued the LGBTQ choice in the post-secondary world would not diminish, even if the decision by the SCC had gone the other way, 2-7 in other words. She stated the students are not compelled to attend a post-secondary institution.

Because TWU is a private institution, Wong considered the private funding of this particular post-secondary institution important as a factor. That is, the university is private, receives tax credits as a religious institute, and acquired public infrastructure dollars and research funding.

“In April, Wong also took aim at the Canada Summer Jobs program attestation of legally-enshrined rights for applicants, arguing it violated the rights of those who don’t agree with, for example, the right of a woman to have an abortion,” Richmond News noted.

The main concern from Wong comes from the other regulated professions being affected by the June 15 SCC decision.

The executive director of the proposed TWU law school, Earl Phillips, stated, “All Canadians should be troubled by today’s decision that sets a precedent for how the courts will interpret and apply charter rights and equality rights going forward.”

TWU made the original proposition for the law school during 2012. Approval was acquired through the Federation of Law Societies of Canada and the BC Ministry of Advanced Education; nonetheless, the BC Ministry of Advanced Education withdrew the approval at a later time.

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2022-04-15

Breaking News: United States Withdraws from the United Nations Human Rights Council

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/19

According to Arab News, the United States Ambassador for the United Nations Human Rights Council, Nikki Haley, announced the withdrawal of the United States from the UN Human Rights Council.

Haley declared, “We take this step because our commitment does not allow us to remain a part of a hypocritical and self-serving organization that makes a mockery of human rights.”

NBC News reported in more depth stating that the US withdrew from the UN Human Rights Council due to continued bias against Israel, from the vantage of the US Ambassador.

Haley declared the UN body hypocritical and self-serving. “For too long, the Human Rights Council has been a protector of human rights abusers, and a cesspool of political bias… Therefore, as we said we would do a year ago, if we did not see any progress, the United States is officially withdrawing from the UN Human Rights Council,” Haley said.

The top UN human rights official, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, criticized the American administration for its zero tolerance policy for immigration. The withdrawal from the UN Human Rights Council came one day later.

Al Hussein explained, “The thought that any State would seek to deter parents by inflicting such abuse on children is unconscionable.”

Benjamin Netanyahu approved of Haley’s move on behalf of the Trump administration. He said, “Instead of dealing with regimes that systematically violate human rights, the UNHRC obsessively focuses on Israel, the one genuine democracy in the Middle East.”

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2022-04-15

Loss is Love Suffered: An Ode to Marie Alena Castle

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/18

Marie Alena Castle was the communications director for Atheists for Human Rights. She was raised Roman Catholic. She became an atheist later in life.

She has since been an important figure within the atheist movement through her involvement with Minnesota Atheists, The Moral Atheist, National Organization of Women, and in writing Culture Wars: The Threat to Your Family and Your Freedom (2013).

Please read some previous publications, probably her last, between the two of us: Session 1, Session 2, and Session 3.

I have loved and love many people, in different ways and so not simply its romantic or sinewy heartthrob manifestations. Some, as you live some tad longer, become noticed as loved only through their absence, sometimes permanent departure. Marie Alena Castle was born on December 20, 1926 and died on May 25, 2018.

In the tone given in title and prior paragraph, I feel a proper loss today. I only found out about a quarter of a day ago now.

Castle knew lots. She worked from a place of authority. Her work spanned several domains of activism, where most activists focus on a particular issue including children’s rights, human rights, Indigenous rights, labor rights, reproductive rights, or women’s rights, and so on. In fact, her work spanned several of these areas, which seems impressive in contrast to the monochrome activism prominent in the modern day.

I found the work with her, in her 90s, powerful. She spoke with an authority, which I did not find feigned or ill-conceived. There was a tremendous weight of proper seriousness given from deep time experienced, assiduous work in writing, and real suffering and striving from activism where the stakes were higher than now. Our current era merely experiences the first retraction in different domains in our lifetimes in, for example, women’s rights.

We stand atop a pile of bodies, literal and metaphorical – often women, who fought for equality. In my own country, women earned the right to legal rights as persons in a democracy through the right to vote less than a century ago: staggering, true, and unsurprising. Castle knew this. I know this. To give a glimpse, please give a good ol’ gander at one question-and-answer banter regarding inculcation of protective critical thinking and education for the young here:

What can be some buffers, or defenses, against these direct attacks on the new media and communications technologies, e.g. to educate and inoculate new generations?

Marie Alena Castle:

No one cares about any social effects so this has to be made personally self-serving. Start with sex/contraceptive education in schools. Impress the girls that they are NOT a public utility and whether or not to terminate a pregnancy is entirely their business, not the church’s, not the state’s, not their sexual partner’s and not the Roe v. Wade regulations. Impress the boys with the fact that if they get a girl pregnant they are liable for 18 years of child support. Use social media to pass this around so it gets to the students at religious schools.
Try for some social effects by calling to account the “pro-life” propagandists as misogynistic, ignorant liars. (They make outrageously stupid claims about embryos and fetuses.) Put up billboards next to their 6-month-old-white-baby ads showing women (various ethnicities) asking why it is anyone’s business but hers and declaring she is not a public utility and asking what the “pro-lifers” have done for real babies lately other than only opposing welfare/child care/educational aid.
Run anti-terrorist ads everywhere pointing out the group that has done and is doing the most damage – the anti-abortion violence prone clinic vandals, death-threateners, bombers, murderers (give the numbers since 1973). Note the clinics’ need for excessive security, bullet proof vests, randomized doctor routes to get to clinics, etc.
OK to note the desperate situation women find themselves in and needing an abortion (rape, abusive relationship, health issues, fetal deformity, poverty, etc.) but don’t do much of this because the general public doesn’t care.

The clarity of thought, the moral authority, the extensive time perspective portrayed, the realism without becoming a cynic, the optimism inherent in the provision of actionable activism items, and the simple straightforward comprehension of progressive change happening from people, from human beings, behaving in coordinated ways to improve their lot over long periods of time.

It does not come from on high. It comes from down low, of those dead, forgotten, and wasted away with a hope for a better tomorrow – for peace between the “races” and “ethnicities,” between men and women, between sexual and gender minorities and majorities, and those at war in various ways over territory, ideas, faiths, politics, and resources.

I feel proper loss here.

Even though, 150,000 people or more die every day. Individual human beings become the great source of inspiration, influence, and emotionally salutary components of life. Life becomes process. People become a part of it for one another. Activism is the form in which life and people coalesce to make change together for a shared, positive future.

In personal life, most deep, close, real friends rather than by title, have been elderly women. I do not know why, nor do I figure any solution to this quandary of personal life in the near future either, for me.

In the proper loss, I feel proper love. I loved interviewing her. I loved reading the force of the thinking and the evocative power of the phrasing with the spirit or breathe of life in systematic representation. I have loved many people in a similar way, who left waves in my emotional life of solitude. It becomes both sufferings for the loss and realizations of the loss as underlying love.

I feel a proper love there.

Her obituary statement was as follows:

I have enjoyed being one of the luckiest people on Earth. Fate gave me a 91-year break from otherwise endless oblivion and a life filled with political skullduggery and social activism for the rights of workers, women, gays, and anti-war efforts. I built a dome home, raised five good kids, built atheist and political organizations, worked as a journalist, and wrote Divided We Fall: Religion, Sex and Politics, and the Political Blunder That Brought Religion into Public Life and Opened the Door to Trump. None of this uphill climbing has been especially pleasant, but it has been interesting.

Women in most societies lose prominence beyond prime reproductive age. Why? Women get seen as vessels for new life alone. As Castle noted from nearly a century of experience, women and girls get seen as public utilities. By implication, and as a testable hypothesis, their value to the public should decline proportionally over time, especially as they become older.

As women age into the darker years and leave into the yonder twilight, societies lose track of them; we stop keeping track of them: “How was your day? How are you feeling? What is new with the cat(s)? (As one stereotype might go.)”

As women enter the deep night of societal perception, I can reflect on the influence of Castle and other elderly women who made a tremendous impact on me. Their loss brings a sense of love left best to individuals influenced by them. There is a strength in the decades-long activism and persistence – a certain hopeful ebullience about life and its positive aspects apart from the negative.

Its hardships and difficulties.

And its losses,

and from there a realization of odes to love.

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2022-04-15

This Week in Canadian Science 2018-06-17

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/17

“Government of Canada investing close to $25M in innovative projects that will deliver new technologies to Canadians and unlock the power of AI to tackle chronic health issues

OTTAWA, June 13, 2018 /CNW/ – Artificial intelligence is changing the way Canadians live; it’s in our cars and computers, our smartphones and apps. All the more reason to unlock the power of AI to address some of the greatest health challenges Canadians face.

Today, while visiting the University of Ottawa’s Heart Institute, Parliamentary Secretary for Science, Kate Young, and Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General and to the Minister of Health, Bill Blair, launched the next Collaborative Health Research Project (CHRP) competition.

Previous CHRP competitions have traditionally brought together engineers, those working in the natural sciences, and health researchers, who combine their talents to bring real-world solutions to real-world problems in the health sector. Under this new competition, valued at $24.875M, social scientists and humanities researchers will, for the first time, be encouraged to join research teams applying for funding. Almost $6M of the total available funds will be targeted to projects that investigate the ethical, legal, and societal impacts associated with the development and spread of AI in the health sector.”

Source: https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/canadas-scientists-can-pitch-projects-that-bridge-artificial-intelligence-health-research-685378241.html.

“OTTAWA — The sales practices of Canada’s largest telecommunications companies — a long-time sore spot for many consumers — will be the subject of a public inquiry ordered by the federal government on Thursday.

“Like many Canadians, we are concerned by allegations of clearly inappropriate sales practices by telecom carriers,” Navdeep Bains, the minister responsible for telecommunications, said in a statement.

Bains said he has directed the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission to conduct the investigation, including a public inquiry, and report on the sales practices used in the industry by Feb. 28.”

Source: https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2018/06/14/telecom-sales-practices-crtc-public-inquiry_a_23459277/.

“Seaweed could become a staple in the diet of Canadian livestock after researchers discovered it’s a sustainable and viable option for healthy digestion in cows — and humans.

This research, which began in 2015, is somewhat of an extension of research from 2008 that showed Japanese people have more bacteria in their digestive tracts to digest the carbohydrates in nori seaweed. Abbott and his team wanted to see if this relationship extended to other seaweed varieties with different structures.”Wade Abbott, a research scientist at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, and his team have been using a crystallography beam line at the Canadian Light Source (CLS) synchrotron to study the structure of four enzymes and how they digest agarose, a carbohydrate found in red seaweed.

Source: http://thestarphoenix.com/technology/science/seaweed-could-be-the-answer-for-cheap-sustainable-livestock-feed-researcher-says.

“For a Toronto-based innovation accelerator, the final frontier is the next frontier.

The Creative Destruction Lab, an accelerator affiliated with the University of Toronto, is now calling for applications specifically from starry-eyed entrepreneurs with space-focused startup ideas. And the new stream already has some star power behind it ― they’ve enlisted Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield to serve as the founding fellow.

“Space is obviously something that most people have a lot of passion about, because it’s primarily unknown,” said CDL’s Sheret Ross, who’s leading the accelerator’s new space stream. The “unknown” is ripe territory for entrepreneurs, who he says are in constant search of problems to solve. They’re looking to recruit around 25 new ventures.

Mr. Ross believes there’s a substantial talent pool in Toronto’s aerospace realm, but no clear path to entrepreneurship. “It’s really going to be about public-private collaboration, and creating an ecosystem where ventures can go through,” he told The Globe and Mail.”

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-university-of-toronto-accelerator-affiliate-shoots-for-the-starry-eyed/.

“What do you do if 10 quadrillion high-energy collisions in the world’s largest particle accelerator fail to reveal any new truths about the nature of reality? The answer: Revamp your machine and go for 10 times that number.

In a nutshell, that explains the groundbreaking ceremony that took place on Friday at the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, near Geneva, Switzerland.

Canada is one of dozens of countries participating in the project, which will eventually see the collider’s performance increase tenfold by the middle of the next decade. Researchers hope the higher number of collisions that result will increase the likelihood that they will spot some extremely rare clues to a more fundamental theory of matter than the current standard model of particle physics.

“It’s the next step in the development of the LHC,” said Oliver Kester, an associate director at the TRIUMF accelerator in Vancouver, one of the Canadian research centres participating in the international experiment.”

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/technology/science/article-canadian-scientists-among-those-intensifying-search-for-new-particles/.

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2022-04-15

This Week in Canadian Religion 2018-06-17

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/17

“MONTREAL – A Quebec mayor has found a novel way around a Supreme Court ruling forbidding prayers at municipal council meetings — reading the national anthem.

In its French version, O Canada is loaded with Christian imagery. Its first verse hails a Canada carrying the cross in its arms and invokes “valour steeped in faith.” A later, seldom-sung verse declares, “Christ is king.”

On Monday, Louiseville Mayor Yvon Deshaies opened the monthly council meeting by asking people to stand as he recited an abridged version of the anthem, which included the lines about the cross and faith as well as a French translation of “God keep our land glorious and free,” from the English O Canada.

Deshaies then hung a crucifix on the wall of the community centre where the meeting was held, drawing applause from most of the roughly 70 people in attendance

In an interview Wednesday, he said his actions were in response to news about religious minorities seeking to work as police officers in Quebec while wearing such symbols as the hijab and turban. “Where are we headed?” he asked.”

Source: http://nationalpost.com/news/canada/barred-from-reading-a-prayer-at-council-meeting-quebec-mayor-tries-o-canada-instead.

“Imagine the reaction of Vancouver residents if a U.S. airline or bank created a map showing Canada as an administrative region of the United Kingdom.

Let’s say that United Airlines or Bank of America Corp. did this to win the approval of British prime minister Theresa May, who is in a position to grant concessions to these corporations.

Canadians would be furious. They would declare that Canada ceased to be a colony in 1867 when it became independent.

No doubt, some would launch boycotts against United Airlines or the Bank of America. Canadians would also hold demonstrations outside the offending corporations’ offices”

Source: https://www.straight.com/news/1091316/taiwanese-canadians-feel-betrayed-corporate-kowtowing-chinese-strongman-xi-jinping.

“The top of the wikuom is just visible from the retirement residence of the Sisters of Charity. Its off-white canvas approximates the birch bark the Mi’kmaq people used to construct their homes when they ranged across what are now the Maritime Provinces of eastern Canada. Pine poles hold the structure up and leave an opening to release smoke from ceremonial fires. Inside the wikuom (the Mi’kmaq word for what you may have known as “wigwam”), Catherine Martin, a filmmaker and Mi’kmaw activist, leads ritual prayers, burning sage and sweetgrass, cedar and tobacco, and teaching visitors about her people’s way.

The wikuom is not a relic of the past. It is an invocation of a future in which First Nationsare respected as equals in Canada.

Last spring, when the wikuom was erected at the University of Mount St. Vincent, Ms. Martin held a visiting chair in the women’s studies department at the school, founded by the Sisters of Charity in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1873. The prayers she offered were for the victims and survivors of Canada’s centuries-long drive to eradicate its native peoples—in particular, the Mi’kmaq children forcibly taken from their families on reserves and sent to the government-sponsored boarding school the Sisters of Charity staffed for close to four decades. Former students of the Shubenacadie Residential School tell of being beaten, physically scarred for speaking their native language, forbidden from communicating with siblings, humiliated for wetting the bed and whipped with leather cat tails if they attempted to escape.”

Source: https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2018/06/14/canadian-catholics-grapple-history-whitewashing-indigenous-children.

“Andre Schutten with the Association for Reforms Political Action slammed the Supreme Court decision on Trinity Western’s law school, saying it sends a bad message about religious freedoms in Canada.”

Source: https://globalnews.ca/video/4276508/intervenor-says-supreme-court-decision-on-trinity-western-represents-a-danger-to-religious-freedom.

“The Supreme Court has upheld the right of provincial law societies to reject the graduates of a proposed Christian law school over its requirement that students abstain from sex outside of heterosexual marriage.

In a highly anticipated contest between religious freedom and equality, most of the court said the limit on religious freedom was a minor one – well short of “forced apostasy,” as five of the judges put it. By comparison, the effects on equality, if the school had been accredited, would have been large enough to threaten the integrity of the legal system, the judges said.

The court had been asked whether the law societies of British Columbia and Ontario were within their rights when they voted not to give licences to graduates of Trinity Western University’s proposed law school at its campus in Langley, B.C. In a pair of 7-2 rulings, the court said they were.”

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-supreme-court-upholds-provincial-law-societies-right-to-reject/.

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2022-04-15

This Week in Canadian Politics 2018-06-17

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/17

“OTTAWA — During a visit to Ottawa this week, Tibet’s exiled political leader was warning Canada not to fall into a trap as its trade relationship with China deepens.

Especially amid recent uncertainty with Canada’s biggest trade partner, the United States, it makes economic sense to engage with China, said Lobsang Sangay, president of the Central Tibetan Administration, a “government-in-exile” based in India that represents Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.

But Canada should be careful not to self-censor or turn a blind eye to human rights abuses by the Chinese government, he said in an interview with the National Post. It’s a trend that he said he has watched in Australia, which entered into a free-trade agreement with China in 2015.

“One should enter into trade with China. You do business with China. You have to have a relationship with China. You can’t avoid it, you can’t ignore it and you should make money,” Sangay said. “But you know, what I’ve noticed is the moment there’s a trade agreement with China, all of a sudden these countries start resorting to self-censorship. First Tibet, then Tiananmen, then Taiwan and all of the environmental and labour issues and women’s rights issues in China.””

Source: http://lfpress.com/news/politics/dont-self-censor-to-please-china-in-trading-relationship-exiled-tibetan-leader-tells-canada/wcm/9aef2058-65ff-4b57-9b5b-da91fe6ee62f.

“Next January, federal politicians will gather in a new, glass-ceilinged House of Commons that takes its architectural cues from a clearing in the woods.

The temporary chamber in the West Block will replace the Centre Block, currently home to the House of Commons and Senate chambers. Centre Block will remain closed for an estimated 10 years to undergo major renovations.

This week, journalists were given an early look at the project. The new Commons was built in what was once an outdoor courtyard, and natural light pours through a sweeping glass ceiling, about the size of a football field.”

Source: https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/take-a-peek-at-canada-s-forest-inspired-house-of-commons-1.3976220.

“TORONTO — For the first time in decades, one of the world’s most durable and amicable alliances faces serious strain as Canadians — widely seen as some of the nicest, politest people on Earth — absorb Donald Trump’s insults against their prime minister and attacks on their country’s trade policies.

Some Canadians are urging Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to seek peace with the U.S. president. Many others want him to hang tough even as Trump seeks to make political hay with his anti-Canada rhetoric.

But there’s broad agreement with this assessment by The Globe and Mail, a leading Canadian newspaper: “Relations between two of the world’s closest allies are now at a perilous low.””

Source: https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/canada-u-s-relations-at-a-low-after-trudeau-trump-trade-tiff-1.3973145.

“Politics sometimes makes for strange bedfellows — but what we’re seeing in Canada this week is a veritable orgy.

Everybody is jumping in bed with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: New Democrats, Greens, even Conservatives.

Heck, especially Conservatives.

Jason Kenney, Doug Ford, Andrew Scheer, Stephen Harper.

Name any prominent Canadian conservative, particularly those who despise Trudeau, and odds are you’ll find them snuggled under the sheets, politically speaking, with the prime minister.

It’s not that they’re particularly keen to spoon with Trudeau, but they want to be seen defending Canada against the bullying tactics of U.S. President Donald Trump.

Not only has Trump imposed punishing tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum exported to the U.S., but, in a move typical of a president whose political behaviour has yet to hit bottom, he began tweeting personal attacks against Trudeau as “very dishonest and weak.””

Source: http://edmontonjournal.com/news/politics/graham-thomson-canadas-politicians-pile-into-bed-with-prime-minister.

“Canada’s system of supply management has been the target of heated political debate for the better part of half a century — but very few Canadians outside of the affected farm sectors actually understand how it works, or who foots the bill for stabilizing farmers’ incomes.

Supply management is a system that allows specific commodity sectors — dairy, poultry and eggs — to limit the supply of their products to what Canadians are expected to consume in order to ensure predictable, stable prices.

While the federal government has played a role in supporting agricultural pricing policies for more than a century, the current system of supply management traces its origins to the 1960s — a period of overproduction due to technological advances that resulted in low prices for farmers.”

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-supply-management-explainer-1.4708341.

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2022-04-15

This Week in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms 2018-06-17

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/17

“Last week, in response to my request from over six weeks earlier, the Liberal Government finally released details outlining the impact on Manitoba from their “Liberal values test” within the Canada Summer Jobs program.

The numbers revealed that 101 community and faith-based organizations in Manitoba were unable to participate in the Canada Summer Jobs program because of the Liberal government’s new discriminatory attestation requirement. This figure makes up part of the 1,559 applications that were denied over the attestation nationwide.

The government’s response reads: “In Manitoba, 101 applications were deemed ineligible on the basis of submitting an incomplete application in relation to the attestation. The category the Department uses to track ineligibility in relation to the attestation does not solely track failure to sign the attestation, but also includes modified and removed attestations.”

What we see from these numbers is that, at a minimum, 101 summer jobs that may have been created for students in our communities across Manitoba will not exist this summer. And since each individual applicant can request funding for several positions, the number of lost opportunities for Manitoba’s youth is likely much more significant.’

Source: https://www.mysteinbach.ca/blogs/8961/manitoba-hit-hard-in-canada-summer-jobs-fiasco/.

“The Supreme Court of Canada says the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal was correct in deciding it does not have the jurisdiction to consider whether Canadian laws are discriminatory, a decision that comes as the government launches consultations to remove sexism from the Indian Act.

The top court on Thursday dismissed a challenge of tribunal decisions brought by the Canadian Human Rights Commission on behalf of two families who could not pass their Indian status on to their descendants because of discriminatory policies in the Act.

The Tribunal said in rulings in those cases that it could decide whether government services had been distributed unfairly but does not have the power to consider direct challenges to legislation because legislation is not a service. The decision was later upheld by the Federal Court and the Federal Court of Appeal.

In a decision written by Justice Clément Gascon, the Supreme Court found that the tribunal and the courts were right to dismiss the challenges.”

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-canadian-human-rights-tribunal-cannot-challenge-discrimination-in/.

“Everybody gains an education, but not in the way they may have wanted to, given the recent decision in the most important legal case determining religious freedom in Canada of the past decade.

On Friday, the Supreme Court of Canada announced a pair of 7-2 rulings that dealt a blow to Trinity Western University’s hopes of running a nationally accredited law school. It’s a result that has been disquieting to both sides represented in court as it pitted two important societal values against each other: the freedom of religion and the promotion of equality. This is the messy, imperfect work of living with personal beliefs and convictions that must fit the Charter Rights and Freedoms that shapes Canada.

A portion of Christian freedom of expression loses big time in this ruling, which implies that in Canada, sexual identity trumps religious identity. Christian belief understands that sexuality is informed by the God of the Bible. So when TWU, a Christian university in Langley, B.C., wanted the ability to train accredited lawyers, it meant those students would have to sign the school’s community covenant to enroll. The covenant prohibits having sex in any way except the context of monogamous, heterosexual marriage. Law Societies in Nova Scotia, Ontario, and B.C. argued that such a voluntary surrender of sexual rights discriminated against Charter freedoms.

Our Supreme Court justices decided the TWU community covenant disqualifies graduates from mandatory law society accreditation. TWU’s community covenant has a host of other lifestyle conditions, such as prohibition of harassment, verbal intimidation, gossip, obscene language, lying, and drunkenness.”

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-trinity-western-decision-is-a-big-loss-for-christian-freedom/.

“Ewert appealed from a judgment of the Federal Court of Appeal setting aside a decision finding Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) had breached its obligation under s. 24(1) of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act (CCRA) and had infringed Ewert’s rights under s. 7 of the Charter. Ewert, who is a Métis inmate, challenged the CSC’s reliance on certain psychological and actuarial risk assessment tools. He claimed the validity of the tools, when applied to Indigenous offenders, had not been established through empirical research. The reliance on those tools, he further argued, infringed his rights under ss. 7 and 15 of the Charter and the CSC did not take all reasonable steps to ensure the accuracy of information about offenders as required by s. 24(1) of the CCRA. The trial judge concluded that the CSC had infringed Ewert’s rights under s. 7 of the Charter and did not meet the requirements of s. 24(1) of the CCRA. He ordered an interim injunction that prohibited the CSC from using results generated by the impugned tools with respect to Ewert. The Federal Court of Appeal allowed the Crown’s appeal and found that Ewert did not establish on a balance of probabilities that the impugned tools produced inaccurate results when applied to Indigenous inmates. The issues raised by the appeal were whether the reliance on the tools resulted in a breach of s. 24(1) of the CCRA and the infringement of ss.7 and 15 of the Charter.

HELD: Appeal allowed in part. The statutory purpose of the correctional system supported an interpretation according to which the CSC’s obligation under s. 24(1) extended to the accuracy of psychological or actuarial test results that it used. Ewert did not have to prove that the impugned tools produced inaccurate results. The question to be addressed was whether the CSC’s actions were sufficient to fulfill the legislated standard of all reasonable steps to ensure accuracy, currency and completeness. Section 4(g) of the CCRA represented an acknowledgement of the systemic discrimination faced by Indigenous persons in the Canadian correctional system. The clear direction expressed in s. 4(g) and the underlying rationale for that direction strongly supported the conclusion that CSC’s inaction with respect to the concerns raised about the risk assessment instruments fell short of what s. 24(1) of the CCRA required it to do. The finding that there was uncertainty about the extent to which the tests were accurate when applied to Indigenous offenders was not sufficient to establish that there was no rational connection between reliance on the tests and the relevant government objective. Thus, Ewert did not establish that the CSC’s reliance on the tools violated the principle of fundamental justice under s. 7 of the Charter. Furthermore, Ewert failed to establish infringement of his rights under s. 15 Charter on the basis that the evidentiary record was not sufficiently developed. The Court appropriately exercised its discretion and issued a declaration. Exceptional circumstances included the fact that Ewert had already used the statutory grievance mechanism under the CCRA.”

Source: https://www.thelawyersdaily.ca/articles/6731/constitutional-issues-canadian-charter-of-rights-and-freedoms-aboriginal-rights-remedies-for-denial-of-rights.

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2022-04-15

Interview with Usama al-Binni – Administrator, Arab Atheist Network & Editor, Arab Atheists Magazine

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/14

Usama al-Binni is an Administrator of the Arab Atheist Network, the Editor of the Arab Atheists Magazine. Here we explore his story and views.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You grew up in Jordan to a moderately religious family. What did your parents do? How did this influence your faith? How did your faith develop over time?

Usama al-Binni: Both parents were school teachers, my father was a religious education teacher and a graduate of al-Azhar University. He taught at the same high-school where I went and was supposedly the epitome of piety for being his son. I wasn’t that pious though. I tried to hold on to my faith during my late teen years, but to no avail. I was interested in philosophy and science and was fortunate enough to have a couple of friends willing to debate. I ended up going into physics and in part because of that struggle as I saw in physics there place where many age-old philosophical questions being answered. Back when I started questioning my faith in the late 1990s I had access only to scant blasphemous content, and I left Islam gradually and not without pain.

Jacobsen: How did this atheism develop over time?

al-Binni: By early 2000s I felt Islam was finally behind me, that criticizing Islam was a transitional phase and immersed myself in other concerns living as an agnostic who became an anti-theist during infrequent debates. I did have a brief stint frequenting debate forums on the internet, but was doing so under a pseudonym as I was still living in Jordan. Discovering online Arab ex-Muslim communities on Facebook around 2014 changed things completely for me, as I felt that unlike the solitary struggle I had to go through, there is a widespread movement online of people coming together, and while many stayed anonymous, they were all very vocal and explicit about criticizing religion and they were a community. I felt I belonged. I felt a responsibility to join the movement. It started with a local group in East Tennessee of American atheists, which I discovered through a MeetUp group, and then moved on to a Facebook group called Arab Atheists Forum and Network, where I became very active, and soon enough I was approached by the admins to join them, and I did. I have had the privilege to know many wonderful and intelligent people who share a lot with me.

Jacobsen: Now, how did this lead to the work with the Arab Atheists Magazine?

al-Binni: One project of that group which attracted me especially was the Arab Atheists Magazine, the continuity of the project over years and its diversity drew me in and with my academic background I felt I could contribute to that effort, both in terms of content and organization, and that’s one of my main concentrations now, although there are other ongoing projects as well. I believe that being openly atheist and an academic gives me some advantage over those who cannot use their real name and face, and living in the US gives me great latitude to do many things people back in the Middle East can’t do.

Jacobsen: What are some of the important provisions for others with an online space as opposed to an offline space to express their atheism?

al-Binni: It’s a world of difference. I lived for about 10 years as a closeted ex-Muslims back in Jordan and was very careful about who I divulge the secret to. Most people over there would be deeply intolerant of anyone who criticized religion in any way, especially if the criticism is overtly one directed from someone who says they’ve left the faith. I once mistakenly talked about my thoughts to someone I had thought was a friend, but he ended up (maybe half-jokingly) threading me inflict the punishment of apostasy upon me. I became after that extra careful about what I say and to whom I say it. And while Jordan is considered by many to be a bastion of religious moderation, one needs to remember that abu-Musab az-Zarqawi, the famed al-Qaida terrorist, came from Jordan. In late 2015 a Jordanian writer who shared a cartoon on his Facebook page, and ended up being shot by a Muslim extremist on the steps of the court house right after a hearing where he was being tried for blasphemy for sharing the cartoon! And there are numerous examples from many Arab countries where being openly critical of religion can bring countless troubles. Being online, and especially in communities like our Facebook group, Arab Atheists Network and Forum, it is possible to be with like-minded people, use pseudonyms and at the same time debate Muslims without fear of physical harm if one carefully guards their real identity. This is a world of difference from the openness I have experienced in the US. Here, I have met people face to face, seen how they exercise their civil rights to counter religious rhetoric but also to participate in a life far closer to normal than an ex-Muslim would dream of in a majority-Muslim country. I don’t say the US is a perfect haven for atheists, but it is a world of difference from what I’ve known back in Jordan and what I see online from fellow ex-Muslims in the Muslim world. It is perhaps this dual life I live as an openly atheist ex-Muslim in the US compared to what I see online that gives me hope and a desire to work with the people back there to improve their living situation.

Jacobsen: What tend to be the foci of the Arab Atheist Magazine?

al-Binni: The Magazine emerged in late 2012 as a means of distilling the thought of Arab atheists at this important juncture in their history, where, for the first time since the dawn of Islam, there is an actual community of ex-Muslims coming together and forming a community. This has never happened before. The Magazine, and other forms of discourse we have, are meant to capture that, as a mirror for our identity and a record for whoever comes after us. We cover everything that has to do with Arab atheism, although atheism here is a rather broad category encompassing a wide range of religious dissent and persuasions. We publish both original and translated works that focus on religious criticism, but also includes attempts to go beyond that limited bubble into a vision of an alternatives to religion. We published original novels, poetry, studies conducted by researchers who collaborated with us, cartoons (the one that resulted in the murder of the Jordanian writer was drawn by an artist who regularly publishes with us), we have our in-house painter who creates paintings especially for the Magazine. The Magazine is closely linked to the Network Forum on Facebook and there is a continuity between the two entities, both in the people who run the two and in the content.

Jacobsen: How can people become involved in and support the Arab atheist diaspora?

al-Binni: The situation for Arab atheists living outside the Muslim world is complicated. Many tend to leave the faith early in life, maybe as teenagers. Extricating one’s life from religion is a redefinition of identity, and as teenagers still dependent on their families and living usually within an Islamic community means one is risking being banished from one’s home while vulnerable and without means of support. Ex-Muslims of North America and the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain (and many other such organizations) are doing wonderful work helping ex-Muslims, young and old, find a community of people who understand them and can provide support. These organizations deserve all the support they can get, it is often the case that they have to assist ex-Muslims facing persecution in a Muslim country an need to get out, they help ex-Muslims fleeing potential violence from their communities in the US and Europe. But perhaps, getting the word out, letting people know what ex-Muslims and atheists are facing and start viewing them as a legitimate minority with a voice that needs to be heard, a faceless minority that is being oppressed and not even recognized.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Usama.

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2022-04-15

Interview with Rev. Tim Bowman – Minister, Gladwin Heights Church

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/13

I wanted to explore some of the world of different Christian leaders, small and big. However, I wanted to report less on those and more in their own words. These will be published, slowly, over time. This, I trust, may open dialogue and understanding between various communities. Of course, an interview does not amount to an endorsement, but to the creation of conversation, comprehension, and compassion. Rev. Tim Bowman is the Minister of Gladwin Heights Church. Here we talk about the Gladwin Heights Church, community, church services, and more.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What was early life like for you, especially regarding religion and irreligion in peers and family? As you were born in Guelph, Ontario in 1977 and raised in Calgary, Alberta. You earned degrees in English and Psychology with a Master of Divinity degree from the Vancouver School of Theology. This seems to indicate an early life influence as well – potentially not, but probably so.

Rev. Tim Bowman: My father grew up in the steel town of Hamilton, Ontario; my mother was a farm girl from southern Ontario. She had a large extended family; I saw a lot of my aunts and uncles, grandparents and cousins at every holiday. My fondest memories are of Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas at my grandfather’s farm and later at an aunt and uncle’s, large meals with dozens of people, board games and snowmobiling and sleeping on floors and couches. Pretty much everyone attended church.

My father studied engineering and got into oil and gas work, and so we moved quite a lot when I was a child, including to Saudi Arabia and Italy. Finally we settled down in Calgary when I was in Grade Three. My father taught Sunday School at our local church for a few years, and my mother was the assistant office administrator for a long time.

Given our frequent moves, family and belonging were important to me, and I felt like I belonged at our church. I noticed how my mother went above and beyond her job description to set up and clean up after every event. I began to volunteer with the Sunday School and to attend the youth group. So many people clearly found joy, purpose and belonging there – how could I not want to be a part of it?

As I made friends in Junior High and then High School, I noticed that few of them talked about their faith, but at the same time I was never made to feel out of place because of it.

Jacobsen: When did you first become Christian or a follower of Christ in an explicit way? Often, in conversation with Christians, the conversions come from upbringing or adolescence/later life experience of God – using their terminology.

Bowman: My friend in Guelph invited me to a fairly evangelical children’s / youth group (similar to Scouts). I continued to attend that group’s meetings and go to its summer camps for a few years after moving to Calgary. The emphasis tended to be on believing the right things and avoiding sin so I could get into heaven. As I got older, I began to drift away from church somewhat – partly as the search for individuality that all adolescents experience, and partly because that message began to lose its appeal.

Of course, if I’d listened closer to what was said at my family church on Sundays, I might have heard a different message.

University was when things really changed for me. I tried out one or two of the Christian groups on campus, but they always seemed to be lacking something. A shared faith was a reason for gathering, maybe reading the bible and then having pizza and watching a movie, but that felt a little hollow. I sought out the United Church campus chaplain, and he suggested the Student Christian Movement.

The first SCM meeting I attended was a planning session to host the national gathering of the SCM, so it was more jumping in the deep end rather than dipping my toe in the water, but the more I saw of these folks, the more I liked. Here was a faith that really made a difference in how they lived. They advocated for gay rights, they attended environmental rallies…this was a faith with purpose and meaning and relevance. It was also small and tight-knit enough that it felt like a home among the large and impersonal campus crowds.

When I graduated with Arts degrees in English and Psychology, and decided that overseas English teaching wasn’t for me, I asked, “What’s next?”. I decided to actually start listening to the voices in the back of my head (as well as the voices of my parents, chaplain, and minister). I asked my congregation to help me consider whether I was called to ministry, and attended the open house at the Vancouver School of Theology. I began to pay attention to my spiritual life, and to follow my father’s example in experiencing the divine in nature.

At around the time I encountered the SCM, I was also given a book by Marcus Borg. Borg’s demonstration that Christianity is at least as much about meaningful and ethical life in this world, as about life in the next world, also struck a chord with me.

Jacobsen: Gladwin Heights United Church is the place where you preach, teach, and build Christian community. Who was the founder? Why the title Gladwin Heights United Church as the name of the church? What are the positives and negatives of working in and building a church community in Canada?

Bowman: In 1979, the Fraser Presbytery of the United Church noted new housing developments in Abbotsford-Matsqui. A new church would be needed to serve all of these new residents. Trinity Memorial United Church provided much of the funding and human resources to establish the new congregation, which was named Gladwin Heights after the neighbourhood it was situated in.

It turned that many of the new residents were immigrants from Christian-minority countries, so the church has not been quite as full as was expected. This diversity is both a challenge and blessing of ministry in the Canadian context: whereas previously many people attended church simply because it was the thing to do, cultural and demographic shifts mean that people no longer attend simply as a cultural norm, which translates into smaller congregations. At the same time however, it means that people are here because they really want to be.

Canada has a complicated history with First Nations people, and the Church is part of that history. As First Nations are becoming increasingly visible and assertive, we have engaged more deeply and intentionally. Trying to heal old wounds, deeply embedded in Canadian society, is not easy, but it is also faithful and life-giving.

Jacobsen: What is the particular denomination of the church? How does this differ from other churches? Also, why focus on ecotheology and process theology within this work or calling for you?

Bowman: The United Church of Canada was born from the union of the Methodists, Congregationalists, and most of the Presbyterian churches in Canada in 1925. These denominations saw the need to coordinate their efforts to serve northern and Prairie areas where the need for clergy to serve the growing population often outstripped the supply. Throughout the years other denominations and local churches, for example the Evangelical United Brethren, have joined as well. At one point we envisioned becoming the national church of Canada. As the religious landscape changes, we are again looking more and more to collaboration with other denominations to serve God’s people.

Each of the founding denominations have contributed to the personality, or perhaps DNA, of the United Church. From the Methodists we inherit a concern for justice, from the Presbyterians a concern for ordered worship, and from the Congregationalists a tendency to allow individual congregations as much local decision-making power as possible while still remaining a united church across the nation.

The vast size and diversity of Canada, including the desire for local autonomy, means that each region and indeed congregation can be different, but one can make a few general statements. We tend to have a strong streak of social justice and activism, as well as a liberal, non-literal approach to theology. For example, while some denominations are currently debating whether to ordain openly LGBTQ people as ministers, we decided in the affirmative back in 1988. My favourite nickname for the United Church is “the NDP at prayer.” But then, I mostly vote NDP, so I consider this a compliment! Again however, the United Church can be very diverse; not all of us vote NDP.

Perhaps this is why ecotheology and process theology interest me. Whereas some ancient theologies stressed the power and glory of God, meaning that God existed in splendid isolation from the world and remained unaffected by it, I am more attracted to theologies that understand God in relationship to the world and everything within it. This implies that God is affected by, involved with, grows along with, and interpenetrates the world, because if you are not affected by anything someone says or does, how can you claim to be in relationship with them? Process theology envisions a God that operates by persuasion and invitation rather than by compulsion. The stories in Scripture that I find most fascinating are those that seem to show God and/or Jesus learning or changing their minds in response to encounters with human beings. This is a God that truly loves the world.

Jacobsen: What does an average Sunday service look like at the church? How do you, as a pastor, prepare the sermon? What tends to be the topics taught or spoken about at the church? Final question, what seems like the bigger problems and trends for the Christian church in Canada into the coming decade, i.e., the 2020s?

Bowman: I think of a worship service as having three movements, if I as a musical amateur may use that term. First, we gather with God and each other (to be with each other is to be with God). We invite each other, we pray that we may be aware of God’s presence, and confess the truth about ourselves and our world – unburdening ourselves of that which separates us from God. Then we read the scriptures and reflect in a sermon on how the living Word of God is speaking to us today. Lastly, we respond to the Word in action: through prayer, through offerings for the work of the church in the world, and by going out into God’s world as God’s people.

My music director and I choose scriptures and hymns two weeks in advance, so I get an advance look at the scriptures for a given Sunday. At that time I choose one text which might reward further study, and do enough reading and thinking to get an idea of what I might want to say about it.

Then it mostly sits in the back of my head until the following week. At the beginning of the week I pull it out again and begin to study it in depth. Eventually I have enough understanding of the text, enough ideas and information circling around in my head, that one or more will collide with a situation in the life of congregation members, the church as a whole, or in the world.

When that ‘aha!’ moment occurs, I get a sense of what the Word might be for us in the intersection of that passage and our lives. To get my thoughts in order, I then try to map out my ideas in the following outline: 1) What is the need or problem in the Bible’s original context that the text describes or is responding to? 2) What is the analogous need or problem in our world today? 3) What is the good news of God’s activity in response to that original problem? 4) What is the analogous good news of God’s activity for today’s problems?

Ideally, then, the topic of a sermon emerges from themes found in one of the prescribed scripture texts for a given Sunday, in conversation with needs or events in our world today. At the risk of fulfilling the stereotype that Christians are obsessed with talking about sex, I recently preached on two Bible passages which are often used to condemn homosexuality; I argued that this not the only way to read such texts. Previously I preached on the Biblical idea that the love of God can “overcome the world,” and pointed to the example of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s teachings on nonviolence.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Rev. Bowman.

My pleasure. Thank you for the opportunity to communicate with people who see things differently than I do. Our world needs more of that.

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2022-04-15

Christianity Today Reports on Age Gap in Religion Around the World

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/13

Christianity Today reported on the recent Pew Research report. The report from the Pew Research Center indicated a “gap” in the age between the believers and the non-believers.

That is to say, on one binary face value metric – old and young, the old seem more religious than the young. They identify as more religious and take part in more of the standard suggested practices of religion.

The secularization of the world seems like a concern for the religions of the world, especially the largest ones’ leadership. It would seem to mean wanes in power and influence and potential new followers. In the United States, Western Europe, and Latin America, the young adults appear far less religious than the older generations.

The Pew Research Center looked into 106 countries in the new report with about 58 nations having “little or no age gap in religious commitment.” Of the remainder, 46 of them at least, the adults under the age of 40 showed a significantly lower level of religious commitment or considering religion important than their older or over 40 counterparts.

Christianity Today explained, “Particularly religious countries with higher population growth tend to maintain religious belief and commitment between young and old generations. Pew found that over the past decade these highly religious countries outpaced their less religious counterparts due to high fertility rates and disproportionately young populations, factors often tied to their level of development.”

In the international analysis, the economic and social environment in a country affected the level of religiosity, in both the developing countries and the advanced industrial economies. With North America and Western Europe, the most secularization appears to have taken place.

Those parts of the world show a “pretty stark” difference in the formal religious affiliation of the young and the old. It becomes “two to five times wider than the global age gap. Canada has the biggest generational religious divide in the world. The difference between Canadian young adults and their elders who affiliate with a particular religion is 28 percentage points.”

That makes Canada an outlier in the religious affiliation gap between the young and the old. Other countries were included in the analysis and worth mention in the Christianity Today article.

“Other top countries for gaps in religious affiliation include Denmark (26 percentage points), South Korea (24 percentage points), Australia (23 percentage points), and Norway and Sweden (both 20 percentage points),” the reportage stated.

The US young adult population identify the role of religion in their lives as twice as important as the Canadian young adult population. I do not know how this maps onto the forms of the informal non-religious seen in Canada with the – what the literature calls – SBNRs or the “spiritual but not religious” people.

SBNRs seem to, at times, engage in informal activities outside of a formal religious context with religious overtones, or simply sub-texts, to them. In contrast to the Americas and Europe in general, Africa and the Middle East show different contrasts in religious affiliation by age.

The Middle East and Africa do not show much difference in religious affiliation between generations. Religious commitment remains strongest there.

“Two majority Christian countries represent the biggest exceptions to the religious age gap seen around the globe,” Christianity Today explained, “In Ghana, a relatively stable country in West Africa, and Georgia, a former Soviet republic, today’s young people are more likely than older generations to say religion is ‘very important’ in their lives, the report stated.”

If you compare the under 40 Ghanaians and the over 40 Ghanaians, the numbers emerge as 91% to 85%, respectively. In Chad, Liberia, and Rwanda, the young “claim their religious affiliation, attend services, and commit to daily prayer at higher rates than their parents and grandparents.”

A common theme in these countries comes from the threat of violent conflict. If a violent conflict is present, people seem more religious. The “existential insecurity” seems to correlate, positively, with more religiosity. If more risk to life and limb, then more religion.

“In predominantly Christian countries, it’s whether they consider religion a priority; the greatest generational discrepancies emerge over the question of religion’s importance in their lives,” Christianity Today explained, “In predominantly Muslim countries, it’s a question of mosque attendance. Even in countries where religiosity remains steady across age groups, young people still tend to be less likely to pray daily.”

The countries with the majority of citizens adhering to or identifying as Christian show the highest levels of decrease in religiosity. It shows in the other main Abrahamic faith, Islam, but not as severe in terms of the decrease.

The reportage said, “As noted, the countries with the greatest percentage of people who say religion is “very important” in their lives—mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and Central America—are also among the fastest-growing countries in the world.”

It continued to note. The Pew Research Center Report explained a negative correlation between the level of commitment to religion and the markers for the economic and social development of a country. That is, education levels, GDP, and income equality negatively associated with or negatively correlate with religious commitment. If poorer, less educated, with higher income inequality, then the countries’ citizens will adhere more to a faith.

The one outlier in this is the United States of America. Unique in its high level of development and high religiosity.

As noted in the article, out of the 102 nations analyzed by the Pew Research Center, only the United States showed higher levels of daily prayer. In fact, it had above-average levels of prayer. In conclusion, it was higher in other measures of its citizens’ level of religious commitment too.

External to the United States as an outlier example, religion correlates with poverty, lack of education, and greater divides between the poor and the rich.

Moral of the story, and to policymakers: if someone wants to increase religiosity or religious commitment, they would construct policy to increase income inequality, decrease educational access and success, and increase the quantity of the poor; if someone wants to decrease religious commitment, and so increase secularization, they would become policy architects oriented to increase educational achievement, attainment, and completion, and decrease income inequality and the quantity of the citizenry below or in the poverty lines.

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2022-04-15

Ad Infinitum: Christianity Not Under Attack or “On Trial”

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/10

According to CBC News, there has been an infant custody court case. One involving a stuffed lion, purportedly Jesus Christ as lawyer, glossolalia or speaking in tongues, and asserted religious zealots in British Columbia.

One couple considered religious zealots rejected legal assistance in a court case. They informed the witnesses to the case: Jesus Christ is their lawyer. Where Christ asked questions via the voice of one of the parents, so in context, Christ – via the parent, purportedly – fought for the custody of the parent.

The mother wanted to rename the child “Jesus JoyoftheLord.” The couple lost the court battle. Social workers balance child safety and parental beliefs, often. This case highlighted it. The couple spoke to the court room through a stuffed lion, who they purported was the lawyer, Christ (their alleged Lord and Saviour).

The Justice Diane MacDonald said, “This is a difficult case… The parents obviously love their child and wish to raise her in a home with their Christian values.”

AJ and DK, or the couple’s initialisms within the court case, had a trouble history. They moved from community to community. They alienated people. They did this through “efforts to purge churches of ‘evil influences.’”

“The stakes are high because a continuing custody order paves the way to adoption. The case is not the first time religion has reared its head in a child custody dispute,” CBC News reported, “In 2015, a pair of devout Jehovah’s Witnesses were ordered not to talk about religion in front of their four-year-old granddaughter.”

In addition in 2009, the “top court” in Canada considered and then dismissed the case of a Jehovah’s Witnesses Manitoba girl. She claimed rights were violated because of a forced blood transfusion as a minor.

“The Ministry of Children and Family Development got involved with AJ and DK in 2016 after AJ told a facilitator at a lunch program that DK had choked her and “believes sexual relations between children should be encouraged,’” CBC News explained.

The mother later denied the disclosure. AJ was pregnant at the time. Their baby was born on November 1 of 2016, where a paramedic helped them. AJ refused any medical procedures, even vaccinations.

There were also issues “expressed about AJ’s mental health and DK’s potential for violence. A specialist was assigned to work with the family, and the baby was placed in voluntary care with foster parents.”

The child began to lose weight between 1 and 2 months old, so the child was taken from the home. AJ did not feed the child breast milk and the child was losing weight. One pastor sought a restraining order against them.

In West Kelowna, the couple were charged with criminal disturbance of another church.

The court case decision (the one they lost) described, “DK co-operated with the arrest but AJ ‘rolled around on the ground’ and did not co-operate… The parents allegedly wanted to cleanse the Church of evil influences.”

This did not mean something with the parents’ freedom of religion at all, according to the CBC News reportage. The director of the child, family and community services originally argued the parents were unfit for parenting or caretaking of the child.

The parents put forth the argument that they were being persecuted for their “deeply held Christian beliefs.” The justice’s review of the case “was limited to errors of law.”

MacDonald (the justice) noted, “…he, himself, was a Christian and did not have any issue with their Christian family values… I restate that this hearing is not about the parent’s freedom of religion.”

She, the justice, continued to talk about Christianity not being on trial; and the parents’ belief in some purported revelation in God or the use of speaking in tongues, or glossolalia, are not on trial. Same with the home birthing or the denial of use of vaccinations. Those were not on trial.

What was on trial according to MacDonald? Nothing, the issue was the best interests of the child. The justice, in the case of a potential adoption, had the hope that the ministry may consider in searching for an extended member of their family for the child.

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2022-04-15

This Week in Canadian Science 2018-06-10

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/10

“VANCOUVER, June 8, 2018 /CNW/ – Today, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the Haida Nation, Oceana Canada and Ocean Networks Canada announced a new partnership to share resources, knowledge and expertise to better understand and protect seamounts (underwater mountains) near the islands of Haida Gwaii.

Protecting seamounts is internationally recognized as important for healthy oceans. Seamounts are offshore biodiversity hotspots. These highly-structured environments are ideal for coral and sponge growth, in turn providing nursery and foraging habitat important for fish populations and other marine life.

This summer, the group will spend 16 days aboard the Ocean Exploration Trust’s state-of-the-art vessel, E/V Nautilus, studying three seamounts: SGaan Kinghlas-Bowie, Dellwood and Explorer.”

Source: https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/celebrating-world-oceans-day-by-partnering-to-explore-and-protect-mysterious-underwater-mountains-in-canada-684989491.html.

“Professor Vivek Goel is vice-president, research and innovation at the University of Toronto.

When was the last time you travelled outside Canada? Can you remember the last time you had a conversation with someone born elsewhere or felt a personal link to international events?

Canadians pride themselves on our global connections, diversity and openness. We are a small but significant player on the world stage and our ability to work across borders is a key part of our influence. As we all benefit from such global connections, so does research. If you want to be at the leading edge globally, you have to build global partnerships. Prosperity-generating breakthroughs in Canada depend on knowledge that is produced here, as well as in many other research centres around the world.

Unfortunately, there are some people who raise concerns about working with foreign partners. Something has to be done, the argument goes, to stop academics from handing over our national know-how to foreign players with little in return.”

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-building-walls-around-our-research-wont-lead-to-made-in-canada/.

“When Kirsty Duncan, Canada’s federal science minister, wants to illustrate the importance of fundamental science – research driven by human curiosity, not potential outcomes – she often reaches for the example of deep learning.

The branch of artificial intelligence, which attempts to mimic the way the human brain learns, was pioneered by University of Toronto researcher Geoffrey Hinton and others and is now widely viewed as a potentially revolutionary technology that could transform Toronto – and Canada – into a global innovation hub.

But if it weren’t for public funding of University Professor Hinton’s research decades ago, when he toiled in obscurity on a field of inquiry many considered crazy, the breakthrough may well have happened somewhere else – or perhaps not all.

“There’s a lesson here: it’s investments in discovery research over decades,” Duncan said in an interview during a visit to U of T’s campus this week, noting the federal government last year invested $125 million in a Canada-wide artificial intelligence strategy to capitalize on its early lead.”

Source: https://www.utoronto.ca/news/it-all-starts-discovery-research-federal-science-minister-says-canada-s-innovation-pipeline.

“Federal Science Minister Kirsty Duncan has made it clear that gender equity in science is a big priority for her. And now she’s looking beyond universities to scientists employed by the federal government.

Duncan said in an interview in Toronto this week that she has asked science-based departments in the federal government to collect demographic data about their staff following a union survey that found:

42 per cent of female federal scientists, engineers and researchers who responded thought gender bias was a career barrier.
27 per cent believe men are favoured in opportunities for leadership roles.

But Duncan isn’t relying on the union’s own study.

“I think we have to know what the data is,” she said.”

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/gender-bias-duncan-1.4696030.

“Expectations include delivering on mandate priorities, engaging in consultations and continuing ongoing collaboration

OTTAWA, June 8, 2018 /CNW/ – Today, the Honourable Kirsty Duncan, Minister of Science and Minister of Sport and Persons with Disabilities, met the Canada Research Coordinating Committee (CRCC) to outline her expectations for transformative change in the research community. The Minister launched the CRCC in October 2017 with the mission of delivering on priorities that include:

Bringing greater harmony and coordination to research-related programs and policies in Canada and addressing common concerns across the three federal granting councils and the Canada Foundation for Innovation;
Improving equity, diversity and inclusion across the research spectrum; and
Developing, in partnership with Indigenous communities, an interdisciplinary Indigenous research and training model that contributes to reconciliation with First Nations, Métis and Inuit.

During today’s meeting in Ottawa, the Minister outlined her expectations that the committee engage in ongoing consultations with the members and organizations that are part of Canada’s research community.”

Source: https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/minister-of-science-met-with-the-canada-research-coordinating-committee-to-outline-expectations-684981421.html.

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2022-04-15

This Week in Canadian Religion 2018-06-10

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/10

“WEATHER-RELATED disasters can make people more religious but it depends on the toll they inflict, suggests new UBC research. If a disaster injures a significant number of people, it can strengthen religiosity among those who are already religious. But if a disaster inflicts mostly economic damage, the opposite effect applies.

“It’s generally assumed that disasters can intensify religious preferences or practices,” said study author Oscar Zapata, a postdoctoral researcher in UBC’s school of community and regional planning. “My analysis suggests that it depends on the frequency of disasters in that region and the specific impact of the disaster.”

Eighty-two per cent of survey respondents said they believe in God, with the majority reporting that they are either Roman Catholic, Protestant or Christian Orthodox. Using statistical analysis, Zapata found that among the believers of God, religiosity increased following disasters that injured a significant number of people; for every one per cent increase in the number of injured due to a climate disaster, attendance at religious services increased by close to four per cent.”

Source: https://www.voiceonline.com/injuries-and-loss-of-life-boost-religious-faith-after-disasters-in-canada-ubc-study/.

“The couple spoke in tongues in court to a stuffed lion who they claimed was giving them direct counsel from God.

They rejected legal aid, preferring to advise witnesses “it was their lawyer Jesus Christ asking the questions through the voice of the parent.”

The battle was for custody of their baby — who the mother wants to rename Jesus JoyoftheLord.

They lost.

Now, in a decision highlighting the tightrope social workers walk in balancing parental beliefs with child safety, a B.C. Supreme Court judge has dismissed the Kelowna couple’s claim of religious persecution.”

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/christianity-custody-child-religious-debate-1.4693154.

“An Osborne Village-area church is using the separation of religion and state as an argument against a city plan to confer heritage status on the building.

On Friday, city council’s property and development committee voted to place Trinity Baptist Church on Gertrude Avenue on the City of Winnipeg’s list of historical resources.

The 80-member congregation opposed the heritage designation for its 108-year-old building on the basis it could hamper the church’s religious freedom, in the event it wished to make changes to its interior. “

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/trinity-baptist-church-heritage-1.4698065.

“Canada’s Supreme Court strongly supported religious freedom when it ruled that faith-based congregations have the right to establish their own rules of membership and procedures for determining when someone can be expelled.

The May 31 decision was met with relief by Christian groups that backed the case of a Jehovah’s Witness community in the western province of Alberta, which had been sued by a former member it had excommunicated.

The nation’s highest court ruled unanimously that the state had no right to interfere in the internal affairs of any religious organization as long as it didn’t affect civil rights or laws.”

Source: https://international.la-croix.com/news/canada-s-top-court-gives-a-boost-to-religious-freedom/7738#.

“MONTREAL – Beginning next month, at least one employee in every Quebec government body, municipality, transit agency, school board, university, daycare and hospital will need a new skill: judging the sincerity of religious beliefs.

Across the province, hundreds of “accommodation officers” are getting crash courses on whether to accept or reject requests for accommodations made on religious grounds, such as meals respecting dietary restrictions or time off for religious holidays.

In recently published guidelines, the provincial government says the officers will apply a number of criteria established over time thorough jurisprudence, including whether the request for a religious accommodation stems from a “sincerely held belief.””

Source: http://nationalpost.com/news/canada/quebec-begins-training-accommodation-officers-to-assess-religious-sincerity.

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2022-04-15

This Week in Canadian Politics 2018-06-10

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/10

“The Canadian government announced at the G7 summit in Quebec that it has raised more than $3.8 billion in an effort with other countries to send the world’s poorest girls to school.

That includes a $400-million investment from Canada as part of the overall three-year commitment, and also includes contributions from G7 partners and the World Bank.

Canada, along with the European Union, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the World Bank, will partner on the funds, which will go towards supporting women acquiring job skills, improving teacher training to improve curriculum for girls, expanding the quality of data available on female education and promoting more coordination between humanitarian partners.”

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-education-girls-g7-1.4699620.

“Ontario turned Tory Blue in this week’s election, not because newly-crowned Premier Doug Ford is an extremist, but because he isn’t.

The contest became a weird three-way race: Between a moderate and fiscally conservative businessman and two tax-and-spenders out of the public sector, one more extreme than the other.

It was not a right, center and left contest. It was Doug Ford in the center versus a left and an extreme left leader.

He promised to cut spending, taxes, hydro rates, and scandals. His goal was to trim spending overall by a relatively modest four per cent and to fire Hydro One’s overpaid $6-million-a-year chief executive officer.

By contrast, the Liberal and NDP leaders outdid one another with promises to spend more, never less. They offered the status quo on steroids despite widespread public dissatisfaction about taxes, energy costs, and scandals.

The first indication Ford would win handily was when sitting Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne conceded that she couldn’t win. Her announcement was an admission that her policies had alienated voters. It was unusual, classy, but risky, and ended up handing the NDP’s Andrea Horwath the highest popular vote of any NDPer. Wynne’s concession convinced many Liberal voters to move into the extreme left lane to stop Ford.

Meanwhile, Ford never veered, adhering to his pledge to restore fiscal integrity and cut taxes.””

Source: http://business.financialpost.com/diane-francis/doug-fords-win-sends-a-message-to-the-rest-of-canadas-politicians-including-the-prime-minister.

“OTTAWA – U.S. President Donald Trump has backed up threats of tariffs in the past with real trade action, and that’s why his latest comments about the Canadian dairy and auto sectors are worrying, and need to be taken seriously, say trade insiders.

On CTV’s Question Period Sunday morning, Former premier of Quebec and deputy prime minister Jean Charest said Canada has to prepare for Trump to act, because as seen with the levelling of steel and aluminum tariffs on Canada, “he tends to follow through on the threats he makes.”

“We have to prepare and we’re very worried, and should be very worried on this side,” said Charest. “On a day-to-day basis the Trump administration is confusion and chaos, but on the key issues he ran on… he has remained constant.””

Source: https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/trump-s-parting-g7-threats-to-canadian-dairy-autos-a-real-cause-for-concern-trade-insiders-1.3967340.

“QUEBEC — When Donald Trump boarded Air Force One in Quebec and whisked his way to Singapore on Saturday, he left behind a stormy wake of mixed signals that bordered on rage. Hours after indicating he would sign on to a carefully drafted G7 communique, he rescinded his support, accused Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of being meek and dishonest, and threatened Canada with more trade action.

Here are five questions about what’s at stake:

The future of the G7: The leaders huddled late into the night on Friday and again on Saturday morning to find compromises palatable to all, especially on maintaining free trade and carefully managing trade disputes. With Trump rejecting those compromises and turning his back on an agreement, can the G7 remain intact? They also affirmed the importance of the “international rules-based order” and that the G7 is based on a set of “shared values.” What is lost if the G7 becomes the G6, or simply falls apart?

Canada-U.S. trade: The United States is, by far, Canada’s biggest customer. Much of Canada’s export sector is tightly linked to having an open border with the United States. That makes the renegotiation of the North America Free Trade Agreement that Trump has instigated crucial to the future of Canadian investment and prosperity. The U.S. has recently thrown up or reinforced several barriers to that open border — in aerospace, lumber, and most recently steel and aluminum. With Trump and Trudeau exchanging increasingly personal and public insults, what happens to those NAFTA negotiations? Are Canada’s supply chains at risk? Are there enough reasonable conversations taking place with thoughtful American powerbrokers behind the scenes to help Canada escape a full-blown trade war that would devastate a wide range of sectors?””

Source: https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/trump-s-aggression-against-g7-and-canada-five-questions-about-what-s-at-stake-1.3967281.

“You would have been called a cynic if you had predicted that, on the launch of a Canada-U.S. trade war initiated without valid cause by the larger country, Canada’s free-market Conservative Party would use the occasion to undermine its own government by supporting tariff-protected dairy farmers.

But then, politics has a way of breeding cynicism.

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer did his part on Tuesday when he released a statement criticizing not U.S. President Donald Trump, who capriciously imposed levies on Canadian steel and aluminum last week, but Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for the crime of announcing “flexibility” in his position on access to the Canadian dairy market.

Mr. Scheer called any weakening of the tariffs that shield Canadian milk, eggs and poultry from foreign competition “totally unacceptable” and accused the PM of being duplicitous for saying otherwise to an American audience.

The most galling thing about this attack on the PM was not that the Conservative stance on supply management is dead wrong. All three major parties have, in the past, steadfastly supported the antiquated and expensive fixed prices, production quotas and trade barriers that protect dairy and poultry farming in Canada, so Mr. Scheer is not alone in this.””

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/editorials/article-globe-editorial-andrew-scheers-cheesy-trade-war-politics/.

“The federal Department of Justice has quietly agreed to amend the regulations on internet child pornography after Parliament Hill’s legal fact checkers spotted problems with the law.

The back and forth between department officials and lawyers with the Standing Joint Committee on Scrutiny of Regulations — detailed in internal letters — shines a light on the imperfect science of drafting government regulations.

The regulations brought in by the Harper government in 2011 to accompany a new child pornography law require that Canadian internet service providers (ISPs) report child pornography to the police.

The regulations include a unique provision that asks a designated organization — the Canadian Centre for Child Protection — to review any online files flagged by ISPs or members of the public to determine if they constitute child pornography. The Manitoba-based charity is seen as the leading voice on the issue in Canada.”

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/scutiniy-committee-internet-porn-1.4695165.

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2022-04-15

This Week in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms 2018-06-10

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/10

The Mohawk Council of Kahnawake (MCK) has announced it will not appeal a recent court decision striking down a controversial section of its membership law that barred residents who married non-Indigenous partners from living with them in the community on Montreal’s South Shore.

Quebec Superior Court Justice Thomas Davis ruled the law, dubbed “marry out, get out” by many Kahnawake Mohawks, violates Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

“It is clearly in our interest to move forward as a community and to put this unpleasant episode behind us as a community,” said Grand Chief Joe Norton in a statement released Wednesday.

“It was unanimously agreed [by the Kahnawake Mohawk Council] that going to another court would not serve our purpose,” Norton said.

Council also agreed to pay $35,000 to seven of the 16 plaintiffs, as Davis ordered.

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/kahnawake-mohawk-council-will-not-appeal-superior-court-decision-overturning-marry-out-get-out-policy-1.4694696.

“Bedell, 18, is a former member of the Mayor’s Youth Council and has been active in student politics since he was in middle school.

He said he was interested in participating in the project because issues that young people face need to be addressed.

“Though we do have a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, oftentimes in our political discourse, we tend to only focus on issues that adults face,” said Bedell. “We brush under the rug how those issues affect children.”

Developing the children’s charter began in 2017 when Children First Canada, a national non-profit organization, hosted online forums and focus groups to see what issues concerned Canada’s youth.”

Source: https://www.thestar.com/calgary/2018/06/06/teens-across-the-country-gather-in-ottawa-to-finalize-new-childrens-charter.html.

“The Supreme Court of Canada didn’t find this to be a laughing matter, and has reinforced on several occasions, the fact all provincial legislation must conform to the Constitution, which has provisions for regional and voter thresholds in deciding electoral reform.

There was a foundational case heard before the B.C. Court of Appeal back in 1989 (Dixon v. Attorney General of B.C.) that has been referenced numerous times since by the Supreme Court of Canada, that determined “the right to a high degree of equality of voting power is one of great importance; it is one of the most fundamental freedoms granted by the Charter.” This resulted in B.C. introducing the Electoral Boundaries Commission Act that included the following principles as instructed by the Court: “that the principle of representation by population be achieved, recognizing the imperatives imposed by geographical and demographic realities, the legacy of our history and the need to balance the community interests of the people of British Columbia.”

The legislation also followed the direction of the court in allowing a population deviation of plus or minus 25 per cent. When electoral boundary commissions are struck, they go to great lengths to comply with the Constitution to ensure equality of voting power is maintained.”

Source: http://www.princegeorgecitizen.com/opinion/letters/a-proportional-representation-response-1.23330716.

“Gerald Comeau, a volunteer with the Bangor Sawmill Museum in Meteghan River, N.S., said the museum does not have a mandate to take an ideological position on abortion, and should not be compelled to do so in order to be eligible for funding.

“We’re a museum. We’re not involved in the business of ideological questions of abortion and so on,” said Comeau in a phone interview Thursday. “So we came to the decision that we could not support that clause.”

Comeau, a former longtime Tory politician and senator, said he wrote a letter to accompany the application that affirmed the organization’s respect for human rights and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but the application was nevertheless denied.

He said without government funding, the museum — home to one of Canada’s last water-powered mills — does not have enough money to hire a student museum guide, and so will not open this summer as scheduled. The funding required to hire the student amounts to about $3,000.”

Source: http://www.squamishchief.com/n-s-sawmill-museum-blames-closure-on-canada-summer-jobs-abortion-controversy-1.23328266.

“A landmark Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario ruling, which recently determined that cutting or reducing benefits for workers over the age of 65 amounts to discrimination, is expected to have significant implications for older workers from coast to coast.

After more than a year and a half of deliberation, the tribunal decided in favour of Brantford teacher Steve Talos, who was taken off the Grand Erie District School Board’s benefits plan upon reaching the age of 65. On May 18 the tribunal determined that doing so violates Section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees Canadians protection from discrimination on the basis of age.

“The tribunal found, five years ago, that the legislation allows the Grand Erie District School Board to do what it did, and the only way this could possibly move forward and be successful was if we challenged the legislation itself,” said Jamie Melnick, who represented Mr. Talos in the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal case. “This decision I believe is the first decision in Canadian history that has found in favour of the applicant on the basis of age discrimination under the Constitution.””

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/careers/management/article-cutting-benefits-for-workers-65-and-over-ruled-unconstitutional-by/.

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2022-04-15

Canadian Science Prodigy Wins at Prestigious International Competition

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/09

A science prodigy in Grade 11 from Waterloo, Ontario, named Sajeev Kohli received the top honours in the Global Healthcare Challenge.

Kohli attends the Sir John A. Macdonald Secondary School in Waterloo. He is the 2018 Sanofi Biogenius Canada national champion. Recently, he was the national champion and won the grand prize for the Global Healthcare Challenge.

He won the award at the “prestigious International BioGENEius Challenge in Boston.” It is considered among the preeminent student biotechnology competitions all over the world.

The competition focuses on healthcare and medical biotechnology. With an emphasis on the production of discovery inventions, Kohli was one among 14 finalists from Canada, Germany, and the United States.

The grand prize came with a cash award of $7,500. Kohli earned recognition for excellence with the research initiative entitled “Recruiting Endogenous Proteins for Site Specific Transport: A Novel Workflow for Gene Carrier Design.”

He had important mentorship, which is crucial for the young gifted and talented – unnurtured gifts are small tragedies. The mentor was, and all should be mentioned for their important often volunteer work throughout the country, Dr. Pu Chen.

Chen is a Canada Research Chair in Biomanufacturing at the University of Waterloo. Chen wanted to develop a cost-effective medication in order to reduce the side effects of cancer treatment.

One that could “selectively target malignant cells. His project could potentially impact the hundreds of thousands of Canadian patients with cancer, the leading cause of death in Canada,” the reportage explained.

Below is a quote about Kohli:

Sajeev has truly distinguished himself, both as the winner of the 2018 Sanofi Biogenius Canada competition, and now with this well-deserved international recognition. His research and drive to innovate is a true symbol of the depth and calibre of scientific talent in Canada,” said Niven Al-Khoury, President of Sanofi Canada. “Sanofi strongly believes in empowering our country’s next generation of innovators. For almost 25 years, we have been proud to support a program that pairs promising young researchers with mentors who will help them realize their greatest potential and showcase their work on the national and international stage. Congratulations, Sajeev, on this wonderful accomplishment.

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2022-04-15

Interview with Professor Anthony Pinn – Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor of Humanities, Rice University

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/06

Professor Anthony Pinn is the Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor of Humanities at Rice University. He earned his B.A. from Columbia University, and M.Div. and Ph.D. in the study of religion from Harvard University. He is an author, humanist, and public speaker. Also, and this is in no way a complete listing of titles or accomplishments, Pinn is the Founding Director of the Center for Engaged Research and Collaborative Learning (CERCL) at Rice University.

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Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What was early life like for you, e.g. geography, culture, language, and religion/irreligion?

Professor Anthony B. Pinn: I grew up in Buffalo, New York, and in a fairly religious family (particularly my mother’s side of the family). Church was a major cultural and social force in my early years – so much so that I moved into ministry at a relative young age. We’d moved from a Baptist church to an independent church that eventually affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal Church denomination, and it was within that denomination I received ordination and worked as a youth pastor through much of my years in school – high school, college, and some of graduate school.

Jacobsen: When did the humanist ethic and aesthetic first come to you? What was the first explicit mention of yourself as a humanist?

Pinn:I grew into humanism as my theology and religious sensibilities did not line up with my experience and the conditions of life in a more general sense. This process started while I was a college student at Columbia University, and it was completed during my early years in the PhD program at Harvard University. My theology didn’t address the circumstances of collective life — e.g., racism, class discrimination and so on. Rather, my theology and religious setting required surrender of these existential questions and a somewhat blind adherence to doctrine. With time, that approach created a dissonance that I couldn’t maintain. I had to either comfort myself as a safeguard of the “Tradition”, or I would have to leave theism (because the problem was larger than my church and denomination). I decided to leave theism.

I can’t recall the first time I was called a humanism, or labelled myself a humanist.

Jacobsen: How did these inform your research work and educational pursuits and attainments over time? Some from the most prestigious and authoritative post-secondary institutions in the world.

Pinn:My interests in religion as both academic subject and personal concern motivated my early study of religion. However, I came to realize only my academic study of religion – as a cultural force in the world – could be justified. Much of my work now involves an effort to better understand the nature and meaning of humanism.

Jacobsen: What is the importance of having the moral authority and community solidarity in times of strife, tribulation, trial, moral ambiguity, political instability, economic uncertainty, and fundamentalist (religion, Islamism and Christian Dominionism, and non-religion, e.g., ethnic nationalism and supremacism)?

Pinn:I’m not certain I understand the question. Moral authority is subjective and community solidarity is conditional. I would say, however, that community remains important across various challenges. There is a need for connection, for the presence of the likeminded, who confirm one’s life choices and understand one’s life challenges. Religion serves to accomplish this for some, but humanism also serves this function as well.

Jacobsen: What seems like the next steps for the non-religious movements in North America over the 2018/2019 period?

Pinn:There is no one answer to that question in that there is no consensus related to concerns or context for non-religious “movements” in North America. The next steps? That depends on what these various organizations and the “movements” they constitute under and as their goals and objectives. I’m not certain there is consistent related to goals and objectives. I, however, would argue that non-religious movements will only be relevant moving forward IF they concern themselves with various dimensions of social justice work.

Jacobsen: Any final thoughts or feelings in conclusion?

Pinn:Nothing comes to mind.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Professor Pinn.

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2022-04-15

Nsajigwa I Mwasokwa (Nsajigwa Nsa’sam) on the Creation of Community

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/05

Nsajigwa I Mwasokwa (Nsajigwa Nsa’sam) founded Jichojipya (meaning with new eye) to “Think Anew”. We have talked before about freethought in Tanzania. Here we continue the discussion on the creation of a community for the non-religious.

Jacobsen: I want to focus less on pointing the finger in this 4^th session. I look to the production of the community rather than the direction of flaws in other communities.

The non-religious communities, in so far as I can tell, have flaws as with any other community. How do you plan to build the non-religious community alongside, and even with, the religious community in Tanzania?

Nsajigwa: Could you recall the “Brook farm” experiment of the Transcendentalists, as well as the “Walden pond” experience of Thoreau in 1840s to 1850s USA? Both were inspired by the teachings of Transcendentalists – Ralph Waldo Emerson and others. They had Thoreau retreat back to nature to practiced right there, self-reliance.

Well, we had our own Tanzanian similar-like experience here, inspired by the teachings of Ushirika – Communitarianism back then. Thus I initiated a “back to the land” move for the unemployed youth in urban centers to go farming, including myself. That was in the mid-1990s.

We went back to the farm in Mbozi very near to the Kimwondo – a meteorite stone, and stayed there 1995 to 1998. Due to heavy “El Nino” rain and a complete lack of any support from the Government (despite their promises for same) we had to abandon the project but out of it came cultural tourism that became lifetime career for some freethinkers.

If we had support by then who knows? Maybe, you could have today a well-established freethinker institution and community in Africa, emerging right from the grassroots…! anyway even the Brook farm and the Walden pond experiments both had to be dissolved but their ideas and ideals linger still.

One of our member of that Youth-hood move is a “Thoreau Anarchist” … still living by farming nearby there, still don’t own a cellphone thus living without one, refusing to visit urban centers only when necessary, doing (building) everything by himself…!

And yes the non-religious are fallible too, I know from experience of building same in Africa, East African part. As of the moment, I am surprised by arguments just on definitions of who & what is a Humanist here. The latter-day generation of nonbeliever potential activists seems stuck just on that…So you hear…I am this not that…Agnostic not Atheist, Apatheist not Atheist, Atheist not Humanist, Pantheist not Atheist, Freethinker not Atheist etc.

As a long time veteran Pioneer freethinker activist, I find this mind-boggling. Does it matter…? as long as you are an independent-minded, skeptic and can question even your own religion that is, you are a brainchild of enlightenment. Those other labels are but personal temperaments. And one can be multiple of those anyway, depending on the circumstances.

Thus in Africa, it’s important to build by teaching (as I have always done) correctly this philosophy & worldview & life stance. We don’t need yet more tribalism, this time of nonbelievers each thinking his label is what this philosophy is.

Likewise building by doing & living by examples of one’s own positive life as a mirror of the Happy Humanist who is Ethical, Humanistic, Rationalist, Responsible, tolerant…tolerant to others viewpoints, only to counter when such becomes inhuman, dangerous…give respect for all…eclecticism…just insist on rationalism, and scepticism to claims, outside likewise inside religion. Of interfaith…Africa had been observed by great thinker late Ali A Mazrui as “Triple heritage melting pot” …Jichojipya deals with that reality on the ground.

Jichojipya is more of “Pro” rather than “against” movement…Pro IHEU AD 2002 Declaration (of which I translated into Swahili being the first time its available in an African language – and one with large speakers and readers), Pro-African Freedom charter before and an African human rights charter now, Pro George Ayittey’s Indigenist renaissance Cheetah teachings, Pro Paul Kurtz Eupraxsophy teachings for building communities and institutions for people living without religion, Pro UN 1948 Human rights charter all in agreement by people in and outside religions like me…Pro secularism…keep religion out of state & governance, our country being secular thanks to our founder who happened to be a good student of John Stuart Mills on subject “liberty”.

I am for individuality (liberty) within cooperatism, each one help one, Ushirika – “SisikwaSisi”, work together for the common good, let 100 flowers blossom to make a beautiful garden, Humanism should rule, whether religious (John Dewey to Julian Huxley), ethical (Felix Adler) or secular (Paul Kurtz)…in all cases man is the centre..! on How (plan) to build…its a nascent movement so building here is from the scratch, grassroots has I have always done throughout my experience above – Mbozi Sisikwasisi project and now for Jichojipya Think Anew.

Jacobsen: Have there been interbelief panels with religions and the non-religious community?

Nsajigwa: Non-religious as a movement is nascent here, except before it was the “back to the land” SisikwaSisi youth movement that became like the Brook Farm and Walden pond transcendentalist adventure. Now, it’s Jichojipya-Think Anew.

There have been conferences of interfaith but the voices of nonbelievers are just not there, they are not even thought to exist, except with (aside from) the elder Kingunge Ngombale Mwiru as an individual exception. He was assumed a “Marxist”, or “communist” by the way, no one ever knew him to be a freethinker until that Jichojipya interview with him.

However, we live with others most of whom are religious, some very religious. It’s our African “triple heritage” package, again as one African great thinker Ali A Mazrui had postulated.

Jacobsen: Have you worked on the creation of schools and clubs and associations outside of Jichojipya to build the non-religious community?

Nsajigwa: No but one thing needs to be highlighted here. Our curriculum syllabus in Tanzania is secular to the point of teaching and even broadcasting “Zamadamu”- theory of evolution already…!

So to be fair the secular education already provided by the state is a good beginning here, but there is that socialization, indoctrination, religion-based from childhood I explained elsewhere about, that one is taken to be primary to the secular education one would get at school. As for ourselves we freethinkers few here in our particular case, despite having such plans before and even now, it is an expensive venture, money capital is needed for that.

As for the clubs yes, circles of book reading philosophy in general, freethinking humanism in particular, doing this since the 1990s when back then a Secondary school teacher, to being a youth activist for social change, to become a pioneer of humanist life stance here from 2002 on. I am an autodidact and have influenced many youths basing on that, as I explained before, a library is my sanctuary.

More so I helped the emergence of a non-religious community in Uganda, was right there from the very beginning of planting seeds done by the IHEU President elder Levi Fragel. Me helping out being his guide as he traveled in places to explain what IHEU and Humanism are about, helping behind the scene too. And for the cause of freethinking humanism elsewhere in Africa, have traveled also to Malawi, Kenya and recently Nigeria.

Jacobsen: What may be some next steps in the development of said communities?

Nsajigwa: For Tanzania and much of Africa its to “unearth” the in the closet Freethinkers nonbelievers and connect them into a circle, body, and institution to work for actualizing Humanist life stance idealism – free world that is secular, tolerant, rational, commensurate with the 21^st century human ethical sympathy and empathy, liberty to all, muted irrationality, superstitions and fundamentalism beliefs – whether theological or ideological…

In practice, resources and funds for building what great thinker Paul Kurtz termed as Eupraxsophy institutions, centers, what we tried to build during the phase of our Youth-hood SisikwaSisi “Brook farm” to “Walden pond” back to the land adventurism…!

Jacobsen: We can fix more within the community rather than work to point to flaws in other communities. What do the non-religious communities do wrong? Why are these problems? How can these be solved or ameliorated as problems? I mean in the global non-religious community and the local Tanzanian community.

Nsajigwa: Yes, we can fix by showing the alternative…we are part of the solution, globally and locally…in our African case two cases here one, the non-religious needs to get organized, not each living on his own, and in the closet. Here is the imperative need for a good & exemplary Leadership from the Pioneers.

Thus it’s important, as Roslyn Mould of Ghana had rightly pointed out elsewhere, to get the right people leading…and help them on the work to build a movement and a community. In Europe well there is already high level of Liberty & bills of right & rule of law…but here in Africa we live in illiberal societies, with triple tyranny of culture, religion and politics all demanding conformity making it just too hard to be an independent thinker let alone (dangerous being a) freethinker nonbeliever.

Nevertheless, time has come now to “unearth” and organize these extraordinary individuals – what W E B Du Bois termed as the “talented 10th” of every age in every society since the time of Socrates, before and after, into a global community that lives to keep that elenchus habit, that had produced modernity itself as we know it today.

Let us organize ourselves into Eupraxsophy as a community beyond lonesome stoic endurance. For Tanzania front, the emerging of Jichojipya is exactly to facilitate that. We wish to make figure Socrates and subject philosophy qua philosophy get known to the populace. We were able to unearth the late elder Kingunge Ngombale Mwiru as an independent thinker and as a freethinker.

We shall keep doing that, including keep inspiring (we don’t convert though, live and let live..!) others who are independent thinkers and freethinkers on the closet, to realize they are not alone, that there are others like them and that man is a social animal, they need to come together to meet the like-minded, see how they can help one another, each other in this drama of circle of nonbeing to life being and back to nonbeing, while living in between as realists, without religion, or if in it, then be sceptic doubting one, Thomases within it, rationalists as Mutazilites in Islam or Obierikas of African tradition. Religions being but cultural phenomena, thus man-made.

That a possibility to live a Happy and ethical life of usawa, ubinadamu na Utu wema – Swahili for Humanism, without a religion or any supernatural beliefs. Man is the center, from philosopher Protagoras of ancient past to Tanzanian founder father of the Nation (and its secularism principles) late J K Nyerere.

Jacobsen: Thank you for your time, and the opportunity, again.

Nsajigwa: Thanks back to you too, one more time.

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2022-04-15

On the Low-Income Population Health and Critical Thinking on Medical Care

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/04

Professor Gordon Guyatt, MD, MSc, FRCP, OC is a Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Health Research Methods, Evidence and Impact and Medicine at McMaster University. He is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences.

Here we talk about the research that helps the low income and the critical thinking stance to take on pseudo-medicines or medicine purporting to help but does not in the end.

In 2017, I had the chance to talk with a leading medical research, distinguished professor Gordon Guyatt. He specializes in evidence-based medicine. I wanted to talk about some important research and some practical tips for the public.

Tips for the public to avoid snake oil and bogus remedies. We started on the research and then moved onto the practical tips. When I asked about the research, I focused on the research with the most potential to improve health outcomes for the low income.

On low-income Canadians, Guyatt stated, “The best way to improve the health of low-income folks is to decrease income gradients and that would have far more impact than any particular health interventions.”

That is, if society could stop or reduce smoking, then this would improve the health outcomes of the entire population. Lifetime smokers have seven few years of life than non-smokers. That is significant. Who would not pay for another 2,000-3,000 days of life, especially near the end of life?

It is a “far bigger gradient that can come from any particular health interventions. So if we can persuade everyone to stop smoking, that would have an enormous impact on health. While medical innovations have made a big impact on both quality and quantity, there are other things like income gradients, like health habits – in particular, smoking – that have a bigger impact,” Guyatt explained.

As a provincial, national, and, indeed, international expert in evidence-based medicine, this became an important point to convey to me. In particular, the clarity comes from the expertise, knowledge, years in the field, and reading the research.

“Medical treatment has made a big impact on various areas, including cardiovascular disease and treatments and cancer. Those were made because those were the biggest sources of morbidity and mortality in society. That is where I see the biggest continuing potential: certainly, within the area of cancer, our understanding biology has advanced enormously,” Guyatt said.

He states that there will be a steady intake of new preventions and therapies. Many fatal cancers will be chronic diseases in the future. This has been happening. He predicts this will continue into the future. When I shifted the conversation to the critical thinking part. I wanted some simple tips.

Guyatt stated, “What they can do is learn the basic principles of deciding what evidence is trustworthy and what is not. That should be possible. A colleague of mine by the name of Andy Oxlan has completed a large randomized trial in Africa of teaching school-age kids about recognizing, as you put it, snake oil from legitimate health claims.

Oxlan’s randomized trial showed that kids improved substantially in their ability to make the distinctions. At the same time, the parents’ ability to make these decisions improved too. Now, these are highly poor or poverty-stricken areas of the world in parts of the African continent.

We live in a rich country with more resources including information. That would make our job easier in terms of taking a proactive approach to personal health claims.

“Should people decide to educate themselves, they all would be in a position to make judgments themselves. They should certainly be in the position, even with quite limited knowledge,” Guyatt explained, “of asking their clinicians to justify what evidence there is to base what is being suggested and to challenge the physician or the clinician in explaining – to be made knowledgeable of the evidence that supports what they’re doing.”

—

The British Medical Journal or BMJ had a list of 117 nominees in 2010 for the Lifetime Achievement Award. Guyatt was short-listed and came in second-place in the end. He earned the title of an Officer of the Order of Canada based on contributions from evidence-based medicine and its teaching.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2012 and a Member of the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame in 2015. He lectured on public vs. private healthcare funding in March of 2017, which seemed like a valuable conversation to publish in order to have this in the internet’s digital repository with one of Canada’s foremost academics.

For those with an interest in standardized metrics or academic rankings, he is the 14th most cited academic in the world in terms of H-Index at 222 and has a total citation count of more than 200,000. That is, he has the highest H-Index, likely, of any Canadian academic living or dead.

—

He talks here with Scott Douglas Jacobsen who founded In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. We conducted an extensive interview before: here, here, here, here, here, and here. We have other interviews in Canadian Atheist (here and here), Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy, Humanist Voices, and The Good Men Project (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here).

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2022-04-15

In Conversation with Ismail Mohamed of “The Black Ducks”

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/03

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What was early life like for you, e.g. geography, culture, language, religion, and so on?

Ismail Mohamed: I was born in 1983 and travelled with my family to Jordan at the age of five. Luckily, my father was not a religious man; that is, he did not practice religious rituals. This bothered me because all my friends had their parents’ religions and practised the rituals of Islam permanently.

He does not. I was born in Alexandria, Egypt. I lived in Jordan for a long time and returned with my family to Egypt after 9/11. I remember in these days in Jordan how many talked about bin Laden as a Muslim hero.

My uncle helped to raise me. He was devout. He took me with him to the mosque constantly and made me memorize the Koran. I was not able to read and memorize the Koran. This was causing me some frustration among classmates because everyone was good at reading the Koran well and memorizing it.

In my adolescence, I was living a conflict between religious commitment, and my love for music and listening to music and songs. I remember in this period. I was very attracted to the melodies and songs of Michael Jackson, but his reputation was bad among people in my community.

People accuse him of likening women (this is a charge and a stigma in our societies). It was not easy to express my admiration for all the people. I was walking in the Jordanian capital looking for any picture of Michael Jackson just to watch from afar.

The best thing that happened to me in this period was to encourage my parents to read books, encyclopedias, reading about electricity, physics, and chemistry. I loved going to the library and reading about how electricity works and reading about how sexual organs work. I could get information from books. It is great and helped me a lot in understanding life better.

Unfortunately, I only learned the Arabic language at this time in my life. My father was not a person with a university education. He knew that science was wonderful. He encouraged me to read continuously and with the advent of the Internet. He encouraged me to go online and remember that I went.

Jacobsen: You are Egyptian. What is the climate for atheists and religious people there? Is it more favourable for the atheists or for the religious?

Mohamed: I am an Egyptian living in Egypt since the events of 9/11. Being a Muslim and a straight man means that you live in the perfect place for you. Egypt, like any Muslim country, is good for conservative Muslims and heterosexuals.

It is not a good place for atheists. I am not gay, but I have gay friends who live in very difficult circumstances. Almost all of them live a double life. The community may be married to another sex or show that they love the opposite sex, but in fact, they are gay or lesbian.

Jacobsen: How does Egypt tend to treat atheists in social and professional life?

Mohamed: No one can declare his atheism and remain in the same social and professional life. This is almost impossible. This can be announced to some people close to him and will remain secret to everyone.

But if his declaration is strong, the society will not have mercy on him, whether he is a university professor or whatever. Therefore, the majority of those who declared atheism are now social outcasts.

Some of them resort to changing their homes or jobs or hiding, or working through the Internet as I did after my declaration of atheism in one of the satellite channels. I then had to leave my city and go to live in the city for fear on my life and the life of my family, religious persecution and fear of persecution is very difficult and turns life into a great hell.

Jacobsen: What are the laws regarding atheists in Egypt? Does this violate human rights of non-believers?

Mohamed: There are no laws that criminalize atheism in Egypt. If you are an atheist, you do not violate the law. But if you talk about the reasons for atheism or explain religion as you understood it and make you an atheist, you may be imprisoned for contempt of religions. This violates the human rights of freedom of belief and expression.

Jacobsen: What was the show The Black aDucks?

Mohamed: It is a media platform where non-believers were given the opportunity to talk about their experience with religion; an information platform that also propagates the principles of secularism and acceptance of the other.

The program’s guests were not only non-believers, but also minority believers such as Christians, Baha’is, and Shi’a Muslims from Sunni Muslim communities and Sunni Muslims. Shiite communities, and a group of thinkers and writers from different countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

I have recorded more than 300 episodes so far. The program has also been the first to give the opportunity to many homosexuals who are forgotten. They can talk about their experience. Their suffering in the Middle East, also the program aims to encourage non-believers and oppressed life and deliver a message to them is that they are not alone, but we are with them.

Jacobsen: What is going on with the show now? What happens on the show in its more prominent moments?

Mohamed: I was forced to leave the city and go to another city with a very small population. I was able to continue broadcasting from there. However, I was apprehended by security and stopped for a while and returned to my city.

Now, I broadcast my programs with sound instead of audio and video to avoid any trouble that may occur. I was invited to participate in a conference on secularism in London last year. I got a visa to travel, but the security authorities prevented me from travelling for unknown reasons. I received a prize from the conference with Richard Dawkins and others.

Jacobsen: Of course, people have the right to believe or follow a religion as they wish, according to the UN Charter, which narrows the problem to rights violations against atheists with death penalties or against the ordinary religion with the fundamentalists enforcing their views on both of non-religious and the ordinary religious, How can both groups work to combat the encroachment of the fundamentalist religious to protect human rights and acquire justice in the many cases of rights violations?

Mohamed: This is a wonderful question. Unfortunately, to this day, there is an overlap (almost all the countries of the Middle East and North Africa) between what is religious and what is related to life, people, and society. There are many laws based on religion such as personal status laws in Egypt for example (such as marriage and inheritance), and some other laws.

A large proportion of ordinary Muslims do not care about this and do not feel threatened by this overlap between religion and politics or between religion and state and the system of life, while the unbelievers are difficult to hear because most are oppressed and afraid to speak freely because of the laws of contempt of religions that can imprison them at any time. It happened with many thinkers and writers, and some may be killed.

Jacobsen: Any final feelings or thoughts in conclusion?

Mohamed: We are one world and one planet. Western societies are created, produced, and manufactured by the creativity of their children who enjoy freedom after separating what is religious from what is related to life.

I believe that individuals and institutions from all Western countries should support our transformation of secularism and separation of religion and law. We need your support. Islam is a very old religion.

I think it needs to evolve and change many of its interpretations. Western societies and governments can put pressure on Islamic religious institutions to change their concepts.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Ismail.

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2022-04-15

Interview with the Co-Founder of the United Atheists of Europe Nacer Amari

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/03

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Regarding geography, culture, and language, where does family background reside?

Nacer Amari: Although, the Tunisian southern region is where most citizens adhere to the religion. Its customs, traditions, and social norms. I grew up in a Berber family with Arab culture where parents are illiterate and not religious.

Jacobsen: How did this influence personal development?

Amari: Usually, it has a negative impact on the child’s personality, but I consider myself to be lucky compared to the children where I grew up, even though my parents were illiterate and managed to raise me without being affected by religion.

Jacobsen: When did you first identify as an atheist?

Amari: I started to have doubts about religion during the high school. I noticed that my colleagues in the high school were praying, but my family’s members were not. This is when I started thinking about the purpose of prayers and religion and the existence of God in general. Then I completely lost my faith in God during the 10th class identifying myself as an atheist.

Jacobsen: You co-founded united atheists of Europe. Why found it? How big is it? What are your aims and concrete goals for the upcoming years?

Amari: Karrar Al Asfoor and I founded this social fraternity when we noticed that there is a need to unify the efforts of atheists across Europe. It is to bring the European atheists to work together with the ex-Muslim community for a secular world.

In the meantime, it is considered a small-sized social fraternity, but it’s open for every atheist who is interested to join. Our future goals are to have the effective means to challenge religions and protecting secularism in Europe and to empower atheists in the Islamic world pushing it into secularism there.

Jacobsen: In Tunisia, you are banned from eating during Ramadan. Why? How are people quietly and openly protesting it?

Amari: The old Tunisian constitution did not prohibit eating during Ramadan, but there was a ban from the Ministry of Interior requiring restaurants and cafes to obtain touristic permits to be able to serve food and drinks during Ramadan with the windows covered.

The constitution has been updated after the revolution with a new chapter, which is called “the good ethics chapter” giving the ban legal status.

Jacobsen: What is the purported purpose and reasoning behind Ramadan?

Amari: The practice of fasting performed by Muslims every year for 14 centuries is a phenomenon of ancient religious rites that has preserved its existence to this day and is not commensurate with any logical scientific explanation.

This is a holy month par excellence for Muslims. It is one of the five pillars of Islam, as they believe that the revelation of the Qur’an was a “night of fate” this month, also the only month of which the name appears in the Koran.

They considered it the “month of charity” because, when it ends, the faithful must pay alms.

Jacobsen: What is the religious climate in Tunisia? How is freedom to criticize religion there?

Amari: The talk about religious aspect in Tunisia is the talk of a conflict that has existed between religious and political since independence, on the face of social-political, but in its depth is political-religious.

After the revolution the Islamists seized the power, the religious climate became very scary, where have been many assassinations, terror attacks, the rise of terrorism, and atonement to date.

The freedom to criticize religion in Tunisia is complicated, because in the new constitution, there is a contradiction in the laws, where we find in the first chapter mentioned that “Islam is the religion of the state.”

However, in chapter six, ” The State protects the religion (Islam), guarantees the freedom of belief, conscience and the exercise of the cults.”

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Nacer.

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2022-04-15

This Week in Canadian Religion 2018-06-03

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/03

“In a unanimous decision Thursday, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled the courts have no jurisdiction to address the procedural fairness of religious groups or other volunteer organizations.

Highwood Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses (Judicial Committee) v. Wall involved a man who was expelled from his religious community and raised the question of whether the decisions by private, volunteer organizations should be subject to judicial review. Canada’s highest court found that judicial review is limited to public decision-makers and there is no right to procedural fairness absent an underlying legal right, according to the decision, which overturned rulings from the Court of Queen’s Bench and Court of Appeal of Alberta.

“Issues of theology are not justiciable,” wrote Supreme Court Justice Malcolm Rowe, who delivered the judgment.”

Source: http://www.canadianlawyermag.com/legalfeeds/author/aidan-macnab/scc-says-courts-cant-decide-procedural-fairness-of-religious-organizations-15792/.

“A new Supreme Court ruling that Jehovah’s Witnesses are free to banish and shun any member they wish, regardless of how they decide to do it, offers a powerful precedent for religious independence in Canada.

It follows years of uncertainty of just how deeply into the waters of faith and doctrine Canada’s judges are willing or able to wade.

Now the limits are clear, thanks to the case of Randy Wall, a Calgary real estate agent and longtime Jehovah’s Witness whose “disfellowship” destroyed his client base and led him to seek redress in the courts. He did not dispute the right of the Highwood Congregation to banish him, but claimed they did so unfairly, without telling him detailed allegations, or whether he could have counsel or a record of proceedings.”

Source: http://nationalpost.com/news/religion/jehovahs-witnesses-can-shun-members-as-they-see-fit-just-like-any-old-bridge-club-supreme-court.

“WASHINGTON, D.C., May 31, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) — U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo released a report on international religious freedom on Tuesday that includes Canada’s battles over freedom of conscience and parental rights as concerning international incidents.

The report documents Ontario’s Christian doctors’ fight for conscience rights and the government’s inclusion of gender expression and identity in child welfare law. Pro-life and pro-family advocates have warned that the latter gives the state license to remove children from homes if their parents are not accepting enough of the LGBT cause.

Pompeo also announced his department will host a conference on international religious liberty, “Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom,” in Washington. “

Source: https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/u.s.-state-dept-canadian-laws-are-threatening-religious-freedom.

“When Farida Pedhiwala couldn’t articulate the importance of giving charity and sharing wealth to the less fortunate with her three-year-old son, Adam, she decided she was going to show him instead.

Inspired by her son, Pedhiwala began a program — in partnership with ICNA Relief Canada in Mississauga — and will be collecting toy donations until July 4 that will be distributed to families through the food bank to children celebrating Eid al-Fitr.

Eid al-Fitr, a celebration marking the end of Ramadan, is a day where families come together, eat, and give presents to children.

Pedhiwala says like her family donates and volunteers with different charities during December for Christmas, she wanted to do it for Eid as well, and hopes to see the program become an annual event. “

Source: https://www.mississauga.com/community-story/8645170-mississauga-woman-starts-eid-toy-drive/.

“Canada “does not censor” what it posts to Chinese social media, a Foreign Affairs official said, after a report raised questions about how countries communicate on the tightly controlled Chinese internet.

Authorities in China routinely delete and otherwise restrict communications made by foreign embassies on the Twitter-like Sina Weibo, whose reach to large numbers of Chinese people has made it a desired location for “weiplomacy.”

But a report this week that documented the censorship taking place also pointed out countries whose Weibo posts are not being aggressively censored, including Canada, calling into question whether they are redacting themselves.

In at least two instances in the past month, messages posted to Weibo by the Canadian embassy in Beijing differ substantially from those posted to Twitter.”

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-canada-does-not-censor-social-media-posts-in-china-foreign-affairs/.

“WireService.ca Media Release (06/01/2018) Ottawa, ON – The facts of Wall case revolve around Mr. Wall who was “dis-fellowed” (expelled) from his Jehovah’s Witness congregation due to allegations of drunkenness and misbehavior with his family. Mr. Wall brought an application for Judicial Review of the Congregation’s decision alleging that the expulsion affected his livelihood as a realtor since many of his clients were Jehovah’s Witnesses who no longer gave him business. The Court of Queen’s Bench concluded that the Court had jurisdiction to hear the Judicial Review application based on Wall’s economic interest on whether he was afforded due process before this disfellowship.

The Alberta Court of Appeal upheld the lower court decision. The Congregation then appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada.

The WSO was granted intervener status in the case by the Supreme Court of Canada on August 24, 2017 and the appeal was heard by the Court on November 2, 2017. The WSO has appeared before the Supreme Court of Canada five times as an intervener- four of those cases, such as this one, involved non-Sikh appellants.”

Source: https://www.wireservice.ca/index.php?module=News&func=display&sid=23432.

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2022-04-15

This Week in Canadian Science 2018-06-03

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/03

“A lack of funding has forced the Canadian Space Agency to abandon plans to participate in a NASA-led space telescope project that Canadian astronomers say is a top priority for the coming decade.

The decision delivers a galaxy-sized blow to a sector already reeling from a federal budget that was notably silent on space. Scientists and industry partners are now left wondering what has happened to a long-awaited strategy from the Trudeau government for pursuing Canada’s research-and-development goals in orbit.

“It’s a gutting feeling,” said Michael Hudson, a professor of astronomy at the University of Waterloo and Canada’s representative on the keystone mission, known as the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope, or WFIRST. Dr. Hudson, who has been working on the project since 2013, learned of the cancellation earlier this month during a 4 a.m. phone call in Sydney, where he is on sabbatical.”

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-lack-of-funding-forces-canada-to-abort-mission-on-nasa-telescope/.

“The Government of Canada announces the appointment of Christina Tessier as Director of the National Museum of Science and Technology

GATINEAU, QC, May 29, 2018 /CNW/ – The Honourable Mélanie Joly, Minister of Canadian Heritage, today announced the appointment of Christina Tessier to the position of Director of the National Museum of Science and Technology for a term of five years, effective June 11, 2018. The appointment is the result of the Government of Canada’s open, transparent and merit-based selection process.

Ms. Tessier has been serving as Director General of the National Museum of Science and Technology since 2014, delivering a fast-tracked rebuild of the Museum on time and on budget. She joined the Canada Science and Technology Museums Corporation in 2013 as Director of Operations of the Canada Aviation and Space Museum. Ms. Tessier has also held numerous senior leadership positions, notably at Parks Canada. She possesses multi-faceted professional experience acquired in an array of different fields, including culture, high technology and public governance. She is a highly-respected senior executive working with a unique perspective and skill set, together with a corporate focus and a results-driven attitude.”

Source: https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/minister-joly-announces-an-appointment-to-the-national-museum-of-science-and-technology-683955821.html.

“GATINEAU, QC, May 31, 2018 /CNW/ – Every day, scientists and technologists are hard at work at Environment and Climate Change Canada labs across the country, to ensure Canadians enjoy a safe, clean, and sustainable environment.

On June 13 and 14, 2018—during National Public Service Week—we are opening select research facilities across the country to offer Canadians a first-hand look at our work and an opportunity to meet our outstanding scientists and experts.

Visitors will have the chance to tour facilities housing some of the world’s leading research laboratories where our scientists are monitoring air and water quality, studying ecosystem health and the impacts of climate change, and improving our ability to predict extreme weather events.

Participating Environment and Climate Change Canada laboratories are located in Montréal, Burlington, Ottawa, Toronto, and North Vancouver. For more information on these open house events, please visit our website.”

Source: https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/open-house-meet-environment-and-climate-change-canadas-scientists-and-get-a-unique-behind-the-scenes-glimpse-into-our-science-labs-684175811.html.

“Imagine: A Canadian athlete trains and works for 15 years, preparing to make history — then just before he goes for his second gold medal at his second Olympics, the government cuts all Olympic funding for his sport.

That’s what funding is like for some of our scientists, who face the nearly impossible task of making life-saving discoveries or scientific history without good financial support.

Research Manitoba recently released its new funding guidelines. Money goes, in very small grant amounts, to new investigators in a much wider area of fields than previously (not just health sciences but natural sciences and humanities, too). At the same time, it cut its program for health research mid-career investigator operating grants.

On the federal level, the government puts a lot of money into new five year term Canada Research chairs. This pays for new positions, equipment and lab startup funds, but provides little for ongoing lab support, research technicians or grad student research and education.”

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/opinion-joanne-seiff-research-funding-canada-1.4687400.

“OTTAWA, May 31, 2018 /CNW/ – The federal government is using its purchasing power to ensure Canada’s men and women in uniform have the equipment and services they need, while promoting diversity and gender balance and creating skills training opportunities for all Canadians.

The Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, today released the new Value Proposition Guide, which updates the government’s approach to assessing economic benefits to Canada under the Industrial and Technological Benefits (ITB) Policy.

Under the new guide, the Government of Canada will leverage its contracts in the defence sector to promote skills development and diversity.

The ITB Policy requires that for every dollar the government spends on equipment for our Armed Forces and Coast Guard, the supplying company reinvests a dollar back into the Canadian economy. That translates into a robust research and development environment and hundreds of well-paying middle-class jobs for Canadians.”

Source: https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/federal-government-supporting-diversity-and-skills-development-through-defence-spending-684173591.html.

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2022-04-15

This Week in Canadian Politics 2018-06-03

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/03

“Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the U.S. administration’s decision to place tariffs on Canadian aluminum and steel citing national security issues is an insult.

Speaking on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Trudeau admitted he’s struggling to come to terms with President Donald Trump’s use of Section 232 to slap 25 per cent duties on steel and 10 per cent on aluminum.

“The idea that we are somehow a national security threat to the United States is quite frankly insulting and unacceptable.”

Trudeau said he has no idea what Trump wants from Canada, and that a year ago the president told him it would be a poor decision to include Canada in any action under Section 232’s national security rationale.

Tariffs will hurt jobs and prosperity on both sides of the border, he added — and he wants Americans to understand that.”

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/u-s-tariffs-canada-insulting-trudeau-1.4689819.

“There are nine new political parties registered in Ontario and at least one pundit says the number is a sure sign of an “anti-incumbent” election.

All of the new parties are small. Some are focused on one issue. Others take positions on a broad range of issues. Still others want a different approach to governing.

The nine entrants bring the total number of parties in the election to 28.

Many leaders of the new parties told CBC Toronto they have launched the parties because they believe voters are not being heard.”

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/fringe-parties-ontario-election-increase-1.4683906.

“Trade actions like the ones taken by the Trump administration this week are intended to inflict pain, and the steel and aluminum tariffs levied by the Trump administration are unwelcome developments for both industries in Canada.

But the harm will fall disproportionately on producers of steel, rather than aluminum — and not only because the tariff on steel (25 per cent) is higher than the one on aluminum (10 per cent).

The United States is in a much weaker position to hurt Canadian aluminum producers than it is to punish Canadian steelmakers. Indeed, the likely reason for the lower tariff on aluminum is that the Trump administration realizes it’s American consumers, not Canadian producers, who will end up paying for it.

In fact, the top U.S. aluminum industry consultant says the tariff has, so far, actually enriched Canadian aluminum producers.”

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadian-aluminum-shows-its-mettle-in-face-of-trump-s-tariff-1.4686655.

“A Gatineau, Que. doctor says Venezuelans caught in a deepening political and economic crisis at home are being unfairly being denied travel visas to Canada.

Gabriela Prada said she hoped her sister and mother could visit to attend her daughter’s graduation, but their visa applications were turned down. A letter explaining the rationale for her sister’s refusal cited family ties to Canada and turmoil in her home country.

“Given the deteriorating social, economic and political situations in Venezuela, I am not satisfied that you are a bona fide visitor who will depart Canada by the end of any authorized stay,” the letter reads.

Prada said that decision is inappropriate and runs counter to Canada’s foreign policy position that joins other countries in condemning the escalating humanitarian crisis in Venezuela.

“It is good for Canada to endorse other countries, but at the same time, it discriminates (against) Venezuelans’ applications to come to Canada. The policies do not seem in line to me,” she said.”

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/venezuela-visa-canada-hussen-1.4685689.

“Canada is countering the United States’ move to slap punishing tariffs on steel and aluminum imports by imposing dollar-for-dollar tariffs of its own on everything from steel products to maple syrup.

Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said Canada is hitting back with duties of up to $16.6 billion on some steel and aluminum products and other goods from the U.S. — including beer kegs, whisky, toilet paper and “hair lacquers.”

She and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made the announcement at a press conference hours after U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross confirmed the United States is following through on its threat to impose tariffs of 25 per cent on imported steel and 10 per cent on imported aluminum, citing national security interests.

“This is the strongest trade action Canada has taken in the post-war era. This is a very strong response, it is a proportionate response, it is perfectly reciprocal,” Freeland told reporters.”

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trump-steel-deadline-1.4685242.

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2022-04-15

This Week in Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms 2018-06-03

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/03

“Appeal by the Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform of a decision dismissing its application for judicial review of the respondent’s decision refusing to permit the appellant to place certain anti-abortion advertising on the respondent’s transit buses. The appellant was a public interest group that focused its efforts on the issue of abortion. The proposed advertising consisted of full colour depictions of fetuses with the graphics “abortion kills children” and “ENDTHEKILLING”. The respondent refused to permit the proposed advertising because it would be disturbing to people within the community. The appellant argued its right to freedom of expression was violated. The reviewing judge found that the advertisement, when considered in the context of the content of the appellant’s website, consisted of strong statements that vilified women who had chosen to have an abortion. The judge found that the rejection of the appellant’s advertisement in furtherance of the respondent’s statutory objectives had infringed the appellant’s freedom of expression but that infringement was not absolute, because the respondent had not refused to post any advertisements, just the particular one originally submitted. She concluded that the advertisement was likely to cause psychological harm to some women and to cause fear and confusion among children. The judge found the respondent had acted proportionately and reasonably in refusing this particular advertisement.”

Source: https://www.thelawyersdaily.ca/articles/6635/canadian-charter-of-rights-and-freedoms-freedoms-of-thought-belief-opinion-and-expression.

“Try to imagine what it must have been like growing up as the son of former Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau.

You probably would have heard more than a million times how great your dad was.

You likely would have encountered scores of people telling you how the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms changed their lives.

You would have met Ismaili Muslims, Chilean Canadians, and people of many other cultural and religious backgrounds telling you how grateful they were that your father enabled them to come to Canada to build a new life.

Scholars would have told you that your dad was brilliant. Some might have even remarked that your father had attended Harvard, the London School of Economics, and the Sorbonne, which is the academic equivalent of scoring a hat trick.

Gays and lesbians would have said they’re eternally grateful to your father for declaring that the state had no place in the bedrooms of the nation.”

Source: https://www.straight.com/news/1084386/did-justin-trudeau-just-deal-his-father-issues-purchasing-pipeline.

“As with thousands of other Canadians, Robert Wayne Nelson had the chance to die on his own terms.

Nelson’s earlier diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease was enough to handle in the years leading up to his spring 2016 diagnosis of progressive supranuclear palsy — a disease his daughter, Jen Wiles, described as Parkinson’s “evil big brother.”

Doctors didn’t know what to do. The severe brain disorder holds no effective treatments.

However, as a biologist throughout his life, the then-71-year-old had always followed legislation surrounding medical assistance in dying.

“My dad was the first medically assisted death in our community,” said Nelson’s only daughter, Wiles, of her father who died on Feb. 15, 2017, in Camrose.”

Source: http://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/my-dad-gave-us-a-gift-daughter-opens-up-on-fathers-medically-assisted-death.

“When Ontario abolished mandatory retirement in 2006, employers could still terminate benefits for workers who turned 65. But in May, the province’s Human Rights Tribunal determined the provision in the Human Rights Codethat allowed employers to do so was unconstitutional.

Previously, employers often offered benefits to older workers to encourage them to stay and cut benefits at 65 if they wanted to encourage retirement, says Tiina Liivet, vice-president of benefits and health at Accompass Inc. in Toronto.

But she isn’t at all surprised by the tribunal’s decision, noting the provision was at odds with the ban on mandatory retirement. “I think it’s taken a while [for someone to] feel strongly enough about it to take it to the Human Rights Tribunal,” she says.”

Source: https://www.benefitscanada.com/news/age-discrimination-in-benefits-plans-unconstitutional-finds-human-rights-tribunal-115168.

“The P.E.I. government says any restrictions on freedom of expression in its new referendum legislation are “reasonably necessary” to ensure a level playing field for both sides in the upcoming debate — and vote — on proportional representation.

Bill 38, the Electoral System Referendum Act, would limit groups and individuals to spending no more than $500 on referendum advertising unless they register with government, in which case they would be permitted to spend a share of $75,000 in taxpayer funding for each side in the debate.

Exceeding spending limits would lead to fines of $10,000 or more.

Both the Green Party and the P.E.I. Coalition for Proportional Representation have raised concerns, suggesting the legislation would not withstand a legal challenge under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-edward-island/pei-referendum-charter-free-speech-1.4683914.

“WATERLOO — Senators at Wilfrid Laurier University approved a freedom-of-expression statement Tuesday that details the school’s commitment to not censoring difficult or controversial ideas.

The final statement, developed by the Task Force on Freedom of Expression, says Laurier “unequivocally embraces the principles of free expression required in an academic environment.” That includes a range of perspectives and ideas, “including those that may be deemed difficult, controversial, extreme, or even wrong-headed.”

In a presentation to senators Tuesday afternoon, Robert Gordon, chair of the task force, said “the principles are grounded by a commitment to academic freedom, freedom of speech … and the relevant legislation around free speech.” That includes the Criminal Code of Canada, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and the Ontario Human Rights Code.”

Source: https://www.therecord.com/news-story/8638724-laurier-senate-approves-freedom-of-expression-statement/.

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2022-04-15

“The absence of singularity means the absence of inconsistency in the laws of nature describing our universe, that shows a particular importance in studying black holes and cosmology”

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/03

Sunday Express reported on the possibility for research in standard Big Bang cosmology into areas before not empirically researched. That point being before the singularity at the moment of creation or the Big Bang as it is sometimes called.

It has been notoriously thought as something outside of the realm of empirical physics and only left to theoretical physicists to speculate and compare with moments of the universe after T=0, when time began — literally came into existence.

One international team of researchers is proposing a different picture of a before of creation, of a time before the Big Bang. Apparently, the singularity of black holes is akin to the Big Bang because the laws of physics appear to break down.

With some complex math and quantum strangeness, the international team of researchers claim the origins of the universe and the center of a black hole can be explained, comprehended, and not seen as a sort of known unknown.

Professor Mir Faizal at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada and the University of British Columbia, Okanagan in British Columbia, Canada explained, “It is known that general relativity predicts that the universe started with a big bang singularity and the laws are physics cannot be meaningfully applied to a singularity.”

Faizal co-authored the paper with Salwa Alsaleh, Lina Alasfar, and Ahmed Farag Ali. Faizal said that the current theories show the singularities, in black holes and at the Big Bang, are built into the interpretations of the math to make the theories. They follow from the math.

However, if they include quantum effects to remove the singularities, then the standard theories based on work by Roger Penrose, Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics in the University of Oxford and Emeritus Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford, and Stephen Hawking, Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology within the University of Cambridge, can be modified.

Those changes to remove the singularities imply new models. Those old models without the quantum effects to the remove the singularities relied on specific models with problems. One model includes string theory, which, as noted, has its own problems.

Only “very general considerations” rather than a specific model is needed to ‘prove’ the proposal in the paper by Faizal and others. The paper concludes that the centres of black holes do not amount to singularities, but, rather, to empirically testable areas of future research.

“The absence of singularity means the absence of inconsistency in the laws of nature describing our universe, that shows a particular importance in studying black holes and cosmology,” the paper said.

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2022-04-15

On Climate Change

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/03

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) says, “97 percent or more of actively publishing climate scientists agree: Climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities” (NASA, 2016b).

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in the Climate Change 2014 Synthesis Report says, “Human influence on the climate system is clear, and recent anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are the highest in history. Recent climate changes have had widespread impacts on human and natural systems.” (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2015).

The British Royal Society says, “Scientists know that recent climate change is largely caused by human activities from an understanding of basic physics, comparing observations with models, and fingerprinting the detailed patterns of climate change caused by different human and natural influences.” (The Royal Society, 2016b).

And the Government of Canada says, “The science behind man-made climate change is unequivocal. Climate change is a global challenge whose impacts will be felt by all countries, particularly the poorest and most vulnerable. Indeed, impacts are already occurring across the globe. Strong action is required now and Canada intends to be a climate leader.” (The Government of Canada, 2015b). What do these mean, plainly?

In short, the vast majority of those that spend expertise, money, and time to research the climate affirm that global warming is a reality, and a looming threat to the biosphere (Upton, 2015; Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2015). So that means, in general, if you know what you’re talking about regarding the climate, you understand it’s changing. You know it’s warming globally — not necessarily locally, wherever any particular local is, which would be weather. What does this imply?

Well if it is inevitable and ongoing, then its solution or set of solutions is a necessity, which should be the center of the discussion. Not if, but when, and therefore, how do we work together to prevent and lessen its impacts? There can be legitimate disagreement about the timeline and the severity within a margin of error based on data sets, or meta-analyses, but legitimate conversation starts with an affirmative. So why is it significant?

Because most of the biosphere exists in that “extremely thin sheet of air” (Hall, 2015) with a thickness of only “60 miles” or ~96.56 kilometers called the atmosphere. It is happening to the minute sheet of the Earth, and in turn affects the biosphere. So small, globally speaking, contributions to the atmosphere can have large impacts throughout the biosphere and climate, as is extrapolated from current and historical data. What is the timeline, and why the urgency?

Because, in general, it will cause numerous changes in decades, not centuries (Gillis, 2016). That translates into our parents, our own, our (if any) children, and our (if any) current or future grandchildren. In other words, all of us, present and future. What kind of things would, or should, we expect — or even are witnessing?

For starters, we’ll experience average increases in global temperatures, impacts to ecosystems and economies, flooding and drought, and affected water sources and forests such as Canada’s (David Suzuki Foundation, 2014b; David Suzuki Foundation, 2014d; David Suzuki Foundation, 2014e).

It affects the health of children and grandchildren, and grandparents, through heat-related deaths, tropical disease increases, and heat-aggravated health problems (David Suzuki Foundation, 2014c). It is adversely affecting biodiversity (Harvard University School of Public Health, 2016) and threatening human survival (Jordan-Stanford, 2015).

Recently it was reported that the Arctic winter sea ice is at a record low (Weber, 2016). There’ll be sea-level rise and superstorms (Urry, 2016). And it affects all, not just our own, primate species, according to primatologists (Platt, 2016). So even our closest evolutionary cousins, via proximate ancestry, will be affected too. This is a global crisis. What are major factors?

Population and industrial activity are the big ones. Too many people doing lots of highly pollution-producing stuff. It’s greatly connected to the last three centuries’ human population explosion and industrialization, which was an increase from about 1 billion to over 7 billion people (Brooke, 2012). So life on Earth is changing, in part, because of human industrial activity with increasing severity as there are more, and more, human beings on the planet (Scientific American, 2009). What’s being done to prepare for it?

Nations throughout the world are preparing for the relatively predictable general, and severe, impacts of it (Union of Concern Scientists, n.d.). The international community is aware, and that explains the Paris climate conference (COP21) during late 2015 (European Commission, 2016), which Prime Minister Trudeau attended for our national representation at this important global meeting (Fitz-Morris, 2015).

Alberta is making its own preparation too (Leach, 2015). And, apparently, small municipalities in Canada are not prepared for its impacts (The Canadian Press, 2015; The University of British Columbia, 2014). But there are those in Alberta such as Power Shift Alberta, hoping to derive solutions to climate change from our youth (Bourgeois, 2016).

So there’s thoughtful consideration, and work, from the international and national to the provincial and territorial, and even municipal levels, for the incoming changing crisis. Whether something can be done about it at one magnitude or another, it is being talked about more with concomitant changes to policy and actions following from them.

All of this preparation, or at least consciousness-raising, is relevant and needing further integration. Climate change will only get more severe unless we do something about it. So, again, that means it’s all a question of when, not ‘if’.

If we want a long-term, robust solution to assist in the reduction of CO2 emissions, a carbon tax fits the bill for a start. Then there’s future energy resources including Hydro, bioenergy, wind, solar, geothermal, and ocean (Natural Resources Canada, 2016). And the flip side of the coin for an energy source is a place to put that energy via future storage technologies also (Dodge, 2015).

But there’s something needed prior to and alongside all of that, which leads back into the original point. Talk about it. Discussion and conversation is the glue that will bind all of these together. The energy sources and storage-devices of the future, the preparation for the effects of climate change that is happening and will continue to happen, and so on, need chit-chat throughout democratic societies for even more awareness of it.

So let’s do something about it, by talking about it more through a national discourse.

Here and now.

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2022-04-15

In Conversation with Karrar Al Asfoor on Atheism: Co-Founder, Atheist Alliance – Middle-East and North Africa & United Atheists of Europe

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/06/01

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is the status of religion in Iraq?

Karrar Al Asfoor: Religion controls every aspect of life in Iraq, from the simple cashier in a small shop to the largest governmental organization to my house, to the children playing in the streets, to the cafe talks, whatever you do there you will be in touch with religion.

Iraq is considered one of the most important Shia majority countries with Najaf and Karbala cities that are considered to be the holiest Shia cities. The whole calendar is filled with religious festivals that take place in every part of the country.

Jacobsen: How much political and legal power does religion enforce in Iraq?

Asfoor: Taking into consideration that the government is run by religious organizations and Islamic parties with religious militias who have much more power than the security forces, and people needing a fatwa from the grand mufti for everything; I would say that religion is the dominant political power in the country.

Jacobsen: You co-founded an organization with Nacer Ameri. What is the organization? Why co-found it? What is its title, mission, and purpose?

Asfoor: First, let me clarify that it is not yet an officially registered organization, it is an Idea in its early phases. It is much like a social fraternity with goals to bring the European atheist community to work together with the ex-Muslim community for a secular world. Its name is United Atheists of Europe.

It is clear that we rely on unifying the efforts of atheists across the European continent but are not limited to this, because the world has become a small village and whatever happens in one part of the world would affect other parts.

We will use the space of possible freedom here and have that to make an impact in the Islamic world. In terms of “missions,” we have two generally. The first one is to protect secularism in Europe, which faces the risk of Islamism. The second is to have the effective means to empower atheists in the Islamic world pushing things into secularism there.

And as mentioned earlier, our purpose is a secular world, but that is not achievable at the moment because there are political agendas controlling our world. They have the resources and the larger media outlets.

We only have our brains so we need to face them smartly with an innovative workaround, inspired by the Illuminati, which existed during the enlightenment era. Nacer and I started this social fraternity.

Jacobsen: How does religion in Europe represent a better version with more moderation, tolerance, diversity, and real secularism?

Asfoor: During my stay in Europe until now, religion has never intervened with my freedom or personal choices. For example, I could be arrested if drink alcohol in some cities in Iraq compared to over the counter alcohol bottles here in Europe.

That’s a huge difference, and here I feel more comfortable with the idea that my head will still be connected to my body if I criticize religion.

Jacobsen: Does Islam permit secularism in a fundamentalist reading or interpretation of the scripture?

Asfoor: There is no secularism in Islam or other religions. Religions are based on the divine command theory of ethics while secularism is based on the rational ethical theories (like Utilitarianism). They are totally different axiological worldviews, despite the fact some interpretations permit secularism and some reformers actually advocate for it ignoring the huge contradictions between the original scripture and the new interpretation.

But taking in consideration that people vary in their thinking, psychological elements, and social field factors, I think interpretations and reformers hold a key role in the social transformation and our existence (we ex-Muslim atheists) is so much important to them while the opposite is true.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Karrar.

Asfoor: I am honored to participate in this interview with you, thanks a lot Scott.

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2022-04-15

Updates from the Executive Director of the British Columbia Humanist Association

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/30

Ian Bushfield, M.Sc., is the Executive Director of the British Columbia Humanist Association (BCHA). The BCHA has been working to have humanist marriages on the same plane as other marriages in the province. Here we talk about recent updates from the view of the BCHA.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: It has been several months since the last conversation. Let us jump into it. What have been the general trends in British Columbia for the humanist population?

Ian Bushfield: I can only speak broadly, as we don’t get a lot of regular data on the religious and nonreligious make-up of British Columbia. What we do know is that over the past few decades, BC has become increasingly secular where most metrics show a majority of people in the province identify as having no religion and as few as one-in-ten regularly attend religious services.

Within the BC Humanist Association, we’ve continued to see growth throughout 2017 and 2018. Some of our biggest growths in membership and support have come in the past year and we’re really excited to continue that trend through 2018.

Jacobsen: What have been some of the developments in 2018, so far, for the British Columbia Humanist Association?

Bushfield: It’s been interesting for us to watch and start to interact with the new BC Government over the past few months.

Some of it has been promising, like their commitment and consultation around rebuilding the province’s Human Rights Commission, while other issues have been a bit more disappointing, like the continued funding of religious independent schools, possible expansion of faith-based care facilities in Comox and lack of movement on permitting Humanist marriages.

Overall, I think we’re still optimistic that having accomplished much of its election platform in its first year that we’ll be able to start to work with the Government on these and other issues that many Humanists are passionate about.

Jacobsen: What have been some of the more prominent campaigns ongoing into 2018?

Bushfield: What we’re really looking forward to hearing, and this could be any day now, is the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in the Trinity Western University law school case. We intervened at the Court to argue that organizations shouldn’t be able to claim religious exemptions under Canadian law. If the Court adopts our arguments that will be a big defence in Canadian law against the excesses we’re seeing in the USA following Hobby Lobby.

We are also continuing to follow a number of issues such as access to reproductive healthcare and medical assistance in dying and the pushback by religious fundamentalists to improved sexual and gender education in BC schools.

Jacobsen: What are the expectations for projects and developments for the BCHA within the province for the rest of 2018 and into 2019?

Bushfield: We’re looking at three big campaigns this year.

First, we want to dive headfirst into challenging the nearly half-a-billion dollar giveaway BC provides to private schools. The overwhelming majority of these schools are faith-based and many proudly mix creation in their science classrooms. Overall, these schools segregate students by class and religion, which is antithetical to Humanist values.

Second, we’re starting to do some work on looking at how BC municipalities treat religious property tax exemptions. They have some latitude in how they treat these exemptions and we know that not all towns simply give a blanket exemption to all churches. We’re curious as to what different approaches are out there and have already seen some who provide no exemptions to churches!

Finally, BC is in the midst of an overdose crisis and our governments are starting to take some needed action on this file. We want to make sure the approach we’re taking is based on the best available evidence and respects people’s (non-)religious freedoms.

Jacobsen: What are some concerns in the coming months of 2018 for the non-religious in the province?

Bushfield: In addition to what I’ve already spoken about, we’re watching a couple things.

First, the Government is taking some desperately needed steps to tackle the province’s housing crisis. Toward this end, they’ve committed to working with non-profits, including faith groups, to develop new affordable housing units. We’ve heard in the past that these developments have put vulnerable people at risk of religious coercion.

While we understand the urgency of getting units built, this shouldn’t come at the cost of violating the human rights of the nonreligious, religious minorities or the LGBTQ+ community.

Second, the government will be tabling a bill to create a new Human Rights Commission in the fall. This can be an important institution that acts to proactively protect human rights in the province, including secularism. The devil is going to be in the details so we’ll have to keep our eye on what comes forward.

Jacobsen: What are some concerns in the coming months of 2018 for the non-religious in the nation?

Bushfield: Last year, l we saw the federal government table legislation to finally repeal Canada’s blasphemy law. Unfortunately, that bill has been stalled in the Senate for months now.

We need to continue pressing the government and Senators to move the bill forward and ensure its passage this fall. There’s always a small chance that the government will opt to prorogue Parliament over the summer and that could mean we have to start from square one again.

While we’re on the Senate, the chamber has also created a committee to study Canadian charity law. The BCHA is working with the Canadian Secular Alliance to speak against the current privileged position that religious groups receive under Canadian law.

Between this and the government’s expected response to an expert report on loosening the rules around charities’ political activities, we have a rare opportunity to remake Canada’s charity laws.

Jacobsen: You had a debate, recently. How did you get involved in it? What was the background and topic of the discussion/debate?How do you think it turned out in the end?

Bushfield: This was a really great opportunity that was extended to me by people with Apologetics Canada. Rather than a debate, what myself and Dr. Andy Bannister had was a cordial dialogue on whether Humanism or Christianity provided a better foundation for human rights.

While Dr. Bannister has far more academic training than me in philosophy and apologetics, I tried to present a layman case for the understanding that morality and therefore our contemporary human rights are the result of a cultural evolutionary process and something we can continually build upon.

Dr. Bannister argued that there needs to be some fundamental basis for moral transactions but I couched it in the simple and largely universal approach of the Golden Rule.

In the end, I had a lot more fun than I expected and I encourage people to check out the dialogue on our YouTube channel if they’re curious.

Link to debate here:

Q&A here:

Jacobsen: Any final feelings or thoughts in conclusion?

Bushfield: More than anything else, I really want to spend more time talking about the fundamentals of Humanism this year. These campaigns are all obviously important as they aim to make a real difference in the lives of people in BC and across Canada but it’s important to understand why we’re taking these positions. Humanism is pro-human but it isn’t anti-religious. We need to talk more about the things we stand for – human rights, democracy, peace – and not just the things we’re opposed to.

I’m increasingly worried that as a movement we’ve possibly spent too much time on the latter and that’s made some of our spaces less welcoming than we’d want. I think there’s an appetite for the secular, inclusive and progressive message that Humanism can offer and I’m eager to talk more about that.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Ian.

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2022-04-15

In Conversation with Dr. Leo Igwe on the Responsibility of Recognition

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/27

Leo Igwe is the founder of the Nigerian Humanist Movement and former Western and Southern African representative of the International Humanist and Ethical Union. He is among the most prominent African non-religious people from the African continent. When he speaks, many people listen in a serious way. He holds a Ph.D. from the Bayreuth International School of African Studies at the University of Bayreuth in Germany, having earned a graduate degree in Philosophy from the University of Calabar in Nigeria. Here we talk about Nigerian and African humanism, the responsibilities of recognition, aims for the humanist movement, and a recent TED talk.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You are one of the most active Nigerian, and African for that matter, activists known to me. For many others, you have left a positive impression and impact, and show no signs of slowing down. What does this widespread recognition as an important voice mean to you?

Dr. Leo Igwe: The widespread recognition means more responsibility and more work. It obligates me to exert more efforts and sustain the momentum to further humanist ideals and values. It entails devising new and more potent strategies to make humanism flourish, and mainstream the rights and interests of nonreligious persons. The positive impression is a sign of a growing understanding or better, an enhanced realization of the importance of humanism; an indication that a long forgotten, long overlooked need for a positive non-religious outlook is now being fulfilled. In a country such as Nigeria, religion has an overwhelming influence. So it can be very difficult for humanist activists to make any significant impact because such an impression chips away on the rock of overbearing religions. Thus the recognition is a welcome development, a sign of hope that should propel me and other activists out there to do more and consolidate on the gains, the hard-won progress that the humanist movement has so far recorded.

Jacobsen: What does this also mean in terms of additional responsibilities from the recognition by peers and youth?

Igwe: It means striving to ensure that humanism takes its rightful place on the table of religions, philosophies or life stances, and that humanists and other non-religious people can live their lives and go about their everyday business with less and less fear. It means working to end persecution and discrimination against non-religious persons in the region. It motivates me to work for a secular Nigeria.

In Nigeria, those who identify as having no religion are in the minority; they are not reckoned with. Non-religious persons suffer systemic marginalization. For too long, persons without religion have been identified as a silent and sometimes, a non-existing minority. The maltreatment is unacceptable and I want to ensure that this situation changes and that the voice of humanism is heard when issues that affect the public are discussed.

In the coming years, I want to work to ensure that Nigerians grow up understanding that religion is an option, and knowing that they can leave religion; that they can criticize religion. I want to make sure that people in Nigeria are aware that humanism and atheism as options that they can explore and embrace.

Jacobsen: What are your current aims for the humanist movement of Nigeria, which you founded?

Igwe: I have two main objectives for the humanist movement. First is to strengthen the capacity of the movement to fulfill its role of providing a sense of community to non-religious persons. Active humanists are still few and far apart, but the challenge of organizing humanism, of growing and managing the humanist community is huge. The humanist movement needs to be positioned to meet these challenges. It needs mechanisms to robustly address the needs and interests of humanists. So I plan to identify such structures, locally and internationally, wherever they exist and put them at the disposal of the movement.

Second, I want to position the movement to meet the needs of the society. Some mistakenly think that humanism is exclusively for humanists. This is not the case. The humanist/freethought movement does not exist only for humanists but for the society as a whole. Religion and superstition negatively affect the religious and the superstitious. So the humanist movement should be enabled to support victims of religious extremism and irrational beliefs whether they are believers or nonbelievers. My goal is to capacitate the movement so that it can fulfill its obligation to humanists including defending the rights to freedom of religion or belief, freedom of expression and working to end harmful religious and superstitious practices.

Jacobsen: In a recent, and popular TED talk, you posited a positive life stance with humanism. One that even in spite of the difficulties in the past into the present for many Africans poses a positive future. How did you get the opportunity to present at TED?

Igwe: TED officials contacted me. They asked me to draft a talk on humanism and I did. The talk went through several revisions and very rigorous editing processes and rehearsals before it was finally accepted.

Jacobsen: How does humanism present a better future compared to other philosophies?

Igwe: Humanism presents a better future because it has humanity as its main reference. Humanism emphasizes human abilities and potentialities; that humans can overcome its problems and difficulties in this world. Unlike philosophies, especially those with supernatural resonation, humanism’s future is not an otherworldly infrastructure. It is this-world bound. Humanism stresses a future that is attainable and realizable in time and space. The future that it presents may be ideal but not completely a form of fantasy that only the disincarnated savour. It is not a strictly imagined idea that transcends reality, bereft of any trappings of the worldly. The future is not a post-mortem heritage that people can only enjoy and behold after they are dead. It is a future that is achievable in this life, in the here and now.

Jacobsen: In terms of the outcomes and responses to the TED talk, what has been the feedback?

Igwe: The responses have been encouraging. The talk has been viewed over seven hundred thousand times. I have received a couple of messages from those who listened and were inspired by the talk. I guess that the positive feedbacks, which the talk has so far elicited was mainly because such a perspective is a rarity in African discourses. I hope this is going to change and that there will be more TED and non-TED talks that make a strong case for humanism and freethought in Africa.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Dr. Igwe.

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2022-04-15

This Week in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms 2018-05-27

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/27

“Ponoka Christian School (PCS) is among a group of several Alberta schools and families taking on the province’s Bill 24: An Act to Support Gay-Straight Alliances (GSA).

The hearing for this large group of schools, which includes the Lacombe and Rimbey Christian Schools, is coming up on June 8 in Medicine Hat.

The grounds of the application state that there is an absence of parental knowledge with Bill 24, which creates an opportunity for predation.

“Children are often exploited, both sexually and emotionally, by adults or by their own peers, often with tragic, lifelong and irreparable consequences,” states the application, which can be found at the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms website.

“The abuse and exploitation of children occurs most often in places, and during times, when parents are absent and unaware,” it adds.

For parents within the application, it adds there is a worry of an air of secrecy. “The parents are alarmed and frightened at the climate of secrecy that the School Act has created around ideological sexual clubs and related activities.””

Source: https://www.ponokanews.com/news/ponoka-christian-school-among-group-suing-province/.

“This time around, the massive legal bill was not claimed by controversial St. Catharines regional Coun. Andy Petrowski.

Recently released 2017 regional councillor expense data shows that Petrowski — who claimed, and was paid for, $44, 570 in legal bills in April 2017 — claimed an additional $14,318 in “external legal expenses.”

However, Petrowski denied he filed that expense and acting regional clerk Anne-Marie Norio confirmed Thursday it was an error.

However, she would not explain how the mistake was made, only saying in an email it “was an incorrect allocation due to an administrative error.”

“We have no further comment,” Norio wrote in an email when asked for details.

The expense report says Petrowski billed the Region for $14,318 for legal services from the Toronto legal firm of Boghosian & Allen in July 2017. The report does not specify why the firm was hired.

In an email to The Standard, Petrowski — who is currently on paid leave from regional council for undisclosed reasons — said he did not file the expense. Norio later confirmed the error.

Petrowski has filed for large external legal bills in the past, however.”

Source: https://www.stcatharinesstandard.ca/news-story/8631840-region-won-t-explain-14-000-expense-error/.

“The only thing wrong with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s commencement speech to the graduates of New York University recently is that his walk doesn’t match his talk.

In other words, his 22-minute address on May 16 is filled with glaring hypocrisy.

“Humanity has to fight our tribal mindset,” he told the thousands who gathered in the rain at Yankee Stadium.

“So here is my request: As you go forward from this place, I would like you to make a point of reaching out to people whose beliefs and values differ from your own. I would like you to listen to them, truly listen, and try to understand them, and find that common ground,” he continued.

Trudeau should tell that to the thousands of charities and faith groups denied Canada Summer Jobs funding, not to mention pro-life MPs in his own caucus because they refused to sign something they don’t agree with, particularly unrestricted abortion.

He should tell that to the poor and the homeless who will suffer as a result and the students who will be denied meaningful employment working with the needy or children.

“But the leadership we need most today and in the years to come is leadership that brings people together. . . . This is the antithesis of the polarization, the aggressive nationalism, the identity politics that have grown so common of late. It’s harder, of course. It’s always been easier to divide than unite. But mostly, it requires true courage.””

Source: http://calgaryherald.com/opinion/columnists/corbella-trudeau-is-the-master-of-identity-politics-and-aggressive-nationalism.

“Diane Ikonen writes that it’s unfair that potential employers cannot access the Canada Summer Jobs program because “their beliefs about when life begins differ from the Liberals.”

That is completely untrue — the attestation in question is clearly based on protecting Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. These are not Liberal values or even Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s values. A woman’s right to choose and LGBTQ2 rights are very hard-earned Canadian values, protected by our constitution.

Your writer is also wrong in claiming that pro-life candidates are not permitted to run as a candidate for MP in the Liberal Party. There are famously several pro-life Liberal MPs, and as long as they respect Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, there is no issue. That is the exact same bargain Stephen Harper struck with his pro-life Conservative MPs.

As I understand it, in the past the Conservatives funded groups putting kids to work distributing graphic flyers and poster of aborted fetuses. I’m proud this government has taken the principled stand that we will not fund groups that actively work to undermine the rights of women and the LGBTQ2 communities.”

Source: http://www.thesudburystar.com/2018/05/26/sudbury-letter-pm-standing-up-for-rights.

“Long wait times are the vulnerable soft underbelly of the Canadian health system.

Canadians treasure our single-payer, publicly-funded program of physician and hospital care, virtually as a defining part of our national identity. And yet, increasing legal and political pressure over quick access to elective surgeries – cataract extraction and joint replacement, for example – threaten to undermine that support.

The Commonwealth Fund 2017 report ranked Canada last among 11 countries in timeliness of care.

And a case before the British Columbia Supreme Court aims to topple provincial regulations that limit private payment for medically necessary services, claiming that surgical wait times for elective procedures such as arthroscopic knee surgery violate the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The truth is that few people anywhere in the world are in love with their health-care system. Canada is no exception. Why?

Modern health care is expensive – so expensive, at C$5,900 per person per year in Canada, US$9,900 in the U.S. and £2,900 in the U.K., that it costs more than many people are happy to pay, whether through taxation, insurance premiums or out-of-pocket.”

Source: https://troymedia.com/2018/05/27/shorten-hospital-wait-times-canada/.

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2022-04-15

This Week in Canadian Science 2018-05-27

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/27

“For too long, culture, science and diplomacy have suffered from neglect in Canada. Yes, they share a high-toned reputation, but they have been widely misunderstood — disdained even — by parliamentarians, public servants, scholars, the media, opinion leaders, think tanks and the public.

Rather than looking at them as esoteric outliers in the overall scheme of things, we need to see them for what they are: Undervalued instruments of statecraft. And they should once again be integral to Canada’s contemporary image, reputation and brand.

I argued as much when I testified before the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee last December.

Culture, science diplomacy and international policy are the far-flung precincts of our shared national experience, and Canada’s marginalization of them has taken a toll on international relations and Canadian foreign policy.

To understand how, we need to go back to basics:

Culture: It is all-encompassing and amorphous, but not airy-fairy or fuzzy. It is the norms, customs, characteristics, traditions, artistic expression and behaviour of human groups. We learn about it through literature, film, journalism, music, dramatic and documentary television, scholarship, and interpersonal exchange — which I think is key.”

Source: http://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/may-2018/rediscovering-canadas-undervalued-statecraft-tools/.

“KEY POINTS

Indigenous methods and methodologies are increasingly recognized as valuable tools to improve research practices and outcomes.
Ethical guidelines, community-based and partnership approaches, and reflexive allyship are transforming how researchers approach Indigenous health research.
When reporting on Indigenous health outcomes, it is crucial to provide context for Indigenous health challenges observed, and highlight strengths, to avoid contributing to stigmatization in wider society.
It remains important to reflect critically on our attempts as researchers to act as allies, and to highlight the unique knowledge and skills possessed by Indigenous scholars and community leaders.

Historically, owing to a dominant Western science paradigm, Indigenous methods, methodologies, epistemologies, knowledge and perspectives have been dismissed as unsuitable for health research. As such, Indigenous health research frequently remains poorly aligned with the goals and values of Indigenous Peoples. Furthermore, research involving Indigenous people has been tainted by historical atrocities. The process of reconciliation in Canada should include the indigenization of health research, which will contribute to deconstruction of colonial control.

Employing the core ethical principles of “respect for persons, concern for welfare, and justice” used in the Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans, we review the history of Indigenous health research in Canada and outline critical considerations for non-Indigenous researchers. Our aim is to promote a collaborative approach to Indigenous health research in Canada that prioritizes the goals, knowledge and strengths of Indigenous partners.”

Source: http://www.cmaj.ca/content/190/20/E616.

“‘The next Canadian to travel to space is biding his time under quarantine in Kazakhstan, standing by in case something goes wrong to replace an astronaut set to blast off next month, before his own maiden space mission in December.

David Saint-Jacques is serving as a backup to European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst, a member of a three-person team gearing to visit the International Space Station (ISS) on June 6. Saint-Jacques and his crew are living in quarantine to avoid germs ahead of the launch.

The Quebec City-native is a medical doctor as well as a PhD in astrophysics. He holds a commercial pilot licence with multi-engine and instrument ratings, and speaks French, English, Spanish, Japanese and basic Russian.”

Source: https://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/astronaut-david-saint-jacques-talks-about-space-science-and-an-old-rubik-s-cube-1.3945167.

“Next month, Canada will host the Group of 7 (G7) summit in picturesque Charlevoix, Québec. As leaders from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States come together, along with European Union representatives, to discuss the progressive agenda, science will be on everyone’s mind. With science and technology playing a prominent role in everyday life, access to science education and to science-based careers is ever more essential for inclusive growth and for women’s empowerment.

In addition to the contribution that science makes to economic prosperity, the public is demanding that it also be used to guide decision-making. Scientists and knowledge communities have risen to strengthen their case to policy-makers: Witness the global March for Science last month and the renewed interest in science advice for policy at national and international levels. Nowhere has this trend been more evident than in Canada, where the government has signaled its respect for science-informed policy. This was made clear in some remarkable developments over the past 10 months, including my appointment as the first government chief science adviser in over a decade and a historic science budget for 2018. The Canadian scientific community is generally upbeat and reenergized. Now is the time to ensure that the infrastructure and programs are in place to meet rising expectations and deliver on science promises and potential.”

Source: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6391/835.full.

“Indigenous women’s traditional knowledge is too often excluded from scientific research in the North, something that could have serious implications for fully understanding how climate change is transforming the circumpolar world, said a series of speakers at the G7 Arctic Sustainability Summit in Montreal on Thursday.

“Indigenous knowledge systems are gendered,” said Deborah McGregor, a professor at Canada’s York University and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Environmental Justice, who spoke on the morning panel Accessible, Usable and Timely Science.

“So if (women) aren’t there, and research isn’t focused on this, you’re missing a whole realm of knowledge that could be part of these (policy) decisions and governance.””

Source: http://www.rcinet.ca/en/2018/05/26/ignoring-indigenous-womens-traditional-knowledge-hurts-arctic-science-g7-summit-hears/.

““In plain English — in the coming months.”

Bains made the comments after announcing an investment of more than $26.7 million in space technology that will benefit 33 Canadian companies.

The new money will create or secure 397 jobs and support 46 projects to develop what are described as game-changing technologies in medicine, artificial intelligence, autonomous navigation and virtual reality.

“Thanks to the new technologies, we will be able to improve wildfire monitoring, weather predictions and to better understand climate change,” Bains said.”

Source: https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2018/05/25/canadas-space-strategy-to-be-unveiled-soon-science-minister-says.html.

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2022-04-15

This Week in Canadian Religion 2018-05-27

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/27

“The streets of Edmonton’s Mill Woods neighbourhood were flooded with parade floats and tens of thousands of people from the Sikh community Sunday.

They were celebrating Vaisakhi, which marks the birth of the Sikh faith more than 300 years ago.

Attendee Sangram Singh said parade attendance has grown since it started in 1999, much like Edmonton’s Sikh community.

“The growth is because this country is so accepting to everyone,” said Singh, who has lived in Alberta for 20 years. “Everybody here from India or Punjab or the Sikh community enjoys it so much because of the freedom — freedom to have your religion the way you want.””

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/edmonton-vaisakhi-sikh-parade-1.4671638.

“Idil Shirdon thought her brother was just maturing when he found religion in his late teens. And when he started talking angrily about Syria, neither she nor her mother suspected he was thinking of going there.

But then he disappeared.

Weeks later, the unemployed 20-year-old was calling himself Abu Usamah and raving on video about destroying the West. Farah Mohamed Shirdon had joined the so-called Islamic State.

“They were both unaware that Shirdon was contemplating leaving Canada, let alone joining a terrorist group,” the RCMP wrote in an affidavit after interviewing the Calgary family.”

Source: https://globalnews.ca/news/4223130/radicalized-teens-advice-for-parents/.

“THE Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at Canada on Thursday strongly condemned the destruction of a mosque and a historical house in Sialkot, Pakistan, by local municipal officials and a mob of 600 religious extremists.

In a statement, they said: “It is shocking that local police and municipal authorities were present during the attack and destruction of property. Authorities did not take any action to uphold the rule of law and protect the rights of

“The property is of historical significance to the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at. Once the house was demolished, the large mob attacked a mosque adjacent to the demolished house. During the attack, the mob demolished the mosque’s minarets, dome, doors and other parts of the structure. During the demolition of the mosque, the municipal representatives and police supported the attack by not making any efforts to stop the unruly mob.””Ahmadi Muslims. Giving in to pressure from local extremist clerics, the officials from the Municipal Committee of Sialkot City unlawfully demolished a century-old historic house.”

Source: https://www.voiceonline.com/ahmadiyya-muslims-in-canada-condemn-destruction-of-historic-mosque-in-pakistan/.

“The kind of Christianity that makes headlines today is the Mike Pence brand — conservative and aligned with the United States Republican party — leaving many people to believe, including progressive Christians, the religion is politically irredeemable. To use the terms “progressive” and “Christian” in the same sentence seems, to many, deeply odd.

Michael Coren, a cultural critic and defender of progressive Christianity, recently argued that “there is a battle raging and roaring for the soul of Canadian Christianity — between what we can broadly describe as the church’s left and right flanks. And those on the right are winning the day.”

Along with his fellow progressive Christians, Coren is fighting for the soul of progressive Canadians — a cohort that has largely opted out of Christianity. But the truth is that this decline is not new. Since the 1960s, many progressives in Canada have turned their backs on Christianity.

While there may be fewer people in the pews at the United Church and in other liberal denominations, they are not empty. Many public figures in Canada, including Kathleen Wynne, the premier of Ontario and Green party leader Elizabeth May could be called progressive Christians.”

Source: http://nationalpost.com/pmn/news-pmn/being-a-progressive-christian-shouldnt-be-an-oxymoron.

“The growing number of Muslim youth turning to a help line tailored to their needs has prompted officials to extend its hours of operation.

Naseeha — meaning ‘advice’ in Arabic — received about 2,000 calls from Ontario residents in 2017. Overall, there were 18,000 calls made.

That number is projected to double in 2018.

“People can call in and speak to a [Muslim peer counsellor] who they may not know, but may have a better understanding of the background of where they’re coming from culturally and religiously,” said outreach manager Huma Saeedi.

“It’s really important in today’s day and age with youth that are struggling with their identity being Canadian and Muslim,” she said.

Ontario youth are calling for spiritual and psychological help, specifically related to mental health, faith and sexual orientation. In the last year, Saeedi said most callers have been between 21 and 30 years old.”

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/london-ontario-muslim-youth-help-line-1.4677077.

“It was a discussion in her senior English class that inspired Alysha Mohamed to write her award-winning play, My Hands Were Made For This.

Mohamed’s play, in which she stars and co-directed, received awards at the recent Provincial High School Drama Festival in Red Deer for playwriting, direction, performance, production design, stage management and professional conduct.

Mohamed is in Grade 12 at Foundations for the Future Charter Academy and recalls a discussion in her English class that moved her profoundly.

“I was raised Muslim, my entire family is Muslim and I love my religion deeply, but I have seen how it has been corrupted by extremists. Islam is meant to be such a beautiful religion yet I continue to see how it is corrupted. I want to be a voice that leads people to see the warmer, gentler side of Islam.”“We were talking about how even the most monstrous characters in literature, and in real life, have families and lives that are filled with love. I saw the conflict in Syria as an ideal setting to explore this idea,” says Mohamed, whose family moved to Canada from Kenya when she was just three years old.”

Source: http://calgaryherald.com/entertainment/theatre/students-modern-day-romeo-and-juliet-set-in-war-torn-syria.

“William A. Macdonald is a corporate lawyer-turned-consultant with a long history of public service and social engagement.

In his Charles R. Bronfman lecture in 2000, Ken Dryden, the great Canadiens goaltender, compared national games in the United States and Canada. Football, he said, (more so than baseball) requires central control – the opposite of hockey. In hockey, once the puck is dropped, there is chaos. The only choice players have is to do what it takes. The example of Canada’s game has helped to shape Canada.

The Canadian story has always been different from the American – one of evolution, not revolution; persuasion rather than force; and compromise over winning. Its initial English and French connections were gradually weakened, not ruptured. In contrast, the United States was formed and preserved by force. Both the American break from Britain in 1775-83 and the split between North and South in 1861-65 were sudden and violent. Canadian history, in contrast, has always been more political than military.

Since Canada began as a nation – Quebec in 1608 and then Confederation in 1867 – it has had three big achievements. First, despite its difficult geography and challenging history, with its French/English split and proximity to the United States, it has survived, not just as a nation but with one province, Quebec, distinctive in language and religion. Second, Canada has consolidated its territory from the Atlantic to the Pacific and north to the Arctic. Finally, despite divisions of nationality, culture, language, religion and class, it has developed a political and socio-cultural outlook that works. Its one big failure has been with the Indigenous people, although that is now beginning to be addressed.”

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-canadas-mutual-accommodation-story/.

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2022-04-15

This Week in Canadian Politics 2018-05-27

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/27

“Canada’s military is considering lifting a longstanding citizenship requirement as a way to boost its numbers.

Right now, the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) offers waivers to foreign nationals only in exceptional cases — to individuals on international military exchanges, for example, or to candidates who have specialized skills in high demand.

That citizenship requirement is now under review.

“In line with the government of Canada’s objective of raising the numbers of Forces personnel, there are currently initial discussions to review the possibility for foreign nationals’ recruitment beyond skills applicants,” Byrne Furlong, spokeswoman for Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan, wrote in an email. “It is too early to mention anything about any results or conclusion of such review‎.”

DND spokesman Maj. Alexandre Munoz said the existing Skilled Military Foreign Applicant program is open to any foreign applicant with a specialized skill set that would reduce training costs or fill particular needs — a trained pilot or a doctor, to cite two examples.”

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/caf-military-foreign-recruits-1.4675889.

“The federal government has blocked the sale of Canadian construction company Aecon Group Inc. to Chinese interests, citing national security.

The controversial deal between Aecon and China’s CCCC International Holding Ltd., also known as CCCI, would have been worth $1.5 billion.

“As is always the case, we listened to the advice of our national security agencies throughout the multi-step national security review process under the Investment Canada Act,” Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains said in a statement Wednesday.

“Based on their findings, in order to protect national security, we ordered CCCI not to implement the proposed investment.”

The statement did not explain what specific threats to Canada’s national security surfaced during the review.”

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-blocks-aecon-sale-china-1.4675353.

“As with many of the trade actions announced by the Trump administration, the possible effects of his proposed Section 232 investigation of vehicle imports are both menacing and unclear.

To understand how it might affect Canada, one first has to know how the Trump administration intends to define an “imported car.”

A Japanese car made in Japan or a German car made in Germany would clearly fit the bill. But what about a Cadillac XTS assembled by General Motors in Oshawa, Ont., using mostly U.S. parts?

Although the exact breakdown of vehicles by NAFTA country of origin is a closely guarded commercial secret, it’s safe to say there’s a lot more U.S. than Canadian content in cars and trucks assembled here. An average ratio might be about seven-to-one.

But the words Donald Trump used on the day his administration announced this latest Section 232 investigation — calling Canada and Mexico “spoiled,” for example — strongly suggest he had NAFTA imports in mind, as well as cars and trucks from other continents.”

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trump-tariff-auto-nafta-1.4679072.

“De-radicalization expert Mubin Shaikh said he’s conflicted over what to do about returned former Canadian ISIS fighter Abu Huzaifa, a man he said he has personally counselled since he returned to Canada.

“He’s going to school. He’s working. He’s trying to repair his life. He understands what he did was wrong, or even what he was involved in was wrong. And he is working toward rectifying that,” Shaikh said in an interview with host Vassy Kapelos on CBC News Network’s Power & PoliticsThursday.

“What does that mean? That we can rehabilitate him and just send him on his merry way and everything is okay? I don’t like that idea. I think we need to keep him in some kind of program or something where at least we have eyes on him.”

Huzaifa returned to Canada in 2016, but a new New York Times podcast has drawn renewed attention to his story. The former ISIS member gave detailed accounts to NYT reporter Rukmini Callimachi of carrying out two execution-style killings while a member of ISIS in Syria.”

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-shaikh-abu-huzaifa-1.4677258.

“Ontario’s Liberal leader insists her attacks on the New Democrats are different from those of the Progressive Conservatives, though both are labelling the poll-leading party as “radical.”

On Friday, the Progressive Conservatives alleged an NDP candidate in east Toronto, Tasleem Riaz, had made offensive comments online, including a post from 2013 misquoting Adolf Hitler, and a release sent by the Liberals on Saturday morning cites the post and describes the New Democrats as “too risky, too radical.”

When asked about her use of the term — one Tory leader Doug Ford has frequently used to denounce the NDP — Liberal leader Kathleen Wynne was quick to distinguish herself from the Progressive Conservative leader.”

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/andrea-horwath-political-attacks-election-1.4679499.

“Call it the “Curious Case of the Bashed Bear and the Whacked Whale.”

Two Inuit sculptures intended as Canada’s gifts to New Zealand’s prime minister and attorney general mysteriously arrived in that country smashed to bits.

“Due to the long distance travelled, including transit points in three countries, it was not possible to determine where or when the damage to the sculptures occurred or to assign blame to any one person,” said Angela Savard, spokesperson for the Department of Justice Canada.

“No police authorities were contacted in the three countries as there was no clear crime to report.”

The soapstone carvings of a whale and a bear were chosen by Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould from a federal ‘gift bank’ shortly before her official trip to New Zealand in 2016.”

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/new-zealand-raybould-sculptures-1.4674961.

“Imagine for a moment you’ve taken the kind of drug normally intended to put you to sleep through torturous plane rides, but this one’s designed to make tedious political disputes disappear.

When you wake up, the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline debate will be over.

And so what happened?

Did it get built? Did B.C. or Alberta emerge victorious? Is the pipeline cited as one of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s greatest accomplishments or worst failures?

And what about the argument itself? The trading of threats between the provinces; the epic warnings from both Ottawa and the company; the end-of days pronouncements from people on either side of the fight?”

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/kinder-morgan-transmountain-pipeline-politics-1.4678739.

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2022-04-15

In Conversation with Justin Trottier – Executive Director, Canadian Centre for Men and Families

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/25

Justin Trottier is Executive Director of the Canadian Centre for Men and Families, a men’s health and social service facility. The Centre is an open, inclusive and space serving as a hub for counselling, legal aid, fathering programs and trauma support groups. He is Founder of the Canadian Association for Equality, a registered educational charity that seeks to integrate boys and men into our efforts to advance gender equality. Justin has played a leadership role in a variety of humanist, secularist and skeptic organizations, appearing frequently in the media advocating for church-state separation, fundamental freedoms and humanist ethics.

There is the crowdsourced funding campaign for their men’s shelter campaign here.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Let us start, like a superhero origin story, from the beginning. What was early family background in regards to religion in brief?

Justin Trottier: I was raised in what I would describe as a secular, liberal, Jewish household. Religion was not something emphasized. But I recall, at an early age, having a default presumption that there must be some divine presence in the universe.

Somehow, I came to accept that. I espoused the belief and was raised steeped in that. However, it was not a religious thing. It was a belief in God. Through my teenage years, I became more intrigued by the scientific worldview.

That led me on the path of exploration, which culminated in atheism. I went through different stages. I was questioning things and then became a skeptic, and agnostic. I am still those, but also an atheist too.

By the time I was an adult, I was convinced, very likely, that there was not a God. I have not moved beyond that since that time.

Jacobsen: At the University of Toronto, you founded the secular student alliance there. What was the inspiration for that? Some people will have a mentor at the university, which will help them form a group. Did you have one?

Trottier: Not really, I co-founded the group with a young woman named Jenne Fides. She preceded me because she formed a small discussion group at Trinity College, which is one of the colleges at the University of Toronto.

Trinity College is Anglican by tradition. It is unusual to have an atheist club and to be given facilities to host their meetings. I saw this advertising for this atheist club. I did not see something like this at the university.

I was busy. I was running other student clubs at the time. I had not yet gotten around to an atheist or even a humanist group. When I saw Jenny beat me to it [Laughing], I connected with her. We rebranded this college-based atheist club and turned that into a university-wide secular society.

That is what we made at the U of T, a secular alliance. It would transform into a national charity in its own right and become very active across the country.

Jacobsen: You also opened the Secular Freethought Centre. The one trendline is providing some space for secular people to have a community. So, not only with the founding of the U of T Secular Student Alliance but also the Secular Freethought Centre, the first community center for secular humanists.

Does that amount to one of your intents there with regards to founding organizations like those?

Trottier: You said it quite well. The idea was to provide space – both metaphorically and physically, or have space where non-believers could gather and discuss their position on things. They could enjoy each other’s company and also challenge each other.

A lot of the events we had did not bring in speakers to tell us what we already knew.

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Trottier: It was to tell us what the frontiers of science were, about the universe. That can be challenging. We had debates that pitted people from different points of view into dialogue with one another. It was to have dialogue and deepen our understanding of things based out of a safe place where atheists would be welcome.

There would be no dogmas. Nothing taboo, that could not be discussed or debated. That was the principle behind it.

Jacobsen: With reflection and the distance of quite a bit of time, what were some of the topics, even with that principle of open dialogue, at the time that were ‘hot button’ issues – as they say?

Trottier: That is a good question. Some of the events that got the most interest were the frontiers of science events. We had some interesting events by professors and researchers doing cutting-edge work.

Jacobsen: That is cool.

Trottier: Sometimes, it was so cutting-edge that they did not even publish their work yet. Not so much controversial, it seemed to bring out a lot of people. We had a couple of debates. One was on human rights. Are they a convenient fiction or objectively real?

That was from a York University professor who gave that talk. That got a lot of people out. That was one of the more challenging talks for us. I think most of the room came in thinking human rights were real. That there was not a lot of complicated issues around it.

The speaker really challenged us and provoked us to think more critically about our assumptions in those areas. There were a number of talks in those areas.

Jacobsen: The Secular Freethought Centre became Centre for Inquiry Canada. How did that happen?

Trottier: It only lasted for about a summer. It was a little bit messy. Let me back up and be a bit personal, I was a bit at the centre of this for a time. When I graduated from the University of Toronto that summer, I was hired by the Centre for Inquiry to be its campus organizer because of the work I had done at the Canadian Universities.

At the same time, we were given a generous contribution from a local humanist philanthropist in order to begin renting. There were some strings attached to it. He was an older gentleman. He wanted to leave a legacy. He wanted to know that he had opened the first centre for humanists, secularists, and atheists.

There was a local group that had tried to do this for years but had not been successful. They did not succeed. We quickly took him up on this offer. We opened this facility. I was able to continue my campus organizing work. We called it the Secular Freethought Centre. When the Centre for Inquiry had hired me a couple months previously, they wanted in on the action.

We were able to broker a deal between the donor and some other local humanist groups, the Centre for Inquiry, and me to rebrand this as Centre for Inquiry for an office in Canada, Centre for Inquiry Toronto.

It would go on to become a national headquarters for the Centre for Inquiry. I would be hired to serve as its national executive director. [Laughing] I do not know if anyone cares about that history. But you asked the question.

Jacobsen: [Laughing] I care. There are a bunch of branches throughout the country. As an educational organization at the national level, the knowledge of this foundation seems important.

Now, the Westboro Baptist Church, the pastor Fred Phelps is/was notoriously anti-gay. I would assume anti-LGBTQ+ and so on. You hired Nathan Phelps. The son of that pastor, but an estranged son, he headed up a branch of Centre for Inquiry Canada.

Why did you reach out to Nathan?

Trottier: That was one of the proudest things that I did at CFI. It was to recruit Nathan Phelps. He found us. He left the family many years ago. If I remember the story, when he was 18, he flew the coup. He made his way to Canada.

He was a taxi driver. It was in BC somewhere. He happened to have, as one of his passengers in his taxi, a young journalist, probably similar age to yourself, in fact, Scott. They got to talking. The student realized that he really had a story on his hands. He had the son of Fred Phelps driving a taxi in Canada.

He broke this story. It turned out Nathan Phelps was the opposite of his father. He was an atheist, an LGBT supporter, and would become a champion of gay rights issues. This reporter was a member of CAFÉ.

Whether he invited Nathan to contact me or suggested I reach out to him, he was the linchpin in all that. He goes by Nate. I will call him that. He became a volunteer and a branch director and an Alberta member to run our operations.

Jacobsen: How did this relate to Annual Blasphemy Day?

Trottier: This was separate. However, Nate was one of the champion spokespersons for it. That is true. Blasphemy Day was the culmination of one of a few different trajectories that had to do with CFIs response to censorship. One was the Danish cartoon controversy.

I am sure you know well about it. The other one was a little bit more local. It had to do with some Canadian politics around Canadian Human Rights Commissions. At the time, they were claiming a right to, a little bit simplistic but, not offend religious sensibilities.

There were some well-known cases in Canada, where some journalists produced content that was deemed offensive to Muslims. Those few Muslims who were offended – it wasn’t very many, but there were a few – and then complained to the Human Rights Commissions in a couple provinces in Canada.

The Commissions investigated these articles because these were offensive. There were the Canadian angle and the international angle with the cartoons. For some of us, enough was enough; we thought about bringing this day to protect blasphemy, which we call International Blasphemy Rights Day.

I was not involved with them that much anymore, but I was involved in that movement. I was making sure that the Canadian issues were integrated into the founding of those events.

Jacobsen: Also, another form of activism was an atheist bus campaign. It even got some coverage on, the Steve Paikin show, TVO. What was the inspiration for that particular campaign? With respect to the atheist bus campaign, what was the reaction to it? What has been the long-term outcome of that?

Trottier: I was quite prominent in reaching to the media and getting our campaigns covered in the media. You didn’t seem to have to do very much. There was an appetite. We were lucky. They do not have an atheist organization that they can go to together to get that perspective.

Once CFI came on the scene, we became the go-to naturally. It was a constant interest from the media in all activities. We thought, “What is a big splash campaign that we can do to take this interest, which was largely reactive?”

You cover it and then they come to us. How can we lead a campaign around issues important to us and then mobilize the media to convey that message? At the same time, there was the bus campaign happening in the UK with the British Humanist Association.

We thought that might be the right mix to bring that campaign to Canada and then bringing a Canadian mix. It is running ads in various cities. It was the same ad as in the UK, but then it was turned into a conversation around humanist ethics.

“There is probably no God so stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Trottier: We talked about the difference between a humanist and a religious ethical and meaning system. We did a number of events and initiatives around that. That was one big advertising campaign: borrowing the theme and the brand from the UK.

That got so much attention. We had more big advertising campaigns. One was completely created by CFI Canada called the Extraordinary Claims Campaign. It was more a homage to Carl Sagan rather than to atheism and humanism.

We had a tagline with it. Our website had dozens of different “extraordinary claims” and giving people evidence for or against the claim. You asked me what spiralled out of the atheist bus campaign. That was one follow-up.

We wanted to do one on skepticism. We also put a couple billboard ads up. We looked at how people practically lived their lives as a humanist. We had some billboards that featured some real live humanists asking them what was important in their lives.

We had hundreds of testimonials on another page from atheist and nonbelievers and getting them to ask what they get their meaning from. It was, in a sense, humanizing humanism.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Justin.

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2022-04-15

Prof. Imam Syed Soharwardy on the Current State of Affairs for Religion and Irreligion in Canada

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/20

Prof. Imam Soharwardy is a Sunni scholar and a shaykh of the Suhrawardi Sufi order, as well as the chairman of the Al-Madinah Calgary Islamic Assembly,founder of Muslims Against Terrorism (MAT), and the founder and president of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada. He founded MAT in Calgary in January 1998. He is also the founder of Islamic Supreme Council of Canada (ISCC).

Imam Soharwardy is the founder of the first ever Dar-ul-Aloom in Calgary, Alberta where he teaches Islamic studies. Prof. Soharwardy is the Head Imam at the Al Madinah Calgary Islamic Centre. Imam Soharwardy is a strong advocate of Islamic Tasawuf (Sufism), and believes that the world will be a better place for everyone if we follow what the Prophet of Islam, Muhammad (Peace be upon him) has said, ” You will not have faith unless you like for others what you like for yourself.” He believes that spiritual weakness in humans causes all kinds of problems.

Mr. Soharwardy can be contacted at soharwardy@shaw.ca OR Phone (403)-831–6330.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: When it comes to the current state of affairs regarding religion in Canada, are things improving in terms of tolerance for the religious to the irreligious and the irreligious to the religious?

Imam Syed Soharwardy: It is very slow, but, definitely, it is in the right direction. People are having a better understanding of each other. But definitely, we are not there, where we can say, “We have a Canadian community with a broader perspective.”

However, we can say we understand different religions and faith groups. Definitely, there is a rise in anti-immigrant, anti-ethnic, and anti-Muslim sentiment. But there are more dialogues now.

I attend more interfaith dialogues across the country than 5 years or 10 years ago. Definitely, it is going in a positive direction, but the direction has been quite slow.

Jacobsen: I note some small super minority movements within the religious and the non-religious communities. That super minority movement in either community does not have, not necessarily explicitly but tacitly, a respect for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights statement about freedom of belief and freedom of religion.

In other words, some will want to eliminate religion. Others will want to eliminate the non-religious. That seems to violate the two principles of freedom of religion and freedom of belief.

Do you notice this super minority of either community?

Soharwardy: I completely agree with you. There are sentiments in faith and non-faith communities. There is an element, which is quite vocal and visible and, sometimes, in some cases damaging the relationship among various groups of people.

I completely agree with you. Those people, a minority, of course, do exist in the faith groups as well as in the non-faith groups. I come across many people who do not believe in any religion.

They hate religion. They do not tolerate any teachings of any religion. Similarly, there are people in faith communities who follow a certain religion. They have no respect or no tolerance for atheists or agnostics or man-made faith people.

They think they are evil. Similarly, I have emails from people who say, “Secular religion is man-made. You guys are worshipping that does not exist.” That kind of intolerance does exist. It is quite vocal.

It is quite visible. It damages to the good relationships to the faith and non-faith groups, and within the faith and non-faith groups.

Jacobsen: As an individual, and as an independent writer and journalist, I cannot speak for an entire community or for a community of which I am not a part. However, I can say, “I am sorry for those particular instances where you have gotten emails or communications that, more or less, are intended to harm or cause offense.”

At the same time, one important aspect to keep in mind for all members of the community of conscience: even though, every community has their extremists. The important part, and I think we agree on this, is not to allow the extremists to hijack the mainstream of the movement or the community or be the spokespeople of the community itself.

Soharwardy: Absolutely, they have no right to represent the whole faith group or non-faith group. The majority of non-faith people – and I have been involved with many atheist and agnostic groups – respect me as a person of faith.

Even though, they do not believe in any religion. We do have some dialogue. We have some good discussion. But it is very friendly. It is a cordial discussion and civilized. However, there are elements in religious and non-religious groups who do not know how to talk.

They cannot talk in a civil discussion with the opponent group. That definitely bothers me. I absolutely, and from my congregation, know that such people do not represent their own groups, whether an atheist or a religious group.

Faith groups also, they can be very intolerant towards other faiths. That intolerance can be quite visible and obvious.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Imam Soharwardy.

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2022-04-15

This Week in Canadian Religion 2018-05-20

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/20

“Kathryn Chan writes in an article published in the Canadian Bar Review that the “institutional turn” in religious freedom litigation we have seen in Europe and the United States is now apparent in Canada.

The Supreme Court of Canada is scheduled hear three religious freedom cases in the fall, in Wall v Highwood Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses and two Trinity Western University appeals. But until now, the top court’s approach to institutional religious freedom claims, “is deeply ambiguous,” Chan explains”

Source: http://www.nationalmagazine.ca/Articles/May-2018/Canada-s-institutional-turn%E2%80%9D-in-religious-freedom.aspx.

“The superintendent of the Newfoundland and Labrador English School District said he was surprised to see a backlash this week to a presentation on inclusion in Middle Arm.

Tony Stack told CBC that Get Real — which was greeted by several parents of students at MSB Regional Academy urging a boycott — is one of several similar presentations that visit schools throughout the year, including ones from the Red Cross and the Office of the Child Youth Advocate.

“It’s just part of our business, it’s our routine business. We have a lot of groups coming in, talking about various issues,” Stack told Here & Now.”

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/tony-stack-get-real-1.4668385.

“For the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims, the upcoming month of Ramadan will bring fasting, reflection, and charity.

Although Islam is the world’s second-largest religion, Canada’s Muslim population is smaller by comparison; 3.2 per cent of Canada’s population is Muslim.

For those who might not know much about this major holiday, Adil Hasan with the Alberta Muslim Public Affairs Council (AMPAC) has answered our questions.”

Source: https://globalnews.ca/news/4209614/ramadan-101-answering-your-questions-about-the-best-time-of-the-year/.

“A recipient of the Order of Canada for his long-standing work bettering race relations is calling on the Ontario PC Party to revoke the membership of a former campaign staffer over a social media comment about fundamentalist Islam.

Garnet Angeconeb, who lives in Sioux Lookout, Ont., laid out his thoughts in a letter to Clifford Bull, the Conservative candidate in the Kiiwetinoong riding, and blasted the “targeted social media comments about a group of people.” He said the comments by former campaign manager Anne Ayotte were “racist” and an example of “hatred.”

Bull’s campaign announced on Tuesday that it “parted ways” with a staff member over comments made on social media. CBC News confirmed that Ayotte had tweeted that “Islamism is not a true religion, it is a fraud being perpetuated on the world,” before saying that “they must be eradicated otherwise they will eradicate us.”

Ayotte has claimed that the tweet was in response to a post by Tarek Fatah, the founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress and outspoken critic of radical Islam. Ayotte’s tweet has since been deleted.

Islamism is a political and cultural movement that dictates the Qur’an should rule all aspects of life. Its followers may or may not be militant.”

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/anne-ayotte-call-revoking-1.4665741.

“OTTAWA – In the face of persistent assaults on religious freedom and its place in the Canada’s public square, the Christian think tank Cardus has established the Cardus Religious Freedom Institute.

Fr. Deacon Andrew Bennett heads the initiative, which is tasked to “re-present” why religious freedom is important, “not only for Christians but for all people.”

“If we can’t live out our faith in the public square, how do we built a truly pluralistic Canada,” said the former Ambassador of Religious Freedom at a pre-launch reception May 8.

Bennett described an “amnesia” about the contributions of faith communities to Canada’s common life. The Ukrainian Greek Catholic deacon said Catholics “are exhibit A.”

“We have bought into the Enlightenment myth that religion is a private matter,” he said. “Our baptism is not a private matter. We are called to live it out.””

Source: https://www.catholicregister.org/item/27371-cardus-launches-religious-freedom-institute-headed-by-andrew-bennett.

“Recently I was awake in the wee hours, and in an attempt to return to peaceful rest I started to recall Christmas carols. Suddenly their magic inspired me with deeper realizations.

I had a faith-filled childhood. I was born into a German Catholic culture and actually spoke German as my first language. The language was part of a rich culture that had survived 148 years in Russia before my grandparents moved their family to Canada in 1912.

As a child you don’t argue with your cultural and religious roots. You accept truth and meaning as a soul-inspiring blessing. You wear the secure, warm and sheltering blanket of Faith.

Language has an inseparable connection to our experience of meaning as it applies to our encounter with reality and in turn, soul. Suddenly I was gathering meaning from those lyrics I heard and sang as a child.”

Source: http://www.carlyleobserver.com/community/religion/language-culture-and-forever-faith-1.23304704.

“Canadians are evenly divided on the question of whether it’s fair for the Liberal government to require that summer job grant recipients sign an attestation respecting LGBT and abortion rights, according to a new poll.

The Angus Reid Institute survey found a clear 50-50 split across the nation. Conservative supporters are more likely to oppose the attestation (68 per cent) compared to those who voted Liberal (41 per cent) or NDP (44 per cent) in the last election.

The Trudeau government unleashed a storm of controversy when it declared that organizations would have to confirm that their “core mandates” respect the Charter of Rights and Freedoms on reproductive and LBGT rights in order to be eligible for Canada Summer Job grants.

The poll found that respondents’ views changed according to how they thought the grant money would be spent.

Presented with a hypothetical scenario involving an anti-abortion organization applying for a grant to fund activities unrelated to abortion advocacy, nearly three-quarters (73 per cent) of Canadians said they believe the organization should be eligible. Support for funding falls below 37 per cent in a scenario which sees the anti-abortion group spend its grant money on anti-abortion advocacy.

Personal views on abortion

Personal views on abortion are a significant factor in how respondents assess the fairness of the attestation. Those who say abortion should be severely restricted are more likely to see it as unfair (86 per cent) compared to those who hold a pro-choice position (36 per cent).

The Angus Reid Institute survey, conducted between May 2 and 3, 2018, interviewed 1,512 Canadian adults who were members of an online panel. A probabilistic sample of this size would carry a margin of error of +/- 2.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.”

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/summer-jobs-grant-abortion-1.4661901.

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2022-04-15

This Week in Canadian Politics 2018-05-20

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/20

“How easy would it be for the Russians to interfere in Canadian elections? It would be very easy. All they’d have to do is follow the path well-heeled United States interests have used to land-lock Alberta’s oil.

Vivian Krause has been following the money trail to understand how the environmental groups behind the 2008 “Tarsands Campaign” received their money. Canadian-based environmental groups like to claim that the lion’s share of their funding comes from Canadian sources.

Why does it matter where the money comes from? Well, it gives the impression that hard-working, concerned local residents are cutting cheques for $20 at a time because they believe so fervently in a local community cause. While there are some of those well-meaning citizens, it is not where the bulk of the $500 million and counting has come from to demonize Alberta’s oilsands.

Now, we are beginning to understand how the racket really works.

In a recent blog, Krause traces the pathway of dollars and exposes a network of shell charities set up seemingly for no other purpose than to move money around to various environmental causes.”

Source: https://globalnews.ca/news/4215964/danielle-smith-foreign-interests-canadian-charities/.

“OTTAWA—Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government faces a critical few weeks when major initiatives — free trade, the Trans Mountain pipeline and the legalization of marijuana — hang in the balance.

At the same time, key legislative initiatives including reforms to elections laws, government accountability reforms, and an overhaul of Canada’s national security apparatus remain stuck in Parliament.

MPs and senators return to Ottawa Tuesday after a week in their constituencies. It will be the start of a four- to six-week sprint towards Parliament’s summer break.

There’s a lot to get done, and not a lot of time to do it. And it comes at a time when the Liberals have seen their fortunes sag in the polls, said Frank Graves, president of EKOS Research Associates.”

Source: https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2018/05/18/pipeline-politics-free-trade-talks-and-cannabis-legalization-make-for-busy-political-agenda-in-ottawa.html.

“WASHINGTON — The United States declared the NAFTA countries were nowhere close to a deal in a statement Thursday designed to douse expectations that an agreement might be just a few minor adjustments away.

It rebuffed an effort from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland, and several high-ranking staffers who were in the U.S. on Thursday urging a quick deal.

U.S. trade czar Robert Lighthizer rejected the idea that an agreement was within imminent reach. He cited big differences on intellectual property, agriculture, online purchases, energy, labour, rules of origin, and other issues.”

Source: https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/nowhere-near-close-u-s-rebuffs-trudeau-hope-for-quick-nafta-deal-1.3933787.

“These are strange days, indeed.

Our federal government, which has signed on to the Paris Agreement, has also come out swinging in support of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. And we continue to be told that increasing oil and gas production and meeting emissions reduction targets are mutually compatible goals.

This thinking is also reflected in Alberta’s ‘climate leadership plan,’ which allows oil sands emissions to grow by 40 per cent and places no restrictions on oil and gas production outside of the oil sands.

Even with that cap in place, National Energy Board oil and gas production projections show that upstream emission will increase enough that a 49 per-cent reduction in emissions from the rest of Canada’s economy will be required to meet our Paris targets.

Notwithstanding the difficulty in making such radical reductions in a short timeframe, Justin Trudeau and Rachel Notley have both dug in on the “need” to build the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, going so far as to threaten that a failure to build the pipeline could result in Alberta’s extremely modest ‘climate leadership plan’ being cancelled.”

Source: http://vancouversun.com/opinion/op-ed/david-hughes-politics-versus-the-future-canadas-orwellian-energy-standoff.

“Ian Campbell’s run to become a candidate for mayor of Vancouver could result in him becoming the first Indigenous person or person of colour to hold the position since the city was incorporated in 1886.

The Squamish Nation councillor announced Monday that he is seeking nomination to run for mayor under the Vancouver Vision banner — and that’s sparked a lot of discussion about Indigenous representation in city politics.

Vision Vancouver Coun. Andrea Reimer — who recently found about about her own Indigenous identity — says having a non-white person in such an influential role would transform conversations in the city.

“We’ve never had a non-white male mayor,” Reimer said.

“It’s for the Chinese community, for South Asians and Indo-Canadians, for people of all genders to see that it’s possible to make room for a much broader discussion,” she said.”

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/potential-for-first-indigenous-mayor-sparks-conversations-about-indigenous-participation-1.4664005.

“OTTAWA – Canadians will not know the cost of the federal government’s proposed financial backing of the Kinder Morgan pipeline until after talks conclude, says Infrastructure Minister Amarjeet Sohi.

On Wednesday Finance Minister Bill Morneau announced that the government is willing and prepared to indemnify the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, whether or not Kinder Morgan is the company that ends up building it.

Throughout the week, federal ministers have cited the ongoing talks and desire to not negotiate in public as to why they could not wade into how much the offer of financial security for the cross-provincial project could cost taxpayers.”

Source: https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/canadians-won-t-know-cost-of-possible-pipeline-prop-up-until-deal-reached-sohi-1.3936435.

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2022-04-15

This Week in Canadian Science 2018-05-20

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/20

“Minister Duncan thanks science leaders for sharing their love of science with young Canadians

OTTAWA, May 18, 2018 /CNW/ – When we ignite a passion for science in young minds, we encourage their imaginations to take over. The results can be remarkable: new inventions, incredible concepts and novel innovations that put today’s youth on a path to become the entrepreneurs, engineers, doctors, architects and researchers of tomorrow.

Today, in support of nurturing this kind of passion, the Honourable Kirsty Duncan, Minister of Science and Minister of Sport and Persons with Disabilities, celebrated the three winners of this year’s Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada’s Awards for Science Promotion. The awards honour individuals and groups who make outstanding contributions to the promotion of science in Canada through activities that encourage kids and young adults to take an interest in science.

Minister Duncan made the announcement while visiting the Canada-Wide Science Fair at Carleton University, where she met with young scientists exhibiting their science fair projects. She also toured the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Expo which shines a spotlight on the people who make up Canada’s science outreach community; those who open young people’s minds to polar research, robotics, radio communications and more.”

Source: https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/celebrating-canadians-who-inspire-our-youth-to-choose-science-683036021.html.

“OTTAWA, May 16, 2018 /CNW/ – Canada’s scientists are making discoveries that lead to new opportunities, a stronger economy and a growing middle class. To keep up Canada’s competitive edge, however, our researchers must have access to the most sophisticated tools and laboratories to help them break new ground in areas such as climate change, clean energy, ocean research and artificial intelligence. The Government of Canada, through the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), helps universities do just that.

The Honourable Marie-Claude Bibeau, Minister of International Development and La Francophonie, on behalf of the Honourable Kirsty Duncan, Minister of Science and Minister of Sport and Persons with Disabilities, today announced support of $705,605 for two projects at the Université de Sherbrooke.

Dr. François-Michel Boisvert and his team will use the CFI funding to purchase sophisticated research equipment that will help expand their biomarker research. Some protein biomarkers can save lives by indicating cancer or other diseases in patients. Dr. Boisvert’s research could lead to better and earlier detection and treatment. Minister Bibeau had the opportunity to tour the lab with Dr. Boisvert and witness his team’s incredible work first-hand.”

Source: https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/putting-the-best-research-tools-in-the-hands-of-canadas-scientists—more-than-705000-for-state-of-the-art-research-equipment-at-the-universite-de-sherbrooke-682820681.html.

“The creative minds behind animated films like Toy Story and Finding Nemo aren’t just actors and storytellers — they’re technical virtuosos.

A new exhibit opening Saturday at Science World British Columbia peels back the curtain on the science of Pixar Animation studio.

The 13,000-square-foot space guide viewers guides visitors through the technological, engineering and mathematical feats it takes to pull off beloved films such as The Incredibles and Ratatouille.

“Many of the jobs that are really talked about in this exhibit are technical artists,” said Elyse Klaidman, Pixar’s director of archives and exhibition.

“There are a lot of skills, like science, math and specifically algebra, physics and chemistry, that people have no idea are essential to the process.””

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/science-of-pixar-1.4670868.

“Alan Bernstein is president and CEO of CIFAR, the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research

Not a month goes by without another report about Canada’s lagging track record in innovation. The most recent report from the Council of Canadian Academies was typical, detailing how business-led research and development is low and declining. Our dismal track record matters. Canada’s economic well being and the fiscal room to maintain the social programs that we value, look after an aging population, and add new programs such as a national pharmacare program, will be very challenging unless we increase our productivity. That will require private sector investment in innovation, risk taking and entrepreneurship.

At the same time, not a day goes by without another story about Canada’s success in artificial intelligence (AI), or a visit by a foreign delegation eager to understand the reasons behind our success. Canada is an acknowledged world leader in AI and we are attracting significant domestic and international investment. If we want to know how to increase business-led investments in research and innovation and improve our productivity and competitiveness, one place we could start is to understand the underlying reasons behind our AI success.

What are those lessons? Canada’s global excellence in AI didn’t just happen. It started with the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research’s (CIFAR) support of AI research, going back to the 1980s. That support was key in attracting, retaining and training AI talent. Geoffrey Hinton, universally regarded as the godfather of AI, came to the University of Toronto from the United States because he knew about Canada and U of T through his CIFAR connections. Dr. Hinton became a magnet for exceptionally bright students such as Yoshua Bengio (University of Montreal), now the acknowledged leader of the vibrant AI community in Montreal.”

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-to-increase-canadian-innovation-take-a-lesson-from-our-ai-successes/.

“Federal auction policies are focused on creating better wireless service and value for the middle class

OTTAWA, May 18, 2018 /CNW/ – Canadians are demanding world-class high-speed mobile broadband to engage in social media, participate in the digital economy and access other important online services. That is why the Government of Canada is continually looking at how to best allocate wireless spectrum. Spectrum is the airwaves on which wireless connectivity is provided. Making good spectrum decisions helps pave the way for stronger competition, high-quality networks and lower prices for Canadians.

Today, the Government of Canada announced the results for the 2018 spectrum auction. Approximately 94 percent of the allocated spectrum licences went to regional providers and small companies, which will allow them to offer higher quality services to Canadians. In total, six providers obtained spectrum: Ecotel, Cogeco, Xplornet, Iris, Freedom and TELUS. This is further evidence of continuing support for a competitive wireless market, leading to better quality services and lower prices for Canadians.

The Government will continue to support competition and investment in telecommunications so that Canadians continue to benefit from next-generation technologies and that Canada remains at the forefront of innovation.”

Source: https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/government-of-canada-takes-steps-to-improve-competition-and-quality-of-wireless-services-683073491.html.

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2022-04-15

On Tanzanian Youth and Fundamentalist Religion with Nsajigwa I Mwasokwa (Nsajigwa Nsa’sam): Founder, Jicho Jipya/Think Anew Tanzania

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/19

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I want to talk about the youth. How are they doing regarding religion? Is it an impediment to women’s social progress, for example?

Nsajigwa: Young people, the youth are molded right from home into religion from early age. Yes, modern education is provided at schools, but it is regarded as “elimu dunia” or literally “earthy education.”

It is second in importance to that given by religion’s faith institutions (“kipaimara” – Sacrament of Confirmation for Christianity-RC and “Madrassa for Islam), which is seen as “value-based & building” and, thus, primary.

However, forces of secularism do produce dissenters – a few within in spite of religious socialization (indoctrination) from an early age.

Religion comes with a value system, particularly what is expected of woman – what to be and to do (and what not to). Basically, wishing a woman to only play her traditional role as a “good wife”, and later as a childbearing and rearing mother.

Jacobsen: How do seriously do they take religious beliefs?

Nsajigwa: They take it very seriously out of socialization that starts early at home. Though forces of modernity, secularization has had the effect of reducing religiosity in some way. Yet, it hasn’t been a guarantee. In fact, it is a paradox of African modernity!

Jacobsen: Is there a way to inoculate the youth against fundamentalist religion?

Nsajigwa: Yes, education that is enlightening, beyond passing examinations, is the Key. Education that encourages (i.e. does not inhibit) curiosity and questioning – an asking attitude from the young ones. Education by exposure, via traveling to meet different tastes and human values elsewhere.

Education by studying in an impartial manner and with neutrality, example the subject of comparative religions. The teaching that religion is a cultural phenomenon. Instill, inspire, and nurture book reading habit to be a culture by itself.

To develop a skeptical attitude as well as a questioning one instead of accepting things by faith, develop rationalism based on empiricism, teach (rather than having a phobia for) philosophy itself and not through the eyes of theology, bring awareness that there is an alternative life stance to that of religion and supernaturalism.

That one can be ethical, good, and even humanistic without a religion.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time.

Nsajigwa: Thanks back to you.

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2022-04-15

In Conversation with Vidita Priyadarshini – MA in Political Science Student, Central European University

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/18

Vidita Priyadarshini is a graduate student in political science at Central European University. Here we talk about current events at Central European University.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is happening at Central European University now?

Vidita Priyadarshini: It started around March last year when the government, who has a super majority, tabled a bill in the Parliament which would make it impossible for our university to operate in this country.

It was random. Nobody saw it coming. They were making regulations about universities that had dual-accreditation. We have accreditation in Hungary and the United States. They decided to make changes and additions to this accreditation process in Hungary.

They tried to hide behind saying, “This is a general rule which is applicable to every university that operates with dual accreditation.” However, the rules were built in a way that only affected one of the many such universities operating in Hungary, and given the political climate, it was obvious that it is part of a concerted attack.

It went through. It became a big issue. A lot of Hungarian civil society was against it. The opposition, which is highly fragmented, treated it as part of their election campaign. We had support from international academia, European, American, and even from the global south – India and Pakistan. The situation mirrored what happened in Turkey and Russia before.

However, despite all this support, and the CEU having met the requirements painstakingly over the last year, they have not signed the agreements. They are trying to keep us in this tricky position, where you cannot decide if you want to stay in this country or move.

They are trying to hit us where it hurts the most. The university is seen as a liberal university and with a mission such as open society, is seen as an enemy of Hungarian prime-minister’s concept of ‘illiberal democracy.’

The background of the university is that it was founded by George Soros in 1991 to be one of the centres of academic excellence in this region after the fall of communism. So, for him, George Soros and this liberal university represents everything against him.

They were trying to figure out ways to take us down, any perception of opposition was considered harmful. Even though the CEU never gets involved in Hungarian politics directly, it is constantly projected as a major threat. When that didn’t work, they tried subtle ways. For example, through intimidation of NGOs.

They project George Soros as some mastermind who controls everyone. Our university is not controlled by George Soros. That is the narrative that they want to push.

Jacobsen: What has been some of the reaction to Budapest, within Hungary, and within Central Europe itself, with regards to this back-and-forth between, on the one side, a liberal democracy stance, and, on the other side, a more conservative or even ultra-conservative stance?

Priyadarshini: In Budapest, we were surprised last year. People who do not normally take part in political debates took part in protests. We were going around, we were organizing. We were talking to a lot of people. We were surprised when one of the bigger protests had 80,000 in a city of only 2,0000,000. All age groups, it was surprising to me.

One possibility, as I am told by my Hungarian friends is that they might not care that much. The debate might be irrelevant to them – whether to be a liberal democracy or an illiberal democracy, but they agree education should not be attacked. A lot of people probably hated this while harbouring anti-Soros sentiments. Probably, the bottom line was that it is taking opportunities away from Hungarians.

I do not know about the countryside, but in Budapest the sentiment was strongly in support of the university because they felt Hungarians do not have a good education system in general; and that this should not be politicized so much.

They believe educational spaces should not be politicized. You may have opinions about that [politicization of universities], but that seems to be the opinion here. In Central and Eastern Europe, as with everywhere, there is a rise of the Right.

At the same time, there was a shock about this because the Right also might disagree with these policies. With the debates in the European parliament, we saw that there was some pressure on the European Peoples’ Party to push the Hungarian government to not let this legislation through.

However, he has been powering through it in general. The fate of the university remains to be seen as the government continuously refuses to sign the agreement after all new requirements have been met. One can only hope for the best.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Vidita.

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2022-04-15

In Conversation with Sara Al Iraqiya on Leaving Islam, Global Affairs, and Society

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/16

Sara Al Iraqiya is a USA-based 2nd generation Iraqi-American social scientist, writer, and activist. Raised under Sunni Islam and a survivor of attempted radicalization in American mosques and centers — she has both lived experience as well as academic experience with Islam. By age 20, after gaining the freedom to live autonomously and exercising her right to protect herself, she left Islam altogether. Sara aims to educate her fellow Americans and lovers of Western civilization on the horrors, inequalities, and injustices that occur in Western-based mosques and Islamic centers. Sara has been published in two languages (and counting). A world traveler, she briefly lived in France, Jordan, and even Cuba in order to complete her Masters of Arts in Global Affairs specializing in Global Culture and Society. Sara Al Iraqiya has been published in Conatus News and Spain’s ALDE Group.

Scott Douglas Jacobson: When it comes to those that hold to the title of nonreligious or irreligious, they come from a narrow set of possibilities. Those that grew up in a religion and left. Those that grew up in a fundamentalist religion and liberalized.

Those who never grew up in a religion. Of course, the ones that liberalized eventually leave or form something like an ethical culture, Sunday Assembly, or an Oasis network. Those are types of worship that do not ground themselves in the supernatural, in theology.

When it comes to your own background, having talked a bit off tape, you grew up Muslim and then left the faith. How did that happen?

Sara Al Iraqiya: I did not know if I was Sunni or Shi’ite. I did not even know about the sects of Islam until 2003 because sectarian violence in Iraq made the news here in the United States. I suppose people were curious. So, people would keep asking me if I was Sunni or Shi’ite. I could not answer because my parents never differentiated that to me.

As I got older, I learned I was raised Sunni Muslim.

As a child, I truly believed in God; and with the Islamic curriculum that I was exposed to as a child, it was relatively innocuous. They were sweet stories, heartwarming stories about being nice to people and doing good deeds.

For example, when you find yourself in abundance, give things away to those in need, these are practicable actions with or without a religion. However, as a child, I felt these are such profound words, such great ideas that were given to me from a God that loves me.

I did not have anyone to read to me, so I developed an obsession with books.

I loved the public library. I loved going there. I loved borrowing books from my peers, from anywhere. I loved books. I was obsessed with them. I was so young. I could not read.

So, I would pray.

I would pray to God. I would ask God to help me learn how to read. I would pray so much. I woke up one day. I was reading this book. I thought, “Wow, God gave me this gift. I am reading. God gave me the gift of reading. This is amazing!”

No. What it was, and what I did not realize, I had been practicing so hard. I was playing word games, and watching my older siblings do their homework. Prayer happened to be a component. I could have been meditating, thinking about reading.

For some reason, regarding my ability to read, I attributed it to God and praying to God. I became not only advanced in reading for my age level. Also, advanced in writing for my age level, I completely attributed these things to my prayers being answered.

Basically, I was convinced my petitions to God worked. I was such a youngster. I was such a young, innocent kid. I did not understand that I made that happen. So, there was that.

Growing up, I always look at the world with sheer wonder. I would think, “Wow, I am so lucky. I am so grateful that there is a God that created all of these things. Everything is so beautiful. This world is colorful.”

Full of colors, plants, and animals, I loved to play outside when I was a kid. I loved to play with the little critters that I would meet outside and playing in the grass and stuff. Sometimes, I would find a toad.

I was not scared of spiders. I played with spiders. I loved the world. I loved nature. I was a kid that loved to play outside. It was the early 1990s. That is what we were doing, playing outside. We were not playing with iPads.

Not that there is anything wrong with that. You can play word games on those iPads. That is good too. So, you can teach the kids important skills with iPads. But I wouldn’t trade my childhood for anything. It was nice.

At that time, Islamic curriculum that was given to me was geared towards young children, so everything in that basic curriculum was sweet. It was the “sweet stuff.” Sweet words and sweet stories. Heartwarming stuff.

However, as you get older and advance in the Islamic curriculum, the education becomes more extreme. I inadvertently received a Wahhabi education in the United States at a weekend school in my local mosque.

I had that education in the United States, which is something we should all be concerned about now. We can talk about that in a moment. However, yes, it was moving on up. It was moving on to something more, a little more aggressive and sinister. No more “sweet stuff.”

I was “bad” for integrating with others outside of the mosque. There were many attempts to make me feel that way and to accept it as a truth. That interfaith friendships or even interactions were considered sin.

I was a sinner. I was bad. I remember the other students would get upset with me because I refused to say that I hate gay people. I refused to say that gay people are going to burn in hell.

At this time, I believed in hell. I thought, “That is where all the murderers and evil people go. They go to hell.” However, as I was getting older, the mosque leaders and mosque attendees were telling me homosexuals and transgender people go to hell. Because they defied “God’s Word.”

I said, “What did they do wrong?” They would explain, for example, with transgender people, “They have altered their bodies.” I said, “What if somebody was in a severe accident? And so they got reconstructive surgery to live a normal life?”

“There are many people who get surgery. If they are in an accident, afterwards, they get reconstructive surgery. Isn’t that altering their body? Are they going to go to hell?”

I would get sent to “time out” for asking too many questions.

I eventually learned that you do not ask too many questions in the mosque in these Islamic weekend schools. If you ask questions, then that means you are questioning God’s Word.

They feel as if relaying God’s actual Word to the people. So, asking questions is a big no-no, I would get in trouble for that, when I simply saw this as people claiming this as a god’s word.

Then there was also being told that Christians and Jews are all “people of the book.” They are monotheists. They are fine. However, they do not walk the straight narrow path as you do. Then there would be conflicting passages. There would be another passage in the other side of the Qur’an where it essentially said, “Do not trust the Jews.”

They flat out said, “Do not trust the Jews.” I do not agree with this and never have in my life. I have so many friends who are Jewish or Christian in public school. Atheist friends, friends who worship more than one God. They are so nice to me.

They invite me over. We have a good time. We eat snacks and play games. They have been so nice to me. The mosque leaders would say, “Yes, that is what they do. They are nice to you because they want to bring you in, and they want to bring you into sin.”

“Right now, you are walking on the straight and narrow path, but you will fall off if you keep hanging out with these people. Because when you are alone in a room with a non-Muslim, there is one other presence in that room. That presence is Satan.”

And so as ridiculous as this sounds, it is supposed to sound true to someone who is a “believer.” However, to me, it did not sound right.

I had a heart of a child. I felt sorry for Satan. Because I looked at the story of Satan in the Qur’an. I felt sorry for Satan because he was criticizing God’s work. In the Qur’an, he told God, “This human is weak compared to us. To my race.”

Satan in Islamic lore belongs to a different race, called the jinn. Which is an entity you cannot see, but they can see you, it is complicated because different sects are taught different things. However, I could empathize with Satan. He was best friends with God. He was criticizing God’s work like friends do.

“I am supposed to bow down to this human. This human is weak. I am of a different race. I can walk straight through these people.” There was one quote; Satan said, “I can walk straight through them.” So, I felt of compassion for Satan even [Laughing]! Because I was looking at everything through the eyes of a child. I thought, “He was making a criticism.”

I felt that humans are weak compared to the jinn because there is a whole chapter in the Quran that explains the jinn and how they are. They are creatures with supernatural capabilities. They can travel at will, and essentially teleport. They sounded way cooler than humans. I agreed with Satan on that one.

However, you cannot say that in a mosque. You will get in trouble.

They might even try to do an exorcism on you. That is a whole different story and it is very sad that this practice continues.

So, after causing all that trouble I decided to leave the weekend school.

My parents were shocked about this. They thought that the mosque leaders were going to teach me things like “be nice to people, give your extra food to homeless people instead of throwing it in the garbage, give away your extra clothes to people who do not have warm clothes in the winter.”

They thought they were going to teach that brand of morality. What my parents did not understand, what Muslim American parents do not understand, is that the mosque leaders were not teaching us how to be good people, they were teaching us how to hate.

The curriculum starts from childhood. Step by step. Until you see these teenagers or people in their early 20s who are ready to blow themselves up in public places or shoot up concerts or whatnot, we wonder where these homegrown terrorists come from.

There are many reasons for Islamist radicalization. However, part of the reason is the extreme ideologies being taught in the mosques here in the United States. That is a huge part of it and I stand firmly by this statement.

So, when I finally decided I did not want to study Islam in the mosque, my parents understood and even commended me.

I was studying on my own. Because I had not let go of the idea that there is a God. That God loves me and the world. I started believing that way up until the age of 19. I was watching a YouTube personality. Her name is Cristina Rad.

It was a long time ago. I am putting an age on myself [Laughing]. It was a while back. However, she is Romanian and an ex-Orthodox Christian. So, I was watching her videos. She had the video about the “banana guy.”

She was basically dragging them, making fun of them. She was hilarious. She is making fun of these crazy Christians. I thought, “Oh, this is hilarious. She is making fun of these crazy Christians. Oh my God, these are guys are mad.”

“They are so crazy. Oh my God.” Then I think, “Let me see more videos by this girl, she is so funny.” Then I see she is criticizing Islam. It was a record scratch. “What?” [Laughing]. “Wait, what?” [Laughing] “She is criticizing Islam?”

I did not realize up until then. I did not realize how that affected me. I had never seen somebody make fun of Islam before. This got me to the point where I did not think that you could make fun of Islam because it was so drilled in my head that I could not question anything.

The mosque leaders did a good job of that. In many of these Islamic weekend schools, through Islamic curriculum, you will see their manipulation tactics in some of their books and whatnot.

They are experts in brainwashing. Of course, Islam in and of itself, the religion does a good job of indoctrinating people or else there would not be between 1 and 2 billion Muslims in the world.

I am sure if many of the people who are surveyed answer, “Yes, I am a Muslim” out of fear, to be honest. So, that is a side note. That is my social science, nerdy side. When it comes to research methodologies, I am skeptical. Especially of surveys, the surveys make me the most skeptical [Laughing].

When I was searching for ex-Muslims, I only found ex-Muslims who converted to Christianity at that time.

I did not want to become a Christian. Abrahamic religion did not resonate with me anymore.

It is an esoteric concept. No hate to anybody who joins a church. If that heals you, if that makes you feel you are being a better person by going to church – by all means, go to church. So, long as you are not hurting other people, go ahead and do and believe as you please.

That is what makes Western culture so excellent, I believe. It is that we can do and say as we believe, so long as we are allowed to live and are not hurting other people.

So, that is fine to me. However, I could only find these ex-Muslims who converted to Christianity. It seemed these were all coming out of the same God damn church. I realized, “these are fucking commercials.”

It was a breaking point. I do not know if this is their real story. It might be their real story. If it is, that is cool. I have ex-Muslim friends who became Christians. I am super happy for them, but this is not for me. This is not for me. I do not have anything right now.

I do not have any religion.

So, I am becoming frustrated at this point. Because I am not finding anybody like me. I did not want to convert to Christianity because it is not in my heart. I do not feel it in my heart. I am not going to join a church.

I am not saying I dislike Christians.

I am actually going to church tomorrow with a friend of mine. I am going to be there bright and early. I go to church often with my Christian friends for certain occasions. I respect it and respect them. I respect them because they respect me.

They have never tried to force me into anything. There are some members of churches who have crossed boundaries and have been a bit aggressive towards me and others. Some would say that I made the right choice by leaving Islam, but I need to join a religion, that religion being their brand of Christianity. I stay away from people like this.

So, I wanted to find ex-Muslims out there. It did not hit me that you can leave Islam. The way Islam is taught; it doesn’t hit you that you can leave Islam. I know it sounds bizarre. But it doesn’t hit you. But you can leave Islam.

I did not want to go from one Abrahamic religion to another. Islam is basically Orthodox Judaism with a dash of Jesus. Islam is Orthodox Judaism plus Jesus, only this time Jesus doesn’t give a shit about you.

But I am not going after theology. I am going after extremist curriculum and exposing it for what it is.

What does upset me is what is taught in local mosques, in the United States. There are mosques that are teaching extreme ideologies. That is why many of my Muslim friends refuse to step foot in a mosque because they see the way mosques have become. The Muslims I know will not send their children to mosques.

My feelings and opinions about religion are irrelevant. I am talking about what is happening, right here and right now. We have radical mosques.

In this country, people do not realize these are radical mosques. You will get some people who are crazy—they go and shoot up a mosque. This is horrific and deplorable. There are regular peaceful people in many mosques.

I would go there to smell the incense and see the carpet with the ornate designs. When I step into a mosque, it brings back a childhood feeling. It is warm. The smell of the incense. It hits me. It smells so nice.

I refuse to go to a mosque because I do not like wearing a headscarf. So I took that incense and made a car air freshener out of it, it doesn’t require to be lit of course. My car smells like a mosque.

Then you also hear a call to prayer. Sometimes, it sounds nice. Sometimes, the imam’s voice is annoying as fuck. It is the same trigger for some things. It reminds me of childhood, even though they are chanting about some violent, fucked up shit. It triggers some warm feelings. I hate that it does, but it does because it reminds me of being a kid, if that makes sense.

So, I am searching, searching, searching, searching. I find no other ex-Muslims. Zero. Zero ex-Muslims who decide, “I am done with religion.” They become ex-Muslims and become Christians or something. That is all I could find.

Until years went by, the ex-Muslim movement became louder.

They are not bigots. They are simply speaking the truth. There are societal issues going on. They are finally being addressed. The ex-Muslim movement did that most efficiently.

Ex-Muslim atheists are not storming up into mosques and harassing Muslims. If anything, I have been harassed by many Muslims in my life.

However, then I also have many Muslim friends. It is about the personal level. Who a person is.

That is the misconception that people have when it comes to criticizing Islam.

Even ex-Muslims have trouble criticizing Islam, they get disinvited from speaking events. Places will not publish the work of many ex-Muslim writers. They get called bigots.

It causes me to wonder, “How does this make me a bigot at all? Because I am criticizing an ideology I grew up with and I do not believe in anymore?”

The ex-Muslim movement is going strong and it should continue going. I also love the humanitarian work that is going along with it.

We are moving past making fun of that religion; our old religion that we grew up with. We are moving past that, I think, and becoming activists in our own right, whether we realize it or not.

Because it is setting an example for that next generation of young people who may question Islam and will be looking for ex-Muslims out there, and maybe they do not necessarily want to become a Christian or any other sort of theist.

They will find us. They will find our writing; they will find our videos. They will find our talks.

They will see us speaking at their universities. I see that happening in the future. The ex-Muslims, it will not be like the old days, the Dark Ages, which was not too long ago, of being an ex-Muslim. Of being a secular humanist, being an atheist, being an ex-Muslim and not joining another religion. Now there are people that young ex-Muslims can look up to because many of them find themselves completely lost without families.

They do not know how the world works. They turn to hard drugs. They become alcoholics. What do the imams say? The imams say, “People who leave Islam. They become alcoholics and drug addicts. Why do you think that is?” I want to ask them, “Why do you think that is?”

There is absolutely zero compassion there. These people, they turn to things like substances and self-destruction because it is so hard to be ostracized in every direction.

On the other hand, it is warming my heart now. To see, that there is a movement underway. That it is not going to be as hard and as painful as it once was to leave Islam and to leave these customs behind; and to think, to live authentically and to live autonomously and to think with your mind and not with somebody else’s noxious ideas.

Scott: What are you doing now in terms of your own professional work? How does your personal philosophy feed into this?

Al Iraqiya: So for my own professional work, I do not to talk about my work life unless it is a completed project or requires speaking about at that time. Otherwise, I do not talk about this publicly because there are many Muslims who have called ex-Muslims at work. Their bosses were called and then told fabricated things about their ex-Muslim employees in an attempt to get them fired.

So, that happens a lot. However, there have been cases where ex-Muslims are being stalked by Muslims on the internet, trying to find out places of work and things like that. One, I heard one story.

They posted online, “Such and such person called my boss and said all these complete lies about me” to warn other ex-Muslims about being open about their workplace. I’d been harassed by that same troll.

So I am not too public about these things.

My writing is easily accessible. I can be myself when I speak or write. Leaving Islam helped to some extent. For example, my quality of work used to plummet during Ramadan because I would feel dizzy and could not produce satisfactory work. I don’t have that problem anymore.

Scott: From extensive personal experience and those of ex-Muslims known to me, as a heuristic or rule of thumb for comprehension and compassion, those individuals who criticize religion in a public, direct, and assertive way.

They will undergo some form of harassment, whether at work, in home life, in public, and so on. This will impact their entire life. They should know this if they do plan on becoming writers or activists in some form. It comes with the territory. It is a huge personal safety and comfort sacrifice.

In taking on the important issues that affect all of us with regards to religion, especially the religions or subsects of religion that have a political motive, because often, those in the non-religious community will work towards prevention of the encroachment of religion into public life, especially in Western Europe and even more so in north America.

So, it cannot use the force of state because we do not live in theocratic societies to enforce their religion on others who may speak out about it. However, they can use other social, cultural, and personal harassment means to silence you, mistreat you, and so on.

I and others have left jobs and undergone verbal, emotional, and social abuse, in order to continue doing the activist work we have done. It does not come without costs. Sometimes, it will come at heavy costs.

However, if you view the work as highly important, you will continue in the work, but do not be naïve in the fact that there will be times that will be extraordinarily difficult. You will feel as if alone in your activist work.

Al Iraqiya: Yes, I completely believe that. So, this is why I have been transparent with my employers. I explain to them everything. I explain to them all of my publications. I explain to them groups I belong to and my activism.

So, I find it important to maintain that with employers. However, it is not always so easy. I have heard so many stories. It is not always well-received by employers. People do not want to find any possible complications at their workplace. They are worried they may put other employees at risk. There are all these things to take into account.

I have my Master’s in Global Affairs, specialized in Culture and Society. With Global Affairs, the core classes were about the global economy. So, this is my area of expertise. I wanted to get into journalism. I loved writing. I loved the things that I read when I was getting my Master’s.

I was thinking, it stinks that not everybody gets to read this stuff. Not everybody has the time or the funds to read all these things. Hell, I barely did. So, let me talk about some academic ideas, let me talk about it in a way that is accessible, that is what I do.

So, with my articles that have been published thus far, I make sure they are accessible. They are readable. There was a time when I was reading a book a week plus articles.

The articles would be twenty, thirty pages long, dense text. I would have to retain all of that for a master’s degree. So, there is reading involved. I take everything that I have learned.

But with social science – it is imperative to keep up with it. It is similar to how medical doctors take a board exam. They have to read certain medical journals periodically because things change in the medical field. So, they need to be up to date so they can practice modern medicine. Social scientists absolutely need to do something along these lines. Even data from 2008 is crucially different from data in 2018.

So, I try to keep up to date because social science is ever-changing.

I get supportive messages from Baghdad and Basra! I love that we live in this time where global activism is most attainable.

We talked about this earlier. I speak with ex-Muslim young women. I give them the logistical support and emotional support. They do not have their families anymore. In Middle Eastern culture and many Mediterranean, North African cultures, it is family, family, family. Family is everything.

Then you are taught that you do not trust anybody but your family: family, family, family. When they realize they do not have family anymore, their family literally does not love them; their family hates them. In some cases, their family wants them dead. All of that is crushing.

I wish I could meet up with everybody who sends me a message.

And says, “Could you please meet up with me for coffee? I am based in such and such city. Are you ever in this city? I need to talk to somebody.” I wish I could respond to those messages and meet up with everybody.

I cannot. I’ve met ex-Muslims through a mutual friend. Someone I trust and trust their judgement. I would meet in a public place with them. It is a rewarding experience. I remember I was sitting with an ex-hijabi and she ordered a beer. I do not drink beer. I cannot. I do not know why. I cannot drink beer, but I do drink this one Lebanese beer because it’s worth the gastric discomfort.

But otherwise, I do not drink beer for some reason. It hurts my stomach. So, I ordered a glass of wine. She orders a beer. I wish I could show you the grin—it was the most adorable thing.

She is said, “I ordered a beer!” [Laughing]! She was so thrilled about ordering a beer!

She could say it! She could look at the waiter. I remember the waiter was a guy. Looked at him in the eye, ordered a beer, the waiter walks away.

She looks at me. She says, “He’s cute, wasn’t he?” [Laughing]! This is supposed to be girl talk. This is supposed to be so normal, banter, whatever, normal talk.

This is what I mean by emotional support: having a girl friend to talk to about things. It is nice. She would not have been able to say to her mother that she thought the waiter was cute. I mean it is priceless. It is so important. It needs to be done.

Islam itself is gender segregated. So, it is a lot easier in that case for ex-Muslim women to help other ex-Muslim women and ex-Muslim men to help other ex-Muslim men. Because we were completely segregated in every way.

So, the things men have seen and have been exposed to and have been traumatized by will be different than what the women have been exposed to and traumatized by.

Of course I do recommend professional and confidential counseling above all else.

My story, I am telling you, is mild. But there are other stories of people who came from families that are very, aggressive and hateful, very strict. Highly orthodox in a bad way. Hurtful, psychologically damaging to the average person; so, I call those ex-Muslims my superman and my superwoman, the ones who have been through all that. There, they are that beacon of hope for other ex-Muslims out there. Survivors.

Anyway, there is the after care. So, now, you are an ex-Muslim, left Islam. You know how the world works. You feel free. You are empowered. You have a support system.

You have all these friends. However, there might still be that element of sadness. It is always lingering there. So, the next thing that I always to incorporate… laughter.

Humor. Happiness. I believe that is so important. So, when you are ready to laugh, you have got to start laughing. I want to see sad stories diminish.

I would love to see de-radicalization in mosques happen. That is the world I want to live in. Because I see Christianity can and any religion can be this way, but I do not see many ex-Christians facing the things I see ex-Muslims facing.

The documentary One of Us about ex-Ultra Orthodox Jews was the closest thing I have seen to ex-Muslim narratives. In some cases, there are stories that paralleled the stories of some ex-Muslims that I know so much. It was a sad and familiar story.

Some of them might be even more traumatic. But I do not want to say anyone’s story is more traumatic. There is no fucking oppression Olympics. We are not going to go there with the oppression Olympics.

Everybody has had their own pain. Because somebody else’s pain or story is much more dramatic, doesn’t make the pain less valid. Ex-Muslims have been historically disempowered. So, I would love to see empowerment in the ex-Muslim community.

I am seeing it happen already, and it makes me so happy. It makes me so excited. I am so happy for the future. It is a revolution, going on before my eyes. Because as I said, ten years ago, I was searching, searching, searching for ex-Muslim atheists. I could not find a damn one.

All of that is changing now. It is fantastic. I am honored to be a part of that.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Sara.

Al Iraqiya: Anytime, Scott.

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2022-04-15

Activism for Noura Hussein Hammad

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/16

A 19-year-old, Noura Hussein Hammad, from Sudan has been sentenced to death for the killing of a man. Hammad killed the man in self-defense while being raped.

The context is a forced marriage while a child/teenager and so forced child marriage, marital rape while being held down by several men, and the killing the forced-marriage husband while being raped by him. Now, she was taken to a Sudanese court and charged with murder.

Getting the word out has been helpful, most countries’ governments do not want bad press for their country. Journalists and international/global citizens can place pressure on governments in some instances at certain times.

This may be one of those times, as noted in Canadian Atheist, Cornelius Press, Humanist Voices, Medium, and The Good Men Project, with Sodfa Daaji, and Canadian Atheist, Cornelius Press, Humanist Voices, Secularism is a Women’s Issue, The Good Men Project here, here, and here with Marieme Helie Lucas. This story seems to show an unjust and unfair charge.

Hammad’s told her father and family about what happened, but the father turned Hammad into the police. Subsequently, the family disowned Hammad. She was charged with premeditated murder, even though she was defending herself against rape in a forced marriage case.

You can email Sudan’s Minister of Justice.

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2022-04-15

This Week in Canadian Science 2018-05-13

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/13

“Thousands of children descended on the University of Manitoba’s campus Saturday to muck up their hands and feet creating art, while learning about science and engineering.

At 50 interactive stations, the annual Science Rendezvous festival in Winnipeg aimed to show kids how science overlaps with all aspects of life — including painting, food and playtime.

While using a catapult to fling weighted balloons into buckets, nine-year-old Sara said her impression of science, so far, was that it’s “really fun.”

“I think it’s interesting,” she said. “There’s different kinds of it and different things you can do with it.””

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/science-rendezvous-2018-1.4660801.

“(CNN)This week marks what would be the 100th birthday of legendary American physicist Richard P. Feynman. In a world in which many people think of the socially awkward Sheldon Cooper in the television show The Big Bang Theory as being a typical scientist, Feynman was the quite the opposite. And he should be remembered as one of the most brilliant and impactful physicists of the 20th century.

The public met him in his 1985 book Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman, in which he regaled the reader with anecdotes of a colorful and well-enjoyed life. Feynman was a bon vivant, with an affinity for samba music, art, strip clubs and playing the bongos. He was also a successful ladies’ man.

There are those who have claimed that he was sexist, but the truth is subtler. He encouraged his sister to study physics, he advocated for both male and female students, and in the 1970s he supported a fellow female faculty member who he felt had been discriminated against due to gender. (She won her lawsuit in part due to his backing.) He certainly was a product of his time, but his attitudes towards women were not unusual for the era.

Feynman was certainly one of the most brilliant scientific minds of the 20th century, with an impact eclipsed perhaps only by Einstein. He was born in Queens, New York, to immigrant parents. His advanced academic life began when he attended college at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, followed by graduate study at Princeton University, where he achieved a perfect score on the physics entrance exams. The bulk of his career was spent at Cornell University and California Institute of Technology.”

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/12/opinions/richard-feynman-opinion-lincoln/index.html.

“Feeling stressed and want to blow off some steam? Sites throughout the GTA and across Canada will be holding events all day May 12th for the Science Rendezvous Festival.This festival kicks off Science Odyssey, a week-long celebration of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM.

The theme this year is Full STEAM Ahead, with the extra “A” standing for art. Last year’s event brought in more than 30,000 people from around the GTA.

Universities, colleges and other locations around the GTA will be holding free events and street festivals Saturday to show families the fun that STEM can bring.”

Source: https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2018/05/12/the-science-rendezvous-festival-is-full-steam-ahead.html.

“The value of diversity is well-proven. Findings from Harvard Business School, Catalyst, and WinSETT Centre demonstrate that increasing women’s participation in the workforce – especially in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) careers – brings significant economic benefits to organizations, industries, and countries.

Diversity enhances market development. There is very strong evidence that an organization whose employees reflect the diversity of its client or customer base responds more effectively in understanding and serving their needs and in identifying new opportunities and markets.

Diverse companies also have stronger financial performance and improved governance. Specifically, companies with the highest representation of women in their top management teams had a 35.1 per cent higher return on equity and 34 per cent higher total return to shareholders than those with the lowest representation.

A 2007 Catalyst study showed that “on average, Fortune 500 companies with the highest percentages of women board directors outperformed those with the lowest. Compared to U.S. companies with the least gender-diverse boards, these firms reported a 53-per-cent higher return on equity (ROE), a 42-per-cent greater return on sales (ROS), and six-per-cent higher return on invested capital (ROIC).””

Source: http://edmontonjournal.com/opinion/columnists/opinion-achieving-diversity-in-science-needs-more-than-good-intentions.

“VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – Whether your interests lean more toward the intricacies of quantum physics or to drinking beer and making slime, a free festival stretching across Metro Vancouver today has you covered.

It’s called Science Rendezvous and it’s on today at the Kwantlen campus in Langley, SFU in Burnaby and UBC in Vancouver.

Executive Director of Science Rendezvous Katie Miller says at UBC, you can play something called science chase. “You get a card and it will direct you to go around the campus, try out hands-on activities and get a stamp. You’ll be able to ride a hovercraft, discover micro-organisms in the pond [and] explore quantum physics.”

The goal is to spark an interest and curiosity in science and engineering, especially, in young people. “See all of the current, exciting research that’s happening right now in Canada and inspire the next generation to fall in love with it and have their parents watch.””

Source: http://www.news1130.com/2018/05/12/free-science-festival-langley-vancouver-weekend/.

“Before and after Sarah Blaffer Hrdy met her infant grandson for the first time, she spit into a vial. Two weeks later, when her husband arrived to meet the newborn, she had him do the same thing.

Lab tests later revealed that Hrdy’s levels of a brain chemical called oxytocin spiked by 63 percent that evening. Her husband’s spit showed a 26 percent jump after his initial meeting, but several days later, it also increased to 63 percent.

“There was no difference in the end result between me and my husband, it just took him a little more exposure to his grandson to get there,” she says. Now a professor emerita at the University of California, Davis, the esteemed anthropologist has written extensively about the science of human maternity. (Here are seven things you may not have known about the dark history of Mother’s Day.)”

Source: http://www.nationalgeographic.com.au/science/is-maternal-instinct-only-for-mums-heres-the-science.aspx.

“All across the country, from Nunavut to British Columbia to Newfoundland, people are invited to participate in hands-on science during this year’s Science Rendezvous taking place this weekend.

The annual events are held at locations — primarily universities — across Canada as part of Science Odyssey, a celebration of science by the Natural Sciences, Engineering Research Council of Canada. This year it runs from May 11 to May 20.

Science Rendezvous kicks it off on Saturday, inviting people young and old for a day-long celebration of hands-on science.

“The goal ultimately is to really increase the public’s awareness and involvement with actual science,” Kathleen Miller, executive director of Science Rendezvous, told CBC News. “Science isn’t just a thing; science is the process of finding truth.

“Science is truly involved in everything.””

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/science-rendezvous-2018-1.4653165.

““U.S. May Limit Access for Chinese Researchers” (front page, May 1) merely reflects the culmination of the concerted campaign in this country to erode public trust in science and liberal academia.

Foreign students readily fill the openings created by lack of American interest in advanced education in science and technology. Where these foreign students once stayed in the United States and applied their education for the benefit of this country, they are no longer welcome as immigrants.

Barring Chinese students won’t restore American interest in filling these positions with our own students. Reclaiming our eroding position as a world leader in science and technology also requires raising the profile of American science among our own students.”

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/13/opinion/science-technology.html.

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2022-04-15

This Week in Canadian Religion 2018-05-13

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/13

“OTTAWA — Canada’s former religious freedom ambassador says the Trudeau government is displaying “totalitarian” tendencies with its controversial changes to the student summer jobs program.

Andrew Bennett, who until 2015 was Canada’s only envoy devoted exclusively to religious freedom abroad, used the label repeatedly in an interview ahead of his launch today of a new religious freedom think-tank that he will be leading to stimulate public discussion on the role of faith in public life.

Bennett is kicking off that discussion with an attack on the Liberal government’s change to the Canada Summer Jobs program that requires organizations seeking funding to tick a box that attests to their respect for sexual and reproductive rights, including abortion, and other human rights.

The government says it is not targeting beliefs or values but churches and other faith-based organizations say they are being forced to choose between staying true to their values and seeking grants to help them run programs — from summer camps to soup kitchens — that have nothing to do with abortion.”

Source: https://www.cp24.com/news/summer-jobs-program-shows-totalitarian-tendency-ex-religious-freedom-envoy-1.3921641.

“The Quebec government has released its guidelines on how it will assess requests for religious accommodation under Bill 62, the law concerning face coverings and use of public services.

The controversial law was passed in the National Assembly last October.

The section of the law governing face coverings bans people wearing a covering such as a niqab or burka from using a city bus, attending a public school at any level of education or attending a medical appointment for themselves or someone else.

However, in December, a Quebec Superior Court put that part of the law on hold until the government adopted guidelines dictating how the restrictions on face coverings would work in practice.”

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-bill-62-guidelines-accommodations-1.4655620.

“OTTAWA — Canada’s former religious freedom ambassador says the Trudeau government is displaying “totalitarian” tendencies with its controversial changes to the student summer jobs program.

Andrew Bennett, who until 2015 was Canada’s only envoy devoted exclusively to religious freedom abroad, used the label repeatedly in an interview ahead of his launch today of a new religious freedom think−tank that he will be leading to stimulate public discussion on the role of faith in public life.

The government says it is not targeting beliefs or values but churches and other faith−based organizations say they are being forced to choose between staying true to their values and seeking grants to help them run programs — from summer camps to soup kitchens — that have nothing to do with abortion.”

Source: https://www.manitobapost.com/national-news/trudeau-government-displaying-totalitarian-tendencies-says-former-ambassador-114688.

“It was never particularly complicated.

All Mohammad El Hindawi wanted for his family was a reprieve from the bedbugs afflicting his children. In the summer of 2015, while dealing with the vermin in their new home of Edmonton, he’d learned through a social worker that Canadians apparently loved camping, and so, as a new Canadian, he thought that perhaps this was something he should try.

Camping was a new concept to this refugee born and raised in Hama, Syria, site of the Hama massacre of 1982, when the military rounded up 10,000 or 20,000 or 40,000 people for execution (nobody really knows). His father and uncles were spared, but El Hindawi, who was six then, never shed the trauma and bitterness.

His whole life has been a struggle, from his early 20s when he lost his firstborn son to measles, right up until 13 November 2014, the day he boarded a plane and flew to Canada – a country he’d never learned about in public school. His life remained a struggle, because he had six kids crying every night, a wife telling him they’d be better off on the streets, and a family panicking over a blood-sucking insect they’d never encountered before. So, yes, camping, whatever camping was, sounded like a great idea.”

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/13/what-is-canada-like-for-a-refugee.

“A poll found 51 per cent think it is wrong to require organisations to support abortion before they receive state funding

The majority of Canadians oppose the requirement for a summer job grant which means organisations must support the government’s pro-abortion stance to receive public funding.

A survey by the Knights of Columbus shows 51 per cent of Canadians think requiring support for abortion to participate in the Canada Summer Job Grants programme is unfair, while just 27 per cent think the opposite.

The programme helps fund summer schemes run by small businesses, non-profit organisations and faith-based employers, and has provided an estimated 70,000 jobs for university or secondary school students.”

Source: http://catholicherald.co.uk/news/2018/05/11/majority-of-canadians-oppose-abortion-requirement-for-summer-jobs-grant/.

“When Bhupinder Singh passed the test to get his Class 6 motorcycle licence at the start of the month, he was one of the first Sikhs in Alberta to qualify under a newly created helmet exemption.

Whether he was the first or not is of little consequence to the 42-year-old. More important is that his fellow Sikhs are now allowed to express their religion while riding motorcycles in Alberta.

On April 12 a ministerial order amending the Traffic Safety Act took effect, exempting bonafide members of the Sikh religion from wearing a helmet.

Singh could barely wait.”

Source: http://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-news/this-is-our-religion-this-is-our-pride-sikh-motorcyclists-now-exempt-from-helmets-in-alberta.

“Religion is supposed to give one peace of mind. Almost every religion promotes mutual respect and harmony. Unfortunately, in some countries and some regions of the world religion has become a source of conflict. In that context, Canada has been a shining example of intercultural -interreligious peace, harmony and inclusion. It is a beacon of hope and optimism for others. It is no wonder that more than 200 communities from around the globe are proud to call Canada their home. Richmond is a microcosm of this reality. Its Number 5 Road, home to more than 20 places of worship of different denominations, also known as the Highway to Heaven has been playing an important role in this regard.

The Highway to Heaven is a very popular place for visitor from all over British Columbia and Canada. Also, our local media has been veryhelpful in its coverage of the activities along this very special stretch of #5 Road in this community. As chairperson of the Highway to Heaven Association, I am very pleased with the role that our places of worship are playing in promoting intercultural and interreligious harmony.

India Cultural Centre of Canada Gurdwara Nanak Niwas (8600, #5 Road in Richmond,BC) has been playing a key role in bringing to-gether people of different faiths in order to promote intercultural and interreligious harmony.It is very encouraging to see a lot of educators and community leaders bringing students, youth and adults alike to ourvarious places of worship including Gurdwara Nanak Niwas on a fairly regular basis. This helps the young minds broaden their horizons. Such exposure to different faiths and cultures is bound to create more awareness in them and help them become more well- rounded, broad-minded and productive members of Canadian society.”

Source: http://thelinkpaper.ca/?p=68407.

“A first-ever ranking of Canada’s “most youthful” cities puts Toronto on top as the best place for young people to live, work and play, based on metrics such as the cost of a transit pass, monthly rent and concert tickets along with measures of youth unemployment, digital access and crime stats.

The index, to be published Wednesday by Youthful Cities, a Toronto-based social enterprise, examines how attractive 13 Canadian cities are to people between the ages of 15 and 29.

The rankings are based on 121 different indicators – collected by young people across Canada − and weighted by using an opinion survey of youth on what matters most to them. It’s a work in progress with longer-term plans to create an advisory panel and to be published annually.

Given the public-policy focus on older people (who also have more voter clout), the index aims to nudge cities to adopt “youthful” qualities – such as being open, innovative and dynamic – attributes which are also more likely to attract and engage young people.”

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-canadas-most-youth-friendly-cities/.

“When hundreds of white supremacists staged a march in Charlottesville, Va., last August, most of the attention was on the counter-protester killed when a vehicle, believed to have been driven by one of the marchers, plowed into a crowd of pedestrians, and on the controversial statements made about the event by U.S. President Donald Trump.

There was little news coverage, however, of an armed group called the Three Percenters, whose members, dressed in paramilitary gear and carrying guns, attended the rally, acting as a self-styled security detail independent of law enforcement.

The name of the group is a reference to the claim — debated among historians — that only three per cent of Americans took up arms and served in George Washington’s Colonial Army in the American Revolution against the British.

The group says its main goals are to protect the right to bear arms, defend against an “overreaching government” and “push back against tyranny” but claims on its website that it is not a militia and not anti-government per se.”

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/three-percenters-canada-1.4647199.

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2022-04-15

Chat with Bwambale Robert Musubaho on the Kasese Humanist School

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/12

Robert Bwambale is the founder of the Kasese United Humanist Association (KUHA) with “the goal of promoting Freethought in Uganda.” The association is affiliated with the extremely active Uganda Humanist Association (UHA). In March, the UHA held a conference in Kampala whose theme was Humanism For a Free and Prosperous Africa. The Kasese United Humanist Association is a member organization in the IHEYO Africa Working Group, and has participated in humanist conferences. He is also the director of a few primary schools set up to encourage a humanistic method of learning.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: For those that do not know, what is the school?

Bwambale Robert Musubaho: Kasese Humanist School.

Jacobsen: What are the updates on the development of the education program?

Bwambale: We teach the Uganda curriculum, spice it with vocational skills training in carpentry, tailoring, computing, knitting, humanism and comparative religion. We right now have an ongoing program on critical thinking, music dance and drama, and gardening.

Jacobsen: What are the new developments from the kids there?

Bwambale: Most can now think freely and ask questions, most have curious minds, participate in gardening, outdoor physical education activities. Some are steadily developing a culture of reading books.

Jacobsen: How can people find new ways to donate or help in some manner for these and other school programs for the non-religious?

Bwambale:

By sponsoring some of our needy children.

Sending scholastic items to benefit both learners and staffs.

Contributing to staff salaries and general teachers welfare.

Holding fundraising drives in communities in aid to Kasese Humanist Schools.

Organizational partnerships or collaborations with our school.

Jacobsen: Have there been threats to the wellbeing of the kids based on the non-religious nature of the education in the religious country?

Bwambale: Yes, some religious fanatics do tarnish our school that it doesn’t know god and that it believes in spirits, which actually are fabrications since its belief in religions that propagates spirits existence.

Jacobsen: What have been some of the exciting developments in the kids for their wellbeing?

Bwambale: Our kids have gained a balanced knowledge in whatever they are learning. Several have acquired basic skills in vocational studies.

Many have been in a position to explore the world using the internet, some have managed to get online and create friends, pen pal exchange campaigns through letter writing, many have got gifts and school fees from their sponsors.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Robert.

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2022-04-15

Marieme Helie Lucas on the Case of Noura Hussein Hammad

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/10

Marieme Helie Lucas is an Algerian sociologist, activist, founder of ‘Secularism is a Women’s Issue,’ and founder and former International Coordinator of ‘Women Living Under Muslim Laws.’ Here we talk about the case of Noura Hammad. Noura has been sentenced to death and has 15 days to appeal the decision.

The hashtag for the campaign: #JusticeForNoura. Email name and country if you would like to sign the petition: daajisodfa.pr@gmail.com.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: How come is this inequality in the law for women?

Marieme Helie Lucas: As you know, Scott, in many – but not all – instances women in predominantly Muslim contexts are never considered as coming to adult age; and they are considered, in the law, as forever legal minors – it took a long time everywhere (including in the West, of course) to grant women legal equal rights.

As in Noura’s case, we can be given in marriage by our matrimonial tutors or wali (most of the time our fathers but otherwise any male guardian in the family); interestingly enough, this wali can even be our youngest son: being a male is what is being considered…

It is important to note that many so-called Muslim countries do not hold these conservative views, do not try to hide patriarchal ideology under the guise of religion, and that their national laws grant women citizens a lot more rights, including the right to sign a contract ( marriage or commercial) – and in some countries equal rights in marriage.

However, the global trend in the past few decades has been a political tightening by broad alliances ranging from conservative to extreme right forces, which, among other undemocratic provisions, severely curtail women’s rights – legally and otherwise.

Jacobsen: Why are women having to resort to extreme measures in self-protection from sexual violence in forced marriages?

Helie Lucas: Certainly because they do not have the protection of the law, but moreover, as can be seen in Noura’s case, they do not have the protection of their immediate family either. Religiously sanctioned patriarchy is prevalent everywhere.

So-called honor crimes exist over all the continents (last year, one woman died under the blows of her male partner every three days in France) – even when the law criminalizes such crimes.

Hence the importance of pushing for changes concomitantly – at the same time: at the level of changing laws, of course, but also at the level of changing society, where there is a crucial need for support for women’s rights, and for human rights work in general. Right now, funding for women’s organizations has drastically fallen, everywhere.

But even where there are organizations for the defense of women, it is difficult for ordinary people to access them. Women are most often left to fend for themselves, and, in desperation, they usually attempt to their lives; the cases where they physically defend themselves against the aggressor are much fewer.

From age 15, Noura has steadily refused a forced marriage for four years before taking arms against the husband imposed on her against her expressed will, and she only resorted to self-defense after having suffered a first public rape in the name of marital rights and being threatened with a second one.

She is a hero. She deserves to be supported the world over.

Jacobsen: How does the family, community, society, and religion conspire to restrict women?

Helie Lucas: I think I answered that question first. What I want to underline here is that, against all these regressive forces, there are – everywhere, always, I can testify to it, very courageous women’s organisations and progressive individuals, male and female, who stand up for universal human rights at the risk of their liberty and sometimes of their life; they affirm that this human rights stand in no way contravene to their interpretation of their religion; that in no way does it contradict their being deeply rooted in their local culture, nor does it conflict with their national identity.

These voices are rarely heard outside the national context and they need to be heard, in order to confront ideological simplifications of ‘ they’ (barbaric ones) and ‘us’ (civilized ones) that still prevail.

The danger in Noura’s case is that it would be used to stigmatize specific countries (‘backward’ Africa) or a religion (‘violent’ Islam) and reinforce racism; this can be avoided by simply supporting the work of Sudanese and African local human rights and women’s rights advocates and organisations, by giving them the visibility and credentials they hardly ever get.

It will also help progressive westerners to overcome their ‘white guilt’. We need them now: they should not avoid supporting Noura for fear of being labeled ‘Islamophobic’ or ‘racist’. Support the existing local women’s rights and human rights work and the young courageous Noura.

One cannot even think that Noura deserves fewer rights than any other human being, just because she is Sudanese and was raised in a Muslim context: this is sheer nonsense… No cultural relativism here, please…

Jacobsen: hat is the current state of Hammad’s case?

Helie Lucas: Noura will be delivered a sentence today; she admitted to her crime in self-defence and willingly went to the police station with her father to explain the circumstances; women’s rights organisations which have taken up her defence in Sudan think she will be sentenced to death today, but still hope international pressure will save her life and avoid execution.

She has 15 days to appeal the judgment.

Jacobsen: How can people best help her, and others like her in the future?

Helie Lucas: Support local organisations standing in her defence – follow their advice, they know the context best; write to Noura in the prison; alert your local human rights and women’s rights organisations; send letters to Sudanese authorities; and to the African Union, the UN and special rap on violence against women; speak to the media about the case: 15 days is a very short time to save Noura’s life…

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Marieme.

The hashtag: #JusticeForNoura. Again, the email if you would like to sign: daajisodfa.pr@gmail.com.

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2022-04-15

Interview with Molly Hanson – Editorial Assistant, Freedom From Religion Foundation

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/09

Molly Hanson is the Freedom From Religion Foundation Editorial Assistant. Hanson is a champion runner among many others things and earned the spot at the University of Edinburgh for a Ph.D. in Anthropology. Here we learn about her and her work.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: How did you find the FFRF?

Molly Hanson: During my senior year of college at the University of Wisconsin-Madison I was looking for an internship so that I could get some work experience in the field I was majoring in, journalism.

During my hunt, I was looking the university’s job listing page and found that the Freedom From Religion Foundation was looking for a writing assistant. I had never heard of the group until then, but after doing a little bit of background research I was found that it’s mission aligned with my personal beliefs and passions and was thrilled to receive the position after applying.

I was offered a full-time job after I graduated that winter as a full-time employee.

Jacobsen: Amit tells me that you are a champion runner. How did you get into this physical competitive activity and begin to excel at it?

Hanson: I don’t know if I would call myself a “champion” runner, but I did race track and cross country in college and ended with a successful career and I am continuing to run and race. My parents both ran at relatively high levels in college and my older sister was an All-American in track.

So, I was totally proselytized into it, and because my older sister had excelled I felt pressure to do so as well. Also, I don’t do like to do anything half-way that I’m putting energy and passion into, and I can be helplessly competitive.

Jacobsen: As the editorial assistant of the FFRF, what do you for them? Why are these activities important for the fundamental operations of the organization?

Hanson: A good portion of my work involves my work on our Rapid Response Team encouraging our members to take action on state-church issues. I work with members of our legal staff to track legislation involving attacks on abortion and birth control access, voucher schools, Ten Commandments monuments, city council invocations, etc.

I write up action alerts to members explaining how these issues are church-state separation concerns and ask them to take action by contacting their legislators. FFRF is, at its core, a watchdog organization that works to promote state-church separation and I’m sort of a liaison between FFRF, FFRF members, and legislators to help keep our local, state and federal laws secular.

I also assist Amit in writing press releases about church-state violations taking place in communities around the nation and our victories in stopping these violations.This helps to put media pressure on government institutions to keep religion out of the public arena and flexes our legal muscles to our members and the media, demonstrating what kind of difference freethinkers are making.

Jacobsen: What seem like the positives and negatives of religion?

Hanson: Religion been used to justify slavery, the repression of women’s social, economic and political power, violence against women, witch-trials, vilification of the LGBTQ community, violent wars, genocide, the suppression of science, the destruction of cultures, etc. The list is infinite when you have this make-believe, man-made institution that shapes the morals of individuals and legal systems of societies.

I guess the number one negative of religion is that it judges certain ideals of a certain group of individuals to be sacred, makes it blasphemous to even question those certain man-made beliefs, and makes certain ideas and traits evil. The great tragedy is that we’re 100% sure we have this life and likely only this life. I think religion has created a system in which certain lives are more valued above and thus given privilege to better lives.

As for the positives, I think humans are drawn to a need for a sense of community and belonging that religion provides. And if it helps someone treat others with more kindness and empathy that is certainly a plus. It can be used as a tool to teach moral lessons, I just think it’s a deeply flawed tool.

I also think, although it has caused countless horrors, religion has contributed to beautiful works of art. I thought the Met Gala outfits this year were fire. However, religion has also contributed to the destruction of brilliant works of art and scientific discovery.

Jacobsen: You are a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Edinburgh in Anthropology? Tell me about it!

Hanson: Actually, I’m going to be entering a masters program at the University of Edinburgh in Anthropology and might continue on with a Ph.D. at Edinburgh or return to the United States and continue in a Ph.D. program here focusing on political and legal anthropology with research on matriarchal societies and their religious beliefs.

So, I’d want to research political power structures and sociocultural value systems and how those relate to the perceived power that women have in a society. And more specifically, how male god-centric religions have led to the extinction of matriarchal societies and the power women have been allowed / conceptualizations of power that better serve women.

Because of a lot of what we think of as “religion” are patrifocal belief systems made my men with male, ruler gods, I’m interested in how that has shaped which traits and ideas have been consecrated, which have been regarded as evil, and how that compares to matriarchal societies which may have had belief systems that better served women.

I’ve always been extremely interested in feminism and religion so I’m very excited for this opportunity to dig into some fundamental questions I have about both topics and their role in human history.

Jacobsen: How does the FFRF provide a bulwark in support of the non-religious and the ordinary religion for what both want and that being the separation of church and state?

Hanson: James Madison said that religion and government will exist in greater purity the less they are mixed together and we believe that is absolutely true. The religious community can better practice its beliefs and stay true to its sincerely held theology in its own separate sphere, uninfluenced by politics or government funds.

Government better does its job of providing and protecting all of its citizens by using the power of reason and logic. Superstition has no place in the realm of legislation and we work to enforce that and educate on that. By working to keep government and religion separate we are really helping both institutions.

Jacobsen: What seems like an unacknowledged admirable person within the non-religious community? Someone never mentioned but integral.

Hanson: He’s dead and has obviously been acknowledged but Thomas Pain was a pretty big deal. I think his atheism has gotten brushed under the rug a bit, but his nontheism was a cornerstone to the arguments made in Common Sense and the Age of Reason, which really ignited the American Revolution and set the foundational ideas of democratic government.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Molly.

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2022-04-15

Sodfa Daaji on the Urgent Case of Noura Hussein Hammad

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/09

Sodfa Daaji is the Chairwoman of the Gender Equality Committee and the North Africa Coordinator for the Afrika Youth Movement. Here we talk about Noura Hussein Hammad’s urgent case. The hashtag: #JusticeForNoura. Daaji’s email if you would like to sign: daajisodfa.pr@gmail.com.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is the baseline description of Hammad’s case?

Sodfa Daaji: Noura is a 19 years old Sudanese woman, victim of gender based violence, marital rape, domestic violence and forced child marriage at the age of 15 years old. At first, Noura tried to change her fate by escaping to stay with her aunt in Sinnar city, but her father convinced her to come back at home.

He has promised her that the wedding was called off, but she has found herself married against her will. She has spent her in Khartoum. The first three days she stood and didn’t want to give up on her right to say no to any intercourse with her husband. Her refusal brought her husband to call his brother and his cousins and on the 4th day he raped her while they were holding her on the floor.

The next day he tried to rape her and, as stated by Noura during a conversation with the activist and director of SEEMA – the organization that is following directly Noura’s case in Sudan – she took a knife and told him “I die or I will die tonight,” while he replied, “Let’s see who will die tonight.”

Noura stabbed him twice and escaped to her parent’s house. After admitting what she committed, her father took her to the police station.

Jacobsen: What is the likely outcome for Hammad?

Daaji: At this point, in my opinion, we should take in consideration different factors. First of all, the condition of human rights in Sudan. We are talking about a case that came out just few days before her trial, and the main reason is behind the way the government is continuously silencing the freedom of press. Secondly, Sudan is under sharia Law and there is not that much space for the judges for interpretation.

Noura was charged under the article 130, even if in Sudan is recognised the marital rape, but they have not taken in consideration her complete case. Another point that I would like to highlight is the fact that she is a woman. We are pressuring for the way women are perceived in the Sudanese society, and how the rape is justified as a normal act, a sexual intercourse between husband and wife.

The fact that Noura stood for her right as a young girl is not taken in consideration. And, most importantly, what is taken in consideration is the fact that a woman dared to say no, and in some way to break and go against that fate that was written by her parents, and a culture dominated by combined weddings. In Sudan wedding is possible from women’s puberty.

Last point is the husband’s family: According to Sharia, to resume we can say that “you can pay or you can die”. The husband’s family is wealthy and they do not need Noura’s money to compensate their loss. That is why during the upcoming trial on the 10th of May 2018 they will surely condemn Noura to death penalty.

The lawyers of the husband’s family are pressuring for the economic help that Noura’s family has received during the years of the wedding. With just this sentence we can see how Noura was and is perceived: an object sold which duty was just to obey to her husband.

Unfortunately, no matter how much we have pressured on the last days, we acknowledge that time is short and in 15 days will be hard for us to save Noura’s life. In order to do so we need to reach the Sudanese president, who’s bad track record on human rights is not making us positive about her case.

Jacobsen: How can people get the word out or help out?

Daaji: We are trying to make some noise with the aim to be heard by United Nations, Africa Union and African head of states, who are in touch with the Sudanese president. That is why we have an official hashtag #JusticeForNoura and a petition is online:

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/LAWYERS_HUMAN_RIGHTS_ACTIVISTS_SAVE_NORA/?wEvafnb&utm_source=sharetools&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=petition-518899-LAWYERS_HUMAN_RIGHTS_ACTIVISTS_SAVE_NORA&utm_term=Evafnb%2Ben

Anyone is free to join the official FB PAGE

https://www.facebook.com/Justice-For-Noura-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B9%D8%AF%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A9-%D9%84%D9%86%D9%88%D8%B1%D8%A7-1261677983968203/

and to join us on twitter @sodfadaaji @ENoMW @AfrikaYM

Last, we want to address a letter to the High Commissioner of OHCHR. That is why, we kindly ask to human’s rights organizations to read the letter and to sign it with the name of the organization and the name of a representative of the organization. Individuals as well can join by providing us a short bio, their full name and country of origin.

To receive the letter, feel free to contact me at daajisodfa.pr@gmail.com

I have learned in this last two days that the power is on us, if we just try to work together without borders. We have a voice; we just have to learn how to use it in order to be heard.

Thank you very much for the opportunity, and for taking your time to talk about Noura’s case.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Sodfa.

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2022-04-15

Conversation with Michael Isom on New Test Developments and Old Tests: Member, World Genius Directory (2)

Interviewer: Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Numbering: Issue 29.A, Idea: Outliers & Outsiders (24)

Place of Publication: Langley, British Columbia, Canada

Title: In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal

Web Domain: http://www.in-sightpublishing.com

Individual Publication Date: April 15, 2022

Issue Publication Date: May 1, 2022

Name of Publisher: In-Sight Publishing

Frequency: Three Times Per Year

Words: 2,539

ISSN 2369-6885

Abstract

Michael Isom grew up in the birthplace of hip-hop, South Bronx New York, during its original emergence. Having also lived through its rise and urban renaissance of the mid-80s through the early 90s, Michael was able to experience many of the culture’s core lessons of true aboriginal history with respect to cultural identity, knowledge of self, responsibility through adherence to law, studiousness towards becoming the adept, and mastery of one’s being as thematic underpinnings of the rap music produced in that era. In later years after completing high school, he decided to pursue an undergraduate degree in Forensic Psychology and graduate education in Public Policy specializing in Management and Operations. Afterwards, he obtained an M.B.A. in Strategic Management in the wake of the dot-com era. In 2001, during the Super Bowl 35 Baltimore Ravens vs New York Giants intermission, Michael incidentally discovered what may have been the first online IQ test by the late Nathan Hasselbauer, founder of the New York High IQ Society, which soon after became the International High IQ Society. Having scored well past the 95th percentile requirement for entry, Michael was contacted years later by Victor Hingsberg of Canada, and was invited to take the test required to become a member of his newly established Canadian High IQ Society. After meeting its 98th percentile passing requirement and before moving on to TORR (99.86th percentile or 145 IQ requirement), Michael discovered what is undisputedly the most advanced cognitive assessment platform for IQ testing, in the world: IQExams.net. After a completing a battery of 40+ tests within a 1 1/2 year span of signing up, a clear picture of Michael’s scoring attributes emerged within the spatial, numerical, verbal, and mixed item logical areas, with a subsequent RIQ (Real IQ) calculation of 152. As his foray into the High Range Testing world continued, he happened to stumble upon a challenge issued by the ZEN High IQ Society: Two untimed IQ test submissions with a minimum IQ score of 156 (SD 15) are required for entry. And those submissions have to come from a pre-selected set of untimed high range tests. Since Michael already met half the requirements with his first attempt score on VAULT (163), he only needed one other test to qualify – hence Dr. Jason Betts’ test battery: Lux25, WIT, and Mathema are listed as accepted tests for Zen. Scoring 156 on Lux25 not only satisfied the entry requirement, but it also accompanied the rest of his scores on Betts’ test battery for a 151 TrueIQ. With the above experience, Michael decided to gain more exposure to other high range tests from other authors. After taking both the MACH and SPARK tests simultaneously (scoring 168 and 165 respectively on the first attempt), he proceeded towards a specific numerical test, GIFT Numerical III on which he scored 164. After also gaining entry into both the SATORI and TRIPlE4 High IQ Societies, he completed the untimed G.E.T. (Genius Entrance Test) mixed item test in minimal time. After receiving a final score of 162, he returned to IQExams.net and executed one of the most gifted performances on any tightly timed spatial IQ test he’s ever taken. His recent first attempt score of 160 on the incredibly challenging gFORCE IQ test exemplifies that cognitive fortitude can be taken to the brink, while spatial design and difficulty are taken to the next level. He discusses: newer test developers and old tests

Keywords: intelligence, IQ, IQ tests, Jason Betts, Michael Isom, Xavier Jouve, World Genius Directory.

Conversation with Michael Isom on New Test Developments and Old Tests: Member, World Genius Directory (2)

*Please see the references, footnotes, and citations, after the interview, respectively.*

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Are there particularly newer test developers whose tests you’ve taken where people should be keeping an eye on for themselves? Others are more known because they are more prominent.

Michael Isom: There are a number of emerging test developers, more so in the verbal space. And even among the incumbent developers, it’s quickly learned that certain persons may not even take synonyms into account in the creation process.

This for example results in increased subjectivity risk, in which scoring consistency can be adversely affected. And such debates about objectivity control are also pervasive among different test types, (e.g., verbal, spatial, logical, numerical, mixed) where verbal usually has the highest abstraction risk of heightened subjectivity.

So how do you squelch or best minimize these irregularities? One of my favorite verbal tests ever created is the VAULT test, which contained very noted subjectivity control by keeping the terms very culture fair and more tangibly graphic or concrete. They weren’t too abstract, but still retained certain graduated increments of consistency over the exam’s progression.

In comparison to other tests, it’s still one of the very best verbal tests as a critical reference point, in my opinion. New test creators will expand testing for the high range into new areas. And will eventually innovate a divergent reach of the high range, in which consistent correlation of verified actions in the world will be used to support more detailed accuracy of high range test results.

High Range (HR) items tend to change often in comparison to their proctored equivalents. The initial tradeoff is the ability to test adaptation to item type change under pressure vs long-term data accrual of highly repetitive item types over move granular increments.

Perspectives about the rate of item type change on an IQ test are sharply delineated between high-range (HR) test creators and professional psychometricians, the latter of whom tend to make their items repeat very often. The same question types can appear ten or more times before changing even once. Many in the HR testing space have issues with such non-variability, and one of several reasons is that university-trained psychometricians are required to test the difficulty level increases and the calculi for that particular item type over very small incremental progressions.

So, they have to rigorously test minute gradients of scale in difficulty, whereas test developers in the HR space have a lot more freedom to change the item type. However, they’re accruing less data for any specific item type, as it changes more often – thus revealing a hidden trade-off that occurs, which brings me to the next point of standard and HR tests targeting very different components or areas of cognition. The commonplace response is “Okay, you still need to go to a licensed psychologist to get your IQ tested. You can’t do it using an HR testing scenario.”

I’ve often disputed it because the assertion incorrectly assumes that all dimensions of both an HR and standard IQ test are one and the same in exact precision. And while there’s considerable overlap, there are some very stark differences in terms of how they are steered, with each potentially having mutually exclusive aspects of cognitive targeting with measured components moving inversely to each other.

Standard IQ tests usually hinge much more on processing speed than their HR testing equivalents, for example. HR IQ tests, especially those that are untimed, hinge more on depth. So what you see, is this movement towards an inflection point of equilibrium, in which one cognitive dimension trades off against the other. In other words, speed trades off against depth.

The default test structure starts off favoring speed with simpler items. As the difficulty increases by item and type, depth becomes more important. However speed, at some point will most likely be sacrificed, in favor of depth, which in a substantial number of cases is arguably harder to measure. For example, at 140 and above, it’s very hard to tell the difference between a 140 and a 160 on most tests, due in part to being highly sensitive between the 85 to 115 range, indicating a possible breakdown as one gets closer to 130+.

At the 140 and above mark, you need the HR testing scenario to measure difficulty levels not normally associated with the general population. Even though a significant number of HR tests are timed, these are critically focused on processing speed in relation to the scale of hardness.

There are quite a few parallel debates going on that will actually affect the evolution of the HR IQ test over time. For example, some creators adhere to very strict logic paths on both multiple-choice and open-ended tests, timed and untimed. Others seek to measure targeted amalgams or interfaces of logic, imagination, and perception within the same or at times an even more advanced context.

But it appears to become more complex as the number of test creators arrive and grow the space. And it could be in part due to noted differences in the manner in which general intelligence is measured. One of the caveats concerns HR tests that seem to measure general intelligence (at differing grades), but may more so in fact be measuring highly congruent logic patterns between test author and test taker. Such parallels may still have questionable sampling applicability, especially if the N values with respect to Chronbach’s Alpha and Pearson R correlations are too low. In other words, large sample sizes are a supreme factor.

Dr. Xavier Jouve may have been the first to invent an online computer-adaptive format (JCTI, TRI-52) in matrix testing that attained a 90+% correlation with the WAIS Subtest for Matrix Reasoning. The sample size was around 300. As a matter of fact, he’s the only one to have administered the JCTI and the WAIS to the same populations. And from observation of anecdote, it appears that even though he previously sold (for a very minimal sum) IQ test certificates for JCTI results, the RIX (Reasoning Index) range more accurately applies only in comparison to the WAIS Subtest for Matrix Reasoning – not necessarily the overall of FSIQ (Full-Scale IQ). Several persons who’ve scored in the 130 range on the JCTI reported FSIQs of 140+ on the WAIS. And it’s not that such examples qualify as markers or guidelines for extrapolation, but similar patterns are well noted.

A recent question appeared on social media concerning how test-takers feel about certain spatial designs and their style in HR testing. But there’s an area of subjectivity where a testee can do very well on spatial tests from certain test designers but may have problems with those from certain others, because the visual orientation may be closer to modeled patterns of the former. So in a sense, it goes back to the overlap of (1) the affinity between designer and testee logic paths and (2) a more objective measure of general intelligence.

For example, I did unusually well on the MACH and SPARK tests, both of which I took simultaneously. However, I could see certain affinities in the design of those tests, as positive performance indicators. Because of how my train of thought was naturally oriented towards that particular style in the items, it was definitely a key intuitive advantage.

And given that a very large challenge concerns the correct interpretation of the question, if a testee is in tune with the actual test items, then the testee will not only clearly see the underlying question at hand, but also divergent patterns, whose indication can reveal logic traps or other conceptual detours to be avoided.

To illustrate, Dr. Jason Betts’ test battery (Asterix, Lux25, Mathema, and the World Intelligence Test) is one of the most accurate HR test batteries I’ve experienced. It has 97 questions among those four specific tests that hone in on measuring several cognitive dimensions. And overall, it seems almost impervious to guessing and luck by mere coincidence.

One of the unusual aspects of his particular type of test structure is the intentional crossroads built into very specific items to see if one can accurately discern the correct path among the competing mirrors. At the same time, this acts as a preventive measure against excessive time leverage, which may result in score inflation. And in a sense, preventing persons from seeing past what is termed their “TrueIQ”.

The JCTI by Dr. Xavier Jouve established one of the most unique presentations of alternative matrices and still remains a paramount reference in cognitive assessment design to this day. I might have been one of the last people to receive a certificate before Cerebrals Society operations halted.

What I found the most unusual about the JCTI was that it was the first computer-adapted IQ test to hone in on a testee’s IQ area early, from where the questions get more difficult in response to more challenging answers. Later on, I took his TRI-52 test, which I believe gave me a much more striking result.

Regarding anything remotely close in design, I’ve only found one specific test with a similar concept; the LDSE or Long Duration Spatial Examination, created by psychometrician Hans Sjoberg. Then again, it was based on the JCTI. However, it boasts an unusually high correlation to professionally proctored IQ tests, as evidenced by a Pearson R correlation of 0.95 with N = 20 reporting scores.

In bringing everything together, you’re starting to see a situation where initial testing opportunities may occur on social media to see if potential items or similar variants are likely to be stable later on, in the official release phase. This usually supports a better Chronbach’s Alpha. Small puzzles or items may be unexpectedly released to get a glimpse of actual vs anticipated answer patterns. Test creators will obviously make the adjustments to correct for unintended distortions in the answer expectancy range.

It’s normal for someone to posit “I created this particular puzzle, and here’s the opportunity to solve it. This numerical sequence, verbal analogy or spatial item has to be tested to get a feel for the expected answer pattern that supports a reasonable Chronbach’s Alpha.” It definitely applies more so to open-ended items. And a key benefit is that the test designer gets to learn from the response mechanisms that accrue in relation to each item, prior to the official test release.

So subsequent test releases can offer a better idea of what to expect over time. And preliminary norms tend to be better adjusted if arising out of initial item examination and subsequent beta testing. Based on mere observation, wide swings moving from the preliminary to the first norm tend to be accompanied by test reliability challenges, looming not too far behind. In other words, even though the preliminary norm is not as important as the first official and beyond, paying very close attention to precise estimates and assumptions in scoring differentiation and test progression scale can improve the transition to the first norm.

And quite a bit of feedback can be gained, even from small samples. In comparison, standardized tests or proctored IQ tests have a massive accrual of IQ test data from possibly hundreds of thousands of people over so many decades of highly controlled administrations.

The only way that the HR testing space could possibly match such incumbent advantages by direct correlation is through consistent increases in score pair reporting numbers and accuracy from gold-standard tests such as the WAIS, SB, Ravens 2, or the Cattell. One of the most overlooked statistical factors is the sample size associated with the Pearson-R value. If one can move in the direction of N = 30 or greater, in terms of official score reporting by testees, then test correlation with the general populace also becomes better supported by the fact that the number of subsequent norm adjustments is precisely minimized.

At present, there is something else occurring that’s a bit more divergent, but supports the evolution of high range examination long-term. Where proctored exams and academia are positioned on one side and HR or online testing uniquely on the other, there is something called the International Cognitive Ability Research or ICAR, which was developed between the University of Cambridge in England and Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois.

This particular project by mere virtue of its application demonstrated that online testing has several distinct advantages over more traditional modes. One of which is that it allows for very fast data accrual and scale in real-time (i.e., 97,000+ participants in the overall project), with the only limiting factors outside competent application development being bandwidth and network reliability. Two specific ICAR tests have been able to successfully overcome these in their rapid and vast market reach.

One test is the ICAR16 and another is the ICAR60, both of which dealt with visual-spatial rotations, simplified spatial and object orientations (i.e., odd one out anti-patterns or visual sequence fit of presented objects).

One of the original ICAR creators is a psychometrician who had several active tests on IQExams.net termed the Cambridge tests, which were noted to have very high correlations with the WAIS. Although there may have been disagreement about the repetitive nature of the items presented, this serves as the spark where professionally licensed psychologists or psychometricians on an individual basis are willing to work with test developers, statisticians, and technologists in the HR testing space.

Emergent platforms like IQExams.net are very transparent with test statistics. Other incumbent developers may also have specialized knowledge as mathematicians, statisticians, and psychometricians. And a handful usually accrues data analysis archives with some of the best HR test stats available.

Newcomers can better exploit the value of getting near-instantaneous feedback on targeted test items. Although a small advantage, it does serve somewhat as a compensatory measure against the previous time accrual constraints experienced by more experienced developers, especially those who started pre-internet. Now, the feedback loop can be better incorporated into more reliable test designs.

Time allotment in HR testing is another challenging aspect of cognitive measurement design, and can even impact test reliability in a way that poses arguably more risk than item subjectivity. Working memory capacity and processing speed are two of several cognitive aspects typically associated with this dimension. But at its most precise application, it can control for certain other elements in strategic thinking about time tradeoffs, during an actual test.

For example, I can increase the difficulty level of the next several items, by strategically placing what appears to be a time-consuming item just ahead of them. What the testee needs to realize is that what I’m really testing for is the ability to identify the shortcut in the current item that affords more time on the others. Therefore, seeking to set the time within a more precise range of cognitive pressure can give insight into how IQ relates to strategic time allocation.

In psychometric terms, the standard at the university level (i.e., if you look at the SAT, GRE, and GMAT), is about 2 minutes per test question item. It doesn’t necessarily have to be that exactly. In other cases, you have a few HRTs that are close to a minute per item, although most timed HRTs in comparison are substantially longer than 2 minutes per item for testing difficulty within the higher IQ ranges.

Footnotes

[1] Member, World Genius Directory.

[2] Individual Publication Date: April 15, 2022: http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/isom-2; Full Issue Publication Date: May 1, 2022: https://in-sightpublishing.com/insight-issues/.

*High range testing (HRT) should be taken with honest skepticism grounded in the limited empirical development of the field at present, even in spite of honest and sincere efforts. If a higher general intelligence score, then the greater the variability in, and margin of error in, the general intelligence scores because of the greater rarity in the population.

Citations

American Medical Association (AMA): Jacobsen S. Conversation with Michael Isom on New Test Developments and Old Tests: Member, World Genius Directory (2)[Online]. April 2022; 29(A). Available from: http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/isom-2.

American Psychological Association (APA, 6th Edition, 2010): Jacobsen, S.D. (2022, April 8). Conversation with Michael Isom on New Test Developments and Old Tests: Member, World Genius Directory (2). Retrieved from http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/isom-2.

Brazilian National Standards (ABNT): JACOBSEN, S. Conversation with Michael Isom on New Test Developments and Old Tests: Member, World Genius Directory (2). In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. 29.A, April. 2022. <http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/isom-2>.

Chicago/Turabian, Author-Date (16th Edition): Jacobsen, Scott. 2022. “Conversation with Michael Isom on New Test Developments and Old Tests: Member, World Genius Directory (2).” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. 29.A. http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/isom-2.

Chicago/Turabian, Humanities (16th Edition): Jacobsen, Scott “Conversation with Michael Isom on New Test Developments and Old Tests: Member, World Genius Directory (2).” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. 29.A (April 2022). http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/isom-2.

Harvard: Jacobsen, S. 2022, ‘Conversation with Michael Isom on New Test Developments and Old Tests: Member, World Genius Directory (2)’, In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, vol. 29.A. Available from: <http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/isom-2>.

Harvard, Australian: Jacobsen, S. 2022, ‘Conversation with Michael Isom on New Test Developments and Old Tests: Member, World Genius Directory (2)’, In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, vol. 29.A., http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/isom-2.

Modern Language Association (MLA, 7th Edition, 2009): Scott D. Jacobsen. “Conversation with Michael Isom on New Test Developments and Old Tests: Member, World Genius Directory (2).” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal 29.A (2022): April. 2022. Web. <http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/isom-2>.

Vancouver/ICMJE: Jacobsen S. Conversation with Michael Isom on New Test Developments and Old Tests: Member, World Genius Directory (2)[Internet]. (2022, April 29(A). Available from: http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/isom-2.

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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

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2022-04-15

Interview with Amitabh Pal – Director of Communications, Freedom From Religion Foundation

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/09

Amitabh Pal is the Director of Communications for the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF). Here we talk about his work and views with the FFRF..

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: How did you become involved in the secularist movements?

Amitabh Pal: I’ve been at the intersection of progressive politics and journalism my entire professional life. The separation of state and church has been always of importance to me. (I’m extremely proud of the fact that the three countries I’m from — the United States, India and Germany — are all secular.) We were ardent defenders of secularism at The Progressive magazine, where I was at for a long time. One of the main projects we had during the Bush years, for instance, was calling out his “messianic militarism” and the damage it did the world as a chief cause of the Iraq War. We also had regular exposés of the Religious Right and its harmful influence. Anyone who cares for a better society has to work for secularism, and this is something I’ve done with zeal.

Jacobsen: How did you become involved in and work at the Freedom From Religion Foundation?

Pal: After many years at The Progressive, I was in the mode of transitioning out. I had worked with FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor as the editor of The Progressive’s op-ed service (the Progressive Media Project), for which she had a written a number of columns. So when I saw an opening at the Freedom From Religion Foundation, an organization I was familiar with and deeply respected, I immediately applied for the position. I was delighted when, after the selection process, I was offered the job.

Jacobsen: Now, as an important footnote to this conversation, you are highly educated, which includes two master’s degrees. One in journalism; another in political science, these are important accomplishments. How does this inform your work as the director of communications at FFRF?

Pal: Obviously, the journalism degree impacts and informs all that I accomplish here at FFRF. The writing and editing I engage in were seeded at UNC-Chapel Hill (Go Tar Heels!). The coursework there gave me the skills I’m applying at the job day in and day out. But the political science degree has been very handy, too. The work we do is by its very nature political, and having a good grasp of the underlying dynamics helps me be a better writer and editor. I have a special interest in international issues, and so I’ve written blogs and press releases dealing with such matters (for example on Secretary of State Mike Pompeo). The more you learn, the more it comes in useful.

Jacobsen: Also, you wrote at the Progressive for many years. How did you work there? What did you do? What were the results of your writing and work there? (What did you learn?)

Pal: I was at The Progressive for almost two decades — and it taught me a whole lot. I started off as the editor of the Progressive Media Project, an op-ed service associated with The Progressive that sends out columns on a regular basis to hundreds of newspapers all over the United States and abroad. This prepared me not only to write and edit on a wide range of subjects but also to quickly turn around pieces, qualities that have come in very handy here at FFRF. Then, for more than a decade I was Managing Editor of The Progressive magazine itself. I specialized in doing long-form interviews for the magazine, interviewing such folks as Mikhail Gorbachev and Jimmy Carter, among many others. I wrote a lot of web columns, feature articles and book reviews. And, certainly, I further honed my editing skills. It was an incredible experience at The Progressive.

Jacobsen: You have a Hindu background. You can understand the religion and potentially the mix-up with politics too. The ways in which religion get involved in politics are complicated, but, nonetheless, they differ on a number of metrics and in different nations. Hinduism is prominent in India and mixed up with the Modi leadership.

If you have any knowledge and can compare and contrast between the mix-up of Evangelical Christian and Roman Catholic Christian religion in American politics and Hindu religion in Indian politics, how do these differ? How are these similar? How are these the same?

Pal: I could go on and on about this! This is because I am literally writing a book on the populist majoritarianism of President Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Their attempted dismantling of the secular setup in their countries as a part of their political projects is a big focus of my book. The Religious Right In India is in command right now, just like its counterpart in the United States. The ironic thing is that in spite of its supposed hatred of Islam and Christianity, the Hindu political movement is trying to make Hinduism like these religions by imposing a central dogma and belief on a faith that has historically lacked these features. The result is proving disastrous — both for the religion itself and for India at large. The implications of the world’s two largest democracies heading in a calamitous direction should make us all very worried.

Jacobsen: Any final feelings or thoughts in conclusion based on the conversation today? Any updates to the communications activities of the FFRF?

Pal: The Freedom From Religion Foundation is experiencing a tremendous growth spurt, and this is reflected on the communications front. We have a new TV interview show, “Freethought Matters,” which is broadcast in the Madison area and is posted on our YouTube channel. Among the people we’ve interviewed are Steven Pinker and New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg. We have a weekly Facebook Live “Ask an Atheist” feature, which can also be seen on YouTube. We have a pithy “Newsbite” segment discussing the highlight of our week that we post online. Our long-running radio show is going strong. (Check all of this out at www.ffrf.org.) And our endeavors and triumphs in the service of freethought are getting more and more attention from major media entities and local outlets all over the country. Exciting times indeed!

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Amit.

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2022-04-15

The Existential Risks and Trauma of Leaving a Cult

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/09

Scott is the Founder of Skeptic Meditations. He speaks from experience in entering and leaving an ashram. Here we talk about existential risks for an individual leaving a cult, views of the world only knowing the cult, leaving psychologically and physically from the cult, places for transition, and some who never get over their trauma.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What bigger existential risks exist for the individual who leaves the cult, immediately?

Scott from SkepticMeditations.com: The more the group members lived in the ashrams the greater their self-identity was broken and reformed as part of the group. In other words, group members’ existence was attached to monastic identity, name, and position within the spiritual-organizational hierarchy.

Cloistered spiritual groups are most undemocratic and unequal. The superior, powerful members are those closest to the leaders. Group members learn quickly how to please and fight their way to maintain or climb up the spiritual-corporate ladder. It’s a kind of spiritual-ego formed within the context of the organization.

It is difficult to describe what a member feels and thinks after leaving their relationships within a group that for years or decades destroyed, then reformed and maintained their spiritual-ego or self-world identity. Members who leave the group psychologically, first, before they leave physically, probably have a lower risk of failing to reintegrate into society outside.

When you think about cults, the aim of these groups and the members who join them, is to break down the old self-world identity. Labeled as spiritual training, the aim of groups based on ideological thought-reform leads to abuses of its members: whether political, social, or religious groups.

For religious cult-groups, the aim is to remold members into the image of the God, Guru, or perfection as idealized in the spiritual practices of the group. In cults with an Eastern enlightenment-bent, the path is purportedly divinely designed to bring follower-practitioners to perfection, to realize self as Self, soul, or God or Nirvana.

The practice and progress to the aim are measured by degrees of selfless service and obedience to the spiritual teacher, and distrusting self. Through the aims and ideals of the group’s spiritual training, members allow themselves to be destroyed, broken, and in the old self’s place a new self is created, fashioned to fit the group.

This is not a secret. It’s openly discussed by members that the outside world is dangerous, evil, or deluded and inside the group, close to the master-teacher is spiritual safety and illumination. Psychologically cult groups break the member’s sense of self and then reframe follower’s self-world identity.

Essentially members surrender their existence (their self-world image) to the authority of someone who claims to know what is best for the disciple-follower. For members who’ve lived for years and decades inside, psychologically these groups, the damage is irreparable.

Jacobsen: How does someone view the world if the cult or cult-like group is all they have ever known in life?

Scott from SkepticMeditations.com: Long-time cult-group members fear to leave the group for many reasons. In the SRF ashrams, for example, we were taught that as ordained monastics we were somehow special, were chosen by God and Guru to help with his divine dispensation of SRF teachings and meditation techniques.

Our belief in our specialness made us feel superior and powerful–with the weight and authority of Creator of the Universe behind us, who could ultimately be against us?

Surrender and obedience to external authority become easy when you are told you are special, superior, and forerunners of a new race of spiritual beings destined to raise the consciousness of humanity and the world.

The darker side of our belief in this story is that if we ever left the guru-teacher or broke our vows of loyalty then we were told we would not only risk losing everything spiritually but would possibly have to wander in darkness, suffer, lost in delusion (Maya) for seven future lifetimes (future human incarnations).

That is heavy fear and pressure to stay physically and psychologically with the group and its leader-teacher.

There is a certain degree of an annihilation of self that occurs upon entering, staying, and psychologically leaving the cult doctrine. That is perhaps why many former members who leave cults hold onto the underlying beliefs that led them and kept them in the group in the first place.

We humans have a deep need to create meaning in a seemingly meaningless universe. Our cultures (cults: familial, social, economic, political, philosophical or theological) breed and offer meaning, which we seldom take time to examine carefully.

I think this is why existential philosophers, like Nietzsche, declared God is dead but acknowledged the fact that the natural world was a nightmare of horror tinged with moments of art and beauty.

When a member of the cult group, that pretends to offer the ultimate answers to life and purpose of existence, when that member psychologically or physically leaves the group or ideology that creates for him or her a crisis of existence.

Jacobsen: How can members who are thoroughly entrenched in the doctrine of the cult’s worldview leave mentally and then physically?

Scott from SkepticMeditations.com: If a member of the ashram left or was asked by group leaders to leave the ashram, and yet they didn’t psychologically leave behind the SRF monastic ideology, then leaving physically didn’t make much if any change in their cultic worldview.

Perhaps, the members who left physically but not psychologically have to struggle with guilt and shame of not being good enough to stay, even if they “chose” to leave.

There are numerous former monks who I talked with after I left, though they physically left the ashram, clung psychologically to the Yogi-cultic doctrines of the teacher Yogananda, SRF, or kept revolving their worldview around devotion to God and Guru and spiritual liberation through yoga meditation.

Some former ashram members told me that their experiences in meditation prove the existence of kundalini (astral energies) awakened in their spine (a Yogic doctrine espoused by SRF and many Eastern-styled meditation groups), as if that is somehow meaningful and real beyond doubt.

When their understanding is these mystical experiences (mystical interpretations of the natural world), which were implanted into our minds in the first place by the external authority, teachings, or teacher, how would they know that is kundalini in his spine?

Didn’t some external authority tell him that and give him that distinction and interpretation? He’s psychologically trapped in the teacher’s ideology, though he left the ashram a decade ago.

Clearly many former cult members have not “left” the cult psychologically. They don’t leave behind the underlying premises that brought, kept, and controlled them while they physically lived inside the cultic group. Many continue to believe and practice the underlying teachings or doctrines of the external authority.

My own leaving psychologically unfolded gradually. For years and perhaps a decade or more starting while I lived in the SRF ashram. Then when upon physically leaving the group I at first believed that my reason for leaving was flaws of organized religion, of imperfect humans.

I continued to meditate and believe in the underlying premises (God, guru, meditation powers and energies) espoused by SRF and mystical, spiritual yoga meditation or enlightenment. Though I could not make sense at first of why I failed to interpret my experiences as special or mystical and enlightening as the teacher and group had promised.

Eventually, I saw that what I’d believed in was a false doctrine. That the whole thing was a fraud, and that we’d simply been abused. It really hurts to admit that. But to admit I was a victim of abuse has helped me to process, learn, and get through the trauma.

Jacobsen: Do halfway houses or safe transition houses exist for ex-cult members as with women who were victims of domestic abuse?

Scott from SkepticMeditations.com: I’m not aware of organized, physical safe houses for victims of cult abuse in the United States. Though there are some online support groups. In U.S. society, I think, pretends there are no victims of abuses.

Self-reliance is sometimes insufficient. In the U.S., there is an underlying premise in society everybody should be able to pick themselves up by their bootstraps and not expect anyone, certainly not society, to take care of us.

Perhaps the heartlessness of self-reliance is one reason why in the U.S. we have so many religious factions, fundamentalists, and cults vying for mindshare. And, why there seems to be no end to the supply of members joining and leaving religions and cults.

So, for the most part, cult members in the U.S. when they leave the group, they pretty much are on their own. Some are fortunate to have supportive family and friends. But, as I noted above, many cult members abandoned or destroyed their former relationships upon entering and obeying the rules of the cult.

However, I do know of a few informal halfway houses for former religious clergy or cult-members to transition back into society.

The Clergy Project, a nonprofit for clergy who no longer believe in the supernatural, provide online resources and sometimes training and funding for former clergy to reintegrate back into society.

There’s Recovering From Religion that provides a toll-free hotline, but it is not focused on cults per se, but on people struggling to come out of religion (which as I mentioned above physically leaving a cult group is not the same as psychologically leaving the religion or underlying doctrine of the cult).

I’ve heard that Leah Remini, producer, and host of the TV documentary series Scientology and the Aftermath, is trying to organize a nonprofit to support Scientology Sea Org (e.g. clergy) who want to leave and to reintegrate into society.

When I left the Self-Realization Fellowship Order, never to return physically, I was fortunate to find the informal support of several members and former monastics of SRF.

Without their material (donations of household items to stock my new apartment) and psychological support (listening and understanding), I may have had a much more challenging reintegration back into society.

Or, if I had left without their support would have felt perhaps totally isolated and alone. (Self-reliance is mostly a myth. We rely on support from others, especially during our crises.)

I sometimes feel alone in my experiences but then I occasionally meet former cult members who I can identify with. But there seems to be a little more public conversation in the mainstream, but mostly alternative media about cult-groups and members who exit cults.

That kind of vulnerability, feeling isolated and alone, is often what cults and their leaders prey on and target in recruits. So whatever we as society can do to support our members to be independently interdependent; to be part of a supportive community not conditioned by conforming to a set ideology is, I believe, extremely important for social progress and for the survival of the natural world of which humans are part.

Jacobsen: Do some never ‘get over’ their experiences, the trauma for example?

Scott from SkepticMeditations.com: Yes. It breaks you to be a committed member of a cult or psychologically-controlling group. Members join, knowingly or unknowingly, for the promise of spiritual training, which begins by breaking down the ego, self-identity. There’s much trust placed in God, Guru-teacher, and spiritual truth.

When the promises turn out to be false, that breaks members too. As the member’s self-identity softens, breaks down, the member submits to the cult’s reforming, reshaping into a new self-identity.

The break-down of self at first can often feel exhilarating, elating, ecstatic, liberating. But this breakdown and reshaping of self-identity is at best a waste of time, at worst dangerous. Members may never regain the lost years in the group: time wasted, not spent building useful skills, relationships, family, career, intellect, and so on.

Many former members never really seem to get over their trauma. Many turn inward on themselves: to guilt, shame, or depression, sometimes suicide. Again, the guilt and self-world break-down is part of the conditioning, or spiritual training, underlying membership in cultic groups.

Members blame the victim, even if it’s them. The underlying premises are the spiritual teachings and teachers are perfect and if anyone doesn’t find that perfection in them then it is the member’s fault.

They are not spiritual enough or too blinded by ego-self and so on. Many former members are perhaps damaged for the remainder of their life. Often current and former members have huge trust issues: lack of trust in self and others.

A need for existential meaning and a need to seek answers from external authority. I have been working for years since I left the ashram cult to rebuild self-world identity and regain the relationships that I had abandoned with family and friends.

A huge motivation for my doing this interview with you is to speak out about the harms of such groups, to process my experiences, and hopefully help by telling my story and perspectives.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Scott.

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2022-04-15

This Week in Canadian Religion 2018-05-06

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/06

“We’ve talked a lot lately about what Albertans think, as part of our polling series for The Road Ahead project.

We’ve heard how voters, at this point in time, heavily favour the United Conservative Party over the governing NDP. We’ve also heard how their views on the leader of each party don’t necessarily align with their voting intentions. And we’ve heard that Albertans, as a group, aren’t as conservative as you might think.

We’ve learned all this through an unusually large and in-depth survey. We asked people a lot of questions, about what they believe — and about themselves. “

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-road-ahead-poll-demographic-interactive-1.4641696.

“Newfoundland and Labrador may have one of the oldest and unhealthiest populations in Canada, but when it comes to medical assistance in dying, or MAiD, the rates are well below the Canadian average.

Stiff opposition from religious groups is one factor, with some denominations refusing to allow doctor-assisted deaths at publicly funded, faith-based nursing homes, except under extreme circumstances.

Sister Elizabeth Davis is leader of the Sisters of Mercy in St. John’s, which owns and operates St. Patrick’s Mercy Home. (Ted Dillon/CBC)

“We would facilitate a transfer to a site where it would be offered,” said Sister Elizabeth Davis, who serves on the board of St. Patrick’s Mercy Home in St. John’s, which is owned by the Sisters of Mercy but is government-funded — nearly $22 million in 2016-17 — through Eastern Health.

The same policy exists at the Salvation Army Glenbrook Lodge on Torbay Road, which received more than $11 million from the province last year.”

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/medical-assistance-death-1.4634927.

“Canada is the fourth most-accepting country in the world when it comes to immigrants, a new study by Gallup says.

Canada scored 8.14 out of a possible 9 in Gallup’s Migrant Acceptance Index, which put it fourth out of 140 countries in terms of how accepting each country’s population is of newcomers. Iceland was ranked first, followed by New Zealand and Rwanda.

Gallup says it created the index to assess people’s acceptance of immigrants based on what it calls “increasing degrees of proximity.” This is assessed through three questions that ask respondents whether immigrants living in their country, becoming their neighbours and marrying into their homes are “good things or bad things.”

Canada’s score is based on the answers of 2,000 Canadians aged 15 and older who were surveyed between August 10 and November 29, 2017. The summer of 2017 saw a significant spike in the number of people crossing into Canada from the United States and claiming asylum in response to immigration policies introduced by U.S. President Donald Trump.”

Source: https://www.cicnews.com/2018/05/canada-ranked-fourth-most-accepting-country-in-the-world-for-immigrants-0510606.html#gs.lTTc=T4.

“India’s counter-terrorism law enforcement agency has registered First Information Report (FIR) against a Surrey, B.C. man accused of plotting to carry out a major terrorist attack in India’s Punjab state.

Hardeep Singh Nijjar is accused of “conspiring and planning to carry out a major terrorist attack in India,” the National Investigation Agency said in its Thursday FIR filing, a key step towards pursuing extradition per India’s extradition treaty with Canada.

Nijjar’s associates in India have been carrying out reconnaissance of gatherings of the hardline Hindu nationalist group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), “with an intention to target them and strike terror,” states the report.”

Source: https://globalnews.ca/news/4189882/hardeep-singh-nijjar-fir-india-canada/.

“EDMONTON – The Alberta government has reversed a decision which denied an evangelical Christian couple’s request to adopt a child because of their religious views on sexuality and gender identity.

The unnamed Edmonton couple filed for a judicial review last year after their application to adopt was rejected.

The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, arguing that the decision violated their rights, helped the man and woman with their court case.”

Source: https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/alberta-reverses-decision-rejecting-evangelical-couple-s-adoption-application-1.3913047.

“Laughter floated in the air with the smells of Arabic coffee as the Masjid Dar As-Salam mosque in Charlottetown welcomed all visitors during an open house on Saturday.

The event was hosted at the mosque on MacAleer Drive by the Muslim Society of P.E.I. to give the curious a chance to come inside and learn more about the city’s mosque and Islamic religion.

Organizers say it was an opportunity to welcome anyone, and for everyone to learn more.

“To educate the people and to create awareness so that people can understand that we are no different, just like any other parishioner,” said Najam Chishti, president of the Muslim Society of P.E.I. “We come and pray and we live in peace and tranquility.””

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-edward-island/pei-mosque-muslim-society-open-house-1.4650101.

“MONTREAL — As Nigerian asylum seekers flood into Canada across a ditch in upstate New York, Canadian authorities are asking the United States for help — but not with managing the influx at the border.Instead, they want U.S. immigration officials to reduce the foot traffic by screening Nigerians more stringently before granting them U.S. visas.

It is a ripple effect that few expected last summer when people, mostly Haitians, began to walk into Quebec via an “irregular” border crossing north of Plattsburgh, N.Y., and seek refugee status.”

Source: https://www.thespec.com/news-story/8576876-deluged-with-nigerian-asylum-seekers-canada-seeks-stricter-u-s-screening/.

“Muslim women gathered in Calgary for a day-long conference Saturday to talk about what can sometimes be a taboo topic — intimacy.

The Being ME (Muslimah Empowered) conference was founded in Toronto seven years ago, and is in its fourth year in Calgary. Workshops included an introduction to breast health, career networking, and talks about sex and marriage, and healing after divorce.

“There is this really safe space for women to come together and talk about issues that are important to them, whether it’s mental health, sexual health, things that are often taboo,” said Farah Islam, who travelled from Toronto to attend Saturday’s event. “Love it, love the sisterhood, love the energy. I learn so much about our religion this way.””

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/calgary-muslim-womens-conference-1.4650345.

“Perhaps no other entertainment franchise has fans as dedicated and passionate as Star Wars, but what is it that keeps fans coming back to the galaxy far, far away after more than 40 years?

It could be the raw fun of space battles, lightsaber duels and alien creatures, or it could be that Star Wars taps into something much deeper — the human appetite for myths, legends and even spirituality and religion.

“It deals with spiritual questions that are timeless. It deals with good versus evil, right versus wrong, light versus darkness,” said Tony Bidgood, a Catholic priest at St. Teresa’s Parish in St. John’s.

“It deals with people who do well and then fall, and then get redeemed again. It deals with questions about eternal life. Those are universal, philosophical human questions.””

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/star-wars-spirituality-may-4-1.4648005.

“The great debate between the religious and the secular can in many ways be boiled down to one word: Faith. It is something that you either have or do not have, and the chasm between believers and non-believers is virtually unbridgeable. For those who have faith in a Christian context, the Bible is the inspired word of God, true in all of its essentials. It provides an explanation of human life on Earth, it provides guidance and commands on how human beings should relate to God and to one another. It stipulates rituals and sacraments. It holds forth the promise of an after life to which all should aspire. For those who do not have faith, the Bible is no more than a collection of the myths and legends of an ancient semi-pastoral, semi-nomadic people. The God of the Bible, whether Yaweh or Jehovah, is as relevant to them as Zeus or Jupiter. The Bible may be of literary or anthropological interest, but as a guide to life today it is no more significant than The Iliad or The Aeneid. For them, the Bible is a sometimes amusing, sometimes totally incredible account of what supposedly took place several thousand years ago, but it is of human, not divine, origin. There is thus an enormous gap between believers and non-believers.”

Source: http://www.thewhig.com/2018/05/04/religion-to-secularism-and-back.

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2022-04-15

Iowa Passes Most Restrictive Abortion Bill in America

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/05

An Iowa governor signed some legislation, recently. The legislation bans almost all abortions within the state of Iowa, by implication.

The legislation states that if a heartbeat is detected, then abortion is not allowed by the physician. This is considered one of the most restrictive moves against reproductive rights.

The rights for women to safe and equitable access to abortion gets restricted. This amounts to the most restrictive ban on abortion in the United States of America.

The security at the Iowa Capitol was strengthened around the signing of the bill. Republican Governor Kim Reynolds had several state troopers outside of their office.

Reynolds stated, “I believe that all innocent life is precious and sacred, and as governor, I pledged to do everything in my power to protect it. That is what I am doing today.”

The law will become enacted on July 1, 2018. The Iowa Senate had a vote that was more or less split, but the bill was approved for the ban of most abortions in the state of Iowa.

The ban requires women to undergo abdominal ultrasounds with physicians for a test of a fetal heartbeat if a woman wants to seek an abortion.

With a detectable heartbeat, the physician can decline the performance of an abortion. Fetal heartbeats can be detected as early as 6 weeks into a pregnancy, according to experts.

Planned Parenthood for the Heartland (PPH) declared they would sue Iowa. The PPH executive officer, Suzanna de Baca, said:

It’s shameful that when Planned Parenthood heard lawmakers were introducing legislation to ban abortion, we were outraged — but we weren’t surprised… But I think many of us still never expected that Governor Reynolds would so swiftly jump to sign a bill that is so clearly unconstitutional.

An Iowa law banned most abortions after 20 weeks last year. Republican Iowa lawmakers are looking to advance legislation to challenge Roe v. Wade.

Roe v. Wade, from 1973, set the early stage for the advancement of women’s rights constitutional protection for the right to an abortion.

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2022-04-15

Pastor Paul VanderKlay on the Christian Reformed Church

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/01

I wanted to explore some of the world of different Christian leaders, small and big. However, I wanted to report less on those and more in their own words. These will be published, slowly, over time. This, I trust, may open dialogue and understanding between various communities. Of course, an interview does not amount to an endorsement, but to the creation of conversation, comprehension, and compassion. Paul VanderKlay is the Pastor of Living Stones Christian Reformed Church. Here we talk about the Christian Reformed Church, community, church services, and more.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You are the pastor of Living Stones Christian Reformed Church. One preliminary question. Pastors wear many hats within the church community. Some more demanding than others. What are bigger hats in the service of the Christian Reformed Church community at Living Stones Christian Reformed Church? Also, as a small sub-question, what does “Living Stones” mean within the context of the Christian Reformed Church tradition?

VanderKlay: Great question. Here’s where it comes from.

1 Peter 2:4–10 (NIV)

⁴ As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him—⁵ you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. ⁶ For in Scripture it says: “See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame.” ⁷ Now to you who believe, this stone is precious. But to those who do not believe, “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,” ⁸ and, “A stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes them fall.” They stumble because they disobey the message—which is also what they were destined for. ⁹ But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. ¹⁰ Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Christians are in some ways “little Christs”. The community of them is supposed to be a “temple” which as anyone would know in the ancient world is the resting place for the god. You can see that in Genesis 1. In the Israel story the big deal was that the Holy Creator God was living in the midst of an unworthy people, without destroying them. The church ties into that history and supposed to embody it. It often fails, but that’s the idea.

So as a pastor my main job is to do what I can to hopefully not stop that from happening. I think that is the right way of thinking about it instead of “making that happen”. Pastors don’t make Christians, they don’t make churches, Christians believe God’s Holy Spirit does that. We most get in the way, not unlike the disciples in the gospels who mostly got in the way.

This involves preaching and teaching and caring for people. These are the most obvious things that someone might see. The less obvious things are stewarding a culture. This is often the most important thing. It is the small “yes” and “no” to one thing or another in action that actually shapes what a church becomes. It’s not that different from anyone else’s life. We are shaped by what we say “yes” to and what we say “no” to. Churches are of course far more complicated because there are so many more people with histories and roles and power and sin. It’s almost always a mess but we believe that somewhere in this mess there is glory and in that glory God lives in the midst of his people.

Jacobsen: When Christian communities work to build a community, of course, they seem to have, at the heart of it, the image and example of Jesus Christ as depicted in the New Testament of the Bible to guide the construction of their community. How do you work within this framework to build, lead, and maintain the community at Living Stones Christian Reformed Church?

VanderKlay: If you were to read books from the Christian Reformed Church before the 1960s you’d read a lot about how everything in the CRC is a direct expression of what’s in the New Testament. Part of what happened in the 1960s was that this language went out of fashion. What changed? The Second World War.

Before WWII most CRC folks lived in relatively isolated churches in isolated ghettoized communities. We were God’s chosen people living in direct obedience to his Word. The war was a great mixing machine that put CRC people in barracks and trenches and after universities and suburbs with Baptists, and Mormons, and Jews and Catholics and atheists. The CRC was after that point a bit more aware of its own historical and ethnic heritage and the ways that it seemed every group claimed simple, clear application of the New Testament in their community.

It would be nice to imagine that pluralism yields sophistication, but it usually yields another new level of naivety. New ways of imagining faithful application came in from other Christian traditions in American and also a new degree of skepticism.

Traditions mix with ethnicity and local contexts to form the body of Christ which is his church. My father did this in Paterson NJ amidst the children of Dutch immigrants who wished to serve God by serving the black population fleeing the Jim Crow south looking for jobs in the industrial north. This was the context of my formation. Dutch Calvinism with Cold War Paterson as the civil rights movement reverberated through the church. The New Testament becomes “canon” bit in a unique way in each place. The mental maps of Jesus and his church get worked into real time and space in ways that are impossible to reduce or multiply. History is that way. So traditions are maintained, sometimes tweaked, sometimes changed, sometimes abandoned and later restored. It’s thoroughly human without excluding the presence of God.

Living Stones developed on the other coast but in similar ways. The crushing poverty of Paterson is replaced by the disposable suburb of Florin and Meadowview in Sacramento. Old saints die, or stay, or leave, new saints come. Change is constant but continuities persist. I bring the Bible into the conversation and the long narrative thread of the church gathers crystals in yet another unique solution something like rock candy.

Jacobsen: What are the proceedings of normal church services at Living Stones Christian Reformed Church on the main service day? How do you plan and execute special events, e.g. weddings, baptisms, funerals, and so on?

VanderKlay: By temperament I am a creature of repetition. Days and weeks for me are mostly the same if I can help it. On Sundays we gather to study the Bible, to enjoy the company of old friends and new, to pray, to offer financial sacrifices to God, and to worship which is culturally the strangest thing we do in a secular world. We attempt to inhabit a fandom that goes all the way back to an obscure people living in a portion of the world destined to yield geographical genocide. We believe that the God of the world ceded the planet to a rebellious steward-race to eventually redeem it at great ironic cost. We do what ancients would recognize but moderns abhor. We relate to this king up in the sky imagining he enjoys our sacrifices and offerings whether in cash, check or song.

Because my congregation is small and mostly old I do more funerals than weddings. It might sound strange but I like doing funerals better. Why? Because weddings are often distracted by emotions going in every direction but the right one. Funerals bring a focus that only loss can give. People are ready to settle down and listen at funerals. They are ready to sit and assess and explore how they are spending their ever decreasing number of moments. Things of real value are contemplated and shared. While there are often remarks about someone’s work life seldom do we pay attention to money kept or used on diversion or satisfaction-seeking. More often we learn about the time spent with loved ones, the sacrifices given for the welfare of others. Funerals seem to provide holy moments even for those skeptical of the holy. So in my planning for these things, as I said at the beginning, I try not to get in the way. I try to tell the truth which can be difficult at a funeral. The devil’s tool at a funeral is nostalgia and vanity. I only do funerals for sinners, which means all of us. This lets me talk about God’s generosity even if the stories of human goodness need to be embellished.

Jacobsen: Any community has the problems of a community, whether internal dynamics or the pressure from the wider culture. What are some of the bigger difficulties in the maintenance of a church? What are some of those difficulties from within, e.g. members leaving or financial difficulties, or from the outside, e.g. popular cultural influence at odds with Christian Reformed Church teachings?

VanderKlay: It’s no secret that churches in North America are shrinking. Before I talk about this it’s important to know that this is the exception to the rule right now in the world. While numbers of Christian worshippers decline in Western Europe and North American they are growing or booming just about everywhere else. It has always been this way in the history of the church. The Lord gives and takes away. We’re not dualists really.

There is near endless speculation and anxiety about this in North America? Is it science that makes the Bible unbelievable? Is it affluence that makes us less hungry for God because we can fill our lives with cars and vacations and homes and porn and video games and genetically-selected offspring? Is it that the church has simply lost its way or gone corrupt with power, sex and money? As with most things it’s likely “all of the above” and “more than we can know”.

The frontier between “church” and “not-church” is always moving and never empty. We’re all given 24 hours in a day and need to figure out how to fill them. The last 50 years have exploded with ways to spend our time that most generations could hardly imagine.

The ubiquitous uncertainty of life through most of human history tempted the church of past generations to focus exclusively on next-life destinations. While that’s clearly something to talk about the fast transition to modern-80-year-Western-lifestyle-security has left the church a bit flatfooted. The church needs to endure without losing the narrative thread. The Orthodox church has endured Islam and Communism, we’ll see what the European churches can do.

We often do our best when we are challenged. Affluence tempts us to sloth. Christianity seems to do best from below, not from positions of privilege and established power.

Church members face all of the difficulties of everyone else, hopefully however they do so less alone. We try to support each other, emotionally or even financially.

Christians believe that the story of humanity will finally have a happy ending. We believe that joy is foundational, not loss, and that heaven and earth will one day be reunited and the struggles we face now will be, as one saint said, like a night in an inconvenient hotel. It’s easy to discount “pie in the sky bye and bye” but it sure beats lonely resignation buoyed by some sense of pride about the dark cold end of the universe.

Jacobsen: Any final thoughts or feelings in conclusion?

VanderKlay: It’s a privilege to try to share a few thoughts. I hope they were helpful.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Pastor VanderKlay.

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2022-04-15

Free Hearts, Free Minds GoFundMe

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/01

A new organization has been founded by the Canadian former or ex-Muslim Yasmine Mohammed. Mohammed is an ex-Muslim activist, author, instructor, and podcaster. She wrote From Al Qaeda to Atheism.

In early life, Mohammed was beaten because of a failure to memorize the Quran at times. Then she was coerced into marriage with a fundamentalist Muslim man, who turned out to be a member of Al Qaeda.

The Al Qaeda member husband was bailed from prison by none other than Osama bin Laden. Mohammed has lived a life experienced by some Muslim women. Eventually, she was contacted CSIS, which she describes as the “Canadian CIA.”

Mohammed knew nothing of them before their contact with her.

In interviews with her, and a personal opinion here, Yasmine does not get sufficient recognition for the pain, heartache, trauma, and loss of life quality and time because of the circumstances of life experience for her.

When an adult, she did wear the niqab and “lived in a home/prison with paper covering all [over] the windows.” She only earned a high school diploma at that time. She had a baby as well. However, she fled. These reflect the stories of others.

I have talked to many leaders and others in the former Muslim community. Not all or even most Muslims experience these traumas, and ordinary Muslims live normal healthy lives full of giving and receiving love with family, friends, and community; however, these other stories exist, and community and organizations, and councils, do not by necessity solve their problems – internal and external, but they do provide some solace, safety, and sanctuary in working through their problems.

The new organization has a GoFundMe campaign. When I asked Mohammed about the foundation of the campaign for the new organization Free Hearts, Free Minds (FHFM), she said, “I was getting inundated with messages from people from the Muslim world asking for help. I tried as hard as I could, but I didn’t have the resources to help them all. I was frustrated and sad and it was starting to affect my life and my mental health.”

When she was hearing and reading those stories, she felt a personal connection to them based on the life experience for her. She lives in British Columbia, Canada now. However, she knew the experience of living in a non-free and non-secular society.

Mohammed noted the possibility of wallowing. However, she chose to not wallow “in feelings [of] helplessness, frustration and sadness, I decided to start FreeHearts, Free Minds.” She feels as if reaching back a decade or more to help her young, suicidal self.

FHFM provides the basis for people to be able to know about leaving Islam as an option. They can stay if they wish, of course, as comes from freedom of religion and freedom of belief. However, the ability to know about the other option is important.

“Today, with the help of technology, and FHFM, I want to do all I can to ensure that no one ever feels that alone,” Mohammed said. As the organization is young, and with only a current team of ten people, the organization is small.

However, as things move forward, Mohammed explained, “…we are prepared to launch a dating site that will support Ex-Muslims in the Muslim world trying to avoid forced marriages and/or circumvent guardianship laws.”

The other service is a life coach who supports apostates in Muslim majority countries.

Mohammed continued, “If we’re able to maintain and grow our two services I’ll be happy. I think both services provide essential support to apostates in Islamic countries in very dangerous situations who have no other resources, no other options, and no other hope.”

One can donate monthly by clicking here. There can see the website here. Again, the GoFundMe campaign is here.

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2022-04-15

Stephen Skyvington on Early Life, Belief, God, New Book, and Trends in Canadian Politics and Religion

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/01

Stephen Skyvington is the President of Politrain, Inc.. Here we talk about early life, belief, God, an upcoming new book, being the President of Politrain, Inc., and more.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Let us start from the beginning, as I have said in other interviews, like a superhero origin story. How did you get here? What were early life and education like for you?

Stephen Skyvington: I was born in 1958 — on New Year’s Eve, no less —in Toronto, Ontario. I spent the first twelve and a half years of my life going to school and playing sports in Scarborough, before we moved to a small town about fifteen miles north of Toronto in 1971. I say small town but it was really more like someone had plopped down fifty houses in a corn field on what had been prime Ontario farm land before the farmer who owned it sold the land to developers. As a result, I’ve grown up with something of a “split” personality, in that I feel just as comfortable living downtown in a big city — as I did for seventeen years in Toronto, from about 1990 to 2006, before moving here to Cobourg — as I do living in the country.

Jacobsen: How did these influence personality insofar as they influence temperament and belief structure?

Skyvington: Although my parents told me many times I was the only “planned” child, arriving a full eight years after my middle brother and ten years after my eldest brother, the reality is I ended up being left on my own quite a bit growing up. Especially after we moved to the country. My one brother stayed behind to go to university while my other brother met someone, fell in love, and returned to the city to live with his new wife after being with us for only one year. As a result, I spent most of my days reading and drawing and dreaming. All worthwhile activities, to be sure — although, unfortunately, I started to become more and more reclusive like my mother and less and less gregarious like my father. I suspect this is why — even to this day, some forty-five years later — I often feel “alone in a crowd” no matter where I happen to be at the time.

Jacobsen: What did God seem like as a kid and adolescent, whether in observation of others and with a theory of their conceptualizations or in your mind?

Skyvington: I’m not sure I had much of a concept of God growing up, although I do remember standing up in class one morning for Show and Tell and proudly announcing that my Grandpa “went to Heaven last night!” a couple of months before my eighth birthday. I also vividly recall crying one Sunday morning and telling my dad I didn’t want to go to Sunday school anymore, that I wanted to stay home and watch the “Roy Rogers Show” on TV. Much to my astonishment, he let me skip church, which began a long — and to this day, pretty much unbroken — estrangement from organized religion.

Jacobsen: Your next book has a standing title of “Un-belief-able: An Atheist’s Take on God, Organized Religion and Spirituality.” What inspired the topic, the title, and the content?

Skyvington: I’d just finished writing my latest book, “This May Hurt A Bit,” which is about how we might go about reinventing Canada’s health-care system, and was casting about for something new to explore. Around the same time, I found myself reading Christopher Hitchens’ excellent memoir, “Hitch-22,” in which he explores his atheism and speaks at great length about organized religion, when the title “Un-belief-able” popped into my head. Now, regular readers of your magazine will recognize that title as the one I used for a piece I submitted to you for publication a few months ago, which I wrote after attending the funeral service for my wife’s cousin. Re-reading the article, I realized I’d barely scratched the surface, as it were, and that there was a whole lot more I could talk about on the subject. I asked my wife what she thought about the idea and if she’d be good enough to dig up as many expressions as she could find that had something to do with God, organized religion or spirituality. From the dozens she came up with, I narrowed it down to twenty-five, and set myself the task of writing a 3,000-word essay on each topic over the next few months. Hopefully, this will result in my publishing a brand-new book sometime in 2020.

Jacobsen: As the president of Politrain, Inc., how does this build into the religious/non-religious views to you? Politics, ideally, does not influence religion, but the world does not reflect this. Citizens will vote for religious identification of a leader. Of course, Canadian citizens have full right to vote for the reasons deemed fit by them.

Skyvington: A few years back, I wrote an article that was published by the Sun Media chain entitled, “Why can’t an atheist be prime minister?” If memory serves me correct, I believe the article came about as a result of watching all those presidential candidate debates on CNN, where it seemed that every two or three minutes someone would invoke the name of God or Jesus as a way of reaching out to individual blocks of voters — typically the “religious right” — as a way of validating their candidacy. While I found it frankly appalling that so many of these candidates felt it necessary to pander to that particular sector of society in hopes of winning the nomination, it got me to thinking about just how nearly impossible it would be for an atheist to become president or prime minister these days — even though, as I argue in the article, we’d be a hell of a lot better off if we were to elect an atheist. Needless to say, that article and a couple more I wrote on similar topics set off something of a “sh*t storm”. I guess it’s sort of like what Mark Twain once said. “It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they’ve been fooled.”

Jacobsen: You experienced more time than me. You witnessed more than me. You read more than me. These give the basis for substantiated reflection. In Canada, over the last four decades, what trends in religion and politics concern you?

Skyvington: Ever since Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated in 1968 — and particularly since 9/11 — it seems to me that the world has lost its sense of humor. We are incapable of laughing at ourselves and have lost the will to love and find joy in the little things that make day-to-day life so worth living. I’ve spoken before about the need to “ban” organized religion, that it has caused just about every war world-wide over the past several centuries, and that too many people use prophesy and The Word as a way of spreading hate and keeping people down. While Canada has managed to avoid much of the religious strife we witness going on elsewhere on what seems like a daily basis thanks to both mainstream media and social media, it’s clear our Day of Reckoning is coming soon. This is why it’s so important, I believe, that those of us who are atheists speak out in a very public and even forceful way in order to help those whose vision has become clouded by lies, half-truths and myths. While I realize banning organized religion would be tantamount to the book burning that the Nazis engaged in or an outright act of fascism, the fact remains that religion — as it’s being practiced today in the 21^st Century — is every bit as dangerous as a nuclear bomb and should be treated as such.

Jacobsen: Over the last four decades in Canada, what trends in religion and politics seem positive to you?

Skyvington: Pretty much nothing in religion or politics seems positive to me. As I say in my forthcoming book, governments used to do things for people. Now they do things to people. Our leaders are no longer “giants” — they are mediocre at best; thieves, liars and crooks at worst. They like to say they are leading from the middle. Well, leading from the middle isn’t leadership. It’s following. While I try to be sunny and optimistic as much as possible, and lead my life following the example of the great American author Henry Miller, whose code was “always merry and bright,” I do find myself wondering more often than not if I haven’t somehow ended up on the wrong planet. Idiocy reigns supreme. Not just in the world of politics but also with organized religion. Everyone is afraid of the unknown and of each other. The Internet is a place where people go to vent and spew all kinds of garbage. We don’t know how to love one another. We only know how to hate. No wonder the aliens haven’t bothered to visit our planet. Clearly, there’s no signs of intelligent life down here.

Jacobsen: As an atheist, this begs questions. What defines God to you? Why deny this God?

Skyvington: It’s not really a matter of denying anything. The way I look at it, we are God and planet Earth is Heaven. Which is why I believe we should live for today, not for tomorrow. What do I mean by this? Simple. I often watch my dogs — we have three: two that we rescued from abusive situations and a big, beautiful puppy who’s full of life. Whether they’re playing in the backyard, going for a walk, eating, sniffing the grass or just lying on the couch sleeping, they seem so wise to me. If only human beings could be more like animals, I can’t help but think we’d be a lot better off. Unfortunately, instead of being full of loving thoughts and caring for each other, humans are constantly scheming and looking for way to get ahead by taking advantage of the sick and the vulnerable. I hate to be so negative, but we really are a disgusting bunch.

Jacobsen: Does organized religion seem more like a positive or negative force in Canada? If a mixed answer, what domains seem good? What domains seem bad?

Skyvington: Negative, of course. It’s sort of like that old joke: “Life is for people who can’t face drugs.” For an atheist, life is for people who can’t face religion. As you’ve probably noticed by now, I have something of a built-in B.S. detector. I know when I’m being “spun” and I know when I’m being played. The Bible is a great story — and yes, in case you were wondering, I have read the Bible cover to cover — but that’s all it is . . . a story. Written by ordinary people just like you and me. It’s not the word of God. It’s just a bunch of made up stories written by people with an agenda. To fall on our knees and bow our heads in prayer and repeat these stories and sing a bunch of hymns . . . well, it kind of reminds me of communism, to be brutally honest with you. It’s mind control. It gives hope to the weak and provides a sense of importance to the well-off. And while I understand the need to make sense of this old world, and that everyone is looking for answers and for a way to not feel so afraid all the time, I’m afraid the Bible and other religious texts like it no more contain the answers to the mystery of life than the phone book. In fact, in some ways, the phone book is better, because at least if you dial one of the numbers inside, you’re likely to get a real, live human being on the other end. Calling out to God, however, will in all likelihood leave you deafened by the silence. At least, that’s been my experience anyway.

Jacobsen: What equates to the spiritual and the spiritual life to you?

Skyvington: People are often perplexed when they hear me — an avowed atheist — say that I believe everyone has a spiritual side. By that I mean, we all have that voice in our head that tells us the difference between good and bad, right and wrong, just and unjust. Whenever I sit down on a bench in a park, or walk through the trees in the woods, or sit beside a lake or stream, I like to quiet my mind and engage in what I call “the spiritual life”. It has nothing to do with God or organized religion. It’s merely a time where one can see the world as it is — a place of great beauty, filled with peaceful, loving creatures — and appreciate the perfection of it all. We don’t need to fit the real Garden of Eden into a box or try to turn it into some kind of morality play. The real thing is plenty enough and fine just the way it is.

Jacobsen: Any final feelings or thoughts in conclusion based on the conversation today?

Skyvington: Bob Dylan once said that the Bible is the most under-rated and the most over-rated book of all time. I think that about nails it. Mr. Dylan also wrote a song in which he suggested that to live outside the law, you must be honest. That’s how I, as an atheist, have always tried to live my life, and how I think all of us should face each and every day on this wonderful planet. Not by perpetrating the Big Lie, but instead by being honest and loving and telling truth. After all, as someone else once said, the truth will set you free. Something to think about the next time you see someone flailing their arms like a maniac, waving the Good Book, and telling you he or she has all the answers.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Mr. Skyvington.

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2022-04-15

Bryan Valentino — Member, Humanist Alliances Philippines, International

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/01

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What’s your background regarding religion?

Bryan Valentino: I was raised as a Catholic and I got introduced to other religions as well so I’m familiar with how most religions work and what they teach here in the Philippines.

Jacobsen: What was your first introduction to HAPI?

Valentino: I was invited to the group by its first lead convener Mark Janeo. I was a bit familiar to the organization already and I like it because aside from it being a discussion group, there are also some humanist events that people can participate in.

Jacobsen: If you could make one on the spot, what’s the better argument for humanism?

Valentino: My understanding of humanism is that it’s a better approach to a better world because it puts “faith” in or requires human action rather than waiting for a miracle to happen.

Jacobsen: What is the community of humanists like for you?

Valentino: So far it has been fun because there are a lot of people who share the some of the ideals that I have. Also, most of the humanists that I know are people who you can have an intelligent conversation with so it makes me understand the world a little bit more.

Jacobsen: How does religion influence political and public life generally in the Philippines?

Valentino: Religion in the Philippines greatly affected legislation before but I believe Filipinos are slowly becoming more secular in the way they see things. For example, it was unimaginable before for a same-sex marriage bill to be filed in Congress but I think it was early in Duterte’s term last year that someone proposed the bill. Unfortunately it was turned down both by Congress and Duterte but nevertheless, it’s still implied that the people’s opinions are gradually changing for the better.

Jacobsen: What is a major reform Filipino law could undertake to have more equality for the irreligious?

Valentino: I think it would be nice to have the separation of church and state in the constitution clearly defined so that we can demand secularism from schools and not be required to attend or participate in religious assemblies or subjects.

Jacobsen: Does the current government pose a threat to the free practice of humanism in the Philippines?

Valentino: Well, hindrances or challenges have always been there even before the current government came to be such as the lack of laws to enforce secularism and discrimination against the irreligious but with the power of social media and the fact that the technology here in the Philippines is improving, I think we will be able to make more people understand what humanism is faster.

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2022-04-15

About One in Five Canadians are Young Earth Creationists

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/01

The National Center for Science Education (NCSE) reported on the state of belief in evolution and creationism in Canada. The report comes from 2008. However, beliefs in a general population probably do not change that rapidly in even a decade.

According to the NCSE, about 3/5ths of the population accept evolution. The distinction between unguided and guided (theistic) evolution was unclear in the report. 1/5th believe God, presuming an Abrahamic God, created humans, or “Mankind,” 10,000 years ago or less.

Another 1/5th are unsure. 1,007 adults between July 29 and 30 in 2008 were interviewed. The margin of error becomes +/- 3.1%. Not bad, the report stated “virtually unchanged” results from a 2007 poll.

The suspicion over a decade may hold too. Some sub-demographics within Canada the same time, which may hold for the same time today as well. 69% of men believe in evolution.

48% of women believe in evolution. 67% of younger adults believe in evolution. 71% of university graduates believe in evolution. 40% of Alberta residents believe in evolution. 29% of Conservative Party supporters believe in evolution.

That is, if you are a Conservative Party member, resident of Alberta, non-university graduate, a woman, and an older adult, then you are most likely to reject evolution.

Reference

NCSE Staff. (2008, August 8). Polling creationism in Canada. Retrieved from https://ncse.com/news/2008/08/polling-creationism-canada-001375.

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2022-04-15

E4D Needs Some More Donors/Champions

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/01

Evidence for Democracy or E4D needs some more champions or monthly donors to support their cause. The cause of evidence-based policies and decision-making.

That accomplished through an informed public and government. It seems best to have people with the ability to discern scientific sense from nonsense. Same with governments.

E4D is here to help with it. People can donate 5, 10, 15 dollars (or much more) per month here:

Donate
Your gift today helps our small team work towards a Canada where governments make smart policy decisions, based on the…evidencefordemocracy.ca

The donation can help with federal climate science funding, keeping the federal government accountable, outreach training for scientists including communications training, events for person-to-person interaction between the public and scientists, and the bolstering of an increasingly respected and honorable organization: E4D.

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2022-04-15

Alain Sayson Presillas on Humanism in the Philippines

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/01

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: How did you come to find the humanist movement in the Philippines?

Alain Sayson Presillas: I only found out about humanism online. By joining atheist groups and eventually leading me to the humanist movement.

Jacobsen: What have been some of the major obstacles in personal and professional life as a humanist in the Philippines?

Presillas: For me, I cannot just go around telling everyone that I am an atheist but somewhat comfortable telling people of being a humanist. My job as a teacher somewhat keeps me at bay because most of my colleagues are very religious and closed to the idea of being an atheist or humanist. Even our department of education has a motto of “maka diyos” which means for god. Our values and decisions in the department are fashioned of being that of the biblical principles. And anything that is bible based is considered not good.

Jacobsen: What have noticed in terms of the law that discriminates against humanists there?

Presillas: Not really discrimination, but from documents and everything else, being religious and religion plays a role or a requirement, which in I find it unfair and self serving only those who are religious.

One thing to be considered is, I cannot write humanist in my birth certificate because it is not a religion.

Jacobsen: What about discrimination in culture and social life as general rules of thumb?

Presillas: Individuals who are not religious are considered evil or has no morals for the most part. If your family ties and culture are engrained in religious principles it is difficult to make a decision that is not religious based, the parents has a say, religion has a say and community has a say to decisions that you make in your own personal life.

Traditional and religious people tend to discriminate on you because you are viewed as somewhat free spirited and cannot be controlled by those who are older than you are.

Most good and quality schools are run by religious order, which is the curriculum is driven by religious dogma, even though you have an option not to take such subjects.

In every social event, that I attend, prayer is always a starting point before anything else

Jacobsen: How does religion have social privileges in society, especially Christianity?

Presillas: Majority of Filipinos are Christian, holidays, documents, etc. favors only one religion. It makes only the rest of the religion as a second choice and those that belong to that religion they’re not considered part of bigger privileges. It widens more the gap of Christians and not Christians.

Jacobsen: How can Christians be prejudiced against non-believers?

Presillas: My experience is mostly in treating non-Christians, I am referring to Muslims and other religions. For the atheists, they are considered evil and wayward individuals because they lack the morals and the Christian values.

Jacobsen: What is the relationship between religion and the state there?

Presillas: Very closely related, the constitution says it and part of it. Leaders are somewhat guided by the fact that their religion plays a role in important political decisions.

Jacobsen: How did you find HAPI? How does it provide a refuge for you from the mainstream religion and life?

Presillas: I found out about HAPI thru online. I was able to prove to myself and to others that we can help each other without religion, that we don’t need religion to be good and of service to humanity.

Jacobsen: What are your activist hopes for humanism in the coming few years?

Presillas: I am hopeful that humanism will flourish in the Philippines for the coming years as more of the Filipinos do have access to information and more advocacies in HAPI that others will actually value what do and somehow do get influenced by us.

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2022-04-15

Ralph Alvin Ace Rapadas — Member, Humanist Alliance Philippines, International

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/01

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: How did you find the humanist community within the Philippines?

Ralph Alvin Ace Rapadas: I found HAPI because I was a member of Philippine Atheists and Agnostics Society (PATAS) where a lot of HAPI’s members were originally from. I found out about PATAS in Facebook the summer before I started my 1st year in college way back in 2011. I actually became really active and revived/founded a freethinker/humanist organization in my University. Things have slowed down with my involvement in these organizations but I still keep in touch with the people I met.

Jacobsen: What was your early experience with religion in life?

Rapadas: I’ve been raised a Roman Catholic. When I was still residing in the New Jersey, I attended after school church programs. During my 6th grade in elementary school, I was certain I wanted to become a priest. I enrolled in the University of Santo Tomas High School, the Catholic University of the Philippines. Ironically in my 2nd year, I became an atheist after learning about biology and the incompatibility of science and religion.

Jacobsen: Do you think that religion is a net benefit or not negative?

Rapadas: I strongly respect and support an individual’s rights to have a religion. There is no doubt that religion has helped many people overcome their hardships in life however, I believe that religion is unnecessary especially in the advancement of society. I view religion as outdated and preferably obsolete in terms of how we understand the world through science and the societal norms encompassing morality.

Jacobsen: How does religion influence politics in the Philippines?

Rapadas: For a secular country, religion plays a major part in influencing politics in the Philippines. The Catholic Church once campaigned for and against certain candidates depending on their stance on the then Reproductive Health Bill which is now a law. Another example would be the bloc voting practiced by members of the Iglesia ni Kristo (INC) wherein leaders of their church would dictate who their members should vote for in elections.

Jacobsen: What is the nature of religious faith to you? What is its core aspect?

Rapadas: For me, religious faith deals with the human need for emotional support and it also conveniently provides “answers” to life’s questions. Why are we here? What is my purpose? It also addresses the human fear of mortality by selling the idea of an everlasting life. In a nutshell, religious faith for me can work in a manner similar to a placebo but is ultimately unnecessary.

Jacobsen: If you could advise youths about humanism, what would you advise?

Rapadas: Try to develop a strong understanding of philosophy and ethics. Be proactive in seeking out new information. Do you think that there is an ultimate meaning to life or that we make her own meaning of life? I think that we make our own meaning out of life. For myself, I am currently leaning on the epicurean/hedonistic philosophy.

Jacobsen: What books do you recommend about humanism from Filipino authors? Who is the Filipino hero for you?

Rapadas: I currently don’t know any humanism books from Filipino authors.

Jacobsen: If you could reference one quote or statement that best represents humanism, what would it be?

Rapadas: An Atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An atheist believes that deed must be done instead of prayer said. An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanished, war eliminated. -Madalyn Murray O’Hair This quote is for atheists but mostly applies for humanism.

Jacobsen: Do you think ordinary humanists or the stars of humanism are the best people to speak on it?

Rapadas: In other words, those who talk about it in a high level or those who live it day to day. I think both have a right and authority to speak on it. The stars may have a bigger following but it doesn’t necessarily relate to expertise in humanist philosophy.

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2022-04-15

Chinese Authorities Restrict Christianity

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/04/30

Chinese authorities have viewed Christianity with suspicion for some time. They view Christians as potentially threatening political dissidents.

This has be a concern of the Communist Party of China. Online marketplaces within China have been removing the Bible. Beijing is restricting citizens’ practice of religion.

China has controlled the sale of Bibles in the past. Only state-sanctioned churches having the ability to print and distribute them. Online marketplaces were a way to sell them without state sanction.

This appears to have changed recently. JD.com, Amazon.cn, and Taobao show few or no results when searching for the Bible.

A senior research analyst, Sarah Cook, for East Asia at Freedom House described the bans. Cook noted the mismatch with religious freedom and online censorship. Religious topics, and other sensitive areas, are censored.

Cook found, “… the Chinese authorities increasingly using more high-tech methods to control religion and punish believers.” These methods can include surveillance or arrest of believers.

Only five faiths are recognized by the Chinese government. These are Catholicism, Chinese Buddhism, Islam, Protestantism, and Taoism.

The Chinese Catholic bishops remain unappointed by the Pope. Beijing and the Pope have this continue opposition to one another. Relations between the Chinese state and the Vatican broke in 1951.

Yang Fenggang is the head of the Center on Religion and Chinese Society at Purdue University. Fenggang explained, “It sounds like the opposition force within the Chinese authorities who oppose the Vatican-China relations have their voice.”

There appeared to be progress made in Vatican-China relations. Some purported this would happen around Easter. Unfortunately, this did not happen.

The banning of Bibles is in line with worrying developments in China about freedom to religion.

A public white paper asserted religions should “adapt themselves to the socialist society.” It continued, “Religious believers and non-believers respect each other, and live in harmony, committing themselves to reform and opening up and the socialist modernization, and contribute to the realization of the Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation.”

Some work is being done to make a Sinicized Bible, a Chinese Bible. It would be along the lines of other faiths’ efforts to rewrite their holy texts to fit the atheist worldview of the Community Party of China.

Sarah Cook posits that this may backfire for the authorities. Chinese Christians tend to be apolitical. But these restrictions may make them go to external sources for the Bible and may also make them more outspoken against the Communist Party and Xi Jinping.

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2022-04-15

Are Outcomes Better in Afghanistan?

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/04/30

There is an increase in the quality of outcomes based on reportage about Afghanistan. For the last 15 years, Afghanistan has made progress in the health outcomes for its citizenry.

This is “especially for women and children,” even in spite of the insecurity well-known in the country. The basis for the improvements are from large-scale partnership models with non-governmental organizations as the deliverers of service.

One report, “Progress in the Face of Insecurity: Improving Health Outcomes in Afghanistan,” (2018) talked about the health gains undergirded through the expansion of the healthcare system and health services for the population.

ReliefWeb reported that the growth has been strong and sustained since 2003. As the World Bank described, “These improvements were in fact larger than in more secure provinces in the country. However, rising insecurity since 2010 has slowed some of these gains.”

Public Finance International reports that there is a long path ahead for the parity of Afghani health outcomes with the world in general.

The World Bank County Director of Afghanistan explained, “Long-term focus and investment by the government of Afghanistan and many partners has moved the country forward on health, despite many challenges… Afghanistan still has a long way to go to ensure quality health services for all, and we look forward to be a being a partner in that effort.”

The more insecure the areas in Afghanistan then the more the maternal health rate of improvement has slowed. The World Bank made a recommendation for the local health service delivery methods to become autonomous in order to improve outcomes.

More investment in monitoring and information is said to help improve the outcomes too. Fewer children are dying before the age of 5. It dropped 34% from 2003 to 2015. Women seeing a qualified health professional increase at a rate of 3.5% per year in addition to the use and contraceptives and births assisted by those skilled professionals.

“Afghanistan’s health gains despite continuing insecurity is a story from which the world has much to learn,” the World Bank Group Senior Director of Health, Nutrition and Population, Tim Evans, explained, “Rather than retreating and unravelling in adverse conditions, the health system is driving forward to secure the health of all citizens – especially mothers and children – drawing on deep reservoirs of local ingenuity.”

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2022-04-15

Iraqi Atheists Arrested for Atheism

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/04/30

Al-Monitor reported on the arrests sent out for Iraqis charged with the crime of atheism.

The charges come through the Dhi Qar province Garraf district judiciary. Atheism as a crime gained lots of social media attention. Some argue this is against the rights of the Iraqis.

The Iraqi Constitution guarantees freedom of belief and expression. Others see this as a political move. The chief Garraf district judge, Dhidan al-Ekili, charged atheist Iraqis.

al-Ekili said, “[They were] holding seminars during social gatherings” to promote and popularize atheism. Four of these people were arrested on March 11.

The local administration set the intelligence agencies to crackdown on atheism. al-Ekili notes this is within the Iraqi Penal Code. At the same time, the Iraqi Constitution permits freedom of belief and intellectual views.

Legal and political analyst Ali Jaber al-Tamimi had different views. He said, “There aren’t any articles in the Iraqi Penal Code that provide for a direct punishment for atheism, nor are there any special laws on punishments against atheists.”

Desecrations of religions is different. But not the simple holding of the belief of the non-existence of God.

The Iraqi Constitution allows “freedom of belief and intellectual views.” Social media critics were harsh on the authorities.

Ahmad Wahid, a stand-up comedian, ridiculed self-professed atheists who do not understand atheism.

Iraqi newspapers assert these atheists come from failed reigns. The failure of the Islamic ruling parties. Corruption as an additive factor.

Gallup reports 88% of Iraqis are religious circa 2012. It is in the top 10 for religiosity in the world. Myths exist about atheism, misunderstandings too.

Clerics associate secularism and atheism as a lump. One category merged together. Others see liberalism and communism as anti-religion.

They become equated with atheism. Shiite cleric Amer al-Kufaishi urged resistance to these ideas. Because they promote anti-religion.

Some Islamic parties rule since March 2003. Safaa Khalaf, a reporter, said, “The idea of atheism in Iraq is rooted in political pressure and its economic and social ramifications.”

Atheism, according to Khalaf, becomes a reaction to political Islam. Political Islam’s inability to solve people’s problems. Modern communication helps with this.

Social media as one reflection, where criticism happened.

Khalaf, explained further, “Secularism was considered an adversary of religious faith.” Secularism, as a term, is gone from political circulation.

The Iraqi Communist Party replaced the term with “civility.”

“Inaccurate and misused labels are being used to describe incorrect behaviors by the political authority in light of the security mentality prevalent in both society and state,” Khalaf stated.

Continuing, “The authorities are comfortable with this illiteracy because it immensely aids them in oppressing any opposed view, especially if it challenges religion, clerics or practices that interfere with public freedoms.”

Iraqi leaders are suspicious of atheism. Some fight against it. Further, others see it as an assault on the Islamic parties.

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2022-04-15

Interview with Ghada Ibrahim on Islam, Saudi Arabia, and More

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/04/30

Ghada Ibrahim is a Former Muslim and Saudi Activist. In particular, an activist for the rights of women in Islam and talking about her former faith. Here we talk about growing up in a Saudi Muslim family, family life, aspects of Islam, well-being of women and men in Islam, and the net analysis of Islam in Saudi Arabia and the MENA region.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You grew up in Saudi Arabia to a Muslim family, naturally. What was family life for you?

Ghada Ibrahim: Arab culture is big on familiar relations. Families are large, and family tied are heavily emphasized. Though I lived 1.5 hours away from the rest of my extended family, we still saw them regularly (at least once or twice a month on a weekend) It would be a big gathering.

Uncles, aunts, cousins, all together at a grandparents house for lunch, afternoon tea, and sometimes even dessert. My first friends were my cousins that were around my age. We played together all day long and got into trouble together when we didn’t listen.

Though we were very religious, there was no actual “segregation” in my family’s gatherings. The men and women sat together in the family room and talked, laughed, and shared meals together.

Women still wore hijab from the non-mahram men. Non-mahram men were men that weren’t sons/nephews/husbands/brothers/fathers/uncles. Brothers-in-law were still considered non-mahram, and so did cousins. That didn’t necessarily ruin the experience.

It was a nuisance to have to cover up, but spending time with family made up for that nuisance.

The main patriarch was usually the grandfather. He would be the authority that made most decisions, but he also had the biggest heart and he loved his wife, the main matriarch, very much.

My grandmother would sometimes cook the lunch feasts (which were always delicious) and my grandfather would usually distribute fruits after or before lunch. It was very lively, loud, chaotic, overwhelming, and honestly, a lot of fun.

Jacobsen: How did this family life provide a basis for knowledge about the religious teachings texts, and major religious figures?

Ibrahim: My family was and still is very devout. Most of our conversations and what we watched on TV revolved around religion and religious figures. A lot of the stories exchanged during our gatherings were stories of the prophet, the 12 Shia Imams, the prophet’s daughter Fatimah, and the state of affairs of Muslims (Shia Muslims especially) in the current time.

A lot of my knowledge on religion and religious figures came from the stories my family shared in our gatherings or watched on TV from religious scholars. Books were also exchanged or recommended, especially that it was very difficult to find Shia books in Saudi Arabia (They are banned).

A book smuggled over the border from Iraq, Iran, or Bahrain is usually read by everyone in a third for “knowledge”.

Jacobsen: How did those understandings provide the basis for precise critical inquiry into the belief structure of Islam rather than a general, and simple, disbelief in the religion more often seen in those who thrust the cloak off?

Ibrahim: It was not necessarily the teachings that got me to begin looking into the religion in a more critical manner. It was another aspect of Shia Islam that I saw in my family and in my community as well.

It is this belief that Shia are victims of injustice at the hands of the unbelievers (usually some kind of Sunni Muslim ruler) and that the only way they will be free from this injustice is when the Mahdi, a Messiah-like figure, will return at the end of days and bring justice and peace to the world.

During the time, the Shia I knew were not doing anything to fight back the injustice and those that did, were criticized. Even if they were hailed as brave and courageous for standing up, they were still dismissed as not being able to do anything because the Mahdi is still the only one that can ever bring about an ever-lasting change.

It made me question why we, as Shia Muslims, had to rely on a figure we never met (only heard stories of) to better our conditions.

The reason I didn’t shed the whole cloak off was because Islam was the only religion and only “truth” I was ever exposed to. I was never exposed to other possibilities or the possibility of Islam not being the ultimate truth.

The interactions I had with my immediate family in our home and with the extended family was very sheltered from the broad outside world. I “heard” of Christians, Jews, Hindus, and nonbelievers, but I never really interacted with them.

Not until the internet was introduced in the 1990s to us and I began to speak to people from all over the world through the click of a few buttons. Even then, I never considered the possibility that Islam was not the truth.

Only that Shia might be misguided into not doing anything themselves to better their conditions. The strong familiar lies and the sheltered upbringing all made it much more difficult to shed the cloak of religion all together.

It just made me poke holes in a few different places and begin an inquiry into why these holes were even there.

Jacobsen: What points made Islam the least plausible to you?

Ibrahim: It was the role of women in the religion. Before I even began to look into Mohammad, the prophet of Islam, I read the Quran thoroughly along with different interpretations and asking several scholars on what I believed then (and still do today) “problematic” verses.

This includes the famous 4:34 verse that allows men to have authority over women and to discipline them, whereas women had no such right or authority over a man.

I’ve read several interpretations from both Sunni and Shia scholars, so-called “feminist” interpretations, asked several scholars and the answers varied from: “That’s not what it actually says” to “women have a lot more responsibility towards the household and thus, her straying from the true path will lead to far more dangerous outcomes”.

It all sounded anti-feminist, anti-woman, insulting, and demeaning. It was the way women are portrayed in Islam that got me to begin questioning the authenticity of the religion as a whole. How could a religion claim to be perfect for all time and space and be so demeaning and insulting to women?

Jacobsen: How does Islam provide a worse basis for the well-being of women than men?

Ibrahim: I can list a few:

Men are allowed to marry more than 1 wife (up to 4) and have any number of sex slaves. This completely ignores women’s sexual and emotional needs and gives only men the sexual and emotional satisfaction in a marriage.

Men are allowed to discipline who they fear to be a disobedient wife (advise them, leave them in bed, and then hit them), while women have no right to even try and discipline a disobedient husband.

Women receive only half the inheritance they rightfully deserve and are required to have a male family member “take care of them”. That is infantilizing and assumes women are helpless and are always in need of a man.

Women’s testimony is half of that of a man. The Quranic reasoning is if one forgets, the other could remind her. This is extremely insulting to women’s intelligence.

After a divorce, women have to wait either 3 months (without any pregnancy) or if pregnant, have to wait until the baby is born before being able to remarry. If widowed, she has to wait 4 months and 10 days or until delivery of the baby if pregnant.

If a man is divorced or widowed, he doesn’t have to wait any amount of time to remarry. This is clear discrimination and in the time of DNA testing, there is no reason to have this time to “make sure the baby’s father is known”.

Women have to be covered up in hijab. Men do not need to cover up at all.

Women do not get the power to divorce. Women lose custody of their daughters after the age of 7 after a divorce.

A virgin woman is considered “more favorable” than a non-virgin. There is no distinction at all for men.

Jacobsen: Is Islam a net positive or negative force in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East-North Africa (MENA) region?

Ibrahim: I see it as a net negative force in the MENA region. It holds back people from progressing and adopting humanist values.

Everything has to be looked at from a religious perspective and as long as Islam is the rule of law, there can never be women’s rights, minority rights, LGBT rights, freedom of speech, freedom of and from religion, and even rights of prisoners/criminals will be neglected.

Jacobsen: Any feelings or thoughts in conclusion?

Ibrahim: When people look at Islam, they look at it from a “their culture” perspective instead of the very real threat it is. The reason the MENA region is so behind on human rights, women’s rights, etc IS Islam.

Islam is as much as Abdul who you go drink with on Friday nights as it is Hamzah that beat up his wife because she refused to sleep with him.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Ghada.

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2022-04-15

This Week in Religion 2018-04-29

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/04/29

“Can religion and faith play a role in the lives of LGBTQ youth?

That question was discussed at a gender, sexuality and faith forum held Tuesday in the University of Windsor’s School of Social Work. The event was a part of the Windsor Pride Run For Rocky Legacy Project — the annual continuation of tributes to Rocky Campagna after the fifth and final Run For Rocky last year.

Former MPP and Toronto reverend Cheri DiNovo was the event’s keynote speaker and said it is time for religious organizations to promote faith as being open to everyone.”

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/religion-faith-place-lgbtq-community-former-toronto-mpp-1.4633111.

“With little fanfare, Health Canada granted exemptions last summer to two Montreal religious groups to allow them to import and serve ayahuasca to their members. The drug, originating from the Amazon, is otherwise banned in Canada since it contains dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and harmaline, two prohibited hallucinogens.

The Eclectic Centre for the Universal Flowing Light, also known as Céu do Montréal, and the Beneficient Spiritist Center União do Vegetal, have so far been very discreet about their exemption. Beyond an announcement on Céu do Montreal’s website, the news has gone virtually unnoticed in Quebec.

“Our legal counsel warned us of the unintended negative consequences of participating in interviews that could jeopardize our continued exemption by Health Canada,” said Céu do Montreal vice president Robert Ferguson in an email to VICE. “The freedom to practice our religion is still fragile in Canada, despite our new status.””

Source: https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/d35w5j/two-montreal-religious-groups-can-now-legally-import-ayahuasca.

“When I recently aired the views of Sikh psychotherapists on Sikh culture in Canada and India, the reactions were all over the map.A small minority of readers were initially agitated, mostly by brief, misleading comments they had picked up on Whatsapp. One said I was trying to portray all Sikhs as “mental.” But things died down in 24 hours. Many Sikhs were supportive, with one even suggesting I’d “redeemed” myself with the piece. You can never predict these things.

The most surprising response came from a long-standing blog called Get Religion, founded by noted U.S. media critic Terry Mattingly. It’s devoted to critiquing the North American media’s coverage of religion. Get Religion often targets superficial and distorted religion reporting, in other words articles by journalists who “don’t get religion.’

Turns out my column of April 7 passed the Get Religion test. West Coast American religion journalist Julian Duin, who is also author of the new book, In the House of the Serpent Handler, analyzed the piece on Sikhs in a review headlined, “As Sikhs make headlines, the Vancouver Sun tries a little psychotherapy (and it works).””

Source: http://vancouversun.com/news/staff-blogs/get-religion-blog-says-vancouver-sun-gets-sikhs.

“Parliament will set back both truth and reconciliation if it passes a motion proposed by Charlie Angus, the NDP MP from Timmins-James Bay. He wants Canada’s Catholic bishops to invite Pope Francis to visit Canada to apologize for the role of the Catholic Church in residential schools.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) included a papal apology on Canadian soil among its calls to action.

Last month, Pope Francis said that he would not come to Canada to offer an apology but if he did visit at some point, an encounter with Indigenous Canadians would be a top priority.

Angus pronounced himself unsatisfied and therefore wants the House of Commons to demand Catholic bishops invite Pope Francis to appear in Canada and offer contrition.”

Source: https://troymedia.com/2018/04/22/call-apology-pope-affront-religion/.

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2022-04-15

In Conversation with Hari Parekh – President Emeritus, Humanist Students

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/04/28

Hari Parekh is the President Emeritus of Humanist Students. Here we talk about atheism and humanism, and the analysis of religion.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Atheism is known to be a negation of gods and affirmation of non-gods. What does humanism negate and affirm as a worldview?

Hari Parekh: As a worldview, Humanism aims to affirm that we can live an ethical and fulfilling life on the foundations of reason and humanity, in a universe that is a natural phenomenon. Humanism centres around people.

As a result, it remains equivocal to centre a worldview in the intention to further human fruition, flourishing, and fulfilment. Humanism provides an understanding of the purpose of being human, rather than the circular stagnancy of atheism.

Humanism may negate the need for ethical and political decisions to be based on superstition and belief. The pragmatism of the natural world remains significant to how one’s worldview may develop.

Defining ‘Humanism’ Thinking about life can cause someone to unknowingly entrap themselves into the negative spiral of solipsism – thinking and questioning everything around them to be something to be dubious or unsure about.

Thinking that as a human being, who’s mitochondrion cells will deplete in energy one day causing one to die, that I will not exist one day. This is a difficult thought to have, yet incredibly significant. Yes, life is short, and yes, we will all die one day.

But, the significance of being able to live and breathe and contribute to society, making the most of this life that I have, remains the single most significant part of being alive. To the point that I endeavour to value the life that I have in making each day without regret.

Defining Humanism does not provide an answer, as each person defines ideologies dependent on their own experience. The value of Humanism remains in understanding the significance of its perspective.

Jacobsen: Where do atheists go wrong in their analysis of religion? Where do they go right?

Parekh: The question allures to me answering whether in my view, atheists may be right or wrong in their analysis of religion. Atheism, principally is interested in whether there is a notion of a ‘God’ or not.

Following that, remains little that Atheism can provide to understand areas other than the circular argument of whether a ‘God’ exists or not.

However, this does not account for the high numbers of people that live in countries where it remains illegal to be non-religious. As a result, the purpose of whether there is a ‘God’ or not is not simply a theological argument as highlighted above – it becomes a question of identity.

This would suggest, as a result that, there may be a purpose to atheism in such conditions where blasphemy laws are still stringent and prevalent, for example – where people are persecuted for not believing in a ‘God’.

Atheism is neither wrong or right as the question asks.

Jacobsen: What would a humanist society look like to you?

Parekh: My dad will often talk to me about how he sees one calamity after the next on the news each day, to which each day he will repeat the remark: if only people cared more about people.

My dad may be religious, but the sentiment of how he would like society to be is valid. As a result, that is how a humanist society would look – a society where laws, legislation and policies that affect people first and foremost were considered based on how they may affect people.

To intrinsically care about the wellbeing of people in communities within society would be how a humanist society would look like to myself.

Jacobsen: Why is Humanist Students important for the development of the humanist community on campus?

Parekh: Humanist Students remains highly significant for the development of humanist communities on campuses across the UK. Why would a student become a member of Humanist Students in the first place?

Going to university for the first time is a significant life event. This episodic event is a pivotal moment, where the majority leave the family home for their first opportunity to test their boundaries of freedom.

A poignant moment being that, when this person leaves their household, they are a representative of everything they have learnt. Going to university is more than just achieving a degree – it is an opportune moment to challenge the ideals, and a priori knowledge one brings along with them.

As a result, university is an environment where students that are religious are more likely to question the ideological construct of their religious faith, whereby they may question the very notion of whether they believe in their religious faith.

The transition from being religious to non-religious can be a difficult journey – with an increase in mental health issues such as depression, due to the deconstruction of one’s original sense of identity, which was formed within the trilogy of religion, culture, and tradition.

As a result, the importance for the development of a humanist community on university campuses remains paramount to ensure that people who might be going through such a transition, have a safety net and community to call their own.

Jacobsen: What do you plan to do after your time as the President-Emeritus of Humanist Students?

Parekh: The aim remains that there is a necessity for humanist communities to be formed within the local community, not just at universities, to provide support and a sense of belonging to non-religious people.

The task of creating this community within the local community remains a challenge – however, with the above apostasy example, there remains an ever-growing need for people to be supported within their local community.

Jacobsen: Any final thoughts or feelings in conclusion?

Parekh: Having worked in the student sector of Humanist UK for the past four years, I’ve had a great opportunity to learn, develop, and support people in creating communities across the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland.

It is never an easy endeavour, as attendees may not come in vast numbers, people question the need and necessity of such a society or community on campus, some people do not have the awareness to know that there is a choice to be non-religious.

The constant pressure to continue to highlight the need and necessity of such a community has the potential to demotivate even the most energetic of individuals in continuing to develop such a community.

But, my final feeling remains to say that, people who take time to create a community for non-religious people at their universities must remember that they are the sole representation for non-religious students for their university.

They are the only representatives to highlight issues and provide their student audience with an awareness of what it means to live a life believing in the natural world – to believe in the good nature of human beings.

To stand tall at the sight of injustice and to be the only people on their entire university campus to be empowered to do so. Moreover, to be a safety net to people that are currently transitioning from being religious to non-religious.

If, anyone reading this is currently running their student society and feels discouraged and demoralised – to read this, and reignite that drive and grit, to represent non-religious people on campus.

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2022-04-15

Male and Female Ex-Muslims – Narrative Interpretation and Escape

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/04/26

Waleed Al-Husseini founded the Council of Ex-Muslims of France. He escaped the Palestinian Authority after torture and imprisonment in Palestine to Jordan and then France. He is an ex-Muslim and an atheist, and a friend. We have published interviews in Canadian Atheist (here, here, here, and here), The Good Men Project (here), Humanist Voices (here), and Conatus News (here, here, and here). Here is an educational series on ex-Muslims in France.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Can you tell some of the stories, anonymous if need be, of some of women members of the Council of Ex-Muslims of France?

Waleed Al-Husseini: We get a lot of testimonies. One of the most touching was for a French girl. Her father is Algerian. Her mother is French. She was born and lived all her life in France. She questioned herself when she was forced to wear the hijab at the age of 13. She stopped playing with her childhood friends because it became a forbidden activity.

She used to, at that time, read from the holy texts of Islam. But then she became an atheist, but she still wore the hijab and lived with her family in an area full of Muslims. That is why even she can’t take the hijab off. She can’t tell her family that she left Islam. She supported us. She came to one of our meetings.

Another woman, she left question Islam after the Charlie Hebdo attack and was asking herself, “Why do we do this? Why do we live in secular society and act like those who live in Islamic state?”

She asked her family and others always she got the answer that we are different and we always should belongs to Islam till she start reading and knowing about me from my 1^st book she read it and she became atheist and she really fighter for freedom

Jacobsen: Can you tell some of the stories, anonymous if need be, of some of men members of the Council of Ex-Muslims of France?

Al-Husseini: Men’s stories, it is rarer because Islamic society provides men all that they want. Their mistakes mean nothing. The stories, I have more from a refugee who came to France. There is a man. He is from Morocco. He started with freedom of women. Then he went into the freedom of not taking part in Ramadan, but he was arrested.

Then he got discrimination in the court. When he was out, he studied Islam very well, then he understood it very well. So, he left Islam for the same reason

Jacobsen: I ask those two prior questions to provide a basis of the experiences of members, ordinary refugees or French citizens who ex-Muslims are – apostates. How do these stories differ for men and women?

Al-Husseini: Most of the women, they left the suffering because of Islam. That is why they read and become atheism, so there is a clear reason for them. But for men, it is harder because he needs to be humanist and to do more reading to see how to become an atheist.

This is a difference between the stories of men and women. For sure, for women, its clearer with hijab and with the ability to have freedom in life. So, they suffer more than men because of Islam.

The space of freedom is much larger if you are me.

Jacobsen: Have the stories been getting better or worse in terms of the people who leave Islam?

Al-Husseini: Every story is a special case. But we still have a hard time, so the stories are always hard. It is not a fairy tale. We do not have happy ending stories, because even for the ex-Muslim who leave their family.

They will have problems in work between their friends, so the stories still the same: worse.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Waleed.

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2022-04-15

Millennials More Probable to Believe in Afterlife

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/04/26

The National Post reported on belief in the afterlife for Millennials (Brean, 2018). They believe in it. They also do not believe in it. But they believe in the afterlife more than other cohorts of Canadians.

A survey reported the sociological trend of older generations of Canadians’ disbelief in a literal afterlife. The afterlife filled with creatures and wonders, and the dog from childhood named “Penny” or “Woof.”

Miracle stories tend to become more metaphor and allegory and less a map of another realm and the literal writ of the all-powerful. This coincides with other data. Information indicating the increased religious belief and religiosity of the older.

Two skews with more of an afterlife belief for the young. Then the increase in religious seriousness among the old. The trends hold for supernatural beliefs too. Examples given were “angels, ghosts and communicating with the dead.”

The immanence of death seems to quicken concrete, naturalistic thought. Reginald Bibby, of the University of Lethbridge, described Millennials as “far more open to a wide range of things.” 70% of the 18-to-29-year-olds believe in an afterlife.

Pre-Boomers, it comes to 59%. The main subtext of the narrative, of course. Most Canadians believe in an afterlife of some form. A form describable by Abrahamic faiths’ presuppositions and philosophy.

But not quite as well, 66% of Millennials believe in a higher power (God sometimes sold separately). 80% of the pre-Boomers believe in God or a higher power. Bibby argues for a shift in spiritual culture.

That may suffice as a first-blush explanation of the dual-inversion phenomena.

Bibby explains:

It’s not life stage… It’s not that older people have given up and figure there’s no life after death. It’s just that, in addition to those preachers and priests and others that were drilling into people in days gone by the fact that there’s life after death and you better shape up or you might go to hell, that kind of stuff, we’re just saying the life-after-death theme has been given an incredible shot in the arm from culture as a whole, and from the most unlikely places, particularly the entertainment industry.

Brean indicates the belief in an afterlife divide comes from GenX and the baby Boomers. Boomers with secular pop culture. Boomers with afterlife talk in church. GenXers with lack of attendance at church.

But Millennials work within a context of an afterlife in the culture in “video games and pop culture. It is normal again.” They contain “cartoonish cultural traditions of ghosts, mediums, psychics, fortune tellers, clairvoyants, and Ouija boards.”

Professor James Alcock, a professor of psychology at York University, notes the various meanings of “belief.” These can include confidence, faith, trust, and so on. Canadians reading the survey may respond individually to particular meanings of “belief.”

Brean interpolates an explanation into the narrative. That technological advancement permits more imaginative leaps. People can think of more possibilities. These increased possibilities bring more openness to belief in an afterlife. Church numbers continue downwards. Afterlife belief goes upwards.

Alcock opined:

In an age (ed. 19^th and 20^th century science) when new scientific discoveries were rapidly changing the understanding of how nature worked, it made sense for scientists to show interest in what was being reported from the séance parlours. It was possible that, just as with X-rays, radio waves, and radiation that had been hidden from human knowledge until science uncovered them, there might be a psychic dimension of nature awaiting discovery.

Brean considered this a basis to reflect more. That the belief in the afterlife of the young, but modest declines in religious faith, amount to residue. Historical religiosity as a curiosity and the afterlife as another secular possibility.

Bibby reported on the frame of the question. If stated as if death amounts to absolute finality, then the response leans more to a strong negation. An afterlife must exist. He concluded, “In fairness to people, they don’t really know.”

References

Brean, J. (2018, March 29). Millennials are more likely to believe in an afterlife than are older generations. Retrieved from http://nationalpost.com/news/canada/millennials-do-you-believe-in-life-after-life.

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2022-04-15

Interview with Vivek Sinha – Writer, Hindustan Times and The Times of India

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/04/25

Vivek Sinha is a Writer for Conatus News, Hindustan Times, and The Times of India. Here we talk about Kashmir, global terror, young life, sitting down with an ex-terrorist, and more.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You have written for both the Hindustan Times and TheTimes of India. Some focusing on global terrorism (Sinha, 2017a). How is the struggle for Kashmir a subset of global Islamic terror?

Vivek Sinha: The genesis of this “struggle for Kashmir” dates back to 1947 when India gained independence from British colonial rule. At that time there were two kinds of regions in the Indian subcontinent– British India and the Princely States.

British India was directly ruled by Great Britain and Princely States through their proxies. At the time of Indian independence British India was divided into two dominions, India and Pakistan… and the Princely states were given the option to join either the Indian or Pakistani dominions.

Jammu & Kashmir was a Princely state. Now, given the strategic location of Kashmir, British wanted it to join Pakistan as they felt a populous Islamic strip on the north of India could act as a buffer against spread of Communism. During post World War-II, USSR was aggressively pushing Communism across the world.

Even though the erstwhile Maharaja of Jammu & Kashmir acceded his Entire Princely state with India, the Islamic state of Pakistan attacked Kashmir and grabbed almost one third of Kashmir and continues to occupy this chunk (Gilgit-Baltistan, Muzaffarabad etc) even today.

Ever since then, Pakistan continues to foster discontent among Kashmiris, dreaming of the day when Kashmir is united with Islamic state of Pakistan. And what better way to realize this goal than to indoctrinate Kashmiri Muslims into fighting for the greater cause of establishing Islamic Caliphate.

This instantly connects common Kashmiri with the rest of Muslims spread across the world. The Kashmiri Muslim feels that (s)he is not alone and his/her struggle is for the greater Islamic cause. It helps give Islamic sanction to the deaths of Kashmiri. Sheer acts of terror are hailed upon as valour.

For several years mosques and madrasas in Kashmir have been used to preach this line of thought. Terrorists are branded as Militants and those killed in counter-insurgency operations are hailed upon as martyrs who have laid down their lives for the cause of Islamic Caliphate. Islamic endorsement ensures a steady stream of recruits.

The world has come to know of this story when, in recent times, a few of these indoctrinated Kashmiri youth have openly professed their allegiance to fighting for Islamic Caliphate rather than Kashmir’s independence. Zakir Musa, the ousted Hizbul commander operating in Kashmir, minced no words when he said Mujahids like him are fighting only towards establishing Islamic Caliphate and their fight in Kashmir is only a part of this grand design.

Several other Kashmiri terrorists have been circulating messages across social media networks reiterating that their struggle is for Ghazva-e-Hind which aims to spread Islam across Indian subcontinent and establish the Islamic Caliphate.

Jacobsen: How was youth for you? What was your family’s geographic, cultural, linguistic, and religious background?

Sinha: I was born in a middle class family. I was born and brought up at Kanpur, an industrial city around 445 kilometers south east of New Delhi. I am a Hindu and have completed my school from a Catholic Christian School.

The religious beliefs in my family are quite liberal. Despite being devout Hindus, my parents educated me and my brothers at a Christian school.

Growing up in Kanpur I had (and still have) several Muslim and Christian friends apart from Hindus. So we celebrated almost every festival (Diwali, Holi, Eid, Christmas) with equal enthusiasm and fervour.

Despite coming from a family of engineers I took up journalism and writing. My parents never objected to my taking up writing as a profession, rather they always encouraged it.

Jacobsen: Also, you sat down with an ex-terrorist (Sinha, 2017b). What was the experience like for you? Also in hindsight, any further reflection insights on the experience and conversation in general?

Sinh a: Right from the moment he (the ex-terrorist) walked in, I could read it in his eyes that the guy wanted my help very badly. I felt concerned for him. All the time, as he spoke, his eyes were moist with tears.

He felt betrayed and violated. He felt trapped by the same people whom he trusted and revered. He told me categorically that he understood this devious game only after everything was lost for him.

He was desperately in need of a saviour who probably could help him and his family lead a simple and normal life. After the coffee he hugged me tight and whispered “please help me brother” in my ears, even as he thrust a sweet candy on my palm.

After my meeting I spoke about him, wrote his story but have not been able to contact him yet again. Despite my earnest request he did not give his contact details.

In hindsight, I wish he could have given his contact details to me, because I genuinely want to help him.

Jacobsen: What concerns do you have about the progressive movements in the UK and in India?

Sinha: I feel that progressive movements should not be hijacked by any one set of ideologies. The progressive movement, by definition, should challenge the status quo and cull out the prevalent ills from societies and nation states.

Sadly, both in India and in the UK progressive movements seem to have fallen into the trap laid down by Leftist ideologies.

Instead of raising issues that could help in the betterment of societies the Leftists (aka Communists) have taken up the progressive movement and are trying to push their agenda in its garb.

A case in point is the concept of veil (burqa/hijab/ etc) in Islam. Across India and in UK a section of progressives can be seen justifying wearing of burqa by a Muslim woman as her freedom of choice.

But this same group maintains stoic silence when another Muslim woman discards her veil. Instead of defending her in the name of freedom of choice to Not wear the burqa, they castigate her and all the progressives who side with her are branded as Islamophobes. Similarly, other contentious issues like female genital mutilation are never taken up as aggressively as they should.

This nips in the bud all talks of Islamic reform. If the progressive movement has to convert itself into a formidable Movement then it needs to snap ideological knots off all hues and focus only on the issues.

Jacobsen: How do you recommend younger generations become involved in progressive politics and social movements for the improvement of the social conditions of those often neglected by the wider society?

Sinha: The younger generation needs to develop a thinking mind and question all kinds of beliefs till they get satisfactory answers. The connected world has opened new vistas of knowledge for everyone all across the world.

Rather than tying themselves with specific groups or ideologies and blindly aping thought processes of these ideological groups they should inculcate a reasoning mind and question set beliefs and dogmas.

Jacobsen: Any final thoughts or feelings in conclusion?

Sinha: One cannot be a Thinker and Follower at the same time. If one sincerely wants to be a part of the Progressive Movement in their respective country/society then (s)he has to be a “thinker”. Only a thinker can challenge dogmas and initiate discussions, which ultimately leads to a better society.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Vivek.

Sinha: You are welcome.

References

Sinha, V. (2017b, June 1). Coffee with an ex-terrorist in Kashmir. Retrieved from https://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/between-the-lines/coffee-with-an-ex-terrorist-in-kashmir/.

Sinha, V. (2017a, June 6). Yes, Kashmir struggle is a subset of global Islamic terror game. Retrieved from https://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/between-the-lines/yes-kashmir-struggle-is-a-subset-of-global-islamic-terror-game/.

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2022-04-15

Concerns for Safety Among the French Ex-Muslim Community

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/04/24

Waleed Al-Husseini founded the Council of Ex-Muslims of France. He escaped the Palestinian Authority after torture and imprisonment in Palestine to Jordan and then France. He is a friend. Here we talk about secularism in France in 2018, the status of the Council of Ex-Muslims of France, new books, recommended books, and concern for safety.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What do you see as the issue for 2018 and secularism in France?

Waleed Al-Husseini: For me, the most concerning issue in France this time are the things that have been said by the president when he said that the state is secular, but the society is not. This is one of big things. We do not agree here.

Even French secularism cannot accept this because since the beginning, that society also incorporates secularism. If the society does not incorporate secularism, that means you will open the door more for Islamism (political Islam).

There will be more things like hijab and then separated sexes in the society, and make more of a micro-society within the larger society. One that does not integrate. Also, the president went to church and asked for church to be into political and return things back between the republic and church.

But this also is a danger to open the big door for Muslim fundamentalists to come into French political life. These two issues, for me, are the most dangerous things done by president Macron. They are anti-secularism in France.

Jacobsen: It has been a while. What is the status of the Council of Ex-Muslims in France? Is everyone safe? Is the community growing?

Al-Husseini: Yes, we are all safe. I received more threats, but I’m still alive. I founded one conference with ex-Muslims in Norway. It was good to speak about the right of blasphemy and what is going on in Europe and how things going on with isolation and other stuff.

So now in Norway, we got some ex-Muslims from Turkey and Pakistan too. It means we grow to be in most of the European countries and share the ideas because the situation is different from country to country.

Jacobsen: Any new books in the works, coming around the corner?

Al-Husseini: My second book was published in France last year. I wish it would be translated into English because this one is important. I speak about the celebration of Islam radicals in Europe. I explain the strategy of political Islam.

I try to find solutions with explaining things like “Islamophobia” and racism and the using of these definitions to throw at the liberal society, and then using freedom for soft isolation from society.

I would like to publish in English, but still now there no suggestions for translation.

Jacobsen: Can you recommend some books for people interested in learning more about the experiences of nonbelievers and ex-Muslims in particular?

Al-Husseini: The Blasphemer: The Price I Paid for Rejecting Islam, it’s my book. The book of Ayaan Hirsi Ali called Infidel: My Life. Another book by Ibn Warraq entitled Why I Am Not a Muslim. These books are testimony and published in English.

We have others in other languages: French and German but not English.

Jacobsen: As you know, I have done several interviews and articles on and with the ex-Muslim community around the world. What is their primary concern regarding personal safety and getting their messages out to the secular, democratic world, which tends to be the Western world?

Al-Husseini: Yes, sure and thank you for all this work you do to help us reaching our voice for more people; for us, yes, because we face the dangers there, we get killed or arrested without knowing about us.

That is why we try to make our voice heard more, especially for the Western world. Because the Arabic world doesn’t accept us. They do not have the democratic culture. For the Western world, to tell them, there people are leaving their region.

They will understand us because they face the problems of religion and dictators. All these reasons make us send these messages for them. Messages about our personal safety. As you know, this is our big problem. Anyway, it’s become problem for anyone to speak about Islam or Islamism and the reason is clear as to why.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Waleed.

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2022-04-15

This Week in Religion 2018-04-22

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/04/22

“Quiz any atheist on campus about the origin of the phrase, “separation of Church and State.” Do it! Will they tell you that it does not in fact appear anywhere in the Constitution? Perhaps. There are some intelligent students in the Secular Student Alliance. Here is one question that they won’t be able to answer, though: “Why aren’t all people atheists?”

To most atheists, religion is simply a matter of ignorance. They’ll say religious people simply adopt the values and prejudices of their parents without giving them a moment of critical reflection. Whether you’re raised as a Christian or a Muslim is simply a matter of geography.

The new age atheists like Richard Dawkins will say religious people outright reject science and logic. Try telling that to the fifty or so Nobel Prize winners in science from the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences.”

Source: http://www.utdailybeacon.com/opinion/columns/forgotten-freedoms-taking-religion-seriously/article_77e0f992-4668-11e8-9584-7f0937fc3ab4.html.

“IN no other democratic elections does religion play such a consistently crucial and entrenched role as in Malaysia. Just look at the rhetoric spewed forth by the politicians during this 14th general election period.

Pas, traditionally, uses religion to woo voters, often saying that other parties are not “Islamic” enough.

In its national and state manifestos, Pas claims that it is “offering Islamic governance” and “more Islamic elements”, including hudud punishments for violating certain “perceivedly” syariah prescribed practices, such as a spot fine on Muslim women who fail to wear the hijab in public.

In past elections, there would be a war of words between Pas president Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang and former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.”

Source: https://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnists/2018/04/360563/religion-and-ge14.

“Barbara Bush, who died Tuesday in Houston, always seemed a little old-fashioned to me. But it wasn’t until a few days ago, when news broke that the former first lady was dying, at age 92, that she seemed old.

Like other aspects of her persona, Bush had an old-fashioned sort of religious faith.

It wasn’t the old-time religion of gospel revivals, but rather the old-line faith of her Episcopal Church.”

Source: https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2018/04/20/commentary-barbara-bushs-old-fashioned-religion/.

“The relentlessness of the moral and spiritual tacking by the seventeenth century Puritan writer, John Bunyan, in his memoir, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, is nothing short of dizzying. Bunyan wrote this autobiographical work during his twelve year stay in the Bedfordshire jail. (It was during this imprisonment that Bunyan also began work on his best known book, Pilgrim’s Progress.) As a Puritan non-conformist, Bunyan’s preaching technically violated laws at that time aimed at insuring the preeminence of the Church of England. The authorities’ zeal for enforcing such laws increased considerably with the Restoration of King Charles II in 1660, when Bunyan was prosecuted. For so steadfast and devoted a prisoner of religiously-informed conscience, though, the spiritual life Bunyan portrays in Grace Abounding seems unexpectedly wobbly.”

Source: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/why-religion-is-natural-and-science-is-not/201804/scrupulosity-the-religious-expression-ocd.

“The University of Malta and the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, from Cambridge, UK, recently held its first Faraday course in Malta on the theme ‘Science and religion – two views or two realities?’.

During the course, held at Mount St Joseph spirituality centre, Mosta, the participants discussed various themes, including ‘Science and religion: clash of worldviews’, ‘Religion, religious practices in Neolithic Malta’, ‘Cosmology and faith’, ‘Faith and reason: the case of the Bible and archaeology’, ‘The genome of man: shaped by the past and editing for the future’, ‘The environmental crisis: ecological, environmentalist and religious convergences and divergences’, ‘The mythical conflict: have science and religion got on better than people think?’, ‘Science and miracles’, ‘I God’, and ‘The Church breathing with two lungs on Homo Technologicus’.”

Source: https://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20180422/education/Faraday-course-on-science-and-religion.677142.

“If you were to go by the stream of psychology and neuroscience books published over the last two decades, you’d think Buddhism is an intricate philosophical system designed by a man with a keen insight for the emergence of psychoanalysis and philosophy some 2,400 years down the road.

Indeed, Buddhism lends itself to emergent sciences in ways no other faith has. In fact, many modern thinkers, including Sam Harris and Stephen Batchelor, question if faith is even necessary to understand Buddhism. The question of faith is one Siddhartha Gotama generally avoided. As Batchelor writes:

Gotama’s dharma opened the door to an emergent civilization rather than the establishment of a “religion.”

In an early instance of transcending tribalism, Buddha opened up his teachings to the entire world; it was not a gender- or race-dependent practice. Monks and nuns were in a co-dependent relationship with the public: the clergy offered spiritual sustenance while commoners provided them with food and money. Anyone could partake in the Three Jewels, either for a lifetime or, in some nations (such as Japan), for a season: dharma, Buddha’s teachings; sangha, the community; and the Buddha. Faith in these three aspects offers ground-floor entry into the Buddhist life.”

Source: http://bigthink.com/21st-century-spirituality/is-buddhism-a-religion.

“As part of an effort to reduce noise in Ghana’s capital, Accra, the environment minister has suggested that the Muslim call to prayer, normally broadcast over loudspeakers across the city, should instead be sent out on WhatsApp. The notion has proved immensely unpopular – not least because it equates the call to prayer with noise pollution. But it also highlights religion’s growing, if sometimes uneasy, reliance on tech.

Contactless collection Catholic and Protestant churches in the UK have begun using contactless card readers for donations and other payments, hoping to make life easier for parishioners who may not be carrying cash. A contactless collection plate is being trialled by the Church of England, but it is being held up because it is feared the technology might slow things down.

The confession app Confession (version 2.1) walks sinners through the business of confession, pings you push notifications when it’s time for your next shriving and includes a handy sin checklist in case you have forgotten what you’ve done wrong. What it doesn’t do is offer absolution. You still need a priest for that.”

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2018/apr/18/religion-technology-apps-muslims-halal-cashless-church-donation.

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2022-04-15

Interview with Mandisa Thomas – Founder, Black Nonbelievers, Inc.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/04/22

Mandisa Thomas is the Founder of Black Nonbelievers, Inc. One of, if not the, largest organization for African-American or black nonbelievers or atheists in America. The organization is intended to give secular fellowship, provide nurturance and support for nonbelievers, encourage a sense of pride in irreligion, and promote charity in the non-religiou community. Here we talk about the recent transition from full-time work to full-time activism for Thomas and building community.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, you recently quit your full-time job to begin full-time activism. Why did you make the switch? How are you making the transition?

Mandisa Thomas: Yes, the reason why is that I founded Black Nonbelievers back in 2011. Due to some changes at my full-time job as well as the request and even demands with the atheist community, requests for me to speak or to participate in various projects (and boards that I serve on), it became clear to me.

I needed to take this activism into a full-time direction. I had already been contemplating this for the past few years while developing the organization. Now, it was the optimum time to take that step. Black Nonbelievers is still a volunteer organization.

I am doing my work with that. In the meantime, I have also created a Patreon link, where people can support my atheism, building content, as well as build content, and possibly a podcast. I am sharing appearances there.

I am sharing any information relevant to patrons and the community.

Jacobsen: Your background does show exposure to Christianity, Black nationalism, and some Islam. How will this be influencing your activism?

Thomas: I think this gives me a unique perspective to the table because of my exposure to religion but not indoctrination. I grew up very progressive, with a progressive mindset. I have a very unorthodox point of view.

I may say things people are thinking, but do not necessarily say. As a black woman who is an atheist, there is the freedom to have those discussions and reach people in a way that will help them personally and the community too.

Jacobsen: Who else, and what other organizations, provide that basis for black and African-American nonbelievers and atheists to build community, focus activism, and find the sense of belonging that they might not have otherwise?

Thomas: I may be biased. But we are the largest black organization within the atheist community, which is providing such an avenue. There are maybe smaller groups in local areas, but, particularly for African-Americans, we are the organization that is doing it.

There is still African American’s Outreach. It provides information. They are a subsidiary of the Center for Inquiry. There is also an avenue through the American Humanist Association, the Black Humanist Alliance. They are primarily an online entity.

Black Nonbelievers provides support online and offline for community building.

Jacobsen: What form does the online and offline community building take? Because I could see many ways that could take place.

Thomas: Absolutely, we host in-person events in the areas where we are located. We hold general meetings. We have potlucks. We have movie nights. We host various in-person events, which are mostly social with some as informative.

We also table at various events. We table at other outdoor festivals as well. We do some of everything that engages. Also, I am the co-host of a quarterly radio show here on FM radio in Atlanta, where we talk about everything atheism-related.

In addition to meeting in person, we do have a media outlet here.

Jacobsen: If you happen to know about any Canadian association or individuals who are leading a similar organization in Canada, can you recommend anyone? Or if people are looking to found a similar local organization in their own community to serve certain needs, how can they take those first steps?

Thomas: Actually, there is a David Ince in Calgary, Alberta. He is part of a Caribbean association. He hosts a podcast called Freethinking Island. He used to be in New York. Now, he is in Canada.

He is looking to reach fellow nonbelievers and atheists up there. I would recommend Black Nonbelievers is a domestic non-profit corporation in the United States. We are a 501(c)3, domestic. Until we get to a point where we are international, I would suggest that meetups are a good place to start for any organizers looking to build that medium for people.

But also, it would be good to look up the rules and regulations of their area to see how they can start a non-profit, can be tax exempt in some way, if that applies to where they live. Then once they have that information, we can point people in the right direction.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Mandisa.

Thomas: Thank you!

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2022-04-15

Interview with Rakshit Sharma – Writer, Conatus News

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/04/21

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What was early life like for you? You have an educational background in Indian history. What is the nature of the progressive political movements in Indian history?

Rakshit Sharma: So far as my early life is concerned, it was that same as it would be for any other person coming from the same age group and class as mine. The only distinction though being my garnered interest in studying religion and an attempt to grasp the questions revolving around the same and God, of course.

I’d say it was also because of the kind of free atmosphere I was given, helped me shape and move through my ideas. No doubt I’ve gone through a radical change. From someone who was a staunch believer to a skeptic.

I was born and brought up in a humble practicing Hindu family, went to a Catholic school and had friends from other communities too. So, I kind of never had a strict atmosphere that could have dictated adherence to a singular truth and perhaps that also was my earliest encounter with dissent.

Now coming to your second part of the question, progressive movements in our political history. It depends what you mean by that. In a sense, our freedom struggle was quite progressive as it embodied great ideals of equality, liberty, justice, and fraternity. Plus, the constitution of our country, which might also call as a manifestation of our struggle and ideals secured this progressive ethos.

Developing a scientific temper is a fundamental duty for us Indians as a matter of fact.

Jacobsen: How does the political trajectory of India look in the past 5 years and look forward? Do things look to be heading in a more progressive or a more conservative direction?

Sharma: Communalism and Casteism aren’t new players so far as Indian politics is concerned. The very inception of free India took place after a bloody partition on communal lines. So, it won’t be wrong to say that India always had this challenge of getting rid of this baggage and push polity in a more inclusive and progressive sphere. But that doesn’t seem to have happened.

Initially, communal forces had a hard time, but things took a turn in the 80’s and the eagerly waiting communal block got the chance it was looking for. In hindsight, they have capitalized quite cleverly upon the socio-political conditions in the decade that also saw the assassination of 2 Indian Prime Ministers.

Since then, it has been an entirely different scene. And to help their cause, economic liberalization was also embraced in 92, thus creating a big middle class, generally consisting of Upper Caste Hindus, who form the target demographic of the BJP, the ruling party.

So far as trajectory is concerned, yes, we’ve lost on what we had been, though quite peculiarly, able to carry through.

That is the trust of religious minorities, Muslims in particular. Communal riots though had been a bitter reality of the Indian experience, and let’s also not forget that more riots have taken place under the Congress’s rule, which today portrays itself as the sole flag bearer of communal harmony, the feeling of alienation is something new.

A perception has taken roots in the psyche of minorities that the present disposition is destined to work to their loss and misery. And now jumping to the other part, whether India will tread a progressive path or otherwise. Truth be said, India is a country of contrasts. Too diverse for any sort of generalization and dynamics here change very fast.

Plus, we have the next general elections around the corner and as it’s imperative for any democracy, let’s hope people take the right step. The rest would be mere speculation. But, yes if it stays on the same path, unfortunately, the picture doesn’t seem to be something that would qualify as nice.

Jacobsen: How does the caste system alongside religion play out in the political scene within India?

Sharma: B.R Ambedkar, the chairman of the drafting committee of the Constitution is said to have remarked that till caste remains a force in the social dynamics, politics isn’t immune to it. This has proved to be quite germane in the post-independence Indian political history.

Political parties across the spectrum, i.e., one way or the other capitalize on the caste factors. Be it open caste-ist agendas, hate speeches to polarise caste groups, special provisions to woo caste groups or even something as tacit as filing candidates that come from dominant caste groups in their constituencies.

Some are open about it and while others opt for the clandestine channels. But the truth is that a social reality as stark as caste is potent enough to decisively influence political processes. Every party has its pet vote bank, and the determinant here is unsurprisingly caste.

The sad state of affairs can be very aptly gauged by this oft-used taunting comment, “In India people don’t cast their vote, they vote their caste.” And as it stands today, nothing much seems to be changing anytime sooner.

Jacobsen: If you could take two figures within Indian political history with positive progressive impact on the political and social scene within the country, who are these two individuals? Why are they crucial to the development of the progressive movement within the Indian political scene?

Sharma: These two leaders, in my humble opinion, would be Jawahar lal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India and Dr. B.R Ambedkar, the chairman of the drafting committee of the constitution. The former commands relevance for his efforts to usher India into the Modern Age through his prudent programme on Higher Education and Industry and the latter for his the remarkable work for the underprivileged sections of the people.

Both apart from being in politics were also men of great intellectual acumen and have numerous masterworks to their credit, which is also an intellectual storehouse for the Indians of the New Age.

So far as Progressive politics in India is concerned, these two have made great contributions. The ideals of Inclusiveness, Secularism, Social Justice, and Equality, were transformed from mere abstractions to spirit because of the genius of these men. Indian political scene thus owes a lot to these two men as regards progressive politics.

Jacobsen: Any final thoughts or feelings in conclusion?

Sharma: India is a country of great diversity and contrasts. Too complex to be generalized. And in its dynamic character, I lay my hopes for a better and more rational India.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Rakshit.

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2022-04-15

Interview with a Member of the Humanist Alliance Philippines International

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/04/20