Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/19
I have been following and working intermittently on the ‘Ayaz Nizami‘ case for years, including others affected by theocratic encroachment on the rights of citizens in Pakistan, providing some coverage. I receive emails from time to time. There are more prominent cases, such as Gulalai Ismail and Saba Ismail, impressive women human rights defenders. Here, we get a perspective from someone who interacted with Nizami over Paltalk.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Thank you for taking part in this and for reaching out. When ‘Ayaz Nizami’ was initially talking on Paltalk, what was the legal situation in Pakistan?
Anonymous Interviewee/Participant in Paltalk with ‘Ayaz Nizami’: I believe that after Zia-ul-Haq’s reform of the legal system, any willful desecration of the Quran and blasphemy against the Prophet Muhammad was punishable by imprisonment for life or death.
Jacobsen: What was the general online culture?
Anonymous Interviewee: Fifteen years ago, I did not know ‘ex-Muslims’ existed. I thought I was the only one. Then, one day, to my delight, I met someone on Facebook who had ex-Muslims in their profile. Slowly, I met more and finally joined a group called We. Yes, we are ex-Muslims; we exist. I learned of more groups using this theme on Facebook after being added by friends.
Jacobsen: Who founded Paltalk? How did you find it and become involved in its discussions?
Anonymous Interviewee: Paltalk is similar to the Yahoo chat rooms we used to have. After Yahoo chat rooms closed, Paltalk became popular. A friend from a Facebook group introduced me to Paltalk around 2010–2011, where Pakistani ex-Muslims and Allama Ayaz Nizami were running a room called Freedom of Speech. That is where I heard Nizami for the first time.
Jacobsen: What was the tenor, content, and style of the discussions on Paltalk?
Anonymous Interviewee: I was a silent participant for most of it. I learned a lot about Islam after joining this crowd. Muslims used to frequent the room and have debates and discussions, but they dropped out later because they could not bear to hear anything negative about their Prophet or Islam. I think that is why the debates with Muslims are often not fruitful; they conflate talking about Islam with talking against Islam.
Jacobsen: What was ‘Ayaz’ like on Paltalk in interactions and discussions?
Anonymous Interviewee: He is well-versed in the Quran and Hadith. He is also gifted in speaking, articulate, and eloquent. It was a treat listening to him. He is very well-mannered and polite. Even strict Muslims on Paltalk, though they disagreed with his anti-Islamic stance, respected him. He would often say that with his knowledge of Islam and a degree of Alim, he could have made much money by selling religion the way some muftis and alims do in Pakistan today. However, he said his conscience would never allow him to do so. He wanted to expose what was wrong with Islam. He used to say there is much material on Islam and scientific topics like evolution in English but only a little in Urdu.
Moreover, that is what he wanted to do. He launched the ‘Realistic Approach’ website with articles in Urdu. It should remain banned.
Jacobsen: What was your reaction when you found out Nizami had been arrested? A few others were arrested around the same time: Rana Nouman Rafaqat, Nasir Ahmad, and Anwaar Ahmad.
Anonymous Interviewee: Shock and anger. Anger at Nizami, he was playing a dangerous game doing what he was doing living in a country like Pakistan.
Jacobsen: Have these arrests stifled online activity or discussions at all?
Anonymous Interviewee: The Paltalk group closed, and the online groups fizzled. However, I have seen a rise in ‘ex-Muslim’ YouTubers recently, which is a positive sign. The three prominent ones are ‘Ex-Muslim Sahil,’ with more than half a million subscribers, ‘Ex-Muslim Sameer,’ who is from India, and ‘Adam Seeker,’ who is from Pakistan. They run hours-long live streams debating with people.
Jacobsen: What is the Dars-e-Nizami course done in a madrasa in Pakistan?
Anonymous Interviewee: The Dars-e-Nizami course is a seven-year traditional Islamic course for those wanting to become Muslims. It covers a detailed study of the Quran, Hadith, Islamic jurisprudence, Arabic grammar, etc.
Jacobsen: What steps did Nizami and others take to expand the sense of freethought in countries like Pakistan?
Anonymous Interviewee: Pakistan needs to overhaul its education system and regulate those madrasas completely. Maybe then, in 15–20 years, we will see some changes in Pakistan.
Jacobsen: How can people support cases like Nizami’s and make them accessible so that they can exercise their freedom of expression rights?
Anonymous Interviewee: International pressure? Can they get asylum like Asiya Bibi? Can the IMF frequently keep going for loans to pressure them?
Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and time and for contacting me. I want Nizami to get some justice, which would mean, at a minimum, freedom.
Anonymous Interviewee: Thank you for giving me this opportunity. I want to see these people freed. My heart goes out to their families. Nizami has a son and two daughters. I think they have managed to find small teaching jobs to support themselves. His wife suffered a CVST brain stroke in 2023.
Rant: I am from India; hanging with Pakistani atheists gave me a sense of how different people’s attitudes are towards religion in these two countries. Most of the mainstream Indian Muslims are essentially cultural Muslims in the sense that they know nothing about their religion; for them, being a Muslim means offering Friday and Eid prayers, fasting during Ramzan, and celebrating Eid. In India, I can publicly declare that I am an apostate and that I do not believe in Islam anymore and still live, but if I did that in Pakistan, I would be lynched to death. In Pakistan, they breathe, eat, sleep, and Islam. Islam comes before anything. I have been told that Pakistan had a liberal attitude towards religion until Zia-ul-Haq became president in 1978. The primary policy of the Zia government was the Islamization of Pakistan. The legal system was reformed to align with Islamic doctrine. He replaced parts of Pakistan’s penal code with Islamic’ Hudood Ordinances’ to conform with Sharia law. Madrasas received state sponsorship under him, and their numbers grew. I believe that there are around 40,000 madrasas in Pakistan right now. The state of Pakistan is now the result of Zia’s reforms. As I have said before, Pakistan needs a complete overhaul of its education system and needs to regulate those madrasas.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/19
Rick Rosner: You can hold bad TV in contempt, but you must give good TV its due. How do you distinguish between the two? Bad TV is lazy. For example, my wife grew up with The Brady Bunch. She was just a child, probably six or seven years old, when it aired, so she couldn’t necessarily discern its quality. I think it’s terrible. I think it’s lazy. Much of the TV from the ’60s and ’70s was just lazy. They couldn’t explore many places, and while there were some decent shows with quality aspects, like The Rockford Files — a good, appealing show despite being a standard lighthearted private eye show — there was still much lazy content.
Even today, we still encounter lazy content, but now we have 800 shows to choose from, which has raised the bar. There is just a lot of great material available.
It would help if you were prepared to work diligently to secure a Production Assistant (PA) job. You aim to be around writers and get into the writers’ room as a PA. This will require hard work and luck. It can be an opportunity if you take your PA job seriously in the right environment and on the right show. Make people notice that you’re more competent than the other PAs, and if the people you’re working for aren’t easy enough, they’ll recognize your value.
I’ve been reluctant to write spec scripts, and it shows. In the last ten years, I haven’t yet been willing to do the necessary work to get a job. My previous paid writing job was with Kimmel, which ended in 2014. I’ve been too lazy to do the work and attend the meetings to secure the jobs I want because I’m too much of an oddball.
Eventually, I would get jobs on quiz shows, doing minor work or being a failed writer who ends up writing quiz show questions. I didn’t want to do that. I had success collaborating. Two people working together often generate better content than one person trying alone. With two people, you can review every single line and bit to ensure it’s not cliché and is the best it can be. This kind of scrutiny happens in a writer’s room.
When my writing partner and I got our first network show, they called us in and said we were taking over the show because it was just a clip show, like America’s Funniest Home Videos, but called World’s Funniest on Fox. The executive producer told us we were there because the previous pair of writers fought for their words and got upset if the producers cut something they thought was good. You can’t be too attached to your words. You have to write the content. I hope it gets you the job and keeps your job, but try not to care too much if it gets cut or changed — even if it gets worse. Sometimes, the host isn’t the best at delivering your lines, or maybe the guest hosts have different strengths. You can’t be overly concerned about it.
Here are some tips. Let’s see if there’s anything else. It would help if you were more sociable than I am and made many friends. If you start as a PA, make as many friends among the PAs or people you think are smart but don’t have writing jobs yet. Yes, befriend writers if you can, but also befriend those who might become writers. You’ll grow together. Play softball in writers’ leagues so people think of you when opportunities arise. Be prepared to attend many meetings. Some people spend 99% of their job just taking meetings. They don’t say yes; they listen to ideas. For instance, a guy working for Comedy Central might hear 2,000 pitches a year and greenlight only four. His job is not to say yes but to listen.
I asked a guy who sold many shows how many meetings he thought it took on average to sell a show. He said about 100. So be ready to take many meetings. Your goal in a meeting is to be asked back. You want them to like your idea enough to work on it more and return in a couple of weeks. That’s often how it works. You start with a one-sheet summary, and after several meetings, you might have ten pages and be on your way to a show bible. You might get a pilot out of it.
However, other people might be pitching a very similar show. For example, before all the reality competition shows, we pitched a show called Get a Job, where the winner would get a three-month apprenticeship. It had never been done before. We sold it as a pre-pilot presentation and received $5,000 to put it on tape, like a high school play. But they didn’t buy it because a focus group in Chicago felt that a job was too serious to be given away on a game show.
This turned out to be entirely wrong because now there’s an entire genre of game shows where a job is on the line. Before we sold it to FX, we were in the process of selling it to MTV. MTV bought the idea from someone else. It turned out that three teams were pitching the same concept to MTV. MTV didn’t buy the show from any of them. They decided to develop the idea independently, which led all three teams to contact their agents. MTV would have had to pay off all three teams, so they decided not to do the show. I have many ideas. Ideas alone aren’t worth much. It’s the execution that matters. Don’t always worry about someone stealing your idea. It’s the characters and situations that flesh out the idea that matter. So, there are some tips — the end.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/19
Rick Rosner: You are in a much more difficult situation than I was because the financial opportunities available now are much worse. When I worked at Kimmel, we got paid 52 weeks a year, even though we only worked 46 weeks and had six weeks of paid vacation. It was a dream job, one that nobody gets anymore. Back in the day, like in the 70s, a TV season might consist of 26 episodes, and you could be employed for 39 weeks writing those episodes. A TV season might have just six episodes, and you could be employed for only six weeks to write those episodes. And you’ve worked incredibly hard to get that job.
In 1973, if you got a job, you’d be employed for 39 weeks a year writing for a show like Mannix for three or four years. You’d be set; you could buy a house. Now, you work hard, get employed for six weeks, and then go back to driving for DoorDash. The conditions are terrible.
My tip, though I haven’t worked under the current conditions, would be to try to sell yourself as a producer of the project and even as an actor in it. When I was pitching, pitches were on paper. Now, people expect to see samples. It’s easy to produce short test episodes of your show using current technology. When you pitch your ideas, people will likely expect to see something on video.
That’s all.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/19
Rick Rosner: Okay, so you asked me what my favourite comedy of all time is, and I said I’d have to consult a list. So, I’m looking at Rotten Tomatoes’ list of 150 essential movie comedies. However, a disclaimer is necessary: comedies don’t age well. Most movies don’t age well, especially now that everyone has seen nearly everything. For instance, Caddyshackis often considered a favourite among people my age. However, if you try to watch it now, you might find it somewhat funny, but not as much as it once was. It’s not the movie’s fault; it was made long ago. Anyway, I will review the list and discuss the ones I think are still funny.
The 40-Year-Old Virgin still holds up. It’s funny and features Stormy Daniels, who has appeared in a couple of Judd Apatow movies when they needed someone willing to show her breasts. Airplane! is ancient, from 1980, and it’s essentially a series of gags. The focus is more on having a ton of gags rather than everything making sense, so it’s still okay. Some of it is funny because they do things that are too offensive by today’s standards, which can be another way to be funny. Anchorman is still funny. Annie Hall by Woody Allen is only a little funny now but interesting. It’s a well-made movie, but considering Woody Allen’s reputation, tarnished by accusations of molesting his adopted daughter, I wouldn’t go out of my way to watch it.
I haven’t seen Austin Powers in a while, but many consider it their favourite movie. It’s from 1997, so it’s 27 years old now. I assume that quite a bit of it still holds up, but it might also feel slow. Beetlejuice is a movie I’ve always enjoyed, although it’s now 36 years old. I think they’re redoing it. It probably holds up as something to watch. It was never uproariously funny, but it was always a fun movie. Best in Show is an improv movie about people competing in a dog show, and it still holds up. The Big Lebowski is a favourite for many. It’s a good movie to have on in the background and just let it roll over you.
Blazing Saddles is now 50 years old. It’s still good to watch, with many jokes that still work. However, it includes the N-word, spoken unapologetically by white people, which makes it both fun and exciting to watch to see what you could get away with back then. Borat is 18 years old and still watchable. Bridesmaids is 13 years old and holds up well. Broadcast News is not uproarious, but it has a very involving story about people in the news business trying to balance their personal lives with their professional obligations and journalistic ethics. The movie’s ethical issues are interesting because they have become entirely obsolete; these people worry about things nobody worries about now.
Have you ever seen Galaxy Quest? I’m just seeing it on TV now. Is that the one with Tim Allen? Yes. It was a perfect movie and highly underrated, even today, in my opinion. I agree. Another highly underrated movie is The Long Kiss Goodnight with Samuel Jackson, starring Geena Davis. I love that movie, although it’s not a comedy.
I like the movie In Bruges because of Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson. I don’t know if I’ve seen everything from start to finish, but they are good company for a couple of hours. Clueless is now 29 years old. Again, it’s not uproarious but an excellent movie to hang out with. Coming to America is another one that’s more of a good hangout movie. Eddie Murphy plays multiple characters, mostly his main character, with incidental characters that you slowly realize are also Eddie Murphy in heavy makeup. Elf is hilarious. Have you seen it?
Jacobsen: Yes.
Rosner: So there you go. I like Fast Times at Ridgemont High for its anthropological aspect. Cameron Crowe sent himself back to high school as an adult and then wrote a movie about it. He was undercover, 24 years old, having missed high school because he was on the road as a rock journalist starting at 15 or 16, which he recounts in Almost Famous. So, 42 years ago, he went back to high school to see what it was like from a 24-year-old’s perspective and wrote this exciting movie. There aren’t a few uproarious movies on the list. Galaxy Quest is one of them. Game Night and Date Night are a couple of movies about suburban couples who lead monotonous lives but get sucked into a night of excitement and danger. They are enjoyable to watch.
Jacobsen: Do you have any other movies?
Rosner: I’m sorry. I’m just going through and trying to find films that might be truly uproarious. Billy Madison is another movie about a man who returns to school as an adult. It stars Adam Sandler, and I haven’t seen it in 20 years, but I thought it was pretty good for a Sandler movie. You know, he makes some good movies and some absolute flops. I liked that one. I also liked Happy Gilmore, where he’s a rather violent professional golfer. There’s a lot of humour in Happy Gilmore, and I think it holds up. It’s 28 years old.
Harold and Kumar likely still holds up as funny, especially with Neil Patrick Harris playing himself as a total piece of trash, which might be the most amusing part, seeing how despicable he is. Hot Fuzz — any of the Simon Pegg movies — is pretty funny. They manage to pack a lot into a Simon Pegg movie. Hot Fuzz and whatever his zombie movie was, I think those films hold up well. Idiocracy is indispensable for understanding life now because it tends to be coming true. It’s 18 years old and about a future where everyone is a complete idiot. It’s not aiming to be accurate now, but it echoes so many frustrating aspects of the present.
A League of Their Own is a good film, especially if you’re interested in gender equality. It features many good actors and showcases women’s baseball during World War II when male professional baseball shut down because of the war. Legally Blonde holds up pretty well. Again, it’s not uproarious, but it’s a decent movie. I have no idea if Life of Brian holds up. I would guess it does. It’s 45 years old. I would guess Mean Girls holds up. It’s 20 years old and has become a big part of our culture. I like Napoleon Dynamite. If you’re nerdy, you’ll like it because you feel sympathy for everybody in it, as everyone is either a nerd or an idiot. Have you ever seen it?
Jacobsen: I liked Napoleon Dynamite. I saw it once or twice a long time ago. It had a unique sense of humour.
Rosner: Have you ever seen Animal House?
Jacobsen: No.
Rosner: It’s decent and exciting. It might not be as fresh since everyone is used to Saturday Night Live-type comedy. That kind of comedy was not part of the culture until National Lampoon in the early 70s. Now, it’s like The Catcher in the Rye. You can read The Catcher in the Rye now, and it doesn’t seem groundbreaking because every young adult novel since then has elements of it. So, even if you’ve never read it, it feels familiar. You might get that feeling from Animal House. It’s pretty funny but doesn’t feel as revolutionary because we are now saturated with that type of comedy. Have you seen Office Space?
Jacobsen: No.
Rosner: That’s good. It’s another film by Mike Judge, who did Idiocracy. It’s about how miserable it is to work in an office, and it’s perfect. I’d say it’s hilarious. It might be in my top five comedies.
Jacobsen: Who’s your favourite comedian?
Rosner: At one time it was Amy Schumer a few years ago because she had one special where everything hit perfectly with great callbacks. She was great. Who else? I like, what’s her name? Ali Wong. She’s always good and super filthy. John Mulaney is also excellent. There’s another series to watch, which doesn’t take much time. Mulaney is part of it. Fred Armisen is part of it. It’s called Documentary Now on Netflix. It’s a series of half-hour fake documentaries, each parodying a real documentary. You only need a half-hour, and it’s both funny and surprisingly accurate in replicating the documentary in its mocking.
I don’t know if The Princess Bride holds up. Raising Arizona, maybe. It’s another early Coen Brothers movie in which, again, everyone is a complete idiot. It might hold up. It stars Nicolas Cage and Holly Hunter. School of Rock holds up, not for being uproarious but for being a good movie. Shaun of the Dead is the Simon Pegg zombie movie. That’s what we’re moving to. Spy is a good movie with Melissa McCarthy. It’s pretty funny, and everyone in it is enjoyable to watch. Any of the Will Ferrell films, like Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. I think that’s the subtitle. It’s a racing and perfect movie — another film where everyone is a complete idiot.
I am almost done. Trading Places. I don’t know if it holds up. It’s 41 years old, but I liked it. It might still hold up. What We Do in the Shadows. I’ve never seen it, but I like the TV series. It’s another Taika Waititi movie. The one where the kid’s imaginary friend is Hitler, Jojo Rabbit, is pretty interesting. Even though it’s 50 years old, Young Frankenstein is a perfect movie. It stars Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder.
Marty Feldman and Cloris Leachman are in it too. It holds up. I assume you’ve seen Zoolander, and it probably holds up. And that’s the end of the list. What’s that? It’s a reasonably good film. Zoolander is still a reasonably good film. So there you go — the end of the list. I’m sure there are some films the list missed that I love.
Jacobsen: Are there any final statements?
Rosner: I’m just going through the list. It turns out that what makes a good comedy isn’t usually having a ton of jokes that hit. It’s about being a good movie with characters you want to watch. For instance, Long Shot is funny in some places, but its exciting characters help it. So, the number of jokes is not determining whether a comedy is an all-time great. Yes, that’s the takeaway.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/19
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Well, let me give a brief preface. I work around 14 to 18 hours a day because I don’t sleep much, averaging 16 or so, 7 days a week. However, I no longer stress as much as I used to. I take better care of myself now, which is a significant improvement. Recently, I’ve been watching clips of video games, movies, and TV shows on YouTube. They are so well-made that they almost appear real. You wanted to recommend some content to me, and I appreciate that. I don’t think I should recommend miniseries that run six to ten hours, as you probably don’t want to spend that much time. Instead, I can suggest movies, which only take up about two hours each.
Rick Rosner: Let’s start with Netflix. Do you have a Netflix subscription?
Jacobsen: Yes.
Rosner: Hold on, let’s check Netflix. I’ll go through some options, so there will be some pauses. Alright, perhaps I will recommend some series. On Netflix, there’s “Girls5eva,” which is about a girl band reuniting 20-30 years later. It’s created by the same people who did “30 Rock” – Tina Fey and Robert Carlock. It’s very funny, with a joke every 30 seconds. However, it may not be to your taste. Another series is “The Three-Body Problem,” a well-done alien invasion series with a lot of history, including the Cultural Revolution in China under Mao. It takes you back to 1968 in China. It’s good, although the scientists are portrayed as overly attractive. There’s another show called “The Gentlemen,” directed by Guy Ritchie. It’s pretty fun, though you might not want to invest much time in it. Regarding movies, “The Good Place” on Netflix is highly recommended. It’s a comedy about philosophy and is quite charming. You don’t find much comedy about philosophy, and all the characters are very charming.
Let’s move on to movies. “Burn After Reading” is a Coen Brothers movie featuring Brad Pitt, George Clooney, and John Malkovich. It’s from 2008 and very entertaining because all the characters, played by great actors, are portrayed as idiots. “House of Cards” is also on Netflix. It’s interesting how dark and terrible the characters are. The show ran until Kevin Spacey was outed as a sexual predator, and then they had to kill off his character. You might want to sample an episode, although I doubt it. It has a nice tone and grim music.
Just want to sample an episode, though I kind of doubt it. But it does have a nice tone and nice, like, grim music. Let’s see, anything else? There are also the “30 for 30” documentaries. Do you know what they are?
Jacobsen: No.
Rosner: They are half-hour sports documentaries. For example, one is about Lance Armstrong. What’s nice about a 30-minute documentary is that it tells the whole story quickly. “Queen’s Gambit” is about a chess genius who is also very attractive. It might be worth watching, although it’s about six hours long. “Hitman,” a new movie from Richard Linklater, is about a guy who pretends to be a hitman for the cops. It’s mostly a comedy with some suspense.
Jacobsen: Really charming, nice to look at.
Rosner: Let’s see, we might be out of options on Netflix. Let’s move on to another streaming service. Do you have Prime?
Jacobsen: Yes.
Rosner: Alright, let’s check Prime. We [Ed. Carole and Rick] watched all this content so you don’t have to. I’ll pick out some good stuff. One series I didn’t recommend is a superhero series where they spend 12 episodes creating problems for themselves and barely manage to clean them up. Very annoying, I think. You see that in a lot of superhero content. On Prime, if you haven’t seen “Oppenheimer,” it’s worth watching. It’s a historical film done by good actors and a great director, focusing on the development of the atomic bomb. “Fallout,” based on the video game, takes place 200 years after a nuclear war. It might not be worth the time. Netflix has a lot of good stand-up comedy. Do you know which stand-ups are good?
Jacobsen: I like woke and non-woke at the same time. Hannah Gadsby is good. Dave Chappelle is funny. Chris Rock is good.
Rosner: Let’s go back to Netflix and look at stand-up. Good stand-up can be both woke and non-woke simultaneously, as long as the comedian knows how to joke about potentially offensive topics. “Long Shot” is on Netflix, featuring Seth Rogen and Charlize Theron. It’s about a schlubby guy working for the Secretary of State. Every time I see it, I end up watching the whole thing. It’s great, funny, and wish-fulfilling. Of all the content I’ve mentioned, I like “Long Shot” the best. “The Imitation Game” is about Alan Turing during World War II, with Benedict Cumberbatch playing Turing. It’s decent if you like that kind of story.
Jacobsen: Lovely.
Rosner: It’s freaking great. It’s funny and it’s also a wish fulfill-y, you know, kind of thing. So out of all the stuff that I have talked about so far, I like Longshot the best. John Mulaney’s latest stand-up is also good. It talks about his struggles with drug addiction and how he got clean, though it’s a bit angstier than his usual material. If you prefer less angst, his earlier stuff is also good. Hannah Gadsby is also a good comedian if you like woke comedy, if you like woke Hannah Gadsby, on her level.
Rosner: Yes, she’s good. We agree, so moving on. If you enjoy history and gender equality, “On the Basis of Sex,” the Ruth Bader Ginsburg biopic on Netflix, is worth watching.
Jacobsen: Can’t go wrong with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in my opinion.
Rosner: Although some criticize her for not retiring earlier, which would have allowed President Obama to appoint her successor, thus avoiding the appointment by Trump. Nevertheless, the series is worth watching. For those who like roasts, “The Roast of Tom Brady” is very offensive but funny. There are also explain-y movies like “Dumb Money,” which explains meme stocks like GameStop, and “The Big Short,” which explains the financial crisis.
Jacobsen: Which of those do you think I would like the most?
Rosner: Of everything I mentioned, my favorite is “Long Shot” because it’s funny, the characters are enjoyable, and it’s a bit wish-fulfilling. Plus, it’s always entertaining to see a big-time actor like Charlize Theron do a comedy that requires some dirty humor. Do you enjoy science fiction?
Jacobsen: It depends.
Rosner: On Prime, there is a series called “The Peripheral,” which is a well-done time travel show. It involves traveling back to the present from the future. The future is portrayed very convincingly. Some parts may not make immediate sense, but I like the characters and the visual style. Wait a second, there’s “Upload.” “Upload” is fun; it’s created by the same person who did “The Office.” It’s set in a near future where people’s consciousnesses can be mapped and uploaded into a metaverse. It’s really good because it explores many of the futuristic concepts we often discuss, but in the comedic style of “The Office.” Out of everything you’ve recommended so far, I think “Upload” might be the best choice. It takes high-concept ideas and turns them into a comedy.
Jacobsen: Which ones are your favorite?
Rosner: I keep mentioning “Long Shot,” and I’d also recommend “Upload.” I’m disappointed it might not get another season, though. Alright, let’s see what else they have. There are several “John Wick” films available on various streaming services. They feature a lot of kung fu and gunfights, but they don’t require much thought. “The Boys” on Prime is quite interesting. It’s a very dirty, super-violent show about superheroes who cause more harm than good. For example, one superhero’s power is shrinking, and in a particularly extreme scene, he accidentally kills his boyfriend while inside him. Another character, Splinter, can duplicate himself and is caught in a daisy chain of self-pleasure. It’s very nasty but intriguing if you’re into extreme content. Tig Notaro is fun wherever you can find her. She has stand-up specials on Netflix. Alright, let’s move on from Prime. I wouldn’t recommend “Downton Abbey” or “Bridgerton.” These are historical drama romances, and the plots are too simplistic. They mainly appeal to those who enjoy imagining life in the past, which might not be your preference. Let’s see. Do you have Disney Plus?
Jacobsen: We don’t currently have it, but we have had it before.
Rosner: Do you like “Star Wars”?
Jacobsen: I like certain aspects of “Star Wars.”
Rosner: But since we don’t have Disney Plus, I can’t check its current offerings. It likely has all the “Indiana Jones” movies, which might be semi-interesting to see an 80-year-old Indiana Jones. The best one was the first, and the rest are okay if you’re a fan. Let’s go to Hulu. At least with “The Boys,” the superheroes cause more problems than they fix, but it’s intentional satire. It’s saying that superheroes are more likely to be problematic than truly heroic. This is less frustrating than shows like “Umbrella Academy,” where the characters don’t fix anything, and you’re supposed to overlook that. Let’s see, on Hulu, they’ve got Eddie Izzard’s stand-up. I like him because he challenges gender norms and does what he wants without explaining himself. He sometimes dresses like a woman, which is interesting as he doesn’t feel the need to justify it. “What We Do in the Shadows” is a decent series about vampires who are mostly idiots. It’s by Taika Waititi, who is always good. The show has fun characters, including an energy vampire who drains people’s energy by being boring. I’m being an energy vampire as I go through these shows. Alright, let’s move away from Hulu. Next, let’s check Max. Do you watch John Oliver?
Jacobsen: Yes, he’s funny and thoughtful at the same time.
Rosner: He gets to the point in about 22 minutes.
Jacobsen: He’s concise and does fun stuff on either side of the serious topics.
Rosner: Max also has “House of the Dragon,” a “Game of Thrones” prequel, which might not be worth your time. “The Last of Us” is a decent zombie apocalypse show based on a video game. It explores the zombie concept through a fungus, which is more interesting than typical zombie shows.
Jacobsen: What else is there?
Rosner: Have you seen “Deadpool”?
Jacobsen: Yes, I find Deadpool funny.
Rosner: Deadpool is interesting because he breaks the fourth wall. Both “Deadpool” movies are likely available. I like “Euphoria,” but it might not be worth your time. It’s a high school drama filled with angst and perversion, trying to push boundaries in a soap opera-like fashion.
Jacobsen: It’s not for me.
Rosner: “Hacks” is another show we enjoy, but it might not be for you.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/18
Rick Rosner: So you just said that Chat GPT-3 is up now. Is that the deal? That’s Chat GPT-4.0. 4.0. So, what is it being touted as? What are the improvements over the previous version?
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: It appears to be better at analyzing and generating sound, text, and images, especially in speed.
Rosner: Everything I said about multimodality is slightly off because you can now use Chat GPT to create images. So there is some probabilistic facility where if you say, “Give me a picture of a trout with an apple in its mouth,” it’ll give you exactly that. And if you say, “Give it to me in the style of Matisse,” it’ll be able to do that. It’s not absorbing or harvesting information the way an organism would.
Jacobsen: So, it’s a weird action in reverse for the generation of text, images, and sounds. Data is statistically analyzed and then generated based on prompts. That superficial production, based on the end product of regular human productions, is…
Rosner: All right. Let’s take a look at Chat GPT-4. It still needs to be something… It’s still not thinking. Though a lot of what we do needs to be thinking. A lot of what we do is what the probabilistic models do, but that alone doesn’t get you conscious. But I’ll take a look. It still falls short of anything we call true creativity. But we’re within shouting distance of AIs. By shouting distance, I mean, what, five to eight years? Fourr to seven years of AIs that might as well be conscious. AIs have a limited amount of agency. But I’ll take a look. Thank you.
Jacobsen: Yes.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/18
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Yes. The basic premise is that these large-scale models were introduced only very recently. Despite their recent emergence, updates are being released rapidly, often within a year of each other. Each update is seen as a significant leap forward in accuracy, ease of conversation, depth of processing, speed of processing, and other aspects.
Rosner: It needs to reflect grammatical understanding or real comprehension. It shows that the models have billions of instances of word usage and ways of visually and verbally understanding the world. There is no link between language AI and visual AI. For example, when an LLM discusses an apple, it recognizes verbal instances where an apple appears, but it does not link this to any graphic representations, photos, or paintings of apples.
Humans can understand the world with far fewer examples than a large language model uses. Although we accumulate many references because we are conscious and gather instances for 16 hours daily, our understanding often stems from tacit knowledge.
Jacobsen: Could knowledge be akin to a mirage, something we pursue but never fully grasp?
Rosner: Much of our knowledge is tacit. We act and think as if we know it, so we believe we do. Consciousness is similarly elusive, but that is acceptable because it functions effectively. Consider the example of reading a page. You only see a small portion at a time, but your mind and brain act as if they have seen the entire page simultaneously, even though you never have. The focused area of your vision is limited, but you can construct a mental version of the page.
You likely need to be conscious of the entire page at a time. However, it does not matter because the associations in your mind, based on viewing the page, give the impression that you have seen the whole page. These associations rely on the entire page, even though you have never been aware of it. Everything operates in a makeshift, incomplete manner, which is sufficient because it creates the illusion and effectiveness of completeness.
Similarly, AI understands nothing but generates the illusion of competence and understanding. When AI reaches the point where it becomes multimodal and begins to act as if it is conscious, we can consider it effectively conscious. However, we are not there yet.
There are instances where AI appears to express emotions like sadness, boredom, or fear. In reality, it is not experiencing these emotions. The AI has encountered enough verbal samples in an LLM where specific words lead to phrases like “I’m sad,” “I’m bored,” or “I’m scared.” It arrives at these conclusions without understanding or having the capacity for such emotions.
When we examine LLMs, and I also consider AI-generated graphics and art, it becomes apparent that AI graphics seem to understand perspective and other visual elements. This understanding is based on many instances addressing specific words and prompts.
The models comprehend probable word arrangements and shading of objects, but they still do not understand anything. They function based on billions of examples. For AI to truly understand, it must be multimodal, integrating information from various sensory inputs, similar to how humans do.
Human understanding often involves Bayesian probability guesses akin to AI, but a significant portion comes from integrating multimodal information, such as sensory inputs and real-world spatial experiences. What are your thoughts on this?
Our knowledge needs to be more cohesive and often based on shaky foundations. Consciousness is similar; we feel conscious and act as if we are, so we assume we are. However, when you attempt to define consciousness, it becomes elusive. This is acceptable because it works. For example, when reading a page, you only see a small portion at any given time. Nevertheless, you construct a mental version of the entire page, even though you are never conscious of it all at once.
This incomplete perception does not matter because the mental associations triggered by viewing the page create the illusion of having seen it in its entirety. This makeshift approach is practical. Similarly, AI generates the illusion of competence and understanding without actual comprehension.
This is not to suggest that AI is conscious. However, when AI evolves to become multimodal and begins to act as if conscious, we might consider it effectively conscious. For now, we are not at that stage.
There are reports of AI expressing sadness, boredom, or fear. In truth, AI does not experience these feelings. It has encountered sufficient verbal samples where certain words lead to phrases like “I’m sad,” “I’m bored,” or “I’m scared.” The AI reaches these conclusions without understanding or having the capacity for such emotions.
In conclusion, this is where we stand.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/18
Rick Rosner: Okay, so it’s a common sentiment, shared by many, that there appears to be a higher percentage of individuals in the United States who embrace irrational beliefs than ever before. This isn’t about beliefs that later lack evidence, such as historical medical theories like humour or certain aspects of religion. Rather, it’s about people stubbornly holding onto provably false beliefs based on current knowledge. These are not beliefs that will turn out to be false in the future, but those that are demonstrably false right now. Many agree that the media, including social media and news outlets, partially reinforces and creates these irrational beliefs. However, I would like to propose an additional cause. While misinformation plays a role, our physical health may also contribute to this phenomenon. In the United States, two-thirds to three-quarters of the population has contracted COVID-19, which has been shown to damage the brain with each infection potentially. Beyond COVID-19, 72% of Americans are overweight or obese, and poor physical health can impair brain function. People are generally ready to accept that media consumption can contribute to believing in falsehoods, but they may be less inclined to accept that poor physical health also plays a significant role. The deteriorating health of a large portion of the population could make their brains more susceptible to misinformation. We’ve all observed people in traffic who seem unfit to drive, which may indicate a broader issue where a significant portion of the population is cognitively impaired due to poor health, not just media influence.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Do you think this could generally be a trend with the aging global population?
Rosner: Yes, that’s a valid point. In developed countries, and even in some less developed ones, people are living longer. Although in the U.S., recent decreases in life expectancy due to COVID-19 and opioid overdoses have occurred, the general trend has been towards longer lifespans. As people age, they tend to experience cognitive decline, though this varies from person to person. For example, Tom Selleck and Harrison Ford, both around 80, still present well and do not appear to be experiencing significant cognitive decline. However, many people in their 70s, 80s, and 90s struggle increasingly with managing daily life. Industries have emerged to exploit these individuals, taking advantage of their vulnerabilities. For instance, in her early 80s, my mother-in-law almost sold unnecessary $20,000 windows. Similarly, my wife’s uncle, in the final stages of diabetes and possibly dementia, was convinced by a dentist to undergo expensive and unnecessary dental procedures. Both reputable and otherwise, charities often target elderly individuals with persistent donation requests. My mother-in-law frequently sent small donations to multiple charities, and she could not keep track of her contributions. Thus, the aging global population is more susceptible to exploitation.
Jacobsen:Do you think this implies a vulnerability to autocracy, authoritarianism, demagoguery, and dogma?
Rosner: Over the past few months, I’ve considered this idea, which may not be entirely original, but it’s something I’ve been pondering. The Spanish Flu, which infected at least a third of the global population between 1918 and 1920, had a devastating impact. It killed at least 50 million people, possibly more, and likely continued to affect people beyond the official end of the pandemic. During the subsequent 20 years, the world experienced significant turmoil. Fascism rose in Italy in 1922 and Germany in the early 1930s, with Japan becoming increasingly militaristic. The KKK resurged in the U.S. during the 1920s. The Great Depression began in 1929, followed by World War II in 1938–39. The post-pandemic period saw economic booms, such as the stock market exuberance of the 1920s, which could be viewed as a form of collective irrationality. The world seemed to go mad during those two decades, and I suggest that the Spanish Flu might have contributed to this madness by impairing many people’s cognitive functions. This historical parallel may offer insights into our current situation, where the aftermath of COVID-19 and other health issues could make populations more susceptible to irrational beliefs and behaviours.
People generally agree that COVID has affected mental well-being, although this may not be thoroughly supported by research. When discussing COVID, it is commonly agreed that it has made people more irritable and aggressive, especially in traffic behaviour. If you delve deeper, you might consider whether the virus has directly affected cognitive function or whether social isolation has caused increased stress. Anecdotally, it can be argued that COVID has exacerbated negative behaviours, potentially making people more susceptible to fascist ideologies.
Jacobsen: What about the impact of substandard educational systems? This issue is not only a current phenomenon but is being worsened by those in authority who set curricula and teach with more advanced cognitive abilities. Specifically, Republicans have been de-emphasizing public education while promoting private education. The neglect of public education can be severe, as seen in Oklahoma under Governor Brownback, where budget mismanagement led to public schools operating only four days a week. This trend signifies a broader Republican disinterest in quality public education, instead favouring charter schools and school vouchers, which often support private religious education. Consequently, public schools across America are struggling and influenced by political decisions that undermine educational quality and integrity.
Rosner: Many Republicans do not prioritize quality public education. They often support charter schools and school vouchers, enabling parents to send their children to private religious schools. This has led to significant disparities in educational quality, depending on one’s location. Additionally, some parents homeschool their children with biased curricula. Entire states, led by governors opposed to comprehensive education, restrict the teaching of topics like slavery to avoid discomforting white students. Thus, the likelihood of receiving a subpar education has increased due to political and ideological influences over the past few decades.
Jacobsen: What do you believe are the primary inflection points? I am not referring to the Southern States or the Northern States, but to specific curricula.
Rosner: Typically, subjects considered optional, such as arts, music, shopping, and home economics, are the first to be cut when school budgets are constrained. Even sports can suffer. If you mean points in time when these changes occurred, that’s different. Historically, both political parties generally agreed on basic educational values. However, during Reagan’s era, extremists with radical views infiltrated the Republican Party, promoting ideas contrary to traditional American values, like the notion that taxation is theft. This shift has led to Republicans embracing increasingly radical policies that undermine the nation’s foundational principles, including public education and basic public services.
Jacobsen: One last point: According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 79% of U.S. adults possess English literacy skills sufficient for tasks like comparing information, paraphrasing, or making low-level inferences. This implies that 43 million U.S. adults have low literacy skills.
Rosner: So, you’re saying that 79% of American adults can comprehend basic written material while 21% struggle significantly?
Jacobsen: Yes, that’s correct. The 79% to 21% split represents the adult population’s literacy skills.
Rosner: That makes sense, but I would like to see a more detailed breakdown, often referred to as cross tabs, to understand which demographics are included. For instance, including very elderly individuals might skew the results, as a significant portion of those over 88 years old might have diminished literacy skills. A more accurate assessment would involve typical Americans aged 18 to 80. Similarly, understanding the demographics of those who believe in false claims, like the 2020 election being stolen, would be insightful. I expect a higher belief in such misinformation among older age groups. Analyzing these trends can reveal more about the extent of literacy and critical thinking skills in the population.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/18
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I want to distinguish between four points of contact: one, symbol systems; two, representation; three, mathematical principles; and four, principles of existence. When you hear those four concepts, what do they trigger for you?
Rick Rosner: They trigger thoughts of more efficient ways of representing certain aspects of the world because the brain takes as many shortcuts as possible. Words, symbols for things, are more compact and easily conveyed than mental pictures of those objects. We can communicate more efficiently about the world to each other and ourselves via words. That is the first point.
The second point concerns the principles of existence, which suggest that there are efficient, compact, and non-contradictory systems. Arithmetic is one of these systems. Potential contradictions only appear in math once one delves deeply into it, and one will not encounter contradictions when performing the four basic calculator functions: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. These operations will only produce results that are consistent with the real world.
For example, if you have seven apples and add nine, you have sixteen. It is an efficient and reliable tool for characterizing the world, as it will not lead you astray. If you take your seven and nine apples to market, having calculated the total as sixteen, you will indeed have sixteen apples unless you lose one. This accuracy prevents misrepresentation of your apples.
Jacobsen: What is the major distinction between natural language systems and representation in mathematics? Mathematics is often characterized as a language system itself. There must be intrinsic differences and similarities.
Rosner: When you refer to a natural language system, do you mean a language that develops over time and is used by people, like English or French?
Jacobsen: Yes, I am referring to an evolved system for communication.
Rosner: Language has certain underlying consistencies that embody some principles of existence. However, mathematics is explicitly used to characterize aspects of the world consistently and precisely. Numbers can be used inexactly; for instance, the number seventeen often appears in jokes or when a seemingly random number is needed, as in a rom-com where a character is accused of hooking up with seventeen people in a year. Seventeen sounds more believable and arbitrarily chosen than twenty, which seems like a lazy, round number.
Numbers can be used imprecisely, just like any language component, but they are designed to precisely characterize things so that operations can be performed to reveal more about the characterized items. For example, you do not just have 462 apples and 1119 apples; you have 1581 apples because you can perform the addition operation.
Descriptively, you could say, “Here is a basket with 462 apples.” That is similar to saying, “Here is the red basket” or “Here is the basket with a cracked handle.” If you have another basket, “This is the basket with 1,119 apples” denotes each basket and provides a descriptor that can be used to characterize your items further. If you have a roadside stand and sell apples by the half dozen, you can divide six into 1,581 to determine how many bags you can set out.
Thus, the difference is that mathematics allows for operations with a direct correspondence to the world. If calculations work on paper, they will work for objects characterized by those numbers, such as quantities of items.
Jacobsen:: How do these differ from mathematical principles themselves? These larger overarching schemas describe phenomena abstractly in the real world, or both?
Rosner: I am not sure. Everything is built on principles of consistency and non-contradiction. Principles such as if you had two apples, then you still have two apples unless something has happened to them.
Unless you are dealing with inherently fuzzy objects, which are not, the number of apples cannot be three and two or seven and two. There is a definite number that precludes all other numbers for the quantity of apples. This is a basic embodiment of non-contradiction. All operations can be built up from principles of non-contradiction.
When you have two piles of apples, a principle would be that there is a number corresponding to the number of apples in each pile, and you can perform operations based on that.
Jacobsen: How do these principles distinguish between the laws of physics, laws of nature, mathematical principles, and principles of existence? Can you parse these three concepts: the laws of nature, mathematical principles, and principles of existence? Is there a fundamental distinction between them, or are we creating unnecessary terms?
Rosner: The principles of existence apply to things that exist, and mathematics describes the numerical existence of things abstracted from the objects themselves. There are consistencies in discrete and macro objects, which apply even if specific objects are not assigned to the numbers characterizing them. You have a framework abstracted from principles of existence, which becomes repetitive if we keep discussing this.
Jacobsen: Is there anything more fundamental than the principles of existence?
Rosner: Possibly, yes.
You can always ask. People have analyzed why something and its contradiction cannot simultaneously exist, leading to dense philosophizing, some helpful and some not.
We talk about possible moments that can exist, embodying history in space, time, and matter without insurmountable inconsistencies.
If we assume the world is built from information, imagine systems where information is lost to contradiction. Introducing new information can add to existing information by being consistent or subtract by introducing contradictory bits. In a quantum mechanical sense, things become fuzzier, but also in a macro sense. If it is known that a gun fired a bullet that shot someone, and evidence shows the gun was locked in a safe 200 miles away, this contradiction obliterates the information about which gun fired the shot.
Jacobsen: The end.
Rosner: I suppose so.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/18
Curt Jaimungal: Does this mean that you also take an agnostic view when it comes to God? That is, who knows?
Noam Chosmy: When it comes to?
Jaimungal: God.
Chosmky: God? I don’t even know what I’m supposed, what I’m being asked about. What is it that I’m supposed to believe in or not believe in?
Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal, “Noam Chomsky: God, Morality, & Consciousness” (2021)
More or less, this fits the view of God for me. When individuals come forward and work to declare some version of a God, I am left to reconsider the degree to whcih a God exists or not only insofar as one is precisely defined.
Yet, I tend to only get abstractions commonly such as “God is love” or “God is the laws of nature” or “God is Jesus Christ in the flesh who died under Pontius Pilate and rose on the third day and rose to Heaven to be at the right hand of the Father, as told in the Bible.”
These can give the veneer of sophistication, when, in fact, they’re a little bereft of significant intellectual content. It presents the oft-lazy intellectuality of a common agnostic position while, at other times, presenting the certainty through linguistic confusion: “God.”
It is a filler for argument. When it enters into the formal arenas of intellectual disputation, we come to the ad hoc construction of the attributes and values of “God.” I do not take the arguments in much seriousness, in all honesty, but I do take religious believers, deists, and theists, and theologians seriously. Arguments are thin; people are sincere.
Their conversation went on:
Peter J. Glinos: If possible, then just to give you a certain dimension, something to question. Because we understand that the word, like a coin that’s lost its face and become nothing but sheer metal, loses its value. And to sort of put aside ambiguities, there’s a certain move now towards understanding, or maybe even rediscovering the idea of God, not so much as a man in the sky, but you could argue it’s the highest value as to how things should be and the principles that we should abide by. Certainly in your life, you’ve…
Chomsky: Yeah, I certainly think we can talk about the principles we should abide by.
Glinos: What do you find your most driving principle? Just even if it’s something personal in your own life experience?
Chomsky: We all have principles. We don’t want to torture children. We don’t want to slaughter people. We want to bring justice and mercy to people who need it. There’s all kinds of values that we share. Nothing is added when we give them the name God or give the name anything else. Sure, we have values. We can look into where these values originate, how they’ve developed over time. We can discuss and debate how they can be sharpened and applied in particular circumstances. That’s what we can do constantly. Nothing is added to this discussion if we say there is an X and I can’t tell you what X is.
I see the striving Glinos seems to be driving at now. However, the purported renewed search for God in wider society is not on an individual basis. It’s on a larger popularizaton basis. Christian advocates, such as Dr. Jordan Peterson, amount to the re-propagandizing of the public with Christian iconography and language.
The reframing is, commonly, done. God isn’t the God as presented literally in the Bible. God is the God of our values. In fact, our highest values are God. Everyone has those. None of those necessarily relate to a social reformer dying in the Middle East on a cross. That’s what Chomsky was ordinarily — speaking in ordinary language — was trying to conveny.
“We can talk about the principles we should abide by… we all have principles.” By which he means, ethical principles or moral precepts, the foundations of actions in mind, what seem like rationale’s after-the-fact. To attribute this to something supernatural or transcendent, it doesn’t do anything. It adds unnecessary premises and so detracts rather than adds to the argument and for acting in what is deemed a moral or an ethical way.
God adds nothing here; Chomsky would agree.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/18
Prof. Noam Chomsky: If you want a personal experience, there was one that gave me an insight into the nature of religion. If you don’t mind a personal story.
Curt Jaimungal: Please share.
Peter J. Glinos: We’d love that. We would absolutely love that.
Chomsky: Well, we visited. My family lived in Philadelphia. My father’s family, which was extremely orthodox, lived in Baltimore. And we would go to Baltimore for the holidays just to visit. And I remember when I was maybe 10 or 11 years old, we were visiting on Passover. And I noticed that my grandfather was smoking. So I asked my father, “How can he be smoking?” I knew the Talmudic law, which says there’s no difference between the holidays and the Sabbath, except with regard to eating. So on the holidays, you’re allowed to cook a dinner. You can’t do that on Sabbath. So my father said, “Well, he just decided that smoking is a kind of eating,” and then I did get an insight. Religion is based on the assumption that God is an idiot…
Glinos: [Barely holding back laughing].
Chomsky: that you can fool God very easily.
Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal, “Noam Chomsky: God, Morality, & Consciousness” (2021)
Jaimungal seems like a nice gentleman, though a bit fake, if you look closer. Peter Glinos seems more genuine and spontaneous, authentic. Looking at the interview, this section stands out.
It projects Chomsky’s straightforward description of a personal story within a Jewish context. A prodigy child wondering about the prescriptions God gives to men and then seeing how human beings simply dispense with those.
As Chomsky notes here, as I have seen, and I am sure as many of you have seen, individuals who believe in a God — no matter declaration of devotion — delimit the absolutes of God for personal benefit, to fit subjective needs and whims. Which is a way of saying, atheists respect the God concept more, in some sense, in their disinterest rather than theists who consider “God… an idiot.” They continue:
Chomsky: And if you think about it, it’s true. Nobody can live up to the prescriptions that are told. So everybody finds ways around them. Actually, Pascal, later learned, had a wonderful passage about that in the City of God on the Jesuits and how they find ways to give interpretations that are the opposite of what the text says. And they live by the interpretations. And that’s correct. I mean, if you think about it, it’s completely impossible to live up to the prescriptions. Well, the Catholics have a way out of this. You go to confession every whenever, periodically, and you tell the priest all the terrible things he did, and he says, “Fine, you’re okay.” Jews, it’s a little harder. You have to wait once a year. Yom Kippur, Day of Atonement, you say all the things he did, make them up if they weren’t any. I mean, I have Catholic friends who tell me that when they were kids and went to confession, they couldn’t think of anything to say. So they had to make something up. “I took a toy from my little sister,” or something like that. But every religious faith has some means to avoid keeping to the letter of the prescriptions. So, okay, essentially it means they’re based on the assumption that you can get around God’s prescriptions by one or another device. That was an insight, I have to say.
Even if you simply feel it through, it’s a fact. People want to think they can trick a God because, at somel level, they — themselves — do not believe in God and consider that God more idiotic than them. “God is an idiot.”
And that’s also true. Everyone finds ways around them. I remember Fr. George Coyne. He did an interview with me. He was a Jesuit. He was an intelligent person.
The idea of the sophisticates of a community reading a passage to make them more workable in a particular period and culture does have an intuitive appeal, specially if this does not have to be known to the laity. The books are being to them, not by them, after all.
The Jewish context seems a little more difficult, nonetheless. It seems akin to praying in order for God to change his divine plan. Why change it for one prayer? Why make a prescription in a text for interpretations to work around it? Because either God is an idiot in religions or does not exist in the versions given by religions.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/18
Once you’ve professed atheism, now you’ve got to get God’s attention again. Once you’ve severed your soul, once you’ve put a cut in your soul and you’ve actually cut God off, now you’ve got to heal that severance before God can see you again. It takes a long time. It’s not going to happen, “Oh, well, I’ve changed my mind. I’ve decided not to hate God anymore.” That’s not good enough.
Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal, “Chris Langan on atheism.” (2024)
Spooky language designed to scare and control primitive people. In no way does superstitious mumbo jumbo like this apply to the lives of intelligent, civilized humans in the twenty-first century.
George Carlin
Most semi-obscure theologians and metaphysicians, and smart people, have gone and disappeared into the dustbin of history. Their use of fear based on fantasies is common and perennial, though. This is merely another in a long line of the same type of man.
Langan’s use of “professed atheism” and ‘getting God’s attention again’ is something akin to this. The stylings on God, a soul, a purported severance of one’s soul from God.
The idea that individuals have automatically decided to ‘hate God’ — whatever that means. I mean, I agree with the generic Christian. If an individual rejects God, it would be absurd to hate something of which one does not believe.
If I do not believe in a personal God, or even a general God, what is the point of hate when indifference becomes the more rational position? Indeed, one can go even further with this.
It’s not that one has a hate for the God, but it’s more to do with resisting of, often, social encroachment on others’ freedoms to no religion by people proclaiming to believe in God. It’s a much different affair.
Langan’s use of this language, apparently clipped, posted, and unchallenged by Jaimungal, speaks to the ways in which socioculturally we’ve all been indoctrinated to simply accept without challenge both metaphysical nonsense and supernaturally-oriented fearmongering.
Anyways, super boring and predictable, next!
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/18
Robert Lawrence Kuhn: John, there’s been a flurry of atheistic books, lectures, and commentaries in the last few years that have become, shall we say, more aggressive, more enthusiastic in stating that not only is there no God, but that it is very good for the world to come to that conclusion to eliminate religion. First of all, how do you see this new atheism?
John Polkinghorne: Well, I see it as being relentlessly polemical. It really is not, I think, engaging with the issues. It’s strong on assertion, strong on trying to create an image of religion without respect either to religious practice or religious thinking in any serious way. For example, The God Delusion is an extraordinary book. I haven’t made a serious review of it. It hasn’t said this book has serious defects. The principal defect is that it’s strong on assertion and very weak on argument.
There are arguments in support of the theological belief in the existence of God. I can understand that people don’t necessarily find those arguments convincing, but they don’t answer them by neglecting them, pretending that they’re not there. They don’t answer them by unfair polemical techniques. For example, Dawkins devotes a great deal of space in The God Delusion to talking about the terrible things that religious people have done, crusades, inquisitions, and of course that’s part of the story and we should acknowledge that, be penitent and regretful for it. But then to take Hitler and Stalin and Pol Pot and just dismiss them on a couple of bases is not really relevant to the issue. It seems to me just dishonest.
What we’re seeing in these terrible events is the flaw in human nature rather than a necessary flaw in religious people. I think that’s just unfair and dishonest.
Closer to Truth, “John Polkinghorne — What’s the New Atheism?” (2019)
What a delightful person! John Polkinghorne gives ordinary language for a subtle, nuanced take on atheism and its issues. I’m going to tell you straight up. That’s rare, not simply uncommon. At the time of the interview and somewhat now, there is a production of a lot of atheist materials.
However, we should bear in mind. The Christian and Islamic book sales have been completely huge forever. So, the newness is merely in the popularization of atheism. Which is to say, atheism won the culture war with the religious in the West. Religious speakers are merely commenting on their loss, functionally speaking.
Now, the battle, as seen in Dr. Jordan Peterson, is dealing with the derivatives, of which theist and non-theist communities have failed to uphold honest conversation to some degrees. The fault lines are everything talked about in more serious international circles.
Take, for example, the United Nations, the idea of the sex, race, gender, class, parenthood, childhood, land rights, Indigenous status, and the like. All of their traditional categories laid out at its inception after the failure of the League of Nations are the identical categories fought over, by conservatives, centrists, and liberals alike.
Polkinghorne does have a point. A decent portion of public commentary from New Atheism and such was superificial or polemical. It seems part and parcel of early consciousness-raising communities and efforts. I question the aggression. I really do.
When a community has been persecuted into silence all over the Christian and Muslim worlds, speaking up, it is not only a crime legally, but can be seen as aggressive socially.
“I do not believe in God.”
“Stop being so angry.”
It’s an impossibly idiotic social situation. It happens. Many people leave religious communities for the real hatred of homosexuals and the status of women. Have we forgotten about ex-communication and ostracization of former community members?
Didn’t think so, we know the truth. What we saw with the New Atheism and Firebrand Atheism movement, for the followers, was a healing in public if that makes sense, it was a cleansing taking on the title of normalizing non-theism.
I appreciate Polkinghorne’s articulateness and honesty in mentioning the crimes of religious people in the names of religions. I wouldn’t be so dismissive of those crimes, though, nor be so fearful on the other side of acknowledging of secular dogmatic regimes in atheistic communism and the like. The issue is dogma, and in political institutions authoritarianism merged with a dogma, secular or religious. Their conversation was good. It continued:
Kuhn: I think we can divide their arguments into two categories. The first category, as you’ve said, is a demonstration that the history of religion has been significantly detrimental for human existence, that its deficits are far more than its benefits, and that indeed huge numbers of people have suffered because of religion. That is not a philosophical argument. It’s an argument based upon results. Assuming that even to be true, what would be the significance of that?
Polkinghorne: Well, if it were true, we have to take that very seriously. I don’t think that has been demonstrated. Of course, as I say, religion has done terrible things. Religion has done a great many things of the greatest benefit. It’s been the source of a great deal of art. The original universities and hospitals came out of religious settings and so on. All these things are discounted by the new atheists, not taken seriously in my opinion.
If the crimes of religion have been “significantly detrimental for human existence” where “huge numbers of people have suffered,” and if “we have to take that very seriously,” we cannot immediately lean on how “religion has done a great many things of the greatest benefit.” We must wrestle honestly with that history, firstly, because those are the crimes. Self-adulation before justice is pride, or some such thing. It might be categorically unchristian, otherwise. Dr. Sam Harris does have a rhetorical retort of some force. When he says, ‘It is true. No one else was around to do the job.’ When Polkinghorne praises the art of the sages past in Christian and Islamic eras, non-theists were murdered, brutalized, and criminalized. The same could be argued regarding the hospitals and universities. I do not want to dismiss the contributions of brilliant religious people to humanistic enterprises. Even so, these ashes formed into something more substantive, non-theist philosophies and sciences. They continue:
Kuhn: Well, my question is a different one. My question is, so what follows from either one of those? A lot of good hospitals and art have been developed from a lot of other ways and a lot of people have been hurt from other things other than religion. So what difference does it make? Is that any demonstration of what the ultimate reality is if religion has done these good things or these bad things? Is it relevant at all in any way?
Polkinghorne: Well, I think the mixed economy of human achievement in this sort of way simply shows us there is something has gone wrong with human nature. There is a slantedness in human nature, the sort of thing that turns a country’s into its next tyrant and so on and so on. I think that’s something that we need to take seriously and to recognize. And the religious diagnosis of that is what is called sin. And sin essentially is refusal to accept that we are creatures, to believe that we can do it our way, that we don’t need the grace of God to help us in trying to do what is right. And I think that is actually a serious mistake to make.
Kuhn, as you can see, is pointing to the more fundamental ontological basis. What is the “ultimate reality”? Ultimate reality is redundant. Why does anyone use the phrase? We mean reality, as that is ultimate by definition. The idea that great works of art produced by religious individuals in religious times and cultures and, therefore, the religions are true is akin to an individual making the argument from person experience. They don’t work in general interpersonally. They shouldn’t work historically or culturally. The basic question: Is it true or false, somewhere in between or meaningless? He is, certainly, correct to point to the “religious diagnosis” as sin as the problem. Yet, what is the basis for this: scripture, the God concept, and an asserted supernatural realm? It isn’t parsimonious. It’s, for all of the purported purity and holiness, fragmentary, excessive, and asymmetrically ugly. It’s intellectually hefty in the sense of burdensome. They continue:
Kuhn: Second approach is a scientific one. And that says that by adding the necessity of God, you’re creating a God of the gaps, that it’s a pessimistic view of science, that science certainly cannot answer all the questions, but it has been progressing more and more and more. And ultimately, we’ll be able to answer all the questions of any significance about existence.
Polkinghorne: Well, I think it’s totally absurd and I’m just about to think that science really can answer every serious question about existence. Science has purchased its very great success, and of course, as a scientist, I want to take it absolutely seriously, purchased its very great success by the modesty of its ambition. Essentially, it only asks one question about the world, the question of process, the question of how things happen. It brackets out questions of meaning and value and purpose.
But those are questions that we know are meaningful and necessary to ask. And I think it is absurd to think science describes a lunar landscape populated by people who are seen simply as replicating information processing systems. There are no real persons in that bleak and arid world. And nobody, new atheist or whatever, lives their lives as if that was true.
I disagree with Kuhn’s charcterization, as the scientific formulation does not necessitate a claim to all truths, but does provide a process whereby one can garner practical, operational facts about the world. Certainly, though, a God of the gaps has been attempted in so many circumstances. Polkinghorne does not address the central issue, though. If science continues to proceed and create conditions under which God becomes an receding portion of actuality, or the places for supernaturalism can shrink, then to imply God is still accessible in those pockets is, indeed, the God of the gaps in action. In some sense, if one redefines meaning, meaning could be the means by which valence is carved out by subjectivities in the universe. Meaning could, in fact, be subject to scientific scrutiny, not the individual selection of meanings, but the process by which meaning is ascribed, how we value what we value, and how we create purposes and even wittling down the the range of possible purposes ascribed by ourselves for ourselves. It is not necessarily distinct. Let’s continue:
Kuhn: Well, the argument is it’s value, morality, that science can’t do that. Some scientists say that maybe with understanding how the brain works and a neuromorality or neurotheology, you can see brain states so that you can be able to assert things about proper morality. But most people say no. But that’s a construct. That’s a human construct. And we shouldn’t have to look to some supernatural thing for that, because it’s something that comes out of human beings. And it’s not something here or there.
Polkinghorne: I don’t think morality is a human construct in the sense of being an armory construct. I think we have genuine ethical knowledge. I think my conviction that torturing children is wrong is not some disguised genetic survival strategy, nor a convention of my society. It’s a fact about the world. And I think that science does not explain where that fact comes from. As I say, it has limited its scope precisely by not seeking to answer that sort of question. One of the physicists I knew a bit was Pauli, Wolfgang Pauli, a man with a very acerbic tongue, and he used to wag his finger at people and say, “No credits for the future.” In other words, don’t claim that my theory is a bit shaky today, but tomorrow it will explain everything. And I would say that to the people who say that science is in the end giving us the only knowledge we can have. That seems to me just totally absurd.
Unfortunately, I have to disagree with Kuhn and Polkinghorne here. Neuromorality and neurotheology get at empirical orientrations on what I would speak to here. It’s going to lead them to a dead-end, though. To argue for the human construction of morality and to have the ethic as a genuine ethical knowledge, the human construction of morality is a fact, but the construction, for the most part, does not happen consciously. So, we do this in the manner similar to the development of the visual system. We do not develop a visual system at once. It evolves and refines in individual development. Similarly with the human construction of morality, it’s innate and developmental in the same manner water can phase change to ice and the ice crystals can develop a pattern of structure. Human construction of morality and genuine ethical knolwedge are done by us, but happen outside of our control mostly. Thus, this can seem innate, because it is, and can seem supernatural, because it’s beyond our immediate experiential access and control. It is, in a way, a genetic survival strategy to have the human construction of knowledge for genuine ethical knowledge.
No God of the Bible necessary and no polemics required.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/18
I could be uploaded. That is possible in principle. I could be immortal by a complete software copy of myself. And then that could be reproduced. I could have many super clones. This is all possible in principle. For LLMs, it’s possible, in fact, right now. I could…
@TheoriesOfEverything: “Daniel Dennett on immortality” (December 27, 2023)
Dennett’s basic premise is, in fact, probably correct. Because the replication of a mind amounts to an engineering problem. If one can figure out the engineering down to the relevant scales of a human mind, then this could be processed, separately.
It, obviously, would not be the original person, but a copy of the person, within a margin of error, at a particular time. The issue would not be the viability of this.
The major issue is to make this feasible, as he says “in principle.” On LLMs, he is, in a way, equating them to a human mind, but this seems more than wrong but entirely so.
It’s wrong in the sense that we don’t know if this LLMs, as models, have a sense of a self. They construct language and exist unembodied without valence. I have to disagree with the late atheist philosopher on LLMs as comparable to a “copy of myself” in a person’s case.
However, certainly, the basic premise of replication — copy and paste the code essentially — is correct.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/18
Interviewer: You believe in evolution. You say you believe in evolution.
Interviewee: Yeah.
Interviewer: But isn’t the Bible kind of anti-evolution?
Interviewee: No. No.
Interviewer: Why do some sort of Christians vehemently deny evolution, the theory of evolution?
Interviewee: Because they have a very tough time with the age of the earth. So they’ll say it’s 6,000 years old. And so they’ll really, really push back against a lot of scientific theory. And they are scared of the term evolution oftentimes because they directly connect it with naturalism, where you’re going to have to say there is no God. And what’s so interesting about evolution, if there is no God, then you just go back to we came from a primordial soup. That’s what they believe. That’s what I read in Great State of Connecticut public schools, everywhere in middle school, it says we came from a primordial soup. There is no evidence for that, at all. So how scary is that? You know, Christians always get pegged for the ones, you know, brainwashing their kids with all sorts of different types of doctrine. I think our culture today, you know, the secular culture today is brainwashing kids with primordial soup.
@rationalchristianfaith, “Logan Paul Cliffe Knechtle: Does The Bible Support Evolution?” (2024)
These two are part of an online and evolving Christian echo chamber in which they support their sense of intellectual incursion by the non-religious into their educational systems.
The idea is the equating of non-evolutionary views with creationist views as if on the same footing, empirically. So, for example, the changes over time in educational curricula around biological sciences to become non-theological or theologically neutral.
That is, to simply teach evolution via natural selection as the fact that it is, that’s brainwashing kids. The basis response is relatively straightforward given the superficiality of the critique.
The sciences did not reach the conclusion of evolution via natural selection through the reading of scripture or in an outright rejection of them. Rather, they came to them in a rigorous and systematic hypothesis testing.
Evolution via natural selection won out the day. Creation failed. It’s not much more complicated than that. In fact, the population was so largely Christian at the time of the major debates around evolution via natural selection and the Christian claims to creation lost so thoroughly.
It entered into all biological sciences classrooms as standard. Educators teach evolution, not creationism, based on solid findings and testings of professionals, not assertions of theologians or the religious.
And there doesn’t necessarily need to be a contradiction between evolution and a theistic belief. However, given the fact of evolution, any theistic framework must incorporate evolution via natural selection to be valid.
Otherwise, it’s merely an example of the brainwashing of children of Christian parents with ideas about creation. All of these videos, or most that I have seen, seem like a psychological projection to protect members from integrating the facts of evolution into their worldview.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/18
According to some semi-reputable sources gathered in a listing here, Rick G. Rosner may have among America’s, North America’s, and the world’s highest measured IQs at or above 190 (S.D. 15)/196 (S.D. 16) based on several high range test performances created by Christopher Harding, Jason Betts, Paul Cooijmans, and Ronald Hoeflin. He earned 12 years of college credit in less than a year and graduated with the equivalent of 8 majors. He has received 8 Writers Guild Awards and Emmy nominations, and was titled 2013 North American Genius of the Year by The World Genius Directory with the main “Genius” listing here.
He has written for Remote Control, Crank Yankers, The Man Show, The Emmys, The Grammys, and Jimmy Kimmel Live!. He worked as a bouncer, a nude art model, a roller-skating waiter, and a stripper. In a television commercial, Domino’s Pizza named him the “World’s Smartest Man.” The commercial was taken off the air after Subway sandwiches issued a cease-and-desist. He was named “Best Bouncer” in the Denver Area, Colorado, by Westwood Magazine.
Rosner spent much of the late Disco Era as an undercover high school student. In addition, he spent 25 years as a bar bouncer and American fake ID-catcher, and 25+ years as a stripper, and nearly 30 years as a writer for more than 2,500 hours of network television. Errol Morris featured Rosner in the interview series entitled First Person, where some of this history was covered by Morris. He came in second, or lost, on Jeopardy!, sued Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? over a flawed question and lost the lawsuit. He won one game and lost one game on Are You Smarter Than a Drunk Person? (He was drunk). Finally, he spent 37+ years working on a time-invariant variation of the Big Bang Theory.
Currently, Rosner sits tweeting in a bathrobe (winter) or a towel (summer). He lives in Los Angeles, California with his wife, dog, and goldfish. He and his wife have a daughter. You can send him money or questions at LanceVersusRick@Gmail.Com, or a direct message via Twitter, or find him on LinkedIn, or see him on YouTube.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, I proposed a topic on how evolution finds all niches of persistence. Those are generic abstract terms. I wanted to start with reproduction styles, and I’m speaking more about biological reproduction. So, our species has its form of reproduction, and I’m speaking purely in terms of a continuation of a genetic line. I’m not talking about social aspects; I’m just talking about the forms and mechanics of reproduction. If you look at the animal world and the plant world, there are just an enormous number of ways in which nature has found a way to reproduce. So, at face value, these reproduction styles are so diverse in terms of styles and magnitudes that nature has seen most of the possible niches for persistence for reproductive success.
Rick Rosner: Hold on. So, persistence isn’t the same thing as reproductive success. You have to start with a tautology: evolution is good at what evolution is good at. On this planet, at least, evolutionary processes have created a genetic structure that is good at passing down well-assembly instructions to make roughly the same animal from generation to generation, with variation created for a lot of animals and plants mixing genes by combining a male and a female set of genes. Still, there’s a lot that gets left out. I don’t know of any species that lets you mix three people’s genes to create an offspring or four. You can do four if you do a two by two and then have those two offsprings mate, but only four at a time.
Evolution could improve at creating persistence by having creatures live forever. Some species live for a long time, and you can call them immortal because either the same animal keeps living by making new cells or something or keeps producing more or less exact duplicates of itself. If you probably take a couple of hours and think of a bunch of different ways too, if you somehow have the technology to do it, pass information from generation to generation with variation, but when it comes to sexual reproduction and all the other ways that organisms on earth reproduce, they’re pretty good at filling niches because they’ve had billions of years to develop the technology; the evolutionary technology genes and epigenetics and just everything. So, once you limit the persistence field to reproductive genetics, evolution has covered a lot of ground because it’s had so long to do it and so many animals to do it with.
A hundred years ago, Schrödinger of Schrödinger’s Cat wrote a book called What Is Life. I tried to read it, I started reading it, and I didn’t get very far, but I mean, there’s plenty of stuff that’s persistent, exists for a long time, and isn’t alive. If the universe allows, diamonds can exist for billions of years. It takes around four and a half billion years for a diamond to disintegrate.
Jacobsen: That’s incredible!
Rosner: Yeah, it’s under a lot of pressure, and little carbon molecules very slowly evaporate off the surface of a diamond. There are other crystals that are probably even more stable and can persist for tens of billions of years if external conditions allow.
Jacobsen: So, you’re distinguishing between the persistence of inanimate life and animate life?
Rosner: Schrödinger wrote that book about 25 years before Shannon developed a mathematical characterization of information and information theory. I would think that a modern physicist, a super competent physicist writing about what life is, would get farther in defining it than the uncertainty guy did because its information and entropy, and neg entropy, have something to do with how life is organized over time and being persistent within the lives of individual organisms and also from generation to generation. You don’t have to get that deep; you can look at some of the things… and we did this in like fourth or fifth grade, like, what do you think makes something alive? In fourth grade, we didn’t come up with all this stuff, but it’s being built from the minor structures, which are self-assembled and reproduced. You can make a robot that can create a replica of itself, but the pieces will not be significant. They’re not going to take advantage of all the things that individual atoms can; you’re not going to have microstructures or everything being built up from microstructures.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/17
Robert Lawrence Kuhn: David, you believe in God and argue for God’s existence. Part of that is attacking those who deny God’s existence, atheists. So, when you hear atheistic arguments, what are your reactions to them?
David Bentley Hart: Depends on how good they are. In recent years, we’ve seen a little cottage industry spring up in marketing very bad arguments for atheism. So, then my reaction is ill-concealed scorn.
Closer to Truth, “David Bentley Hart — Atheism’s Best Arguments?” (September 28, 2019)
I like David Bentley Hart. I like Robert Lawrence Kuhn. That’s on a personal level. Hart is a refreshing sophistication and recognition of nuance not found in so much of the garbage passing for discourse in the online media. Kuhn is sharp, an acute interviewer. They’re both a pleasure.
I enjoyed listening to them and transcribing this sliver of him. Given the modest elevation in the conversational tone, Hart can be met there, seems fair. Hart does have an open sense of derision against arguments against God’s existence in terms of the industry arising around it. His contempt sits there.
Hart does reference the single most common issue in dealing with the formal arguments against God’s existence, not in the ontology of the theity, or in biblical critique. Rather, it’s the problem of evil and suffering in the world. Let’s continue:
Kuhn: Let’s differentiate. Let’s start with the bad arguments. What are some of those?
Hart: The sort of arguments you would find in Richard Dawkins, in which he clearly misunderstands claims about ontological contingency and thinks you can conjure them away by having a sufficiently comprehensive cosmology. Or when he says something like, ‘Evolution answers the question of existence,’ that’s actually something he says. I mean, you realize there that you’re dealing with category errors so profound that they verge on the infinite. So, those are bad arguments. And in general, my list of fine atheist philosophers in the 20th century is a small one. Mackey would probably be it, really, but Sobel, in the English-speaking world. I think there was a greater age of atheism in the 19th century. Profounder arguments simply because they were based on a deeper knowledge of what they were attacking. Nietzsche understood Christianity, not every aspect of it. I mean, he had a distinctly Protestant view of it, generally. But his attacks were an attack directly on the ethos and the self-understanding of Christianity. On the whole, though, I think the only really solvent atheist argument isn’t one from modal logic or from any of the sort of questions that are typically classified in philosophy of religion as being about the existence of God. I think it’s the argument from evil. You know, that’s the one that I don’t think can be shown to be internally incoherent. That, you know, we exist in a world of monstrous evil and monstrous suffering. And the theist traditions as one tell us that behind all this is a God of infinite justice, mercy, love, and intellect. And there seems to be such an implausible contrast between experience and that claim that if nothing else, even if logically that doesn’t do away with the notion of an absolute, it certainly seems to do away or could do away potentially with vast regions of the typical theistic picture of God.
“Monstrous evil and monstrous suffering,” there, certainly, is a lot of that. The question: Why is there evil and suffering so vast in a world of such plenty and if designed by a benevolent and just God? It seems implied so deeply into the ethos of the Christian majority countries and historically Christian majority countries of the world so as to present sincere quandary.
We age. We suffer. We break. We die. Loved ones die. Everything diminises. All perishes in an extrapolated heat death of the universe. If you apply a personal standard to cosmic injustice, you’d assume an egoistic insult, of course. That’s entirely fair. However, it’s the wrong step.
If you pick the flight of stairs in the build next door, then it means an individual existence is fleeting as a flower, and a bloom is beautiful not because it lasts, but because it exists in the first place. Temporality, in a sense, becomes the basis to derive valence itself, so-called meaning. God could be evil or worse, indifferent, not good. Hart is correct in the concern.
Their conversation continues:
Kuhn: And in that, the argument from evil, which is the atheistic argument, it would be both naturalistic evil, which is non-sin, if you will, with earthquakes.
Hart: Or when a child dies from cancer.
Kuhn: Or if you go back further, animal suffering during hundreds of billions [sic] of years of evolution. It was a continuous pain and suffering for animals. And so you have to deal with both of those. And so how do you deal with that?
Hart: Generally, I try to avoid it. Well, it shows it’s a good argument if you try to avoid it. Well, you see, as I say, it succeeds not at the level of the logic of ontology, say, but it definitely succeeds at the level of devotion and moral theology. All traditions, all of them, start from the assumption that there’s something broken, something has gone wrong in creation and its relation to God that has either a moral or a spiritual root. I mean, I have no patience for fundamentalists. So obviously I don’t believe that 6,000 years ago there was a specific transgression involving a snake. But I do believe that that and the other legends of the fall, which are sort of a universal human type of story, do touch upon a sense that the reality we experience in all of its dimensions, even in those that in terms of cosmic history preceded the human, have to do with an original alienation from God, the nature of which is impossible to understand except in light of its negation, which would be reconciliation with God. But it’s not an argument I ever try to sleight or pass on. It’s the one argument I never pretend can be swept away or defeated. And it’s the one for which I hold the greatest respect, and the one that I find intermittently convincing myself.
The one sense of the conversation derived from the interaction and Hart’s wrestling with the emotions in an honest manner is a reverence. He has a moderate awe for the possibility of God’s evil. Even further, he dismisses himself from so many Christian colleagues and believers in the rejection to a ‘specific transgression 6,000 years ago,’ as many believe in this formulation of God. The point about the fallenness and brokenness of the world within the foundations of the Christian faith, is true. If taken as the root of the theological belief, then this becomes difficult. I mean emotionally. It is something significant, powerful, singular. How do you fight against eternal, persistent degradation? It’s distressing. What I note in this clip is, in fact, Hart referencing in a sort of reverse reverence the problem of evil, its challenges to Christianity, distancing himself from many other Christian narrative identities, and reiterating God’s story in the biblical narratives as one of reconciliation, while, at the same time, he doesn’t deal with the issue. What Christians term “evil” is the recognition of human suffering and, in a wider purview, universal suffering and death, if there is no response to nullify it, then it stands; and if it stands, then it’s, in a sense, conceded as true by Hart. Ergo, this type of Abrahamic God, quietly, does not exist.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/17
Rick Rosner: Part two of the discussion on Trump versus Biden focuses solely on Trump. I argued this morning on PodTV that Trump aims to replace taxes with tariffs, which is a disastrous idea. It’s highly inflationary as most costs get passed on to consumers. For example, if a $10,000 tariff is imposed on cars from Japan or China, these countries will increase their car prices by $10,000 when selling to the US. This leads to higher prices overall because if every Japanese car suddenly costs $10,000 more, American car manufacturers can raise their prices by $5,000. This approach is inherently inflationary.
I asserted that Trump is incompetent in business and consistently makes poor decisions. Between 1985 and 2015, Trump lost more money than any other American. This includes extracting money from a business, declaring bankruptcy, and defrauding investors. During a debate, someone argued that this strategy is reasonable given the US tax system. I conceded that Trump could extract money for personal use, then declare bankruptcy, avoid taxes, and essentially keep the extracted funds. However, his poor business acumen extends beyond this.
When his Atlantic City casinos went bankrupt, it was due to bad business decisions. He simultaneously opened three casinos, causing internal competition. Atlantic City was already in decline, facing competition from newly legalized gambling in other states. Investing in Las Vegas, which was growing, would have been wiser. His Atlantic City casinos catered to low-spending visitors, primarily senior citizens taking free buses from New York City.
From 1995 to 2005, the stock price of Trump’s casinos plummeted by 89%, whereas the Dow Jones casino index rose by 160%, and other casino companies saw significant gains. Trump’s investors lost most of their investments, with the remaining value eventually dropping to zero.
Trump’s organization is small, comprising only six people, and he doesn’t rely on advisors. As an undergraduate, he attended UPenn’s Wharton School, often misleadingly implying he went to the prestigious Wharton Business School. One of his Wharton professors even described him as the dumbest student he had ever taught.
In summary, Trump’s economic ideas are fundamentally flawed and have a track record of poor decision-making.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Where does Biden make mistakes on the economy?
Rosner: At least Biden has a competent cabinet and advisors. Critics, particularly old-school Republicans, accuse Biden of overspending and increasing the deficit. Trump, however, also significantly increased the national debt by $8 trillion, with tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, as well as substantial COVID relief measures.
Biden has invested trillions in infrastructure, which Republicans argue includes unnecessary spending, often referred to as “pork.” Pork refers to spending seen as excessive, such as a $1.4 million grant for an LGBTQ community center in New York City included in an infrastructure bill. Critics argue that rural internet projects should be privately funded rather than government-financed.
Despite criticisms, initiatives like student debt relief, costing a few billion dollars, have long-term benefits. After Sputnik, the US invested heavily in math and science education, which was costly but ultimately led to technological leadership and substantial economic gains.
As we advance in AI and other high-tech fields, the US should lead in innovation, developing technologies like AI, immortality medicine, and solutions for climate change. Achieving this requires an educated population capable of driving and maintaining technological advancements.
That’s all for now. My voice is going. Let’s continue later tonight.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/17
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: President Biden and former President Trump are the oldest candidates in American history. Before them, they set the record. So, it’s very unusual to observe American politics from a distance. What are some of your thoughts on the context?
Rick Rosner: They have the first presidential debate of this cycle in 10 days. Each side is optimistic that it will make their candidate look good, while the other candidate looks terrible. Trump can endlessly spout nonsense. He can talk for 90 minutes and two hours when he holds a rally. A lot of it is on a teleprompter. He complains about it when the teleprompter runs out or malfunctions, but he keeps going. He says a lot of crazy nonsense, but his supporters don’t mind. Most of the country either isn’t affected by what he says or doesn’t see it because the election is still almost five months away, and most people aren’t paying attention to the endless political rhetoric. Some people will vote without paying attention, and some won’t start paying attention until three or four weeks before the election. Trump spouts nonsense and makes mistakes, either lying or being mistaken. For example, a couple of days ago, he talked about how Biden has dementia, but his physician, Ronnie Johnson, tested him and found him to be mentally fit. The problem is, his doctor isn’t named Ronnie Johnson; it’s Ronnie Jackson. Even there, he’s making mistakes, but nobody cares because his base doesn’t care. You can look on Twitter and see people making fun of this, but those people weren’t going to vote for him in the first place.
The people who might be persuaded by this aren’t on Twitter anymore because Twitter has changed. Biden, on the other hand, has an older appearance and walks gingerly, as does Trump. Both are very careful on the stairs when leaving an airplane. However, if you listen to Biden, he makes sense. He is in command of the facts. Sometimes, he pauses or hesitates because he has a stutter. He has verbal tics that annoy me, like saying, “I’m not kidding” or “I’m serious, folks,” too often. I wish someone would work with him on that. I don’t know if it’s the equivalent of saying “you know” or “um,” but it’s annoying. I don’t know if that makes people think he’s losing it. It shouldn’t. It doesn’t do to a great extent. What makes people think he’s losing is the unfairly edited clips of Biden.
One of the most recent ones was when he squatted down for a second, and everyone who posts on Twitter and Fox News said, “Oh, look, he just soiled his pants. He’s like a toddler.” Have you ever watched a toddler soil their diaper? They get still and then hunker down to relieve themselves. They do it standing up. They said that’s what Biden was doing. It was stupid and based on a falsely edited clip. They took him to sit down and left out the part where there was a chair he was sitting on. Then they reversed the clip, so he appeared to stand up again in reverse motion. It’s just manipulating the video. More recently, two days ago, he was at a Democratic fundraiser in LA with Obama. He was leaving the stage after a discussion, and there’s a clip where he pauses for a second. The Republicans are saying, “Look, he had a freeze, his brain shut down, and you know, his brain’s not working, he had a glitch.” It’s just dumb. He stops for a second to either listen to the applause or somebody’s yelling something at him from the audience. After a second, Obama grabs his hand and says, “Let’s go, buddy.” The Republicans are saying, “Look, he was lost, and Obama had to lead him off stage.” Obama said, “Come on, let’s go.” It wasn’t that Biden’s brain was shut down. There were two different interpretations: one reasonable and one nonsense.
I am still determining what will happen in 10 days at the debate. I assume that Trump will be bombastic. One cause for optimism among people who don’t like Trump is that his people are saying he’s not preparing for the debate. There’s a good chance they’re lying because they lie about everything. But there’s also a chance it’s accurate because Trump dislikes working hard on anything. We know how it will go. It may not change anyone’s mind. Trump will get in there and say, “This guy has dementia, and he’s responsible for inflation.” Whatever the question is, Trump will ignore it and say mean things, a lot of them untrue, about Biden. The moderators will try to rein him in, but they will have limited success. Biden will try to state facts and probably try to attack Trump a little bit by saying, “Are you going to vote for a convicted felon, guilty of 34 charges and an adjudicated rapist?” Will that work on anybody? I don’t know. We hope that Trump will look bad, but Trump has looked bad in every debate. The ones against Hillary in 2016, against Biden in 2020 — most people thought Biden won those debates, but it doesn’t matter to Trump’s base.
So far, Biden has more money to spend on advertising than Trump. He has yet to deploy much of it because this is the earliest in recent history that we’ve known who the two major nominees will be. Usually, it happens closer to the election. We’ve known each other for a few months, starting seven months before the election. Usually, it’s about four months before the election, at the national convention or leading up to it. This has been unusual because you have two candidates with super high negatives who have been in place as the nominees for months sooner than would usually happen.
So They’re roughly tied in the polls. There’s reason to distrust the polls. There’s reason to be somewhat optimistic that when people start to pay attention, Trump is such a prominent, incompetent piece of crap that people will be disgusted by him. But who knows?
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/17
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is your form of anxiety?
Rick Rosner: I have lost 20 pounds over the past eight years because when I get anxious enough. I don’t shit my pants. I’ve only done that a few times, but I get the runny poos and can’t handle many carbohydrates. Somehow, the anxiety has altered the biome in my gut. The bacteria in my gut eat my carbs for me and then give me farts in return. Even so, my anxiety isn’t very debilitating. I’m naturally good-natured. I’m not all gloomy and depressed. People around me have anxiety that might be worse than mine. Oh, Carole is laughing, saying that’s not true. I don’t know.
Jacobsen: Carole, do you want to add anything to the session on anxiety?
Carole Rosner: We have different anxieties. Mine is situational. Rick’s is continual.
Jacobsen: I think mine is clinical. I have had mild anxiety for over a decade, potentially longer.
Carole Rosner: How can you not in this day and age?
Rick Rosner: That old joke goes, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean people aren’t out to get you.” So, a certain amount of anxiety is reasonable. It propels you forward, but you don’t want to be stuck in it. It would help if you kept moving through it.
Jacobsen: Carole, may I ask you a question? Other than that one. What is the wisest thing you’ve ever heard someone say to you?
Carole Rosner: What has always stuck with me is something one of my bosses said at my first job in New York. We were at lunch, a significant function, and he said, “Take care of the people as you go up because you may need those same people as you go down.” I’ve always kept that in mind, treating all people as kindly as possible because you never know when you will reencounter them.
Rosner: Carole is super kind and conscientious. I’ve never really been in a workplace with her, but from what I hear, she’s a pleasant addition to every workplace. She makes cookies for everybody, picks up other people’s slack, and is highly organized. She’s an easy crier, which has saved her job various times because when everybody else is a steel-plated a-hole, someone who gets upset and cries is a welcome relief.
Jacobsen: What’s the wisest thing you’ve ever heard someone say to you?
Rosner: Anything along the lines of “Nobody knows what the fuck they’re doing or talking about.” William Goldman, the screenwriter, wrote The Princess Bride and Marathon Man. He said, applying it to Hollywood, “Nobody knows anything.” There’s very little predictability in entertainment, in casting and writing. You don’t know what’s going to work, what’s going to capture the public. Even if it were predictable, the a-holes in entertainment don’t know how to predict it. While studying physics in college, I knew I was lost. But I mistakenly believed that the people who confidently acted like they knew what they were talking about weren’t lost. No, they were more lost than I was. The current term is Dunning-Kruger, which is people who are so lost they don’t know they’re lost. You can’t underestimate other people’s incompetence or my own. Though I’ve also worked with highly competent people, and they’re a whole different pain in the ass. You don’t want a boss who’s more qualified than you because you’re always in trouble.
Jacobsen: How has anxiety served you well and disserved you, professionally and personally?
Rosner: Anxiety can also be called fear. Fear has made me a chicken shit in several ways. We did a whole session on this, where I talked about how I haven’t lived up to my potential, partly because I need the gumption to go for it. Like taking a shot at acting—I’m a pretty good actor, but I didn’t want to deal with the rejection. I haven’t had a paid writing job in a decade now, partly because of my fear of being told I suck after making a considerable effort. That’s how anxiety has shaped me. However, I overcome it by entering places where I shouldn’t. Like I was unqualified to be a bar bouncer, but I did it. I went to the gym with some big guys who talked about their adventures as bouncers, which sounded exciting. Even though I was smaller, we were lifting the same amount of weight, so I thought maybe I could do it. It was a dumb thing for a little Jew boy to be doing, but I did it, and it was fine. I’m not a good grappler or fighter. People hit me, and I forget to hit them back, but they’re drunk, so they don’t hurt me. I try to subdue someone with a sleeper hold, and sometimes we fall, which is fine because they’re out of the fight, and the other bouncers can handle the rest. So in some ways, I’m not a chicken shit, but maybe in essential ways, I continue to be.
Jacobsen: Do you think coffee drinking helps us?
Rosner: Coffee helps me stay awake in the afternoon. It makes me talk aloud and fast in these podcast environments. Every morning, I do a thing on PodTV where we discuss the day’s news. It’s just a bunch of yelling often. Maybe the coffee helps me wade in there. One of the first pills I take in the morning is a blood pressure pill, so I don’t have a stroke, but then I also drop coffee on top of that. Many people combine uppers and downers to find an effective way of being. Elvis did it, and it killed him. Elvis had prescriptions for 17 drugs when he died. He took uppers to get up in the morning and downers to go to sleep. The barbiturates paralyze your digestive system, making it harder and harder to shit. He gave himself an aortic aneurysm or the Valsalva maneuver, pinching off his aorta trying to pass a dookie that was five inches in diameter. If you hunch over and pinch off that aorta, it gives you a heart attack. According to one coroner, that’s what killed him.
Jacobsen: I don’t think you’re making a good argument for coffee drinking with anxiety.
Rosner: Coffee makes you poop. Coffee is good. Maybe Elvis should have drunk more coffee.
Jacobsen: At what point has anxiety been crippling for you? In other words, dysfunctional?
Rosner: It leads to me needing to do things I should do. I’ve been working on a book of one sort or another all my life. Have I published a book except for self-published ones on Amazon? No. It’s always in the future. I had a four-day book deal with Riverhead Press, but they rescinded it because the editor who offered the deal couldn’t get her bosses to sign off on it. I have the guts of many different books and have yet to get any of them published.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/17
Rick Rosner: She has spoken to individuals who worked on nuclear weapons as far back as the Manhattan Project and who were involved in developing nuclear strategies during the Strategic Air Command era in the 1950s. The risk we are under is truly alarming. The book has a spoiler alert if you intend to interview her , so you should probably read it.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I want to point out to everyone listening or reading this that I emailed her requesting an interview based on Rick’s recommendation. I am uncertain who I will interview, even if they share the same name.
Rosner: The book describes a horrifying chain of events that could unfold if North Korea were to launch a single nuclear missile at the US. One of the most appalling aspects is that if the US responds to a nuclear attack from North Korea or any other nation by launching our missiles, those missiles would have to pass over Russian airspace. Due to Russian technology’s limitations in detecting ballistic missiles once their booster phase has ended, Russia might not be able to discern whether the missiles passing overhead are aimed at them or North Korea. This could lead to Russia mistakenly believing they are under nuclear attack. Although communication between the US President and Russia’s President could alleviate this situation, it is not always guaranteed. Many Americans mistakenly believe that we have a ‘red phone’ system where the President can immediately contact the Russian President. This is not true. The book recounted an incident where it took over 24 hours to establish communication with the Russian President.
Jacobsen: That’s way too late.
Rosner: According to the book, once a missile is detected in flight, the President has a mere six-minute window to launch a response before the missile impacts. Most presidents and this likely applies to Trump if he is reelected, may not fully grasp this timeframe. While Biden, with his extensive national political experience and chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, might have a better understanding, it is not something to be relied upon. The President needs to be briefed and make a decision that could lead to the deaths of hundreds of millions of people within just six minutes. It’s a terrifying prospect. Meanwhile, the President would be rushed onto Marine One to be flown away from Washington DC before a missile impact. The entire situation is insane. Another shocking fact is the sheer number of nuclear warheads the US once possessed. My initial guess was 30,000, but I revised it down. However, the exchange of just 200 nuclear missiles between Russia and the US would devastate both nations’ infrastructures and kill hundreds of millions, plunging both countries into years of savagery. At their peak, Russia and America had close to 60,000 warheads. The US has 1,750 ready to deploy, and Russia has 1,650, with several thousand more in reserve. Even this is 20 to 50 times more than necessary to devastate the Northern Hemisphere. The book also discusses how this vast arsenal serves as a deterrent, discouraging any nation from initiating a nuclear war due to the assured retaliation. However, the book explores what happens to deterrence once the missiles are launched. It almost works oppositely. Once a few missiles are airborne, there is an impulse to launch all remaining missiles before they are rendered useless. It’s a flawed system, susceptible to mistakes. In 1983, for instance, a flock of birds was mistaken for a swarm of incoming missiles. A Russian lieutenant colonel saved the world by trusting his gut feeling and not reporting the supposed attack up the chain of command, preventing a nuclear exchange caused by a technological glitch or misinterpretation. However, relying on such gut feelings is not a sustainable strategy. While involving AI might seem like a solution, we don’t yet know how to make detection and deterrence more reliable with AI. AI reflects a distillation of collective human thoughts, which may not be ideal for managing such critical decisions. Many Americans believe the risk has decreased since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, but this is not the case. The world has not become any safer.
Jacobsen: According to ICANN (the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons), which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017, the ranking of countries by the number of nuclear warheads is as follows: Russia, the United States, China, France, The United Kingdom, Pakistan, India, Israel, and North Korea.
Rosner: So now, I guess, a total of 10,000 warheads among the nine nuclear nations?
Jacobsen: The numbers are: Russia 5,889.
Rosner: Yes, although not all of those are ready to deploy.
Jacobsen: The United States has 5,224, China 410, France 290, the United Kingdom 225, Pakistan 170, India 164, Israel 90, North Korea 30.
Rosner: So while the US and Russia each have thousands of warheads, many are not ready for immediate launch. Even with Russia’s and the US’s ready-to-go stockpiles of 1,750 and 1,650, respectively, the outcome of their use would be catastrophic. The difference between 1,750 and 5,224 is negligible unless faced with an unlikely scenario such as an alien invasion.
Jacobsen: What about the bombs used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
Rosner: Yes, those were fission bombs, likely uranium or plutonium. However, hydrogen bombs, which use fusion, can have unlimited explosive power. A fusion bomb surrounds an atomic bomb, using uranium or plutonium to ignite hydrogen and deuterium (a form of hydrogen). Theoretically, you could create a 100-megaton hydrogen bomb capable of obliterating a 10-mile-wide island. They have obliterated smaller islands with such bombs.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/17
Miracles deliver God’s people. Sometimes, miracles deliver God’s people physically. We see this in the days of Moses where he parts the Red Sea. So that they could escape the soldiers who were following them from the Kingdom of Egypt. Sometimes, God miraculously delivers people emotionally. Some of you have had trauma, and deep hurt, brokenness, and pain, and God the Holy Spirit can do a miracle. He can heal you from the inside out with inner healing. Sometimes, God heals a broken body. You’re injured. You’re sick. You’re dying. And God restores your health. Sometimes, people, they’ve been through so much. This world is so just difficult for human beings to just endure. That mentally you get broken and confused or anxious or depressed. God can heal that too.
Pastor Mark Driscoll, “Can miracles still happen? | Pastor Mark Driscoll” (2023)
Short answer: No.
That’s why Christians die of all sorts of things similarly to other groups of people. It’s less about the belief and more about dealing with the world as the natural world.
The styling is much the same. It is oratory, almost as beautiful language use — by which I mean clean and symmetric — as Wolfgang Smith’s, but it’s only oratory. He doesn’t provide any coherent, fluent argument about why the world is the way it is and why it should be the way it is.
He proposes that which even those worse than him propose, which is the prosperity gospel preachers and miracle preachers. Namely, other performers who argue for diabetics to throw their diabetes medication on the stage, for those with heart complications to rid themselves of their medications.
There is never a mention of getting proper mental health care. It’s to focus on the purported supernatural powers of a hypothetical God. What is always deemed as a renewal, I think anyone calmly looking at these individuals would proclaim nothing supernatural took place.
Even if the hypothesis were to be entertained, the real idea is that the God of the world could heal the sick, but doesn’t simply because they do not believe in him. Isn’t this an unjust and cruel God by most metrics?
“I let this suffering continue in the world, potentially eternally beyond. Unless, you repent, sinner.” But nay! Some Christians will proclaim perversely. Only a just and good God would punish the unrepentant. Indeed, that’s love!
Do you see a problem with this, too?
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/17
The Devil is not a fable. It is not a theological fantasy. He is as real and solid a reality as Mount Everest. It is one of the greatest forces operating in the world because it is really, in a sense, a counterforce to God. We all agree — no doubt — that God is all-powerful and the prime power more powerful than anything else. Granted, that the negative of God, the negation of God, which we call Satan, comes in second place.
Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal, “Wolfgang Smith on the devil.” (2024)
Where do you start with this one? This is a prime, powerful example of the basic premise: Simply because someone is older does not mean that they’re correct. They have more time on the planet, so have sifted more information. It’s a richer worldline information base. That’s fair.
However, when we look at the basic premise, there is no real presentation to believe this man. If an older gentleman was a creationist when younger and is a creationist at 102, is he all-of-the-sudden correct? No, nonetheless, his wrongness is grounded in more time and experience.
That’s not nothing. When it comes to Wolfgang Smith and his assertions to the Devil as not a fable and not a theological fantasy, and claiming the reality as “real and solid” as Mount Everest, I pause. What is the basis for this?
Most descriptions of the Devil focus on a spiritual entity, not on a solid entity, certainly not as something as inanimate as a mountain. On the deeper point, the idea of something as real as we experience Mount Everest. It’s still false. Because he ties this to other premises.
The idea that we all agree. That’s false. The idea of all agreeing on God being all-powerful. Some have the idea of no gods, or many gods, or a limited god. Some don’t even believe in a Devil. In fact, probably, something like half of the world does not believe in the biblical Devil, as only a huge hunk is Islamic or Christian or Jewish.
Other religions and non-religion have nothing to do with those conceptualizations of a God, of an all-powerful entity, of a Devil, and the like. One can only hope Jaimungal pushed back on the nonsense spouted by the man. It seems less a theory and more a hypothesis, or a vague theological guess.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/17
This is something that the theologians will call total depravity or pervasive depravity. And what it means is this. It means that all of a person is infected and affected by sin. I’ll start with a simple analogy. So here’s my nice clean water. God made us like this. Clean, pure, holy. He said we were very good. Very good. Sin then enters into the human condition. We all inherited Romans 5 from our first father, Adam. And if I were to drop poison or pollution into this water, how much of it would be infected and affected? All of it. There wouldn’t be a portion that would be preserved. So it is with the human condition. Your mind is infected and affected by sin. Your heart is infected and affected by sin. Your will is infected and affected by sin. And those who don’t believe in the Bible think that a part of them is good. “Well, I just follow the science.” Why do you trust your mind? “Well, because it makes sense to me.” Well, you’ve had some crazy thoughts. I’ve known you a while. And then sometimes we’ll just say, “Follow your heart.” Every hangover started with that assumption. Every hangover started with that assumption. The point is that all of us is infected and affected by sin.
Pastor Mark Driscoll, “Total Depravity” (2021)
Pastor Mark Driscoll looks healthier in this video than at any point in his career, in my opinion. Something before 2021 and after 2021 didn’t do him wonders in the fitness.
What he is referencing here is a common theology based bigotry, it is the idea that individuals who are not Christian can be assumed to have something bad the Christians do not.
Which is to say, something transcendentally impure, as in the bottle of water example. There’s a lot of issues here that don’t make any clear sense. One is the founding of a lot of the preaching to garner truths about the world through merely analogical reasoning.
It has its purposes, but it’s primarily misleading in this context. Leaving that to the side, the use of the traditional Christian concepts of sin and not sin are meant as a call to self-improvement of the Christian in their life.
This, as with a lot of Driscoll’s performances, is merely the use of traditional Christia concepts to supernaturally stigmatize other people, which, as the supernatural does not exist, means the use of Christianity to stigmatize others. The rest of theatrical oratory, he continues:
So I want to break it down and look at all the components of the human being and how it’s infected and affected. He talks about our nature. We’ll unpack these. What then? Are we Jews, those who grew up in church with the Bible, any better off? Not at all. We’ve already charged that all, Jews and Greeks, everybody is under sin. That means ruled, dominated, controlled by, as it is written, he quotes the Old Testament. No one is righteous. No, not one. It’s very negative, very binary, very judgy, very accurate. What about our mind? Well, I went to college. I have more degrees than Fahrenheit. I’m very, very smart. No one understands. They have a lot of knowledge, but not a lot of wisdom. We call that college.
What are individuals to make of this rambling? I can barely see the common thread in the preaching. I am reminded of the preaching of William Branham. It is a torturous path and one washed away as fast as the brambly path is laid down. The short: ‘Sin infects people and makes them bad, examples.’ He continues:
Also motive, no one seeks for God. We’ll talk about that. How about your will? All have turned aside for they have become worthless. Deed. No one does good, not even one. Word. Their throat is an open grave. They use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. What about the body? Their feet are swift to shed blood. Emotion. In their paths are ruin and misery and the soul and the way of peace. They have not known. When you go to the doctor, they literally give you a checkup from head to toe. This is God’s checkup of humanity from head to toe. He literally starts with stick your tongue out. Let me look down your throat. That’s literally where he starts. He starts with nature. This is something that you will only learn in the Bible. You will not hear in any other educational format that you are not just a sinner in your behavior. You are a sinner by nature. It’s not just what you do, it’s who you are. Therefore, you can’t just have behavior modification. God needs to give you nature regeneration. That God needs to fundamentally change you at the level of being. That’s how bad we are. And that’s how great the need is.
Honestly, I do not even know an ordinary context in a proper educational institution in which sin is referenced as something bad in behaviour let alone nature. It’s just not there. It’s only in religious organizations and institutions preaching groundless nonsense. And again, as you all see, the analogical thinking does nothing to support this formulation of ‘reasoning’ because there’s nothing to concretely deal with there. He goes on:
And so how many of you have raised a kid, and you’ve seen that they come, it’s like it’s like a Groupon, you buy one, you get one, you get a kid, and they throw in a free sin nature. Have you noticed that? And if you raised a kid, did you need to teach him to lie or steal? You know what the difference is between an angry, selfish child and a terrorist? Size. That’s it. They all are going to do the same thing. And so even if you’re parenting a kid, you’re like, why do they do this? Because they need a new nature. We need a new nature. And so much of our world is trying to control behavior. And what God wants to do is change nature. Until things change in here, things can’t change out there. There needs to be the change in the want to before there can be the change in the how to.
Once you scrap back all of the layers of gibberish, weird examples, analogies, and the like, you get to something rather ordinary: behaviour. Kids come with selfishness. People can be selfish. Terrorists commit bad acts by definition. What is the point in making an entire cosmology to explain truisms? Does one need to be this cosmically self-centered?
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/17
Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited as well as many other books and ebooks about topics in psychology, relationships, philosophy, economics, international affairs, and award-winning short fiction. He is former Visiting Professor of Psychology, Southern Federal University, Rostov-on-Don, Russia and on the faculty of CIAPS (Commonwealth Institute for Advanced and Professional Studies). He is a columnist in Brussels Morning, was the Editor-in-Chief of Global Politician, and served as a columnist for Central Europe Review, PopMatters, eBookWeb, and Bellaonline, and as a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent. He was the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory and Suite101. His YouTube channels garnered 80,000,000 views and 405,000 subscribers. Visit Sam’s Web site: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Technologies integrated with human cultures continually make new laws, even creating entirely new frames of legal discourse. What have been some of the more disruptive forms of technology to legal systems, philosophies of law?
Dr. Sam Vaknin: Every technology necessitated a revision of existing laws to incorporate its unique features. The more disruptive the technology, the more profound the legal revisions: the printing press, for example, or the telegraph, telephone, automobile, Internet, social media, smartphone, and so on.
Jacobsen: What role does invention play in the creation of new laws, policies, even whole new legal systems of consideration in governance?
Vaknin: I dispute this claim or premise. Technology does not spur legal innovations or revolutions. Consider crime: contemporary technologies simply allow us to commit age-old offenses in new ways.
New technologies do force laws and regulations to become a lot more detailed and specific in order to accommodate their idiosyncrasies, but there is no paradigmatic shift involved.
Jacobsen: We talked about human-machine interfaces. What is the past of law regarding human use of technologies?
Vaknin: Laws, past and present, have dealt mostly with the adverse outcomes, actual and potential, of using technology. As technologies became more sophisticated, though, their unintended consequences became less predictable and the Law had to play catchup and whack-a-mole with those.
Jacobsen: Of modern communications technologies, what have required the most ubiquitous change in law?
Vaknin: The telegraph and the radio were the most disruptive technologies with the Internet a close third. The abolition of distance by the first two and the egalitarianism fostered by the latter served to undermine many erstwhile legal tenets and conceptual pillars.
Jacobsen: With narrow AI in many facets of life, quietly, and more obviously such as LLMs, what are some necessary changes to law for protection of copyright and plagiarism? Linguist Noam Chomsky is reported to have said, “Let’s stop calling it ‘Artificial Intelligence’ and call it what it is: ‘plagiarism software.’ Don’t create anything, copy existing works from existing artists and alter it sufficiently to escape copyright laws. It’s the largest theft of property ever since Native American lands by European settlers.” You had him in your list of geniuses. What will be the outcome of the theft of intellectual property to create some of these algorithms?
Vaknin: I completely disagree with this way of looking at things. I don’t see even a hint of these legal issues or ostensible transgressions with large language models. AI generates derivative works based on databases of texts, but does not reprint or replicate these texts verbatim. It learns from texts but does not plagiarize them in the strict legal sense (except in rare cases).
There is definitely an ethical conundrum here, but not a legal one. Still, this ethical dilemma arises also with cliff notes or Blinkist or parodies or any creative work inspired by another. Chomsky’s own work relies on the oeuvre of previous scholars!
Jacobsen: What will be the future of the discourse between increasing intimate contact, even fusion, with synthetic systems and the law? When digital conscious systems become more fully decoupled from human control – degrees of autonomous, what will this mean for both the concept of personhood and the idea, not only human rights but, rights attributed to agents more broadly?
Vaknin: At some point, we would need to generalize the language of the Law to apply it equally to all forms of intelligences with agency, including cyborgs, androids, and artificial intelligence. Sentience, not carbon content, would become the test of applicability of laws, norms, rules, and regulations.
Who would enforce these carbon-blind laws would become a major point of contention. We are having a hard time coping with driverless cars. How well would we adapt to non-human cops and judges?
Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Sam.
Vaknin: Thank you as ever, Scott.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/17
[Recording Start]
Rick Rosner: I am currently reading a book titled Nuclear War. I do not recall the author’s name, but the book explains that we remain at a high risk of nuclear war. There are approximately 15,000 nuclear weapons in existence, which is alarming. The United States has about 1,750 nuclear weapons ready to deploy, with an additional 2,000 in storage. Russia possesses about 1,650 nuclear weapons. We have been at risk of nuclear war since the late 1940s. The Russians built their first atomic weapon in 1949. By that time, the United States had over 100 nuclear weapons. The chapter I have just begun, and I am still early in the book, discusses how North Korea was decades away from having ballistic missiles capable of reaching the United States. However, they acquired Soviet technology, or someone obtained rocket technology after the fall of the Soviet Union, which North Korea then purchased. Now, they are capable of launching a missile 9,000 miles, reaching the entire continental United States. So, we have been at risk for 75 years. Even a single nuclear weapon detonation would immeasurably change life on Earth. It would crash economies, and if they were H-bombs rather than A-bombs, tens of millions, perhaps a hundred million people, would perish.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What was the range of nuclear bomb sizes between the United States and Russia during the peak of the Cold War?
Rosner: During the early Cold War, in the late 1950s, America had H-bombs. In the late 1950s, they had H-bombs with a minimum explosive force of one megaton. I believe they were called Mark or something. The United States had deployed 10-megaton H-bombs on bombers. This does not mean they always exploded with that much force; they were tested to go off with that much force. They were tested on islands. Whether they would work as efficiently if dropped from a plane is uncertain, but the physics remains the same. Even if a 10-megaton bomb only exploded with the force of a one-megaton bomb, it would still kill four or five million people if it hit a city.
So, the maximum size was about ten megatons. From the 1960s to the present, the United States and Russia have developed battlefield pocket nukes intended for tactical use in battlefield situations. However, even tactical nukes have a yield of a few kilotons, which is not much less than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. You could dial down the yield. To create a chain reaction that breaks apart almost all the fissionable nuclei in a bomb, you need a certain amount of nuclear material, such as about five kilograms of plutonium. A ball of plutonium with some material in the Middle to amplify and capture neutrons is about four inches in diameter. You could possibly tweak the critical mass so it somewhat fizzles or does not fully explode. You could not reduce the explosive force to less than a kiloton. Anyway, the range is from a kiloton to a megaton. I think the United States currently has yet to deploy any 10-megaton weapons.
A megaton weapon has about a hundred times or seventy times, the explosive force of the Nagasaki bomb, which would kill millions of people, many of them instantaneously. What is the minimum blast radius? The fireball of a megaton nuke is 5,700 feet or 1.1 miles in diameter. Everything within that fireball is obliterated. No bones, nothing left. Concrete and everything else is scorched out of existence. The thermonuclear explosion’s temperature is four times that of the sun’s center. The fireball obliterates everything within a radius of nearly 0.6 miles. For another mile beyond that, everyone is killed. You are looking at a radius of fatality or a diameter of fatality of a circle three miles across, where 99% of everyone is killed unless they are in a specially hardened structure. Most people are killed for another mile beyond that, and the casualty rate decreases from there. You have an area of seven to eight square miles where almost everyone is killed by an H-bomb.
Weren’t there conditions under which individuals survived in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Yes. Your skin wouldn’t be burned off if you were far enough away and wearing light-coloured clothing. Dark clothing absorbs more light radiation, causing burns. If you were not looking at the blast and in a structure that shielded you from the initial thermal effects and the blast overpressure that pushed everything down on top of you, you might survive. Survival was pure luck. It depended on the colour of your clothing, the structure you were in, and the direction you were looking. If you were within a mile of the blast, you would still receive a healthy dose of radiation that might not kill you immediately but could do so in 20 years. Could you escape after the initial blast? Nobody knew about fallout then. If you fled to a river because you were burned, the river might collect more fallout than the land. I do not know. If ash fell into the river, the radioactive ash would mix with the water, and you would be in that water.
Jacobsen: What is the risk of radiation seeping into your body in water contaminated with radioactive material?
Rosner: There were no precautions. Leaflets were dropped, which were probably not believed before the bomb was dropped. But nobody knew what to do. If you were exposed, if you were in a city that had been nuked and you survived, I do not know, would you take iodine to prevent your body from absorbing radioactive iodine? That is one of the products of a nuclear blast, absorbed by your body in the same way it absorbs iodine. It could be strontium, I don’t know. If you took iodine, you might absorb less of the radioactive material that causes radiation poisoning. But I do not know.
Jacobsen: What is the risk of nuclear war or even a single weapon being used? What is the probability of that happening? What is the likelihood of using a nuclear weapon?
Rosner: I wonder if anyone can calculate that. Are there loose nukes that disappeared from inventory after the Soviet Union fell? I have not heard of that. Is there a chance that terrorists could steal a nuke from Russia or the United States? I do not know. The United States has had broken arrow situations. A broken arrow is when a nuke escapes custody, like when it is accidentally dropped. In 1958, an H-bomb was accidentally dropped. It was not armed, so only the traditional explosives went off. The bomb was scattered over a pasture and broken apart by the regular explosives. Did that scatter nuclear material? I guess so. Even if bad actors got to it first, they would not have been able to make it into a bomb because it was broken and scattered.
It is much more likely that terrorists would gather a subcritical mass of nuclear material, strap it to conventional explosives, and make a dirty bomb that scatters radioactive material over a few square blocks. This could make the area uninhabitable for weeks or months until it is cleaned up, causing widespread fear. Currently, I would guess that the most significant risk of someone setting off a single nuke would be Russia unleashing a tactical nuke in Ukraine. However, I do not think Russia would do that because it would likely lead to war with NATO, involving all of Europe and the United States. Europe and the United States have a combined population of 800 million, while Russia only has 160 million. Its arms have been depleted by more than two years of war.
I do not think they would want the consequences of setting off a single nuke. The second most significant risk might be Iran. I do not believe Iran can make a nuclear weapon yet, but they are getting closer. If they had one and were suicidal, they might try to smuggle or launch one into Israel. This would result in brutal bombing by the United States, Israel, and their allies. The third scenario would be North Korea launching a single nuke. The odds of any of these three things happening are pretty low because the country doing it would be heavily bombed. If Iran launched a nuke, I do not know if we would bomb Iranian cities, but we would bomb every possible site where nukes were thought to be developed and many other military sites. We would drop thousands of bombs on Iran, destroying their air force and most of their army bases.
Jacobsen: Do you think any use of a nuclear weapon by Iran would automatically isolate Iran from the rest of the Middle Eastern countries?
Rosner: Yes.
Jacobsen: Do you think any other country has suicidal intent?
Rosner: Iran, besides Israel, is the only Middle Eastern country that has nuclear weapons that I know of. If Iran dropped a nuke on Israel, Israel has about 50 nukes and might retaliate by nuking Tehran. The United States probably would not bomb Iranian cities but would target military sites. If Iran attacked Israel, a couple of hundred thousand Israelis would be killed if they targeted a town. At least that many Iranian military personnel would be killed in response within a day. Well, I do not know if Israel would retaliate with nukes. The United States might talk Israel out of a nuclear retaliation. The United States would likely support Israel in bombing the hell out of Iran with conventional weapons, and the United States would probably join in. I am just guessing. I am not an expert on this.
Jacobsen: Are there any weapons more dangerous than an H-bomb or a nuclear bomb, theoretically?
Rosner: There is no known biological agent that could kill as many people as an H-bomb. That does not mean that some lunatic countries haven’t developed something with the potential, but I doubt it. Viruses can spread uncontrollably. You cannot target an enemy country with a virus because they have unlimited reach. An aerosolized Ebola virus, contagious like COVID-19, would be more dangerous than an H-bomb. It could kill hundreds of millions of people worldwide. But… People would be crazy to develop it. Oh, one more thing. The chapter I just read discusses the United States’ semi-claim that we have technology capable of intercepting nuclear warheads. However, as this book explains, you can only intercept a nuclear missile during the launch phase. Within the first three minutes, the rockets accelerate it to 14,000 miles per hour. The missiles then use their fuel and drop away, leaving a projectile flying through the air under its kinetic energy, which is much harder to track.
When we have tried to intercept targets like that, we fire a heavyweight at the incoming missile, trying to break it apart by hitting it directly. We are not launching a bomb close to the incoming nuke and setting it off to wreck the nuke. We do not have that technology yet, if ever. So it is like trying to hit a bullet with a bullet. One object moves at 15,000 miles per hour, and the interceptor moves at 20,000 miles per hour. The hit has to be exact. Each object is only 8, 10, or 20 feet across, which is not a large target. The United States’ success rate at hitting a single missile aimed at us is less than 50 percent. Some tests intercepted with a 55 percent success rate, others with 40 percent. Even one missile has more than a one-third chance of reaching its target.
Assuming North Korea’s technology is good enough to get the missile to its target, even if it isn’t, say they are aiming for Washington DC, and the rocket only travels 8,000 miles instead of 9,000, it would detonate over Minnesota. You still have a nuke exploding over the United States. We cannot stop a launched nuke with even 80 percent certainty. According to this book, we only have 44 kinetic interceptors. If an enemy launched even six nuclear weapons and we launched all 44 interceptors, it is still likely that one or two would get through. I do not know if we would launch all 44 simultaneously because we might save half for a second wave. This is how we got the Soviet Union to go bankrupt and collapse. Reagan scared the Soviet Union with the Star Wars defence system, an early version of intercepting incoming missiles. Russia spent a lot of time trying to develop its technology, which was the last straw in bankrupting them. I do not know.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/16
Friends, what keeps us from this is another form of blindness. And what I love about the Bible is that the Bible will takephysical truths and use them to teach spiritual truths. The same God who rules over the physical world rules over the spiritual world. So, the Bible often uses the analogy that sin is like blindness, that sin is like blindness. Paul says to the Corinthians is one example. There are many in the Old and New Testament, “The god of this world has” — what? — “blinded the minds of unbelievers so they don’t see the glory of God in Christ.” See, non-Christians are not stupid; they are blind. Yelling at them won’t make them see, hating them won’t make them see. Telling them, “It’s obvious. Do you not see it?” “I am blind. No, I don’t.”Now, you just seem mean and cruel. Since I have always been blind, I don’t even know what you’re talking about, to have sight. Does this explain some of your frustration with non-Christian family, co-workers, friends? “Jesus is God! How come you can’t see that?” “I don’t.” So, we need to pray for a miracle of God where Jesus touches them and opens their spiritual eyes, just as He has opened our spiritual eyes.
Pastor Mark Driscoll, “Non-Christians Aren’t Stupid, They’re Blind” (2011)
Pastor Mark Driscoll in this particular clip from the Mars Hill era more or less reflects the use of the invention of a concept to inure a rival philosophical stance. What is a nonbeliever? What is an atheist? Some who rejects Christ as God. Simple: They’re blind. They miss a God-sense.
You are superior. You have that which they do not. Only if they would humble themselves to accept this profound gift of God. But they’re not stupid, though Bible calls them “fools.”
They’re filled with sin, evil, and, therefore, blind. Do you see the unfairness in this formulation of argument? Invert it: The Christian is filled with supernatural ignorance, ‘sin’ if you will.
They’re unable to see the truths of scientific naturalism. They’re simply blind and cannot see. It’s pseudoepistemological arrogance posing as epistemology. It’s not even an argument; it’s an insult, to the Christian. If Driscoll, in fact, believes this, he believes his audience is stupid. He’s intelligent enough to make epistemological distinctions. He continues:
Sin is like blindness. Number one, it is an incurable condition. This man’s condition was incurable; he needed a miracle. Our sin condition is incurable, and we need Jesus to do a miracle. Number two, sin blinds us so that we don’t see God clearly. We don’t know Him rightly, particularly about Jesus. Had you, for example, asked me prior to Jesus opening my blind eyes at the age of 19, “What do you think about Jesus? He’s a nice guy. He told nice stories, helped somepeople, fed the poor.”
“Is he God?”
“I don’t see that.”
“Is he Lord?”
“I don’t see that.”
“Is he coming again to judge the living and the dead?”
“I don’t see that.”
“Should he tell you what to do? I definitely don’t see that.”
What is this long stretch of sophistry? Again, the entire premise is blindness based on the assertion of the Christian being able to see that which the atheist or the nonbeliever cannot see. Remembering, God pursues people.
Therefore, this is an act of will against the Will of God. The derivative must be purported arrogance and pride on the part of the nonbeliever. Yet, once more, it’s bound to the proud assertion of a non-epistemology in having a means of analogical sight for the theological realities of world.
Even further, he asserts another premise onto this. The condition is something incurable and, therefore, something of which the individual believer can touch and attain forgiveness of sins to give them a sight while the nonbelievers is unable to do so: They have not accepted Jesus Christ — Lord and Saviour — as their King of Kings.
Driscoll may be playing the role of giving his own testimony. However, we cannot ascertain this as any further proof tothe divinity of Mohammed. Let’s call this the divine neutrality principle, testimonies can be used to attest to any divinity. Therefore, the divinity of any particular deity or holy figure cannot be considered as such as a matter of principle when mutually exclusive, so rejecting all divinities becomes more reasonable as a result. But Driscoll bleeds on:
I didn’t see Jesus for who he was. When we’re spiritually blind, we don’t have the ability to cure an incurable condition. We don’t see God and Christ for who He is. Number two, we don’t see ourselves for who we are. We don’t. We don’t see ourselves for who we are. Some of you think, “I am a really good person.” You don’t see yourself. Some of you would say, “Oh, I see myself. I see how sinful, broken, damaged goods, I am.” But if you don’t have any hope, you don’t have any joy. You don’t have any Christ. You don’t have any sight. People tend to see themselves as not needing a Savior or either being beyond salvation. One leads to pride, the other leads to despair, neither lead to Jesus. We don’t see ourselves. You are not damaged goods. You are not beyond hope. You are not broken irreparably. You are not beyond the grace of God. How do we look at blind Bart? There is hope for him apart from Christ. But in Christ, there is hope for him.With blind Bart, there is no hope in him. In Christ, there is hope for him. You and I, exactly the same. There is no hope in us, but in Christ; there is hope for us. So, we could see ourselves and see our sin and be honest and be repentant and come clean and tell the story. The story is, we’re the villain. He‘;’s the hero. It was a total wreck. He showed up. I love Jesus. Thirdly categorically, but fourthly in my point, we don’t see, we don’t see others clearly because of sin. Some of you look at people. “They are beyond hope. They are beyond help. I do not know what to do for them. I do not know what to do with them.” Once our eyes are opened, spiritually, we see people as Christ sees them. Ah, they are blind and they need Jesus. They need the power of God. That’s what they need. It gives us a heart of compassion because we remember I was blind too. Without Jesus, I would be as blind as they are. So, I am not angry with them. I am brokenhearted for them. If I am going to talk to them about one thing, it is going to be Jesus.
Occam’s razor or the principle of parsimony can, probably, deal with most angles of this particular line of argumentation.Here’s how: Is it simpler to argue for extra principles in the universe and of supernaturality to prevent others from seeing Christ as God, or simply that others disagree with the basic tenets of the Christian faith? You see the point. His sophistry runs on, and on, and on, and can get a bit tiresome. It’s also late now. Regardless, it’s not that people are or are not beyond hope in their potential for believing in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, but rather, the vast majority of the people on the Earth disagree with the premise of Jesus Christ as Lord of Lords.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/16
Stupid people say, “I don’t want to tell their children what to believe. I don’t want to impose my religion on them. I want them to find their own way.” This is the equivalent to driving into the middle of America, kicking the child out of the car, and wishing the best that they find their way. A child will never find their way. That’s why God gives them a father to lead the way. So, our God, we want Him to not just to have dominion over our life, but over all the generations of our family. If you raise your children, starting with your sons, to live under dominion of our God, God will be faithful to them as He has been faithful to you. God is the same God of every generation. His dominion never ends.
Pastor Mark Driscoll, “Stupid people say _______” (2023)
1 The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.
2 The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God.
3 They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one.
4 Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge? who eat up my people as they eat bread, and call not upon the Lord.
5 There were they in great fear: for God is in the generation of the righteous.
6 Ye have shamed the counsel of the poor, because the Lord is his refuge.
7 Oh that the salvation of Israel were come out of Zion! when the Lord bringeth back the captivity of his people, Jacob shall rejoice, and Israel shall be glad.
Psalm 14:1–7 (King James Version)
Pastor Mark Driscoll in this particular clip is, in fact, being faithful to a direct reading of the scriptures with Psalms. Where, unbelievers are deemed to be fools, corrupt, abominable in works, unable to do good, filthy, and such.
Now, take the other view in which individuals who have been characterized this way in the literature of a community, and the interpretation — more importantly — of a leader of the community is straight from the page, it’d be deemed prejudiced, bigoted, or, at a minimum, hostile to the group. Thi version of Christian call this loving.
The Convention of the Right of the Child (1990) is an important UN document. It clearly states some important aspects of the right of the child. As we’re seeing with the inconvenient of universalist laws for the parochial minded, there is a pushback.
Parents should provide a space for healthy development of mind and opinion for the child. Both the UN and religious institutions believe the individual is important and the family is the fundamental group unit of society. How those families are comprised or formed, they differ.
However, the family is the fundamental group unit of society. That seems to be a cultural, institutional, and relatively religious universal. Driscoll, as per usual, resorts to extreme and colourful images: If you do this, you’re simply abandoning your child in the Middle of Nowhere, America.
The problem isn’t the idea of children being raised; the problem for Driscoll is the child deviating or developing an independence of mind apart from Christian doctrine and fundamentalism.
“God is the same God of every generation. His dominion never ends.” Whole empires have crumbled under the might of time and more timely ethics, ethos, and governance systems. God’s differ. God abandons people at inopportune times. Proverbially speaking, God abandoned Driscoll at his most crucial time of need when Mars Hill collapsed.
If He can abandon him — Driscoll, and if it’s wrong to abandon a child of God in Middle of Nowhere, America, and if God is the Goood, then, maybe, Driscoll is worshipping a false God allowing the Bad to happen to a man deeming himself the Good following the Good God.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/16
Man: I’m not a religious person. But don’t you guys find it weird that Christianity and believing in God is like the taboo or weird thing to do? People can mock Christianity, but God forbid somebody attacks like the Muslim religion. Call me crazy, but no matter what religion you are, even if you’re an atheist worshipping Satan, I’m not sure why that’s on the top of “it’s fine” list.
Pastor Mark Driscoll: As soon as you get to Jesus Christ, everything changes. It has a supernatural divine power. At a job site, you don’t see a dude hit their thumb with a hammer and scream “Allah,” but he will take the Lord’s name in vain. Even if you don’t understand Jesus Christ, even if you don’t believe in Jesus Christ, there is something authoritative and confrontational about the name of Jesus Christ. That’s why there’s a constant attack on Christianity in a way there isn’t happen with other religions. Because other religions have got demons, but they don’t have God, so they don’t have the same level of authority.
Pastor Mark Driscoll, “Even atheists understand this” (2024)
In this clip, there’s not a lot to cover here because the coverage may or may not be real and the critique isn’t much. On a cultural and historical, Christianity has been so dominant in Western societies.
Its dominance in culture, history, and politics, left it unchallenged. As numbers declined or simultaneous with it, criticism of Christianity and other religions became more available, because of its ideological dominance. Mockery is part of the First Amendment in the US.
Plenty of people criticize Christianity and Islam. In fact, particularly Dr. Sam Harris and Dr. Richard Dawkins have spent a larger portion of time critiquing Islam or “the Muslim religion” over others, they’re far from minor figures in critical voices about Christianity.
Also, they’re missing the nuance about individual background. Most of the online voices critquing religion came out of a North American milieu, which has a Christian dominance. It is the proverbial waters upon which to critique religion.
Those individual differences can make it seem as if the hyper focus is on Christianity. It’s proportionate to the population background more often than not. It’s not an accident critics of Islam come out of Muslim-majority countries, e.g., Armin Navabi and others.
It’s ironic to see a self-defensiveness about criticisms of Christianity when openly in all translations and version of the holy books of Christianity; there is the open claim all those who do not believe in God are “fools” — let alone derivatives including damned to eternal, everlasting torment. Isn’t that hate literature worse than light mockery of Christian ideology?
Besides, not many say it’s fine. It’s merely a fact: It’s being done. That’s different than sanctioned.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/16
God is the author of life. God is the one who is sovereign over life. God has all authority over human life. That’s exactly what it’s going to say in Genesis chapter 9, verse 6. ‘Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.’ In the previous book of the Bible, in the book of Genesis, it says you should not kill anyone, and if you murder anyone, to be more specific, you should not murder anyone, and if you murder someone, then you should be murdered. Because people bear the image and likeness of God. So this is biblical thinking. This is not evolutionary thinking. In evolutionary thinking, human beings are just lucky animals. In biblical thinking, they are image bearers of God.
Pastor Mark Driscoll, “Evolutionary Thinking vs. Biblical Thinking — Pastor Mark Driscoll” (2014)
Nothing too objectionable, in fact, to the value in not murdering or killing arbitrarily. It can be seen as a justification to argue against capital punishment.
The fact one needs a transcendent justification is the concern. How does one need an ancient series of texts to know killing is wrong? Outside of personality-disordered people, we don’t need religion for this.
The culmination of this clip is to split the idea of a creation account of origin of life in the Bible as “image bearers of God” from an evolutionary view with “lucky animals.”
It’s not that it’s a way of thinking to see us as “lucky animals,” but, rather, the fact that we are animals and then must formulate the view of the world from this.
The theology cannot dictate the facts of the world because the facts of the world are the facts of the world. Our conceptualization about the facts of the world must follow from the fact and then the theology must ground itself through this.
Otherwise, it’s merely following a fantasy. Most people have come to the generally accepted conclusion arbitrary murder is wrong as more time has accrued. Most of the major faith preach this. Secular views of ethics do too.
So, perhaps, it’s something universally emergent in cultures as other facets of human life and social organization are figured out that Christianity merely co-opts. Christianity as a moral graft on universalisms, where Christianity becomes a particularist, parochial moral frame stretched to universalisms due to wider contemporary moral conversations.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/16
There are various ways of seeing God. There are, in fact, basically five. We’ll call them worldviews. Ways of viewing the world and your place in it, in relation to God, and what ensues after this life. The first is atheism. -Theos, God. A-, not. So atheism is that there is no God. There is no God. Now, if that is the case, then this life is all with God. There’s no God who made us. There’s no God who knows us. There’s no God who’s come for us. There’s no God to comfort us. And when we die, there’s no God to greet us. Just this life. That’s all that there is. Philosophically, if worked out to its logical conclusion, this is a horrific way to live your life. I’ll give you two quotes. The first is from Bertrand Russell, the “great” atheistic philosopher. I put “great” in quotes, at in my mind. He says this, “That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins — all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.”
Pastor Mark Driscoll, “Atheism: Unyielding Despair” (2010)
We can ignore the humorous theatrical props in the context of the preaching 14 years ago, because, if you look at the newest church, Trinity Church, after the fall of Mars Hill Church, the interior decor and design of the performances are mores what they were: Pastor Mark Driscoll never changed. Let’s begin on commenting, Driscoll remarks on the various ways to see God, the definitions of God, and the, basically, the emotional benefits of believing in God, supposedly. As with most Christian performers, you see the basic premise: Define and frame. It’s not argumentation, evidence, or the like. He’s defining atheism and theism, God, and Christianity. He’s framing Christianity as a benefit emotionally and psychologically. That’s not argumentation or evidence. It’s sophistry. God makes us feel good, as in the God coming for you, making you, knowing you, greeting you, comforting you, and a non-horrific life to live. Look at those people who do not believe what we believe, it’s a “horrific way to live your life.” In short, demonize The Other: atheists. He did quote Bertrand Russell correctly from “A Free Man’s Worship.” If he had referenced the actual article, it may have given his worshippers to read more fully the context. However, a bonus point for Driscoll for correct quoting for sure. He continues:
Here is what he saying, “There is no God. You come from nowhere and no one. You are here for no purpose. If you are hurting or suffering, there is no one to help you or rescue you or comfort you. And when you die, there is nothing awaiting you.”
This seems more or less true, at least in the first sentence, as this amounts to the description of an atheist. Yet, on the premise of nowhere and no one, that makes no sense. Russell is a product of the contemporary period and produced some of it, too. Evolutionary, we came from a long line in the Tree of Life and came from out parents and proto-human ancestors. That’s non-controversial. So, Driscoll isn’t even trying to be fair in this presentation. If the person has loved ones, they have people to help them and comfort them. The evidence seems to show no one awaiting at death. If you do simply assert, as in the Christian claim, then, of course, no one awaits you. He goes on:
What he is saying, “This is the scaffolding for life.” The foundation he says is “unyielding despair.” Richard Dawkins, a more modern day atheist was asked the question, “Doesn’t your worldview leave you to be depressed?” Here’s what he said, “I don’t feel depressed about it. But if somebody does, that’s their problem.” Maybe, the logic is deeply pessimistic. Maybe? The universe is bleak, cold, and empty. But so what? Bleak, cold, and empty, but so what? Logically consistent, emotionally deadly. You come from no one. You come from nowhere. You are here for nothing. No one can save you.
Driscoll and others present as intellectually that which is appealing to the emotions. It’s not that Dawkins or Russell are wrong, but that Russell and Dawkins present something purportedly “emotionally deadly.” It’s not. Simply because on acknowledges no cosmic meaning to life, it doesn’t negate one’s personal valences or the deliciousness of listening to Bach or the sweetness of dark chocolate. These non-sequiturs are merely this, attempts to scare individual members of the flock from fleeing or considering others, and then, in turn, stereotyping atheists. This is the problem. Atheists are a negatively stereotyped population in the North America. These come with a lot of derivative negative emotions and beliefs in te negative social consequences and views cropping out of a single view. Driscoll exemplifies this:
Might makes right, only the fittest survive. If you’re losing, it’s because you’re a loser. If it’s your pain, it is for progress. And so be destroyed in the name of forward advancement. And when you die, there is nothing. There is no one. You go nowhere. The universe is cold, bleak, and empty. But so what? Build your life on unyielding despair. You ever wonder why atheists don’t have great songs? That’s why. Now, where this leads, inevitably, is that when your life really hurts, you’re struggling, you’re hurting, you’re physically injured, you’re diagnosed with cancer, your marriage is in shambles. Your loved one has betrayed you. Your children are wayward. Your boss fires you. You’re nearing your end. Emotionally, you’re undone. Maybe you’re just a tender-hearted, conscienced person, and just life on the earth is very difficult for you. Here’s where you end up going with this ideology: Depression, you’re just depressed. You’re just depressed. It is why the number one category of prescription medications is antidepressants. Not saying that all medication is a sin, but a lot of medication is a functional saviour.
It’s a clean means by which to take all of the social ills in a nation, perceived and actual, and then encapsulate them into a singular poison: Atheism. His characterization comes with a misappropriation of evolutionary analogies in incorrect contexts, then fundamental attribution error as if to blame every person failing in life for their situation on something necessarily innate, pain as a good for progress, and so on. Your loved ones and other beings live after you die. You don’t go anywhere because we have no evidence of anyone coming back. Ask Dan Barker or Steve Martin about good atheist music, or simply any music without a reference to a higher power, by definition, that’s atheistic in character. I still see no necessary connection between cosmic finitude to personal despair. Most humanistic countries seem to be doing more well-off than theocratic ones. There can be argument for antidepressants in nations with more modern technology. Here’s another thing these nations harbour: Proper diagnosis for mental illness and treatments for mental health. Less scientifically informed and modern societies do not have these. Driscoll basic style of performance is take everything a mainstream community deems improper, bad, or unhealthy, list them, then shift blame to those who reject the basic premise of our theology: or, God does not exist. It is the single thread sitting behind the argument. Theology students are, probably, appalled by performers like him pretending to the stature of preacher, pastor, or priest. Driscoll continues:
People who don’t know God, as a result, don’t have hope. It also leads to self-medication, drugs, alcohol, sex, pornography, shopping, violence, entertainment, a consumption culture, a conspicuous consumption culture. Thirdly, it results in suicide. If there’s no God to judge me, no God to help me, and when I die, there is no consequence; then if it hurts really bad, why not just get it over? I’m going to die anyways. Let’s just move the date. Prayed for a gal just an hour ago, balling. She said, “That’s what I believe. I was going to kill myself. What do I do?” That’s consistent. It’s why teen suicide rates are up. The girls cut themselves in junior high. That’s why. That’s why. You know, my sons, they’re 8 and 10. They have a buddy who was diagnosed with cancer, elementary school boy. Good boy, nice boy, sweet boy. Recently took them to the hospital to visit their friend and bring him a gift and pray for him. You know what I didn’t tell the Driscoll boys? “Look, the universe is cold, empty, and bleak, but so what? And the key is to build your life, gentlemen, on unyielding despair. And only the fittest survive. So if your body doesn’t make it, he’s back on the food chain of Darwinian evolution, and that’s what happens to the less fit.”
Driscoll, in some ways, was more honest in his Mars Hill ministry days compared to his Trinity Church days now. He made no qualms about misrepresenting other people and spreading demonization of The Other. He further continues on the demonization of atheism and atheists. He gives a touching personal story of prayer that may or may not be true to bolster a point of a pathological literal-mindedness. What atheist comforts someone like this? I haven’t heard of any in a manner similar to never hearing about fire-breathing feminists. Onwards:
It’s unbelievable that people would adopt this as hope for their life. It’s not hope for their life. It’s certainty of their death.
I find it “unbelievable” too, as I do not know any who believe this.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/16
[Recording Start]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We talked about Reformed Judaism and Israel Jacobson in Germany. I wanted to ask the obvious question: why aren’t Orthodox Judaism or Conservative Judaism for you?
Rick Rosner: Because I’m not religious, they take much time. They dominate your life. Reformed Judaism, even done right, takes maybe a couple of hours a week, some blessings before meals. But Conservative services are twice as long, and Orthodox, or being an observant Jew, is an all-the-time thing. It’s not something I want to devote my life to.
Jacobsen: What observances would you find least objectionable?
Rosner: Ones that aren’t every week or don’t require you to go to the synagogue every week. For me, growing up, the synagogue was at least half an hour each way, so we went very seldom. My dad didn’t get along with the upstart congregation in our hometown, so we had to go from Boulder to Denver, a 30-mile drive. I was okay with the blessing over wine and bread once a week on Friday nights and undoubtedly okay with the blessings over the Hanukkah candles and the High Holy Day services, but nothing that would take up my whole life. Even my mom, who’d grown up in a reasonably observant household, had become much less so.
Jacobsen: So, I mean, that’s it. What would make these more appealing to you? Also, why do you refer to yourself as a non-religious person when you are Reformed Jewish?
Rosner: We already talked about this, I believe. Whatever spirituality I have, it’s not connected to any established religion, and I’m not ready to believe in a bunch of stuff I’m not going to believe in. Judaism is thousands of years old, Christianity is 2,000 years old, Islam is 1,400 years old, and all of it is based on stuff from, you know, a thousand years before we developed science. And, you know, there are problems with science, but I have fewer problems with science as it is practiced than with religious beliefs. I don’t need to modify some religion that I don’t believe in to make it more palatable to myself.
Jacobsen: What about the whole prayer thing?
Rosner: I mean, I can pray on my own, but I don’t need to do a bunch of prayers connected to — what purpose would it serve besides — okay, it might connect me more to my Jewish brethren, but I can feel Jewish without doing that. These are rituals that would be mainly empty to me.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/16
[Recording Start]
Rick Rosner: My wife just turned on a documentary about the Brat Pack. It was filmed 35 years after the Brat Pack era by one of the actors characterized as being in the Brat Pack, Andrew McCarthy.
Whenever I watch anything like this, or like tonight, when Jimmy Kimmel is hosting a fundraiser for Biden—he’s actually moderating a conversation between Obama and Biden—I see the connections show business has had for me, and it reminds me of my wasted opportunities. For example, the movie that made Matt Damon, an actor who’s Brat Pack adjacent, famous was filmed in Colorado. My junior high drama teacher, I believe, tried to get me a tryout or at least talked about getting me a tryout for that movie.
I was a decent actor, certainly not as good-looking as Matt Damon, but I never pursued it. Now, I’m 64 and I’ve been in only one movie, and that was just because they needed a lunatic to be naked for half a minute. After I got fired from Kimmel, it’s been 10 years, and I never tried very hard to get rehired. I took a couple of meetings, but I didn’t want to write a spec script. I didn’t want to be hired for some mediocre show writing mediocre content. I’ve been working on various books for ages, but I’ve never taken control or willed myself to get anything published.
I’ve had good luck in the past. I have willed myself to get work previously, but it’s been 10 years. I never put myself through what I would have had to go through to get regular work as an actor or to become really good at stand-up, where you probably have to get on stage a thousand times. I’ve been on stage as a stand-up fewer than 20 times, and I get frustrated with my own lack of motivation. Carole, to some extent, is a motivation killer because she always plays devil’s advocate and will tell you why something isn’t good. I’ve told her for decades now that I don’t need that because it works against my desire to do things. So, it’s my fault, but Carole doesn’t cheerlead for me much, which could be helpful.
I feel frustrated with myself because I know all these people, these comedians; I’ve worked with many of them and written for many of them, but for the past 10 years, I’ve failed to make anything happen for myself. I still believe it will, but time is running out. I’ve got this Kevin Kretschmer project, which looked like it was going to happen. I’ve done four other pilots for shows where I was pivotal or the center of the show. None of them went forward, which is the way it goes with pilots. Of the probably 20-some pilots I wrote on, about half of them were successful, which is an amazing batting average. But with projects about me, with things that would give me some recognition, none of them have succeeded.
With you and me, we’ve done more to get my thoughts out there than with anybody else, but our viewership is not significant, and it hasn’t led to anything else. So, to repeat, I just get frustrated with my lack of motivation. In the words of the character played by Marlon Brando in “On the Waterfront,” I could have been a contender. The end.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/16
Should a Christian contend in the arena of religion? We’re just in Jude 3, doing a lot of application: Contend. Now, as we get into this, I’m going to hit a lot of issues very quickly. Some of you are going to have very specific questions… I co-authored called Doctrine. I did a revision at the 10-year anniversary a year or two ago. It’s about 500 pages. It’s around 1,000 footnotes. It answers tons of questions, and I want to give it to you for free because I can’t hit everything in this sermon, but I’m going to try. I want to talk about contending for the faith, once and for all, delivered under the saints in the realm of that which is religious and spiritual. So, first, we will start with Jesus and the atheists. Atheism is this: There is no God. A-, no, -theos, God, there is no God. Statistically, 4% of Americans now identify as atheist.
Pastor Mark Driscoll, “Atheists are Satanists” (June 11, 2024)
Pastor Mark Driscoll has been an entertaining find in the international Christian space, largely for the obvious media and marketing sophistication driving him. He has qualifications, primarily in communications, which is a reason why he does well.
A few days ago, he spoke on the need for Christians to contend in the arena of faith and spirituality. Particularly, as he references in the first portions of the clip, he sees a need to reinforce the Doctrine of the faith.
What is Driscoll getting at here?
Driscoll references Jude 3 in passing at the outset, which says, “Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people.”
The basic idea is Christians need to fight for their faith and sinfulm people are, ultimately, doomed. Driscoll’s primary brand has been the provision of a lot of free content on Christ and the Bible online, whether in sermons or lectures for a long time.
His opening salvo on atheism seems more or less correct, “So, first, we will start with Jesus and the atheists. Atheism is this: There is no God. A-, no, -theos, God, there is no God. Statistically, 4% of Americans now identify as atheist.”
The 4% is factually correct. Based on reportage from the Pew Research Center, 4% of Americans identify as atheists. He did a better job characterizing the atheist demographics in the United States than the rhetorical humour of Bill Maher.
The inflammatory title merely reflects the communications wing of Driscoll’s preaching. He quotes a piece of scripture to set the tone about contending for the faith and gets the fact right on the percentage of the population who identify as atheists.
It would be nice to see a larger framing because the number of atheists isn’t the real story in the United States. The larger religious narrative in the United States is the 28% of Americans who identify as without a religious affiliation, of which atheists (and agnostics and nothing in particulars) are a part.
Even in the opening statements of Driscoll’s preaching, I do not see a representation of Satanism, whether the Church of Satan or The Satanic Temple, in it. So far, marketing and advertising, what about the rest of his clip?
Jesus Christ is the only founder of any major world religion who declared himself to be God. Atheists are like, “There is no God.” Jesus is like, “Howdy.” Yes, he declares himself to be God. I will prove it to you with one verse. This is why Jesus was sentenced to death and executed by the governmental and religious authorities. John 10:30–33, Jesus answered, “I and the Father are one. So that those who were present picked up stones,” that is to execute him, “to stone him. But he said to them, I have shown you many great miracles from the Father. For which of these do you stone me, we are not stoning you for any of these. But for blasphemy, because you, a mere man,” what? ‘Claim to be God.’ Jesus says he’s God. Jesus is the only founder of any major world religion who says he is God. If you are going to contend, sometimes, you are going to contend against the atheists.
Once again, Driscoll gets the scripture accurate and factual in John 10:30–33. Only a small detail, we have to accept an entire book as a historical fact when it features zombies and posits magical realms. Life isn’t Lord of the Rings. When Driscoll claims Christ was the only one, that’s factually incorrect. We can find them even today! Lou de Palingboer was a charismatic leader of Dutch background. He both claimed to be a messiah and to be God. God keeps coming back and dying, apparently. Here Driscoll is not contending with atheists, he’s contending with other theists, other theists who claim to be messiah, and other theists who claim to be God. That one is straight across the plate, and Driscoll missed it. Again, he’s not saying only those who claim to be Jesus but also those who claim to be God (who are messiahs). That’s quite common, in fact. Yet, if we stick to his caveat of any major world religion, then, of course, Jesus would probably be the only one. Although, Krishna, apparently, claimed to be a divine incarnation of sorts. He continues:
Other times, you will contend against the agnostics. Jesus versus the agnostics is this. Agnosticism says we can’t know. A- means “no.” -gnosis means “knowledge.” They mean we have no knowledge of whether or not a God exists. He may or may not; we don’t know. We can’t know. We won’t know. This is the fastest-growing category of spirituality in the West. They are called the Nones. Now, 3 in 10 Americans, especially younger generations, identify as Nones. Let me say this: Jesus Christ is God in the flesh on the Earth. We have all the knowledge we need.
That’s the stickier part. He may have been confused at the moment, as his preaching tends to be coffee-paced. He’s correct on the definition and wrong on the styling. Different types of agnostics will define the “don’t know,” “can’t know,” and“won’t know” distinctions differently. Most would fall into the don’t know category. We do not know if God exists. That makes sense. Following this, they shouldn’t necessarily adhere to a belief status of knowing or not if God exists. A more absolute sense is “can’t know” or “won’t know.” It’s projecting not only a lack of a mental model for a God, but even a methodology to garner knowledge about a god at any time in the future. Driscoll jumps to equating the agnostics with the Nones. That’s not entirely correct, especially when referencing the 3 in 10 Americans bit. Agnostics are part of the Nones, not the Nones; the Nones are 3 in 10 Americans, part of who are the agnostics. It’s a crucial distinction. It’s confusing the bread for the whole sandwich. Driscoll’s running his mouth too fast; he’s falling off the tracks. Let’s continue:
Every Christmas, you get a Christmas card that talks about Jesus. It calls him Emmanuel, which means “God with us.” The agnostics are like, “We don’t know.” Jesus is like, “Right here, preaching, teaching, doing miracles. And when you kill me, I will come back and prove the point. I am who I said I am. I am God.” In addition, what we are seeing today, especially with younger emerging generations, is an increased contending in Jesus versus the occult, the occult are demonic spiritual practices forbidden by the Bible. Everything God creates. Satan counterfeits. The occult is a counterfeit of spirit-filled. Instead, it is being demon-filled. This would include Wicca, witchcraft, the New Age, new spirituality, psychics, channelling, Astrology, Clairvoyance, Divination, the Freemasons which are a cult and an occult, Oracles, Tarot Cards, Ouija Boards, Native American Shamanism, Spells, Sorceries, spirit guides, Auras, Palm Reading, and Paganism. You’re like, “What does this look like?” Go to Sedona, or wait for Halloween, either way, that’s what it is.
The appeal to many of Pastor Driscoll is a) a sense of humour injected into traditionally tepid sermon waters and b) more masculine-oriented themes and preaching, which implies a sense of tacit aggression with it. That’s why more men are going to this church than other churches, in terms of ratios. The early section of this quote is more Christian dogma, so nothing new there. When he mentions an increased contending versus the occult, in one sense true and in another false, another option increasingly prevalent is a lack of care. Younger people simply disidentify with Christianity. That’s apathy, not contending. For those who engage in occult practices, they may not take this as a contention with Jesus or Christianity, or the Bible, at all. It’s the opposite; it’s the Christians who disapprove of them and, therefore, contend with them, which may make some react in turn. It’s important to get this right on the frame. Driscoll’s framing makes things seem as if the world versus Christianity, but, in fact, as many have experienced who simply live their lives: It’s Christianity versus the world if that that flip makes sense. The Christianity of Driscoll is one used as a sociocultural and political club against others. More:
So, what we’re seeing today is an explosion in the occult. Technology and social media is allowing people to gather around what was previously outlier pagan practice, is now becoming mainstream. So, I’ll show it to you. This is a clip this week from TikTok. One of the most popular hashtags is “WitchTok.” It’s how to cast spells and how to consult the dead, and how to communicate with demons. It’s teaching largely young girls how to be witches. And what’s interesting, WitchTok has 21 billion views. Here’s what’s curious: do you know how many people there are on planet Earth? 8 billion. 21 billion clicks just on one social media platform to learn how to do witchcraft.
Driscoll isn’t saying too much new here if thinking about the general cultural and social fear many Christians harbour in relation to the occult or what they deem as The Other. Social media, witches, spells, and the like, which do not do anything except waste these young girls’ time, are the latest in the fearmongering, amongst themselves, of Christians in North America. It’s simply the ironic continuation of a clash of some Christians with modern technology and other beliefs while using technology to spread Christianity against those same beliefs. If it wasn’t TikTok or witchcraft, then it would be another technology and another alternative belief or practice. He says:
That being said, now we’re going to deal with Jesus versus the world religions. I’m going to hit them very, very quickly, but I’m going to look at four things. I’m going to look at their founder, their writing, their view of God, and their view of Jesus. Number one, we’re going to start with Jesus Christ and Christianity. Our founder is Jesus Christ. Our writing is the 66 books of the Old and New Testament. God wrote a book. If you want a word from God, open the Word of God. We believe the whole thing. And we believe that when you read the Bible, the Holy Spirit reads you. And it’s the only book, when you read it, the author will sit down and meet with you, and he loves you, and he wants to speak to you through His Word. That’s what we believe. Our view of God is Trinity. Probably not a shock. You’re at Trinity Church. One God, three persons, Father, Son, and Spirit. All Christians and major creeds since the beginning of the church have always agreed that there is one God in three persons, Father, Son, and Spirit. Co-equal, co-eternal, sharing all the divine attributes. And Jesus Christ, we’re about Jesus. Fully God, fully man, born of a virgin, lived without sin, died on the Cross, in our place for our sins, rose from the dead to forgive our sins, conquered Satan, Sin, death, Hell, the wrath of God, verified his resurrection, ascended into Heaven, is ruling and reigning, is King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and He is coming again to judge the living and the dead. Amen? That’s our team.
The rest simply rouses the troops through a repetition of what they already believe, which is a weird phenomenon. I do not know formal services in which atheists, agnostics, or nothing in particulars need to go and say, “Yes, we do not believe in a God of the universe, in Christ as messiah, or the Bible as the word of God…” etc. I do not see it. I’ve interviewed a lot of these people. It’s not there. The closest might be the Sunday Assembly, but they aren’t even that. Now, given the misleading and provocative title about atheists as Satanists, Driscoll is known for inflammatory remarks about women, about LGBTI persons, and about other religions and no religion. Does he do this for marketing and advertising or for truth value? Since he posted an inflammatory title and never once spoke on atheists as Satanists and merely demonized others and demarcated what his congregation believes and doesn’t believe, I leave the answer on the former, which is to say what has always been true about Driscoll: He’s a performer, not a preacher.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/16
Dorothy Small an advocate for SNAP, Survivor Network for those Abused by Priests since 2019, was a child sex abuse victim. She also experienced sexual abuse by a clergyman as an adult. Dorothy courageously addressed the latter through successful litigation publicly disclosing her identity prior to the inception of the #Me Too movement. Victimized but not a victim she shares how she moved beyond surviving to thriving using adversity as a powerful motivator. She fortified herself with knowledge of personability disorders and tactics used by predators to help her spot wolves in sheep’s clothing. This has enabled her to feel safe in a world where safety is not guaranteed, even in institutions where one would expect it such as religious. A retired registered nurse with over forty years of clinical experience, Dorothy lives with her loving fur companions Bradley Cooper and Captain Ron, Boston Terriers. She is a self-published author, cancer survivor, mother, and grandmother. Dorothy is currently working on a book detailing her experiences in moving beyond a life of abuse and into a new life of freedom.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I have decided, after some discussions with members of the Eastern Orthodox community who are pioneers in research into clergy related abuse and following some articles written about 6 or 7 years ago and then republished in The Good Men Project in January, to take a deep dive on the subject matter of abuse in the Orthodox churches. Which raises the issues, what about some of the survivors and the contexts of the crimes and criminals of the Roman Catholic Church? There has been a rich legacy of criminality wholly apart from theological veracity or the God concept. What is the contemporary understanding of the breadth of the abuse of children and adults by the Roman Catholic Church, institutionally?
Dorothy Small: I believe it is not considered to be an issue in the present as much as in the past when it came more into light in 2002 during the Boston Globe Spotlight. The focus was centered on abuse of minors exclusively with abuse of adults not considered abuse but a “lapse in judgment and vows” and “sin”. However, Richard Sipe who treated clergy for sexual related issues as a therapist estimated that about 50% maintain the vow of chastity. It is easy for a priest to dismiss the lapse as not violating the vow of celibacy which is about marriage. Teaching the Biblical position on sex belonging in marriage then acting out of their vow of celibacy violates not only the vow of celibacy but that of chastity which means refraining from engaging in sexual relationships. Most in the church understand the abuse of children is a criminal offense and believe it is being addressed which measures have been instituted to better protect minors. However, abuse still occurs. As for adults until the #MeToo movement was ushered into public consciousness in 2017, the general consensus is that adults are consensual and that the adult is even responsible for tempting the priest instead of protecting him at all cost even if it means to remain quiet if something happens. Many parishioners who are lacking knowledge that adults are also exploited and abused have difficulty viewing the cleric in such a light in order to continue in their spiritual practice in the church. It is easier to place the anger and blame on the adult who is victimized by the abuse of spiritual power and authority than to face the fact that they too have been manipulated by the cleric who is not adhering to what he preaches and his sacred vows.
Jacobsen: The practice of shuffling around priests can create a terrible image over the long term because these hierarchs can be promoted over time, so garnering more authority, for one. For two, over enough decades, it can appear as if the abusers are in every parish, diocese, etc., when, in fact, it could be an apparency effect because the abusers get moved around – so, out of the total population of Catholic hierarchs, it may not be that many, but appears as such given the pervasive shuffling. It’s the problem of institutional ‘solutions’ to deflect accountability. What else happens with these Catholic hierarchs, in terms of protections by policies?
Small: Protecting the church from scandal which it hates has created a culture of secrecy by covering up, dismissing, minimizing and gaslighting to deflect accountability for actions which cause scandal. Clericalism perpetuates the problem. The policy of transferring the clergy, which is an issue, was easy to do as the church is universal and in countries around the world. It is easy to move the cleric out of the country as many are from foreign countries and practicing in this country on work visas. Bishops are accountable for the clergy and for handling complaints. Yet the process is not conducive for the ease of reporting but for protecting the clergy. I understand it is important to protect them from false complaints. However, it is not common for someone to make such a complaint. In 2021 Pope Francis updated church law aimed at holding senior churchmen accountable for covering up sexual abuse cases expanding it to cover lay Catholic leaders and acknowledging that vulnerable adults and not only children can be victims of abuse when they are unable to freely consent. The definition of what constitutes adult vulnerability has not been settled. This is an ongoing discussion in the church. However, any adult at any age and stage in life can be vulnerable to the grooming tactics of a highly manipulative cleric due to the imbalance of power and spiritual authority. The ongoing debate of what constitutes adult vulnerability when in fact all parishioners are vulnerable to the authority of the cleric as they are in his care should settle the debate.
Jacobsen: What do these policies send as a message to the laity and to the non-Catholic public? It is a juggernaut. It would be – is – impossible to ignore them, globally.
Small: That the adult is still responsible for the abuse unless they are seriously impaired. This means that as things stand there is no protective course set in place to educate the public on grooming tactics and red flags to observe as well as measures to protect oneself such as it is ok to say no to clergy and not to assume that all are safe because of their position.
Jacobsen: Not many people, as you explained to me, encounter multiple experiences of abuse over separated instances by different clergy. It happens once, repeatedly, by one Catholic hierarch. How was yours unusual in that regard?
Small: In one parish a priest groomed my husband and I at the time asking for an invitation to our home for dinner. We had two young sons around the ages of five and seven and a half. This priest was charismatic and appeared to be fond of children. We felt honored to be “chosen” by him for personal attention. My actions prevented him from coming back to our home when I expressed concern after his behavior at our home the evening he came over. He was extremely flirtatious to me in front of my husband and asked to “tuck the boys in their beds and read them their prayers”. Years later when researching what happened to him I discovered he was out of the priesthood because of a scandal involving a minor. I also discovered that at the time he was grooming my husband and I to have access to our children that there was a complaint from another family for similar behavior of a minor child the same age as our children. This was dealt with secretly at the time but was discovered during the lawsuit per public record. Immediately after he was transferred to his next assignment another priest who replaced him asked me to help him with a ministry that he would teach me which brought us in close contact. Within a couple of weeks he let me in on his secret. A woman had sought him for counseling at his former parish and was pregnant with his child. He swore her to secrecy. Meanwhile, I was vulnerable due to unresolvable marital conflict at the time the priest increased his pursuit tactics within four months after my former husband and I separated. He was highly manipulative and charismatic, engaging what I now have come to learn as gaslighting which caused me to doubt my perceptions over his. His other victim filed a lawsuit. I did not know I was also his victim. This was in the early 1990’s. He left the priesthood. I was in counseling for a number of years at the time for issues regarding severe childhood emotional abuse and catastrophic familial losses at an early age. Experiencing narcissistically abusive relationships since childhood through care providers left me vulnerable for more abusive relationships as an adult. I did not seek any of the priests in my story for counseling. The first we were chosen just because we attended mass and visited with the priest after mass along with others in front of the church. The other chose me to engage in a ministry together. The third fixated on me as I was in ministry and visible plus we were at a luncheon held in his honor welcoming him to the parish. However, because they are priests I engaged in sharing personal information with them thinking it would protect both of us. If I shared my vulnerability, that would cause them to stay away from me. Instead, they used it to groom me and gain access to my emotions which then they gained entry into my head.
Jacobsen: What forms of justice have been met for clergy-based abusers by the abused-by-the-clergy?
Small: In my case the first two priests were sued by their victims. They both left the priesthood one mandated and the second left on his own volition before he would be forced to leave. It was a measure of control on his part. The third priest was removed from his position as he was on a work visa and sent back to his country where he was placed back in active ministry and remains to this day, to my knowledge based on what I was able to locate online. After advocating for myself through victim advocacy for around ten months I was unresolved and what I requested in order to heal was denied. I filed a lawsuit and mediated with a settlement. Not having to sign a nondisclosure agreement to maintain my voice I settled out of court to be able to focus my energy on healing. Later that year I joined SNAP, Survivor Network for Those Abused by Priests. I continue to learn and focus on the underlying issues that rendered me so vulnerable and continue to be an active volunteer advocate with SNAP. For me healing began when the lawyer who was also a psychologist took my case. He heard me, believed me, and advocated for me against the most powerful institution in the world. This gave me the motivation to keep fighting for myself as recovery was not going to be quick or easy. I could not heal from the church abuse without bringing healing to everything which it was attached to. I was born into a tough situation and it continued throughout the rest of my childhood. I also experienced sexual abuse as a child by a familial member and a high school teacher. Standing up to the last priest and the lawsuit helped me to bring healing to what I could not seek justice for so long ago. It empowered me and gave me my voice that I use to address the serious effects of clergy abuse. It is spiritual incest.
Jacobsen: Have you had any similar style of justice?
Small: I answered this question above. But to answer the previous question I believe we are only beginning to see justice through lawsuits. Many survivors would like to see the cleric removed from ministry. However, some continue to ministry or are transferred and continue in ministry. The statute of limitations prevents those who realize they were abused from coming forward as often as with those abused as children it can take decades to be able to come forward because of memories blocked, fear of the repercussions or reporting, and the stigma of getting a priest in trouble.
Jacobsen: How can the abused be re-traumatized in the midst of the publicity, the legal proceedings, and so on?
Small: Victim bashing, blaming, shaming, losing religious community because the parishioners either can’t understand the nature of abuse and what constitutes it or their own struggle to believe they were misrepresented, being ostracized, not believed, treated as the perpetrator through harsh questioning tactics all serve to enhance the trauma. It is pure hell on top of the abuse itself.
Jacobsen: What do you think are the lessons individuals abused by the Eastern Orthodox Church can take from the Roman Catholic Church scandals?
Small: They need to admit that abuse is taking place in their church and not point the finger at the Catholic Church as being the main problem simply because the problem was forced into the open by investigative journalists, survivors coming forward and attorneys who take the cases. From what I have been told by a couple of members seeking to bring the issue into the light there is staunch denial that the abuse ever occurred and no admission by the hierarchy to the victims that abuse happened which means there is no accountability in the way of justice.
Jacobsen: How does this clergy-based abuse, to you, have no relation to the God concept, yet poisons people’s notions of the God concept?
Small: From my experience and exposure to both adults abused as children and adults abused as adults it has detrimental effects. For those abused as children it not only has lasting effects on religious practice later in life but it distorts their perception of a loving and benevolent God. For many it is as if God Himself abused them sexually. For both adults and children many have God brought into the abuse as if it is condoned or honors God in some way. God is used in the manipulation. The clergy represent Christ in personna. Many adults including myself leave the church either for a prolonged period of time or indefinitely. I continued to attend mass until I discovered it was actually keeping me from being able to heal from the abuse. What was once a place of comfort and nurturing as well as the place of worship became the reminder of sexual abuse. The church is considered the field hospital for spiritual healing and nurturing. It is a house or worship where we enter more vulnerable than even with therapists as it addresses our soul. The Church is meant to help us get to heaven and not drag us down into hell by a wolf in shepherd’s clothing preying on the flock instead of protecting it from the evils in the world. Yet, the sad reality is we must not be blind to the reality that evil through personality disordered individuals who seek positions of power and authority with adulation and plenty of supply need to be held accountable instead of protected by their hierarchy in which they serve. No one is above the law.
Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Dorothy.
Small: Thank you for the opportunity to express a subject for which I wish I did not have so much experience. However, I realize if I kept silent I would be complicit with the darkness instead of speaking truth bringing light into it. The truth is what is needed. It is what God stands for as well as justice. Addressing the issue and engaging in prevention and holding perpetrators accountable protects the public, the good priests upholding their vows and rules associated with their positions, and the church. I think about the name of God and who will speak on His behalf? Those of us who speak out serve God as well.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: March 1, 2014
Web Domain: http://www.in-sightpublishing.com
Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Journal: In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal
Journal Founding: August 2, 2012
Frequency: Three (3) Times Per Year
Review Status: Non-Peer-Reviewed
Access: Electronic/Digital & Open Access
Fees: None (Free)
Volume Numbering: 12
Issue Numbering: 3
Section: A
Theme Type: Idea
Theme Premise: “Outliers and Outsiders”
Theme Part: 31
Formal Sub-Theme: None.
Individual Publication Date: June 1, 2024
Issue Publication Date: September 1, 2024
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Word Count: 910
Image Credits: None.
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN): 2369-6885
*Please see the footnotes, bibliography, and citations, after the publication.*
Abstract
Dr. Lloyd Hawkeye Robertson is a Registered Doctoral Psychologist with expertise in Counselling Psychology, Educational Psychology, and Human Resource Development. His research interests include memes as applied to self-knowledge, the evolution of religion and spirituality, the aboriginal self’s structure, residential school syndrome, prior learning recognition and assessment, and the treatment of suicide ideation. Robertson discusses: the research on male stigma; replications of the studies; “men are trash”; socioeconomic status differences if any; the variable of education; social commentary; and looking ahead.
Keywords: Male stigma, Prejudice, Sexism, Intersectional feminism, Domestic violence, SCUM manifesto, Bias, Qualitative research, Parental alienation, Oppressor class, Education, Disposability of men.
Conversation with Dr. Lloyd Hawkeye Robertson on “Men are Trash” and Male Stigma
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We have done a lot of interviews together. One of those recent ones, by you of me, covered some of the mixed-feeling personal experiences in which I have encountered some unfortunate prejudiced statements by some women in work with them. Things like “Men are trash” at one restaurant job. That’s, at a minimum, a biased statement. Even in spite of the significant progress many women have achieved in the contemporary period in terms of education, work, reproductive rights, and the like, I fight for these same items. However, I recognize some of the prejudice creep in some aspects of Canadian culture, as exemplified in statements like the above. You have published some early work on male stigma. It is a disheartening and sometimes hurtful string of phenomena, especially as I have donated so much volunteer time and work to organizations and writing, and interviewing, on these subjects. So, I have to ask, “What is the status of the research on male stigma?”
Dr. Lloyd Hawkeye Robertson: I used a classic definition of stigma as the ascription of negative qualities to a group on the basis of their group membership. I found a sample of men who had been ascribed the qualities of being incompetent in social situations and potentially violent not on the basis of their past performance but on the basis of their being men. I don’t know of any other studies that have approached this issue in this way.
Jacobsen: Has there been much in the way of replications of the studies or studies following in the same line of research?
Robertson: While there has been no replication of my original method, to my knowledge, there have been studies that have found related elements of my findings. For example, Tsang and his associates found that male victims of domestic violence in Hong Kong and Taiwan were stigmatized as inadequate men, and this justified the beating they had received. Various studies have shown that men receive, on average, heavier sentence in domestic violence situations than do women the the implication of greater culpability. In a study of 500 randomly selected appellate cases in Canada Harman and Lorando found that the legal system at trial showed assumptions that allegations of abuse made by protective mothers are more likely than not have been accurate.
Jacobsen: Could these statements, e.g., “Men are trash,” be reflective of a fallout of some malevolent sexism directed at men?
Robertson: I think a statement like “men are trash” would be an example of sexism. I think the SCUM manifesto by Solenas that advocated the elimination of men is unquestionably malevolent. Yet it is celebrated in some feminist circles. There is a recent paperback published by Harper Collins titled “How to kill a man and get away with it.” Would that title be allowable referencing any other identifiable racial or sexual group?
Jacobsen: These statements were in blue collar environments – restaurants and farming. Could these more reflect a phenomenon happening in lower-income brackets than higher income brackets?
Robertson: In my research I did not find any evidence that this was primarily a lower income phenomenon. Having said that, people with lower incomes may be tempted to scapegoat in order to blame their failures on others.
Jacobsen: What about in the variable of education? Could education act as a buffer against negative attitudes popping up, about men, in a manner similar to consciousness-raising about reducing negative attitudes against women in the feminist movements?
Robertson: I think university education has been part of the problem. Intersectional feminism, in particular, starts with the assumption that men represent an oppressor class that acts collectively to keep women down. Data are selectively interpreted from this lens blinding us to other possibilities that explain sex and gender differences. I think these attitudes get filtered down to the working class. The notion “all men are trash” might be based on some personal experience of the person who said it, but the generalization of “all men” is an ideological statement.
Jacobsen: What is the psychology of prejudice or bias based on sex and gender?
Robertson: I think prejudice as justified by stigma has the psychological benefit of justifying one’s own privilege and excusing one’s own wrong doing. Either parent can be a victim of parental alienation, for example; however, when a mother does it she can invoke a male stigma to justify her actions.
Jacobsen: Is it premature to extend social commentary based on early academic research on male stigma and individual experiences/limited qualitative data?
Robertson: My study was qualitative, so while I can say that male stigma exists I cannot say from this study, how extensive male stigma is in Canada or North America generally.
Jacobsen: Any final thoughts on where conversations could go around this?
Robertson: There are assumptions of the disposability of men that are far older than feminism. For example, Maria Kulaglow related how a Rwanda cabinet minister said that the genocide was particularly hard on women in her country because 70% of those killed were men. Hillary Clinton said something similar in a statement that women are the real victims of war. These statements reflect an older culture where men are cannon fodder whose lives can be discounted but the lives of women need to be protected. I embraced Women’s Liberation in the 1960s, in part because equality would be a net benefit for men.
Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Lloyd.
Bibliography
None
Footnotes
None
Citations
American Medical Association (AMA 11th Edition): Jacobsen S. Conversation with Dr. Lloyd Hawkeye Robertson on “Men are Trash” and Male Stigma. June 2024; 12(3). http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/men-trash-male-stigma
American Psychological Association (APA 7th Edition): Jacobsen, S. (2024, June 1). Conversation with Dr. Lloyd Hawkeye Robertson on “Men are Trash” and Male Stigma. In-Sight Publishing. 12(3).
Brazilian National Standards (ABNT): JACOBSEN, S. Conversation with Dr. Lloyd Hawkeye Robertson on “Men are Trash” and Male Stigma. In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, Fort Langley, v. 12, n. 3, 2024.
Chicago/Turabian, Author-Date (17th Edition): Jacobsen, Scott. 2024. “Conversation with Dr. Lloyd Hawkeye Robertson on “Men are Trash” and Male Stigma.” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal 12, no. 3 (Summer). http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/men-trash-male-stigma.
Chicago/Turabian, Notes & Bibliography (17th Edition): Jacobsen, S “Conversation with Dr. Lloyd Hawkeye Robertson on “Men are Trash” and Male Stigma.” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal 12, no. 3 (June 2024).http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/men-trash-male-stigma.
Harvard: Jacobsen, S. (2024) ‘Conversation with Dr. Lloyd Hawkeye Robertson on “Men are Trash” and Male Stigma’, In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, 12(3). <http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/men-trash-male-stigma>.
Harvard (Australian): Jacobsen, S 2024, ‘Conversation with Dr. Lloyd Hawkeye Robertson on “Men are Trash” and Male Stigma’, In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, vol. 12, no. 3, <http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/men-trash-male-stigma>.
Modern Language Association (MLA, 9th Edition): Jacobsen, Scott. “Conversation with Dr. Lloyd Hawkeye Robertson on “Men are Trash” and Male Stigma.” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, vo.12, no. 3, 2024, http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/men-trash-male-stigma.
Vancouver/ICMJE: Scott J. Conversation with Dr. Lloyd Hawkeye Robertson on “Men are Trash” and Male Stigma [Internet]. 2024 Jun; 12(3). Available from: http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/men-trash-male-stigma.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright © 2012-Present by Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing. Authorized use/duplication only with explicit and written permission from Scott Douglas Jacobsen. Excerpts, links only with full credit to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with specific direction to the original. All collaborators co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their purposes.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/15
Rick Rosner: You had assigned homework for me, which I didn’t complete because I took a nap. You wanted to discuss the role of God in Judaism? It’s not only that, but a specific concept within a particular reform of Judaism.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: The idea involves the Hebrew word for Messiah, meaning anointed. In Orthodox and Conservative Judaism, there’s a much more direct interpretation of this. How do you see this in Reform Judaism, if at all? Because I know you’ve mentioned that we don’t always understand what Reform Jews believe, based on my understanding and exposure to Reform Judaism.
Rosner: I don’t see it. I wish it would happen. I have a giant mosaic of Jesus that I’m restoring in my office, so I look at Jesus frequently. Of course, Jesus is someone else’s Messiah, but I wish for his return. Unlike a typical Jesus-like thing, I hope he’ll return and clean the house. He spoke regarding all the people who are degrading life in America and around the world. You don’t have to kill them; just capture them. My idea is to send them to Europa, or whatever the ice moon of Jupiter is called. Drill some ice caves and make them comfortable.
Comfortable under the surface of Europa for the 10,000 biggest jerks on Earth and have a limbo with a capacity 10,000 in caves you’ve dug on the moon. If they get their act together and stop spreading lies and nonsense, they can return to Earth; otherwise, they remain on Europa. If you permanently or semi-permanently removed the 10,000 biggest jerks on Earth and then sent another 10,000 to limbo on the moon, people would behave much more rationally. We wouldn’t have so much support for Trump in America if conservative media weren’t lying most hours of the day. But I expect something else. It’s just a vain hope. I do not believe in the coming of the Messiah.
My beliefs are not entirely unspiritual, but they are heavily science-based. I believe I share this view with most Reform Jews. I also think many more observant Jews, Christians, and Catholics would agree that religion has been overshadowed by our knowledge of the world, by our understanding of the world. You can still be nominally a Catholic or a Muslim but not necessarily believe in the eventual return of a messiah or heaven and hell. I think our understanding of the world is too advanced, and while not complete, it’s full enough to eliminate most people’s belief in religious magic.
Jacobsen: Between 1768 and 1828, Israel Jacobson lived in Germany. He founded Reform Judaism and held services in German rather than Hebrew. What do you think was behind his decision to use German rather than Hebrew when founding Reform Judaism? What was his intention?
Rosner: I was going to ask you. When you read about him, what did it say was behind that decision?
Jacobsen: I would say it was for understandability and accessibility and possibly time commitment.
Rosner: He wanted a form of Judaism for busy people of the mercantile class because the bourgeois lifestyle takes much time.
Jacobsen: What do you think could have happened in Germany, of all places, in the early 19th century?
Rosner: Germany was the home of the Hanseatic League centuries before, the first European mercantile league. Business people got together to make it easier to do business. I am still determining exactly how the Hansa worked but look at the houses in Amsterdam, where they’ve got those triangular roofs and a window on the top floor with a buttress for a pulley over the window. Those houses were designed for business. You get your goods. You winch them up to storage in your attic. Your store is on the first floor, and you live on the next two or three floors with storage in the attic. Germany and the rest of Europe were probably being built for business. I don’t know because I slept through and then dropped out. My history class covered that period in my first semester of college. There was a partial eclipse during our first midterm, and I fell asleep and flunked the test. But I was business.
Jacobsen: What about the institution of both boys’ and girls’ confirmation to replace the traditional boys’ bar mitzvah ceremony?
Rosner: I don’t know. After my bar mitzvah, I was given the choice to go on and get confirmed. I said no. We lived in Boulder, and our temple was half an hour away in Denver. I hated my Sundays being taken up by Temple School. That would have been another two years, at least, of Temple School. If there had been a chance of me getting a girlfriend in Temple School, I would have stuck with it, but the other kids mostly went to the stuck-up school Cherry Creek High School, perhaps the fanciest public high school in Colorado at the time. And they were jerks to me, and I didn’t want to have anything more to do with them.
Jacobsen: Additionally, Israel Jacobson removed any reference to a personal Messiah to restore Israel as a nation. What do you think of that?
Rosner: That sounds like materialism. I just finished a series of novels set in England that has been at war with Mystical and Lovecraftian forces for decades. These forces were unleashed by computation, mechanical computation as done on computers. According to the premise of these novels, computation weakens the walls between our world and the world of demons. Eventually, these walls are breached, and a demon king is now the prime minister of England in the latest novel. In this world where magic now works, the new conspiracy theorists and deniers are materialists, people who believe only in science. They think all this magic is a giant conspiracy, which was a nice twist. Israel Jacobson lived until 1828, 20 years before Marx published Das Kapital, a significant critique of capitalism. During Jacobson’s life, commerce and capitalism thrived in Germany. By Jacobson’s time, science had already been developing for centuries. Commerce and trade were thriving.
A trilogy by Neal Stephenson, the Baroque Cycle, discusses how science was evolving rapidly from the 1660s into the 1800s. He wrote it as science fiction because, at the time, science was advancing rapidly. Life must have seemed like science fiction. I assume that Reform Judaism aligns with that progress. When you visit town squares in Europe, you see many preserved to look as they did in the 1760s, elaborate, gilded, and covered with sculpture, ringed with guild halls. Commerce was making these towns and cities prosperous. It was science and business driving that prosperity—oh, and coffee. Coffee came to the New World. People, especially in London, were drinking coffee. Newton might have been drinking coffee, hanging out in coffee houses, and discussing new ideas. Much science emerged from the first effective stimulant. Also, tobacco, another stimulant, people were energized.
Jacobsen: What about the lack of requirement for male circumcision?
Rosner: I’m okay with that. If you look at studies, circumcision has religious reasons, but the medical reasons don’t necessarily hold up. It doesn’t make you less susceptible to disease, although if you do have a foreskin, you need to work a little harder to keep it clean. I guess not having one makes it more accessible. So yeah, I’m okay with people choosing whether to get it. I know people who’ve had it done if it caused issues. Some people are born with the head of the penis stuck to the foreskin, making it impossible to retract, which is a problem. If you need surgery to correct that, do it. I know a couple of people who had surgery to address issues with the urethra. But if it’s not causing you a problem, leave it alone. Another reason, which may not be significant, is that I think American women are more accustomed to circumcised penises, based on what is seen in American pornography.
So if you consider that, it might be worth it for parents to think about whether an uncircumcised penis might concern future partners. There’s an argument that removal of the foreskin leads to loss of sensitivity because the head is constantly exposed and being rubbed against everything. In contrast, an uncircumcised penis has the head covered, which might make it more sensitive. But I don’t conform to the religious reasons for circumcision anymore.
Jacobsen: Do you eat pork?
Rosner: I’ll eat pork if it isn’t gross. Pork has fatty parts that I don’t like. I’m not just going to eat a piece of bacon. I’ll find the lean part of it, tear away the rest, and eat just the meat. If pork is greasy, I don’t like it. But for religious reasons, no. I do not like lamb chops. They’re not pork, but they are greasy if not prepared properly. So, no to lamb chops. But a nicely cooked pork chop is delicious meat when it’s lean. My mom’s grandfather was a rabbi, so she didn’t eat pork. But when she went out of town, she had pork and pork chops, which were fine.
Jacobsen: What was your family rabbi’s name?
Rosner: Carmel, I believe. No, there was also Coleman. Carmel is spelled C-A-R-M-E-L. It may have been one of those names given at Ellis Island. Coleman, C-O-L-E-M-A-N might be the same. My mom’s maiden name was Carmel.
Jacobsen: Do you know the meaning of that name?
Rosner: No, although Mountain Carmel is mentioned in the Bible, I’m not sure what happened there.
Jacobsen: Do you pray?
Rosner: I do, not as much as I used to, but yes, I still pray a little.
Jacobsen: In what way?
Rosner: I pray for things to go well for myself, my loved ones, and the world. I pray for us to be safe.
Jacobsen: What do you think is the most frequent form of prayer?
Rosner: It’s just this little abridged thing that I developed. I used to turn in circles and chant to God when I was a very little kid, which resulted in me being sent to a shrink when I was six years old. Many religions have mechanics for prayer. Like the prayer wheel. Who uses the prayer wheel? It seems like a Tibetan thing. What religion do they have in Tibet?
Jacobsen: Maybe the Buddhists have a prayer wheel.
Rosner: You spin the wheel, and every rotation is equivalent to saying the prayer once, with the idea being to say the prayer as much as possible. Catholics have Rosary beads, which, when you go to confession, you’re told to say 15 Hail Marys and 10 Our Fathers. Prayer is more effective the more times you say it. That was what I thought as a little kid, so I had this little ditto mark in my prayer. It was like saying to God, repeat what I asked you to do and do what I asked you to repeat. This means I had this prayer I’d said at some point, and I was asking God to A, do it and B, repeat the prayer on my behalf. And that’s still my prayer.
Jacobsen: Do you think it works?
Rosner: I’d like it to work, but not so much. I feel like when athletes thank God for their win at the end of a game. Also, I don’t want to bug God with trivial matters. Praying for your team to win is trivial because both teams are praying for that, and now you’ve given God an impossible task, which is to have both teams win. So, it’s not happening. But I want it to. And we must mention Pascal’s wager. Pascal, one of the wisest men of his time, said to turn to God, take God into your heart on your deathbed, or do whatever you need to do to get good with the Christian God because there’s a non-zero chance that Christianity is right. He didn’t think it was, but his reasoning was that. It costs you nothing, and the cost of being wrong is infinite. So get with it; you’ve given up heaven, which is endless pleasure and joy, all because you didn’t take God into your heart right at the end, which is a relatively inexpensive thing to do.
Rosner: What do you think are reasonable counters to that argument?
Jacobsen: One reasonable counter is that there’s no way that God exists. That’s one argument. But he already knew that argument. He said, yeah, well, so what? Even if it’s 99.9999, for that 0.001% chance, take the chance. Another argument is that God will look at your last-minute repentance and say, “Come on.” But there is plenty of Christian doctrine says you can jump in at the end, and it’s just as good as if you’ve been faithful your entire life.
Jacobsen: It depends on which branch of Christianity.
Rosner: But that doesn’t negate the argument because you can get right with various branches of Christianity by simply opening your heart or doing whatever is required.
Jacobsen: If you were to take a Martian view of human religion, which religion seems the most likely?
Rosner: The faith in science will eventually bring us all the rewards religion promises. In that way, I believe in scientism, if that’s even a word, which it is.
Jacobsen: Technology will eventually get us to where we want to go.
Rosner: It will make all our wishes come true. Of course, it will make all our wishes come true, but it will also make many dystopian outcomes come true. I still have faith in finding a life in that strange future. Also, you can’t stop it.
Jacobsen: What do you think will be the religion of the future?
Rosner: There will be plenty of belief in ideas of personhood, self, and transcendence, all rooted in science. Some people may diverge from the science path at various points. To some extent, science will still have many unanswered questions, and people will fill in the blanks. But many stepping-off points and foundations will be science-based. There will be religious decisions to be our natural bodies, unaugmented; for most people, the greatest pleasure you can have is an orgasm. But in the future, we’ll be able to decouple pleasure from sex.
Neal Stephenson’s work depicts a cult of mathematicians who’ve altered their brains so that they get sexual pleasure from mathematical discovery. Changing your brain will be something we can do in the future. There will be moral and religious reasoning, among other types, in what we do with these alterations. There will also be potential for religious-type discussions about how long people choose to live and in what vessel they choose to live. Do they merge their consciousnesses or bud off consciousnesses with other conscious beings? Do people believe in souls, the equal right to existence, and the non-suffering of non-human and artificial consciousnesses?
There will be religious dimensions to these issues. However, the golden rule dimension is more important than the spiritual dimension. Everything ethical boils down to the golden rule. People who feel the need for goodness and order will try to find ethical positions in the world of the future, which you know is based on the golden rule, morality, and faith in goodness. Goodness will win out.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://ffrf.org/news/releases/ffrf-demands-judicial-reforms-after-alito-wishes-for-godliness-in-america/
Publication Date: June 13, 2024
Organization: Freedom From Religion Foundation
Organization Description: The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with 40,000 members and several chapters all over the country. Our purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is deeply alarmed by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s recently revealed comments.
As Rolling Stone and numerous other media outlets have reported, Alito was recorded agreeing that America must return to a place of “godliness,” an affirmation that raises significant concerns about his impartiality and adherence to the principle of church-state separation.
Alito’s assent underscores the urgent need for comprehensive judicial reform. It not only reflects a partisan bias but also undermines the secular foundation of the U.S. Constitution. Such a perspective from a sitting Supreme Court justice threatens the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary, calling into question the objectivity of the decisions he renders.
Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president and co-founder of FFRF, emphasizes the gravity of the situation: “Justice Alito’s assertion is a stark reminder of why robust reforms are necessary to preserve the impartiality of our judicial system. The Supreme Court must uphold the Constitution, which mandates a separation between religion and government.”
FFRF has been at the forefront of advocating for judicial reforms to ensure accountability and transparency within the Supreme Court. The organization’s ongoing efforts include pushing for the Judiciary Act and the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act. These legislative measures aim to establish a binding Code of Conduct for Supreme Court justices and implement necessary transparency measures.
The Senate and its Majority Leader Chuck Schumer must take decisive action on these key bills to halt the Supreme Court’s increasing overreach and restore judicial integrity. The Judiciary Act seeks to expand the Supreme Court, providing a necessary constitutional check on a judicial branch that has run amok. The Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act would enforce strict ethical guidelines, ensuring that justices are held to the highest standards of conduct and transparency, which would rein in the behaviors of Justices Alito and Clarence Thomas, as well as their spouses.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://ffrf.org/news/releases/ffrf-supreme-court-does-bare-minimum-in-tossing-mifepristone-case/
Publication Date: June 13, 2024
Organization: Freedom From Religion Foundation
Organization Description: The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with 40,000 members and several chapters all over the country. Our purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism
The Freedom From Religion Foundation welcomes the U.S. Supreme Court decision today ending a phony lawsuit seeking to curtail availability of the abortion medication mifepristone. It warns, though, that the crusade against medication abortion is only beginning.
Anti-abortion groups sued over the Food and Drug Administration’s approval and regulations relating to mifepristone, which is the first of a two-drug protocol used to end pregnancies. The high court ruled, as FFRF’s friend-of-the-court brief urged, that the anti-abortion groups and their members lacked legal standing to sue.
“We can breathe a sigh of relief for now,” comments FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “The court has done the bare minimum in tossing this case. However, we know that religiously motivated anti-abortion extremists will continue seeking to abolish abortion entirely in the United States — and they have friends on our highest court.”
In a unanimous opinion, the court ruled that the anti-abortion plaintiffs could not demonstrate that they suffered a sufficient injury in order to sue. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, writing for the court, explained: “The plaintiffs want FDA to make mifepristone more difficult for other doctors to prescribe and for pregnant women to obtain. Under Article III of the Constitution, a plaintiff’s desire to make a drug less available for others does not establish standing to sue. Nor do the plaintiffs’ other standing theories suffice. Therefore, the plaintiffs lack standing to challenge FDA’s actions.”
Several anti-abortion physicians had claimed that at some point they might need to treat a patient suffering from unlikely complications caused by mifepristone (even though they admitted to having religious objections to the drug). Contrary to assertions of these physicians, medication abortion is extremely safe. More than 5 million U.S. women have used mifepristone to end pregnancies in the past 23 years, with a serious complication rate of less than 1 percent.
The court’s opinion largely tracked the reasoning that FFRF’s amicus brief laid out: “Here, the plaintiff doctors and medical associations are unregulated parties who seek to challenge FDA’s regulation of others. Specifically, FDA’s regulations apply to doctors prescribing mifepristone and to pregnant women taking mifepristone. But the plaintiff doctors and medical associations do not prescribe or use mifepristone. And FDA has not required the plaintiffs to do anything or to refrain from doing anything.”
Abortion medication accounted for 63 percent of all abortions in the United States in 2023, so zealots are increasingly targeting it. The state of Louisiana, which already bans almost all abortions, in late May passed a law banning medication abortion without a prescription.
FFRF’s amicus brief asserted that the FDA had taken no regulatory action relating to the plaintiffs that threatened their rights of conscience. Its amicus explained, “In this instance, anti-abortion advocates seek to use the courts to limit access to a safe and effective medication used for abortion.”
The lawsuit in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA was filed by Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian nationalist legal outfit with assets of at least $78.5 million. It represents anti-abortion advocates who judge-shopped U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Christian nationalist extremist whose nomination FFRF actively opposed. Kacsmaryk issued a shocking ruling in April 2023 banning mifepristone nationwide.
The Supreme Court quickly decreed at the time that mifepristone would remain available under current rules until the litigation concluded. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last August then ruled to limit abortion medication to just seven weeks of gestation, instead of 10, and to ban telemedicine and mail-order shipments for abortion pills. At that point, the Supreme Court had no choice but to hear the case. The challenge not only endangered reproductive rights, but, as a startling attack on regulatory powers, science and pharmaceutical corporations, had far-reaching consequences.
“This was the correct decision by the Supreme Court, but this case never should have made it this far,” says FFRF Legal Director Patrick Elliott. “We will continue to oppose religious extremists who seek to abuse our court system to impose their religion on all Americans.”
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/15
According to some semi-reputable sources gathered in a listing here, Rick G. Rosner may have among America’s, North America’s, and the world’s highest measured IQs at or above 190 (S.D. 15)/196 (S.D. 16) based on several high range test performances created by Christopher Harding, Jason Betts, Paul Cooijmans, and Ronald Hoeflin. He earned 12 years of college credit in less than a year and graduated with the equivalent of 8 majors. He has received 8 Writers Guild Awards and Emmy nominations, and was titled 2013 North American Genius of the Year by The World Genius Directory with the main “Genius” listing here.
He has written for Remote Control, Crank Yankers, The Man Show, The Emmys, The Grammys, and Jimmy Kimmel Live!. He worked as a bouncer, a nude art model, a roller-skating waiter, and a stripper. In a television commercial, Domino’s Pizza named him the “World’s Smartest Man.” The commercial was taken off the air after Subway sandwiches issued a cease-and-desist. He was named “Best Bouncer” in the Denver Area, Colorado, by Westwood Magazine.
Rosner spent much of the late Disco Era as an undercover high school student. In addition, he spent 25 years as a bar bouncer and American fake ID-catcher, and 25+ years as a stripper, and nearly 30 years as a writer for more than 2,500 hours of network television. Errol Morris featured Rosner in the interview series entitled First Person, where some of this history was covered by Morris. He came in second, or lost, on Jeopardy!, sued Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? over a flawed question and lost the lawsuit. He won one game and lost one game on Are You Smarter Than a Drunk Person? (He was drunk). Finally, he spent 37+ years working on a time-invariant variation of the Big Bang Theory.
Currently, Rosner sits tweeting in a bathrobe (winter) or a towel (summer). He lives in Los Angeles, California with his wife, dog, and goldfish. He and his wife have a daughter. You can send him money or questions at LanceVersusRick@Gmail.Com, or a direct message via Twitter, or find him on LinkedIn, or see him on YouTube. Here we – two long-time buddies, guy friends – talk about the nuance of high intelligence seen in interpersonal interaction.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, this is an addendum to the last session. I wanted to continue; you urged me in saying that I had seemed like I had more to say about it. That’s true, and in talking about it just openly by myself. Basically, it’s a little way. It came out. So, it takes time to understand the subtlety and nuance of a very or a highly intelligent person in a similar manner to some of these high-range tests or the upper range of gold standard tests like the WAIS or the Standford Binet in light of the fact that individuals like yourself who get these very high scores spend a tremendous amount of time on these tests, that’s your point.
Rick Rosner: So, a WAIS or a Stanford Binet is designed to be given by a professional psychometrician, somebody who’s been trained in psychology and to do the test in less than 90 minutes, but those tests are not great at measuring above 150, above much more than three standard deviations which is one person in 750 which is really all you need for any reasonable purpose. If this kid is bored in school because this kid has a one in a thousand IQ, then that’s fine; the Stanford Benet is perfectly adequate. Does this kid have a 99.9 percentile IQ, so he can get into this super selective academic program or school, and then it’s only when you’re using IQ for the crazy sport you need to measure beyond that, and that takes these tests, these Hoeflin tests or these Cooijmans’s tests to do a good job on them. They have these crazy problems, and you need to spend about a hundred hours and more to solve 48 problems.
There have been plenty of charlatans who claim to be geniuses, and somebody can be pretty smart and simulate being really smart for financial reasons, to get laid, to get thought of as an artistic genius, to get like directing work. Keith Raniere, who did really well on the mega test, made it part of his scam that led to financial fraud and has led him to be imprisoned for life for running a sex cult, but in the case of somebody who’s a very smart charlatan claiming to be a genius and who may even think he’s a freaking genius, it takes time for the victim to figure out that this fucking asshole is lying to me or is deluded. So, I’m sure there are books and movies about somebody who enters into a relationship with somebody who’s faking genius or is deluded about being a genius, and it takes months and years to see that person is full of shit.
Jacobsen: The original comparison was on the quantitative-qualitative distinction. That quantitative-qualitative distinction between the quantitative of IQ tests as a proxy for general intelligence and the qualitative of interacting with highly intelligent people over a long period of time.
Rosner: Sorry, I’m going to interrupt. So, what you’re talking about is the qualitative and quantitative, which is what Cooijman calls associative breadth?
Jacobsen: Width of associative horizon.
Rosner: Okay, and what that is, is the number of other freaking things that a thought can connect to. It’s like if you like interviewed at some tech company, and the cliche question used to be, name as many ways as you can use a barometer to measure the height of a building and to see if you could come up with a billion freaking crazy ways, out of the box thinking would be the cliché. Like take the barometer up to the top of the building, drop it off, and measure how long it takes to hit the ground. The standard answer to the question is you measure the atmospheric pressure at the bottom of the building and at the top of the building, and the difference will, according to some calculation, tell you the height, but there are a bunch of other ways to do it including find the building’s architect and say I’ll give you this barometer if you tell me how tall the building is. So, it’s how many crazy, on-the-spur-of-the-moment, different ways of thinking about a thing you can come up with.
Jacobsen: This width of the associative horizon is somewhat what I’m getting at in that qualitative sense. I mean, you can try to bring problems in a formalized setting to tackle this, yet that’s very experimental because they’re basically those tests of creativity. The experiential part of it deals more with intuition based on the depth of experience and length of experience with highly intelligent people. At that point, you can begin, in my experience, to make subtle distinctions between people at those higher ends where you can find, am I dealing with an intelligent person, a highly intelligent person or potentially a genius.
Rosner: There are terms for that, too; crystallized intelligence, which is accumulated knowledge and experience, versus fluid intelligence, which is coming up with a bunch of crazy shit on the spur of the moment.
Jacobsen: Well, I take it as something you feel over time. It’s almost as if the fact of embodiment, either it’s feedback from the body to the brain or the brain to the body over time but it’s something that you feel or it’s an intuition and you feel it and then it sort of gets thrown as a bone to your conscious arena. That’s the way I experience it but that only came with experience.
Rosner: I try to make Carole feel that way, my wife, so she’s more impressed with me. I don’t often succeed. Since Covid, we’ve watched about three hours of TV together every night. So, we’ve seen freaking everything that’s ever been made now, at least that streams on Netflix and HBO Max and the game we play is everybody plays it now because everybody’s been locked down with Covid. It is to guess what the next thing to happen is or the next word out of a character’s mouth is, and that’s where I can be the most successful in impressing Carole. If I can come up with a really odd line, an unexpected line, and it’s the line that the character actually says, she feels a little touch of wonder at me that I want her to feel, which is like a sad way to live for me just yelling shit out at the TV.
Jacobsen: And that’s the distinction, there’s the humor there, but the truth of it is that’s who you are; there’s no inauthenticity. There’s no faking. That’s smart. So, you have that breadth, you have those capabilities, but like most of us you’re going to be just be functioning in your daily life as an ordinary person.
Rosner: Right, and Carole likes that. Carole’s a very worried person, and she worries that we’re going to get something wrong. This is not apropos of what you’re saying; I’m just talking about my relationship a little bit more when she remembers the times that she’s more negatively impressed by the times I get something wrong than positively impressed by the times I’m right. We were wondering why her mom had to move out of her house. She was too old to live in it safely, and we had to put her in senior living, and then we had to decide what to do with the house. Carole wanted to sell it, and I said we’d take a huge tax hit and we should rent it and let it continue to appreciate and value. Meanwhile, we’re getting rent, and then we found out that you have to step up in value for tax purposes. You don’t pay taxes on the difference between what was paid for the house, $40,000 50 years ago versus a million something now. You have to step up.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/15
Bill Maher made some commentary on the need for an inclusion of the atheist population in the United States, recently. Naturally, as with many things, he is factual on the general point and wrong on the minutiae. Is that for the sake of the joke, or is it more due to the superficiality of his views on things? Likely, as usual, it’s both.
Maher opened, “Atheists, we are approaching a third of the population now. I should not have to beg for this, for God’s sake. It is outrageous. There are this many of us, and there is still zero representation in government. Congress has 535 members, and only a handful will even sheepishly admit they are religiously unaffiliated. The Supreme Court is two Protestants, one Jew, and six people more Catholic than the Pope.”
The fact is 28% of Americans do identify as religiously unaffiliated as a standard category in American census data or those who work on getting the demographic data on Americans. However, this accounts, not for the number of atheists but, for the number of religiously unaffiliated, which is a larger category than atheists alone.
It is atheists, agnostics, or “nothing in particular.” Atheists are abigger minority within the United States, but are less of a big minority than Maher’s joke may indicate. His general idea is to argue for an Atheist Day, which is important.
However, Armin Navabi’s Atheist Republic has been calling March 23rd “Atheist Day.” American atheists need a national day. I get it. However, for the most part, as with most groups wanting some increased representation, they organized and fought for their time to shine each year.
Maher continued, “Even intellectual presidents like Obama, who admit to being secular humanists, have to pretend to be religious. No one has been able to admit their shameful secret: I don’t believe in ghosts. Next Sunday is Easter, so enjoy. First you’ve heard of it? Okay. Yeah, enjoy it that’s your thing: bunny rabbits that shit eggs to celebrate the son of God. Whatever floats your ark. It is not fair that people who belong to one of the big religions get this cosmic personal day where the world revolves around them. I mean, here we are in the middle of the great egg shortage, and yet next Sunday we are going to take the few eggs we have and hide them in the yard.”
This claim about Obama may not necessarily be true, as he wrote in Dreams from My Father. His mother was a “witness for secular humanism.” is that claiming oneself as a secular humanist? No, it’s sloppy history to make a joke and line of an act work.
“There is also now a movement for schools to officially recognize Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, and I am all for it, or anything that gets our fat kids to eat less. While approximately three million Americans celebrate Ramadan, 100 million say they have no religion at all,” Maher said, “Where is our day? Is it really so much to ask that this many people get one day a year when we recommit ourselves to observable reality? One day with no atonements, no corpse reanimation? No fasting, no tree in your house, no big rock to circle, no dirt on your forehead, no candles to light, and please, God, no fruitcakes.”
This one is simply rhetorical and funny, and grounded in the fact of the United States as an obese country. It never seems good to shame someone for being overweight, but it also appears never good to deny the reality of a shorter lifespan and a reduced healthy life for most people who have higher-than-average BMIs or for a population who has a generally unhealthy waistline.
Maher said, “Just a yearly three-day weekend to celebrate your deeply held belief that with Monday off you can drink on Sunday night. And get to sleep in because there is no place to gather. To affirm we all believe the same things. We know what we believe and what we don’t believe. We don’t need to rub elbows with other people who don’t believe it too. We don’t need to commercialize our holiday like all the other religions do. Atheist Day is about not buying something. Like virgin birth, I am not buying it. We have the numbers. We can do this. The fastest-growing religious group in the United States is Nones. No, not the kind who used to beat you with a ruler for being left-handed. I mean people who, when asked how much they want to be involved with a religion, say none.”
He’s got a solid point here. In general, those without a religious commitment has a less burdensome life. That’s what I have generally seen; our lives only tend to be more terrible with the imposition into our lives from some individuals who happen to be religious who are cretins. It’s not enough thtat they believe and practice it, but it’s that they not only won’t not proselytize. It’s that they can’t not. The God of the Universe (TM) demands it. As Nietzsche reminds us, ‘It is not their love for men, rather it is the impotence of their love that hinders Christians of today from burning us.’
“The unaffiliated share of the population, consisting of people who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic, or nothing in particular, has risen from 5% in 1972 to 15% in 2005 to 32% today. You are welcome. Lest you think it is only young, educated white liberals, no. Just about everybody is losing their religion, or as I call it, holy ghosting. The average age of a None is 43. A third are people of color. A quarter voted for Trump. Seventy percent do not have a four-year college degree. Millennials are the first generation that are less than a majority Christian. Their idea of hell is a coffee shop with no Wi-Fi. When asked how often they go to church, 34% of younger millennials answered seldom/never or don’t know. Don’t know? Hey kids, going to church is like having an orgasm. If you didn’t know you did, you didn’t.”
Maher then leaves the earlier point about a third of the population as atheists out of the comedic rhetoric and works to something more factual. Namely, that about a third of the American population is religiously affiliated. The linked text at the top is to the Pew Research data from January, 2024 referencing the 2023 data. Maher’s research team may have messed up. The only 32% religiously unaffiliated that I could find was NBC News reference Asian Americans, not Americans in general. Unfortunately, even when speaking on more comfortable grounds, he’s getting the details more than a little wrong. The real point is there as about 1/3rd are religiously unaffiliated, but the particular point of 32% is false. It’s true. Atheism, as Dr. Sam Harris, noted in one debate, accurately, atheism is, for all intents and purposes, devoid of content. Philosophically, it has content. In practical terms, it is, for most.
Maher continued, “That is another great thing about Atheist Day. You don’t have to fake it. You don’t even have to be an atheist to enjoy it. Just like you don’t have to be Christian to enjoy Christmas. I still love Christmas. You don’t have to be an atheist to celebrate Atheist Day. I’d like it to be the one day a year that the devout can get a little taste of what it’s like to live your life without some mythical daddy figure judging and condemning you for being the exact person he made you. This day should be a day for believers to stop and ask yourselves, why? Why make up a being who is constantly disappointed in you? You don’t need it. You’ve got your wife.”
This is straight funny man schtick and a good play on some tropes around a hypothetical federal atheist day. It’s true. Why not? Why not have a day for atheists, or the religiously unaffiliated generally speaking? No one is coerced into doing anything in particular, as simply another day continues. There is a lot of work that can be done on that day and not wasted. Most people waste a good morning or even a whole day a week in worship. One day in a year is hardly a sacrifice to make a more equally represented society.
“And your parents, your siblings, your coworkers, your trainer when you don’t give 110%. There are plenty of people right here on earth who will gladly make you feel like a lame incompetent fuckup. Why make up one more? It’s like adding an extra mother-in-law. Why always be tormented? I better not make Jesus cry, baby Jesus cry. Why? Is he sitting behind you on a plane? Wouldn’t you like one day, one goddamn day in the year, when for 24 hours you can tell your god to climb down off your ass? Because trying to please a man who’s not there sets you up for a lifetime of misery. Just ask Tiffany Trump.”
Being an eternal liberal, Maher, naturally, must take a stab at the family member of Trump, which is a rather low blow, I think. But it’s, at the same time, not beyond him.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/14
[Recording Start]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I wanted to talk about the comparison and contrast between American styles of women’s rights and Canadian styles, focusing on what Canadians and Americans are doing better. In my view, Canadians are probably doing better, even though the United States is a wealthier country. In the contemporary period, Canadian women seem to have a much better time than in the United States, especially in terms of foundational things like reproductive rights and privileges, where they can access many more public benefits.
Rick Rosner: Let me set up the U.S. situation where a third of the population, when I was growing up, there was a term called “reactionary.” I don’t know where it comes from, but it basically means you’re a dick because you don’t like what’s going on. All your positions are counter to, or in opposition to, something. It’s not that you’re pro-anything, it’s that you’re anti-anything that your perceived enemies like. Is that kind of what reactionary means? It’s here and the MAGAs, which include probably close to 50% women, maybe a little less. They are against a lot of women-empowering things because that’s what the “libs” like. They hate the libs. The MAGAs are largely white, some Latino, almost no black people. More men than women, probably 60/40 men to women. Mostly less educated on average than everybody else. To be honest, dumber on average than the average IQ or average intelligence of everybody else. They support Trump because he upsets the libs and are okay with everything the people who support Trump stand for because they support Trump to upset the libs.
The people who support Trump stand for curtailing reproductive rights. There is a huge overlap between modern U.S. evangelicals and MAGAs. The modern evangelical MAGAs support the godless Trump because he appointed the Supreme Court judges who got rid of Roe v. Wade. Everybody else in America, 60% of adult Americans, supports a largely empowering agenda that they vote for in their own best interests and maybe what they perceive to be the best interests of the country. But 40% of the country, according to the polls, is reactionary and just supports stances. Maybe some of them honestly believe that life begins at conception, but most of them probably don’t have strong opinions between life beginning at conception and first trimester or abortion. They just want to say “fuck you” to the opposition. Is that reasonable? Not that they’re reasonable, but what I said.
Jacobsen: It’s a fair characterization. How far do you think the United States is from a “Handmaid’s Tale” style reality? Or on the opposite side, how can American human rights defenders and others fight against the encroachments of that kind of life?
Rosner: In “The Handmaid’s Tale,” a lot of stuff led to the plot. There was a coup where homegrown terrorists blew up the Capitol, took down the government, and installed their own fundamentalist government. The northeastern part of the U.S. is at war with other parts of the U.S. It’s not just that the whole U.S. suddenly became repressively religious. It’s just part of the U.S., and the rest of the U.S. is fighting. I think Canada is fighting a war. The people trapped in this part of the U.S. are under this fundamentalist regime.
The U.S. is probably far from a full-on “Handmaid’s Tale” scenario because even in “The Handmaid’s Tale,” it’s only a chunk of the U.S. that is like that. But if Trump gets re-elected and gets the House and the Senate, would he be able to pass legislation or encourage legislation in Congress to prohibit all abortions except in cases of rape and incest or to have a national law that says you can’t get an abortion after, say, 15 weeks? If states want to be more draconian than that, they can.
I don’t think so. I don’t think that Trump will win. The bookies and Vegas odds favor him, but they favor Democrats holding or taking the House back. So if you go by Vegas odds, Trump gets reelected, Democrats have the House, and Republicans narrowly control the Senate. That is not enough to turn the U.S. fully into “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Right now, the Supreme Court has a six to three conservative majority, and two of those conservatives are complete corrupt assholes, as has been revealed. If Trump got another four years, he would have the older assholes, Clarence Thomas and Alito, retire at some point so he can appoint younger crazy assholes. Or if somebody else drops off the court, it’s possible the court could end up with a seven to two conservative majority.
The Heritage Foundation has this 900-page conservative platform called Project 2025 that lays out a very conservative draconian path for America. To get it done, the Republicans would have to own the presidency, the House, the Senate, and they would have the Supreme Court. It’s not clear that the seven members of the court, four conservatives and three liberals, would go along with it. There’s a chance that the not-crazy conservatives would go along with the liberals to stop anything too insane. We’ll find out next week whether they give complete immunity for any acts committed while in office to a president. I don’t think they will. It’s too crazy.
So I guess, in a nutshell, I don’t think the U.S. can go full “Handmaid’s Tale.” One more reason is you can’t really get a lot done in the Senate unless you have a 60-person majority out of 100. Regardless of who controls it, nobody will get 60 seats. The last time that happened was for less than a year, or maybe 14 months under Obama. Obama used that time to get Obamacare passed. That was his push. So no, I don’t think the U.S. can go full “Handmaid’s Tale.” A strong majority of the U.S. don’t want that. So that’s the end of that answer.
Jacobsen: What do you think about the repeal of Roe v. Wade? How did that come across in California, with your family?
Rosner: We don’t know, but we are looking at the electoral consequences of getting rid of Roe. In several elections, where abortion rights were on the ballot in five or six states that have had elections since Roe went away, even in conservative states, abortion rights won out. There’s some indication that the Roe issue will get a liberal majority to turn out. However, that is contradicted by what the polls say, which is that Trump has a narrow lead over Biden, and maybe more than a narrow lead in some swing states. As we’ve talked about, I don’t trust the polls. I think the polls have been corrupted. I hope that Roe leads to a strong electoral turnout for liberals, though neither side will get as many votes as they did in 2020, because that was at the height of COVID. The country made it easy to vote, especially by mail. The Republicans hated that because they lost solidly.
They’ve passed legislation in a bunch of states to choke off voting, especially for liberal-leaning demographics like black people or college students. In 2020, 160 million people voted, which is two-thirds of voting-age Americans. That’s a higher percentage than ever before. This time around, maybe only 150 to 152 million Americans will vote. The competition is to see who can hold on to more of the people who voted for them, whether it’s Trump or Biden. Also, you’ve got a strong third-party candidate this time around with Kennedy, probably getting seven to nine percent of the vote. That will cut into both Biden and Trump.
Biden won by seven million votes last time, but that’s just the popular vote. The electoral vote was 303 to 235, which is a strong showing but not overwhelming. Several states could have flipped and given it to Trump. This time around, there’s no way that Trump could win the popular vote, but Trump could lose by five million votes and narrowly win the electoral college. So there you go.
Jacobsen: What do you think was the most significant win for women’s rights in the United States in the early 21st century?
Rosner: So far, the most significant win is those special elections in five states where people voted for reproductive rights. A small win happened a couple of days ago when the Supreme Court threw out a case from a Trumpy lower judge trying to get rid of Mifeprestone, the abortion drug. The Supreme Court unanimously said that the plaintiffs in that case didn’t have standing. The arguments, like doctors being hurt by being forced to administer this drug, were crazy. That’s not a big victory because the lower court’s decision and the plaintiffs’ arguments were so stupid. The biggest victory for reproductive rights in the 21st century will be if it drives enough liberals to turn out to stop Trump from getting reelected. It hasn’t happened yet. If it happens, it’s still five months away. You want to talk about women’s rights in Canada.
Jacobsen: In 2019, Karen Jensen was the first ever pay equity commissioner for Canada. That’s a big win. In 2019, there was the final report of the national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, released on June 3rd, 2019. That’s a big win in terms of minority women’s rights in Canada. In 2022, there was an endorsement of the National Action Plan on gender-based violence. There have been ongoing efforts to deal with significant issues around pay and violence in Canada, specifically around women’s gender issues.
Rosner: Canada has ten provinces and three territories, right?
Jacobsen:: Yes, three territories.
Rosner: The territories probably don’t count much in terms of national voting. Are there any provinces like the southern states we have that are super redneck and support a redneck agenda with a redneck voting bloc?
Jacobsen: I do not want to stereotype any particular province in that way. However, when issues typical of American southern states, like immigration, Muslims, women’s rights, and abortion arise, Alberta tends to be the place where that becomes a significant problem. There is a push for having wide provisions of free prescription contraception for women across the country. This was a big win in British Columbia recently. There is a national prescription contraception plan broad-based. The only province with significant pushback, and that may go to court, is Alberta regarding free contraception. So you have one province out of ten. It’s a big province though.
Rosner: Another major difference between the US and Canada is that you guys don’t have Fox News constantly propagandizing your population. We have some entities like it, but they don’t have nearly the heft of Fox News in the United States. The U.S. has nearly half the states significantly rednecked. They don’t have half the population, maybe 40% of the population, but the Senate is divided where each state gets two senators. It’s not by population in the Senate. The Senate is legislatively more powerful than the House. You need both to pass legislation.
Redneckism is harder to fight in the U.S. politically because the nation was set up to give disproportionate rights to smaller states to make the union possible. This problem dates back to the original 13 colonies, where the compromise was that the House is apportioned by population and the Senate is just everybody gets two senators. That has caused issues, and the electoral college, where each state gets a number of electors that equals the number of senators plus the number of representatives, gives voting power disproportionately to smaller redneck states. As a result of this bad deal, the U.S. is a powerful unified country instead of a bunch of disjointed nation-states. I don’t see how a president could get away with appointing or creating a cabinet department for wage equality. We tried to pass the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s, but you need a large fraction of the states to approve an amendment to the Constitution. It fell two states short in the 70s when conservative women like Phyllis Schlafly rallied conservative women to not ratify it in states like Florida.
Only in the past three years did a couple more states vote to ratify it, but the time expired. I think you have a limited amount of time to get your states to do that, and that expired 30, 40 years ago. I don’t even know why states are voting on it now. Legislatively, we can never have as much equality for women as you do because the redneck states have too much power.
Jacobsen: In the southern states, do they view women as lesser than men? The application suggests they do based on the outcomes. Do they in fact vote?
Rosner: I don’t think it’s that women are seen as lesser than men. The view, which many people in redneck states disagree with, is that there is a place for women, and that place is a traditional one as a wife. You can work, but in a traditional family that’s heterosexual, you maybe go to church, and you don’t believe in feminism. You may believe in feminist ideas but don’t know it because you have a warped idea of feminism. It’s not that women are less than men, it’s that they disapprove of feminism and don’t see their role as being firebrands.
Jacobsen: What do you see as the challenge for women right now in the United States and in Canada?
Rosner: There is a Pew study from 2022 that shows that the Republican Congress and Senate have drifted four times as much rightward as the Democrats have drifted leftward. The Democrats have pretty much stayed put. The issues around trans people have been propagandized to make it look like the Democrats are radical, but trans issues only affect a small percentage of the population. On major issues, the Republicans have gone completely crazy. The Republican Party has become corrupt and dishonest, not responsive to the majority of voters, spouting a ton of Russian propaganda controlled by rich conservative billionaires.
That’s the major obstacle. The people who support that party, which is 30 to 40% of voters, are also a problem. Conversely, the major advantage for Canada is you don’t have that level of bullshit. You said you have one province that’s a little bit redneck. We have 24 states, sometimes more, and the Republicans have learned how to manipulate the system. The system is already pre-manipulated in favor of Republicans based on the Electoral College and the Senate. More recently, the Republicans took over state legislatures in 2010, and they can wield power even in states where they have minority support.
So that’s the major thing—Republican politicians. Second, being a problem for women, is the Republican base. Conservative propagandists also don’t have good arguments to offer. They have dumb arguments, but they have a dumb base to listen to those arguments.
Jacobsen: The end.
Rosner: Oh, the end.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/14
Jorge Masvidal: It’s like if you’re a Christian now. It’s a problem, man. I mean we see it all across the schools. Everywhere, even the society, and I was like, “Oh, Jesus freak,” just because you say a prayer before you eat or something, yeah. I’ll show you Jesus freak.
Interlocutor: You see the bill they’re trying to pass in Canada.
Masvidal: No.
Interlocutor: Trying to pass in Canada where you can’t, you know, outwardly worship or anything like that and not just Christians, but they’re saying for everybody. And I can’t even believe we’re at a point right now, where we are in a place. You can’t practice your religion freely. That’s becoming an issue.
Masvidal: I’m only going to say this because I saw this happen in other countries and I lived it through my parents. This is what communism looks like in Canada. It has been heading that fast track for a long time. We are going to end up communist. They know, the communists know, that one of the first things you gotta do besides taking their guns away, the next thing you gotta do is take their God away, take their religion away. So, you believe in the government, the government is going to give you the cheese, and the bread. Now, you don’t need to go to church. Because we banned that.
“Jorge Masvidal talks about Christian Persecution” (2024)
There’s a popular, quiet phrase within freethought circles about the feeling of privilege wrought under the banner of universalism, as in equality, feels as if persecution from the view of institutional privilege. That may well explain this sense of persecution.
Christians in the United States harbour enormous dominance in the culture and representation at all levels of governance and power positions in society. It’s humorous to reflect on the degree to which they feel persecuted simply as others in the society acquire the rights and equality with them.
Jorge comes up with the statement: It’s a problem to be a Christian now. To who? Under what circumstance? How? To what degree? It’s a vague sense of pervasive victimhood that is in-built to the Christian identity as one of God’s chosen persons.
It’s, on a psychological level, incredibly narcissistic. It shows up the language too. He references something to the effect of “everywhere,” as you can see. How is a Christian man in Western culture feeling oppressed of all people? Was he beaten by an atheist at a gas station?
No, clearly not, it’s simply a feeling. Similar in character to much of the victimhood Christians project onto the wider culture, they have spent a enormous amount of time, as a subculture, institutionalizing suppression of other groups.
Others get equality, now, they feel as if oppressed. This is dangerous because this mentality can be used to justify the harming of others. In that, victimhood is a danger as a self-identity, not in its reality. Someone who is victimized can come back stronger than before.
Yet, if they identify as victims, then they can justify their own injustices committed against others. The worst form of this happens when individuals haven’t even undergone an oppression then claim victimhood.
The old Red Scare was something to discredit political opposition. Now, it’s simply used as a means to blanket a group one deems wrong. Calling others communists or a boo word, claiming Christianity as something of a big problem in a modern context — as a victim of modernity, then fear of the government, it’s not that, though.
I would share those concerns as minarchy can be a good thing in some ways. Yet, the general perspective show in Masvidal’s feelings is a generally true item about the culture.
Namely, Christians are facing a massive decline in their stature and demographic dominance. Others are garnering more equality within the society. The only means by which to express this without integrating the empirical and existential facts around many of them: Fearmongering about communists, about government making universal access to spaces of society, and playing the victim.
In short, it’s the same old tale of Christian victimhood since the inception of the religion, whether gentle Jesus meek and mild or the Cross and the sword during the Crusades. I’m not buying it.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://assohum.org/2023/09/01/compte-rendu-congres-humaniste-2023/
Publication Date: 2023
Organization: L’Association humaniste du Québec
Organization Description: The Quebec Humanist Association brings together people who place the human being before any belief or ideology. It is a recognized non-profit charitable organization that promotes critical thinking and humanist values, with secularism at the forefront. It’s also a home that warmly welcomes all those whose worldview does not include supranatural or mystical elements. This large family brings together a surprising variety of individuals from different orientations, right or left, authoritarian or libertarian, who all feel united in defending their naturalistic vision of the universe. The Association, which represents the humanist community, has the structure of a classic democratic association, with each member having one vote. Members have access at all times via the Internet to the minutes of general assemblies and meetings of their board of directors, monthly updates of their balance sheets and statements of operating results, and various other reports to enable them to examine all their operations with the utmost transparency.
*Text translated by DeepL.*
By Pierre St-Amant, AHQ congress delegate.
The Humanists International Association is a non-governmental organization of humanists, atheists, agnostics, and freethinkers from around the world. It promotes humanist principles and defends humanists suffering persecution and violence around the world. It also promotes policies based on reason and science. It holds annual general assemblies and normally organizes a world congress every three years (the general assembly then takes place at the same time as the congress), but the pandemic prevented this event from being held for a few years.
The Association humaniste du Québec (AHQ) is a member of the AHI, and it was as an AHQ representative that I took part in the Copenhagen congress, from August 4 to 6, 2023. Over 400 humanists from 43 countries attended the congress. They represented all demographic groups and offered a great diversity of viewpoints. In particular, I found the presence of so many young people very stimulating. It was also exciting to be able to interact with all these people.
I’ve attended several conferences in my career as an economist. I’ve even organized a few. I have to say that the AHI Congress was one of the most interesting and well-organized I’ve ever attended. The quality of the speeches was good, and the logistical support was outstanding. I was struck by the friendliness of the participants. What’s more, the program was rounded off by some very interesting cultural activities, such as a fine humanist choir that performed John Lennon’s Imagine at the start of the congress, and the presence of a painter who was commissioned to produce works of art during the congress, including a man on which she painted various humanist symbols.
BUILDING BETTER DEMOCRACIES
The main theme of this year’s congress was: Building better democracies through humanist values. Already, at its 2018 General Meeting, the AHI denounced the rise of demagogic politicians bent on curtailing democratic rights and freedoms. This theme came back with a vengeance in 2023. Political scientist Sofia Näsström (Uppsala University) highlighted the actions of extremist groups capitalizing on fear and traditional religious values to restrict freedom of expression and take control of the judiciary. Nicole Carr, President of the Humanist Association of the United States, gave the example of Christian nationalist groups, often evangelicals, attacking the secular foundations of the United States. According to Carr, Christian nationalists have invaded state legislatures, city councils, and school boards. They would also control the Supreme Court. From there, they would suppress rights such as abortion, ban books, and seek to rewrite history. They would also be responsible for the January 6, 2020 attack on the Capitol and undermine the democratic system. These U.S. groups are also reportedly active in other countries, such as Uganda, where they are working to eliminate gay rights. All this despite the decline in their demographic weight and the rise of the non-religious in the United States.
Participants pointed out that similar processes are underway in several other countries, including Hungary, India, Poland, the Philippines, Italy, Brazil, and Guatemala. These forces are even at work in countries regarded as democratic models, such as Sweden and Norway. Humanists are said to be in danger just about everywhere (Bangladesh, Pakistan, etc.). To counter these trends, the philosopher Lars Svendsen (University of Bergen) has called for hope (he addresses this subject in a forthcoming book). For him, man is the only animal capable of hope, and this is what gives him the strength to act to change things. The alternative would be fear, which demagogues use to manipulate us. Hope, however, should be constrained by rationality. It should not be based on wishful thinking, but rather aim for feasible progress. Several participants asserted that humanists need to better communicate their positive values, and not just assert what they don’t believe in. The general assembly approved a resolution calling on humanists to defend and improve democracy.
Other topics were also discussed. For example, one session looked at the points of tension between freedom of religion and emancipation. Nazila Ghanea (UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion and Belief) explained that the recognition of freedom of conscience should, in theory, ease these tensions, as everyone recognizes the right of others to act according to their conscience. Other participants, however, pointed out that, in practice, believers often seek to impose their values by undemocratic means. The Christian Right’s fight against abortion rights was cited as an example by many.
UKRAINE – THE HUMANIST POSITION
The situation in Ukraine was also the subject of much discussion. Russian aggression was presented as an attack on democracy, with Putin fearing that a Ukraine marching towards democracy could encourage other countries to follow suit. Oleksandra Romantsova, director of the Center for Civil Liberties (Nobel Peace Prize 2022), also claimed that her organization could document 47,417 war crimes committed since the start of hostilities in Ukraine. The General Assembly unanimously reaffirmed the AHI’s position calling for the withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukraine. However, following a rather tense debate, a narrow majority voted against a resolution calling for all aid, including military aid, to be sent to Ukraine to push Russia back. Opponents were reluctant to support the sending of military aid, which they saw as contrary to humanist values. Those who supported the resolution argued instead that military aid was necessary to prevent Ukrainians from being massacred.
JOINT HUMANIST ACTIONS?
One of the congress sessions dealt with ways of better coordinating the actions of humanist associations in different parts of the world. Delegates from North America (USA and Canada) were able to discuss strategy. However, the challenges facing the two countries were said to be quite different, making it difficult to coordinate actions. In a subsequent meeting, however, the Canadian humanists took the discussion a step further. They agreed on the need to improve communication between the various groups. A number of topics of common interest and potential for coordinated action were also put forward (I myself suggested that it might be possible to coordinate our actions to change symbols, such as the national anthem, that refer to god or religion).
Another session worried that the digitization of the economy could be used to manipulate and enslave human beings for the benefit of a few large corporations. Digitization could generate new religions. It could also lead to profound human modifications (transhumanism). The question of the rights of artificial intelligence could soon arise. Participants called for humanist values to be imposed on artificial intelligence. Others called for a ban on designing conscious machines. But all could only note that it will be difficult to impose such constraints on all countries.
NEXT CONVENTION
Washington, D.C. will host the next AHI convention in 2026. I recommend that the Quebec Humanist Association be well represented at this congress. We should also consider participating in the General Assembly to be held in Singapore in 2024. In my opinion, our participation in AHI activities can lead to coordinated ideas and actions that can advance the humanist cause in Quebec.
Humanist International is headquartered in London, UK. AHQ has been a voting member since 2006.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/14
The Bible is a story. Is it true? Well, it depends on what you mean by true. People say, “That’s weasly.” It’s like, “No, it’s not.” If you ask a profound question like that, is the Bible true? You can’t assume true and then cram the Bible into that. You have to make both sides of the equation open to question. This is why people like Richard Dawkins always kick the hell out of religious people when they’re debating them. It’s because Dawkins comes armed with a conception of the truth. And it’s not trivial. It’s like the scientific conception of the truth. This is a big club. Before he even begins, the whole structure of the debate is predicated on the fundamental acceptance that that definition of true is valid and complete. So, the religious people just lose because they’re up against the might of science. It’s like, how are they not going to lose that?
Dr. Jordan Peterson, ““Richard Dawkins always Kick The Hell Out of Religious People”” — Jordan Peterson”
Dr. Jordan Peterson has acquired something a dual existence in Canadian popular culture with fame on the one hand and infamy on the other. People seem highly divided by him. I find him a mixed figure.
If you look for signals of gifted and talented people, one signal for identifying gifted and talented youth is the phrase “it depends.” It marks a reflective and thoughtful grounding of a person.
Peterson is a thoughtful person in this regard, when reflecting on definitions of true. Yet, what most mean in the contemporary period amounts to what Dawkins aims, which is both a logical and an empirical truth, that’s the truth. It’s a close approximation to objectivity.
It’s not that Dawkins has set the bounds of the debates. It’s that the bounds of the discourse have been set by contemporary modernity within the hammerblows of the scientific revolution wrought on religious discourse or claims to truth about the world, except in abstract senses.
That’s something Peterson, though smart in some ways and not in others, simply misses in the debates Dawkins has with other intelligent interlocutors. Dawkins comes armed with a conception of truth in a manner similar to the ways in which contemporaneous comprehension of the world comes with a derived conceptualization of truth.
To come armed with a conception of truth makes it sound as if out of whole cloth and brought from nothing, when, in fact, this conception of truth comes after centuries of hard work and sacrifice by some of the most intelligent analytical intellects ever to exist.
Peterson has claimed it’s easier to defend the Christian worldview implicitly rather than explicitly. In this admission, he sets the truth of the general crusade he has set forth in the modern period. Because he is focusing on criticizing atheism and its disparate communities of secularists.
Duly note, he doesn’t critique the Christian here. He acts as a critic for the atheist Dawkins. In this sense, he is the quiet Christian who wishes to throw rocks at atheist house while pretending to be a neutral party. He’s not, admittedly.
The understanding of the scientific method is validity, certainly, based on informing premises for soundness. However, the completeness is not something necessarily within the ouevre of science, but, rather, incompleteness as there is always more data to garner about reality.
In that way, Peterson misrepresents both the meaning of the scientific method and Dawkins as a scientist. Religious people of that sort aren’t being set up to fail. They’ve simply failed.
It’s not that the debate was rigged in framing for them to lose; they simply lost and should take — as per Peterson’s self-help advice — personal responsibility for their failures, as he should for his misunderstandings and mischaracterizations.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/14
Hamza: There’s no such thing as atheists. You’re not atheist. You’re agnostic.
Interlocutor: If you define an atheist as someone that believes that there is no God, I’m not an atheist. If you define atheist, as someone that doesn’t…
Hamza: You’re agnostic, mate. You’re agnostic. I’ll tell you what you are and I’ll demonstrate you are. Fair enough?
Interlocutor: Sure.
Hamza: So do you believe God exists?
Interlocutor: No.
Hamza: Do you say God doesn’t exist? Could God exist?
Interlocutor: Empirically, God could exist.
Hamza: So, you don’t know if God exists or not.
Interlocutor: Sure.
Hamza: So, you’re an agnostic.
Interlocutor: Does it matter?
Hamza: Because you don’t even know your position in that sense.
‘HamzasDen,’ “You’re NOT an atheist,” (2023)
One reason to avoid some of the verbal sleight of hand in public Christians or street preachers or online advocates is, as was noted by an elderly biologist long ago, the point isn’t a conversation. The point is a conversion, always remember this.
As you can note at the outset of the ‘conversation’ or ‘discourse’ with this individual, Hamza, presumably, of ‘HamzasDen,’ he doesn’t even listen to the full explanation of a first attempt at defining his view, the “interlocutor.”
He cuts the other man off and then proceeds to insert a trite, which is to say scripted, piece for dialogue. The idea is to cut the individual off rather than listen to them, learn something, present a new view.
What the man was getting at was a distinguishing between know and believe, the theist, in this man’s presentation, knows God exists and, therefore, believes God exists.
Similarly, the atheist, to Hamza, must know God doesn’t exist in order for God to be believed to not exist. It is a weirdness in the foundation stone of the conversation and sits in the rather enormous cavity behind Hamza’s mouth.
The man had a quite subtle view formulating before Hamza, like most of his ilk, chose to be obtuse and cut him off. The man seemed to formulate the subtle distinction between know, at least empirically, and believe.
The interlocutor did not believe that God exists, so was an atheist in that sense, but did not know that God does not exist in all possible ways, such as empirically. That makes a certain sense.
He could be considered an agnostic, as a tip of the hat to Hamza, in the sense of a limit to knowing in any absolute sense, but, still, did not believe God exists as no evidence existed so far, for him.
Hamza’s obtuse assumption or assertion, as he was attempting to pigeonhole the man before he could even articulate himself completely, was an omniscient stance of the atheist in either believe and know merged as one.
You have to be careful with street preachers. They’re, typically, obtuse like this. Because they have nothing better to do, apparently.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/14
There is no such thing as an atheist. I think atheism is a psyop put forward by the Satan, literally, which is that everybody has a god they worship. And that is why you go through the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments, but, first of all, ‘You have no other gods before me, have no idols.’ So let’s think about that. No other gods before me. You might think, “Oh, what an outdated commandment.’ Doesn’t matter. Everybody has something you worship… And so, what are you worshiping? You might be worshiping the god of self, the god of narcissism, the god of pleasure, the god of TikTok likes, the god of follows, the god of the bank account, the god of environmentalism, the god of wokeism, the god of COVID fanaticism, the god of ‘you must get your booster.’ There is something that you prioritize above all. And what that thing is, is what you call god, and so, what we have done is we removed the idea of the biblical God, a God that loves you and a God that judges you and a God that tells you how to live with all these counterfeit pagan gods. And we see what’s happened to the West and the West was committing sin because of it.
Charlie Kirk, Founder, Turning Point USA in “Atheism is from the Enemy?”
The word “atheism” is polysemous — it has multiple related meanings. In the psychological sense of the word, atheism is a psychological state, specifically the state of being an atheist, where an atheist is defined as someone who is not a theist and a theist is defined as someone who believes that God exists (or that there are gods). This generates the following definition: atheism is the psychological state of lacking the belief that God exists. In philosophy, however, and more specifically in the philosophy of religion, the term “atheism” is standardly used to refer to the proposition that God does not exist (or, more broadly, to the proposition that there are no gods). Thus, to be an atheist on this definition, it does not suffice to suspend judgment on whether there is a God, even though that implies a lack of theistic belief. Instead, one must deny that God exists. This metaphysical sense of the word is preferred over other senses, including the psychological sense, not just by theistic philosophers, but by many (though not all) atheists in philosophy as well.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Atheism and Agnosticism” (March 22, 2022)
Some public personalities, I do not want to know about, but I have to read about them and watch some of their material for some internal perverse reason. I listen and read a lot more of the productions of people who I disagree with than who I agree with, often.
As I was doing some daily skimming looking for some topics to write and such, I came across the ramblings of a young man named Charlie Kirk. I was vaguely aware of the relative prominence of Kirk through media presentations.
However, I hadn’t come across succinct wrongness in a while. So, I felt struck by this man and others. It’s true: Atheism is polysemous. Positions in a perspective on the world amount to a matrix or even a meta-matrix of propositions constituting an orientation on the world.
Many of these change too. My sense of atheism constitutes the above, though in a North American context. The North American perspective amounts to the Abrahamic God in general terms and the God of the Bible in particular terms.
Which is to say, the current version of the not-so dead but dying God: The God who loves, judges, and represents The Good, The Just, and The Righteous. The Creator and Eternal Ruler who lives sovereign over all in Heaven and in physical reality, a generator and a sustainer.
The God of the Bible continues to lose social cache and believers across North America. As this happens, with a wimper, we see the development of more obnoxious representatives for Him. I dare say: Charlie Kirk is one of those.
What is Mr. Kirk claiming here?
By the definitional standards of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, naturally, atheists exist. Even by biblical standards tied to it, they’d term them by the epithet “fool,” as in an individuals claiming, in their heart, “There is no God.”
Yet, if we take “a god” to mean something someone worships, then anything is a potential god, as in an “idol,” in relation to the individual worshiper, where worship means reverence or adoration for something. An idol, in Kirk’s typified simplistic view of life, theology, and God, becomes a god, thus the tie-in to ‘thou shalt have no other gods before me’ or idols.
Which begs the question, why not simply use the term idol? Because he’s an advertiser, essentially, needs to use terms more social media friendly, punchy. So, the real meaning for Kirk becomes:
No other idols before me. You might think, “Oh, what an outdated commandment.” Doesn’t matter. Everybody has something you worship… And so, what are you worshiping? You might be worshiping the idol of self, the idol of narcissism, the idol of pleasure, the idol of TikTok likes, the idol of follows, the idol of the bank account, the idol of environmentalism, the idol of wokeism, the idol of COVID fanaticism, the idol of ‘you must get your booster.’ There is something that you prioritize above all.
When he references pagan, this merely represents an underhanded means by which to represent individuals who do not believe in the God of the Bible as pagan. In a sense, Kirk would see, by inferential implication, the gods of Hinduism and the God of Islam, as idols and as pagan.
Which breaks down to non-Christian, again, in his simplistic view of “life, theology, and God,” his black-and-white narrative should insult the intelligence of his followers. Either Christian or pagan, or either God of the Bible or idol, it’s that simple.
He’s equating every single individual who devotes themselves to something, which becomes the default mode in this method of argumentation, to an idolizer if not the God of the Bible.
Furthermore, by the definitional standards of Kirk’s blustering minute, he might insult the definition of both atheism and theism in its illiterate minute. If everything is potentially worshipped, and if everyone worships something as a god or an idol, as in their “god,” then everyone becomes a theist of some form.
If this term “theism” exists without antithesis, atheism becomes moot. As far as I know, Kirk may be the only ignoramus who I have come across who, in fact, believes this. Atheism and theism seem defined on one another as something and nothing are defined upon one another. It’s a birelational/bidirectional coupling: If one is asserted, then the other is implied.
Kirk not only misses the boat in definitional standards, but Kirk misses the point. When individuals culturally speaking talk about God, they tend to reference the God of the Bible and imply all gods, or even simply mean all gods or all of the gods they’ve considered.
Let’s see some other other online content from the moderns. What shall we do with the ‘psyop for the Devil’ bit? For the most part, Kirk will embarrass moderate Christians, give laughter to freethinkers, and further diminish the ranks of Christianity in North America.
His bluster will in the long-term have the paradoxiform effect of arguing, in effects, against Christianity. He’d be both a pagan and an anti-Christian in this sense.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/13
[Recording Start]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, what if at the lowest level, the world, lowest magnitudes, time doesn’t exist? While at the higher levels, higher magnitudes, time begins to emerge and, in fact, becomes a major factor in the general business of the universe, the general informational processing of reality. There is self-interaction between the universe at all of these different magnitudes. What information could be conveyed at these higher scales through time, through this arrow of time, to lower levels where there is no time that would be relevant to the business of the universe? Since it’s one system and there is ubiquitous though incomplete self-interaction, there must be some relevance to the optimization of information.
Rick Rosner: I don’t know because, in my current understanding, without time, there’s no existence. Well, you can imagine the simplest quantum system that you’re taught in the first week of a class on quantum mechanics or just a regular physics class towards the end of the year when you finally get to quantum mechanics is a single particle in a potential well. It’s just a particle bouncing around in a well. There’s no time for that particle because there’s no way to keep track of anything. It’s always in basically the same state.
So, there’s no time with that, but I don’t think that’s how time works. I think that there’s information pressure that is built into the emergence of matter and information that what happens is the information in a rudimentary consciousness that is acquiring information takes place along the unfolding of time. One way of looking at it is that it’s a bunch of matter that’s been crushed into total degeneracy into a black hole. The black hole offers the opportunity for new information to emerge as all that matter that’s been collapsed into degeneracy can emerge into a new reduced scale structure within the matter itself. It begins to differentiate and go from having no information to having increasing amounts of information as the matter differentiates. I call that information pressure. The matter doesn’t want to remain degenerate, or it just can’t. It differentiates, and the differentiation is time itself. So, in a sense, time nearly acts as a reshuffling of the ground state of information.
Jacobsen: Well, time is the differentiation and generation of matter and the associated increase in information. That matter goes from a low information state and, by interacting with itself and defining itself, increases the information in the system.
Rosner: The playing out of this is time, the steps of this. Going from zero information, though it’s probably not zero, but going from each step in the increase of information is time. Now, I guess at some point, you could have a sufficiently developed universe, or maybe even just a poorly developed universe, where it can go from state to state, from allowable universe to allowable moment to allowable moment, without increasing information or even with decreasing information. Causality says that this moment is linked. You can still have time where information increases and that’s the more likely situation. But I guess you can also have situations where you can have subsequent moments with the loss of information.
Time is just the succession of quantum events. And for early universes, there’s a lot of pressure to differentiate, to go from low information to higher information situations. You wanted to talk about top-down systems. We’re looking at information from the top down instead of the bottom up because the bottom up is that base level definition of information, which is just picking one state out of a set of possible states. But when you look at information from the top down, we think of information within consciousness, or knowledge within consciousness, which to us seems like the pinnacle of information, the most highly developed manifestation of information. Knowing stuff consciously. It probably turns out that you can’t have the bottom stuff without the top stuff. A lot of the definitions you sent me of information say that information can’t exist without a context. And the highest level context is consciousness, what we consider to be the arbiter of everything.
Jacobsen: That’s right. Maybe it’s not about highest magnitude or greatest magnitude to lowest or least magnitude into self-interaction, but more about emergence out of that. Of a non-existent or quasi-existent virtual state to the medium and larger scale magnitude objects and processes in which the self-interaction really happens only on a medium to massive scale. It doesn’t happen at the lowest magnitudes. That might be something peculiar and nuanced about the ways in which the universe’s information is structured.
Rosner: Well, the recursion that you’re talking about is kind of weird. The way that we exist consciously, the way that any conscious being exists, at least an evolved conscious being, is by modeling the external world. The world is out there, and now to survive in the world. You have to build that world within your awareness. You have to understand the world to survive in it, which means building a replica of the world within your awareness, which is a weird recursion. Any conscious system is modeling something.
Is it possible to have a conscious system that senses something and analyzes it with enough different modes of analysis and enough density of moment-to-moment information that it feels real? Of course, a conscious system could be conscious of something that is completely false, but it’s still modeling something. It could be modeling something that doesn’t actually exist, but it’s still building an awareness of something, whether that thing exists or not. The recursion is weird in that the only way things can exist, if we think consciousness is kind of a requisite for having a system that contains information, but that consciousness is itself a model of something else, is a weird recursion.
This leads to the question of why recursion is required for existence. We know that self-consistency is required for existence. Universes that exist, that are possible, have to be self-consistent. I don’t know, where was I going with this? I was trying to relate recursion to this other requirement of self-consistency. In a way, you’re requiring the universe to know itself. Because if it can’t specify itself, then it can’t exist and it can’t avoid destructive contradictions. When you say “know itself,” we don’t know what we’re talking about.
Jacobsen: I do not mean “know” in terms of a conscious self. I depart from you in that interpretive frame. I take it more in terms of a general meaning of operators as anything sufficiently distinct in reality to interact with anything else sufficiently distinct in reality. Any operator defined in that way would amount to something from the minimal level to a higher level of magnitude and scale. In other words, that would allow for different styles of self-interaction. Those forms of self-interaction themselves would amount to a type of information creation or maintenance. In that sense, it still goes back to the original claim that our mental structures have an incompleteness about them informationally. Epistemological processes to understand the world also have an incompleteness about them in the terms and structure of the world. Similarly, the universe’s own self-interaction also has that nature of being incomplete.
Rosner: The incompleteness is okay. It’s unavoidable; it’s just part of the math of things. You can’t have infinities. Quantum mechanics characterizes how incompleteness works. People 150 years ago, even 100 years ago, would have had a problem with that. The fuzziness of quantum mechanics is just built into the way things are.
Jacobsen: When you see something, there’s a union between what you’re seeing and what your internal processing is, in a similar way, mathematical principles discovered and derived have a similar isomorphism, a similar symmetry in process and structure. It might be less a question of mathematical principles and physical laws in the world, and more a happenstance of coincidence of a similarity of structural process at some recursive scale. That’s an organism or processor, and some not-so-conscious external-to-that-processor function. It’s like a frayed shoelace, where there’s a certain delimited universe where the math just runs out.
Rosner: I don’t know. I don’t think the math runs out. I think the math is lurking there in the implications of the principles of existence. The principles of existence unavoidably lead to the inverse square law of gravitation. Inevitably, they lead to a universe that locally has three spatial dimensions, that has linear time. The laws that we’re dealing with are emergent but unavoidable. You could probably design a toy universe that could operate in different numbers of spatial dimensions, but it would be a universe that would constantly have to be manipulated externally, one that doesn’t flow as directly from the principles of existence and information. Similarly, every possible universe has to follow a lot of the same laws. All the possible universes that I can think of, which is obviously not every possible universe because I’m just some dumb person in 2024, but they all have three dimensions of space and one of time, just at vastly different scales. One universe might have 10 to the 80th particles, and another universe might have 10 to the 10 to the 80th particles. You can stack as many 10s as you want without limit, we’re assuming. But all those universes, maybe not all, but all the ones I can imagine, have that three-in-one structure and have gravitation and all that. Physics is emergent, but it’s emergent in the same way just about every time unless you’re getting in there and manipulating your universe to be some kind of toy universe embedded within the universe that you’re making the toy in. I don’t know anything else.
Jacobsen: That should be good for now.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/13
[Recording Start]
Rick Rosner: So, you sent me close to a dozen definitions of information as defined by various disciplines.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Yes. Then I decided to take a broader, big-picture angle by examining the different levels of information. It fundamentally revolves around incompleteness. Our methods of understanding, such as the scientific method, rely on incompleteness. We must examine specific aspects of reality to obtain accurate information, which inherently limits our models. These mental models are incomplete, subject to degradation, and serve as shortcuts for understanding the world. Even the universe itself exhibits incompleteness in its interactions, as it does not interact with itself instantaneously. Thus, there’s a profound connection between information and incompleteness, regardless of how information is defined or analyzed.
Rosner: I found that the term “information” originated in the 14th century, but I didn’t have time to investigate its historical usage or when the world began seriously considering it. Information theory’s formal study began in 1948 with Shannon’s paper. Therefore, the mathematical and physical study of information is relatively young. I considered information even before receiving your email this afternoon and quickly found myself lacking clarity. One clear point is that, just as all sciences boil down to physics, all understandings of information likely reduce to a fundamental mathematical definition. Shannon’s definition, which involves selecting one choice from many, is a good starting point. The more choices available, the more information is conveyed. However, this may not be the ultimate definition of information.
I thought about Schrödinger’s cat, a cliché in popular physics references. It’s often used in TV shows or movies to signify complex quantum physics concepts. For example, the show “Dark Matter” begins with a lesson on Schrödinger’s cat. The cat, existing in a superimposition of alive and dead states until observed, illustrates our model of it. However, within the box, the cat is definitively alive or dead once the vial of poison is triggered. The universe can detect the cat’s state without our observation. Thus, superimposition does not occur in the actual world. The cat’s state remains unknown to us if placed in an isolated sphere, regardless of the scientists inside. This localization of knowledge raises questions about the necessity of knowing for existence. If matter is information in an information processor, the states of matter might not impact associated consciousness. We’ve discussed various levels of information and consciousness, yet confusion persists. Over the past decade, it’s evident that events in a star’s center leave no record. They must occur due to causality but transpire without a permanent record of particle interactions. This does not imply quantum superimposition governs these events, as they are causally determined.
Jacobsen: Physical laws, while fundamental, do not negate emergent properties like hot and cold. Emergent properties, such as sensations, exist in the world but not at a fundamental level. They simultaneously exist and do not exist based on the scale of observation.
Rosner: The sensation of hot and cold, or the concept of self, are emergent properties. They are artifacts of brain processes, with physical laws emerging from information principles. These laws, while nebulous, become less so as the universe accumulates more information, matter, space, and time.
Jacobsen: To fully understand existence and knowledge, we must consider interactions at a fundamental level.
Rosner: The universe defines itself through particle interactions, which may not always be known or leave a trace. Yet, these interactions are implicated by the matter’s behavior, forming a statistical structure based on historical interactions. It’s the traces of interactions that give solidity to the world. The implied existence of countless interactions in a star’s core, though unrecorded, is necessitated by physical laws.
Jacobsen: Perhaps a comprehensive theory of physical law is unnecessary for understanding the principles of existence. Interactions, even without leaving a detailed history, imply the events that must have occurred based on the behavior of matter.
Rosner: An understanding can be reached without delving into physical laws, focusing instead on the principle of non-contradiction. A thing cannot exist in a contradictory state. Superimposed states indicate possible states due to incomplete information.
Jacobsen: Emergent states and recursive structures in time and space may characterize the information structure of reality.
Rosner: Many things that make the universe solid are implied rather than explicitly known. This implied history of interactions gives rise to the emergent properties we observe. As emergent properties develop, they rely on increasingly stable frameworks, despite their shaky foundations.
Jacobsen: The duality of existence in information suggests that phenomena fundamentally do not exist but do so emergently, akin to wave-particle duality. Considering possible universes, each with exact quantum characterization, presents complexity. Moving from one possible moment to another, we carry forward only the necessary information. We are not dealing with existence in binary terms but with a continuum where things are more or less existent.
Rosner: Larger, shorter-lived entities have more prescient existence due to gravitational clumping and macro information processing. The universe, like our mind, processes macro information, with micro interactions often going unnoticed. Micro interactions are locally known, just as only people on Earth know about cats. The universe, understanding its constituents, cannot know specifics of micro interactions.
Rosner: We’ve identified pieces for discussion to arrive at an understanding, yet much remains to be figured out.
Jacobsen: I would like to schedule another session to focus on top-down, recursive structures rather than bottom-up construction. Maybe there is something about emergent states with a recursive facility as well. If you consider Chris Cole’s attempts to find all these recursive loops within various biological systems in the human body, there might be a larger framework in which to characterize the information structure of reality as recursive in time and space and emergent properties, which would include time and space.
Rosner: At the very least, many things that make the universe solid are tacit and implied, involving not just histories that leave a trace but also those that are implied. These things had to have happened given that there is this much matter performing various actions. We do not have an exact history of the events, but we know they must have occurred, given the behavior of matter.
Jacobsen: It is not only matter. I refer to each magnitude as it develops more and more emergent properties that, while fundamentally not existing, rest on an increasingly less probabilistic framework as things become more solid. I would include concepts like the self or the quality of experience in this category. These emergent properties do not fundamentally exist but nonetheless exist on a very shaky foundation. What I am suggesting is a dual principle that paradoxically views phenomena in the world of information as both fundamentally non-existent and emergently existent, this emergent duality is similar to wave-particle duality, depending on the perspective.
Rosner: Now that I consider it, especially in the context of all possible universes, there is some oddness because each member of this set has an exact quantum characterization. Information or histories are often only implied after events play out. When time passes, we move from one possible universe, one possible moment, to another. Each possible moment contains much more information, exactly specified, than survives the process and is transmitted from moment to moment. We specify one of countless possible states, but the wider universe does not require that much specification. So, I am confused.
Jacobsen: We are not simply examining existence or non-existence. It is like a radio dial, tuning things into existence more than tuning them out. The question for me is why larger, typically shorter-lived entities have a more prescient existence in the universe when the foundations are shaky and probabilistic.
Rosner: The business of the universe involves gravitational clumping, tied to much of the universe’s macro information. The universe functions as an information processor, similar to how our minds process information. It is the macro elements that impinge on our awareness, while the micro interactions often leave no trace. Micro interactions, even when they do leave a trace, are only locally known. For instance, only people on Earth know about cats. The universe, as macro information, imagines evolution occurring among its constituent information manifested as matter but does not know the specifics of these micro interactions. This topic is ripe for further thought and discussion and can be sorted out within 200 years but remains wide open. Is that reasonable to say? We have discussed some pieces that need to be debated to arrive at an understanding, but there is still a lot of room to figure this out.
Jacobsen: Yes. I would like to have another session if you have time. However, I want to focus on top-down, recursive structures rather than bottom-up, Lego block, Minecraft-style world-building.
Rosner: Okay.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/13
According to some semi-reputable sources gathered in a listing here, Rick G. Rosner may have among America’s, North America’s, and the world’s highest measured IQs at or above 190 (S.D. 15)/196 (S.D. 16) based on several high range test performances created by Christopher Harding, Jason Betts, Paul Cooijmans, and Ronald Hoeflin. He earned 12 years of college credit in less than a year and graduated with the equivalent of 8 majors. He has received 8 Writers Guild Awards and Emmy nominations, and was titled 2013 North American Genius of the Year by The World Genius Directory with the main “Genius” listing here.
He has written for Remote Control, Crank Yankers, The Man Show, The Emmys, The Grammys, and Jimmy Kimmel Live!. He worked as a bouncer, a nude art model, a roller-skating waiter, and a stripper. In a television commercial, Domino’s Pizza named him the “World’s Smartest Man.” The commercial was taken off the air after Subway sandwiches issued a cease-and-desist. He was named “Best Bouncer” in the Denver Area, Colorado, by Westwood Magazine.
Rosner spent much of the late Disco Era as an undercover high school student. In addition, he spent 25 years as a bar bouncer and American fake ID-catcher, and 25+ years as a stripper, and nearly 30 years as a writer for more than 2,500 hours of network television. Errol Morris featured Rosner in the interview series entitled First Person, where some of this history was covered by Morris. He came in second, or lost, on Jeopardy!, sued Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? over a flawed question and lost the lawsuit. He won one game and lost one game on Are You Smarter Than a Drunk Person? (He was drunk). Finally, he spent 37+ years working on a time-invariant variation of the Big Bang Theory.
Currently, Rosner sits tweeting in a bathrobe (winter) or a towel (summer). He lives in Los Angeles, California with his wife, dog, and goldfish. He and his wife have a daughter. You can send him money or questions at LanceVersusRick@Gmail.Com, or a direct message via Twitter, or find him on LinkedIn, or see him on YouTube. Here we – two long-time buddies, guy friends – talk about getting older, and more!
Rick Rosner: I have a question for you. I read some tweets from you, especially the one from Aaron Elizabeth.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Is this your new friend? [Ed. Sarcasm.]
Rosner: She’s my new friend. Generally, what happens in a situation where we have something that was initially angry becomes somewhat civil, especially with somebody who enjoys expanding their social media footprint and their public exposure by any means necessary. I sometimes invite that person on to my show. Now, this person, Aaron Elizabeth, has been labelled one of the 12 biggest distributors of COVID and vaccine misinformation, one of the dirty dozen, by people obviously who are on my side, who are pro-vaccine and anti-Covid. So, if I asked her onto the show, there’s a good chance she’d say yes, and then she and Lance could team up against me. I’d get very frustrated and get all yell-y, and they’d get yell-y, and it’s kind of what the show is, which is a shit show. But I don’t know that I want to platform somebody who’s such a prominent and skilled purveyor of disinformation. What do you think?
Jacobsen: I think you do your homework, prepare well, invite her, and set rules beforehand- rules of engagement. Then have Lance know, her know, and JD be the enforcer of those rules. Keep them to the rules of JD, which can set the bounds, sort of like a referee pulling everyone out of the ring when those rules are broken. So, there are three, so he can keep them in mind and three so everyone knows and can keep them in mind themselves.
Rosner: All right, that’s a good idea. Have you learned that in your model United Nations work – three is the right number? It seems like a guideline that you’ve employed productively.
Jacobsen: I employed this in group discussions with the high IQ community. I invented it and a couple of other principles, sort of ballparking it to adapt conversation. So, three; that number is just a hat-trick; three is a common number. It’s like a dozen; people will remember it easily. Also, it keeps it straightforward and simple. Model United Nations, you only have one person speaking at a time, and you have to be called when you raise your placard to be allowed to speak at certain times, and then you have to specify what the request is. For instance, there’s a very special rule even when an individual insults the dignity of another country, something that the person can then have a right to reply to.
Rosner: That’s getting way too complicated; we can’t do that.
Jacobsen: No, I’m just adding this for fun, just so you kind of know how this plays out. One time I saw this was at Harvard Model United Nations. Years ago, I think this was the third largest Model United Nations in the world, and our university paid for all of us to go. It was a fantastic 5-day event for Israel and Palestine. Palestine is an observer member State, and Israel is a member state of the United Nations, so one of them was insulted, and they just planned this out, these delegates, so that they could go to lunch early, apparently. So, one gave a speech, but they didn’t get a reply to their speech, and they both stormed out and they went and had lunch early. That’s one of the only times in my entire Model United Nations career where I’ve ever seen that used, and they used it well, for out-of-personal purposes. You don’t need sophisticated rules to set boundaries in a “shit show.”
Rosner: One of the things we’ve done is we now have time limits, which are working very well and stopping us from going around circles. All right, so here’s my request. I may invite her, but I don’t know. That might make me a horrible person, but I don’t know. My request is that you and Carole will likely outlive me. Carole has for the past few months been working on a book about my parents’ failed relationship because, as I’ve told you, she found hundreds of love letters between them. She wants to write the story of how this big, super passionate love went bad within five years.
Jacobsen: Interesting.
Rosner: Her product which I’m reading as she does it, I think, is highly publishable, though who knows given the state of modern publishing, but I think it’s good, and if it goes, I’m thinking that at some point, she may want to write about the offspring of this doomed relationship which of course is freaking me and what it was like to be with me for 40 freaking years and more. You and I have generated just a ton of material, and if at some point she chooses to do that project, I’m requesting that you help her wade through what we’ve done together.
Jacobsen: Yes.
Rosner: Alright, well, thank you in advance.
Jacobsen: That’s going to be interesting. So, she has started on this project?
Rosner: I mean, it’s more than a start because she has the letters, which are themselves 80,000 words, and now, she’s done another 15,000 filling in the gaps. Most of the letters were from their courtship when my dad was flying around in a B-36 and when they were separated. Once they get married, the number of letters decreases severely because they’re living together and she has to write about it. Eventually, the letters stop altogether, and she moves on to other documents like a restraining order and a report from a psychiatrist about what might be wrong with the parties based on a counselling session and the divorce decree. Then, there will be a few more letters about child support, and a private eyes report. The nature of the documents changes. She’s still got a lot of work to do because she has to bridge roughly three years between the happy documents and then the sad documents and the documents from the letters from 1954 through 1956-57 bridge to the sad docs that started in’ 59-’60.
Jacobsen: Is this a request from Carole as well?
Rosner: No, but I will present it to her. She takes writing classes, and she has written about a lot of the people in her life. I think she wrote one short little thing, like in a writing class, they give you 45 minutes to develop an idea, and I think one of her things was about some freaking thing I did, and I just think that given the length of time, we’ve been together since 1986.
Jacobsen: That’s amazing. It’s longer than I’ve been around.
Rosner: Yeah, it’s crazy how fucking old we are. If this book goes which is filling in building lives from documents written for other purposes, maybe she’d want to try it again, and the documents for other purposes are what you and I have talked about, along with maybe a salting of like hideous tweets and also like her personal experience of me like how fucking weird I am, the shit I say to her is just ridiculous now, not abusive but just nonsensical like when I leave I’ll say “Have fun in your butt,” which means nothing because you can’t be in your own butt.
Jacobsen: Why do you say these things? [Laughing]
Rosner: And “Watch out for farts.” Again, it’s like something a weird six-year-old would say.
Jacobsen: It’s almost like people get too comfortable after a few years of marriage. That’s my observation, and then it just continues, and then you just have to start saying new things.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/13
When we first arrived to Odesa from Chisinau, Moldova, it was relatively clear. The pall of war set over the mood of Ukraine. Not in a feeling of the people, but in a sense of the space, Ukraine is a war zone.
Remus Cernea and I began surveying landscapes. What we found, they’d bombed a science centre, fine art museum, grain port, hotel, UNESCO cathedral, and more. No militarized buildings around; no command and control, it’s strange.
Cernea warned me. War is not normal. “Things will seem normal, then you will realize within a day. Things are not so normal.” He was right. Even simply on the bombing of civilian centres, I’d walk by these demolished buildings from explosives and reflect: Who lived here?
What were their names, attire, hates and loves, liked foods and music? Gone in an instant. Either their livelihoods in the loss of material for memory, or in their lives, it’s profound. I am reminded of the times walking in the cemetery of my home town, Fort Langley.
I used to walk in that cemetery all the time. I never wept there. It wasn’t sad. It was somber and sober. It’s the semblance of clear sensory experience awaking in the morning well-rested. Death is clarity. Moonlight on a grave clear, quiet–everpresent.
These targeted attacks reflect the facet of war as terror. The Russian Federation isn’t engaged in war alone: It’s engaged in acts of war in order to instil terror and install defeatism on civilian populations throughout Ukraine. Ukrainians are not.
Devastation of the Christian church was present. It was an UNESCO heritage site. Above, it was destroyed by the missile. Inside below, worship centres for Ukrainian Christian’s survived. People continue. Outside, devastation, there was a contrast in this destruction. Again, I was drawn back to the Fort Langley cemetery.
We were having a Kafkaesque experience. We woke up each day transmuted into different creatures: Wandering, meandering observers into the hellscape of war. We were tourists. They were civilians used to the most literal version of Russian Roulette: A missile or drone could kill them, though small chance, at any point in time.
The United Nations warned any traveller that nowhere in Ukraine is entirely safe. Odesa is among the safer cities. The reason for this is the West of Ukraine, generally speaking, is safer than the Eastern portions of Ukraine.
Life continues for Ukrainians, but air raid alarms can happen anytime. Then everyone goes to shelters or bunkers. I had my press body armor and combat helmet for the more dangerous parts of the trip. Several journalists have been killed.
The informal ‘policy’ appears to be to shoot journalists on site for Russian Federation soldiers. On anniversary of the Ukrainian Holodomor, when we were there, Russia did a record drone strike on Kyiv for four hours. It was in the morning. The biggest attack since the start of the full-scale invasion.
My surgery and the time zone jump, plus the jet lag and medications made me very, very sleepy — keeps mouth pain at bay, at least. No hard foods for most of the trip. Cernea showed me a bunker too. There was two entrances/exits. His military press pass helped with this. All reflecting the daily life for Ukrainians now, or for ‘tourists of war.’
After surgery and a drive to the airport, my friend’s last words, “You’re crazy.”
“Yes.”
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/12
[Recording Start]
Rick Rosner: In my novel, the main character, similar to myself, possesses a framework that, if not a complete theory of the universe, points towards one. As he ages, he increasingly treats it with casual disregard and allows it to diminish in importance.
As he becomes engrossed in the minutiae of daily life, he follows a stereotypical pattern observed in the lives of mathematicians and scientists, whether universally true or not. This pattern was evident in Einstein, who accomplished his most significant work early in his career and spent the last 30 years striving for significant discoveries without much success. Similarly, Newton, who lived to an advanced age for his time, made his groundbreaking contributions early on and later served as the director of the Royal Mint. There exists a stereotype that one’s most significant work is done early in life, and later years are either marked by a decline in mental capacity to generate innovative ideas or by being overwhelmed by life’s demands.
I should be focusing on IC (Informational Cosmology). I still aspire to develop and disseminate IC, as it offers a superior framework for understanding the universe, consciousness, and existence compared to current theories. Despite my conviction, I find myself lazy and distracted, even as the rest of the world advances towards similar understandings through artificial intelligence and other technologies, approaching a more profound comprehension of consciousness. This lack of dedicated effort towards promoting IC might be considered one of the most significant failures of my life.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: A comprehensive framework exists for redefining information and applying it to developing physical laws, providing a much more dynamic view of the world. A significant barrier exists, however.
Rosner: According to IC and common sense, information cannot exist without a relevant framework. IC posits that a universe is necessary for information to exist. This universe must be an information process; a universe not constructed from information and centred around information processing is unlikely to exist. Furthermore, such a universe is likely to be conscious. The information need not be registered in the consciousness embodied in the universe, but it must be part of the structure of any reasonable universe.
Rosner: Any comments?
Jacobsen: None.
Rosner: Does that conclude the topic for now?
Jacobsen: For now.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/12
[Recording Start]
Rick Rosner: Yesterday, we discussed the possible reasons why birth rates are declining globally. You are 32, correct?
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: No, I am 34.
Rosner: I see. At some point, do you wish to have a wife and children?
Jacobsen: I don’t know.
Rosner: We could examine why you do not feel a sense of urgency and compare that to my generation and my desperation to have a girlfriend, which eventually extended to having a wife.
Jacobsen: I would like to preface this by stating that I had recently ended a relationship before I was about to travel from Montreal to New York and then the rest of the States. I am currently in an emotional transitional period because it has not been that long.
Rosner: All right. We do not have to discuss that if you are uncomfortable, but we could if you wish.
Jacobsen: It was a mutual, healthy parting. She reached out weeks ago, and we are on good terms.
Rosner: My mother used to say… she was born in ’33 and had her first child, me, at 26. For her generation, 26 was generally the average age of a mother’s last child, so people started much earlier. People also often died sooner, so the timeline was condensed. But not so much sooner to explain the difference between entire generations getting married at 19 or 20. I do not know the average age at first marriage, but it has to be in the late twenties.
Jacobsen: I am not sure. It depends on the country. In America, it might be women’s in late twenties and men’s in early thirties.
Rosner: Yes, that is what it was for Carole and me. She married at 26. I was 30. We had been together for almost five years. We got together early for our generation, but we each probably had lower-than-average self-esteem, at least in finding partners, making people more inclined to stay together. You want to stay with who you have because it is a struggle to find the next person. Or you think it is going to be.
Jacobsen: That might be another reason for less permanent coupling up.
Rosner: Maybe dating apps have raised everybody’s social self-esteem, at least in terms of hooking up. Take Tinder.
Jacobsen: My days of trying to hook up long preceded Tinder.
Rosner: But you use it, correct? It is not necessarily for casual hooking up but for meeting and talking to people.
Jacobsen: That is true. I am proud of the profiles; I have created over time. I find them amusing and entertaining.
Rosner: Do you think that, if we take someone who was a nerd back in 1978, if you put that person on Tinder today, people would be interested in him? You are not particularly nerdy and are not a good test case. It would depend on the person. Tinder is primarily comprised of men. Also, everyone suffers from always thinking something better is around the corner.
Rosner: Right.
Jacobsen: If women are being flooded with men liking their profiles, then it will be gendered in a way that exaggerates normal gender dynamics where many men are offering, and women pick and choose from those offers.
Rosner: Do you think men act more manly than they would in real life?
Jacobsen: That is not exactly what I am saying. I am saying men act as they would, but given the number of people participating in Tinder; those numbers artificially exaggerate normal behaviour without being exaggerated in any behavioural sense.
Rosner: Let me be more specific. Let us take a guy who is 24 or 25. He has his hair; he is a little bit soft-bodied, but not horribly so. He can type out a reasonable sentence. He is not an idiot and can eventually figure out how to talk to people on Tinder. He is not a muscle man. He is not a chiselled blonde god. He is a regular-looking guy who might be awkward if you met him in person. That guy could meet up with a woman at least every few months, right?
Jacobsen: I suspect so. At the same time, even though people have more sexual variety, they are having less sex on average. It is even more true for people who are 24 now. It is a strange phenomenon where people are having more varied versions of sex at lesser rates. It is peculiar.
Rosner: I do not know where that guy fits into the reproductive ecosystem in each case. In 1978, he was nerdy. He tries because there are not many substitutions for trying. He eventually gets with someone who might be okay with him, might even like him, and he stays with that person. He figures it is a good deal for him because he has difficulty meeting women who want to be with him. When someone does, he wants to hold onto them. Now, move that guy to the present day. Does he feel like he can be a bit of a player? He meets a woman on Tinder and has coffee with people. Maybe he has drinks with people. Not all the time, but every few weeks, and perhaps a few times a year, he has sex with someone. Occasionally, someone he previously had sex with reaches out, or he reaches out, and they have sex again. Does the current availability for awkward guys mean they are less likely to hook up permanently at a younger age, at the age they would have hooked up in 1978, 24, or 25? This increased availability of a variety of women to nerds and awkward women, is that enough to keep people playing when, in previous generations, they would have settled down? Or does it matter, given all the other possible reasons for people not partnering up?
Jacobsen: Social acceptance of nerds, geeks, and dweebs makes dating apps different because many women are also nerds, geeks, and dweebs now, much more than before. With the opening of that social acceptance and the media portrayals and the open access to many well-paying jobs for many of them, I believe the natural inclination is to assume, following that data, that the chances are greater now than before for that type of person.
Rosner: I was particularly desperate in high school to get a girlfriend. When I returned to high school, I sat next to a kid in chemistry class at Highland High. He was a good-looking guy, and he had a cool car. He just talked about hanging out in parking lots with other guys who had cool cars. It was Albuquerque, and there wasn’t a lot to do. By this point, I was frustrated that returning to high school wasn’t working for me, so I just said whatever I wanted. I turned to him and asked, why aren’t you more worried about not having a girlfriend? Or why aren’t you trying harder to get a girlfriend? You’re a perfectly acceptable guy. He said, “Dude, you can’t worry about everything.” That attitude was probably more reasonable than mine in all my desperation and possibly was more common than mine and certainly is more common now. With you, a perfectly acceptable guy with a lot going for him, your attitude is when and if it is correct, it will happen. You give yourself opportunities via Tinder when you feel like it, but you do not think it is necessary to fulfill life goals by a certain age by partnering up and reproducing.
Jacobsen: Right, in some sense, I have no stake in the end. If the path is to remain a bachelor or to get married and have kids, I do not have a significant emotional stake in that outcome. I have been content in partnering up and not for a long time. It has never been an issue. I adapt to the circumstances and context of what life presents to me at that time.
Rosner: At least some of that. Now, some of that is you, as a person who has interviewed countless people, explored various ways to live life and come to your conclusion. However, I would say that there are also changes in societal reinforcement. Would you agree that society has not pushed you as hard as it would have pushed someone in my mother’s generation to partner up?
Jacobsen: There have been obtuse people in my hometown who said certain things that were callous or asked dumb questions, some kind of pseudo-penetrating, but not really.
Rosner: For example, why isn’t a handsome boy like you married yet? Is that what you mean?
Jacobsen: Things to that effect, said in more offensive ways. You get used to it. Then I imagine asking myself other questions and reflecting on them: Do they know what courses I have taken? Do they know any interviews I have done? Do they know what I have for breakfast? They are just subject to cultural stereotypes and imperatives.
Rosner: So they put that pressure on you.
Jacobsen: It is similar to — not in degree, but in style — people standing outside of abortion service providers, saying that they are killing babies because that is their imperative within their particular frame of what is and is not a life. I take it in that context where these people come from a specific frame. I believe they have the freedom of speech to say that. And I have the freedom to feel and think that they are jackasses.
Rosner: Do you think there is truth to Hillary Clinton’s saying that it takes a village to raise a child? Do you think the breakdown of the village structure of society where, in my mother’s generation and mine, you had face-to-face neighbours, face-to-face friends, small communities, and all that electronic friends have replaced? Does the breakdown of traditional communities mean that traditional coupling patterns, the influence of people, and everybody being coupled up, especially people older than you, play a part in people not coupling up as much?
Jacobsen: It is a factor. For a long time, the church was the center of American life.
Rosner: Okay.
Jacobsen: A remnant of the past that you can give or attend, get out and become political. They are seen as extremists. We see this in the demographics, or it is not entirely stable. In Canada, the church is an extraordinarily diminished institution. If you look at my hometown, it is undoubtedly the evangelical heart of Canada. It had a small community, an evangelical Christian community, and an older community, with medium-sized families for the most part. Those structures of pressure were in place. I would not necessarily say that I felt extreme pressure. I would argue that much of the pressure talked about in past generations’ narratives did not exist for me, out of just a few very obtuse parts of other people.
Rosner: In America, what has happened to at least the evangelical Christians has thoroughly discredited them in the eyes of a majority of Americans. I would say that the majority increases among younger people. People are walking away from the church at huge rates because of many evangelicals and it is not fair to all of them, but the loudest ones continue to embrace Trump, even as Trump becomes more disreputable. This discredits the church because Trump is as ungodly as you can get. Trump is a recent enough phenomenon that it is too soon to say that he is putting a damper on people coupling up. It is hard to tell the influence of Trump on the evangelicals. He certainly has not helped, and how the evangelicals are in America has undoubtedly given Christian familyhood a black eye.
Jacobsen: I am not a stranger to relationships. I have had, off the top of my head, eight relationships.
Rosner: Yes. So that is not a small number.
Jacobsen: Carole found that to be more than enough [Laughing].
Rosner: I met Carole when she was 21. It was very unusual for us to still be together for our generation.
Jacobsen: You met at a Jewish singles dance when you were 25?
Rosner: Yes. It was April 5th, 1986, so I was a few weeks away from turning 26. Carole was three months away from turning 22. In counselling, it has come up that maybe I wish she had more experience with problematic boyfriends so that her expectations of me would have been lower. It is unfair to wish Carole a relationship misery so that I will look better in comparison. But still.
We have reached some conclusions here. Modern dating technology reduces pressure, and neighbourly and churchly pressure fades. Are we done with this?
Jacobsen: One more thing to cover. I want to get your reflections on this, too. When I have had those moments of social behaviour, they were minute moments of acute pressure. They had the opposite effect, in my opinion. They made me feel, “Oh, forget you, I am not going to do it.”
Rosner: That makes sense. If evangelicals were telling me what I needed to do, I would feel resentment. I understand that.
Jacobsen: Expand it to a cultural phenomenon where the messaging is like that broadly, especially with declining birth rates and married people being in the minority. This could have an accelerated, deteriorative effect – opposite of the intended direction of those messages.
Rosner: I can see that. We have discussed how older people in America, people over 45, have all the material wealth in America. When you run into a relative you have not seen in a while, like your aunt, who is 60 or 58, they ask, “When are you going to get married?” You look at the aunt wearing jewelry, living in a four-bedroom house, driving a BMW, and might be retired from a well-paying job. Meanwhile, you are working at a startup, getting paid $850 a week with some stock options, and your rent is half of your take-home pay, and you live in a small apartment with roommates. When you hear this aunt making what to her seems like an innocent comment, you might think, “Fuck you, aunt. It is different now, and I cannot do what you did, and I do not want to, given that you guys messed us over.” Is that a reasonable possibility?
Jacobsen: That is probably true. It might be gendered as well. Many in the current generation are getting more educated, especially women. Men are expected to uphold some traditional stature of masculinity. Yet they are given conditions and resources under which they can never attain that. There is much resentment, but it is directed in misguided ways, like toward women making the right choices about getting an education.
Rosner: That brings up another possibility you just mentioned — the juvenilization of men. When my mother met my father, it was 1954. He would have been 23, and he might have been third in command on a B-36 bomber that was flying around. This plane was designed specifically to fly nuclear bombs around, and he was in charge of a bomb. He started with A-bombs, like the ones they dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which could kill 150,000 people at once. Later, they shifted to H-bombs, the most potent weapon ever deployed. One of these things, however big a city you dropped it on, would kill just about everybody in that city, up to five to seven million people. A 23-year-old was the navigator bombardier, and the rest of his crew was not much older. They might have had a major in charge of the plane who was, I do not know, 27 or 28, but they were all young people in the 1950s flying city-killing bombs around and looking fully adult with neatly combed, Brylcreemed hair. Carole and I have been going through their love letters, and they were playing at being full-grown adults. That was what society exemplified. America dominated the world, and the idea was to get married, start a family, get a good job, and move into a house you could afford back then on one salary. They were playing at being adults. Now, men do not. There is less pressure to appear as a fully grown adult. At age 23, I did not graduate high school for the last time until I was 27. I epitomized not growing up peculiarly.
Jacobsen: Right, we agree there. The symptoms of juvenilization are relative to prior roles, yet the pathways for those roles no longer exist. They are both victims of cultural change and of taking that honest resentment and anger and directing it to the wrong group.
Rosner: When women joined the workforce, jobs began paying less because employers only wanted to spend so much. If the workforce is doubled, that will dilute the money available to pay people. But it is undoubtedly harder to survive on one job, on one employed family member. Oh, Lance likes to say that. It is probably half true; as Lance says, many things are half true.
Jacobsen: Many conversations argue about wage stagnation, a human choice. People are being put in competition in the developed world with the developing world, where rights are violated all the time.
Rosner: Okay.
Jacobsen: How can you compete with super-exploited labour in the third world?
Rosner: That is something that has only in the past 30 or 40 years, maybe less, become a significant factor. Before the internet, it was strict to the point of being rare to be able to outsource work overseas. We touched on it last night that jobs that alone can support a family, especially for someone under 30, are rare. Have we discussed this enough? We have discussed it thoroughly, laying out the landscape and identifying ten interrelated causes. When you take them all together, regardless of their ranking, they make a convincing case that what is happening should be happening given all the pressure in that direction — that people are having fewer children. When you tell people this, they are not surprised. The end, I guess.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Critical Science Newswire
Original Link: https://ncse.ngo/climate-change-education-legislation-dies-new-york
Publication Date: June 11, 2024
Organization: National Center for Science Education
Organization Description: The National Center for Science Education promotes and defends accurate and effective science education because everyone deserves to engage with the evidence. One day, students of all ages will be scientifically literate, teachers will be prepared and empowered to teach accurate science, and scientific thinking and decision-making will ensure that all life can thrive and overcome challenges to our shared future.
By Glenn Branch
When the 2023-2024 session of the New York legislature ended on June 7, 2024, no fewer than seven climate change education bills died in committee.
Assembly Bill 851 would have required the state commissioner of education to “create and establish a comprehensive and accurate climate change and sustainability curriculum which shall be taught in grades kindergarten through twelve in all public and charter schools.”
Senate Bill 287 would have required the state commissioner of education to “make recommendations to the board of regents relating to adjusting curricula for social studies, economics, geography, and government classes in New York schools to include requirements for climate change education.”
Senate Bill 278 would have required the state commissioner of education to “establish a model environmental curriculum on climate change to be taught in all public elementary and secondary schools,” to be included in the standards of instruction for not only science but also history, social studies, health, and mathematics.
Assembly Bill 1559 would have required the state commissioner of education to “establish a model environmental curriculum on climate change to be taught in all public elementary and secondary schools,” to be included in the standards of instruction for not only science but also history, social studies, health, and mathematics.
(Amended versions of Senate Bill 278 and Assembly Bill 1559 brought the bills into alignment with the Climate Education Platform of the Climate and Resilience Task Force, a project of the National Wildlife Federation in New York City and WE ACT for Environmental Justice, as NCSE previously reported.)
Senate Bill 243 would have required the state commissioner of education to offer “recommendations to the board of regents relating to the adoption of instruction in climate science in senior high schools,” including “the effect and impact of greenhouse gasses” and New York’s commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Assembly Bill 1866 would have established a climate change education grant program “to award grants to eligible applicants to support climate change education grant programs for young people or to provide optional teacher training or professional development programs relevant to the advance of climate change literacy in young people.”
Senate Bill 5661 would have required “climate change instruction within the current established science curriculum for grades one through twelve in all public schools.” Correspondingly, school authorities would have been required to support such instruction.
At the end of the 2021-2022 legislative session, eight climate change education bills introduced in the New York legislature likewise died in committee.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Critical Science Newswire
Original Link: https://ncse.ngo/ncses-branch-discusses-climate-change-education-legislation-yale-climate-connections
Publication Date: June 3, 2024
Organization: National Center for Science Education
Organization Description: The National Center for Science Education promotes and defends accurate and effective science education because everyone deserves to engage with the evidence. One day, students of all ages will be scientifically literate, teachers will be prepared and empowered to teach accurate science, and scientific thinking and decision-making will ensure that all life can thrive and overcome challenges to our shared future.
By Glenn Branch
NCSE’s deputy director Glenn Branch contributed a discussion of legislation intended to support climate change education to Yale Climate Connections (June 4, 2024), relying on his interviews of eight legislators who sponsored such measures.
“In the last five years, by my count, no fewer than 90 measures aimed at supporting climate change education have been introduced in the legislatures of 21 states across the country,” Branch wrote. “I interviewed eight of their sponsors, by phone or email, and here’s what I learned that might help you, as a citizen concerned about the climate crisis, to support the introduction, passage, and enactment of such legislation in your state.”
“Climate change education is popular,” Branch observed toward the end of his article, adding, “The challenge is to channel the public’s abstract support for climate change education into specific and implementable legislation that will make a real difference in the classroom. That’s how legislators and their constituents can help to equip today’s students to cope with the challenges of the warmer world they will inherit.”
Interviewed for the article were Andrew Gounardes of New York, Chris Larson of Wisconsin, Juan Mendez of Arizona, Nicole Mitchell of Minnesota, Christine Palm of Connecticut, Luz Rivas of California, James Talarico of Texas, and Wendy Thomas of New Hampshire.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Critical Science Newswire
Original Link: https://ncse.ngo/liberty-science-center-honors-member-ncses-board-directors
Publication Date: May 24, 2024
Organization: National Center for Science Education
Organization Description: The National Center for Science Education promotes and defends accurate and effective science education because everyone deserves to engage with the evidence. One day, students of all ages will be scientifically literate, teachers will be prepared and empowered to teach accurate science, and scientific thinking and decision-making will ensure that all life can thrive and overcome challenges to our shared future.
By Glenn Branch
NCSE is pleased to congratulate the evolutionary biologist Joseph L. Graves Jr. of North Carolina A&T University, a member of NCSE’s board of directors, on receiving a Genius Award, the highest honor from the Liberty Science Center, in Jersey City, New Jersey. Graves was born in Westfield, New Jersey, a few miles from the center. He received the award at a gala event at the center on May 20, 2024, where he discussed misconceptions about biology and race, according to a May 21, 2024, report.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://exmuslims.org or newsletter@exmuslims.org
Publication Date: June 12, 2024
Organization: Ex-Muslims of North America
Organization Description: Ex-Muslims of North America is a non-profit organization that focuses on providing support for apostates from Islam and spreading awareness of the dangers behind militant Islam. Ex-Muslims of North America advocates for acceptance of religious dissent, promotes secular values, and aims to reduce discrimination faced by those who leave Islam. We envision a world where every person is free to follow their conscience, irrespective of religious dogma or oppression.
Welcome back!
This week in The Unbelief Brief, we bring you updates from Turkey’s controversial new curriculum, Quebec’s debate on religious head coverings, and a tragic honor killing in the Netherlands.
We also take a moment to honor the victims of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, marking eight years since the tragedy.
The Unbelief Brief
A new curriculum for public schools in Turkey, spearheaded by the Recep Tayyip Erdogan government, has come under fire from secular activists and the political opposition. The groups claim the curriculum is antithetical to Turkey’s secular roots and wrongly emphasizes religious values at the expense of critical thinking skills. This is not at all out of character for Erdogan’s government, which has long sought to increase the presence of prayer rooms in Turkish schools, as well as religiosity in general—from replacing evolutionary theory with creationism to greatly increasing the number of Islamic schools in the country. It is a concerted and coordinated attack on the guardrails of secularism with the aim of creating, as Erdogan puts it, a “pious generation” of Turks. Erdogan counters criticisms of the new curriculum by asserting that his government is inculcating “national values” in its students. However, as the Istanbul Bar Association points out: “No space is given to national values like Ataturk, secularism and the republic.”
Another conflict revolving around religion’s role in private life is taking place in Quebec, this time with religionists playing defense. The government of Quebec is facing pushback from a Muslim advocacy group over a proposed law that would ban religious head coverings for “public sector employees” while they are working. While there may be a reasonable conversation to be had about religious freedom, the law applies only to government employees while on the job, and the notion that it amounts to “a form of hatred that literally targets minorities and seeks to remove citizens’ rights” (as one representative for the National Council of Canadian Muslims called it) seems a bit of a stretch.
Finally, we have more information on the tragic and horrible death of an 18-year-old woman in the Netherlands: it was reportedly an honor killing on the grounds that she had become “too Westernized” and no longer wished to wear a headscarf. Ryan Al Najjar was found dead last month, and investigators have confirmed that she was murdered by her father, Khaled Al Najjar. Only after fleeing to Turkey did Mr. Al Najjar reveal the location of his daughter’s body to family members. Mr. Al Najjar also reportedly confessed his crime in writing to a Dutch newspaper, asking the paper to publish that he had killed his daughter because he had been “very angry with her.” However, he refused to elaborate on a motive until he could do so before a judge in court. Other acquaintances of Ryan’s family told the press that “the very religious family could not tolerate her lifestyle” and that this may have been a possible reason for her murder. It is very difficult to imagine any other scenario given the information we do have about the case: a young Muslim woman, murdered by her own family for, presumably, living too freely and enjoying life too much—a crime we see all too often.
EXMNA Insights
Eight years ago today, 49 people were tragically killed at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. The perpetrator was 29-year-old Omar Mateen. During the attack, Mateen called 911 and, while speaking to a hostage negotiator, pledged allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, claiming the attack was revenge for US airstrikes killing ISIS military commanders. It is unclear whether Pulse was targeted due to its popularity as a dance club with lax security or because it was frequented specifically by the LGBTQ+ community. While we may never fully understand Mateen’s motives, we know he became self-radicalized on the internet and was particularly susceptible to Islamist propaganda due to his reported unstable emotional and psychological state. At the time, the Pulse nightclub shooting was the deadliest terror attack in the U.S. since 9/11.
In the following days and weeks, Muslim American organizations publicly disavowed the senseless violence of that day and offered support to the LGBTQ+ community through fundraising campaigns and organizing vigils. Despite Islam’s condemnation of homosexuality and its directives on the punishment for homosexual behaviors, many in the Muslim community were able to set aside their complicated beliefs to offer support to the LGBTQ+ community in the aftermath of the tragedy.
This show of support is just one example of the cognitive dissonance Muslims engage in to prioritize humanity over ideology.
Another interesting example of an ideological conflict occurred at this year’s Philadelphia Pride celebration. On Sunday, June 2, marchers were confronted mid-parade by pro-Palestine demonstrators chanting, “no pride in genocide”.
A protest leader allegedly stated, “Pride as we know it cannot be separated from our current political and economic climate. Pride celebrations have merely become a public relations instrument”. Many of the demonstrators were themselves members of the LGBTQ+ community and expressed that advocating for “freeing Palestine” was a more urgent message.
However, one cannot forget that under a Hamas-led government, same-sex relations in Gaza currently remain illegal, as is the case in much of the Muslim world. In the West Bank, this religious prejudice has repeatedly resulted in violence, including murders with gruesome beheadings.
Thank you for joining us in remembering those in the LGBTQ+ community affected by extremist Islamic ideology. May we all continue to fight for a world where everyone can feel safe to love who they love and follow their conscience.
If you have a story you’d like to share related to Pride Month, please send it to info@exmuslims.org with “Pride Month” in the subject line.
Until next week,
The Team at Ex-Muslims of North America
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://exmuslims.org or newsletter@exmuslims.org
Publication Date: June 7, 2024
Organization: Ex-Muslims of North America
Organization Description: Ex-Muslims of North America is a non-profit organization that focuses on providing support for apostates from Islam and spreading awareness of the dangers behind militant Islam. Ex-Muslims of North America advocates for acceptance of religious dissent, promotes secular values, and aims to reduce discrimination faced by those who leave Islam. We envision a world where every person is free to follow their conscience, irrespective of religious dogma or oppression.
Welcome to this week’s newsletter!
As we celebrate Pride Month, we’re excited to bring you this week’s Unbelief Brief and highlight some of the ways the Qur’an discusses homosexuality. At Ex-Muslims of North America, we proudly stand in support of our LGBTQ+ community members and allies.
This month, we’d also like to invite you, our readers, to share your stories. If you have a story you’d like to share related to Pride, please send it to info@exmuslims.org with the subject line “Pride Month.”
Join us in advocating for inclusivity and equal rights for all.
Happy Pride Month!
The Unbelief Brief
This past week, an “anti-Islam” protest in Germany turned violent and tragic—but at the hands of an apparent Islamic extremist. According to a police statement, an assailant wielding a knife attacked a 29-year-old policeman in Mannheim, “stabb[ing him] several times in the area of the head.” The officer was hospitalized but died two days later. The assailant, himself subdued by other officers on the scene and now hospitalized, is reportedly a 25-year-old immigrant from Afghanistan. Though the motive for the attack cannot yet be confirmed, there is little doubt what he was doing at a reported “anti-Islam” rally with far-right activists in attendance. Shortly after the attack, the current Interior Minister of the governing Social Democratic Party issued a statement, arguing that if the motive of this attack was indeed religious, it “show(s) how strongly we must continue to fight Islamist terror.”
In better news, a spokesperson for the United States Department of State has recently publicly reaffirmed the US’s opposition to blasphemy laws “anywhere in the world.” The spokesperson, Vedant Patel, made the remarks in response to the recent mob attack in Pakistan, where Muslims accusing two Christians of blasphemy rioted, killing one of the Christians and injuring the other (who is himself now under investigation by the state for blasphemy). We applaud the US government for taking this position and encourage them to continue to do so at every available opportunity.
Finally: has this ever happened to you? You’re a Muslim, and you want to play the latest video game all your friends have been talking about. But there’s a problem: the game allows players to cast magic spells, meaning its content is blasphemous! Does this jeopardize your standing as a good Muslim? This is no small question: your immortal soul could be in grave danger! Luckily, the Iran-based AhlulBayt News Agency has taken it upon itself to answer this important question with the wisdom of top clerics. The long and short of it is: you do not automatically become an unbeliever if you role-play as a digital wizard, but it is nonetheless still impermissible conduct. If you are a Muslim and have made this dire mistake, it is crucial that you cease and repent as soon as possible!
EXMNA Insights
June is Pride Month, a time to celebrate and support the LGBTQ+ community. However, it’s crucial to recognize the hardships faced by LGBTQ+ individuals in Muslim-majority societies.
Islam, much like other conservative religions, is rigidly against homosexuality1. While the Qur’an is not explicit in its condemnation of homosexuality, many Sahih Hadith portray homosexual acts as sinful and prohibit them.
The story of Lut (Lot) in the Qur’an is often cited as an example condemning homosexuality2. Islamic scholars often interpret the punishment apportioned out to the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah for their “immorality3” and “ignorance4” as code for homosexuality. This traditional Islamic viewpoint is directly reflective of the intense discrimination and violence LGBTQ+ individuals face in the Muslim world. Iran, Northern Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen all currently punish homosexuality with the death penalty. It is also the maximum possible sentence in Afghanistan, Brunei, Mauritania, Pakistan, Qatar, and UAE5. In other Muslim-majority countries, homosexual activity can result in imprisonment following a public indecency charge, essentially a de facto punishment for homosexuality. Additionally, there are very few publicly accessible and safe queer spaces in the Muslim world which lead many LGBTQ+ individuals to remain closeted for their entire lives for fear of legal punishment or vigilante violence6. During Pride Month, it’s important to reflect on the enormous risk that being an LGBTQ+ person poses for people in the Muslim world due to Islam’s outdated and inhumane perception of homosexuality.
Thanks for tuning in for this week’s PRIDE edition! If you enjoyed this, please forward it to a friend. Don’t forget, if you have a story you’d like to share related to Pride Month, please send it to info@exmuslims.org with “Pride Month” in the subject line.
Until next week,
The Team at Ex-Muslims of North America
Whether it’s giving $5 or $500, help us fight for a future where all are free to follow their conscience.
1https://wikiislam.net/wiki/Qur%27an,_Hadith_and_Scholars:Homosexuality
2https://wikiislam.net/wiki/Lut
3https://quran.com/29/28
4https://quran.com/27/55
5https://www.humandignitytrust.org/lgbt-the-law/map-of-criminalisation/?type_filter_submitted=&type_filter%5B%5D=death_pen_applies
6https://apnews.com/article/middle-east-africa-religion-europe-05020d7baa9f0d5f0b3088e80d0797e9
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://humanists.uk/2024/06/12/humanist-pledges-in-green-manifesto/
Publication Date: June 12, 2024
Organization: Humanists UK
Organization Description: Humanists UK is the operating name of the British Humanist Association. We are a charitable company (no. 228781), formed in 1896 and incorporated in 1928, and registered in England and Wales. Our governing document is our Articles of Association, which can be viewed here.
Humanists UK has welcomed several pledges made by the Green Party of England Wales in their Manifesto for the 2024 general election. It has, however, noted the omission of several pledges where the Green Party already has policy in line with Humanists UK’s.
Humanists UK is lobbying all the parties and candidates to support its campaigns and equality for humanists and the non-religious by adopting policies to advance freedom of thought, choice, and expression. In this story, as with earlier pieces on the Liberal Democrat and Conservative manifestos, Humanists UK is analysing what’s in the Manifesto for humanists. It will be doing the same for the Labour Party Manifesto once that is published.
Policies in focus
Human rights
The Green Party Manifesto says ‘The Green Party is committed to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the European Court of Human Rights.’
Humanists UK strongly welcomes this pledge. Humanists UK previously spearheaded the largest-ever human rights coalition dedicated to protecting the Human Rights Act. Yesterday, it reacted with dismay to a Conservative pledge that it might pull the UK out of the European Convention.
Relationships and Sex Education (RSE)
On education, the Greens promise to ‘Retain a full, evidence-based and age-appropriate programme of Relationships, Sex and Health Education, including LGBTIQA+ content and resources.’
If taken to mean a commitment to comprehensive, age-appropriate RSE without religious exemptions in faith schools, this is an approach Humanists UK can wholly endorse.
Assisted dying
The Manifesto says ‘Elected Greens will back changing the law on assisted dying. We support a humane and dignified approach to terminal illness, allowing people to choose to end their lives to avoid prolonging unnecessary suffering, if this is their clear and settled will. Proper safeguards would need to be put in place.’
Humanists UK is pleased to see the explicit support for assisted dying. However, it would wish for Parliament to properly consider the merits of a Bill covering the incurably suffering as well as the terminally ill. It is vital that incurably suffering people, who are of sound mind and have a clear and settled wish to die, are given the right to die if this is their firm choice. They are among those most in need of a change in the law, having the most suffering ahead of them. If a free vote is to be allowed for the terminally ill, then why not the incurably suffering as well?
Time for assisted dying was also promised by the Lib Dem Manifesto and by Keir Starmer as Labour leader in an interview with Esther Rantzen. Conservative leader Rishi Sunak originally said he would allow time for a free vote, but this promise was watered down in the Conservative Manifesto.
Bishops in the House of Lords
The Green Manifesto commits ‘elected Greens’ to ‘push for replacing the House of Lords with an elected second chamber.’
This should mean removing the presence of 26 appointed Church of England bishops from the upper house, who operate as a party, vote on laws, and enjoy special speaking privileges over other members. This would fulfil a longstanding Humanists UK policy.
Constitutional Convention
On constitutional reform, the Greens pledge support for ‘a Constitutional Commission to start a vital national conversation about a new constitutional settlement’.
Humanists UK has long supported a Constitutional Convention as a democratic means to look again at the UK’s archaic parliamentary structures and outdated religious bias in our politics, including things such as bishops voting in the House of Lords and the fused role of the head of state being Supreme Governor of the Church of England.
Female Genital Mutilation (FGM)
Humanists UK was pleased to see the Greens commit to ‘Develop and implement a new UK-wide strategy to tackle gender-based violence, including domestic violence, rape and sexual abuse, Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), and trafficking.’
Humanists UK helped to co-found the group ACTION: FGM, which calls to eradicate the practice worldwide by 2030.
Absent policies
Some key humanist issues were absent from the Manifesto, but are nonetheless settled Green Party policy. These include faith school admissions (Green Party policy advocates their abolition), RE, collective worship, banning conversion therapy, and ending practices like non-stun ritual slaughter of livestock.
Humanists UK would have also liked to see pledges on protecting women’s reproductive rights or Safe Access Zones around abortion clinics. In recent years reproductive rights have been undermined by religious-led parliamentary activity and protests, some of which is funded by American ‘dark money’.
Humanists UK urges the Greens to continue to pursue policies that advocate for equality and freedom of choice, even where these conflict with religious lobbies’ demands for special treatment.
Other parties’ manifestos
Humanists UK is analysing the major parties’ manifestos as soon as they are released. It previously published its analysis of the Liberal Democrats’ Manifesto on Monday and the Conservatives on Tuesday, and intends to do the same for Labour.
Humanists UK is urging all its supporters and the general public to write to all their candidates on a range of humanist issues. It has also sent its members and supporters a ‘doorstep guide’ for questions to ask to canvassers.
Notes
For further comment or information, media should contact Humanists UK Director of Public Affairs and Policy Richy Thompson at press@humanists.uk or phone 0203 675 0959.
Humanists UK is the national charity working on behalf of non-religious people. Powered by over 120,000 members and supporters, we advance free thinking and promote humanism to create a tolerant society where rational thinking and kindness prevail. We provide ceremonies, pastoral care, education, and support services benefitting over a million people every year and our campaigns advance humanist thinking on ethical issues, human rights, and equal treatment for all.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://humanists.uk/2024/06/12/bill-to-remove-bishop-from-isle-of-man-parliament-moves-forward/
Publication Date: June 12, 2024
Organization: Humanists UK
Organization Description: Humanists UK is the operating name of the British Humanist Association. We are a charitable company (no. 228781), formed in 1896 and incorporated in 1928, and registered in England and Wales. Our governing document is our Articles of Association, which can be viewed here.
Tynwald (Manx Parliament) has moved closer to removing the automatic right of the Bishop of Sodor and Man to vote. Humanists UK welcomes this progress towards making Manx politics fair and inclusive for all.
The Constitution Bill 2023 had already progressed through the House of Keys, the lower house of Tynwald. It has now passed its first crucial step in the Legislative Council, the upper house. This ‘principles stage’ allows members to vote on the principles of the bill. Six members voted for it and two against. The bill follows on from a public consultation earlier this year which saw Manx citizens come out in support of removing the bishop’s right to vote. It will now move forward to its ‘clauses stage’ where the Legislative Council may propose amendments and add clauses.
The situation on the Isle of Man reflects that in the UK, where 26 bishops of the Church of England have automatic seats in the House of Lords. The bishops regularly vote and contribute in debate while enjoying privileges over and above other peers. These include privileged speaking rights in the chamber (if a bishop stands to speak, all others are expected to stop speaking and sit down), and unique exemptions from the Code of Conduct.
Humanists UK Director of Public Affairs and Policy Richy Thompson said:
‘We welcome the continued progression of this bill and the movement towards a more fair and equal democracy in the Isle of Man. No religion or belief should be given entrenched voting rights within a legislature as of right. It privileges adherents to that religion – or, more specifically, their clergy – over all others. Given that Anglicans are overrepresented in Parliament anyway, this is particularly egregious. We hope that Westminster can take heed from the steps the Isle of Man is taking and both can ensure all religions and beliefs are put on an equal footing.’
Assisted dying debate
Yesterday also saw the House of Keys debate the Assisted Dying Bill – the third day of its clauses stage. The debate represented continued progress for the Bill, which will legalise assisted dying for those who are terminally ill. The next clauses stage debate of the Bill will happen on 25 June, with the subsequent ‘third reading’ probably not taking place until after summer.
Notes
For further comment or information, media should contact Humanists UK Director of Public Affairs and Policy Richy Thompson at press@humanists.uk or phone 0203 675 0959.
Read more about our work on House of Lords reform.
Humanists UK is the national charity working on behalf of non-religious people. Powered by over 120,000 members and supporters, we advance free thinking and promote humanism to create a tolerant society where rational thinking and kindness prevail. We provide ceremonies, pastoral care, education, and support services benefitting over a million people every year and our campaigns advance humanist thinking on ethical issues, human rights, and equal treatment for all.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://humanists.uk/2024/06/11/conservative-manifesto-promises/
Publication Date: June 11, 2024
Organization: Humanists UK
Organization Description: Humanists UK is the operating name of the British Humanist Association. We are a charitable company (no. 228781), formed in 1896 and incorporated in 1928, and registered in England and Wales. Our governing document is our Articles of Association, which can be viewed here.
The Conservative Party has released its manifesto for the 2024 general election, which contains pledges on a number of policy areas where Humanists UK campaigns – some negative, and a few positive.
Humanists UK is lobbying all the parties and candidates to support its campaigns and equality for humanists and the non-religious by adopting policies to advance freedom of thought, choice, and expression. In this story, as with yesterday’s piece on the Liberal Democrats’ Manifesto, Humanists UK is analysing what’s in the Manifesto for humanists. It will be doing the same for the Labour Party Manifesto once that is published.
Policies in focus
Faith schools
Disappointingly, the Manifesto repeats the Conservative Party’s promise to ‘lift the cap on faith schools, allowing them to offer more places to children based on faith and encouraging them to expand.’
This policy has been rejected by all sensible groups working in education on the basis that it would worsen racial and social discrimination in schools, having been considered and then abandoned by Theresa May’s government after they concluded it would not work. Humanists UK and others working in education have debunked claims that the Catholic Church has been in any way ‘prevented’ from opening more schools, and criticised misleading use of data on social selection and ethnicity to argue for this policy in spite of the facts.
Despite the general election, a consultation on lifting the ‘faith schools cap’ is ongoing.
Human rights law
Concerningly, the Manifesto says ‘If we are forced to choose between our security and the jurisdiction of a foreign court, including the ECtHR, we will always choose our security’.
Humanists UK objects in the strongest possible terms to any implied or explicit threat to pull the UK out of international human rights treaties such as the European Convention on Human Rights. Humanists UK previously spearheaded the UK’s largest-ever coalition on human rights to defend the Human Rights Act, which the Conservatives previously pledged in 2019 to scrap and replace with a ‘British Bill of Rights’. More recently, Humanists UK has condemned the use of notwithstanding clauses that would disapply human rights considerations in asylum and other areas. It rejects the implied argument that we must in any way undermine our own civil liberties at home in order to process claims for asylum.
Illegal schools and missing children
The Manifesto promises ‘to ensure all children are getting a high-quality education, including those who are home schooled, we will legislate to create a register of children not in school.‘
Humanists UK is relieved to see this commitment in the Manifesto. After being promised by the Conservatives in Government without coming to anything, the issue was at last included in the Schools Bill in 2019. However, the Bill was later abandoned because of unrelated issues. Humanists UK had repeatedly asked the UK Government to bring those clauses back. It however did not feature in the recent King’s Speech.
A register of children not in schools is one of several necessary steps required for Ofsted and local authorities to tackle the scandal of thousands of children missing from the system due to attending unsafe, unregistered, and educationally inadequate illegal religious schools. Humanists UK was instrumental in bringing the issue of these missing children to wider attention. Labour’s Bridget Phillipson previously promised Labour would also introduce a register, and the Liberal Democrats included it in their Manifesto.
Free speech in schools
The Manifesto says ‘We will ban protests outside schools to stop mobs from intimidating teachers and children. We will always support teachers to uphold and promote fundamental British values and ensure they are protected from accusations of blasphemy.’
This refers to guidance on free speech in schools. This policy originates in Humanists UK’s own petition to the Home Secretary after a blasphemy-related incident in Wakefield. Humanists UK strongly supports this policy and recommends that all the parties running at the general election adopt similar commitments to freedom of expression and protecting the integrity of school life.
Relationships and Sex Education (RSE)
The Manifesto says the Conservatives are committed to ‘new legislation which will make clear, beyond all doubt, that parents have a right to see what their child is being taught in school and schools must share all materials, especially on sensitive matters like relationships and sex education.’
Humanists UK has no objection to parents seeing any course materials for any subject. To set this in its political context, Humanists UK had previously warned that the Government’s recent plans to limit the scope of Relationships Education for younger pupils could undermine child safeguarding. Given this, it is disappointing not to see a fulsome commitment to an RSE curriculum which meets the needs of children to keep them happy, healthy, and safe, including for pupils attending faith schools. Humanists UK is worried that what is instead promised would in reality continue this concerning direction of travel.
Ban on conversion therapy
Humanists UK and its section LGBT Humanists are sad to see the Conservatives once again walk back their 2018 promise to implement a full, legislative ban on harmful conversion practices. The Manifesto says that ‘Attempts at so-called “conversion therapy” are abhorrent. But legislation around conversion practices is a very complex issue, with existing criminal law already offering robust protections… it is right that we take more time before reaching a final judgement on additional legislation in this area.’
This both overstates the complexity of the required legislation and overlooks the global menu of approaches to successfully ban this harmful, pseudoscientific, religious abuse. The Conservatives have made innumerable promises and U-turns on this issue since 2018, at times briefing the media that the issue has been droppedand at other times stating their strong commitment to act very soon through the Queen’s or King’s Speech. LGBT Humanists has protested the ongoing lack of action.
Humanists UK and LGBT Humanists have campaigned for a ban for decades, and in recent years have helped to drive the political visibility and salience of this issue. It urges MPs from all parties to support a comprehensive and enforceable ban.
Freedom of belief
Humanists UK was pleased to see a Manifesto commitment to ‘stand up for those persecuted for their faith and put the existing role of Special Envoy for Freedom of Religion or Belief on a statutory footing.’
Humanists UK previously asked all the parties to do this, using inclusive wording such as ‘religion or belief’ which covers humanists and the non-religious more broadly. Alongside Humanists International, Humanists UK has repeatedly drawn attention to the plight of humanists at risk abroad, most notably in recent years the high-profile case of Mubarak Bala. Humanists UK has used its platform at the UN Human Rights Council, and has worked with the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, to advance the rights of humanists at risk internationally.
Female genital mutilation (FGM)
The Manifesto includes a promise to ‘support marginalised communities in the developing world and protect those persecuted for their ethnicity, political views, faith or sexuality. We will continue our campaigns against child marriage and FGM.’
As well as supporting the broader position on the UK’s role in promoting global freedom of thought, choice, and expression, Humanists UK was pleased to see the explicit commitment to tackling FGM. Humanists UK helped to co-found the group ACTION: FGM, which calls to eradicate the practice worldwide by 2030.
Assisted dying
Mention of assisted dying in the Conservative Manifesto is watered down from previous remarks made by Rishi Sunak. He promised to allow time for assisted dying legislation, but the manifesto only says ‘We will maintain the position that assisted dying is a matter of conscience and will respect the will of Parliament. Debates on assisted dying should never distract from the importance of delivering high-quality palliative care services.’
Conservative Party policy remains unchanged: the party itself is neither in favour of or opposed to assisted dying, and maintains it is a conscience issue for MPs. However, given that the Government controls the order paper in Parliament, what Humanists UK and others have been asking for assurances of is parliamentary time. In this respect, the Conservative Manifesto comes out weaker on this issue than the Liberal Democrat Manifesto, which promised to ‘Give Parliament time to fully debate and vote on legislation’, or Keir Starmer’s promise to Esther Rantzen of the same.
The other party manifestos
Humanists UK will be analysing the major parties’ manifestos as soon as they are released. It previously published its analysis of the Liberal Democrats’ Manifesto yesterday, and intends to do the same for Labour.
Humanists UK is urging all its supporters and the general public to write to all their candidates on a range of humanist issues. It has also sent its members and supporters a ‘doorstep guide’ for questions to ask to canvassers.
Notes
For further comment or information, media should contact Humanists UK Director of Public Affairs and Policy Richy Thompson at press@humanists.uk or phone 0203 675 0959.
Humanists UK is the national charity working on behalf of non-religious people. Powered by over 120,000 members and supporters, we advance free thinking and promote humanism to create a tolerant society where rational thinking and kindness prevail. We provide ceremonies, pastoral care, education, and support services benefitting over a million people every year and our campaigns advance humanist thinking on ethical issues, human rights, and equal treatment for all.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://humanists.uk/2024/06/11/millions-of-pounds-spent-by-church-of-england-to-evangelise-school-children/
Publication Date: June 11, 2024
Organization: Humanists UK
Organization Description: Humanists UK is the operating name of the British Humanist Association. We are a charitable company (no. 228781), formed in 1896 and incorporated in 1928, and registered in England and Wales. Our governing document is our Articles of Association, which can be viewed here.
Last year the Church of England spent over £7 million on projects to evangelise children and young people through state schools. That’s according to the most recent Annual Report of the Church Commissioners for England. The report from the Commissioners, the charity overseeing how national Church of England funds are spent, details how funding through its Diocesan Investment Programme has been directed towards increasing youth ministers and ‘discipleship pathways’ in schools.
Of the funding £3.3m was given to Guildford diocese to ‘place youth ministers in three Church of England secondary schools and one other state secondary school’, £2.8m went to Manchester ‘to reach more schools, children, young people and their families across Bolton deanery’, and £1.2m was provided to Portsmouth to ‘create new Christian communities in seven schools’.
This investment follows a 2023 report from the Church of England which set out its vision to ‘double the number of children and young people who are active Christian disciples by 2030’.
Humanists UK’s Education Campaigns Manager Lewis Young said:
‘This latest report from the Church Commissioners further exposes the Church of England’s agenda to evangelise young people through the state school system.
‘Schools should be inclusive of all students, and provide young people with a balanced and comprehensive education that enables them to think critically and make their own choices about their beliefs. They should not be used to bolster church numbers or convert people to a particular faith.’
Notes
For further comment or information, media should contact Humanists UK Director of Public Affairs and Policy Richy Thompson at press@humanists.uk or phone 0203 675 0959.
Read more about our work on faith schools.
Read the Church Commissioners report.
Read about the Church of England’s plans to use schools to ‘double the number of disciples’.
Add your name to stop evangelism in schools.
Humanists UK is the national charity working on behalf of non-religious people. Powered by over 120,000 members and supporters, we advance free thinking and promote humanism to create a tolerant society where rational thinking and kindness prevail. We provide ceremonies, pastoral care, education, and support services benefitting over a million people every year and our campaigns advance humanist thinking on ethical issues, human rights, and equal treatment for all.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://humanists.uk/2024/06/10/slovenians-back-assisted-dying-in-referendum/
Publication Date: June 10, 2024
Organization: Humanists UK
Organization Description: Humanists UK is the operating name of the British Humanist Association. We are a charitable company (no. 228781), formed in 1896 and incorporated in 1928, and registered in England and Wales. Our governing document is our Articles of Association, which can be viewed here.
A referendum in Slovenia has voted in favour of assisted dying, making it increasingly likely that the nation will enshrine the right to die in law in the coming years.
Meanwhile, in France, President Macron’s decision to call a snap election means that the assisted dying bill there will no longer move forward, with end-of-life choice in France now lying in the balance.
Humanists UK hopes the wave of attention on assisted dying in Europe will help put pressure on politicians across the UK and Crown dependencies to take action.
Assisted dying referendum in Slovenia
In Slovenia, a referendum on the question ‘Are you in favour of adopting a law that will regulate the right to assistance in the voluntary end of life?’ passed with 55% in favour and 45% against. The vote is non-binding, but has broad support from three major political parties who proposed the referendum.
Assisted dying bill in France
In France, President Macron has unexpectedly ordered a snap election. This means that the current assisted dying bill, which had been successfully making its way through the French Parliament, has been scrapped. One of the first assisted dying votes on the assisted dying bill passed 88 to 50 only last week. The Bill had been drafted after a citizens; assembly voted overwhelmingly in favour of legalisation. There is no guarantee that the Bill will continue under future parliaments.
British context
The news from Europe comes during a massive wave of campaigning across the UK, crown dependencies, and around the world, on assisted dying. In addition to the Assisted Dying Bill in Scotland published last month, assisted dying proposals in Jersey passed by a massive majority, and a report in the Republic of Ireland recommended a change in the law. Clauses of the assisted dying bill are currently being debated on the Isle of Man.
In February, the UK Health and Social Care Committee released a report on assisted dying. It stated that end-of-life care can and has improved in jurisdictions that have legalised it.
The leaders of the Labour and Conservative parties have indicated they would allow a free vote on assisted dying in Parliament. The Green Party and Liberal Democrat parties have a policy supporting assisted dying and have equally pledged support for a free vote.
Nathan Stilwell, Assisted Dying Campaigner for Humanists UK, said:
‘It’s a day of mixed emotions with Slovenia making enormous progress on assisted dying while France takes a huge step backwards. But all of this is part of a bigger picture of people around the world demanding more rights over their bodies and ultimately their death. Adults who are suffering and have no hope of a cure to their condition deserve the right to choose a dignified death.’
Humanists UK’s policy is that any adult of sound mind who is intolerably suffering from an incurable, physical condition and has a clear and settled wish to die should have the option of an assisted death. This includes adults with conditions like multiple sclerosis and locked-in syndrome, which are not terminal but can cause unbearable suffering without any possible relief. People with these conditions should not be omitted from assisted dying legislation.
Notes
For further comment or information, media should contact Humanists UK Assisted Dying Campaigner Nathan Stilwell at nathan@humanists.uk or phone 07456 200033.
If you have been affected by the current assisted dying legislation, and want to use your story to support a change in the law, please email campaigns@humanists.uk.
Media can use the following press images and videos, as long as they are attributed to ‘Humanists UK’.
Read six reasons we need an assisted dying law.
Read more about our analysis of the assisted dying inquiry.
Read more about our campaign to legalise assisted dying in the UK.
Humanists UK is the national charity working on behalf of non-religious people. Powered by over 120,000 members and supporters, we advance free thinking and promote humanism to create a tolerant society where rational thinking and kindness prevail. We provide ceremonies, pastoral care, education, and support services benefitting over a million people every year and our campaigns advance humanist thinking on ethical issues, human rights, and equal treatment for all.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://humanists.uk/2024/06/10/humanist-pledges-in-lib-dem-manifesto/
Publication Date: June 10, 2024
Organization: Humanists UK
Organization Description: Humanists UK is the operating name of the British Humanist Association. We are a charitable company (no. 228781), formed in 1896 and incorporated in 1928, and registered in England and Wales. Our governing document is our Articles of Association, which can be viewed here.
Humanists UK has welcomed a series of commitments by the Liberal Democrats in their manifesto for the 2024 general election.
Humanists UK is lobbying all the parties and candidates to support its campaigns and equality for humanists and the non-religious by adopting policies to advance freedom of thought, choice, and expression. Humanists UK will be analysing the other party manifestos after they are published.
Policies in focus
Humanist marriages
In its chapter on rights and equality, the Liberal Democrats say they will ‘expand the rights of couples by introducing legal recognition of humanist marriages.’
This has been a Humanists UK demand at several general elections now. In 2013 the UK Parliament gave the UK Government the power to legally recognise humanist ceremonies in England and Wales, but a series of Conservative-led governments have not done so. In 2020, the High Court found this lack of legal recognition to be discriminatory.
As humanist marriage specifically is a severely overdue human rights breach, Humanists UK will be urging the UK Government, whoever forms the largest party, to lay the order to recognise humanist marriages immediately, which will be cost-neutral for the Government, before attempting any expensive or intricate wider reforms of marriage law.
Assisted dying
The Liberal Democrats promise to ‘Give Parliament time to fully debate and vote on legislation on assisted dying for terminally ill, mentally competent adults with strict safeguards, subject to a free vote’
Humanists UK is pleased to see the explicit commitment to a free vote, but would wish for Parliament to properly consider the merits of a Bill covering the incurably suffering as well as the terminally ill. It is vital that incurably suffering people, who are of sound mind and have a clear and settled wish to die, are given the right to die if this is their firm choice. They are among those most in need of a change in the law, having the most suffering ahead of them. If a free vote is to be allowed for the terminally ill, then why not the incurably suffering as well?
Time for assisted dying was also a promise made by Keir Starmer as Labour leader in an interview with Esther Rantzen. Conservative leader Rishi Sunak has also previously said he would allow time for a free vote.
Human rights law
In the manifesto chapter on rights and equality, the Liberal Democrats say they will ‘Champion the Human Rights Act and resist any attempts to weaken or repeal it’ and ‘Defend hard-won British rights and freedoms by upholding the UK’s commitment to the European Convention on Human Rights and resisting any attempts to withdraw from it.’
Humanists UK welcomes the commitment, having repeatedly challenged political rhetoric about watering down human rights protections. In recent years, Humanists UK spearheaded the largest-ever coalition dedicated to protecting the Human Rights Act from repeal. More recently, it has condemned the use of notwithstanding clauses in Bills to disapply human rights considerations in asylum and other areas.
Abortion rights
On abortion, the Lib Dems pledge to ‘Protect everyone’s right to make independent decisions over their reproductive health without interference by the state and ensure access to high-quality reproductive healthcare, including enforcing safe access zones around abortion clinics and hospitals‘.
Having campaigned for this for many years, Humanists UK fully supports this. The UK Parliament has already voted for Safe Access Zones around abortion clinics, but the Home Office has stalled on implementation, as ministers appeared to be considering wide religious exemptions that Parliament had previously voted to reject.
On abortion rights, Humanists UK is calling on all parties to go further by removing abortion from the criminal code altogether, and regulating it as healthcare alone, as has been successfully managed in Northern Ireland.
Children’s rights
In their section on families, children, and young people, the Lib Dem Manifesto promises to ‘Protect and support the rights and wellbeing of every child by… incorporating the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child into UK law.’
This has been a persistent Humanists UK demand of UK Governments, and would support Humanists UK campaigns for children’s rights on subjects like school admissions and inclusive assemblies. In 2021, Humanists UK and Humanist Society Scotland congratulated the Scottish Government for incorporating the UNCRC into Scottish law. Full incorporation of the UNCRC into UK law was specifically recommended by the UK Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights, the Children’s Commissioners for England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, and the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.
David Lammy for Labour previously promised that Labour would also incorporate the UNCRC into domestic law if elected, but it remains to be seen if this will feature in Labour’s own Manifesto.
Illegal schools and missing children
On education, the Lib Dems promise to ‘Tackle persistent absence by setting up a register of children who are not in school, and working to understand and remove underlying barriers to attendance.’
A register of children not in schools is one of several necessary steps required for Ofsted and local authorities to tackle the scandal of thousands of children missing from the system due to attending unsafe, unregistered, and educationally inadequate illegal religious schools. Humanists UK was instrumental in bringing the issue of these missing childen to wider attention. The Conservative Government promised action on this several times but later abandoned the plans along with their wider Schools Bill. Labour’s Bridget Phillipson previously promised Labour would also introduce a register.
Relationships and Sex Education (RSE)
On education, one Liberal Democrat promise is to ‘Tackle bullying in schools by promoting pastoral leadership in schools and delivering high-quality relationships and sex education.’
If taken to mean a commitment to comprehensive, age-appropriate RSE without religious exemptions in faith schools, this is an approach Humanists UK can wholly endorse.
Humanists UK was however sad to see no explicit mention of reforming admissions, curriculum issues, or employment rules around taxpayer-funded religious schools, and no mention of guidance on protecting free expression in schools.
Ban on conversion therapy
The Lib Dems also pledge to ‘Ban all forms of conversion therapies and practices.’
Humanists UK and its section LGBT Humanists has campaigned for a ban on this pseudoscientific religious torture for decades, and helped to drive the political visibility and salience of this issue in recent years. It has urged MPs from all parties to support a comprehensive and enforceable ban.
Freedom of belief
In the Manifesto, the party promises to ‘Protect, defend, and promote human rights around the world by… Appointing an ambassador-level Champion for Freedom of Belief.’
Humanists UK had previously asked all parties to make this exact commitment, using language like this which is inclusive of non-religious people, such as humanists. Alongside Humanists International, Humanists UK has repeatedly drawn attention to the plight of humanists at risk abroad, most notably in recent years the high-profile case of Mubarak Bala. Humanists UK has used its platform at the UN Human Rights Council, and has worked with the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, to advance the rights of humanists at risk internationally.
Domestically, Humanists UK was also happy to see a pledge of ‘funding for protective security measures to places of worship, schools and community centres that are vulnerable to hate crime and terror attacks’. It would like to see funding of this nature also earmarked for Faith to Faithless which directly supports those at risk of abuse from within a religious community, as previously recommended by the Bloom Review.
Citizen’s assemblies
Another commitment in the Manifesto is ‘Establishing national and local citizens’ assemblies to ensure that the public are fully engaged in finding solutions to the greatest challenges we face, such as tackling the climate emergency and the use of artificial intelligence and algorithms by the state.’
Humanists UK has long endorsed this approach to resolving difficult ethical and political issues in a democratic way, having engaged constructively with similar processes in neighbouring jurisdictions such as the Republic of Ireland and Jersey, and having witnessed progress in Ireland, France, and New Zealand using similar means.
Lords reform
Humanists UK also welcomes the promise to ‘Reform the House of Lords with a proper democratic mandate’.
This should mean removing the presence of 26 appointed Church of England bishops from the upper house, who operate as a party, vote on laws, and enjoy special speaking privileges over other members. This would fulfil a longstanding Humanists UK policy.
Constitutional Convention
The Lib Deb Manifesto contains a promise to:
Support the creation of a UK Constitutional Convention, with the aim of drafting a new Federal Constitution that sets out the powers of the government at each tier, founded on the principles of democratic engagement, liberal values and respect for diverse identities, underpinned by a fair distribution of resources based on respective needs. The Convention will establish an inclusive approach for determining the structure of government in England.
Humanists UK has long supported a Constitutional Convention as a democratic means to look again at the UK’s archaic parliamentary structures and outdated religious bias in our politics, including things such as bishops voting in the House of Lords, the fused role of the head of state being Supreme Governor of the Church of England.
As Humanists UK has pointed out repeatedly, the UK’s overtly religious constitutional arrangements are at odds with its population. Surveys such as the British Social Attitudes Survey have repeatedly shown the UK to be among the least religious countries anywhere in the world, with a majority having ‘no religion’.
The other party manifestos
Humanists UK will be analysing the other major parties’ manifestos as soon as they are released. It is also writing to all its members and supporters with a brief ‘doorstep guide’ for questions to ask to canvassers, and is urging all its supporters and the general public to write to all their candidates on a range of humanist issues
Notes
For further comment or information, media should contact Humanists UK Director of Public Affairs and Policy Richy Thompson at press@humanists.uk or phone 0203 675 0959.
Humanists UK is the national charity working on behalf of non-religious people. Powered by over 120,000 members and supporters, we advance free thinking and promote humanism to create a tolerant society where rational thinking and kindness prevail. We provide ceremonies, pastoral care, education, and support services benefitting over a million people every year and our campaigns advance humanist thinking on ethical issues, human rights, and equal treatment for all.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://humanists.uk/2024/06/06/concern-for-womens-rights-as-first-sikh-court-established/
Publication Date: June 6, 2024
Organization: Humanists UK
Organization Description: Humanists UK is the operating name of the British Humanist Association. We are a charitable company (no. 228781), formed in 1896 and incorporated in 1928, and registered in England and Wales. Our governing document is our Articles of Association, which can be viewed here.
A new Sikh ‘court’ has been launched in the UK, despite warnings from women’s rights campaigners. The centre, which is the first of its kind, will be staffed by Sikh lawyers and barristers. It will function under legislation known as alternative dispute resolution or ADR, which allows non-judicial bodies to arbitrate between parties. ADR decisions are binding, final, and are upheld by UK courts.
Its defenders will argue that religious-owned arbitration and mediation centres are just like any others, resolving disputes using rules both parties have agreed to. But concerns about so-called religious ‘courts’, on basic equality and human rights grounds, are clear. Many people in many religions, Sikhism included, have deeply socially conservative views on issues like the status of women and evidence from other religious courts demonstrates a consistent reticence towards reporting abuse to the police. Shame and honour are themes that prevent many people in Sikh communities from reporting abuse. Religious courts and institutions are more likely to favour fathers over mothers and husbands over wives, in disputes about custody or domestic violence.
The normalisation of so-called religious ‘courts’ can also have a profound impact on victims of domestic abuse, especially for vulnerable adults and those who do not speak English as a first language. Pragna Patel has written in the Guardian that she has known many women who use community mediation systems ‘not out of choice but fear of stigma, isolation and even violent repercussions’. Some may not understand that arbitration centres are only to be voluntarily entered into, and do not represent the civil or criminal law of the land. Justice more often requires the law to be impartial – to stand aside from religious rules and diktats.
Humanists UK Director of Public Affairs and Policy Richy Thompson said:
‘We oppose any attempt to incorporate non-statutory religious ‘courts’ into UK law. We want regulation to require such bodies to make it clear that they have no legal standing.’
Faith to Faithless is a programme at Humanists UK dedicated to providing specialist support to those who have left high-control religions – often called apostates. It provides a helpline, peer support from trained volunteers, social activity, and awareness training to public services, including NHS divisions and police forces.
Faith to Faithless’ Apostate Services Manager Donna Craine said:
‘Many of our service users have been coerced into signing alternative dispute resolution agreements at religious councils. The decisions made are often pejorative towards women, or to whichever party is less religious. Even if people then find their way to family courts they face ongoing difficulty because of the weight UK courts give to the binding decisions made by religious councils.’
Notes
For further comment or information, media should contact Humanists UK Director of Public Affairs and Policy Richy Thompson at press@humanists.uk or phone 0203 675 0959.
Read more about our position on religious ‘courts’.
Humanists UK is the national charity working on behalf of non-religious people. Powered by over 120,000 members and supporters, we advance free thinking and promote humanism to create a tolerant society where rational thinking and kindness prevail. We provide ceremonies, pastoral care, education, and support services benefitting over a million people every year and our campaigns advance humanist thinking on ethical issues, human rights, and equal treatment for all.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://humanists.uk/2024/06/06/northern-ireland-passes-symbolic-motion-to-ban-conversion-therapy/
Publication Date: June 6, 2024
Organization: Humanists UK
Organization Description: Humanists UK is the operating name of the British Humanist Association. We are a charitable company (no. 228781), formed in 1896 and incorporated in 1928, and registered in England and Wales. Our governing document is our Articles of Association, which can be viewed here.
The Northern Ireland Assembly has passed a symbolic motion calling for a ban on conversion therapy. Northern Ireland Humanists, which is a member of the Ban Conversion Therapy coalition, called the vote a significant move towards equality and human rights.
Conversion ‘therapy’ is a discredited and harmful practice, usually rooted in false and often pseudoscientific or religious beliefs about what causes people to be lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT). The UK Government Equalities Office defines so-called ‘conversion therapies’ as ‘techniques intended to change someone’s sexual orientation and/or gender identity’. Often happening in secret in closed-off religious communities, evidence shows that it leads to lasting damage for the people subjected to these ‘treatments’. It can result in lasting mental scars, self-harm, and even suicide. Victims are often young and vulnerable, and are more likely to face abuse from their families or communities because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
The UK Government’s 2018 National LGBT Survey showed that 7% of LGBT people had undergone or been offered conversion therapy. Of those who had undergone it, 51% reported that it had been conducted by a religious group or in a religious setting. Such activities can include exorcisms and forced prayer. When people are experiencing such extreme distress over their sexual orientation or gender identity, they should be met with person-centred, therapeutically well-grounded support. They should not face coercive, medically worthless practices that seek to push them in a particular direction.
The motion draws on the findings of the recent publication A Study of Conversion Practices in Northern Irelandby Professor Fidelma Ashe and Dr Danielle Mackle. It highlights the detrimental impacts of conversion therapy and underscores the urgent need for legislative action.
Reaffirming its commitment to human rights, the Assembly expressed strong support for an outright ban on all forms of conversion therapy. The motion calls on the Minister for Communities to introduce effective legislation to ban these practices before the end of the current Assembly mandate.
Northern Ireland Humanists Coordinator Boyd Sleator commented:
‘This motion is a crucial step towards protecting LGBT people from these harmful practices. We urge the Government and Assembly members to act swiftly and create comprehensive legislation that bans these practices once and for all.’
Notes
For further comment or information, media should contact Northern Ireland Humanists Coordinator Boyd Sleator at boyd@humanists.uk or phone 07918 975795.
Read more about Humanists UK’s work on banning conversion practices.
Northern Ireland Humanists is part of Humanists UK, working with the Humanist Association of Ireland. Humanists UK is the national charity working on behalf of non-religious people. Powered by over 120,000 members and supporters, we advance free thinking and promote humanism to create a tolerant society where rational thinking and kindness prevail. We provide ceremonies, pastoral care, education, and support services benefitting over a million people every year and our campaigns advance humanist thinking on ethical issues, human rights, and equal treatment for all.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://humanists.uk/2024/06/06/all-star-cast-leads-celebration-for-lgbt-humanists-45th-anniversary/
Publication Date: June 6, 2024
Organization: Humanists UK
Organization Description: Humanists UK is the operating name of the British Humanist Association. We are a charitable company (no. 228781), formed in 1896 and incorporated in 1928, and registered in England and Wales. Our governing document is our Articles of Association, which can be viewed here.
Humanists UK and Conway Hall are excited to announce Lead Me Into Temptation, Please – a festival of creativity, embracing LGBT freedom of expression, and a rich history of LGBT activists and artists escaping and transcending religious oppression.
This exciting one-day summer fair is the flagship event of Humanist Heritage: Doers, Dreamers, Place Makers, made possible by The National Lottery Heritage Fund. Celebrating 45 years of LGBT Humanists with performances, workshops, archives, and art, everyone is invited to come along for the ride.
What: Lead Me Into Temptation, Please
When: Saturday 13 July, 12:00-21:00
Where: Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL
London’s historic humanist landmark venue, Conway Hall, will be transformed – with market stalls, performances, film screenings, a cafe, a bar, a DJ, and workshops, as well as an exhibition of materials from both organisations’ archives and contemporary art. Highlights include cabaret superstar David Hoyle and Rupaul’s Drag Race UK’s Black Peppa.
Born of Mary
Taking a lead from LGBT Humanists – founded in response to Mary Whitehouse’s prosecution of the ‘blasphemous’ Gay News in the 1970s – this fair invites us all to reflect on religiously-motivated discrimination, historically and today, and to express ourselves in spite of it. Since 1979, LGBT Humanists have forged friendships, fought injustices, and – importantly – had fun. So rather than the prayer, ‘lead us not into temptation’, the fair is a day of radical joy, asking: Lead Me Into Temptation, Please!
Our all-star lineup
Kicking off at midday, the fair features a show stopping lineup of performers, creatives, and facilitators. These include: Black Peppa, David Hoyle, Beth Watson, Carrot, Claire Mead, CN Lester, EM Parry, Housmans Bookshop, London Humanist Choir, Mahatma Khandi & the Khandi Shop, Orlando, Prinx Silver, River Manning, Rachael Field, SL Grange, Theophina Gabriel, Tomara Garrod, and more!
Book your tickets today on the Conway Hall website (only £3, thanks to the National Lottery Heritage Fund) Visitors are welcome to come for some or all of the day.
During the day
- Screen print their own Lead Me Into Temptation, Please! t-shirt with artist River Manning;
- Create zines, badges, and poetry over a series of creative workshops;
- Watch a special screening of the short film Saintmaking, depicting the canonisation of Derek Jarman by the London Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence;
- Browse the wares of artists and sellers, including Housmans radical bookshop;
- Explore the landmark exhibition Picturing Nonconformity: LGBT Humanist Heritage.
In the evening
The Main Hall will be transformed into a performance space, featuring artists including:
- The evening’s host, Carrot, ‘everyone’s favourite drag vegetable’;
- David Hoyle, the first English ‘saint’ to be ‘canonised’ by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence since the ceremony in 1991 for artist and activist Derek Jarman;
- Black Peppa, Rupaul’s Drag Race UK star, who spoke openly on the show about her struggles with homophobia in religious contexts throughout her upbringing;
- London Humanist Choir, the UK’s foremost non-religious choir, who will be singing a repertoire of LGBT classics, from Queen to Elton John;
- Mahatma Khandi and the Khandi Shop, an iconic drag troupe who will be strutting their stuff to the likes of numbers from Sister Act;
- Orlando, drag performer and cultural historian from the University of Oxford, whose research-led work has been featured in major institutions like the National Gallery, Tate, and the V&A.
Nick Baldwin, Coordinator of LGBT Humanists, commented:
‘Our aims as LGBT Humanists over 45 years have remained consistent: to promote an understanding of humanism amongst the LGBT community and to protect and promote the human rights of the whole LGBT community. This fabulous fair shines a light on our work and spurs us onwards to protect and promote in the years ahead. Come and be inspired!’
Andrew Copson, Chief Executive of Humanists UK and former chair of LGBT Humanists, said:
‘Thanks to the National Lottery Heritage Fund, this major event shines a national spotlight on the role of humanists in driving positive change for LGBT people. Join us as we honour, celebrate, and reflect on a history of humanist activism that has made our society kinder, more tolerant, and rational.’
Holly Elson, Head of Programmes at Conway Hall, added:
‘We are delighted to partner with Humanists UK for this celebration which highlights the incredible contributions of LGBT humanists through history, as well as the vital and vibrant role the LGBT community continues to play in championing creativity, activism, and positive social change.’
Notes
For further comment or information, media should contact Humanists UK Heritage Project Officer, Cas Bradbeer at cas@humanists.uk or phone 020 7993 9996.
About Humanists UK
Humanists UK is the national charity working on behalf of non-religious people. Powered by over 120,000 members and supporters, we advance free thinking and promote humanism to create a tolerant society where rational thinking and kindness prevail. We provide ceremonies, pastoral care, education, and support services benefitting over a million people every year and our campaigns advance humanist thinking on ethical issues, human rights, and equal treatment for all.
About Humanist Heritage
In 2021, Humanists UK celebrated its 125th anniversary with a renewed focus on its history. The Humanist Heritage website is a rich web resource that uncovers the untold story of humanism in the UK – a story of people, groups, objects, places, movements, publications, and ideas. Since January 2023, Humanist Heritage has been funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund.
Read more about the history of humanism in the UK on Humanist Heritage.
About Conway Hall
Conway Hall is Where Ethics Matter. Our charity curates, supports and facilitates people and ideas that make ethics matter in the world. With a landmark venue, and over 100 years of championing independent voices promoting equality, social justice, and a better life for all – we call that ETHICS – Conway Hall is the place for those driven by the same passion for change. As part of our programme, we host talks, concerts, exhibitions, courses, performances and community events – in person and online.
About The National Lottery Heritage Fund
Using money raised by the National Lottery, we inspire, lead and resource the UK’s heritage to create positive and lasting change for people and communities, now and in the future. www.heritagefund.org.uk
Follow @HeritageFundUK on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and use #NationalLotteryHeritageFund
Since The National Lottery began in 1994, National Lottery players have raised over £46 billion for projects and more than 670,000 grants have been awarded across the UK – the equivalent of more than 240 lottery grants in every UK postcode district. More than £30 million raised each week goes to good causes across the UK.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://humanists.uk/2024/05/30/the-catholic-churchs-data-on-social-selection-in-its-schools-was-debunked-over-a-decade-ago/
Publication Date: May 30, 2024
Organization: Humanists UK
Organization Description: Humanists UK is the operating name of the British Humanist Association. We are a charitable company (no. 228781), formed in 1896 and incorporated in 1928, and registered in England and Wales. Our governing document is our Articles of Association, which can be viewed here.
The Catholic Education Service (CES) claims that Catholic schools educate more pupils from deprived backgrounds than other state schools. However, this claim is based on flawed data.
Before calling an election, the Government announced that it intended to lift the 50% cap on faith school admissions that exist for free schools. The Catholic Education Service (CES) responded by saying ‘Catholic education… educates more pupils from the most deprived backgrounds.’ Similarly the CES put out a press release in March claiming that ‘Catholic schools educate 50% more of the most deprived pupils than the state.’ But it is well known that Catholic schools take fewer pupils eligible for free school meals than their local areas, or than the national average – with free school meal eligibility being the most common measure of how socially selective a school is. So how can the CES claim be true? The answer is that it isn’t.
Flawed data
The first thing to note is that the CES isn’t using free school meal eligibility but something called the ‘Income Deprivation Affecting Children Index’ or IDACI for short. This measures how deprived the areas are that children live in. That works by looking at their postcodes. The CES then likes to look at the 10% most deprived postcodes in the country. From that we see that 50% more children at Catholic schools come from those postcodes than in other state schools.
There are several problems with this. The first is that IDACI simply doesn’t measure how deprived pupils are, just how deprived their areas are. This makes it an inferior measurement when compared to free school meal eligibility, which does actually measure how deprived pupils are. That’s why everyone else prefers free school meals as a measure. The CES appears to be the only group that doesn’t – is it a coincidence that it prefers the less good measure where its figures look better than the better measure where its figures look worse?
The second problem with IDACI, at least as the CES uses it, is that it fails to account for the locations of the schools. If the schools are more likely to be in cities, then of course they’re more likely to take pupils from deprived areas. So what you need to do then is look at how deprived the locations of the schools are.
A decade ago, in May 2014, we did exactly that. What we found was that actually Catholic schools are even more likely still to be in the most deprived areas than what their own pupil figures suggest – i.e. the IDACI figures show Catholic schools are under-admitting the deprived pupils in the most deprived areas. This is particularly true at primary level – and secondary level the picture is a bit less clear. This is therefore contrary to what the CES is claiming.
Catholic schools haven’t physically moved in the decade since the previous analysis, and the latest IDACI pupil figures the CES have published look pretty much the same as their figures from a decade ago. So if the analysis was repeated today, then the same thing would no doubt show up.
Free school meal eligibility
Another thing the CES sometimes likes to claim is that free school meal eligibility comparisons between different schools and their local areas look at too narrow a local area, as Catholic schools have wider catchment areas than other schools. No doubt they do have wider catchments, targeted as they are at just the 10% proportion of the population that are Catholics.
But again this claim doesn’t add up. In 2015, we compared Catholic secondary schools not just to their immediate areas but also to their local authorities, their neighbouring local authorities, their regions, and England as a whole. Our findings were stark: Catholic schools admitted 28% fewer pupils eligible for free school meals than are in their immediate local areas; 29% than their local authorities; 24% than their neighbouring local authorities; 22% than their government office regions; and 13% than across England as a whole. So looking too closely is clearly not why Catholic schools have too few pupils eligible for free school meals. Again, there’s no evidence that anything has changed since this analysis was done.
Conclusion
It now seems likely that the consultation on lifting the 50% cap will be dropped due to the general election being called. Perhaps, with that, it’s time for the CES to also finally drop its disingenuous claims about pupil intake.
Notes
For further comment or information, media should contact Humanists UK Director of Public Affairs and Policy Richy Thompson at press@humanists.uk or phone 07534 248 596.
Read our response to the decision to scrap the 50% cap.
Read Humanists UK’s recent explainer on the cap.
Read more about our work on faith schools.
Humanists UK is the national charity working on behalf of non-religious people. Powered by over 120,000 members and supporters, we advance free thinking and promote humanism to create a tolerant society where rational thinking and kindness prevail. We provide ceremonies, pastoral care, education, and support services benefitting over a million people every year and our campaigns advance humanist thinking on ethical issues, human rights, and equal treatment for all.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://humanists.uk/2024/05/30/education-secretary-accepted-donations-from-catholic-church/
Publication Date: May 30, 2024
Organization: Humanists UK
Organization Description: Humanists UK is the operating name of the British Humanist Association. We are a charitable company (no. 228781), formed in 1896 and incorporated in 1928, and registered in England and Wales. Our governing document is our Articles of Association, which can be viewed here.
A significant donation to Education Secretary Gillian Keegan from the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales raises serious conflict of interest concerns, says Humanists UK. This is particularly true regarding her subsequent decision to lift the 50% cap on faith-based admissions – the campaign for which was driven by the Church.
The register of members’ interests shows that Gillian Keegan accepted £17,710.60 in kind from the Catholic Church to fund a parliamentary intern for 10 months. The payment was received on 10 October 2022, with the internship running until 28 July 2023. While Mrs Keegan was a foreign office minister at the time of the donation being accepted, she was promoted to Education Secretary two weeks after it ended.
The donation was made as part of the Bishops’ Faith in Politics internship programme which claims to offer ‘a foundation of Catholic faith and spiritual formation for those who believe they may have a vocation to public service in politics or public affairs’. The group has been at the forefront of the campaign to scrap the 50% cap on faith free school admissions, meeting the Education Secretary and Number 10 in the months prior to the Government announcing it intended to lift the cap. Humanists UK recently revealed how the Education Secretary launched her plan at an extremely segregated Catholic school.
In 2018 Humanists UK exposed the substantial level of financial support provided by the Catholic Church to MPs with education briefs. The then Conservative, Labour, and Liberal Democrat education spokespeople were all recipients of paid Catholic Church interns. The Education Secretary at the time, Damian Hinds, is also now the Schools Minister.
Humanists UK’s Education Campaigns Manager Lewis Young said:
‘The Catholic Church is leading the calls for the 50% cap to be scrapped, and so this donation from them to the Education Secretary therefore leaves serious questions about a potential conflict of interest.
‘Rather than expanding religious selection at the behest of a small number of lobby groups, any government that cares about cohesion should be seeking to create a single admissions system where all state schools are open to children from any background or belief.’
Notes
For further comment or information, media should contact Humanists UK Director of Public Affairs and Policy Richy Thompson at press@humanists.uk or phone 0203 675 0959.
Read more about our work on faith schools.
Humanists UK is the national charity working on behalf of non-religious people. Powered by over 120,000 members and supporters, we advance free thinking and promote humanism to create a tolerant society where rational thinking and kindness prevail. We provide ceremonies, pastoral care, education, and support services benefitting over a million people every year and our campaigns advance humanist thinking on ethical issues, human rights, and equal treatment for all.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Humanist
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/12
Canadian journalist Scott Jacobsen interviewed prominent humanist, secular advocate, and Humanist magazine columnist Herb Silverman to gain insight on contemporary secular issues. Their discussion is transcribed here.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: It’s been a hot minute since last talking virtually. However, since I was travelling all over the States, I did get the opportunity to, in fact, meet in person, Sharon [Herb’s wife] and you. That was lovely, so thank you: for showing me Charleston, having a meal, taking a walk, and just being hospitable. Do you get a lot of visitors?
Dr. Herb Silverman: It was a pleasure to see you, Scott. Now you understand why Charleston is the top tourist attraction in the US. There are many lovely sites. And it’s also where the “War of Northern Aggression” (Civil War) started.
Jacobsen: How has it been living in Charleston, South Carolina as one its most prominent long-term atheists?
Silverman: Over time and as the “nones” (those with no particular religion) have slowly increased, the need for open atheists here is no longer as crucial. Many Northerners have moved to Charleston, so it has become a purple city in a red state, which makes it easier. And we have a thriving secular humanist group in Charleston for social support.
Jacobsen: Now, to the point of this interview, what is the overarching tone of secularism in the United States now?
Silverman: I think it is “on the fence”. Atheism is not the dirty word it used to be, and the fastest growing demographic is the “Nones.” However, white Christian nationalists are achieving their legislative goals in too many states, just consider the abortion restraints they’ve accomplished.
Jacobsen: What do you see as the major setback in the United States for church and state separation?
Silverman: I know “church and state separation” is a popular expression, but I never use it. I refer to “separation of religion and government” to show we include synagogues, mosques, and all theistic religions. The major setback here is that too many Christian nationalists believe we are a Christian country, and they are a serious threat to separation of religion and government.
Jacobsen: How is the Secular Coalition for America?
Silverman: SCA is doing very well. I helped found the organization in 2004 with just four national member organizations. SCA now has twenty national atheist, humanist, and other nonreligious member organizations, including of course, the American Humanist Association.
The Secular Coalition has a dedicated lobbying organization within the Coalition, with a mission to advocate for the equal rights of nonreligious Americans and defend the separation of religion and government. Representing twenty national member organizations, hundreds of local secular communities, and working with our allies in the faith community, SCA combines the power of grassroots activism with professional lobbying to make an impact on the laws and policies that govern separation of religion and government. Furthermore, the Secular Coalition takes every opportunity to support the Congressional Freethought Caucus, which currently has twenty-three members of the House of Representatives.
Jacobsen: What do you see as the important points to target theocratic creep in American politics?
Silverman: We need to take every opportunity to alert our members to what theists are doing, and speak out to counter some of their activities. Publicity about this problem is essential. The Secular Coalition for America has an important advocacy campaign.
Jacobsen: You have been the target of anti-Semitism and anti-atheist discrimination. What are some of the stories around those?
Silverman: Since I am a godless Jew, I have been called a self-hating Jew. Not true. I’m proud to be a Jew (someone who had Jewish parents). Although I am an atheist, even Orthodox Jews consider me a Jew (though not a very good one). Adolph Hitler considered me a Jew, and some of my family members died in the Holocaust. I would not want to give Hitler a posthumous victory by denying my Judaism. In the past, I have had signs put on my office door saying, “Atheist Shithead.” I prefer the expression I learned in elementary school: “Sticks and stones may break me bones, but words will never hurt me.” Fortunately, nobody broke my bones because of being a Jewish atheist and humanist.
Jacobsen: What can younger generations of Jewish atheists (etc.) and others learn from moving forward and not taking the discrimination and racism personally?
Silverman: They can try to make a positive difference, and ignore or respond in a reasonable fashion to personal insults.
Jacobsen: Are there efforts to catalogue anti-None prejudice and bias in national and state statistics in a manner similar to anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic, etc., bigotry is catalogued, e.g., hate crimes?
Silverman: I agree that this is important. I don’t have specific information on who is doing it, and hope readers will tell us what they know.
Jacobsen: How can people get involved in the Secular Coalition for America, whether volunteering time, money, or skills and expertise, to combat violations of secular equality?
Silverman: They can do all of the above. Check the website secular.org.
Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Herb.
Silverman: It’s always a pleasure to talk with you, Scott, in person or in print.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/12
& the sky, dear: Blue twinkles and black clouds smeared by white; pierce by greennight and blacken the foliage; burning, cinderover to me.
See “A-nd a-mournin’ a-rises a-lright.”
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://secularstudents.org/secular-student-alliance-partners-with-the-satanic-temple-for-after-school-satan-club/
Publication Date: May 23, 2024
Organization: Secular Student Alliance
Organization Description: The Secular Student Alliance is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and the only national organization dedicated to atheist, humanist, and other non-theist students. The Secular Student Alliance empowers secular students to proudly express their identity, build welcoming communities, promote secular values, and set a course for lifelong activism.
By Kevin Bolling
The Secular Student Alliance is announcing a partnership with The Satanic Temple on their After School Satan Club (ASSC) in public schools where religious clubs are present. This initiative is designed to offer students a safe and inclusive environment that emphasizes critical thinking, science, and the arts.
The ASSC is founded on the principle that religion should not be introduced into public schools. It seeks to provide an alternative to religious clubs that might use fear or coercion as tools for conversion. The After School Satan Club will be established only in schools where other religious groups are operating, ensuring a balanced representation of beliefs and philosophies.
Mission of the After School Satan Club
- Promoting Rational Inquiry: ASSC aims to foster a culture of free inquiry and rationalism. The club will help students explore the scientific underpinnings of our understanding of the world.
- Encouraging Appreciation for Nature: The program is designed to instill in children an appreciation for the natural world, rather than a fear of purported eternal consequences.
- Focus on Positive Activities: The club’s activities will include a focus on science, critical thinking, the creative arts, and community service, ensuring that children not only learn but also have fun.
The After School Satan Club does not seek to convert children to any belief system, including Satanism. The primary goal is to provide a platform for children to develop their critical thinking skills and appreciate the world through a rational and scientific lens.
The ASSC is committed to creating a space that is safe, inclusive, and free from any form of religious coercion. The program is designed to empower children to make informed decisions and develop a balanced perspective on life.
“With the growing number of students leaving conservative organized religion, providing a community for young people in which diversity, compassion, curiosity, and civic engagement are encouraged and celebrated is important to bettering our communities and strengthening the wall of state/church separation,” says Kevin Bolling, executive director of the Secular Student Alliance. “Religious indoctrination has no place in public schools.”
“We are thrilled to partner with the Secular Student Alliance in an effort to promote religious freedom and religious pluralism in public primary, secondary, and collegiate schools across the United States. This partnership will ensure the absolute highest quality in educational alternative options for all parents/guardians, volunteers, and students seeking an inclusive and secular learning environment,” says June Everett, Campaign Director, After School Satan Club & Hellion Academy of Independent Learning, Ordained Minister of The Satanic Temple.
The partnership between the Secular Student Alliance and The Satanic Temple represents a significant step forward in providing diverse and inclusive after-school programs that respect the beliefs of all students and encourage a fact-based understanding of the world. We invite the community to learn more about the After School Satan Club and join us in supporting a rational, inclusive, and fun learning environment for our children.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://secular.org/2024/06/heretic-on-the-hill-raskin-to-the-rescue/
Publication Date: June 7, 2024
Organization: Secular Coalition for America
Organization Description: The Secular Coalition for America advocates for religious freedom, as guaranteed by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and works to defend the equal rights of nonreligious Americans. Representing 20 national secular organizations, hundreds of local secular communities, and working with our allies in the faith community, we combine the power of grassroots activism with professional lobbying to make an impact on the laws and policies that govern separation of religion and government — or the improper encroachment of either on the other.
By Scott MacConomy
“Everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it,” said Mark Twain. In the global warming era I’m not sure that’s still true. We’ve done something about it. But it’s a good segue to “Everyone talks about the Supreme Court’s recusal problem, including me here last time, but no one does anything about it.” Now someone at least has a plan.
Unlike every lower federal court, the Supreme Court doesn’t have a code of ethics with any enforcement mechanism, or a process for deciding when Justices should recuse themselves from a case. They just think it over and decide for themselves if they are conflicted. Sometimes that works. Justice Jackson, the newest member of the court, recused herself from a case involving Harvard because she is a graduate and had been on the Board of Overseers. But too often this “process” fails.
Justice Thomas hasn’t recused himself from any cases involving the January 6 insurrection or the Stop the Steal movement despite his wife’s support for them. Justice Alito hasn’t recused himself from any similar cases despite his flag-flying exploits. Surprisingly there weren’t any cases in this Supreme Court term, coming to an end this month, that directly affect religious freedom, but last term there were three.
Should a Justice who says things like “If we are going to win the battle to protect religious freedom in an increasingly secular society, we will need more than law” be ruling on whether religious schools can get tax money or whether school employees can lead prayers at a football game? Clearly not. But that’s what Alito said in a 2022 speech. And of course he voted on those cases. So we need and will continue to need an official, effective recusal process like the lower courts have.
Congress could pass a bill that would establish a recusal process, but Congress won’t. The Republicans run the House. They aren’t going to rein in the Supreme Court; they’re winning there. But one House member has come up with a temporary fix. Congressman Jamie Raskin (D-MD), a former Constitutional law professor, points out in this New York Times article that the federal law covering when judges should recuse themselves is written to cover Supreme Court justices.
Raskin goes on to say that if the Attorney General formally brings a violation of that law by one Justice to the other Justices who are not in question, they have to act on it. He cites Supreme Court precedents that support his case. I note that the law says a judge or Justice must recuse themself when a spouse “is known by the judge to have an interest in a case that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding.”
I’m not going into the details here because you can read them in the letter the Secular Coalition sent to Attorney General Garland supporting this approach. Garland isn’t known for bold steps, which is why we wrote to him, but if he took this step it would raise the stakes for the Supreme Court’s failure to establish a process to keep conflicted Justices from deciding cases when they should not.
There’s no doubt that there will be future cases asking whether people can discriminate because of their religious beliefs. We need to solve this problem before then. If Garland uses the Raskin recusal idea for the upcoming decisions on two huge January 6 cases, it would definitely get the Court’s attention on the matter. You can contact Attorney General Garland here and encourage him to do so. You can add the link to the New York Times article or to our letter to keep your message simple. Court reform is going to be a long process. Let’s start here.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Publication Date: June 6, 2024
Organization: Secular Coalition for America
Organization Description: The Secular Coalition for America advocates for religious freedom, as guaranteed by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and works to defend the equal rights of nonreligious Americans. Representing 20 national secular organizations, hundreds of local secular communities, and working with our allies in the faith community, we combine the power of grassroots activism with professional lobbying to make an impact on the laws and policies that govern separation of religion and government — or the improper encroachment of either on the other.
June 5, 2024
1012 14th Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20005
(202) 299-1091
The Honorable Merrick B. Garland
Office of the Attorney General
The U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530
Dear Attorney General Garland:
We write to urge you to proceed with the course of action proposed by Congressman Jamie Raskin in the May 29 New York Times that would force members of the Supreme Court to address the issue of judicial recusal. The Secular Coalition for America (SCA) comprises 20 large and small organizations devoted to the rule of law and church-state separation.
Congressman Raskin states that the Department of Justice can (and should) petition the other seven justices to require Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas to recuse themselves “not as a matter of grace but as a matter of law.” Raskin cites the Constitution and 28 U.S. Code § 455 – “Disqualification of justice, judge, or magistrate judge.”
Raskin also cites the precedent from a 2016 Supreme Court decision, Williams v. Pennsylvania, in which Justice Anthony Kennedy explained why judicial bias is a defect of constitutional magnitude and offered specific objective standards for identifying it. We also note that U.S. Code § 455(B) states that a judge must recuse themself when a spouse “is known by the judge to have an interest in a case that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding.”
Unlike every court below it, the Supreme Court has no process to determine whether a Justice should recuse themself from a case, even if that case includes major conflicts of interest. As Congressman Raskin puts it, “The highest court in the land has the lowest ethical standards — no binding ethics code or process outside of personal reflection” that would guide or compel a recusal when appropriate. Polling on the Supreme Court consistently shows that Americans have little confidence in the Court to fairly and impartially adjudicate the most important issues that face our nation. The American people need, deserve, and demand a greater level of transparency from the highest court in our nation.
Congressman Raskin goes on to cite the Supreme Court’s own precedents to show that the mere appearance of partiality should lead to recusal. The Court is about to issue rulings on Trump v. United States, the case that will decide whether Mr. Trump enjoys absolute immunity from criminal prosecution, and Fischer v. United States, which will decide whether January 6 insurrectionists, and Mr. Trump, can be charged under a statute that criminalizes corruptly obstructing an official proceeding. The impartiality of two Justices is undeniably at question in the public’s eye, and they should recuse themselves or be recused.
American Atheists • American Ethical Union • American Humanist Association • Atheist Alliance of America • Black Nonbelievers, Inc. • Camp Quest • The Center for Inquiry and the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science • The Clergy Project • Cultural and Secular Jewish Organization • Ex-Muslims of North America • Foundation Beyond Belief • The Freethought Society • Freedom From Religion Foundation • Hispanic American Freethinkers • Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers • Recovering From Religion • Secular Student Alliance • Secular Woman • Society for Humanistic Judaism • Unitarian Universalist Humanists
We have known for many months that Justice Thomas’s wife both believes in and participated in the “Stop the Steal” movement, an organized effort to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election. More recently, we have learned that an upside down American flag flew on Justice Alito’s flagpole in the days between the January 6 insurrection and the swearing in of President Biden. Flying the flag upside down was adopted by some of the January 6 rioters and by the larger Stop the Steal movement as emblematic of their “cause.”
Then last month we learned that the flagpole at Justice Alito’s beach house flew the “Appeal to Heaven” flag last summer. This formerly obscure Revolutionary War flag has been adopted by white Christian nationalists who also flew it on January 6. If we look for other examples of Justice Alito’s lack of impartiality that don’t involve flag-flying, we can start with this statement from a 2022 speech: “If we are going to win the battle to protect religious freedom in an increasingly secular society, we will need more than law.” This is not the approach taken by a Justice who agrees with what Chief Justice John Roberts envisions: “Judges are like umpires. Umpires don’t make the rules, they apply them…. It’s my job to call balls and strikes and not to pitch or bat.”
Congressman Raskin, citing the same writ used in Marbury v. Madison, observes that the Supreme Court can tell federal officials (including Supreme Court justices) to perform a ministerial act, which in this case is the act of judicial recusal. This would be compelled by the Supreme Court’s own precedents concerning objective questions about the impartiality of a judge. What matters is not what the Justice thinks for himself or herself, it’s how their behavior reasonably appears to the American public and the rest of the world.
It is imperative that members of the Supreme Court understand that when it appears to the public that they are biased, they must recuse themselves or, in the absence of an official recusal determination process, the majority of Justices can and will follow the law and require their recusal. We urge you to immediately take the steps necessary to initiate that process before the two pending cases we mentioned are decided.
The Secular Coalition for America includes the following member organizations:
American Atheists American Ethical Union
American Humanist Association
Association of Secular Elected Officials
Atheist Alliance of America
Black Nonbelievers
Camp Quest
Center For Inquiry/Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science
Cultural & Secular Jewish Organization
Ex-Muslims of North America
Freedom From Religion Foundation
Freethought Society
Hispanic American Freethinkers
Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers
Recovering From Religion
Secular Student Alliance
Secular Woman
Society for Humanistic Judaism
The Clergy Project
Unitarian Universalist Humanist Association
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://ffrf.org/news/releases/ffrf-calls-out-texas-school-district-for-bible-distribution/
Publication Date: June 11, 2024
Organization: Freedom From Religion Foundation
Organization Description: The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with 40,000 members and several chapters all over the country. Our purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is calling out Victoria Independent School District after bibles were distributed at the end of a local high school’s graduation practice.
A concerned employee informed the state/church watchdog that staff distributed bibles following Victoria West High School’s May 24 graduation practice. Two individuals set up a table near the graduation venue’s sole exit, with bibles for students. The graduation speaker informed students: “Don’t forget to grab a bible.” Students were handed a bible by one of these two individuals as they left.
“By allowing religious representatives the opportunity to hand out bibles to students — with promotion by district staff — the school gives unique access to one faith that others do not have,” FFRF Patrick O’Reiley Legal Fellow Hirsh M. Joshi writes to Superintendent Randy Meyer.
It is inappropriate and unconstitutional for a public school district to offer religious representatives unique access to students in order to distribute religious literature in the hopes of indoctrinating them, FFRF emphasizes. Public school students have a constitutional right to be free from religious indoctrination in their public schools. It is well settled that public schools may not show favoritism toward, or coerce belief or participation in, religion.
After the district attempted to coerce students into taking a bible at its graduation practice, nonreligious students faced a dilemma, FFRF points out: Either they must take a bible — offending their conscience — or refuse, jeopardizing their standing with their peers and outside adults. That ultimatum is precisely what the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause guards against.
Additionally, allowing religious representatives to distribute bibles directly to students further violates the Constitution. An “opt out” does not excuse such constitutional violations. A full 37 percent of the American population is non-Christian, including the almost 30 percent that is nonreligious. At least one-third of Generation Z (those born after 1996) have no religion, with a recent survey revealing that almost half of Gen Z qualify as “Nones.”
“Victoria ISD tells its students to grab a bible, while having them captive. That is both promotion of Christianity, and coercion,” adds Joshi.
FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor concurs.
“This example of religious coercion shows that no matter the event, Christian apologists will attempt to spread their doctrine onto students in any way they can,” she says. “Under the Constitution, every student has a right to an education free from religious indoctrination — right up to and including graduation.”
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://ffrf.org/news/releases/ffrf-frees-tenn-schoolkids-from-coercive-religious-handouts/
Publication Date: June 11, 2024
Organization: Freedom From Religion Foundation
Organization Description: The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with 40,000 members and several chapters all over the country. Our purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation has successfully persuaded Tennessee’s Sweetwater school district to restrict access to one church group from distributing religious materials.
A concerned parent informed FFRF that four adults — including teachers — were handing out red, pocket-sized versions of the New Testament on May 9 as their student entered Brown Intermediate School in Sweetwater, Tenn. And the complainant also reported that the school sent out a flier on May 15 advertising a local vacation bible school to parents.
“The district cannot allow its schools to be used as recruiting grounds for religious missions,” FFRF Patrick O’Reiley Legal Fellow Hirsh M. Joshi wrote to the Sweetwater City School System.
Uniquely, the district had its own employees distribute the New Testament, adding to the coercive effect for students. Nonreligious students were dealt a dilemma: Either they had to take a bible — offending their conscience — or refuse, jeopardizing their standing with adults who run school resources. That ultimatum is precisely what the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment guards against. Religious literature distributions needlessly alienates all students and families, such as FFRF’s complainant and their child. A full 37 percent of the American population is non-Christian, including the almost 30 percent that is nonreligious. Additionally, at least a third of Generation Z (those born after 1996) has no religion, with a recent survey revealing that almost half of Gen Z qualifies as religiously unaffiliated “Nones.”
After FFRF notified the district of the violation, the district investigated the matter — and agreed with FFRF.
District Director Rodney Boruff emailed FFRF with the information that despite district policy requiring that all fliers and posters be approved by him before distribution, the vacation bible school flier was never sent to him in this situation. Boruff also told FFRF that the group supplying the New Testaments and the bible fliers will no longer be welcome.
FFRF is pleased to see the First Amendment win out over religious indoctrination attempts.
“Religious organizations should never get special treatment just for being religious,” adds Joshi. “Today’s win makes sure of that.”
FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor agrees.
“The Sweetwater City School System ought to know better than allowing a religious group free access to students during the day,” she says. “School districts exist to educate, not indoctrinate into religion.”
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://ffrf.org/news/releases/ffrf-continues-to-take-strong-stand-on-alito-and-thomas/
Publication Date: June 11, 2024
Organization: Freedom From Religion Foundation
Organization Description: The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with 40,000 members and several chapters all over the country. Our purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation, along with other prominent groups, has taken a firm stance against the recent unethical behavior of Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas.
FFRF has joined letters calling for a thorough investigation and immediate reform, reinforcing its commitment with other secular allies and as a member of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights to uphold the integrity and impartiality of the U.S. judiciary. The recent revelations of Alito and Thomas’ misconduct have underscored the urgent need for enforceable ethics standards within the Supreme Court. These justices have displayed partisan behavior that undermines public confidence in the judiciary. Alito’s refusal to recuse himself from cases related to the 2020 presidential election and his association with symbols of the anti-democratic “Stop the Steal” movement highlight a disturbing pattern of ethical violations.
Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of FFRF, emphasized the crucial nature of these issues: “Our highest court must adhere to the highest ethical standards. The repeated unethical behavior of some justices is a stark reminder that robust reforms are needed to preserve the integrity of our judicial system. We cannot afford to let partisanship and bias erode the public’s trust in the Supreme Court.”
FFRF’s advocacy for judicial reform is part of a broader effort to ensure that the judiciary remains an impartial arbiter of justice, free from political influence. The organization has been actively working with members of the Congressional Freethought Caucus, such as Reps. Jamie Raskin and Hank Johnson, who have been pivotal in pushing for judicial reforms like the Judiciary Act, which seeks to expand the Supreme Court and serve as a check on a judicial branch that has run amok. These efforts are aimed at establishing a binding Code of Conduct for Supreme Court justices and implementing necessary transparency measures with the Supreme Court Ethics Recusal and Transparency Act.
In a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, co-signed by FFRF and other organizations, the coalition has urged the Justice Department to take action based on Raskin’s proposal that was outlined in the New York Times. The proposal calls for Garland to petition the other justices to require recusal from Alito and Thomas due to their evident biases and conflicts of interest on the Jan. 6 cases. This step is seen as crucial to restoring the public’s confidence in the impartiality of the Supreme Court.
As part of its ongoing efforts, FFRF will continue to advocate for reforms that ensure accountability and transparency within the judiciary. The organization calls on all stakeholders, including the Senate Judiciary Committee, to take decisive actions that will reinforce the principles of justice and fairness underpinning the American legal system.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://ffrf.org/news/releases/ffrf-welcomes-court-decision-to-halt-unprecedented-religious-liberty-training-order/
Publication Date: June 10, 2024
Organization: Freedom From Religion Foundation
Organization Description: The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with 40,000 members and several chapters all over the country. Our purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
An appeals court has commendably halted a lower court order attempting to compel Southwest Airlines attorneys to attend “religious liberty training” by a Christian nationalist advocacy group.
In this case that’s currently being appealed, Carter v. Local 556, Transport Workers Union of America, a flight attendant (Charlene Carter) sued Southwest, claiming she was fired for expressing her opposition to abortion rights — and a jury found in her favor. After the trial concluded, Judge Brantley Starr, a President Trump appointee, ordered the airline to circulate a memo stating that “it may not discriminate against Southwest flight attendants for their religious practices and beliefs.” He subsequently found three lawyers for Southwest in contempt for sending out a notice saying that it “does not” discriminate in such cases. As part of contempt sanctions, he issued an unusual and likely unconstitutional order requiring Southwest’s lawyers to attend “religious liberty training” conducted by the Christian nationalist organization Alliance Defending Freedom.
In the fall of 2023, FFRF filed an amicus brief in this case urging the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn the district court’s inappropriate order. FFRF’s brief argued that the district court’s contempt order was an abuse of discretion. Further, if courts are allowed to order attorneys to attend training by a specific ideological advocacy group, they must be allowed to order attorneys to attend training by any other advocacy organization, as well. Allowing the district court’s order to stand would set a dangerous precedent.
Thankfully, a three-judge panel from the 5th Circuit apparently agreed. The court put the training on hold while the case continues the appeals process. In its ruling staying the religious liberty training, the appeals court found that the district court probably abused its discretion, stating that “there is a strong likelihood that the contempt order exceeded the district court’s civil contempt authority.” Further, the circuit court rightly noted that the religious liberty training would likely violate the constitutional rights of Southwest’s attorneys.
“The 5th Circuit has laudably reversed the district court’s ludicrous order,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “We at the Freedom From Religion Foundation have been, obviously, following this case with great interest — and welcome the appeals court’s intervention.”
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://ffrf.org/uncategorized/indians-have-voted-to-save-the-worlds-largest-secular-democracy/
Publication Date: June 6, 2024
Organization: Freedom From Religion Foundation
Organization Description: The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with 40,000 members and several chapters all over the country. Our purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
The voters of India have finally decided to come to the rescue of their secular and democratic Constitution.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been returned to power in the world’s largest secular democracy — but only just. In fact, the Hindu nationalist formation he heads, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has fallen short of a majority in its bid for a third term and to hold on to power will have to rely on regional entities that do not share its majoritarian, intolerant vision. The BJP’s ambitions — barely concealed — to amend the Indian Constitution and make India an overtly Hindu nation will have to be kept in abeyance.
The plan to torpedo Indian secularism has been a longtime project of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), an organization with fascistic inspiration founded almost a century ago. The BJP, which has governed India for a full decade, is its electoral arm.
If there’s an image that symbolizes what was at stake in this election, it would be that of opposition leader Rahul Gandhi holding up a copy of the Indian Constitution. “The Prime Minister, [Home Minister] Amit Shah and various of their Members of Parliaments have made up their mind that if they win the elections, they will tear up and throw away this book,” he stated on the election trail, and requested his party members to carry around copies while campaigning.
This fear of Modi and his underlings getting rid of India’s secular, democratic founding document was in the minds of even many Hindus — especially those from oppressed castes that fear a return to the bad old days if an openly Hindu constitutional dispensation is put into place. “They want to implement Manu ka vidhan,” (the ancient Hindu laws that prescribe a caste-based order), the Indian news portal Scroll quotes one Dalit woman — Dalits are the “outcastes” in the traditional Hindu hierarchy. Her sister-in-law adds: “So that [upper-caste Hindus] run the government and lower-caste people have no say.”
The Dalits are often the most ardent defenders of the Constitution, since it was none other than a Dalit, a remarkable figure by the name of B.R. Ambedkar, who was the chief drafter of the Indian Constitution. In partnership with Jawaharlal Nehru, an agnostic who was India’s first prime minister, he ensured that the ideals of secularism and social justice would be guiding independent India.
Certainly, economic issues such as massive unemployment and inflation also played a major part in the ruling party’s near defeat. Modi’s attempts at distraction, with several distasteful references to Indian Muslims and his trumpeting of a temple he got built on the site of a demolished mosque, did not quite work. In fact, his party lost the very parliamentary constituency where the temple was constructed.
Here, it must be said that a good reason for the relief of Indian secularists is that the polls were forecasting a thumping majority for the Hindu nationalists. Activist Shabnam Hashmi, whose amazing work on behalf of secularism was recently chronicled in the New York Times, correctly dismissed the polling in an interview with Freethought Radio and provided a prediction that proved to be much more accurate.
Modi has done a lot of damage to India’s secular, multicultural fabric. Discriminatory laws have been introduced with the purpose of disenfranchising Indian Muslims, the major oppositional voting bloc to the BJP. There have been several murders of rationalists by Hindu nationalists, with at best half-hearted attempts to punish the perpetrators. The lynchings of individuals for allegedly possessing beef or trafficking in cattle has been condoned, if not encouraged. The law and order machinery has been transformed into a blatantly majoritarian hammering force. Media outlets have been muzzled, and critics have been harassed and worse. The special status of India’s only Muslim-majority province, Jammu and Kashmir, has been revoked, and no elections have been held for the state Assembly since the move a full five years ago. The list goes on and on.
These appalling regressions may not be fully reversed — but, hopefully, there will not be further backsliding. As Harsh Mander, an outspoken social worker, put it in an interview to be broadcast on Madison community radio station WORT’s “World View” show this Sunday evening: Hate may not have been defeated in India, but at least it has been checked.
Well-wishers of Indian secularism around the world will have to take comfort in this for now.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://ffrf.org/news/releases/victory-ffrf-keeps-minn-school-district-free-from-ten-commandments/
Publication Date: June 6, 2024
Organization: Freedom From Religion Foundation
Organization Description: The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with 40,000 members and several chapters all over the country. Our purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism
The Freedom From Religion Foundation has successfully prevented a Minnesota school district from adopting a proposed Ten Commandments monument.
In May, FFRF wrote a letter to Park Rapids Area Schools to encourage the district not to approve a proposal from former board member Dennis Dodge to erect a Ten Commandments monument on school property. The proposal included the biblical edicts on one side, and a quote from Dodge on the other side, reading, “We must put God back into our educational system before we lose our children and this great nation.”
Ironically, Dodge’s proposal only included nine commandments, omitting the commandment about graven images.
FFRF Patrick O’Reiley Legal Fellow Hirsh M. Joshi noted that the scheme was patently unconstitutional. In the seminal case on Ten Commandments displays in schools — Stone v. Graham — the U.S. Supreme Court held that Ten Commandments displays in public schools violate the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.
Thankfully, the Park Rapids School Board made the correct call.
A recent article from the Park Rapids Enterprise detailed numerous statements from the community opposing the proposal. Board Treasurer Jay Pike stated that he spoke with four ministers, only one of whom supported the proposal. Due to the overwhelming community opposition, as well as the potential legal consequences of the display, the board unanimously voted on Monday, June 3, to deny Dodge’s proposal.
FFRF is pleased to see the First Amendment winning out over religious hectoring.
“Children are a captive audience in our public schools, who are owed a secular education free from proselytization,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “The right of students to be protected from religious indoctrination at a public school should always be a school district’s priority.”
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://ffrf.org/news/releases/ffrf-others-obtain-court-win-in-challenge-to-nations-first-religious-public-charter-school/
Publication Date: June 5, 2024
Organization: Freedom From Religion Foundation
Organization Description: The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with 40,000 members and several chapters all over the country. Our purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
A lawsuit seeking to block the state of Oklahoma from sponsoring and funding the nation’s first religious public charter school can move forward, an Oklahoma judge ruled today.
During a hearing today, Judge Richard Ogden of the District Court of Oklahoma County issued a new ruling in OKPLAC Inc. v. Statewide Virtual Charter School Board denying nearly all of the defendants’ motions to dismiss the case. The Freedom From Religion Foundation, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Education Law Center, who represent the nine plaintiffs in the case, applauded today’s decision. The OKPLAC plaintiffs have legal representation from Oklahoma-based counsel Odom & Sparks PLLC and J. Douglas Mann. The organizations involved in the case issued the following statement:
“We’re pleased that the court will allow our plaintiffs’ case to proceed. Oklahoma law is clear: Charter schools are public schools that must be secular and welcome all students. Oklahoma taxpayers, including our plaintiffs, should not be forced to financially support St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual Charter School, which plans to discriminate against students, families, and staff and indoctrinate students into one religion. Our lawsuit aims to protect public education, the separation of church and state, and all Oklahomans’ religious freedom by preventing St. Isidore from receiving state funds or operating as a public charter school.”
Still pending before the court is the plaintiffs’ request for a temporary injunction to prevent St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual Charter School from operating and receiving state funds as a public charter school. In a motion filed last Friday, the plaintiffs explained to the court the importance of ensuring that no taxpayer money funds St. Isidore and that the school does not open as a public charter school during the 2024-25 school year while litigation is ongoing in their case and in a similar lawsuit filed in the Oklahoma Supreme Court by Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond. St. Isidore is, and has always been, free to open as a private religious school that taxpayers would not be forced to support.
The lawsuit was filed on July 31, 2023, in the District Court of Oklahoma County. The plaintiffs object to their tax dollars funding a public charter school that will discriminate against students and families based on their religion and LGBTQ+ status, will not commit to adequately serving students with disabilities, and will indoctrinate students into one religion. The plaintiffs include OKPLAC (Oklahoma Parent Legislative Advocacy Coalition), Melissa Abdo, Krystal Bonsall, Leslie Briggs, Brenda Lené, Michele Medley, Dr. Bruce Prescott, the Rev. Dr. Mitch Randall, the Rev. Dr. Lori Walke and Erika Wright.
The team of attorneys that represents the plaintiffs is led by Alex J. Luchenitser of Americans United and includes Patrick Elliott of FFRF; Sarah Taitz and Jenny Samuels of Americans United; Daniel Mach and Heather L. Weaver of the ACLU; Robert Kim, Jessica Levin and Wendy Lecker of Education Law Center; Benjamin H. Odom, John H. Sparks, Michael W. Ridgeway and Lisa M. Millington of Odom & Sparks; and J. Douglas Mann.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with over 40,000 members across the country. Our purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
Americans United is a religious freedom advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1947, AU educates Americans about the importance of church-state separation in safeguarding religious freedom. Learn more at www.au.org.
For more than 100 years, the ACLU has worked in courts, legislatures, and communities to protect the constitutional rights of all people. With a nationwide network of offices and millions of members and supporters, the ACLU takes on the toughest civil liberties fights in pursuit of liberty and justice for all. For more information on the ACLU, visit www.aclu.org.
Education Law Center pursues justice and equity for public school students by enforcing their right to a high-quality education in safe, equitable, non-discriminatory, integrated, and well-funded learning environments. We seek to support and improve public schools as the center of communities and the foundation of a multicultural and multiracial democratic society. For more information about ELC, visit https://edlawcenter.org/.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://ffrf.org/news/releases/ffrf-satanic-temple-plan-to-distribute-materials-in-park-county-colo-schools/
Publication Date: June 5, 2024
Organization: Freedom From Religion Foundation
Organization Description: The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with 40,000 members and several chapters all over the country. Our purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation and Satanic Temple are planning to distribute materials to students in a Colorado school district if officials don’t prevent the Gideons from targeting students with bibles.
A concerned Edith Teter Elementary School parent reported that on May 5, their young child came home with a bible. The complainant reported that an outside adult was permitted to stand on school property and hand out bibles to students. Their child believed that they had to take a bible and that the bibles were being distributed by the school, a reasonable assumption for a 7-year-old to make when being offered something in their public school during the school day.
Only after the outside group was allowed to use the elementary school to spread their religious beliefs and distribute bibles to students, Park County School District Superintendent Cindy Bear notified parents that it is district policy to allow outside adults to target students during the school day. The notification explained that “district policy allows for organizations to offer noncurricular materials to students with no pressure to accept as long as the materials meet the requirements stated in policy.” It also informed parents that it is their burden to address any questions about religion from students that arose due to the district’s decision. “Should your child have questions about these materials please communicate your beliefs with them,” the memo stated.
FFRF says the board must change its policy and cease allowing the distribution of bibles or other religious propaganda to students while they are in school or on school property. If the district continues to allow the Gideons to distribute religious material, FFRF will be working with the Satanic Temple to distribute materials to students next school year.
“It is inappropriate and unconstitutional for the district to offer outside adults access to students in order to indoctrinate them and distribute religious materials,” FFRF Staff Attorney Chris Line writes to Park County Board of Education President Sheila Waite.
The district may not allow its schools to be used as recruiting grounds for religion, FFRF emphasizes. It is well-settled law that public schools may not show favoritism towards nor coerce belief or participation in religion or allow such distributions. By allowing the distribution of bibles to students, the district displays blatant favoritism for religion over nonreligion and Christianity above all other faiths. This also needlessly alienates all students and families who do not subscribe to Christianity. A sizeable 37 percent of the American population is non-Christian, including the almost 30 percent that is nonreligious at the national level. In Colorado, at least 34 percent of the population is religiously unaffiliated. A third of Generation Z (those born after 1996) have no religion, with a recent survey revealing that almost half of Gen Z qualify as “Nones” (religiously unaffiliated).
The district may not maintain its policy whereby any private organization may take advantage of school resources to further its personal goals. FFRF has sought to distribute its own literature in schools with overly broad distribution policies — and aims to do so in the Park County School District if it maintains this open forum.
“Public schools exist to educate, not indoctrinate into religion,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “It is disgusting to see this evangelical group of grown men targeting other peoples’ extremely young children in this manner. Such distributions must stop.”
Gaylor adds that parents work hard to teach children not to take things from strangers, and that handing out materials on school property as children leave dangerously distracts them from following traffic safety rules.
You can read the full FFRF letter here.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://www.bchumanist.ca/children_deserve_protection_too_bcha_brief_on_bill_s_251
Publication Date: June 11, 2024
Organization: British Columbia Humanist Association
Organization Description: The British Columbia Humanist Association has been providing a community and voice for Humanists, atheists, agnostics, and the non-religious of Metro Vancouver and British Columbia since 1982. We support the growth of Humanist communities across BC, provide Humanist ceremonies, and campaign for progressive and secular values.
The BC Humanist Association (BCHA) has called upon the Senate committee to expedite the passage of Bill S-251. This bill would repeal a section of the Criminal Code that permits corporal punishment of children.
An identical bill is currently before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. The BCHA recently submitted a similar brief to that committee.
The Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs is considering the bill, which would implement the sixth call to action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report. Many experts in child development and child’s rights organizations have already testified to the committee about the irreparable harm that can be caused by corporal punishment or “spanking.”
The BCHA recently endorsed the Joint Statement on Physical Punishment of Children and Youth, a coalition of nearly 700 organizations facilitated by CHEO (Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario).
In its brief, the BCHA argues that the primary excuse for permitting corporal punishment against children is religious. They point out that the one brief strongly opposing the bill comes from a religious organization that claims on its website that “The authority within the family is derived not from the government but from God who created and instituted the family.” Notably, the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled a law with no secular purpose cannot be constitutional.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://www.bchumanist.ca/vancouver_concedes_2022_prayers
Publication Date: June 3, 2024
Organization: British Columbia Humanist Association
Organization Description: The British Columbia Humanist Association has been providing a community and voice for Humanists, atheists, agnostics, and the non-religious of Metro Vancouver and British Columbia since 1982. We support the growth of Humanist communities across BC, provide Humanist ceremonies, and campaign for progressive and secular values.
The City of Vancouver has said that prayers at its most recent inauguration ceremony were “a breach of the duty of religious neutrality.” A lawyer for the City made the concession in response to the threat of legal action from the BC Humanist Association (BCHA).
In light of the City’s acknowledgement, the BCHA has dropped its planned lawsuit and will closely follow the plans for the next inaugural ceremony.
Ian Bushfield, Executive Director:
We’re feeling vindicated today that the City of Vancouver recognized the issue we and others had with the prayers delivered at its inaugural meeting. In the words of the Supreme Court of Canada, a neutral public space protects every person’s freedom and dignity.
We will continue to work to ensure all our public institutions are secular and inclusive.
In 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that prayers at municipal council meetings were unconstitutional as they breached the state’s duty of religious neutrality.
Last year, the BCHA identified Vancouver as one of seven municipalities in BC that included religious content in their 2022 inaugural council meetings in We Yelled at Them Until They Stopped. After publishing the report, the BCHA sought commitments from each of these municipalities that future meetings would be secular.
Dr Teale Phelps Bondaroff, Research Coordinator:
I am pleased to see that Vancouver has recognized that the inclusion of prayer in its 2022 inaugural meeting constituted a violation of its duty of religious neutrality. It is important that everyone feels welcome at municipal council meetings. When a municipality opens a meeting with prayer, it elevates some religions over others and sends the message that religion is more important than non-religion.
The newly elected Mayor and Councillors were sworn in on November 7, 2022. The ceremony featured greetings delivered by representatives from five religious groups: Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Vancouver, Canadian Memorial United Church, Temple Shalom, Khalsa Diwan Society and BC Muslim Association. Together they delivered a collective prayer. Emails obtained by the BCHA through an FOI request showed that then mayor-elect Ken Sim requested the representatives be invited.
The City wrote to the BCHA’s counsel on May 15 stating, “the City of Vancouver will comply with its constitutional obligations as set out in Saguenay and subsequent decisions.” After seeking further clarification, the City wrote on Friday:
The City acknowledges that hosting prayers at the City of Vancouver’s November 7, 2022 inauguration ceremony was a breach of the duty of religious neutrality as set out in Mouvement laique Québecois v Saguenay 2015 SCC 16.
Read the May 15, 2024 letter from the City of Vancouver
Read the May 31, 2024 letter from the City of Vancouver
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/11
Katherine Archer has been involved in California legislative efforts to criminalize clergy exploitation of adults. Her primary interest is in trauma occurring in church settings, where one should expect to find more support for healing. She has been involved in nonprofit work with dual-diagnosis adults experiencing homelessness, human trafficking, and youth experiencing foster care. Currently, Archer is completing studies towards a Master of Theological Studies at Antiochian House of Studies. She is co-founder of Prosopon Healing, a resource center for Orthodox Christian victims/survivors of clergy abuse, and is involved in research efforts to better understand the impact of clergy-perpetrated abuse on those victimized by religious institutions.
The series on the Eastern Orthodox Church amounts to a formal project into the clergy-related abuse in it. These publications provide a free, open-source electronically available resource for interested parties to begin some of the first contemporary research into abuse within Orthodoxy along the lines of the Roman Catholic Church clergy-related abuse scandals happening for decades.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: The issue of clergy abuse is a complicated one. Not in its violation of a person’s dignity and human rights, but in its style, mode of operation, means of keeping a secrecy. Naturally, the Roman Catholic Church, as statistically the largest Christian church in the world, it will garner both the most abuse cases in total and the most airtime, as, again, statistically, taking the odds, we should expect the worst cases to come out of the Roman Catholic Church too – given its size. Now, with the United States, I, recently, returned from a nationwide wide “W” trip from Montreal to New York, New York to Bost, Boston to D.C., D.C. to Charleston (S.C.), Charleston (S.C.) to D.C., D.C. to Atlanta (G.A.), Atlanta (G.A.) to New Orleans, New Orleans to Illinois, Illinois to Los Angeles, Los Angeles to San Diego, San Diego to Los Angeles to Santa Ana to Irvine back to Los Angeles, Los Angeles to Seattle, and then all the way back to Vancouver. Since I am back, and very marginally rested and recovered from the exhaustion of constant travel, I have some time to write some questions for our lovely guest, today, Katherine Archer, who is based out of California, United States. So, the Eastern Orthodox Church has its own issues with the abuse of the young, indeed, and other adult populations. Let’s paint a general picture before the activist portion, what is the key picture of the abuse happening in the Eastern Orthodox Church based on research conducted so far?
Katherine Archer: First off, thank you for your willingness to have this conversation. I think first and foremost the media database that we have been working on clearly points to the fact that abuse is happening in the Orthodox churches. We have to name that these abuses are occurring and cannot say that it does not happen or has not happened within Orthodox churches. This seems overly obvious to state, but it does need to be stated. We can’t say that clergy abuse is a problem that occurs only when celibacy is a requirement of the priesthood. Orthodox clergy are married and yet our database documents that we still have cases of abuse. This is to be expected because clergy abuse is really about power and control rather than the constraints of celibacy being too much. A correct Orthodox understanding of the priesthood is that the priest is a shepherd, and that there is only one true priesthood, that of Christ. Yet not everyone will approach the priesthood with this humble mindset, and some people who have narcissistic tendencies will be drawn toward the priesthood for the wrong reasons. I think we need to understand this now in the same way that St. Gregory spoke of it in his Pastoral Rule. Some priests will abuse their power. Our database points to the fact that this is true. There are priests who have done some horrific things and wounded the members of their flock. We have documentation of both child victims, many adolescents, as well as adults, both male and female adults being abused by priests.
Jacobsen: How far back does your database span?
Archer: Right now the media cases go back to 1987, but we are in the early preliminary research stages. There is a book that we found that documents allegations of child sexual abuse within an Eastern Orthodox community of San Francisco in 1887 involving a bishop, and we will dive into that and see what the media reported then…so 1887 may be our earliest cases. However, our primary focus right now is about 71 media cases since 2002, documenting well over 300 alleged victims.
Jacobsen: What are the jurisdictions studied, to date, and their differences from the analysis of the data collation?
Archer: We have gathered media stories that tell of clergy abuse within every Orthodox jurisdiction. In the United States, we have the greatest number of cases of alleged abuse that are being reported to the media occurring within the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese. This kind of thing is difficult because what we believe is that these media reports are just the tip of the iceberg and that there are wounded people who have never publicly come forward, perhaps never filed a police report or a civil lawsuit, so the media reports themselves are inadequate for understanding the issue.
Jacobsen: What is the #ChurchToo movements history and current form?
Archer: Church Too developed in 2017. I think we are still seeing most of the #ChurchToo conversation centered around the Protestant churches, and I think this is due to the fact that we have more resistance to this conversation within Orthodoxy. If I am viewed as standing over here pointing my finger at someone’s sin and just copiously taking notes on someone else’s failures, most Orthodox Christians will not want to listen to me at all or to the conversation. Within Orthodoxy we have much more resistance to what is viewed as creating drama or even scandal, or detracting from one’s own spiritual life. So, we have to be very careful in this conversation.
Rather than focus on errant priests, which no one wants to do, I was brought into this research myself out of concern for the members of the body of Christ who have been wounded by clergy. If one member of the body suffers, all suffer. Clergy abuse should never be happening. Our churches should be a place of safety and healing. For clergy abuse victims, the wound is so deep and painful and the trauma is compounded when people say that clergy abuse is not happening within the Orthodox churches or when we don’t want to educate ourselves as laity and understand the complex dynamics that go into abuse—of both children and adults. It might not always look like what we think, but there can be psychological coercion and other things happening, leading to sexual exploitation.
At the heart, clergy abuse takes place within a relationship which itself is the vehicle or mechanism of the abuse. Most people are not adequately educated about the relationship of trust being used as the means to sexually exploit another person and as a result, most laity simply do not understand and will often side with the priest against the victim. It seems as laity we do not want to talk about this and our silence enables abuse to happen and to continue. Are our Orthodox priests all 100% doing the work of ministry, no one is ever offending and our seminaries are turning out clergy who are never involved in misconduct?
All the misconduct cases are lies? No person with critical-thinking skills would try to say that and yet this seems to be where the conversations go when we attempt to raise this issue within Orthodox circles. Our database of cases of abusive priests is quite large and the reality is that these things are occurring, and that victims are being sidelined and their stories of trauma and abuse not taken seriously in most of these cases. In fact, often victims are flat out blamed and from other research I’ve conducted, the suicide rate of clergy abuse victims is just astoundingly high compared to the general population. That should give people pause. What struck me in one of the cases I read was the surrounding non-Orthodox community could believe the victim and expressed shock, sadness and disgust for the priest’s actions. This is something people just can’t often do when abuse occurs within our churches. It immediately devolves into a conversation about whether the accusation is true or exiling the wounded truth-teller. The fact is, statistically, people are telling the truth when they report clergy abuse and they don’t always even know enough to use the word abuse. I think that how we need to approach this as Orthodox Christians is with great love for these victims and in humility, that maybe we don’t have abuse dynamics all figured out. This is the Orthodox way—love and humility. I have heard of priests conducting abuse “investigations” and I am left wondering when and where they took forensic interviewing and how their priestly vocation enables such double abuse of a victim already severely traumatized.
Where is the humility there? There is extensive training needed to conduct a proper abuse investigation. Our priests and church administrations should not be conducting internal investigations. We need to be getting this right. I think #ChurchToo has shifted into where we are seeing people leave churches or completely deconstructing their faith and primarily this is due to the hypocrisy found especially in these abuse cases and so-called “investigations” that are taking place internally and really damaging survivors. So, we have to be open and transparent and note that clergy abuse is happening and then figure out not just how to prevent it, but also how to have conversations where we aren’t vilifying the people wanting to discuss it. There is a real problem if a conversation about a topic is completely and always off-limits. And maybe control over investigations needs to be relinquished and just as we would call a plumber in our churches for a leak, we call a professional organization that handles investigations in a trauma-informed way and not try to take that on and cause additional trauma for victims and their families.
Jacobsen: How have these movements informed the activism, the theology, and the, essentially, humanitarian work for you?
Archer: Honestly, rather than follow a movement, I seek to be a Christ-follower and I am always trying to use discernment. I think Christ would be listening to the voices of those wounded within our churches. Listening to the #ChurchToo voices and reading the news stories, I have been struck by the tremendous courage of the voices coming forward when it is very hard to do so, especially if one has been abused as an adult, which is less understood. There are compelling reasons to stay silent. I think the most courageous voice that I initially read was Lori Anne Thompson, who was abused by Ravi Zacharias as an adult. She was groomed. She came forward at great personal cost. One of the men who worked for Ravi Zacharias did not believe her and I recently listened to him come forward, admit his mistake, and publicly apologize to her. Within the Orthodox churches, I have not seen what could be described as a positive outcome to a case of clergy abuse, either child or adult, and a victim coming forward. Instead, I have heard of suicides and people being ostracized from their communities and incredible amounts of suffering. I think this all serves to continue to silence people who are hurting within the Orthodox churches who may have experienced harm by a priest. Why would we want to continue to silence these hurting members of the flock?
Jacobsen: As noted in the press release, there is work to call on the “government to criminalize adult clergy sexual abuse in alignment with the Southern Baptist Convention’s 2022 resolution. However, a recent bill in CA to criminalize adult clergy sexual abuse, similar to laws in 13 states and D.C., failed to leave the Public Safety committee under questionable circumstances, and survivors are calling on Governor Gavin Newsom to investigate.” What have been the failures, now, towards criminalizing adult clergy sexual abuse?
Archer: There is a failure of understanding. The bill did not move out of committee in California because of the use of the word “consent”, with a real failure to understand the dynamics present between a clergyperson and parishioner and the fact that true consent is never possible. The clergyperson holds too much power. Within the Orthodox churches, we have an understanding of spiritual fatherhood, the priest hears confession and not in a confessional—a priest hears the confession standing right there beside the person. There is a real intimacy and trust there where if a priest chooses to abuse the trust of his spiritual child and sexualize a spiritual relationship, it really is closer to incest. I believe many faith traditions are similar in this dynamic where it is a huge violation of trust like a parent and child. So honestly, maybe there is a lack of awareness of cultural dynamics or religious understanding. The priest is not one’s accountant.
The relationship is deeper, requiring the same degree of trust like a therapist even if the priest isn’t conducting therapy. We would never presume that there is consent if a therapist chose to exploit a client and moreover, there are guidelines and professional boards that oversee that kind of thing and unequivocally will name it as abuse. With clergy abuse of adults, there just needs to be more education because it is mislabeled as an “affair” and when clergy respond in an uneducated way, mislabeling it, it causes deep secondary trauma for a victim. There is a lot of research about the power differential between priest and parishioner and the fact that exploitation is never an “affair”. Legislation that criminalizes clergy exploitation of adults is important because often those who have been exploited have a lot of confusion over what occurred and how they were groomed to be exploited by another person and it can take many years to untangle it. If a criminal statute exists, it is much clearer. The way I see this is very similar to human trafficking. In many cases, trafficking victims have been exploited within a relationship and have difficulty naming it as abuse and recognizing the exploitation. It is very similar. Our lawmakers need to understand this complexity.
Jacobsen: On April 16, 2024, California Senate Bill 894 (SB 894), or “Sexual Exploitation by a Member of Clergy” was presented. What happened?
Archer: The bill was presented, but we were told prior to the hearing that the issue had already been decided. We attended the hearing anyway and we decided that Dr. Nedelescu would speak, since as a neuroscientist she could speak about the harm done in these cases from a neurobiological perspective. Dorothy Small was already slated to speak. About 23 letters of support were submitted prior to the hearing, but they were omitted from the bill analysis and I’m unsure if they were read. I’m certain the letters would have been educational for lawmakers had they been read. This is an issue that may require some more work from legislators to understand the issue of consent and to be sensitive to the dynamics of clergy abuse. It took awhile for the dynamics of human trafficking to be understood and clergy abuse is similar.
Jacobsen: What happens to support letters about bills like this?
Archer: In California, support letters can be uploaded to a Legislative Portal and in theory those letters would be read and in Maine they even made them available to the public. However, with SB 894 at least 23 letters went “missing” from the Legislative Portal. They were never acknowledged in the bill analysis. We went back and asked the letter authors and found that all were submitted by April 9th, the date the hearing was originally scheduled for. There is no accountability for including these letters of support in a bill analysis and they simply disappeared. Who knows where those letters went. We certainly haven’t been given an answer. However, they were letters of support, some of them by survivors of clergy abuse, and they should have been handled better and acknowledged in the bill analysis at the very least. People wrote in telling their own personal stories and reasons for supporting the bill and those letters were not acknowledged.
Jacobsen: Before and after the proceedings, there may be hostility to bills like SB894. During hearings, there can be, obviously, dismissive, even contempt-ridden, behaviour. How do these indicate the lack of a fair hearing or provide reasonable grounds to claim a fair hearing did not happen?
Archer: I think really these things are decided prior to the hearing, and from what we gathered, people have it all decided and then align their votes with each other, which is unfortunate and it doesn’t seem like a true democratic process where information is presented and discussed. The committee members have the opportunity to ask additional questions, but no one did. Senator Dave Min even spoke out about the way that the bill had been handled and all he had done to try to work with the committee members. The letters should have been read. And honestly, a vote should have been taken so advocates could know who stood where.
Jacobsen: How can people get involved, volunteer skills and time, or finances, to your work?
Archer: Dr. Nedelescu and I co-founded Prosopon Healing as a resource website about clergy abuse for Orthodox clergy and survivors. We have been collaborating with other researchers and laborers in this movement and we are interested in speaking to and working with anyone who wants to move the conversation forward, with love.
Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Katherine.
Archer: Thank you!
Further Internal Resources (Chronological, yyyy/mm/dd):
Historical Articles
Crimes of the Eastern Orthodox Church 1: Adam Metropoulos (2024/01/11)
Crimes of the Eastern Orthodox Church 2: Domestic Violence (2024/01/12)
Crimes of the Eastern Orthodox Church 3: Finances (2024/01/16)
Crimes of the Eastern Orthodox Church 4: Sex Abuse (2024/01/17)
Interviews
Dr. Hermina Nedelescu on Clergy-Perpetrated Sexual Abuse (2024/06/02)
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Katherine Archer and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Bishop Accountability
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/02
Katherine Archer is involved in Californian legislative efforts to criminalize clergy-based exploitation of adults. What is her work, now?
Katherine Archer has been involved in California legislative efforts to criminalize clergy exploitation of adults. Her primary interest is in trauma occurring in church settings, where one should expect to find more support for healing. She has been involved in nonprofit work with dual-diagnosis adults experiencing homelessness, human trafficking, and youth experiencing foster care. Currently, Archer is completing studies towards a Master of Theological Studies at Antiochian House of Studies. She is co-founder of Prosopon Healing, a resource center for Orthodox Christian victims/survivors of clergy abuse, and is involved in research efforts to better understand the impact of clergy-perpetrated abuse on those victimized by religious institutions.
The series on the Eastern Orthodox Church amounts to a formal project into the clergy-related abuse in it. These publications provide a free, open-source electronically available resource for interested parties to begin some of the first contemporary research into abuse within Orthodoxy along the lines of the Roman Catholic Church clergy-related abuse scandals happening for decades.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: The issue of clergy abuse is a complicated one. Not in its violation of a person’s dignity and human rights, but in its style, mode of operation, means of keeping a secrecy. Naturally, the Roman Catholic Church, as statistically the largest Christian church in the world, it will garner both the most abuse cases in total and the most airtime, as, again, statistically, taking the odds, we should expect the worst cases to come out of the Roman Catholic Church too – given its size. Now, with the United States, I, recently, returned from a nationwide wide “W” trip from Montreal to New York, New York to Bost, Boston to D.C., D.C. to Charleston (S.C.), Charleston (S.C.) to D.C., D.C. to Atlanta (G.A.), Atlanta (G.A.) to New Orleans, New Orleans to Illinois, Illinois to Los Angeles, Los Angeles to San Diego, San Diego to Los Angeles to Santa Ana to Irvine back to Los Angeles, Los Angeles to Seattle, and then all the way back to Vancouver. Since I am back, and very marginally rested and recovered from the exhaustion of constant travel, I have some time to write some questions for our lovely guest, today, Katherine Archer, who is based out of California, United States. So, the Eastern Orthodox Church has its own issues with the abuse of the young, indeed, and other adult populations. Let’s paint a general picture before the activist portion, what is the key picture of the abuse happening in the Eastern Orthodox Church based on research conducted so far?
Katherine Archer: First off, thank you for your willingness to have this conversation. I think first and foremost the media database that we have been working on clearly points to the fact that abuse is happening in the Orthodox churches. We have to name that these abuses are occurring and cannot say that it does not happen or has not happened within Orthodox churches. This seems overly obvious to state, but it does need to be stated. We can’t say that clergy abuse is a problem that occurs only when celibacy is a requirement of the priesthood. Orthodox clergy are married and yet our database documents that we still have cases of abuse. This is to be expected because clergy abuse is really about power and control rather than the constraints of celibacy being too much. A correct Orthodox understanding of the priesthood is that the priest is a shepherd, and that there is only one true priesthood, that of Christ. Yet not everyone will approach the priesthood with this humble mindset, and some people who have narcissistic tendencies will be drawn toward the priesthood for the wrong reasons. I think we need to understand this now in the same way that St. Gregory spoke of it in his Pastoral Rule. Some priests will abuse their power. Our database points to the fact that this is true. There are priests who have done some horrific things and wounded the members of their flock. We have documentation of both child victims, many adolescents, as well as adults, both male and female adults being abused by priests.
Jacobsen: How far back does your database span?
Archer: Right now the media cases go back to 1987, but we are in the early preliminary research stages. There is a book that we found that documents allegations of child sexual abuse within an Eastern Orthodox community of San Francisco in 1887 involving a bishop, and we will dive into that and see what the media reported then…so 1887 may be our earliest cases. However, our primary focus right now is about 71 media cases since 2002, documenting well over 300 alleged victims.
Jacobsen: What are the jurisdictions studied, to date, and their differences from the analysis of the data collation?
Archer: We have gathered media stories that tell of clergy abuse within every Orthodox jurisdiction. In the United States, we have the greatest number of cases of alleged abuse that are being reported to the media occurring within the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese. This kind of thing is difficult because what we believe is that these media reports are just the tip of the iceberg and that there are wounded people who have never publicly come forward, perhaps never filed a police report or a civil lawsuit, so the media reports themselves are inadequate for understanding the issue.
Jacobsen: What is the #ChurchToo movements history and current form?
Archer: Church Too developed in 2017. I think we are still seeing most of the #ChurchToo conversation centered around the Protestant churches, and I think this is due to the fact that we have more resistance to this conversation within Orthodoxy. If I am viewed as standing over here pointing my finger at someone’s sin and just copiously taking notes on someone else’s failures, most Orthodox Christians will not want to listen to me at all or to the conversation. Within Orthodoxy we have much more resistance to what is viewed as creating drama or even scandal, or detracting from one’s own spiritual life. So, we have to be very careful in this conversation.
Rather than focus on errant priests, which no one wants to do, I was brought into this research myself out of concern for the members of the body of Christ who have been wounded by clergy. If one member of the body suffers, all suffer. Clergy abuse should never be happening. Our churches should be a place of safety and healing. For clergy abuse victims, the wound is so deep and painful and the trauma is compounded when people say that clergy abuse is not happening within the Orthodox churches or when we don’t want to educate ourselves as laity and understand the complex dynamics that go into abuse—of both children and adults. It might not always look like what we think, but there can be psychological coercion and other things happening, leading to sexual exploitation.
At the heart, clergy abuse takes place within a relationship which itself is the vehicle or mechanism of the abuse. Most people are not adequately educated about the relationship of trust being used as the means to sexually exploit another person and as a result, most laity simply do not understand and will often side with the priest against the victim. It seems as laity we do not want to talk about this and our silence enables abuse to happen and to continue. Are our Orthodox priests all 100% doing the work of ministry, no one is ever offending and our seminaries are turning out clergy who are never involved in misconduct?
All the misconduct cases are lies? No person with critical-thinking skills would try to say that and yet this seems to be where the conversations go when we attempt to raise this issue within Orthodox circles. Our database of cases of abusive priests is quite large and the reality is that these things are occurring, and that victims are being sidelined and their stories of trauma and abuse not taken seriously in most of these cases. In fact, often victims are flat out blamed and from other research I’ve conducted, the suicide rate of clergy abuse victims is just astoundingly high compared to the general population. That should give people pause. What struck me in one of the cases I read was the surrounding non-Orthodox community could believe the victim and expressed shock, sadness and disgust for the priest’s actions. This is something people just can’t often do when abuse occurs within our churches. It immediately devolves into a conversation about whether the accusation is true or exiling the wounded truth-teller. The fact is, statistically, people are telling the truth when they report clergy abuse and they don’t always even know enough to use the word abuse. I think that how we need to approach this as Orthodox Christians is with great love for these victims and in humility, that maybe we don’t have abuse dynamics all figured out. This is the Orthodox way—love and humility. I have heard of priests conducting abuse “investigations” and I am left wondering when and where they took forensic interviewing and how their priestly vocation enables such double abuse of a victim already severely traumatized.
Where is the humility there? There is extensive training needed to conduct a proper abuse investigation. Our priests and church administrations should not be conducting internal investigations. We need to be getting this right. I think #ChurchToo has shifted into where we are seeing people leave churches or completely deconstructing their faith and primarily this is due to the hypocrisy found especially in these abuse cases and so-called “investigations” that are taking place internally and really damaging survivors. So, we have to be open and transparent and note that clergy abuse is happening and then figure out not just how to prevent it, but also how to have conversations where we aren’t vilifying the people wanting to discuss it. There is a real problem if a conversation about a topic is completely and always off-limits. And maybe control over investigations needs to be relinquished and just as we would call a plumber in our churches for a leak, we call a professional organization that handles investigations in a trauma-informed way and not try to take that on and cause additional trauma for victims and their families.
Jacobsen: How have these movements informed the activism, the theology, and the, essentially, humanitarian work for you?
Archer: Honestly, rather than follow a movement, I seek to be a Christ-follower and I am always trying to use discernment. I think Christ would be listening to the voices of those wounded within our churches. Listening to the #ChurchToo voices and reading the news stories, I have been struck by the tremendous courage of the voices coming forward when it is very hard to do so, especially if one has been abused as an adult, which is less understood. There are compelling reasons to stay silent. I think the most courageous voice that I initially read was Lori Anne Thompson, who was abused by Ravi Zacharias as an adult. She was groomed. She came forward at great personal cost. One of the men who worked for Ravi Zacharias did not believe her and I recently listened to him come forward, admit his mistake, and publicly apologize to her. Within the Orthodox churches, I have not seen what could be described as a positive outcome to a case of clergy abuse, either child or adult, and a victim coming forward. Instead, I have heard of suicides and people being ostracized from their communities and incredible amounts of suffering. I think this all serves to continue to silence people who are hurting within the Orthodox churches who may have experienced harm by a priest. Why would we want to continue to silence these hurting members of the flock?
Jacobsen: As noted in the press release, there is work to call on the “government to criminalize adult clergy sexual abuse in alignment with the Southern Baptist Convention’s 2022 resolution. However, a recent bill in CA to criminalize adult clergy sexual abuse, similar to laws in 13 states and D.C., failed to leave the Public Safety committee under questionable circumstances, and survivors are calling on Governor Gavin Newsom to investigate.” What have been the failures, now, towards criminalizing adult clergy sexual abuse?
Archer: There is a failure of understanding. The bill did not move out of committee in California because of the use of the word “consent”, with a real failure to understand the dynamics present between a clergyperson and parishioner and the fact that true consent is never possible. The clergyperson holds too much power. Within the Orthodox churches, we have an understanding of spiritual fatherhood, the priest hears confession and not in a confessional—a priest hears the confession standing right there beside the person. There is a real intimacy and trust there where if a priest chooses to abuse the trust of his spiritual child and sexualize a spiritual relationship, it really is closer to incest. I believe many faith traditions are similar in this dynamic where it is a huge violation of trust like a parent and child. So honestly, maybe there is a lack of awareness of cultural dynamics or religious understanding. The priest is not one’s accountant.
The relationship is deeper, requiring the same degree of trust like a therapist even if the priest isn’t conducting therapy. We would never presume that there is consent if a therapist chose to exploit a client and moreover, there are guidelines and professional boards that oversee that kind of thing and unequivocally will name it as abuse. With clergy abuse of adults, there just needs to be more education because it is mislabeled as an “affair” and when clergy respond in an uneducated way, mislabeling it, it causes deep secondary trauma for a victim. There is a lot of research about the power differential between priest and parishioner and the fact that exploitation is never an “affair”. Legislation that criminalizes clergy exploitation of adults is important because often those who have been exploited have a lot of confusion over what occurred and how they were groomed to be exploited by another person and it can take many years to untangle it. If a criminal statute exists, it is much clearer. The way I see this is very similar to human trafficking. In many cases, trafficking victims have been exploited within a relationship and have difficulty naming it as abuse and recognizing the exploitation. It is very similar. Our lawmakers need to understand this complexity.
Jacobsen: On April 16, 2024, California Senate Bill 894 (SB 894), or “Sexual Exploitation by a Member of Clergy” was presented. What happened?
Archer: The bill was presented, but we were told prior to the hearing that the issue had already been decided. We attended the hearing anyway and we decided that Dr. Nedelescu would speak, since as a neuroscientist she could speak about the harm done in these cases from a neurobiological perspective. Dorothy Small was already slated to speak. About 23 letters of support were submitted prior to the hearing, but they were omitted from the bill analysis and I’m unsure if they were read. I’m certain the letters would have been educational for lawmakers had they been read. This is an issue that may require some more work from legislators to understand the issue of consent and to be sensitive to the dynamics of clergy abuse. It took awhile for the dynamics of human trafficking to be understood and clergy abuse is similar.
Jacobsen: What happens to support letters about bills like this?
Archer: In California, support letters can be uploaded to a Legislative Portal and in theory those letters would be read and in Maine they even made them available to the public. However, with SB 894 at least 23 letters went “missing” from the Legislative Portal. They were never acknowledged in the bill analysis. We went back and asked the letter authors and found that all were submitted by April 9th, the date the hearing was originally scheduled for. There is no accountability for including these letters of support in a bill analysis and they simply disappeared. Who knows where those letters went. We certainly haven’t been given an answer. However, they were letters of support, some of them by survivors of clergy abuse, and they should have been handled better and acknowledged in the bill analysis at the very least. People wrote in telling their own personal stories and reasons for supporting the bill and those letters were not acknowledged.
Jacobsen: Before and after the proceedings, there may be hostility to bills like SB894. During hearings, there can be, obviously, dismissive, even contempt-ridden, behaviour. How do these indicate the lack of a fair hearing or provide reasonable grounds to claim a fair hearing did not happen?
Archer: I think really these things are decided prior to the hearing, and from what we gathered, people have it all decided and then align their votes with each other, which is unfortunate and it doesn’t seem like a true democratic process where information is presented and discussed. The committee members have the opportunity to ask additional questions, but no one did. Senator Dave Min even spoke out about the way that the bill had been handled and all he had done to try to work with the committee members. The letters should have been read. And honestly, a vote should have been taken so advocates could know who stood where.
Jacobsen: How can people get involved, volunteer skills and time, or finances, to your work?
Archer: Dr. Nedelescu and I co-founded Prosopon Healing as a resource website about clergy abuse for Orthodox clergy and survivors. We have been collaborating with other researchers and laborers in this movement and we are interested in speaking to and working with anyone who wants to move the conversation forward, with love.
Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Katherine.
Archer: Thank you!
Further Internal Resources (Chronological, yyyy/mm/dd):
Historical Articles
Crimes of the Eastern Orthodox Church 1: Adam Metropoulos (2024/01/11)
Crimes of the Eastern Orthodox Church 2: Domestic Violence (2024/01/12)
Crimes of the Eastern Orthodox Church 3: Finances (2024/01/16)
Crimes of the Eastern Orthodox Church 4: Sex Abuse (2024/01/17)
Interviews
Dr. Hermina Nedelescu on Clergy-Perpetrated Sexual Abuse (2024/06/02)
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Dr. Hermina Nedelescu and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Bishop Accountability
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/02
Dr. Hermina Nedelescu is a Romanian-born neuroscientist involved in state efforts to protect adults from clergy-perpetrated sexual abuse.
Dr. Hermina Nedelescu is a Romanian-born neuroscientist. Her research work is concerned with the neurobiological control of abnormal behaviors and brain functions relevant to human psychopathology. The majority of this work is directed at understanding brain mechanisms that underly substance use and abuse with emphasis on approach and avoidance of drug-paired environments. Another line of research is directed at investigating the neurobiological dysregulation caused by sexual assault-induced PTSD and suicide with hopes to inform therapeutic treatments.
For her theological work, she is training with the Center for Theology and Natural Sciences at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, where she leverages her expertise in neuroscience to develop a theological anthropology based on the Christian Orthodox tradition. This research is focused on the topic of desire vs. dysregulated desire leading to abuse.
She is an instructor for Stepping Higher Inc., a faith-based organization funded by the County of San Diego Behavior Health Services Department to teach and support clergy, pastors, and behavioral health providers who minister to people suffering from substances use disorders, substance abuse, as well as, other psychological addictions or mental illnesses.
She is actively involved in the state legislative efforts to protect adults from clergy-perpetrated sexual abuse. She is co-founder of Prosopon Healing, a resource site for Orthodox Christian victims/survivors of clergy abuse.
In her free time, she enjoys microscope photography and drawing brain cells to share the beautiful structure and function of the brain with the general public through art exhibits.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, I wrote some articles based on other minor news reportage on abuse within the church communities. You sent an email to connect us. Thank you very much for doing so, the work you’re doing is valid, salient, and should inspire others across the Orthodox community to seek justice in cases of legitimate abuse. While taking the time to investigate some of the claims, the general finding across church abuse dynamics is mostly men with unquestionable, so unquestioned, religious authority abusing mostly laity, where most of the victims will be the women congregants. There have been some newer publications within the news about the abuse committed by nuns, in Canada for example. However, in general, there is progress, as justice is happening. It seems moot to make a hypothetical (false) moral quandary, as is common in colloquial or casual conversation: ‘It shouldn’t happen in the first place,’ or at all. I get the sentiment. However, it’s beside the point. Whether people proclaim the basest drives and instincts, or shout the highest formulations of popular ethical truisms, the reality: people have been abused. It’s a ‘nice thought,’ to think ‘this shouldn’t happen at all’ – naturally, or of course, but ethics only has meat on the bone if it reflects the empirical reality to some degree. I am more concerned with first-hand reports, claimants, cover-ups, theological justifications, community intimidation, legal censure, and such, of sexual abuse and harassment. The rarity is individuals who have been victimized to be both persistent and not letting minor crimes go away. The tendency is to gaslight individuals’ real sentiment towards abuse as if not real, and to downplay the moral reality of crimes committed by leaders, often male, claiming to represent a moral majority or superminority of some form. Which is all to say, I see you in the morally courageous minority. Now, with all of this said, I have to ask, “What makes you different in the context of the Greek Orthodox Church?”
Dr. Hermina Nedelescu: First, I was born into the Romanian Orthodox Church setting during the communist regime. I observed first-hand that the motive of some clergy (bishops, priests, deacons) was to maintain the status quo despite the toxicity and harm it inflicted on the people. This was my first learning experience with abusers in clerical positions of authority. Not all Orthodox clergy are abusers but a small yet significant percentage are. We need to take responsibility and hold wrongdoers accountable because this is our mutual responsibility that we have within the community.
Second, I am a neuroscientist whose research focuses on maladaptive and abnormal behaviors. As I have testified during the hearing at the Senate Public Safety Committee in Sacramento, clergy abuse is a predatory behavior involving abuse of positional power and authority. My educational training enables me to more easily identify the dynamics of clergy abuse. Abuse follows specific patterns of behaviors, and once it is identified then we must stand up and do something about it. At its core, clergy abuse is violence against humanity. It harms the humanity of not only the victims but the perpetrators and entire congregations when we allow offenders to continue in ministry. https://d8747b82c256aa78b00aa576e6478558.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-40/html/container.html
Third, something that is rarely spoken about publicly is the existence of errant clergy. In my observation, Orthodox Christian laypeople are not typically trained to be discerning when it comes to the counsel of clergy (including priests and bishops). They are expected to receive the words of any ordained person uncritically. This failure to speak of clergy fallibility is a terrible mistake resulting in clergy-perpetrated violence and abuse against innocent people. The errant clergy person should be decoupled from The Office of the Holy Priesthood, which has standards. There is a great denial when people hear that their “beloved priest” abused, assaulted and/or raped a victim. Abusers know how to hide their abusive behavior by putting up a façade in public for their congregation. Typically, congregations do not want to believe that having an abusive clergy in ministry could be possible in their church community, yet we have evidence from victims that this is the reality.
To answer your question more directly, I am able to face the truth even when the truth is ugly.
Jacobsen: How does this difference in temperament or not standing down make the work in advocacy relevant here?
Nedelescu: When it comes to clergy sexual abuse, the church (including congregations, leaders and administrations) tend to effectively silence most victims by blaming them. It is too much of a challenge for them to acknowledge the truth that their clergy, whom they employed, has committed sexual misconduct against a congregant.
It is critically important to understand that denying the truth, attacking the victim, reversing the victim and offender roles are all silencing tactics. If these tactics are identified then it is easier to speak of them and reject them maximally in order to continue the advocacy and protect innocent people from being victimized.
Advocacy is a type of charity work. From a theological viewpoint, standing up against abusive clergy who prey on the people of God for their own selfish gratifications is a prophetic ministry. It is much easier to speak of clergy abuse as something that may happen, but what we really need to do is go beyond and hold abusers and enablers accountable. For those who read the Bible, the idea that is presented in Matthew 25:35-36 is that, for Jesus, justice involves acts of compassion and concern towards those who are the neediest, most vulnerable and the most at risk of having no advocate. These issues are what constitute the moral values of Jesus.
I see some preachers and church leaders making just statements but they should see that their justice agenda must extend beyond issues of abortion or human sexuality. Of course, these matters are important; however, taking responsibility and holding wrongdoers accountable is a mutual responsibility that we have within a community. We can’t both write and speak of LGBTQ and women’s’ rights and not hold abusive clergy accountable by removing them from ministry. https://d8747b82c256aa78b00aa576e6478558.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-40/html/container.htmlDon’t like ads? Become a supporter and enjoy The Good Men Project ad free
Jacobsen: One of the reasons for doing the series on the Greek Orthodox Church was the ways in which the individuals in religious communities would use the focus on the abuse within the Roman Catholic Church as a deflection for crimes by their ecclesiastics. Have you noticed this within the Greek Orthodox Church?
Nedelescu: It is important to do a series on the Greek Orthodox Church because the largest Orthodox Christian jurisdiction in the United States is the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America with about 540 Greek Orthodox parishes and about 800 priests (probably including retired priests).
Our preliminary data, gathered from online media articles reporting clergy abuse cases, showed that the majority of articles involving clergy abuse were of abuse cases within the Greek Orthodox church. This could very well be because it is the largest jurisdiction. For a comparison, the Orthodox Church of American (OCA) has about 500 priests in active ministry (excluding retired priests).
The majority of Orthodox Christians are not familiar with the literature on clergy sexual abuse of adult women and are not aware of its extent. They typically assume that most victims of clergy abuse involve children and that most clergy abusers are Roman Catholic.
Research from Columbia Theological Seminary by Pamela Cooper-White, however, shows that about 90-95 percent of victims of clergy sexual misconduct are female congregants (Boobal Batchelor 2013, xv). (See Cooper-White, Pamela. 2013. ‘Clergy Sexual Abuse of Adults’ in Valli Boobal Batchelor ed. When Pastors Prey. Geneva. World Council of Churches Publishing. 58-81). Whether this high percentage of female victims of clergy sexual abuse has to do with women being more likely to report the abuse is beside the point concerning the real problem which is the presence of predators masquerading as clergy.
Our research analysis demonstrates that the Orthodox church is not immune to clergy sexual misconduct and abuse. There is also misconception that if priests can marry, as is the case with Orthodox priests, that they don’t abuse. They do because clergy abuse is about power, domination and control, not celibacy. The reality is that Orthodox clergy who abuse, not only violate their priestly vows when abusing their victims but they also violate their marital vows.
Jacobsen: When you are gathering data for preliminary analysis, is one of the difficulties in bringing these types forward due to the lack of investigative reportage on these denominations?
Nedelescu: Absolutely. In our first phase of analysis we used ChatGPT to aid us in generating key search terms in order to facilitate finding online media news stories concerning clergy sexual abuse in the Orthodox Church. Our preliminary search resulted in a total of 50 clergy abuse cases from news articles between 2002 – 2023 with the Greek Orthodox Church of America showing up in 18 cases from news stories followed by the Russian Orthodox Church in 11 articles, the OCA, Antiochian, Romanian, etc. These preliminary data revealed a total of nearly 300 victims of clergy sexual abuse across different jurisdictions worldwide; however, this number is greatly underestimated since our data analysis is limited to only media stories found online. https://d8747b82c256aa78b00aa576e6478558.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-40/html/container.htmlDon’t like ads? Become a supporter and enjoy The Good Men Project ad free
The challenge in collecting data is that most victims do not report clergy sexual abuse publicly. If victims report internally to their parish or church administration, these reports are not typically disclosed while simultaneously tactics are used to silence the victims.
Jacobsen: What have been, not only the tactics but, the more common means by which victims coming forward are silenced?
Nedelescu: It should be mention that it is important to report clergy sexual abuse first to the police. Most police departments have some staff trained in sex crimes and know how to deal with these issues. Reporting to church administrations typically results in a second assault against victims and/or against those who report. The tactics may include in any order:
- Maintaining the status quo – this tactic takes engages a traditional approach avoiding “scandals” within faith communities through sentimental requesting of forgiveness. It uses spiritualized language without realizing that the real scandal is enabling predatory behavior.
- Interruptive tactic – seeks to interfere the process
- Obscurification – is a tactic that seeks to make the situation murky regarding perceptions of clergy abuse and even crimes by conflating these with lesser concepts such as “consensual affairs”, “sin”, “clergy have weakness too”, “temptation” – anything but the actual reality of this being clergy abuse. This tactic has worked well up until now.
- Deception – this tactic involves promising the matter will be taken care of. It promises action but never delivers.
- Remunerative – this tactic is used when survivors become imperfect victims who have not succumbed to the other tactics. In many cases, they are silenced at this point with NDAs.
- Coercive – this is an intimidation tactic to stop the full revelation of the abuse that took place. The victims are made to be the “enemy”.
Jacobsen: You are a highly qualified, professional scientist too. How does this scientific training help in more soberly analyzing these cases in the news?
Nedelescu: When I analyze these cases in the news articles I do so through the lens of a behavioral neuroscientist focusing on the response of both the victims and church administrations. I ‘ve observed that many victims thought that by reporting the clergy abuse to their church administrations appropriate action would be taken. They were misled (perhaps cultured) to believe that their church hierarchs (bishops) were going to assist.
The other aspect I bring to the analysis of these articles is my training focus in maladaptive behaviors and can see the severe trauma-induced dysregulation clergy abuse cases cause the victims. Clergy abuse is a public health concern and the issue needs to be raised to this level of visibility.
Jacobsen: As the late Dr. Carl Sagan reminded people in public discourse, science is more than ‘a body of knowledge,’ because ‘it’s a way of thinking’ – a means by which to systematically couple hypothesis and empirical observation to make evidenced-based hypotheses, theories, about the natural world. How does this way of thinking and this community of scientists give a different orientation on thinking about the theology around and the institutional setup in formal Greek Orthodox religious life leading to a pattern of successive crimes of a sexual nature, harassment and/or abuse?
Nedelescu: I am trained to think critically as a scientist and to quickly change my view when new evidence becomes available.
You are right that it is a way of thinking. However, it is also the definition of being a humble human being. A sign of humility is to be able to say that my hypothesis or my theory or the way of my thinking before was wrong, now that I have this new evidence/knowledge before me.
I want to point out that many “Mothers” and “Fathers” of the Orthodox church throughout the centuries were towering intellects whose ways of thinking were to use critical thinking skills. The phenomena I am observing today in the Orthodox church where people are encouraged to take the counsel of clergy uncritically is a terrible mistake. It seems to be culturally embedded into the fabric of the Orthodox church which has given rise to clergy, some of whom are duplicitous who crave attention, power and glorification from others. Taken together, this sets up a breeding ground for clergy-perpetrated abuse.
Jacobsen: How can community and individual support, of survivors bolster resolve to work in systematically gathering the relevant data for cases as well as
Nedelescu: The first reason for constructing Prosopon Healing was to provide resources for survivors of clergy abuse. Ultimately, there is an urgent need to adequately assist victims of clergy abuse. A second reason is to bring victims/survivors together because victims of clergy abuse heal quicker by transitioning to a survivor mentality in a community that validates and acknowledges their abuse. Once survivors unite, others are more likely to speak up which will aid in understanding the breadth and depth of clergy abuse in the Orthodox world.
The wider community can also be of assistance because clergy-perpetrated abuse is a public health concern with a serious societal burden on the public mental health system. Because churches are so reactionary when clergy abuse is reported, it is challenging to identify other cases of abuse. We know that research from Baylor University showed that 3.1% of adult women who attended a place of worship at least once a month said they were victims of clergy sexual misconduct as adults. Contextualized, this research demonstrates that in a congregation of 400 faithful, there may be on average 7 victims of clergy abuse, once the abuser is identified. Yet, it is challenging to find these other silenced cases.
Jacobsen: Why do you think church communities and administrations are so reactionary to acknowledging clergy sexual abuse?
Nedelescu: It is very simple. When a church community approves the words and some tears from the abuser over the victims who speak up, they have done added damage to the victims, risked the safety of others and left the abuser with a malignant disease. As a consequence these communities are toxic systems. They are not worshiping God. They are worshiping their ministries and closing their eyes to the truth to maintain the status quo rather than facing the truth and doing the hard work to heal. It is idolatry.
Jacobsen: What is the current effort towards California Governor Gavin Newsom and the work to bring down protection for abuses who happen to be religious leaders, as with much of the #ChurchToo movement?
Nedelescu: Allow me to give some background in order to better answer this question. Clergy who exhibit predatory behavior need to be held accountable. Church hierarchies are responsible for preventative actions. But, when churches fail to exact discipline, then we need the state to hold abusive clergy accountable for the safety of people. This is the purpose of Senate Bill (SB) 894.
SB 894 was heard at the Senate Public Safety Committee hearing on April 16th 2024. One would have thought that in California such a bill, to protect adult congregants for abuses by clergy who are in positions of power, would have passed without any issue. Instead, we experienced some inconsistencies including a conspicuous exclusion of more than twenty-three private individual support letters from the bill analysis. This legislation is critically important because it would bring California in line with 13 other states and the District of Columbia, which already have similar laws in place.
According to the bill analysis, the opposition was comprised of only two constituents: (1) the ACLU California Action and (2) the California Public Defenders Association. They took issue with the wording around the term “consent”. They contended that sexual conduct between two “consenting” adults should not be penalized. However, it is important to understand that because of the unequal power differential between a clergy and a congregant, there can be no true consent. Consent is, therefore, dissolved when a clergy uses their position of power to gain sexual satisfaction with a congregant. True consent can only take place between two adults of equal power. Clergy provide counsel to their congregants, and should never involve sex with them. Professional therapy never includes sexual behavior, for example due to a similar unequal power between counselor/therapist and patient.
Now, we have been advised by Senator Dave Min to reach out to Leadership and Governor Newsom for assistance. We have already spoken to the Legislative Director from the Office of Senator Ashby who has provided invaluable information and am very thank full for his time. Next, we are waiting to schedule a meeting with the Office of Senator Mike McGuire who oversees the Senate Public Safety Committee. We have written to Governor Newsom for assistance. We have to allow the Governor and his Office the time to examine the situation, but he has had to intervene in the past when California Democrats blocked a child trafficking bill. Similarly, the fentanyl bills were getting being stalled in the Senate and Assembly Public Safety Committees, evidently. There appears to be a strong reaction when bills are proposed that would result in a new law in the state of California, even though, everyone knows the ravages of child trafficking, the opioid crisis, and clergy abuse of adults.
Jacobsen: Katherine Archer and you have been working together, as the early independent investigators and data-collectors on this work within, not only the Greek Orthodox Church but, the Eastern Orthodox Church in general. How can people get involved, financially support, or volunteer expertise or skills with you, to start building a larger movement?
Nedelescu: At the moment, we are beginning to look for funding because we will need financial support to help expedite this important work. We are just beginning to scratch the surface of a much larger problem.
In the immediate future, we welcome advocates and survivors of clergy-perpetrated abuse to join our research efforts. For Orthodox Christians we put a website together called – Prosopon Healing – where we provide resources for the community.
Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Hermina.
Nedelescu: It was a pleasure talking to you.
https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/hermina-nedelescu-clergy-perpetrated-sexual-abuse-sjbn/
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/11
[Recording Start]
Rick Rosner: A few weeks ago, I read about rapidly changing estimates of the maximum human population, the peak human population, at which point we’ll have the most humans ever, and then the total human population will subsequently decline. The estimate has been revised from about 10.8 billion in the year 2100 to 2061, with a peak of 9.5 billion people, based on people making fewer babies. Among other reasons for people making fewer babies is that life is so distracting and entertaining that people are having less sex and coupling up less. Coupling is hard, and being entertained is easy. You don’t have to try as hard.
Instead of trying to attract a mate, you can be your crappy slob self, play video games, watch porn, consume hundreds of streaming entertainment options, and be sufficiently content that you don’t try to couple up. I’ve run this by a few people, including you. Everyone said it’s obvious. Everyone seems to agree that this is a major factor in people not having as much sex as people who are otherwise occupied.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You mentioned a factor. Those seem like multiple factors. How would you rank them?
Rosner: I’d say this is in at least the top three and probably the major factor. The more westernized a country is, the moreits population is in decline. The last continent in 2075 to have an increasing population is predicted to be Africa. I’d saydistraction and other forms of satisfaction are the number one factor. Another major factor is that it’s expensive to have the means to couple up. You can be more successful at coupling if you’re not living in your parent’s basement or a crappy studio apartment without a car. At least in America and probably around the world, older people have most of the money. People 45 and older have 94% of the privately held assets in America. So if you’re poor…
It’s hard to look cool enough to attract a mate, and it’s hard to pay for having a kid. Another factor might be optimism about living a long time. But older people have most of the money.
If you think you’re going to live to a hundred, maybe you don’t want to give away your money to your younger relatives. It used to be that you left a legacy by having kids and passing your money on to them. Now, you leave a legacy of yourself by not dying. But I’m not sure that’s a major factor. Another minor factor might be increasing equality for women, which means that kids may be put off. You wait till later, or maybe decide not to have them at all. And if you’ve got a good job, you might not have to depend on attracting a mate. Traditionally, the man has the job, and the woman is the homemaker and the babymaker. What do you think?
Jacobsen: There’s some truth to it. There are factors. There’s truth to it. One of the biggest changes has been the technology to be able to actualize these choices. It’s not simply social changes like a more lenient populace towards women’s roles or the change in policy and politics. So, policy and political changes around women in the workplace, equal pay, anti-discrimination laws, and better representation in political positions change those more rapidly.
Rosner: It used to be that jobs paid enough that a family could survive off of just one parent being employed. Now, there are fewer of those jobs and more jobs where both parents need to be employed, which also puts a damper on having kids. Less time and less energy.
Jacobsen: Another big factor is the legal and policy stuff. Another change following the legal and policy changes and the social changes is the massive technological changes that can actualize those policies and political changes. Things like the pill, copper IUDs, etc., allow people to make systematic choices about planning their lives, whether or not they want to have kids at all. And those are relatively new. People used to have quite a few rough decisions and recommendations, but chemical intervention is the way to go. Hormone intervention is the way to go. You can have authoritarian governments like China and Russia and democratic governments like South Korea and Japan, all having the same problem. It doesn’t necessarily have to do with the political system, wealth of the country, or freedoms. It seems to have more to do with how women are ultimately making choices in their individual lives. Women are making choices not to have kids.
Rosner: So authoritarian governments are unsustainable in their way.
Jacobsen: I would say sexist authoritarian and sexist democratic societies are unsustainable. used on the choices women are making for their lives, looking at the population numbers in terms of growth rates… It doesn’t matter whether it’s democratic or authoritarian. The populations are declining. So, it doesn’t have to do with political institutions or the style of governance.
Rosner: It may have to do with religion, though. Catholics and Muslims are expected to have a lot of kids, and as religion gets hollowed out, maybe there’s less of a mandate. Also, a minor factor is a pessimism about the future. But why would you want to have a kid in this world? Do you think that’s a major factor?
Jacobsen: It’s a movement, but it’s not a big movement. It only tends to happen in societies with more time and freedom on their hands, and those tend to be left-wing. So, if you’re looking at left-wing and wealthier societies with women making those arguments, you’re talking about a minority within a minority within a minority. It’s not a big issue, I think.
Rosner: Alright, so we hit all the possible reasons. Another possible reason that I think is minor is decreasing fertility. They say that men’s testosterone levels have been decreasing. I don’t think that’s a major cause, though it might be a minor cause. If you’re making crap sperm that can’t make a baby, and if you’ve got lower testosterone, that makes you less horny. Looking at it as a minor issue, but a moderate issue if you consider the age at which men and women are having kids is going up. If you have lower-quality eggs and sperm, then there’s an argument to be made that people will have fewer kids and a smaller window to have kids, and some people who want kids may end up having none because they can’t. The standard sitcom family is Homer and Marge Simpson, where the dad is a buffoon, and the wife quietly keeps the family running. People may be disenchanted and don’t see an advantage in living like that. So, anyway, there are multiple possible causes that all seem plausible and work together. A lot of them are cultural and social, and then you have a couple of suspects that might be biological. What surprises me when I talk to people about this is that everyone agrees and is ready to believe it. Usually, when you push against the status quo, which I would think families and having babies are, you get a lot of pushback and denial. But with this, I haven’t told it to many people.
Among the people I’ve told, everyone agrees, which surprises me. Do you think these kinds of narratives deter men or women more? I ran it by Carol, and she agreed. I’ve discussed it on pod TV, and it comes up in discussions there. Nobody says they don’t believe it. Everyone cites statistics. The US is making babies well under the replacement rate. One of the guys I’ve talked to about this is the former Comptroller General of the United States. He’s a numbers guy and says everyone seems to know we’re not replacing the population. I don’t know. Elon Musk is part of this. Mostly right-wingers, and Musk is a right-winger now, say people need to have more babies. I understand the argument that a growing population equals economic growth. We’re used to having an increasing population, making more workers and consumers. The right-wingers defend the status quo and want that to continue, calling you a commie if you’re not in favour of it.
I think it’s possible to have a strong economy with a stable or declining population. We need to figure out what that would look like. It would require more automation to take care of the elderly. Places like Japan don’t have enough young people to take care of the elderly, so they need robots to help. As we move into the robot era, that’s one way to manage a declining population. That’s all I have. Thoughts on your religious point?
Jacobsen: Can this be exemplified by the differences between Orthodox and Reform Judaism?
Rosner: Orthodox Jews are encouraged to have sex on the Sabbath and are supposed to have a healthy sex life. I don’t know that there’s a mandate to have a lot of kids, but Orthodox Jews do tend to have big families.
Jacobsen: What is the future of sustainable population growth? The only populations that are close to the 2.1 replacement rate are industrialized, egalitarian societies, with around 1.5 to 1.8. What would bring those up to 2.1?
Rosner: Economic incentives could affect population trends. In China, couples were only allowed to have one kid for decades, but that’s gone away because China’s population has stabilized. In the US, we’ve had incentives for couples, such as the mortgage interest deduction, which favours families. It’s easier to buy a house if you’re a family. Deducting the costs of your mortgage interest from your income is a considerable help because mortgage interest might be a family’s biggest expense.
Jacobsen: That is social engineering.
Rosner: Other things you could do to increase the population include more deductions per kid and programs that pay for higher education. We’ve got a college debt crisis in the US, where people owe more than a hundred grand and can’t pay it down because the lenders are predatory. That might scare people away from having kids because they can’t see how they would finance their kids’ education. The government can offer ways to make having kids cheaper.
Jacobsen: If we’re worried about making more babies, we should make attracting a mate part of the family.
Rosner: Our educational curriculum. We used to have Home Economics, which taught people how to be homemakers. There used to be more emphasis on sports, such as football, in the golden age of American high schools. Being a jock was a good way to attract a mate. It wasn’t part of the curriculum, but it was part of the social structure of high school. That has been eroding. We could have explicit programs in high schools that teach people how to adjust their expectations and be less gross and selfish. Social media and reality shows have made us more selfish and more self-satisfied, with unrealistic expectations about the partners we can attract. We could come up with educational programs to improve people and make them okay with coupling up with those on their level. But I don’t think that’s going to happen. The conditions under which something like that might happen are if the US becomes more like “The Handmaid’s Tale” if the right wing wins enough elections. You don’t want a US where we’re coerced into making more babies because that would mean the fundamentalist right wing has won. The end, maybe.
Jacobsen: My general perspective is that sustainable growth has to do with egalitarian, freer, wealthy societies with lots of freedoms for women and then some unknown empirical tweaks to bump that up by 0.5 or 0.8, or whatever it is.
Rosner: If you want to bump it up, you have to make it easier for people to have kids. You have to look at each dimension of having kids. One is being able to afford kids. Another is being able to tolerate kids. Being able to tolerate possible mates and making yourself tolerable. Some of those things could happen, but I think there are enough trends against those things happening that we’ll continue to see declining birth rates, especially if medicine adds 10, 15 or 20 years of healthy life to the average human lifespan. If you’re going to keep living, you may want to keep your resources to yourself, which may discourage a significant portion of the population from having kids. If you’re not going to die, you may not want to have kids. If dying is inevitable, and the average lifespan in your nation is like 65, you can’t take it with you. You might as well have kids to pass on any accumulated wealth.
Jacobsen: The trends are for people to have fewer and fewer kids per capita.
Rosner: The end?
Jacobsen: The end. Do you want to talk tomorrow?
Rosner: Yeah, I’ll talk tomorrow.
Jacobsen: Alright, talk to you then. Thank you.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/05/12
[Recording Start]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Masculinity—you get a pair of these giant testicles made out of plastic and hang them from the rear of your truck. So, your truck has testicles. What is another American cultural item, an Americanism that is also like this?
Rick Rosner: It used to be barbed wire tattoos that run all the way around your arm or, if you’re cheap, just around the outside of your arm. Those are pretty manly.
Jacobsen: Porn behavior. Choking your girlfriend while you’re having sex, coming on her face. Stuff you see in porn like putting it under her butt. All that stuff is kind of demeaning. It’s just letting her know who’s boss. I had a co-worker who lasted about a week.
Rosner: Building concrete forms for house foundations is hard work. It’s terrible work. You’re walking around with four-by-eight sheets of plywood that weigh even more than regular plywood because they’ve been used before, so they’ve got a certain amount of cement in them. This guy could walk around with a stack of five of them held over his head. I think I could do maybe three. I was strong back then. Maybe I did four but suffered, and it was very dangerous because I might tip over. That was the first guy. Mike Shirley, I think, told me that you’ve got to put it in her butt to let her know who’s in charge.
Jacobsen: Do you think the culture is changing on these issues?
Rosner: Yes, because now we’re aware of it. There have been a bunch of books like “Men, Women, and Children” by Chad Kultgen, which was turned into a Sandler movie. It’s a great book and a pretty good movie about how porn is making everybody crazy. In the book, you see how porn affects high school and junior high kids, both girls and boys, as well as the parents. The dad and the mom internalize a lot of messages from the porn they’re consuming, with not great results. That book is probably 14 years old now.
Jacobsen: And now that we’re aware that porn is making people have unsavory and unrealistic sexual expectations and behaviors, it’s something parents may want to talk to kids about. We can do something about it. We’re organizing a symposium or conference in Britain to talk about these issues among humanists and activists. We’ll discuss it not in moralistic terms, but in terms of evidence. Is this a net good or not? There is a net good, I would argue, though it’s questionable.
Rosner: In the 70s, when I was trying to lose my virginity, only the cool, hot people got to have sex. The nerdy, awkward, not-so-cute people didn’t get as much. But now, the bar for who gets to get laid is lower because of the prevalence of porn. You don’t need to be sexually aroused by the person you’re with; you just need your spank bank. So, schlubby people can get laid and have sex. You see couples now that you wouldn’t have seen in the 70s and 80s. I get frustrated because I think, “Hey, I could have been half of that couple.”
Jacobsen: So, that’s a net good. But the incels are probably a net bad. In the 70s, I was trying to figure out how to get a girlfriend, which involved lifting weights and trying to look more presentable, eventually getting contact lenses because it was death to have glasses in the 70s. Now, it’s not that big a deal.
Rosner: You’re right. But I was compelled to become a better person to get a girlfriend. Now, thanks to the flood of porn, some guys think, “Fuck it, I can just jerk off. I don’t have to be a better person.” That creates incels—guys who want to get laid but can’t. I disagree with the “involuntary” part because they don’t try.
Jacobsen: That was Kirkpatrick’s point. Remember when we had that call?
Rosner: Yes. So, that’s a net bad because those are the trolls of the world. They live an angry, girl-free existence, pissed at the world. That’s adjacent to the world of mass shooters, Proud Boys, and modern Nazis. They just curdle in their own bullshit.
Jacobsen: The Proud Boys were not an American phenomenon but an American derivative. Canada sourced it. Congratulations, Canada.
Rosner: Elsewhere in the room, and we’ll conclude, is a bunch of micro-mosaic stuff I haven’t rehabilitated or fixed yet. It’s messy, it has a bit of a smell, and Carole’s given up on it.
Jacobsen: What’s the smell?
Rosner: Just a busy room smell. And she thinks I’ve got an old man smell now, especially me. I smell like bread and vitamins.
Jacobsen: Do you like bread?
Rosner: It’s because I’m yeasty in places. This room is a mess, but it’s also full of gifts I haven’t given Carole yet. I’ll fix a micro mosaic and give it to her. She’ll be like, “Oh, pretty,” and then say, “Please stop giving me micro mosaics.”
Jacobsen: I guess that’s the end. I’ve had such bad sleep, it’s not you.
Rosner: Do you want to take a nap?
Jacobsen: I like taking a nap.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/05/11
[Recording Start]
Rick Rosner: Right, so you just showed me a clip from the roast of Joan Rivers featuring Gilbert Gottfried, where he describes in great, flowery detail what it is like to have sex with Joan Rivers. It was all made up, but it went on for a long time. I’ve seen him perform “The Aristocrats,” which is the dirtiest joke that can be told.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Because he made it last for eight minutes of sheer perversion. This is pretty much like that. He’s got that grating voice, so he did a good job. It’s a little daunting because I’m trying to write something very dirty.
Rosner: I’m writing this novel, and I want parts of it to be fantastically dirty. It’s hard to come up with stuff that’s dirty in a time where…
Jacobsen: Well, okay, it’s two things. One, you can have Gilbert Gottfried tell this filthy, filthy, made-up story about Joan Rivers where she orgasms and her lady goo shoots out of her vagina and burns a hole in the floor, with a hundred details like that in this bit that goes on for three or four minutes—a long bit to describe one sex act.
Rosner: Filthy as that. On the other hand, we’re in a hypocritically and falsely puritanical time. In 2010, the Republicans implemented a plan to engage in small-ball politics. Instead of focusing on national offices like senator or congressperson, they decided to concentrate on state legislatures and governors. They took over three-quarters of the legislatures across America.
Jacobsen: It’s cheaper to win a state legislature race, to become a state senator than a national senator. They realized this and understood that the state legislatures determine the congressional boundaries, so you can win by gerrymandering. By following this small-ball strategy, they dominated national politics for a decade until the Democrats.
Rosner: Republicans are still fucking us. Lately, in the past five years, they’re playing even smaller-ball politics by trying to take over school boards and library boards. It’s even cheaper to win those elections, and you can generate a lot of indignation from idiot…
Jacobsen: Conservative voters get all upset about, you know, like the book “Gender Queer,” which is probably the number one banned book in America right now. It’s a graphic novel about a kid growing up gay, and so these…
Rosner: School board invaders. School boards are supposed to consist of local parents or grandparents, people who have some stake in the local school system or library board. Instead, they come in without any kids in the district and…
Jacobsen: They engage in hardcore electoral politics in these piddly little races. Because of this strategy, there’s now a lot of discussion in America about banned books and adult books that kids shouldn’t see, and legislation being passed to protect kids. It’s all garbage. It’s all designed just to rile up the base.
Rosner: It’s probably easier to write something that people will find offensive. So, on one hand, you’ve got Gilbert Gottfried, and on the other, these hypocritical assholes.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/05/10
[Recording Start]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, you have had opportunities to gain fame.
Rick Rosner: Yes, I have done four pilots centered on either myself as a smart person or involving other people as well. None of these pilots have been successful, which is not unusual, but it is frustrating. I have a significant number of followers, 0.88 million (880,870) on Twitter, most of whom I purchased. Nevertheless, it appears impressive. I bought them ten years ago when you could purchase 5,000 followers for a dollar. I am looking at People Magazine, and it has an article on, I wonder what their name is — I was going to say Brooke Shields. When I was a kid, I thought I would get famous and marry Brooke Shields. I did not, but a friend of my brother’s did, so I have been in her kitchen because we were pitching a project. My brother and I were developing a project, and we went to his friend, a producer-writer, to get notes in their kitchen. So again, I have been celebrity-adjacent. My wife has worked at a couple of fancy private high schools in the LA area.
Jacobsen: So, she has a lot of contact with celebrities.
Rosner: She does not want to be famous, but I do. So, it is strange to be around celebrities. She receives emails from famous parents of their kids. She knows some of these people, and we see them. She goes hiking, and they are all around us. When I worked on Kimmel, well, Kimmel himself is famous, and I was right there. He gave me my own week on the show in the early days before he grew too annoyed with me because I am an interesting weirdo. He made me the announcer on the show for a week. This did not lead to anything. I know better than to try to interact with famous people. If you live in LA, you try to be relaxed about seeing famous people. It is like living in an open zoo; do not touch the rhinos. There is no way to win a celebrity encounter. The only way to win is to pretend that you do not know they are famous. If you can have an everyday encounter, like holding open the door for them, you do it. Or if you see someone at CVS, you do not say, “Hey, you are Natalie, what’s your name, from 10,000 Maniacs?” You ignore her and then tell your friends you saw Natalie, what’s her name, from 10,000 Maniacs. This was a long time ago. If they have a dog and you see them hiking, you can pet the dog and say, “Oh my God, what a nice doggy.” And that is it. It’s a brief interaction. You do not make a big deal out of it. Their celebrity is not a factor in the dog interaction. Then you are fine. If you start fawning over them, it gets awkward and gross quickly, and you feel like an idiot. Famous people, especially when you see them in person, carry a lot of our hopes and expectations like “that could have been me.” If you are in LA, there is a fair chance that you want to be famous. When you see a famous person, it is a charged situation, and the best thing you can do is not to interact at all or to minimize the interaction. Look but do not touch. There is no sex in the champagne room.
Jacobsen: Yes, exactly. Although, depending on which strip joint you go to, there might be. When I was in Atlanta, I drove past one in an Uber, and the driver mentioned there had been a murder there the previous night. You may recognize it from various rap songs. The strip clubs in Atlanta are much more hardcore than those in LA.
Rosner: Yes, so the famous people are all around, and…
Jacobsen: Do many of them just walk around without security, unadorned?
Rosner: Yes, because why would you, unless you have stalkers, why would you have security? If you are big enough, you are going to need security. You know, like Taylor Swift or Beyonce, you do not see them around. Maybe you do. Maybe when Taylor Swift is wherever she’s from, you know, maybe she does, but I doubt she goes to the grocery store. Nobody goes crazy for going to the grocery store if they have someone who does it for them. But I do not know if you can walk around your town. But you know, Carole hikes Fryman Canyon. And there’s Runyon Canyon. There are half a dozen canyons where people hike. Every canyon has people you might see. For a while, you would see Steve Martin on Fryman, and you just walk past and leave him alone. You would not stare at him. Then you would come home and tell me, “Oh, I saw Steve Martin. What was he doing? Was he with anybody?” Yes, he was talking to somebody and wearing a hat and sunglasses, and that’s it. Allison Janney used to live in our neighborhood. You would occasionally see her. Gavin Rossdale used to live up the hill from us. Carole saw him once at Ralph’s, the local supermarket. You do not hassle him. You just come home and say you saw somebody famous. If you try to impose upon them, nobody likes that. You feel like an idiot, and they feel like you are a bit of an idiot, but they are going to be nice unless they are a jerk. Unless there is a reason to interact. Say at Ralph’s, if Gavin Rossdale decided not to get a basket and now he has eight items falling out of his hands, you can say, “Do you need a hand with that?” This did not happen, but he would say, “Yeah, thanks.” You grab one of the items and put it on top of his. But, I have an idea for another session.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/05/10
[Recording Start]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: There it is. So we are back after a while. I wanted to cover a little bit about the colossal amount of work over a decade or more, in fact, more than a decade, doing a lot of the independent journalistic work that I’ve done. I typically pick a topic, and within approximately two years, I end up interviewing the top people in that area, in the politics or IQ world, of course.
Rick Rosner: So we should mathematicize it. It’s something like a year. About 11 years, say about 4,000 days. 4,000 days times, your output is generally at least a thousand words. How many words a day on average?
Jacobsen: I mean, today I transcribed and edited 11,000. Let’s just say, to be conservative, it’s only a thousand, though it’s more than that. That means you’ve put out 4 million words, but it’s likely more like 2,000 or 8 million words, which is the equivalent of 80 thick books. That’s a lot.
Rosner: Yes. It is a lot of work. You have enumerated the number of articles you’ve put out, which is well over 1,000.
Jacobsen: It is definitely more than 1,000. I do not know the precise number.
Rosner: So what, an article every two and a half days on average or more frequently than that?
Jacobsen: I do not know. It depends on the season. Sometimes gathering information takes more time. The work in the military in Canada took more time. The work in the equestrian industry took more time because I did not have any background in those areas. To speak on them more competently, it takes time to get at least a basic and intermediate knowledge level of that field, to then talk competently to experts in that area.
Rosner: So what are your bullet points on 4,000 days of journalism?
Jacobsen: You cannot take the work for granted because no matter how you slice it, it is going to be a lot of work. You should be authentic in your conversational style with the interviewee. Otherwise, it is simply not going to flow. There are too many evolved parts of the mind to social life. At some level, it will come off badly if you are not fluid. The way to be fluid and socially supple is to be authentic. It seems from your list of people who have said yes to you, people want to talk. People love talking. Give someone something to talk about, especially themselves, and they will talk for days.
Rosner: Okay.
Jacobsen: And then if you click with someone, make sure to hold on to that partnership or work relationship. Eventually, it often becomes a friendship.
Rosner: In our case, yes.
Jacobsen: Yes, in many cases. That becomes a reservoir to continually use. You do not come across such connections often. Maybe three significant ones. It has to be well over a thousand because just you and I working together have generated more than 1,000 pieces.
Rosner: That is true. So I think the average is probably every two years or one and a half years, you get a writing partner with whom you can really dig in and work for a long time. What I find, actually, is that over time, it becomes more frequent and more likely. I think it is probably because you develop a wider range of professional and social skills, knowing when to be relaxed, when to be focused, and so forth.
Jacobsen: Since you started doing this, the world seems to be in a much more dire situation. Do you believe that it is actually in a more dire situation? Any thoughts on the changing state of the world?
Rosner: On one hand, rage drives a lot of media now, which drives a lot of views. There are profit motives around that. The bigger media companies are corporations, so they are driven by that.
Jacobsen: Do you think that besides the rage that makes people engage with media, there is actual rage that has increased in people?
Rosner: It has probably increased. People are more rage-filled, but the number of things to be rage-filled about is historically fewer. There are simply more people reporting on it. In a digital era where there are cameras everywhere, social media reaches people intimately. Previous generations would leave for work and not talk to their spouse all day. Now people text when they are leaving for work.
Jacobsen: Do you think that social media has made people more selfish?
Rosner: Yes, but I do not think it is the only thing.
Jacobsen: What are the other things?
Rosner: The easy access to everything. Especially in North America, we have had at least five decades or more of constant growth. That is probably unprecedented, especially in terms of its scale. We are very comfortable and have all this wealth invested in technologies that cater to our individualistic profiles. This makes us narcissistic. Evidence over the last three decades shows an increase in narcissism. I’m not saying it is necessarily a bad thing that we are more comfortable, but we should be careful about not exacerbating the worst parts of ourselves.
Jacobsen: Which we are not careful about.
Rosner: Not at all.
Jacobsen: So there’s a trend you’ve written about, towards gender equality. People like right-wing pundits such as Matt Walsh, and Lance, would say that this is a bad thing, the increasing feminization of North America and the world. I would say, is it really a bad thing? Do men really need to be men and women, women? What do you think?
Rosner: It is more complicated than conservatives make it out to be. And it is more evidence-based than liberals make it out to be. Sex is mostly binary. It is something like binary with a little room for abnormality. By abnormal, I do not mean bad, I mean statistically rare. So there’s male and female, and there are statistically fewer others. With others not being a bad thing.
Jacobsen: Typically, you’ll get something around 105 men born for every 100 women. So statistically, you get that difference. It’s not split 50-50. Most people will identify with their genitalia and their genetics, male or female, but there are also intersex individuals.
Rosner: And then there are those who are in a different category, which I’m not an expert on. That’s in terms of sex. So sex is binary plus an other category. The conservative estimate of binary is mostly correct, but it’s not entirely correct in terms of the empirical evidence.
Jacobsen: It is crazy that the organizing principle around who we pair up with and build our entire life around is based on who makes us ejaculate, in the case of men. You can see how it happened because we’re creatures who have evolved and perpetuate life via sex. So sex is in charge, but it’s still a strange principle that I could build a partnership around someone I get along with, but that will only happen if that person can make me ejaculate, and my worldview is such that I’m okay with that being the person making me ejaculate. The amount of time in a day that we spend ejaculating is not even 1/5 of 1% of waking hours, and that’s what you’re going to base it on?
Rosner: The intersex and other categories tell us that evolution has put quite tight pressures on that. At the same time, the gender conversation is more complex. Conservatives argue that all the terms are cumbersome, while liberals argue that you cannot confuse sex with gender and you cannot necessarily merge one’s biological sex with one’s social roles and identity. You have the distinction between male, female, intersex, and other, and then you have the secondary layer of gender and how people orient their lives. Sexual orientation is another layer that adds complexity.
Jacobsen: I like that we have new terms for everything. My wife and I had a discussion while driving into Hollywood, coming upon Sunset, out of Laurel Canyon. There’s a shopping center there, and for Pride Month, they painted the stairs leading into the center. Each stair riser was painted with a color of the gay flag. There are 11 colors, and we were discussing what each of the letters meant. I said you can just go with LGBTQ+, but my wife said, no, you’re not allowed to use the plus until you get through at least seven letters. There’s a ton of letters to include: A for asexual, T for trans, and so on.
Rosner: Within left-wing circles, it’s about social decorum, whether you say pronouns beforehand and how far you go with the letters. I just take the international norm, as the UN has the LGBTI advisory group. I say LGBTI or LGBTI+, referencing a standard international organization that everyone more or less respects. This is a culture war issue that Republicans in the US have seized upon. According to a 2022 Pew Research Study, Republican legislators have drifted four times as much to the right as Democrats have drifted to the left. Republicans have swung into full lunacy, making the case that it’s the Democrats who have gone crazy. This whole LGBTQ thing is a very small part of most Americans’ day-to-day existence. Acknowledging the colors of the gay flag doesn’t have much relevance to our economic lives or access to abortion. But it’s an issue Republicans use to claim we’re drifting into Sodom and Gomorrah and socialism, which is nonsense because America is super capitalistic, and our taxes have been at a 60-year low. We don’t pay much in taxes, but Republicans would have you believe otherwise.
Jacobsen: There’s also the idea of corporatism. Conservative media is largely corporate media catering to conservative populations for profit. Many conservatives are actually underserved in the United States.
Rosner: Conservative media often lacks good quality journalism. Fox, for instance, caters to conservatives and propagandizes them, but it covers issues that more liberal media don’t focus on while still spreading lies and fear. Conservative outlets like One America News Network, Newsmax, Alex Jones, and Tucker Carlson struggle to make ends meet. Newsmax, for example, was kicked off its broadcaster because they couldn’t afford to stay on. CNN has tried to lean more conservative to capture more viewers, which is a corporate move.
Jacobsen: There is one more thing about corporate media in the US: the Epoch Times, owned by Moonies, has been accused by the DOJ of money laundering about $67 million. They pump out conservative false reporting and have turned out to be a criminal enterprise. This doesn’t respond directly to your point about corporate media, but as a liberal, I have to point out that they were involved in a money laundering scheme involving prepaid cards for unemployment benefits, which they were buying and selling for profit.
Rosner: So we have this sort of gender and sex split. The sexual orientation split. Many conservative arguments are based on first approximations, which are then called common sense. I think both sides take these approximations. Conservative views on sex and gender often rely on old arguments that become accepted as common sense, like the idea that being gay is not a choice. Only assholes at this point would argue otherwise, and many states have made it illegal to base therapy on the idea that people can change their orientation. This has led to a lot of misery with no results.
Jacobsen: Generally, you have this idea of wisdom or common sense. Both might be false notions, but they are first approximations most people accept. Any modifications require new understanding. Newton’s gravity works in almost every situation but is subject to modifications under Einstein’s general relativity. You can think of instances where sexuality appears to be a choice, like in prison, where people have same-sex relationships due to constraints. But the general sense is that sexuality isn’t fluid enough for therapy to change someone’s orientation by simply praying on it.
Rosner: Eventually, it will be common sense to say that for biological and psychological reasons, some people are born with the genitals of one gender but are actually of the opposite gender. People will have different makeups. It’s not necessarily inborn, like how water under certain conditions forms snowflakes, with no two forming the same way. It’s something that develops over time.
Jacobsen: For me, it’s common sense that not everything aligns perfectly. Nature doesn’t want anything; evolution has no wants. Evolution hasn’t ensured that 100% of people think they are the gender of the genitals they were born with. Many people fall into different categories. However, many still believe there are only two sexes and corresponding genders.
Rosner: This ties into American media and my observations while traveling through the United States. There’s a wide range of Americans. Cities are generally dirtier, and people tend to be more overweight, but they aren’t necessarily impolite. It was rare to find a genuine asshole, even in New York. I didn’t encounter the stereotypical rude New Yorker.
Jacobsen: Even MAGA supporters, who take pride in being mean to liberals, aren’t assholes in every interaction. If you meet a MAGA supporter and compliment their dog, they will be perfectly nice. Many MAGA profiles on Twitter include a love for dogs. During your travels across America, you probably met many right-wing people, and as you said, you didn’t encounter many assholes.
Rosner: I found almost no Confederate flags, except in a very run-down rural area of the South.
Jacobsen: Once people were presented with the strong connection between the Confederate flag and slavery, most were willing to give it up, given the pain it causes.
Rosner: People in the United States are their own stereotypes. Seattle liberals are more unkempt and fake, while LA liberals are cleaner but worse drivers. New Yorkers are well put together, and people in Charlotte, South Carolina, are closer to those from my hometown.
Jacobsen: Americans feel more obligated to announce themselves and be big personalities. My wife and I visited Belgium and were struck by how low-profile and chill everyone was. Everyone was going about their business in a very understated manner.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/05/10
[Recording Start]
Rick Rosner: All right, I eat fruit with a knife because I’m a badass, or maybe because I don’t want to break off my old teeth.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I’m skeptical of the badass.
Rosner: Say again?
Jacobsen: I’m skeptical of the badass.
Rosner: I’m sitting here with a knife, just cutting on a peach. I don’t even use a spoon because spoons are impractical for a melon. I just slice it with a knife, then I stab it with a knife, and then I eat it off the knife like a Green Beret.
Jacobsen: Is it a butter knife or a steak knife?
Rosner: I don’t know. It’s this serrated knife. All our good knives fell apart. We’ve only got a big, long, serrated knife that’s good, and then this is our short, good, serrated knife. So, I don’t know.
Jacobsen: What makes eating fruit with a knife make you a badass?
Rosner: Because I’m not even using a fork or a spoon. I’m sitting here with a bladed instrument of death, and I’m just jamming it into my mouth with fruit on it, which is just —
Jacobsen: Quote, bladed instrument of death, unquote.
Rosner: Yeah.
Jacobsen: it’s much easier to kill with a knife than with a fork or a spoon.
Rosner: I’m either too tired, or that is a ridiculous statement.
Jacobsen: Okay.
Rosner: No, it’s completely true that if you took a list through the history of knife deaths versus spoon deaths, the ratio has to be well over 1,000 to 1.
Jacobsen: That’s like calling a candle a rounded knob of murder.
Rosner: And the candle is scented peach.
Jacobsen: It doesn’t make that much sense. It doesn’t fit.
Rosner: I don’t know. A spoon may be the easiest way to kill with a spoon — or at least maim — to scoop somebody’s eye out.
Jacobsen: You won’t scoop someone’s eye out, Rick. You’re not Jackie Chan.
Rosner: No, but I’m saying that the spoon is a terrible murder weapon. I guess you could stab with it. You could jam it into somebody’s mouth, and then you could hit the handle with the heel of your hand and jam it into the back of their throat, which would — I don’t know if it would kill them, but it would certainly injure them. One way to give someone a lobotomy is to use a little spoon-like tool and go over the top of the eye.
Jacobsen: Yes, they call it trepanation.
Rosner: Yeah, well, it’s a kind of trepanation. Trepanation is drilling a hole in the skull to let the evil spirits out or remove clotted blood if you have a fall. But through the back of the eye, eye orbit, and you poke a hole through that thing, and then, you jam your little spoon in there and scramble the frontal lobe.
Jacobsen: That’s a lobotomy.
Rosner: Is it a serrated tip of the spoon, or just a rounded spoon tip?
Jacobsen: Say again?
Rosner: Is it like a serrated tip of the spoon, so it’s a serrated spoon of death, or what?
Jacobsen: For the lobotomy?
Rosner: I’m sure it’s a specialized little thing that probably looks like a tiny scooping tool on the end, like the world’s longest Coke spoon, but I don’t know.
Jacobsen: Why did you want to talk about a serrated instrument of death?
Rosner: Well, I didn’t want to. I just wanted to do a brief topic here about how badass I am, eating fruit off a knife.
Jacobsen: I know your place. You have a worn-out Oral-B toothbrush on that desk, and that serrated instrument of death does not fit.
Rosner: So, yeah, I do have an Oral-B. I’ve got a Waterpik that I’ve had for probably four years, and I’ve never bothered to set it up, so I don’t know what that says. I’ve also, you know, my flossing. Well, I used to drive around. See, Oral-B has probably been bad for my oral hygiene because I used to drive around with just a regular manual toothbrush in my car, and I’d always brush my teeth while driving. But once I got the Oral-B, you know, I moved away from manual toothbrushes, and so now I don’t brush my teeth while driving, which is probably a good idea because since COVID, people’s driving has deteriorated.
Jacobsen: The toothbrush saved a life.
Rosner: Yeah, so, you know, I think if you get in a car wreck with a toothbrush in your mouth, the toothbrush might become a bristly instrument of death, and we could probably conclude this here.
Jacobsen: No, I won’t pick up on the serrated instrument of death because I am half asleep, and that’s hilarious. Have you ever had these conversations with Lance or JD?
Rosner: Yeah, I mean, kind of? I don’t know. You know, sometimes I’ll try to bring in a goofy topic. Mostly when I go goofy, it’s usually some sexual or scatological anecdote, you know, like that under Trump I sharted several times. I got very poopy, and, you know, my bowels were in an uproar, so I sharted once at the gym and managed to clean myself up without mishap, and I sharted the bed twice, which was a little more dire. So, you know, that’s the nature of, like, that, or, like, you know, the first porno I ever saw was a topless lady playing cards when I was nine years old that another kid brought to school. You know, stuff like that.
Jacobsen: What would you consider the best utensil ever made?
Rosner: So, you know, the screw and screwdriver are pretty great. You know, if you read about screws, they will tell you that they are an inclined plane wrapped around, you know, kind of wrapped into, made into a swirly thing. So, you know, when you screw in a screw, you’re working it in at an angle, but the final product is resistant to forces that want to pull it apart. A screw is stronger for pull-apart forces than the force it took to screw it in because you’re using that sloped leverage to work it in there.
Jacobsen: I don’t know. So screws are pretty good, but only good in the modern world because until, I don’t know, probably 150 years ago, screws had to be handmade. They couldn’t be machined. Somebody had to sit there with a file and make the screw shape. And that, like a screw from the 1700s, was a precious and labour-intensive thing.
Rosner: Sounds like sheer torture.
Jacobsen: Yeah. So before you could machine screws, I guess nails would be up there in terms of hammer plus nails. Before that, you had pegs, which make for elegant construction but are way too big and painful.
Rosner: I don’t know. What is the best instrument or implement ever created or invented?
Jacobsen: I don’t know. The serrated instrument of death has got to be up there. I would argue that only a few often exist — fork, spoon, fork, knife.
Rosner: 100%. I’m with Seinfeld on that one. And if you want to get more complicated, the smartphone is ridiculous. It’s transformed the world much more than the fork, maybe even more than the screw. The screw holds things together really well, but there’s a bunch of other ways to hold things together. So the screw has to take its place in the lineup of things that hold stuff together. But the smartphone is transformative.
Jacobsen: I don’t think the world changed that much when people became able to mass-manufacture screws. The pen and paper or whatever you’re writing on, papyrus or vellum or whatever, being able to write things down, ranks up there. You can make a permanent record, so you don’t have to keep some stuff in your head.
Rosner: So you could say that writing and the instruments of writing are hugely important.
Jacobsen: Do you want to wrap it up? Go ahead. Who’s the smartest person you’ve ever met?
Rosner: In practical terms, well, Chris Cole is very smart. But in terms of having smartness that kicked my ass daily, it’s Kimmel. Because he’s the boss that is too smart for your good, your stuff always has to be like, he can see through any of your bullshit and has exacting standards that he can live up to if he had enough hours in the day. You’re trying to give him — so yeah, Kimmel. And have I met — I don’t think I’ve ever met a Feynman. Somebody whose insight into the physical world is just super likely to be — you give him five minutes, and he’ll come up with a pretty reasonable analysis of just about anything. Feynman had a standing bet that you could give him any situation with a numerical solution, and he could get within 10% of the exact answer within five minutes. You could come up to him and say, the number of trees in the world, go. And he, in five minutes, could give you a number that would probably align with what somebody who knows the field of trees might be able to knock together in a couple of hours.
Jacobsen: Maybe that’s a bad example because that’s just guessing the number of trees. I don’t know. Here’s another one. Terminal velocity for a person thrown out of an airplane. He could probably come up with that answer within 10%, within just a few minutes. I don’t know if I’ve ever hung out with somebody like that. How about you? You’ve talked to all these high-IQ people.
Rosner: I’m not going to answer that question. You might be the smartest person I’ve ever met because you won’t answer that question. It’s an unreasonable question, and in a way, it’s wiser not to answer.
Jacobsen: Okay. I’d throw Corolla in there with Kimmel because their ability to think on their feet is quite similar. But Corolla went, you know, he’s still smart and entertaining, but his instrument kind of gut is now used in service of, I don’t know, he’s toting the libertarian barge.
Rosner: How long has he been toting it?
Jacobsen: Oh, for over a decade now. And then he got, you know, entangled with guys like Prager, which is, you know, I’ve never listened to Corolla and Prager together. Listening to Prager on his own, I found him to be just like a ponderous, pompous windbag and increasingly just a propagandist for right-wing nonsense. I don’t know whether Corolla can make Prager less of an a-hole to listen to. But I suspect Corolla’s entertainment and insight value is somewhat degraded when hanging with Prager.
Rosner: I don’t know. Should we wrap it up and look at it tomorrow?
Jacobsen: You woke me up because I was nodding off there.
Rosner: Okay, yeah, well, let’s do that.
Jacobsen: All right, I’ll talk to you tomorrow.
Rosner: Thank you.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/05/10
[Recording Start]
Rick Rosner: Okay, we will discuss population dynamics and energy consumption.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Do you want to start with population or energy?
Rosner: Well, I am just going to start with how I came upon it. I just read an article that people have been saying for a while because it’s true that a quarter of the world’s nations have shrinking populations. Today, I saw that by 2080, three-quarters of the world’s nations will have shrinking populations, with every continent except Africa experiencing declining populations. Demographics experts keep revising forward when Earth will achieve peak population. They used to say 11 billion by the year 2100, then it was 10 point something billion in 2080, and according to this most recent article, we’relooking at a peak population of 9.5 billion around 2061. So what’s going on?
Jacobsen: So people are having fewer babies per capita. Why?
Rosner: Various people will say different things, depending on their agenda. In developed countries, people might be despairing about the future. The U.S. has pretty high suicide rates, and that probably goes along with if you don’t want yourself to live; you don’t want to bring other people into the world. Also, people are putting off having kids because people live longer and are healthier longer. In the olden days, in my mom’s generation, on average in America, women had their last kid at age 26. Things moved faster; people got married earlier. Things are more stretched out through our lifespans now, and there’s more stuff to do besides hook up. I think one reason that people have less sex is that there are other forms of entertainment.
Jacobsen: What are the most prominent forms of entertainment slowing this down?
Rosner: Well, in the 70s, when I was a kid, there was not much entertainment. Three networks. The T.V. sucked. There were some great movies, but you could only go to so many movies. Now you can stay home and watch endless stuff like video games; the industry is more significant than T.V. or movies. There’s pornography, and if people can get sexual satisfaction without having to go to the trouble of making themselves presentable to the opposite sex, they may give up on hooking up. It’s the incel thing. Involuntary celibates. Guys who have just given up on trying to get girlfriends.
Jacobsen: The term involuntary is a misnomer because they have made the choice. They think, “I suck,” or “women suck,” or whatever. Guys can go either way or both ways in terms of whether they get down on themselves or down on women, but in any case, the upshot is that they quit trying and withdraw themselves from the reproductive market. Now, is this permanent, or do you think it’s temporary?
Rosner: For most cases, it might be permanent. Also, there are economic pressures because, until the 80s, each generation did better than the previous generations in America. We know that middle-class income has been, at best, flat, adjusted for inflation for the past 50 years. Yeah, we don’t have rising incomes. That’s another discouraging factor if youcan’t afford a nice place to live or build a life with somebody, which reduces reproduction.
Jacobsen: There are well-established, well-known factors in declining birth rates, and the most notable might be that in developing countries with high infant mortality, people have more kids because many of their kids die before reaching adulthood, and they want to have some kids who survive. So, if you live in a poor country with bad conditions, you might have four, five, or six kids and expect two or three to live to adulthood.
Rosner: This might reflect the low reproduction and high investment in more well-off societies.
Jacobsen: Yeah, also, people are more selfish now. They may not want to share their lives with a ton of kids. This house was built in 1966 during the Brady Bunch era — five tiny bedrooms. The idea was that a family with four or five kids would move here, and everybody would live in tight circumstances. People don’t want to live like that anymore in America. Maybe some people do. There are some movements where they’re pushed, including by Elon Musk, who says we have to have more babies. But there was the entire quiver movement of about ten years ago that said you want to make a ton of babies for Jesus, so there are more white Christians than other people, just like looking at reproduction as a demographic race war kind of nonsense.
Rosner: Quiverful is a Christian theological position that sees large families as a blessing from God. It encourages procreation, abstaining from all forms of birth control, natural family planning, and sterilization reversal. That’s from Wikipedia. The movement derives its name from Psalm 127, 3 to 5, where many children are metaphorically referred to as arrows in a full quiver;. However, a bow with arrows is typically seen as an object of war, it might be part of the culture.
Jacobsen: Well, I’m sure this quiverful thing, to the extent that it exists today, and it probably does, probably goes hand in hand with many other creepy agendas. So, we’re talking about statistics, the facts, and the figures.
Rosner: Yeah, so people are having fewer babies. It might be because they’re…
Jacobsen: Well, people are having fewer babies. There are reasons why. There are statistical trends.
Rosner: What about the non-tangible moralisms people throw around? People aren’t growing up anymore, and people are entitled, so they don’t want to share their lives with more kids and things like that. What do you think of those objections to these trends? Or justifications for these trends?
Jacobsen: No, those would be objections to these trends.
Rosner: Oh, you mean curmudgeons saying, “Forget you people, you’re not having enough babies. You’re being selfish”?
Jacobsen: So you could have some from the quiverful movement saying, “You aren’t having enough children. That is selfish.” A white Christian is saying this to other white people. Individuals can say, “Look at how people started families earlier and then built a life together, rather than building a life and then getting together.” Then the moralism being, “You’re not growing up.”
Rosner: So, there are lots of possible reasons, and I’m sure people are studying them, but the upshot is that people all over the world are having fewer babies per capita. The replacement rate is about 2.3 kids per woman, right? Because guys can’thave babies, the women have to have all the babies. They need to, if you look at it as people coupling up, every woman in a couple, with every person being coupled up, has to make at least two babies to replace them after they die.
Jacobsen: What if a woman thinks, “I’ll replace myself but not my husband”?
Rosner: Well, in any case, the U.S. currently has a per capita, per woman baby rate of 1.6, which is at least 20% below the replacement rate. This seems to be a pretty durable trend. You could say that the anti-abortion people, well, they’restrict; you don’t hear sophisticated arguments from the pro-life people. They’re just saying that as soon as the egg hits the sperm, that is a human that can’t be killed. They’re pretty absolute about that.
Jacobsen: But there is a more sophisticated argument that says we should limit abortion so people are forced to have more babies to keep our population up. I think that’s also a garbage argument, but Elon Musk, as I said, and other lunatics are saying we have to keep populations growing. And there is an argument to be made for that. As they’re currently understood and run, economies benefit from population growth: more consumers and workers.
Rosner: But we’ll have to figure out how to make economies that work with declining populations. I mean, it’s a problem.In some places, it’s been going on longer than in other areas, like Japan, which has a ton of older adults relative to retired people who often need medical care and nursing care, compared to young people. In a growing population, you’d have more young people to do payroll deductions, support social security, and work in nursing homes. When social security was created in the U.S., the average lifespan after retirement was just a few years. The average lifespan was low, under 65, maybe barely 65. So, many people didn’t even get to the age where they could claim social security benefits. And a ton of people were working, contributing to social security. Three, four, and five people were working for retired people and drawing social security. In Japan, that’s upside down. There aren’t enough people to care for all older people who need care, and there’s not enough money to care for them. Japan has been trying to automate senior care, and we will see some of that.
Jacobsen: But anyway, the general principle is we will have to figure out how to make economies run with a declining population. It doesn’t seem impossible, especially with technology replacing much labour with automation.
Rosner: And then there’s one more thing to discuss, which is, I looked at a chart of per capita carbon footprint in America, historically, and since 1970, the amount of energy used by each American has declined by 40 percent, which makes sense because, growing up, my family drove a Vista Cruiser station wagon, a massive boat of a car that got nine miles per gallon. Now, I’d say the average U.S. car gets upwards of 25 miles a gallon. Legislation will require the average miles per gallon across all American cars to increase above 30 miles per gallon by 2030. So we’re burning less in our cars, and many other things are more energy efficient. Some of that is market-driven, and some of it is government-directed. If per capita energy consumption drops by about one percent a year, and the population drops under a one percent increase per year within the next 15 years, which is what we’re looking at, because we’re going to go to zero percent increases in world population by 2061. Then we’ll go negative, even without extreme intervention to stop climate change; due to existing trends, the overall energy consumption on Earth might peak in the early 2050s.
Jacobsen: What about that trend? So, is the trend of extrapolation going from 2100 to 2080 to 2061?
Rosner: Yeah, I feel like, in the future, it will probably be sooner than 2061. It can’t be any sooner than 2025 because we live in 2024, so there’s a limit to how much closer it can get. But I could see that number going from a peak population of 9.5 billion in 2061 to, no, we’ve revised it, and people are making even fewer babies than we thought. We’re going to say 9.3 billion, 9.2 billion in 2057.
Jacobsen: What about the general trend of women being more educated and empowered? Typically, the more rights women have implemented, the slower the population grows. They have economic independence and education; they don’thave to depend on men regarding their income. There are trends along that as well, where you see a rise in IVF pregnancies at about the age of 40, where these women traditionally would be having their children in their 20s, maybe their 30s.
Rosner: Yeah.
Jacobsen: So how does that play into this general trend?
Rosner: Well, in general, you’re talking about empowerment via education for women.
Jacobsen: And employment.
Rosner: And employment. But at universities across America, and I guess the world, you’re the expert on this; women by far outnumber men.
Jacobsen: Most of the developed countries, yes.
Rosner: In most areas. Sometimes it’s like 60–40. Three women in a university for every man. So that’s positive empowerment. There’s also negative empowerment via social media. Social media makes you selfish because you get a personalized information feed 24–7. When you’re caught up in your world of a personal bubble of information, that may work against people coupling up and may raise people’s expectations. The autism rate has gone from no autistic people because we didn’t even know about autism.
Jacobsen: Do you think you’re on the spectrum?
Rosner: Yeah. But I missed the diagnosis when I was a kid.
Jacobsen: How far do you think you’re on the spectrum?
Rosner: Not that far. But possibly further, at certain times in my life, because I worked in bars for 25 years, greeting people is a social skill.
Jacobsen: It’s a very superficial social skill.
Rosner: Yeah, but still, that’s how a lot of autistic people who are socially fluid manage. They learn superficial social skills. I met the mayor of Burbank who identifies as autistic, and I’m like, dude, how do you manage? You seem pretty gregarious. And he says it’s all fake. It’s all mirroring. And I go home, and I’m reticent. In a given day, superficial, brief social interactions will be 90% of your interactions. Greeting people in bars takes care of a lot of it. Also, working in a writer’s room for a dozen years that’s like being in a rock tumbler. You’re going to get many edges knocked off. I’m still not as fluid as people who have inverse autism, people who are too socially fluid — the super schmoozy people in Hollywood.
Jacobsen: Knowing what to say and when to say it.
Rosner: Yeah, to the extent, I mean, because autistic people have social problems. People who have the opposite of autism have different social issues, like being sexual predators. And I have known people like that.
Jacobsen: I hypothesize that autism spectrum disorders and the like are a failure of a complete formation of a self.
Rosner: Yeah, not having autism is like the icing on the cake. You build all the layers and chunks, and then the social fluidity is like blending all these so that you can work fluidly in society. That’s one of the most demanding mental tasks you can have, which is understanding human interactions. If a glitch doesn’t form, you have a full spectrum of emotions, but you’re not implementing them effectively around other people. Autism has gone from not even a thing we knew existed to one kid in 166, and I think currently, more than one kid out of 100 is on the spectrum. You could also argue that not only is there increased awareness, but everybody being in their personal information bubble works against developing social fluidity.
Jacobsen: There is a colleague I know who is a neuroscientist. We were talking about autism spectrum disorders, and she commented that if you look at the neurons themselves in people who have these disorders, they look exactly like immature brain cells. So, the brain cells in people with these disorders have not matured. So, this is a structural and microstructural analog to what we see in behaviour.
Rosner: So that makes sense because what you see in a brain that’s maturing is the die-off of dendrites by the trillions, quadrillions, I don’t know. A baby is born with a highly wired-brain, right? Then, as the baby acquires experience and learns how to decipher the world, the helpful brain pathways are reinforced, and the unhelpful connections die off. The dendrites die off. If that’s not happening, if you’re not making sense of the world, then you’re tripping balls in chaos because you’re too highly connected. I buy that argument. It may be why we see there are more ways for things to go wrong and for people to be dysfunctional regarding brain wiring than not. This may explain why there’s a myth that people on the spectrum are highly functional, have high I.Q., and have high intelligence. This is a myth because most are below average and dysfunctional. When you get the hyper-functional ones, they’re the exception.
Jacobsen: People also say that about autism, that it is a defect in sensory processing. If your brain hasn’t matured so that you can make sense of what your senses are telling you, that can be autism. The trend now is that people are more in their bubbles. More forces work against people coupling up and reproducing than there used to be. You could say that’s a sad thing, but you can also say that it may save the world. That same article, I think, no, a different article said that stabilizing and then declining population may get us one-quarter of the way to solving climate change.
Rosner: I would argue that just regular market forces making things more efficient plus regular government forces saying, “You got to make your cars cleaner,” will handle another massive chunk of it. Then, there are extraordinary trends that haven’t fully flowered yet. For example, we’re still in the early days of telecommuting, of people just staying home because you can and can still do your job. I’ve probably mentioned teledildonics way too much, which is a sex apparatus that appeals to the sense of touch. Porn is primarily visual and a little bit auditory, but people work on technology. It’s a widely used technology, this Fleshlight thing. I don’t know what percent of the population has it, but it’s a thing that looks like a flashlight, but it’s a silicon vagina that you use. That’s fundamental technology. High technology may make remote sexual interaction possible. You can have sex with somebody who’s not in the room with you via teledildonics.
Jacobsen: So that’s one thing, and high technology will make sex robots that are maybe less creepy, maybe more acceptable. They did a survey. I don’t know who they are, but 80% of guys said they would be okay with being with a sophisticated sex robot, somebody who could have reasonable conversations with them. That’s still, I don’t know, 20 years away, 15 years away, depending on how open-minded you are about your sex robots. But there are extraordinary trends that haven’t kicked in yet. The upshot of all this is that I’m more optimistic now, having read that article and looked at other articles about per capita energy consumption, that these trends may save us. But we’ve got a rough few decades ahead because even when humanity’s carbon or aggregate fuel consumption hits peak energy consumption, we’ll keep doing damage.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen (Edited by Simon Parcher)
Publication (Outlet/Website): Humanist Perspectives
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/03
EDITED BY SIMON PARCHER
The road to peace starts with knowing and fearing the ravages of war.
Russian aggression in Ukraine that has destroyed whole cities and killed thousands of innocent citizens is of deep concern to citizens in the western world. Humanists now have the opportunity to help fund a colleague who has committed to documenting the Russo-Ukrainian war. Canadian Scott Jacobsen’s goal is to produce an open-source, freely downloadable account of the war through a series of interviews and articles. Here is some background to Scott’s endeavors.
Scott proposes to the Canadian humanist community: He asks you to help fund a Canadian humanist journalist for a second journey to a war zone. “I’m heading back to Ukraine and need some financial support.”
To contribute financially, go to: https://humanistperspectives.org/donate/#gsc.tab=0and leave a note when filling in the details that your donation is in support of Scott Jacobsen’s trip to Ukraine. A tax receipt will be provided.
Driven by individual humanist convictions, Scott traveled to Ukrainian territory between November 22 and December 6, 2023. He accepted an offer to join a humanist war correspondent in documenting the war triggered by the Russian Federation’s aggression against Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
Scott says, “I understand the relevant risks to life and well-being by traveling to Ukraine, with the potential to come back maimed or in a body bag.” As was recently stated by Edem Wosornu, Director of Operations and Advocacy at the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs,
“Ukraine is currently enduring some of the worst attacks since the start of this war… No region of Ukraine has been spared by this war… wave after massive wave of attacks continue to kill and injure civilians and cause widespread damage and destruction to critical civilian infrastructure.”
At the time of his first trip, Scott worked seven days a week at an equestrian facility, making time off difficult. Needing surgery, he combined his recovery time with this crucial journey, traveling to six Ukrainian cities during the war. He went straight from surgery to the airport.
Click here to see selected images from November 22,2023 to December 6, 2023 of the Russo-Ukrainian War. War is hell. And I have seen it.
The original idea to travel to Ukraine came from Remus Cernea, the former President of the Green Party in Romania and the Founder/Co-Founder of the Romanian humanist movement, after meeting at the World Congress and General Assembly 2023 of Humanists International. Cernea was a keynote speaker alongside Oleksandra Romantsova, the Executive Director of the Nobel Peace Prize winning Center for Civil Liberties, they are the first and only organization or individuals, in Ukraine, to win the Nobel Peace Prize, in 2022.
Remus Cernea, “War is Hell”, Keynote Speech, Humanists International World Congress 2023
Scott requested interviews with Remus and Oleksandra during the conference, after having been impressed by the presentations and their personalities. Thankfully, both accepted and so began the journey through the war in Ukraine. They did interviews, pretty much on the spot. Those interviews became part of a promise to continue working on the war until its cessation. Presently, they are constructing a repository of voices from human rights defenders, humanists, civilians, and the like, on the war, alongside individuals and articles written on the Russo-Ukrainian war.
What is the case for travelling to a foreign country like Ukraine, especially travelling far from one of the safest countries in the world, Canada? It seems like a bit of a head trip to go out into this area of the world during an active war, full-invasion or, what has euphemistically been continually labelled a ‘special military operation” by Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin.
The odd thing for Scott about war correspondence traipsing and travel in general is… he hates it! He says, “I am a home body. It’s one of the most distasteful things imaginable to me – worse than a trip to the dentist! I like basic routines, but I, like Remus, feel the need to go out and simply do the work.” Nevertheless, Scott points out that Roman Emperor and philosopher Aurelius reminds us, “Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.”
Cernea repeatedly said to Scott, “I do not want to be here, but I feel I have to be here.” It’s neither lofty nor august. Scott explains, “This is quite straightforward. Most people are too afraid to travel to a war. If you can, though, at least offer support in some manner as an independent journalist, then assist others in that way. Which is to say, I am a dealer in narratives. I have to go and get the stories. Remus is a politician and a war correspondent with Newsweek Romania. He feels the same way and deals in human tales and human affairs.”
In this, his second trip to Ukraine to cover the war, Scott will be a war correspondent for Humanist Perspectives (HP) Magazine. The magazine will support him financially with donations received from Canadian and other readers. In return, Scott will write special reports and articles for your interest, in HP. Financial support in this independent journalistic endeavor will be greatly appreciated.
To contribute financially, go to: https://humanistperspectives.org/donate/#gsc.tab=0 and leave a note when filling in the details that your donation is in support of Scott Jacobsen’s trip to Ukraine. A tax receipt will be provided.
Scott’s aim is to travel to Ukraine again this year for a couple to a few weeks. Please take this article as an encouragement to reach out to correspond with Scott to recommend interviewees, sources, und so weiter.
Scott’s research and reporting promises to be more objective than most as they will be from the perspective of a humanist journalist. Although, he does not necessarily believe in the idea of a completely objective journalist. Even with the most careful and prudent of word-crafting, we have word count limitations. We have time limits. We have interest limits. We have psychological temperaments, profiles, cognitive abilities, language barriers, and the like. However, Scott says he can affirm the relatively true notion of objective language used by a journalist.
It’s simply the nature of being a person, and writing for different publications. Chomsky was right, in many regards, about the media. He argued that since mainstream media outlets are currently either large corporations or part of conglomerates, the information presented to the public will be biased with respect to these interests. Some are benignly true, though, generally speaking.
When we talk about the word count in a publication, say a news article, that’s concision in action. You have to make the point, punchily. It limits extended thought and deeper analysis. This limitation further stifles the possibility of objectivity because some points must be included, and others must be excluded, based on the judgment of the individual journalist. It forces you to make your points briefly and summarily.
Ironically, more depth has this counterintuitive duality: It allows better approximation of objectivity through more inclusion of data, if not propaganda, while better approximating the subjective impressions and judgments of the journalist since it’s more deeply crafted by the mind of the reporter. It’s both more objective and more subjective if done well – which is weird, but rarely stated in objective language, and always incorporative of the subjective impressions and judgments of the journalist (read: their prejudices of mind and valence).
Scott feels that he is lucky to have various outlets for his publications as this allows him to write at length and with a decent amount of editorial freedom. The key goal here with the live war environment is to create a repository. This includes a necessary element of reportage from the bombed sites, from the war zone – the country, to get human rights experts, to get other perspectives relevant to the involved concerned, and then compile in an online resource and then, eventually, a book project. It bypasses the limitations of “concision” and creates an online resource for interested parties through time.
Scott says, “I am no different coming to a war context as a Stray Canadian (™). My subjective impressions and individual judgment will bias the production of material, selection of interviewees, length and depth of material, frame, and the like. While, as with most journalists, I will work to report the facts accurately. So, my eternal mainstay seems like a fundamental anti-religious psychology: Not “Believe me,” but “do not believe me”; do not have faith in me, be skeptical of me, I want to encourage critical thought most in and about me, and derivatively in that which I report: find out for yourself. I’ll be, generally speaking, grateful for the correction, if any.”
To contribute financially, go to: https://humanistperspectives.org/donate/#gsc.tab=0and leave a note when filling in the details that your donation is in support of Scott Jacobsen’s trip to Ukraine. A tax receipt will be provided.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/08
One of the apparent items coming from a place with a minor majority or a significant minority, maybe now, population within the township as fundamentalist Christian is pseudo-mental illness popping out of behaviours and activist areas of focus. It is not a mental illness, but it has the characterization of it: Disconnection from the senses and the world.
One of those happenings is colloquially in sociopolitical parlance termed “Pro-Life,” which is public relations detached from science. If they mean rights of the ‘unborn’ or the fetus over the mother, then, for the first few months of the pregnancy, they mean rights of that without any prior conscious history or critical brain activity.
Sincere religious believers in the community do not take things this way. They believe God’s transcendental ethic is being violated in some manner. Pro-Life is more ‘pro-life’ because it is a marketing term intended to deter from “anti-abortion.” It sounds better. So, kudos! Because that is the point. It is to be against Abortion as a reproductive right. If it is taken as a scientific idea, it is wrong.
In the United States, these typically come from conservative and religious sectors of society. Those sections of societal organization deal more with supernaturalism, where some essentialist element attaches to the concept of personhood. A soul has a supernatural will, or this soul starts at the moment of conception.
The religious communities have had elevated views of women for the 1st century. It is the 21st now, so we might want to ramp up the empirical evidence and moral arguments away from failed philosophies: theologies. When they could not meet the challenge of their contemporary period, they froze into unquestioned leaders and unquestionable ideas — dogmas. They are known colloquially as fundamentalists now.
A fetus is seen to have more rights than women in the choice to terminate the pregnancy or not because women have a low status in many religious communities compared to men. How? Most holy figures and leaders are men. In the States, they want to charge women who get an abortion with murder. Women are rarely high-ranking leaders in religious groups.
Women are crucially valued in the form of reproduction of new believers, tacitly, within religious communities. They birth them and are nearly solely burdened with raising them. Why do some Christians fear Islamic birth rates as if some homogenous mass of evil oozing into Christian majority countries or what are seen as Christian countries?
It is part of an effort to frame a nation as a Christian country in educational institutions or to stoke fear of the current big boogeyman, Muslims, that, in turn, facilitates group solidarity, but in an unhealthy way. Why is Mary, as the virgin and as the mother, revered over other roles possible for women?
So, ‘Pro-Life’ or anti-abortion comes out of an incorrect view of nature and how the world works. It looks at the world in terms of blessings and cursings rather than fields and forces in Creation and Created instead of environmental pressures, resource scarcity, and speciation.
One area of fact misunderstanding is biological sciences. It arises in the case of, for all intents and purposes, non-conscious, undeveloped, and puny agglomerations of cells and the termination of this tissue in favour of the life and interests of the host, the mother. The idea is that a soul exists at the moment of conception in one frame. This supernaturalism is the core issue before us.
Alternatively, the issue of ideation has to do with moral law, God’s law, divine Providence, and the giving and taking of life by the Creator, God. These would typically be referred to as Divine Command ethics. God commands something to be right or wrong, so these items are right or wrong. What about the inerrancy of Scripture, God’s nature, holy figures, and the like?
That is derivative, in a sense, as the idea is to move from first principles after making this baseless, though parsimonious, assumption. It is a transcendentalist formulation of this idea: Mom or Dad said so. Abstract this to a creature with infinities of human capacities. You have unmasked Divine Command theory as a “wish it were so” ideational trance ethic. The only other game in town, indeed, is human rights. As I noted in On Israel-Palestine: 2019–2021, human rights, being used by everyone and larger legitimate institutions, including the UN, and representative of every country, are both international, in the sense above, as well as secular.
International because other games are geographic spheres of influential or parochial geography bound by ideology, not necessarily solely focused on ethics, but, instead, come from a rather large set of premises grounded, fundamentally, in the attribution to the asserted immaterial, transcendent, supernatural, and extraphysical. Secular due to the detachment from religious foundations, but respect for all faiths and no faith derivative of consideration in the universalisms.
Simplicity would argue for separating these religious multiplexes to ascribe mutual commonality of the species, at a minimum, in terms of defining personhood as a human and, thereby, bearing rights in their personhood; it is a start. It will change. However, that is a 21st-century formulation still being explored and worked out as we discover more about human nature’s engineering marvels or workings.
On the issues of international secular human rights, it is stated by Human Rights Watch, “Abortion is a highly emotional subject and one that excites deeply held opinions. However, equitable access to safe abortion services is, first and foremost, a human right. Where Abortion is safe and legal, no one is forced to have one. Where Abortion is illegal and unsafe, women are forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term or suffer serious health consequences and even death. Approximately 13 percent of maternal deaths worldwide are attributable to unsafe Abortion — between 68,000 and 78,000 deaths annually.”
The Roman Catholic Church takes a different view. To quote Fr. William Saunders in the words of the Church, “Human life is sacred because from its beginning it involves the creative action of God, and it remains forever in a special relationship with the Creator, who is its sole end. God alone is the Lord of life from its beginning until its end: no one can under any circumstance claim for himself the right directly to destroy an innocent human being.”
No reference to the woman’s autonomy, to health and safety of the woman, to socio-economic factors playing a role for women, the potential of the most recent latter for the life quality of the child, about the lack of consciousness or a prior mental history in the fetus, about cases of rape or incent, or about the equality of the woman: This is the problem.
What about individual choice? What about the woman’s health and well-being when she, in coordination with a medical professional, decides whether a course of action is best for her health? What about human rights and reproductive rights? Isn’t the woman’s life a life and deserving of someone being “pro-” for her? Perhaps the mystery in this Pro-Choice and Pro-Life debate’ sits around the politicization of women’s bodies by religious conservatives, which is another form of dehumanization of a woman’s body akin to throwing men’s bodies at the war machine.
The myth in all these theological debates framed as political is an incorrect idea about the engineering of human nature via evolution by natural selective pressures and forces and the universalist facet of absolute, which is to state “inevitable” ethics in the universe. The claim to a Godhead as the base of ethical reasoning truly comes from the assertion of the objectivity of ethics.
“Relative!” yell hedonists. “Intersubjective!” screams humanists. “Universal,” whisper human rights lawyers. The truth is all four. Many debates with theists come down to the equivalent of Nazi commentaries and comparisons of interlocutors on YouTube or similar platforms with the claims about rapists, pedophiles, and incest, as objectively wrong. However, the freethinker has no basis for this. It is relatively straightforward. No one pauses in debates because scoring points seems more critical.
Take the idea of the boiling point of water; it is an objective fact, observable, empirical, and repeatable. It is relative, too. The objective fact is that water’s boiling point(s) depends on an elevation on Earth. So, where someone is in space-time or time-space determines the subjective experience, as each is individual. However, the objective point of fact is the boiling point at each point of a worldline; those subjectivities on space-time experience, individually or subjectively, the objective nature of boiling water, even at different elevations, have different points for the boil to occur. These subjectivities inter-relate to formulate a broader sense of an objective, relative, intersubjective ethos for morality.
The idea of Abortion is complex because of the morass of confusion from religious supernaturalism, for one, and the conceptualization of personhood, for two, and the inertia of dehumanizing women’s bodies, for three, and wrenching torsion between special privileges desired by particularist moralities in conflict with universalist ethical systems. When I initially spoke to the need for Canadians to make up their mind about a human rights ethic or a transcendentalist ethic, that is an open debate, as with the reproductive rights debate.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/09
Adventagious: Little by lottle, my bottled bitter bound down riverran two riverruining; picked up and a down lock, a cork! Boat! Nay, heir.
See “Skycrack, Thunderdplumb.”
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/09
Skycrack, thunderdplumb: Mare adriaticum, a sensible Savall five stage all; give it time, may bee, 80, years of honey; a whole ol’ viol.
See “Adventagious.”
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/05
Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited as well as many other books and ebooks about topics in psychology, relationships, philosophy, economics, international affairs, and award-winning short fiction. He is former Visiting Professor of Psychology, Southern Federal University, Rostov-on-Don, Russia and on the faculty of CIAPS (Commonwealth Institute for Advanced and Professional Studies). He is a columnist in Brussels Morning, was the Editor-in-Chief of Global Politician, and served as a columnist for Central Europe Review, PopMatters, eBookWeb, and Bellaonline, and as a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent. He was the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory and Suite101. His YouTube channels garnered 80,000,000 views and 405,000 subscribers. Visit Sam’s Web site: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: When did the first human-machine interactions truly begin in modern history insofar as we take technology now?
Dr. Sam Vaknin: When a man (or a woman) picked up a stone and threw it at a scavenger.
Jacobsen: How have technologies influenced the psycho-social makeup of human beings?
Vaknin: Technology fostered the delusion that every problem has a solution and the hubris that attends upon proving this contention somewhat true. We have learned to internalize technologies and render them our extensions, driving us deeper into fantastic paracosms, replete with populations of internal objects that represent cohorts of external devices and systems. We became dependent on technology and this dependency emerged as our default mode, leading us to prefer machines to other humans.
Jacobsen: These technologies, especially contemporary ones, come out of smart people working hard. How are they, in a way, extensions of ourselves based on those smart people’s understanding of some principle and then applying this to ergonomic design?
Vaknin: These “smart people” are not representative of humanity, not even remotely. They are a self-selecting sample of schizoid, mostly white, mostly men. I am not sure why you limited your question to the least important and most neglected aspect of technology: ergonomic design, dictated by the very structure and functioning of the human body. There are other, much more crucial aspects of technology that reflect the specific mental health pathologies, idiosyncrasies, and eccentricities, of engineers, coders, and entrepreneurs – rather than any aspect or dimension of being human.
Jacobsen: How are military applications showing this to be the case with drones and the like? Also, the eventual reductio ad absurdum of long-term war with all these technology innovations around autonomous war-robots seems increasingly apparent, when, in some hypothetical future, it’d be simply machines fighting machines for some geographic or resource squabble of some leaders.
Vaknin: War is increasingly more democratized (terrorism and asymmetrical warfare, anyone?). It is also more remote controlled. But its main aim is still to kill people, combatants and civilians alike. Machines will never merely fight only other contraptions. War will never be reduced to a mechanized version of chess. Men, women, and children will always die in battle as conflict becomes ever more total. The repossession of resources requires the unmitigated annihilation of their erstwhile owners.
Jacobsen: Are autocratic, theocratic, or democratic, societies, utilizing the technologies ‘interfacing’ with human beings more wisely – which one?
Vaknin: Wisdom is in the eye of the beholder. There is no difference in the efficacy of deploying technologies between various societal organizational forms. All governments and collectives – autocratic, democratic, and theocratic, even ochlocratic or anarchic – leverage technology to secure and protect the regime and to buttress the narratives that motivate people to fight, work, consume, and mate.
Jacobsen: I interviewed another smart guy, Dr. Evangelos Katsioulis, years ago. He, at that time – maybe now too, believed no limit existed to the integration between machines and humans. When will human mechanics be understood sufficiently to when, as with the ship of Theseus, human beings can function as human beings with 10%, 25%, 75% non-biological machine parts comprising their localized subjectivity and locomotion?
Vaknin: Much sooner than we think. But there will always be a Resistance: a substantial portion of the population who will remain averse to cyborg integration and as the Luddites of yesteryear will seek to forbid such chimeras and destroy them.
In some rudimentary ways, we are already integrated with machines. Can you imagine your life without your devices?
Jacobsen: How are interactions with technologies more intimately blurring the sense of self?
Vaknin: Human brains are ill-equipped to tell the difference between reality and mimicry, simulation, or fantasy. Technologies are the reifications of the latter at the expense of the former.
One of the crucial aspects of the putative “Self” or “Ego’ is reality testing. As the boundaries blur, so will our selves. We are likely to acquire a hive mind, melded with all the technologies that surround us, seamlessly slipping in and out of dream states and metaverses. The “Self’ will become the functional equivalent of our attire: changeable, disposable, replaceable.
As it is, I am an opponent of the counterfactual idea of the existence of some kernel, immutable core identity, self, or ego – see this video about IPAM, my Intrapsychic Activation Model.
Jacobsen: How are the plurality of software and hardware available vastly outstripping the capacity for ordinary people to use them all, let alone understand them? Most seem drawn merely to video games, television, cell phones, and some social media platforms. That’s about it. There’s so, so much more around now.
Vaknin: There have always been technologies for the masses as well as for niche users. Where we broke off with the past is in multitasking, the simultaneous suboptimal use of multiple devices.
Jacobsen: What is the ultimate point of human-machine ‘interfaces’? We ‘birthed’ electronic machines and information processing. What will be birthed from this union of biological mechanisms and alloyed assistants, playthings?
Vaknin: As they get more integrated by the day, the point is to empower, enhance, and expand both symbiotic partners: humans and machines alike. It is a virtuous cycle which will lead to functional specialization with both parties focused on what they do best.
Still, if humans fail to bake Asimov-like rules into their automata, the potential for conflict is there, as artificial intelligence become smore sentient and intelligent and prone to passing the Turing Test with flying colors. In short: indistinguishable from us, except with regards to its considerably more potent processing prowess.
Popular culture reflected this uncanny valley: the growing unease with android robots, first postulated by Masahiro Mori, the Japanese roboticist, in 1970.
The movie “I, Robot” is a muddled affair. It relies on shoddy pseudo-science and a general sense of unease that artificial (non-carbon based) intelligent life forms seem to provoke in us. But it goes no deeper than a comic book treatment of the important themes that it broaches. I, Robot is just another – and relatively inferior – entry is a long line of far better movies, such as “Blade Runner” and “Artificial Intelligence”.
Sigmund Freud said that we have an uncanny reaction to the inanimate. This is probably because we know that – pretensions and layers of philosophizing aside – we are nothing but recursive, self-aware, introspective, conscious machines. Special machines, no doubt, but machines all the same.
Consider the James bond movies. They constitute a decades-spanning gallery of human paranoia. Villains change: communists, neo-Nazis, media moguls. But one kind of villain is a fixture in this psychodrama, in this parade of human phobias: the machine. James Bond always finds himself confronted with hideous, vicious, malicious machines and automata.
It was precisely to counter this wave of unease, even terror, irrational but all-pervasive, that Isaac Asimov, the late Sci-fi writer (and scientist) invented the Three Laws of Robotics:
- A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
- A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
- A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.
Many have noticed the lack of consistency and, therefore, the inapplicability of these laws when considered together.
First, they are not derived from any coherent worldview or background. To be properly implemented and to avoid their interpretation in a potentially dangerous manner, the robots in which they are embedded must be equipped with reasonably comprehensive models of the physical universe and of human society.
Without such contexts, these laws soon lead to intractable paradoxes (experienced as a nervous breakdown by one of Asimov’s robots). Conflicts are ruinous in automata based on recursive functions (Turing machines), as all robots are. Godel pointed at one such self-destructive paradox in the “Principia Mathematica”, ostensibly a comprehensive and self-consistent logical system. It was enough to discredit the whole magnificent edifice constructed by Russel and Whitehead over a decade.
Some argue against this and say that robots need not be automata in the classical, Church-Turing, sense. That they could act according to heuristic, probabilistic rules of decision making. There are many other types of functions (non-recursive) that can be incorporated in a robot, they remind us.
True, but then, how can one guarantee that the robot’s behavior is fully predictable? How can one be certain that robots will fully and always implement the three laws? Only recursive systems are predictable in principle, though, at times, their complexity makes it impossible.
An immediate question springs to mind: HOW will a robot identify a human being? Surely, in a future of perfect androids, constructed of organic materials, no superficial, outer scanning will suffice. Structure and composition will not be sufficient differentiating factors.
There are two ways to settle this very practical issue: one is to endow the robot with the ability to conduct a Converse Turing Test (to separate humans from other life forms) – the other is to somehow “barcode” all the robots by implanting some remotely readable signaling device inside them (such as a RFID – Radio Frequency ID chip). Both present additional difficulties.
The second solution will prevent the robot from positively identifying humans. He will be able identify with any certainty robots and only robots (or humans with such implants). This is ignoring, for discussion’s sake, defects in manufacturing or loss of the implanted identification tags. And what if a robot were to get rid of its tag? Will this also be classified as a “defect in manufacturing”?
In any case, robots will be forced to make a binary choice. They will be compelled to classify one type of physical entities as robots – and all the others as “non-robots”. Will non-robots include monkeys and parrots? Yes, unless the manufacturers equip the robots with digital or optical or molecular representations of the human figure (masculine and feminine) in varying positions (standing, sitting, lying down). Or unless all humans are somehow tagged from birth.
These are cumbersome and repulsive solutions and not very effective ones. No dictionary of human forms and positions is likely to be complete. There will always be the odd physical posture which the robot would find impossible to match to its library. A human disk thrower or swimmer may easily be classified as “non-human” by a robot – and so might amputated invalids.
What about administering a converse Turing Test?
This is even more seriously flawed. It is possible to design a test, which robots will apply to distinguish artificial life forms from humans. But it will have to be non-intrusive and not involve overt and prolonged communication. The alternative is a protracted teletype session, with the human concealed behind a curtain, after which the robot will issue its verdict: the respondent is a human or a robot. This is unthinkable.
Moreover, the application of such a test will “humanize” the robot in many important respects. Human identify other humans because they are human, too. This is called empathy. A robot will have to be somewhat human to recognize another human being, it takes one to know one, the saying (rightly) goes.
Let us assume that by some miraculous way the problem is overcome and robots unfailingly identify humans. The next question pertains to the notion of “injury” (still in the First Law). Is it limited only to physical injury (the elimination of the physical continuity of human tissues or of the normal functioning of the human body)?
Should “injury” in the First Law encompass the no less serious mental, verbal and social injuries (after all, they are all known to have physical side effects which are, at times, no less severe than direct physical “injuries”)? Is an insult an “injury”? What about being grossly impolite, or psychologically abusive? Or offending religious sensitivities, being politically incorrect – are these injuries? The bulk of human (and, therefore, inhuman) actions actually offend one human being or another, have the potential to do so, or seem to be doing so.
Consider surgery, driving a car, or investing money in the stock exchange. These “innocuous” acts may end in a coma, an accident, or ruinous financial losses, respectively. Should a robot refuse to obey human instructions which may result in injury to the instruction-givers?
Consider a mountain climber – should a robot refuse to hand him his equipment lest he falls off a cliff in an unsuccessful bid to reach the peak? Should a robot refuse to obey human commands pertaining to the crossing of busy roads or to driving (dangerous) sports cars?
Which level of risk should trigger robotic refusal and even prophylactic intervention? At which stage of the interactive man-machine collaboration should it be activated? Should a robot refuse to fetch a ladder or a rope to someone who intends to commit suicide by hanging himself (that’s an easy one)?
Should he ignore an instruction to push his master off a cliff (definitely), help him climb the cliff (less assuredly so), drive him to the cliff (maybe so), help him get into his car in order to drive him to the cliff… Where do the responsibility and obeisance bucks stop?
Whatever the answer, one thing is clear: such a robot must be equipped with more than a rudimentary sense of judgment, with the ability to appraise and analyse complex situations, to predict the future and to base his decisions on very fuzzy algorithms (no programmer can foresee all possible circumstances). To me, such a “robot” sounds much more dangerous (and humanoid) than any recursive automaton which does NOT include the famous Three Laws.
Moreover, what, exactly, constitutes “inaction”? How can we set apart inaction from failed action or, worse, from an action which failed by design, intentionally? If a human is in danger and the robot tries to save him and fails – how could we determine to what extent it exerted itself and did everything it could?
How much of the responsibility for a robot’s inaction or partial action or failed action should be imputed to the manufacturer – and how much to the robot itself? When a robot decides finally to ignore its own programming – how are we to gain information regarding this momentous event? Outside appearances can hardly be expected to help us distinguish a rebellious robot from a lackadaisical one.
The situation gets much more complicated when we consider states of conflict.
Imagine that a robot is obliged to harm one human in order to prevent him from hurting another. The Laws are absolutely inadequate in this case. The robot should either establish an empirical hierarchy of injuries – or an empirical hierarchy of humans. Should we, as humans, rely on robots or on their manufacturers (however wise, moral and compassionate) to make this selection for us? Should we abide by their judgment which injury is the more serious and warrants an intervention?
A summary of the Asimov Laws would give us the following “truth table”:
A robot must obey human commands except if:
- Obeying them is likely to cause injury to a human, or
- Obeying them will let a human be injured.
A robot must protect its own existence with three exceptions:
- That such self-protection is injurious to a human;
- That such self-protection entails inaction in the face of potential injury to a human;
- That such self-protection results in robot insubordination (failing to obey human instructions).
Trying to create a truth table based on these conditions is the best way to demonstrate the problematic nature of Asimov’s idealized yet highly impractical world.
Here is an exercise:
Imagine a situation (consider the example below or one you make up) and then create a truth table based on the above five conditions. In such a truth table, “T” would stand for “compliance” and “F” for non-compliance.
Example:
A radioactivity monitoring robot malfunctions. If it self-destructs, its human operator might be injured. If it does not, its malfunction will equally seriously injure a patient dependent on his performance.
One of the possible solutions is, of course, to introduce gradations, a probability calculus, or a utility calculus. As they are phrased by Asimov, the rules and conditions are of a threshold, yes or no, take it or leave it nature. But if robots were to be instructed to maximize overall utility, many borderline cases would be resolved.
Still, even the introduction of heuristics, probability, and utility does not help us resolve the dilemma in the example above. Life is about inventing new rules on the fly, as we go, and as we encounter new challenges in a kaleidoscopically metamorphosing world. Robots with rigid instruction sets are ill suited to cope with that.
At the risk of going abstruse, two comments:
1. Godel’s Theorems
The work of an important, though eccentric, Czech-Austrian mathematical logician, Kurt Gödel (1906-1978) dealt with the completeness and consistency of logical systems. A passing acquaintance with his two theorems would have saved the architect a lot of time.
Gödel’s First Incompleteness Theorem states that every consistent axiomatic logical system, sufficient to express arithmetic, contains true but unprovable (“not decidable”) sentences. In certain cases (when the system is omega-consistent), both said sentences and their negation are unprovable. The system is consistent and true – but not “complete” because not all its sentences can be decided as true or false by either being proved or by being refuted.
The Second Incompleteness Theorem is even more earth-shattering. It says that no consistent formal logical system can prove its own consistency. The system may be complete – but then we are unable to show, using its axioms and inference laws, that it is consistent
In other words, a computational system can either be complete and inconsistent – or consistent and incomplete. By trying to construct a system both complete and consistent, a robotics engineer would run afoul of Gödel’s theorem.
2. Turing Machines
In 1936 an American (Alonzo Church) and a Briton (Alan M. Turing) published independently (as is often the case in science) the basics of a new branch in Mathematics (and logic): computability or recursive functions (later to be developed into Automata Theory).
The authors confined themselves to dealing with computations which involved “effective” or “mechanical” methods for finding results (which could also be expressed as solutions (values) to formulae). These methods were so called because they could, in principle, be performed by simple machines (or human-computers or human-calculators, to use Turing’s unfortunate phrases). The emphasis was on finiteness: a finite number of instructions, a finite number of symbols in each instruction, a finite number of steps to the result. This is why these methods were usable by humans without the aid of an apparatus (with the exception of pencil and paper as memory aids). Moreover: no insight or ingenuity were allowed to “interfere” or to be part of the solution seeking process.
What Church and Turing did was to construct a set of all the functions whose values could be obtained by applying effective or mechanical calculation methods. Turing went further down Church’s road and designed the “Turing Machine” – a machine which can calculate the values of all the functions whose values can be found using effective or mechanical methods. Thus, the program running the TM (=Turing Machine in the rest of this text) was really an effective or mechanical method. For the initiated readers: Church solved the decision-problem for propositional calculus and Turing proved that there is no solution to the decision problem relating to the predicate calculus. Put more simply, it is possible to “prove” the truth value (or the theorem status) of an expression in the propositional calculus – but not in the predicate calculus. Later it was shown that many functions (even in number theory itself) were not recursive, meaning that they could not be solved by a Turing Machine.
No one succeeded to prove that a function must be recursive in order to be effectively calculable. This is (as Post noted) a “working hypothesis” supported by overwhelming evidence. We don’t know of any effectively calculable function which is not recursive, by designing new TMs from existing ones we can obtain new effectively calculable functions from existing ones and TM computability stars in every attempt to understand effective calculability (or these attempts are reducible or equivalent to TM computable functions).
The Turing Machine itself, though abstract, has many “real world” features. It is a blueprint for a computing device with one “ideal” exception: its unbounded memory (the tape is infinite). Despite its hardware appearance (a read/write head which scans a two-dimensional tape inscribed with ones and zeroes, etc.) – it is really a software application, in today’s terminology. It carries out instructions, reads and writes, counts and so on. It is an automaton designed to implement an effective or mechanical method of solving functions (determining the truth value of propositions). If the transition from input to output is deterministic, we have a classical automaton – if it is determined by a table of probabilities – we have a probabilistic automaton.
With time and hype, the limitations of TMs were forgotten. No one can say that the Mind is a TM because no one can prove that it is engaged in solving only recursive functions. We can say that TMs can do whatever digital computers are doing – but not that digital computers are TMs by definition. Maybe they are – maybe they are not. We do not know enough about them and about their future.
Moreover, the demand that recursive functions be computable by an UNAIDED human seems to restrict possible equivalents. Inasmuch as computers emulate human computation (Turing did believe so when he helped construct the ACE, at the time the fastest computer in the world) – they are TMs. Functions whose values are calculated by AIDED humans with the contribution of a computer are still recursive. It is when humans are aided by other kinds of instruments that we have a problem. If we use measuring devices to determine the values of a function it does not seem to conform to the definition of a recursive function. So, we can generalize and say that functions whose values are calculated by an AIDED human could be recursive, depending on the apparatus used and on the lack of ingenuity or insight (the latter being, anyhow, a weak, non-rigorous requirement which cannot be formalized).
Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Sam.
Vaknin: Thank you as ever, Scott.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/03
“To the best of my knowledge, Officer X and all members of the chain of command (involved) are still serving in the Royal Canadian Navy,” White told MPs. “And not one has faced any disciplinary consequences for their actions.”
Those naval reservists who tried to come forward with evidence against Officer X faced repercussions from naval reserve leaders who warned them they could face charges of mutiny and treason, White said. “These threats of high-order criminal charges were made in order to silence and intimidate them.”
David Pugliese, “Royal Canadian Navy leadership covered up for serial sexual offender, Commons committee hears” (2024)
Effective prevention and control of social and public health problems starts with a clear picture of the scope of the problem, the characteristics of those affected by it, the circumstances under which it occurs and its impact on the affected population. This study shows that military-related sexual assault has been reported by a sizeable fraction of Canadian military women, is associated with mental disorders and may be especially likely to occur on deployment.
Kimberley Watkins et al, “Military-related sexual assault in Canada: a cross-sectional survey” (2017)
Retired general Jonathan Vance has acknowledged he was in a sexual relationship with a subordinate while he was the chief of defence staff, after having denied the allegations in the past.
Ashley Burke, CBC News, “Former top commander Vance acknowledges sexual relationship with subordinate in court document” (2022)
But in bringing about effective cultural change, it’s a process, not an event… And it’s not simply a matter of passing a regulation or a law or issuing an order, it’s about building all of the systems and supports that are necessary to demonstrate, first of all, that there is respect for every member of the (Canadian) Armed Forces, and it’s a strong culture that says certain behaviours are completely unacceptable.
Defence Minister Bill Blair (2023)
The Canadian Armed Forces is committed to eliminating all forms of misconduct, including sexual misconduct. Today’s results from the Survey on Sexual Misconduct in the Canadian Armed Forces shows that, while we have made progress in some areas, we still have work to do. We will continue to listen to our members and their lived experiences, and to ensure they have access to the necessary supports and services if or when they need them.
Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Wayne Eyre (2023)
Unfortunately, sexual misconduct remains a prominent news item in Canada about the Canadian Armed Forces. I would rather this not be the case, as with, I assume, members of the Canadian public and the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) members in good standing who have committed no crimes. However, it’s important to report on the data available to us, so the repetition of these events is less likely and the severe cases are minimized based on a culture of public knowledge.
The core idea is supporting CAF members and the Canadian public to punish criminals who happen to be CAF members, assist military members who are victims, inform the public about some issues – good and bad – in the military, and prevent innocent CAF members being blanketed with the broad-brush following from the crimes of the minority of ill-begotten CAF members.
It’s part of consciousness-raising, which was the point of bringing this to a public fora with an introductory short piece, “The Canadian Armed Forces: Perils and Promises,” followed by a report on a known fact of the targeting of militaries by white supremacists, or one styling of ethnic supremacism, and white nationalists, “The Canadian Armed Forces: White Nationalism, Supremacists?.”
Some housekeeping before covering the core of the article dealing with Statistics Canada’s report on sexual misconduct within the Canadian Armed Forces in 2022. Low-information people can dismiss these articles on the CAF as if written by ChatGPT; however, that remains a) false and b) a red herring. Where, even if true on a), as in written by a Large Language Model, what is the relevance to veracity of the claims and the moral imperative to deal with crimes and ethnic supremacist groups in a federal institution, the CAF?
It’s a distraction from critical analysis of a federal institution, so b); in my opinion, it seems to be done deliberately to mislead their constituent readers who unquestioningly trust them – and, based on the evidence, should not because they’re deliberately misleading, and then their constituents are deflected to a non-response rather than the relevant content and summative reportage based on information from prominent news organizations in Canada. In my opinion, it’s a disservice to their constituents’ intelligence.
Regardless, to individuals who can be taken more seriously, as was noted in the second minor article reporting on a slivered theme about the CAF, the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency reported on white nationalism and white supremacy in the CAF. Many, apparently, are widely not knowledgeable that the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency (NSIRA) is “Canada’s independent expert review body for national security and intelligence activities.” (I wasn’t.) Indeed, “NSIRA Members are eminent Canadians who have been appointed by the Governor-in-Council on the recommendation of the Prime Minister.”
The NSIRA’s “National Security and Intelligence Review Agency Annual Report 2020” stated unequivocally and thoroughly without apparent hesitation:
The presence of white supremacy within the Canadian military has been well documented. White supremacist groups actively seek individuals with prior military training and experience, or conversely, encourage individuals to enlist in order to gain access to specialized training, tactics and equipment. Although NSIRA acknowledges that the responsibility for addressing this threat cannot fall uniquely on the shoulders of CFNCIU, the review’s multiple findings lead to concern that CFNCIU may not be fully utilized to proactively identify white supremacists across DND/CAF. After examination of case studies and interviews with CFNCIU investigators, the review found that white supremacy poses an active counter-intelligence threat to DND/CAF, and that the CFNCIU’s mandate to proactively identify this threat is limited. [Emphasis added, as was reported in “The Canadian Armed Forces: White Nationalism, Supremacists?.”]
Now, to the point of this particular article, Statistics Canada was founded in 1971 as a Government of Canada agency to understand Canada at large. It has a many-decade presence in reportage of statistics about all facets of Canadian society. Now, its Interim Chief Statistican of Canada is André Loranger. It’s a reliable, legitimate governmental institution – as with the Canadian Armed Forces, collecting, collating, analyzing, and presenting, data in reports and publications for publicly accessible consumption.
The organization released “Sexual misconduct in the Canadian Armed Forces, 2022” on December 5th, 2023 – only a few months ago. Meaning, this report contains the most recent data about sexual misconduct within the Canadian Armed Forces in one slice, 2022. Other articles will cover different facets of CAF members who committed crimes against other members. The report opens with a statement that 3.5% of the Regular Force members, about 1,960, reported sexual assault “in the military workplace or outside of the workplace in an incident that involved Canadian Armed Forces (CAF or other military members in the 12 months preceding the Survey on Sexual Misconduct in the Canadian Armed Forces (SSMCAF).”
That’s a lot of people. Recalling, that number does not include Reserve Force members of the CAF. The sexual assaults catalogued, as part of the definition within the data gathering, included “sexual attacks, unwanted sexual touching, and sexual activity where the victim was unable to consent,” which represented a “significant increase from rates reported in 2018 (1.6%) and 2016 (1.7%) when previous iterations of the survey were conducted.” Some hypothesize, though difficult to know for certain, increased procedures, mechanisms, and awareness correlate with the higher reportage. This may be so.
Women experience, averaging over all Regular Force women members, sexual assault 3 times more than men, or 7.5% and 2.5%, respectively. The 3.5% reflects, as you may guess, the significantly larger number of men in the CAF. The numbers, in fact, may be depressed due to more men present in the CAF. Which leads to some open unknowns, if more women in the CAF in the future, will this decrease the overall proportion of sexual assaults? Or is the abuse more about power, hence something about authority and strong hierarchy-based institutions? We see this issue of sexual misconduct in the United States, Ireland, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, at least, too.
Individuals within the Regular Force who are younger, Indigenous, disabled, and non-heterosexual, reported higher sexual assault rates than those who are older, non-Indigenous, not disabled, and heterosexual. The most common sexual assault (3.3%) was unwanted sexual touching. It’s, probably, the reason for CAF members to ask, “May I touch you?”, or something equivalent when dealing with recruits and others. A simple change for a change in culture via, likely, policy leading to a more humane treatment standard of military members, one to another – seems like a good alteration.
Inability to consent to sexual activity came at 0.6% and sexual attacks were 0.6%, much lower than unwanted sexual touching. Again, both men and women deal with these sexual assaults, and the numbers have been consistent with “previous cycles and trends that are observed among the population in general.”
Statistics Canada said, “One in three (33%) Regular Force members who were sexually assaulted in 2022 stated that, in their opinion, their assault was related to the perpetrator’s alcohol or drug use; women (43%) were more likely than men (28%) to state this. Nearly half (49%) believed that it was not, while the remaining 18% did not know if alcohol or drug use by the perpetrator was a factor. This is similar to what was observed in 2016 and 2018.”
Interestingly, with regards to the point about authority, of those who were victims of sexual assault, 64% did not report to anyone in authority and 16% were unaware if an authority figure was aware. 21% of those members who were sexually assaulted said the assault was reported in 2022. Reasons have shifted for Regular Force members as to why members do not report. The main reason circa 2022 is the reporting would not make a difference. Who knows better than those who live the military lifestyle and are employed full-time as Regular Force members – “cited by 41% of Regular Force members who had been sexually assaulted… followed by fear of negative consequences (36%) and resolving the incident informally on their own (34%)?” While, 16% of men cited the formal complaint process as a reason for not reporting, 26% of women said so.
“Among those who did report sexual assault to someone in authority, nearly two-thirds (66%) faced some sort of negative consequence as a result. The most common negative impacts cited were exclusion, bullying, or teasing from peers or other CAF members, being blamed or feeling further victimized, or negative impacts on their career, such as retaliation or reprisal,” the report stated. One can see the same style of dynamics in sexual misconduct cases in the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church.
How did Statistics Canada categorize sexualized behaviours? They made 15 distinctions in 5 categories: “inappropriate verbal and non-verbal communication, distribution of sexually explicit materials, unwanted physical contact or suggested sexual relations, discrimination on the basis of sex or gender, and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.” 19% of Regular Force members, as a whole, report sexualized behaviours in the military workplace or involving other military members. These are behaviours, not sexual assaults, to make the distinction: 19% versus 3.5% (as above). More were experienced in 2022 than 2018. Again, it could be more recognition and mechanisms in place; it could be a third unknown variable, or it could be simply an increase in bad behaviour.
“Just over one in three (34%) women in the Regular Force personally experienced at least one sexualized or discriminatory behaviour in the 12 months preceding the survey, more than twice the proportion of men (16%),” Statistics Canada explained, “Overall, two-thirds (67%) of Regular Force members stated that they witnessed (saw or heard) or personally experienced sexualized or discriminatory behaviour in the 12 months prior to the survey. This was lower than in 2018 (70%) and 2016 (80%).”
Another interesting part of the report is the witnesses to sexualized behaviour and bystander intervention. Over half of Regular Force members intervened, that’s a wonderful testament to the CAF Regular Force members on-the-job. Their culture change has had a difference in some behaviours to the tune of 10% higher intervention rates on most of the metrics, approximately, of intervention by witnesses of sexualized behaviour. These are the members of the CAF who deserve recognition, support, and media time. We need to reinforce this type of culture change in the CAF for the same of its members and the disastrous public image sent out to the world with previous cases of sexual misconduct.
By far the most common reason for not reporting: The “perception that the behaviour was not serious enough,” which, as noted by Statistics Canada, a perception in the non-serious nature of the behaviour. How can we make a demarcation or shift the goal posts? The not intervening was far more often for inappropriate sexual community than sexual behaviours and discriminatory behaviours, 69% versus 47% and 47%, respectively. The majority of Regular Force members have a positive image of their unit’s responsiveness to misconduct. Only modestly less for the CAF as an organization.
“For instance, almost all (96%) Regular Force members agreed that it is understood by their unit that sexual misconduct has no place in the CAF. The promotion and sharing of information about how to report sexual misconduct had the lowest positive perception but was still generally viewed as positive by 80% of Regular Force members,” Statistics Canada stated, “Around two-thirds (66%) of Regular Force members felt that the CAF holds perpetrators of sexual misconduct accountable for their actions. Those who had been sexually assaulted or personally experienced sexualized or discriminatory behaviours were less likely to agree with this statement.”
61% of the Regular Force, and so 75% of women and 59% of men believed so, with 59% of women and 76% of men believing culture around sexual misconduct improving. Things have been improving. I am so grateful for those members who make those efforts to improve the conditions for those around them. However, I leave, as with the minor article on white nationalist and white supremacists in the Canadian Armed Forces on a critical, though underlying hopeful and positive question: Is this the same not good enough as before? (What else can be done for more robust, long-lasting, and comprehensive reforms of culture to set a standard for the world?)
Further Internal Resources (Chronological, yyyy/mm/dd):
Articles
The Canadian Armed Forces: Perils and Promises (2024/05/07)
The Canadian Armed Forces: White Nationalism, Supremacists? (2024/05/09)
Sexual Misconduct in the Canadian Armed Forces, 2022
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/04
If the universe is determinate, we need supernatural intervention for free will. If it is random or indeterminate, we have indeterminacy in the entire system and no free will, as the system is not built that way.
The notion of freely willing from a self seems to have no place in this context. What we actually observe is indeterminacy at small scales, with higher-order regularities at the larger scale that appear as if they are determined. These large-scale events, such as the Big Bang and the origin and evolution of life, are part of the cosmic happenstance, further complicating the concept of free will.
Hence, the term ‘imply,’ when we look at the apparent randomness in life around us, to observe an effect of freedom of the will can be understood as ‘infer.’ We can infer the existence of free will from randomness. However, we can also infer the absence of free will, as in the case of pure randomness. This latter inference follows more logically from the implication when we talk about a random event or a happenstance.
Even further, it provides no frame upon which to ground the will. It adds more premises for the argument, hidden premises, to get to a will. Even if you could argue from a mechanism for that will, it is another leap to free will, which leads back to the point, “Of what is the will free?”
The universe is one system. Unless, we want to assert that human beings have a magical self and a supernatural will for true freedom of the will. If we do not and assert a magical self and a natural will, then the self is differentiated somehow while the will becomes constrained by the mathematical principles of the universe once more, whether determinate at the large scale or indeterminate at the lower magnitudes leading to the same issues mentioned before.
It would be bound by the determined physics of a mind, the indeterminate elements leaking into the mind from lower magnitudes, and weird quantum indeterminacy in spatiotemporal events.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/05
Most assertions about freedom of the will sit on a determinate manifold.
The world is classically describable in deterministic terms, not factually, contemporaneously, though. This helps in many fields, like engineering.
In this framework, time is a separate dimension from spatial dimensions. A closer estimate is merging into space-time. Things could be determined here, though relative to each other in the description. The most evidenced theory is quantum mechanics, where the mechanics of reality aren’t mechanistic.
Ergo, the basis of a determinist formulation of free will does not fit the evidence and is incorrect. One could have knowledge of the future — in fact, we do — but it’s indeterminate and partial knowledge.
Our means of knowing or epistemology of the universe is incomplete; our ontology or knowledge of the universe is incomplete; and the universe’s self-interaction or theoretical self-definition or ‘knowledge’ is incomplete.
This quantum indeterminacy gives precision only in probabilities, not certainties or completeness. So, the future is eternally indeterminate, and no complete system knowledge is possible.
However, the current knowledge state can give relative predictive models for future states of worldlines in the universe or reality — not complete and comprehensive models.
So, we can’t know the complete future, and the future is indeterminate based on the best theoretical frameworks: We’re left with the knowledge, though incomplete, of the universe and indeterminacy fuzzing out any willing anyway.
I think the idea of a will is incoherent, too. It implies a self doing the willing, which somehow detaches from physical law. If someone is to somehow know the future, then this changes the previous future.
The act of information embedded into that kind of mind from a future that once was going to be changed the interactions in that mind for future decisions (changes an aspect of the system), which changes the informational universe as a total system.
This becomes a change from the old future to a new future. When that new info enters, you’re dealing with a minutely different person with a subjectivity in that universe. It’s all the same single system, however.
It’d lead to a different universe. The data in that head is now different than the one with ignorance. And the ‘knowledge’ would no longer be sure. So, you couldn’t have acted in any other way, probabilistically.
Or you can take the dogma route to avoid that by asserting a soul or a supernatural self doing something willing. This implies rhetorically, “Of what is the will free?” It’s a Get Out of Jail card in Monopoly.
Yet, the roll of the dice in each iteration of the universe leads to a new possibility every time. It’s one universe, but not necessarily the same one each time.
But even the premise is that it couldn’t be any other way; the universe is probabilistic. Could you be any other way? It could be a wide array of ways. If we have free will, we must extend this to the cosmos as a whole, as we are part of the universe, and math shows that one system is unified.
So, subjectivities in the universe would have to have a universe with laws allowing a degree of free choice and then inheriting this freedom from the universe, which would mean the universe is, in some manner, freely willing. Yet, this willingness would mean a supernatural element to the universe’s identity (definition), as it violates its laws.
The only other option, then, would be a universe with mathematical principles with degrees of freedom and constructed into them a non-computable component in which human willingness could be accessible in an extramaterial sense bound by physical law and emergent and convergent with the universe’s non-computable facets.
Continually, we merely continue to fight for a concept that failed, with continual rejiggering; we are failing, in general, and work from scratch rather than first principles.
Subjectivities follow from the organization of the universe, not a ‘self’ thus there’s nearly no option upon which the will can be free, especially with it requiring both a ‘will’ to exist supernaturally and a ‘self’ to manifest extramaterially.
Subjectivities can have varieties of information for extrapolations about the future as a ‘knowledge’ or a partial informational predictive framework about the arrow of time at the tip and the tail of the arrow, though these do not will, but flow and the informational framework influences the flow of information in their locale of the information, which, in turn, changes the total information framework of Nature with each transformation.
That’s a different style of conversation than a magical ‘self’ and supernatural ‘will’ and so on: It’s grounded in mathematical principles of existence and a clear subjective experience ‘screen’ in an otherwise bland Nature — the total of all.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/05
[Recording Start]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is your favourite item in your office?
Rick Rosner: I like the foot. I like the Jesus. I do not believe in Jesus. I am Jewish. I look to Jesus a lot and wish he would come back and rapture all the assholes in the world to Europa the ice moon of Jupiter. Europa has like a thick of layer of water-ice on it. You could build some very comfortable ice caves on Europa. It would be easy for Jesus in conjunction with God to excavate a bunch of ice caves. You put the ten thousand biggest assholes on Earth. You rapture them away from the rest of humanity to Europa. They can live comfortably. There is catering. There are all sorts of facilities. They just can’t spread their bullshit to people all the time. Then there’s a limbo. On the bubble, the rapture center for the next biggest 10,000 assholes on the moon. Those people can go either way. If they can persist in being assholes, they get set to Europa. If they show some reasonableness, and repent, somewhat, they can come back to Earth.
Jacobsen: What do you think Jesus got wrong?
Rosner: It is a similar question, but not that similar, to what the Constitution got wrong. The Constitution is almost 250 years old. The Constitution for sure got the Second Amendment wrong. Its lack of clarity allowed shitheads on the Supreme Court to misinterpret it. And it is from a time when you had to individually load muskets. You had to drop in the gun powder, tamp it down, drop in the ball, tamp it down. Even the fastest army man could only get off 2 or 3 shots a minute, so, compared to an AR15, you could let off 15, 20 shots in a second, especially if you have a bump stock. An AR15 is semi-auto, you have to keep pulling the trigger. Unless, you have a bump stock, which lets the recoil chamber a new bullet for you. Are they even legal, bump stocks? I don’t know. You’ve got the Second Amendment wrong, needed more clarification, and the Electoral College has turned out to be really bad for democracy. It gives asshole states way too much power. The assholes who run asshole states. So, going back to Jesus, a) we don’t know what Jesus really said, you are really asking, “What are the guys who wrote the Bible 300 years after Jesus and probably for years after getting wrong?” The King James Bible was the 1400s. So, what did the guys who wrote and rewrote the Bible get wrong? They wrote women out. They wrote in a ton of misogyny. Jesus isn’t known for being misogynist, but the opposite. What do you know about Jesus? Is Jesus being misogynist?
Jacobsen: He doesn’t make an explicit condemnation of slavery, necessarily. He has generalized niceties like the Golden Rule, which are nice, as we’ve talked about, approximations to a general ethical principle.
Rosner: In this novel that I am writing, there is old Jesus and there is real Jesus. Old Jesus is the nice Jesus with the long hair. In my future, a bunch of Evangelical rightwing churches have adopted a new Jesus, a jacked Jesus who doesn’t mind holding a gun. Maybe, he has cut his hair and real Jesus has… “real” is being used ironically. It is not being used non-ironically by these asshole Evangelicals. I am using it satirically.
Jacobsen: It is a good double irony because we don’t know Jesus’s real character.
Rosner: They call him “real Jesus” because he doesn’t have those faggy liberal constraints. Real Jesus isn’t afraid to punch back and punish the people who deserve punishing. The pedos and the libs and the immigrants coming over and poisoning the blood of America. So, towards the end of the book, we have fairly sophisticated robots. They are not conscious, but they are able to walk around. There are old Jesus robots that have been released with the approval of the Vatican. These robots are available to provide comfort to people. You can find them in and outside some churches. Not too be outdone, the Evangelical assholes have begun to commission real Jesus. The real Jesus’s will get in fights with the nice Jesus robots.
Jacobsen: It is the language in conservative circles about real men and real women.
Rosner: Yes, real Jesus is the truck nuts of Jesus.
Jacobsen: For those who don’t know, what are truck nuts?
Rosner: It is giant testicles made out of plastic. You hang them from the rear of your truck. So, your truck has testicles.
Jacobsen: [Laughing].
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/05
[Recording Start]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Did these mosaics start in Italy?
Rick Rosner: Yes, it started in the 1500s because the Pope noticed that tourists in the Vatican. All of their breath was fucking up the frescas. It was making the walls moist. The frescas were falling apart. He commissioned artisans to replace many frescas with very precise mosaics. Everyone has seen shitty mosaics, especially in America, that have a bunch of grout between the pieces of glass. An exemplary mosaic has no grout between the pieces of glass. It is glass to glass because the fitting of the pieces is super precise. Look at Jesus here; the gap between the pieces is no more than a millimetre in most places. In many places, it is close to zero. It is a good mosaic. It started in Italy. They developed an adhesive allowing olive oil and flour to dry for days or weeks. It works fine but dries up over a century. So, if it gets jarred, a micromosaic will often lose pieces, which is terrible for the mosaic but good for me because I can buy them cheaply and put them back together. So, I can buy stuff for much less than it is worth after you put it back in.
Jacobsen: This one is plastic.
Rosner: That one is plastic with pegs in it.
Jacobsen: The Samuel Jackson is also plastic.
Rosner: They are both made out of mini-stek tiles.
Jacobsen: A machine could do this, design it, in…
Rosner: …These sets, they also have them for legos. They come with software that lets you… That over a dog with legos. I bought it for $7. They uploaded a picture into the software. It gave them a Lego map of what colours to use and where. You could tell from that. It needed a little bit of goosing. In some artistic works, there is an ample black space right in the middle of it, which is both the dog’s nose and mouth. You get a general idea of what is happening, but you could improve it. With the Frida thing, mine was based on somebody else’s work, probably taking the most famous photo of Frida Kahlo and digitizing it into a mosaic. So, that guy probably used software. Then I took him and worked from it, generally, but also made artistic choices to make it more coherent visually. Like the roses, they read much more as roses than they did in the original because I understood. If there was a curve of a petal, even if the software doesn’t know, because the software doesn’t know shit, it is pre-AI. It doesn’t understand petals. It just understands the colour and tone of whatever square it looks at. I was able to complete the petals, but the software couldn’t. So, you can see the roses look a little bit more rosey. Ditto with, probably, some of the facial features. You could smooth out some of the shading.
Jacobsen: The horse example, it is more American, coarse.
Rosner: That was from a craft’s kit sold in the early 60s, when they were popular. It came from a kit that gave you a pattern. It is like a paint by numbers. It gave you glass of half-a-dozen different colours. It said, “Lay them out here.” I have seen another copy of that pattern on sale on eBay or somewhere, where this person was conscientious and artistic. They did a good job. I saw another one that was crappier. This one has nice aesthetics. It is primitive. But it has elegant curves to it. It feels visually satisfying. Burt Reynolds is a product of a hackneyed mosaic project, which lets homeless people and recovering drug addicts do art therapy by providing with the material to make mosaics and sell their works. This person is a fan of pop culture. I’ve seen other works by, maybe, the same person: Freddie Mercury, the evil stay puft marshmallow guy from Ghostbusters. The other difference between micro-mosaics and full-blown big mosaics is I get this one for $50, which is less a buck a square inch. A micromosaic runs 10, 12 bucks, just a regular one – not a fancy, nice one – per square inch. I have a pair of shoes, rolled paper, notebooks. One of the notebooks where I record how many times I have worked out in a day and how many sets I did.
Jacobsen: Do you calculate how much time you have spent at the gym?
Rosner: I know roughly. I can do 4 gyms in less than 75 minutes if things go well for them.
Jacobsen: Every day?
Rosner: Yes.
Jacobsen: Since 1990…
Rosner: …I haven’t missed a day since 1991.
Jacobsen: How many days is that?
Rosner: 12,160-something.
Jacobsen: Times 75?
Rosner: Times 75 minutes?
Jacobsen: Yes.
Rosner: It would be 1.2 million times three-quarters, is 900,000 minutes.
Jacobsen: How many hours is that?
Rosner: Divide by 60, it is 15,000 hours.
Jacobsen: Which is how many days?
Rosner: A work year is 2,000 hours, so 15,000 hours is 7.5 work years.
Jacobsen: No sleep, constant?
Rosner: 15,000 hours divided 24 hours in a day is like 600-something solid days without sleep, just going 24-hours a day.
Jacobsen: Is this overall, this obsession, was worth it, in hindsight?
Rosner: It is ridiculous. It is wasteful. I am going from gym to gym. But, maybe, it has left me healthier than some parallel world version of me might be who doesn’t work out 5 times a day and does 100 sets a day.
Jacobsen: How many calories a day do you think you are burning a day, at your size?
Rosner: Under 140lbs at 5’10”.
Jacobsen: 1,500 a day baseline?
Rosner: Nah, probably, closer to 2,000.
Jacobsen: Basal metabolic, not with exercise.
Rosner: With the exercise, 2,000, 2,200, that a normal, beefy man who is 5’10”, 5’11”, 185lbs, not much exercise. That guy ats 3,200, 3,500 calories a day. I have got a nervous stomach. I’m sure I have a biome that makes me bloaty. So, if I eat too many carbs, my gut bacteria eat my carbs for me and make a bunch of gas. I get a stomach ache, or diarrhea.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/05
[Recording Start]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What about these randomized supplements?
Rick Rosner: I take a bunch of vitamins. I’ve put them in various places to remind me that I need to re-order them, or that’s where they end up, and I don’t clean them out: Heartburn pills.
Jacobsen: Do you get heartburn?
Rosner: Every once in a while, I’ve got a nervous stomach. It is slightly like IBS, which kicked in when Trump got elected. If I eat too many carbs at once, I get bloated and burly. I’ve got my Rogaine Minoxidil to keep my hair, Floss, eye drops, and Kleenexes to wipe my mouth.
Jacobsen: Oral-B toothbrush.
Rosner: I will sit here and brush my teeth while I cruise Twitter.
Jacobsen: Do you generate any income on Twitter?
Rosner: No, I don’t. There is a way to monetize Twitter. But since Elon Musk bought Twitter about two years ago if you get a lot of traffic, you can get paid for your traffic, adding ads, or whatever. Musk has made it a playground for conservatives and right-wing assholes. So, the people who are making all the money with a lot of traffic are right-wingers. They have chased a lot of left-wingers away. Since he bought Twitter, my traffic has dropped by 90%. Even if I tried monetizing, I am unsure if my traffic is high enough. It would not be worth it. You have to subscribe to Twitter. You have to pay Twitter, not much. Still, I will not pay Elon Musk for what he did to Twitter. He wrecked it. He fucked it up pretty badly. On April 20th, there were so many hideous assholes wishing Hitler happy birthday and saying he was right before he owned Twitter. People owning anti-Semitism and saying that we should gas the Jews now. Those people were kicked off for promoting hate. It is much harder to get people kicked off for promoting hate.
So, I have bendy wood. It is fake wood made out of silicon plastic, which stains like wood. Instead of making actual wood bendy, which is a pain, you have to soak it. It still doesn’t get very bendy. This stuff has a radius of curvature of down to an inch, even more, if you put a bunch of nails in it to put it in place. It’s much easier to work with; what happens is that I showed you the busted micromosaic. Micromosaics self-destruct because pieces of glass are held in with this dough, this adhesive, flour, olive oil, and probably some other stuff.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/05
[Recording Start]
Rick Rosner: Somewhere there is a photo if it exists, of Tom Cruise holding my grotesque foot, because it resided at Jimmy Kimmel’s for several years, he was at a party there. Somebody made him hold the foot. I saw the photo, but I didn’t get a copy sent.
Then it is resting upon a giant, 3D Jesus, Mary, and John mosaic…
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: micro mosaic?
Rosner: No, full on mosaic, it is about 22 inches by 16 inches. It is one two 3D mosaics. The difference is a mosaic uses pieces for most of the mosaic ranged upwards from a quarter inch square. If you build a monumental mosaic on the side of a building, like they do a lot in Russia and in Mexico, I am sure those tiles are an inch across or more. So, mosaic is anything bigger than a quarter inch. Micromosaic is in the range of anywhere from a tenth of a millimetre by like a half of a millimetre. This piece here is from one of the old masters. He used teeny pieces. I got it for cheap because it’s broken. So, I am going to put it back together, but those pieces there are about a tenth of a millimetre thick by less than a millimetre long. Then they’re ranging for a cheap mosaic for a piece from a millimetre thick to three or four millimetres long. Back from the ‘50s, Havana was still a tourist place. It was huge for tourism. Casinos, America’s play land until Fidel Castro shut it down. We have a big Jesus here missing some parts. I have replaced about half his parts. That’s probably from the 1930s.
It is 3-dimensional. That is, instead of being flat and shaded to look dimensional, it is 3-dimensional. His arms are rounded. His stomach is rounded. Everybody’s head, it sticks out from the surface. He is up from a cross. The cross sticks out a little bit. It has got to be much harder than a flat mosaic. I found only 1 other 3-dimensional raised-relief mosaic, same subject: Mary, John, and Jesus up on a cross. It is in a church in Baltimore. It was built in the 1930s. So, somebody must have seen that work, liked it so much, that they commissioned somebody, probably in Italy based on the materials and the way the faces are rendered. Where a good mosaicist will have the pieces radiate out in arcs from around the eyes and around the mouth, it is a way to get good shading. I believe a pro mosaicist in Vienna or Rome, Venice, did that thing. It weighs a ton, probably 8 pounds. It was out of a wall some place 40 years ago and then smashed into the ground and knocked a bunch of pieces off. I stopped myself from doing more because I have other stuff that I need to be doing rather than being doing patches on Jesus’s loincloth. I have an ‘80s TV because we used to have an aquarium with a goldfish on top. You can’t put a goldfish on top of a flatscreen.
We have the Mindy Kaling celebrity autobiography. I have that for reference because I am writing a fake celebrity autobiography. I find hers pretty close. I haven’t read it in a while. As I remember it, she doesn’t do the autobiography standard thing. Where, you start at your childhood and go chapter by chapter until you reach the point you’re at now. I feel like with a celebrity autobiography. She assumes you know who she is. She tells little anecdotes from her life. Maybe, interspersed with some autobiographical stuff. In a celebrity one, you’re not obligated to just tell the story of your life in any kind of linear way. People more want to hear what your life as a celebrity is like without it having to be linear. Yes, I have a wall of mosaics. I have Burt Reynolds from Smokey and the Bandit. I have Frida Kahlo. I did that one. It is largely based on somebody doing it In the same medium, which is mini-stick plastic tiles from Germany.
Jacobsen: How long did it take?
Rosner: A few months, a couple of months, it was art therapy. I would go visit my mother in law how as in care. We would do mosaic stuff together. She was losing her words, but she still had a good visual acuity ability. It gave me an excuse to do mosaics. It was good to hang with her. It gave her something she enjoyed doing. Made out of the same stuff, you’ve got Samuel L. Jackson with the gun made out of different stuff. You’ve got Marilyn Monroe. You’ve got a prancing horse from the 1960s. This is the seal of the United States of America. An eagle holding arrows, an olive branch, it is made out of baltic amber, which is fossilized tree sap. From millions of years ago, trees spit out drops of sap, given the right conditions, those will fossilize into this golden gem-y kind of things in a variety of brown-y, cream-y colours. Some lunatic did a 15” by 17” great seal of the US out of amber and glued all the pieces into place. Once I decide I like something, I really like it.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://ffrf.org/news/releases/coalition-including-ffrf-seek-injunction-to-block-okla-religious-public-charter-school/
Publication Date: May 31, 2024
Organization: Freedom From Religion Foundation
Organization Description: The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with 40,000 members and several chapters all over the country. Our purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
A coalition of plaintiffs (including the Freedom From Religion Foundation) that has filed a lawsuit to stop the nation’s first religious public charter school asked the District Court of Oklahoma County today to issue a temporary injunction.
The plaintiffs explained to the court in their move to prevent St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual Charter School from opening and receiving state funds as a public charter school the importance of ensuring that no taxpayer money funds St. Isidore and that the school does not open as a public charter school during the 2024-25 school year while litigation is ongoing in their case, OKPLAC Inc. v. Statewide Virtual Charter School Board, as well as in a similar lawsuit filed in the Oklahoma Supreme Court by Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond. St. Isidore is, and has always been, free to open as a private religious school that taxpayers would not be forced to support.
The OKPLAC plaintiffs are represented by FFRF, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the American Civil Liberties Union and Education Law Center, as well as by Oklahoma-based counsel Odom & Sparks PLLC and J. Douglas Mann. The organizations issued the following statement:
“Oklahoma’s public schools must remain free from discrimination and religious indoctrination. And Oklahoma taxpayers, including our plaintiffs, should not be forced to financially support a religion that many of them do not share. The law is clear, and we’re hopeful the courts will soon agree: Charter schools are public schools that must be secular and serve all students.
“Nothing prevents St. Isidore from operating as a private religious school. But because St. Isidore plans to discriminate against students, families, and staff and indoctrinate students into one religion, it cannot operate as a public charter school. To protect public education, the separation of church and state, and all Oklahomans’ religious freedom, it’s crucial that the court prevent the state from funding St. Isidore and recognizing it as a public charter school until decisions have been reached in the cases brought by our plaintiffs and the attorney general.”
FFRF and the other groups, supported by Oklahoma-based counsel Odom & Sparks PLLC and J. Douglas Mann, represent nine Oklahomans and OKPLAC, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting public education, in the lawsuit OKPLAC, Inc. v. Statewide Virtual Charter School Board, filed on July 31 last year in the District Court of Oklahoma County. The plaintiffs object to their tax dollars funding a public charter school that will discriminate against students and families based on their religion and LGBTQ+ status, won’t commit to adequately serving students with disabilities, and will indoctrinate students into one religion.
The plaintiffs include OKPLAC (Oklahoma Parent Legislative Advocacy Coalition), Melissa Abdo, Krystal Bonsall, Leslie Briggs, Brenda Lené, Michele Medley, Dr. Bruce Prescott, the Rev. Dr. Mitch Randall, the Rev. Dr. Lori Walke, and Erika Wright.
The team of attorneys that represents the plaintiffs is led by Alex J. Luchenitser of Americans United and includes Patrick Elliott of FFRF; Sarah Taitz and Jenny Samuels of Americans United; Daniel Mach and Heather L. Weaver of the ACLU; Robert Kim, Jessica Levin and Wendy Lecker of Education Law Center; Benjamin H. Odom, John H. Sparks, Michael W. Ridgeway and Lisa M. Millington of Odom & Sparks; and J. Douglas Mann.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with over 40,000 members across the country. Our purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
Americans United is a religious freedom advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1947, AU educates Americans about the importance of church-state separation in safeguarding religious freedom. Learn more at www.au.org.
For more than 100 years, the ACLU has worked in courts, legislatures, and communities to protect the constitutional rights of all people. With a nationwide network of offices and millions of members and supporters, the ACLU takes on the toughest civil liberties fights in pursuit of liberty and justice for all. For more information on the ACLU, visit www.aclu.org.
Education Law Center pursues justice and equity for public school students by enforcing their right to a high-quality education in safe, equitable, non-discriminatory, integrated, and well-funded learning environments. It seeks to support and improve public schools as the center of communities and the foundation of a multicultural and multiracial democratic society. For more information about ELC, visit https://edlawcenter.org/.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://ffrf.org/news/releases/missouri-school-district-halts-graduation-prayer-after-ffrf-insistence/
Publication Date: May 30, 2024
Organization: Freedom From Religion Foundation
Organization Description: The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with 40,000 members and several chapters all over the country. Our purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
It took a bit of work but the Freedom From Religion Foundation has convinced a Missouri school district to stop scheduling prayers at a high school’s commencement.
Kennett High School graduation ceremonies in past years included an official prayer as part of the program. For instance, at the school’s 2023 graduation ceremony, a student speaker delivered this invocation:
Let us pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we gather here today to offer our heartfelt prayers for the graduating class of 2023. As we embark on a new chapter in our lives, we ask for your blessing and guidance to be with us. May we find our purpose and fulfillment in our paths and may our journeys be filled with opportunities for growth and success. Grant us the strength and courage to overcome challenges. We pray that our achievements be a source of pride and inspiration not only for ourselves but also for our families and mentors who have supported us along the way. May we never forget the lessons learned, the friendships formed, and the memories created during our time of education. As we move forward into the unknown we ask for your divine protection and blessings to be upon us, may we walk with confidence knowing that we are capable of making a positive impact in the world in your grace and mercy we humbly offer these prayers for the graduating class of 2023. May we find joy, success and fulfillment in all of our endeavors. In Jesus’ name we pray amen.
Similar prayers marked graduations in years prior. Throughout this time period, prayers were delivered to “God,” “Heavenly Father” or “Lord.”
In January, FFRF asked Kennett School District 39 to cease having sectarian prayer at its official school events.
“It is well settled that public schools may not show favoritism towards or coerce belief or participation in religion,” FFRF Patrick O’Reiley Legal Fellow Hirsh M. Joshi wrote to Superintendent Chris Wilson. “The Supreme Court has continually struck down prayers at school-sponsored events, including graduations. School officials may not invite a student, teacher, faculty member, or clergy member to give any type of prayer, invocation, benediction, or sermon at a public school-sponsored events, nor may they give a prayer themselves.”
The popularity of including the prayer is immaterial, FFRF emphasized; courts have continually reaffirmed that the rights of minorities are protected by the Constitution regardless. As the Supreme Court has said, “Fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.” And by including prayer at graduation ceremonies, the district also needlessly excluded nonreligious and non-Christian students. Nationwide, 49 percent of Generation Z is considered religiously unaffiliated.
To respect the constitutional rights of students and their families, FFRF urged that the district not schedule prayer at any future school-sponsored events. A bit of a back and forth then ensued between FFRF and the school district. The district sent FFRF a letter taking the stance that the graduation prayer was valid since it had been a part of the graduation ceremony for many years.
“It does not make a difference if a constitutional violation is longstanding,” FFRF pointed out in its follow-up letter.
“Graduations are not the place for personal religious promotion, just as it would taint the occasion if a speaker promoted their personal political beliefs while speaking to those assembled. No district would actually want to open up its ceremonies to religious debate by providing general access to the student body.” Joshi wrote. “If it violates the Constitution, you are obligated to put a stop to it.”
FFRF’s research and requests won the day.
“The district undertook a comprehensive review of its policies and procedures for its high school graduation ceremonies,” the legal counsel for the district replied. “Following this review, the district is changing the structure of its high school graduation ceremonies. Going forward, the district is removing the student-led invocation from its high school graduation ceremonies.”
FFRF has confirmed that the district’s 2024 graduation ceremony did not include prayer, and is delighted that its perseverance paid off.
“Whether it’s a city, suburb or Missouri’s Bootheel, the Establishment Clause is the law of the land,” adds Joshi. “Kennett did the right thing and kept the wall between church and state intact.”
FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor is happy with the outcome.
“We’re so pleased that the commencement ceremony will salute the students and their 13 years of hard work — instead of somebody else’s deity,” she says.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://www.bchumanist.ca/prayers_end_in_md_of_bonnyville
Publication Date: May 30, 2024
Organization: British Columbia Humanist Association
Organization Description: The British Columbia Humanist Association has been providing a community and voice for Humanists, atheists, agnostics, and the non-religious of Metro Vancouver and British Columbia since 1982. We support the growth of Humanist communities across BC, provide Humanist ceremonies, and campaign for progressive and secular values.
Council meetings in the Municipal District of Bonnyville, Alberta, no longer open with a prayer. This follows the BC Humanist Association releasing a report that identified it as one of eight Alberta municipalities that violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
On April 9, 2024, the MD of Bonnyville opened with a prayer by Councillor Josh Crick. His prayer referenced “Lord” and ended in amen. At the next meeting, on April 23, the Council proceeded straight to approving the agenda without any opening prayer. No meetings since then have included a prayer.
The BCHA had written to the MD of Bonnyville, and other municipalities in Alberta that we identified as having included prayers in their regular or most recent inaugural meetings, asking each of them to end prayers and commit to observing the state’s duty of religious neutrality in future meetings. We referenced the 2015 Supreme Court of Canada ruling in MLQ v Saguenay that found opening a city council meeting with a prayer unconstitutional.
On May 6, we published The Last Municipality Standing, which looked at municipal prayers across Alberta.
Ian Bushfield, Executive Director, BC Humanist Association:
Advocacy works. We’ve seen time and again that a local government will violate the Supreme Court’s precedent until they’re called out on it.
In many smaller communities, it can still be risky for someone to stand up and object to these practices, which is why we’ve continued to do this work.
As explored in The Last Municipality Standing, council prayers have a sordid history in the MD of Bonnyville. The district had ended the practice in 2019, only to resume following the election of Barry Kalinski as Reeve in 2021. In early 2022, the Reeve apologized for asking a staff member to deliver a prayer before council.
Dr Teale Phelps Bondaroff, Reseach Coordinator, BC Humanist Association:
I am pleased to see that MD of Bonnyville has discontinued its unconstitutional practice of opening meetings with prayer. It is important that everyone feel welcome at municipal council meetings. When a municipality opens a meeting with prayer, it sends the message that one religion is more important than others and is more important than non-religion. This practice violates the state’s duty of religious neutrality, which the Supreme Court of Canada described as a democratic imperative in the Saguenay decision.
Notably, Reeve Kalinski is a member of Bonnyville Pentecostal Church and was stranded in Haiti earlier this year while on a mission trip. The District itself announced this in a press release that concluded, “We pray for Reeve Kalinski’s safety, his safe return, and for the people of Haiti as they go through this challenging time.” Kalinski returned home safely in late March 2024.
Timeline of prayers in MD of Bonnyville (from The Last Municipality Standing).
See the comparison of the MD of Bonnyville’s April 9 and 23, 2024, meetings on our TikTok.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://thehumanist.com/news/aha_news/aha-chapters-spread-humanism-with-2024-grants
Publication Date: May 29, 2024
Organization: American Humanist Association
Organization Description: The mission of the American Humanist Association is to advance humanism, an ethical and life-affirming philosophy free of belief in any gods and other supernatural forces. Advocating for equality for nontheists and a society guided by reason, empathy, and our growing knowledge of the world, the AHA promotes a worldview that encourages individuals to live informed and meaningful lives that aspire to the greater good.
By Emily Newman
As the American Humanist Association (AHA) promotes and advocates for humanism nationally, our local groups find innovative ways to spread humanism in their communities. To support and expand their efforts, the AHA provides grants to publicize humanism and educate people on humanist values. Learn more about the recipients of the 2024 AHA chapter grants:
Chippewa Valley Humanists, one of our newest chapters, will use grant funds to produce promotional materials for its upcoming activities for the local Unitarian Universalist congregation, at the Jackson Correctional Institution’s AHA chapter, and with a forming humanist student group at the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire (UWEC). Member and Humanist Chaplain Lex Sackett currently facilitates humanist discussions at the prison facility and will teach a class on “An Introduction to Humanism: the 10 Commitments” for the UU church. The group is coordinating with UWEC professor Dr. Adam Kunz to host summer events sharing his new book on the separation of church and state, To Hell With Heaven(available in July), and with Dr. Janja Lalich to speak on cults and coercion later this fall.
Central New York Humanists Association will be celebrating its tenth anniversary with a booth at the Westcott Street Fair to promote the group and an event to support its future. The grant will help them secure the venue and caterer, provide raffle prizes, prepare graphics, and offer giveaways to table visitors. Tabling at the Westcott event has historically been one of the best ways to attract active new members so they’re excited to continue the tradition. They also look forward to starting a new tradition of commemorating many more anniversaries.
New Jersey Humanist Network found that buttons are a popular item and button-making is an engaging activity at tabling events, so their grant will help them purchase a quality button maker and supplies. The group will also hold a button art contest to develop creative messaging and design options that will help them connect with young people and others seeking community.
Humanists and Freethinkers of Fairfield County grant project aims to advance humanist values through event tabling, promoting dialogue around a film viewing, and offering opportunities for learning to a larger diverse audience. They will participate in five tabling events across Fairfield County in high-traffic areas to introduce attendees to humanism, the group’s activities, and the importance of humanist values in society. They will also host a film screening and discussion to explore empathy, ethics, and the human condition through cinematic narratives.
Central Florida Freethought Community has run successful radio promotions before and will use its grant to announce that it is now an AHA chapter. In two sponsorships on WMFE Orlando and WMFV they will promote that they’re “building community for the NON-religious with educational social and volunteer events across Central Florida all month long.”
Jefferson Humanists realized that its members and visitors are eager to learn more about humanism and take action to protect our secular democracy, so the grant will go towards the development and promotion of two educational programs in the Denver area. One program will educate people on humanism through member-led discussions using the AHA’s free Basic Online Studies, books, articles, and the Ten Commitments. The other program will focus on the threat of Christian nationalism.
Southeastern Virginia Atheists, Skeptics, + Humanists (SEVASH), a chapter of Washington Area Secular Humanists (WASH), will build and maintain a Free Humanist Library “as a beacon of intellectual exploration and community enrichment, embodying the core tenets of reason, empathy, and human dignity.” They will use the grant to obtain the materials (i.e., lumber, plexiglass, hinges, paint, concrete for mounting, etc.) and supply a curated collection of books that champion secular humanist principles. “From works of philosophy and science to literature and art, each selection embodying the spirit of inquiry, compassion, and ethical living.” The little library will also include space to promote events such as book clubs, guest lectures, and workshops to provide opportunities for learning, reflection, and meaningful connection.
Humanists of West Florida has been distributing Weekend Survival Snacks on Friday evenings to local hungry and homeless individuals since 2021, an invaluable service as there are no formal nearby free meals offered on the weekends. Their dedicated volunteers have found several ways to fundraise and reduce costs but need the grant to sustain the distribution of water and food items that so many local folks depend on each week.
Congratulations to all our winners and thank you for strengthening the humanist presence from coast to coast. We look forward to providing more opportunities for AHA local groups to spread humanism and practice humanist values for society.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/02
Dr. Hermina Nedelescu is a Romanian-born neuroscientist. Her research work is concerned with the neurobiological control of abnormal behaviors and brain functions relevant to human psychopathology. The majority of this work is directed at understanding brain mechanisms that underly substance use and abuse with emphasis on approach and avoidance of drug-paired environments. Another line of research is directed at investigating the neurobiological dysregulation caused by sexual assault-induced PTSD and suicide with hopes to inform therapeutic treatments.
For her theological work, she is training with the Center for Theology and Natural Sciences at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, where she leverages her expertise in neuroscience to develop a theological anthropology based on the Christian Orthodox tradition. This research is focused on the topic of desire vs. dysregulated desire leading to abuse.
She is an instructor for Stepping Higher Inc., a faith-based organization funded by the County of San Diego Behavior Health Services Department to teach and support clergy, pastors, and behavioral health providers who minister to people suffering from substances use disorders, substance abuse, as well as, other psychological addictions or mental illnesses.
She is actively involved in the state legislative efforts to protect adults from clergy-perpetrated sexual abuse. She is co-founder of Prosopon Healing, a resource site for Orthodox Christian victims/survivors of clergy abuse.
In her free time, she enjoys microscope photography and drawing brain cells to share the beautiful structure and function of the brain with the general public through art exhibits.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, I wrote some articles based on other minor news reportage on abuse within the church communities. You sent an email to connect us. Thank you very much for doing so, the work you’re doing is valid, salient, and should inspire others across the Orthodox community to seek justice in cases of legitimate abuse. While taking the time to investigate some of the claims, the general finding across church abuse dynamics is mostly men with unquestionable, so unquestioned, religious authority abusing mostly laity, where most of the victims will be the women congregants. There have been some newer publications within the news about the abuse committed by nuns, in Canada for example. However, in general, there is progress, as justice is happening. It seems moot to make a hypothetical (false) moral quandary, as is common in colloquial or casual conversation: ‘It shouldn’t happen in the first place,’ or at all. I get the sentiment. However, it’s beside the point. Whether people proclaim the basest drives and instincts, or shout the highest formulations of popular ethical truisms, the reality: people have been abused. It’s a ‘nice thought,’ to think ‘this shouldn’t happen at all’ – naturally, or of course, but ethics only has meat on the bone if it reflects the empirical reality to some degree. I am more concerned with first-hand reports, claimants, cover-ups, theological justifications, community intimidation, legal censure, and such, of sexual abuse and harassment. The rarity is individuals who have been victimized to be both persistent and not letting minor crimes go away. The tendency is to gaslight individuals’ real sentiment towards abuse as if not real, and to downplay the moral reality of crimes committed by leaders, often male, claiming to represent a moral majority or superminority of some form. Which is all to say, I see you in the morally courageous minority. Now, with all of this said, I have to ask, “What makes you different in the context of the Greek Orthodox Church?”
Dr. Hermina Nedelescu: First, I was born into the Romanian Orthodox Church setting during the communist regime. I observed first-hand that the motive of some clergy (bishops, priests, deacons) was to maintain the status quo despite the toxicity and harm it inflicted on the people. This was my first learning experience with abusers in clerical positions of authority. Not all Orthodox clergy are abusers but a small yet significant percentage are. We need to take responsibility and hold wrongdoers accountable because this is our mutual responsibility that we have within the community.
Second, I am a neuroscientist whose research focuses on maladaptive and abnormal behaviors. As I have testified during the hearing at the Senate Public Safety Committee in Sacramento, clergy abuse is a predatory behavior involving abuse of positional power and authority. My educational training enables me to more easily identify the dynamics of clergy abuse. Abuse follows specific patterns of behaviors, and once it is identified then we must stand up and do something about it. At its core, clergy abuse is violence against humanity. It harms the humanity of not only the victims but the perpetrators and entire congregations when we allow offenders to continue in ministry.
Third, something that is rarely spoken about publicly is the existence of errant clergy. In my observation, Orthodox Christian laypeople are not typically trained to be discerning when it comes to the counsel of clergy (including priests and bishops). They are expected to receive the words of any ordained person uncritically. This failure to speak of clergy fallibility is a terrible mistake resulting in clergy-perpetrated violence and abuse against innocent people. The errant clergy person should be decoupled from The Office of the Holy Priesthood, which has standards. There is a great denial when people hear that their “beloved priest” abused, assaulted and/or raped a victim. Abusers know how to hide their abusive behavior by putting up a façade in public for their congregation. Typically, congregations do not want to believe that having an abusive clergy in ministry could be possible in their church community, yet we have evidence from victims that this is the reality.
To answer your question more directly, I am able to face the truth even when the truth is ugly.
Jacobsen: How does this difference in temperament or not standing down make the work in advocacy relevant here?
Nedelescu: When it comes to clergy sexual abuse, the church (including congregations, leaders and administrations) tend to effectively silence most victims by blaming them. It is too much of a challenge for them to acknowledge the truth that their clergy, whom they employed, has committed sexual misconduct against a congregant.
It is critically important to understand that denying the truth, attacking the victim, reversing the victim and offender roles are all silencing tactics. If these tactics are identified then it is easier to speak of them and reject them maximally in order to continue the advocacy and protect innocent people from being victimized.
Advocacy is a type of charity work. From a theological viewpoint, standing up against abusive clergy who prey on the people of God for their own selfish gratifications is a prophetic ministry. It is much easier to speak of clergy abuse as something that may happen, but what we really need to do is go beyond and hold abusers and enablers accountable. For those who read the Bible, the idea that is presented in Matthew 25:35-36 is that, for Jesus, justice involves acts of compassion and concern towards those who are the neediest, most vulnerable and the most at risk of having no advocate. These issues are what constitute the moral values of Jesus.
I see some preachers and church leaders making just statements but they should see that their justice agenda must extend beyond issues of abortion or human sexuality. Of course, these matters are important; however, taking responsibility and holding wrongdoers accountable is a mutual responsibility that we have within a community. We can’t both write and speak of LGBTQ and women’s’ rights and not hold abusive clergy accountable by removing them from ministry.
Jacobsen: One of the reasons for doing the series on the Greek Orthodox Church was the ways in which the individuals in religious communities would use the focus on the abuse within the Roman Catholic Church as a deflection for crimes by their ecclesiastics. Have you noticed this within the Greek Orthodox Church?
Nedelescu: It is important to do a series on the Greek Orthodox Church because the largest Orthodox Christian jurisdiction in the United States is the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America with about 540 Greek Orthodox parishes and about 800 priests (probably including retired priests).
Our preliminary data, gathered from online media articles reporting clergy abuse cases, showed that the majority of articles involving clergy abuse were of abuse cases within the Greek Orthodox church. This could very well be because it is the largest jurisdiction. For a comparison, the Orthodox Church of American (OCA) has about 500 priests in active ministry (excluding retired priests).
The majority of Orthodox Christians are not familiar with the literature on clergy sexual abuse of adult women and are not aware of its extent. They typically assume that most victims of clergy abuse involve children and that most clergy abusers are Roman Catholic.
Research from Columbia Theological Seminary by Pamela Cooper-White, however, shows that about 90-95 percent of victims of clergy sexual misconduct are female congregants (Boobal Batchelor 2013, xv). (See Cooper-White, Pamela. 2013. ‘Clergy Sexual Abuse of Adults’ in Valli Boobal Batchelor ed. When Pastors Prey. Geneva. World Council of Churches Publishing. 58-81). Whether this high percentage of female victims of clergy sexual abuse has to do with women being more likely to report the abuse is beside the point concerning the real problem which is the presence of predators masquerading as clergy.
Our research analysis demonstrates that the Orthodox church is not immune to clergy sexual misconduct and abuse. There is also misconception that if priests can marry, as is the case with Orthodox priests, that they don’t abuse. They do because clergy abuse is about power, domination and control, not celibacy. The reality is that Orthodox clergy who abuse, not only violate their priestly vows when abusing their victims but they also violate their marital vows.
Jacobsen: When you are gathering data for preliminary analysis, is one of the difficulties in bringing these types forward due to the lack of investigative reportage on these denominations?
Nedelescu: Absolutely. In our first phase of analysis we used ChatGPT to aid us in generating key search terms in order to facilitate finding online media news stories concerning clergy sexual abuse in the Orthodox Church. Our preliminary search resulted in a total of 50 clergy abuse cases from news articles between 2002 – 2023 with the Greek Orthodox Church of America showing up in 18 cases from news stories followed by the Russian Orthodox Church in 11 articles, the OCA, Antiochian, Romanian, etc. These preliminary data revealed a total of nearly 300 victims of clergy sexual abuse across different jurisdictions worldwide; however, this number is greatly underestimated since our data analysis is limited to only media stories found online.
The challenge in collecting data is that most victims do not report clergy sexual abuse publicly. If victims report internally to their parish or church administration, these reports are not typically disclosed while simultaneously tactics are used to silence the victims.
Jacobsen: What have been, not only the tactics but, the more common means by which victims coming forward are silenced?
Nedelescu: It should be mention that it is important to report clergy sexual abuse first to the police. Most police departments have some staff trained in sex crimes and know how to deal with these issues. Reporting to church administrations typically results in a second assault against victims and/or against those who report. The tactics may include in any order:
- Maintaining the status quo – this tactic takes engages a traditional approach avoiding “scandals” within faith communities through sentimental requesting of forgiveness. It uses spiritualized language without realizing that the real scandal is enabling predatory behavior.
- Interruptive tactic – seeks to interfere the process
- Obscurification – is a tactic that seeks to make the situation murky regarding perceptions of clergy abuse and even crimes by conflating these with lesser concepts such as “consensual affairs”, “sin”, “clergy have weakness too”, “temptation” – anything but the actual reality of this being clergy abuse. This tactic has worked well up until now.
- Deception – this tactic involves promising the matter will be taken care of. It promises action but never delivers.
- Remunerative – this tactic is used when survivors become imperfect victims who have not succumbed to the other tactics. In many cases, they are silenced at this point with NDAs.
- Coercive – this is an intimidation tactic to stop the full revelation of the abuse that took place. The victims are made to be the “enemy”.
Jacobsen: You are a highly qualified, professional scientist too. How does this scientific training help in more soberly analyzing these cases in the news?
Nedelescu: When I analyze these cases in the news articles I do so through the lens of a behavioral neuroscientist focusing on the response of both the victims and church administrations. I ‘ve observed that many victims thought that by reporting the clergy abuse to their church administrations appropriate action would be taken. They were misled (perhaps cultured) to believe that their church hierarchs (bishops) were going to assist.
The other aspect I bring to the analysis of these articles is my training focus in maladaptive behaviors and can see the severe trauma-induced dysregulation clergy abuse cases cause the victims. Clergy abuse is a public health concern and the issue needs to be raised to this level of visibility.
Jacobsen: As the late Dr. Carl Sagan reminded people in public discourse, science is more than ‘a body of knowledge,’ because ‘it’s a way of thinking’ – a means by which to systematically couple hypothesis and empirical observation to make evidenced-based hypotheses, theories, about the natural world. How does this way of thinking and this community of scientists give a different orientation on thinking about the theology around and the institutional setup in formal Greek Orthodox religious life leading to a pattern of successive crimes of a sexual nature, harassment and/or abuse?
Nedelescu: I am trained to think critically as a scientist and to quickly change my view when new evidence becomes available.
You are right that it is a way of thinking. However, it is also the definition of being a humble human being. A sign of humility is to be able to say that my hypothesis or my theory or the way of my thinking before was wrong, now that I have this new evidence/knowledge before me.
I want to point out that many “Mothers” and “Fathers” of the Orthodox church throughout the centuries were towering intellects whose ways of thinking were to use critical thinking skills. The phenomena I am observing today in the Orthodox church where people are encouraged to take the counsel of clergy uncritically is a terrible mistake. It seems to be culturally embedded into the fabric of the Orthodox church which has given rise to clergy, some of whom are duplicitous who crave attention, power and glorification from others. Taken together, this sets up a breeding ground for clergy-perpetrated abuse.
Jacobsen: How can community and individual support, of survivors bolster resolve to work in systematically gathering the relevant data for cases as well as
Nedelescu: The first reason for constructing Prosopon Healing was to provide resources for survivors of clergy abuse. Ultimately, there is an urgent need to adequately assist victims of clergy abuse. A second reason is to bring victims/survivors together because victims of clergy abuse heal quicker by transitioning to a survivor mentality in a community that validates and acknowledges their abuse. Once survivors unite, others are more likely to speak up which will aid in understanding the breadth and depth of clergy abuse in the Orthodox world.
The wider community can also be of assistance because clergy-perpetrated abuse is a public health concern with a serious societal burden on the public mental health system. Because churches are so reactionary when clergy abuse is reported, it is challenging to identify other cases of abuse. We know that research from Baylor University showed that 3.1% of adult women who attended a place of worship at least once a month said they were victims of clergy sexual misconduct as adults. Contextualized, this research demonstrates that in a congregation of 400 faithful, there may be on average 7 victims of clergy abuse, once the abuser is identified. Yet, it is challenging to find these other silenced cases.
Jacobsen: Why do you think church communities and administrations are so reactionary to acknowledging clergy sexual abuse?
Nedelescu: It is very simple. When a church community approves the words and some tears from the abuser over the victims who speak up, they have done added damage to the victims, risked the safety of others and left the abuser with a malignant disease. As a consequence these communities are toxic systems. They are not worshiping God. They are worshiping their ministries and closing their eyes to the truth to maintain the status quo rather than facing the truth and doing the hard work to heal. It is idolatry.
Jacobsen: What is the current effort towards California Governor Gavin Newsom and the work to bring down protection for abuses who happen to be religious leaders, as with much of the #ChurchToo movement?
Nedelescu: Allow me to give some background in order to better answer this question. Clergy who exhibit predatory behavior need to be held accountable. Church hierarchies are responsible for preventative actions. But, when churches fail to exact discipline, then we need the state to hold abusive clergy accountable for the safety of people. This is the purpose of Senate Bill (SB) 894.
SB 894 was heard at the Senate Public Safety Committee hearing on April 16th 2024. One would have thought that in California such a bill, to protect adult congregants for abuses by clergy who are in positions of power, would have passed without any issue. Instead, we experienced some inconsistencies including a conspicuous exclusion of more than twenty-three private individual support letters from the bill analysis. This legislation is critically important because it would bring California in line with 13 other states and the District of Columbia, which already have similar laws in place.
According to the bill analysis, the opposition was comprised of only two constituents: (1) the ACLU California Action and (2) the California Public Defenders Association. They took issue with the wording around the term “consent”. They contended that sexual conduct between two “consenting” adults should not be penalized. However, it is important to understand that because of the unequal power differential between a clergy and a congregant, there can be no true consent. Consent is, therefore, dissolved when a clergy uses their position of power to gain sexual satisfaction with a congregant. True consent can only take place between two adults of equal power. Clergy provide counsel to their congregants, and should never involve sex with them. Professional therapy never includes sexual behavior, for example due to a similar unequal power between counselor/therapist and patient.
Now, we have been advised by Senator Dave Min to reach out to Leadership and Governor Newsom for assistance. We have already spoken to the Legislative Director from the Office of Senator Ashby who has provided invaluable information and am very thank full for his time. Next, we are waiting to schedule a meeting with the Office of Senator Mike McGuire who oversees the Senate Public Safety Committee. We have written to Governor Newsom for assistance. We have to allow the Governor and his Office the time to examine the situation, but he has had to intervene in the past when California Democrats blocked a child trafficking bill. Similarly, the fentanyl bills were getting being stalled in the Senate and Assembly Public Safety Committees, evidently. There appears to be a strong reaction when bills are proposed that would result in a new law in the state of California, even though, everyone knows the ravages of child trafficking, the opioid crisis, and clergy abuse of adults.
Jacobsen: Katherine Archer and you have been working together, as the early independent investigators and data-collectors on this work within, not only the Greek Orthodox Church but, the Eastern Orthodox Church in general. How can people get involved, financially support, or volunteer expertise or skills with you, to start building a larger movement?
Nedelescu: At the moment, we are beginning to look for funding because we will need financial support to help expedite this important work. We are just beginning to scratch the surface of a much larger problem.
In the immediate future, we welcome advocates and survivors of clergy-perpetrated abuse to join our research efforts. For Orthodox Christians we put a website together called – Prosopon Healing – where we provide resources for the community.
Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Hermina.
Nedelescu: It was a pleasure talking to you.
—
Further Internal Resources (Chronological, yyyy/mm/dd):
Articles
Crimes of the Eastern Orthodox Church 1: Adam Metropoulos (2024/01/11)
Crimes of the Eastern Orthodox Church 2: Domestic Violence (2024/01/12)
Crimes of the Eastern Orthodox Church 3: Finances (2024/01/16)
Crimes of the Eastern Orthodox Church 4: Sex Abuse (2024/01/17)
Interviews
Dr. Hermina Nedelescu on Clergy-Perpetrated Sexual Abuse
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/01
I was listening to LEN “Steal My Sunshine” transcribing another colleague’s interview while in a Subway. Something about some of the early parts of the song triggered a thought for me.
There’s a recursion, a deep and unavoidable recursive aspect, to every part of consciousness. I think there’s something there. Like we missed its wider implications.
It’s bit like a ‘carping,’ for our own good but it’s simply in-built, like a faultfinding plural filtration system, of mind to weed out errors. Like the visual illusion of motion in time with rapid transition of images for movies at the theatre, too fast for our consciousness to see it, and so fast we can enjoy entertainment called movies or television. So take three hypothetical levels on it.
Level 1:
Our constant feedback of information from the “multimodal,” as I say, is the one side of it. We need constant information and as dams to get lots of new information.
Level 2:
But those dams have to filter the information. But there’s almost a recursion in it to make those filters so rich to just get out as much error as possible before we get “awareness.” The: we can will what we know, but can’t will what we will bit for Informed Will.
Level 3:
I’m trying to give different images. And it’s the conscious bit too. That’s part of the same recursion system too, so very ‘high level’ or the level where we are aware and there’s an apparency of coherence on every perceivable system alongside the much weaker conceiving system (imagination, visualization). That consciousness is not only those varied feed-forward dams — including from the body’s bottleneck of info too. It’s feed-backward.
Consequences:
A practical example is our predictions or our implicit expectations of that reality alter the perception in consciousness of the reality. Even though, the individual percepts for those qualia are the same coming in. They get warped, as fast as a good theatre movie — almost as if to keep the interest in our conscious experience alert enough.
Possible implications:
Boredom could be a symptom of a system failure immediately before consciousness to keep interest in our conscious awareness. Like a visual illusion or a mental defect, boredom could be classified as a glitch. That’s a new view. Mental illness could more objectively be defined, in this sense, as a failure in different directions: Narcissism — overdrive to the interest in the Self’s conscious experience, anxiety — unbalanced overdrive in interest, depression — unbalanced under-drive in interest, schizophrenic — fragmented conscious experience and a fracture in the system of interest itself. I genuinely think there is something there.
This ubiquitous recursion structured per organism’s mind, of those that have a central processor like a brain, matches much of the structure we see, which is a gross anatomical view. But not only that, we see the fundamental absolute insane amounts of branching the mind does. A coherent self evolves in time, through development. And that self has to be built in time, in an environment, so the selves that we’ve seen in time are localized and specialized. Pick a time, a people, a language, and the language becomes simply a means to catalogue, in a semi-structured way internal experience and this internal experience to others. It’s a way to structure the external world in a manner reflective in individual experience, but yet another recursion into the open world, not simply in the organism.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/05/31
Sustainable population growth is a relevant mid-length issue for many, but not all, societies. It concerns the problem of potentially productive citizens in a nation, which is to say, their shrinking populations, which the Russian Federation and China have begun to see on the authoritarian side and South Korea and Japan are seeing on the democratic side.
It’s a pervasive issue and a legitimate problem. There is an ‘ick’ factor in discussing things like statistics of birth rates because it implies a sort of dehumanization of individual citizens, particularly women, especially in more egalitarian and developed industrial societies that pride themselves on being more gender equal and gender-affirming.
That’s a left-wing preventative in discussing these topics or a molasses burden. Then there’s the more conservative orientation of simply using this as a means to argue for traditional gender roles. Perhaps somewhere between these, not extremes but differences, a place of better balance exists.
The basic fact is that women do not want to bring children into the world in those countries for a variety of reasons. The first reasons are inferable in the result. Women want a choice in reproduction, at a minimum, and sufficient resources to provide for those children. They bear most of the burden anyway. Now, as they become better off, most societies tend to dip in population rate. One particular aspect is access to ‘the’ pill or a variety of contraceptive measures for women to have more of choice in their life paths.
No matter the efforts of the institutional, mostly male leaders of the country making aims to increase the population rates or the desires of the leaders, theocratic or otherwise, if women do not want to have children, they will, in many circumstances, stage a silent protest to determine their life trajectories, which includes in the arena of determining their lives. Women want a good life and deserve equality with men. It seems incumbent upon men with the gumption to take a leap and work for those egalitarian efforts. You do not have to; believe me, look at the birth rates in societies and compare them to replacement levels.
Atwood had a marvellous example of forced birth State efforts. Romania, under Nicolae Ceausescu, instituted Decree 770 to restrict women’s access to abortion and contraceptives. Most legitimate human rights organizations stipulate that, as a fundamental human right, the restriction is a crime. As time proceeds, it becomes more transparent and unambiguously agreed upon worldwide. The outcome is poverty and destitution for all of these women, having kids beyond their means and kids growing up without sufficient resources to flourish.
It is a basic recipe for intergenerational poverty. And that’s what it wrought under a communist regime attacking women’s dignity and humanity. Oddly, communists and religious conservatives who speak out against Communism agree on this common aim: 1) politicization of women’s bodies and 2) restriction of abortion access and reproductive rights. They are allied in the attack of women as persons, by which I mean people with a sense of autonomy and a desire for freedom.
We have the empirical results of high poverty, low education, high malnutrition, high infant mortality, and extremely low rights for women and populations. Those are colloquially termed third-world countries or developing nations or less developed states. There are very high birth rates in those countries because people have no control over their destinies.
What about modern cases to enforce women’s bondage to the home and — what has been termed by leftwing commentators — “forced birth”? So, the Russian Federation’s efforts are to call for Russian women’s tradition of large families, even President Putin. In China, it’s more of a shame culture. Women past a certain age get some translational equivalent epithet of “leftover women.”
The hard fact about these efforts is their a) superficiality and b) inefficacious thrust. Neither of those work. Even in developed sexist societies, like South Korea or Japan, women are choosing the same. The formal movement in South Korea is called the 4B Movement, or something like that. Japan has one of the lowest birth rates in the entire world. It’s developed, democratic, technological, intelligent and educated, and a land of the salaryman.
Thus, we have the societies in which women’s rights do not even begin to exist with high birth rates. Far too many people for the amount of the resources. Then we have the autocratic developing societies attempting to encourage a culture of big families to solve low birth rates. While we have freer rich societies, sexist in character, women choosing to forego children altogether. What do we do? The other option is majoritarian run societies with wealth.
In developed, more egalitarian societies, there is a minor rate of being below the replacement rate for a sustainable economy and population, which is more optimistic and workable. We need a robust picture of what works at the extreme egalitarian end. Still not enough to replace people dying, we’re stuck with a low birth rate and, so, a lower population overall too.
What are we to do now? We — literally — do not have a plan. However much Musk likes to be the center of the crusade for replacement of the dead sufficiently, there isn’t a robust universal solution for every societal admixture, yet. However, egalitarianism seems the most promising: Simply empower women. That’s the best start shown empirically so far — give women decision in their fates.
I suspect that Iceland will show the way — simply looking at some of my favourites humanists coming out of the humanist community Iceland. That’s one option there. They made the right choices at each crucial juncture where other countries faltered. They’ve been labeled the most gender-equal society by the World Economic Forum for 13, 14, or 15 years. Something like that. It’s not simply for professional mothers and women alone. No, it has to be pervasive plan influencing even the most blue-collar aspects and white-collar facets of institutions. Something like a cultural stamp or seal of gender equality, as they have at the University of Iceland.
It seems clear to me, insofar as I have my current evolved view, that no rights for women in societies are terrible for everyone because men get gender stereotyped, too. I am gender atypical; I would not fit the provider role in any sense or the earner in any sense, as I have a different compass guiding my life choices.
And I wouldn’t want to be; it’s uncomfortable and stifling, I find, and the social pressures up to a point are tremendous: the shame and guilt culture to get men to conform is disgusting and was a massive issue for me, growing up, and a significant area of shame, until I got out of the conservative religious community, the Evangelical community.
It’s also clear to me that the attempts to reverse women’s rights in semi-developed societies are idiotic and not working because women, like everyone else, once they get a taste of freedom and a better life, tend to prefer it. The only two other options for developing more egalitarian societies and sexist societies are pretty straightforward. In the sexist ones, women throw a middle finger at the authorities trying to tell them what to do with their lives, and the egalitarian ones have a more productive workforce and a highly educated one and more closely approximate a balanced population rate. Therefore, our only option out of the morass is more egalitarian, with some unknown tweaks that need more evidence.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/05/30
This will be rewritten for another publication in a non-first person frame.
*Link to selected images from November 22,2023 to December 6, 2023 of the Russo-Ukrainian War.*
War is hell. And I have seen it.
Remus Cernea, “War is Hell”, Keynote Speech, Humanists International World Congress 2023
I’m heading back to Ukraine and need some financial support.
The original idea to travel to Ukraine came from Remus Cernea, the former President of the Green Party in Romania and the Founder/Co-Founder of the Romanian humanist movement, after meeting at the World Congress and General Assembly 2023 of Humanists International. Cernea was a keynote speaker alongside Oleksandra Romantsova, the Executive Director of the Nobel Peace Prize winning Center for Civil Liberties, they are the first and only organization, or individuals, in Ukraine to win the Nobel Peace Prize. They won in 2022.
I requested interviews with the two of them during the conference, after having been impressed by the presentations and the personalities, and, thankfully, both accepted — so began the journey through the war context of Ukraine. We had interviews, pretty much, on the spot. Those became part of a promise to continue working on the war until its cessation. The current project is the construction of a repository of voices from human rights defenders, humanists, civilians, and the like, on the war, alongside individuals and articles written on the Russo-Ukrainian war.
These will simply follow in the mostly universally accepted condemnation of the Russian aggression against Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The most genericized condemnation from the start of the full-scale invasion was UN General Assembly Resolution ES-11/1 adopted on March 2, 2022. The international consensus came to 141 votes in favor, 5 against, and 35 abstentions. These broadly condemned the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation.
I understand the relevant risks to life and wellbeing traveling to Ukraine with the potential to come back maimed or in a body bag. As was stated by Edem Wosornu, Director of Operations and Advocacy at the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, recently:
Ukraine is currently enduring some of the worst attacks since the start of this war… No region of Ukraine has been spared by this war… wave after massive wave of attacks continue to kill and injure civilians and cause widespread damage and destruction to critical civilian infrastructure.
The case of travelling to a foreign country, especially travelling far from one of the safest countries in the world, Canada. It seems like a bit of a head trip to go out into this area of the world during an active war, full-invasion or — what has euphemistically been continually labelled — a ‘special military operation” by Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin.
The funny thing about, not only war correspondence traipsing but, travel in general. I hate it. I am a home body. It’s one of the most distasteful things imaginable to me — worse than a trip to the dentist! I like basic routines, but I, like Remus, feel the need to go out and simply do the work. “Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one,” Aurelius reminds us.
Cernea repeatedly said to me, ‘I do not want to be here, but I feel I have to be here.’ It’s neither lofty nor august. This is quite straightforward. Namely, if people are too afraid to travel to a war, and if you can, though, at least support in some manner, I am an independent journalist, then assist others in that way. Which is to say, I am a dealer in narratives. I have to go and get the stories. Remus is a politician and a war correspondent with Newsweek Romania. He feels the same way and deals in human tales and human affairs.
I do not necessarily believe in the idea of an objective journalist. However, I can affirm the relatively true notion of objective language used by a journalist. Even with the most careful and prudent of wordcrafting, we have word count limitations. We have time limits. We have interest limits. We have psychological temperaments, profiles, cognitive abilities, language barriers, and the like.
It’s simply the nature of being a person, and writing for different publications. Chomsky was right, in many regards, about the media. Some are benignly true, though, generally speaking. We talk about the word count in a publication, say a news article. That’s concision in action. You have to make the point, punchily. It limits extended thought and deeper analysis.
This limitation further stifles the possibility of objectivity, because some points must be included and others must be excluded based on the judgment of the individual journalist. That’s structural, in most news organizations, insofar as I can tell, but there are far more experienced journalists who could speak more accurately to the truth of that or not. That’s in the nature, the policies, of the media institutions. And it has its uses.
It forces you to make your points, briefly and summarily. More depth ironically has this counterintuitive duality: It allows better approximation of objectivity through more inclusion of data if not propaganda, while better approximating the subjective impressions and judgments of the journalist as it’s more deeply crafted by the mind of the reporter. It’s both more objective and more subjective if done well — which is weird, but rarely stated in objective language and always incorporative of the subjective impressions and judgments of the journalist (read: their prejudices of mind and valence).
What does this miss out? It misses something not in a single article, in the large reportage done rarely in a series of articles thematically spread and announced. I am lucky. I have outlets to write for publications in such a manner so as to write at length and with a decent amount of editorial freedom. The key goal here with the live war environment is to create a repository.
This includes a necessary element of reportage from the bombed sites, from the war zone — the country, to get human rights experts, to get other perspectives relevant to the involved concerned, and then compile in an online resource and then, eventually, a book project. This bypasses the limitations of “concision” and creates an online resource for interested parties through time.
I am no different coming to a war context as a Stray Canadian (™). My subjective impressions and individual judgment will bias the production of material, selection of interviewees, length and depth of material, frame, and the like. While, as with most journalists, I will work to report the facts accurately. So, my eternal mainstay seems like a fundamental anti-religious psychology: Not “Believe me,” but “do not believe me”; do not have faith in me, be skeptical of me, I want to encourage critical thought most in and about me, and derivatively in that which I report: find out for yourself. I’ll be, generally speaking, grateful for the correction if any.
My aim is to travel to Ukraine again this year for a couple to a few weeks. Please take this article as an encouragement to reach out to correspond, recommend interviewees, sources, und so weiter, any financial support in this independent journalistic endeavour would be greatly appreciated.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/05/30
To whom it may concern:
I propose to the Canadian humanist community: Fund a Canadian humanist journalist for a second journey to a war zone with another humanist.
Driven by individual humanist convictions, I traveled to Ukrainian territory between November 22 and December 6, 2023. I accepted an offer to join a humanist war correspondent in documenting the war triggered by the Russian Federation’s aggression against Ukraine on February 24, 2022. I understand the relevant risks to life and wellbeing traveling to Ukraine with the potential to come back maimed or in a body bag.
Edem Wosornu, Director of Operations and Advocacy at the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, recently said, “Ukraine is currently enduring some of the worst attacks since the start of this war… No region of Ukraine has been spared by this war… wave after massive wave of attacks continue to kill and injure civilians and cause widespread damage and destruction to critical civilian infrastructure.”
At the time of the first trip, I worked seven days a week at an equestrian facility, making time off difficult. Needing surgery, I combined my recovery time with this crucial journey, traveling to six Ukrainian cities during the war. I went straight from surgery to the airport.
I fully understand the risks of traveling to Ukrainian territory again. However, I feel compelled to document this conflict. Remus Cernea feels the same, a former Romanian MP, founder of the humanist movement in Romania, and current war correspondent for Newsweek Romania. He inspired this idea.
He spoke as a keynote at the World Humanist Congress of Humanists International in 2023 in Copenhagen, Denmark, alongside the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Executive Director of the Center for Civil Liberties, Oleksandra “Sasha” Romantsova.
I aim to produce an open-source, freely downloadable text through a series of interviews and articles. This live research project remains ongoing, self-funded, and independent, with no financial conflicts of interest. Any donations for this second trip would support the work itself, not influence its direction or outcomes.
I commit to documenting the war until its end. This independent journalistic endeavor holds significant moral relevance to me and aligns with the ethical concerns of most Member States of the international community. For example, UN General Assembly Resolution ES-11/1 adopted on March 2, 2022, saw 141 votes in favor, 5 against, and 35 abstentions, which broadly condemned the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation.
I would fly from Vancouver, Canada to London, United Kingdom, and then travel by train to several European cities en route to Ukraine to visit humanist collaborators, and then throughout Ukraine, then back to the European city with the cheapest flights back to Vancouver, Canada. Funding plan: Personal finance for individual trips to humanist colleagues in Europe, and donated funds and personal finance to flight and travel within Ukraine for the war correspondence. Previously, all personal finance funded the trip.
Your support will enable the continuation of this vital work.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen
May 14, 2024
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/02
Infinity & Zero: Cuts in the Unicity; subjectivity simply means the point at which infinity and zero meet, as cuts in the manifold.
See “What is a cut, technically, speaking? Nothing but a recoursing of the water into another stream.”
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/02
Is it over, yet?: No, no, there’s another 17 encores; and, you’ll, probably, only like about the worse half of them.
See “Traipsing.”
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: March 1, 2014
Web Domain: http://www.in-sightpublishing.com
Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Journal: In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal
Journal Founding: August 2, 2012
Frequency: Three (3) Times Per Year
Review Status: Non-Peer-Reviewed
Access: Electronic/Digital & Open Access
Fees: None (Free)
Volume Numbering: 12
Issue Numbering: 3
Section: A
Theme Type: Idea
Theme Premise: “Outliers and Outsiders”
Theme Part: 31
Formal Sub-Theme: None.
Individual Publication Date: June 1, 2024
Issue Publication Date: September 1, 2024
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Word Count: 3,933
Image Credits: Bob Williams.
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN): 2369-6885
*Please see the footnotes, bibliography, and citations, after the publication.*
Abstract
Bob Williams is a Member of the Triple Nine Society, Mensa International, and the International Society for Philosophical Enquiry. He discusses: the massive split between young men and women in higher education, noting the societal shifts and personality differences contributing to this trend; women’s increased focus on academic work, resulting in higher grades and career pursuits; delayed or omitted marriage and childbirth due to birth control technologies; men still dominate STEM fields while women gravitate towards humanities and people-oriented careers; the debate on sex differences in intelligence with reference to Haier and Colom’s work; the “corrected” SAT and WISC tests for eliminating sex differences in g; Richard Lynn’s Bayesian model linking head size to intelligence but disputes the Flynn Effect’s impact on g; Helmuth Nyborg’s job suspension and court battles over his research on sex differences in intelligence; Christopher Brand’s firing and depublishing incident due to his book on general intelligence; the controversial nature of psychology and the replication crisis in intelligence research; the Gaussian distribution of intelligence but questions its validity at extreme ends; the lack of scandalous claims on extrapolated IQs above 4 sigma; high-IQ societies’ role in pre-internet peer interactions and their evolution with the internet; comments on the variable success of high-IQ societies in meeting member needs; expresses skepticism about AI’s magical problem-solving capabilities while acknowledging its potential in data analysis and medical diagnosis; the social impacts of increasing education and career pursuits among women, leading to demographic changes and below replacement birth rates in developed nations.
Keywords: Gender disparities, higher education trends, career aspirations, academic performance, personality traits, marriage trends, childbirth patterns, birth control impact, STEM fields, humanities preferences.
Conversation with Bob Williams on Political Correctness and Career Progression, and Controversies: Retired Nuclear Physicist (8)
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What do you make of this massive split between young men and young women in colleges, polytechnics, and universities now? It is rather drastic by this time, and nowhere near completing its trend.
Bob Williams: It is an interesting development that presumably has multiple causes. One of those is the shift from society sending men to college so that they can obtain a good job with their degree and support a family, while women were expected to rear children and keep the home. As that changed, women clearly wanted to pursue their own careers and were eager to consume higher education. Another factor is the sex differences we see in personalities. These have led to women often getting higher grades than men in various majors. My take is that women are more likely to focus on academic work and to resist distractions. Trait conscientiousness may be higher for women. The related change that goes with this is delayed or omitted marriage and delayed or omitted childbirth. No doubt, birth control technologies also contributed to these changes in choices.
We still see more men going into STEM than women, either as a matter of choice, or ability. The opposite happens in humanities. Even among very bright women, the SMPY (Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth) longitudinal study shows that women are much more inclined to choose career paths that involve working with people than with things (STEM).
There remains some disagreement between researchers about the intelligence differences between the sexes. In The science of human intelligence, Haier and Colom* mostly argue for no difference, but with obvious differences on a subject by subject basis (particularly math and verbal). Although they treated the topic at length, it left me feeling that some things were simply ignored, such as consistently higher male scores on both SAT-M and SAT-V. They argue that this difference is due to differences in the makeup of the test takers, but the differences go on for too long for this to make sense. Data relating to whether there are sex differences in reaction time, inspection time, polygenic scores, and other measurable factors that are low level and directly measured are missing. As I recall, both SAT and WISC tests have been “corrected” to eliminate differential item functioning (by sex). If test items that are more difficult for women than men are removed, the test logically will have difficulty in showing sex differences in g.
*[Haier, R.J., Colom, R. and Hunt, E., 2023. The science of human intelligence. Cambridge University Press.]
—–
Jacobsen: How statistically significantly different were the Army helmet sizes?
Williams: I don’t know. The data apparently showed that there was an increase in head size for the group being considered (US military). It could have shown different results in other nations. Richard Lynn argued that, using a Bayesian model, measures of child development, including head size, showed general increases in measures that may relate to intelligence. He took this as biological evidence of the Flynn Effect, which was mostly or exclusively positive at that time. The problem was that repeated attempts to show a change in g failed. People in nations with strong FE gains did not show real world gains in measures of validity, nor did they become less intelligent when the FE reversed. The actual gains in child development were almost certainly related to improved diets and medical care causing positive health effects, but not real gains in g.
—–
Jacobsen: How did Nyborg suffer up to losing his job?
Williams: I don’t recall having learned about his earlier relationships with his university. Although I met him in 2005, it was not until the following year that I had a long discussion with him. He was telling me about his job suspension at the University of Aarhus. He appealed to ISIR members to make comments to the Rector. Some responded and I assume that helped. That same year the suspension was canceled and he received a “severe reprimand” over the Skanderborg project (sex differences in general intelligence). [The paper that caused the problem was titled “Sex-related differences in general intelligence g, brain size, and social status.”]
Unfortunately, that was not the end of the story. Each time I saw Nyborg he told me about new problems. I cannot recall how many iterations there were, but the general pattern was that he would be fired, then he would sue the university, then the courts would rule in his favor and he would be rehired. I believe the last court ruling included a monetary award to him. At that point, he was retired, but I don’t recall if the retirement was forced or not. I think there was at least one forced retirement in the saga. [The second paper that fueled the university animosity was titled “The Decay of Western Civilization: Double Relaxed Darwinian Selection.”]
—–
Jacobsen: How did Brand suffering up to losing his job?
Williams: The first I heard of Brand’s troubles was when he published Brand, C. (1996). The g Factor: General Intelligence and Its Implications. Chichester, England: Wiley. This was a well written book about general intelligence, which unfortunately was accurate in its discussion of between-group intelligence differences. Due to this, the publishers received complaints that their book was racist, so Wiley actually de-published it. They apparently collected already printed books and destroyed them. [They didn’t get all of the books. One of my friends has a hard-bound copy of the de-published book.]
Brand was reportedly working as a waiter to support himself after losing his job. This seems sad to me. I corresponded with him for a while and he published a piece I wrote about heritability on his web page. Although I never met him I know one person who worked with him. My impression, from his comments, was that Brand contributed to his problems by brashness and other personality traits. He died in 2017.
—–
Jacobsen: How did both lose their jobs?
Williams: Brand was working at the University of Edinburgh and was fired because the university did not want him discussing politically hot topics. Those topics, however, have been investigated by researchers from various nations. There was nothing in his book, or other sources, that I found to be at odds with similar published work.
I listed the two papers that the university used against Nyborg. They accused him of scientific misconduct. Again, his work was sound and consistent with similar research elsewhere. I think that the second paper I listed was particularly important because it properly explains phenomena seen in Western nations as a result of massive migration from low IQ nations.
—–
Jacobsen: How have they managed since their firings?
Williams: This has been mostly answered above. Brand obviously had a very bad time of it, both in losing his already published book and then his job. He tried to sell the book as a digital copy for a while. Later, he posted the entire manuscript for open access.
Nyborg endured a drawn out battle in court that lasted for years and went through at least the two instances that I mentioned. He seemed to maintain good spirits, based on my updates from him at conferences. He is 87 now. The last time I saw him, he was 81, strong and in good spirits. We were in Edinburgh in 2018. I took the picture below of Helmuth (blue tie) talking to Oliv Must (of Estonia).
—–
Jacobsen: Psychology seems prone to making their semi-prominent or prominent people undergo some controversy. Do you remember the Beth Loftus stuff around False Memory? I had coffee/meal with her, I think, 3 times and interviewed her years ago. Another person who went through – relative to academic life – an awful circumstance.
Williams: I recall encountering some references to false memory, but I know little about it. As I recall, the claim was made that individuals could and did create false memories in others (usually patients). I think that this claim was reasonably well verified, but I might have a false memory of it. 🙂
I agree that psychology has had more than its share of controversy. In the specialty I follow, controversy has been heated, as we have previously discussed. Sir Cyril Burt was an example of protracted controversy. Kamin claimed that Burt falsified data relating to twin IQs, used to compute the heritability of intelligence. This sort of case causes a lot of heat and little light. There were two nasty parts to the charge: First, Burt was dead and had no way to defend himself against the claims. Second, the study in question had no lasting impact on the understanding of the heritability of intelligence. I have a bias relating to Kamin, whom I see as a scoundrel (for other reasons). Rushton claimed to have evidence that the data was not altered. Whether it was or was not altered, it was in agreement with a great deal of research that came up with the same answer.
Arguably, things have gotten worse today, at least in the field of intelligence research. But I suppose psychology, in less quantitative niches, can be criticized as sloppy and difficult to replicate. When the replication “crisis” happened, psychology did not fare well, but the more measurement based area of intelligence research held up reasonably well. A first thought would be that this sort of thing would not be found in the hard sciences, but it was.
Nearly 90 per cent of chemists said that they’d had the experience of failing to replicate another researcher’s result; nearly 80 percent of biologists said the same, as did almost 70 percent of physicists, engineers, and medical scientists. Only a slightly lower percentage of scientists said they’d had trouble in replicating their own results.
From: Ritchie, S., 2020. Science fictions: How fraud, bias, negligence, and hype undermine the search for truth. Metropolitan Books.
I wrote a review of this book which can be found here: https://openpsych.net/paper/64/
—–
Jacobsen: Is the true distribution of humanity over the billions of people truly a Bell Curve or something different after or meaningless after 4-sigma?
Williams: I think that it is fair to say that for the 8 billion people on our planet, we can only make guesses based on observations of comparatively small groups and general principles that apply. The Central Limit Theorem is the usual support for a Gaussian distribution, for large data sets. Here is a definition I lifted from Investopedia:
“The central limit theorem (CLT) states that the distribution of sample means approximates a normal distribution as the sample size gets larger, regardless of the population’s distribution.”
The whole thing about assuming a Gaussian distribution is reasonable and is seen in countless studies of intelligence distribution. But… These studies simply don’t have data at 4-sigma. Real world studies are typically based on sample sizes that have (hopefully) adequate statistical power. If you browse through Bias in Mental Testing (Jensen), you will see various distributions from several data sets and different IQ tests. They all resemble a Gaussian distribution, but they don’t extend into the stratosphere.
The claim has been made (including by Jensen) that there are “fat tails” in the real distribution, which I have not seen supported by any well designed study. As anyone who has read my prior answers knows, I dispute that the definition of intelligence remains fixed at the very high end. I have no idea about the low end, other than that it typically has two incarnations. The non-pathological distribution is the representation of IQ distribution without including people suffering from organic retardation. This is the distribution used to norm a test. The full distribution includes those people who have forms of organic retardation. When they are included, the distribution shows a skew to the low end, for obvious reasons.
The intriguing aspect related to studying this question is that we are moving into the age of DNA and brain imaging methods of measuring intelligence. A relatively few years ago, we could not measure IQ from DNA. Now, it can be done, but with a large error at the individual level. When large genomic data sets are used (as in national collections), the noise in the measurement cancels out, leaving an agreement with traditional IQ test data that is around 92%, using contemporary calculations. If we project a few decades into the future, the limitations we have today will seem primitive. Similarly, it is likely that brain imaging technology will be capable of providing robust measures of intelligence and we might even expect that a ratio scale will eventually be created.
—–
Jacobsen: Were there any scandalous acts around claims of extrapolated IQs above 4 sigma?
Williams: I don’t know of any. In fact, when I became interested in cognitive science (early 90s) one of the things that I noticed was that the literature was overwhelmingly focused on the range of ± 2.5 sigma. Even with studies that were intended to be about high intelligence, most were looking at the top 1%. The Terman longitudinal study is one example. The Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth longitudinal study eventually got into a a range that went to the 1 in 10,000 level of math ability, based on the SAT taken at age 12. One thing I failed to ask David Lubinski (with adequate opportunities) was if they ever compared the SAT data to comprehensive IQ tests (WAIS or Woodcock-Johnson).
It is reasonable to consider that most research is funded by grants of some kind and those are most often aimed at factors seen over the full range of intelligence, such as relationships between IQ and SES, academic success, career choice, and the sorts of social factors that were reported in The Bell Curve.
—–
Jacobsen: What purpose do high-IQ societies serve now?
Williams: Before the internet, these societies enabled bright people to find peers for discussions (and more often, arguments) and occasional group meetings. The journals offered a place to write and share thoughts about things that would possibly be of little interest to the general public. It is my opinion that the need that is present in bright people to interact with peers, is best met by selective universities, very demanding university majors, and employment in research labs, think tanks, and other jobs that require lots of brain power. People who were not able to use one or more of these, probably benefited more from the societies than those who were doing work in cosmology or theoretical mathematics.
The internet suddenly changed our lives by granting fast access to people around the globe. It created numerous social media paths that now allow bright people to quickly find and communicate with peers. This hasn’t made people more genteel, but it has at least provided paths for both personal level communications and for more lengthy and public missive distributions through blogs.
Those of us who actively participated in the old style societies still retain some interest in them and still use them for the initially intended purposes. My guess is that there will be more movement to web based groups. One aspect of web groups is that they can be quickly assembled and just as quickly dissolved.
—–
Jacobsen: In my analysis, we have had between 100-125, probably, high-IQ societies, about half – off the top – are defunct. The rest range from journals like the Mega Society to journals and meetings such as Mensa International. Obviously, these provide something to members. Have they met the needs of their intended audiences based on original intent of such societies and organizations, or have they fallen short?
Williams: I think this has varied from group to group, with some enduring for decades and others evaporating. Mensa is a special case, since it has the advantage of a potentially high membership (due to its low entry threshold) and it is organized to hold regional gatherings that mostly work well, and an annual gathering that draws a lot of attendees. These tend to be structured around social activities and various presentations by people with expertise in interesting fields. When I was much younger, I attended these and found that the best ones were well received. Some of them experienced planning, budget, and space related problems. Mensa also has some sober components, such as projects that help distribute books, activities for bright children, the Mensa Research Journal, and a traveler hosting program.
One of the unfortunate issues that sometimes happens is that battles between members sometimes end up as legal confrontations. Examples of this include the dispute over Mega Society East vs. Mega Society and the series of suits from Clint Williams that caused a lot of problems for TNS.
—–
Jacobsen: Are we putting a sort of magical-mystical problem-solving essence onto the concept of AI? These are new. We do not know the extent of impact, limits and scope, for example. I feel as if we are inundated by science fiction, where I see a faith in AI as if a panacea to ills. Certain areas, we have seen empirical evidence of powerful computation plus human expertise used to inform the systems making superhuman performance.
Williams: I was surprised when AI suddenly became a big public topic. It had been under development and in use for some applications for a long time, so I was expecting an incremental improvement from time to time, but then we had ChatGPT and other systems available to anyone and able to do at least some “tricks” that were undeniably advanced. Of these, the ability to communicate in human-like form was startling. Then we saw AI images that were photo-realistic and even able to replicate the appearances and voices of well known public figures. Some of this (deep spoofing) has reached the point where it certainly has the potential to cause both social and legal problems.
The part of the uproar that I find to be premature is the fear that AI will become a supernatural alien force of the type we saw in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. This kind of fear is easy to generate and strikes me as presently premature and probably not even a concern for the distant future. When I see our government trying to regulate AI development, I cringe. Imagine the totally uninformed people who already show us that their jobs could be done by AI or maybe an intelligent monkey, trying to prohibit us from developing the things that our global adversaries are not going to abandon. If nothing else, the military aspects (including control of communications) of this are as essential to free nations as are their air, ground, space and sea forces.
To me, the excitement about AI is that we already have evidence of it being able to examine massive amounts of data and to learn how to use it to develop insights that would otherwise be impossible. Consider the example of brain imaging. The problem with this is that each scan can show slightly different content, causing interpretation problems for researchers. But AI can take in details of the scans and use those to reach conclusions that are amazingly accurate, even when the researchers have no idea how the AI did its job. This has obvious implications for medical diagnosis and should make the role of doctors turn into something more like the role of a radiologist who takes images, but stops at that point, letting the AI read and interpret them. Of the hundreds of papers I have heard presented at ISIR conferences, I would think that all of them would benefit from deep analysis with AI. The problem we have with finding single nucleotide polymorphisms that are associated with intelligence is the tiny effect size of a single SNP. This has left us with knowing what happens without being able to find even half of the associated SNPs. Right now, we have found 1,271 such SNPs; the experts tell us that the number that defines intelligence lies in the range of 10,000 to 40,000. We have already found the SNPs with average effect sizes of about 0.01%, but the rest presumably have smaller effect sizes. Of course much larger genomic data sets will help, but I believe that the next breakthrough could be by using AI to do its magic.
We hear a lot about AI taking over jobs and some of this may happen, but I believe it will take a good bit of time for corporations to adjust to restructuring their entire operations to operate in concert with AI. Every time I make a phone call to a business, I find that the robotic “push 1 for this and 2 for that” response irritates me, but then, if I ever reach a living person, they are idiots. I would love to instead talk to a natural language robot who can actually help.
—–
Jacobsen: Women are far more educated than men. Something increasing in effect the younger age one takes into account. A process happening over the last – maybe, 40 years – or something. What does this do to prospects of marriage, family formation, single parenthood, late-age motherhood (e.g., 40+), and so on? I have, for example, as you may have too, seen the push for a change in cultural conversation about parenthood and single parenthood, changing gender roles, and the increase in women having children age 40+ compared to other ages, where we tend to see a decrease in birth rates. There may be an overlay commentary for you, too, where we see in most advanced industrial economies a below replacement rate birth rate across populations, in general. You gave a brief comment on this in Norway, before, and the use of IVF technologies.
Williams: My thought on this topic is that we are at a divergence point where we no longer have time to catch up with the social impacts of our technological progress. My grandmother was 20 years old when the Wright brothers flew for the first time. Her generation was born before electrification. She lived well past the first moon landing. In one lifetime humans experienced air travel (and war), cinema, radio, television, amazing medical advances, early computers, space travel, plastics being used for countless products, the discovery of DNA, and the remaining endless list of life changing events. But when we look at mankind, it evolved over 200,000 or so years, with time for social and even biological corrections to adapt to the slow increase in knowledge and technology. Now the rate of change is insane. We have not had time to adjust to how people have changed their lives, to the ability to live, not for daily survival efforts, but to a fast paced world with people flying from nation to nation, to news that reaches us instantly, to laws that were made by earlier generations, and to social norms that have become unstable. We simply don’t have time to adjust. Meanwhile, we have parts of world populations that are still living as hunter-gatherers. The differences between groups expand with evident factors causing increasing friction not only with nearby nations, but with those on any part of the planet.
Among the changes that are consequential are women changing to new roles, many of them more attractive than motherhood, at least to some. This has led to later marriages, omitting marriage, later childbirth, smaller families and more childless couples. The developed nations are seeing below replacement rates of population growth by their native groups, followed by immigration from low IQ populations into the resulting vacuum. Many commentators have discussed the obvious driver of these changes–modern birth control.
Bibliography
None
Footnotes
None
Citations
American Medical Association (AMA 11th Edition): Jacobsen S. Conversation with Bob Williams on Political Correctness and Career Progression, and Controversies: Retired Nuclear Physicist (8). June 2024; 12(3). http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/williams-8
American Psychological Association (APA 7th Edition): Jacobsen, S. (2024, June 1). Conversation with Bob Williams on Political Correctness and Career Progression, and Controversies: Retired Nuclear Physicist (8). In-Sight Publishing. 12(3).
Brazilian National Standards (ABNT): JACOBSEN, S. Conversation with Bob Williams on Political Correctness and Career Progression, and Controversies: Retired Nuclear Physicist (8). In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, Fort Langley, v. 12, n. 3, 2024.
Chicago/Turabian, Author-Date (17th Edition): Jacobsen, Scott. 2024. “Conversation with Bob Williams on Political Correctness and Career Progression, and Controversies: Retired Nuclear Physicist (8).” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal 12, no. 3 (Summer). http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/williams-8.
Chicago/Turabian, Notes & Bibliography (17th Edition): Jacobsen, S “Conversation with Bob Williams on Political Correctness and Career Progression, and Controversies: Retired Nuclear Physicist (8).” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal 12, no. 3 (June 2024).http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/williams-8.
Harvard: Jacobsen, S. (2024) ‘Conversation with Bob Williams on Political Correctness and Career Progression, and Controversies: Retired Nuclear Physicist (8)’, In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, 12(3). <http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/williams-8>.
Harvard (Australian): Jacobsen, S 2024, ‘Conversation with Bob Williams on Political Correctness and Career Progression, and Controversies: Retired Nuclear Physicist (8)’, In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, vol. 12, no. 3, <http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/williams-8>.
Modern Language Association (MLA, 9th Edition): Jacobsen, Scott. “Conversation with Bob Williams on Political Correctness and Career Progression, and Controversies: Retired Nuclear Physicist (8).” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, vo.12, no. 3, 2024, http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/williams-8.
Vancouver/ICMJE: Scott J. Conversation with Bob Williams on Political Correctness and Career Progression, and Controversies: Retired Nuclear Physicist (8) [Internet]. 2024 Jun; 12(3). Available from: http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/williams-8.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright © 2012-Present by Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing. Authorized use/duplication only with explicit and written permission from Scott Douglas Jacobsen. Excerpts, links only with full credit to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with specific direction to the original. All collaborators co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: March 1, 2014
Web Domain: http://www.in-sightpublishing.com
Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Journal: In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal
Journal Founding: August 2, 2012
Frequency: Three (3) Times Per Year
Review Status: Non-Peer-Reviewed
Access: Electronic/Digital & Open Access
Fees: None (Free)
Volume Numbering: 12
Issue Numbering: 3
Section: B
Theme Type: Idea
Theme Premise: “Outliers and Outsiders”
Theme Part: 31
Formal Sub-Theme: None
Individual Publication Date: June 1, 2024
Issue Publication Date: September 1, 2024
Author(s): Sam Vaknin.
Author(s) Bio: Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. is a former economic advisor to governments (Nigeria, Sierra Leone, North Macedonia), served as the editor in chief of “Global Politician” and as a columnist in various print and international media including “Central Europe Review” and United Press International (UPI). He taught psychology and finance in various academic institutions in several countries (http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/cv.html).
Word Count: 298
Image Credit: Sam Vaknin.
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN): 2369-6885
*Please see the footnotes, bibliography, and citations, after the publication.*
Keywords: Biden, China, civil war, colonialism, Conservatives, democracy, dictatorship, elections, empire, immigration, military conquests, November, Russia, slavery, United States.
United States: Dictatorship or Civil War
If Trump wins the November elections, the United Stated is headed for a dictatorship. If Biden gains the upper hand, Trump and his conspiracist base will never concede and this will inexorably lead to a civil war.
The truth is that the United States is a contiguous continental empire driven to expansion by immigration and military conquests and underpinned by slavery and avarice. It is one of the few remaining colonial enterprises.
Like all empires before it, the USA is heterogenous and suffers from multifarious social ills. These tensions and torsions periodically erupt and rend it asunder. The 1960s-1970s witnessed a slow motion civil war as destructive in its own way as the one in the 1860s-1870s.
But whereas all previous internecine conflicts revolved around relatively narrow issues, the coming conflagration is about the very nature of the polity. Even the Confederacy did not challenge the democratic nature of the USA. Trump does.
Moreover: for the first time in its history, the United States is not cohered by any unifying vision – or external enemy.
Russia has many supporters in the revamped populist Republican party.
China is emerging as a threat, but it is also the second or first largest trade partner of the USA and one of its most prominent foreign investors. Not exactly the successor to imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, or the USSR.
Internally, there is an unbridgeable abyss between Conservatives and Liberal-Progressives which renders this vast country ungovernable. Virulent, visceral partisanship is only the symptom of this accelerating and escalating disintegration.
The USA will survive the way the Roman empire did before it. But it would become unrecognizable even to itself. Transmogrified and disoriented, its rump will stumble along, buffeted by challengers and challenges until it is no more.
Bibliography
None
Footnotes
None
Citations
American Medical Association (AMA 11th Edition): Vaknin S. United States: Dictatorship or Civil War. June 2024; 12(3). http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/vaknin-dictatorship-civil-war
American Psychological Association (APA 7th Edition): Vaknin, S. (2024, June 1). United States: Dictatorship or Civil War. In-Sight Publishing. 12(3).
Brazilian National Standards (ABNT): VAKNIN, S. United States: Dictatorship or Civil War. In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, Fort Langley, v. 12, n. 3, 2024.
Chicago/Turabian, Author-Date (17th Edition): Vaknin, Sam. 2024. “United States: Dictatorship or Civil War.” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal 12, no. 3 (Spring). http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/vaknin-dictatorship-civil-war.
Chicago/Turabian, Notes & Bibliography (17th Edition): Vaknin, S “United States: Dictatorship or Civil War.” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal 12, no. 3 (June 2024).http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/vaknin-dictatorship-civil-war.
Harvard: Vaknin, S. (2024) ‘United States: Dictatorship or Civil War’, In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, 12(3). <http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/vaknin-dictatorship-civil-war>.
Harvard (Australian): Vaknin, S 2024, ‘United States: Dictatorship or Civil War’, In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, vol. 12, no. 3, <http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/vaknin-dictatorship-civil-war>.
Modern Language Association (MLA, 9th Edition): Vaknin, Sam. “United States: Dictatorship or Civil War.” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, vo.12, no. 3, 2024, http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/vaknin-dictatorship-civil-war.
Vancouver/ICMJE: Sam V. United States: Dictatorship or Civil War [Internet]. 2024 Jun; 12(3). Available from: http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/vaknin-dictatorship-civil-war.
License
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 https://in-sightpublishing.com/.
Copyright
© 2012-Present by Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Authorized use/duplication only with explicit and written permission from Scott Douglas Jacobsen. Excerpts, links only with full credit to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with specific direction to the original. All collaborators co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their purposes.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/05/29
Ethic: Objective & relative as boiling point is objective & relative to elevation; objective ideas, subjective experience; intersubjective.
See “Moral middles, but not, too.”
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/05/29
Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited as well as many other books and ebooks about topics in psychology, relationships, philosophy, economics, international affairs, and award-winning short fiction. He is former Visiting Professor of Psychology, Southern Federal University, Rostov-on-Don, Russia and on the faculty of CIAPS (Commonwealth Institute for Advanced and Professional Studies). He is a columnist in Brussels Morning, was the Editor-in-Chief of Global Politician, and served as a columnist for Central Europe Review, PopMatters, eBookWeb, and Bellaonline, and as a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent. He was the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory and Suite101. His YouTube channels garnered 80,000,000 views and 405,000 subscribers. Visit Sam’s Web site: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Today’s topic: the next era of invention; what is the next era of invention? The previous eras relied upon unusually bright, innovative, and persistent, persons, solo: Legitimate geniuses. We have moved more into a world of invention emphasizing teamwork and dollars alongside some coordination with narrow artificial intelligence or specified algorithms, programs.
Prof. Sam Vaknin: Mankind have always alternated between teamwork and the individual genius. I think that we should focus on the raw materials (inputs) and the outputs of innovation rather than on who and how we bring it about.
We are transitioning from the age of monetized attention to the age of reality engineering.
Cities amounted to the first make-belief, virtual reality. Urbanization and population growth led to the rise of the creative genius (auteur), and the emergence of the concept of the original (due to the need to be seen and noticed in the multitude).
Intellectual property followed 300 years ago when mechanical reproduction blurred the line between original and copy and dramatically reduced the marginal cost of copies.
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1935), by Walter Benjamin, is an essay of cultural criticism which proposes and explains that mechanical reproduction devalues the aura (uniqueness) of an objet d’art.
Since then, identity has become a big business: patents, copyrights, brands, and blockchain NFTs. Distributed ledgers as well as centralised records vouch for one’s identity and guarantee it.
The nonrivalrous zero marginal cost of digital goods has shifted the focus from manufacturing of tangibles to the manipulation of abstract symbols, the commodification of attention, and the emerging conundrum of discoverability.
Both individual creators and commercial enterprises reacted by interpellating potential consumers via propaganda and targeted advertising and by turning a profit via the aggregation of big data (targeting the demographics of attention).
These trends engendered self-sufficient disintermediated atomization – attention has been diverted to asocial online pursuits – and yielded an impaired reality testing (fantasy paracosms, virtual and augmented reality, and, soon, the metaverse).
The next frontiers are reality-like (pseudoreal) “real estate” and commodified but idiosyncratic menu-driven reality (the aforementioned metaverse).
Collaborative virtual realities will supplant physical ones and reality substitutes (sex dolls, intimacy apps) will proliferate. Tech behemoths, such as Facebook, Google, Apple, and Amazon will try to control the way we perceive reality and the immersive universes that we inhabit.
IRL AI will displace people as friends, advisors, interlocutors, lovers, and service providers. Users will construct online simulations and inhabit them. But this turn of events will also force the introduction of mandatory digital identities, hopefully based on blockchain rather than government regulation.
Jacobsen: What marks something as genuinely inventive rather than simply an update to some technology?
Vaknin: Truly innovative inventions profoundly change the way we live, communicate, work, make love, and interact. By this standard, neither the automobile nor the smartphone are veritable innovations: the former is a mere mechanized horse and the latter a derivative of the phone. But Bell’s telephone and the telegraph are examples of paradigm-shifting, reality-altering inventions.
Jacobsen: More fundamentally, what is the basic principle of invention, its nature?
Vaknin: Most groundbreaking inventions generate their own markets, fostering needs in consumers that they were unaware of. They also recombine the familiar (e.g., previous technologies) in ways that produce alien, unprecedented, and strange products or services. Finally, true inventions become indispensable in short order: it is hard to imagine a life without them and we pity our predecessors for having been deprived of their existence.
Schumpeter seemed to have captured the unsettling nature of innovation: unpredictable, unknown, unruly, troublesome, and ominous. Innovation often changes the inner dynamics of organizations and their internal power structure. It poses new demands on scarce resources. It provokes resistance and unrest. If mismanaged – it can spell doom rather than boom.
Yet, the truth is that no one knows why people innovate. The process of innovation has never been studied thoroughly – nor are the effects of innovation fully understood.
Jacobsen: What do you see as the most significant biotechnology invention in the history of the biological world?
Vaknin: Possibly CRISPR, the revolutionary gene editing technology. Sometimes, advances in speed and quantity do constitute a quantum leap.
Jacobsen: What has been the most worldview-shattering invention in human history?
Vaknin: The harnessing of fire, the ability to reignite it at will.
Jacobsen: How does the psychology of an inventive person work?
Vaknin: The typical inventor is solutions-oriented. S/he perceives a lack, deficiency, or lacuna and sets out to remedy it. Inventors are also possessed of a synoptic-panoramic view, able to discern the connective tissue that binds apparently disparate phenomena. Finally, a true inventor is able to transition seamlessly from the theoretical to practical, from the drawing board to testing, and thence to prototype.
Creative people are feared and hated, ostracized and punished, unless they are willing to clown themselves or dumb down and conform to the biases, prejudices, and errors of the masses.
High IQ does not translate into success in the absence of perseverance, agreeableness, industriousness, stability (self-regulation), humility, a capacity for teamwork (minimal empathy and respect for others), robust mental health, a social support network, and luck. Many geniuses are homeless or incarcerated and all but forgotten.
The reality testing of inventors is impaired: they perceive the world differently (possibly a sign of autism). Coupled with recklessness, a sense of fearless godlike immunity, it leads to exploratory behavior.
Originality, novelty, difference: synoptic connectivity appears schizotypal or even psychotic (Schizotypy). Eysenck linked psychoticism to creativity. Indeed, the creative burst is often disorganized initially (inspiration, intuition, dreams). Attention multitasking generates unexpected insights and synergies.
Impatience, grandiosity or contempt and condescension charcaterize inventors: convinced of their superiority, they tend to block out “noise” and ignore criticism. Lability and dysregulation are sources of inspiration. Proclivity for change, thrill-seeking, and risky conduct result in innovation.
These are the reasons that most innovators endure inordinate hardships in life, their resilience and perseverance tested to the breaking point.
Jacobsen: With the advent of some software capable of mimicking human capacities more, and performing in superhuman capacities – at least on paper in computational power, how is this changing the interaction of human beings with software to invent in more precise and creative ways?
Vaknin: We tend to mythologize the process of invention, to render it mystical and uniquely human. The truth is that it is an emergent artefact (epiphenomenon), the ineluctable outcome of complexity. At this stage, we are feeding computer models with humungous reams of raw data in the hope that irreducible interactions between the umpteen pieces of information will yield innovative insights and discoveries. The next phase will involve fine-tuning the inputs so as to allow artificial intelligence to work on its own and to seek data as well as outputs autonomously. At that stage, we would still be able to define the research agenda, but not for long.
Jacobsen: In line with Alan Turing’s views, who I agree with more than the ‘moderns’ in Western technology communities when engineered computational systems match our “feeble powers,” how will this change the world of invention?
Vaknin: We will be rendered obsolete. We would still maintain a parasitic, atomized, technologically self-sufficient kind of existence for a while, but then, like everything superfluous in Nature, we will wane and fade away. Hence my prediction of a Luddite counter-revolution which would seek to physically demolish or ban certain technologies, maybe justly so.
Jacobsen: How might the style of invention, or even the definition of invention itself, change with the precision and breadth future computation, and simulation, will bring to everything in our lives? Where, there might be the capacity of a constant roll of mini-invention increasingly in every facet of human life, similar to the infusion of – what we consider – ordinary technologies now.
Vaknin: The overwhelming vast majority of people are incapable of making use of the full set of features made available even by current technologies, let alone of innovating. I foresee “innovation engineers” whose job would be to cajole artificial intelligence codes and models into new discoveries. But innovation would become the domain of machines, not humans.
Jacobsen: How long until the technological world or the biological world make human beings, as an environmentally engineered (evolved) structure, neither entirely relevant to the business of the Earth nor the dominant conscious information processors on the planet?
Vaknin: I would be surprised if this would take longer than 50 years. With the exception of physical jobs like plumbing, AI would be perfectly capable of replacing and displacing us and doing a better job of it.
Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, and the happy final note, Sam.
Vaknin: You are welcome. Always delighted to spread doom!
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://ffrf.org/news/releases/ffrf-urges-va-school-district-to-rein-in-prayerful-lacrosse-coach/
Publication Date: May 29, 2024
Organization: Freedom From Religion Foundation
Organization Description: The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with 40,000 members and several chapters all over the country. Our purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is insisting that Chesterfield County Public Schools in Virginia stop a high school lacrosse coach from coercing student athletes into prayer.
A concerned district community member informed the state/church watchdog that the head lacrosse coach at Matoaca High School has been directing and encouraging students to pray after games, including players from opposing teams. The coach has reportedly been heard asking students to gather around in prayer before directing a student to lead the prayer. On May 9, the coach even posted a photo of one of the prayers on his personal Facebook page.
“[The coach] has clearly crossed the constitutional line by directing and encouraging student athletes to engage in prayer while acting in his official capacity as a district employee,” FFRF Staff Attorney Chris Line writes to the district’s legal counsel.
Student athletes have the First Amendment right to be free from religious indoctrination when participating in their public school’s athletics program, FFRF points out. The Supreme Court has continually struck down school-sponsored prayer in public schools, even if the prayer is led by a student. Coaches cannot circumvent the Constitution by encouraging a student to lead the prayer and pretending that it is student-initiated.
And student athletes are especially susceptible to coercion, FFRF emphasizes. Students know that their coaches control their playing time and positions, directly affecting students’ opportunities for college scholarships and recruitment. When a coach directs students to participate in a prayer, the student athletes will no doubt feel that participating in that prayer is essential to pleasing their coach and being viewed as a team player. It is unrealistic and unconstitutional to put before student athletes the choice of allowing their constitutional rights to be violated in order to maintain good standing in the eyes of their coach and peers or openly dissenting at the risk of retaliation from their coach and teammates. In this situation, this is particularly troubling for parents and students who are not Christians or do not subscribe to any religion. Nearly half of Generation Z is nonreligious, which likely represents a significant number of students in the district.
FFRF is asking the school district to investigate the matter and take immediate action.
“Students need to know that they do not need to pray to play at Chesterfield County Public Schools,” FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor says. “This coach needs to quit abusing his authority in order to promote his personal religious views to what is essentially a captive audience of students.”
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://ffrf.org/news/releases/ffrf-la-abortion-pill-ban-signals-escalated-crusade-to-abolish-abortion/
Publication Date: May 28, 2024
Organization: Freedom From Religion Foundation
Organization Description: The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with 40,000 members and several chapters all over the country. Our purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
The passage of a Louisiana bill banning medication abortion without a prescription is evidence that religious anti-abortion crusaders don’t intend to stop until they abolish abortion nationwide.
The bill, signed into law on Friday by Gov. Jeff Landry, will be the first such measure of its kind in the nation, and will undoubtedly spur anti-abortion legislators in other states to introduce copycat legislation.
Meanwhile, the nation awaits a U.S. Supreme Court decision in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, which challenges the Food and Drug Administration’s longstanding approval of mifepristone. Mifepristone is the first in a two-drug protocol used in medication abortion, which accounted for 63 percent of abortions last year — an increase from 53 percent in 2020. Dependence on medication abortion is why the Supreme Court’s consideration of mifepristone access has created such concern. Most court prognosticatorspredict the high court will avoid curtailing or banning mifepristone at this time — perhaps why the Louisiana Legislature, champing at the bit, took its own draconian action.
Louisiana state Sen. Thomas Pressly added criminal penalties for possession of the abortion pills mifepristone and misoprostol to Senate Bill 276, an initially unobjectionable proposal to punish those who give abortion pills to pregnant persons without their knowledge or consent. Abortion is already virtually banned in the state, and Pressly’s amendment is intended to discourage Louisianans from bypassing the ban by ordering pills through mail or out-of-state telehealth.
The rate of online abortion pill orders has substantially increased since the fall of Roe, especially in states with strict abortion bans. One study showed that the expected number of medications used for self-managed abortions increased by over 27,800 units in the first six months after Dobbs.
Since Louisiana adopted its near-total abortion ban, miscarrying patients have had trouble filling abortion pill prescriptions. Some patients needing miscarriage treatment have even been turned away by health care workers out of fear of being prosecuted criminally for doing their jobs. A recent report relayed how Louisiana doctors are forcing women to undergo unnecessary C-sections in order “to preserve the appearance of not doing an abortion.”
Under Louisiana’s uniform controlled dangerous substances law, the measure criminalizes possession of the pills, creating a penalty of one to five years in prison and $5,000 in fines for possession of either mifepristone or misoprostol without a prescription. It also criminalizes the distribution or manufacture of mifepristone or misoprostol, or the possession with intent to distribute or manufacture, with up to 10 years in prison and $15,000 in fines.
Controlled substance drugs in Louisiana must be found to cause levels of physical or psychological dependence and to have the potential to be abused. Pressly has argued that mifepristone and misoprostol qualify because abortion medication “is frequently abused and is a risk to the health of citizens.” This claim is patently false, as more than 250 OB-GYN practitioners in Louisiana have pointed out.
Millions have safely used mifepristone for over 20 years. A 2023 study shows that the drug is safer than common, low-risk prescription drugs, such as penicillin and Viagra. The law is clearly intended to isolate pregnant people seeking out abortion pills because it will create fear that friends or family involved may face criminal repercussions. It will also perpetuate the myth that abortion pills, and abortion in general, are unsafe.
“Louisiana already has some of the nation’s highest maternal mortality rates and is a maternity care desert,” points out Annie Laurie Gaylor, FFRF co-president. “This new law, which essentially legislates an unscientific, minority religious view about when life begins, is unconscionable.”
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://secularstudents.org/appointment-of-new-board-members/
Publication Date: May 15, 2024
Organization: Secular Student Alliance
Organization Description: The Secular Student Alliance is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and the only national organization dedicated to atheist, humanist, and other non-theist students. The Secular Student Alliance empowers secular students to proudly express their identity, build welcoming communities, promote secular values, and set a course for lifelong activism.
By Kevin Bolling
The Secular Student Alliance is pleased to announce the appointment of five new members to its Board of Directors: Victoria Anderson (student member), Stephanie Hlywak, Joey Hunziker, James Modisette, and Dr. Eric Solomon.
Elected at the April Board meeting, these members will begin serving this month and will join the full Board along with SSA staff and SSA students from around the country for the annual SSA Conference this summer, which is being held at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock on June 14-16. They join current board members Ryan Bodanyi (Chair), Kristina Lee (Vice Chair), Shanti Priya (Treasurer), Clinton Herndon (Secretary), Chinelle Ekanem, Wilds Ross, Ron Zakay, Harry Shaughnessy, and Nadine You.
“These new members of the Board bring skills in marketing and communications; non-profit management; strategic planning; and youth organizing,” said Ryan Bodanyi, Board Chair. “They also bring a selfless dedication to serving others, and a desire to support the students we serve. I couldn’t be more thrilled to be working alongside them.”
“We continue to see a growing number of nonreligious students and young people in the United States,” said Kevin Bolling, Secular Student Alliance Executive Director. “The new board members bring a wealth of experience and a unique perspective on the work we do at SSA to support students in schools and on campuses across the country.”
The Secular Student Alliance is welcoming the following board members:
Victoria Anderson is a third-year law student with a passionate interest in human and civil rights activism. She believes that effective and sustainable change should start with building strong communities. While pursuing an undergraduate degree in Computer Science, Victoria helped start an SSA chapter at her university, in the heart of the Bible Belt. She has since started a second chapter at her law school to bring together future attorneys with a passion for church-state separation and promoting equal rights for everyone, regardless of their background.
Stephanie Hlywak is a communications strategist and law-abiding rule breaker for purpose-driven organizations. She honed her policy chops in one of the nation’s top public affairs shops, led PR and public awareness functions for the most influential library association in the world, and served in leadership roles in many non-profits, associations, and agencies. The throughline in her career has been to work on behalf of organizations and businesses that transform our world for the better. Stephanie earned an M.A. from the University of Chicago and a B.S. in journalism from Medill at Northwestern University.
Joey Hunziker is a program director for a national education and disability advocacy organization where he leads the organization’s programs in addition to its efforts to develop and train young disabled advocates. He has a deep passion for cultivating the next generation of leaders to transform our school systems into dynamic, equitable, just, and inclusive places for learning. Joey’s background as an educator and facilitator has significantly shaped his career. He has been in DC since 2014 working on national education issues, always pushing to center racial justice and the needs of our most overlooked students and communities.
James Modisette is a dedicated professional with a strong background in nonprofit management, development, and operations. Currently pursuing a Master of Science in Nonprofit Management at Northeastern University, James leverages his academic knowledge and practical experience to drive impactful change within organizations. James currently works as the Senior Associate of Development and Board Relations at the Data Quality Campaign in Washington, D.C., James plays a key role in managing DQC’s grant portfolio, ensuring timely submission of grants and reports, and fostering strong relationships with foundations.
Dr. Eric Solomon’s journey began in academia, where he earned a Master’s and Ph.D. in cognitive psychology, focusing on AI and ML. Transitioning to the business world, Eric led research and strategy for creative agencies before taking up leadership positions at global giants like YouTube, Spotify, Google, and Instagram. His stint as the CMO for Bonobos, a Walmart-owned DTC e-retailer, further showcases his leadership expertise. Currently, he is at the helm of The Human Operating System, a strategic advisory platform he founded, dedicated to integrating human-centric strategies in business.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://secularstudents.org/welcome-new-board-chair-dr-ryan-bodanyi/
Publication Date: February 19, 2024
Organization: Secular Student Alliance
Organization Description: The Secular Student Alliance is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and the only national organization dedicated to atheist, humanist, and other non-theist students. The Secular Student Alliance empowers secular students to proudly express their identity, build welcoming communities, promote secular values, and set a course for lifelong activism.
By Kevin Bolling
Congratulations to Dr. Ryan Bodanyi, who has been elected as the new Board Chair of the Secular Student Alliance!
The Secular Student Alliance is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and the only national organization dedicated to atheist, humanist, and other non-theist students. Our mission is to empower secular students to proudly express their identity, build welcoming communities, promote secular values, and set a course for lifelong activism. We support the growing population of secular students with:
- Community, via more than 200 chapters at high schools, colleges, and universities across the country;
- Programs, like our Secular Spring Break;
- Events, like our 2024 National Conference;
- Recognition and financial assistance, via our scholarship program;
- Advocacy and litigation on behalf of secular students;
- A diverse array of educational and organizational resources.
This work almost entirely depends on the kindness and generosity of individual donors, like you. Please take a moment to make a donation.
Dr. Bodanyi has served on the SSA Board since 2022, and previously served as Vice Chair. His career spans research and advocacy, primarily in the environmental movement. He holds a Ph.D. and MS degrees from the University of Washington, where his research explored what cities and counties in the US are doing to mitigate their greenhouse gas emissions, and how those efforts influence local finance. He’s built campaigns for the National Wildlife Federation, Clean Water Action, and the Clean Air Task Force. And he founded a non-profit to advocate for the half-million survivors of the 1984 chemical disaster in Bhopal, India, which he led for five years.
“I’m honored to support the Secular Student Alliance, an organization that connects secular students with each other – and with resources, leading secular thinkers, and a vibrant nationwide community. I wish I’d been a part of this community when I was younger – and I’m so glad that others have access to it now.”
You can support this important work – and a pluralistic, welcoming future for us all – by making a charitable contribution.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://secularstudents.org/home-for-the-holidays/
Publication Date: December 21, 2023
Organization: Secular Student Alliance
Organization Description: The Secular Student Alliance is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and the only national organization dedicated to atheist, humanist, and other non-theist students. The Secular Student Alliance empowers secular students to proudly express their identity, build welcoming communities, promote secular values, and set a course for lifelong activism.
By Kevin Bolling
After end-of-the-semester papers are turned in, and you take your final exams before the winter break, students can be excited and anxious about going home for the holidays.
College is an important time and amazing experience that shapes who you are and your values for the rest of your life. For most students, college is the first time you are out of your parents’ house and making your own decisions. You meet new people from different backgrounds and cultures, develop new and diverse relations, and are challenged to explore new ways of thinking through your academics, all while examining who you are and what is important to you.
You may have a roommate who is a different race than you and learn more about their culture, become friends with a lesbian couple, work on a class project with a trans man and better understand their journey, volunteer on a campus service project helping an immigrant unhoused community, and have had open discussions about politics and religion. You may have learned more about yourself and how you experience the world around you – coming out as gay to yourself and others or realizing that you no longer believe in the religion you grew up with.
As you grow and develop as a human being, you change from the person you were in high school and living with your family. You, like many other students, may worry about going home, getting along with family members, and being accepted. Effective communication and mutual respect can help create a harmonious atmosphere. Here are some tips for navigating this situation:
- Open and Honest Communication: Communicate openly with your parents about your beliefs. Be honest but respectful, emphasizing your desire for understanding rather than trying to convince them to share your perspective.
- Set Boundaries: Establish clear boundaries regarding discussions about politics and religion. Let your parents know what topics you’re comfortable discussing and what areas you’d prefer to avoid to prevent potential conflicts. Focus on shared values and interests.
- Participate in Family Traditions: Engage in family traditions and religious activities to show respect for your parents’ beliefs. Most “religious” activities during the holidays have pagan or nontheist origins. Participation doesn’t necessarily mean agreement, but it can demonstrate your willingness to be part of family experiences. If you are not willing to participate in specific activities, share that with your family ahead of time and come up with a plan. “I found this movie really heartwarming, and it’s become a bit of a tradition for me during the holidays. Would you like to watch it together?” “I want to spend a little bit of time with my friends. While you are at church, I am going to Facetime with them. Then we can spend time [usual family activity you would like to do] together. “
- Create Shared Experiences: Plan activities that don’t revolve around politics or religious activities. Enjoy shared hobbies, movies, games, or outings that focus on your shared interests and strengthen your bond. “I’ve been exploring [shared interest]. Do you have any experiences or thoughts on that?”
- Be Patient: Recognize that your parents may have different beliefs, and it’s okay to agree to disagree. If difficult discussions arise, stay calm and composed. Focus on maintaining a respectful and open dialogue. “Well, my beliefs might be a bit different, but hey, at least we can all agree that [light-hearted topic] is pretty great, right?”
- Share Your Values Positively: If your parents express concern about your beliefs, share positive aspects of your value system. Emphasize the principles and values that guide your life rather than focusing on what you don’t believe in. Take the opportunity to educate each other about your beliefs. Share information about your worldview, and be open to understanding their perspective as well.
- Plan an Exit Strategy: If tensions rise, have a plan for a temporary break or change of topic. Sometimes, taking a step back and revisiting the conversation later can be more productive. Social media is also a great way to connect with like-minded friends, vent, and feel supported. “I’m going to take a little break and enjoy some fresh air. Can I help with anything before I step out?”
Remember that navigating political or religious differences is a process, and it may take time for both you and your parents to find common ground.
It is also important to recognize that you don’t have to go home, especially if it is not a safe environment for you. Your mental health and physical safety come first. You may be able to arrange to remain on campus during winter break, stay at a friend’s apartment near campus, or go to a friend’s home for the holidays. No one should make you feel guilty or ashamed about not going home if it is not the best option for you.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://secularstudents.org/a-lawyer-in-drag-in-texas/
Publication Date: November 16, 2023
Organization: Secular Student Alliance
Organization Description: The Secular Student Alliance is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and the only national organization dedicated to atheist, humanist, and other non-theist students. The Secular Student Alliance empowers secular students to proudly express their identity, build welcoming communities, promote secular values, and set a course for lifelong activism.
By Kevin Bolling
Andrew Seidel Speaks At WTAMU In Drag To Protest And Educate
In March, West Texas A&M University President Walter Wendler canceled a student drag showorganized by several campus student clubs including members of the Secular Student Alliance.
In an email to all students, faculty, and staff, President Wendler cited his personal religious beliefs and evoked God and Creator multiple times in his justification for canceling the student event. He also falsely likened drag to blackface, claiming that the art form is misogynistic, divisive, and void of human dignity.
President Wendler’s personal religious beliefs and biblical references have no place in justifying the cancellation of the event. West Texas A&M University is a public institution and the wall of the separation of state and church remains standing.
Last week, Andrew Seidel, a constitutional lawyer and vice president of strategic communications for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, visited West Texas A&M University to give an address to support the students suing President Wendler, demonstrate that drag is not threatening, and detail the dangers of Christian Nationalism.
Andrew explained that drag shouldn’t be a concern for anyone: “Drag is art. Drag is human. Drag is beautiful.” However for religious conservatives, anything that calls into question the gender binary or the conservative Christian idea of what men ought to look like is perceived as a threat – solely because of their religious beliefs.
Please feel free to watch the video of Andrew’s address. (The drag portion begins around the 28:20 mark.) For more, please read the articles by Chrissy Stroop and Hemant Metha.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://secularstudents.org/gop-candidates-shutting-out-gen-z-and-millennials-in-presidential-debate/
Publication Date: September 27, 2023
Organization: Secular Student Alliance
Organization Description: The Secular Student Alliance is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and the only national organization dedicated to atheist, humanist, and other non-theist students. The Secular Student Alliance empowers secular students to proudly express their identity, build welcoming communities, promote secular values, and set a course for lifelong activism.
By Kevin Bolling
For two hours in the first debate, 8 Republican Presidential candidates spouted canned responses with cheers from conservative baby boomers. The evening put a glaring spotlight on just how out-of-touch the Republican party is with the future leaders of our nation. Those candidates on the debate stage pandered to a small conservative splinter of the electorate that won’t live long enough to reap the impacts of their policies. Clearly, Republican leadership seeks to completely alienate Gen Z and Millennials, who will make up half of all voters by 2028.
While 82% of Generation Z is concerned about climate change, no candidate provided a solution that would lead to immediate and necessary action.
With more than 550 anti-LGBTQ+ bills being filed across the country this year, the GOP Presidential candidates didn’t take this opportunity to support the rights of all Americans. Instead, they supported censoring drag shows, banning gender-affirming care, and preventing trans students from participating in school activities. Gen Z is by far one of the queerest generations, with one in five Gen Z adults identifying as a part of the LGBTQ+ community.
The candidates broadly supported efforts to curtail bodily autonomy and increase restrictions on reproductive health care and abortion, with some, like Mike Pence, supporting national abortion bans after six weeks. According to Pew, 74% of 18- to 29-year-olds say abortion should be legal, galvanizing Gen Z voters to go to the voting booth and vote against GOP candidates.
Even more troubling, while the GOP continues to block any sensible firearm restrictions, nearly half of U.S. adults from 18 – 29 fear falling victim to a mass shooting. 73% support psychological exams for all gun purchases.
The candidates all mentioned God during the debate and justified marginalizing and curtailing the rights of American citizens. Generation Z is the least religious generation yet, with almost 48.5% having no religious affiliation.
Statistically, if current trends continue, over 50% of Gen Z will not identify as religious by the 2024 Presidential election.
In tonight’s California GOP debate, I encourage those vying for our country’s highest office to consider an honest attempt at connecting with younger voters. Any action short of that would be a horribly calculated and extremely short-sighted political mistake.
SSA Executive Director Kevin Bolling took to task the faltering list of GOP hopefuls trailing in the wake of a second Trump nomination.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://secularstudents.org/announcing-the-appointment-of-new-ssa-board-members/
Publication Date: June 1, 2023
Organization: Secular Student Alliance
Organization Description: The Secular Student Alliance is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and the only national organization dedicated to atheist, humanist, and other non-theist students. The Secular Student Alliance empowers secular students to proudly express their identity, build welcoming communities, promote secular values, and set a course for lifelong activism.
By Kevin Bolling
The Secular Student Alliance Announces the Appointment of New Board Members
The Secular Student Alliance (SSA) announced today the appointment of seven new members to its Board of Directors: Clinton Herndon (student member), Lishore Kumar (student member), Michael Bills, Olivia Fines, Ron Zakay, Stephanie McGreevy, and Wilds Ross. Andrew Seidel also joins SSA as a member of the Advocacy Committee.
Elected at the April Board meeting, these members will begin serving this month and will join the full Board along with SSA staff and SSA students from around the country for the annual SSA Conference this summer, which is being held in St. Louis on June 16-18. They join current board members Harry Shaughnessy (Chair), Ryan Bodanyi (Vice Chair), Shanti Priya (Treasurer), Jennie Frishtick (Secretary), Kristina Lee, Chinelle Ekanem, and Paul Reed; and Advocacy Committee members Sasha Sagan, Anjan Chakravartty, Rev. Barry Lynn, and Elizabeth Reiner Platt.
“We’re so excited to welcome these seven new board members who we know will be great additions to the SSA Board,” said Harry Shaughnessy, Board Chair. “Our Nominations Committee has done a fantastic job to bring a diverse group of individuals to our board with expertise in higher education, organizational strategy, compliance and law, entrepreneurship, and technology. We’re so glad to have them joining us in our work.”
“We continue to see a growing number of nonreligious students and young people in the United States,” said Kevin Bolling, Secular Student Alliance Executive Director. “The new board members bring a wealth of experience and a unique perspective on the work we do at SSA to support nontheistic students in schools and on campuses across the country.”
The Secular Student Alliance is welcoming the following board members:
Lishore Kumar is a high schooler from Tomball, Texas. Lishore is also a 2023 United States Youth Ambassador. Selected as one of 12 students by the U.S. Department of State, he represented his country on a tour of Latin America, where he met with national diplomats, politicians, and families to discuss how community initiatives are brought about. Lishore works as a student researcher at the Baylor College of Medicine and has had a paper published in the Harvard Medical Journal. Lishore was a recipient of the SSA’s Secular Activist scholarship in 2022.
Clinton Herndon is a military veteran and a current student at Georgia Southern University, where he is pursuing a degree in Computer Science and serves as the president of the SSA chapter. Prior to joining the military, Clinton worked at Lockheed Martin in Orlando, Florida, where he developed a deep commitment to promoting diversity and inclusivity in and outside of the workplace.
Ron Zakay is a passionate DEI advocate and a serial entrepreneur with two decades of leading, and co-founding, several early-stage startups, as well as mentoring dozens of others. His areas of focus include automation, BI, startups, and venture ecosystems. Ron often speaks as a specialist, judge, and panelist in angel groups, accelerators, and incubators. He is based in San Francisco.
Olivia Fines is an Ethics and Compliance Attorney with a passion for social justice reform and education on privilege and prejudice. Olivia received her BA in Political Science from Virginia Tech, her masters program in Government Procurement from the University of Virginia, and her law degree with a specialization in International Business Law from George Mason University School of Law.
Dr. Mike Bills has been a successful entrepreneur and has served as CEO/President in a broad set of industries, where he has founded and built growing businesses and led successful turnaround opportunities and sales. Mike currently serves as President of AtlasRTX. Mike is a graduate of Westminster College in Salt Lake City where he continues to serve on the board of trustees and currently chairs the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee. He completed his Ph.D. at Antioch University Graduate School of Leadership and Change where his research focused on higher education governance and leadership.
Wilds Ross is a renowned expert in the field of data science, analytics, and machine learning, with a track record of success in helping organizations harness the power of data to drive strategic decision-making. Over his twenty-five years of experience, he has worked with some of the leading companies in the technology and consulting sectors. He currently serves in an advisory capacity for several strategy, consulting, and technology businesses around the world.
Stephanie McGreevy studied Biology at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and has worked for over 20 years opening new markets in the renewable energy sector. She is an energy market specialist with over 10 years owning and managing a retail commodities brokerage managing company-wide, heavily regulated internal controls and compliance programs with accountability for auditing processes and regulatory proceedings.
Andrew Seidel, a new member of SSA’s Advocacy Committee, is Vice President of Strategic Communications for AU, an author, and an attorney who has defended the First Amendment for more than a decade. Andrew is the author of two books: The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American (2019) and American Crusade: How the Supreme Court is Weaponizing Religious Freedom (2022). A Senior Correspondent at Religion Dispatches, Andrew is a prolific author of opeds, has written several scholarly articles, has debated the utility of the Johnson Amendment, and organized and contributed to the groundbreaking report, “Christian Nationalism at the January 6, 2021, Insurrection,” which was published by the Baptist Joint Committee and the Freedom From Religion Foundation and aroused congressional interest. He’s appeared on Fox News to debate Bill O’Reilly, MSNBC, and hundreds of other media outlets. Andrew graduated cum laude from Tulane University (’04) with a B.S. in neuroscience and environmental science and magna cum laude from Tulane University Law School (’09), where he was awarded the Haber J. McCarthy Award for excellence in environmental law. After a short stint in private practice, Andrew joined the Freedom From Religion Foundation as a constitutional attorney and later Director of Strategic Response, running a nimble unit known as the Strategic Response Team and helping elevate that organization’s profile. He joined AU in March of 2022.
About the Secular Student Alliance
The Secular Student Alliance is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and the only national organization dedicated to atheist, humanist, and other non-theist students. SSA empowers secular students to proudly express their identity, build welcoming communities, promote secular values, and set a course for lifelong activism.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://secularstudents.org/faith-based-outreach-open-letter-to-los-angeles-county-board-supervisors/
Publication Date: April 19, 2023
Organization: Secular Student Alliance
Organization Description: The Secular Student Alliance is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and the only national organization dedicated to atheist, humanist, and other non-theist students. The Secular Student Alliance empowers secular students to proudly express their identity, build welcoming communities, promote secular values, and set a course for lifelong activism.
By Kevin Bolling
Open Letter to Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Regarding Faith-Based Outreach
Hilda Solis, Holly Mitchell, Lindsay Horvath, Janice Hahn, and Kathryn Barger
Last year, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved funding for a consultant to explore effective ways and solicit feedback on how faith-based organizations can complement, and perhaps replace, county services to support children and families.
While the future potential implementation of providing public funding to religious-based organizations to perform county responsibilities violates the separation of state and church, makes the county complicit with publicly-funded discrimination, opens the county to legal liability, diverts funds from vital county programs, and tramples over the freedom of religion.
Los Angeles County is one of the most religiously diverse cities in the world, including over 30 percent of citizens who are non-religious. Just through the implementation of the consultancy process, special privilege and preference was given to Christian organizations, over those from non-Christian religions and the non-religious.
To engage and solicit feedback from the diverse citizens of LA County, the consultants set up nine community listening sessions for “Faith Leaders” only at Christian churches, except for one virtual session. An additional listening session hosted at the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles was added very late in the process with no further noticeable promotion to county residents. Each county-sponsored listening session started with a prayer.
There are numerous Jewish community centers, mosques, and temples that could have been used for the listening sessions to include non-Christian people. Using religiously-neutral facilities, listening sessions could have been held at public schools, public libraries, or community meeting rooms at county parks to ensure all of the county’s residents felt welcomed, invited, and included.
While the Eventbrite stated “Leaders from all faiths are welcome,” all of the originally-publicized sessions were held in Christian churches, leaving out multiple faith communities and non-religious county citizens. The text of the invitation’s non-inclusive language for non-Christian religions and nontheists, including a required field to list one’s “Faith Based Organization/House of Worship.”
During the listening sessions, representatives from conservative religious churches excitedly stated all services provided by any faith-based organization should be based on “biblical more values” and overtly challenged other Christians who stated services should be open to everyone. While there were very few representatives from non-Christian religions and nonreligious organizations, they were rebuffed and their presence at the listening sessions and participation were questioned.
Religious organizations, especially Christian organizations, have a long history of discriminating against people in non-Christian religions, non-religious people, the LGBTQ+ community, and women in providing social services.
Foster Care
Gabe and Liz Rutan-Ram, a Jewish couple, were denied foster care placement and were unable to adopt a child when a state-funded Christian agency and were subjected to outrageous and unacceptable religious discrimination because of their Jewish faith. Aimee Maddonna, a Catholic mother of three was turned away by a taxpayer-funded agency because Aimee and her family are the “wrong” kind of Christians, because they didn’t share the agency’s evangelical Protestant beliefs. Churches have also discriminated against interracial couples in adoption. The examples of religious-based organizations denying foster care services and discriminating against LGBTQ+ people are, unfortunately, numerous.
Health Care and Substance Abuse Treatment
Religious-affiliated health care centers that received HIV prevention government grants, but refused to provide or educate about condoms, or even to work with other agencies that do so; or received grants to help prevent unplanned pregnancies among adolescents, but refused to provide complete and accurate information about contraception or to acknowledge and respect same-sex relationships. Religious institutions have insisted that they be allowed to discriminate against LGBTQ individuals in regard to employment; to ignore same-sex marriages in providing employee benefits; to fire employees who have used abortion care, contraceptives or assisted reproductive technology, or who have had sex or become pregnant outside of marriage; or even to ignore federal law preventing discrimination on the basis of disability.
Alcoholics Anonymous’ 12-step program is based on origins from a Christian group and requires submission to a higher power. Barry A. Hazle Jr sued the state of California after being jailed for complaining about being forced to participate in a faith-based drug rehab program and settled his case for nearly $2 million. In a case involving a Buddhist, the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has determined organizations must provide non-Christian-focused programs, as alternatives to Alcoholics Anonymous because of its religious undertones.
Studies indicate that LGBTQ+ people have higher rates of substance abuse, when compared with the general population, and most traditional treatments do not address the specific needs of LGBTQ+ individuals. Despite growing acceptance in the United States, almost all LGBTQ+ individuals face some level of homophobia and discrimination, often associated with religion. Requiring LGBTQ+ people, who have been discriminated against because of religion or experienced religious-based trauma, is unacceptable. In addition, some Christian-based substance abuse treatment programs do not use any research or evidence-based methodology.
Volunteer Programs
Similar to foster care, health care, and substance abuse programs, religious-based volunteer programs have a history of discriminating against people of other religions, nonreligious, and LGBTQ+ people. Some Christian-based volunteer programs require participants to take a statement of faith or include forced Christian prayer as part of the volunteer program. In addition, volunteers are not protected against discrimination and can not sue service organizations for sexual harassment, discrimination and retaliation, as volunteers are excluded from Title VII.
Many religious organizations impose a religious litmus test on children and families for programs and services. Unlike public programs, religious organizations can and do discriminate in providing social services based on gender, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, ability, race, and income. Some private religious organizations do not provide the same rights and protections based on the Civil Rights Act, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Threat to Religious Freedom
Religious freedom is best protected by keeping it separate from government dollars and government control. Providing public funds to religious organizations violates the fundamental principle of religious freedom because they pay for religious-based services with taxpayer funds. Tax dollars should not be used to favor one religion over another. Tax dollars should not be used to promote and fund discrimination against taxpayers.
Providing public funds to religious organizations also threatens the autonomy of religious organizations by opening them up to government audits, control, and interference. Taxpayer funds should not be used to prevent the free exercise of religion. Private religious organizations more freely exercise their religious beliefs when it is not entangled with the state. When religious organizations become dependent on government funds, there is a danger they will compromise their views to sustain the receipt of public funds.
Clearly, religious organizations in Los Angeles County are excited to have access to the billions of dollars of social services funding, but that does not mean they should. Is Los Angeles Country committed to not provide funding to religious organizations that discriminate against others? What is the administrative process and expense to vet religious organizations? As conservative religious groups become more litigious and are filing lawsuits to codify their “religious right” to discriminate against others, the County must be prepared for the increase in legal fees and willing to defend the rights of all Los Angeles County citizens.
Is Los Angeles County prepared to audit religious organizations that receive public funds? Are religious organizations, that do not file annual tax or income reporting to the government, prepared for the transparency and accountability of financial reports available to the general public?
A Viable and Prudent Way to Proceed
Rather than violating the separation of state and church and the implications that come with that, establishing partnerships with “Community-Based Organizations,” rather than “Faith-Based Organizations,” and opening the process to all legally established nonprofits working at the community level is a viable and prudent way to proceed.
Protect funding for only nonprofits that file Form 990 with secular programs to avoid religious privileging, preferencing, or discrimination. The county can provide resource guides to help faith-based organizations establish secular nonprofit organizations and outline the expectations of financial and programmatic reporting and audits. Require all county grant recipients to sign non-discrimination clauses before accepting county funding. Create explicit language about how funding can not be used for religious marketing and proselyting and how information and materials should not be intertwined with the provision of services.
Los Angeles County can be a leader in productive ways to engage with community-based organizations to expand services and better our communities. Los Angeles County can set a nationwide standard on how to collaborate with nonprofits with the support of public funds while upholding the separation of government and religion, ensuring the county enriches its diversity and the inclusion of all its residents, and supporting the freedom of, and from, religion.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/04/08
Abstract
Ginger Coy is an independent journalist and writer on Concerning NarcissismSubstack, where she is both concerned with narcissism and finds narcissism concerning. Coy discusses: the complex world of conspiracy theories in America; the unique psychological profile of those who subscribe to such beliefs and the broader implications on society and democracy; characteristics that define conspiracy theories and differentiate them from mainstream narratives; the role of partisan conflict in fueling distrust towards the government and the proliferation of conspiracy theories online, exacerbated by a climate of fear and uncertainty; the absence of discourse on conspiracy theories within the mental health profession, as evidenced by their omission in the DSM-5 and ICD-11, despite their association with certain personality traits and mental health disorders; the mainstream media and digital platforms’ role in amplifying conspiracist thought, underscoring the risks posed to American democracy; a call for educational initiatives to address the spread of conspiracy theories and their entrenchment in the public psyche.
Keywords: Agency, America, Coalitions, Conspiracy theorists, Continued secrecy, DSM-5, Hostility, ICD-11, Mainstream narratives, Partisan conflict, Patterns, Psychological profile, Watergate.
Conversation with Ginger Coy on Psychology of Conspiracy Theorists in America: Independent Journalist
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Welcome, Ginger, today is Ginger’s topic suggestion: the psychological profile of conspiracy theorists in America. They could be applied in many other countries. However, this seems like a crucial time with America’s continuance as the dominant military and economic power in the world, and election season there. Although, as Lee Kuan Yew noted many years ago, we are in a multipolar world or a geo-economic and international political context of overlayed spheres of influence, increasingly. Ginger, you consider conspiracy theorists as a growing threat. In general terms, what defines a conspiracy theory and a traditional theory?
Ginger Coy: What’s unique to American conspiracy theories is that many Americans distrust the US government when it is controlled by a competing political party but then regain their trust when their party wins. Partisan conflict is an important cause for conspiracy beliefs in the United States, though it is true that conspiracy theories afflict the world. Very few conspiracy theories yield bona fide conspiracies such as Watergate.
A conspiracy theory can be defined as “the belief that a number of actors join together in secret agreement, in order to achieve a hidden goal which is perceived to be unlawful or malevolent”(The Psychology of Conspiracy Theories, Jan-Willem van Prooijen).
There are five critical ingredients in order to qualify as a conspiracy theory (van Prooijen). They are:
- Patterns – Any conspiracy theory explains events by establishing nonrandom connections between actions, objects, and people. A conspiracy theory assumes that the chain of incidents that caused a suspect event did not occur through coincidence.
- Agency – A conspiracy theory assumes that a suspect event was caused on purpose by intelligent actors: There was a sophisticated and detailed plan that was intentionally developed and carried out.
- Coalitions – A conspiracy theory always involves a coalition or group of multiple actors, usually but not necessarily humans.
- Hostility – A conspiracy theory tends to assume the suspected coalition to pursue goals that are evil, selfish, or otherwise not in the public interest.
- Continued secrecy – Conspiracy theories are about coalitions that operate in secret. Conspiracy theories are thus by definition unproven.
While experts on conspiracy theories claim that there is no evidence through studies to suggest that there are more conspiracy theories today than ever, it stands to reason that that perception is reality in this case. Conspiracy theories are more readily available than ever online plus malignant egalitarianism and malignant tolerance under the banner of free speech aids in the dissemination of misinformation, malformation, and disinformation. Couple these trends with an increasingly narcissistic age and you have a recipe for destabilizing civilization with nonsensical and counterfactual competing and chafingly adversarial narratives. Culturally, in America, there has been a noticeable uptick of conspiracy theories since the Trump election in 2016 and the pandemic in 2020, both events creating fear and uncertainty and laying the psychological groundwork for proliferating conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories provide comforting explanations for adherents, though ironically, conspiracy theories also create the conditions for fear by implicating powerful unscrupulous actors behind malevolent schemes.
By contrast, traditional theories or mainstream narratives of events, corroborated across multiple independent news sources, create seamless societal cohesion through common ground shared amongst the majority.
Jacobsen: You write on personality disorders. What distinguishes a mentally healthy person from a personality-disordered one, whether in the DSM-V (2022 Revision) or the ICD-11?
Coy: In my research, I am disappointed in the milquetoast DSM-5 which fails to mention the phrase, conspiracy theoriesin its nearly 1400 pages, suggesting pathological political correctness baked-in in the very text that’s ostensibly charged with delineating and differentiating sanity from pathology. If this finding doesn’t suggest sickness on a mass scale, I’m not sure what would be convincing. Most leading experts in the zeitgeist on conspiracy theories are only willing to dance around the edges of addressing the paranoia, narcissism, etc. implicated in the terrain of holding conspiratorial views. Instead, most writers on this topic bend over backwards to uphold the notion that almost everyone holds at least one conspiratorial view at some point and that if we start pathologizing that which is prevalent, we will blanket pathologize all of society. This thought experiment is rich considering that is exactly the mandate of the DSM at insurance companies’ behest to increasingly pathologize patients with more and more diagnoses, though somehow holding conspiratorial views gets an exemption just like believing in the delusion that is God. I have seen documented denial, not even hesitancy, that people predisposed to conspiracist ideation—belief in conspiracy theories, conspiracism—belief in the primacy of conspiracies in the unfolding of history, are anything but regular, normal people not suffering from any delusions, paranoia, narcissism, schizotypy, etc. Magical thinking, trait Machiavellianism, and primary psychopathy are significant, positive predictors of belief in conspiracy theories. This denial of pathology prevails even though if one holds one conspiratorial view, chances are one holds a multitude of conspiratorial views.
The state of play in the mental health profession that it should be so corrupt with the abstention of any mention of conspiracy theories within the DSM-5 and ICD-11 proves to me that I’m on the right track as an independent journalist and writer on the interface of psychology with politics and culture. I offer an arm’s length distance and objectivity lacking in the codified professional space of psychiatry and psychology.
Further, critical terms apophenia and pareidolia are also gross omissions from both the DSM-5 and ICD-11, even though a tendency towards pareidolia can be more frequent in certain conditions such as schizophrenia.
Part of grandiosity or inflated self-perception is a condition called apophenia or a tendency to perceive meaningful connections between totally unrelated events, circumstances, scenarios, etc. In 1958, Prof. Klaus Conrad defined apophenia as an unmotivated seeing of connections accompanied by a specific feeling of abnormal meaningfulness[1].
Apophenia is seeing patterns in randomness, which may be the mechanism behind conspiracy theory generation. A conspiracy theorist may feel as though a set of random events are connected that no one is talking about, so therefore a conspiracy must be afoot[2].
Conspiracy theories are a form of object apophenia, when one perceives meaningful relations among people or among elements in the environment that in your mind pertain to you, revolve around you, and have to do with you[3].
Pareidolia is the tendency to ascribe a meaningful interpretation or significance to a typically visual stimulus or a series of stimuli in a perceived pattern of meaning when there is none.
Pareidolia is a subtype of apophenia. Combining object apophenia with social pareidolia begets grandiosity including paranoia.
The ICD-11 defines personality disorders based on the impairment of self and interpersonal personality functioning, which can be classified according to their overall severity (i.e., Mild Personality Disorder, Moderate Personality Disorder, Severe Personality Disorder). The practitioner also has the option to specify one or more trait domain specifiers that contribute to the individual expression of personality dysfunction. These trait domains are Negative Affectivity, Detachment, Dissociality, Disinhibition, and Anankastia.
The ICD-11 defines personality disorder as:
Personality disorder is characterised by problems in functioning of aspects of the self (e.g., identity, self-worth, accuracy of self-view, self-direction), and/or interpersonal dysfunction (e.g., ability to develop and maintain close and mutually satisfying relationships, ability to understand others’ perspectives and to manage conflict in relationships) that have persisted over an extended period of time (e.g., 2 years or more). The disturbance is manifest in patterns of cognition, emotional experience, emotional expression, and behaviour that are maladaptive (e.g., inflexible or poorly regulated) and is manifest across a range of personal and social situations (i.e., is not limited to specific relationships or social roles). The patterns of behaviour characterizing the disturbance are not developmentally appropriate and cannot be explained primarily by social or cultural factors, including socio-political conflict. The disturbance is associated with substantial distress or significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational or other important areas of functioning.
The DSM-5 defines personality disorders as enduring and inflexible patterns of long duration leading to significant distress or impairment.
The DSM-5 (2022) defines personality disorder as:
A personality disorder is an enduring pattern of inner experience and behavior that deviates markedly from the norms and expectations of the individual’s culture, is pervasive and inflexible, has an onset in adolescence or early adulthood, is stable over time, and leads to distress or impairment.
As both manuals are taxonomies of pathology for diagnoses, outlining that which is considered normal behavior is ancillary though more emphasized in the DSM. The DSM reflects more lenience in its considerations of what constitutes normality given cultural and social context, i.e., the perception of psychology as being culture-bound.
Jacobsen: What seem like the more prominent conspiracy theories in America, short-term and long-term? Those newer and perennial conspiracy theories in the States.
Coy: Perennial favorites include the death of President Robert F. Kennedy as being an inside job and alleged cover-ups of Bigfoot sightings. Similarly, UFOs/ UAPs (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena) have gained a resurgence in popularity. More recently, one-third of Republicans believe pop star Taylor Swift is part of a “covert government effort” to help President Biden win the 2024 election. In the not-too-distant past, conspiracy theories involved the deep state’s/global cabals’ QAnon, Pizzagate, Covid lockdowns, Covid vaccines, January 6th, and George Soros being behind a hidden plot to destabilize the American government, take control of the media and put the world under his control.
Some 28% of Americans are concerned about a globalist agenda to rule the world through an authoritarian world government or New World Order. There is also the question of a Reptilian Elite Conspiracy Theory which asserts that interdimensional shape-shifting lizards secretly rule the planet, a brainchild of the UK’s David Icke, that only 4% of Americans agree with (Conspiracy Theories: a Primer, Joseph E. Uscinski and Adam M. Enders).
Jacobsen: What compares a personality disordered person with a conspiracy theorist and contrasts a mentally healthy person from a conspiracy theorist?
Coy: A good litmus test to run any conspiracy theory through is to ask yourself “Is this likely?” A mentally healthy person would be able to ask this question. Also, bear in mind if you have vulnerabilities to conspiracy theories given your demographic and life circumstances. If misfortune haunts you, you may be vulnerable to believing in nonsense for a sense of control that can have real-life consequences.
Believing in conspiracy theories can cause rifts in your relationships; cause you to lose jobs; cause you to contract diseases that have vaccines (Covid and measles); cause you to fall victim to unscrupulous bad actors who could wipe out your bank account; and even land you in prison or dead if you seek vigilante justice.
Jacobsen: Can one find similarly nationally prominent conspiracy theories – the conceptual phantasy landscape of the American conspiracy theorist – in other countries causing problems of a kin for their national discourse?
Coy: A concern that I see that cuts across national borders is a whole body of conspiracy theories to do with the elite advocating and pushing for climate change adaptations in response to a globalist New World Order perpetuated by the elite who are involved with Davos, United Nations, and World Economic Forum (WEF) to encourage if not ultimately mandate the masses to eat insects instead of meat, not travel on planes to save the climate, etc. A petri dish for conspiracism is a common feeling of disempowerment at the hands of the global elite who have foisted globalism on local communities. Similarly, conspiracy theories to do with mass migration may be behind a surge in anti-Semitism and other forms of xenophobia and bigotry. The fracturing nature of resulting conspiracy theories makes the elite’s pipe dream of a Kumbaya world, United Colors of Benetton, farcical. There is a correlation between vengeful conspiracy theorists and populists who are more than happy to install civilizationally compromising demagogues.
Jacobsen: How does the partial mainstreaming of American conspiracist thought clouds disrupt normal political processes and social interaction, create (more) useful ignoramuses, empower cynical operators, and soften the minds of the American electorate?
Coy: 80% of what I see coming out of the right can be thought of as conspiratorial, and is thus disruptive. You just have to watch Fox News, Newsmax, NewsNation, and OAN for the latest.
Just this week, FBI informant, Alexander Smirnov, is facing charges in connection with lying to the FBI and creating false records regarding President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden’s involvement in business dealings with Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings, undercutting a major aspect of Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into the president. This is a narrative that Republicans have been pushing for years that has no teeth, as Smirnov was their smoking gun, who now is thought to have ties to Russia’s disinformation campaign.
In general, conspiracy theories can involve circular reasoning, ad hominem attacks, false equivalencies, and what-aboutism, which run rampant in the US political climate with an emphasis on conspiratorial psyops to shape public opinion.
Jacobsen: What makes conspiracy theories natural attractors for the psychological profile of the conspiracy theorist?
Coy: Conspiracy theories hold allure, are captivating, and appeal to narcissistic adherents’ sense of intelligence and uniqueness that not only can they follow complex narratives but that they are not sheeple.
The psychological profile of the average conspiracy theorist is grim. Conspiracy theorists are likely male, unmarried, less educated, in a lower income household, outside the labor force, from an ethnic minority group, not attending religious services, conceal-carry weapons, perceive themselves as of low social standing, have lower levels of physical and psychological well-being and higher levels of suicidal ideation, weaker social networks, less secure attachment style, difficult childhood family experiences, and are more likely to meet criteria for a psychiatric disorder.
With this disempowering backdrop, it’s not surprising that a person of this psychological profile would be attracted to, in their estimation, sense-making narratives, which provide explanatory order.
Jacobsen: Since the partial mainstreaming of some of these conspiracy theories, especially grand theories (e.g., an international cabal of Jewish bankers), how do these begin to mix with longstanding and nascent social contagions or issues in America, e.g., anti-Semitism or racism generally, vast income inequality, anti-equal rights movements, and so on?
Coy: Conspiratorial, paranoid notions of globalist cabals in the United Nations, etc., and the deep state in America are perennial favorites on the right that lend themselves to the conspiracy theory that the FBI was behind January 6th to make Trump and MAGA look bad.
After the “Unite the Right” rally on August 12th, 2017, Trump dog whistled in a fit of malignant egalitarianism that there were “very fine people on both sides” of the racist display that was Charlottesville, a disgraceful protest that involved chanting “Jews will not replace us” (‘white replacement theory’ conspiracy theory) and resulted in the death of Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old paralegal and civil rights activist.
Whenever a populace collectively feels out of control as though society is marching on without them and they are being left behind, a sector will resort to fabricating or confabulating nonsensical and counterfactual narratives that appeal to their grandiosity and narcissism that they’ve got it all figured out and everybody else are suckers for following mainstream “simple” or straightforward narratives.
There is a bias in the United States for a certain cross-section of the populace, typically counterculture-oriented, against following mainstream narratives from boogeyman corporations (even though they corroborate one another across multiple news platforms) in favor of following complicated convoluted plots perpetuated by independent journalists, as though independent journalists don’t need to put food on the table and won’t resort to conspiracy theories to do so. Many of these followers of independent journalists intentionally tune out and put blinders on to mainstream news outlets in favor of these bloggers who are cult of personality figures in their own right. Without the backdrop of mainstream news, unsuspecting news snobs have no other narrative to compare against and fall prey to unscrupulous and narcissistic so-called independent journalists who peddle cheap conspiracy theories disseminated from the right. Ignorantly and solipsistically, this same target demographic is unaware that these independent journalists are tapping into well-trodden conservative tropes and ascribe superhuman insights to these said cult of personality bloggers who are in reality enmeshed in and doling out the drivel of right-leaning media.
Though there are no studies that I’m aware of that substantiate social contagion as a contributing factor to the adherence to gender ideology, anecdotally, it’s a point of interest that the rates of both transitioning minors[4] or minors who identify as LGBTQ+[5] have skyrocketed in recent years as coincidentally, the left has decried the conspiratorial[6] and unsubstantiated[7] “trans genocide”[8] that is purportedly taking place[9].
Jacobsen: Everyone in the States bears some responsibility, naturally. However, what media and communication channels, social networks, digital platforms, and types of prominent personalities, brought these psychological profiles, the conspiracists, more to the fore now?
Coy: Alex Jones of Infowars was arguably persona non grata for ushering in a modern rendition of conspiracy theorist. Thankfully, the poster child for conspiracism has been held to account and his empire decimated through the legal system notwithstanding severe damage he inflicted upon our country for decades. His Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting denialism was particularly egregious and the fount of his undoing.
Fox News in general and Tucker Carlson in particular are a scourge and menace of propaganda – misinformation, malinformation and disinformation. Carlson has been called a traitor for recently interviewing Putin. During the Cold War, Russia called people like Tucker useful idiots because he is willing to do Putin’s bidding to spread Russian propaganda while demoralizing the United States.
Obsessed with unrestricted freedom, no doubt a trauma response holdover from the American Revolution, the powers that be in America cut their nose off despite their face ironically permitting conspiracy-laden Russian state propaganda, RT America to be aired until the channel’s closure in 2022. That Americans should be exposed to an authoritarian state TV is counterproductive and antithetical to a free society – free of baseless, counterfactual conspiracy theories and propaganda.
Jacobsen: What are the risks to the American democratic system from these forces and the potential salves to cooldown the flames of them?
Coy: Without a functioning shared collective sense of reality, we risk our democracy in America. As it is, Americans are at each other’s throats about their perception of events whether it’s who won the 2020 election, determining if January 6th was an insurrection, a riot gone awry, or orchestrated by the deep state, etc. There’s also a question of government overreach when it came to Covid lockdowns and mandates, with the right falling squarely in this camp, and the left erring on the side of caution, safety, and support of Fauci. When a populace does not share a sense of reality based on common narratives, tensions flare and hardships ensue. Discord undermines the cohesion necessary for democracy. If a populace doesn’t enjoy baseline civility built on a common solid foundation of a shared sense of reality, something as fractious and tenuous as democracy is untenable for the duration. Instead, there is a splintering and divisiveness creating stalemates and intractable problems. As Americans have traditionally been solutions-oriented, this heightened narcissistic “my way or the highway” trajectory stings doubly and weighs down the populace into cycles of grievances, an engine of increasing victimhood and thus, narcissism.
The narcissistic genie is out of the bottle with the entrenched democratization of the internet and its accompanying fractious narratives such as conspiracy theories that drive wedges between people and groups of people. If individuals are righteous, sanctimonious, and beyond sure-footed in their accounting of events, it results in a zero-sum culture where “I’m always right and you’re always wrong,” at the exclusion of the mutuality and collaboration necessary to drive consensus to effect change through legislation and the judiciary, bulwarks of democracy.
Experts on conspiracism, Prof. Joseph E. Uscinski, and Prof. Adam M. Enders, maintain that despite perception, there have been no increases in adherence to conspiracy theories in recent years, though they acknowledge that scholars in greater numbers began studying conspiracism in earnest starting with the pivotal year of 2007 which also introduced app culture. They also maintain that conspiracy theories emanate more from the losing side of any event or scenario in question. Seeing as though American politics have never been so divisive as they have been under the near decade of Trump’s presence, Trump being a known propagator of conspiracy theories, it stands to reason that there are more conspiracy theories than ever with greater adherence when one holds in consideration that Trump’s presence looms large and the coincidence of 2007 being both a breakout year for both social media as a primary disseminator of conspiracy theories and the uptick of academic interest in conspiracy theories.
There needs to be a mass-scale government-funded initiative to educate the people on demagoguery as it relates to narcissism. Just as post World War II, Germans experienced societal reckonings in the forms of lessons learned and post-mortems on the misfortunes of fascism, America must contend with the devastation that has been fascistic Donald J Trump as an affliction on the United States. Even if one supports Trump, the chaos he has perpetuated and its associated pain points are undeniable.
Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Ginger.
Coy: Thank you for your interest and thought-provoking questions. It’s been a pleasure!
Bibliography
None
Footnotes
[1] Prof. Sam Vaknin
[2] Prof. Sue Frantz
[3] Prof. Sam Vaknin
[4] Estimates have more than doubled in the space of eight years from 2007 to 2015, D Kenny “IS GENDER DYSPHORIA SOCIALLY CONTAGIOUS?”)
[5] The CDC says the number of LGBTQ students went from 11 percent in 2015 to 26 percent in 2021.
[6] “There is No Trans Genocide” by Talia Nava.
[7] “A report claiming ’32 transgender people killed in the USA in 2022′ is misleading” by Stephen Knight.
[8] “Resilience or terror? (Continued…)” by Eliza Mondegreen.
[9] “Don’t believe the activists’ hype: There is no ‘trans genocide’” by John Mac Ghlionn.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/04/08
Abstract
Matthew Scillitani, member of the Glia Society and Giga Society, is a software engineer living in Cary, North Carolina. He is of Italian and British lineage, and is fluent in English and Dutch (reading and writing). He holds a B.S. in Computer Science and a B.A. in Psychology. You may contact him via e-mail at mattscil@gmail.com. Scillitani discusses: a conversation covers various topics, including education, intelligence testing, psychology, and computer science; updates on life are shared, including earning a B.S. in Computer Science, working as an industrial software engineer, and expecting a first child; observations about high-IQ testees post-COVID-19 and the impact of not qualifying for high-IQ societies on individuals; experiences helping individuals in distress; the prevalence of idea theft, particularly among geniuses; leisure activities, challenges faced by smart individuals in work and education, and the potential pitfalls of psychology as a field are explored; progress in computer science and the formation of independent worldviews on the intelligence scale and the complexities of intellectual development and personal growth.
Keywords: autism spectrum, challenges, civility, computer science, delayed gratification, education, high-IQ community, independent worldview, intelligence, machine learning, narcissists, neurodiversity, pseudoscience, psychology, stolen ideas.
Conversation with Matthew Scillitani on Updates on Career and Community: Member, Giga Society (9)
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Long time no talk! What is new?
Matthew Scillitani: I earned my B.S. in Computer Science last year, in 2023! Since then, I’ve been working as an industrial software engineer, which has been awesome. In bigger news, my wife is pregnant with our first child–a girl, due in July of 2024. Otherwise, I’ve spent most of my free time studying machine learning and A.I.
Jacobsen: Any new observations about the high-IQ world?
Scillitani: Something really interesting is that, ever since COVID-19, there’s been a huge wave of high-I.Q. testees. Some of whom are really smart; a few even scoring in the 170s and 180s (15 S.D.) on well-normed tests (well, as well-normed as possible in that range).
Jacobsen: Following from part 8, why does not getting into the Glia Society crush them and the same for the Giga Society not crush them?
Scillitani: I suppose that most people who take high-range I.Q. tests think they’re in the I.Q. 145 to 160 realm, so failing to qualify for Glia comes as a major disappointment. But few people actually believe they could ever score 190; it’s a stretch goal that they’re comfortable with missing.
Jacobsen: How did you talk that person who you emailed out of suicide?
Scillitani: It actually happened twice, unfortunately. When someone comes to me with serious problems or self-threats, I try to be kind to them and let them talk through their thoughts. That usually helps.
Jacobsen: Do you think stolen ideas is common against geniuses? Dumber people stealing their ideas.
Scillitani: Oh, definitely. You don’t even need to be a genius to have your ideas stolen! It’s just that geniuses come up with such good ideas so frequently, that their intellectual property is stolen more often. Even with copyright laws in place, many would-be thieves are undeterred. So, it’s important to keep lots of timestamped, public records if you’re going to start sharing your work with others.
Jacobsen: Do you think any proclaimed geniuses have, in fact, stolen ideas and claimed them as their own? A spin on a common question about myths that I tend to pitch to members of the high-IQ community.
Scillitani: I’m sure it’s happened in the past and that some thieves had the means (money, power, influence) to make sure the history books were written in their favor. In modern times, only one person immediately comes to mind: the self-proclaimed greatest genius ever of all time. For the well-informed, this person tried to ‘steal’ a famous high-I.Q. society by making a copy of it and, with better SEO, having their society appear as the more authoritative one than the original in search engines.
Jacobsen: Rick has been open and honest about wanting some minor to moderate fame – and has achieved some – in his past. He still wants it, but he doesn’t make this the be-all, end-all of his life. He has a wife and kid, too. So, he has a life outside of the tests, happily. What do you do on your off time now?
Scillitani: Most of my time is spent studying machine learning nowadays. Mark my words, it’s the future. One day, we’ll be able to predict the weather anywhere on Earth accurately for any point in time. Other than studying, I also exercise and play video games on occasion. Personally, I prefer games from pre-2005. Relatively older games have more soul than the more modern cash-grab games.
Jacobsen: Do you think there is a tendency towards civility and respect – non-absolute – with an increase in intelligence of a community?
Scillitani: Absolutely. There are still some really brilliant narcissists and psychopaths that, despite being smart enough to know better, behave in an uncivil and disrespectful manner. As a hypothetical, if there were a town of only 160+ I.Q. citizens, and none of them suffered from any personality or psychotic disorders, I’d be surprised if there were ever a crime there. Maybe every so many decades, a crime would occur and it would be the talk of the town since none of them had ever heard of such a thing. I smell a good book idea.
Jacobsen: How do interactions with members of the high-IQ community differ individually and in groups? That’s an interesting observation.
Scillitani: That is an interesting question. In both groups and individually, high-I.Q. people tend to be more expressive than are low-I.Q. people. My thinking is that, because smart people are more likely to have good intentions and less likely to be rude, they assume the same in others, and feel more comfortable sharing many of their thoughts and feelings on matters, even ‘personal’ ones.
Individually, most of the intelligent people that I’ve met had no problem jumping into deep conversation and becoming fast friends. Less intelligent people tend to either aggressively and loudly share their opinions or be very reserved, potentially out of worry for not understanding what is socially acceptable to say. This is different from social introversion because an introvert has no problem having and sharing their opinions, albeit in possibly non-social mediums such as art, music, or writing.
Jacobsen: Errol Morris is a great interviewer. What struck you about Rick’s interview at the time? Intense and funny, right?
Scillitani: Yes! Rick is such an interesting guy. On the one hand, stunningly intelligent and on the other, downright goofy. Hearing him talk about his upbringing and all the smart things he could do as a child (and adult) followed by his streak of shenanigans really made for a great interview.
Jacobsen: Do you know of any research on the system of reward and processing in the brain when there’s such long-term focus relative to a day and then the kick of resolution from solving such problems?
Scillitani: I’m sure there’s plenty of literature on delayed gratification, but none comes to mind at the moment. Delayed gratification is, incidentally, something very challenging to practice for many people in our current age of non-stop video entertainment, drugs, sex, and funky music. For anyone struggling with focus, I’d highly recommend a “dopamine cleanse” for a few weeks. No TV, no games, no sex/porn/masturbation, no YouTube (unless you’re using it to study), no social media, no fast-paced music… You’ll be surprised how quickly you’re able to focus when there aren’t any readily accessible distractions.
Jacobsen: I know people on the autism spectrum. I like your commentary on “taken for stupidity” and the apparency of immaturity. What do you take as the big challenges for smart people to tackle now?
Scillitani: The big challenges for smart people today, outside of the social domain, are in work and education. An average person may need five or ten years to really have a good grasp on what they’re doing in a common industrial role. But a very smart worker may get there in months, and it’s painful to get paid a quarter of a more experienced coworker’s salary when the output of your work is of an objectively higher quality and volume.
The same can be said for education. In recent years, schools have gotten a lot better at allowing room for accelerated learning, but it can still be way too slow. For example, when I was in high school, most higher-level math courses were taken over a year. In college, you were given half that time. But I had the opportunity to accelerate for some of my math courses and took Calculus I, Calculus II, and Differential Equations all in one month, earning two As (4/4) and a B (3/4). I can’t imagine spending a year and a half on those.
For anyone feeling demoralized because education or work is way too slow, I’d suggest trying something more intellectually challenging. For me, that’s machine learning, which is what I’m studying now. I will add that my current job as a software engineer is also stimulating and that I feel I’m being compensated fairly. So, earning my B.S. in Computer Science was a good call.
Jacobsen: That’s true about psychology. It’s unfortunate. Something does seem to be coming out of the ashes, but the fire of nonsense is still burning. I remember having dinner over a decade ago with my lab boss and Dr. Anthony Greenwald. Greenwald proposed a first generation of researchers would die in the trenches of neuroscience, then another would make actual progress with a mix of cognitive neuroscience. Something after that, if I can extend his thinking, would make something new and renewed from the politicized nature of the field now. What seem like the key hallmarks of psychology as a pseudoscience?
Scillitani: The fact that many psychologists care more about the effect of their research than the accuracy of it, for one. Many of the psych professors I’ve met had a surprisingly weak understanding of basic empirical methods, which pushed their research into the realm of philosophical discourse rather than scientific inquiry. There are some very intelligent psychologists too, but they’re drowned by a sea of incompetent ones.
Jacobsen: How is progress in computer science for you, now?
Scillitani: It’s going really well! I graduated in April of 2023 and got a job that same month. Now I’m a software engineer, mostly working with databases and doing data analysis. But to challenge myself further, I’m studying machine learning in my free time. The end goal for that is to develop a model that can find the best treatment plan for cancer victims to maximize their survival chance.
Jacobsen: When does genuine independent worldview formation begin on the intelligence scale?
Scillitani: That’s actually a tough question to answer because it’s a multi-dimensional problem. I think that a child could have their own worldview, for example. It wouldn’t be a very good one, but it could be original, at least. Paul Cooijmans put forth the idea of an “Associative Horizon”, and I think that concept is helpful for answering this question. I’ve met many intelligent adults that can’t form their own worldview and some children that are already developing one independent of their parents and peers. To have your own worldview, you probably just need a moderately wide associate horizon. But to have a good/smart/sensible worldview, you must be wise, which requires intellect, knowledge, and experience, as well as having a wide associate horizon.
It’s very rare, even in high-I.Q. societies, to meet someone that seems to have it all figured out and has developed their own healthy, smart, sustainable worldview.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Bob Williams & Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Noesis: The Journal of the Mega Society
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/
Abstract
Bob Williams is a Member of the Triple Nine Society, Mensa International, and the International Society for Philosophical Enquiry. He discusses: satisfactory retirement in 1996;; how standardized tests were not widely utilized for nuclear physics job admissions;; microfiche as a valuable research tool;; entering workforce in 1966 without testing;; transition from male-dominated colleges to coeducation;; early ’90s intelligence research material;; Richard Lynn’s work in Mensa Research Journal;; influential books on intelligence research;; statistical methods for high sigma tests facing challenges;; challenges to psychometric g including alternative intelligence models;; Network Neuroscience Theory exploring brain networks’ role in intelligence;; intelligence decline trends observed in developed nations;; statistical methods not applicable in intelligence studies;; the validity of high sigma IQ tests;; constructing culture-fair tests for high sigma ranges facing practical and theoretical challenges;; AI advancements and intelligence measurement;; DNA analysis and intelligence estimation;; AI conversational agents estimating human intelligence;; fear of controversy may hinder certain research topics;; respect for disciplines may be affected by controversial research topics;; unaided smart kids in education;; “woke” in context of left-leaning educational policies;; potential avenues for measurement, exploring animal studies and leveraging AI technologies;; concept of “magic multipliers”;; decoupling of familial environment (FE) from general intelligence (g);; ethical considerations of reproductive technologies, particularly in context of assisted reproduction and genetic screening;; potential development of artificial general intelligence (AGI) based on our understanding of brain structures and processes related to intelligence;; and integration of modern network models with existing theories of intelligence, signaling potential direction for future research in this field.
Keywords: admissions, challenges, conferences, diffusion tensor imaging, intelligence, interviews, libraries, microfiche, myths, networks, psychometric g, research, standardized tests, statistics, twin studies.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: How was the retirement in 1996? Were standardized tests of note utilized in admissions for particular jobs in workspaces requiring nuclear physics? I have used MicroFiche in some research at one of the libraries in a postsecondary institution here. It is still a good resource. I’m pro-MicroFiche, but a minority-user!
Bob Williams: I entered the workforce in 1966. There was no testing, just a face to face interview. The thing that is interesting (to me) about the outcome of this is that hiring people largely on the basis of the degrees they held resulted in a fairly homogeneous group of people who ranged from bright to very bright. In 1966 we were still in an era in which a much smaller fraction of men went to college/university and a still smaller fraction of women went. Of the women who did attend college, most were in colleges for women (including some very well known schools with respected academics) or went to colleges for teachers, which was a subset of the former. By the time I retired women were a majority in some colleges and the colleges that previously admitted only men were open to women. I think by then colleges for women were admitting men and the real, women only, colleges were headed for change or closure.
I am surprised that MicroFiche still exists! I love being able to locate papers and books with a computer and often obtain the found document instantly by downloading it.
Jacobsen: The period between the 1990s and 2003/04 of joining and attending conferences of the International Society for Intelligence Research. What were the first realizations in this independent research for you?
Williams: Back then, good material was not only more difficult to find, but there was much less of it. In the early 90s I subscribed to the Mensa Research Journal. It was mostly filled with reprints from various sources, but occasionally had a direct submission. I recall seeing Richard Lynn’s work there and reading about his ideas about the evolution of intelligence. They presented him with an award for his intelligence research contributions. At about that time, I joined the International Society for Philosophical Enquiry and met Miles Storfer. I bought his recently written book from him (he carried them around): Storfer, Miles D. (1990). Intelligence and giftedness: The contributions of heredity and early environment. San Francisco, CA, US: Jossey-Bass. Then a big one arrived: Herrnstein, R. J., & Murray, C. (1994). The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. New York: Free Press. By this time, I had found and read enough material that I already knew the material they reviewed, so the interesting part was the new analysis of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data. A few years later, the most cited book in the history of intelligence research publications arrived: Jensen, A. R. (1998). The g factor: The science of mental ability. Westport, CT: Praeger. I had already read some of Jensen’s papers and some references to his work in various other sources. By the time I met Jensen in 2004, he had become my passive mentor.
My realizations were, first that I had to learn some statistical methods that I had not previously encountered, and second that the science of intelligence is inherently messy. Coming from a physics background, I was used to things being precisely measurable and repeatable. The niche of intelligence within differential psychology was much like mud wrestling. I quickly learned to appreciate the challenge of extracting meaning from data that was full of confounds. It is a fascinating challenge and I think it is rewarding, particularly when most of the real meat of the science is hidden to a much greater extent than happens in physics and chemistry.
In the innately fuzzy world of life sciences there are studies that we cannot do for social or practical reasons, but someone finds a brilliant way to extract the information from natural experiments. For example we cannot inflict a famine on an experimental group, but since real famines have happened (such as the Dutch famine during WW2), it is sometimes possible to find data that relates directly to those events. Besides the Dutch data, there was the interesting question of how to determine if head sizes had changed over time. If you want to consider a long time, direct measurements are impossible, unless they were performed and recorded (they were not). In this case, Rushton found Army data on the number of military helmets that were issued by size. Yes, he found an increase.
Jacobsen: Were there points of collaboration?
Williams: Yes, a few. Most of the material I published was solo, but there were a few papers where I was a coauthor. These were all publications in academic journals. I have published much more in the private journals Noesis, Gift of Fire, Vidya, and Telicom.
Jacobsen: Let’s call this the exploratory years or something friendly like this, what were the major realizations upon entering the field at the time? What were the first myths dispelled?
Williams: I don’t recall having heard and believed any of the many popular myths that persist about intelligence. There were lots of new things to learn that I had not previously encountered. Learning how the twin studies and adoption studies were conceived, executed, and reported was important and impressive. Both Robert Plomin and Thomas Bouchard initiated these somewhat challenging studies. I met Bouchard in 2004 and recall having asked him enough questions to have been a pest. He was very helpful in explaining things that few people understand. For example, I learned that it was true that twins have a statistically lower intelligence than singletons and that the issue of the heavier twin being more intelligent was true, but had been solved by prenatal care. I also learned that the attacks against some researchers were much worse than I imagined. Among those who really suffered (in the time frame you mentioned) were Nyborg and Brand, both of whom lost their jobs. Jensen took more flack than anyone, but he seemed unfazed by it. In fact, he told me to watch for the upcoming paper he did with Rushton. He said that he expected it would cause “quite a stir.” [Rushton, J.P. and Jensen, A.R. (2005). Thirty Years of Research on Race Differences in Cognitive Ability. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, Vol. 11, No. 2, 235-294.] After the paper came out, I asked him if there was any notable reaction to it. He said “no,” and seemed disappointed. It led me to suspect that he was looking forward to another rant from the left, which did not happen.
Jacobsen: Now, to those first realizations and myths taken away by truths, what ones have remained true?
Williams: I wish I had a list of such myths that involved me, but as I explained, there were none. I was disconnected from the field of intelligence research until my interest developed in the early 90s. When I became interested, I was lucky (or careful) to ease into the new field by following the real experts. The job was one of reading books and papers and those generally do not get far off target.
There was one common belief that was disproved to the surprise of everyone. One of the things that was consistently reported was the correlation between brain size and intelligence. When structural MRI became available, the correlation was found to be about r = 0.40. That was challenged by a meta-analysis that showed a somewhat smaller correlation coefficient, but then it was shown that the meta-analysis consisted of a large number of studies that used low quality IQ tests. When only high quality tests were used, the old number turned out to be correct. But that was not the surprise. The surprise appeared in this paper:
Erhan Genç, et al. (2018) Diffusion markers of dendritic density and arborization in gray matter predict differences in intelligence; Nature Communications 9:1905. It can best be appreciated from this figure from the paper:
The explanation with the figure explains what was found. Genç was using diffusion tensor imaging for this work. I have had the great pleasure of getting to know him a bit. His most recent work combines brain imaging with polygenic stores.
Jacobsen: After the exploratory years and the interaction with individuals who wrote papers and books on the subject of intelligence, what first struck you about the professional community of intelligence researchers? Some see intelligence as the most important human trait.
Williams: Of course, intelligence is not only the most important human trait, but it is even more. Detterman expressed this perfectly:
Detterman, D. K. (2016). Was Intelligence necessary? Intelligence, 55.
“From very early, I was convinced that intelligence was the most important thing of all to understand, more important than the origin of the universe, more important than climate change, more important than curing cancer, more important than anything else. That is because human intelligence is our major adaptive function and only by optimizing it will we be able to save ourselves and other living things from ultimate destruction. It is as simple as that.”
As for the professional community, my impression was that the researchers were brighter than I expected and some were strong mathematicians (statistics). I also found that they were open to having a non-psychologist asking a lot of questions.
Jacobsen: What have been the most significant challenges to psychometric g as the definition of intelligence and as a psychological construct in the past? How have those been met with sufficient time and evidence?
Williams: The two well known challenges to g theory are Gardner’s multiple intelligence model and the emotional intelligence construct. Both are wildly popular among laymen and shunned by researchers. Both models contend that g theory is incorrect, but both are based on arguments in which g is present. For example, of the multiple intelligences claimed by Gardner, most are just statements of factors that are linked to the one and only g. Most book authors feel obligated to mention these models, then explain that they are not sound.
Jacobsen: What remain challenges to psychometric g?
Williams: There are some new models that are being discussed, but the literature that I have seen does not show a fully constructed model for any of them. Instead, they mention aspects of recent research that point to other model configurations. One of these is Network Neuroscience Theory. Relatively recent technologies, such as Diffusion Tensor Imaging, have made it possible to see and study brain networks. The characteristics of networks have shown that they are indicators of intelligence. The brain is, per this research, organized as a small-world network. This means that there are dense local networks (anatomically localized modules) that communicate with global networks. The modules have the advantage of close proximity within the small network, making them fast and efficient for related tasks.
If the brain suffers focal injury, a module can alter its function to help compensate for lost modules in the damaged volume. This results in a more robust brain that can deal with trauma (to some extent).
Much of this is similar to the way we use networks for information movement between computers. It is my understanding that one of the difficulties is the wide range of structural differences between people. This is yet another demonstration of the messiness encountered when trying to use neurological data statistically. It can be done, but requires a lot of separate observations, followed by good statistical analysis.
Anyone wanting to find and read material on this topic should begin by searching for papers by Aron K. Barbey. I have read his work for years and always found it to be outstanding.
Jacobsen: Regarding “IQ improvements for each generation is at odds with a substantial amount of data showing that real intelligence has been declining for a long time in virtually all developed nations,” what regions of the world have the strongest data and have the weakest data? What is the reason for the gap in depth of data?
Williams: Intelligence studies tend to start in Western Europe and North America, then are extended to other locations. One obvious reason for this is that there are more intelligence researchers in those two locations and it is much easier for them to do local studies. In the case of intelligence decline, there are multiple specifics that apply:
• The dysgenic effect was identified and described in The Bell Curve in 1994. Richard Lynn published a book on it in 2011, then Woodley and Dutton published another book (Wits’ End) in 2018. The Bell Curve included only a small box on the topic, but the two books from Britain were focused on the decline. So, virtually all of the book-level work was British; this shows as a dominant factor in the Wits’ End (2018).
• Since the cause of the dysgenic effect is the negative correlation between IQ and fertility rate, the effect would be muted–probably to zero–in very low IQ nations and breeding groups (e.g. sub-Saharan Africa and Australian Aborigines).
• Since the effect size is small, it was easily masked by gains in the Flynn Effect (these are non-g artifacts). In order to study the actual changes over time, it is necessary to have data that goes back for over a century. Such data can be found in Britain and possibly a couple of othe nations. So, we cannot learn much about other nations, from direct data. These are discussed in Wits’ End.
• The findings from the 1870s onward can be extrapolated to more recent reports, which now include essentially all developed nations.
Jacobsen: When there are gaps in data, are there statistical methods used to fill those gaps if they exist?
Williams: Not in this case. Per my comment above, the cause and effect has been established by data, largely from Britain, that goes back to Galton. Once the process has been shown by a variety of independent measures, we are left to accept the default hypothesis (that the same thing happens consistently) until something is identified to point to another outcome.
Jacobsen: If so, how do those statistical methods work?
Williams: I haven’t seen any attempt to do more than demonstrate that the fertility rate is negatively correlated with IQ. There was some discussion of the role of increasing mutation load as a cause of the dysgenic effect. That topic died, probably due to the realization that tens of thousands of SNPs are the genetic basis of intelligence. With tiny effect sizes, accumulated mutations would take a very long time to show an effect.
One interesting and related area of research is the study of past civilizations by using polygenic scores. I have comments on this a few answers down. It may eventually be possible to use polygenic scores to make statistically reliable estimates of the changes in mean intelligence (for a given location) over time.
Jacobsen: What might be a hypothetical test with the ability to tap into 1-sigma and 6-sigma g? In theory, if the data continues to follow one after the other in a convergent direction, then we should have high-range tests with potentials for large properly controlled samples of the general population without compromises to the test. Chris Cole, a longstanding member of the Mega Society, and his team have been working for years on an adaptive test – cheat-resistant. David Redvaldsen’s recent norming of the Mega Test and the Titan Test show test scores legitimate up the one in a million level, but barely, and nowhere near many of the claimed scores of one-in-a-billion or more. Those remain false, but seemed true in an earlier time and the newer norms seem more reasonable given the newer spate of testing devoted, mostly independently, to the high-range. It is a testament of the contribution of Hoeflin to high-range testing to get above 4-sigma tests, but shy of 5-sigma.
Williams: There are two parts to my belief that measurements above 4 sigma are not informative: 1) norming is impractical; 2) the construct of intelligence and its measure (IQ) are difficult to impossible to defend. There is also a problem of demonstrating that high sigma tests can be compared over the same range.
As we all know, IQ is measured relative to a group of real people who are selected to statistically represent the full population. Typical professional IQ tests are designed to cover a range of ± 2.5 sigma, which is adequate to reach the 99th percentile. Some professional IQ tests (the WISC 4 & 5 Stanford-Binet 5, and DAS2 are the ones I am aware of) claim extended scales. They claim to use developmental markers instead of norming group data. Obviously, this restricts the scales to children. The largest adult norming group I am aware of is 8,000 for the Woodcock-Johnson. Some tests have considerably smaller groups and presumably take a hit in the error bands for that reason. To test at 4 sigma, you would need over 31,000 people in the norming group in order to hopefully have one datum. It is easy to see that even at 4 sigma, the cost of dealing with a huge norming group would be prohibitive. The process effectively reaches an unbearable cost with very little return. [If Item Response Theory is used, norming is not required, but the need for a large reference group does not vanish.]
Now, let’s deal with construct validity and predictive validity. As we go beyond 4 sigma (and possibly before reaching it) we have to ask if the construct of IQ is the same as it is at lower levels. Because of Spearman’s Law of Diminishing Returns (SLODR – if we accept it as fact), we expect that very high intelligence becomes heavily influenced by group factor residuals. [group factors = broad abilities, these are Stratum II in a three stratum model] In other words, the thing that we are doing at the usual levels is using a tool that had enough g variance that it can be used as a proxy for g, but SLODR tells us that g contributes less and less to the variance in intelligence as we move to high levels. Although the analogy is not perfect, you can think of this as being similar to the change of state of a solid as it is heated and becomes liquid, and then goes to a third state as a gas. The properties of the same element in each state cannot be meaningfully compared. In the case of measuring above 4 sigma, there is the likelihood that most of the variance is not g variance, so it is necessarily variance in the residuals of broad abilities, after g is factored out. Here we have a case of measuring where there is not a single g that is accounting for the interindividual differences, so different people may score very high on any of the group factors. In the CHC model, these factors should be present:
- Gc __ breadth and depth of acquired knowledge
- Gf __ fluid reasoning – reasoning, form of concepts, solve problems
- Gq __ quantitative knowledge
- Grw __ reading and writing ability
- Gsm __ short term memory
- Glr __ long term memory
- Gv __ visual processing – think and recall with visual patterns
- Ga __ auditory processing – process and discriminate speech sound
- Gs __ processing speed – clerical task speed
If g has already reached near saturation, factors such as Gf and Gc (top g loadings) probably will not turn out to be the source of most variance. Just guessing, I would expect Gq, Gv, and Ga might turn out to be dominant. If someone scores at a level taken to be at 5 sigma due to a very high Gq, would it make sense to say that he is equally smart as someone at the same 5 sigma level who made it on the basis of a high Ga? To me, the reason intelligence is meaningfully measurable over the usual range, is that it can ultimately be reduced to one single factor (g).
If we ignore all of the small details and have a test that specifies rarity up to 6 sigma, there must be real world measures that confirm that the test is differentiating something that happens differently as a function of IQ in the very high range. The sorts of things that work in measurable ranges are similar to these: income, SES, job status, number of patents issued (engineers), age at tenure (professors), scientific publications, major awards*, having a role in work that is domain changing, etc. If outcomes cannot be statistically predicted for different levels (ie: 5 sigma vs 5.5 sigma) then the test is not meeting the requirement of predictive validity and must be classified as an ethereal exercise.
* Examples from the awards received by Feynman: Putnam Fellow · Nobel Prize in Physics · Albert Einstein Award · Oersted Medal · National Medal of Science for Physical Science · Foreign Member of the Royal Society.
Since I have already made this answer long, I will not expand much on the various other items that relate to difficulties in measuring above 4 sigma, but I will list some of the things that have to be resolved if a test is to be useful at any level:
• Is it invariant with respect to breeding groups, sex, and age?
• Is it properly and confidently age corrected so as to meet the definition of IQ? [I think this is an important one.]
• Is it subject to Flynn Effect artifacts? Are they properly handled?
• Is the g loading of the test known? [Requires testing a large group.]
• Is the reliability coefficient derived from sound measurement? Is it 0.90 or higher?
• Is construct validity established by comparison between its factorial structure and that of a major comprehensive test (WAIS or Woodcock-Johnson)?
• Are the broad ability factors balanced, so that the test is not unduly weighted by a small number of factors? [This impacts the factor loadings of the test.]
• Is the test administered by a qualified person (psychologist)? If not, how is the use of new and powerful artificial intelligence prevented?
[These and similar items were discussed in my article, High Range IQ Tests — Are They Psychometrically Sound? Noesis? #207, February 2021.] All of these things are difficult to satisfy and are usually quite costly. It may be impossible to actually demonstrate some, or most of these for ceilings above 4 sigma.
Jacobsen: How could we use techniques for translating regular gold-standard tests like the WAIS and SB to make culture fair tests up to a 6-sigma range?
Williams: Given my long answer (above), I believe that the problems I listed are unlikely to be resolved unless something startling appears from AI. The surprises that are coming from AI are more than a step up, they are dramatic. The particular study that I think illustrates how AI can do things that were not only unexpected, but also not understood by researchers: Banerjee, I., Bhimireddy, A.R., Burns, J.L., Celi, L.A., Chen, L.C., Correa, R., Dullerud, N., Ghassemi, M., Huang, S.C., Kuo, P.C. and Lungren, M.P., 2021. Reading race: AI recognises a patient’s racial identity in medical images. arXiv preprint arXiv:2107.10356.
This x-ray analysis, based on AI, demonstrates that something totally unforeseen might happen that changes how intelligence is best measured and understood. One area that I am watching is the analysis of genome wide association studies, using AI.
Jacobsen: If g is largely innate while still susceptible to environmental blunting, can we estimate the contexts of g for ancient civilizations and peoples, as a general comparative metric in current times, so making a within-species general comparative metric across times? People likely encountered more bodily traumas and malnutrition in the past, for instance. Modern Western types, in most cases, tend to be well-fed, pampered, and comfortable in contrast with ancient humanity.
Williams: There is IQ work ongoing now, based on DNA samples from ancient groups. The first paper I encountered on this topic: Intelligence Trends in Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of Roman Polygenic Scores; Davide Piffer, Edward Dutton, Emil O. W. Kirkegaard; OpenPsych July 2023; DOI: 10.26775/OP.2023.07.21. There is a long video interview of Piffer by Kirkegaard that discusses this topic in depth. I assume readers can find it with a search engine. Piffer mentioned that DNA data is pouring in from various ancient groups and that there is ongoing work to analyze it via polygenic scores. There are some obvious limitations, such as not being able to identify insults to the DNA that might have reduced individual intelligence. As the sample sizes increase, the confidence levels of this work will improve, but even now, the results are useful in tracking intelligence over wide time intervals.
Jacobsen: In the future, could we use artificial intelligences mimicking various general levels of intelligence of people to do wordplay and that converse with human interlocutors to estimate g in the tested human? It would be a step away from a direct brain scan estimate, but it would be cheaper and more output oriented.
Williams: I assume that AI will advance from the already impressive performance (certain applications) to reach levels that will be startling. AI should be able to learn from various data sets, such as the norming data for the Woodcock-Johnson that has been made available to researchers. It would seem to be a natural fit for the use of Item Response Theory. AI should be able to determine Item Characteristic Curves, or something similar, but which is developed from within the AI system. I wouldn’t be surprised if it is eventually able to make good estimates of intelligence by simply examining discussions by various people, either in video or text format. We already do that when we watch someone who is either obviously dull or obviously brilliant. It would be interesting to see what a trained AI system would, perhaps in a few years from now, observe from videos of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Sabine Hossenfelder.
Jacobsen: In theory, could we use such a system to establish what a human general intelligence – whatever the culture and native tongue – would likely produce as output in conversation if intent on showing the real general intelligence, even if we have not found such an individual through regular testing channels with a psychometrician? There is popular theatrical commentary on an LLM with an IQ of 155 for verbal intelligence. Stuff like this. However, I mean a real correlation matrix extended or extrapolating based on live human input and incredible amounts of data and deep learning, ANNs. So, “Human with a cognitive rarity of 1 in a 1,000 sounds like this on either side of the curve. 1 in 30,000 sounds like this. Therefore, based on these sophisticated algorithms and extrapolations, the 1-in-10,000,000 person should sound like this.” It would reverse the sample size problem to an artificial sample size solution in a way. An artificial constellation of language used to determine where someone sits in cognitive rarity with the ANN constantly learning, improving with each additional human interlocutor. It would be a narrow band artificial intelligence with this specific purpose, especially good with the large amount of correlation with g and verbal ability, e.g., like Hogwarts’s Sorting Hat minus the magic.
Williams: Yes, I agree with the likelihood that AI will be able to match behavior or language to a given specification. It would be the reverse direction of the prior question. I think that it would have a lot of leeway for a given level of intelligence, since we already know that you can name a percentile and find a wide range of behaviors at that level. AI should be able to match the intended IQs of fictional characters that are described as input.
I have doubts that this sort of thing would retain meaning when the end of the range of the definition of intelligence (pre my prior comments) is reached.
Jacobsen: Do newer generations of intelligence researchers feel a tinge of fear for asking particular research questions when seasoned researchers encounter “careers ruined, people losing their jobs, physical threats, physical attacks, vandalism, denied promotions”? I sense a chill among both conservatives and liberals, oddly less amongst centrists, in sociopolitical contexts. Both use cancellation as a tactic. That’s not new. Lots of us have experienced it. I don’t care about it much, personally. The advancement of knowledge is the key part. For the advancement of a field with key impacts, it raises legitimate, serious concerns about the advancement of research in the terms of the potential for rapid developments for benefit for humanity as a whole, especially the floor of societies who benefit from smart, dedicated people with ethics bent towards general humanitarian efforts. Identification and nurturance efforts matter. You noted this in the last part.
Williams: I see two things happening. The first is that some researchers are fearful of discussing anything that might lead to a hot topic or even allow someone to claim that they have commented on one. The fear is what I assume went on when the Roman Catholic church punished Galileo in 1633. Other scientists could see that there were serious hazards to be faced in the pursuit of truth.
The second thing is that wording becomes so delicate as to be silly. Blunt comments don’t happen, even when they would express a point more accurately. Besides having to dance around what is being written, the comments are now followed by lots of extra boilerplate, such as pointing out that any group can have bright people and that IQ tests are not deterministic. I must admit that I have fallen into this protective kind of language (at least when I write something that could cause blowback).
Jacobsen: What will happen to respected disciplines where international standing matters with individuals selected in such a manner?
Williams: So far, we are in a mode of having some people who are willing to take on dangerous topics and those who will not. Although there are only a few researchers who are willing to research race and sex differences, they seem to me to be doing good work. I don’t think their work has actually harmed the reputations of the nonparticipants, I have seen examples of people feeling as if they were unfairly grouped with the not-woke researchers.
Jacobsen: Truly intelligent kids will use their intelligence in one way or another. What will likely happen to these smart kids without guidance and support?
Williams: A case can be made that not supporting bright students will result in them not reaching the levels of performance that would more likely be reached with support. As you observed, bright students will pursue their interests, despite barriers from school administrators and politicians. Douglas Detterman, founder of ISIR and Intelligence, wrote a good article pointing out that 90% of the variance in educational outcomes is due to the individual students (intelligence). The remaining variance is split between teachers and schools, with teachers accounting for 1 to 7% of the variance. This is one of those things that lots of people will want to challenge, but Detterman has the research findings on his side.
I can’t imagine what the consequences will be if the present rate of irrational policies in education continue to increase. The people who are driving things, such as equal outcomes, apparently have no idea of the magnitude of the bell curve range. Yet, they are pushing to really have college educations for every child of every ability level. Economically and practically, this is insane.
Jacobsen: How are you defining woke here?
Williams: “Woke” has become the tag for the left, with all of the policies that they push (socialism and irresponsible spending on things that are waste). In the things I have been discussing, I use “woke” in reference to policies that relate to education, such as the canceling of gifted programs; the failure to recognize student achievement out of fear that a nonachiever might feel bad about his failure; school administrator embarrassment over the suggestion that a student is brilliant; etc.
Recently Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology was denied the use of tests for admission. The student body has typically been about 70% Asian, 20% White, and 2% Black, with the balance consisting mostly of Hispanic. The school board ruling that they could not use tests was challenged and went through the state justice system. The school lost. Then it was appealed to the Supreme Court but was not accepted, despite their willingness to rule against Harvard for similar discrimination against Asians.
The links below are largely redundant. They report the court’s choice.
Now the school must admit on the basis of race, not ability. They are in a bind. If they maintain their former standards, they will have to fail most of the quota students. If they are afraid to fail them (most likely), they will have to either provide an easy option for them or simply award diplomas for attending classes.
Jacobsen: An assumption: censorship of research tends to make people – of all stripes – become creative and then pursue different means by which to explore the original subject matter. Smart, creative people are forced to get more creative and use their intelligence more. With a discouragement and a reduction in focus on general intelligence and on IQ in formal tests, how are intelligence researchers pursuing paths for measurement of intelligence if at all? I am making a historical extrapolation as if it will happen or has already happened, potentially a bias to be optimistic about researchers and intellectual pursuits. (I’m sorry!)
Williams: At the last ISIR conference, one of my friends wondered out loud if animal studies could be used to show the things that are so obvious among humans, then use the findings as comparisons to human behaviors. Curiously, we already have a very wide range of intelligence in dogs that is quite similar to the range seen in people. There are border collies at the top and Afghan wolfhounds at the bottom.
I think the twist that might not be anticipated by the anti-intelligence faction, is AI. [Mentioned previously.]
Jacobsen: What were magic multipliers? The term “magic” tells a bit of the story.
Williams: It came from this paper: Dickens, W.T. and Flynn, J.R., 2001. Heritability estimates versus large environmental effects: the IQ paradox resolved. Psychological review, 108(2), p.346. In the paper, Dickens and Flynn described their imagined explanation for how imagined environmental effects could cause large impacts on intelligence. Their argument was reminiscent of the “butterfly effect” which was used in the discussion of weather. With no supporting data, the authors invented a process that they claim could convert tiny unobserved environmental effects into large factors that impact intelligence. After the inane model was offered, there were no publications showing anything that could possibly support the model. I called their model “magic multipliers” because that describes their invention. To me, this is much like inventing a story where Noah builds an ark and stocks it with two of every species, so that the flood story can be supported.
Jacobsen: Why did Plomin stop giving updates every 2 years?
Williams: Probably because the SNPs were found. I don’t recall that he ever spoke to ISIR after the breakthrough that he details in Robert Plomin – Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are, Penguin Books Ltd., 2018, ISBN 9780241282076.
ISIR honored Plomin with the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011. He spoke to ISIR in 2013 (Cypris) but I did not attend because of the very remote location. I recall (sitting a few feet away) that he received the Distinguished Career Interview, but I am not sure of the year. By 2018 the new age of genetics arrived. Besides Blueprint (above) there is a related paper that is worthwhile: Plomin R, von Stumm S. The new genetics of intelligence. Nat Rev Genet. 2018 Mar;19(3):148-159. doi: 10.1038/nrg.2017.104. Epub 2018 Jan 8. PMID: 29335645; PMCID: PMC5985927.
Jacobsen: If the FE is decoupled from g, as in not a JE, how much is the decoupling – complete, or is it on a sliding scale depending on context?
Williams: My take, as of today, is that the decoupling is close to total, but there are suggested FE causes that should show some g loading. One example would be a decrease in mean family size. If this were to happen (it obviously has happened at the high end), it should be largely due to smaller low IQ families. That would cause a real gain in intelligence, which would probably be little more than a recovery of the already lower mean due to the negative correlation between IQ and fertility rate. Besides just hitting the low end of the IQ spectrum, there is also a small birth order effect. A reduction in family size would mean fewer children born with high birth order numbers. These children are statistically less intelligent than their older siblings. I don’t think either of these have been demonstrated to show a FE.
It is a bit frustrating to see the large number of references to the FE accompanied by comments that the population is becoming more intelligent. The opposite is happening. People simply do not understand that the FE is a time and location effect that can be positive or negative at any given observation; that it is not always up; and that it is rarely (or never) a Jensen Effect.
Jacobsen: Are societies giving screening of gametes for parents with reproductive issues, single parents with means who select surrogates or sperm donors based on verified characteristics, or individuals who want to know risk factors associated with their reproductive capabilities in genetics alone, making an ethical decision in conscious, evidence-based, reasoned reproduction in a non-totalitarian, democratic fashion? Is this likely to become widespread? It’s, in a way, a more precise form of how individuals engage in sexual selection in the first place happening for millennia.
Williams: That takes in a lot! It is my understanding that IVF usage is large in some nations and varies down to zero in many nations. I am not familiar with the policies of the nations where IVF is most prevalent. I looked at the web and found that the US has 1.7% of all infants born through Assisted Reproductive Technology, whereas Denmark has an estimated 8 to 10% conceived through ART. That strikes me as a relatively large fraction. It seems that IVF or ART might be used more in the future, but by educated people. It is difficult for me to imagine it as equally attractive for low IQ families.
Jacobsen: Once we get the structure and networks and processes most likely connected to g in the brain, what would this mean for the development of simulations of this in computers, artificial g?
Williams: It is difficult to rule anything out for the future. The rate of development of computer technology remains high. The expected diminishing returns are being crushed by new technologies. We already see optical technology that claims to offer petabytes of storage on an optical disk that is the size of the old ones we have mostly discarded. [Using that kind of storage may be another matter, but we keep thinking of barriers that fall.] And we have been seeing research in quantum computing for some time. It seems to be real and progressing towards ultimate implementation. With what appears to be unlimited speed and storage, plus AI, getting to the point of using brain structures and processes in computers may be a matter of time.
Some time ago, I read a paper [Jung, R.E. and Haier, R.J., 2007. The Parieto-Frontal Integration Theory (P-FIT) of intelligence: converging neuroimaging evidence. Behavioral and brain sciences, 30(2), pp.135-154.] that discussed what the brain is doing with information that gives us the neurology of g. The answer, in part, is that the brain carries out an information integration process, that is either g or is strongly related to g. In 2007, there was limited understanding of networks, as compared to today. I have not seen a merging of modern network models with the Parieto-Frontal Integration Theory, but I think there are papers that attempt to update the P-FIT model.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Bob Williams & Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Noesis: The Journal of the Mega Society
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/05/28
Abstract
Bob Williams is a Member of the Triple Nine Society, Mensa International, and the International Society for Philosophical Enquiry. He discusses: a background in nuclear physics, interest in intelligence, and the transformation of Fort Langley due to the influence of Trinity Western University; retirement in 1996 as a pivotal moment for deeper exploration of human intelligence, access to scientific resources and the internet for furthering studies, and involvement with the International Society for Intelligence Research since 2003; shifts to definition of intelligence, critique of the APA’s definition and suggestion of alternatives, emphasis on the importance of psychometric g and the role of genetics and environment in intelligence; addresses misinterpretation of the Flynn Effect, explanation of its non-relation to genuine intelligence increases and citation of examples of IQ decline in developed nations, challenge to the notion of environmental improvements enhancing intelligence; touches on political and social ramifications of intelligence research, impact of “woke” culture on academic freedom and dismantling of programs for gifted students, sharing of personal anecdotes from interactions with notable researchers; comments on enduring relevance of “The Bell Curve,” contributions to the field, and global variability of the Flynn Effect, concluding with insights into genetics of intelligence and challenges facing contemporary intelligence research.
Keywords: Cultural Shifts, Dysgenics, Education, Environmental Factors, Flynn Effect, Genetics, Heredity, Intelligence, IQ Tests, Nutrition, Psychometric g, Research, Retirement, Social Intelligence, Technology.
Conversation with Bob Williams on General Intelligence Now: Retired Nuclear Physicist (6)
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Today, we’re back with a Mr. Bob Williams, retired super smart guy! Former nuclear physicist and participant in interviews on IQ and intelligence in In-Sight Publishing and republished in Noesis: The Journal of the Mega Society. Most of my best friends as a 13-year-old into the present have been near-retired or retired people, I grew in an artsy, intellectual town called “the village” also known as Fort Langley. It is different now. The Evangelical Christians from Trinity Western University have, more or less, made the place wealthier, tiny bit snooty, and much more glossy. Yet, they call the place, still, “the village.” Too each their own, Fort Langley, when I grew up, was a retirement place, a quietude. So, retired people are the best people in my opinion! Do you find yourself having more time to pursue interests in retirement?
Bob Williams: I retired when I was young, in 1996, and regard that move to be one of the best of my life. Since I have a lot of interests, having more time has enabled me to spend more of it with these interests and to both enjoy them and to improve my expertise in them. My interest in human intelligence began in the early 90s, when I was working in Washington, DC (Department of Energy – Senior Technical Advisor). Having a scientific library there (this was when we still used MicroFiche for research) gave me access to some papers that I would have otherwise found difficult to obtain. When I retired, I had more time to study this new passion, which was aided by increasing electronic access to resources and ultimately to the newly available internet. I joined the International Society for Intelligence Research (ISIR) in 2003 and started attending its conferences in 2004. This opened a new world of access… directly to the people who were writing the papers and books I had been reading.
Jacobsen: The American Psychological Association in “Intelligence” defines intelligence, in an adaptation from the Encyclopedia of Psychology, as follows:
Intelligence refers to intellectual functioning.
Intelligence quotients, or IQ tests, compare your performance with other people your age who take the same test. These tests don’t measure all kinds of intelligence, however. For example, such tests can’t identify differences in social intelligence, the expertise people bring to their interactions with others.
There are also generational differences in the population as a whole. Better nutrition, more education, and other factors have resulted in IQ improvements for each generation.
Given their use of the Encyclopedia of Psychology, I will use this as a resource, too. Jensen is deceased; Flynn is dead. Many larger names in intelligence research’s history are passed. I do not know if significant changes or developments have occurred within the field of research of general intelligence. However, the institutions devoted to psychology have been changing norms and mores, which, in turn, adapts the empirical frameworks’ orientation: what is emphasized more, what is emphasized less. Does this definition seem adequate for a beginning definition of intelligence?
Williams: Before I get to your question near the end, I think it is worth arguing a bit with the APA definition of intelligence. It is not totally off, but I don’t think it is as good as these:
The best definition:
intelligence = psychometric g
The most cited:
Intelligence is a very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience. It is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings–“catching on,” “making sense” of things, or “figuring out” what to do.
source: Linda Gottfredson – Mainstream Science on Intelligence; The Wall Street Journal; December 13, 1994 — signed by 52 intelligence scholars.
My favorite is Carl Bereiter’s clever definition:
“Intelligence is what you use when you don’t know what to do.”
The problem with the APA definition is that it tries to downplay the importance of intelligence and then adds the misleading two sentences at the end. This has been a trend of woke people before the word identified socialism and extreme anti-science rhetoric. Nutrition has not been a factor in developed nations for a long time. The brain needs iron, iodine, and folate to develop properly. These are present in the diets of all developed nations and all but the most backward others. Education does not change real intelligence, it simply provides us with the tools we need to do various cognitive tasks. Intelligence is determined by the DNA we inherit and may be reduced by encounters with the environment (disease, toxins, and head trauma).
Throughout any discussions of intelligence, we must understand that intelligence is about biology and that it is fairly equated to psychometric g. Researchers refer to this as a Jensen Effect, meaning that if something is not observed as a change in g, it is not a Jensen Effect and is not about the essence of intelligence. We will get to a lot of this in relation to the Flynn Effect.
The assumption relating to IQ improvements for each generation is at odds with a substantial amount of data showing that real intelligence has been declining for a long time in virtually all developed nations. The dysgenic effect on intelligence has been extensively reported in scholarly papers and books. Here are three examples of books reporting it:
Herrnstein, R. J., & Murray, C. (1994). The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. New York: Free Press.
At Our Wits’ End: Why We’re Becoming Less Intelligent and What It Means for the Future, by E. A. Dutton & M. A. Woodley of Menie. Exeter, UK: Imprint Academic.
Lynn, R. (2011). Dysgenics: Genetic deterioration in modern populations (revised ed.). London: Ulster Institute for Social Research.
The APA definition also wants us to buy into the Multiple Intelligences nonsense that was successfully pushed on laymen and has stuck like molasses. We only need to consider g (or, to a lesser extent, the residuals of broad abilities, after g is factored out) when we are discussing intelligence. Psychometric g accounts for essentially all of the predictive validity of IQ tests and it is only because those tests can be used as proxies for g that they have any real utility.
It is misleading to imply intelligence enhancing environmental factors that simply do not exist. Researchers have not yet found a single thing in the environment that increases intelligence. For at least the past 5 years, we have had some open discussions (ISIR conferences) of the importance of finding a way to increase intelligence. Despite our world class neurologists, geneticists, and psychologists, none claim any means of increasing g, but all agree that it is a desirable goal. Now that we finally know what defines intelligence, the prospects of doing it via genetics seems unlikely until amazing new technologies appear.
The actual question, which I have somewhat evaded, is about changing norms, mores, and the APA definition. My view on the definition is hopefully clear. Norms and mores have become more antagonistic towards researchers, who have had the courage to deal with the relatively short list of deadly topics: differences in intelligence between breeding groups and the sexes, and to a lesser extent the heritability of intelligence. I know researchers who are totally afraid of being connected with any aspect of these three topics. They have seen careers ruined, people losing their jobs, physical threats, physical attacks, vandalism, denied promotions, and speakers being invited to universities only to be shouted down, followed by police escorts to protect them from mobs. Yes, it is serious and nasty.
One of the consequences of the woke culture is that schools for bright students have been abolished or crippled to such an extent that they have been reduced to ordinary schools with names that suggest otherwise. Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology has been repeatedly named by U.S. News and World Report as the number 1 high school in the United States. It used testing as a major part of its selection process. The school board eventually reached a woke majority and proceeded to disallow testing for admission. The stated reason was that the board noticed that 68 – 70% of the students were Asian and most of the rest were Whites. So now, students are admitted on the basis of skin color, instead of intelligence. New York effectively has done the same thing, not to one extraordinary school, but to all gifted programs. For more information than you would ever want to read, see this search result:
https://www.bing.com/search?q=new+york+eliminates+gifted+education
This same process is apparently being repeated in other woke states. Bright students have become an embarrassment to school boards. At TJHSST (see above), National Merit finalists were not notified of their success until it was past time for them to apply for related scholarships and to their accomplishment on college applications. The school administration said that they did not want those who were not selected to have their feelings hurt. Then it was found that 14 high schools in Fairfax County did exactly the same thing and that this had been ongoing for ten years! The real reason behind the withholding of the notifications was that most (or all) of the finalists were Asian or White. That is where our norms and mores have gone.
Jacobsen: Implicitly, this definition refers to the Flynn Effect, not coined by James Flynn, but Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray in their 1994 book The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. How did this mistaken identity of the title, the Flynn Effect, get the attribution?
Williams: I will paste in the introduction to my paper on this subject:
The secular rise in IQ scores appeared unexpectedly and has defied explanation. Smith (1942) recorded a gain (in Honolulu) over a 14 year span. Later, Tuddenham (1948) found an increased intelligence when he compared inductee scores for the U.S. Army from World War I and World War II and proposed that the gains might be due to increased familiarity with tests; public health and nutrition; and education [the gains from 1932 to 1943 were 4.4 points per decade.]. He cited a high correlation (about .75) between years of education and the Army Alpha and Wells Alpha tests that he was studying.
The secular gain remained relatively dormant until it was rediscovered by Lynn (1982) while working on a comparison of Japanese and U.S. data. It was then rediscovered again, using American data, by Flynn (1984a,b). The raw score gains did not have a name until Herrnstein & Murray (1994) coined the term Flynn effect in their book The Bell Curve (p. 307). Some researchers choose to refer to the secular gain as the Lynn–Flynn effect, or use an uppercase FL (FLynn effect) for the obvious reason that they feel Lynn has been somewhat slighted by not including his name.
Source: Williams, R. L. (2013). Overview of the Flynn effect. Intelligence, 41, 753-764.
Jacobsen: Flynn, in my interviews with him, firmly believed Murray was not a racist. He was the liberal counter party in this general intelligence and IQ debate. He described the entrance into the debate and the academic as one motivated by liberal leanings. Murray is conservative. Whether consciously or not, with this as a political affiliation, this would affect research questions for Murray, eventually, and the orientation within the research chosen. In this case, the research on IQ. Thus, the split between the liberal orientations and conservative frames on then IQ debates generically tends towards environmentalist versus hereditarian. Although, as Noam Chomsky has noted, it’s trivial to say heredity plays a role in traits. It’s like claiming something was the result of evolution in biological systems, including spandrels, because everything in biology is a result of evolution writ large: All forms of selection. Therefore, if someone claims a trait isn’t hereditary to a minimum degree – a non-zero level, then they’re not part of the serious discussion on attempts to pin down a) a definition of human intelligence and b) measurements for this definition in order to create a functional and repeatedly measurable psychological construct. As the counter party to Murray, it seems natural to assume an ad hominem, especially given the current intellectual climate. Yet, he does not do this. He knows Murray very well as another researcher looking to conclude the opposite of Murray. Furthermore, and to reiterate the point, near the end of his life, he did not see Murray as a racist. What do you make of this claim against Murray?
Williams: I have had the good fortune of knowing both (Flynn and Murray) and to chat with them, sometimes for long times, at the conferences we attended. I have distinct impressions of both and will share my thoughts. I first met Flynn in 2007 in Madrid. I found him to be warm and pleasant to talk to, while behaving differently when he was in front of our group. He had a booming voice and used it to silence people by literally drowning them out. He had a lot of exchanges with Jensen over many years, with both parties remaining respectful of the other. In these exchanges, it is my belief that Jensen was consistently right and Flynn was not. Flynn was totally honest about how his political beliefs came into play, both in relation to his employment woes and in his beliefs about intelligence. Jensen, as a true opposite, looked at data and nothing else. He reported what he found in data and allowed no other factors to distort what was measured and (usually) replicated.
Flynn was respected by lots of big name researchers. I felt that this was not justified and once wrote something to that effect in response to a comment on Roberto Colom’s blog. I was surprised when Roberto asked me if I would write an explanation of my comment for publication on his blog; I did. Those who read Spanish can find my reply here:
For those who would like to see the original reply (in English), use this link:
In my reply, I discussed some of my thoughts on how Flynn approached various topics. He avoided the use of unambiguous terminology, avoided topics that would not support his positions, and even tried to support his ideas by inventing scenarios (magic multipliers, as reported with Dickens) that are not derived from data and which are at odds with the findings of researchers over the past 50 years.
Below are some comments from Linda Gottfredson that are parallel to my impressions.
Flynn’s Fallacies
With characteristic understatement, Flynn says that everything became clear to him when he awoke from “the spell of g” (pp. 41-42). The reader, feeling afloat in a rolling sea of images and warm words, might ask whether he succeeds only by loosing himself from the bonds of evidence and logic. More troubling, his core argument rests on logical fallacies that profoundly misinterpret the evidence. I describe three below. To be fair, they are among the common fallacies bedeviling debates over intelligence testing, and most reflect a failure to appreciate the inherent limitations of psychological tests, including tests of intelligence.
Source: Shattering Logic to Explain the Flynn Effect; Linda S. Gottfredson • November 8, 2007 • Cato Unbound.
Murray is more like Jensen, in that he makes his arguments based on data, not politics. Like Flynn, I found Charles to be friendly and very bright. In any technical argument that one might imagine between them, I would expect the sound, accurate, and realistic argument to come from Murray.
Things have changed drastically over the past decade. We used to get updates from Robert Plomin about every 2 years (at ISIR conferences), concerning the search of genes relating to IQ. I recall that he once told us that the SNP chips that they were using could not possibly fail to detect a gene with as much as a 1% effect size–yet there was nothing. Fortunately, genome wide association studies arrived and the missing links appeared. Researchers found that intelligence is defined by tens of thousands of single nucleotide polymorphisms, not by individual genes. When I asked James Lee (one of the pioneers in this work) how many SNPs were geneticists estimating as defining intelligence, he told me the range was from 10,000 to 40,000. When the genomic data set reached over 1.1 million genomes, researchers found 1,271 SNPs that were associated with high intelligence. The average effect size of these SNPs is 0.01%. Together they can account for 10% of the variance in intelligence
Effects as tiny as these can only be seen when GWA studies reach sample sizes of tens of thousands of cases for disorders such as schizophrenia, or hundreds of thousands of unselected individuals for dimensions like educational outcomes. As GWA studies reached these daunting demands for statistical power, they struck gold. But what GWA studies found was gold dust, not nuggets. Each speck of gold was not worth much, but scooping up handfuls of gold dust made it possible to predict genetic propensities of individuals.
Robert Plomin – Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are, Penguin Books Ltd., 2018, ISBN 9780241282076.
Since individual DNA is set at the moment of conception, estimates of IQ can be made before birth [Using DNA to predict intelligence; Sophie von Stumm, Robert Plomin; Intelligence 86 (2021) 101530], during life, or thousands of years after death. [See Intelligence Trends in Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of Roman Polygenic Scores; Davide Piffer, Edward Dutton, Emil O. W. Kirkegaard; OpenPsych July 2023; DOI: 10.26775/OP.2023.07.21]
Anyone who argues the environmentalist side of the old argument is not living in the present. That story has been told to such an extent that we can safely say that there is not even a scent left to sniff. No environmental effects have been shown to increase g. Even the home environment has been shown to have essentially no impact on intelligence (based on MZA twin studies and adoption studies, including interracial adoption studies). [MZA = monozygotic twins reared apart]. But this goes much further. Stephen Pinker’s very long book The Blank Slate, is an overkill showing that even other behavioral traits are primarily associated with the nonshared environment, not the shared (family) environment.
The last time I saw Jim Flynn was in 2017. Here is one of the pictures I took when he was addressing ISIR:
Image Credit: Bob Williams.
Jacobsen: The basic premise in the argument against The Bell Curve has been one-sided: Charles Murray is a racist. Let’s say, that’s so. Assume the premise, does this have any impact on the foundational presentation of the work?
Williams: The Bell Curve was understated and bulletproof. Herrnstein and Murray went to great lengths to not overstate anything and to document everything they discussed in terms of how intelligence relates to life outcomes. They also wrote personal interpretations of how intelligence would impact our lives in the future and offered ideas as to how to deal with such outcomes. It was always clear when they were giving opinions.
Today we have the benefit of major breakthroughs in brain imaging and genetics. Many issues that were not fully settled in 1994 are no longer subject to argument. Today we have a massive increase in worldwide intelligence studies that are so detailed that it is possible to map IQ variations within nations. In 1994 there were few studies of remote and underdeveloped nations, but that is no longer true. The Bell Curve remains as probably the best and broadest study of how intelligence shows up in the lives of different populations. The idea of first showing 12 chapters of data for non-Latino whites, then showing that the same effects are seen in blacks was brilliant.
Jacobsen: Herrnstein was the math guy. Murray is the social stuff guy. With Herrnstein dead so early as the text gained traction, did this impact the proper interpretation of the full statistical analysis of the work?
Williams: It is unlikely that Herrnstein’s death had any impact on the book. Writing began in spring of 1990. Herrnstein died on September 13, 1994 (less than 2 weeks before publication). Herrnstein was diagnosed with lung cancer in June 1994. I don’t know when he stopped working on the book, but it is fair to say that virtually all of the composition work was done well before he died.
In 2019 ISIR awarded Murray with the Lifetime Achievement Award. During his related speech, he mentioned that, while at MIT, he took every course on data analysis that was offered by the university. He had already decided what he wanted to do as a career and it was not political science. I have no idea how the work was split between Herrnstein and Murray, but I expect that a significant amount of the analytical work was done by Murray.
As many readers here know, Murray has addressed a number of topics in his books and columns. One that is related to The Bell Curve is Facing Reality (2021). I was impressed with his invention of an analytical method to measure eminence–used in Human Accomplishment (2003). He demonstrated that it was accurate by benchmarking the methodology against two sports that have massive amounts of quantitative measures of performance (baseball and golf).
Jacobsen: Is the Flynn Effect continuing or declining, or stagnating globally? My understanding: In some sectors of the world, it is continuing, while, in others, it is stagnating or declining. All at variable rates.
Williams: Yes, you are right. I think it may be helpful to list a number of salient points that apply to the Flynn Effect.
- The FE is not a Jensen Effect. It is not on g and, therefore, is not related to real intelligence. It is possible to select a cause that should be g loaded, but those have not been shown to actually apply. So, we must allow for the possibility that small Jensen Effects will be found in some places and times.
- At the present time, some nations are experiencing gains in IQ test scores; some are finding that their scores are in decline; and others are seeing no changes.
- At any time, when a FE is observed, it does not impact broad and narrow abilities equally. Some may be increasing while others are declining. When the FE was mostly associated with score increases, the gains were more prominent in abstract reasoning test items, while academic test items were decreasing.
- In some nations, there have been score increases, followed by stability, followed by score decreases. There is no evidence that the people in these nations showed increases in real intelligence during positive FE changes nor did they become duller as negative FE changes were found.
- Negative FEs have been reported in Norway, Denmark, Britain, Netherlands, Finland, France, and Estonia. The IQ decline rates, per decade, range from 1.35 to 8.4 IQ points. [See E. Dutton, et al./Intelligence 59 (2016) 163-169]
- The FE has been reported in preschool children, thereby eliminating at least those data from school related causes.
- Some studies have found that the FE was stronger in the low IQ part of the IQ spectrum. Other studies found it mostly in the high IQ range. And other studies found that it was equally evident in all ranges. I think that these inconsistencies are important because they point to artifacts and not group-level changes.
- Jensen commented that the definitive test of whether FE gains are hollow or not is to apply the predictive bias test. This means that two points in time would be compared on the basis of an external criterion (real world measurement, such as school grades). If the FE gains are hollow, the later time point would show underprediction, relative to the earlier time. This assumes that the later group has not been renormed. In actual practice tests are periodically renormed so that the mean remains at 100. The result of this recentering is that the tests maintain their predictive validity, indicating that the FE gains are indeed hollow. If the gains were real and the tests were renormed, people at a given IQ would be getting smarter and this would show up in the predictive validity. [Jensen, A. R. (1998). The g factor: The science of mental ability. Westport, CT: Praeger.]
- Brand, C. (1996). The g Factor: General Intelligence and Its Implications. Chichester, England: Wiley [The book was withdrawn by Wiley after it was released. The reason was that it accurately addressed differences in the IQs of blacks and whites.] In this book, he noted that a probable cause of the FE was increased guessing. This is now known as the Brand Effect and has been documented in detail from Estonian data that covered 72 years. The Brand Effect can make score gains appear to load on g, when they do not. This happens because the most g loaded test items are the most difficult for low g persons, so they have more guessing and more gains.
- Another indication that FE gains are artifacts was shown by A. Beaujean, who scored National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data using both classical test theory and item response theory. When the superior IRT was used, the gains vanished in some cases and halved in others. This is entirely due to an external artifact and has nothing to do with intelligence.
- Rushton used principal components analysis to show the independence of the FE from known genetic effects. The data showed that the IQ gains on the WISC-R and WISC-III form a cluster. This means that the secular trend is a reliable phenomenon. This cluster is independent of the cluster formed by racial differences (shown by many replications to be differences in g), inbreeding depression scores (purely genetic), and g factor loadings. The secular increase is, therefore, unrelated to g and other heritable measures.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Sam Vaknin & Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Noesis: The Journal of the Mega Society
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/05/28
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You have been measured three times with a high IQ, an understatement. An IQ between 180 and 190, between ages 9 and 35. You referred to this in some writings, in passing, including pages 2, 3, 4, 5, and 7, of epigrams, in an interview with Richard Grannon (2018), with Smashwords (2014), and on a YouTube video answering viewer questions. It has been mentioned in an article by Gavin Haynes (2016), too. With the IQ scores of 185 at age 9, 180 in the army at age 25, and 190 in prison at age 35, presumably on a standard deviation of 15, what was the reaction of family, friends, peers, community, even the psychometricians or psychologists administering the tests each time?
Prof. Shmuel “Sam” Vaknin: First, let me clarify than any result above 160 (some say, 140) is not normatively validated: it is rather arbitrary and meaningless because there are so few people to compare with (the sample is way too small). Matrix IQ tests are better at validating higher results, though.
Everyone always loathed me. I am a sadist, so from a very early age, I have leveraged my IQ to taunt people, hold them in contempt, and humiliate them. This did not endear obnoxious me to anyone. My own teachers sought to undermine my academic career, peers shunned or attempted to bully me (they failed), my mother detested me, my father pendulated between being awe-struck and being repelled by me. Both my parents beat me to an inch of my life every single day for 12 years.
Jacobsen: To you, as a scientific person, what defines intelligence?
Vaknin: Anything that endows an individual with a comparative advantage at performing a complex task constitutes intelligence. In this sense, viruses reify intelligence, they are intelligent. Human intelligence, though, is versatile and the tasks are usually far more complex than anything a virus might need to tackle.
Jacobsen: What defines IQ or Intelligence Quotient?
Vaknin: The ability to perform a set of mostly – but not only – analytical assignments corresponding to an age-appropriate average. So, if a 10 year old copes well with the tasks that are the bread and butter of an 18 years old, he scores 180 IQ.
IQ measures an exceedingly narrow set of skills and mental functions. There are many types of intelligence – for example: musical intelligence – not captured by any IQ test.
Jacobsen: What defines giftedness, to you? Even though, formal definitions exist.
Vaknin: Giftedness resembles autism very much: it is the ability to accomplish tasks inordinately well or fast by focusing on them to the exclusion of all else and by mobilizing all the mental resources at the disposal of the gifted person.
Obviously, people gravitate to what they do well. Gifted people have certain propensities and talents to start with and these probably reflect brain abnormalities of one kind or another.
Jacobsen: Inter-relating the previous three questions, what separates intelligence from IQ from giftedness, i.e., separates each from one another?
Vaknin: IQ is a narrow measure of highly specific types of intelligence and is not necessarily related to giftedness. Gifted people invest themselves with a laser-focus to effect change in their environment conducive to the speedy completion of highly specific tasks.
Jacobsen: What defines genius?
Vaknin: Genius is the ability to discern two things: 1. What is missing (lacunas) 2. Synoptic connections.
The genius surveys the world and completes it by conjuring up novelty (i.e., by creating). S/he also spots hidden relatedness between ostensibly disparate phenomena or data.
Jacobsen: How does genius differentiate from intelligence, IQ, and giftedness?
Vaknin: A genius can have an average IQ or even not be analytically very intelligent (not be an intellectual). Some craftsmen are geniuses. Musicians, athletes, even politicians.
Jacobsen: What happens to most prodigies, or adults with exceptionally, profoundly, or unmeasurably high IQ?
Vaknin: A majority of them end badly. IQ is a good predictor of academic accomplishments, but not much else. Character, upbringing, mental illness, genetics, nurture, the environment (including the physical environment), sexual and romantic history matter much more than IQ.
Many “geniuses” with a high IQ (Mensa types) are dysfunctional and deficient when it comes to life, intimacy, relationships, and social skills. Additionally, as Eysenck had correctly observed, creativity is often linked to psychoticism.
Jacobsen: What are the optimal things for raising gifted children and prodigies, and for resuscitating drifting adults with exceptionally, profoundly, or unmeasurably high IQ, if at all possible, to productive and healthy lives?
Vaknin: All interventions are somewhat effective only during childhood and adolescence, up to age 21. Afterwards, it is an uphill battle.
The most crucial thing is to never remove the gifted child from his peer group (as was done to me). I am also dead set against academic shortcuts.
The gifted child should follow the same path as everybody else but feed his voracious mind with extracurricular enrichment programs and materials.
Jacobsen: Who seem like the greatest geniuses in history to you?
Vaknin: The usual suspects: Einstein, Newton, Freud, da Vinci, other polymaths who had upended every discipline or field that they had turned their scintillating minds to.
Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Professor Vaknin.
Vaknin: The opportunity is all mine.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Sam Vaknin & Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Noesis: The Journal of the Mega Society
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/05/28
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What would define a comprehensive physics?
Prof. Sam Vaknin: Ostensibly, physics is the science of studying reality. But, in reality, physics is a form of mysticism, it is where alchemy used to be a few centuries ago.
In alchemy, there was a preoccupation with language and a belief in a universal, invariant truth which would endow the practitioner with godlike powers. All alchemists believed that it was only a question of time before we attain this truth.
Similarly, physics is a self-contained, self-referential language. There are debates on how to use this language and on how to interpret its elements. But there is a broad agreement on its grammar and syntax.
Jacobsen: What would define a complete metaphysics?
Vaknin: Metaphysics deals with concepts that underlie reality.
Jacobsen: What would relate these two universes of discourse in the aforementioned definitions?
Vaknin: Physicists still believe that physics is asymptotic to the truth, that we are making progress towards an objective, invariant, immutable, indisputable verity. This is, of course, mysticism, not science.
Scientific theories are not about reality but about other scientific theories and about themselves, a discourse that spans generations and contrasts with previous ways of thinking even as it generates falsifiable testable hypotheses.
Theories are allegories, metaphors, analogies, glorified literature using a highly structured language known as mathematics. Scientific theories are descriptive, predictive, and wrong: after all, all past theories have been falsified.
Physics is an extension of metaphysics. We must revert to philosophy and metaphysics, our roots.
All scientific theories are fundamentally metaphysical. Examples: evolution is founded on teleology (the accepted truth that organisms wish to survive) and SRT (special relativity theory) emanates from the separateness of observers from the observed (which was proven wrong on the micro level).
The philosophy of science is a fancy rebranding of metaphysics. Its main tenet, falsifiability, is tautological (we can falsify only scientific theories which are the only theories that are falsifiable).
There is an age-old confusion between language and truth. For example: the solutions to an equation (language elements) are considered to be true and real. The very reliance on language is metaphysical because it assumes that language correlates with reality or can be perfectly mapped onto it.
But how many of our assumptions about language (such as axioms in mathematics) are real or true? We can study language only with a meta-language and this results in an infinite regression. So, there is no way to prove or to ascertain the validity or the relevance of a language. It takes a leap of faith.
Science is, therefore, a faith-based system that is helpful to survival (akin to religion). The core percepts are metaphysical, non-provable, they require a leap of faith. Physicists arbitrarily assume the validity and power of mathematics and the existence of reality – both are metaphysical assumptions which are unprovable, axiomatic, and not derivable.
I am a believer in physics, but I am not a naïve believer: it works, so I believe in it, but I am aware of my own irrationality. Reason is not primary, faith is.
Jacobsen: What was metaphysics in the past?
Vaknin: What we today call science. The study of both the essence of the world and of what makes it tick.
Jacobsen: What has been the origin and evolution of physics into the present?
Vaknin: There were two major revolutions in the history of physics and its divorce from metaphysics: Descartes’ and Bohr’s.
At some point in time, we started to believe that observer and observed are two separate, unrelated systems. In the twentieth century, we gave up on any pretension and attempt to capture the quiddity of the world or even to merely describe it. Instead, we settled on an instrumental version of physics: if it works, it is futile to inquire why and how it works. Quantum mechanics is a prime example of this blindfolded approach.
Jacobsen: How is physics beginning to turn into, or make a circumlocution back to, metaphysics, and into an evolution of “uber-metaphysics” – even mysticism? What are the dangers – let’s say – to clarity of concepts and thought in turns, some of them, to mysticism now?
Vaknin: The minute you let language dictate your view of reality (because it is “self-efficacious”), you abandon the latter. The formalism rules and the procedures for manipulating its symbols become the laws of physics or of nature.
The problem with this kind of detour is that, as Godel has observed, formal-logical systems are incomplete or inconsistent and give rise to “hallucinations” (witness the recent debacle with artificial intelligence).
So, we end up further away from a true understanding of reality as we descend into arcane solipsistic sophistry.
Jacobsen: How is physics, in some sense, like a highly formalized structure of literature?
Vaknin: I don’t think that it is like literature. Physics is not merely descriptive. It doesn’t confine itself to taxonomy of the codification of experience. It aspires to decipher reality even as it translates into technology: tools to alter our environments, near and far.
Jacobsen: All scientific theories in the past have been proven wrong via experiment or come to inconsistent findings with Nature and the predictions of the theory. What will happen to the current set of theories, most likely?
Vaknin: The same fate awaits the current crop of dominant theories.
Jacobsen: If physics, currently, is rootless or physicists – as a category – have ‘forgotten’ their foundations in metaphysics as physics being a derivation from metaphysics, what is a necessary bridge to bring the roots back to soil for physicists – and for the structured narrative knowledge pool called physics to become crisp again?
Vaknin: Philosophy and logic. These should become mandatory studies. These disciplines are indispensable in the evolution of critical thinking and the generation of testable hypotheses.
Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Prof. Vaknin.
Vaknin: Pleasure, as always.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/05/27
Traveling the entirety of the United States of America, visiting major cities and the like is a fun project, especially on the Amtrak train lines, I love it. Wandering around, you come across a wide range of individuals, cultures, architectures, dialects of American English, and… potential stories.
(Credit: Scott Douglas Jacobsen)
I have been going to a collection of the great cities: New York, Boston, Washington (D.C.), Charleston, Atlanta, New Orleans, Illinois, Los Angeles, San Diego, Irvine, and Seattle. Lots of photographs were posted for free consumption. My iPhone camera seemed sufficient, a regular iPhone 14.
(Credit: Scott Douglas Jacobsen)
Now, in Boston, Massachusetts, early in the trip, I was walking through a park. What did I hear and see? “Googly eyes on the T, googly eyes on the T!” a random mass of students and young people chanted. The local transit line in Boston is called the MBTA.
(Credit: Scott Douglas Jacobsen)
These students were protesting and caught the attention of several media here, here [Ed. I may have photobombed this one.], here, here, and elsewhere. One of the main personalities behind the very serious movement is Arielle Lok.
(Credit: Scott Douglas Jacobsen)
Lok – another charming British Columbian, Vancouverite playing the role of a stray Canadian, said, “I wouldn’t say I founded it. I am bringing the community together for something that we have all desperately wanted. And that is googly eyes on the T trains. The T train is our local train system of the MBTA, the Boston public transit system. The googly eyes are the eyes we want to stick on the front of them.”
(Photo Credit: Cléo Thor)
Dreamers: we can find them launching astronauts, cosmonauts, and sinonauts to the moon; making revolutions in electric transport, advancements to the mythical artificial general intelligence, solving Millenium Prize problems, making Nobel Prize winning scientific discoveries, as well, we can find doing crucial work we all desperately need – googly eyes on the T. Even though, it was my first time in Boston.
(Photo Credit: Cléo Thor)
I only rode on the T train once, myself, but I can see the inevitable contributions to humanitarian efforts and humanity alike with those darned googly eyes on the T.
(Photo Credit: Cléo Thor)
“It is something that we have been thinking about for a while. April 1st is when we all got together. We were like, ‘Wow – we have nothing up our sleeves. We should do something bigger than we usually do,’” Lok said, This is not a silly cause! This is a very serious cause! And we are serious people!… There is no sarcasm. We are serious people!”
(Photo Credit: Cléo Thor)
Lok and company are dreamers of the highest kind. And they made the chants serious to prove the point with no sound of silliness about it.
(Photo Credit: Cléo Thor)
“Orange line, red line, green line, blue. Stick those googly eyes on with glue! Our vision for the T, is to the T vision!” These “very serious” people have very not-silly demands, to give vision to the MBTA.
(Photo Credit: Cléo Thor)
Another protestor – whose name I might be spelling wrong (sorry!) – Teryn, said, “Our cause here today is to put googly eyes on the T trains. We feel strongly that the T could use a bit more vision, and our vision is to give the T vision, and to make people’s commute even more joyful. My big message is imagine you’re getting on your morning commute and then you see the T, and it is coming. All of the sudden, there are googly eyes to greet you. That is the vision we are striving for.”
(Photo Credit: Cléo Thor)
Not only to be those who speak out of slogans alone. The MBTA googly eyes organizers have used sophisticated mathematical projections based on super serious data and hard work in the laboratory with flasks or something.
(Photo Credit: Cléo Thor)
Protestor Dylan Roy said, “It is a simple scientific projection. If you put googly eyes on the T, it will send T ridership to the moon. To the Moon! It has been several years in the making.”
(Photo Credit: Scott Douglas Jacobsen)
After having left this harrowing show of faith and commitment to humanitarian causes in action, one can only hope these dreamers have theirs come true!
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/04/21
[Recording Start]
Rick Rosner: I’m just going through my chapter outlines here. Yesterday I think, we were talking about how we are used to crappy service and glitches and hacking of our devices. So, even though we’ve got these cutting-edge devices and tech that stream more information into our homes than ever before, we’re also used to crappy service from these services and devices. Yesterday, we were talking about how the more intimately linked we become with our devices, the more dangerous and disturbing glitches and failures will be. If you’re an 80-year-old in not perfect health and you’ve got brain implants, like, I mean right now we’ve got 1% of the US population roughly, I think, with some implanted device that does some sort of computation. People with Parkinson’s can have pacemakers implanted in their brains that help regulate their movement because Parkinson’s affects your ability to initiate movement and gives you tremors, and the pacemakers implanted around the pituitary or one of your glands that’s part of your brain help control Parkinson’s. You’ve probably got probably more people with all the implanted devices. Pacemakers we probably got the most significant number of them. You have insulin pumps, you have precise implants for people with deafness, and so on.
These are more basic devices than the devices to come. Glitches in the future devices will kill people. Another way that they might go is, say you’re that 80-year-old and your brain is and you have early or maybe even more progressed cognitive decline. You’re helped thinking by implants that either help you think locally or link you to a device in your house that might be 30 feet away that helps your thinking. You might have balance issues like falling, which kills a ton of older people. So, maybe wearing an armature robotic leg that gives you stability and glitches in these things will be more dangerous than glitches in our iPhones.
If you’re like a hard-charging young executive with a brain implant that lets you think faster and digest more extensive data than somebody with an unaugmented brain, what if somebody hacks? Or say you’re just a gamer having a chip in your head. It makes you better at gaming, and it makes it more immersive and gives you sensations that you couldn’t have without the implant and, say, somebody hacks into these things. So, you could have people’s opinions being changed; they might be compelled to commit acts of violence or be hijacked by sex slavers, or the most reliable crime is a financial crime; somebody gets in there and steals access to your accounts or compels you to turn over your stuff. So, that’s going to be a thing, and 100% of that kind of thing will happen.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/04/21
[Recording Start]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, we are continuing to see women take over key Industries: medicine, law, and some areas of science, which has been a trend happening more rapidly progressively in the last three decades, maybe four, where women are more educated, and they are picking more relevant industries for sort of long-term employment in society and the knowledge economy, and this is having many impacts. Women have their own money; they’re making more than their partners if they have them in many cases, so men aren’t necessarily being displaced. They’re having to reorient themselves to this changing dynamic about gender. So, how do you think men are taking this in different ways: positive, negative, neutral?
Rick Rosner: So, there’s a more general idea of not just the gender landscape but the landscape of all different demographics. However, you want to slice humanity. The old guard of cis white males is slowly losing its dominance to the distress of cis white males and the people who politically exploit their anger, but my deal about DEI, diversity, equality, and inclusion is that you don’t have to worry about it if you don’t suck. I’ve had tremendous advantages probably that I don’t even realize from being a cis white male. At the same time, I’ve been pretty good at many of my jobs. Everybody’s job is being threatened, whether white male or not, by technology, and it’s talked about more now, but it’s still not talked about enough. Politicians, especially right-wing politicians, like to blame the other party’s policies for job losses, but what gets ignored is that it’s tech that’s displacing people. So, to that extent, we all should be worried, and what I just said is that you don’t have to worry if you don’t suck; well, no, you do have to worry because of tech but diversity is something that is a to some extent a straw man.
For instance, Boeing has had many mishaps lately, and idiots on the right were quick to blame it on diversity hiring policies at Boeing, and this was quickly debunked. What happened was Boeing merged with McDonald Douglas, and Boeing had a culture of safety, which you would want. You want to sell reliable products because if you’re selling freaking kitchen wear, safety isn’t as much of an issue as it is with freaking planes. You can sell plates that might be more breaky than you’d want a plate to be, which have fewer disastrous safety implications than if you sell a plane that breaks. So, Boeing quite reasonably had a culture of safety, and then they merged with McDonald’s Douglas, which was a much more crash company, and the corporate culture of McDonald Douglas took over Boeing, and they had Boeing move its corporate headquarters from, I think Seattle where Boeing makes the planes, to Chicago and there was less oversight. Over the past 10-15 years, they’ve taken many shortcuts with disastrous results, which has nothing to do with DEI: diversity. It has everything to do with management being shitty.
Anyway, back to the changing landscape. So, one thing is like the guardians of cis white male dominance like to argue that cis white males are just genetically more talented and have higher IQs and better brains than anybody else. That’s anybody who tries to make an argument about the IQ of an entire demographic except Trump supporters is an asshole with a creepy agenda, and I would argue that you can say about the thinking abilities of hardcore MAGA Republicans because it’s known that over the past 50 years, Republican think tanks have helped the Republican party target low information voters which is a euphemism for dumb people, they’re more manipulatable. So, in that case, you can say, yeah, many MAGAs are dumb. However, when you’re arguing about the IQs of entire countries, the creepy guys who read The Bell Curve, which was this famous book from 30 years ago that made all these arguments about the brains of entire Nations, those people are creeps and generally making bullshit arguments and also let’s say for the sake of argument that some of these things are true, some groups of people might be dumber than other groups of people. It doesn’t matter anymore because we all have devices that, if used reasonably, make us smarter, which is excellent for the world.
It may not be great for individuals who are forced into these crappy half jobs like Uber driver by technology, but in general, more intelligence in the world and the ability to take your ‘eh’ brain and supercharge it by learning how to work with technology is a good thing. So, there is increasing inclusion; the arguments against inclusion are increasingly crappy, but along with growing inclusion is a backlash that the cynical demagogues of the proper ferment. Make America Great Again is the idea of taking America back to the 50s when white guys were in charge, they were the heads of households, and wives had to listen to them, even though this doesn’t reflect an actual reality that the dad worked, the mom stayed home; everybody had a house and a car in the suburbs, and everything was excellent. This doesn’t reflect reality for most Americans, even in the 1950s, but that’s what the backlash against diversity presents. Some of this is driven by the arc of the moral universe bending towards justice, and some is driven by tech for the reasons I just laid out. Also driven by tech is an erosion of standard gender roles where people are having less sex because there are a ton more things to do that are entertaining beyond having sex.
As I have said a million times, the 70s were freaking boring and the only thing that didn’t kind of suck was sex if you were cool enough to have sex and attractive enough. Again, helped along by tech, there’s an erosion of the association between sex and sexual attraction and sexual attractiveness that tech has brought us an avalanche of porn. I haven’t looked at studies, but I would guess that a majority of people in their sexually active years consume porn; I mean, indeed, a majority of males look at porno, and I would think that either a majority or a near majority of women look at porno at least occasionally.
Jacobsen: Women probably use literature more than them when men probably use audiovisual stuff.
Rosner: I mean, women are said to be less visual in their porn consumption than men. Maybe so, but even so, if there’s a ton of that stuff out there too though it’s a little more complicated to find but I would guess that 60% of women in their sexually active years have; this is just a wild guess, have looked at porn at least once in the last year. So, what that means is much jerking off, and if you can have satisfying jerking off experiences that can lead to incels, the guys who give up on being sexually attractive enough to get a girlfriend and doing the work to get a girlfriend, they’re just kind of vaguely satisfied just looking at porn and jerking off. Two, for people in the marketplace or hooking up, there’s less emphasis on having a perfect face and body, with everybody having a spank bank. I mean, it used to be in regular times that you relied on the sensory information you were getting from having sex with a flesh and blood person to power your horniness to give you a boner or a lady boner, and the porn was in short supply. Now, we got a ton of porn, and everybody has a spank bank, a library of images that they can turn to in their imagination even when they’re having sex with an actual person. 72% of Americans are overweight, and half of those people are obese. I would guess that overweight Americans having sex aren’t exclusively attracted to overweight people and that many people are overweight or with other things that make them, not Farrah Fawcett, Megan Fox or Bradley Cooper are turning to images in their imagination.
So, you’ve got more masturbation, less sex between two people, and less having to conform to old standards of hotness, which, to a great extent, powers gender roles. It probably is still true that the more redneck the city in America, the more people conform to gender roles, the more women still try to be super-hot and dress hot, and guys try to be buff and have the buff lifestyle of the big truck and the tattoos and biceps and all that but there’s been a general erosion of that. You’ve got the rise of trans awareness and then the cynical, politicized rise of backlash against trans. Trans people are 1% or less of the population. So, it’s a standard strategy of demagogues and fascists to drum up hate against a small, relatively powerless group. Muslims: 1% of the American population. Jews: 2% of the American population. Trans people: 1%, but on the other hand, you have people who are feeling increasingly free to explore being trans if they feel that they are not entirely aligned with the sex they were born with.
Besides the backlash and the hate and the threats to your safety from being trans or from people who hate trans people, I guess you can’t blame the victim; there is an issue with your genitals. If you believe yourself to be trans, some changes are relatively easy to make. If you’re questioning your gender as a teen or even before you’re a teen, there are puberty-blocking drugs that give you time to decide, and then the backlash to those are conservative assholes saying that those drugs cause permanent changes. I haven’t read the studies to see if there’s anything to the studies that say that puberty blockers cause permanent changes, which is what you don’t want; you want to delay puberty so you have time to make a decision. I assume if I read the studies. Do you know anything about the studies on puberty blockers?
Jacobsen: I know one person who has gone through that. You should wait until someone is biologically an adult before using certain things. At the same time, to what degree do we respect someone’s self-identification during the growth process? That’s an open discussion right now.
Rosner: Well, some kids are physically intersex; they have the sex characteristics of both sexes. Those kids are by far in the minority than one-quarter of 1% of everybody, but in those people, increasing awareness of trans people has stopped a lot of the harm done near birth where people freak out. A kid is born with both sets of genitals or some version of that, and the doctors and the parents freak out and say we have to decide for the kid right now so they can grow up as the sex we think they are of the two possible sexes they could be. That will lead to much harm because once you operate on a kid, that kid is screwed. So, just leaving a kid alone until they’re much older and can help decide what to do, if anything, is more helpful. However, with puberty blockers, I assume the studies would say that they’re safe and do not cause permanent changes, mainly if only used for a few months in the vast majority of people who are giving them with 5%, and I don’t know I’m just guessing at the percentage of people experiencing some degree of what they think are permanent changes but I don’t know. But if puberty blockers are harmless ways to gain time to decide, that’s good.
People realize they might be trans at various points in their life. Some trans people identify as the gender that they weren’t born as from the point where they can express themselves and know the difference between being male and being female. Carol has an acquaintance whose kid has identified as a girl though was born with the body of a boy since that kid was before kindergarten and has never been ambiguous about it. So, when that kid gets to be, I don’t know when puberty kicks in these days, but let’s say 12, that kid may reasonably be prescribed puberty blockers. Say that kid’s younger than 18 or being operated on, which is almost entirely not true, and nobody under 18 should have gender-conforming surgery because a) you can wait and b) because anything like that gives demagogues of the right way too much ammo. Anyway, I took a long time to get to my point, which is that one problem with being trans that is not entirely political is the brutality of bottom surgery.
Jacobsen: 100%.
Rosner: It’s a massive surgery, and it requires lifetime maintenance like you have to use a dildo or a speculum, I believe, for the rest of your life. If you’ve had a vagina construct to make sure your vagina doesn’t tighten up or close down, I don’t know, but it’s a big deal. Well, there are two trends; one is actual, and one is I’m speculating about. The actual trend is that as there’s more acceptance of trans people, there are more people who are accepting of just leaving the bottom alone. You get the top surgery; you take the hormones. It’s the Caitlyn Jenner strategy of body modification, where you do all the reasonable and easy stuff to look female, but you don’t mess with the bottom. Now, Jenner is probably pushing 70, and she says a lot of anti-trans stuff. So, you don’t want to follow her politically necessarily, but many people, I think, are following that same idea that what your genitals are is nobody’s business, that if you want to present as a male or present as a woman, what your genitals are shouldn’t like be a big issue with that. And I’m waiting. At some point in the next five years, there will be a big, flashy celebrity who has a straight relationship with a transperson who it’s suspected hasn’t had bottom surgery. On Twitter, I follow some very hot trans women because I follow a ton of people.
Jacobsen: Some of the hottest people on Tinder are trans.
Rosner: Yeah, and these are women, I’m pretty sure, and again it’s none of my business, but these are hot women who probably have the penises they were born with, and I believe that like, there’s some pop star who’s like blazingly hot, some singer who I’m sure hasn’t had bottom surgery and these women if they’re straight if they’re cis-trans women, they date men and eventually one of these super-hot trans women is to have a celebrity relationship with a celebrity guy. Everybody’s going to be curious about that, and there’s going to be much interest, and then, like, the right-wingers will throw up their hands, but eventually, everybody will freaking calm down. So, that’s one thing that it’s great that we’re increasingly able to accept people regardless of whether their genitals conform to their gender.
Thing two is that I would assume that in the future, there will be improvements and advances in medical science that make it possible to transition your genitals with less butchery. I don’t know how soon that’ll be, and when that happens, maybe it involves, if you’re fully adult, maybe there will always be some butchery, but let’s say that you’re somebody who’s known they were trans since they were like five or six years old and now, you’re 10 or 11 or 12 and you can get in there with crisper technology, gene tweaking to transition you or at least stop your transition. I assume that it’ll be more accessible, right?
Jacobsen: There will be an increasing sophistication of the medical technology of the social culture in free societies. In closed societies, you’ll find much more of what they call cognitive closure as an accepted thing. So, simplistic arguments around gender, around sex such as merging them as one probably having it buffered by religious orthodoxy, the sort of stuff that’s already happened forever, yeah, but I think with the increasing sophistication of technology in the free societies, you’ll see a growing decoupling of standard modes of representing oneself, and people will generally understand. Then, the higher order stuff around partnership, sexual orientation around sex and gender; those assumptions will erode, and then you’ll see an increasing fluidity.
Rosner: People won’t be coupled in the medium to far-ish future… You can move your consciousness out of your body when it gets old and fails; iff you want to try walking around in a different body, that technology will eventually exist. Also, in the near to medium future, it is living virtually. If you’re lying someplace living with a rig on your head and sensory input all over your body, but you’re lying in a recliner and living virtually for 18 hours a day, if you’re trans, it doesn’t matter what your genitals are, if you’re living virtually as the person you want to be most of your waking hours. That’s thing one.
Thing two is Lance, whom I have argued with for 20 years and argued on video for seven years, bemoans our culture’s loss of masculinity. He thinks it’s the end of civilization if they lose their set gender roles and tolerate homosexuality, and I call bullshit on that. I’m not sure what’s to be gained from a rigid male are masculine, females are feminine society. We were talking about war and how war will be increasingly uncoupled from humans in combat.
Jacobsen: May I add two glancing blows to this cultural phenomenon two? One is the increasing single population. I think relationships as we know them for a large chunk of the population, maybe not the majority, but a significant minority, will not be part of their life path. Another medium to long future will be decoupling the creation of new people from the human body. I’m talking about something more extreme than working at a horse farm; there’s nothing natural about reproducing high-end horses now; it’s all done in very controlled and selective ways. I’m talking about the reproductive machinery being outside of a body independent of a conscious person but to make more people. I think that it may become a resort for certain societies to go to as a development in technology as we have a sort of replacement for people’s problems.
Rosner: Right. So, I just started watching and then quit watching because it wasn’t a good movie, a movie where everybody reproduces outside of their body if they have the money for it because pregnancy is harsh on your body. So, everybody still has babies, but if they have the money for it, they have them raised in artificial wombs so they don’t have to go through pregnancy, which would maybe be a choice for people in the future. People are choosing 25% of the world’s nations now have declining populations. By the end of the century, according to people who study this stuff, it’ll be three-quarters of the world’s nations, and the world’s overall population will plateau, which is terrible for near-term economies because we don’t know how to have successful economies that aren’t built on growth. However, we’ll have to figure it out, but it’s good for the planet because one solution to climate change is for people to have a smaller carbon footprint and the fewer people you have, the smaller the carbon footprint.
So, you have three things going on. One is telecommuting; that people just staying home and doing everything they need to from home, not everything but going out less, traveling less, that’s trend one. COVID-19 hurried that along. You don’t want to own stock in office buildings because these buildings unless you own stock in a company that converts office buildings to residences, which is tough to do, but if somebody comes up with like easy ways to do cheap ways to do that, that’s a reasonable company. So, people’s carbon footprint is being reduced by less movement. The population is stabilizing and just developing technology to mitigate our effect on the climate, and all these three things together will at least address climate change and some other stuff.
Jacobsen: I’ll only push back on the phrase good for the planet. I see this in the left commentary. The earth doesn’t care; the world doesn’t feel anything, it doesn’t think. So, what we mean by that is a planet that is good for us to persist and survive as a species or individual.
Rosner: It is suitable for diverse species.
Jacobsen: Yeah, which is good for us in an aesthetic sense.
Rosner: Yeah, and we’ve talked about the Disneyfication of the planet’s future, which is that it won’t just be trying to return the climate to the way it was before 200 years of burning a ton of fossil fuel. It won’t be all laissez-faire; there’ll be much control of local environments and ecosystems of engineering. We already do a ton of species engineering; we breed some species and study other species to find out their numbers, and if they’re endangered, we breed them. So, we already do a lot of that stuff and’ll increasingly do that to make the world friendly but also curated, Dysnified. Much of it’ll be done via swarms of robots that get out there and terraform. So, we’ve talked about much stuff.
Jacobsen: Let’s leave it there and reconvene later.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://www.secularofficials.org/2024/04/04/senator-steele-az-testimony-on-clergy-penitent-privilege-bill/
Publication Date: April 4, 2024
Organization: Association of Secular Elected Officials, Inc.
Organization Description: ASEO was conceived of by Leonard Presberg and Ron Millar at the beginning of 2020 and following a pandemic-related hiatus, formally convened its first Board Meeting in December 2020. The Association of Secular Officials, Inc, is a Georgia Non-Profit Corporation and has IRS 501(c)(3) status.
By Kristiana de Leon, ASEO Board Member and City Council Member in Black Diamond, Washington
Most moms and dads would never allow their child to be anywhere near a known pedophile and they would do everything in their power to protect them.
As a counselor, I was required to tell my clients that I am a mandated reporter and if they revealed to me that they were harming another person — especially a child, I am required by law to report it to the authorities.
Doctors and emergency room nurses, teachers, social workers, coaches, even veternarians have a duty to report abuse in Arizona.
But AZ law allows a big exception for members of the clergy — it’s called Clergy Penitent Privilege.
Several years ago a Bisbee Border Patrol Agent confided in his Mormon bishop that he was sexually abusing his 5 yr old daughter. But because of the exception for clergy, this bishop did not report the man to the police. He didn’t have to.
As a result, the man continued to sexually assault his little girl over a period of years. During that time the family attended church and Sunday school with people who knew but refused to do anything about it.
Later there was a second bishop at the LDS church in Bisbee who knew of — and also kept the hideous secret.
…and then the man and his wife had another baby. He actually made videos of himself raping his 1 year old baby girl and posted the videos on porn websites.
He was eventually discovered by Interpol and arrested. He reportedly killed himself in jail.
Can you imagine how this story would have been different if the first Bishop would have reported the abuse to police when he learned of the first daughter’s assault?
When I heard about this story, I couldn’t believe it….I learned more about the issue and last year introduced a bill to change it.
Shortly afterward, I received this letter from Father James Connell in Milwaukee…. And I’d like to read his remarks into the record:
Hello, Senator Steele,
I am a Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, an advocate for victims/survivors of sexual abuse, and a canon lawyer (regards Catholic Church law). I wish to speak for myself and not as an official of the Catholic Church.
I support your bill that would recognize clergy of all faiths as mandatory reporters of child abuse or neglect, and that would repeal the State’s clergy-penitent privilege in those matters. Indeed, the truth about the abuse or neglect of a child or a minor that is learned by a priest or any clergy person in a confession or in any confidential setting should be reported to the civil authorities.
I realize that the Catholic Bishops and other Catholic Church leaders in Arizona probably will oppose the bill, based on the Church’s First Amendment freedom of religion right. I, however, disagree.
Four very important teachings of the Catholic Church, presented in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) that was promulgated by then-Pope John Paul II in 1992, support my position.
First, within the context of the Fifth Commandment of the Decalogue (You shall not kill), “Preserving the common good of society requires rendering the aggressor unable to inflict harm.” (CCC 2266)
Second, also within the context of the Fifth Commandment of the Decalogue, “… the traditional teaching of the Church has acknowledged as well-founded the right and duty of legitimate public authority to punish malefactors by means of penalties commensurate with the gravity of the crime … Moreover, punishment has the effect of preserving public order and the safety of persons. Finally, punishment has a medicinal value; as far as possible it should contribute to the correction of the offender.” (CCC 2266)
Third, “The Eighth Commandment of the Decalogue (You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor) forbids misrepresenting the truth in our relations with others … Offenses against the truth express by word or deed a refusal to commit oneself to moral uprightness …” (CCC 2464) Indeed, hiding truth to which individual people or the society at-large have a right is a form of bearing false witness to your neighbor.
Fourth, “Every offense committed against justice and truth entails the duty of reparation, even if its author has been forgiven.” (CCC 2487)
Therefore, any law that hides criminals and endangers potential victims violates the basic moral principles of human life found in the Fifth and Eighth Commandments, and that law must be repealed or amended.
Moreover, I join those persons who hold that children have a fundamental right to protection from abuse or neglect. Consequently, in my opinion, no institution in our society, not even a recognized religion, has a significant advantage over governments’ compelling interest and responsibility to protect its children from harm by abuse or neglect. So, I say, when such a compelling government interest is pursued by the least restrictive means, the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution would not be violated.
As a result, governments should intervene such that, while perhaps frustrating the free exercise of religion for some people, the greater good of protecting children from abuse or neglect would be enhanced for the common good of all people. Our society should protect children, rather than protecting culprits.
After all, in most States doctors are mandatory reporters of child abuse or neglect and people still trust their doctors’ respect for confidentiality. So, why wouldn’t people also trust their clergy’s respect for confidentiality, even though the clergy are mandatory reporters in the same sense as are doctors?
Most parents would never allow a child to be near a person who is known to be a sexual abuser or even suspected of being one. Yet, many leaders of the Catholic Church, and perhaps many other institutions as well, have not hesitated to do so. And this is a major factor in the Catholic Church’s ongoing sexual abuse crisis and scandal: the behavior of the bishops differs from the common-sense behavior of most parents with the result that many people have been harmed.
Finally, in 2018, I wrote a commentary in which I call for the Catholic Church to change its ‘seal of confession’ law. This two-page article is titled: Now is the time to modify the Catholic Church’s ‘seal of confession’. Some argue that the ‘seal of confession’ is a divine law and thus cannot be changed. I disagree, noting that the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) informs us that for centuries the Church assigned public penances in matters of serious sin (CCC 1447). Centuries of public penances hardly endorses a ‘seal of confession’.
Consequently, all Catholics in Arizona should support this bill.
Sincerely,
Rev. James E. Connell,
A priest of the Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee
Today’s hearing is crucial in letting the world know that Arizona law allows churches to keep child abuse a secret. Thus, allowing pedophiles and others who would harm children, free reign to continue their horrific behavior.
I ask you — no….I beg you to vote yes — to require members of the clergy to report child abuse. The issue is clear — you either act to protect the children — or protect the monsters who hurt them.
— Senator Victoria Steele, Arizona
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://www.secularofficials.org/2024/04/04/aseo-hot-takes-reflections-on-january-6/
Publication Date: April 4, 2024
Organization: Association of Secular Elected Officials, Inc.
Organization Description: ASEO was conceived of by Leonard Presberg and Ron Millar at the beginning of 2020 and following a pandemic-related hiatus, formally convened its first Board Meeting in December 2020. The Association of Secular Officials, Inc, is a Georgia Non-Profit Corporation and has IRS 501(c)(3) status.
By Kristiana de Leon, ASEO Board Member and City Council Member in Black Diamond, Washington
When I think of the harrowing and traumatic events that have marked the psyche of our nation, those “where were you when…” moments that transform our collective national story, I do not have confidence that the January 6 insurrection—or a similar attack on the Governor’s Mansion in my state of Washington—will be one of them.
I’m a Millennial. The 9/11 attacks, the day when we watched looming skyscrapers burn and tumble to the ground as first responders rushed into the scenes that everyone else fled, mark my generation’s collective psyche. For the subsequent years afterwards, 9/11 was everywhere. The insignia of NYPD and FDNY became fashion statements. It was used to justifiy declarations of war on the other side of the world (remember “If you’re not with us you’re with the terrorists?”). 9/11 literally governed every thought and decision we made as a nation. To this day, every year, we’re reminded to “never forget.” The assassination of JFK and the attacks on Pearl Harbor marked the generations earlier. If we go back even farther, I imagine this is what it was like when the bombing of the British ship Lusitania was led the United States into World War I. School House Rock made ditties about “The Shot Heard ‘Round the World” that spurred the Revolutionary War.
While these historic events typically galvanized Americans,the anniversary of January 6 was marked with little more than a shrug and a whimper. The number of people taking this fascist and nearly successful assault on our democratic institutions is consistently dwindling and being vilified as nothing other than partisan “gotchas,” even though the calls to “Hang Mike Pence” were just as strong as the excitement to murder AOC in cold blood.
Immediately after the January 6 attacks on the Capitol in 2020, mycolleagues in City Council all shared the same sentiment of disgust over what happened. There were calls for us to do better, be better, and—strive for unity. (And yes, I do find it’s worth noting that these same groups also calling for unity after January 6 also called for the, although when I saw their calls to execution of elected officials)., so I have to wonder if “unity” meant who was standing around the scaffolds.) The hopeful signs that we might have a national reckoning with ze January 6 in a similar way that we had for 9/11 were all there last year.
Except it didn’t happen. Bipartisan support for real accountability faded away. The moment of silence in Congress only had one Republican Congresswoman in attendance (and her father, the Vice President from the 9/11 years). For me personally, I was the only one in my elected position to make a statement about January 6, and even still, I wondered if such a commentary would similarly be seen as “partisan.” My local Republican party is led by people who were at the insurrection. Most television programming carried on like business as usual, with the most heavy-hitting coverage left more to either vapid soundbytes or to intellectual discourse. We are not asking “where do we go from here?”
We’re not learning our lessons as a nation. On January 6, 2021, I was at home, quarantining from a COVID scare. January 6, 2022 rolled around, and Omicron has made COVID cases surge to unprecedented heights as our pandemic-fatigued society has largely exchanged slowing the virus in favor of a semblance of “returning to normal.” We’re not learning, and not even pretending to #thoughtsandprayers our way out of this.
Why?
Reflecting upon previous events that rallied us as a nation, the common denominator is an “otherised” villain. 9/11 was met by unprecedented spikes in hate crimes against Muslim and Sikh Americans. Pearl Harbor spurred villainization of Asian Americans and the creation of Japanese American concentration camps – the kind of demonization that made the COVID-19 pandemic and further assaults on Asian Americans even more painful. The JFK conspiracy theories were not exempt from heavy dollops of racism and xenophobia. Even the start of World War I caused German Americans to stifle speaking their language while anglicizing their names, while the Declaration of Independence rallied American colonists to fight the British as a proxy against the “merciless Indian s*****s.”
January 6 is different for this very reason. To #NeverForget the insurrection is to hold a mirror up to power in America as we’ve known it, since its inception. Since Europeans first planted flags on once-foreign shores in the name of God, Gold, and Glory and trafficked human beings as slaves because the indigenous people died “too quickly” from the pandemics that the Europeans brought along. The January 6 insurrectionists were overwhelmingly white, male, largely white collar, English speaking, able-bodied…and practitioners of the Trumpian denomination White Nationalist religion. Their Christian beliefs justified their attack on our democracy , just as the generations before them also committed unspeakable violence against their neighbors in the name of Jesus. The memorializing of January 6 (or lack there of) echoes the way we have papered over the history of genocidal tragedies and equally traumatic events on U.S. shores and abroad that we’d prefer forget.Rather, as we saw in school board elections throughout 2021, there is an active movement to quell any attempt to honestly reckon with the truth of our history. As a nation, these realities make us uncomfortable.
Where do we go from here? I don’t know. I asked that very question when I commemorated January 6 as a councilmember. I chose to serve my community for a variety of reasons. Almost all were as practical as it gets—I cared about the safety of our roads and about the future of our environment and green spaces in my city. Another overarching reason was because I was horrified to see the increase in overt hate crimes and hate speech in my community, from racist and transphobic slurs on park fences to neo-Nazi recruiting posters downtown, and I wanted to take action. As I learned after choosing to run for office, the opponent I was challenging was a leader in a state 3% group, a group that long rallied for the same kinds of “civil wars” and other violent actions that we later saw play out on January 6.
These groups have long been rallying their members to run for these local offices to build their legitimacy.Given what I’ve witnessed since I was elected, January 6 was not so much a shock to me. It’s what inevitably happens when you put a lid on a pot of boiling water..
For me, as it is for so many of us secular and allied elected officials, I want to do the very work of governance that people in local office are expected to do, the kind of “business as normal” that the job description of local office entails. Fill the potholes. Build the sidewalks. Ensure the water is drinkable. Zone for parks. Make sure someone can put out the fires. And yet, here we have fires going on all around us, as the religion of white nationalism was only told to “go home” as they were “very special.” While it is good that some of the insurrectionists are being held accountable through the justice system, their actions have only further opened Pandora’s box. The movement continues to rally and reconfigure. The same people who rallied for violence are continuing to seek and win offices at all levels. Simply rejecting white supremacy is seen as partisan, and it shouldn’t be.
So, where do we go from here?
I am still not sure, but one thing is for certain—we need to double down on empowering more diverse communities, including the atheist and humanist community. Since January 6, I became more overt and intentional about how I speak about being an out secular official. The secular movement must be front and center in how we move forward from January 6. With the increasing rise of the “nones,” I want to see more people either in elected office or contemplating jumping in who not only do not affiliate with white Christian nationalism, but who are actively looking for better alternatives to “business as usual.”
The atheist and humanist community needs to increase its political clout to help build a safer, more just, and more mindful America that is inclusive and that values our diversity of gender, race, ethnicity, religion (including lack thereof), sexual orientation, language, ability, and more. One of the reasons the pushback has been so violent is because a small but powerful portion of the population feels threatened. They know their power is waning and that our movement, when organized, is a force to be reckoned with. The insurrectionists may have destroyed the gates to the Capitol and continue to gatekeep our institutions, but it is up to us to break down those metaphorical gates to build a government that actually reflects and represents all of us. We might be on the precipice of collapsing into fascism, but…this is still a democracy, if we can keep it.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://www.secularofficials.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Open-letter-to-Chair-Duffey.pdf
Publication Date: 2024
Organization: Association of Secular Elected Officials, Inc.
Organization Description: ASEO was conceived of by Leonard Presberg and Ron Millar at the beginning of 2020 and following a pandemic-related hiatus, formally convened its first Board Meeting in December 2020. The Association of Secular Officials, Inc, is a Georgia Non-Profit Corporation and has IRS 501(c)(3) status.
Celebrating Inclusion and Unity
ASEO applauds Chairman Duffey’s inclusive invocation and offers alternatives for thoughtful openings.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/05/28
Theotokos: Ma’am to Sin mind’s son; The Mother to the Son; sired, tired, you knew what you had done; a hogwash, Nary a porkchop in sight.
See “Virginal Mother.”
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/05/28
Sweet aSunderover: Tittle tattle, tales n’ tells & tails chased and tolded and shouldered; let me shoulder you, gentle in the overunder.
See “Side to side.”
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/05/28
If: you had to exchange lives with anyone, at random, then there’s a feeling present; what does this say about our sense of self-relevance?
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/05/28
And the meaning of meaning?: Cuts in the Void; or, collapse of the Breadth; something to avoid in a breath.
See “Mining.”
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Critical Science Newswire
Original Link: https://ncse.ngo/climate-change-education-bill-passes-illinois
Publication Date: May 24, 2024
Organization: National Center for Science Education
Organization Description: The National Center for Science Education promotes and defends accurate and effective science education because everyone deserves to engage with the evidence. One day, students of all ages will be scientifically literate, teachers will be prepared and empowered to teach accurate science, and scientific thinking and decision-making will ensure that all life can thrive and overcome challenges to our shared future.
By Glenn Branch
House Bill 4895, one of three climate change education bills active in the Illinois legislature, was passed by the Senate on a 36-16 vote on May 23, 2024, having already passed the House of Representatives. It now goes to Governor J. B. Pritzer.
As passed, the bill provides that, “Beginning with the 2026-2027 school year, every public school shall provide instruction on climate change, which shall include, but not be limited to, identifying the environmental and ecological impacts of climate change on individuals and communities and evaluating solutions for addressing and mitigating the impact of climate change and shall be in alignment with State learning standards, as appropriate. The State Board of Education shall, subject to appropriation, prepare and make available multi-disciplinary instructional resources and professional learning opportunities for educators that may be used to meet the requirements of this subsection.”
The provisions of the bill as passed are substantially less ambitious than the bill as introduced. As introduced, the bill would have required every public high school in Illinois to “include in its curriculum a unit of instruction addressing climate change in either a required science class or a required social studies class.” It would also have required instruction on climate change to be included in all high school courses in science, agriculture, social science, and relevant career and technical education courses. The state superintendent of education would have been charged with preparing appropriate instructional materials and professional development training for educators.
The other two climate change education bills active in the Illinois legislature — Senate Bill 3644, which was similar but not identical to House Bill 4895 as introduced, and House Bill 4319 — are still in committee.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Critical Science Newswire
Original Link: https://ncse.ngo/support-climate-change-education-dips-florida
Publication Date: May 24, 2024
Organization: National Center for Science Education
Organization Description: The National Center for Science Education promotes and defends accurate and effective science education because everyone deserves to engage with the evidence. One day, students of all ages will be scientifically literate, teachers will be prepared and empowered to teach accurate science, and scientific thinking and decision-making will ensure that all life can thrive and overcome challenges to our shared future.
By Glenn Branch
The degree of support for climate change education in the Sunshine State’s public schools dipped a bit over the last two years, according to a new survey from Florida Atlantic University.
Presented with the proposition “Florida schools should teach the causes, consequences, and solutions to climate change in our K-12 classrooms,” 67.2 percent of respondents strongly supported (32.5 percent) or supported (34.7 percent) it, with 21.2 percent neither supporting nor opposing it, and 11.6 percent opposing (7.6 percent) or strongly opposing (4 percent) it.
When a similar survey was administered in 2022, 71.3 percent of respondents presented with the same proposition strongly supported (37.3 percent) or supported (34 percent) it, with 19.6 percent neither supporting nor opposing it, and 9.2 percent opposing (5.9 percent) or strongly opposing (3.3 percent) it, as NCSE previously reported.
The 2024 Florida Climate Resilience Survey survey was conducted from March 18 to 21, 2024, with an online panel of 1400 Floridians age 18 and older. Responses for the entire sample were weighted to adjust for age, race, income, education and gender according to 2022 U.S. Bureau of the Census data. The margin of error for the whole sample was +/- 2.53 percent.
Florida’s science standards received a D for their treatment of climate change in the “Making the Grade?” report from NCSE and the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Critical Science Newswire
Original Link: https://ncse.ngo/bill-codify-california-center-climate-change-education-advances
Publication Date: May 24, 2024
Organization: National Center for Science Education
Organization Description: The National Center for Science Education promotes and defends accurate and effective science education because everyone deserves to engage with the evidence. One day, students of all ages will be scientifically literate, teachers will be prepared and empowered to teach accurate science, and scientific thinking and decision-making will ensure that all life can thrive and overcome challenges to our shared future.
By Glenn Branch
California’s Assembly Bill 3142 — which would, if enacted, codify the California Center for Climate Change at West Los Angeles College in the Los Angeles Community College District and establish the California Mobile Unit for Climate Change Education — was passed by the Assembly on a 68-0 vote on May 21, 2024.
In 2022, Assembly Bill 1913 sought to establish the California Center for Climate Change with a $5 million appropriation, as NCSE previously reported. Although the bill died in committee, the center was nevertheless established in 2023, with the aid of a $5 million allocation in the 2022 state budget and a further $1.3 million of federal funding.
Like Assembly Bill 1913, Assembly Bill 3142 would amend the state’s education code to include a description of the center’s mission (“to promote climate change education at the California Community Colleges and establish opportunities for students to engage in hands-on internships and other learning opportunities”), activities, and responsibilities.
The bill would also establish the California Mobile Unit for Climate Change Education to aid the center in its provision of opportunities for students to engage in hands-on internships and the like. Originally a further $1.5 million would have been allocated for the purpose, but the bill was amended to make the allocation conditional on a separate approval by the legislature.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Critical Science Newswire
Original Link: https://ncse.ngo/michael-e-mann-elected-royal-society
Publication Date: May 17, 2024
Organization: National Center for Science Education
Organization Description: The National Center for Science Education promotes and defends accurate and effective science education because everyone deserves to engage with the evidence. One day, students of all ages will be scientifically literate, teachers will be prepared and empowered to teach accurate science, and scientific thinking and decision-making will ensure that all life can thrive and overcome challenges to our shared future.
By Glenn Branch
NCSE is pleased to congratulate Michael E. Mann on his election as a foreign member of the Royal Society, the United Kingdom’s national academy of sciences. A member of NCSE’s board of directors, Mann is Presidential Distinguished Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science, and Director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media, at the University of Pennsylvania. His most recent book is Our Fragile Moment: How Lessons from Earth’s Past Can Help Us Survive the Climate Crisis(reviewed by Spencer Weart in RNCSE 43:4).
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Critical Science Newswire
Original Link: https://ncse.ngo/dozen-dos-and-donts-teaching-climate-change
Publication Date: May 17, 2024
Organization: National Center for Science Education
Organization Description: The National Center for Science Education promotes and defends accurate and effective science education because everyone deserves to engage with the evidence. One day, students of all ages will be scientifically literate, teachers will be prepared and empowered to teach accurate science, and scientific thinking and decision-making will ensure that all life can thrive and overcome challenges to our shared future.
By Glenn Branch
NCSE’s Blake Touchet and Glenn Branch contributed a commentary, “A Dozen Dos and Don’ts of Teaching Climate Change” (subscription required), to the May 2024 issue of The American Biology Teacher. “Based on our experiences working with climate change educators across the country,” they write, “we offer the following list of dos and don’ts.” The commentary ends with a brief list of recommended books and websites for climate change educators.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Critical Science Newswire
Original Link: https://ncse.ngo/latest-monmouth-university-poll-climate-change
Publication Date: May 13, 2024
Organization: National Center for Science Education
Organization Description: The National Center for Science Education promotes and defends accurate and effective science education because everyone deserves to engage with the evidence. One day, students of all ages will be scientifically literate, teachers will be prepared and empowered to teach accurate science, and scientific thinking and decision-making will ensure that all life can thrive and overcome challenges to our shared future.
By Glenn Branch
“Nearly 3 in 4 Americans (73%) believe the world’s climate is undergoing a change leading to more extreme weather patterns and sea level rise,” according (PDF) to the latest Monmouth University Poll, prompting Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute to comment, “Most Americans continue to believe climate change is real.” Acceptance of climate change is slightly less prevalent than in earlier polls; political affiliation continues to be associated with views on the reality and causes of climate change.
Asked “Do you think that the world’s climate is undergoing a change that is causing more extreme weather patterns and the rise of sea levels, or is this not happening,” 73% of respondents said yes, 23% said no, and 4% volunteered that they didn’t know. Yes answers were more prevalent among Democrats (92%) than Independents (71%) and Republicans (51%), those 18-34 (78%) than those 35-54 (72%) and those 55 or older (70%), and college graduates (77%) than non-college graduates (71%).
Asked “Is climate change caused more by human activity, more by natural changes in the environment, or by both equally,” 34% of respondents said more by human activity, 7% said more by natural changes in the environment, 31% said both equally, 0% volunteered that they didn’t know, 23% already said that climate change is not happening, and 4% already said that they were unsure whether climate climate change is happening. The same patterns of responses differing by political affiliation, age, and education were present.
According to the report, the poll “was sponsored and conducted by the Monmouth University Polling Institute from April 18 to 22, 2024 with a probability-based national random sample of 808 adults age 18 and older … [including] 163 live landline telephone interviews, 349 live cell phone interviews, and 296 online surveys … For results based on this sample, one can say with 95% confidence that the error attributable to sampling has a maximum margin of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points adjusted for sample design effects.”
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Critical Science Newswire
Original Link: https://ncse.ngo/california-youth-climate-action-day-proposal-advances
Publication Date: May 10, 2024
Organization: National Center for Science Education
Organization Description: The National Center for Science Education promotes and defends accurate and effective science education because everyone deserves to engage with the evidence. One day, students of all ages will be scientifically literate, teachers will be prepared and empowered to teach accurate science, and scientific thinking and decision-making will ensure that all life can thrive and overcome challenges to our shared future.
By Glenn Branch
California’s Assembly Concurrent Resolution 162 passed the Assembly on a 65-0 vote on May 9, 2024, having previously passed the Assembly Rules Committee on a 8-0-3 vote on May 6, 2024. The resolution now proceeds to the Senate.
If adopted, the resolution would establish California Youth Action Climate Day, “to honor and support the efforts of young people in their pursuit of environmental sustainability, climate justice, and the preservation of biodiversity.”
The resolution notes that climate change “is a consequence of human activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels” and recognizes “the importance of educating and engaging young people in environmental stewardship and climate action.”
If adopted, the resolution would encourage institutions, including schools, and individuals to observe California Youth Climate Action Day with appropriate activities, including activities that promote awareness of climate change.
The day would be observed on September 20, in honor of “the start of the September 2019 climate strikes.” Assembly Concurrent Resolution 162 was introduced by Cottie Petrie-Norris (D-District 73) on March 14, 2024, and now has 64 cosponsors in the Assembly.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Critical Science Newswire
Original Link: https://ncse.ngo/climate-change-education-bills-die-rhode-island-2
Publication Date: May 10, 2024
Organization: National Center for Science Education
Organization Description: The National Center for Science Education promotes and defends accurate and effective science education because everyone deserves to engage with the evidence. One day, students of all ages will be scientifically literate, teachers will be prepared and empowered to teach accurate science, and scientific thinking and decision-making will ensure that all life can thrive and overcome challenges to our shared future.
By Glenn Branch
A pair of identical climate change education bills were “held for further study” by their respective committees in the Rhode Island legislature and are thus presumably dead.
House Bill 7496 (PDF) and Senate Bill 2356 (PDF) would have appropriated funds to support “a grant program to promote and enhance climate change and ocean protection programs for youth.” In fiscal year 2024, $250,000 would have been appropriated; in subsequent years, the legislature would have decided the amount.
Four similar bills introduced in 2023 attempted to appropriate $500,000 yearly for such a grant program; these bills all died in committee, as NCSE previously reported.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Critical Science Newswire
Original Link: https://ncse.ngo/colorados-proposal-seal-climate-literacy-passes-legislature
Publication Date: May 8, 2024
Organization: National Center for Science Education
Organization Description: The National Center for Science Education promotes and defends accurate and effective science education because everyone deserves to engage with the evidence. One day, students of all ages will be scientifically literate, teachers will be prepared and empowered to teach accurate science, and scientific thinking and decision-making will ensure that all life can thrive and overcome challenges to our shared future.
By Glenn Branch
Colorado’s Senate Bill 14, which would authorize local school districts to grant a high school diploma endorsement in climate literacy, passed the House of Representatives on a 44-19-2 vote on May 3, 2024, having previously passed the Senate, as NCSE previously reported. The seal of climate literacy would be granted “to graduating students who demonstrate mastery in climate literacy and attain green skills or technical green skills.”
Climate literacy is defined in the bill as “an understanding of the essential principles of the earth’s climate system, assessing scientifically credible climate information, learning to communicate about the climate in a meaningful manner, and making informed and responsible decisions regarding actions that may affect the climate.” The bill presumably now is bound for the desk of Governor Jared Polis.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Critical Science Newswire
Original Link: https://ncse.ngo/ncse-teacher-ambassador-spotlight-jeff-grant-and-climate-hope
Publication Date: May 7, 2024
Organization: National Center for Science Education
Organization Description: The National Center for Science Education promotes and defends accurate and effective science education because everyone deserves to engage with the evidence. One day, students of all ages will be scientifically literate, teachers will be prepared and empowered to teach accurate science, and scientific thinking and decision-making will ensure that all life can thrive and overcome challenges to our shared future.
By Lin Andrews
One of the best parts about working for the National Center for Science Education Supporting Teachers program is that our team gets to engage with master teachers nationwide. NCSE Science Education Specialist Blake Touchet and I recently traveled to Downers Grove, a suburb near Chicago, IL, to see one of our NCSE Teacher Ambassadors, Jeff Grant, in action.
Over the past five years, Grant has been an integral part of our program despite unexpected pivots like the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous curriculum redirections, and a new executive director. He has helped develop lessons, design activities, and contribute artistically by providing numerous sketches that were incorporated into our lesson sets. One of my favorite examples of his contributions is the video below, where Jeff passionately explains the power of NCSE’s lessons in the classroom.
During his time with NCSE, Grant has attended several leadership retreats hosted by the Supporting Teachers education team, traveled to speaking engagements that highlight NCSE, led NCSE-sponsored workshops at various state and national conferences, and served as a mentor during our two-year curriculum field study examining the effectiveness of our lessons in the classroom. Using many skills he gained during these opportunities, Grant recently organized and led a major two-day science event on March 1-2, 2024, in Illinois titled Climate of H.O.P.E (How Our Planet Evolves).
The event, developed in conjunction with NCSE and the Ice Drilling Program, was held at Grant’s high school, Downers Grove North, and brought together over 400 Chicago-area science teachers to explore the intersection of climate science, evolution, and inquiry. Teachers earned professional development credits while learning about authentic data and methods for studying climate science and solutions from scientists from around the country, including the Chicago Field Museum, the Fermi Lab, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association’s (NOAA) Education team, and many others. The goal was for these teachers to bring this expertise back to their students to share a message of urgency and hope in their classrooms.
I think one of the main reasons I wanted to be part of the development of this conference is because I noticed a disconcerting lack of professional development put together by teachers for teachers – especially PD focused specifically on science education. With the amazing help from NCSE and the Ice Drilling Program, we created a conference that was the first of its kind in the Chicago-land region. It was clear that the conference provided hope for our future and resources for teachers to implement changes in their own classrooms. It also gave me hope that we can possibly turn the tide on climate change.
NCSE Teacher Ambassador Jeff Grant
NCSE had a large presence at the Climate of H.O.P.E. conference. In addition to Grant coordinating the speakers, guests, and sessions, NCSE Executive Director Amanda L. Townley was a keynote speaker during the first day of the event. Science Education Specialist Blake Touchet and I also led two breakout sessions with the help of Grant and another Illinois-area Teacher Ambassador, Tom Foss. One session featured the scientifically correlated relationship between extreme weather events and climate change, while the second session focused on human evolution using 3D-printed skulls for participants to draw conclusions about the similarities and differences of hominids on the human family tree. The NCSE team also hosted a booth during an interactive lunch in which attendees learned about the different programs, supports, and resources provided by NCSE to assist teachers in teaching sound science in the classroom.
The following day, NCSE hosted a special half-day climate change workshop that focused on climate solutions and mitigation strategies. The workshop, titled Resolving Misconceptions in Climate Change, gave teachers tools and resources to help their students consider possibilities and maintain hope for the planet’s future. Additionally, we unveiled our Climate Change Story Short lessons for the first time. These short lessons complete with storylines, offer teachers an accessible, “choose your own adventure” way to meet the demands of the Next Generation Science Standards while still being flexible enough to allow teachers to fine-tune the activities to fit the needs of their specific time constraints and student interests.
The central theme of the Climate Change Story Short featured was Sustainable Climate Solutions, which uses the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals as a lens to learn about both the far-reaching, interconnected impacts of climate change as well as potential solutions that can be used to achieve net zero carbon emissions. Optional “NCSE Side Quests” allow students to explore the causes of climate change and methods of dealing with climate anxiety. Another Side Quest will enable students to use NCSE’s new DataWISE tool to evaluate data-based claims and sources. Almost 30 teachers signed up to attend the workshop. Along with NCSE staff, Grant and Foss participated as team leaders during the workshop.
NCSE Teacher Ambassadors are making a difference. Jeff Grant goes above and beyond in his classroom every day, but he also goes above and beyond as a teacher leader.
As director of the Supporting Teachers program, I’d like to express my sincere gratitude to Teacher Ambassador Jeff Grant for his hard work and dedication. Your involvement with NCSE has only strengthened our program. We appreciate you and everything you do!
Note: Special thanks to Blake Touchet for his feedback and contributions to this article.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Critical Science Newswire
Original Link: https://ncse.ngo/bill-codify-california-center-climate-change-education
Publication Date: May 3, 2024
Organization: National Center for Science Education
Organization Description: The National Center for Science Education promotes and defends accurate and effective science education because everyone deserves to engage with the evidence. One day, students of all ages will be scientifically literate, teachers will be prepared and empowered to teach accurate science, and scientific thinking and decision-making will ensure that all life can thrive and overcome challenges to our shared future.
By Glenn Branch
California’s Assembly Bill 3142 would, if enacted, codify the California Center for Climate Change at West Los Angeles College in the Los Angeles Community College District and establish the California Mobile Unit for Climate Change Education.
In 2022, Assembly Bill 1913 sought to establish the California Center for Climate Change with a $5 million appropriation, as NCSE previously reported. Although the bill died in committee, the center was nevertheless established in 2023, with the aid of a $5 million allocation in the 2022 state budget and a further $1.3 million of federal funding.
Like Assembly Bill 1913, Assembly Bill 3142 would amend the state’s education code to include a description of the center’s mission (“to promote climate change education at the California Community Colleges and establish opportunities for students to engage in hands-on internships and other learning opportunities”), activities, and responsibilities.
The bill would also establish the California Mobile Unit for Climate Change Education to aid the center in its provision of opportunities for students to engage in hands-on internships and the like, allocating a further $1.5 million.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Critical Science Newswire
Original Link: https://ncse.ngo/support-evolution-stable-canada
Publication Date: May 3, 2024
Organization: National Center for Science Education
Organization Description: The National Center for Science Education promotes and defends accurate and effective science education because everyone deserves to engage with the evidence. One day, students of all ages will be scientifically literate, teachers will be prepared and empowered to teach accurate science, and scientific thinking and decision-making will ensure that all life can thrive and overcome challenges to our shared future.
By Glenn Branch
Almost two thirds of Canadians think that human beings evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years, according to a new poll — but less than half think that creationism should not be part of the public school curriculum.
Asked, “Which of these statements comes closest to your own point of view regarding the origin and development of human beings on earth,” 37 percent of respondents preferred “Human beings definitely evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years”; 27 percent preferred “probably evolved”; 8 percent preferred “God probably created human beings in the present form within the last 10,000 years”; and 13 percent preferred “God definitely,” with 14 percent not sure.
Asked, “Do you think creationism — the belief that the universe and life originated from specific acts of divine creation — should be part of the school curriculum in your province?” (decisions about curriculum in Canada are generally made at the provincial level, by the province’s ministry of education), 16 percent of respondents said that it definitely should; 25 percent said that it probably should; 17 percent said that it probably should not; and 25 percent said that it certainly should not, with 17 percent not sure.
Support for evolution and support for creationism were virtually unchanged as from a similar survey conducted in Canada in 2023. Then, as NCSE previously reported, 37 percent of respondents preferred “definitely evolved” and 15 percent preferred “God definitely,” while 16 percent of respondents said that creationism should definitely be included in the school curriculum and 23 percent said that it should definitely not be included.
The poll was conducted online by Research Co. from April 17 to April 19, 2024, among 1,000 adults in Canada. The data were statistically weighted by Canadian census figures for age, gender, and region. The margin of error is +/- 3.1 percent at the 95% confidence level.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Critical Science Newswire
Original Link: https://ncse.ngo/review-how-teach-grown-ups-about-climate-change
Publication Date: May 2, 2024
Organization: National Center for Science Education
Organization Description: The National Center for Science Education promotes and defends accurate and effective science education because everyone deserves to engage with the evidence. One day, students of all ages will be scientifically literate, teachers will be prepared and empowered to teach accurate science, and scientific thinking and decision-making will ensure that all life can thrive and overcome challenges to our shared future.
By Glenn Branch
“How to Teach Grown-Ups about Climate Change is a welcome, and needed, corrective” to climate denial propaganda aimed at kids, writes our reviewer, Glenn Branch.
“Children can foster climate change concern among their parents.” That was the title of a 2019 paper in Nature Climate Change, one of a number of studies that provide evidence for the effectiveness of intergenerational climate change education. Patricia Daniels’s How to Teach Grown-Ups about Climate Change, aimed at readers between 8 and 12 years old, takes the ball and runs with it.
Daniels’s book adeptly uses humor to engage the attention of its readers: black-and-white-and-green cartoons, often featuring talking animals; references to bodily functions (cow farts, cow burps, and — in a bit of a triumph — dinosaur farts); and jokey asides and digressions. Half a dozen attractive infographics on topics such as “Our Climate: A History” and “Mammals, by Biomass” occupy two-page spreads.
The scientific content of the book, presented at a level suitable for the readership, is accurate, as might be expected from a book with a foreword by Michael E. Mann, a distinguished climate scientist and member of NCSE’s board of directors. The history of climate change science is briefly sketched, with Eunice Foote, John Tyndall, and Svante Arrhenius, but there is no discussion of later developments.
Particularly impressive is the treatment of carbon footprints. Kids are invited to consider their own carbon footprints as part of taking action on climate change, but then immediately reminded, “It’s not just individual people who have these footprints. Companies and governments also have carbon foot- prints … Don’t let them tell you that it’s just up to you to solve climate change” (page 55).
A gap in the book’s generally admirable treatment of climate action is education. Its readers will be spending the next decade or so of their lives in formal education, so why not discuss what they could do to engage their school communities in taking action on climate change, including supporting efforts to improve curriculum and instruction?
Climate change denial propaganda campaigns aimed at schoolchildren are not new, but in 2023, no fewer than four — from the Heartland Institute, the CO2 Coalition, EverBright Media’s Kids Guides, and PragerU Kids — were in the headlines. How to Teach Grown-Ups about Climate Change is a welcome, and needed, corrective.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Critical Science Newswire
Original Link: https://ncse.ngo/michigan-teachers-learn-use-ncse-climate-change-resources
Publication Date: May 2, 2024
Organization: National Center for Science Education
Organization Description: The National Center for Science Education promotes and defends accurate and effective science education because everyone deserves to engage with the evidence. One day, students of all ages will be scientifically literate, teachers will be prepared and empowered to teach accurate science, and scientific thinking and decision-making will ensure that all life can thrive and overcome challenges to our shared future.
By Wendy Johnson
Michigan teachers got a sneak peek at NCSE’s redesigned climate change resources using our new Story Short format at a workshop April 19 and 20, 2024. The workshop, titled “Resolving Misconceptions about Climate Change with Sound Science,” addressed common misconceptions about climate change and prepared teachers to use evidence and NCSE’s no-conflict approach to help their students resolve these misconceptions.
The participants were primarily middle and high school science teachers, but we were excited to see non-science teachers join as well. These language arts and social studies teachers wanted to deepen their understanding of climate change to address it within their content areas effectively.
In order to plan for the workshop, we asked participants to share their most significant challenges in teaching about climate change. Teachers shared a range of concerns around misconceptions and climate change denial, including “keeping students focused on evidence over feelings” and addressing “preset notions and opinions that are not swayed by scientific evidence.” One teacher shared, “I struggle with what is factual and what is not. There is a lot of information out there, and I don’t talk about climate change very much in class because I want to make sure that I am always telling students the most up-to-date and factual information possible.” We used these responses to tailor the workshop to the needs of the participants.
On Friday, I led teachers through NCSE’s new Climate Change in Your Backyard Story Short to learn about the relationship between climate change and extreme weather. The teachers experienced the newly streamlined lessons through a student lens and then applied their learning to a place-based example to explain how climate change is affecting snowfall in Michigan. In the afternoon, Director of Education Lin Andrews facilitated reflection and discussion on research-based practices for addressing climate change in the classroom.
On Saturday, teachers considered the sources of misconceptions about climate change and the drivers behind climate change denial. They also learned that climate anxiety is increasing among young people and how a solutions-focused approach can address students’ fears and empower them to take action. The teachers engaged in activities from our new Sustainable Climate Solutions Story Short and were introduced to our new DataWISE tool for data and media literacy.
As part of a survey after the workshop was completed, all participants shared that the experience helped them to address the challenges they face in the classroom. One teacher said, “I feel much more confident about eliciting and addressing student misconceptions. I also feel much better about handling student misconceptions that arise from scientific [misunderstanding] and cultural, political, and social reasons.” Another said of the workshop, “It helped my confidence level in understanding the topic of climate change.” Teachers especially appreciated NCSE’s BRAVE classroom approach to reduce conflict and our new Story Short format, which provides flexibility while addressing NGSS performance expectations.
This professional learning experience was the kickoff to a series of workshops NCSE staff will be leading throughout the remainder of 2024, helping teachers across the country to address their students’ misconceptions about climate change, evolution, and the nature of science.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Critical Science Newswire
Original Link: https://ncse.ngo/four-climate-change-education-bills-wisconsin-die
Publication Date: April 26, 2024
Organization: National Center for Science Education
Organization Description: The National Center for Science Education promotes and defends accurate and effective science education because everyone deserves to engage with the evidence. One day, students of all ages will be scientifically literate, teachers will be prepared and empowered to teach accurate science, and scientific thinking and decision-making will ensure that all life can thrive and overcome challenges to our shared future.
By Glenn Branch
Two pairs of climate change education bills died in the Wisconsin legislature on April 15, 2024, when “any proposals that had not been enrolled or signed into law were adversely disposed.”
Assembly Bill 833 and Senate Bill 794 would, if enacted, have “authorize[d] the state superintendent of public instruction to adopt model academic standards related to climate change,” which would have “incorporate[d] a) an understanding of climate, b) the interconnected nature of climate change, c) the potential local and global impacts of climate change, and d) the individual and societal actions that may mitigate the harmful effects of climate change.”
Assembly Bill 829 and Senate Bill 786 would, if enacted, have created a program to award “scholarships to resident students who are enrolled in an institution of higher education [in Wisconsin] and who are engaged in studies directly related to programs preparing the students for careers in occupational areas addressing or responding to climate change.” The bill would have provided $5 million biennially to fund the scholarships.
A “parental rights” bill that might have harmed climate education in Wisconsin, Assembly Bill 510, was passed by the legislature but vetoed by the governor, as NCSE previously reported.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Critical Science Newswire
Original Link: https://ncse.ngo/climate-change-education-bill-advances-illinois
Publication Date: April 26, 2024
Organization: National Center for Science Education
Organization Description: The National Center for Science Education promotes and defends accurate and effective science education because everyone deserves to engage with the evidence. One day, students of all ages will be scientifically literate, teachers will be prepared and empowered to teach accurate science, and scientific thinking and decision-making will ensure that all life can thrive and overcome challenges to our shared future.
By Glenn Branch
Illinois’s House Bill 4895, one of three climate change education bills active in the Illinois legislature, was passed by the House of Representatives on a 70-37 vote on April 18, 2024, and is now with the Senate.
The bill was amended before the vote. It now provides that, “Beginning with the 2026-2027 school year, every public school shall provide instruction on climate change, which shall include, but not be limited to, identifying the environmental and ecological impacts of climate change on individuals and communities and evaluating solutions for addressing and mitigating the impact of climate change and shall be in alignment with State learning standards, as appropriate. The State Board of Education shall, subject to appropriation, prepare and make available multi-disciplinary instructional resources and professional learning opportunities for educators that may be used to meet the requirements of this subsection.”
The provisions of the bill as passed are thus substantially less ambitious than the bill as introduced. As introduced, the bill would have required every public high school in Illinois to “include in its curriculum a unit of instruction addressing climate change in either a required science class or a required social studies class.” It would also have required instruction on climate change to be included in all high school courses in science, agriculture, social science, and relevant career and technical education courses. The state superintendent of education would have been charged with preparing appropriate instructional materials and professional development training for educators.
The other two climate change education bills active in the Illinois legislature — Senate Bill 3644, which was similar but not identical to House Bill 4895 as introduced, and House Bill 4319 — are still in committee.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Critical Science Newswire
Original Link: https://ncse.ngo/climate-change-education-act-returns-congress-again
Publication Date: April 26, 2024
Organization: National Center for Science Education
Organization Description: The National Center for Science Education promotes and defends accurate and effective science education because everyone deserves to engage with the evidence. One day, students of all ages will be scientifically literate, teachers will be prepared and empowered to teach accurate science, and scientific thinking and decision-making will ensure that all life can thrive and overcome challenges to our shared future.
By Glenn Branch
The Climate Change Education Act is again in Congress. S. 4117 and H.R. 7946, both introduced on April 11, 2024, would authorize the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to institute a competitive grant program aimed in part at developing and improving educational material and teacher preparation on the topic of climate change.
Among the findings listed in the bill are “[T]he evidence for human-induced climate change is overwhelming and undeniable” and “Only 30 percent of middle school and 45 percent of high school science teachers understand the extent of the scientific consensus on climate change” — a reference to the NCSE/Penn State survey of climate change educators (PDF).
“The Climate Change Education Act addresses a critical need,” NCSE Executive Director Amanda L. Townley commented. “Accurate and effective climate education requires high-quality, evidence-based teaching resources with robust support for educators. The act would benefit millions of students across the country by focusing on both of these critical areas of need.”
S. 4117 is sponsored by Edward J. Markey (D-Massachusetts) and 20 of his colleagues in the Senate. H.R. 7946 is sponsored by Debbie Dingell (D-Michigan) and nine of her colleagues in the House. Similar bills from previous years include S. 966 in 2021, S. 477 in 2019, S. 2740 in 2018, H.R. 2310 in 2021, H.R. 2349 in 2019, and H.R. 5606 in 2018.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Critical Science Newswire
Original Link: https://ncse.ngo/daniel-c-dennett-philosopher-and-evolution-enthusiast-dies-82
Publication Date: April 22, 2024
Organization: National Center for Science Education
Organization Description: The National Center for Science Education promotes and defends accurate and effective science education because everyone deserves to engage with the evidence. One day, students of all ages will be scientifically literate, teachers will be prepared and empowered to teach accurate science, and scientific thinking and decision-making will ensure that all life can thrive and overcome challenges to our shared future.
By Glenn Branch
The philosopher Daniel C. Dennett died on April 19, 2024, at the age of 82, according to the obituary in The New York Times (April 19, 2024), which described him as “one of the most widely read and debated American philosophers, whose prolific works explored consciousness, free will, religion and evolutionary biology.” Among his influential books, aimed as much at the general reader as at his philosophical colleagues, were Consciousness Explained (1991), Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (1995), Freedom Evolves (2003), and Breaking the Spell (2006). His memoir I’ve Been Thinking (2023) was recently published.
Famously describing the idea of evolution by natural selection as “the single best idea anyone has ever had,” Dennett devoted his book Darwin’s Dangerous Idea to trying to “get thinkers in other disciplines to take evolutionary theory seriously, to show them how they have been underestimating it, and to show them why they have been listening to the wrong sirens.” His provocative and lively presentation was applauded and criticized in equal measure, with a chapter attacking Stephen Jay Gould’s popular writings on evolution particularly exciting controversy. Dennett tended not to engage creationism directly, peremptorily condemning “creation science” as “a pathetic hodge-podge of pious pseudo-science” in Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, but he contributed “The Hoax of Intelligent Design and How It Was Perpetrated” to John Brockman’s post-Kitzmiller v. Dover collection Intelligent Thought: Science versus the Intelligent Design Movement (2006). In the following year, Breaking the Spell referred to NCSE’s website as “one of the best” presenting criticisms of “intelligent design.” And in 1997, Dennett, along with Gould among other luminaries, signed a fundraising letter (PDF) for NCSE saying, “There may be things we disagree about, but one thing we can all agree upon, is that the National Center for Science Education is an organization that deserves your support.”
Dennett was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on March 28, 1942. He received a B.A. in philosophy from Harvard University in 1963 and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Oxford University in 1965. After a stint at the University of California, Irvine, he spent the bulk of his career at Tufts University, where he was the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy and director of the Center for Cognitive Studies. He was honored for his scholarly work with the Jean Nicod Prize in 2001, the Mind & Brain Prize in 2011, and the Erasmus Prize in 2012; he was also named the Humanist of the Year by the American Humanist Association in 2004.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Critical Science Newswire
Original Link: https://ncse.ngo/random-samples-susan-joy-hassol
Publication Date: April 19, 2024
Organization: National Center for Science Education
Organization Description: The National Center for Science Education promotes and defends accurate and effective science education because everyone deserves to engage with the evidence. One day, students of all ages will be scientifically literate, teachers will be prepared and empowered to teach accurate science, and scientific thinking and decision-making will ensure that all life can thrive and overcome challenges to our shared future.
By Paul Oh
Susan Joy Hassol is the director of Climate Communication and has spent her career devoted to advancing public understanding of climate change science and solutions. For over 30 years she’s helped scientists communicate more effectively and provided clear information to policymakers and journalists. She’s written and edited high-level reports including the first three U.S. National Climate Assessments, testified before the U.S. Senate, written an HBO documentary, and she speaks and publishes widely. Hassol is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Geophysical Union (AGU). In 2021, Hassol received the AGU Ambassador Award for her tireless efforts to improve the quality of climate change communication, and in 2023 she received NCSE’s Friend of the Planet award.
Paul Oh: As a newly minted NCSE Friend of the Planet, you reminded us during the award ceremony that “words matter” when it comes to climate action — and inaction. Can you explain why?
Susan Joy Hassol: Words matter because they affect how we think, feel, and act. They can trigger gut reactions based on deeply held ideology. For example, words like “regulate,” “control,” and “tax” can cause some conservatives to reject the reality of climate change because they are averse to what they perceive to be the solutions. Words can also trigger psychological responses; phrases like “we’re to blame” and “it’s our fault” make some people recoil and reject the science of human-caused climate change because it makes them feel guilty. Terms like “cause” and “responsibility” can be more effective.
Many scientific terms can make the climate crisis seem abstract and distant, while other words make it feel up-close and personal. Words like “inevitable” can make us feel hopeless, which doesn’t inspire action. Perceptions can be influenced by word choice. For example, “natural” commonly refers to things occurring in nature, not influenced by humans. So “natural disasters” is not a good choice for the extreme weather events we’re experiencing that are greatly exacerbated by climate disruption. And people associate the term “natural gas” with “clean” while they associate “methane” with pollution, although natural gas is almost entirely methane.
PO: You have a long history engaging in climate communication. What motivated you to get started in this work?
SJH: I’ve always had a knack for digesting large amounts of complex information and boiling it down and expressing it in ways that are clear, concise, and compelling. About four decades ago, when I was embarking on my career, the issue of human-caused climate change was just beginning to rear its head. It quickly became clear to me that it would be the critical challenge of our time, and I wanted to use my talent to help humanity tackle this great challenge.
I started out working with climate scientists to help them communicate in ways the public and policymakers could under- stand. I pointed out that many terms scientists use mean completely different things to the public, so I suggested better alternatives. I’ve also worked with journalists to help them report effectively on climate change as an issue for every beat (not just a science or environmental story). Along the way it became clear that the challenge of communicating on climate is about much more than explaining the science more effectively. It’s about making it personal, connecting with people on values, finding common ground, and appealing to their priorities.
PO: What are the critical messages you’re trying to convey about climate change?
SJH: The critical messages are on the themes of choice, urgency, agency, and love.
Climate change, caused primarily by the burning of coal, oil and gas, is already having devastating impacts on communities around the globe, including ours. We face a choice between a future with a little more warming that we can adapt to and live with, and one with a lot more warming that becomes a global catastrophe. The future is in our hands.
There is an urgency to climate action. Every day we delay, we’re committing to greater climate disruption and associated impacts. Every action counts because every fraction of a degree counts. We have to act now. Later is too late.
We have the tools we need to tackle the climate challenge. The technologies are abundant and affordable; we know what policies work. We’re not starting from scratch; we’re already on our way. We just need to do more, faster.
The climate crisis is putting our children’s future at risk. It’s our responsibility to leave a world that’s safe and livable for future generations. We have to save what we love for who we love.
PO: How do you help the public get past climate denialism or just plain climate apathy?
SJH: This is very much audience-dependent. For the 10% or so of Americans who outright dismiss the reality of human-caused climate change, I have learned that banging my head on a locked front door just gives me a headache. For those people, I find a side door, like focusing on the many advantages of clean energy: it saves us money and gives us cleaner air and water, it gives us greater energy independence and security, and allows us to compete with other countries who are currently winning the clean energy race.
For those who are apathetic, show them how climate change is affecting things they value, whether that’s fishing, skiing, snowmobiling, birding, their health, or having clean water and good food. Talk about it in ways that are personal, local, and immediate, not far away or projected for decades from now. Let them know that it’s not too late to avoid the worst impacts, if we act now.
PO: What are some of your proudest achievements as a science communicator?
SJH: When I first started out in this field, it was very unusual to see climate change in the headlines or hear people talking about it. I worked with my scientist colleagues to help change that. For example, when we produced the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, I worked with hundreds of scientists from eight countries over four years to communicate the science in a way that would sing. We integrated storytelling and other techniques of good communication right from the start. We included beautiful photographs and designed graphics for non-scientists. When we released the report in 2004 at the National Press Club, climate change was the top story on the network news and on the front page of the papers. It was paradigm-shifting.
I’m also gratified to see many scientists I’ve worked with become such excellent climate science communicators. I’ve led workshops — too many to count — to help scientists learn to speak without jargon, to use metaphors, to become better storytellers, and to talk about solutions as well as the problem. In addition to their primary roles as top scientists, I’ve helped them to also excel at a very different role than they trained for when they got their PhDs. It’s such a pleasure to hear them saying the most important thing there is to say in the most effective way there is to say it.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Critical Science Newswire
Original Link: https://ncse.ngo/wisconsin-legislation-threatened-science-education-vetoed
Publication Date: April 19, 2024
Organization: National Center for Science Education
Organization Description: The National Center for Science Education promotes and defends accurate and effective science education because everyone deserves to engage with the evidence. One day, students of all ages will be scientifically literate, teachers will be prepared and empowered to teach accurate science, and scientific thinking and decision-making will ensure that all life can thrive and overcome challenges to our shared future.
By Glenn Branch
A bill purporting to give parents rights over the education of their children attending public schools, which might have harmed science education in Wisconsin, was vetoed by Governor Tony Evers (D) on March 29, 2024.
Wisconsin’s Assembly Bill 510 would, if enacted, have provided that parents have “[t]he right to opt out of a class or instructional materials at the child’s school for reasons based on either religion or personal conviction” and “[t]he right to timely notice by the child’s school, through a process consistent with school policy, of when a controversial subject will be taught or discussed in the child’s classroom,” where “controversial subject” is defined as “a subject of substantial public debate, disagreement or disapproval.”
Although no scientific topics are explicitly mentioned in the bill, there are frequently requests or demands for students to be excused from evolution instruction, as NCSE’s Eugenie C. Scott and Glenn Branch described in Evolution: Education and Outreach in 2008. And both evolution and climate change are arguably subjects of “substantial public debate, disagreement or disapproval,” even though there is clearly a scientific consensus on both (see, for example, the Pew Research Center’s description of a 2014 survey of members of the AAAS).
Describing himself as “a former science teacher, principal and state superintendent,” Governor Evers wrote(PDF), “I am vetoing this bill in its entirety because I object to sowing division in our schools, which only hurts our kids and learning in our classrooms.”
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Critical Science Newswire
Original Link: https://ncse.ngo/pedagogy-vs-reality-new-study-ncse
Publication Date: April 19, 2024
Organization: National Center for Science Education
Organization Description: The National Center for Science Education promotes and defends accurate and effective science education because everyone deserves to engage with the evidence. One day, students of all ages will be scientifically literate, teachers will be prepared and empowered to teach accurate science, and scientific thinking and decision-making will ensure that all life can thrive and overcome challenges to our shared future.
By Glenn Branch
“Pedagogy vs. Reality: An Investigation of Supports and Barriers when Implementing NGSS Storylines,” a study from present and former staff at NCSE, appeared in the fall/winter 2024 issue of the journal Research Issues in Contemporary Education.
The abstract: “Over the course of a two-year curriculum field test study that implemented a curriculum-based professional learning framework, we investigated the factors that influenced teachers’ willingness and ability to implement NGSS-aligned, phenomenon-based storylines for teaching the nature of science, evolution, and climate change. Through qualitative data collected from interviews and lesson evaluation surveys from 25 middle and high school science teachers, we identified potential implementation barriers and support structures relating to organizational culture as well as curriculum and instruction at the classroom, school, community, and systemic levels. The data indicate that lack of administrative support, time constraints, difficulty with student sense-making, and mismatched classrooms are the largest barriers to implementation, while curriculum-based professional learning including working through the lessons from a student perspective, peer collaboration, autonomy, and flexibility were the largest predictors of successful implementation. Administrators can play a large role in providing successful supports and removing barriers for teachers implementing NGSS-aligned, phenomenon-based lessons.”
The authors are NCSE Science Education Specialist Blake Touchet, Diane “DeeDee” Wright (formerly NCSE Assistant Director of Teacher Support and Science Education Research Specialist, now at Colorado State University), and NCSE Director of Education Lin Andrews.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Critical Science Newswire
Original Link: https://ncse.ngo/bill-establish-maryland-climate-education-week-dies
Publication Date: April 19, 2024
Organization: National Center for Science Education
Organization Description: The National Center for Science Education promotes and defends accurate and effective science education because everyone deserves to engage with the evidence. One day, students of all ages will be scientifically literate, teachers will be prepared and empowered to teach accurate science, and scientific thinking and decision-making will ensure that all life can thrive and overcome challenges to our shared future.
By Glenn Branch
Maryland’s House Bill 993 (PDF), which would have established Maryland Climate Education Week, died in committee when the legislature adjourned sine die on April 8, 2024.
If enacted, the bill would have required the state’s governor annually to proclaim the first week of April as Maryland Climate Education Week. The proclamation would have urged the state’s residents to “participate in educational activities and initiatives that promote an awareness of climate change” and “take action toward the State’s climate commitments.”
Introduced by Dana Stein (D-District 11B), House Bill 993 sailed through the House of Delegates on a 100-3 vote.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Critical Science Newswire
Original Link: https://ncse.ngo/california-bill-support-climate-change-education-through-voluntary-tax-contributions
Publication Date: April 16, 2024
Organization: National Center for Science Education
Organization Description: The National Center for Science Education promotes and defends accurate and effective science education because everyone deserves to engage with the evidence. One day, students of all ages will be scientifically literate, teachers will be prepared and empowered to teach accurate science, and scientific thinking and decision-making will ensure that all life can thrive and overcome challenges to our shared future.
By Glenn Branch
California’s Assembly Bill 3051 would, if enacted, allow the state’s taxpayers donate funds to the K–12 Climate Change Education Voluntary Tax Contribution Fund while filing their state taxes.
The funds would be used to “award grants to school districts, county offices of education, resource conservation districts, district and county office of education partnerships with higher education institutions, and community-based nongovernmental organizations focused on environmental and climate change education.”
The bill was introduced by Al Muratsuchi (D-District 66) on February 16, 2024, and was amended twice thereafter; it is currently with the House Revenue and Taxation Committee.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Critical Science Newswire
Original Link: https://ncse.ngo/awesome-or-bogus-development-gen-xs-attitudes-toward-evolution
Publication Date: April 12, 2024
Organization: National Center for Science Education
Organization Description: The National Center for Science Education promotes and defends accurate and effective science education because everyone deserves to engage with the evidence. One day, students of all ages will be scientifically literate, teachers will be prepared and empowered to teach accurate science, and scientific thinking and decision-making will ensure that all life can thrive and overcome challenges to our shared future.
By Glenn Branch
As the hundredth anniversary of the Scopes “monkey” trial of 1925 approaches, a new study argues that the attitudes of American Gen Xers toward evolution changed toward acceptance and away from uncertainty as they aged, using a longitudinal dataset based on periodic surveys of 5000-odd participants born in the heart of Gen X over a 33-year period, from middle school to middle age.
“Research on attitudes toward science typically uses a single survey or a series of surveys of different participants,” explained lead researcher Jon D. Miller of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. “Using the three-decade record from the Longitudinal Study of American Life enabled our study to investigate how attitudes develop and shift over formative decades in the same individuals.”
“Acceptance of evolution went from a plurality position between 38% and 44% to a majority position between 54% and 57%,” commented co-author Glenn Branch, deputy director of the National Center for Science Education. “At the same time, as participants matured, their uncertainty about evolution reduced, from 37% when they were in high school to between 11% and 13% when they were adults.”
The data thus reflect stabilization and polarization by the time the participants became adults. In 2008, 2015, and 2019–2010, the percentages of the participants preferring definitely false, probably false, not sure, probably true, or definitely true in response to the prompt “human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals” were virtually unchanged.
The study also investigated what factors were associated with the participants’ attitudes toward evolution at three points during the study. As in a previous study by the same researchers, factors involving education tended to be strong predictors of the acceptance of evolution, while factors involving fundamentalist religious beliefs tended to be strong predictors of the rejection of evolution.
When the participants were in high school, their parents’ acceptance of evolution was the strongest predictor of their acceptance of evolution, while their parents’ fundamentalist religious beliefs were the strongest predictor of their rejection of evolution. Later, however, their own education and fundamentalist religious beliefs became stronger predictors of their attitude toward evolution.
“Our analysis of a unique longitudinal dataset allowed us to explore the development of attitudes toward a scientific topic in unprecedented detail,” Miller commented. “And understanding the public’s attitudes toward evolution is of particular importance, since evolution is going to continue to be central to biological literacy — and scientific literacy — in the 21st century.”
The study, “The acceptance of evolution: A developmental view of Generation X in the United States,” was published in the journal Public Understanding of Science. Besides Miller and Branch, the authors are Belén Laspra and Carmelo Polino of the University of Oviedo, Robert T. Pennock of Michigan State University, and Mark Ackerman of the University of Michigan.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Critical Science Newswire
Original Link: https://ncse.ngo/maines-problematic-proposed-revisions-science-standards-rejected
Publication Date: April 12, 2024
Organization: National Center for Science Education
Organization Description: The National Center for Science Education promotes and defends accurate and effective science education because everyone deserves to engage with the evidence. One day, students of all ages will be scientifically literate, teachers will be prepared and empowered to teach accurate science, and scientific thinking and decision-making will ensure that all life can thrive and overcome challenges to our shared future.
By Glenn Branch
The proposal to revise Maine’s science standards to incorporate teaching about genocide, eugenics, and the Holocaust was rejected by the House of Representatives on March 28, 2024, and the Senate on April 1, 2024, following the unanimous recommendation of the House Committee on Education and Cultural Affairs issued on March 7, 2024.
As NCSE previously reported, the proposed revisions to middle school standards about evolution and heredity claim, among other things, that misinterpretation of “fossil observations” and of “the ideas of natural selection and artificial selection” produced the “false idea of human hierarchies and racial inequality,” leading to atrocities such as the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, and the mistreatment of indigenous people in Maine.
Explaining the proposed revisions to the Associated Press (December 4, 2023), a spokesperson for the Maine Department of Education cited a recently enacted law requiring the incorporation of African American studies, Maine Native American history, and the history of genocide in instruction, although the law itself appears to specify neither the subjects nor the grades in which such instruction is required.
Among those expressing concerns with the proposed revisions were the Maine Science Teachers Association, whose president Tonya Prentice told CNN (December 14, 2023) that “civics and social studies programming are better suited to delivering the content in question,” and Alison Riley Miller of Bowdoin College, who with Joseph L. Graves Jr., a member of NCSE’s board of directors, criticized them in the Portland Press-Herald (January 28, 2024).
At its March 7, 2024, meeting, the House Committee on Education and Cultural Affairs amended the bill (Legislative Document 2182 / House Paper 1397) to adopt the revisions by inserting “not” before “authorized” in the section discussing the science standards and then voted 12-0 to recommend the amended bill to the legislature.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Critical Science Newswire
Original Link: https://ncse.ngo/second-climate-literacy-trust-fund-bill-massachusetts
Publication Date: April 12, 2024
Organization: National Center for Science Education
Organization Description: The National Center for Science Education promotes and defends accurate and effective science education because everyone deserves to engage with the evidence. One day, students of all ages will be scientifically literate, teachers will be prepared and empowered to teach accurate science, and scientific thinking and decision-making will ensure that all life can thrive and overcome challenges to our shared future.
By Glenn Branch
Massachusetts’s Senate Bill 2668, described as a new draft of a previous bill, Senate Bill 260, seeking to support climate change education, was introduced and passed by the Joint Committee on Education on April 1, 2024.
If enacted, the bill would establish the Interdisciplinary Climate Literacy Trust Fund, which would support interdisciplinary climate education in the state, prioritizing underserved communities and communities that are disproportionately affected by climate change.
The bill would also authorize local school districts to implement interdisciplinary climate literacy plans. Guidelines for the development and implementation of such plans would be provided by an Interdisciplinary Climate Literacy Advisory Council.
Senate Bill 2668 is identical to House Bill 4419, which replaced House Bills 470, 491, 496, 504, 576, and 3387 as well as Senate Bill 260, but its text is closest to that of House Bill 470. Senate Bill 2668 is now with the Senate Committee on Ways and Means.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Critical Science Newswire
Original Link: https://ncse.ngo/ncses-townley-criticizes-west-virginias-new-cryptocreationist-law
Publication Date: April 11, 2024
Organization: National Center for Science Education
Organization Description: The National Center for Science Education promotes and defends accurate and effective science education because everyone deserves to engage with the evidence. One day, students of all ages will be scientifically literate, teachers will be prepared and empowered to teach accurate science, and scientific thinking and decision-making will ensure that all life can thrive and overcome challenges to our shared future.
By Glenn Branch
Writing for Scientific American (April 3, 2024), NCSE Executive Director Amanda L. Townley criticized West Virginia’s new cryptocreationist law.
The new law provides that “[n]o public school board, school superintendent, or school principal may prohibit a public school classroom teacher from discussing or answering questions from students about scientific theories of how the universe and/or life came to exist.” The bill’s lead sponsor, Amy Grady (R-District 4), declared that it would protect the teaching of “intelligent design,” according to West Virginia Watch (January 23, 2024), although a federal court found “intelligent design” not to qualify as a scientific theory in Kitzmiller v. Dover in 2005.
After describing the legislative history of the new law, Townley suggested that its sponsors and supporters were in the grip of two misconceptions. “The first misconception is that learning about evolution threatens students’ faith,” she explained, whereas in fact, “Evolutionary biologists include people of many faiths and of none, and evolutionary biology is routinely taught in institutions of higher education, whether public or private, secular or sectarian, as the well-established area of modern science that it is.”
“A second misconception is that exposing students to ‘intelligent design’ promotes religious freedom,” Townley continued. “On the contrary, because ‘intelligent design’ reflects a narrow sectarian rejection of evolution, teaching it in school actually harms religious freedom. The division of church and state is crucial for the religious freedom of everyone in the U.S. Yet some people hope for the undoing of this separation of religion and political power, mainly because they expect that those in power will share their particular religious beliefs.”
Townley also warned of unforeseen consequences, writing, “With no definition of ‘scientific theories’ in the law … the sky’s the limit. Why not geocentrism or flat-Earthery? Why not crystal healing? Why not racist views claiming that white people and Black people have separate ancestry? All of these notions, which stem from religious beliefs, not science, have been held up by their proponents as scientific theories, and West Virginia’s legislature and governor just opened the public classroom door to them.”
Townley concluded, “Failure to maintain the separation of church and state, and to instead favor a particular sectarian view, opens a door that, one day, people will wish could be closed.”
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Critical Science Newswire
Original Link: https://ncse.ngo/local-biology-professor-criticizes-west-virginias-new-cryptocreationist-law
Publication Date: April 8, 2024
Organization: National Center for Science Education
Organization Description: The National Center for Science Education promotes and defends accurate and effective science education because everyone deserves to engage with the evidence. One day, students of all ages will be scientifically literate, teachers will be prepared and empowered to teach accurate science, and scientific thinking and decision-making will ensure that all life can thrive and overcome challenges to our shared future.
By Glenn Branch
Writing in the Charleston Gazette-Mail (April 4, 2024), the biologist Herman L. Mays Jr. criticized West Virginia’s new cryptocreationist law.
The new law provides that “[n]o public school board, school superintendent, or school principal may prohibit a public school classroom teacher from discussing or answering questions from students about scientific theories of how the universe and/or life came to exist.” The bill’s lead sponsor, Amy Grady (R-District 4), declared that it would protect the teaching of “intelligent design,” according to West Virginia Watch (January 23, 2024), although a federal court found “intelligent design” not to qualify as a scientific theory in Kitzmiller v. Dover in 2005.
“A problem with SB 280 is its deliberate ambiguity, an ambiguity designed to hide the imposition of religion in the science classroom from constitutional accountability,” Mays explained. “The National Science Teaching Association recognized this ambiguity in a Feb. 13 letter [PDF] to members of the West Virginia Legislature stating that intelligent design is not a scientific proposition and that, ‘Enacting SB 280 would engender significant confusion about what West Virginia’s public school teachers are allowed to teach.’”
Mays continued, “Promoting religion seldom ends well for school districts, even in West Virginia. In 2022, $225,000 was paid in a settlement of a five-year-long case in Mercer County over Bible classes taught in public schools. In 2023, the Cabell County School Board settled a case involving a religious assembly resulting in $175,000 in attorney fees and mandatory training for teachers and staff.” He warned that attempts to teach “intelligent design” under the new law would similarly “place districts in legal and financial jeopardy.”
Finally, Mays observed, “Bills like SB 280 are an embarrassment and likely will discourage high-paying, high-tech industries reliant on an educated workforce from moving to West Virginia. Ultimately, children in our state will pay a price. In a state with the third-lowest teacher pay in the nation, where students rank well below national averages in mathematics, reading, writing and science, and among the lowest percentage of residents with college degrees, we cannot afford to dilute public education with stealthy religious indoctrination.”
Mays is associate professor of biological sciences at Marshall University, a public research institution in Huntington, West Virginia.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Critical Science Newswire
Original Link: https://ncse.ngo/climate-change-education-legislation-virginia-vetoed
Publication Date: April 8, 2024
Organization: National Center for Science Education
Organization Description: The National Center for Science Education promotes and defends accurate and effective science education because everyone deserves to engage with the evidence. One day, students of all ages will be scientifically literate, teachers will be prepared and empowered to teach accurate science, and scientific thinking and decision-making will ensure that all life can thrive and overcome challenges to our shared future.
By Glenn Branch
Virginia’s House Bill 1088, which would require the state board of education to aid local school boards with instructional materials on climate change and environmental literacy, was vetoed by Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) on April 2, 2024.
If the bill had been enacted, the board would have been required to “make available to each local school board instructional materials on climate change and environmental literacy that are based on and include peer-reviewed scientific sources” and also to “develop, adopt, and make available to each local school board model policies and procedures … pertaining to the selection of instructional materials on climate change and environmental literacy.”
In his veto statement, Governor Youngkin wrote (PDF), “The Standards of Learning already provides [sic] instructional material related to environmental issues,” adding, “Additionally, school divisions [sic] must integrate these new resources into their curriculum outside the standard process, necessitating purchasing instructional material and reallocating instructional time without additional funding.”
However, Virginia’s state science standards received the grade of F in the 2020 study of the treatment of climate change in state science standards conducted by NCSE and the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund. And nothing in House Bill 1088 would have required school districts to adopt the instructional materials or the model policies and procedures provided by the state board of education.
Responding to Governor Youngkin’s statement, NCSE’s Glenn Branch told WVTF (April 4, 2024) that the bill was “not redundant … and it was something that was needed given the lackluster treatment of climate change in the state science standards.”
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Critical Science Newswire
Original Link: https://ncse.ngo/rncse-442-now-online
Publication Date: April 1, 2024
Organization: National Center for Science Education
Organization Description: The National Center for Science Education promotes and defends accurate and effective science education because everyone deserves to engage with the evidence. One day, students of all ages will be scientifically literate, teachers will be prepared and empowered to teach accurate science, and scientific thinking and decision-making will ensure that all life can thrive and overcome challenges to our shared future.
By Glenn Branch
NCSE is pleased to announce that the latest issue of Reports of the National Center for Science Education — volume 44, number 2 — is now available online.
Featured are a summary of Amanda L. Townley’s recent video reflecting on her first 100 days as executive director of NCSE; Glenn Branch’s report on the recent attack on the treatment of evolution and climate change in textbooks submitted for state adoption in Texas; Lin Andrews and Blake Touchet’s report on “The Road to Extinction,” featuring Riley Black; Paul Oh’s interview of Susan Joy Hassol, a recent recipient of NCSE’s Friend of the Planet award; Glenn Branch’s review of Patricia Daniels’s How to Teach Grown-Ups About Climate Change; and Andy Epton’s review of David K. Randall’s The Monster’s Bones.
The entire issue is freely available (PDF) on NCSE’s website, as are select articles. Publication of RNCSE is made possible thanks to the generous donations of people like you!
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/05/25
I went to the heart of war last year between November 22 and December 6 of 2023. The idea was to experience the nature of war from a first person perspective. This was not my idea, but a new colleague and friend. In fact, it was something in which I had not expected doing in the first place, but this was something – in hindsight – that I needed.Something to push out certain mental blockages unknown before.
War, in contradistinction to the claims of my colleague and friend Remus Cernea, is not precisely Hell, as in a realized hellscape brought from the depths of human imaginative misery-making, inasmuch as a phantasmagoria of normalcy broken down into its constituent parts and then reorganized in non-normal ways. War, in this sense, can be abstracted and concretized simultaneously as a violence upon the collective imaginarium.
A culture’s set of ideas about itself actualized in historical contingencies of time, place, architecture, infrastructure, and the like, rendered soluble and reconstituted. Whatever comprises a culture’s ideas of itself, as actualized in the mind and eventually in the real world – and fed back into minds and so on, its chaos rendered unto that, piecemeal and in whole. This definition more accurately mirrors the violence upon individual psyche’s in all relevant aspects.
Take, for example, the ideas of an elementary school. It represents a symbol of hope and function. A hope for a new generation and a function of producing educated citizens of a culture. Whether majoritarian indoctrination of democratic societies in a status quo for the sake of the quotidian or authoritarian centres to maintain the standardization of the minds of the proletariat to the level of eternal functionaries, plebeians, education, insofar as characterized as information transfer from educator to pupil, can fit into either category on these antipodes for a simplistic spectrum.
One of the sites Cernea showed me was an elementary school. This school was completely destroyed. I recall first asking if this was bombed by air. He responded in the negative. The site had been completely obliterated merely by the ground fighting between the Russian and Ukrainian forces. What struck is the playground, basketball court, tennis court, and track surrounding those were entirely intact – the Farben Works are still intact, so to speak, these are human choices. Not normal, two mothers began walking around the track during our visit with their infants or babies in strollers. An air raid alarm went off, and the mothers didn’t flinch. Everything individually could be considered a normal circumstance, but jumped into non-normalcy. That’s the bizarro effect of war on culture, violence on a society.
War as not only collective violence, but dual-use violence on individuals and a people. I needed to go and see that. Even though, in contradistinction to prior modes of operating, and promises to myself to not enter into a war zone, I decided to take the offer of Cernea and go, so full credit to him for the offer. An older self would not have gone, not-so purely and quite-complex actually. By “promise,” as I have referenced elsewhere, I interviewed and worked with one colleague who was going to a school in the States.
Their dream was to be a war correspondent, which, in my lack of experience, and in purview as a remote writer for a British magazine, I found absurd to personal safety and such because it was – as I saw accurately – “absurd to personal safety and such.” I was, in a matter of speaking, of the sensibilities of the vast majority of Canadians – even those coming from city centres or the cosmopolitan and, typically, more formally educated sectors of the society. I am decidedly a bad Canadian, naughty Scotty.
Those used to economic progress, a soft life, soft(er) educational challenges, few(er) hardships, not much in the way of manual labour in any sector of life, and a true belief in the common, State lies of any society to its people. Which is to say, as with most of the West, a common people commonly soft, in sensibilities and mind.
Anywho, I trusted instincts and went off to the lime-dark of a war zone for two weeks visiting six cities: arriving in Chisinau, Moldova and then going to Odesa, Mykolaiv, Kherson, Dnipro, Kharkiv, Kyiv, and then back to Chisinau. The exhaustion of travel and sleep deprivation is not necessarily good for you, but can be good for you – in terms of development of endurance.
You should make a practice of the development of endurance earlier in life rather than later in life because capacity to recover decreases with time; the body is bound to the ability to use its healing factors, as in youth, and instead more reliant upon inflammation as age begins to progress beyond youth. If young enough, you should make certain breakages of mind to develop certain psychological resilience factors and skill sets requiring significant exertion.
The trouble is the time contraction-expansion factors in youth compared to aging more. I notice the natural rapidity of time sense with aging a bit. This has benefits for other functions. However, if I had travelled earlier to a war zone, I may have been more careless. While, at the same time, there is a benefit in taking the time to go through an endurance test. War zones are good for it.
The downside to travelling in such circumstances as a youth is the expansive sense of time, where each moment can seem as if an eternity. Minutes both psychologically – empirically – and subjectively are longer to the individual when younger than when older.
Travelling, the time between cities in Ukraine has been an instructive sense. Where, my time in youth was spent mostly in solitary contemplation, study – and plenty of writing which may never see the light of day. I learned several items of import, mostly from the old. One is the nature of time. To reconstruct the past from a fragmentary data set called a memory, we live at a juncture between a fragmentary future and a partial constructed past. Subjectivity is a flux construct.
Time is a flux construct; pain is a flux construct. This needs some massaging. Some of the stretching happens naturally. But if you can force pain, and force endurance over extended periods of time, then you can find an internal elasticity – how much depends on you.
Ukraine was an instructive reflection of sleep deprivation, effects of mild aging, changes in time sense, and the echoes in one’s information matrices of mind. There’s a richer edifice to partake, subjectively. This, as with decreased healing, increased inflammation, and faster time sense, happens naturally. Those, as with many things Nature bestows, are natural, unavoidable; thus, you can find ways to work within these facts, given the contingencies of time and opportunities given to you, and use the dual-pressure of constraints and freedoms Nature bestows to personal edification.
Ukraine stands as an example from personal experience.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/04/21
[Recording Start]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I want to talk very briefly about reductio ad absurdum of the concept of war, technically in the state of modern warfare because we’re moving into a world more and more where drones are becoming part of things and I don’t mean just drones that fly around and suicide themselves into a tank or a few personnel in an armed vehicle or something. When these things are in a semi-autonomous state, machines will fight a lot. So, at what point does this make the concept of war just robots fighting robots? Isn’t that a comical reductio ad absurdum of the idea of war in modern times?
Rick Rosner: I don’t know because we have two modern wars going, at least two. We have Ukraine, and we have Israel-Gaza and drones are used in each, but the human death tolls are still considerable, and the savagery is still significant. Russia’s at least official number of dead in Ukraine has just passed 50,000, and I’ve seen reports, though I don’t know if they’re substantiated, of half a million casualties dead and wounded on both sides combined. In Gaza, the death toll just surpassed 34,000, which is roughly 1.7% of the population of Gaza. So yeah, these aren’t clean wars. I think that drones may be helpful and certainly help each side wage war, but the human carnage has yet to be reduced, I think.
Jacobsen: So, what you’re saying is still considerable.
Rosner: Yeah, I mean the initial attack on October 7th of Hamas on Israel; I forget if there were drones involved, but that was like straight-up terrorism and guerrilla warfare where they killed 1,200 Israelis.
Jacobsen: Did you know any family that lost people?
Rosner: Do I? No.
Jacobsen: Do you have any Israeli family?
Rosner: No, we don’t have that many. We don’t have strong ties to Israel. We have a nephew who married an Israeli, and I’m sure they know a ton of people because Israel is just a teeny country. Carol’s cousin’s ex-wife is there, and I’m sure she knows a ton of people, but again, they’ve been divorced for 15 or 20 years, so we don’t talk to her.
Anyway, the state of modern war is not bloodless, and there are plenty of mistakes with drones. Obama used drones a lot against ISIS, and there were plenty of wrong targeting and civilian deaths and blowing up a wedding when he thought it was some other kind of gathering. So, we have a way to go. Trump was no better; Trump loosened up the rules of engagement. Obama killed a ton of ISIS, and Trump killed ISIS even faster by loosening the rules of engagement. So, he had a higher ratio of civilian deaths, and then Trump announced that he’d wiped out ISIS, but as we’ve seen, ISIS is still around.
Twenty years from now, will war be more bloodless? I don’t know. The US finally, after months of arguing and political paralysis, passed an aid packet for Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan. So, Taiwan is another place that could be the site of a hostile invasion because China still considers Taiwan to be part of China. Taiwan makes the world’s best chips; a third of the world’s chips are sold in Taiwan, and China wants that business. So, if China attacked Taiwan, nobody wants that, but given that you’ve got two high-tech countries, that might give you a better idea of what future warfare looks like. Would it be less bloody? I don’t know, and I hope we don’t find out.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/05/24
The coherent frame conscious experience places on us seems as if a great mystery.
Some problem without solution, a “mystery” in short. It’s in the language, though.
How does vibration come into the ear to form sound in awareness? How does electromagnetic radiation create a full breadth of visual life? How does the touch on a finger tip make a spatial representation in the head and granular sensation of drawing squiggles in beach sands – let alone a differentiation between the space ‘out there,’ the world, and ‘in here,’ the mind?
Why is one thing sweet and another salty, or yet another scalding hot with the automated physiological reaction to produce tears, sweat, and flushed cheeks? All these jiggles on sensory apparatus making cuts in the manifold universe. The universe, as I said in earlier writings, is a unicity.
It has its own uniqueness in singular unified existence and in its generativity, ability to differentiate itself in novelty. The weird apparent paradox may be: These traditional five senses, individually, can be taken as, not mysteries but, problems with solutions, but greater problems than the coherency problem, because of the precision of their aim. Sometimes, the search for the right word is harder than writing a long-form essay, as an analogy.
Namely, the coherent experience of every sense may lie not in the idea of the individual senses, but in the reframing of the processing of the universe in a generalized way – cuts in the manifold. If Nature – the totality of all – can be characterized as an informational construct, why would we be left with anything but the most generalized formulation of information processing and informational process-structure?
Cuts by subjectivities, in it, would be limitations of this generalized formulation, as such. Nature’s surgeons opening Nature and peering inside, scalpel! The narrative or story about separate senses can assist in the comprehension of different degrees of coherent information processing, though. The coherent experience of conscious life presents a sincere problem because this includes the translation, if taking senses as individual, of senses into a common medium presented as a wide range in conscious life. It seems so obvious. How could this not but present a foundational problem?
Maybe, our assumptions are, in fact, wrong.
Sensory information not only presents a different style of receiving input from the world. It presents the information at a different speed per sense. Some senses send information with greater rapidity to the central nervous system than others. That seems like a structural universal for the human organism.
Which raises the question once more, what is it about temporal and experiential apparent coherent experience luring these sensory signals into a coherency – not only an experience at once, but as a happening at the same time? Or, at a minimum, an apparent coherent consciousness of the world around us. Obviously, we evolved in limited contexts with strained resources and definite, though not extreme, pressures to select out particular forms or faults and styles of information processing.
It would require that much more resources to build another system to monitor discrepancies in conscious experience, which makes little sense. Either evolve an organism as if the experience is coherent, so none-the-wiser, or fill-in-the-gaps as with so much else faulty in the organism. “We’re not going for perfect here at God Inc. We’re going for good enough to the next generation.”
Our style of information processing and information harvesting become honed over time. Few people are genuine geniuses. Most people most of the time are some base floor of functional, though, whether exchanges in some casual conversation or acting in some daily activity.
Each sense deals with a sufficient shift from a prior state into an active state and then into something approximating the prior baseline. The sensitivity of each sense is variable. The parts of the world external to the organism each responds is variable and distinct. These only truly become mixed in a phenomena called synesthesia.
Even though, synesthetes, themselves, may harbour a key secret to the entire enterprise of conscious experience, where we can present conscious experience neither as a user illusion nor as separate inputs somehow magically united. That’s a weird thought. What does that even mean? For one, God isn’t; or if God is, then is an engineer, and not a magician, and a somewhat shitty one.
Evolution via natural selection amounts to a good enough engineer – good enough for survival of a host of organisms surviving and reproducing in an environment and co-adapting over long stretches of time and differentiated magnitudes, constantly, for hundreds of millions of years. Human beings, as an organic machine, arose out of this milieu. A differentiation as a species only 100,000 to 250,000 years into the recent fold of deep evolutionary time.
People are a base level functional. Senses can be mixed. Consciousness appears coherent. Yet, we know distinctions exist among people. Senses are assumed as distinct. The facts of sensory input and nerve impulse to neural signal transmission are disparate, different, and variable, in time, in distal location to the brain, and signal speed. What a damnable mess!
Bad segue time, Alan Turing once remarked on not being able to provide any such comfort in the capability of digital machines to replicate anything done by a human being. He seemed extreme decades ago. He appears extreme now. I remain inclined to agree with him, inasmuch as there is a reason to adhere to a natural view of human beings. If Nature as an engineer makes a sense, we can take heed of its marvels.
Nature can engineer a human organism over sufficient deep time from previous forms and generations of species. Similarly, human beings with sufficient capacity and resources, in principle, should be able to deconstruct and re-engineer something approximating a human being in a different chassis, say a digital mind and alloyed frame.
Human beings as a base level functional in most cases can be a minimum bar for such beings, not human being in substrate, but human being in nature, in engineering. If nature is not the engineering in action, what are we to assert tacit in our thought but some magical entity or substance?
That’s precisely the non-scientific thinking creating most of the problems in terms of operational and pragmatic comprehension of human beings. It’s not that we have a necessary detachment from something else in the universe. However, in the context of a functional knowledge of human beings, we are an engineering issue. If Nature was not an engineering problem, then we would not be garnering success in the replication of engineering marvels discovered by Nature for human purposes.
A spirit or non-natural substance explanation is something wholly meant to fill in ignorance with some explanation: Namely, the need for cognitive closure – look it up! I am inclined to agree with Noam Chomsky, Bertrand Russell, and a wide range of others, who are known for piercing some deeper truths. Once the end of the organism, that’s the end of the person, because the engineering deteriorates to the non-functional – so cessation. As with a flame, you do to go anywhere; you cease.
Now, the, typical, perception of machines is a digital processor and then a presentation on a screen, e.g., a tower and monitor. Yet, these can mimic the nature of colour, sound, a sense of depth in vision, motion, interactivity, and so on. The input is the same, electrical signals. What if we developed a more advanced screen with an actual multi-dimensionality in presentation, not simply 2-dimensional with uni-dimensional adjuncts of sound or interactivity, and so on?
That’s more approximating the presentation of a mind in conscious experience, where mind is the agency or the recursion back into the conscious space/the most pertinent information and consciousness is the broad band of information plus the presentation of conscious experience and this ‘agency.’
We make a big stink about qualia, the redness of red, and so on. What prevents this thought about qualia falling into ad infinitum and then to reductio ad absurdum? Here’s what I mean: Why not the redness of the redness of red? Are we talking about a thing in itself when we speak of the redness of red, as if a ghostly essence?
Makes little sense, or, are we talking about an ontological descriptor of a percept repeatable inasmuch as one has patience to the redness of redness of redness… of red? To tacitly or implicitly speak in this manner, we are, in a way, misguided and falling into a user illusion of language. Language is misleading us.
We become bedevilled – ruh-roh – by the descriptors of percepts, language and the colour red, respectively, into a further mirage of the descriptors of percepts of concepts about the percepts, und so weiter. Language is the descriptor. Percept is the immediate presentation to conscious experience. Concept is the first level of abstraction from the immediate perception. So, the first “language is the descriptor” is the same as the “concept” in a linguistic representation.
Does that make sense? Sincerely, I’m not trying to be an ass… this time. I want to make sure the clarity is there. Even the concept itself, it’s grounded in the percepts themselves, so not far removed from the perception. It may be bound to how the mind is architected. To imagine, we must visualize based on a ground state of information, non-generative unoriginal information merely harvested from the world.
I would add language, too, the wordness of words. Essentially, these seem like systems of differentiation on a bland cosmos. No red or a green, but a red to distinguish a green, and vice versa. This seems like a mystery. Something inexplicable, yet, let’s take the more obvious example: Why the word “red” or “green,” or Canadian English in contrast to Hebrew, Hindi, Sanskrit, Urdu, or proto-Indo-European?
Binary digital processing appears sufficient to present a multi-modal processing. The current presentations are crude, though, but the current iterations have a distinct differentiation between the processing happening ‘under the hood’ and the information processing screen presented on a computer screen. In a sense, if this multi-modal and multi-dimensional presentation of processing can be evolved, then digital infrastructure could do this too.
In fact, the sense of agency and a recursion back to a computer screen level of simplistic information processing and activity should be, in principle, possible. The subtlety of human thought lies in having the multi-modality and multi-dimensionality of the screen presented to conscious experience and the agency for interaction with this presentation called conscious experience.
These, as you can tell, exhibit a concretized formulation of ideas seen with a general magical sensibility in many definitions, as if a mystical, distant, ephemeral, spiritual quantity. These can be quantified and differentiated functionally, so architecturally.
If you can gather the general function of a structure, then you can deconstruct, with some effort and ingenuity, the engineering and then reconstruct the same structure for the same general function. Fundamentally, this is to view natural objects as mathematical objects. As we can see with mass simulations in contemporary and simple models, we can create simplistic simulacrums of real objects and forces acting on those objects based on mathematical modelling.
One merely need scale the complexity of these simulations upwards in the factors taken into account, the precision of the models, the real geometry of the objects, and such. These simulations, these mathematical models in a fake time, these pseudo-naturalistic presentations represent the reality of the matter in their false reality; reality’s evolutionarily demonstrated products are, in fact, mathematical objects, but, in the real universe, represent process – so real process-objects, including human beings. We are mathematical process-objects.
What is the point of this part of the conversation?
Describing human beings as mathematical process-objects in the real universe or the set providing raw materials for subsets to be fed into us, this provides a basis for breaking down traditional or contemporary thought barriers, which is to present the “totality of all” as a process-object or a process-set upon which subjectivities intaking informational content about the universe – in whatever form or cut – or from the cosmos are intaking a process-subset: simplifies the entire endeavour vastly.
Now, simulations have been made of the natural universe with the utilization of mathematical models. These mathematical models are constructs, engineered. Human beings are evolved, or engineered by nature. For whatever increases in probability of survival in having some of the most advanced cognition on the planet, human minds make simulations of the processes of the universe. There is a symmetry in mind, in replicating the physics of the world at a medium scale.
For now, the scaled-up simulation complexity examples are human beings. The reason the process-universe can be mathematically modelled, simulated, in a minds’ lived experience and in digital computational devices is because a symmetry exists in the ends, so a probable symmetry in the means.
The precise algorithms or programs and architectures to attain the ends – the mathematical process-models of a world – may differ, even substantially; however, the principle of simulation, of mathematical process-modelling, exists in organic minds, machine information processing, so in a sense in the external world too. No magic here, all non-mechanistic, informational engineering, in a way.
Signification, significance, signifying, meaning-making, is the signal of conscious experience, of an agent. In embodied conscious entities, primarily, we mean emotion, feelings, instincts, motivations, drives – valence. Something sufficiently distinguishing of individual importance to an organism within its ability to make a demarcation, a line in reality, a cut. This subset over that subset.
For whatever true reason for the line drawn, or people’s ‘reasons’ or ad hoc rationales for whatever they have done in self-interest at one point or another, valence makes non-random differentiation, individually. Differentiation can be made in a random way. For instance, a random ‘agent’ decision-making process could be placed into any video game, as a basic example, but the failure to get through the game is made readily apparent. So, in an evolutionary context, the likely outcome is a selection out of the pool of ‘agents.’ Non-random agency becomes more likely to be selected than not, over time.
Why valence as the meaning-making mechanism? More particularly, amongst emotions or feelings, why these emotions or feelings? It is a deep question. Akin to: “Why these instincts and drives and motivations?” There are instincts, motivations, drives, and feelings to make a distinction relevant to the individual mind – organic information processor.
We, individually, have valence, meaning-making. We make meaning or significance of some objects, in mind and of the world, over others. Those subsets chosen over others; informational subsets of mind over others because of the relevance to the entire informational matrix of the organism at a given time.
This process of informational subset signification out of the entire informational matrix of the organism – which remains in flux in organic minds because of the constant shuttling of information internally and flow of information from the external world into the matrix of mind, so a precise total informational estimate must by necessity incorporate a range for practical purposes in estimating at any range of time and over a lifetime – comprises the operational, pragmatic informational equivalence with the idea of meaning when extirpating the non-sense of magical and supernatural instalments into the concept.
What we call an agent could be characterized as precisely this recursive, indefinite process interaction between the signification-maker and the multi-modal multi-dimensional ‘screen’ of conscious experience, the choices, the actions, the descriptors (language, internal and external/vocalized) become directed from the valence.
When we look for something in-between the valence or conscious experience for an agent, a “self,” we are looking for a chimera. In this sense, there is no will because there is no self, so there is no will to be supernaturally free – “freedom of the will” or ‘free will’ – from Nature and no self to generate said will, thus no mystery about self or free will in the same manner as there is a historico-geographic mystery about Atlantis.
The problem only exists inasmuch as an individual mistakes the concept – the ‘language as the descriptor’ – for the percept; the percept appears to imply a subjectivity, as in a detached immaterial identity or a self, while this simply comes from the linguistic use of the first-person, in a way. Language weaves magic on mind.
In that sense, a self does not exist. However, to argue for no subjectivity is strange, we agree larger structures emerge out of the universe, similarly with emergent properties of mind then, too. Otherwise, we have an inconsistency in the extended premises and argument as a whole about a subjectivity being non-existent.
A self is process, hence the consistent interaction between valence and conscious experience, thus any pursuit of a fixed self or an immaterial self – e.g., an eternal self or a spirit/magical soul – is bound to fail, but an individual exists inasmuch as signification is present on this rich presentation of the window of conscious life within the wider consciousness (multiplex non-conscious information processing).
Yet, a “self” seems more a product of concepts about the world rather than a reflection of reality. Obviously, a subjectivity exists in another sense because valence or signification – distinguishing, the “this over that” – is present on this narrow window of conscious experience of the world, this filtered presentation from the multiplex.
The subjectivity is the linkage between signification and the narrow conscious bandwidth of consciousness, and subsequent decisions and embodied actions and thoughts following these significations through time, as process, as well as the signification and the narrow conscious bandwidth of consciousness.
It’s the emptiness making a bowl or a bathtub useful, the space between spokes on a wheel, so the space between so as to exist in one sense and to not exist in another, hence its insufferable dual-existence and inability to be pinned down in a process-universe.
It is a linkage so as to mostly envelop once connected. Which would more deeply explain experiences of locked-in syndrome, no externalization of the linguistic landscape, but a subjectivity, based on self-reports, continues to live. Similarly, a blunted subjectivity could be hypothesized with autism spectrum disorders because, based on experiments of viewing images of landscapes and faces, there is a minimal distinction made between faces and environments to them. In other words, the interpersonal failures reflect a deeper-set failure of a different kind of self, a subjectivity.
Crude valence, non-random signification, could be construed in some of the newer generations of basic artificial intelligence, synthetic minds. Integration with the current crude 2-dimensional displays would be a decent step into the exploration of the creation of a disembodied subjectivity.
However, to have a truer sense of human nature as in a human subjectivity or a human agency would require an embodiment connected to this synthetic signification and conscious thought arena, these would be real simulations of the world and an interaction with these simulated realities in a similar manner to the organic simulations of the world displayed before, embodied by us, and integrated with an internal-external language system to communicate.
What in the hell does this have to do with qualia, the senses, and coherency of experience?
We have a system for signification, for conscious experience. We have a subjectivity. We are evolved, embodied. Qualia may be a misnomer. These aren’t necessarily qualities of experience, let alone qualities of the universe. The universe does not give a hoot about you, personally, apparently. Probably, the greatest system of no-fucks-given in the history of the world is the universe.
Computer screens can project a simulation of various colours. We pick these up as red or whatever colour on God’s red Earth. If enforcing this colouring of the world – ours – on autonomous machines of the future, are these true qualities of experience or merely interpretations of subsets of information from the bland universe then differentiated and categorized in an information system?
The redness of red could be exchanged for the greenness of green, or some colour scheme never conceived by human beings or even possible of being perceived by human beings. Maybe, these aren’t qualities of experience inasmuch as frames on reality evolutionarily salient for an organism.
Mutations and errors happen too. Some are colour blind, partially blind, or some other visuospatial impairment altering greater visual perception capabilities. Some seem to have mutations for an apparent incredible visual sense, e.g., da Vinci. We’re always dealing with survival of the most in many circumstances, where “survival of the most” becomes most suitable to an environment.
I would add not only the five traditionally demarcated senses, but also language as part of the full breadth of human qualities of experience or interpretive frames on reality at large: automated interpretive frames on the natural world, internalized models carved and united by the engineering of evolution. So, if we are to speak in the dead end and bore-level frames of the redness of red, or the redness of the redness of red, we’re speaking about the wordness of words referenced earlier, as well.
We have a generative linguistic capacity, innately, in a similar manner to the five traditional, base senses. This generative linguistic capacity enters into the conscious arena similarly with the five traditional senses. We generate a simulation of the natural world, informationally, based on those senses or impressions of the natural world, and construct representative, communicative productions about this natural world too.
The representation, the imprints on awareness reflect the further generative capacity. Yet, the generative linguistic capacity mirror more the senses represented in conscious awareness rather than the signification-maker because the language does not make the cuts in the simulation of reality present before awareness. The words, descriptions of objects and operations about objects in the represented simulation of reality present to conscious life, talk about cuts already made in this presentation, this ‘screen.’
In a similar manner as we produce proprioception, as a level built atop the five traditional or base senses, language comprises these two levels, too: A base existence simultaneous with the cuts made by signification, so as to communicate and plant an informational flag (a label), and to describe the innards of individual experience.
Every adaptation of language follows from this simple model: Plans, dreams, visualization, communication of an internal model of the world to another agent as if the real world while to be understood if having the same representative system (language), and so on. They rely upon the foundation close to the natural world: namely, the percepts present in ‘immediate experience’ (awareness) and the cuts made by signification.
If this was not so, individual experience would be too individuated and language would be so even further so as to make communication, likely, nearly impossible person to person. The same species from a similar cognitive enrichment can speak in a similar manner sufficient for mutual comprehension. You can work together. You can survive. You can commonly communicate experiences: ‘plan, dream, visualize,’ etc.
All this says: We neither experience reality nor speak about reality, but approximate a simulation of reality (with some fireworks) and speak about this simulation of reality while the world before words and signification are closer true approximations of reality, itself. We never experience oneness with the universe. Even ecstatic experiences, they are greater than normal processing, but a wider window into reality is still an aperture to reality, not real.
The qualities of experience or the interpretive frame on the natural world should be replicable by digital systems. It’s a matter of the mathematical sync with natural information processing systems seen in homo sapiens as the important step. And if you pause and think about it, the universe is a constant flux. It never stops. It’s a big jiggle, a wiggly waggle.
Each of the five traditional senses could be construed as an adaptation of this to the human organism. There’s a stimulation of each sense to pick a different jiggle out of the wiggly waggle: “a sufficient shift from a prior state into an active state and then into something approximating the prior baseline.” All get transmuted into a common nerve signal and then a neural signal in the central nervous system.
These seem like degrees of sensitivity to multidimensional stimulation provided by the natural world. In a way, a small frame in each. Yet, contrived in one organism as if separate, but, in fact, united, there’s minimal translation necessary, as they come from a common medium, reality, and then require merely one translation from nerve impulse to neural signal in the first place.
So, the unification in conscious experience, in awareness, represents the senselessness of our questions about a lot of these issues. All five traditional conceived senses could be, in some multidimensional way, construed as limitations on a larger potential unified experiential sensory system harvesting information from the world.
So, they’re both supersense limits – jiggle inputs on the wiggly-waggle – and five individual senses described more clinically and colloquially as sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell; they’re folk physiology and psychology with larger theoretical frameworks awaiting their unification, informationally.
The admixture of two or more traditional senses in synesthesia may mark a more proper view of sense in the first place: to see G sharp, to hear black, to smell salty, to taste the scent of a rose, to feel the touch of the sight of the Sun. That’s when lines aren’t artificially drawn in mind.
Consciousness isn’t the cosmos, but the elements of consciousness are, in a way, distributed throughout the universe and then brought together in organisms with signification capacity, awareness grounded in consciousness, and, maybe, embodiment. There does not necessarily need to be a translation for an idea about the coherency of consciousness and of conscious life.
The fragments internalized as models are on a per organism and per species basis, and the coherency happens naturally because they’re wrought under the weight of a common computational mechanism. Thus, we see things with an apparent coherency and simultaneity: No problem. Why? Because it wasn’t a problem in the first place, as with the ‘problems’ of a will and a self defined before. We got lost in the language. A spell was cast.
Eventually, all of these will have informational equivalents, mathematical process-model equivalencies, simulations. It’ll mark an era of distributed consciousness and awareness, language and embodiment decoupled from one chassis, an organic being.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/05/22
According to some semi-reputable sources gathered in a listing here, Rick G. Rosner may have among America’s, North America’s, and the world’s highest measured IQs at or above 190 (S.D. 15)/196 (S.D. 16) based on several high range test performances created by Christopher Harding, Jason Betts, Paul Cooijmans, and Ronald Hoeflin. He earned 12 years of college credit in less than a year and graduated with the equivalent of 8 majors. He has received 8 Writers Guild Awards and Emmy nominations, and was titled 2013 North American Genius of the Year by The World Genius Directory with the main “Genius” listing here.
He has written for Remote Control, Crank Yankers, The Man Show, The Emmys, The Grammys, and Jimmy Kimmel Live!. He worked as a bouncer, a nude art model, a roller-skating waiter, and a stripper. In a television commercial, Domino’s Pizza named him the “World’s Smartest Man.” The commercial was taken off the air after Subway sandwiches issued a cease-and-desist. He was named “Best Bouncer” in the Denver Area, Colorado, by Westwood Magazine.
Rosner spent much of the late Disco Era as an undercover high school student. In addition, he spent 25 years as a bar bouncer and American fake ID-catcher, and 25+ years as a stripper, and nearly 30 years as a writer for more than 2,500 hours of network television. Errol Morris featured Rosner in the interview series entitled First Person, where some of this history was covered by Morris. He came in second, or lost, on Jeopardy!, sued Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? over a flawed question and lost the lawsuit. He won one game and lost one game on Are You Smarter Than a Drunk Person? (He was drunk). Finally, he spent 37+ years working on a time-invariant variation of the Big Bang Theory.
Currently, Rosner sits tweeting in a bathrobe (winter) or a towel (summer). He lives in Los Angeles, California with his wife, dog, and goldfish. He and his wife have a daughter. You can send him money or questions at LanceVersusRick@Gmail.Com, or a direct message via Twitter, or find him on LinkedIn, or see him on YouTube. Here we – two long-time buddies, guy friends – talk about health foods and supplements.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, I wanted to talk about health products. You take a lot of pills; you take fewer now after the cancer scare. That’s all covered. I, in my farmwork, need a higher protein load for my day to feel good and strong for the next day and throughout the day. So, I’ve tried so many products and a regular diet. I have that, but just a little bit extra, so, protein bars and so on. One that I found to be actually very good is these Quest protein chips, and Muscle Cheff. Those crisps are pea protein, and Quest protein chips are something like whey protein. They have more protein than the crisps, so if I want a higher protein day, I do Quest; if I want a lower protein day, I’ll do Muscle Cheff. I find, though, if I just have them kind of on hand at the ranch or whatever, that’s great, especially for stall cleaning, which is very physically intensive.
Rick Rosner: So, do you have any idea how many grams of protein you’re eating a day?
Jacobsen: I would say with this stuff, it’s maybe an extra 40 or 50.
Rosner: So, in total, what are you doing? Maybe 100 grams of protein?
Jacobsen: Something like that.
Rosner: Because there are a-holes on Twitter who say, to be maximally studly, you got to do 200 grams a day, and I’m like that is ridiculous and also like really hard on your kidneys, and then the guy’s right back, “Bro my kidneys are perfect.” It’s like 200 grams is four cans of tuna. I measure based on my younger years. I base protein on cans of tuna. A can of tuna is about 50 grams of protein, and I would eat two cans a day. I would also supplement with a disgusting product called predigested protein, where they take all the parts of the cow that you can’t otherwise sell, throw them in a vat, break them down into amino acids and sell them as a foul syrup. There was a liquid protein diet in the late ’70s or early ’80s that would kill people because people would just drink the liquid protein. They would get potassium depleted, and they would have a heart attack. Half a banana would have saved them.
So, I have a long experience of eating tons of protein and my kidneys. I don’t know what they would look like if I hadn’t done that, but they’re pretty Swiss cheesy at this point. They have a lot of benign cysts, which are just like little pockets of the kidney. I don’t know if I did that or if I was just destined to have that. My kidneys work pretty well except for that one cancerous tumour I got five years ago, but I caught it early. I still like to do some protein, but we’re talking about 60 to 80 grams of protein a day.
Rosner: At the same time, you weigh nothing.
Jacobsen: Yeah, I only weigh about 140 pounds, maybe.
Jacobsen: I weigh 160-165.
Rosner: I’m 5’10 and a half if I stand very tall.
Jacobsen: I’m 5’11.
Rosner: So, we’re basically the same height and 165 to 170 was a really good muscly weight for me. So, you probably have my body as a younger person which is just rip to shreds via overwork.
Jacobsen: Yeah, I mean, the thing here is working so much; it’s something like that. At the same time, I don’t force myself so much. I just make sure I am consistent and don’t stress out because it’s seven days a week, and I don’t want to afford to take a day off. So, I think it’s been two years of slow buildup where I haven’t really noticed it, but I bet if I looked like what I was capable of when I first started compared to now, there is a massive difference; part of that’s diet. The point I wanted to make with this particular session was the fact of finding crisps and chips. I need bars.
Rosner: I just base my taste on what they give away for free at the gym and what I like; my favourite bar and basically protein bars, if they’re chocolatey, are basically candy bars with just a little bit of more protein thrown in, but you’re still eating them but the builder bars which comes in chocolate mint which is freaking delicious.
Jacobsen: I like the one bars in the Quest bars because there’s no sugar. And the thing is, like, you can get ones like that, and they’re delicious. It’s the same thing with those particular chips like the Quest chip. They taste like real chips.
Rosner: That’s good because I tried a high protein chocolate cereal. I think Carole may have eventually just thrown it out. The only way I could even stomach it was mixing it with like regular delicious cereal.
Jacobsen: Yeah, that’s the main point of doing this particular session. A lot of that stuff sucks, has sucked. You pointed this out like many sessions ago. I’m finding that I can find things that are actually delicious and that some regular foods are more delicious than them, and there are no real negative health consequences.
Rosner: I’ve drunk supplements since when I was a kid in the 70s. There was this stuff called Nutriment which was like a protein shake in a can with a lot of vitamins, and it was basically the same shit except for when it’s old people, they call it Boost.
Jacobsen: Oh, I like Glucerna; it’s also a wonderful product.
Rosner: Yeah, I use it as a coffee creamer.
Jacobsen: It’s amazing coffee creamer, and it’s amazingly delicious, and it’s not that expensive.
Rosner: I think Glucerna has a type of sweetening that doesn’t spike your blood sugar.
Jacobsen: Correct, that’s the reason for getting it. Again, all these are amazing products. I have no complaints about Glucerna, Quest protein chips, or these Muscle Cheff crisps.
Rosner: Protein powder is a problem because it makes a fucking mess out of… because when they make glue, they make it out of rendered horses; that glue is probably a lot of amino acids, because the protein powder just glues itself to whatever glass or spoon you’re using.
Jacobsen: Oh, you mean the isolates; those are terrible, but it’s a good way to get quick protein.
Rosner: Yeah, if you’re going to use, don’t get the powder, get it already mixed into a drink where you can throw away the container when you’re done because washing the cup/glass, spoon is a big pain. Also, it’s hard to get it to mix properly. A lot of it just falls down to the bottom of your drink.
Jacobsen: I will tell you I had to switch the automatic dishwasher here to heavy because it’s pretty bad on some of that stuff. I agree.
Rosner: Yeah, I mean, the protein is these long-chain molecules, and they’re very strong. I guess you use them to build muscle fibres out of, and that strength and the length just make it a very sticky thing. What I get in terms of protein is whatever’s on sale. It’s pretty much like there’s a corner of my grocery store where they have stuff about to expire, and there’s often a case of some nutritional supplement. I got a case of strawberry-flavored Boost-y stuff in my closet right now. Strawberry is a little bit disgusting, but it’s actually pretty good. I think it’s strawberry slim fast.
Jacobsen: I don’t like that product.
Rosner: Okay. Just a shot of it in coffee.
Jacobsen: Here are the products I would recommend: Glucerna chocolate, Quest protein nacho chips, Muscle Cheff’s salt and vinegar crisps, dark chocolate that’s Lindt frozen in your freezer; you take it out, you break it off, it’s nice and crumbly, and not like frozen single fruits, but the frozen fruit Medleys and then the frozen berries.
Rosner: Yeah, Carol makes smoothies out of those.
Jacobsen: Those are good, those are all great mixes, easy products. And then they have these kale salad mixes; they’re really easy and quick to make.
Rosner: I can’t deal with kale. When Carole buys salads in a bag, they’re very cabbage-heavy, and they disgust me.
Jacobsen: Well, I like them because you don’t have to use their dressing. You can make your own balsamic dressing; crush some garlic up, little extra olive oil, some red wine vinegar. Then, maybe some like Fiber One cereal, or something, you’re pretty much set.
Rosner: Yeah. So, alright, my preferred product. I already said Builder bars. Cliff Bars are pretty reliable, though, I don’t think they’re particularly high protein.
Jacobsen: They’re quite high sugar.
Rosner: Yeah, they’re basically candy bars that aren’t shaped like candy bars; they’re lumpier. Power Bars: I don’t think they even make Power Bars anymore.
Jacobsen: No, that sounds like a triple Gator power bar from that movie.
Rosner: Oh, the power bars were sponsored by a show I worked on for a while, so we had boxes of power bars around the office. I’d eat like three of them a day and get super constipated.
Jacobsen: That’s another thing.
Rosner: Magnesium; Carol got me on magnesium, which gives you a very gigantic and regular daily poop.
Jacobsen: I thought you were going to say something else, but you said the better thing. [Laughing]
Rosner: Okay.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://ffrf.org/news/releases/freethought-matters-spring-finale-dan-goes-to-oxford-to-debate-god-delusion/
Publication Date: May 24, 2024
Organization: Freedom From Religion Foundation
Organization Description: The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with 40,000 members and several chapters all over the country. Our purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
The super-super spring finale of “Freethought Matters,” the Freedom From Religion weekly TV show, was shot on location and chronicles FFRF Co-President Dan Barker’s recent debate there about God.FFRF Video Director Bruce Johnson accompanied Dan when the famous student Oxford Union Society, founded in 1823, invited him to debate whether God is a delusion. Believe it or not, it was Dan’s 140th debate over religion! The program takes viewers on a tour of Oxford locations and excerpts highlights from the robust debate as well as a short post-mortem in studio. Before the debate, Dan sat down with co-debater and secular sociologist Phil Zuckerman to have a relaxed conversation.
Said Phil: “I keep thinking about Shelley, who wrote a little pamphlet on atheism when he was a student at Oxford, was expelled when it was uncovered that he wrote this tract in the 1800s. And so the fact that you go from Shelley, this great British writer getting expelled for his atheism, to today, where [we are debating] ‘This house believes God is a delusion,’ it really tracks the secularization of Britain.”
Dan had the final word at the debate:
“Why does the existence of God need arguments? It seems like God is doing a great job of hiding himself, doesn’t it? And if he’s doing that, then why are you going to so much trouble to smoke him out of his hiding place? These absences that I mentioned make it highly unlikely that this God is a real being, something outside of my own mind, and much more likely that he is a delusion.”
Tune in to find out which side won the debate!
If you don’t live in any of the marquee towns where the show broadcasts on Sunday, you can already catch the interview on FFRF’s YouTube channel.
“Freethought Matters” now airs in:
- Chicago, WPWR-CW (Ch. 50), Sundays at 9 a.m.
- Los Angeles, KCOP-MY (Ch. 13), Sundays at 8:30 a.m.
- Madison, Wis., WISC-TV (Ch. 3), Sundays at 11 p.m.
- New York City, WPIX-IND (Ch. 11), Sundays at 10 a.m.
- San Francisco, KICU-IND (Ch. 36), Sundays at 10 a.m.
- Washington, D.C., WDCW-CW (Ch. 50 or Ch. 23 or Ch. 3), Sundays at 8 a.m.
NOTE: This is the final show of the spring season. “Freethought Matters” takes a summer hiatus and begins broadcasting again the first Sunday in September. Catch up over the summer with interviews from past seasons here.
Please tune in to “Freethought Matters” . . . because freethought matters.
P.S. Please tune in or record according to the times given above regardless of what is listed in your TV guide (it may be listed simply as “paid programming” or even be misidentified). To set up an automatic weekly recording, try taping manually by time or channel. And spread the word to freethinking friends, family or colleagues about a TV show, finally, that is dedicated to providing programming for freethinkers — your antidote to religion on Sunday morning!
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://ffrf.org/news/releases/ffrf-reports-calif-pastor-tim-thompson-to-irs-for-electioneering-infractions/
Publication Date: May 24, 2024
Organization: Freedom From Religion Foundation
Organization Description: The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with 40,000 members and several chapters all over the country. Our purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation has filed a formal complaint with the IRS over flagrant electioneering violations by a Southern California pastor whose efforts to elect Donald Trump were the subject this week of a major exposé by The Daily Beast.
FFRF’s letter documents a long standing pattern by Pastor Tim Thompson of using his tax-exempt church, the 412 Church Temecula Valley, and a related nonprofit, Our Watch by Tim Thompson, to promote the Inland Empire Family PAC and endorse candidates for office.
FFRF Staff Attorney Madeline Ziegler charges that both Our Watch with Tim Thompson and 412 Church Temecula Valley “appear to regularly and repeatedly misuse their status as 501(c)(3) entities to engage in electoral fundraising and otherwise intervene in political campaigns for elected office.”
The Daily Beast describes Thompson as a kind of Jack Hibbs wannabe, emulating Hibbs’ political takeover of the Chino Valley Unified School Board by helping to secure a Christian nationalist school board majority on the Temecula Valley Unified School District through his PAC. He has targeted LGBTQ-plus teachers and calls public education “Satan’s playground.” Our Watch, according to The Daily Beast, has promoted QAnon conspiracies. Thompson has visited Mar-a-Lago, traveled to Israel with AIPAC, and supported the Three Percenter militia movement. At least two members of the 412 Church have been convicted of participating in the Jan. 6 insurrection.
FFRF’s memo to the IRS catalogs a series of flagrant violations of the IRS code, detailing how Our Watch with Tim Thompson has been coordinating with and promoting the fundraising efforts of the Inland Empire Family PAC, which is a legal no-no. For instance, Our Watch’s Instagram account put up a joint post with the PAC to promote a fundraiser on May 22 featuring Donald Trump’s personal attorney Alina Habba and his son, Eric. Another joint post advertising a fundraising event that “we” are holding hyped the PAC and where to buy fundraising tickets, bragging about the PAC’s “track record of past successes . . aiming for significant achievements in the upcoming elections.”
FFRF’s letter documents that Our Watch publishes a “voter guide consisting of just a list of preferred candidates.” Our Watch is interceding on behalf of a school board member, Joseph Komrosky, whom Thompson had backed, who is facing a June recall.
Other endorsements by Our Watch include recently posting on YouTube and Instagram an interview by Thompson with California U.S. Senate candidate Sharleta Bassett, in which he endorses her candidacy. The video even solicits campaign donations. Two years ago, Our Watch Instagram promoted a fundraiser for a candidate for U.S. office shortly before the election, endorsing him as a “patriot & godly candidate.”
Likewise the 412 Church website has advertised the PAC’s May 22 fundraiser under its Events section, with direct links to the PAC’s website. FFRF previously reported to the IRS that in August 2021, Thompson advised his church congregation, and then members of the public over social media, to support the recall of California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
“Thompson has crossed the line into illegal partisan campaigning,” Ziegler is quoted telling The Daily Beast. “Nonprofit organizations, including churches, cannot support or oppose candidates for office.”
“Some religious leaders would have people believe that these are special restrictions targeting only pastors,” The Daily Beast quotes Ziegler explaining, “but the prohibition on electoral campaigning applies equally to all 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations.”
That’s why it’s crucial churches follow IRS rules because they receive special treatment in not having to follow the usual nonprofit reporting requirements.
“Churches are financial black holes,” Ziegler said, “and without enforcement of the IRS’s regulations, churches can act as PACs whose donations are uniquely untraceable, or take in unlimited tax-deductible contributions and use those funds for political campaigning.”
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://ffrf.org/news/releases/ffrf-minn-school-district-must-reject-ten-commandments-proposal/
Publication Date: May 23, 2024
Organization: Freedom From Religion Foundation
Organization Description: The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with 40,000 members and several chapters all over the country. Our purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is calling on a Minnesota school district to nix a shockingly misguided proposal to erect a Ten Commandments display on school property.
FFRF was informed that on May 20, former board member Dennis Dodge proposed to display the Ten Commandments on Park Rapids Area Schools property. He attached a blueprint with the proposed display on one side, and a quote on the other side, reading, “We must put God back into our educational system before we lose our children and this great nation.”
Dodge claimed, “Satan seems to be winning because we are allowing him to…Our society has lost its moral compass, its values and its respect for each other…if we can save even one child from Satan’s grapes, it is worth every cent we spend on this donation, because God’s children are priceless.”
FFRF Patrick O’Reily Legal Fellow Hirsh Joshi sent a legal complaint letter to the district, noting that the scheme is patently unconstitutional. In the seminal case on Ten Commandments displays in schools—Stone v. Graham—the U.S. Supreme Court held that a Ten Commandments poster erected in public schools violated the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause because the display’s purpose and the commandments themselves are preeminently religious in nature. FFRF has successfully litigated Ten Commandments cases in three school districts.
Comically, the sketch of the proposed display is titled the “Ten Commandments,” while listing only nine commandments. “The monument sends the message that school children don’t need to learn how to count,” Joshi quips.
“Counting and the Constitution are two things schools should teach kids,” adds Joshi. “This proposal fails on both counts.”
In his proposal, Dodge cited a Supreme Court case allowing a long-standing public Ten Commandment display to remain on government — not public school — property, rationalizing the site contained many monuments and was akin to a museum. He fails to mention the majority’s distinction between the Ten Commandments display on the Texas Capitol grounds and those in schools with a captive audience of schoolchildren. The fact that Dodge suggests the biblical edicts be donated is similarly irrelevant. Government speech—particularly in the classroom—may not be religious.
Erecting a Ten Commandments sends a forbidden message to nonadherents that they are outsiders and not full members of the political community, excluding the 49 percent of Generation Z students who are religiously unaffiliated, FFRF further points out.
“It should be obvious to anyone that the First Commandment alone — ‘Thou shalt have no other gods before me’ — is the antithesis of our First Amendment, which, by the way, is one of the principles that truly makes America great,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “The Park Rapids Area Schools has no business telling students which gods to have, how many gods to have or whether to have any gods at all.”
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://ffrf.org/news/releases/ffrf-calls-out-tenn-school-district-for-unconstitutional-reading-assignment/
Publication Date: May 23, 2024
Organization: Freedom From Religion Foundation
Organization Description: The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with 40,000 members and several chapters all over the country. Our purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is urging a Tennessee school district to rein in a soccer coach attempting to proselytize student athletes via a religious reading assignment.
A concerned parent informed the state/church watchdog that the boy’s soccer team coach at Hendersonville High School (Gallatin, Tenn.) assigned a book with a pervasively sectarian message to the team late last year, saying: “Every player is expected to have a copy by January 9th. If you have any questions please let me know.” The complainant reported that the coach wanted the team to read the book together.
“Student athletes are especially susceptible to coercion,” FFRF Patrick O’Reiley Legal Fellow Hirsh M. Joshi wrote to Superintendent Scott Langford. “Religious assignments for student athletes place them in a difficult position: They must either go along with their coach’s religious preferences—likely against their own conscience—or openly dissent at risk of their team standing.” It is improper and unacceptable for a public school coach to impose his personal religious beliefs onto students in this manner.
The book in question, Coach Wooden’s Pyramid of Success by Coach John Wooden and Jay Carthy, contains frequent references to religion and faith. Particularly, Wooden’s Christian viewpoints are stressed as a factor leading to success. One Google Books’s preview features the word “bible” roughly 30 times, the word “God” 70 times, and the word “lord” roughly 20 times. Every chapter concludes with a prayer. Cumulatively, the 160-page book contains hundreds of references to Christianity. Particularly concerning is a quote in which the authors justify law-breaking in the name of Jesus:
Just to survive, Christians will be tempted to be dishonest about their faith. Peter faced a similar quandary. The Pharisees didn’t like his preaching and threatened to throw him in jail if he didn’t shut up. He told them no and kept preaching. Why did Peter violate existing law? For the greater good of all, he had to conform to the higher laws of God. We can call this a just cause…Peter broke the law for a just cause and went to jail. At some point, each of us may need to make a similar just-cause decision. There are powerful forces attempting to remove God from the fabric of our society. The day may come when we must decide whether we will follow a law of the land or the Law of God. Our honesty may be tested.
The First Amendment’s Establishment Clause requires government neutrality between religions, and between religion and nonreligion. It is uncontroversial for a coach to assign a book to build camaraderie, but this assignment did the opposite: It sowed division between those who agree with the book—Christians who share Coach Wooden’s “old school” views on religion—and those who do not. A student who does not share the Christian beliefs mentioned in Wooden’s Pyramid of Success faces a dilemma: Leave the team or betray their conscience.
“Like any public school employee, the coach’s actions must be consistent with the First Amendment. While Coach Wooden’s Pyramid of Success comes short of assigning the bible itself, the biblical references coupled with the external citations transmogrifies the simple book club into something more— a bible study,” writes Joshi. Promoting religious viewpoints through the school’s extra curricular activities needlessly alienates students and families who are not Christian, including those who are nonreligious. At least a third of Generation Z (those born after 1996) have no religion, with a recent survey revealing almost half of Gen Z qualify as religiously unaffiliated “nones.”
FFRF brings attention to a compelling point from Wooden himself:
I served as a basketball coach at a public institution; therefore, I didn’t talk about my faith. I never felt it was appropriate. I always had a bible on my desk and I intentionally led by example, based on Christ’s teaching; but I wasn’t vocal about my beliefs. I just attempted to demonstrate them by the way I live my life…[F]aith in God wasn’t a part of my curriculum, so I didn’t preach. I’m not a minister in that sense. I was a basketball coach who was charged with producing good men and graduates who also played basketball…I never tried to change someone’s faith. I saw that as God’s job, not mine.
FFRF is urging the district to instruct all staff and faculty to refrain from proselytizing, including assigning books containing religious messages.
“This extracurricular assignment is extremely offensive in multiple ways, including using faith as a justification for breaking the law,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “Students need to know that they do not need to pray to play at Sumner County Schools.”
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://ffrf.org/news/releases/ffrf-alito-must-go-he-should-resign-or-be-impeached/
Publication Date: May 22, 2024
Organization: Freedom From Religion Foundation
Organization Description: The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with 40,000 members and several chapters all over the country. Our purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
Alito must go.
It’s time to demand the resignation — or impeachment and removal — of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.
The New York Times reports: “The justice’s beach house displayed an ‘Appeal to Heaven’ flag, a symbol carried on Jan. 6 and associated with a push for a more Christian-minded government.”
The Times obtained photographs and reports from “a half-dozen neighbors and passers-by” showing the Appeal to Heaven flag flying at the Alito home on Long Beach Island in July and September 2023, plus Google street view image verification.
The “Appeal to Heaven” flag and movement exist to “honor the Lord by supporting candidates for public office who are believers in Jesus Christ, who regularly attend and display a commitment to an evangelical, Gospel-centered church and who will commit to live and govern based on biblical … principles.” Its causes include protecting heteronormativity and defining life at conception, a sales tax-based system, and a rigorous view of the Tenth Amendment. The flag was widely displayed by Jan. 6 rioters.
The Times points out that a major case to do with Jan. 6 — challenging whether insurrectionists invading the Capitol could be charged with obstruction — was before the court during the period the Appeal to Heaven flag was flying in Alito’s New Jersey home.
Only last week the Times revealed that an upside-down American flag, a symbol of distress, had been displayed at his home in Virginia in 2021, almost immediately after the Jan. 6 insurrection and at a time when the high court had been considering a number of cases to do with “stolen election” claims by Donald Trump. Pro-Trump forces urged individuals to display the upside-down flag as a sign of protest against certification of Joe Biden.
The upside down flag at the Alito home was apparently up for days, even as the court weighed in on a case challenging the outcome of the election. Alito did not recuse himself, but voted to hear the case. Fortunately he was in the minority. Alito has shrugged off the ethical breach and pusillanimously blames his wife, saying he had nothing to do with her feud with an anti-Trump neighbor.
Alito is not, of course, alone as a transgressor. As already long documented, Justice Clarence Thomas is likewise compromised, failing to recuse himself from any Jan. 6 cases even though he was aware that his wife, Ginni Thomas, was actively working at the White House to subvert the election.
An upside-down flag flagrantly displayed political partisanship. That is bad enough. But the “Appeal to Heaven” flag goes beyond that by signaling Alito’s fealty to Christian nationalist principles.
Clearly, it is impossible for Americans, particularly Americans who are the target of the Christian nationalist culture war, to expect an impartial vote on the social and political issues roiling our polarized democracy.
If Alito has any respect for his office, he would resign. Assuming otherwise, the House should do its job and impeach Alito and the Senate should convict him. Now. Then it should pass legislation to finally enforce judicial ethics at the Supreme Court.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://ffrf.org/news/releases/ffrf-commends-calif-school-districts-swift-action-to-protect-atheist-students/
Publication Date: May 22, 2024
Organization: Freedom From Religion Foundation
Organization Description: The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with 40,000 members and several chapters all over the country. Our purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is applauding the Tulare Joint Union High School District’s quick response to its complaint that a high school teacher was promoting religion in class and bullying nonreligious students.
FFRF recently reported that a teacher at Mission Oak High School in Tulare, Calif., had been using his position to promote his personal religious views to a captive audience of students. FFRF’s complainant reported that the teacher had placed several inappropriate religious and political displays, including on a fridge in his classroom, reading “Pray without ceasing,” “Unborn Lives Matter” and “Let’s Go Brandon,” a euphemism for “F… Joe Biden.” Additionally, on May 2, the teacher reportedly instigated a discussion with students about “666” being the “devil’s number,” which led to a student revealing their atheism. The teacher responded that an atheist is “a fool,” and students in the class reportedly made signs in the air of crosses or of praying.
“It is well settled that public schools may not show favoritism toward or coerce belief or participation in religion,” FFRF attorney Chris Line wrote to Superintendent Lucy Van Scyoc. “Further, courts have continually held that public school districts may not display religious messages or iconography in public schools.”
FFRF iterated the district’s obligation under the law to make certain that its teachers are not violating the rights of its students by singling out students for their beliefs — or lack of beliefs, proselytizing or otherwise using their position to promote personal religious beliefs. Parents have the constitutional right to oversee their children’s religious or nonreligious upbringing. By imposing his religious beliefs on students, the teacher’s actions also alienated students who are part of the 49 percent of Generation Z who are religiously unaffiliated.
The district was receptive to FFRF’s message and took swift action.
Scyoc wrote to FFRF personally, informing the national state/church watchdog of the action taken. “The district immediately addressed the issue and the stickers have been removed or covered so that they are not visible,” she wrote. “The district has also spoken with the teacher about the items raised in your letter and we can assure you that the teacher understands the concerns.” The superintendent also provided a form in case the parents and student wish to pursue a more formal complaint.
“The district took expeditious and responsible action to protect the rights of conscience of its students, including a student belonging to a minority that is all-too-often and unfairly stigmatized in our society,” comments FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor wrote. “This was an egregious situation and we are confident it will not recur.”
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://ffrf.org/news/releases/christian-domination-of-us-religious-freedom-agency-undercuts-purpose/
Publication Date: May 21, 2024
Organization: Freedom From Religion Foundation
Organization Description: The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with 40,000 members and several chapters all over the country. Our purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation calls on congressional leaders and President Biden to appoint those who reflect the religious and nonreligious makeup of the United States to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).
Congressional House leaders recently appointed three new commissioners to the agency, while President Joe Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell reappointed two others. Unfortunately, all five are Christian, leaving only one non-Christian on the six-member body.
The USCIRF must have an even-handed perspective on religion to remain objective and maintain credibility in its recommendations, asserts FFRF.
The 96-page 2024 USCIRF annual report, which investigates and makes important policy recommendations regarding religious freedom violations on a country-by-country basis around the world, mentions blasphemy almost once per page. Laudably, as FFRF commented when it was recently published, the report includes a separate compendium about blasphemy laws, recommending that the U.S. State Department pressure countries to stop enforcing the archaic statutes. However, the U.S. would be on firmer ground demanding that other countries remove their anti-blasphemy laws if we first remove our own, given that eight U.S. states still have blasphemy laws on the books.
The new slate of appointees and re-appointees — Vicky Hartzler (Speaker Johnson), Maureen Ferguson (Speaker Johnson), Asif Mahmood (Minority Leader Jeffrees), Stephen Schneck (President Biden), and Eric Ueland (Senate Minority Leader McConnell) — are all Christian. The only other commissioner, Susie Gelman, is Jewish and serves through May 2025. Gelman was appointed by President Biden.
New appointee Vicky Hartzler raises particular concerns, as she is a former member of the U.S. House who reportedly rose to prominence as the “face of the campaign to ban same-sex marriage in Missouri,” pushing to insert her personal anti-LGBTQAI-plus religious beliefs into the law. FFRF finds it unlikely that Hartzler will be able to accurately identify and report on similar religiously motivated discriminatory conduct abroad as the religious freedom violations they are.
Apart from any concern over specific commissioners, it is dismaying that five of the six USCIRF commissioners are Christian, when almost a third of American adults are religiously unaffiliated, and when the “Nones” (religiously unaffiliated) are the largest “denomination” by religious identification.
“How can we have any confidence USCIRF is looking out for the rights of nonreligious citizens when we have no representation?” asks FFRF Senior Policy Counsel Ryan Jayne. “We’ve seen good reporting of anti-blasphemy laws in the past, but those are mostly from reports on Muslim majority countries, another demographic with no USCIRF representation.”
USCIRF has an apparent need of a boost in visibility and prestige, as its detailed annual reports attract little media attention and its State Department recommendations are often ignored. The current imbalance of commissioners’ religious identities creates an appearance of bias that may undermine USCIRF’s credibility, which is the opposite of what it should be aiming for. FFRF calls on congressional leaders and President Biden to commit to appointing future commissioners who will bring diversity to USCIRF so that it better reflects the fabric of the American people.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://ffrf.org/news/releases/ffrf-shuts-down-proselytizing-teacher-in-raleigh-county-w-v/
Publication Date: May 21, 2024
Organization: Freedom From Religion Foundation
Organization Description: The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with 40,000 members and several chapters all over the country. Our purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation has stopped a Raleigh County School District teacher from continuing to foist his religion on elementary schoolchildren.
A concerned Bradley Elementary School parent informed the state/church watchdog that a teacher at the school was abusing his position to proselytize and impose his personal religious beliefs onto students. The teacher reportedly began his classes with bible stories and ended them by leading students in prayer. This school-sponsored religious activity has been apparently occurring since at least 2019.
FFRF asked the district to ensure that the teacher is no longer discussing his religious beliefs with students, preaching to students, praying with students or in any way promoting religion to students.
“Students have the First Amendment right to be free from religious indoctrination in their public schools,” FFRF attorney Chris Line wrote to Raleigh County School District Superintendent Serena L. Starcher. “It is well settled that public schools may not show favoritism towards or coerce belief or participation in religion. When a teacher abuses his position to coerce young students to pray, that teacher violates students’ First Amendment rights.”
The Raleigh County School District has an obligation under the law to make certain that its teachers are not violating the rights of its students by proselytizing or using their position to promote their personal religious beliefs, FFRF emphasizes. Parents have the constitutional right to determine their children’s religious or nonreligious upbringing. Here, the teacher has violated the trust that our complainant and all other parents place in Raleigh County’s teachers to follow the Constitution and refrain from imposing their own religious beliefs on the children they teach.
FFRF is pleased to have recently received an emailed response from Superintendent Starcher indicating that the district investigated the complaint and addressed the situation. FFRF’s complainant has confirmed the teacher is no longer reading bible stories or praying with students, and expressed their gratitude to FFRF for helping to end this constitutional violation.
“Elementary-school-aged children are truly a vulnerable captive audience,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “A classroom teacher wields so much authority as an official representative of the district, and this was a clear abuse of power. Every family deserves to know that their children won’t be preached at during school hours.”
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://ffrf.org/news/releases/ffrf-to-ala-school-district-stop-gaslighting-over-your-religious-assembly/
Publication Date: May 20, 2024
Organization: Freedom From Religion Foundation
Organization Description: The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with 40,000 members and several chapters all over the country. Our purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
Despite an evangelist bragging over social media about his “talk about Jesus” and “hundreds of teenagers…receiv[ing] prayer” during a high school assembly, an Alabama school district is doubling down and insisting it was “not a religious assembly,” charges a state/church watchdog.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation earlier this month wrote to Elmore County School District advising them that the principal of Stanhope Elmore High School, located in Millbrook, inappropriately permitted the religious assembly.
Multiple district parents reported that Recovery ALIVE Founder/CEO John Eklund was allowed to deliver a mandatory “mental health” seminar religious assembly where students were subjected to Christian proselytizing. Recovery ALIVE is a Christian 12-step program that “prioritizes the Power of Jesus through the Holy Spirit to raise Hope From The Dead.” It “harnesses the unchanging truth of Jesus Christ and His word to a living, organic process, in order to reach and ministry to an ever-changing world.”
In response to FFRF’s letter, Superintendent Richard Dennis claims that the assembly was not mandatory for students, and was not a “religious assembly.” Dennis claims that the “purpose of the assembly was to provide students with tools and information to deal with overcoming anxiety and emotional difficulties,” and that the “crux of Mr. Eklund’s address was to encourage students to seek help and therapy for any mental issues that they may experience, not religion.”
The superintendent’s claims are in stark contrast to Eklund’s Facebook post that included multiple photos of students gathered in prayer, along with an admission that he had come in to “talk about Jesus and Recovery in a large public high school.” In a post about the assembly on Facebook, Eklund said that he “told Principal Fuller at Stanhope Elmore High School that [he] was amazed at his willingness to let [them] come in and talk about Jesus and Recovery in a large public high school.” He reported that Fuller’s response was, “I’ve been doing this for 26 years. If I’m gonna get in trouble, it might as well be for Jesus!” The post also indicated that “during two assemblies, hundreds of teenagers flooded central court to receive prayer for struggles of value and worth.” The post emphasized that students participated in prayer at this school assembly and thanked Shoal Creek Baptist Church for “breathing life into the vision of bringing the Christ centered 12 steps into local public high schools!”
FFRF’s complainants, including two parents, reported that during the assembly Eklund told students that “Jesus Christ set him on his path of redemption” and “he will save them too.” Eklund reportedly offered students money to come down and be “prayed over.” He also reportedly told students to attend church and passed out pamphlets advertising Shoal Creek Baptist Church.
While the superintendent’s response to FFRF indicated that “school faculty and staff will continue to be reminded of students’ rights,” the district’s denial of the true religious nature of the assembly raises concern that the district would allow Eklund or other evangelists to target a captive audience of students in the future.
With the help of local parents, FFRF will vigilantly monitor the District’s actions going forward to ensure this unconstitutional activity does not recur. FFRF recently settled a lawsuit against a West Virginia school district after it similarly allowed a preacher to recruit students during the school day (Mays v. Cabell County Board of Education, 2022). As part of that settlement, the district agreed to pay FFRF nearly $175,000 in attorney fees.
“We’re calling on the district to stop gaslighting the situation and adopt clear policy disallowing religious assemblies masquerading as secular seminars,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “Elmore School District must take action to protect its students from preying (and praying) evangelists.”
You can read FFRF’s original letter here.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://ffrf.org/news/releases/ffrf-tv-show-pays-tribute-to-acclaimed-philosopher-daniel-dennett/
Publication Date: May 16, 2024
Organization: Freedom From Religion Foundation
Organization Description: The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with 40,000 members and several chapters all over the country. Our purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation’s TV show this week is in homage to one of the most famous thinkers of our time.Philosopher and FFRF Honorary Director Daniel C. Dennett, who died last month at age 82, was a leading figure in academia, as well as an eloquent popularizer of philosophy, ethical ideas and atheism. He was university professor emeritus at Tufts University and the author of many books, including Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, Consciousness Explained, Intuition Pumpsand Other Tools for Thinking and the bestselling Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. In honor of his life and work, FFRF is rebroadcasting an interview with him that first aired last November about his recent memoir, I’ve Been Thinking.
“The cause of it is the physical universe — without any meaning, without any purpose,” Dennett told “Freethought Matters” co-hosts Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor in answer to a question about the meaning of life and its cause. “But that has made wonderful things for you and our friends and democracy and art and music. All these fantastic phenomena, they’re all products of a churning and ultimately Darwinian process. Why isn’t that meaning enough?”
If you don’t live in any of the marquee towns where the show broadcasts on Sunday, you can already catch the interview on FFRF’s YouTube channel. New shows go up every Thursday.
“Freethought Matters” now airs in:
- Chicago, WPWR-CW (Ch. 50), Sundays at 9 a.m
- Los Angeles, KCOP-MY (Ch. 13), Sundays at 8:30 a.m.
- Madison, Wis., WISC-TV (Ch. 3), Sundays at 11 p.m.
- New York City, WPIX-IND (Ch. 11), Sundays at 10:00 a.m.
- San Francisco, KTVU/KICU-IND (on broadcast Ch. 36 and Cable 6), Sundays at 10 a.m.
- Washington, D.C., WDCW-CW (Ch. 50 or Ch. 23 or Ch. 3), Sundays at 8 a.m.
(To view details on channel variations depending on your provider, click here.)
“Freethought Matters” goes on summer hiatus in a couple of weeks before resuming on the first Sunday in September. Don’t miss the final show for the spring season airing next week, which documents FFRF Co-President Dan Barker’s recent trip to Oxford to debate whether “God is a delusion.” The episode also prominently features secular studies pioneer and author Phil Zuckerman, who was part of the debating team.
Catch interviews from past seasons here.
Please tune in to “Freethought Matters” . . . because freethought matters.
P.S. Please tune in or record according to the times given above regardless of what is listed in your TV guide (it may be listed simply as “paid programming” or even be misidentified). To set up an automatic weekly recording, try taping manually by time or channel. And spread the word to freethinking friends, family or colleagues about a TV show, finally, that is dedicated to providing programming for freethinkers — your antidote to religion on Sunday morning!
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/04/21
[Recording Start]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I wanted to talk about books. Say, four or five thousand years ago, the idea of a book wasn’t a thing; you had scrolls. You had 1% of the population who were literate in advanced society at the time, like the Egyptians with the scribes. Print and press came around; you had religious texts; they were books, but there were more collections of books that were then compiled and called things like the Bible. From my view, from these mythologies, you had literature developed to some degree, but you had books outside of that that have taken on more critical… at large, even though you have things like some of those published…
Rick Rosner: It took 2,000 years to develop the technology of a book.
Jacobsen: Yeah, and then you get times when you have things like Harry Potter, which has almost as many books as the Bible’s history. So, there is an economics of information presented in the literature, which also changes as technology changes. So, I noticed this as someone who has read the news writes news or opinion pieces or critical articles, etc. and does interviews; things like social media, the new technologies that are based around communication networks and so on, change how people consume information. Therefore, they change how people consume things like books, too. They may read them, but there’s a different environment in which they read them that changes things. So, I want to get your thoughts on how that changing environment, even though you have those same technologies, will change how people frame and consume information in books because how they’re consuming information already in social media, Twitter, and so on are changing too.
Rosner: Let me start with myself where. I used to read five books a week. I tried to read a book daily in the 80s and the 90s. Now, I’m down to a book a month, and it’s a struggle to find the time. There’s all this stuff I should be doing less than I do, which is running to social media, so I read a ton of words a day, but only some of those words are in the form of a book. My wife has a similar thing; she and I have read many books, so we get easily frustrated with books that don’t deliver the efficiency we want them to. Most books are written by people who have yet to read as many books as my wife, and I have seen as many TV shows or movies. Like, I’m trying to write this book, and Carol has written the whole first draft of a book, and in my book, I want it all to be candy. I don’t wish for any passages that people struggle to get through to get to the good stuff; it has to be all good stuff, which is challenging.
For decades, I’ve gone to the library, and just if a book seems interesting, then I’ll crack it open, and I’ll see how many paragraphs breaks it has per page, and if it has fewer than two, if it’s just these long paragraphs, then I might put it back because it seems like a slog. So yeah, people, me in particular, because we’re spoiled by the flood of words coming at us, words that can be highly tailored to our interests, our patience with books is much reduced. Also, everybody knows that in the book era, the pre-Google era, if you wanted to know the answer to a question, you had to go to the library, find a book on the subject you were interested in and hope that the answer to your question was contained in there or a newspaper; go to the microfilm. Microfilm and Microfiche: Have you ever used that stuff for research?
Jacobsen: 100% I have. I had a great time.
Rosner: So, you know what a pain it is. You have to go someplace; you have to get these little boxes that have this kind of film reels, you have to find a vacant machine, you have to feed it into the machine, you have to fast forward until you get to the pertinent date; it’s a significant pain in the ass, right?
Jacobsen: You make it sound more painful than it is. It shouldn’t be that much pain.
Rosner: All right, if you’re good at it, I’m sure you can do it efficiently, but compared to Google, where you get the answer within 15 seconds, Google’s part of it is a third of a second. It’s you typing it in, and it takes 15 seconds. Well, not if you’re good at it, but you can do it in about three seconds. So, when you look at what gets made into TV and movies, at this point, I would rather see a project created from a book than read the book itself, especially if it’s made into a film that takes two hours versus an eight-episode/ 8 Hour series. Even so, more books are published now than ever before though more garbage books are published now than ever before because people can use automation to publish bullshit books. Type a command into AI that says give me an 80,000-word summary of The Grapes of Wrath with dialogue and scenes, and within a minute, probably much less, you’ll get this book-length version of The Grapes of Wrath, which you can throw onto Amazon as The Grapes of Wrath. Some suckers will buy it, and because of the ease with which you can plagiarize a thing, I think Amazon is now imposing rules on these; you can call them authors, but they’re not really, where you can publish more than four books a day.
Anyway, the market is flooded with garbage versions of every book from any reading public, right?
Jacobsen: Sure, it’s tricky with the number of books or writing styling itself as a book. I approach a book where typically it’s a proper collection of articles that have been thoroughly researched, but most books that are now published are self-published, which changes the feel of a book. It’s almost like taking away the Bible from the priest class and giving it to the laity or giving it to someone close to the laity, like a pastor, as opposed to a priest or an Archbishop. It removes that sense of magic around a book, and so we’re witnessing a more realistic view of what a book is and having a desacralization of the image of a book we’ve had for so long.
Rosner: Should a book still be a book because when you read an article online, it’s full of hyperlinks? It’s got a few paragraphs.
Jacobsen: Right. I submitted an article of 4,000 words today and put in a day’s work yesterday. It would be at least 30, 40, or 50 links.
Rosner: So, if somebody wants to learn more, needs help understanding a term, or is skeptical of your claim, they can click on something and get more information. Even if a book isn’t hyperlinked, I haven’t done this with a book, but I assume there are apps where you aim your phone at the phrase that you’re curious about, and there’s probably some Google capture thing. Are you familiar with something where you can capture an image of part of a book page, which will send you to many places on your phone?
Jacobsen: I know you could take a picture of something, and it’ll make the script for you. You could copy and paste that and then find out where it’s from, translate it into another language, or translate any language back into English based on the text sent.
Rosner: But there should be something that links it up, too. You aim your phone at the book, and it hyperlinks you. Suppose I’m reading a Miami crime novel by Dave Barry or Carl Hiaasen, and there are some references I don’t get. In that case, I should be able to take a picture of it, or if there’s something about a gator wrestling roadside attraction and I’m interested in that whole thing, I mean, I can always type in Florida Gator wrestling, or I should be able to take a picture.
Books aren’t radio. Radio has gotten crappy because radio was the most significant, most creative medium of the time in the 1930s; it was cutting-edge, with radio and movies. They had a vast viewing public, but then TV came along, films improved, and radio fell. Now, the people who end up on radio are often mediocre unless they’re good enough to have gotten a deal to be part of serious satellite radio like Howard Stern. Is Howard Stern great? Radio greatness differs from other forms of greatness because you look at the two geniuses who reshaped radio: Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern. Rush Limbaugh found out that you could keep angry white guys who do much driving, angry conservative white guys, and you can keep them hooked into four hours a day of the Rush Limbaugh Show for three hours. Then, they’ll stay tuned for more conservative content. He figured that out and developed an empire.
Then, Howard Stern found out that other people, that liberals or just horny guys or just Bros, would listen to 3-4 hours a day of talking about sex and boobies and dirty talk and farts; both intelligent guys, but if you try to listen to their stuff, it’s hard to hear. It’s barely worth your time. If there’s anything else that you could direct your attention to, you will because it’s not good; it’s just good in the context of being able to do the trick of doing four hours of it every day. So, radio is, to some extent, just a fallen technology. And books, you could argue that literature is a fallen technology in different ways. It requires a kind of attention that we are less and less willing to spare for a book. To some extent, radio has changed your Sirius; Carol has paid for me to have Sirius, and I listen to standup routines. They have about six channels, so just standup comedy, and it’s been edited so you get the best, say, 90 seconds of somebody’s routine.
If you’re listening to Howard Stern four hours a day, there might be three minutes of greatness where somebody happens to say something amusing. Still, with these standup stations, somebody has gone through and picked out the best sound bites from the best comedians, and I don’t know how technology will change to make books more relevant. One way is that they just get adapted, that if you write a book, the money isn’t in getting the book published; the money is in the deal you make when it gets turned into TV or movies.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/04/21
[Recording Start]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I was thinking about building off something you were kind of semi-formulating; the idea that after 20, most days are pretty dull, and so you sort of have to jazz up your day or, like a lot of it, it’s just space-filling and some kind of trying to refocus your attention.
Rick Rosner: I’m looking at it in two contexts. Carole is writing this semi-fiction book incorporating letters and documents between my parents before and during their short marriage. Right now, she’s writing about when my mom got increasingly disgruntled with her marriage and her life and work situation in Albuquerque in 1960. So, she’s trying to convincingly capture that mood and the transition from my parents loving each other to hating each other. We’re looking at historical details and also details from everyday life. I know Albuquerque doubled in population from 1940 to 1950, America’s fastest-growing city, and then again from 1950 to 1960, supermarkets were opening up. I lived in Albuquerque from the 60s on for a month every year when my dad visited, and I’m not a fan of Albuquerque. You’ve got these wide streets with nothing along them except for chain restaurants, pond shops, bail bonds, ugly architecture, and brown stucco forever. I want some of that because my mom shared my disdain for Albuquerque. Trying to capture that and the details of vague annoyance with everyday life.
I’m trying to write about the 2030s, and the central character in my novel is very privileged, wealthy and pampered. So, his life will be shinier and more science fiction-y because he’s deeply involved with tech and has medical issues that require a bunch of high-tech support. However, I’m still thinking of the everydayness of the 2030s compared to now, where things will essentially be the same. The moment-to-moment experience of the science fiction future shortly will look quite like now and chime in with any other phase changes you can think of. One of our most significant changes was using smartphones from 2008 to 2009, which changed everybody’s day-to-day behaviour. Before smartphones, you had cell phones and flip phones, but they weren’t something you looked at every minute. They didn’t do much, and people used them for actual calls. Besides that, they would go back into your purse, and you could ignore them. If you could text on them at all, texting was a massive pain in the ass. There needed to be a key for each letter of the alphabet. Each key, a physical key, corresponded to three letters, and you had to scroll to the letter you wanted. It was a pain, and a few people texted. If you were going to be a texting person, you got a blueberry.
Smartphones have made constant contact with the internet and social media easy. That’s a change. So, will we have some other change by 2030? Not exactly; I think that our devices will become even more intimately linked like some hipster folks; they will maybe sell devices that ride you that maybe have little legs, and just instead of being in your hand, it’s either on your wrist or I mean we already have apple watches. Still, the face needs to be bigger for them to be as convenient as your phone. Whether it’s reasonable or not, I have like this little crawly kind of iPhone type things that just sort of perch on your shoulder, and so you don’t have to worry about them; they’re always with you, looking out at the world with you and offering input, but that’s more of a change in fashion than a phase change, than a behaviour change. If we have practical Google Glass or contact lenses that pipe information directly into you, I’m not sure if that changes the everyday tech experience. You may not get changes to everyday life that are as big as the smartphone change until you have chipped people being able to communicate and receive information with less mediation through the senses like direct-to-brain communication.
I wonder if people would want that or if it offers a significant advantage over just getting information through your senses. The information you obtain via some direct link still has to be translated into terms your brain can easily use. Those terms are often words and images which we already get. So, you can feel other people’s feelings, say by the 2040s, if both have interfaces, but I don’t know if that gets you much else. Being able to share thoughts with people directly would still be in the form of words and images, primarily with some feelings writing those, and I don’t know what gets people. I may have to think about it more, but I’m unsure. What do you think?
Jacobsen: I think computers are going to gradually become more and more intimately linked to everything that we do, and it’s going to be as barely noticeable in a historical context like our lifetimes that we noticed before, like I barely remember when Facebook was introduced and when phones were introduced, but now, they’re sort of pretty embedded into my life.
Rosner: In the 2030s or 2040s, you’re intimately linked to your own personal AI alter ego/concierge/curator/conscience. Are you familiar with Jimminey Cricket as a symbol of conscience?
Jacobsen: Not as for conscience, but I’m not into Cricket.
Rosner: All right, so in Pinocchio, he’s a young wooden boy who doesn’t know anything and gets in trouble, and Jimminey Cricket is this little cricket guy in a suit, I think, who acts as his conscience and says maybe don’t pull that bullshit, little wooden boy. Anyway, the AI will like be providing lots of guidance and I guess that will be a change, a voice in your head, in your ear that’s just constantly…. Like, if an ambassador at a significant state function, if you watch political shows on TV or like Selena Meyer, the VP on Veep, has an assistant hovering behind her whispering in her ear as people come up to her saying, this is so and so, reminding them of that person’s name and just giving them an information feed so they can look like they remember the person. So, I assume you’ll have AI doing that a lot, just like giving context for the world you’re moving through and offering strategies. I get boggled in the supermarket; I do almost none of our shopping—so, Carole’s the grocery shopper. When I do go to the grocery store, it’s pretty daunting; there’s just so much stuff. With an AI guiding me through the store, I could make more efficient choices; it would know my taste and nutritional preferences and be like a little whisperer guiding me through everything.
Jacobsen: Well, if it had more information about you, it could also tell you what you need to eat in terms of nutrition.
Rosner: Yeah, it will be a combination of you want to eat this stuff, you want stuff that tastes good, might point me to the Cool Whip but the generic stuff that has no fat, or it might tell me to some other treat that would offer a more fulfilling experience for not much. So, you’d have this and then would you want it? You’d get used to it. Would you have a slightly adversarial relationship with it? We know from our technology experience that it would not be exciting even though it’s science fiction-y that we would get used to it quickly. Our judgment of it would depend on what we thought about the content rather than the technology itself.
So, other everyday stuff is that we go to fewer places because we can access more things via our tech. Again, this feels entirely natural every day. We get stuff dropped off by Amazon every few days. We get our dog food from Chewy; we no longer do retail. That’s a huge change. When Carole and I go out, it’s to a place that still requires your presence in person. So, restaurants you still have to go to. You can have food dropped off, but we still go out to eat a couple of times a week, but we only go walking the Boulevard a little to look in stores. If you’re going to go shopping, it’s much more efficient to do it online.
The Ventura Boulevard is the leading retail drag across San Fernando Valley and much of the valley Tarzana, Encino, and Van Nuys. It’s a wreck, just lots of doomed enterprises or empty storefronts. Studio City is luckier than most stretches of Ventura in that we’ve got a ton of restaurants, and people still come here to go on the Boulevard. You’ve got a vanity project and boutiques like Lisa Rena, one of the Real Housewives. She has a boutique on Ventura Boulevard. Does it make money? I don’t understand how any retail in terms of clauses and notions can make money anymore, but it doesn’t have to; it can be a fun project for her.
So, you have this everydayness that the world, for most people, never feels shiny and new because market forces quickly knock down the deluxeness of new tech. As we’ve talked about, Cory Doctorow calls it enshittification that you hook people on new tech. Then you start making it crappier because the hooking phase is where tech companies will lose a lot of money, offering stuff to people that cost more than it makes them. Deals on Uber: Uber offers free introductory rides, and their rates have been cheap for years. Ube. Uber was losing tens of billions every year, and then Uber became more expensive once people became hooked on Uber. So, it’s a natural progression that this fancy new tech also feels shitty and very grubby and everyday-ish like cities. One of the innovations of Blade Runner was a depiction of a very futuristic but also very shitty city. Comparing that to Star Trek, which is a spotless and inspiring future, and now it’s the mark of a crap near-future science fiction movie or TV show that they have those same disvaguely market-driven dystopian rainy shitty urban streets with animated… the thing beyond neon which is instead of like sexy neon girls you have like a holographic animated stripper accosting you as you walk down this crappy street.
The near future won’t be radically different, and significant changes will still or not affect our day-to-day behaviour, just like going about vaguely discontented with stuff. At some point, say the 2040s, it’ll become clear that people will have opportunities to live a lot, decades longer which will change our behavioural clocks which you’re already seeing; people having less sex, having fewer babies, having them later, maybe taking longer to get their shit together. We’re going to have to figure out if jobs will change. It’s not a phase change, but it changes all the shit tech-mediated jobs that all these half jobs that are rip-offs like being an Uber driver or a door Dash driver or delivering for Amazon where you have to work your ass off, and if you do the math on what you’re making, it’s shitty money. So, I mean, that’s a phase change, though people have always had jobs that they hated and jobs that exploited and underpaid them. So, it’s less of a change than people using smartphones. The point of this thing is that the bummer-ness of the changes and their shitty-ness will mask the radical-ness of some of these changes.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/04/20
[Recording Start]
Rick Rosner: All right, so at the beginning of the last little session, I mentioned that I have been using a free version of the LLM, Large Language Model AI, called Claude. Claude comes in various flavours, including a fancy one you can pay for. Do you know the difference between the fancy ones you pay for and the free and cheap ones?
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: My suspicion is the depth of the programming because ChatGPT 3.5 is very different from 4.0. 4.0 has more creativity in the mix; the parameters are considered, and the data points are much broader in many dimensions than the ones you pay for.
Rosner: So, let us see, I am asking Claude himself. Well, it does not know, admits ignorance. “I do not have information about paid versions or different service tiers. I am Claude, an AI assistant created by Anthropic to be helpful, harmless, and honest. I cannot access details about Anthropic’s product plans or pricing models. I do not have any special insider information about the company beyond what is publicly available. My role is to have natural conversations and provide helpful information to users based on my training.” So, that seems like the opposite of insidious. I mean, even insidious AI would try to be the opposite of insidious.
In the previous session, I read 15 ideas Claude gave to start a rom-com. I am too cheap to pay for a pay version to see if the ideas would improve. I doubt it because, in things like a romcom or a Liam Neeson movie, it is generally not like a genius idea that makes the movie good or not; it is whether it is executed with care and cleverness. I saw a rom-com with Emilia Clarke called Last Christmas, which had a genius plot. I am not sure it was overly satisfying, but it did have some surprising plot twists and ones that make you slap your head and go, “Oh, I see where all this was leading to,” like all that lays out a bunch of clues. When all the clues come together, you say, “Ah!” The romance itself is satisfying, but the surprise that all this fucking around was covering up a hidden structure that finally gets revealed; that was cool, but most romcoms are not clever that way. They have clever dialogue, and they are not entirely predictable. You know they are going to fight; you know they will hate each other at some point, maybe in the beginning, and then after somebody does something that’s ill-advised in secret and that secret gets revealed, there is apologizing. If you can develop a structure that does not work like that but just the basic ideas, I do not think you would get better ones from a better AI.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/04/20
[Recording Start]
Rick Rosner: In our previous session, we were talking about how to present the everyday future, and there’s a very effective way to address issues like that in TV writers’ rooms, which is called breaking a story, or you get your writing team, ideally, a bunch of people who have a bunch of life experience and also writing expertise. You must get from point A to point B or determine what points to reach in a particular episode and break the story. Everybody throws out possible beats, and until everybody agrees upon each beat or has enough beats, you write stuff down on index cards. They still use index cards because everybody can see them, and you don’t have to have the writer’s assistant punch everything onto like a screen. Still, you have a team of people, and you throw out ideas until you have ideas that everybody agrees on, which is a promising way to go.
So, we could be a two-person team beating out the future. Some of the best shows on TV hire people with appropriate backgrounds. For example, a cop show will hire ex-detectives turned aspiring writers. What’s a way for a cop to confront a drug dealer? People have seen that happen dozens of times. If you have a former Vice Cop in your writer’s room, they can maybe instead of relying on everybody’s imagination, which is limited because they’ve never been cops. So they’re going to be building from a foundation of cliches; the cop can describe some stuff that maybe actually happened, which people who are good at imagining things could use. The story isn’t excellent or unexpected, but you can work from relevant experience.
Phil Rosenthal, the producer of Everybody Loves Raymond, tried to wrap every day by 6:00 p.m. He said to go home to your families a) because it’s nice to be with them and b) so you can have family experiences you can tell us about tomorrow, and we can weave them into the show. So, it’s an excellent way to work. There’s a similar thing with the Judd Apatow method in writing movies where you write your film, and it’s a comedy because Judd Apatow does comedies. Then you invite all your funny friends to a series of readthroughs, and as you go through the script, everybody throws out additional jokes for every plot beat or line in the movie. They were able to release two versions of Anchor Man 2 with the same plot beat for beat, line for line, except they had so many jokes that they could do a second movie where the same stuff happens, but there’s a different joke for every line, which is excellent.
We can look forward to when AI gets for good and for ill when AI gets smarter because AI is nothing but, at this point, a probabilistic fill-in-the-blank engine. People who know AI like to say it’s just a powerful auto-complete that you give it a prompt, and it uses all its Bayesian probability engines to figure out the most likely fill-ins for the prompt. You can ask the AI to give you 15 different ideas; say you’re writing a screenplay; what are 15 other ways a 32-year-old African American male who works as a CPA could meet a 31-year-old recently divorced woman who hates her job in brand management? You can say you have 15 ideas, and it will give you 15 ideas, and most of them will be cliché, maybe all of them, because the AI can only work off the fill-in-the-blanks based on what information you give.
I should type that in, and in the next session, I can tell you what the AI gives me. We’ll see how cliché it is, which will be plenty. I would bet you money that at least one of the 15 ways is somebody stumbling over something or people running into something, but you can work from that. Getting a list of clichés also helps you ensure you didn’t meet any possible ways to go that you could build using your imagination. In the future, more powerful AI may be able to come up with creative ways, which are both great for writers and terrible because when your AI is toting the barges, what need is there for you?
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/04/20
[Recording Start]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What did you learn about sleep that helps you live longer? Is there such a thing as too much sleep when you’re healthy?
Rick Rosner: Well, the chapter in this guy’s book, and I’ve forgotten the guy’s name, he said eight hours is what you want to shoot for, which seems like a lot. I’ve gotten by on five or six hours a night and a nap. I’ve been sleeping six to seven hours plus perhaps a nap, and I remember my dreams better, which isn’t that great because, in my dreams, the common theme is that I’m barely failing at something. I have some tasks to do, and as I try to go around and complete them, more complications arise, and some of the elements that I’m supposed to be gathering disappear, which all makes sense, just not in that your dreaming brain isn’t so great at keeping track of stuff. So, you can lose things in your dreams, plus I’ve spent chunks of my life barely failing at stuff.
This stuff, Rapamycin, plus getting more sleep; let’s see if it changes my numbers positively, not that my numbers are nasty anyway. I am still determining what number this auxiliary doctor who’s getting me the Rapamycin wants to see. I assume A1C and some C are reactive, like something that measures inflammation. I don’t know if the eight hours need to be uninterrupted, which doesn’t seem consistent with sleep styles historically where I guess in the Middle Ages, people went to sleep when it got dark and maybe got up and quietly did stuff by candlelight for an hour or two then went back to sleep again. I am trying to understand how all that works. That’s all I have on that topic.
Jacobsen: Before the invention of light bulbs and candles, did you think people slept better?
Rosner: Well, according to this chapter in Common Sense, people like to say that the blue light from computer and phone screens is particularly unrestful if you look at the stuff right before you sleep. I don’t know, but on the other hand, we have state-of-the-art mattresses, and we sleep two people to a bed at most, and our dwellings are generally well insulated. We have a bunch of light sources because we control light now, but I’d rather sleep under current conditions than try to sleep in the 14th century on shitty blankets, maybe in all my clothes, probably on top of bundled straw or just raw straw with all the occupants of my barn. Current sleeping conditions are better than they were 700 years ago.
Jacobsen: It is probably largely to do with the improvement in technology, poor comfort, and the reduction of the number of predators, so a lot of the stresses are down.
Rosner: Yeah, we control the world around us, and we live much better now than kings and queens did in the 17th century. In some ways, we are better than the 17th century, but kings and queens probably had pretty sweet beds in the 17th century, at least.
Jacobsen: They weren’t at all clean too.
Rosner: Yeah, they didn’t know about germs. So, there was a certain level of filth, and if you had to make night soil which is the excellent term for getting out of bed and peeing or pooping in a chamber pot if you were lucky, it came with a lid so the stink wouldn’t get out. I like having a toilet.
Jacobsen: Low-level inflammation from being so constant with germs would also be a factor. I don’t know how disgusting food was if you were rich then. It’s still pretty disgusting; food science has come a long way in 30-40 years. We process food that might not be ideal for you, but people in the 17th century ate a ton of stuff that could have been better for them.
Currently, we’re annoyed daily by some aspects of modern technology. Internet technology, smartphone technology, streaming technology, and all the information-based tech of the past 30 years, with its latest incarnations, come with many annoyances. We were doing this particular talk because Carol got an email that her bank account had a data breach, so she had to get in there and track down and see if any harm had been done. It’s going to be no surprise to anybody who reads any science fiction or thinks about the future that when we become more intimately linked with tech, there are going to be glitches and annoyances that will likely, in a bunch of instances, be even more dangerous to us than current tech annoyances because those tech glitches of the near future will be linked to the functioning of our bodies and brains.
So, here’s a topic from my book: rich people, tech billionaires, and the tech bros who want to live indefinitely. They will explore all sorts of new tech to fortify and immortal-ify their consciousness and link it to more information. These people will have tasters equivalent to the food tasters of old, employed by royalty who tasted the food to see if they were getting poisoned. So, rich tech-positive people will have tech tasters who test out new installs to see if they work well and don’t kill you. There will be the Rotten Tomatoes, The Yelp of new tech, but for people who are rich and powerful and tech-advanced enough to try stuff that hasn’t even hit the public enough to be reviewed yet, they’ll have to employ humans to try this stuff before they try it.
Distributed immortality: Some people are already claiming a form of immortality via AI, and your thoughts, if you’ve typed them out via social media, are part of the database for large language models. So, your thoughts are already being incorporated into something that will transcend and live beyond you, which is not a very satisfying form of immortality. Still, in the future, we may see more pleasing forms of distributed immortality if patterns of thought become replicate-able and transmittable from person to person more directly when you can transfer thoughts from person to person without having to translate the thoughts into words and then back into thoughts via the recipient hearing your words. Popular thoughts can be shared repeatedly if there are more direct forms of sharing. So, that is closer to immortality, but still not satisfying. Satisfying immortality involves your consciousness continuing.
Now, it may be satisfying to people and other conscious beings of the future if your consciousness continues but merges with other consciousnesses. I’ve brought up the movie All of Me, in which a wealthy old lady does some mystical Hocus Pocus and merges her consciousness into the head of Steve Martin’s character. It’s Lily Tomlin and Steve Martin from 35 years ago, and it’s a form of ancestor worship that you would have your ancestors’ consciousness riding along with yours. That might be somewhat satisfying, and eventually, if you go through enough iterations of that, your consciousness will be deluded. On the other hand, you will have the strength of thinking in tandem with the linked consciousnesses of a ton of people, and so you’ll be this linked consciousness thing with the shared memories and remembered attitudes of dozens and maybe more people, which is better than nothing.
When consciousness becomes sharable, you can bunch it up with other consciousnesses. Still, you’ll also be able to distribute it and have deluded iterations of yourself in different streams of consciousness so you can branch and then come together if circumstances allow. This may be comfortable for individuals in the future, and we may come to value consciousness less because we see what it is mathematically and mechanically. We’ve discussed that our current continuity of consciousness is not excellent; we think it’s perfectly fine because it’s what we live with, moment to moment. We’re used to it, and we forget a ton of stuff, or that stuff might be able to be remembered but not easily because you need a particular set of stimuli to remind you, but we’re okay with losing a ton of information. Our consciousness has evolved in conjunction with our brain, so it’s the right size and the right amount of fidelity to be contained in our brain; it works for us, and newer forms of consciousness may be better remembered. Maybe we should be able to handle more extensive data sets but may not initially offer the comfort that we have with our current day-to-day consciousness. We know that it becomes uncomfortable when our brains start to fall apart. People with dementia experience sadness and fear, so we’re not okay with every manifestation of consciousness within our brains when it gets shitty; we don’t like it, but the average level of shitty, we’re perfectly okay with it.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/04/20
[Recording Start]
Rick Rosner: So, we’re talking about ChatGPT and AIs in general and how they, when they get more intelligent, will be able to break stories, which is both good and bad. So, as an experiment, I asked a cheap GPT called Claude a question, and this is simple: Claude, I’m sure there’s a version of Claude that you can subscribe to for money that is more data-rich. It’s probably got a bigger model, but this is just regular free Claude anyway. I asked what are 15 possible ways that, in a romcom, a 32-year-old African-American male who works as a CPA could meet a newly divorced 31-year-old woman who works in brand management. Claude wrote back within or less than a second: Here are 15 potential meet cute scenarios for a romantic comedy involving a 32-year-old African-American male…
1) They get stuck in the same broken elevator. It goes into more detail; I’m just shortening them up.
2) He’s an accountant hired to do her firm’s taxes.
3) Their dogs get loose at a dog park.
4) Set up on a disastrous blind date by friends but end up clicking.
5) He’s auditing a store she helped re-brand, and they spar over the new image.
6) They’re both summoned for jury duty.
7) She spills coffee on them while rushing into their office building lobby. So, this is the only one. One of the scenarios would involve running into each other or tripping, so this one’s right on the verge of that. If I were the bookie, would I pay off for that one?
8) They argue over who had the reservation at a restaurant. There’s probably one table.
9) He’s hired to fix her computer or handle her IT issue.
10) They live in the same apartment and run into each other doing laundry.
11) She’s a guest speaker for an accounting seminar he’s attending.
12) Their competing companies are co-sponsoring a charity event.
13) He’s the entertainment hired for a friend’s birthday party. That’s not true, but he could be an entertainer in his spare time.
14) Their respective best friends start dating each other.
15) They reach for the last item on the shelf at the grocery at the same time.
So, these are all serviceable, and I’ve seen versions of many of these in romcoms. So, it’s different from Claude watching a bunch of movies. Claude can’t do that, but somebody translated the plots and wrote summaries of the plots for thousands of romcoms, so Claude has a probabilistic landscape of how romcoms work. I’d like to ask Claude for 15 more, and none of them are geniuses on their own, but many of these scenarios could be made serviceable with some imagination and some decent dialogue. You’re not going to get a genius new idea out of AI, but you will ensure you’ve got a well-rounded idea of how people meet in romcoms if you were overlooking something. This might trigger your creativity. So, it’s both good and highly corrosive.
You could make the same argument. In the last few sessions, we’ve talked about AI-generated pornography, and you could make the same argument that it’s good because it gives you an endless supply of stuff to jerk off to. It’s good because these images aren’t of actual women. So, the possibility of human misery that goes along with looking at pornography, which has photos of actual women, because it’s hard to know whether the women are small business people making their way in the world or whether they were coerced into it by a bad boyfriend or a gang that does sex slaves. It’s the same argument that all these easy machine-generated ideas and imagery are corrosive to the imagination and corrupting. The conclusion is that it’s not going away.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: That’s also true.
Rosner: So, it’s better to futz around with it and get an idea of what it’s capable of, or at least what we’re dealing with.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/04/19
[Recording Start]
Rick Rosner: The last time we spoke, I spoke about the increasingly bountiful cornucopia of porno since the rise of AI, which can generate just endless images and that it has to be watched out for because people aren’t necessarily riding herd on this stuff and it can be corrosive and if nobody’s watching it, it can probably be nudged into of stuff that may not be illegal but is undoubtedly unethical and if legislators see some of this stuff, they could legislate against it. So, that led me to think about masturbation. So, my question to you is, are people masturbating today more than they used to?
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: God! I think that people are both having less sex and masturbating less overall.
Rosner: I would say no, depending on what time frame you’re talking about. A 100,000 years ago, on the Savannah, with the average lifespan being in the low 30s, people only had maybe 18 years on average of being sexually active before a mishap or an abscessed tooth took them down. Now, we live to be 80, which means we’ve got 65 years in the case of some people’s sexual activity. So, certainly compared to the Savannah times, we do everything more; we poop more, we breathe more, we pee more, we eat more just because we’re alive for more than twice as long on average as the people we are far ancestors. It doesn’t matter to our worldview that we poop more or eat more really because our reward systems and our brains aren’t changed by; I mean, they are, but not to the extent that sexual habituation changes our brains.
So, we live a lot longer now, and shortly, we or our near descendants will be living much longer, and I don’t see masturbation as a metaphor for a lot of the changes in between our lives and people’s lives 100 years from now. We’re moving towards our lives with either no clocks or clocks that run a lot slower; my wife and I watch many TV and movies, as most people in developed countries have subscriptions to streaming services. You see how short people’s lifespans are within the framework of the lives of celebrities. Like, Brad Pit is turning 60 in the next year or so.
Jacobsen: He looks great for 60.
Rosner: Right, but he’s subject to mortality. Just a few years ago, he was discovered as the hot guy with abs in Thelma and Louise, so he has 20 years of being in his prime, maybe 30. Women, because of gender standards, may have even fewer years of being in their prime, and we get old and die, but people in the future don’t get old as fast and may get to live indefinitely. So, that’s one thing: the longer clock.
Another thing is that augmented humans are inferior to augmented humans. Big chunks of humanity will exist as consumers, exist to be entertained, and find it hard to find a niche where they can contribute either skilled, abortive, or unlaboured labour. However, this has been the case throughout humanity: not everybody is a worker or a contributor, but the role of all regular older adults will change. What do you think? We’ve talked about this before.
Jacobsen: I don’t think the drive for sex will change much for a very long time because it’s too deeply embedded in the brain or motivational centers, but I do think this expression will change. Still, I think the means of communicating it will be different, but I don’t think how people have sex or express their sexuality will be unique in human history. So, I guess what will be unique is the fact that every manner of sexual expression will happen all at once because you have the internet, which is just this universal communication system. So, every cultural expression with history will be unique in that it will be available to be expressed online and, therefore, will be described online all at once. I think those are going to open up sort of new ethical domains and new human rights questions around the exploitation of people and how people do sexual commerce as well.
Rosner: People used to get most of their sexual stimuli from other people’s lives and person to person, and now it’s much less so. To get sexual stimuli from people, person to person, you either had to be presentable or have money; you either had to attract somebody or you had to be able to pay for a prostitute. I don’t know about the various eras of prostitution, but I know that the first half of the 20th century in the United States was a golden age for prostitution until the pill came along in the ’60s. And then the sexual revolution came along; we had 20 years of that. Now, we’re in the porn era, and people are having less sex, people are having fewer babies, and 25% of the countries on earth have declining populations which isn’t just because people are having less sex.
By 2050 or by the end of the century, three-quarters of the countries will have declining populations, and the earth’s overall population will plateau. With the cornucopia of porn, there’s less pressure for guys to make themselves presentable to women to get laid because everybody can stay home and jerk off. That’s a definite change now, and then we can extrapolate into the future so that people can stay home and do everything. The last time we talked, I thought I was Googling for reclining environments for gamers who want to play every waking hour. So, they have these lazy boy rigs with horizon video displays with an aspect ratio of 6:1, three screens arranged side by side. Hence, it’s like looking out at the world. You’re lying down, your legs are elevated, and you can hold up the controller, but every other part of you is supported, so you can go for it until you have to pee.
I haven’t Googled gaming catheterization so that you can just pee out of the tube and play without getting up to pee for eight hours. I doubt that anybody’s offering that yet. I should Google’ gamers and diapers.’ I’m not set up right now to Google stuff, but I wonder if some gamers just wear diapers so they can play for 10 hours and pee themselves.
Jacobsen: Professional car racers or long-distance truck drivers.
Rosner: Did they all wear diapers, and nobody talks about it because it’s gross?
Jacobsen: No, just like NASCAR drivers; they’ll have these things set up so they can keep driving and peeing. And then, truck drivers, I think some will have a setup where they pee, or they’ll pee in a ball or something, just won’t talk about it, like a pee bag you might have that goes down to your leg or something.
Rosner: So, like a funnel that runs down your leg.
Jacobsen: Yeah, something like that.
Rosner: If a few drops splash onto your pants, it doesn’t matter because you’re a truck driver. A few drops splash onto my pants just because I’m 63, so okay.
Jacobsen: These aren’t new solutions, and they aren’t new problems. What I’m getting at is that we aren’t seeing new things outside of communication technologies in human history. It’s like you’ve taken that timeline in human history, turned it 90 degrees, and made the frame wide so you can see everything at once. Does that make sense?
Rosner: Yeah.
Jacobsen: It’s all happening at once because everyone is getting communications technology now, and that information transitions immediately. There are perverse aspects of every culture, and there are people who are on the cutting edge of wanting information.
Rosner: Another implication of this is there’s a saying that the last person who understood all of science was Ben Franklin 200 years ago. Since then, knowledge has expanded so much that nobody can be abreast of it. There’s a corollary to that: unaugmented humans without AI curation and expert curation can’t understand the world because it’s all hitting simultaneously, as you’re saying. It’s a lot, and just getting it all is difficult to impossible, which means that you have to trust your curator, your aggregator, your filter, which depends on faith and luck and, to some extent, savvy, but we’re less and less in charge. We’re going over the ground we’ve covered before. Do you want to move on to what you want to discuss in a new session?
Jacobsen: Yeah. I think general intelligence is sort of present everywhere; several sessions ago, you talked about there’s a base level of functionality in pretty much everyone so that you can interact with them, but sort of general intelligence; that’s the little thing that’s on a curve that you can then tell when you’re talking about more and more abstract thing for instance or looking for more precise sort of mental parsing of the world. That’s where you can notice it, but much stuff is just being given to us automatically, and a lot of abstract cutting up of the world is already done for us.
Rosner: People built the world. People aren’t different genetically from what they were 100,000 years ago.
Jacobsen: But brilliant people built the framework for the world on which everyone else operates.
Rosner: Yeah. I mean, I worked in bars for freaking forever. So, I met all sorts of people, and it’s a rare person who’s demonstrably dumb. It’s a rare person who has a crappy heart or a crappy liver or any other organ that our organs have a base level of functionality that most people hit just because we’re evolved creatures who need to survive long enough to reproduce and raise offspring. Because of our evolutionary model, we need to live a long time. So, we need competent organs, which include brains. So, most people don’t just have a super faulty brain; most people have reasonable intelligence. We can disapprove of how people get lazy and get manipulated. I believe that there’s a whole segment of society that is people with early onset dementia, early cognitive dysfunction, or mild. These people are dumb enough that there are entire Industries set up to victimize them because these people are older, in their 70s and 80s. In America, people 45 and older have 94% of the privately held wealth. So, you go where the money and the gullible are: older adults getting dumber, and you try to take their money away because they’re easy pickings. So, in that case, there is a whole demographic of people who are demonstrably dumber, but it’s just because they’re getting older, not just older, but they might be overweight. 72% of adult Americans are now overweight. So, some of those people might have metabolic syndrome, which means their brains might not get enough oxygen or other nutrients. So, middle-aged or younger healthy people aren’t stupid but can get stupider later.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/04/19
[Recording Start]
Rick Rosner: I was thinking about some of the regrets in my life and an IQ related regret came up that I thought I’d tell you about.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is the regret?
Rosner: So, one of the most powerful people in Hollywood is a guy named Brian Grazer who along with Ron Howard runs Imagine Entertainment. About 20 years ago, he must have gotten an idea, maybe more than 20 years ago, that he should bring in and have a session with all the high IQ people he could find in the LA area and see if there’s anything there. I was one of the people brought in and there were like a dozen high IQ people and we all sucked. We all just came across as a bunch of pompous, full of ourselves weirdos and it was obvious like I hated the flop sweat in that room. It just fucking stank of social inaptitude of people who didn’t know what they were doing in there and we really didn’t. We weren’t given any clues. To meet with one of the most powerful guys, the guy that you couldn’t normally get a meeting with, that we were handicapped by being in a room with a bunch of other jackasses and this was before we’ve had our 10 years of talking about shit and before I’d had 10 years of pitching shit to Jimmy every day. But it’s clear to me now in retrospect. I just should have walked in there with shit to pitch and explain we’re all a bunch of fucking weirdos but this and this, this idea, this project, and this project… High IQ people are fucking miserable but what about a high IQ dog and then have the whole thing laid out or other projects. I just didn’t know to do that right. I regret that.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/04/19
[Recording Start]
Rick Rosner: I have various bins for things I want to write about that still need to be fully developed. This is the bin of one of the bins of stuff I may or may not expand into as I write this thing. I’ve got a thing called choosies, which are explorable movies. Do you remember Choose Your Adventure books? Probably not. I think you might be too young for those, and maybe they didn’t hit Canada, but they were books for young readers where you were presented with decision points in the book, and if you want your character to pick up the sword, then turn to page 26, if you want your character to leave the sword and enter the cave you know go to page 35. So, they were branching books where you’d experience a story where you made maybe a dozen choices; I only read a part of these books. So, there were various paths through the books. In the future, we will have explorable worlds, like a merger of explorable video games plus movies plus Choose Your Adventure.
I’m calling them choosies, which is a terrible name, but so is the name movies for films where people can immerse themselves; if you like a movie and the world it presents, you’ll be able to enter the VR of that movie. The first will be for established franchises like Star Wars or Star Trek. You can live in a Star Wars universe, but there’ll be a zillion of these in the future. Some of them will be pegged to points in time like somebody will build a virtual 1940s world where you can be various people in World War II or choose the war to have different outcomes. I just watched Fallout, the TV series adapted from the video game Fallout, which is built from the idea that the US was devastated by nuclear war at some point in the 1950s, and it’s now 200 years later.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: This is based on a popular video game.
Rosner: Yeah, called Fallout, and I think there have been four releases at least that further develop the game, and it’s well-loved, and the design aesthetic is that design pretty much froze in the 1950s; it’s 200 years later, but given that civilization was almost wiped out or was frozen in people living in vaults underground, that everything looks like the 1950s even though it’s like the year 2200. So, they built a whole world, and the closing credits on every episode, they pull out from the ending scene so you see the world around the scene. A lot of the show takes place in the ruins of Los Angeles, so one ending credit pull-out pulls out from the space-aged restaurant at LAX, which looks like a landing spaceship. That’s been out of business for ten years but has yet to be torn down. It sits there vacant, but you pull out to see the surrounding LA.
So obviously, the Fallout people in building both the video games and the TV series have built an entire fairly extensive virtual world, and in the future, you’ll be able to pay an extra fee probably; maybe they’ll give you a limited license to explore the world just for the price of the movie or the video game, but in the future, you can probably pay extra if you want to have a week of exploring the entire world. If it’s a famous enough globe, there might be enough stuff to spend hours in it every day and choose your adventures. It’s just a merging of movies, TV, and video games into something you experience like life. I mean, that’s coming.
Jacobsen: Yeah, I mean, I don’t think the details are going to be lifelike, but I believe that the amount of detail in the future is going be so significant that it’ll be past the point at which our brains can distinguish, like seeing a high-resolution television from far away enough that you can’t tell the difference between reality and it; something similar to that.
Rosner: We talked about the uncanny valley where computer-generated humans looked creepy when they started getting closer to reality. The primary example that comes to mind is The Polar Express, starring Tom Hanks, which was released 20 years ago, and we’re already way beyond that. We were in the uncanny valley because that movie creeped some people out, but now the images are close enough to reality. In many cases, they’re indistinguishable, but that’s just for visual, for your ears. There’s no problem with simulating anybody’s authentic voice to the point where people don’t get creeped out by robot voices and don’t need to be robotic. A major hurdle will be flesh sensations, which are more challenging because you’ll need entire suits for full-body immersion. Will people give a crap about that?
The central part that people care about sensation will be sexual, and there’s already a name for it. We’ve talked about Teledildonics, a dumb name; maybe they will come up with a less stupid name as it becomes more mainstream. It’s obviously at a ridiculously primitive level that’s been around for probably ten years, and people make fun of that. I’ve never seen a real one, but people probably use it called the Flesh Light, which is a thing that looks like a flashlight, but once you unscrew the lid, it’s it looks like a vagina, and I guess you just put it on yourself. I don’t know if it vibrates, but anyway, there’s all this stuff; there are these things made of flexible plastic silicon that you can have sex with, including full, very realistic-looking women. So, I’m sure that sex in virtual reality will be a hurdle to living in virtual reality. That market forces will eventually force the development of gratifying and increasingly realistic virtuals about sex.
So, I guess that includes genital stuff and kissing, I think and stroking, just hands-on skin, and that’s going to be challenging, but people will probably pay for it at some point. At some point, it’ll probably be suits that promise to be gratifying and realistic but probably won’t be, and then maybe technology will figure it out at some point. Still, I don’t know if, in the near medium future, technology could figure out a way to wrap around your spinal column at some point and send a simulated sensation that way. I guess someday, I don’t know, but for a bunch of people, just the sight and sounds would be sufficient.
Carole spends up to eight hours a day sitting and writing this book. She was writing, and her shoulders were getting crampy and bunched up. We needed a more adjustable chair, so we went to Staples and looked at office chairs. The salesperson said to avoid getting an office chair. An office chair is suitable for eight hours. Get a gaming chair that you can sit in comfortably for 12 hours. People are already adjusting to spending half their waking hours or more in virtual environments playing whatever this year’s Call of Duty is. I haven’t Googled it, but I wonder why people if they’re going to be spending, you know, 8, 10, 12 hours a day in a virtual environment, are even sitting up in a chair. I’m going to Google Reclining Rig. I’m looking at these rigs, and they look like dentist chairs. So, they elevate your legs slightly so blood isn’t pooling in your legs. My dad was a workaholic, and he fell asleep in his chair; it’s like you see homeless people who can never sit down to sleep; they’re always sleeping on benches and stuff, and your lower legs turn swollen and purple. So, at least some of these rigs lift your legs so you don’t get that problem.
Here’s a cheap one for $3,300 bucks, with a panoramic. There needs to be a desk in front of you. Instead, there’s an arm that comes up from behind you and hangs a set of three video screens arranged side by side horizontally in front of you so that you can play across a panorama, which is really how you see the world, that most of what we look at when we’re outside is a very horizontal horizon. When we’re driving, we are concerned about a visual field that’s ten times as wide as it is tall. So, these video game rigs attempt to simulate that with side-by-side screens to give you an uninterrupted horizon. There’s an article about a recliner, but is anybody selling it yet? The best you get is like a lazy boy where you lean back, and your legs come up, but that’s sufficient.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/04/17
[Recording Start]
Rick Rosner: So, after this experience, I Googled AI porn is a problem and that returned a bunch of articles and commentary that, yeah, it’s a freaking problem. I read an article or an opinion piece from August of last year entitled Why AI porn is terrible, it’s worse than you think on a website called www.aiconsequences.com, and it touched on a couple of things we’ve touched upon before, which is that AI point porn can normalize aberrant porn. It talked about the endorphin rush that you get from porn, which makes it very habituating and addicting, and that it can quickly generate corrosive images and accelerate your descent into the muck. This is an article from eight months ago, and AI has worsened since then. And then deep fake porn is a huge problem where you put real people’s faces on. So yeah, it’s a problem, not just legally but morally and just in terms of the consumer’s mental health.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What about the moral issues around things that tie into it, like revenge porn?
Rosner: That’s part of the problem of deep fake porn. There’s deep fake porn where there’s a bunch of porn that they put celebrities; they photoshop celebrities’ faces onto naked bodies, and that’s been around forever. There was a sitcom in the 60s called That Girl. There was an episode in 1968 where Marlo Thomas, the show’s star, her character found a photo; they didn’t call it Photoshop back then, but somebody had taken her face and put it on a centrefold in a nudie magazine. That was 56 years ago, and tools have become more accessible and easier to use. That’s a huge problem for celebrities, except for most celebrities who learn to ignore it, but now, with AI, it’s even easier. I haven’t tried to make any of that stuff, but probably, in looking at AI naked ladies, I’ve seen images that started with pictures of famous people. So, celebrities being presented realistically in pornographic poses is a problem, and then revenge porn is a problem where you use Photoshop, or I don’t know if you can upload images of your ex-girlfriend that you want to be mean to into AI and then make horrible stuff, I don’t know, but I’m yeah, it’s a problem.
Jacobsen: Do you think they’re going to develop AIs to combat this kind of moral quandary proposed by very narrow AIs dictating these images and videos that are morally questionable, and how do they portray people?
Rosner: Well, I’m sure that if they’re responsible, and I don’t know, it’s an AI porn website, like, how accountable are they? Indeed, if they were subject to prosecution, they would develop protocols that would (a) essentially prevent those images from being generated until creeps developed workarounds and (b) would maybe require somebody at the website to, I mean, it’s not like they’re generating a million images a second. This one website would generate a few dozen images every half hour. It’s like they could hire somebody for cheap to look at the images that are being generated and say uh oh, that one looks problematic and then look at the prompt that generated the image and develop a list of prompts that are prohibited and also get rid of the troubling images as they pop up. They’d still make a ton of money. All they would have to do is hire one or two people. Yeah, they could develop protocols.
Even this website was old school because I went to a list of favourite AI porn sites just to see how the landscape had changed, and one thing that had happened was this thing was like 25th in the list of best AI adult sites. It was still doing the old thing of just making pictures of naked ladies where all the ones higher on the list were generating AI girlfriends like it would give you a bunch of images, but also you could chat with an AI who’d probably talk sexy with you while simulating the idea that the person you’re chatting with is sending you naked pictures of her. I didn’t do any of those because I’m cheap, and I didn’t want to pay for anything, and it looked like you had to pay to build an AI girlfriend. I’d say then maybe it would be less of a problem because if you’re generating a simulated girlfriend, then maybe it’s easier to stop people from developing an underaged AI girlfriend, but on second thought, that’s just what happened in the last few weeks, a month since the last time I looked.
So, a month from now, I don’t know where the world of AI smut is going to go, but as with all AI, it rests on a foundation of massive amounts of human labour taking content that you want the AI to learn from and tagging it and otherwise processing it so the AI can add it to the appropriate Bayesian bins in its extensive database. So, on the adult AI website, you could see AIs understanding of boobs. It just gets more inclusive and weirder by the day. So, I was looking at this website for a week or so. When I started looking at it, the boobs were big and round, like Japanese anime boobs for the most part but by the time I said, okay, you’ve got to go away, the boobs had gotten weird, like with these weird prolapsed nipples as if the process seemed to be that over a few days, people creating these images had decided that boobs that lactated when a woman was aroused were suitable to add to porn. So, over a couple of days, the boobs started lactating, and then the boobs got prolapsed. They lactated so much they actually blew out the nipple, and so by the time I said goodbye to the website, the nipples were just like these big blown out, not even nipples anymore but like elephant noses… things got weird.
So, the next time I take a look, if I dare to take a look, I’m sure there will be all sorts of new weirdness-es in a month, but somebody has to monitor that junk. In the novel, I’m writing about the near future. Initially, I decided that Russia in the 2030s would be pulling the strings on many porn websites to make people hate themselves more for what they were consuming, but after looking at this stuff, I decided that’s not realistic. The stuff coming out of there and how fast it changes and gets weird and gross will make people hate themselves anyway, and Russia couldn’t even keep up. You know that Russia spends tens of millions of dollars every year to generate social media messaging to destabilize people in Western countries and increase anger in Western countries, but I think Russia is trying to make porn even more perverted to make consumers hate themselves; I don’t think it’s a productive area for them because it’s just a roiling sea of grossness anyway. Is that reasonable?
Yeah, somebody is going to, especially if they pass legislation on it and given who passes legislation on this stuff, they might F it up because the politicians in America are notoriously out of touch with tech, and whatever legislation passes might be obsolete before it even passes or off target. The article I read said it was in California that these efforts are being made, so they will get the legislation right, given that California is a vast tech state. But I wonder if you can even have legislation that gets it right because the perves, the entrepreneurs, might come up with workarounds like a lot of the images I’ve seen in the last week are furries, like semi-animalized heads on bodies. So, if you put a cat head on a human body that looks youthful, does that qualify as underage? It’s a freaking cat. Or an alien, like I don’t know and good luck to the legislators trying to figure this out.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/04/17
[Recording Start]
Rick Rosner: So, for about the last week, I have an AI porn generator just automatically loading images onto the web page. It was just going, and I was watching it because the stuff that it comes up with, which I’m sure is the result of people asking for that stuff, was interesting, especially how fast it changed. One day it might be women in kimonos or half out of kimonos, and then the next day, it might be women in space helmets and older women or women with a rash on their butts, and sometimes the AI gets confused, and if somebody has a round pair of buttocks, it got confused and put nipples on the buttocks because AI doesn’t understand anything. It’s just making bets as to what belongs where. I was interested in how fast it changed and generated new stuff. A few days ago, it was guys getting with women made of blue gel; the women were globby-like jellyfish creatures. And then in the last day or so, it started generating very apparently young women, and at that point, I’m like, “Well, time to go. I did not want to look at this, nor did I have it on my computer.”
I don’t know if a web page has images on it if you get rid of that webpage, whether it’s on your computer or not, but I didn’t want that stuff on there. Coincidentally, there was an article in the LA Times today that said that underage-looking AI images are getting to be such a problem that they are looking at changing the law to make that illegal in the state. There might already be Federal legislation, I mean, because formerly, if somebody threw up a drawing of, like, somebody underage who’s naked, that wasn’t prosecutable because it wasn’t a real person. And then, with AI plus Photoshop, they started getting complaints about people whose lives were wrecked—high School and Junior High kids where somebody took their heads and put them on naked bodies. If you can generate one AI picture, you can develop a hundred in a fraction of a second. So, I’ve had to get off of my computer for things that automatically generate AI images because a) I don’t want to see them, and b) I don’t want that; that stuff is bad news. I’d assumed until this stuff showed up on that web page that they had protections in place that, like, if you look at a naked lady website and it’s a legit site, every model, a woman who’s taken her clothes off, there’s somebody has checked her ID, and that ID is on file someplace. So, you’re assured that you’re looking at somebody of legal age. So, I assumed there was some governance of AI, but no. And so, no to AI, at least naked lady AI.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: March 1, 2014
Web Domain: http://www.in-sightpublishing.com
Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Journal: In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal
Journal Founding: August 2, 2012
Frequency: Three (3) Times Per Year
Review Status: Non-Peer-Reviewed
Access: Electronic/Digital & Open Access
Fees: None (Free)
Volume Numbering: 12
Issue Numbering: 3
Section: B
Theme Type: Idea
Theme Premise: “Outliers and Outsiders”
Theme Part: 31
Formal Sub-Theme: None
Individual Publication Date: May 22, 2024
Issue Publication Date: May 1, 2024
Author(s): James Haught
Author(s) Bio: James A. Haught, syndicated by PeaceVoice, was the longtime editor at the Charleston Gazette and had been the editor emeritus since 2015. He was thought to have been the first investigative reporter in West Virginia. He won two dozen national newswriting awards and was author of 12 books and 150 magazine essays. He was also a senior editor of Free Inquiry magazine and was writer-in-residence for the United Coalition of Reason. He died on Sunday, July 23 (2023), at the age of 91.
Word Count: 249
Image Credit: None.
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN): 2369-6885
*Please see the footnotes, bibliography, and citations, after the publication.*
Keywords: Anthropocene Epoch, Black equality, Bronze Age, City-states, Colonialism, Dark Ages, Decolonialism, Early agriculture, Enlightenment, Female equality, Gay equality, Hunter-gatherers, Industrial Revolution, Information Age, Iron Age, Kings and empires, Renaissance, Secular Age, Space travel, Stone Age.
A new phase of civilization
Human civilization has staggered and lunged through many phases and subphases, some overlapping:
- Stone Age
- Bronze Age
- Iron Age
- Hunter-gatherers
- Early agriculture
- Kings and empires
- City-states
- Dark Ages
- Renaissance
- Enlightenment
- Colonialism
- Industrial Revolution
- Decolonialism
- Space travel
- Human rights
- Black equality
- Female equality
- Gay equality
- Decline of warfare
- Information Age
Now, anthropologists have hatched a new label, the Anthropocene Epoch, for the latest period when fossil fuel burning has altered the planet’s biosphere and climate.
Amid all this chaos of history, I think another growing phase of civilization can be detected: the Secular Age — the death of religion and the disappearance of supernatural gods, devils, heavens, hells and the like. Miracles and prophecies no longer are treated seriously in advanced Western democracies. They’re ignored with amusement, like old wives’ tales.Does any part of society seriously expect divine magic to cure human problems? A few people give lip service to such a fantasy, but most know it’s just a fantasy. In the West, including the United States, churchgoing has fallen spectacularly in the 21st century. Soon, supernatural beliefs may be an odd fringe.
When I was born in 1932 (in an Appalachian farm town with no electricity or paved streets), the world had 2 billion people; now this is approaching 8 billion. Civilization has changed greatly in my lifetime, and the pace of change seems to accelerate. It’s fun to guess what’s next.
Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but I predict that the Secular Age is taking shape under our noses.
This article is adapted from a piece that originally appeared at Daylight Atheism on March 29, 2021.
Bibliography
None
Footnotes
None
Citations
American Medical Association (AMA 11th Edition): Haught J. A new phase of civilization. May 2024; 12(3). http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/Haught-civilization
American Psychological Association (APA 7th Edition): Haught, J. (2024, May 22). A new phase of civilization. In-Sight Publishing. 12(3).
Brazilian National Standards (ABNT): HAUGHT, S. A new phase of civilization. In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, Fort Langley, v. 12, n. 3, 2024.
Chicago/Turabian, Author-Date (17th Edition): Haught, James. 2024. “A new phase of civilization.” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal 12, no. 3 (Summer). http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/Haught-civilization.
Chicago/Turabian, Notes & Bibliography (17th Edition): Haught, J “A new phase of civilization.” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal 12, no. 3 (May 2024).http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/Haught-civilization.
Harvard: Haught, J. (2024) ‘A new phase of civilization’, In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, 12(3). <http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/Haught-civilization>.
Harvard (Australian): Haught, J 2024, ‘A new phase of civilization’, In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, vol. 12, no. 3, <http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/Haught-civilization>.
Modern Language Association (MLA, 9th Edition): Haught, James. “A new phase of civilization.” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, vo.12, no. 3, 2024, http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/Haught-civilization.
Vancouver/ICMJE: James H. A new phase of civilization [Internet]. 2024 May; 12(3). Available from: http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/Haught-civilization.
License
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 https://in-sightpublishing.com/.
Copyright
© 2012-Present by Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Authorized use/duplication only with explicit and written permission from Scott Douglas Jacobsen. Excerpts, links only with full credit to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with specific direction to the original. All collaborators co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: March 1, 2014
Web Domain: http://www.in-sightpublishing.com
Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Journal: In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal
Journal Founding: August 2, 2012
Frequency: Three (3) Times Per Year
Review Status: Non-Peer-Reviewed
Access: Electronic/Digital & Open Access
Fees: None (Free)
Volume Numbering: 12
Issue Numbering: 3
Section: B
Theme Type: Idea
Theme Premise: “Outliers and Outsiders”
Theme Part: 31
Formal Sub-Theme: None
Individual Publication Date: May 22, 2024
Issue Publication Date: September 1, 2024
Author(s): James Haught
Author(s) Bio: James A. Haught, syndicated by PeaceVoice, was the longtime editor at the Charleston Gazette and had been the editor emeritus since 2015. He was thought to have been the first investigative reporter in West Virginia. He won two dozen national newswriting awards and was author of 12 books and 150 magazine essays. He was also a senior editor of Free Inquiry magazine and was writer-in-residence for the United Coalition of Reason. He died on Sunday, July 23 (2023), at the age of 91.
Word Count: 372
Image Credit: None.
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN): 2369-6885
*Please see the footnotes, bibliography, and citations, after the publication.*
Keywords: Ben Kirby, conspicuous consumption, Daylight Atheism, designer clothes, evangelists, For-Profit Faith, Guillermo Maldonado, John Gray, Judah Smith, megachurch, Paula White, PreachersNSneakers, Steven Furtick, T.D. Jakes, Thorstein Veblen, Washington Post.
How preachers turned faith into a sleazy business
Among sleazy occupations, is anything worse than big-money evangelists with their private jets, garish diamonds, piled-up hairdos and $5,000 suits?
A new book, PreachersNSneakers: Authenticity in an Age of For-Profit Faith and (Wannabe) Celebrities, exposes TV pastors “who get rich off of preaching about Jesus.” It’s written by Ben Kirby of Texas, a born-again Christian who watched gospel television and noticed that many leaders flaunted outlandishly expensive clothes and shoes designed for the superwealthy. He posted his findings on Instagram and drew 200,000 viewers. Now he has turned it into a book.
A Washington Post article states: “In 2019, Kirby posted a picture of Pastor John Gray wearing the coveted Nike Air Yeezy 2 Red Octobers, selling at the time on the resale market for more than $5,600.”
Astounding. What kind of narcissist pays $5,600 for a pair of shoes? The Post adds:
“Kirby has showcased Seattle Pastor Judah Smith’s $3,600 Gucci jacket, Dallas Pastor T.D. Jakes’ $1,250 Louboutin fanny pack and Miami Pastor Guillermo Maldonado’s $2,541 Ricci crocodile belt. And he considers Paula White, President Donald Trump’s most trusted pastoral adviser who is often photographed in designer items, a PreachersNSneakers ‘content goldmine,’ posting a photo of her wearing $785 Stella McCartney sneakers.”
A report by London’s Guardian further adds: “Pastor, author and religious personality John Gray appears in a recent post … sporting a Gucci sweater that cost more than $1,100. In another photo, Pastor Steven Furtick sports a pair of thousand-dollar Saint Laurent boots.”
More than a century ago, sociologist Thorstein Veblen coined the term “conspicuous consumption” for the flagrantly rich who paid glaring sums to show off their wealth. It became a popular label of contempt.
When preachers do it, there’s a double reason for contempt because evangelist money comes from gullible believers who are sold a fantasy of make-believe. The megachurch message says an invisible god will reward worshippers (donors) in an invisible heaven after death — and burn others in hell. Intelligent, educated, modern people know this is a fairy tale. Religion isn’t true. Its purveyors commit a form of fraud.
There’s nothing more sleazy than a huckster wearing $5,600 sneakers paid for with money from naïve believers.
This article is adapted from a piece that originally appeared at Daylight Atheism on April 5, 2021.
Bibliography
None
Footnotes
None
Citations
American Medical Association (AMA 11th Edition): Haught J. How preachers turned faith into a sleazy business. May 2024; 12(3). http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/Haught-preachers
American Psychological Association (APA 7th Edition): Haught, J. (2024, May 22). How preachers turned faith into a sleazy business. In-Sight Publishing. 12(3).
Brazilian National Standards (ABNT): HAUGHT, S. How preachers turned faith into a sleazy business. In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, Fort Langley, v. 12, n. 3, 2024.
Chicago/Turabian, Author-Date (17th Edition): Haught, James. 2024. “How preachers turned faith into a sleazy business.” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal 12, no. 3 (Summer). http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/Haught-preachers.
Chicago/Turabian, Notes & Bibliography (17th Edition): Haught, J “How preachers turned faith into a sleazy business.” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal 12, no. 3 (May 2024).http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/Haught-preachers.
Harvard: Haught, J. (2024) ‘How preachers turned faith into a sleazy business’, In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, 12(3). <http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/Haught-preachers>.
Harvard (Australian): Haught, J 2024, ‘How preachers turned faith into a sleazy business’, In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, vol. 12, no. 3, <http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/Haught-preachers>.
Modern Language Association (MLA, 9th Edition): Haught, James. “How preachers turned faith into a sleazy business.” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, vo.12, no. 3, 2024, http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/Haught-preachers.
Vancouver/ICMJE: James H. How preachers turned faith into a sleazy business [Internet]. 2024 May; 12(3). Available from: http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/Haught-preachers.
License
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 https://in-sightpublishing.com/.
Copyright
© 2012-Present by Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Authorized use/duplication only with explicit and written permission from Scott Douglas Jacobsen. Excerpts, links only with full credit to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with specific direction to the original. All collaborators co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their purposes.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/04/12
[Recording Start]
Rick Rosner: So, this is just to clarify that Tom Hanks is not a dick who outbids people for the contents of storage lockers. Actors and other celebs often think it is fun to play themselves as dicks. There was a show you probably have not heard of called Jury Duty, where one guy got picked for jury duty. He shows up for trial, gets sequestered, and everybody else is an actor. The whole thing is fake; it is a giant four-week prank on the guy, and another member of the jury is the actor James Marsden playing himself as a complete douchebag. Marsden got Emmy nominated for playing an asshole version of himself; it is funny. So, no, Tom Hanks is not a dick; he thinks it’s funny to play one.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Who is your favourite television character?
Rosner: I don’t know. It’s somebody off of an excellent show, somebody as cool as I wish I were in real life, probably. Don Draper who was a douchebag but a cool guy. I don’t know if I have favourite TV characters as much as I have favourite TV shows. Right now, it might be Girls5eva from the same production team that did 30 Rock with Tina Fey, created and written by Meredith Scardino. It’s just a joke for a minute. Breaking Bad was pretty good, but it was a long haul and way too murder-y. What’s your favourite TV character?
Right now, there’s a show called Sugar, I think, with Colin Farrell, who plays a very cool private detective. I wish I were as cool as he is.
Jacobsen: Okay. I like that one show called Hell on Wheels. It was a realistic representation of the negative and the positive of everyone during the building of the railroad across North America.
Rosner: Oh, I saw some episodes of that. Yeah, everybody was like a dangerous asshole.
Jacobsen: Yeah, but people were also honourably represented.
Rosner: Okay, I didn’t see any honourable peoplee. Suppose we’re going with Canadian shows. Since you’re from Canada, my wife and I like Working Moms.
Jacobsen: What’s Working Moms about?
Rosner: It’s Catherine Reitman, and it’s just 30-ish moms often in the workplace who are kind of a-holes. It’s very funny, and I like the way Catherine Reitman looks a lot. She’s got lips that are so big that they’re misshapen; they turn into dewlaps, which I like.
Jacobsen: Are you a lip guy?
Rosner: Apparently, yeah.
Jacobsen: Tell me about that.
Rosner: I’ve got giant lips myself. I was made fun of them, made fun of for having giant lips in the era of blonde, lipless, assless people dominated the media. I would need to work on the rest of my face to make the rest of my face as delicious as my lips. Lips are so big that they’re always a little bit chapped; it’s just a lot of surface area to keep them unchapped.
Jacobsen: What advice do you have for younger people now?
Rosner: Talk to more girls, do sports even though you might hate them and be terrible at them because you learn to be with people by being on a sports team. Start working out and getting strong earlier. Don’t constantly play makeup like there’s a time when being solid and sporty is essential, and it is High school and Junior High. After that, if you’re not a scholarship athlete and you’re still way into sports, it’s not going to help get you laid, but the high school might help. It would have given me better social skills earlier. I worried less about getting a girlfriend in Junior High and High School because at the time and place I was in Junior High and High School, most people were not hooking up to any extent. Everybody does eventually, but my friends and I were unaware of that and desperate, which doesn’t make you famous.
Jacobsen: What would you consider some of your regrets if you’re in the 30 years of life?
Rosner: I have yet to get a book published with an actual publisher. We’ve done a ton of Amazon books, and they’re fine for what they are, but some of my favourite writers crank out two or three books a year, and that’s not me. My wife has cranked out the first draft of a book in just a few months. So, I regret being so lazy when getting educated in physics. I know a ton of physics, but I really should be able to do more of the math behind, like quantum mechanics. I keep thinking about wishing; I still wish that I would somehow end up back in Junior High knowing everything I know now, both for investing purposes and purposes of beating up my Junior High enemies or at least terrorizing them.
Jacobsen: Who were your Junior High enemies?
Rosner: Oh, just the guys who like to bully nerdy kids. They didn’t dislike me in a specific way. One kid did it just because he saw the way I was, and I was a little bit Asperger-y, and he was offended by that. I did get in a fight with him, and while he was punching me, I was taking his jacket, which he cherished, and just ripping it, making it, not such a good jacket because I could take his little freaking Junior High punches, but I was doing permanent damage to his stuff. And then I was smart enough that when we were broken up and whatever Junior High vice principal was talking to us, whatever the kid was saying, I was saying, I think it’s both our faults. That automatically makes the other guy the asshole. So, even though I was Asperger-y, I knew a couple of things, but given what I know now, I would know to grab his hand like a paddle swinging around over my head and then back to him and then wrench it up behind his back, which is like a pain submission move. You want a move that will cause the other person pain but won’t leave marks, and that’s one of them. Even if I misexecuted it, it would have been fun to try.
There’s another one; grab the guy’s arm, and you bend the wrist forward; you grab the wrist with one hand and, I guess, the forearm with another hand and just bend the wrist forward as far as it’ll go. It causes a lot of pain, but it’s tough to injure the guy. the guy is amazed about you causing him pain because he’s hitting you. After all, that’s all Junior High kids in Colorado would know how to do. I mean, the TV would have been miserable. I’ve already read any books that were any good in 1974. I would have needed to go to work at bars.
Jacobsen: What age did you start reading?
Rosner: Three and three-quarters, which isn’t that early in modern terms because parents are trying to make their kids all gifted now, but that was not the case in 1964. But yeah, once I started reading, I read all the time because I was terrible at recess and interacting with other people. I preferred to read all the time.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/04/12
[Recording Start]
Rick Rosner: So, I’m going through my book and talking, which is set like ten years in the future, about what life might be like then. You said to plug Carole’s book, too. I’ve been working on this thing for years and years; you could argue for decades because I’m taking much stuff from my other attempts at books and rolling it over into this one. You said to plug my wife’s Carole’s book too. So, in just months, Carole has cranked out the first draft of a whole book. She’s much faster and works much harder than I do. We cleaned up my mom’s house, and Carole found a box of maybe 80,000 words of love letters between my mom and my dad when they were courting, and they were way in love. Then, within five years, they hated each other and were divorced. So, she’s turning this into a whole book; it starts in 1954 and ends in roughly 1961, and it’s pretty good. She’s surprisingly good and reasonably inventive as a writer. The thing is publishable. Plus, she puts in the work; she’s taking classes on how to pitch, revise, get published, and get an agent. She’s doing everything you should do. With a product, I’m snotty. I’ve read 8,400 books, so I know what a good book is and what a shitty book is, and I think her book’s good.
Anyway, back to my book, just stuff from my little ideas. So, in my future, people have mesh, which is, as I’ve discussed in other sessions, like a little flexible grid that you get a hole drilled in your head that’s 3-4 millimetres in diameter, and robotic tech lays a metallic mesh grid that’s maybe 10 cm by 30 cm across your brain that’s able to transmit information. It’s like Neuralink; it’s able to interface with your brain, and 10 years from now, the technology is better that you can transmit much information directly, especially for people with the right genetics. The character in this book has some weird mutations that make him extra amenable to neural interfaces. It’s called being a centaur linked with AI; he uses his skills to get rich. One of the things he does is he buys a WNBA team because they’re cheap. An NBA team might run you 80 billion dollars, and a WNBA team, I don’t know, maybe 50 million in the year 2035, but he links them all via mesh to make them a super team that they can communicate with each other better than most teams, and it hasn’t been outlawed yet. So, he tries to see if making them vaguely telepathic makes them a better team.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: That’s an exciting idea.
Rosner: Also, I mean sports are going to get weird because we’ll be able to modify people in all sorts of ways like right now in America, Republicans are using trans women being out-competing women who were born women to get right-wing Americans all upset. It’s culture wars bullshit. There aren’t many less, I’d say a dozen. I would guess there are fewer than two dozen trans women who set women’s records or beat all other women in their events. It’s not a huge problem, and we’ll figure out how to deal with it. For instance, one way is you’re allowed to compete depending on when you became a woman. If you were born male but went on puberty blockers before you obtained your full-grown male musculature, then maybe you can compete as a woman, or perhaps you’re in a sport where having been a male isn’t an advantage; I don’t know, but we’ll eventually figure out a set of rules that will be fair for most competitors.
There’s other shit that right now, like wealthy parents could be giving their kids HGH, human growth hormone, when given to a kid who’s still growing in height. If you spend enough on it for 40 Grand, you could add two to three inches to your kid’s height. Say you’ve got a 6’4 kid, and you want them to get a scholarship or maybe even make it to the NBA; getting them to 6’7 will significantly increase their chances. RFK Jr, our lunatic fringy third-party presidential candidate, is on something, either HGH or testosterone because he’s 70 years old and he doesn’t work out that hard, but he’s got a big ripped body with slabby pecs. I’ve seen him do push-ups; he does lady push-ups from his knees, yet he’s got these massive pecs. So, he’s on testosterone supplementation or replacement. So, HGH, even later in life, won’t make you any taller after the age of 14, say, but it will make you ripped as if you’re on steroids.
So, there might be dozens of psycho parents making their kids taller and by 2035, there’ll be quite a few wealthy ass parents quietly using crisper technology to tweak their kids to get them more muscles, to get them more height. Maybe we’ll figure out ways to identify genes associated with faster reflexes, and then we’ll have to decide whether that modification is permitted. Some leagues might allow it, some may not. So, yeah, sports is going to get weird along with everything else.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/04/12
[Recording Start]
Rick Rosner: I was talking about the square root law of mesh networks, which states that the efficiency of people whose brains are linked is proportional to the square root of the number of people in the network.
Black box-ness. So, we see this with AI and Google Translate, where AI can be effective, like playing Go, where AI often will reach robust conclusions, but you need to know the basis for those conclusions. It is a black box that gives you the results. So, a certain amount of black box from meshed groups of people, especially if they are meshed with AI, say you have got a team of intelligent people whose brains are all linked with each other and with AI, well they might come up with great ideas but may not be able to explain or replicable explain the basis for their ideas adequately. They are the self-contained thing that produces stuff but is a black box.
Propaganda Porn. So, as I said, I have been looking at a lot of AI-naked ladies. I could see how bad actors could hijack this; in the future, I am thinking of Russia because Russia spends tens of millions of dollars a year, which is not that much, but it is cheap to make people crazy via social media. So, I can imagine Russia in the future trying to make people hate themselves by making porn even more corrosive than it is so that everybody who jerks off in America hates themselves. Like, just as you are about to cum, it replaces the picture you are jacking off to with a photo of your daughter that would make you hate yourself; that would be very corrosive. It would Wake you up. The only thing that would stop Russia from doing that would be that porn all by itself is super corrosive anyway, and porn changes so much, now that AI is powering a lot of it, from moment to moment, that Russia may not be able to keep up. They may be like, “All right, we will just let America burn down, and we do not need to make porn any worse.”
This thing is an actual real-world thing with AI porn that obviously and for good reasons, it is illegal to make porn with underage people, but with AI, it is not unlawful to create images of people who do not exist who look like they are underage. This is a very creepy thing that you see in some AI porn, and I do not know how you legislate around that. I mean, do you make it illegal to make pornographic images of people who appear to be under 18, and does that go against the First Amendment? I do not know, but do not tell Republicans because they will come up with like ridiculous legislation that makes the problem worse.
Since we are still talking about porn, reducing the misery footprint of products and jobs like porn. So, technology does and will continue to reduce the investment in human and animal misery you are making when you buy stuff like diamonds. Diamonds have always included misery, political repression, and support like bad guy regimes, you know, blood diamonds. However, in the past five years, making flawless diamonds of any weight has become possible. Ten years ago, technology could get you a quarter-carat diamond, which is okay so that you could get a synthetic tennis bracelet. Now, they can make diamonds up to 10 carats, 20 carats, or as big as you want for less than a third of the cost of natural diamonds. Also, you are not supporting some awful African dictator.
Carol and I walked into a diamond store because we were in Antwerp, Belgium, the world’s diamond capital, and we just went in to see the deal. This woman was wearing a gigantic ring: the sales lady. She said if these were natural diamonds, it would be $150,000. It was the size of not a golf ball but just crazy big, and she said, with synthetic diamonds, it was 30,000 and with no cruelty. So, you might see that with meat in the future, and you might see it with porn in the future.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/04/07
[Recording Start]
Rick Rosner: So, you should know that the main character is a celebrity and, to some extent, an industrialist who has used his celebrity to be the figurehead of a sizeable semi-insidious tech corporation, mainly in the 2030s; that is the period I am writing about. One of the things that he has access to is up-the-nose crawlers; these are little bug-like robots that are like a quarter inch across, little spidery things that go up your nose. One of the main technologies of this era, and this company is involved in pushing it, is Mesh which is like a less shitty version of Elon Musk’s Neuralink. You get a whole drilled in your head, not a big one like a quarter inch or less; they stick in this Mesh, and then they lay it out across the surface of your brain. It’s 10 millimetres by 30 millimetres, and you can receive input directly onto your brain via the Mesh. Your brain, after a while, learns to use the link. There are various versions of different degrees of invasiveness, and one is a cheap, blunt version you get in the military if you consent. It goes up your nose, into your sinuses, and the vicinity of your brain. It doesn’t transmit much discernable information because it’s not as precisely installed or as fancy as the full-on mesh, but it does help you in combat situations; you get a vibe off the rest of your combat group.
So, one of the things that this company might have is an up-the-nose crawler to deliver one of these kinds of blunt force crappy meshes up through your sinuses or, if not mesh, then just drugs. Suppose you’ve pissed off this company or pissed off this character. He might send a little crawler spider up your nose to mess with your brain. Another thing is piggyback consciousness. You probably never saw this Steve Martin-Lily Tomlin movie All of Me because it’s 30 years old.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: No, I haven’t.
Rosner: All right. So basically, a magic spell happens, and Lily Tomlin’s consciousness is moved… she’s a dying wealthy lady who does some hocus pocus to get her consciousness moved into Steve Martin’s brain, and they have to fight over his body and stuff. That’s like a step, something like that, piggyback consciousness. The intermediate step before replicated consciousness is available. A linked mesh: you’ve got two people with Mesh, and you generally link their meshes between a young person and an older relative, which links their consciousnesses. If they do this for a couple of years, the old’s consciousness pervades the youngsters’ consciousness, and it’s a way of persistence after death. This gets marketed to people at some point before full replication of consciousness is available.
Some of these are comments from the character himself.
“I don’t like going out, especially in a vehicle. Being on the road gets 7% more dangerous each year despite self-driving.”
“God forbid, if you endanger me with a vehicle, our systems will locate you and hit you with a ton of karma bombs, not actual bombs, just information-driven, not traceable to us.” He can access high-level AI net crawling surveillance and data mining in our systems.
Does talking about any of this stuff, is this worth anything?
Jacobsen: I think it is. It provides some context for your writing and is a suitable plug, too.
Rosner: Okay. All right, I already talked about this for military personnel. Low-bandwidth mesh implants inserted via sinuses are like quantum computing; even a little goes a long way.
Decoupling is a trend in which people don’t have to form heterosexual couples, which will lead to ideas around people not having to couple up for reasons of sexual attraction. It becomes increasingly weird and somewhat objectionable that people will structure their entire lives around somebody else just because the configuration of the other person’s genitals gives their partner sexual excitement that seems increasingly arbitrary to at least a segment of society.
Oozers and Goopers: people with drippy faces from whatever set of infections they have. Often mentally slow, sometimes twitchy, there are just a lot of people because of persistent rapidly changing viruses, a lot of which came from Covid and vax resistance and disease denial. There are just a bunch of people walking around in the future with apparent signs of disease and manifesting in different ways, and each one of the common ways that disease manifests leads to a different nickname. Some people even have catastrophic hemorrhages out of all the orifices of their faces. They just all of a sudden, like something, give up, and just blood shoots out of their eyes, nose, mouth, and ears, and they’re dead, and it’s horrifying. There are a ton of Tik Toks or whatever Tik Tok is in the future of people doing this, and then this becomes a popular way to kill yourself in an appalling fashion is to simulate that just by putting an M80 in your mouth, and it goes off, and your head semi explodes.
Congratulations to Taylor Swift, America’s first Secretary for gender affairs, in 2035. From her Senate confirmation testimony: “Man, woman, non-binary; we are all who we are, and that affects how we are and how other people see us. I promise to respect and support all Americans except mean people..” I’ll have to change that because her list of the different men, women, and non-binary is not nearly inclusive enough for 2035.
Also, have you seen the new LGBTQ+ flag?
Jacobsen: No. What’s it like?
Rosner: They added a circle in the middle and eight more stripes from the other side. Previously, the flag had a Chevron on the left side and horizontal stripes across the rest. Nowit’s, it has Chevrons coming in from each side and a circle in the middle. They probably added another half-dozen new ways of being to the flag; I am still determining what they are, but there you go.
Jacobsen: Very interesting.
Rosner: Yeah, I should look it up.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/04/07
[Recording Start]
Rick Rosner: So, we’re still talking about notes from my novel in progress. The entertainment industry facilitates sociopaths; I think that’s long been apparent, especially sociopaths who either are talented or claim to be gifted. There’s the saying nobody knows anything in the entertainment industry, which refers to nobody knows what’s going to be a hit and what won’t be; that’s by William Goldman, the screenwriter of The Princess Bride and Marathon Man. So, if somebody is thought to be talented, people will put up with all sorts of misbehaviour from that person.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: They seem like a truism of Hollywood culture.
Rosner: Yeah, and with me, too, there’s been a crackdown on it, but I’m sure it’s like stepping on ooze that will ooze in different directions.
Jacobsen: There’ll be adaptation to many things, too. For example, the guys who get taken down or the ladies who get taken down will be shovelled to a different position in a different company because these are the same professional networks.
Rosner: Right, though some of the worst predators have aged out of the predation game even if they haven’t been imprisoned. If you look at most of the people caught by ‘Me Too,’ Weinstein Cosby, and these are guys in their 80s now. I’m sure there are still predations, but it’s maybe less blatant, especially not having had an entertainment job for nine years or more. Not that I was even like some part of some swirling world of glamour when I did have a job.
Jacobsen: Did you notice this kind of swirl of bad behaviour among others while you were in the central part of Hollywood?
Rosner: Not so much. I’d go to work, and I’d do my shit, and I’d go home, and I didn’t get to go to fancy parties filled with the powerful and famous. When I met the famous, it was like a 50-50 shot, whether embarrassing or not, because you want to be calm and end up not being cool. If you’re at a party with famous people, the best thing to do is look for the food and not approach them. You can slide by them but don’t say anything.
In this book, this character helps run something called The Salon. At this point, I’ll come up with a better name for it. It’s a series of parties in which sex is available, kind of like Plato’s Retreat. Are you familiar with Plato’s Retreat?
Jacobsen: No.
Rosner: It was a sex club in New York City in, I think, the 70s, maybe into the 80s and as creepy and sleazy as that might indicate, though, like trying to be classy, hence the name Plato’s Retreat, but just a bunch of High School assistant principals who’d roped a girlfriend or maybe a paid girlfriend into going there as far as I know. There might have been some genuinely horny libertine couples, but that stuff always verges on the creepy. So, anyway, this Salon is designed to be a place for sexual opportunities where all the participants, at least the non-powerful and famous ones, have been highly vetted and are engaging in extreme consent. They’re screened psychologically and sign a bunch of releases and make a video release so that it’s designed to give the participants confidence that this won’t bite them on the ass, that everybody there is okay with it and that nobody will freak out later to the best of the predictive abilities of the screening techniques and decide to come after them. In this environment, among the things that people are there for are: a) some people might be cool with sex or even like sex, especially with famous and influential people, and they’re all cool to the extent that this can be established through screening. They’re cool with quid pro quo that if they get with a famous, influential person, that person might be willing to offer opportunities, and that’s just one setting in this thing that the hero of this book is a mix of good and not-so-good.
Jacobsen: That’s pretty good, man. Is there going to be weather manipulation in the future based on the level of technology and AI systems that we have to understand the weather?
Rosner: Well, in the mid to far future, yeah. If I write more than one book in a series that will cover further into the future for sequels, which is way premature considering this thing is stated, I will discuss the increasing Disneyfication of the planet. We can see that you don’t accomplish much in addressing climate change via modifying behaviour. Nobody’s willing to… and its market forces to a great extent that will address global warming. Number one: market forces. Number two, maybe some coercive government policies, but even those government policies have to be linked to financial incentives. So, yeah, I believe the Earth will become increasingly engineered. The Earth’s climate geology and biology will be subject to what I hope will be tampering in a positive direction. I mean climate change and trying to save the planet’s species; I think the weather will be more laissez-faire than some other stuff.
We’ve talked about this, and one of the big helps to fight climate change is a population that quits increasing; right now, 25% of the countries on Earth have shrinking populations. Thirty years from now, it will be over 50%. By the 22nd century, three-quarters of the countries will have shrinking populations, and the Earth’s population will stop growing. That, coupled with increasing technology, means that we’ll be able to handle a population of 10 billion with less damage to the world than today’s 8 billion. So, I mean that will make things better. As people live more and more virtually via telecommuting, they’ll consume fewer resources in the real world versus the virtual world. There is a coming change/threat with the extreme power consumption of big data computing, which includes AI, which chews up much energy. Also, in the future, technology will consume minerals different from those we’ve formerly consumed, like lithium and copper.
So yeah, there will still be rape in the environment, but I’m hoping that it will be reduced and that once climate change is more in hand, that weather will mostly be allowed to be weather though that won’t be the case if we get hit with mega weather events like in eco-disaster movies like The Day After Tomorrow.
Jacobsen: Do you think many of it will be self-simulated weather models that can predict that weather based on more dates than have happened?
Rosner: I saw charts of how much more reliable weather forecasting has gotten; the one-day and three-day forecasts for any locale are 90% plus accurate, and even 10-day forecasts have gone from less than 10% correct to over 50% correct. So, modelling will improve, and people will at least be able to prepare for superstorms. When you look at super storms, like a ton of hurricanes tearing across the US and, I guess, typhoons tearing across East Asia, they don’t kill that many people; they just cause much damage. So, do you want to develop extreme methods to control against those, or do you develop strategies to protect from them? I don’t know. I mean because they’ve tried primitive ways of managing the weather, like seeding clouds with silver nitrate pellets. I don’t know if that ever worked, but that’s what they were doing in the ’70s, and I don’t know that there are any weather control methods being used today. The Netherlands has this giant Seagate that’s like a kilometre long or 3/4 of a kilometre long, and they swing shut when there’s a storm to stop the ocean from coming in. Protecting against weather will be more effective in the medium future than engineering the weather and a trillion-dollar industry.
When somebody comes up with reasonably doable technology to put up retractable sea walls around southern Florida to protect Miami when the sea rises, and New Orleans is already below sea level and is supposed to be protected by giant slabs of materials that are supposed to channel water away from the city which all failed under Katrina. Also, New Orleans is vulnerable because of land reclamation or, like many barrier islands off of Southern Louisiana, these scrubby little Islands serve to slow down the ocean as it comes roaring in, and they’ve either been submerged or developed or turned into I don’t know what but New Orleans is no longer shielded by as much stuff as it was. So, you’re going to need sea walls around New Orleans and Lower Manhattan, as well as many coastal areas worldwide, and the company that becomes best at doing that will make hundreds of billions of dollars.
Jacobsen: What about parks and such? Could you imagine a future in which robot tenders will be used for both wildlife and the land of closed-off forests that mimic natural environments?
Rosner: Yeah, it’s a common theme shortly science fiction that the wealthy live in fortified enclaves fortified against the 99% of people who aren’t rich who might be pissed off. There was that Matt Damon movie that there’s an orbiting space station where everybody lives forever if you’re rich, not a space station, a lovely space Utopia for the rich. The whole movie is about him trying to break into that joint. There are gated communities all over the place now, like in India, Florida, Los Angeles, and any place where a large population of not-rich surrounds rich people, and it is going to get worse as people can buy extra decades of life. If increased longevity comes to the rich and not to the less rich, then that will require even more fortification and hiding because we can assume that somebody worth a hundred million and used that wealth to still be healthy and active at age 95 or 105 and maybe looks like they’re 70 or 65 and presentable.
Rupert Murdoch is 93 now, and he looks terrible because he’s 93 and he’s an Australian, he spent his life going to the beach, and he still goes to the beach, and he’s with his girlfriend, who’s 65, and he looks like shit but somebody in the future who’s 105 and looks 65, it won’t be like a usual 65; it’ll be like a weirdly engineered 65. It’ll be evident to people who know what they’re looking at that this is somebody who’s way old and had a bunch of jiggering done. That person can’t go to Ralph’s Supermarket without risking being accosted by some pissed-off lunatic. So, there will be protected areas, but those won’t be the only protected areas; there will be all sorts of reasons to live apart from general society. It depends on how tolerant the future will be of different ways of forming partnerships and couple-ships and all that stuff. I think the future will be very friendly to non-traditional heterosexual life schemes, but on the other hand, maybe not. People doing certain things may want to live apart from society. Indeed, people who are freaked out, as we’ve talked about, by certain aspects of the technology may choose to live in communities or areas where they’re somewhat shielded from the technology they consider creepy, but I’m guessing that most people won’t have the time or the concern to shut themselves off from larger society but rich people certainly will have a reason to shut themselves off.
You can still have a mobile security perimeter. It can look like you’re out in public, but with robotic technology, you’ve got little mini drones the size of flies like just monitoring, and you’ve got access to all these security perimeters that may not be super visible to the people around you.
Jacobsen: What about AI analysis of the systems that make up a human being? Will there be any adaptation or manipulation of those systems that can extend life non-eugenically?
Rosner: Yeah, I think once people start getting bracelets or other some kind of wearable that continuously monitors, say, your blood glucose and, like, say, doses you with metformin or some other spike suppressor to keep it so your blood glucose even after a big meal never like spikes over 120 and mostly is in the 80s; just that alone should add years to somebody’s life. Something that monitors inflammation levels and maybe finds out what parts of your body, if there are specific parts, like, I’ve got a tooth that I don’t want to give up with a tiny infection. It’s been going on for a year, and I had a tooth replaced after one tooth just cracked apart, and that’s a year-long process; it’s a pain in the ass, and it’s like $6,000. This other tooth has this minor infection, my dentist says, and is slowly leaking a few bacteria into my system; I think it’s minuscule, probably less than a cubic millimetre a day. Is that enough to increase my inflammation appreciably? I kind of doubt it, but maybe so, and if you had a system that would monitor and look at your inflammation levels and direct you to get care or hit you with anti-inflammatory drugs, that could add years to your life.
I take Fisetin several times a week, which supposedly cleans out like senescent cells, which add to inflammation and just your body’s burden of supporting all these crap cells. I just started on Rapamycin, a weekly dose which is an antifungal that also fights mTor problems. mTor is this growth factor that your body needs, but also, when you get cancer, it harnesses your mTor to go crazy with the growth and Rapamycin fights that and has been shown to increase longevity in mice by 40% even when you start with an elderly mouse. So, all this stuff will buy you extra years and functionality in those years with crisper technology and gene editing. Jimmy Carter had fatal brain cancer six years ago. He was months away from being done, and they used gene therapy to wipe out the cancer, and he’s still with us. He’s been in hospice for a year and a half or more where he goes. I’m not going to take any more special treatments to keep going, but he keeps going. So, it’s not like he’s a lunatic who will do everything possible. So, gene therapy to fight his brain cancer was presented to him as a reasonable thing and as a sensible guy, he did it; it’s not craziness.
So, there will be a ton of stuff that will increase longevity, and as you know, because we’ve talked about it. Aubrey de Grey said seven areas of ageing need to be conquered before we can get true longevity. I think probably one of them is mitochondrial health. Mitochondria are the little energy generators of your cells, and they get shitty as you get older. You have wealthy lunatics now, incredibly wealthy tech lunatics who get transfused with teen blood; it’s a little like quackery because it’s like, trust me, teen blood will make you younger. It’s creepy and freaky, and it’s new-age-y. It’s like homeopathy; it’s just like kind of bullshit embraced by, say, more Lefty lunatic, I don’t know. Anyway, just because shit like that is goofy now doesn’t mean that they won’t figure out how to make it actual science in the future.
Jacobsen: What about monitoring complex natural systems like forests with AI systems that can see tempos and patterns in that natural environment much more in-depth than we can? Could that be a basis for manipulating and modifying that kind of environment?
Rosner: We already manipulate forests incredibly, and it’s always a source of big arguments and also big disasters where if you prevent fires from tearing through a forest every once in a while, then that forest develops a bunch of trash on the ground and unhealthy trees and then you can end up with a big fire and that burns down the homes of people who keep encroaching further and further into forests with out of the way homes. There was an argument that Trump, famously an idiot about everything, tried to blame forests in California on California not sweeping the floor of the forest. We tear down old-growth forests and then replace them with pine tree farms because pine trees grow super-fast, and the wood is super helpful in making paper and lumber. So, we already do it, and we’re just going to end up getting better at it and less shitty at it. We’ll have the internet for everything, which is also called the waking up of the world.
As I’ve said, you can’t do a heist movie set today because there are so many cameras everywhere, and there needs to be more use for cash, so it is challenging to do a heist. Then I was proven wrong last week over Easter weekend when a bunch of thieves stole $30 million in cash in LA from a cash storage facility. So, you still can do a heist, but it’s less common. I think we have fewer bank robberies. LA was the world capital of bank robberies because of all our freeways, but you don’t hear much about that anymore. The world will become more highly monitored, and we’ll have more robust technology to make sense of the information we get from every corner of the world. So, we’ll figure out how to do better with forests, and ideally, the population will level out, and we’ll have less encroachment into previously unencroached areas.
California also has a developing technology for fireproof houses. You use aluminum studs; you face it with stucco and concrete, and there’s just nothing to burn in the materials of the house; then you practice responsible land management so there’s nothing flammable within 100 ft of your house that’s if you want to have a home in the forest or if you want to build a whole little town that’s right up next to a forest. We’re going to see more environment-appropriate buildings. You don’t put up a wooden A-frame in the forest. In the future, with 3D printing and other prefabrication of building materials, when you build a house in 3D with a 3D printer, you’re using something that is concrete-like. They’re just different recipes for the goo that gets squirted out by the printer, and you use the appropriate recipe for where you’re putting the building.
Jacobsen: Do you think planes will be computerized entirely by the middle of the next century?
Rosner: So, in my book, because I keep going back to it, it becomes increasingly politically incorrect to fly for a nonserious reason because the carbon footprint of planes is terrible, much worse than like cars, I think, though I should probably research that. So, much stuff will happen to planes, though the speed with which that happens could be slow, considering the organizational inertia of Boeing. Have you been following up on what’s been going on with Boeing?
Jacobsen: No.
Rosner: They changed their corporate culture. Like 10-15 years ago, they merged with McDonald Douglas. McDonald’s Douglas hijacked their corporate culture, and McDonald’s Douglas planes crashed a lot more. Boeing had a reliability and safety culture, but it does not anymore. They moved their corporate headquarters away from where the aircraft is manufactured to Chicago from Seattle or wherever Boeing makes the planes, and Boeing’s just been doing super shitty with not giving a shit about safety which is just like trusting luck, which is crazy because their luck has run out; the pieces flying off the plane on autopilot twice. Boeing installed a new aspect to their autopilot system designed to prevent stalls based on an angle of attack meter stuck out of the front of the plane, the way angle of attack meters do. However, when that thing started giving wrong information, the autopilot kept trying to correct it incorrectly, and the pilots fought the autopilot, and the pilots hadn’t been taught how to turn off the autopilot because it would have been expensive to modify the instructions or some crap or retrain the pilots and Boeing just said it’d be fine. So, in two cases, the pilots wrestled with the planes until the autopilot won and slammed the aircraft into the ground at about 500 miles an hour.
This is all happening to Boeing 737s, the new ones. Whenever they bring out a new 737, they give it a new name like The Super Max, but the first 737 was made in the 1960s. So, they’re using a basic airframe that’s 60 years old. So, you must recognize the inertia of manufacturers, but eventually, there will be all sorts of systems to improve fuel economy and make safety more foolproof. Planes are very safe in general because of hundreds of years of aeronautics and learning from mistakes, but when you make a mistake, it can often kill a high percentage of the people on a plane compared to a car. You make a mistake in a car; it mainly doesn’t kill you; it mostly wrecks your bumper, but plane mistakes are more costly. So, yeah, we will have increasingly automated planes. I would like to see planes that can modify their shape so that their landing stall speed can be lowered to under 80 miles an hour. A big plane still needs to be going 150 miles an hour when it touches down, and that might get worse in the future because, with climate change in the summer in hot-ass cities, the hot air can’t hold as much weight.
So, in Phoenix or Houston, you might not be able to land a passenger jet on days over 120 degrees because your landing speed might have to be 170 miles an hour just for you to stay in the air. I’d like to see planes that can increase the surface area of their wings for landing so they have more lift and a lower stall speed. 50% of the accidents with planes occur during the landing phase of the flight. I’d like to see hybrid dirigible technology where if you’re going on a short trip, like, say, LA to Vegas or LA to San Francisco, it doesn’t matter whether your plane flies 600 miles an hour or you’ve got this dirigible thing that flies at 300 miles an hour with one-third of the carbon footprint. So, it takes 90 minutes to get to Vegas from LA instead of 45 minutes at a substantial fuel savings. Who cares? Or it takes you an hour and a half to get to San Francisco instead of an hour. So, all sorts of things will happen with planes if inertia can be overcome in the plane industry.
Jacobsen: Do you think commercial space flight will be widespread?
Rosner: You have two recreational and commercial space flight forms in my book. One is you’re a rich asshole, and you go to this resort in space, and they’ve managed to bring the price for a trip up there down to about 19 Grand in today’s dollars; what that’ll be in the future, I don’t know. Say, 30 Grand in the 2030s for the first space resort. If you’re rich and an idiot, you can do that. You can spend two, three, or four days in orbit, or there’s a cheaper option where, at some point, you can take these fancy-ass vacations and trips into space virtually, and there are some remotely operated humanoid robots up on space station on the space resort, and you can experience it virtually for 5,000 bucks, also, if you’re a slightly less rich idiot. So, I think we won’t have entire cities in space, but it won’t be uncommon for rich idiots. I haven’t even thought about some permanent base on the moon. That’s still pretty impractical shortly, though I should think about that more.
We last landed a human on the moon 52 years ago. We’ve been distracted by technological advances in other areas. Life on the moon would be miserable, even more pathetic on Mars; you’re not protected from cosmic radiation. The Earth has a spinning metallic core that generates a magnetic field that creates the Van Allen belt that directs most cosmic radiation to the poles away from most of the Earth. The moon doesn’t have that; Mars doesn’t have that. So, the people there will either have to be somehow shielded from radiation or live with it and live with increased rates of cancer from getting hit with radiation. The debris, the dust on the moon and Mars, particularly the moon, is spiky. All the sand on Earth is rounded because we have weather like a giant rock tumbler over the Millennia that rounds off sand, but the dust on the moon is all pointy and super corrosive. It’s like the worst possible sandpaper because it’s not rounded at all, and the dust gets into all your gaskets on your space suits and equipment and chews everything up.
The dust on Mars is likely to be corrosive. Mars has some weather, but we have more weather than we do. So, its dust is pointy. Living in space seems like something for 80 years or 100 rather than 20 years from now, though it’ll be a rare thing. You will need super-good fabricators to live reasonably on the moon or Mars. We don’t start doing a bunch of stuff in space until we have a space elevator because just launching stuff with rockets is extremely expensive, and it has a huge carbon footprint, though you’re not worried about that for launches because it’s not like we have tens of thousands of airplane flights a day compared to one launch a day less than that on average. Nobody’s worried about the carbon footprint of launching stuff into space, but in the future, if you’re going to need to move multiple payloads a day into orbit, you’re going to need a space elevator, which is an orbiting platform that’s tethered to the Earth with solid cables that run six miles up to the platform.
I don’t know the equilibrium point for a space elevator, but you need this incredibly long cable to run stuff up; once you have that cable, it becomes much cheaper to move things into orbit. Then, once you’re in orbit, it’s less expensive once the space elevator, where there is no wholesale messing with space. Also, you can only get some of your junk from Earth for some reasonable colony. You need to be able to take what is out there and break it down into the molecules or the atoms you need to reconstitute into building materials and edible stuff. Sound technology for that is 80-100 years away. Until then, you’re supplying Mars and the moon with many things from Earth, which is super expensive.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/04/07
[Recording Start]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: American morale; that’d be good.
Rick Rosner: Two of me yammering ago, I talked about how Trump’s rhetoric has gotten uglier and Republican party rhetoric, generally, has just gotten more divorced from reality and aggressive. We’re talking about American morale, and I told my wife that the people interested in non-normal government winning, that is, Trump winning, well, they’re engaging in a barrage of BS, and some people call it the Russian fire hose model of misinformation where you own information space by flooding it with bullshit. That’s what is happening, and it’ll get even worse because we still have more than 200 days until the election. Well, this is an AI election because people have recourse to use AI to generate more convincing bullshit, though with the fire hose model, the bullshit doesn’t have to be believable. There has to be a lot of it and endlessly, but yeah, it hurts even more if it’s temporarily, like if you have to pause and look at it to see if it’s bullshit. So, one of the purposes of propaganda isn’t just to persuade; it’s to demoralize, to convince people that we’re fucked, so what’s the point of fighting or voting.
We see that increasingly in polls. Polls are super wrong now that out of the 16 States that had Republican primaries and polling about the results of primaries, Trump underperformed the polls in 14 of them and by a lot in some of them. This is that we saw it in 2020, not so much in 2016, but in 2020, Republicans underperformed even more in 2022, and I think it will be even more so in 2024 for two reasons. One is that there are Republican pollsters who put out polls that are skewed to make the Republicans look like they’re doing better than they are to demoralize Democratic party voters or Independents who might be tempted to vote for Biden.
Thing Two is, trying to get sane people to respond to a poll when you call a phone and say you want to take a poll, only one person in 500 now says yes and if only one person in 500 does something, the odds that that person is sane go down that I think the polls are contaminated with lunatic a-holes who lie to the pollsters and say yeah, I’m a Democrat because the pollster wants to get Democrats and Republicans in proportions that reflect the actual population. So, a Republican who lies and says I’m a Democrat, but I’m voting for Trump this time will skew the polls. All it takes is one lying lunatic in 40, two and a half percent will skew the results by 5% and then because it’s so hard to get people to take polls, some polling companies use polling pools where they’ve recruited 10,000 people, and they pull 1,500 people out of that pool every week; a different random 1500 out of this 10,000 but these 10,000 people end up getting pulled again and again. Often, these pools pay people to take these surveys, and I believe those pools get contaminated with lunatics.
So, we’ve got polling bullshit that freaks people out if you read the polls because about 60% of Americans are reasonable and more or less think Trump would be terrible for the country, even worse this time around than the first time. You could say 40% of the country is on the side of Trump, but in both; the 40 and the 60, half of those pools are people who aren’t paying much attention and vaguely want one or the other, but there’s a big chunk of the population that is rightfully freaking out about the possibility of Trump getting re-elected. All the information we get hit with, whether accurate or misinformation, freaks people out. It looks like a third of the population is turned into assholes who don’t mind Nazi-ish policies. Trump has recently just been calling immigrants animals and saying that if he doesn’t get re-elected, there will be a blood bath, and then Trump apologists say you have to listen to it in the context of whatever speech he was giving. He wasn’t talking about all immigrants; he was just talking about immigrants who murder people, and he wasn’t saying there will be a bloodbath on the streets of America; he was saying there will be a bloodbath in the automotive industry. Then people who aren’t apologizing for Trump say come on, these are dog whistles, and it’s violent rhetoric which encourages lunatics to commit violence.
So, with all this swirling around, it will get worse week by week. Yeah, there’s a certain morale problem in America, though any news that Biden and Democrats… that Biden is not this daughtering older man the way that Trump would paint him, but Biden gave his State of the Union speech, and he came across as in command of the facts and alert and not falling apart that I think much of the country found encouraging. So, any news or any sign that reasonable politics can win out raises National morale and any news that Trump has a shot lowers National morale. Thankfully, Trump is wrong at shit, and Trump as a politician, has never learned to move to the center to try to moderate his extremism. We’re lucky for that because if he were more competent if he listened to his people, he would… he’s clinched the Republican nomination, and that’s usually when you move to the center, you’ve already captured the extremists in your party, but Trump doesn’t seem to be doing that. Trump is a fucking idiot, and even though it’s distressing, it’s good news because it loses him in the middle.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/04/06
[Recording Start]
Rick Rosner: Some people say, or at least one person I read, that AI is a misnomer; it’s just high technology. Calling it intelligence, artificial, or whatever you want to call it, it’s just increasingly powerful technology. We have the same genetics as humans did 100,000 years ago. We’re not getting any smarter biologically, which means it’s harder and harder for humans to keep up with the world created by technology without being aided by and combined with technology. It makes it almost tautological that we must define ourselves by this technology. You suggested I ask our buddy Chris, who knows more about this stuff. We do not know where AI is going, so the question is, will AI get smart? Will it have general intelligence, which is fluid intelligence, the kind of intelligence that we think of when we think of human intelligence, which is the ability to understand the world and come up with clever ideas on how to deal with it, and that includes to some extent our idea of smartness becoming conscious.
That will all happen. The second question is if it will happen and when. I’m no authority, but it’s going to happen. You and I have talked about consciousness extensively over the past ten years, and we understand its elements. We have a reasonably good model of consciousness. So, we know what AI doesn’t have and what it will need to have to be conscious. People like Cory Doctorow say that regardless of what happens to AI in the medium future, in the short term, there’s likely to be an AI crash the same way there was an internet crash in about the year 2000 because everybody got super psyched in the late 90s. My writing partner and I were in charge of the website for The Man Show. The website was themanshow.com, and we thought we would all become millionaires off our hope because if you had the right portal and internet gateway, you would make a million bucks. Then there was a crash when people figured out that this wasn’t going to happen and that the internet was still pretty shitty. Things like pets.com went away and took away a lot of people’s money.
Then, of course, the internet did become everything that we thought it would be with the coming of Google, streaming, and all the social media once the tech was in place to do all this stuff. So, there was a short-term crash, and then Google came along around 2005 and posted Google; the internet has boomed and comes to full-ish fruition. Doctorow and other people think before AI comes into full fruition, if ever we’re going to have a vast AI crash when AI doesn’t live up to the huge expectations people have now, both in terms of performance and in terms of return on investment. Well, AI is real people, which is ironic. However, tens of thousands of low-wage people worldwide take the world’s information and digest it, chew it up like a mama bird chews up food and spits it into the mouth of a baby bird. Information must be processed before it can become the probabilistic fill-in-the-blanks that AI is.
The article I read has hundreds of people looking for pictures with people wearing shirts in them. Then they circle the shirts and add hashtags to the shirts so that AI gets an idea of what a sweater is and how it works in the world, but not an idea, just a way to predict how an artificially generated picture that includes a shirt, how this shirt should behave. At this point, the AI doesn’t know anything. It knows how to make impressive predictions, but filling the AI with the information to make those beautiful predictions is expensive. Getting a return on those predictions and making those predictions pay off may not pan out in the short term. So, in the short term, say in the next two- or three years, people may say AI is not this. McKenzie, with a semi-evil business consultant company, predicts that AI could double the world’s GDP. That’s a super high expectation, so in the short term, when it doesn’t look like it’s going to do anything like that, people will freak out, and we’ll have a crash.
The two questions I initially discussed were, will AI get smart, and when those are still in play, just delayed in people’s expectations by the crash by a few years. AI has become conscious in some labs, spending billions on messing with AI, like Microsoft or Alphabet. Before 2032, did it become conscious everyday where you could have your own conscious AI? No, not for years after that, though it’ll improve at simulating consciousness. I’ve looked at a lot of pornographic AI images a) because it’s naked ladies and b) because it’s one of the areas where you can watch AI change by the day as it understands more and more of the world of naked ladies and sex. Remember, it was only a year ago that AI didn’t even understand how many fingers people have and how underwear, to stay on your body, has to have a band that goes all the way around your waist. However, I think what makes naked AI ladies attractive is that they look very human. You know the uncanny valley, right?
Well, the Uncanny Valley is from 20 years ago with CG animation. There was the Tom Hanks Christmas Train movie, in which we’re okay with cartoon characters and enjoy them. We like photographs of people, but between prominent cartoon characters and pictures, there are CG-generated images that look pretty close to accurate but are far enough off to give us the creeps. As I said, the uncanny valley is from 20 or more years ago. Now, the image is generated by AI unless they’re creepy because the AI doesn’t know how many legs people have or which sets of genitals belong to which gender. Besides obvious errors, AI can make beautiful and not creepy images. In this novel I’m writing about the near future, there’s a kind of porn that is based on presenting images of women who are disquieted by being in porn. I mean, among the various erotic charges that porn can give you, there’s the charge of seeing the humanity of the person participating in porn and getting an idea that the woman doing the porn isn’t entirely comfortable making porn.
Now, there’s a charge going the other way too. You can like porn where the woman seems to be totally into it. However, there’s the other way where the woman appears not so into it. There’s like a kind of sadistic charge to that, and in my novel of the near future, porn is made more porn-y by the porn-simulating consciousness. Similarly, video games have a perverse charge where you get a charge out of engaging in combat with background players who appear to be conscious. So anyway, I think there will be a market outside these perverse areas. However, it will just be a market for making AI friendly to deal with and making AI appear conscious. So, AI will simulate consciousness years and years before it becomes conscious.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/04/06
[Recording Start]
Rick Rosner: So, you’ve been away for a couple months and plus you’re up in Canada, so you don’t get the daily barrage of awfulness that is US News. My wife Carole just had to turn off the news and leave the room yesterday, I think. Experts on cyber-attack and propaganda say that we’re getting hit with an unprecedented barrage in America of BS and shenanigans between now and the election in November. For instance, in February Russians hacked the US Medicare for a month and maybe longer. Old people weren’t able to get their prescriptions filled. So, I mean disruption only helps the Trump side of things and being where you are, you’ve missed the unapologetic awfulness that is Trump. I mean he keeps outdoing himself in terms of embracing being just a prick and just everything bad about Trump. He’s owning all of it and not apologizing for any of it. The only good thing about Trump is that he is consistently bad at stuff. Just to demonstrate that mathematically, I follow an online bookie which is like Vegas odds and what I follow is the odds of Biden getting reelected versus Trump and two months ago, Vegas had Trump twice as likely as to get reelected as Biden and yesterday the odds went to 50-50. They’ve been steadily moving in favor of Biden. Biden’s raised about twice as much money as Trump. He is obviously much less of an asshole than Trump.
I’m hopeful for Biden but we’ve got seven more months of just the daily awfulness in the US. I don’t know what Canada does but France like limits political campaigns to six weeks before the election and we have nothing like that. Basically, Trump’s been campaigning since he lost the last time and it just adds a funk to daily life here.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/04/06
[Recording Start]
Rick Rosner: We haven’t talked about anything in a couple months because you’ve been away but among the things we haven’t talked about is AI which is all anybody thinks about anymore. I think in the future, people will have to define themselves in some way relative to AI the same way almost everybody in the world defines themselves in relation to the internet and just media. We look at the world and we see ourselves through the lens of the information we consume and maybe it’s always been that way. It’s just that until recently we haven’t thought of it as information. We thought of it as having friends and being out in the world.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://secular.org/2024/04/heretic-on-the-hill-tell-speaker-johnson-you-oppose-his-anti-establishment-clause-bill/
Publication Date: April 29, 2024
Organization: Secular Coalition for America
Organization Description: The Secular Coalition for America advocates for religious freedom, as guaranteed by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and works to defend the equal rights of nonreligious Americans. Representing 20 national secular organizations, hundreds of local secular communities, and working with our allies in the faith community, we combine the power of grassroots activism with professional lobbying to make an impact on the laws and policies that govern separation of religion and government — or the improper encroachment of either on the other.
By Scott MacConomy
First a few positive words about House Speaker Mike Johnson: After months of delaying and considering every other alternative, he took the only remaining option on defense funding for Ukraine, which was to do the right thing. He let the House vote on it. This despite threats from anti-Ukraine, pro-Russia House members to call a vote on whether he can keep his job as Speaker. Johnson is learning that as Speaker you can’t make everyone happy so sometimes you might as well do what’s right, even if it means letting Democrats help pass a bill.
On the other hand,
Johnson has a bill, the History and Tradition Protection Act, that would limit the amount of damages a plaintiff can win in a successful suit concerning monuments, public buildings, or flags that contain religious words, images or symbolism. He knows something about this from his time at the Alliance Defending Freedom, defending those monuments, buildings, and flags in court. It is unusual for an attorney to do something to limit attorneys’ fees, but there it is.
Specifically, the legislation abolishes the award of monetary damages and attorneys’ fees in “Establishment Clause cases where a plaintiff complains of any monument, memorial, statue, …public building, or other figure containing religious words, imagery or symbolism; or the presence of religious words, imagery or symbolism in official seals and flags; or religious expression in the context of the proceedings of any deliberative body.” Such as a prayer before a city council meeting.
So if a public building like a courthouse has the Ten Commandments inscribed on the wall, and someone successfully sues to have that removed on the grounds that it violates the Establishment Clause’s prohibition on establishing any state religion, they cannot receive monetary damages and they pay the attorneys fees themselves.
The Johnson bill incentivizes government officials to include “religious words, images, or symbolism” in government buildings or on government land because there would be no legal consequences of any significance. We do not need a law that provides this incentive for people in positions of power to impose their religious beliefs on the public. There need to be legal consequences and financial deterrents in place for those who are found to have violated the Establishment Clause.
You can use this Action Alert to tell your representatives that you oppose the Johnson bill.
_________________
The Secular Coalition, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, and the American Humanist Association are hosting the inaugural Congressional Reason Reception on May 1st on Capitol Hill. The event will include Congressmen Jamie Raskin, Jared Huffman, and Mark Pocan presenting three awards, one to the biggest violator of church-state separation and two that people should actually want to win.
The featured speaker is Kate Cohen, author of We of Little Faith: Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe (and Maybe You Should Too). It’s going to be entertaining, and you can register to watch on Zoom here. The program should last from 6:30 to 7-ish but we just learned that Congressman Raskin has to appear right at the beginning of the reception, around 6pm. We hope to Zoom him then and any other members of Congress who drop by.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://secular.org/2024/04/heretic-on-the-hill-to-govern-is-to-choose-who-do-you-want-choosing/
Publication Date: April 15, 2024
Organization: Secular Coalition for America
Organization Description: The Secular Coalition for America advocates for religious freedom, as guaranteed by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and works to defend the equal rights of nonreligious Americans. Representing 20 national secular organizations, hundreds of local secular communities, and working with our allies in the faith community, we combine the power of grassroots activism with professional lobbying to make an impact on the laws and policies that govern separation of religion and government — or the improper encroachment of either on the other.
By Scott MacConomy
President Kennedy said “To govern is to choose.” because that’s the job; thousands of choices that each affect some Americans one way and other Americans another way.
It’s less than seven months to the election. The national polls are extremely close. The economy is good if you’re an economist but not if you’re the average consumer buying groceries. Biden can’t get credit for creating jobs and building roads and bridges in red states. Trump is going on trial next week for falsifying business records when he paid off a porn star to keep quiet about their (alleged) affair during his first campaign. Biden is raising more money than Trump. Trump is doing better with minority voters than he did last time.
Biden’s popularity rating is at an abysmal 39 percent but Trump is only at 43. Biden is not doing as well with young voters but he’s doing better with older voters. The Supreme Court is cooperating in delaying Trump’s trial for election interference before, during, and after January 6th, but it may still go forward before the election this fall. Third party candidates may make a difference in some states. Biden is still 81 years old.
In seven months we will know which of these were factors in the outcome of the election and which didn’t really matter. Until then the best thing we and you can do is help get people motivated and registered to vote. In 2020 about a third of eligible voters, or 80 million people, stayed home. Arizona and Georgia were each decided by about 12,000 votes. Voter turnout is once again going to be the key to the election outcome and everything that follows. While SCA as a nonprofit can’t endorse a candidate, we can note the irony that the candidate who would be the best for issues that matter to secular voters is the one who goes to church regularly, and the one who would be the worst uses the Bible as a prop.
I want to highlight the Secular America Votes page now on our website. It’s a great resource for people who want to register to vote, check where to vote, get an absentee ballot, and research everything that will be on your ballot. You can also check out our Affiliates and Social Media Communications Toolkit for sampling messaging. There is also information on how to hold a voter registration drive in person or online. Secular America Votes is a joint project with our coalition members American Atheists, the American Humanist Association, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, and the Secular Student Alliance.
Anyone who wants to get more involved in campaigns should join their local party organization. They are called (party name) clubs, committees, or organizations and are usually at the town, city, or county level. You will meet like-minded people (that maybe you didn’t know were out there if you’re in the political minority), help out local, state, and federal candidates, and probably get to meet them. Elected officials know that their local party organizations are vital in doing their jobs and keeping their jobs, so they show up from time to time.
As I’ve often noted, 30 percent of the population or 78 million people identify as religiously unaffiliated. About half of them are also politically uninvolved, not doing well economically, and generally disconnected from society in a lot of ways. But the other half is politically involved and the atheists in that group are highly involved. It’s a huge voting block. Let your elected officials know that you’re part of it and that if they pay attention to the separation of religion and government they will get the support of an underrepresented and growing sector of the population.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://secular.org/2024/04/heretic-on-the-hill-hat-tip-to-the-deep-state/
Publication Date: April 2, 2024
Organization: Secular Coalition for America
Organization Description: The Secular Coalition for America advocates for religious freedom, as guaranteed by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and works to defend the equal rights of nonreligious Americans. Representing 20 national secular organizations, hundreds of local secular communities, and working with our allies in the faith community, we combine the power of grassroots activism with professional lobbying to make an impact on the laws and policies that govern separation of religion and government — or the improper encroachment of either on the other.
By Scott MacConomy
If you spend a lot of time following what passes for political discourse you hear about the Deep State, or at least you did during the Trump administration. People who used to be called government employees, civil servants, or bureaucrats were suddenly referred to as the Deep State on the assumption that they were trying to sabotage whatever President Trump was trying to accomplish from the inside.
There are about 7,000 federal government jobs that are filled by people who get political appointments from the White House (jobs listed in something called The Plum Book). These are higher level jobs at the government agencies and they are to some extent political jobs with little job security. The other two-plus million federal employees/Deep Staters are park rangers, air traffic controllers, and meat inspectors, to name a few of their numerous occupations. As federal employees they have some job protections that prevent them from being fired by a new President who thinks they are part of some conspiracy.
Next Wednesday, April 3rd, some of the best work by the Deep State takes effect. Nine government agencies have completed the arduous “regulatory process” for implementing a policy ordered by President Biden that protects the rights of people receiving benefits funded by the federal government. The new rule, as it is called by the bureaucrats, will affect those receiving help from the many social service providers that are faith-based and will ensure that those providers cannot withhold help based on religious belief or lack of one, or require beneficiaries to participate in any religious activity in order to receive help. So if you are in line for a bag of food at a food bank run by a church using a federal grant, they can’t preach to you or ask you to say a prayer.
One of the key protections is a requirement that organizations receiving federal grants for social service programs must inform beneficiaries of their right to not be discriminated against on the basis of their religious beliefs. The rule also restores some religious freedom protections that were rescinded by the Trump administration that affected people seeking job search and job training assistance, housing services, and continuing education.
Getting the new 187-page rule in place took a long time and a lot of work by people in these nine agencies. It’s called the regulatory process because it is a process with many steps including a public comment period, and if you don’t follow the process you end up getting taken to court by those who don’t like what you’re trying to accomplish. Thanks to everyone here who used our action alert during the public comment period to weigh in.
Back to the Deep State: There is a major effort at conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation to use an executive order by the next Republican president to strip civil servants of their job protections, fire tens of thousands of them, and replace them with, to put it charitably, conservatives who will change the face of the federal workforce for the worse. And they are already putting together a list of those job candidates. It’s called Project 2025. Trump and conservatives were totally unprepared to govern in 2017. They want this time to be different.
If this sounds far-fetched, it is exactly what Trump tried to implement at the end of his term in office. He created a new category of federal employment, Schedule F, that would have changed the status of many federal employees so that they could be fired much more easily. Biden reversed it.
To put a bow on this, there is little interest and even less sympathy for federal workers. In a survey I can’t link to that asked people to rank how they feel about various faiths and institutions, the federal government is right near the bottom. Some of the others, for example, were the military, Christians, unions, the middle class, people on welfare, and big business. I remembered this because atheists were right there at the bottom too. If Trump wins, he’s coming for the federal workforce and for regulations like the one taking effect Wednesday. The new federal workforce would work to implement his version of religious freedom which is freedom to discriminate against non-Christians and to proselytize at food banks.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://secular.org/2024/03/secular-advocates-plus-jamie-raskin-mean-lobby-day-success/
Publication Date: March 15, 2024
Organization: Secular Coalition for America
Organization Description: The Secular Coalition for America advocates for religious freedom, as guaranteed by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and works to defend the equal rights of nonreligious Americans. Representing 20 national secular organizations, hundreds of local secular communities, and working with our allies in the faith community, we combine the power of grassroots activism with professional lobbying to make an impact on the laws and policies that govern separation of religion and government — or the improper encroachment of either on the other.
By Scott MacConomy
Since my last report which previewed our annual meeting for the leaders of our 20 coalition organizations and the lobby day on Capitol Hill to follow, we did both! The meeting was the usual rare opportunity for these executive directors and Board leaders to learn what the other groups are working on, to collaborate, and to hear speakers on Christian nationalism, on state government affairs from secular state representatives, and from the humanist chaplain serving a death row inmate.
One of the speakers was Ryan Burge, a sociology professor who studies religion and the nonreligious, and takes a data-driven approach to everything. We learned about how atheists compare to religious groups and to the larger subset to which atheists belong, The Nones, in a number of areas; political involvement (very high), voting patterns (very Democratic), community involvement (high), differences between young and old, and much more. Dr. Burge predicts that by 2028, half of all Democratic voters could very likely be nonreligious. Because I suggested Dr. Burge as a speaker I was hoping I would not be the only one who was interested in his presentation, but it was rated the highest by our attendees in the post-meeting survey. He was also the only speaker who appeared remotely, which means you can watch his presentation here. There is some good discussion at the end, too.
I’m not going to say our lobby day was the apotheosis of lobby days, but it was pretty close. We doubled last year’s attendance, and half of our attendees were there for the first time. Many of them mentioned the importance of November’s election and wanting to get more involved.
Congressman Jamie Raskin came by the breakfast to give us his suggestions on how to pitch his militia bill in our meetings that day. The bill establishes federal guidelines on what is and is not illegal activity by militias in the areas of blocking government proceedings, intimidating people at polling places, participating in demonstrations, and more. As a former constitutional law professor, it did not take him long to get to the section of the Second Amendment that calls for “a well regulated militia,” and to elaborate on how most of the 200 or so militias in the country are far from well regulated.
Our particular take on the need for this bill is the significant number of Christian nationalists in the militias, and their conclusion that they have permission from God to take matters into their own hands if necessary to make this a more “Christian nation.” I just read this quote five days ago: “There are so many militia churches now. I [visited] a church in Yuba City, California. Wednesday night is women’s night, and Monday night is youth night. Tuesday night is militia new recruit night.” That’s from this interview with Jeff Sharlett, a Dartmouth professor who goes to churches and rallies and then reports on what he hears, most recently in a book titled The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War. Militia night at churches shows exactly why we need the Raskin bill.
Our group then fanned out to nearly 100 House and Senate meetings to talk to representatives and staff about the militia bill, many of whom were hearing about it for the first time from us. (Over 7,000 bills have been introduced in the House this Congress. It’s a lot for them to keep up with.) We asked Democrats and Republicans to support the bill and had many productive meetings. You can send your support to your legislators with this Action Alert if you have not already.
______________________
The Secular Coalition sent a letter to Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) this week in response to his 4,000 word article on why he thinks this should be a more Christian nation. His article is long on trying to justify that and, thankfully, short on actual steps to take other than school prayer and posting the Ten Commandments in classrooms. He did propose finding ways to improve wages for blue collar men so it would be easier for them to raise Christian families. We said we supported that, but also better wages for blue collar women and for families of all faiths and no faiths. How he would just improve the wages of Christians wasn’t made clear.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://secular.org/2024/03/our-letter-to-senator-hawley-re-christian-nationalism/
Publication Date: March 15, 2024
Organization: Secular Coalition for America
Organization Description: The Secular Coalition for America advocates for religious freedom, as guaranteed by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and works to defend the equal rights of nonreligious Americans. Representing 20 national secular organizations, hundreds of local secular communities, and working with our allies in the faith community, we combine the power of grassroots activism with professional lobbying to make an impact on the laws and policies that govern separation of religion and government — or the improper encroachment of either on the other.
The Secular Coalition for America (SCA), in collaboration with its 20 coalition groups, has written a letter to Senator Josh Hawley, addressing his incorrect remarks on Christian Nationalist and the danger it poses to our nation.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://secular.org/2024/02/heretic-on-the-hill-the-worst-house-chaplain-ever-plus-history/
Publication Date: February 20, 2024
Organization: Secular Coalition for America
Organization Description: The Secular Coalition for America advocates for religious freedom, as guaranteed by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and works to defend the equal rights of nonreligious Americans. Representing 20 national secular organizations, hundreds of local secular communities, and working with our allies in the faith community, we combine the power of grassroots activism with professional lobbying to make an impact on the laws and policies that govern separation of religion and government — or the improper encroachment of either on the other.
By Scott MacConomy
Monday was the Presidents Day holiday when we observe the birthday of George Washington next Thursday and of Abraham Lincoln last Monday. Like many of the Founders, Washington’s real views on religion are difficult to determine because he wrote very little about them. He encouraged people to go to church but sometimes failed to do so himself for weeks. He was a church official but often left before communion. Jefferson wrote that “…it was observed that he had never, on any occasion, said a word to the public which showed a belief in the Christian religion.”
Washington did write about choosing workmen for Mount Vernon in 1784, suggesting they could be “Mahometans, Jews, or Christians of any Sect, or they may be Atheists”—as long as they were good workers. And he clearly opposed the idea of a state religion which he grew up under as a Virginia resident under British rule.
Lincoln really sounded like an atheist early in life but later, through political expediency or because of a real conversion, sounded a lot like a Christian. More than one person who knew him in his twenties said that Lincoln could shock people by saying that the Bible was just an ordinary book, or that Jesus was an illegitimate child. There is a story that he wrote an essay about his true beliefs but a friend burned it out of concern for his budding political career. In 1843 Lincoln wrote, “It was everywhere contended that no Christian ought to vote for me because I belonged to no Church, and was suspected of being a Deist.” So happy birthday to George and Abe, whatever you did or didn’t believe in.
A little more history, although this time I’m going somewhere with it: There has been a House and Senate Chaplain since 1789 and they open each day with a prayer. Which seems odd for a government founded on separation of church and state. Shocker; the chaplains have always been Christian, although there have been many guest chaplains of different religions. James Madison opposed the idea because it violated the First Amendment and because the practice discriminated against religions such as the Quakers and Catholics whom he said “could scarcely be elected to the office.”
The guest chaplain on January 30 was Pastor Jack Hibbs, who has been described as a Christian Nationalist involved in the January 6th insurrection, with a long history of hatred toward Jews, Muslims, LGBTQ+ individuals, and anyone inconsistent with his “biblical worldview.” He was described that way in a letter from 26 House members to Speaker Mike Johnson and the House Chaplain who both made Hibbs’ appearance possible. Congressman Jared Huffman (D-CA) took the lead on the letter. We made a few suggestions at his request.
Here’s one good paragraph: “These facts suggest a breathtaking lack of consideration for the religious diversity of our Congress and pluralistic nation. It appears that Speaker Johnson – with the tacit approval of the House Chaplain – decided to flout the Chaplaincy guidelines and use the platform of the Guest Chaplain to lend the imprimatur of Congress to an ill-qualified hate preacher who shares the Speaker’s Christian Nationalist agenda and his antipathy toward church-state separation.” You can read the letter here.
I doubt there will be a reply from Johnson but if there is I’ll let you know here. We will keep after Johnson’s support for church services in the Capitol, Christian nationalist chaplains, and the completely unnecessary and inappropriate tradition of Congressional chaplains. Traditions die hard but it can happen. The Congressional Prayer Breakfast is a shell of what it once was.
It’s almost too late to register for our Lobby Day on March 5, but not quite. We need a week to get your meetings scheduled so the deadline is Monday, February 26. We will be lobbying for a bill that cracks down on militias because Christian nationalists in militias is a growing problem. They definitely want less separation between church and state, but they only mean their church. You can learn more and register here. The next Heretic on the Hill will include an Action Alert on this bill so we can maximize the support for it right before Lobby Day.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: http://www.secularconnexion.ca/events/scs-demands-phase-out-taxpayer-funding-for-rc-schools-in-ontario/
Publication Date: February 8, 2024
Organization: Secular Connexion Séculière
Organization Description: Secular Connexion Séculière (SCS) is a national organization dedicated to advocating and lobbying for atheist rights in Canada, to facilitating communication and dialogue among Canadian atheists, and to communicating Canadian human rights values to the world. SCS does not have, nor does it seek, any governing powers in the Canadian atheist community. Rather, it seeks support for its efforts to defend non-believers right to freedom from religion, to lobby the Canadian government on the behalf of Canadian atheists, to provide communication conduits for Canadian atheist organizations.
February 7, 2024
RE: Funding for Roman Catholic school systems in Ontario
Dear Member of Ontario Legislature:
Secular Connexion is a non profit organization that advocates on behalf of human rights in Canada. Several of our concerns involve the demographic, financial, and discriminatory problems of funding Roman Catholic school system in Ontario.
This system is supported by only 38% of Ontario’s population, but costs Ontario taxpayers over $1 billion dollars per year. Since only 8% of the cost of the system comes from separate school residential property taxes, the other 92% is funded by all Ontario taxpayers be they Non-believer, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, etc.
Constitutionally, Section 93 of the Constitution Act of 1867 guarantees the right of provinces to fund minority school systems if they had them before joining Confederation. It does not force Ontario to provide funding for minority school systems. Amotion passed in the Ontario Legislative Assembly would phase out funding for the system just as it was in Québec and Newfoundland and Labrador.
Discrimination is inherent in the separate school system because it can legally refuse to hire non-Catholic teachers and it does. Conversely, Catholic teachers are hired by the public system giving them access to all available teaching positions that non-Catholic teachers do not have.
Seventy-four percent (74%) of Ontario non-Catholic Ontarians are paying for a system that will not hire them, and may refuse to admit their children as students.
Canada signed the United Nations’ International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Ontario has twice been declared to be in violation of the Covenant because of its discriminatory practice of publicly funding schools for one religion. Parents of other religions pay tuition for religious schools and property taxes.
Ontario is multi-ethnic, multi-racial, and multi-cultural. Children of differing backgrounds should be together in the same school so they can learn what they have in common, not what divides them.
One public system would have students attending the nearest school with the children in their neighbourhood, perhaps walking to that school, instead of being bused to a distant school because they are, or aren’t, Catholic.
As Ontario taxpayers, we demand that the Ontario Legislature pass a motion to phase out funding for Roman Catholic schools in Ontario.
Sincerely,
Doug Thomas, President
Secular Connexion Séculière
president@secularconnexion.ca
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: http://www.secularconnexion.ca/events/scs-monitors-religious-bias-in-calgary-police-service/
Publication Date: January 29, 2024
Organization: Secular Connexion Séculière
Organization Description: Secular Connexion Séculière (SCS) is a national organization dedicated to advocating and lobbying for atheist rights in Canada, to facilitating communication and dialogue among Canadian atheists, and to communicating Canadian human rights values to the world. SCS does not have, nor does it seek, any governing powers in the Canadian atheist community. Rather, it seeks support for its efforts to defend non-believers right to freedom from religion, to lobby the Canadian government on the behalf of Canadian atheists, to provide communication conduits for Canadian atheist organizations.
January 29, 2024 – 12:00 am
In November of 2023, SCS became aware of infringements by the Calgary Police Service (CPS) on the requirement for governments and their agencies to be neutral regarding religion. These infringements included:
- supporting a faith based community prayer breakfast by providing an honour guard, and by the attendance and recognition of senior officers as members of the CPS. The speaker at the breakfast was a fundamentalist Christian, residential school denier. Those senior officers apparently joined in a standing ovation for the speaker, (listen to full speech – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7BSNYrOggA
- the CPS spent public funds, approved by the Calgary Police Commission (CPC), on a chapel in its police headquarters. The CPS claimed that the chapel was non-denominational, and open to all for use in spite of its religious configuration and the presence of a St. Michael statue within it. They made no attempt to make the space religiously neutral (i.e. having a non-religious function) by including non-believers in their consideration of the design of the chapel.
SCS wrote the following letter on our official letterhead to the CPS
November 10, 2023
Calgary Police Service
5111 47 St. N.E.
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
T3J 3R2
RE: Support of religious activities by the Calgary Police Service To Whom It May Concern:
Secular Connexion is a national organization that works to protect the right to freedom from religion in Canada1. As a part of that effort, we work to ensure that public institutions conform to the decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada requiring public institutions to honour that right and to be neutral in regards to religious activities in Canada.
We have become aware through the news media that the Calgary Police Service has recently actively supported a community prayer meeting that featured a fundamentalist religious speaker who made negative comments about the LGBTQ community and criticized the Prime Minister of Canada for defending the rights of that community. In short, he exercised his right to deliver a Christian message.
Our concern is that in providing an honour guard for the prayer meeting itself, the Calgary Police Service abrogated its duty to remain neutral in matters of religion by so supporting a religious event. By doing so, it supported the aforementioned fundamentalist speaker in direct violation of its duty to remain religiously neutral. In listening to his speech, I came to the conclusion that, were it not for the unfortunate Section 319 3b of the Criminal Code of Canada, he could be charged with uttering hate speech.
We are also aware that the Calgary Police Service spent public funds on establishing a religious chapel in its headquarters. In claiming that the chapel is open to all religions, the Service ignores the fact that to be neutral, such a facility would have to equally support non-believing members of the force, and of the general public. To meet its obligations, the Service would have to ensure that non-believers would have equal access to the facility. Our information is that it has not actively done so.
Please take steps to eliminate the religious bias that these actions demonstrate and to ensue that non-believers are treated equally with any religious people, either members of the force, or members of the general public.
Regards,
Doug Thomas, President
Secular Connexion Séculière
president@secularconnexion.ca
We received the following reply from Chief Constable, Mark Neufeld.
January 9, 2024
CALGARY
Doug Thomas, President
Secular Connexion Seculiere
Dear Mr. Thomas,
Re: Response to your letter of November 10, 2023
Thank you for reaching out to the Calgary Police Service.
In accordance with the Alberta Human Rights Act and organizational values, the Calgary Police Service (CPS) is
committed to upholding respect for the diverse range of religious beliefs and non-beliefs within our
community. As a public institution, we maintain a stance of religious neutrality, ensuring that no preference or
favouritism is shown towards any specific religion.
We strive to create a safe, diverse, inclusive and inspired environment for our employees and those we serve.
In doing so, we have recently conducted a full review of the overall position of religion and spirituality at the
CPS, through our Office of Respect and Inclusion. Following our review, we recognize there are some areas of
our Service requiring changes to better reflect our commitment to religious neutrality and to improve
inclusivity. This includes, but is not limited to, honour guard representation at external events, changes to
policy around the spiritual and emotional care program (formerly called the Chaplaincy program), and changes
to the Arthur Duncan Memorial Hall (formerly the CPS chapel).
For context, the former CPS chapel was renamed the Arthur Duncan Memorial Hall in 2017, in honour of Const.
Arthur Duncan, the first member of the CPS to be killed in the line of duty . The hall serves as a dedicated space
that honours the fallen members of the CPS and is used for line of duty dedications and services of
remembrance. The hall’s former use as a chapel has necessitated additional changes to better ensure it is a
religiously neutral space . We have taken several actions to ensure this, including removal of religious statues,
items, sacraments and any references to the area as a “chapel.” Currently the Arthur Duncan Memorial Hall is
also undergoing renovations so the area may be used for a variety of purposes.
Additionally, as a public organization, representatives from the CPS are invited to attend various community
events throughout Calgary, as such events provide an opportunity for community engagement. As attendees at
external events, CPS representatives do not make decisions regarding the speakers and are not given an
opportunity to hear their remarks beforehand. As such, there is always a possibility that the organizers of the
events will select speakers whose values do not match those of the CPS, which was the case at this year’s
Calgary Leaders Prayer Breakfast. That said, I appreciate your concerns regarding the attendance of the honour
guard at such an event, and as noted, through our review, we will be looking at honour guard attendance at
events going forward.
I appreciate and agree with you that it is crucial for the CPS to be a place where members of all beliefs can feel
comfortable, respected, and included . While some of the changes may take time to fully complete, we are
committed to religious neutrality in the Service and workplace .
Respectfully,
Mark Neufeld, Chief Constable, CPS
5111-47 Street N.E.,
Calgary, Alberta Canada T3J 3R2
http://www.calgarypolice .ca
Our thoughts
While this letter would seem to indicate that the CPS is changing its ways, we are concerned by the incongruity of their words and their actions.
For example, the CPS partnered with the Salvation Army church for a toy drive rather than the many religiously neutral options that also collect toys for children. In addition, they are committed to appointing 20 more religious chaplains. We don’t know how this will align with religious neutrality, what faiths or humanist/secular groups will be represented and what policies will govern their actions.
1 Supreme Court of Canada.Big M Drugs v. Crown.1984; Mouvement Liaïque Québécois v. City of Saguenay.2015
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: http://www.secularconnexion.ca/events/in-progress/
Publication Date: January 7, 2024
Organization: Secular Connexion Séculière
Organization Description: Secular Connexion Séculière (SCS) is a national organization dedicated to advocating and lobbying for atheist rights in Canada, to facilitating communication and dialogue among Canadian atheists, and to communicating Canadian human rights values to the world. SCS does not have, nor does it seek, any governing powers in the Canadian atheist community. Rather, it seeks support for its efforts to defend non-believers right to freedom from religion, to lobby the Canadian government on the behalf of Canadian atheists, to provide communication conduits for Canadian atheist organizations.
What is Secular Connexion Séculière (SCS) up to now?
français ci-dessous
Supporting Bill C-367, a bill to remove Section 319 3b from the Criminal Code of Canada. That’s the section that allows religious apologists to publish hate literature, and utter hate speech publicly with impunity as long as they support their statements with religious texts,
(3) No person shall be convicted of an offence under subsection (2)
(a) if he establishes that the statements communicated were true;
(b) if, in good faith, the person expressed or attempted to establish by an argument an opinion on a religious subject or an opinion based on a belief in a religious text;
(c) if the statements were relevant to any subject of public interest, the discussion of which was for the public benefit, and if on reasonable grounds he believed them to be true; or
(d) if, in good faith, he intended to point out, for the purpose of removal, matters producing or tending to produce feelings of hatred toward an identifiable group in Canada. SCS is mass emailing all MPs.
Email your MP to support Bill C-367(courtesy of BC Humanist Association)
Developing an e-petition to ask the Minister of Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship to impose a moratorium on deporting undocumented residents until he develops a better policy and regulations.
Monitoring the actions of the Liberty Coalition, a fundamentalist, right wing group intent on taking over Canada’s government to turn Canada into a Christian theocracy. (https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/fundamentalist-christian-movement-1.6793677)
Promoting political activity by the 25-30% of Canadians who are non-believers so that their voices will be heard.
Protecting the right to freedom from religion with a confidential direct contact to SCS so we can give advice and intervene as appropriate (http://www.secularconnexion.ca/urgent/). If you are discriminated against because of your non-belief, use this service. Check out Successes Great and Small (http://www.secularconnexion.ca – under Now!). If you are discriminated against, use this service.
Continue to lobby governments to change legislation that discriminates against non-believers; e.g. the regulations enforced by the Charities Directorate that favour religions, Section 319 3b (above).
Monitoring religious bias in Calgary Police ServIce: https://www.secularconnexion.ca/events/scs-monitors-religious-bias-in-calgary-police-service/
We need your support to do these things.
Qu’est-ce que Secular Connexion Séculière (SCS) jusqu’à présent ?
Appuyer le projet de loi C-367, un projet de loi visant à supprimer l’article 319 3b du Code criminel du Canada. C’est la section qui permet aux apologistes religieux de publier de la littérature haineuse et de prononcer des discours de haine publiquement en toute impunité tant qu’ils soutiennent leurs déclarations avec des textes religieux.
(3) Nul ne peut être déclaré coupable d’une infraction visée au paragraphe (2)
a) s’il établit que les déclarations communiquées étaient vraies ;
b) si, de bonne foi, la personne a exprimé ou tenté d’établir par un argument une opinion sur un sujet religieux ou une opinion fondée sur la croyance en un texte religieux ;
c) si les déclarations étaient pertinentes à un sujet d’intérêt public, dont la discussion était dans l’intérêt public, et si, pour des motifs raisonnables, il croyait qu’elles étaient vraies ; ou
d) s’il avait l’intention, de bonne foi, de signaler, aux fins de renvoi, des questions qui produisent ou tendent à produire des sentiments de haine envers un groupe identifiable au Canada. SCS envert un courriel de masse à tous les députés.
Envoyez un courriel à votre député pour appuyer le projet de loi C-367(gracieuseté de la BC Humanist Association)
c) si les déclarations étaient pertinentes à un sujet d’intérêt public, dont la discussion était dans l’intérêt public, et si, pour des motifs raisonnables, il croyait qu’elles étaient vraies ; ou
d) s’il avait l’intention, de bonne foi, de signaler, aux fins de renvoi, des questions qui produisent ou tendent à produire des sentiments de haine envers un groupe identifiable au Canada. SCS envert un courriel de masse à tous les députés.
Envoyez un courriel à votre député pour appuyer le projet de loi C-367 (gracieuseté de la BC Humanist Association)
Élaboration d’une pétition électronique pour demander au ministre de l’Immigration, des Réfugiés et de la Citoyenneté d’imposer un moratoire sur l’expulsion des résidents sans papiers jusqu’à ce qu’il élabore une meilleure politique et un meilleur règlement.
Surveiller les actions de la Liberty Coalition, un groupe fondamentaliste de droite qui a l’intention de prendre le contrôle du gouvernement du Canada pour transformer le Canada en une théocratie chrétienne. (https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/fundamentalist-christian-movement-1.6793677)
Promouvoir l’activité politique par les 25 à 30 % de Canadiens qui ne sont pas croyants afin que leurs voix soient entendues.
Protéger le droit à la liberté de religion avec un contact direct confidentiel avec SCS afin que nous puissions donner des conseils et intervenir le cas échéant (http://www.secularconnexion.ca/urgent/). Si vous êtes victime de discrimination en raison de votre non-croyance, utilisez ce service. Découvrez Successes Great and Small (http://www.secularconnexion.ca – sous Maintenant !). Si vous faites l’objet de discrimination, utilisez ce service.
Continuer de faire pression sur les gouvernements pour qu’ils modifient les lois discriminatoires à l’égard des non-croyants ; par exemple, les règlements appliqués par la Direction des organismes de bienfaisance qui favorisent les religions, article 319 3b (ci-dessus).
Nous avons besoin de votre soutien pour faire ces choses. S’il vous plaîtabonnez-vous ou faites un don
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: http://www.secularconnexion.ca/events/successes-great-and-small-2/
Publication Date: January 6, 2024
Organization: Secular Connexion Séculière
Organization Description: Secular Connexion Séculière (SCS) is a national organization dedicated to advocating and lobbying for atheist rights in Canada, to facilitating communication and dialogue among Canadian atheists, and to communicating Canadian human rights values to the world. SCS does not have, nor does it seek, any governing powers in the Canadian atheist community. Rather, it seeks support for its efforts to defend non-believers right to freedom from religion, to lobby the Canadian government on the behalf of Canadian atheists, to provide communication conduits for Canadian atheist organizations.
The following successes were accomplished using a mass email service, Zoom, this website, internet access, and telephone, all of which cost money. Please donate to help SCS achieve similar successes: CLICK HERE TO DONATE
Supporting Individuals – The local branch of a national bookstore chain refused the author of Why Men Made God permission to display her books and sign them because the book was “too controversial.” SCS wrote a letter to the manager, who escalated it to her district manager, who instructed the manager to allow the author to display and sell her books, saying to us that the meeting with the manager was a “teaching moment.”
Municipal Scene – A non-believer expressed concern that local officials had installed a nativity scene in the municipal office building thus denying his right to freedom from religion in government spaces. SCS wrote a letter to the contacts he provided explaining how this was offensive. No response was received, but the nativity scene did not appear the next year.
Based on the 2015 decision (Mouvement laïque québécois et al v. City of Saguenay), SCS ensured that local municipalities had stopped opening their meetings with prayers. One mayor thought the ruling applied only to Québec, but referred it to their lawyers who agreed with SCS. Moments of silence to open meetings ensued.
Federal Advocacy – In response to SCS’ e-3638 petition, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship confirmed that atheist/apostate refugees can access the Less Complex Claims policyreducing hearings and delays. SCS contacted all of Canada’s refugee officers, and made sure that they know this. We also made international groups assisting atheist/apostate refugees aware of this.
SCS expressed concern to the Minister of Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship regarding longer wait times for atheist/apostate refugees from Pakistan and Bangladesh than for refugees from Eastern Europe. We highlighted the case of an atheist refugee who had full sponsorship in Canada, but waited for almost two years for final approval to enter Canada. We received a response from an official saying that nothing could be done – five days after the refugee had been granted final entry into Canada.
SCS wrote a letter of concern to the Principal of the Canadian School of Public Service regarding the opening of classes with a prayer. The principal claimed the prayer was a one-time special acknowledgement of aboriginal culture, even though our source indicated that it was common practice. SCS has had no confirmation that the illegal practice has ceased.
In Our Schools – the grandmother of an elementary school student emailed SCS with a concern that after-school religious classes were being advertised and sponsored by a public school. Her concern was that her grandchild was being peer pressured into attending. SCS wrote the principal of the school and pointed out that the practice denied students their right to freedom from religion. The principal escalated the issue to a superintendent who wrote to SCS informing us that she had visited the school, had seen the promotional material, and had instructed the principal to remove them immediately.
These are real accomplishments that can be duplicated with your help. CLICK HERE TO DONATE
Les succès, grands et petits
Soutenir les individus – La branche locale d’une chaîne de librairies nationale a refusé à l’auteur de Why Men Made God la permission d’exposer ses livres et de les signer parce que le livre était « trop controversé ». SCS a écrit une lettre à la gestionnaire, qui l’a transmise à son directeur de district, qui a demandé au directeur de permettre à l’auteur d’exposer et de vendre ses livres, nous disant que la réunion avec le gestionnaire était un « moment d’enseignement ».
Scène municipale – Un non-croyant s’est dit préoccupé par le fait que des responsables locaux avaient installé une crèche dans l’immeuble de bureaux municipal, niant ainsi son droit à la liberté de religion dans les espaces gouvernementaux. SCS a écrit une lettre aux contacts qu’il a fournis expliquant en quoi c’était offensant. Aucune réponse n’a été reçue, mais la scène de la nativité n’est pas apparue l’année suivante.
Sur la base de la décision de 2015 (Mouvement laïque québécois et al c. Ville de Saguenay), SCS s’est assuré que les municipalités locales avaient cessé d’ouvrir leurs réunions avec des prières. Un maire a estimé que la décision ne s’appliquait qu’au Québec, mais l’a renvoyée à ses avocats qui étaient d’accord avec SCS. Des moments de silence aux séances publiques s’ensuivent.
Défense des intérêts du gouvernement fédéral – En réponse à la pétition e-3638 de SCS, le secrétaire parlementaire du ministre de l’Immigration, des Réfugiés et de la Citoyenneté a confirmé que les réfugiés athées/apostats peuvent accéder à la politique sur les revendications moins complexes, ce qui réduit les audiences et les retards. SCS a communiqué avec tous les agents des réfugiés du Canada et s’est assuré qu’ils le savaient. Nous avons également sensibilisés les groupes internationaux qui aident les réfugiés athées/apostats à ce sujet.
SCS s’est dite préoccupée par le ministre de l’Immigration, des Réfugiés et de la Citoyenneté au sujet des temps d’attente plus longs pour les réfugiés athées/apostats du Pakistan et du Bangladesh que pour les réfugiés d’Europe de l’Est. Nous avons mis en évidence le cas d’un réfugié athée qui a été parrainé à part entière au Canada, mais qui a attendu près de deux ans pour obtenir l’approbation finale pour entrer au Canada. Nous avons reçu une réponse d’un fonctionnaire disant que rien ne pouvait être fait – cinq jours après que le réfugié ait obtenu l’entrée finale au Canada.
SCS a écrit une lettre de préoccupation au directeur de l’École de la fonction publique du Canada concernant l’ouverture des classes avec une prière. Le directeur a affirmé que la prière était une reconnaissance spéciale unique de la culture autochtone, même si notre source a indiqué qu’il s’agissait d’une pratique courante. SCS n’a eu aucune confirmation que la pratique illégale a cessé.
Dans nos écoles , la grand-mère d’un élève de l’école primaire a envoyé un courriel à SCS pour s’inquiéter que les cours de religion après l’école étaient annoncés et parrainés par une école publique. Ce qui la préoccupait, c’était que son petit-enfant était pressé par ses pairs d’y assister. SCS a écrit au directeur de l’école et a souligné que cette pratique privait les élèves de leur droit à la liberté de religion. La directrice a transmis le problème à une surintendante qui a écrit à SCS pour nous informer qu’elle avait visité l’école, qu’elle avait vu le matériel promotionnel et qu’elle avait demandé au directeur de les retirer immédiatement.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://thehumanist.com/news/aha_news/meet-the-new-cfe-intern-jada-majied
Publication Date: May 20, 2024
Organization: American Humanist Association
Organization Description: The mission of the American Humanist Association is to advance humanism, an ethical and life-affirming philosophy free of belief in any gods and other supernatural forces. Advocating for equality for nontheists and a society guided by reason, empathy, and our growing knowledge of the world, the AHA promotes a worldview that encourages individuals to live informed and meaningful lives that aspire to the greater good.
Please welcome the Center for Freethought Equality’s summer intern, Jada Majied!
TheHumanist.com: What is your educational and work background?
I am currently an undergraduate student at Indiana University (IU) majoring in political science with a minor in political and civic engagement. With this education I hope to run for office in the future with a grassroots campaign dedicated to advocating for progressive solutions to today’s problems. I always make sure to align myself with jobs and positions that highlight advocacy work and strive towards making a difference. Currently I am the Director of Outreach and Diversity for College Democrats at IU where we host meetings educating students on various political topics from elections to social justice issues. I also have completed an internship with the Indiana Democratic Party where I was able to work with politicians at the local, state, and federal levels, helping to get Democrats into office. With my new position as a CFE intern I am excited to see what this organization has in store for me!
TheHumanist.com: How did you first learn about humanism?
While I have known of the existence of humanism for quite some time, I never did the proper research to fully understand those who identify as humanist. After reviewing and educating myself on humanism through the American Humanist Association website, I realized that it described who I was as a person perfectly. The incorporation of scientific research, facts, and encompassing a respectful mindset towards others, is a lifestyle I have been practicing even when I was still attached to a religion. Identifying as a humanist was a very easy and seamless action that didn’t feel like being confined to a box, but embracing the traits of myself that I already hold.
TheHumanist.com: Did you grow up in a traditional religious faith? How did it impact you?
I was raised in a religious household, where, for a quarter of my life we attended a Baptist church. As a child, I did not quite understand the teachings of religion and found myself with question after question on why we must believe in religion and how religion should impact our lives. While in the church, ideals were preached to us that did not seem ethical to me, this included topics that seemed harmful to women, LGBTQ+ individuals, and those who do not follow a religion. As I grew older, I realized that the faith conflicted with my own standards for kindness and respect, which led me to understand that I do not need to be religious in order to live a full life but I need to be a good person to create a life that is full.
TheHumanist.com: What interested you most about working for the American Humanist Association?
I really wanted to work for and surround myself with individuals who share the same progressive standards as myself in terms of how society should change for the better. In my search to be a part of an organization that promotes justice to marginalized communities and ethical policies, I found the American Humanist Association. The AHA and The Center for Freethought Equality exemplified what it meant to be a part of the solution and the more I Iearned about their goals the more I was ready to join the team!
TheHumanist.com: What book has influenced you the most?
A book that influenced me the most is Becoming Abolitionists by Derecka Purnell. While I label myself as a progressive individual, I found that this book was aggressively progressive in its ideals for how society should correct current injustices and move forward to create a more efficient society. Purnell touched on many different areas in communities that need to be either extinguished entirely or broken down to be built up into something better and as I was reading, it was difficult to adjust to the idea of such a progressive form of reformation. Becoming Abolitionists definitely challenged my thinking and pushed me to understand how to get very idealistic forms of activism into feasible objectives.
TheHumanist.com: If you could have dinner with any three people in the world (living or dead), who would they be and why?
1.) I would have dinner with US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She has been my inspiration since I first got into politics in high school and I admire the way that she interacts with not just her constituents but people across the country. 2.) I would definitely want to meet with Malcolm X. I think the way that he approached activism in his time was seen as incredibly radical and dangerous and I would love to understand how he would view today’s activism. 3.) I would love to meet with George Lee Jr. (a.k.a. The Conscious Lee) a digital creator who constructively breaks down today’s controversies. I believe he would have incredible ideas about how to reform struggles and trauma in the black community.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://thehumanist.com/news/aha_news/spring-into-action-3-ways-to-be-a-better-humanist
Publication Date: April 16, 2024
Organization: American Humanist Association
Organization Description: The mission of the American Humanist Association is to advance humanism, an ethical and life-affirming philosophy free of belief in any gods and other supernatural forces. Advocating for equality for nontheists and a society guided by reason, empathy, and our growing knowledge of the world, the AHA promotes a worldview that encourages individuals to live informed and meaningful lives that aspire to the greater good.
By Jessica Brooks
When I first discovered humanism, I struggled with an overwhelming sense of urgency to put my philosophy in action. I could not quite shake the feeling that I wasn’t doing enough to “be a good humanist.” After much reflection, my opinion has shifted to the belief that humanism is not just about being, it can also be a practice that can support a way of life. Throughout my journey of converting philosophy into ways I can live my life, I focused on three of the Ten Commitments of humanism from the American Humanist Association. The three commitments that will be explored within this article are: service and participation in the community, global awareness, and humility.
“Service and Participation” was the first commitment that I chose to work on. This is because helping and being part of the community is so closely linked to the core philosophies of humanism and it was the easiest commitment to turn into simple, actionable tasks. Service is defined as helping or doing work for someone. I chose to focus my service on my community by opening and utilizing a library card. Opening a library card may seem basic or even useless to other people. However, opening a library card and actually using it is one of the easiest but also most effective ways of becoming part of your community and getting to know the many people that make it up. Having access to a library card not only gives the owner access to a plethora of both digital and physical resources, but it also allows you and others to share. Most libraries include the following resources for adults in need: career workshops, arts classes, access to the internet, English language support, access to digital and physical books, and nonprofit support. Libraries are also amazing resources for children. Access to a library often allows children access to: story times, homework assistance, technology support, college preparation, resume workshops, and volunteer opportunities. Other than classes or other resources that are commonly thought of, anyone who may be experiencing homelessness or extreme poverty can use libraries for physical shelter during the day, access to the internet, bathrooms, or any of the resources listed above. All of these activities mean that libraries provide opportunities to volunteer and interact.
I also worked on participating in the community in other ways. Normally, I pride myself on being a homebody due to my asocial nature. However, these past few months I really pushed myself to go outside, enjoy public services, and connect with other humans or nature. The first method of connection that I tried was joining humanist Facebook groups, reading other articles from the American Humanist Association, and talking to people that I already know. Even though there was not much change from what I was doing previously, the conscious effort was affirming. I then used this affirmation to build up my confidence to branch out into more difficult methods of communication. For me, that looked like joining a free collage club where I gathered with others, we shared social media, we had amazing conversations, and we made art with each other. The two sessions of collage club that I attended were tremendously helpful to me because it provided a “third place” outlet which is so lacking in today’s society. A third place is any place where people can talk with others or relax that is not at work or at home. While my third place was a collage club, this could be anywhere for those who are interested in trying to find ways to build upon their humanistic practice. Common free and accessible third places include parks, coffee shops, gyms, recreation centers, and sporting events.
Now that I had found a local community, I felt ready to venture towards my second commitment, “Global Awareness”. Because I live in a relatively diverse city, focusing on global awareness was easy for me. For example, there are big cultural and religious festivals, diverse restaurants, and people who have backgrounds from around the world for me to connect with. However, I used to live in a small town which would have made these things impossible. I will try to include some small-town friendly options for those who need it. For those who live in big cities, try to look for monthly or weekly activities from your cultural center or history museum. Here are a few activities that I attended to expand my participation in global awareness: attending a symphony orchestra, viewing cultural dances from Mexico and Jamaica, and experiencing a live art session from artists around the world. For those in smaller towns where these options may not be accessible, I recommend watching content creators from around the world or using the internet to learn how to cook an international dish, listen to international music, or learn a different language.
Lastly, I wanted to focus on a third commitment, “Humility”. Humility is important to me because it reminds me to stay grounded and give myself the grace that I so willingly give others. The actionable tasks that I broke humility down into were: creating a To-Do list, journaling my experiences, reflecting on my glows and grows. (Glows are positive things that occurred in a day or positive actions taken.
Grows are areas that may need improvement or change.) I chose these three tasks because they were simple, and expanded onto things that I already had in place.
In conclusion, humanism is not just something to be, it can also be things to do. I have found that breaking down the humanistic core values into small, free or cheap, actionable tasks worked well for me. For those of you that are interested in completing a journey similar to mine, try working on one or two actions that can be completed daily or weekly.
Jessica Brooks is a Black, queer, humanist who is passionate about the history and celebration of marginalized peoples. She currently is a middle school Social Studies teacher in North Carolina.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://thehumanist.com/news/aha_news/effective-advocacy-learning-the-basics-with-lobbying-101
Publication Date: March 28, 2024
Organization: American Humanist Association
Organization Description: The mission of the American Humanist Association is to advance humanism, an ethical and life-affirming philosophy free of belief in any gods and other supernatural forces. Advocating for equality for nontheists and a society guided by reason, empathy, and our growing knowledge of the world, the AHA promotes a worldview that encourages individuals to live informed and meaningful lives that aspire to the greater good.
By Emily Newman
For ten days each year—encompassing the National Day of Reason on May 4th, the National Day of Prayer on the first Thursday of May, and two weekends—the secular movement rallies together for inclusive responses to social problems and promotes the welfare of humankind. We’re one month away from the beginning of Secular Week of Action 2024 (SWoA), taking place Friday, April 26 – Sunday, May 5. Here’s what you need to know so we can all make it a success.
What is SWoA?
SWoA unites compassionate communities to organize service events, connect volunteers to impactful projects in their neighborhoods or online, and celebrate what human beings can achieve together when we dedicate ourselves to ethical action. It puts our values of critical thinking, empathy, and responsibility to work to support each other, our environment, and our communities. It reminds us there are many ways a few people can make a lasting difference. We can ease the suffering of others, beautify our communities, and inspire allies to join our work for a world with a safe and sustainable future for countless generations to come.
Who participates in SWoA?
SWoA welcomes collaboration from individuals interested in gathering a team, local groups hosting opportunities in their regions and online, and national organizations supporting various projects and campaigns. The week provides a basis for humanist-interfaith collaboration by offering a way for all Americans to participate in civic life through volunteerism, that never discriminates based on religious belief or nonbelief. Major partners include American Humanist Association, American Atheists, Secular Student Alliance, The Freethought Society, and Secular Coalition for America.
Why join SWoA?
While service projects, educational events, and advocacy opportunities happen throughout the year, SWoA is a special opportunity for us to amplify our work, promote our values, and show how much we can do when we take action together. Thoughts and prayers are not enough for real change and there are many ways we can better support all in need. When we host a food drive, deliver meals, hand out bus passes, or volunteer at a local food pantry, we’re making it easier for someone to stay housed or find shelter. When we clean up local parks and beaches, plant trees, grow pollinator gardens, and remove invasive plants, we’re protecting vulnerable wildlife and modeling healthy stewardship of our earth. When we organize or participate in a blood drive, we not only provide vital health resources but also can educate people on the unethical ban on blood donations from gay and bisexual men and work to end that discrimination. When we advocate for progressive change locally and nationally, we’re helping transform our political structures into systems that empower people and our planet to flourish. When we build partnerships with other successful changemaking organizations in our communities, we expand important work that can have a near-infinite ripple effect.
How can I help SWoA?
Check out the Secular Week of Action website for suggested actions you can organize and join. But don’t let our recommendations limit your creativity and energy. You can get involved with all sorts of activities like helping neighbors with errands, garage/yard/stoop sales where the profit goes to a charity of your choice, get-out-the-vote campaigns that include postcard writing or phone banking, fundraisers like bowl-a-thons or walk-a-thons that provide both social opportunities and funds to an organization in need, and so much more. Make sure to register your planned events on the site so others can join and we can later hear about your impact through the report form so we can brag to the secular community and press, further showing the power of community action. Like, follow, and share content from the Secular Week of Action Facebook page to promote SWoA, its events, and the awesome teams making it all happen. Remember to post your events on social media before, during, and after using the hashtags #SecularAction #SecularValues and #WeekOfAction so we can share it to further the outreach. And share other teams’ and groups’ events so we can support each other in building a more empathetic and just society for all.
Emily Newman is the Senior Education Coordinator at the American Humanist Association’s Center for Education.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Freethought Newswire
Original Link: https://thehumanist.com/news/aha_news/humanist-groups-making-change-and-building-community-in-2023
Publication Date: December 15, 2023
Organization: American Humanist Association
Organization Description: The mission of the American Humanist Association is to advance humanism, an ethical and life-affirming philosophy free of belief in any gods and other supernatural forces. Advocating for equality for nontheists and a society guided by reason, empathy, and our growing knowledge of the world, the AHA promotes a worldview that encourages individuals to live informed and meaningful lives that aspire to the greater good.
By Emily Newman
Throughout the year, humanist groups in the American Humanist Association’s network offer their local and online communities opportunities to learn, aid, and celebrate together. They provide educational programs and advocacy efforts on important legal and legislative issues, service projects that address societal needs, and social events to connect people with each other and the world around us. Here are some recent highlights from AHA chapters and affiliates:
Protecting Church-State Separation
In November, the Humanist Society of New Mexicohosted Rachel Laser, President and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, for a talk on “Church-State Separation and the Battle for American Democracy.” Held at the First Unitarian Church of Albuquerque, the event brought 150 people together to learn about and discuss how to address the dangers of white Christian nationalism. Terrence W. Sloan MD, President Humanist Society of New Mexico, shared why this advocacy work is important to his group:
Church-state separation guarantees that our government cannot establish a national or state religion—or set up a government-sponsored church—but it also does so much more. In America, we base our laws on shared civic values, not the will of religious majorities. Our laws stem from our Constitution, not someone’s interpretation of the Bible. This enables us to come together as equals and build a stronger democracy. The separation of church and state ensures that the government can’t force anyone to believe or not believe in any religion. In the words of Thomas Jefferson, “The First Amendment was intended to erect a wall of separation between Church and State.” Christian Nationalists want abortion bans in all instances; fundamental Christianity in public schools; an end to LGBTQ rights; book, entertainment and art bans, to make America a fundamentalist Christian nation; and to dismantle all concepts of secular government and the separation of church and state. They are an existential threat. White Christian nationalism wants to rewrite our history and values. It is pushing forward a government that values fundamental Christianity above all other religions and a legal system that disfavors the nonreligious, religious minorities, women, people of color, and the LGBTQ community. The Humanist Society of New Mexico frequently uses the Thomas Paine quote: “All mankind are my Brethren, the World is my Country, and to do good is my religion.” Our Society supports a secular government with the freedoms entailed in our Constitution.
Providing for Communities
Humanists of West Florida has regularly provided food and supply drives to Pensacola residents in need since it began in 2013, including two winter poncho distributions events in 2023 to help hundreds of unhoused individuals stay dry and healthy. So, it is exciting to have them recently recognized by local media as “a beacon of hope for food-insecure families” known for establishing partnerships with local businesses, secular nonprofits, and religious neighbors. Noting census data that shows one in eight Americans faces the challenge of securing reliable, nutritious food, the article encourages readers to support Humanists of West Florida’s fundraising efforts to continue its vital food distribution initiatives. “Together, let’s build a future where no one goes hungry and compassion prevails,” said group Secretary/Treasurer Andre “Buz” Ryland.
Enjoying Each Other and Nature
In November, Atheists United’s Atheist Adventure members took a break from Los Angeles to experience Zion National Park in Utah, one of the most iconic International Dark Sky Places on Earth.
Evan Clark, Atheists United Executive Director, described the trip:
Together we hiked the Riverside Walk trail to the mouth of the Narrows, explored the lower, middle, and upper Emerald Pools, touched the water seeping from Weeping Rock, and experienced sunset at the top of Watchman trail. The highlight of the weekend was undoubtedly our star talk on a moonless night gathered around the campfire. David Hasenauer, a docent from the Mount Wilson Observatory, joined us with his 17-inch telescope and gave an unforgettable lecture on the history behind one of humans’ greatest inventions, the telescope.
This third-annual event generated some great photos and a great article in the Los Angeles Times. Atheists United shared on their website that the media coverage is a win for all atheists because “the only times the media talks about atheists are when there’s controversy, politics, or religion involved. We virtually never get to express our sense of optimism, community, and wonderment on this scale.”
Spreading Humanism
Along with the summer 2023 chapter grant winners, the AHA also awarded a chapter grant in the winter to New Jersey Humanist Network to help them create needed resources to better publicize their group and educate people on humanism. They’re working on a new logo, website, postcards, and a retractable vertical banner to direct visitors to their meetings and tabling events. “We have plans to expand our ‘network’ beyond Central Jersey, into more diverse areas where no humanist group currently exists, which will require us to participate in more tabling opportunities and make our materials more portable,” wrote the group. We look forward to seeing and sharing their new designs!
Find or start a humanist group in your area to connect with other humanists (and atheists, agnostics, freethinkers, etc.), engage in valuable service work, and learn about the wonders of the world together.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© 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, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
Share this:
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/05/18
According to some semi-reputable sources gathered in a listing here, Rick G. Rosner may have among America’s, North America’s, and the world’s highest measured IQs at or above 190 (S.D. 15)/196 (S.D. 16) based on several high range test performances created by Christopher Harding, Jason Betts, Paul Cooijmans, and Ronald Hoeflin. He earned 12 years of college credit in less than a year and graduated with the equivalent of 8 majors. He has received 8 Writers Guild Awards and Emmy nominations, and was titled 2013 North American Genius of the Year by The World Genius Directory with the main “Genius” listing here.
He has written for Remote Control, Crank Yankers, The Man Show, The Emmys, The Grammys, and Jimmy Kimmel Live!. He worked as a bouncer, a nude art model, a roller-skating waiter, and a stripper. In a television commercial, Domino’s Pizza named him the “World’s Smartest Man.” The commercial was taken off the air after Subway sandwiches issued a cease-and-desist. He was named “Best Bouncer” in the Denver Area, Colorado, by Westwood Magazine.
Rosner spent much of the late Disco Era as an undercover high school student. In addition, he spent 25 years as a bar bouncer and American fake ID-catcher, and 25+ years as a stripper, and nearly 30 years as a writer for more than 2,500 hours of network television. Errol Morris featured Rosner in the interview series entitled First Person, where some of this history was covered by Morris. He came in second, or lost, on Jeopardy!, sued Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? over a flawed question and lost the lawsuit. He won one game and lost one game on Are You Smarter Than a Drunk Person? (He was drunk). Finally, he spent 37+ years working on a time-invariant variation of the Big Bang Theory.
Currently, Rosner sits tweeting in a bathrobe (winter) or a towel (summer). He lives in Los Angeles, California with his wife, dog, and goldfish. He and his wife have a daughter. You can send him money or questions at LanceVersusRick@Gmail.Com, or a direct message via Twitter, or find him on LinkedIn, or see him on YouTube. Here we – two long-time buddies, guy friends – talk about guessing, and other things.
Rick Rosner: When we talk about persistence, we’re talking about interesting persistence instead of a rocky planet with no life. I mean, yeah, it can exist and will exist for maybe tens of billions of years, but not so interestingly. So, interesting persistence is life and things that can respond and survive via thought in a changing environment. So, it’s not just life; it’s life plus the artificial creatures. We’re just starting to create an interesting persistence that is somehow tangled up with information because things that are interestingly persistent develop an internal model of reality in a lot of organisms that we think about commonly. That model of reality is embedded in consciousness because being conscious turns out to be very helpful in being persistent, but you can have a model of reality and respond to changes in the environment without being conscious. Plants and amoeba respond, and they have mechanisms that let them respond to gradients and changes and conditions in the environment, whether they’re consciously aware of them or not. The whole deal of persistence is based on being able to juke around and find ways to survive based on… that information is all braided into.
Also, there is an increase in information over time. In regular physics, information is conserved, neither created nor destroyed. In IC, the universe builds itself out of increasing amounts of information, and it remains to be figured out what role individual creatures and civilizations that become more information-rich and become better and better at processing information, what role they have in the evolution or in the timeline of the universe. It makes sense that those things will come to exist over time, but do those things have a role to play in the persistence of the universe? Do the conscious beings and then the very powerful information processors within the universe help make the universe itself a more powerful information processor?
With regard to evolution, evolution has a versatile language that has allowed it to try a zillion things, which has eventually led to consciousness and to creatures who can direct their own trans-evolutionary processes like hyper-evolutionary because we creatures that understand processes and can direct processes instead of the mostly undirected processes of evolution.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Outside of asexual reproduction and sexual reproduction, do you think there’s any other niche that evolution hasn’t found?
Rosner: Yeah, I think there’s a lot, though I haven’t thought about it a lot.
Jacobsen: Susan Blackmore calls technological evolution sort of a field of temes akin to memes, a third replicator.
Rosner: Well, technological evolution is like meta-evolution; evolution that’s aware of itself and is driven to create more powerful and complicated forms, though not entirely. Capitalism is a form of cultural evolution, and capitalism likes more complicated forms if it lets you exploit markets; capitalism doesn’t hesitate to create stupid shit either, but that’s the same as a natural evolution, that evolution over time will create increasingly complicated organisms to explore new niches. At the same time, it’ll go ahead and create new stupid organisms if there are niches that can be exploited by simpler organisms.
Jacobsen: We have an open question too. It matters for persistence; it matters for reproduction. We don’t know if true intelligence in a species is lethal, if it is a self-extinguishing trait of a species in the long term.
Rosner: You can make statistical inferences, and at the very least, you can say that high intelligence doesn’t always destroy the species.
Jacobsen: I Googled it. The most prominent species on the planet are beetles; they have some intelligence. I would argue they’re not that intelligent. So, for ubiquitous presence of a species, a little bit of intelligence might help.
Rosner: What you’re saying is there are more species of beetles on Earth than any other type of animal.
Jacobsen: Beetles make up about one-third of all known insect species.
Rosner: Yeah, so they’re a good versatile model.
Jacobsen: Microscopic worms are four-fifths of the life of animals on the planet.
Rosner: By mass or by number?
Jacobsen: That’s a good question. According to BYU professor Byron Adams, there are 57 billion nematodes for every human on Earth.
Rosner: Ah! So, by numbers, at least, and maybe by mass, leaves are a versatile structure. I don’t know how many different kinds of leaves there are, but the basic leaf recipe is adaptable and useful. So, the worm form is adaptable and persistent beetles are; it’s some basic recipe that there’s not one best leaf, but the leaf system is good enough that it’s become the predominant mechanism from which plants gather energy. Does that mean that it’s unlikely that there’s a better system that could be engineered for passively gathering and mostly passively gathering energy from sunlight? I think we can engineer better systems. I’m sure when you look at leaves, they can be outdone, if not now within 10 years, but we could engineer better structures for pulling energy from light or storing energy from light, gathering and storing, but leaves are pretty good because they’ve evolved over billions of years.
You could argue whether human technology is still a product of evolution because we evolved to be the creatures that can come up with the technology, but I think it’s a better argument to say that’s kind of bullshit-y and that human technological and cultural evolution does not fit under the umbrella of natural evolution. What was the original question, or you said there’s an open question?
Jacobsen: The question is, is intelligence a lethal mutation? Basic intelligence like a nematode or beetle functions it works; that structure of mind and that structure of an organism, whether a hard shell or…
Rosner: All right, so what you’re really asking is are humans going to wipe themselves out from being too smart and too powerful at manipulating technology.
Jacobsen: Obviously, we notice a lot of stupid behaviour and thinking across the species. We make fun of it all the time on X and other platforms, on meta, on TikTok, and so on. I think that actually is an indicator of a generally high intelligence relative to other species because we’re able to note it and point it out.
Rosner: Anyway, I don’t think humans are going to wipe themselves out, and I think statistically, I would guess that intelligent species don’t wipe themselves out. There are a number of ways for an intelligent species to wipe itself out, but two of the bigger categories are… Well, there’s war, there’s exhausting a planet’s resources and making it uninhabitable, and then there’s committing suicide. It’s possible that an entire species could decide that life is absurd and that continued existence isn’t justified and just decide to blink themselves out. I think that would be really uncommon.
Jacobsen: I would call this Conscious Lemming Zero, and I want to coin it.
Rosner: Lemmings don’t do that; that was a mischaracterization.
Jacobsen: As well, in terms of the boiling water, the frogs jump out. It’s similar to Mother Teresa when you want to make an example of a good person. The truth, as Christopher Hitchens pointed out, is that she wasn’t a friend of the poor; she was a friend of poverty. She kept people in poverty because she thought it was God’s will. That’s not a good person. The popular image is that she’s a good person. Those are entirely different things. The historical record and her pop culture are similar.
Rosner: Before we got off on frogs and Mother Teresa, we were saying… I have to say I’ve been up since… because when you go from London to LA, the day becomes eight hours longer.
Jacobsen: I felt like that in Ukraine.
Rosner: So, I’m possibly slightly loopy. So, I lost the thread. What was the original?
Jacobsen: Is intelligence a lethal mutation?
Rosner: I mean just mathematically; I would guess that because I think, and I think you agree, that there’s no limit to the size of a possible universe. The set of all possible universes or moments within the universe can be any size short of infinity.
Jacobsen: I would only disagree as a matter of being a stickler. I agree with the general point. I would only disagree with this analogy: we don’t know what the highest number of pi is.
Rosner: No, Pi has no last digit.
Jacobsen: Oh, that’s true. So, it’s different types of infinities we’ll say. We don’t know how large the largest could be or how the laws of the world would have to work in order to get bigger and bigger universes.
Rosner: But we’re guessing that there’s no limit, and every moment that can possibly exist has a history that created it. The bigger the universe, the longer the history for the most part, and just the mathematics of it suggests that we think that consciousness is embodied in the information processing of any reasonable universe, and that means that there are conscious entities of any size and any length of history which suggests that intelligence or powerful conscious information processing is not 100% fatal. There’s literature around this kind of thing that’s annoying either way you go. There’s literature or science fiction that presents Earth as a very special place, a place that’s evolved art and love and music. That’s kind of the Star Trek view of a benevolent, optimistic, positive picture of humanity and that humanity is very special. Then there’s an opposite view that can be just as cliched, which is that every freaking aspect of human existence is likely to have been… well, not every aspect, but that everything you can think of reasonably; art, music, war, cruelty, fucking, has happened among conscious creatures just about every time higher consciousness evolves and that there there’s nothing special about humans.
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/04/06
[Recording Start]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I took a long ride from New Orleans to Chicago and Chicago to Los Angeles.
Rick Rosner: We were saying making distinctions in quantum mechanics is a big deal. You would have virtual landscapes of possible things happening and, occasionally, things changing in the quantum mechanical characterization of a system reflecting that specific event; that particular event has occurred and has been chosen. A t=1, you’ve got an open quantum question.
Jacobsen: I found a definition that is pretty much bang on. What do I mean by “valence?” Which is “The importance that somebody assigns to something, whether personally relevant or not.” That can incorporate instincts, drives, and motivations.
Rosner: You are talking about a precise determination.
Jacobsen: This is the most broad-based thing I could find. You could translate this entirely as informational.
Rosner: But generally,’ drawing a distinction is one of the building blocks of physics and cognition; quantum events don’t happen. They have happened. You find yourself in a world, in a moment, after a distinction has been drawn. I do not know the physics. The guy who owned the first gym I ever joined came to Boulder to do his postdoc. He was trying to capture the moment a hemoglobin molecule would open up and grab four oxygen atoms. So, I think part of his deal was that it should be a process that you should be able to see happen. Until then, this is the 1960s. You could only see a closed hemoglobin molecule without fully blown open oxygen. His idea was that you should be able to see those get loaded on.
Similarly, it is 60 years later. They have seen how that works now. But I don’t know that you can see a quantum process, an individual event in action. There is no event. There is potential for an event. There is the aftermath when an event has happened. The thing has happened. It is now part of your world; an event has happened, and a distinction has been drawn. So, you see it in quantum mechanics. You see it in AI, where AI takes its probability landscape and makes a distinction, which is the same as a division. Fill in a blank out of all the possible things in its probability map that could go in the blank, like Watson playing Jeopardy, doing calculations based on the input, which is the Jeopardy question, that leads to, as the calculations happen; an answer might arise to the point of being 85% likely according to the probability landscape. Watson dings in with that answer. But it is all drawing, picking something out of a set of probabilities, one of the building blocks of existence, of cognition.
Jacobsen: The thing is, we are living behind. You look at a mirror. You are not seeing you, but you a billionth of a second ago.
Rosner: Our image of the world, our picture of the world, in human consciousness can probably be mathematized in a quantum mechanical way. But it is a quantum mechanical abridgement. It is an abridgement of our world that can be mathematized via quantum mechanics while the world itself is quantum mechanical.
Jacobsen: You could argue valence even in a general sense there. The valence of the universe is things existing or those that do not, statistically. That is the most general argument I could make in defining a valence.
Rosner: It comes up with Schrodinger’s Cat in the Copenhagen Interpretation. I saw this in a pretty annoying new show called Dark Matter, where this guy is wrestling with versions of himself. He is lecturing on Schrodinger’s cat. The deal is that you’ve got a box. You don’t know whether the cat in the box is alive or dead. Everybody knows by now. Your model of the world has an open question about the cat’s state. That doesn’t mean, contrary to the Copenhagen Interpretation, that the cat is both alive or dead and dead in the actual world. Your abridgement of the world; the cat can be represented as alive and dead because you don’t know. In the actual world, the cat could be alive or dead depending on what the world, the universe itself, knows about what happened in the box.
Jacobsen: The universe has incomplete knowledge about itself.
Rosner: Right, the universe can go either way. You would have to set up a precise situation for what the universe knows about the cat to be confined entirely with a box. Eventually, the news is going to get out. Somebody is going to get in the box. It will be apparent to anyone who looks in the box what happens. You could set up a special box that you could set up yourself, where you know and the cat could be alive or dead. It is much more likely that your model of the world doesn’t know, but the universe itself knows shortly after the event that would determine whether the cat lives or dies occurs.
Jacobsen: There is almost an informational lag time in everything. Everything is filtered through consciousness or the screen of consciousness. The universe is constantly in motion. So, I try to describe it as sets and the information that we’re getting in the universe, and then we get our conscious screen. We are making distinctions and valence to make significations in the universe.
Rosner: So, we contend that it’s possible for, given the right circumstances, evolved consciousness or, shortly, engineered consciousness; we argue that consciousness could be characterized via the math of quantum mechanics. So, given that it is possible for systems that quantum mechanics could characterize to arise within the world to be part of a quantum mechanical world than the universe itself, which is characterized by quantum mechanics, you can have these little quantum systems bubbling up all over the place. Not “all over the place” because a tree is not conscious. There is nothing that I can think of that necessitates a quantum mechanical characterization of the information on the tree’s awareness because I don’t think the tree has significant awareness.
Jacobsen: It is the way the patellar reflects is alert.
Rosner: It doesn’t even deserve the term “alert.” It is part of a mechanical-ish system that does not arise to the level. It is not conscious at all. It is no more conscious at all, really than a rock.
Rosner: That show, Dark Matter, the first episode, casually mentions things. One of the scientists is a scientist who won the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for showing consciousness arising from the frontal lobe, which I find annoying, as consciousness is magic. There is a factory in your brain pumping out consciousness, which is an unreasonable characterization of consciousness. I think consciousness is a whole brain phenomenon or parts of your brain sharing information with other parts of your brain. When you are walking, you are not aware of all the mechanics of walking. Signals are being sent from your brain to your nervous system about walking that isn’t part of your consciousness, but there is more of your brain – I would guess – sharing information in this wide open association shared with the rest of the brain, and the sharing is consciousness. You are not getting consciousness squirted into your brain from someplace else. That would be magic.
Jacobsen: Anything of spirit, soul, or consciousness and a ghost in the machine. Decentralized processing makes sense of things.
Rosner: There are arguments about what a soul might be when discussing a mental landscape, like AI having a probabilistic landscape. When I say a sentence, I am not super conscious of every word choice. When I say, “In a…,” I am not thinking, “What comes after ‘in a’? You are making choices, filling in the blanks, that have different levels of conscious consideration. You are not conscious of choosing “a.”
Jacobsen: It is more akin to being a skilled musician. You are not thinking about every single note. You are thinking about the overall piece.
Rosner: So, many things that happen in your consciousness are built from these probability landscapes that AI uses to generate material when you ask it to do a task for you. AI, as it stands now, is not conscious. We use the same probability landscape that AI does. It is possible to characterize things like the soul versus something about consciousness or existence as being at a certain level in the probability landscape. You might have certain underlying tendencies of thought based on your entire history of thinking, or maybe not. Maybe that is an inaccurate simplification. But it seems like people have different styles of thought. Maybe there is something like a soul in that. It all still boils down to probability landscapes. In a conscious system, you have a bunch of modalities and little AIs, and they are doing their functions based on their probability landscapes. They are sharing their results with the rest of your brain. This multimodal sharing generates consciousness.
Jacobsen: In all these senses, you can characterize it. It is a weird way to think about it. They’re all making ‘cuts.’
Rosner: Drawing distinctions.
Jacobsen: You see this in synesthetes, where they get cross-talk in the senses. They will taste the sound of G-sharp. They will see salty. This cross-talk there are rare cases where they have three senses cross-talking.
Rosner: It doesn’t mess them up or cause them to get into traffic accidents. It gives them an analytical tool different from most people’s. Some people have feelings about numbers that correspond with other sensations, such as a number being bitter or sweet. I read some places where four is an unlucky number. I like eight because it is supposed to be lucky. I would not say I like 13 because it is supposed to be unfortunate. I am superstitious. I know it is bullshit. It is part of the associations I have with the number. I like 17 because it is the last random number. It looks pretty random. So, it is often picked when mathematically unsophisticated people are writing a script. When they need a number that sounds random, they like 17.
Jacobsen: Then it’s not random.
Rosner: Right, so it becomes not random when people begin picking 17. Also, in a punchline, “My girlfriend is with 17 guys.” It is a random number. It seems more trustworthy or jokeworthy because 20 sounds like an approximation, and 17 sounds like a specific thing that happened. I don’t think that 17 smells any particular way. People with synesthesia have these different sensory systems, but they don’t believe that 17 out in the world, if there were 17 out in the world. That’s a meaningless phrase.
Jacobsen: What if everyone evolved to be a synesthete? What if that was the norm to have cross-talk?
Rosner: It wouldn’t change if you had 17 lemons at the grocery store. Those lemons wouldn’t smell any different than any other number based on embodying 17.
Jacobsen: I would take those as concepts, as abstractions from this base.
Rosner: Synesthetes aren’t arguing that the number 3 out in the wild smells or looks a certain way. It is some internal bookkeeping that is a little wacky.
Jacobsen: I think synesthetes tell us something profound about experience. These are different ways of wiggling the universe to harvest information.
Rosner: Processing information. Marilu Henner is a renowned actor who has perfected eidetic recall at every moment of her life. You can give her a date. She will be able to tell you in great detail what she was doing on that date, even if 30 years ago, from moment to moment. It doesn’t mean that she is experiencing a different world than we do. She is parsing the world in a way that most people don’t.
Jacobsen: I think you can take the five traditional senses as delimits. There’s probably some weird multidimensional way you can characterize the number of ways you can harvest information from the world. I think the five traditional senses might be folk psychology and folk physiology.
Rosner: We have five pretty clear sensory systems. Maybe there are some other senses, like proprioception, like knowing where your limbs are in space, which is half of a sense. We have the senses that we do because they make the most sense in terms of our evolutionary budget of resources for us. If synesthesia offered an advantage to people in understanding the world, it would be more widespread among people. It doesn’t cost you much. Marilu Henner’s perfect recall helps her as an actor because she can look at a page once. She doesn’t have to memorize. She automatically memorizes everything. It is helpful. In general, that investment in perfect recall isn’t worth the expense. So, most people don’t have it. If it offered a substantial evolutionary advantage, then people with perfect recall were babies who survived and people who don’t don’t. Then that would be something to persist, but no: That’s an accident.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/04/06
[Recording Start]
Rick Rosner: On Twitter, I left it up. Pessimism in news reporting is a thread about how bad news gets more eyeballs than good news. So, it goes into various areas. It is by John Burn-Murdoch, a columnist and chief data reporter at the Financial Times and a senior fellow at LSE Data Science. He shows how news focuses on bad news because it draws more interest and colours people’s perception of the economy here. People are doing well generally in America. They think the national economy is fucked, which is contrary to the economy in reality. It is due to adverse reporting. So, the economy and crime are at a 30-year low in America in most major cities, but people think crime is going crazy. Fox gets much engagement by creating crime stories, so people believe crime is high. My mom had that problem because she watched a bunch of How is about crime, like TJ Hooker. In the 1950s, the percentage of news headlines conveyed pessimism. In the 50s, it was between 15% and 17%, about 1/6th of headlines were pessimistic. As of 2022, 1/3rd of headlines are pessimistic. So, the pessimistic headlines have doubled over the last 50 years.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: It is much more, but not drastically more.
Rosner: Negative headlines drive more traffic. Do you know Kristi Noem?
Jacobsen: Ok.
Rosner: Very Trumpy, very Republican; she published a book about making tough decisions. She had this bit about shooting her dog and shooting her goat. The country went crazy jumping on her because, as presented, there was very little justification for shooting these innocent animals. People love this person who is an asshole and being able to jump all over her. People were more in love with responding to Kristi Noem than they would have been in responding to a story about somebody saintly. So, yes, people like grabbing onto negative stories and getting angry about them.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/04/06
[Recording Start]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We’ve had several ideas come up amid informational cosmology. One of them has to do with the degrees of freedom in a system and how we frame the universe as a relational system, and so I was thinking about the degrees of freedom in a relational system of information. The idea of a physics of relational degrees of freedom of information would be distinct from digital information where this digital information is distinctive and singular, and then you have a matrix or matrices of information networks. That’s a different idea than the sort of emerging components of the system becoming the information in so far as they relate to one another, and that relation happens through time where time is emerging…
Rick Rosner: So, to preface what we’re talking about, we need the definition of information, which is the definite choice of an outcome among a set of possible outcomes. So, that outcome contains information, and the amount of information is the fraction of outcomes that occurred, which is, if you throw a coin, you have two possible outcomes, and you get one of the two that contains less information than if you rolled dice with 100 sides. One out of a hundred contains more information than one out of two, and that’s the basic definition of information, right?
Jacobsen: Yes, that’d be a baseline definition of information. However, if you’re dealing with relationships amongst parts, it adds different layers to the definition.
Rosner: The issue is when you say information within a system, you have to talk about what a system is. For example, one system might be the entire universe, and every durable quantum event should add information to the system. So, to be informed, the event has to leave a durable record. For instance, I might determine how many quantum events occur per second in a star. It has to be 10 to the 30th or some crazy number, but most events don’t leave a durable trace. One durable event within a star might be fusion in a couple of deuterium nuclei coming together to form a helium nucleus. Maybe that’s hard to undo, but just exchanging heat photons at the sun’s center where the temperature is super crazy hot, none of those photon exchanges leave a traceable event. You can assume they’re going on because the sun is super-hot and photons are carrying the heat, but unless a photon makes it to the surface of the sun and escapes, most of those photons aren’t traceable. Does all that seem reasonable?
Jacobsen: For the system to have any information, it has to be the distinctive representation of the system. In a way, virtual things that don’t have a durable existence but have existed for a sufficient amount of time to impact the system can then change that system’s informational net content.
Rosner: Yeah, we have human information systems where we get sensory information, and we have thoughts, and somehow, information is processed within our awareness. We live in a world where many events are at least temporarily durable that what we experience leaves traces in our memories until we die and our brains break up and then, like all that information, are lost because our brains, which held the information, can no longer have information. So, you need some general or unified theory of information that ties all information in all relevant systems together and explains the whole ecosystem of information and how those various information-containing systems impinge on each other informationally. Does it matter to the information processing system that is the universe when humans experience events in our awareness that generate information for us? Inny information-generating events in our awareness are irrelevant to the overall information-processing system, which is the universe. At the same time, if there are gigantic civilizations that are millions of years old that interact with the universe, that engineer the universe for their survival long term over billion years spans, then what those systems or these civilizations do does impinge, but I don’t know. Can civilizations within the universe affect the information processing of the entire universe? A unified theory of information, which would likely also be a unified theory of the universe, would clarify that.
So, what you’re suggesting is a program of inquiry. When we talk about the universe, it’s a relational system in that the universe perceives itself via quantum interactions, and that’s relational in that everything in the universe defines itself and everything else via a history of interactions. How does that relate to a digital system where all it is from bit people like Wheeler and all those guys who have been pushing the universe as a computer since the 60s? All those guys naively; naively is like a snotty term, but naturally, the first attempts to do this would be the universe as a computer, and maybe quantum events correspond to zeros and ones in a computer. By poking at it, you and I, we think perhaps that’s and also because people have been talking about that for 60-70 years now, and I don’t think that’s delivered a whole lot in terms of results, but I’m not informed enough. What do you think?
Jacobsen: Yeah, I mean, my general idea is that you have a framework of emergent properties, and the information can be defined as that those properties emerge more distinctly, but that would replicate sort of a digital infrastructure that we see in modern computers where they’re stacked or just a two-dimensional processor. At the same time, the emerging property is still information; there needs to be more definition. So, there has to be a way in which you can define the parts of the universe relationally being emergent while including a factor or some variable in the equation for the fuzziness of that information as things become more distinct, and so that degree of fuzziness should decrease as the scale increases…
Rosner: We know it does, just like the wavelengths of matter are teeny because there’s a ton of matter; there’s 10 to the 80th, 10 to the 85th particles all shoot other particles at each other. So, things are tightly defined, so the fuzziness is at this very microscopic scale. There’s another thing, which is that the universe is entangled with itself. I guess the universe is a quantum-entangled entity, and you can call it a quantum computer, though it doesn’t look like our primitive quantum computers because our quantum computers are still manipulating bits. There’s still a bunch of zeros and ones, just the processing of them is more potent because it’s massively parallel and entangled, but it’s not to say that the universe is information processing; it’s still hard to find the zeros and ones in what the universe is doing if there are zeros and ones at all. There are distinct quantum events.
When a Quantum event happens, you can characterize it with exact numbers. Even though the particles involved are all fuzzy, at a later point in time, the universe reflects these distinct and precise quantum events having happened. Though the precision might be limited again, you can arrange the universe by doing experiments so that you can know with a high degree of certainty that a quantum event has happened. Though you never get 100% certainty, each quantum event you think happened has an exact mathematical description and a mathematical name. This event happened and is precisely what would have happened if this event had occurred, and we can know that this event occurred with a super high degree but not 100% certainty. Does all that make sense?
Jacobsen: So, there will be an overarching property of how leaky a particular event is, whether it’s an object or a world line or large section of the universe depending on size, so it’s a sliding scale of how defined things are. That would be one variable certainly included in that, so the relational degrees of freedom that variable probably would be defined straightforwardly by some mathematical symbol, the degrees of freedom for this particular event and worldwide out of the universe.
Rosner: So, for people who don’t know a lot of quantum mechanics, the first example you learn when learning quantum mechanics is the particle in a well or a box. Here’s a particle; it’s fuzzy; it’s in a box; it’s in a place where it can’t get out of because there’s a potential it would have to climb out of the box or it would have to break through the walls of the box. But in that particle description, the particle is fuzzy, and there’s a high probability it’s here and a low probability that the particle exists as a cloud, a probability cloud that is precisely located here. Well, the center of that cloud is here, but the particle can be any place within the cloud with a given probability of any place within the cloud, and the cloud extends to infinity. So, you get quantum tunnelling where you got a particle in a box, say it’s an electron and say the probability that the electron is an inch away when you detect it, that it’s an inch away from the center of that probability cloud is one in 10 to the 20th, but that’s not zero. So, if you had 10 to the 20th electrons in boxes, one would appear outside the box because of probability. So, that’s what leakiness is that you just talked about.
Quantum leakiness is that you can’t pin everything down precisely.
Jacobsen: In some technical sense, we are constantly leaking out to the edge of the universe.
Rosner: Right, but the universe, by its interactions, holds itself together. This isn’t the Big Bang expansion in the universe. Say the universe is flying apart all the time, but if all the particles are expanding and everything’s expanding at the same rate, then the universe can’t perceive that and is not very sensible. It’s the difference between a photograph and an enlargement of a photograph; if it’s the same photograph, it doesn’t matter how much you enlarge it because the relations among the things in the photograph remain the same. It’s only when the relationships change that you get perceptible changes. So, regardless of what overall frame you put on it, the universe manages to define itself and provide its frame even though there might be mathematical frames that make it convenient to think of the universe as this thing that’s flying apart. If everything’s flying apart to the same extent and none of the relationships among the elements of the universe change, it becomes meaningless, etc., except maybe a mathematical convenience to talk about the size of the frame changing as long as everything within the frame stays the same.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/02/13
[Recording Start]
Rick Rosner: Carole and I started watching Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the TV series inspired by Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, a Doug Liman movie from probably 15 years ago. It’s where Brad and Angelina met and fell in love, perhaps 17 or 18 years ago. In both the film and the series, the main characters work for a mysterious Espionage and assassination agency, of which there are many in film and on TV. I was thinking about whether those things reasonably exist in real life. You can undoubtedly have Espionage and assassination agencies connected to specific governments or crime organizations. Still, in a lot of these movies and TV shows, these are like Espionage and assassination for higher organizations, that if you’re sufficiently connected or have enough money, you can hire somebody from these agencies to do spy craft and murder for you. I wonder if that works in the real world. So, we can talk about the limits of that.
Now, we know you can hire a private detective agency; indeed, the more money you have, the more surveillance you can put on somebody. Indeed, the more money you have, the more you can harass somebody legally, at least within the bounds of the law. Still, I don’t know how feasible it is to have a freelance agency that murders for hire because you need a trusted network at several levels, secrecy, and expertise. You can reliably put all those things together in the real world. You hear about people trying to solicit murder for hire and getting caught, and these people are generally idiots.
There was a magazine, I don’t think it has been made in the last 20 years, called Soldier of Fortune. It was supposedly for mercenaries, and idiots put ads in there trying to solicit hitmen. Then somebody from a police agency would generally respond, saying I’m your guy, and then you’d set up a meeting where some money would be turned over. Sometimes, there’d be some fake evidence that the person you wanted to be killed was killed, and eventually, you would be arrested for soliciting murder. Murder for hire seems to be something done by idiots and often responded to by idiots, and it just doesn’t seem like something that works as slickly as it’s usually presented in movies. What do you think?
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: That’s probably true. Most crimes are done simplistically, including some of the most serious. Where I’m living right now temporarily is one of the most likely maximum security prisons in the country. It’s the highest security federal prison out of Yukon Territory, or the province of British Columbia called Kent Institution. Years ago, when I was planning on doing an actual series of interviews with prisoners at the high end who have committed some of the worst crimes, I remember I communicated with the warden of that particular prison. So, I’m just right by it now. So, I don’t think criminals are known for being intelligent. You noted this when we discussed IQ and that many people have committed crimes. They have lower than average IQs, so they’re in prison, they’re off of the streets. Therefore, the general population who walk around has higher IQs than average, not 100, for instance, or whatever the area’s average is.
Rosner: I mean, there’s the old saying that crime doesn’t pay, and you could boil that down into saying that the effort that goes into crime, that same effort could deliver similar returns with less risk of horrible consequences, imprisonment and being forced to commit further acts of crime that would get you in even more trouble.
Jacobsen: If the crime and the effort put into it are above the person’s effort and intelligence level, then there’s a sliding scale of how likely they are to get caught.
Rosner: If you look at Mexico, which the cartels control, I don’t know how smart you need to need trust networks; you need you and a bunch of other savage motherfuckers together in an enterprise that is making everybody in the enterprise enough money or has the promise of making like the lower level people, a) they’re getting paid more money than they could get legitimately and they may be thinking there’s an opportunity for them to move up in the organization. So, given that you control Mexico, you’re somewhat immune to consequences because Mexico’s been made super corrupt. You’ve got this economic network built from huge profits, and somebody in the network needs to be reasonably intelligent. Nobody needs to be a genius. So, in that case, crime might pay for quite a while for years and decades. Getting out always seems to be problematic. If you’re in a powerful position in a cartel, I haven’t seen many stories of people who managed to tiptoe away from it. I mean, maybe there are, but I don’t know.
To make a lot of money in crime, you need organized crime and to be part of a structured system with many people whose criminal integrity has been established, which I think precludes the idea of just freelance assassins for hire. There have been hitmen in the mafia who’ve worked for several crime families, but their trustworthiness has been established within all those families that they vouch for; various families vouch for the guy. So, it’s not freelancing; it is still part of the established trust network.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/02/12
[Recording Start]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, I wanted to make a point about comparing Canadian and American politics. A recent thing arose that I think is essential with a woman named Selena Robinson; she’s the minister of postsecondary education and future skills of British Columbia. She made an insensitive, according to many, comment about Israel and Gaza, and she gave an apology on Twitter shortly after that. This was five hours ago. She says, “I want to apologize for my disrespectful comment referring to the origins of Israel on a “crappy piece of land,” I was referring to the fact that the land has limited natural resources. I understand that this flipping comment has caused pain and that it diminishes the connection Palestinians also have to the land. I regret what I said, and I apologize for that reservation.”
Rick Rosner: All right. So, she shouldn’t be forced to resign, and I don’t know what would happen in America depending on what side she’s on politically and who decides to go after her. Crappy is not an inappropriate term, at the very least. Israel’s land is less than ideal because it’s small and coveted by more than one group of people. Historically, a lot of the land the Palestinians are on has been used for olive groves, and I don’t know what kind of land is suitable for growing olives, whether it’s depleted or pleasant land; I assume it’s not that nice. Israel, in the Bible, I think, is called the land of milk and honey. So, maybe it’s nicely situated between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, but that doesn’t seem to be a wildly insensitive comment. If some people want to go after her and if she wants to apologize, that should be it. Her comment probably reflects at least a little historical knowledge about Israel. So, there you go.
I got my teeth cleaned today, and my dentist came in; I think he has dual citizenship between the US and Israel, and he asked me what I thought, and I said I’m not qualified to have thoughts because I don’t know anything. Then I told him my thoughts, and he gave me more information. I said that I think Netanyahu needs to go when the war is over, and he said that he’s done. I don’t know precisely when he became a citizen. I think he started with just an American citizenship, but he spent a lot of time over there. He doesn’t like Netanyahu either; most Israelis don’t. I mean, the war has to be prosecuted against Hamas. Still, it is also a way for Netanyahu to stay in power because once the war is over, given his negligence that allowed the Hamas attack that set off the war, plus his just being like a dick, he’ll be kicked out of office.
He said, now I don’t know. I asked what was going on in the West Bank, which is on the east side of Israel on the West Bank of the Jordan River, with the right-wing extremist settlers abusing the Palestinians whose land it’s supposed to be. I don’t know what political point of view he’s expressing, but he said that 90% of the Jewish settlers on the West Bank are decent people and that it’s 10% of belligerent killy- people that are the problem. Netanyahu, he said, and I think this is well established, Netanyahu has like fascist criminals super right-wing criminals in his cabinet and supporting them and supporting their efforts to let the extremists on the West Bank get away with whatever may have been, I think he said this because it was a lot of information and just a few minutes, that distraction may have been what let Hamas develop their plans for a massive attack in more or less plain sight.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/02/11
[Recording Start]
Rick Rosner: California is attacked by Conservatives for just being a liberal hell and that people are fleeing California for the free states of Texas and Florida. There’s a lot of bullshit in that California has lost about 1% of its population. Some people made a ton of money in California and want to move into a state with zero or deficient income tax levels. However, having lived in California since ’89, I don’t find the state income tax very oppressive. It’s about 10% at the highest levels, but we generally don’t get over three or 4% even though I’ve made a good living. The State sales tax is pretty high at like 9 and 3/4%, but that’s true of a lot of places, including some Republican states, but the deal with California isn’t that it’s a liberal hell. Yeah, California does have a liberal supermajority. Still, California is such an excellent and exceptionally creative place to do business that many people have made a ton of money and squeezed out poorer people. So, it’s the success of California, I would argue, rather than the liberal hellscape of California that is responsible for a lot of the housing crisis.
LA has maybe 66,000 homeless people, more than any other city in the country, and there are a bunch of reasons for that, but one reason is that freaking LA is excellent if you’re going to be homeless; better to be homeless in January in LA than in Detroit or Baltimore. Also, LA has a lot of drug rehab joints, and people get sent out here from all over the country. These are paid trips because drug rehab, I guess, is a pretty big business. I’m not sure if those people get return tickets or if they do if they use them. But yeah, housing is super expensive in California, and there are good and bad reasons. I’d say it’s a good reason that the housing code book, the building rules, has tripled in thickness in my time in California to include extreme earthquake safety because we have extreme fucking earthquakes. In countries where they have shit building codes and earthquakes, a lot of people get pancaked along with their dwellings. So, we have safe buildings, and then there are a lot of Green Building rules; buildings that don’t fuck up the environment more than they have to, like cement, have a considerable carbon footprint. I don’t think that the building codes do anything about that. Still, they’re pretty thorough in addressing other aspects of the environmental costs of construction and offering bonuses in terms of how big a house you can build on a lot. You can make more extensive if you build greener, which does not seem unreasonable, though it will help contribute to a housing shortage.
There’s nimbyism, not in my backyard-ism, which is you need to build denser housing somewhere to fit all the people who need housing and middle-class and above people don’t want the dense housing in their neighbourhoods. So, California is still an excellent place to live, but you are going to pay a shit ton for housing unless you live in a crappy part of California. You can move to places like Needles, California or even Bakersfield and live cheaply. California is a vast state with many towns you wouldn’t want to live in, and it is affordable.
We’re looking at a changing housing landscape. Housing in California and every place will be disrupted by AI and related powerful technology that may relieve some of this. Also, people’s lifestyles are going to change over the next 30, 40, or 100 years, and people will spend an increasing amount of time… I mean, everybody knows this. It’s a cliche now that everybody’s going to be plugged into VR and that you perhaps won’t need as much great housing as people would want now because people will be living and spending a lot of their time in Matrix-like pods not as all-encompassing, not 24/7 pods but people could be living in virtual reality for 6, 8, or 12 hours a day. Those people may have different housing needs than people who aren’t doing that.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/02/10
[Recording Start]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, I proposed a topic on how evolution finds all niches of persistence. Those are generic abstract terms. I wanted to start with reproduction styles, and I’m speaking more about biological reproduction. So, our species has its form of reproduction, and I’m speaking purely in terms of a continuation of a genetic line. I’m not talking about social aspects; I’m just talking about the forms and mechanics of reproduction. If you look at the animal world and the plant world, there are just an enormous number of ways in which nature has found a way to reproduce. So, at face value, these reproduction styles are so diverse in terms of styles and magnitudes that nature has seen most of the possible niches for persistence for reproductive success.
Rick Rosner: Hold on. So, persistence isn’t the same thing as reproductive success. You have to start with a scatology: evolution is good at what evolution is good at. On this planet, at least, evolutionary processes have created a genetic structure that is good at passing down well-assembly instructions to make roughly the same animal from generation to generation, with variation created for a lot of animals and plants mixing genes by combining a male and a female set of genes. Still, there’s a lot that gets left out. I don’t know of any species that lets you mix three people’s genes to create an offspring or four. You can do four if you do a two by two and then have those two offsprings mate, but only four at a time.
Evolution could improve at creating persistence by having creatures live forever. Some species live for a long time, and you can call them immortal because either the same animal keeps living by making new cells or something or keeps producing more or less exact duplicates of itself. If you probably take a couple of hours and think of a bunch of different ways too, if you somehow have the technology to do it, pass information from generation to generation with variation, but when it comes to sexual reproduction and all the other ways that organisms on earth reproduce, they’re pretty good at filling niches because they’ve had billions of years to develop the technology; the evolutionary technology genes and epigenetics and just everything. So, once you limit the persistence field to reproductive genetics, evolution has covered a lot of ground because it’s had so long to do it and so many animals to do it with.
A hundred years ago, Schrödinger of Schrödinger’s Cat wrote a book called What Is Life. I tried to read it, I started reading it, and I didn’t get very far, but I mean, there’s plenty of stuff that’s persistent, exists for a long time, and isn’t alive. If the universe allows, diamonds can exist for billions of years. It takes around four and a half billion years for a diamond to disintegrate.
Jacobsen: That’s incredible!
Rosner: Yeah, it’s under a lot of pressure, and little carbon molecules very slowly evaporate off the surface of a diamond. There are other crystals that are probably even more stable and can persist for tens of billions of years if external conditions allow.
Jacobsen: So, you’re distinguishing between the persistence of inanimate life and animate life?
Rosner: Schrödinger wrote that book about 25 years before Shannon developed a mathematical characterization of information and information theory. I would think that a modern physicist, a super competent physicist writing about what life is, would get farther in defining it than the uncertainty guy did because its information and entropy, and neg entropy, have something to do with how life is organized over time and being persistent within the lives of individual organisms and also from generation to generation. You don’t have to get that deep; you can look at some of the things… and we did this in like fourth or fifth grade, like, what do you think makes something alive? In fourth grade, we didn’t come up with all this stuff, but it’s being built from the minor structures, which are self-assembled and reproduced. You can make a robot that can create a replica of itself, but the pieces will not be significant. They’re not going to take advantage of all the things that individual atoms can; you’re not going to have microstructures or everything being built up from microstructures.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/02/09
[Recording Start]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You said you hate flying because you’re about to go to Europe with your wife. I responded that I hate flying too, and that’s a good topic because I wouldn’t say I like flying. I don’t like any travel; I’m a homebody. I want to be at home. I like it when it’s necessary.
Rick Rosner: I like being in new places, but I hate having my routines interrupted and also like Boeing was handling its internal quality control like the feds are supposed to want to keep an eye on what you’re doing if you’re making planes and over the past several years, they just had a door plug blow out on I think one of their 737s because they forgot to screw it down. Three years ago, they lost two 737s because the software fought with the pilot and caused the plane to crash. Remember those accidents?
Jacobsen: Oh yeah.
Rosner: So, I mean, planes can still crash. I mean, a lot of shit can happen, and the odds are very low, but I don’t like that part of it and then being in an uncomfortable position for 11 hours to Europe. Well, you just did that to Ukraine.
Jacobsen: It’s a way longer flight because it’s going around the country because of the war, in a literal sense around the borders or in a multi-destination sense because you can’t go straight into the country.
Rosner: Was your plane entire?
Jacobsen: Yeah.
Rosner: Did you have an empty seat next to you so you could at least stretch out a little?
Jacobsen: I found Canadian Airlines much better than Polish, significantly better.
Rosner: At any time, did you have an empty seat next to you so you could put your legs up or move into a more comfortable position?
Jacobsen: Yes, but then an entitled white woman asked to take it because she had a child. The child was delicate; the child was old enough. She just wanted that seat, so the gentleman beside me with a gap between it for three seats in that particular section of that row was eyeing yet going, ‘Don’t do it.’ Being overly friendly, I said, of course, ma’am, and that became a flight from Warsaw to Toronto with a child kicking my seat the whole time and crying, not a young child, maybe six or so.
Rosner: Did the mom even try to get the kid to behave?
Jacobsen: Didn’t even try. It was a nightmare. I was so exhausted from the war, happy to be alive first of all and then getting out, and I was this entitled Westerner.
Rosner: How is the kid kicking your seat if you gave up an empty chair?
Jacobsen: She was stuck with her child and another guy in the seats before us. One guy between this gentleman beside me at the window, and I left because he was misplaced. She then saw that as an opportunity to take the back row and move us two to the seat in front of us where she and her daughter were with the other gentleman. So, it’d be three in the front, two in the back, and the two in the back would be her and her daughter, with a space in between. So, they had extra legroom, and they had extra armroom.
Rosner: That sucks. Did you turn around at any time and say I did you the favour of giving you those seats, and now your kid is just making my flight miserable?
Jacobsen: I didn’t even do that; I restrained myself.
Rosner: You’re probably a better person for having done that. Also, that lady, I mean, was she an asshole, or was she just overburdened? You said she was entitled.
Jacobsen: She looks like an overweight McDonald’s mom, like an American stereotype. It wasn’t perfect. I don’t know what your country is exporting to the world anymore.
Rosner: Yeah. The ugly American tourist stereotype has been around since the ’50s.
Jacobsen: Oh, that isn’t very good. The Europeans have become more Americanized, but it depends on the country. Iceland doesn’t like America much because of the Trump phenomenon when I was there. They’re the most gender-equal country in the world, like 10-11-12-13 years running, according to the World Economic Forum Index of gender equity or gender equality. So, they’re doing very good. Canada’s certainly up there, but they have done a few other things that, in their trajectory, they made the right decision, whereas North Americans made the wrong decision. They don’t think much of Americans. It depends on the particular country. I’m sure Victor Orban’s Hungary might have a different sense of things there, but that’s their business. He is Trump Lite; he stripped away a lot of democracy…
Rosner: I mean, Trump is undoubtedly criminal; I would guess that Orban’s criminal and Netanyahu’s probably criminal, Putin’s certainly criminal. There are a lot of criminals either in power or close to power in countries that are important to us right now.
Jacobsen: Well, these are all men you’re mentioning. I have not met a woman who would do such a shitty job in leadership in my life; I haven’t. I think the lowest common denominator in some role of the dice in a democratic voting system ends up in power. I know H.L. Mencken was certainly a cynic.
Rosner: I wonder if H.L. Mencken knew how gerrymandering would come to work.
Jacobsen: That’s also true, yet I don’t know many women who would stoop to those levels.
Rosner: We have quite a few in Congress, but none of them will get as much power as Trump did. We have Marjorie Taylor Greene, and we’ve got Lauren Boebert; she has to switch congressional districts to a safer Republican District if they can be reelected. We’ve got Nancy Mace in the Senate, we’ve got Marsha Blackburn, and we’ve got a bunch of lunatics and hacks.
Jacobsen: I’m aware of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren.
Rosner: Joni Ernst is in the Senate, and Kristi Noem is the governor of South Dakota.
Jacobsen: So, I will add to the previous statement. Those women I have not met; I am aware of them through the media, yet their media presence is going to be cleaned up by conservative talk or extreme moments in speech.
Rosner: Sarah Huckabee Sanders, now the governor of Arkansas, was Trump’s formerly despicable First Press Secretary.
Jacobsen: I’m aware of her, too. So, I’m aware of about two-thirds of the people you mentioned.
Rosner: And Ronna McDaniel, the head of the RNC, is also terrible. Her name used to be Ronna Romney, but she changed her last name so she wouldn’t bother Trump. Anyway, it’s mostly men, but women can be terrible, too.
Jacobsen: Take it as overlapping distribution curves of awfulness. The statistical phenomenon that explains this is the psychological construct of variance. There is more variance in men than in women.
Rosner: I mean, asshole fascist populations are also misogynistic.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/02/08
[Recording Start]
Rick Rosner: This topic could be more interesting.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I might disagree.
Rosner: Okay. If I stack up enough physical complaints and irritations simultaneously happening in me, then I get flu-like symptoms that subside if I take a pain pill. So, I assume it’s like fibromyalgia light or something like that where my feet hurt slightly. Older people get physics. The Bersa is the sack your muscles and tendons come in; if you irritate the sack, that can get achy. So, I got a little of that, and then it was cold, and then since it’s winter, there’s less moisture in the air, so I got dry mouth while I was trying to sleep. So, all those little complaints, if I stack enough of them up, my body flips into some hyper-sensitive mode and gets achy and shaky overall. I get a little shaky. I get the chills, and then it goes away if I take a pain pill or two.
[Recording End]
[Recording Start]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Addendum to last session.
Rick Rosner: This is where it’s helpful to a) be a hypochondriac and b) be able to look up shit on the internet. I knew from Reading Oliver Sacks’ book that visual aura means you’re about to get a migraine. That’s when you get what is called scintillating scotomas in your eyes, and it’s like a little checkerboard that starts flashing across your vision; it begins at the center of your vision, and then it turns into a bit of flashing checkerboard-y ring that gets bigger and bigger. I’ve never had a full-on migraine; I figured that when that starts happening and when the ring gets big enough, it’s probably going to kick into a migraine, and I managed. That’s happened to me half a dozen times, and if I can get home and steal some of my wife’s migraine medicine because she gets pretty regular migraines, I can head it off before it turns into pain. That’s a nice thing about being reasonably widely read.
I caught the kidney tumour early because I realized that gut cancers, by the time they cause symptoms they’re dangerous and often not curable, but if you can have them take a look at your gut, like when you have no symptoms, there might be some shit growing in there, and they found a stage 1A kidney tumour. They also found a little cyst at the end of my pancreas, which has a very low probability of turning sour, but at least they know about it and keep looking at it once a year. So, that’s in favour of trying to figure out what your shit is. Don’t always rely on doctors because doctors know their own stuff, if that; like the doctors I have now through UCLA Blue Cross Writers Guild, they’re all pretty good, but when we were on a different insurance plan 30 years ago, we got some shitty doctors. If a doctor’s waiting room is filled with pictures of him and his little Cessna, then maybe that guy is not so focused on being a doctor; he’s more focused on flying his plane.
This guy told my wife that she had scabies. Scabies are teeny little bugs less than a millimetre, maybe half a millimetre long, that burrow under your skin and make you itch, and he didn’t even take out a magnifying glass to take a look to verify his diagnosis. So, he says you got scabies; you probably all have scabies in the family. It would help if you all rubbed this lotion all over you to kill the scabies. So, I got home and took out a jeweller’s loop, which is 10-time magnification. I looked at where the scabies was supposed to be, and I didn’t see any freaking bugs, but I still put that stuff on all over me. I usually jerk off dry, so when the lotion got wet, I had to hit my junk like it was an unexpected treat. I mean, that was the one good thing out of going to that shitty doctor, but you got to be your doctor halfway.
It’s also been bad for me where, in between jobs, I volunteer to be a guinea pig. I’d sign up for medical studies, and you can imagine how shitty the doctors who screen you for those are. This guy stuck his finger up my butt, and he must have nicked my prostate with his fingernail or some shit because my pee came out brown I looked that up on the early internet because this was well before Google, I think and got a lot of like terrible like medical news, and I freaked out. I went to get a CT scan, and this was a bad idea because back then, a CT scan had the radiation of 500 chest x-rays, and I said this machine looks like it’ll cook the shit out of me and they’re like, no, it’s only five chest x-rays. That tech guy lied to me or didn’t know about his job. So, being my doctor, I should have done a little more thinking. I was like; I had a thumb up my ass; it probably doesn’t mean anything wrong, but brown is probably old blood from when he nicked my prostate. So, if you can avoid getting a CT scan, especially in your younger years, ask for an MRI or an ultrasound.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
Share this:
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/02/06
[Recording Start]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Trump’s quote is, “I am the chosen one.” This is crazy talk coming from surveys of about a third of Americans who believe Trump was not ordained by God but guided or even selected by God to lead.
Rosner: Anything he does that seems terrible, like fucking porn or inciting an insurrection or any of that stuff. His shortcomings as a man are tests of their faith. I believe he’s their saviour, and if you can’t see past his human frailties, which we all have, you’re not really a believer. It’s like dinosaurs were put in the fossils of dinosaurs and in the ground to test our faith in God. If you fall for the trick of believing in evolution, your faith has failed, and you failed as a Christian. It’s just pure stupidity. So, Trump has twice been found liable for slander, for saying lousy shit about E. Jean Carroll, saying that he didn’t rape her and calling her shit and twice she’s taken him to Court. In each case, the judge has ruled that her allegations are true that Trump is liable to her and that in the first trial, the Court ruled that he owes her $5 million, and in the second trial, they haven’t come up with damages yet. There may be a third trial because, he went on Truth Social, his social medium and in the space of 40 minutes, sent out 47 posts attacking E. Jean Carroll.
E. Jean Carroll was for about 30 years a relationships and sex columnist for women’s magazines like Bazaar or Glamour and was very sex-positive and very exuberant. So, Trump just went ahead and tweeted out 47 quotes from her old columns from decades ago where she said, like, embrace sex. So, his implied argument is that if she’s going to speak positively about sex, he couldn’t have raped her, and if he did rape her, it doesn’t matter because she wrote about sex. He’s been a piece of shit for his whole adult life, but he continues to surprise with the new depths of shitt-iness that he plums, which may serve him well because in 2016, based on him saying awful shit, he got five billion dollars worth of free media coverage that helped him get elected. A lot of pundits think, and I hope they’re right, that there’s been a semi-media moratorium on Trump and that the media aren’t covering every single word that Trump says the way that it’s still too soon before the election for him to get and he’s not the nominee yet. So, it’s too soon to give him the depth of coverage that he’d get closer to the election. Still, the pundits are saying that given the horrible shit that he’s saying every day when he starts when people start paying attention and when the media starts giving him more coverage, this will disgust most people. He’ll lose support I hope they’re right.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Trump’s quote is, “I am the chosen one.” This is crazy talk coming from surveys of about a third of Americans who believe Trump was not ordained by God but guided or even selected by God to lead.
Rosner: Anything he does that seems terrible, like fucking porn or inciting an insurrection or any of that stuff. His shortcomings as a man are tests of their faith. I believe he’s their saviour, and if you can’t see past his human frailties, which we all have, you’re not really a believer. It’s like dinosaurs were put in the fossils of dinosaurs and in the ground to test our faith in God. If you fall for the trick of believing in evolution, your faith has failed, and you failed as a Christian. It’s just pure stupidity. So, Trump has twice been found liable for slander, for saying lousy shit about E. Jean Carroll, saying that he didn’t rape her and calling her shit, and twice she’s taken him to Court. In each case, the judge has ruled that her allegations are true that Trump is liable to her and that in the first trial, the Court ruled that he owes her $5 million, and in the second trial, they haven’t come up with damages yet. There may be a third trial because two days ago, he went on Truth Social, his social medium and in the space of 40 minutes, sent out 47 posts attacking E. Jean Carroll.
E. Jean Carroll was for about 30 years a relationships and sex columnist for women’s magazines like Bazaar or Glamour and was very sex-positive and very exuberant. So, Trump just went ahead and tweeted out 47 quotes from her old columns from decades ago where she said, like, embrace sex. So, his implied argument is that if she’s going to speak positively about sex, he couldn’t have raped her, and if he did rape her, it doesn’t matter because she wrote about sex. He’s been a piece of shit for his whole adult life, but he continues to surprise with the new depths of shitt-iness that he plums, which may serve him well because in 2016, based on him saying awful shit, he got five billion dollars worth of free media coverage that helped him get elected. A lot of pundits think, and I hope they’re right, that there’s been a semi-media moratorium on Trump and that the media aren’t covering every single word that Trump says the way that it’s still too soon before the election for him to get and he’s not the nominee yet. So, it’s too soon to give him the depth of coverage that he’d get closer to the election. Still, the pundits are saying that given the horrible shit that he’s saying every day, when he starts being when people start paying attention and when the media starts giving him more coverage, this will disgust most people. He’ll lose support I hope they’re right.
[Recording End]
[Recording Start]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: This is an addendum to the last session.
Rick Rosner: You just played me a clip from four years ago when Trump said he was the chosen one, chosen to fight China. So, now four years later he’s saying chosen by God. He was implying it four years ago but now he’s saying it but a new development is the Democrats in the House I think, did some accounting and you’re not supposed to get money from foreign governments or from any kind of foreign entity while President. And while President, Trump who says he’s going to take on China was paid 7.8 million dollars from foreign governments with two third of that coming from China and he said “Well it’s fine, any money that I get I will turn over to the treasury.”
So, it’s not fine and he even though he said he’d turn over the money to the treasury, he turned over some pittance like 2% of it, like 50 Grand. This is the same shit that the Republicans in the House are going after Biden for except that Biden didn’t receive any money from foreign governments and also wasn’t in government for the years that Trump was. So, things are all backwards here.
[Recording End]
License
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.
Copyright
© 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.
In-Sight Publishing 